Category: Less of What We Don’t Need

Many of the desert plants do indeed resemble ocean creatures: coral-like cactus and urchin-like succulents. Although it is commonly thought of as desolate and emptiness, the high desert steppe is incredibly abundant and alive. 350 species of wildlife and insects depend just on sagebrush herself. … There is so much in the sagebrush sea, so…

When the European imperialist powers decided among themselves to carve up Africa during the 1884-5 Berlin Conference, they granted Léopold his wish, officially recognizing the International African Association of the Congo (later the Congo Free State). In what was to represent a long-lasting relationship, the United States was the first nation to recognize Léopold’s claim…

On Juneteenth weekend, tens of thousands of people walked up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the U.S. Capitol as part of the epically titled Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls. (Priti Gulati Cox and I traveled via Amtrak from Kansas to join in.) Although we were following the…

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that about 700 million metric tons of copper have been extracted to date. Based on mining statistics from the Copper Development Association, that means about half of all the copper ever mined has been mined from the year 2000 through 2018 inclusive… For lithium annual production is now 25.39 times…

In May 2022 temperatures in India and Pakistan reached 50°C. Heat this fierce causes chaos to infrastructure, water security and also triggers irreversible cell damage within the human body. This extreme event, which plunged nearly a billion people into heat stress, was made 30 times more likely due to climate change. The response for those that can afford…

This is the first part of a two-part series on anti-lithium mining protests that have erupted in Serbia over the last several months, and the broader environmental movement around it. Last September, the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel made her farewell tour to the Balkans. In Belgrade, she was welcomed by Aleksandar Vučić, the Serbian president…

The change in marijuana laws across the US raises issues far beyond, “Hey, dude, we can blow a joint now without getting busted.” The racism that permeated the age of criminalization now lurks throughout the phase of decriminalization. The burgeoning business of growing pot raises the specter of corporate agriculture with its threats to human…

The ecocidal accumulation of capital threatens the very conditions of human life on the planet.  The Covid pandemic confirms this, insofar as the increase in zoonoses over the last forty years is attributable to the destruction of ecosystems. The global ecological limits of sustainable human development have been crossed in several areas (climate, biodiversity, nitrogen…

The United States is facing two grim prospects in 2022: one, that continued abuse of the ecosphere could render much of the Earth unlivable for humans and myriad other species, and two, that the United States’ current political drift toward autocratic rule could accelerate, dashing any hope of attaining a multiracial, pluralistic democracy. These two…