Environmentalism is not a metaphor

By Remy Bargout Environmentalists live under a growing and yet age-old illusion that the mainstream movement has gained a critical mass, or unstoppable momentum that ‘now, consumer society, world leaders, and the capitalist system must reckon with’. In reality, the mainstream movement does not speak to power, but actually exerts it. Elite environmentalism is a …

Forest Defenders Conference, June 2017, UK

On 21st and 22nd June 2017,  the Forest Defenders Conference will be held in Oxford, UK, to discuss the challenges and the violence experienced by environmental defenders worldwide. The conference will bring together front line activists, investigators and community leaders with human rights groups, environmentalists, funders, media representatives, lawyers, security specialists and researchers to build …

An archive of motion: how objects find their meaning

By Marc Herbst* A reflection on how meaning is organised in relation to objects gathered at recent climate events. Or, how things stay in motion until the system changes. Ultimately, it was because the interior of the Paris COP21 Summit’s conference hall looked similar to the train I’d arrived on that it took quite a …

A powerful call from Naomi Klein for a global movement for climate justice

By Joan Martinez Alier* Naomi Klein’s new book, This changes everything. Capitalism vs the Climate  (Allen Lane, London, 2014), puts climate change at the centre of politics. She makes the connection (local-global) with movements everywhere against oil, coal and gas extraction; one could add movements in Brazil and elsewhere against deforestation. “Whether or not climate change has …