The Internet – a case for political ecology?

By Annika Kettenburg The digital sphere is more than the playground of techno-optimism, eco-modernism and capitalist expansion. While in the mainstream it is portrayed as immaterial and unpolitical, the internet is the place where personal data becomes a commodity whose production and distribution exploits workers and nature. As informed citizens, we are all aware of …

Think Big Socialism and the Spectre of Degrowth: The Ghost of Progress (Part I)

by Eric Pineault A fascinating aspect of Jacobin's Earth Wind and Fire issue is the obsessive “presence of the absence" of Degrowth, of limits and the critique of scale. When mentioned, Degrowth is evoked to further convince the reader of the necessity and reasonableness of green Keynesianism and accelerated centrally planned solar communism. Writing after several …

Nature 3.0 – Will blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies save the planet?

by Sian Sullivan Can new cryptocurrencies finance projects with positive environmental impacts, whilst unlocking ‘the $120 trillion natural capital market’? Mining cryptocurrencies through appealing to environmental concerns seems more consistent with speculative tendencies in an era of financialised neoliberalism, than attuned with practices of environmental care and equitable distribution of value. First there was Nature. …

The shitty new communist futurism

By Aaron Vansintjan Let us dream big. But without considering the limits to the shit we consume and generate, our heads will stay in the clouds.   Editors' note: This is the first in a series of ENTITLE blog articles that critically engage with the ongoing discussions about "eco-modernist socialism" and "communist futurism", projected in Jacobin magazine's climate …

Why “Warning to Humanity” gets the socio-ecological crisis (and its solutions) wrong

by Salvatore De Rosa and Jevgeniy Bluwstein The "Warning to Humanity" signed by more than 15.000 scientists calls for action to save the planet proposing elitist environmentalism and missing the real target. Instead, scientists should analyse the roots of the socio-ecological crisis and join the grassroots struggles pushing  for structural changes from local to global …

Sustainable integration? Nexus thinking and the foreclosure of progressive eco-politics

by Joe Williams The water-energy-food nexus has become a powerful framework for sustainable development that seeks to integrate the management of resource sectors for increased efficiency. However, its current mobilisation is fundamentally de-politicising, overlooking the contradictions and injustices of resource governance The water, energy and food sectors are, of course, deeply connected. Agriculture accounts for …

Toxic Bios: A guerrilla narrative project mapping contamination, illness and resistance

by Ilenia Iengo and Marco Armiero By bringing to the fore the affective, bodily and narrative dimensions of environmental injustices, the project Toxic Bios aims to open new paths of collaborative research and grassroots activism focused on "guerrilla narratives" and counter-hegemonic storytelling Toxic Bios is a Public Environmental Humanities project based at KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory in …

Are there alternative trajectories of technological development? A political ecology perspective

by Vasilis Kostakis* Alternative technological systems could develop through the confluence of digital commons, peer-to-peer relations and local manufacturing capacity - but we need the integration of a political ecology perspective to face and overcome the challenges this transition implies Humans do not control modern technology: the technological system has colonized their imagination and it …

Commons and Contradictions: The Political Ecology of Elinor Ostrom

By Derek Wall* Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012) won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for her work on the commons.  Her work is hugely inspiring but difficult to fit into established categorized. Some political ecologists have criticized her as too conservative or managerial. Here, I will attempt here to outline why, despite these criticisms, I …