Environmentalism

This article is concerned with science, spirituality, and ecology. It analyses how certain scientific based metaphors, myths, and visions are being used as new cosmologies or ‘sacred stories’; new worldviews reassessing the relationship of humanity to the environment, expressing different (possibly more spiritual, possibly more environmentally friendly) ways of relating to it than the ‘modern’ ‘secular’ worldview that may be causing environmental degradation. The paper ethnographically and qualitatively analyses three such visions - ‘Deep Ecology’, ‘Gaia’, and the ‘Epic of Evolution’ - assessing their views and arguing for them as centres of ecological dialogue, challenging dominant modern views through stimulating a re-imagining and re-evaluating of the environment based on its interconnectedness, mutuality, and sacredness, thereby (possibly) encouraging (spiritual) re-connection to it and human responsibility towards it.

Usual  suspects  here  too .  Carnegie , Rothschilds , Rockefeller , Ford , DuPont .
All  of  the  foot  soldiers  are  from  Manhattan  Project –the  so  called  Atomic  Bomb makers .
Radiocarbon dating is not based upon fact, but on three assumptions: 1) that an accurate half-life for carbon-14 is precisely measurable; 2 ) that cosmic radiation has been constant for many thousands of years; and 3 ) that the nitrogen supply available to be acted upon by this radiation has been constant.

To advance understandings of how neoliberal ideologies are linked to peoples' everyday environmentalist practices, this article examines processes through which green neoliberal subjects are made. Bringing together critical perspectives on green neoliberalism and symbolic interactionist perspectives on identities, I develop the concept of green neoliberal identity work, a mechanism through which neoliberal environmentalist subjects are produced. I use environmentalists' promotions and uses of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) as a case study, and employ mixed qualitative methods and grounded theory analysis. Data were collected in North Carolina through interviews, participant observation, and texts. The data reveal four generic patterns of green neoliberal identity work: celebrations and renunciations of particular technologies, inclusive-talk, performing moral math, and technological progress-talk. These patterns show that framing green neoliberal subject formation th...

After a brief non-technical discussion of the science, this ppt discusses the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol (and amendments) in relation to the ozone layer as well as climate change. The Vienna Convention served as an important template for later international agreements that tacked other environmental issues.

АННОТАЦИЯ. За прошедшее десятилетие понятие “глобальные проблемы” трансформировалось в новый концепт “глобальное всеобщее достояние” (“global commons”), понимаемое как в узком экологическом смысле, так и в более широком социальном. Современное развитие человечества и глобальное неравенство предопределяют постановку вопроса о доступе ко всеобщему достоянию, что в будущем может привести к принципиально новому типу конфликтов. Уже сейчас наиболее острые проблемы возникают в контексте взаимосвязи глобальной экологии и демографии. Становится все более явным противоречие между природным и социальным аспектами “global commons”. Тем самым концепция глобального всеобщего достояния может привести к столкновению между собой динамики экологического регулирования и социального развития глобального общества.

This project is an attempt to produce a graphic, interactive and global history of modern environmentalism. It connects key people, ideas, movements and case studies to show the connections between different strains of environmental activism over time and space. Originally developed as a Prezi presentation for a course in global environmental history, the “incomplete” in the title refers to both the project’s current status as a work- in-progress, but also to the unfinished nature of the history of environmentalism. Our primary narrative of environmental activism is Western-centric, white and top down, which has pushed the concerns of the poor, racial and ethnic minorities and subalterns to the margins. Environmentalism is a global story, but much of it is a story that has not been told. The goal of this project is to encourage both academics and laypeople to consider and construct a history of environmentalism that is decentered, and both top down and bottom up.

The project is best viewed on Prezi: http://prezi.com/de2b2rkfrg-v/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

L’Égypte – du fait des graves problèmes de pollution auxquels elle est confrontée, et de la vigueur des luttes sociales qui rythment son actualité depuis désormais une bonne décennie – a connu des modalités originales d’articulation des luttes sociales et environnementales. Alors que la stratégie de politisation par le haut des question écologiques, portée par le parti des Verts depuis la fin des années 1980, a rapidement fait long feu, on a vu se multiplier ces dernières années, dans un contexte de montée de la contestation politique et sociale, des mouvements de protestation localisés rassemblant de larges secteurs de la population autour d’enjeux environnementaux. L’un de ces mouvements, organisé à Damiette en 2008, a même pu acquérir une visibilité nationale et obtenir en quelques mois d’importantes concessions de la part du gouvernement.

Az Inconnu csoport esetében a környezetvédelem így szorosan összekapcsolódott az államszocialista rendszer kritikájával, és elsősorban abból a szempontból vált fontossá, hogy olyan ügy volt, amin keresztül sikeresen, sokakat megmozgatva lehetett támadni a rezsimet.

The author understands environmentalism as a stream of contemporary political philosophy based on the reflection of causes and possible effects of global environmental crisis as one of the most serious threats to current political system and global civilization as a whole. Considering the changes in social, technological and environmental starting conditions of the economic-political system – i.e. the consequences of the transition from the stable geologic-climate era of Holocene to the unstable era of Anthropocene – it is necessary to reconsider the basic premises, imperatives and conceptual frames of current economic-political system. The philosophical foundations of current economic-political system as well as the basic premises of environment alism and concepts relevant to the reflection of current threats and risks were articulated in some of the writings of the founders of modern political thinking. The author's focus is on the concept of civil and human rights, the concept of state of nature, and the concept of social contract, which could be of help in the examination of the crisis of current economic-political system as a whole and the environmentalism in particular. The author's hypothesis is that the political philosophy of the 21 st century must reflect the environmental preconditions and limits of the existence and forms of any economic-political system while taking into account that all economic and social activities have their impact on the quality and sustainability of the environment.

Picloram is a powerful, persistent herbicide that has been in use since 1963. It has been used around the world for brush clearing, forestry, and maintenance, and was a key part of Amazonian deforestation. The United States and probably Portugal used picloram in wars in Vietnam and in Africa. Its use in war prompted strong censure and led to picloram's association with 'ecocide' - ecological destruction. After Vietnam, US environmentalists continued to be highly critical of picloram's use domestically, but in the 1980s, in response to world-wide problems with invasive species as well as changes in the understanding of ecological health, many environmentalists came to embrace the use of herbicides as necessary for maintaining and restoring ecosystem health - as an eco-ally. The radical re-orientation of some North American environmentalists toward toxic chemicals like picloram as a way to combat invasive species shows the ecological contingency of environmentalism. Controversy between environmentalists about herbicides and invasive species revealed latent tensions between human health and ecosystem health, long-term and short-term environmental goals.

The European Green Deal (EGD) is a comprehensive policy proposal first brought forward by the European Commission in 2019, to tackle the issue of climate change and to shift towards environmental sustainability. By introducing the concept of international norms, and by mainly drawing from IR constructivist theory, the research intended to investigate on the normative, behavioral, and political influence the EGD can have on EU actors. A plurality of methods has been used: discourse analysis, process tracing, and counterfactuals. The research’s findings concluded that the narration behind the EGD greatly mirrors the dynamical life cycle of norm emergence, and that a behavioral change induced by such process is possible among European actors. It also stressed the potentiality, as opposed to the actuality, of the EGD being able to influence policy decision-making processes. As a consequence, it failed to prove the unconditional groundbreaking valence of the plan, but it did acknowledge the possibility for it to become such, should actors’ behavioral change become even more manifest. Considering the constant updates regarding the EGD, the provisionality of the findings must be stressed, along with the possibility to conduct more quantitative analyses of its impact once the entire proposal has been rolled out.

Extinction Rebellion set out to mobilise a new generation of activists. As our data shows, they have in part succeeded: participants in Extinction Rebellion’s two major actions in London in 2019 had notably little prior experience of protest action, and we encountered many first- time activists. At the same time, however, our socio-demographic profile of XR’s activists in the UK reveals a broadly familiar kind of environmentalist: XR’s activists are typically highly-educated and middle- class (and though our survey did not explicitly ask this, white); they identify politically on the Left; and they consciously adopt multiple pro- environmental behaviours in the course of their everyday lives.
XR’s strength has been to create a new public agency amongst people who are not ‘natural’ protesters, and perhaps even less so natural law-breakers, but who were already persuaded of the rightness of the climate cause, and frustrated with the inability of both ‘politics as usual’ and lifestyle environmentalism to bring about the kind of transformative political change that the climate emergency demands. Mobilising this group enabled XR to significantly expand the numbers of people willing to engage in environmental direct action, broadening its age profile, and bringing non-violent direct action on climate change into the centre of political life in the UK.
The report comes with an Afterword from Sian Vaughan, a first-time Extinction Rebellion activist.

AbstRAct This paper argues that environmentalism as a worldview has played an important and often underappreciated role in the transition from early to late modernity. Specifically, we posit that environmentalism was one of the first discourses to directly challenge early modernist 'grand narratives' about progress, predictability, and the triumph of humanity over nature, and to establish competing narratives about globalism, uncertainty, cosmopolitanism, and scepticism of authority. In helping to establish and legitimize these themes, environmentalism has shaped modern society in ways that go well beyond specific environmental issues. ResuMo Neste estudo, defende-se que o ambientalismo (environmentalism) como cosmovisão desempenhou um papel central, e por vezes subestimado, na transição entre a primeira fase inicial da modernidade e a assim denominada " modernidade avançada ". Propôe-se que o ambientalismo foi um das primeiras abordagens teóricas que contes-tou os " grands récits " da primeira modernidade no que toca ao progresso, à historicidade e ao triunfo do Homem sobre a Natureza. Da mesma maneira, estabeleceram-se " récits " alternativos sobre a globalização, a insegurança, o cosmopolitanismo e a autoridade.

This paper is written by Shapiom Noningo and is the 6th chapter from the report “Peru: Deforestation in times of climate change” (2019), edited by Alberto Chirif.

The most harmful of these dynamics is the expansion of illegal coca growing and alluvial mining. The environmental impacts are, nonetheless, also the result of official policies aimed solely at promoting economic growth that benefits the investment companies to the detriment of the population and the environment. The state has promoted such policies through a strategy of tax reduction (meaning less public investment in social services such as education and health) and a lowering of environmental standards and social rights, such as job security. Their policies have also included the construction of roads that enable companies and extractors alike to gain easy access to new areas rich in natural resources, which are then rapidly plundered. As recent judicial inquiries have shown, these infrastructure projects are based on a logic of corruption rather than national interest.
As for the indigenous peoples, they are suffering serious aggression aimed above all at minimising, or even trying to abolish, the rights protecting them, such as the guarantee of free, prior and informed consultation as provided by ILO C169, the aim of which is to reach an agreement on initiatives affecting them.

This publication forms part of a project on the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) mechanism. The project is being funded by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) and is providing support to Servindi (Intercultural Communication Services), Onamiap (National Organisation of Andean and Amazonian Indigenou4s Women of Peru) and Coharyima (Harakbut, Yine and Matsiguenka Council), this latter being a member organisation of Fenamad (Federation of Native Communities of Madre de Dios and its Tributaries) in Madre de Dios.

The ocean is a vast series of diverse yet interconnected ecosystems.  Ocean waters cover the majority of the planet and are home to countless varieties of life.  The volume of living space provided by the seas is 168 times greater than that of land-based habitats; 90 percent of earth’s living biomass is in the sea (Clark 2006). Despite this opulence, ocean life is in peril, but unlike other threatened ecosystems, the impending oceanic crisis is largely unseen and largely unmentioned even among environmentalists.  While animal advocates and environmentalists rally on behalf of dolphins, seals, and whales, neither group seems too worried about Chinook salmon or Atlantic halibut—but they ought to be.

"It is usually assumed that being an environmentalist entails upholding the good of everything and everyone. In this
paper though I show how the holistic defense of everything implies disconsidering the suffering and death of a
great number of individuals living in nature when the equilibrium of ecosystems or the preservation of biodiversity is at
stake. I claim that from an anti-speciesist perspective we should reject environmentalism and defend the interests of
animals in nature, avoiding those ecological interventions which are harmful to animals and intervening in natural
processes in ways that can be beneficial to them, even if by doing so we may go against the conservation of natural
equilibrium or biodiversity, just as we do in the case of human beings. This implies that if we are in support of what is
for the good of everything we can’t consistently be for the good of everyone and that if we claim, as we should, that
what is important is the good of everyone (animal liberationism) we can’t also be committed to the good of everything
(environmentalism)."

In a climate crisis, shouldn't every option be on the table? When scientists and politicians declare an emergency, shouldn't we mobilize for one---by overhauling laws, economies, and the built environment?The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform is an architect's guide to the politics of energy. It maps conflicts and affiliations among various approaches to energy management and examines their implications for public life. It catalogs positions held by a diverse group of economists, environmentalists, community advocates, political scientists, and designers. It asks how architecture can realign collective priorities in today's built environment. Underdome addresses these ongoing agendas and, more than prescribing solutions, discusses the implications of politics on the way we design and build, ranging from the smallest scale of infrastructure to the largest energy grids.

Taking an exploration into the gendered politics of food, this dissertation interrogates the intimate and complex relationship between gender and food consumption, a relationship which at first glance seems to be trivial and frivolous, but is in fact a significant embodied, political, and cultural practice. It argues that food consumption is an important, embodied practice through which masculinities are disciplined and controlled. Furthermore, it is shown that food consumption (re)produces more broadly assumptions about gender as something that is natural, and essential. It argues that what we eat not only (re)produces gendered binaries, but it is also framed by normalizing discourses of class, race, and sexuality that mask over inequalities and render particular identities invisible. Using three focus groups of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian men, I will argue that vegetarian masculinities simultaneously reinforce and destabilize discourses of normative masculinity which are entirely contextual. In doing this, this dissertation offers an original contribution and an exploration into the everyday, embodied practices in which a group of vegetarian men negotiate normative masculinity.  It will consider the political salience of consuming particular foods, in particular places and raise questions about the intersections of food, gender, race, class, and sexuality. Importantly, I hope to open up a space for further discussion around the sexual politics of food, an area that until now has been given modest attention by feminist scholars.

La gravité du contenu écologique exonérerait-elle les artistes d’un souci de la forme ? La sécheresse formelle de certaines expositions « dédiées àla cause » pourrait le laisser penser. Super informatifs, hésitant entre le devoir éthique et l’émotion, les rassemblements d’œuvres écologiquement vertueuses ou actives n’ont longtemps pas su à quel rythme battre. La récente actualité démontre-t-elle une inflexion des commissariats ? Cherchent-ils toujours et encore àdéciller le public-citoyen, toujours présuméignorant des véritables enjeux environnementaux ? Ou les enjeux ont-ils fini par évoluer, tenant compte d’une meilleure médiatisation ambiante autant que d’une appétence intellectuelle pour le sujet ?
Does the gravity of ecological content exonerate artists from having to be concerned with form? The formal meagreness of some exhibitions “dedicated to the cause” might lead one to think so. These assembled ecologically virtuous or activist artworks, extremely informative, wavering between ethical duty and emotion, have long not known which drummer’s beat to follow. Have recent events demonstrated a new direction curators are taking? Are they forever trying to open the eyes of a public still presumed ignorant of the real environmental issues? Or have the stakes evolved, what with better media coverage and a greater intellectual partiality for the subject?

This paper is written by Timothy R. Baker, Dennis del Castillo Torres, Eurídice N. Honorio Coronado, Ian Lawson, Manuel Martín Brañas,
Mariana Montoya, Katherine Roucoux and is the 10th chapter from the report “Peru: Deforestation in times of climate change” (2019), edited by Alberto Chirif.

The most harmful of these dynamics is the expansion of illegal coca growing and alluvial mining. The environmental impacts are, nonetheless, also the result of official policies aimed solely at promoting economic growth that benefits the investment companies to the detriment of the population and the environment. The state has promoted such policies through a strategy of tax reduction (meaning less public investment in social services such as education and health) and a lowering of environmental standards and social rights, such as job security. Their policies have also included the construction of roads that enable companies and extractors alike to gain easy access to new areas rich in natural resources, which are then rapidly plundered. As recent judicial inquiries have shown, these infrastructure projects are based on a logic of corruption rather than national interest.
As for the indigenous peoples, they are suffering serious aggression aimed above all at minimising, or even trying to abolish, the rights protecting them, such as the guarantee of free, prior and informed consultation as provided by ILO C169, the aim of which is to reach an agreement on initiatives affecting them.

This publication forms part of a project on the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) mechanism. The project is being funded by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) and is providing support to Servindi (Intercultural Communication Services), Onamiap (National Organisation of Andean and Amazonian Indigenou4s Women of Peru) and Coharyima (Harakbut, Yine and Matsiguenka Council), this latter being a member organisation of Fenamad (Federation of Native Communities of Madre de Dios and its Tributaries) in Madre de Dios.

This paper applied an ecocritical perspective on street art to expand on the notion that street art can have an impact on how we relate to urban public space. In doing so, it argued that street art is particularly well positioned to affect the way we think and act with regard to the environment.

Ever since its inception, the project of sustainable development has constituted a challenge to deeply entrenched political, economic, and social beliefs in modern societies. Now matured, the project seems to be highly incompatible with the predominant neoliberal capitalist economic system, constitutes a nuisance to the structure of global governance, and is a noticeably controversial issue in North-South politics. However, the project itself was born out of a conflict between two opposing needs – the need for continuous economic growth on the one hand, and the need to protect the environment and achieve intra-generational and intergenerational social equity, on the other. This article argues that reconciling the needs for economic growth with concerns for the environment has been a very intricate and thorny process, hence the controversy over sustainable development’s definition, aims, and feasibility. By categorizing, examining, and analyzing sustainable development’s inner conflicts, this articles aims at achieving a deeper understanding of today’s sustainability stalemate and potential ways to overcome it. A special focus is placed on the implications of the recent prominence of ecological modernization, especially in the developed countries, on the evolution and integrity sustainable development.
Keywords: sustainable development, inner conflicts, sustainability, ecological modernization, ecologism.