Environmental Activism

Evangelicals often take two wrong paths when it comes to environmental responsibility. The first is to shun most of it all together. We deride activists as "tree huggers" and accept the line given to us by many conservatives, that environmental issues are basically economic issues and we must defend a free market economy against government regulation. This line is in error, not because economic issues are not important, nor because we should not defend free markets (of course we should), but because a proper understanding of the biblical worldview and of the creation and the fall, will lead us to very different conclusions.

Through demonstration of cutting-edge explorations in world and domestic art and science as well as related academic discussions, the 3rd Art and Science International Exhibition and Symposium (Tsinghua University, Beijing, 2012) aimed to reveal the inherent relationship between art and science, broadening research and enhancing levels of innovation. In the information era, the changing fields of science and technology propel human society forward, while ecological innovators point toward a sustainable evolution of human lifestyles and human intelligence carries out grand humanistic ideals with innovative values. From the perspectives of information science, life science and ecological science, the exhibition and symposium, integrated with existing diverse ideas and art forms and carried by artistic esthetics, bio-information technology and ecological intelligence, focused on the ultimate ideals and spirit of human beings, exploring the unknown and creating the future with new thoughts and methods.

City-based citizenship (city-zenship) and its ecological ramifications increasingly inform people’s social and political lives, rendering the link between ecological citizenship and political city-zenship a topical subject for analysis. The questions analyzed here are: How can and how do citizens of cities promote sustainable urban development? What are their goals and motivations? And how do these forms of engagement reflect the theory of ecological citizenship in cities? The research is based on semi-structured and in-depth interviews with environmental and political activists in German and Israeli cities. The analysis indicates that the city is a meaningful political arena for ecological citizenship, with distinct patterns of political participation in relation to a city’s particular identity. However, political participation in cities is not independent of the state, but dependent on the political and civic rights enshrined therein.

Activism and advocacy have drawn academic interest as alternative ways of achieving collective ends outside established political institutions. However, there has been very little theoretical attention aimed at the interconnections between the two spheres. In Civil Becomings: Performative Politics in the Amazon and the Mediterranean, Raúl Acosta examines the manner in which progressive nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activists act in a more intermingled and processual way than scholars have previously acknowledged.

Acosta focuses on networks from the vantage point of two NGOs: one in Brazil that concentrated on environmental issues in the Amazon and another in Barcelona called the Mediterranean Social Forum. The focus of this research is not on organizational aspects of collaboration, but rather on the practices and contexts in which such cooperation occurs. Three major aspects of activist and advocacy networks are analyzed: their communicative characters, their collective performances of the political, and the negotiations they engage in between vernacular and cosmopolitan values.

This volume theorizes the cooperative actions of activist and advocacy networks as legitimating processes for the work of participating groups. In doing so, Acosta argues, they address the issues that justify a joint campaign or effort and also crucially underpin each participating collective as a worthy organization of civil society.

Exploration for copper intensified in the Junín area with the arrival of Bishimetals in the early 1990s. Junín is a community located in Intag, a 1,500 km 2 expanse of cloud forests and farms in northwestern Ecuador (Cotacachi County, Imbabura Province). Bishimetals, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation, received financing from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to explore for minerals in Junín. The effort led to the discovery of large deposits of copper and other minerals in the Junín-Cuellaje project area, located in the exceptionally biodiverse Toisan Range. Interest in the mining potential of Intag was further fanned by the Project for Mining Development and Environmental Control (Spanish acronym: PRODEMINCA), financed with a loan from the World Bank (now part of Ecuador's foreign debt) and implemented in the second half of the 1990s. The principle objective of the PRODEMINCA project was to promote industrial mining in Ecuador. It sought to achieve this goal by: a) modifying Ecuador's mining legislation to make it much more pro-industry; b) to produce maps of Ecuador's mineral deposits (thus saving mining companies the time and money in locating minerals). The World Bank has provided the same " service " to dozens of so-called developing countries. DECOIN presented a formal complaint against the Prodeminca project which resulted in a full-scale investigation by the Inspection Panel. However, by this time the project was near its end, and thus too late to modify. One of the most troublesome aspects of the project was that it prospected in seven national parks. This was just one of the many irregularities that came to light as a result of DECOIN's successful challenge. The most profound consequence of the PRODEMINCA project, the total revamping of Ecuador's mining law, included the following incentives to mining companies: No royalty whatsoever, nearly all existing environmental regulation was scrapped, and what little was left, was left to the Ministry of Energy and Mines to apply; the right to repatriate 100% of profits, minimal provisions designed to protect the rights of labor and communities or to mitigate environmental impacts. The law further gave companies the right to use any and all resources within the concession needed for mining; this includes water, which is required (and contaminated) in massive quantities during mineral processing. Compensation for privately owned resources (only the subsoil minerals belong to the concession holder) was determined by the Ministry of Energy and Mines; farmers dissatisfied with the decision of this entity did not have the right to appeal to a court of law. The law also made mineral extraction and processing strictly a private enterprise-leaving the State completely out of the loop. And, Ecuador was not alone in receiving this kind of international aid from the World Bank. One hundred more countries were similarly affected by the World Bank's radical neoliberalist agenda aimed at opening up access to the world's mineral resources. The wholesale deregulation in Ecuador would later prove to be key to the violence and human rights violations provoked by the presence of unscrupulous mining companies, attracted by the incentives. In 2009, Ecuador's National Assembly approved a new mining law that eliminated many of the above incentives but, and in spite of widespread opposition by indigenous people, environmental organizations and communities affected by mining, the law did not prohibit large-scale mining, as was proposed by these groups. WHAT BISHIMETALS DID DURING ITS STAY IN JUNIN Bishimetals paid little attention to the laws of Ecuador while exploring in Junín. Among the

This paper uses systems thinking to explore the palm oil industry, particularly oil palm cultivation in Indonesia. Palm oil is a major commodity in global trade, but oil palm cultivation results in catastrophic environmental destruction. There may be means, however, by which palm oil production might become more sustainable.

The Introduction to this book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/34095644/Introduction_to_Materiality_and_the_Study_of_Religion_The_Body_of_St_Cuthbert.pdf

Material culture has emerged in recent decades as a significant theoretical concern for the study of religion. This book contributes to and evaluates this material turn, presenting thirteen chapters of new empirical research and theoretical reflection from some of the leading international scholars of material religion. Following a model for material analysis proposed in the first chapter by David Morgan, the contributors trace the life cycle of religious materiality through three phases: the production of religious objects, their classification as religious (or non-religious), and their circulation and use in material culture.

The chapters in this volume consider how objects become and cease to be sacred, how materiality can be used to contest access to public space and resources, and how religion is embodied and performed by individuals in their everyday lives. Contributors discuss the significance of the materiality of religion across different religious traditions and diverse geographical regions, paying close attention to gender, age, ethnicity, memory and politics. The volume closes with an afterword by Manuel Vásquez.

Social movement theorists have often posited that religion and political activism are inherently opposed – that religion cannot liberate people from situations of social or political discontent in the same manner as activism. Through a study of Muslim environmental activists in the United Kingdom and United States of America, this article directly challenges this belief – not only by charting the theoretical problems of this belief within the social movement theory corpus, but also by demonstrating that Muslim environmentalists in the US and UK are both religious and politically active simultaneously. Environmental activism is drawn into Islamic practice in such a way that activism becomes religious practice in the lives of these Muslim activists.

In many educational contexts throughout the world, increasing focus has been placed on socio-scientific issues; that is, disagreements about potential personal, social and/or environmental problems associated with fields of science and technology. Some suggest (as do we) that many of these potential problems, such as those associated with climate change, are so serious that education needs to be oriented towards encouraging and enabling students to become citizen activists, ready and willing to take personal and social actions to reduce risks associated with the issues. Towards this outcome, teachers we studied encouraged and enabled students to direct open-ended primary (e.g., correlational studies), as well as secondary (e.g., internet searches), research as sources of motivation and direction for their activist projects. In this paper, we concluded, based on constant comparative analyses of qualitative data, that school students' tendencies towards socio-political activism appeared to depend on myriad, possibly interacting, factors. We focused, though, on curriculum policy statements, school culture, teacher characteristics and student-generated research findings. Our conclusions may be useful to those promoting education for sustainability, generally, and, more specifically, to those encouraging activism on such issues informed by student-led research.

Patagonia's 2014 documentary DamNation marks a compelling and unconventional milestone in the evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as public relations practice. The company drew from commercial acumen but also grassroots organizing, moving its CSR initiative closer to a form of social and environmental activism. This study, especially relevant for strategic communicators focused on CSR and sustainability issues, assesses DamNation's impact upon Patagonia's audience in terms of message effectiveness, company reputation, and willingness to act on Patagonia's behalf in addressing the issue of dams. An online survey with experimental conditions was used to measure audience views on Patagonia's campaign, as well as differences between those exposed to such company-sponsored activism and those who are not. Findings from the study shed light on both emerging CSR practices and integration of grassroots activism approaches.

This article examines how folk dance is deployed as an innovative tool of urban and rural contemporary protests in Turkey. It specifically focuses on horon, a popular folk dance genre characterised by the eastern Black Sea region and popular across the country. I investigate how environmental activists transregionally circulate the genre during their coordinated protests in the city of Istanbul and the Rize province against a massive infrastructural project called the Green Road in the summer of 2015. The project has become a symbol of the state’s forced developmentalism,
violent histories of ethnic and religious minorities and capitalist dispossession, against which multiple iterations of horon seek to create solidarity, social mobilization and political participation. Ethnographic and choreographic methods guide this study to explore the dance as a complex space of physical and social interactions. Its varying aesthetics, contested meanings, and forms of reproduction and circulation provide a lens through which to discuss how protesters negotiate their identities both in horon circles and protests. The improvisational quality of horon helps merge dance, music and chanted poetry together into political action and enables urban and rural protesters to find flexible ways of resistance across the Black Sea.

The widespread use of social media has impacted various facets of life. While environmental groups once relied on local campaigns and traditional media to broadcast their messages, now social media has become a vehicle for their conservation and activism campaigns. This study surveyed seven local chapters of five worldwide nonprofit environmental organizations on their social media usage and results. Findings reveal the existence of a new type of communication – one that is reliant on a technological logic, rather than a mass communication network. Disparities between usage and analytics were detected, suggesting this tech-organizational communication is embraced, but not managed structurally. With social media debuting just one decade ago, the literature on its usage, effects, and best practices remains thin; this study offers a valid step in establishing how nonprofit environmental groups function in the realm of social media.

"What Susan taught me through her words in Rural Hours is that intimacy is wasted if just felt interpersonally. She helped me realize that nature and the physical landscape can teach humans valuable truths about living in a community—if only we allow ourselves to get close to nature, to get dirty. As I walked down that path in Cooperstown, “away from the village in quiet fields by the river,” (73) I, too, felt that intimacy with nature that Susan validated consistently with her experiences in Rural Hours. Perhaps the most valuable realization I came to in this journey however, would be at the moment when I felt distinctly at home in nature. I began to feel that my presence in the environment was not that of a foreigner, and in that moment, I knew that I had become aware of a community network based in the environment and of which I was forever a part. In order to help others come to these same epiphanies, I will be examining closely how Susan in Rural Hours uses the action of walking through nature as one which allows her to expose the community ethic inherent in the physical environment. Susan’s community ethic in Rural Hours is built on foundation in traditional gender roles, firm Christian values, and true phenomenological awareness of nature. But close readings of Susan’s observations of nature, as well as of supplementary readings that provide depth of understanding to Susan’s role as a female nature writer in the mid-nineteenth century, expose this community ethic in Rural Hours as central in formulating a healthy relationship between humans and nature. Furthermore, this community ethic comes to shape and validate Susan’s emphasis on conservation in Rural Hours, which is reflected in her legacy at Cooperstown, NY. Ultimately, I propose that Susan’s close observations of nature and the sense of community that thrives there, as they are demonstrated in Rural Hours, have played a huge role in the formulation of the conservation ethic that still energizes Cooperstown, NY today."

In this text, I briefly analyse the ways in which environmental activism is being criminalised and treated as terrorism. I will illustrate the text with instances of such treatment from Romania, Italy, France, Greece, the UK and the US. Such a long list of examples is needed in order to argue that the criminalisation of environmental activism is far from being an isolated aspect of one government's policy. It is part of a global trend whereby the contemporary capitalist state is repressing any significant interference in its strategic alliance with multinational companies. It is also part of a global trend in which governments articulate certain forms of civil disobedience as security threats for the infrastructure of the state. In this process, the " terrorist " label functions as the most important alarm that justifies a host of heavy repressive measures against environmental activists. The label of " eco-terrorism " plays a crucial role in cracking down on any form of radical dissent towards the activity of big companies.

The 20th century ended with a “bang” in Puerto Rico, producing one of the most powerful and decisive massive demonstrations that the young 21st century first saw. Broadly, this paper will focus on the meaning and repercussions of the activism that took place in relation to Vieques. Specifically, I will outline the battle against the US Navy undertaken by Viequenses, Puerto Ricans, and activists in the United States and around the world after 4/19/1999—the fateful date when a stray bomb during the Navy’s training exercises on the island killed David Sanes, a civilian security guard working at the base. In essence, this paper articulates and highlights aspects of the struggle between a
small island-municipality in the middle of the Caribbean Sea and the biggest military power on the face of the Earth, in order to extrapolate the lessons offered by the massive transnational social movement that emerged in support of Vieques.

"Questo saggio esamina gli effetti del disastro di Seveso attraverso lo sguardo di una grande ambientalista e femminista italiana: Laura Conti. Nel far ciò, mi muovo all’interno di due cornici metodologico-concettuali: il femminismo neo-materialista e postumanista e l’ecocritica.

Nel luglio del 1976 una nube di diossina si sprigionò dal reattore B dello stabilimento dell’ICMESA Givaudan di Meda, in provincia di Milano. La nube tossica contaminò un territorio ampio e popoloso, avvelenando persone, animali, terreni. Per le donne, le conseguenze di questo disastro furono ancora più drammatiche: la diossina, infatti, causa malformazioni fetali e mette a rischio la gestazione. Nella provincia brianzola, cattolica e conservatrice, questo elemento scatenò fortissime polemiche sull’autodeterminazione delle donne e sulla loro scelta di interrompere le gravidanze a rischio. Laura Conti, medico, scienziata, attivista ambientale, e in quegli anni consigliere regionale della Lombardia, fu testimone della catastrofe, e la raccontò in due scritti: il reportage Visto da Seveso e il romanzo Una lepre con la faccia di bambina.

Analizzando queste opere, e concentrandomi sulla diossina come “agente narrativo postumano”, ossia come un “agente rivelatore” in grado di collegare la materialità e le sue riverberazioni discorsive, rifletto sul modo in cui l’ecocritica femminista può fungere da strumento epistemologico per un’etica e una politica di liberazione."

Starting in April 2016, thousands of people, led by Standing Rock Sioux Tribal members, gathered at camps to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)—creating the #NoDAPL movement. I am concerned with how critics of #NoDAPL often focus on defending the pipeline’s safety precautions or the many attempts the Army Corps of Engineers made at consulting the Tribe. Yet critics rarely engage what LaDonna Brave Bull Allard calls “the larger story.” To me, as an Indigenous supporter of #NoDAPL, one thread of the larger story concerns how DAPL is an injustice against the Tribe. The type of injustice is one that many other Indigenous peoples can identify with—U.S. settler colonialism. I seek to show how there are many layers to the settler colonial injustice behind DAPL that will take me, by the end of this essay, from U.S. disrespect of treaty promises in the 19th century to environmental sustainability and climate change in the 21st century. Updated in July 2020, and will be republished in updated form in 2020 (or 2021) in Contemporary Moral Issues 5th Edition, edited by Lawrence Hinman and published by Taylor Frances. May be cited with this pagination and referencing academia.edu URL. Originally published as Whyte, K. 2017. The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and U.S. Colonialism. RED INK: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, & Humanities: 19 (1): 154-169. Republication (2019) in The Nature of Hope: Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Political Change. Edited by C. Miller and J. Crane, 320-337. University of Colorado Press.

Based on nine years of research, this is the first book to offer an in-depth ethnographic study of a transnational environmentalist federation and of activists themselves. The book presents an account of the daily life and the ethical strivings of environmental activist members of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), exploring how a transnational federation is constituted and maintained, and how different people strive to work together in their hope of contributing to the creation of "a better future for the globe." In the context of FoEI, a great diversity of environmentalisms from around the world are negotiated, discussed and evolve in relation to the experiences of the different cultures, ecosystems and human situations that the activists bring with them to the federation. Key to the global scope of this project is the analysis of FoEI experiments in models for intercultural and inclusive decision-making. The provisional results of FoEI’s ongoing experiments in this area offer a glimpse of how different notions of the environment, and being an environmentalist, can come to work together without subsuming alterity.

This article outlines and interrogates the neglected settler-colonial discourse of White Appalachians, in particular their construction of a White indigeneity. In order to justify occupation and reconcile themselves to the wider settler-colonial society, influential settler Appalachian scholars and activists positioned themselves as a colonized Indigenous people, advancing the once-paradigmatic Colonialist model of Appalachian exploitation. This discursive replacement of American Indians allows settler Appalachians to assert their own White subjectivity as a form of indigeneity and their ownership of the land as decolonization.

Paganism, like every religion, is a complex mixture of concepts that can be used to either rationalize environmental neglect or encourage ecological harmony. Rather than characterizing Paganism, or any other religion, as “green” or “not green,” we might rather speak about the “greening of religions,” an ongoing, never-to-be-complete process. In this way, we can understand the history of contemporary Paganism as a “greening,” one that is still going on, and A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment, as one small but valuable part of that process.

I have been working on a lesson plan designed to get young people excited about the ocean, excited about science and technology, excited about music, excited about literature, excited about Afrofuturism, and excited about environmental activism. I think Drexciya's music and mythology could be a great way to do some of those things.

I geared the lesson toward middle school and high school students, but it could probably be used for both younger and older students.

The first lesson is entitled "Drexciya and Our Ocean Planet," which focuses on the ocean as a marine environment. I am working on a second lesson plan, "Drexciya and the Middle Passage," which will deal with the famous liner notes to The Quest, which speculate about the origins of Drexciyans.

I've never made a lesson plan like this before, so I have no idea if this is something that teachers could use or would be interesting for students. I included a "Rough Teacher's Guide" with a few ideas about possible discussion topics and approaches. I'm sending it as a Word document so people can cut and paste and modify as they see fit. Feel free to share with anyone who you think might be interested.

If anyone has suggestions, feel free to pass them on.

Unitarian-Universalism and Mormonism differ in myriad ways.  Mormonism obviously has much further to go toward embracing an ecological paradigm.  There are some untapped resources in Mormonism which could be used to facilitate this shift, including Joseph Smith’s vitalist teachings and the Word of Wisdom advice to eat meat sparingly.  However, there are major obstacles as well, some of which may be insurmountable, including Mormonism’s inherent anthropocentrism and doctrines and teachings that promote unrestricted childbirth.  For their part, UUs still have work to do as well.  While UUs are perhaps the most environmentally concerned of any religious group, it is also true that they are among most concerned about every other social issue of the day.  The sheer number of worthy causes may contribute to diminishing the resources which are available to UUs to work against what is shaping up to be a global ecological catastrophe.

References

Permaculture presents a powerful critique of the neo-liberal world order, and its techniques may support self-sufficiency and practical sovereignty. Nevertheless, two factors limit its radical potential: its practical flexibility, and the need for educational and economic capital to apply it. Following a detailed description of permaculture and of its conceptualisation of social change, the permaculture community in Turkey is examined as a case study which demonstrates these limitations. Examining rural projects proving the approach’s viability and lifestyle activism in urban centres, I discuss these spaces of action in terms of permaculture’s currently unrealised potential for larger social change.

Resource and environmental management generally entail an attempt by governing authorities to dominate, reroute, and tame the natural flows of water, the growth of forests, manage the populations of non-human bodies, and control nature more generally. Often this is done under the mantle of conservation, economic development, and sustainable management, but still involves a quest to “civilize” and control all aspects of nature for a specific purpose.

The results of this form of environmental management and governance are many, but by and large, across the globe, it has meant governments construct a specific idea regarding nature and the environment. These forms of control also extend beyond the natural environment, allowing for particular methods of managing human and non-human populations in order to maintain power and enact sovereignty.

This volume contributes to advancing an ‘ecology of freedom,’ which can critique current anthropocentric environmental destruction, as well as focusing on environmental justice and decentralized ecological governance. While concentrating on these areas of anarchist political ecology, three major themes emerged from the chapters: the legacies of colonialism that continue to echo in current resource management and governance practices, the necessity of overcoming human/nature dualisms for environmental justice and sustainability, and finally discussions and critiques of extractivism as a governing and economic mentality.

Although this book is about the newly emerging academic field of environmental communication, it is also about voice and practical activism. I contend that a deeply pragmatic form of environmental communication has the potential to transform the way environmental activists speak about their methods and goals – moving them toward a rhetoric of eco-justice. Sometimes looking forward requires stepping back – in this case back to two progressive era thinkers who revolutionised our outlook on social and environmental justice: John Dewey and Aldo Leopard. I argue that the impoverished state of present day studies in environmental communication can be traced to a shallow conception of the pragmatic – a conception that can be made deeper through recourse to Dewey’s and Leopold’s ideas. Originating from their philosophies are twin rhetorics — control and restraint — that when balanced constitute a rhetoric of eco-justice. This new approach to speaking about environmental matters proves helpful for contemporary environmental activists – particularly when working in the areas of wilderness preservation, gardening politics, global climate change and environmental justice ""

The ecological emergency can be described as a combination of four categories: climate change, degradation of biodiversity, increasing pollution and scarcity of natural resources. As a consequence of the industrial revolution, these phenomena appear to be linked to the many technological innovations industrialized by engineers during the 19th century. This profession is still based, to some extent, on an anthropocentric universe where nature must be controlled in the name of progress and where "Science" appears as a neutral entity. While surveys indicate a largely depoliticized public, there has nevertheless been a growing militant and ecological commitment among engineers in recent years. It is therefore possible to question the trajectories that lead these individuals from their training to their participation in collective actions. We can also seek to understand the social determinants of these ecological commitments. We sought to answer these questions through a qualitative method based on some twenty semi-directive interviews with committed engineers, students and graduates, and teachers in engineering schools. We also conducted a study of documents – press articles, minutes of meetings, manifestos, engineering school brochures. It appears that engineers face challenges during their training and careers, both on the job market and in terms of raising awareness of environmental issues. It is their patterns of perception and interpretation of the world which are then transformed and which give rise to a new repertoire of action in the service of the ecological cause, the « cause engineering ».

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Tanja Kohvakka, THE ROLE OF HISTORY TEACHERS IN QUESTIONING
THE DOMINANT WAY OF HISTORY TEACHING IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
2. Ángela Campos Fernandez, BREAD AND ROSES: THE ROLE OF ART IN POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES, RECONCILIATION PROCESSES AND HUMAN RIGHTS PROMOTION: THE CASE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
3. Esma Latić, PARADISE LIES UNDER THE FEET OF MOTHERS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSE ON AND BY MUSLIM WOMEN IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA AND SERBIA
4. Giovanni Agostini, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL RIGHTS AND IDENTITIES OF NATIONAL MINORITIES: THE CASE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

"Many people know about climate change, but few act to lessen their carbon footprint. In fact, the information we think we know about climate change and carbon footprints probably isn’t entirely accurate simply because we likely haven’t done extensive research ourselves. As a whole, the American population hasn’t made many systemic, pro-environmental changes in the past 20 years. This essay and presentation will explore the reasons why we act and what compels us to suddenly engage in activism. I will focus my analysis through the lens of comedy and its effects in relation to environmental activism. Ultimately, I engage with comedians Peterson Toscano and Bo Burnham (two highly performative, queer, white male artists) to examine the effects of their routines’ inclusive environmentalism. Comedy’s values, presentation, and reception are entirely different than, say, Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore’s documentary passionately described environmental conditions using graphs, charts, graphic images, and basic lecture-style inclusivity. Comedy provides a new way to explore the same ideas, and so the performances of Toscano and Burnham replace Gore’s intensity and charts with queerness and the option to laugh. Each genre has different strengths and limitations with political efficacy, too. While Gore’s representation of the facts doesn’t necessarily cause the audience to laugh, its intensity has the potential to ignite some of the audience to begin acting. However, in the 10 years since An Inconvenient Truth’s release, not much has changed in the typical American methods of consumption. Gore’s attempt didn’t work to instigate the full-fledged change he’d hoped it would. Perhaps recent comedy can do better. "

From 1840 to the present, this critical analysis covers Maori land marches, Manapori Dam protest, logging protests, anti-nuclear activism (including the Rainbow Warrior), pesticide and herbicide (Agent Orange) protests, State asset sale protests, GMO protests, and the reality and future probablility of State repression and State terrorism. We point to the Ruatoki "Anti-terrorism" raids as a thing of the future. We celebrate and salute the "troublemakers" of New Zealand who have thus far prevented the complete ruination of this land and the expropriation of its "resources" through a collusive relationship between government and international capitalism. It makes the point that we are approaching or have already passed the limits of our ability to dramatic and cataclysmic environmental, political, economic and social change. There is no alternative left other than direct uncompromising activism in the face of a recalcitrant government and the theft of our heritage.

As wondrous lands are represented as “wastelands” to make way for urban and industrial development in Hawaiʻi, kūpuna or elders and cultural practitioners are currently building a movement across the islands to mobilize moʻolelo (stories and histories) in huakaʻi aloha ʻāina, (physical and spiritual travels to view and remember celebrated and sacred places) in order to protect them.  On these huakaʻi, moʻolelo have critical decolonial effects as they articulate an ʻŌiwi moʻoʻāina economy of abundance that restores “wastelands” to ʻāina kamahaʻo (wondrous land) and ʻāina momona (abundant land).  In this essay, I focus on a 2010 community struggle to protect the birthplace of the kupua (supernatural hero) Māui in Lualualei valley from a developer’s proposal for a light industrial park. The Concerned Elders of Waiʻanae organized the Huakaʻi Kākoʻo no Waiʻanae environmental justice bus tours to share the Māui moʻolelo and build a broad base of support for their struggles, enabling wonder to grow into direct action.  I discuss the ways that Indigenous and critical settler cartographies map the wonder of the Māui moʻolelo on the ground, and I look to narrative conventions of moʻolelo that compare and connect distant places, helping to grow affinity activism.

It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, If you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the Party was trying to achieve. Great areas of it, even for a Party member, were neutral and non-political, a matter of slogging through dreary jobs, fighting for a place on the Tube, darning a wornout sock, cadging a saccharine tablet, saving a cigarette end.

Julia Shaw (2016) Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts, World Archaeology, 48:4, 517-543

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2016.1250671

Keywords: Archaeology as Environmental Humanities; Indian religion and ‘nature’; Agriculture, food change and environmental control; Violence and non-violence; Purity and Pollution; Monasteries as gardens

This paper assesses archaeology’s contribution to debates regarding the ecological focus of early Buddhism and Hinduism and its relevance to global environmentalism. Evidence for long-term human:non-human entanglement, and the socio-economically constructed element of  ‘nature’ on which Indic culture supposedly rests, challenges post-colonial tropes of India's utopian, 'eco-friendly' past, whilst also highlighting the potency of individual human:non-human epistemologies for building historically grounded models of Indian environmentalism. For early Buddhism,I mediate between two polarized views: one promoting the idea of ‘eco-dharma’, as a reflection of Buddhism’s alignment with non-violence (ahiṃsā), and the alleviation of suffering (dukkha); a second arguing that early Buddhist  traditions have been misappropriated by western environmentalism. I argue that the latter view subscribes to canonical models of passive monks removed from worldly concerns, despite archaeological evidence for socially-engaged monastic landlordism from the late centuries BC. Others cite this evidence only to negate Buddhism’s eco- credentials, thereby overlooking the human:non-human entanglement theme within modern environmental discourse, while the predominant focus on non-human suffering overlooks convergences between modern and ancient ecological ethics and environmental health. Case studies include examples of Buddhist land and water management in central India, set within discussions of human v. non-human-centric frameworks of well-being and suffering, purity and pollution, and broader Indic medico-ecological epistemologies, as possible models for collective responses to environmental stress.