ISE-logo-acorn-with-leaves

Population in the news – again

The specter of “overpopulation” has returned to the public airwaves following the UN’s recent announcement that the earth is now home to 7 billion people. The coverage is highly reminiscent of the debates that raged throughout the 1970s and eighties and, once again, there’s a dearth of critical evaluation of this issue. Do rising human […]

OWS’ historical antecedents: 2 articles

Here are links to 2 interesting commentaries addressing historical antecedents to the Occupy Wall Street movement. In a recent column, Chris Hedges interviewed an OWS participant in New York and used this to introduce some perceptive comments about the historic role of the underclass in political movements, drawing on the 19th century debates between Bakunin […]

Updates and more views of Occupy Wall Street

The Occupy Wall Street campaign, now in its third week, has inspired a wide range of commentaries, as well as like-minded events all across the US. Here are two somewhat contrasting views from commentators I trust. Arun Gupta of New York City’s Indypendent newspaper offers a positive outlook on this emerging movement’s potential to confront […]

Toward a “Green New Deal”?

My friend and colleague Richard Greeman, now living in France, has recently added some provocative and forward-looking comments to the ongoing discussion of whether a “Green New Deal” — centered in publicly funded expansion of renewable energy and other “green” technologies — can provide a necessary opening toward a more ecological future. Appropriately for a […]

Tokar book tour for “Toward Climate Justice” & “Agriculture and Food in Crisis”

ISE Director Brian Tokar is doing a book tour in support of his recent titles Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change (Communalism Press), and  Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict, Crisis, and Renewal (co-edited with Fred Magdoff), from Monthly Review Press: March 6. Amherst, Massachusetts @ Food for Thought Books March […]

Toward Climate Justice: Can we turn back from the abyss?

For Z Magazine, September 2009 The summer and fall of 2009 will surely be noted in the annals of environmental history. This period could be remembered as the time when the world’s elites slowly began to crawl toward a meaningful solution to the threat of accelerating global climate disruptions. But if events continue along the […]

Toward Food Sovereignty in Vermont and Northern New England

– From C. Armiger, P. Palmiotto, J. Estes, eds., Banking on Biodiversity: The ecological and socio-economic dimensions of sustainable agriculture, Keene, NH: Antioch University Center for Tropical Ecology and Conservation (in press) The previous panelists have offered thoughtful perspectives on how US agricultural policies profoundly alter the lives of people around the world and how […]

ECOCLUB interviews Brian Tokar

(This interview was originally posted at http://www.ecoclub.com/news/101/interview.html) ECOCLUB.com: What is Social Ecology and in what key ways does it differ from the mainstream environmentalism of the big US & International NGOS? Brian Tokar: Social ecology offers a coherent radical critique of current social, political, and environmental problems, as well as a reconstructive, ecological, communitarian, and ethical […]

Social Ecology and The Greening of Our Cities

First published at Toward Freedom, Sept. 2008 Note: This article is from a presentation for Changer le Monde, Un Quartier à la Fois! (Changing the World, One Neighborhood at a Time) conference, Montreal, 5/1/08 Over the past year, we’ve seen an unprecedented rise in awareness of the consequences of potentially catastrophic global climate changes, and […]

Toward a Movement for Peace and Climate Justice

– For In the Middle of a Whirlwind/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, Summer 2008 (inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info) Complaining about the weather is about as American as apple pie, sitcoms and rock and roll. But while the rest of the world has been noticing for years that our increasingly unstable weather is an initial sign of potentially devastating […]