Textiles connect people. They are part of our everyday lives. They are also part of a journey and become threadbare. This leads to the idea of ‘bearing witness’, recognising the importance of stories of migration and allowing those stories to be told.

Of course, textiles themselves migrate, through historical trade routes. These threads have been exported and imported, these patterns are in our everyday lives. The title of our project Thread Bearing Witness is about the connecting thread of people.

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The project includes three key pieces, ‘GROUND’, ‘SEA’ and ‘SKY’. They have a human scale, so you feel within them. ‘GROUND’ and ‘SKY’ are informed by refugees’ contributions of imagery and textile cultural heritage for a collective common ground of making. ‘SEA’ is the only one made by me alone. It emerged from the saturation of media imagery from that period of time in 2016. Everyone remembers those incredible images coming through the media daily of the horror of people in the sea.

Refugee support

The three pieces reflect my increasing involvement with individuals. I had to start making ‘SEA’ before I met any of the refugees. They took part in the project through ‘GROUND’ and ‘SKY’. This was because the pieces take a huge amount of time to make and I had to begin.

So there were practical considerations to take into account, but in a way I think that’s quite interesting, since the project is about learning through the voices of others, changing perspectives and representing those who contribute as truly as I could. The works open a space for others to enter and participate within.

My daughter, Tamsin Koumis, introduced me directly to the experience of refugee issues. She has a background of working with migrants and refugees and set up the Dunkirk Legal Support Team, which enabled access to human rights at the refugee camp in France. Her organisation has connections to various individuals who have come to this country.

I met up with them and carefully discussed how they might want to contribute to the project. It was very much led by them. I started meeting up with a group of Syrian women in my home town and continue to meet them weekly. I’ve become very close to them. I did some training with a refugee support group, Southampton & Winchester Visitors Group, since I was very aware that I needed to understand safeguarding and delicate, sensitive issues of trauma and culture.

There is no blueprint for how people have been participating. I’ve had to recognise we’ve got to treat each contribution very differently and to be open and led by each participant.

Resilience Collective

One contributor is Saamiullah Khan, an unaccom­panied minor from Kandahar, Afghanistan,who was in the Dunkirk camp and eventually came to the UK thanks to the Dunkirk Legal Support Team and others.

Khan had to leave Afghanistan because of the Taliban. His mother and sisters are still there. His father died in the UK. Saami is an extraordinary young man. He is truly gifted, and has a great sense of responsibility for his family, whom he is missing terribly.

We did various activities together. He wanted to design a piece of work and asked his family in Kandahar to stitch it into a beautiful cloth with the Afghan map at the centre. With Tamsin he wrote about Afghan embroidery. His circumstances were very compromised and difficult and we’ve now lost touch with him. So it’s been heart-rending.

I went with Tamsin to PIKPA refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece.That was very different. We made different things every day, building up trust with the residents. I now send out art and sewing materials, wool and crochet hooks so that the camp can continue making. Much of the project exists outside what is actually represented in the exhibition, and I feel that’s really important.

We wanted to include those who just wanted to be part of the project but aren’t refugees themselves. So we devised the Stitch a Tree project, inspired by the work of Refugee Resilience Collective, a group of narrative psychologists and psychotherapists working in the Calais camp. They held drawing workshops with children and used the tree of life as a narrative therapy tool, describing it as a symbol of strength, life and nourishment.

Stitch a tree

For the Stitch a Tree project, we invited people to contribute stitched trees. These form a collective forest, whichreflects the ideathat we are all individuals but we come together as a shared world. We expected 200 to 300 contributions, but there are now about 5,000.

We have had trees sent to us from groups of schoolchildren who have never stitched before, and beautiful exquisite contributions from experts. It’s multicultural, cross-generational and across genders. This has been a really extraordinary wave of human support, and it is still growing – it’s almost unstoppable.

Meeting with refugees has made me constantly reflect back on my own privilege. It can be very troubling to feel a helplessness to make change. Equally, we feel inspired by people who are living through traumatic circumstances. We are constantly asking ourselves if what we are doing is actually helping.

This notion of bearing witness and authenticity has been hard to negotiate and is very sensitive. I’m not an expert in migration. I’m just an artist. I can’t resolve these issues, but I can show that I care.

Textiles is a medium that has a really powerful presence. It’s a unique kind of activism holding sensitivities and nuances of soft voices that can be repressed and hidden, yet vocalised through this medium. These are the voices that can bear witness to all of those individuals who might not have a voice elsewhere.

This Author 

Alice Kettle is a contemporary textile/fibre artist based in the UK. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. Thread Bearing Witness is at the Whitworth Gallery at the University of Manchester until 24 February 2019. 

To see the need for change and head towards it, you have to ask the obvious, simple questions.

That’s what was done at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, when the campaigning group Feedback asked colleagues from the Soil Association, Friends of the Earth, Biovale and the Committee on Climate Change, “what is land for?”

It was clear from the discussion was that much of Britain’s land-use is far from optimal, a result of historical circumstances rather than any sort of rational choices for today.

Sugar beet

A farmer in the audience pointed out that a significant proportion of what’s now termed farmland only came into that use during the Second World War, when the nation was battling to beat the U-boats by feeding itself. 

As another contributor noted, financial incentives meant drainage of deeply unsuitable wetlands, the last of the last left, continued until the early 1980s. When the funding stopped, so did the drainage, like a stone dropped into one of the few remaining ponds.

That left us with only a tiny proportion of the wetland – the land vital for birds and other wildlife, for flood control, for carbon storage – of even decades before. The conference session didn’t even get started on house building on the greenbelt.

Even some of the best agricultural land being used for farming is being put to far from ideal purposes. A case study – and boy is it a disaster story – is that of sugar beet.

This is an immensely destructive crop, responsible for 10 percent of the total loss of soil in England from agricultural lands. Being a root crop, harvested in autumn in generally wet conditions, large amounts of the surrounding soil is picked up with the beet. So much, in fact, that British Sugar has a steady little earner sideline in selling the soil collected during processing.

So some of the richest, best agricultural soil in the land is being stripped away, to end up on golf courses or landscaping in new office blocks. And this for a crop producing empty, damaging calories. 

Improving our diets

The average British child by age 10 has consumed as much sugar as they should by age 18, as emerged with considerable fanfare last week. We don’t need more of it, and yet British Sugar is hoping to increase production by 50 percent.

Put the land used for sugar beet – even half of it – to growing vegetables biointensively, on the model of Bec Hellouin or Bio-Gemusehof, and it could make a huge impact on our huge deficit of fruit and vegetable supply for even our utterly inadequate consumption levels. It would create the opportunity for huge numbers of extra small businesses, and jobs, at the same time restoring rural communities hollowed out by consolidation of farms into larger and larger blocks.

The misuse problem isn’t just of land of course. A lot of the food is going into feeding animals, to produce a far smaller quantity of meat. Stopping that and eating the grain instead would produce far more calories, but of course calories aren’t what we need.

We need modest amounts of protein – considerably less than we consume now – which means growing more pulses and beans: Hodmedods is showing the way in that, recovering once-common crops that had been almost forgotten and improving the British diet at the same time.

What we also need is wildlife, and that means identifying the most appropriate land for rewilding, mostly with trees. Sometimes that will be the marginal land, sometimes parts adjoining existing woodland or corridors linking it, broadening the areas accessible to our wildlife. Of course that will also, essentially, store carbon to help to meet our legally binding emissions targets. 

Some land – including those new woodlands – can be used (very carefully) for sustainable, local, small-scale biofuel. 

Moving forward 

One of the first things we need is research, understanding, and measures of the environmental impact, not just in soil damage and climate emissions, but also contributions to eutrophication and air pollution, to flooding and wildlife.

We also need to be able to consider the nutritional benefits of a crop – beetroot far better than sugar beet, protein-rich lentils far better than standard wheat for Chorleywood process bread.

The answer has to lie in the fact that growing the wrong crop on the wrong soil in the wrong place has real costs. Some of those costs are borne by the farmer – but lots of them are carried by the rest of us in climate change and pollution impacts from the production and use of nitrogen fertiliser, in lost soil that won’t be replaced for millennia, in flooding, in obesity, ill-health and NHS costs.

A system that makes the profiter pay – that rewards farmers for producing nutritionally rich healthy food while ensure they don’t load costs on the rest of us – is clearly what’s needed.

In the sketched outline of the Agriculture Bill, there’s just a hint of the beginning of a scheme that could head the rich way. We must apply appropriate taxes to the production of surplus food and food that is produced in damaging ways (say for unsustainably produced meat, as Green MP Caroline Lucas was suggesting), and cut taxes and costs for those products that we do need. 

This isn’t easy and it isn’t simple. But given climate change, given our acute levels of nutritional dysfunction and the degradation of land, soils, air and water – there really isn’t any alternative.

This Author 

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Dog food containing grubs mixed with oats and potato has been launched today, in the latest development in the trend to lower the environmental impact of food.

The insects in the pet food by Yora are reared in the Netherlands, and contain protein, fats, minerals and amino acids. They live on vegetable matter that would otherwise go uneaten, reaching full size in 14 days, removing the need for growth hormones or antibiotics often found in meat, according to Yora.

Dog and cat food contributes around 25-30% of the environmental impacts from animal production, in terms of the use of land, water, fossil fuel, phosphate and biocides, and releases significant amounts of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, according to a study by professor Gregory Okin from the University of California.

Weekly shop

When compared to beef farming, insect-based pet food needs just two percent of the land and four percent of the water to produce each kilogramme of protein, which means they generate 96 percent fewer greenhouse emissions, according to a study carried out by Protix, which supplies the insects used in Yora’s dog food. 

The Food and Agriculture Organisation, part of the UN, has also produced a study highlighting the environmental benefits of insect food. Tom Neish, founder of Yora, said: “Animals and humans have been eating insects since the dawn of time and we believe Yora is the future of pet food.”

The idea of eating insects in Western diets has been gaining traction recently. In November, Sainsburys began stocking roasted crickets for human consumption by Eat Grubs citing its own research which found that 42 per cent of people would be willing to try eating insects, with seven per cent willing to add them to their weekly shop if they were easily available.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Ice, plunging temperatures and harsh winds – it doesn’t seem like the right time for vulnerable, soft new life.

My daughter was born at this time of year, in the midst of a big freeze. My dad, a farmer, had been on standby in case I needed a tractor to get me through the deep snow to hospital. Luckily, the roads thawed just in time for her arrival.

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Now she is seven and my companion, along with her older brother, on our yearly pilgrimage to Horsey. Together we battle the coastal wind to climb the dunes, along with crowds of other people. We are rewarded with our favourite Nature spectacle: hundreds of grey seal pups and their parents on the beach.

Haul-out

Every year, the seals come here to give birth. It’s known as a rookery, but having experienced the heavy, ungainly feel of late pregnancy myself, I prefer the other descriptive term: a haul-out. About half the world’s population of grey seals are found around Britain, and this site is really important.

It’s got cute factor, with the fluffy white pups rolling over and seeming to wave at us with a flipper, their dark, liquid eyes like pools of innocence. Their perfect, white fur is a reminder that they evolved thousands of years ago and would originally have been born in a colder climate, onto snow.

There is plenty of humour here as well, with the comical lolloping of the adults, flopping themselves onto the sand with clumsy movements, but there is sadness too, as we notice the carcass of a pup.

I think the children enjoy it best of all when the male bulls fight, bumping each other with their blubbery chests and making strange barking grunts. It’s a scene that gets recreated in my living room for weeks afterwards.

The males are vying for a space nearest the females, for soon after the pups are weaned it will be the mating season. Any pup who gets in the way of a bull could be injured or killed.

Ensuring protection 

It seems like a peculiar time of year to bring babies into the world, but after a summer of feasting on fish the mothers should be in peak condition for the challenges of rearing their young. They need to be.

The milk they produce is so rich – containing 60 percent fat – that a mother can lose over 50kg in weight in the few weeks she feeds her pup. Meanwhile, the pups can put on 2kg each day, building the thick layer of blubber they require for survival in the winter sea.

After the pups are weaned, the mothers return to the waves and leave them on the beach. This often causes well-meaning members of the public to panic that they have been abandoned. The pups still have a bit of growing up to do before they can take to the water. In three weeks or so, that fluffy white fur will moult, turning mottled grey and, crucially, waterproof.

Then the pups can head for the sea and learn to catch food. Mind you, it’s tough out there. The Friends of Horsey Seals report that more than half of the pups born won’t make it through their first year.

The seals need our protection, while on land and at sea. However adorable they look, we must keep our distance, with dogs strictly on leads. This beach operates a voluntary closure for the haul-out season, with appropriate viewing areas. We can think about marine life as a whole too, by reducing our plastic consumption, helping with beach litter picks and using marine-safe washing detergent.

Thankful for that blast of fresh air, cuteness and pure natural wonder, we head back to the warmth of home. We’ll be back to visit the seals next year.

This Author 

Kate Blincoe is a freelance nature and environment writer, and author of The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Parenting. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Our planet has an abundance of animals that help ecosystems around the world thrive. What happens when they start to become endangered and even extinct?

In 2018 alone we saw three bird species go extinct: the Cryptic Treehugger, Alagoas Foliage-gleaner and the Hawaiin Po’ouli. We also saw the last male northern white rhino die at a wildlife sanctuary in Kenya in 2018 – with just two females left, there is no way to reproduce and continue this species now.

The Center for Biological Diversity has said: “We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago”. We must do something to fix this mass problem.

Survival rate

Giraffes have been added to the endangered species list, and numbers of the long-necked mammals have gone down by 40 percent over the last three decades, mostly as a result of human activity in their habitats. There survival rate is threatened by human poaching. 

eCo2 Greetings has created an interactive map that highlights some of the most endangered and critically endangered species around the world.

All of these animals play a vital part in our ecosystems and their existence is in our hands. So, how can we as a planet improve the future of their existence?

Take a look at the map here to see just what species are endangered and how each country can work together to save them.

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from eCo2 Greetings.

Symbiosis – an expanding network of revolutionary organisers and local initiatives –  is assembling a confederation of democratic community institutions across North America.

The emerging network consists of diverse groups and member organisations, from Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi to Olympia Assembly in Washington, who are participating out of a recognition of the need to carry the movement for radical democracy beyond the local level.

The project has been gathering support over the past year and will be launched at a continental congress in Detroit from 18 September of this year.

Shared vision

Z, a co-founder of Black Socialists of America (BSA), said: “It is imperative that any groups or organisations moving in a social or economic sense on the vision we share for a democratic and ecologically sound world not struggle on their own, but instead under a global support system aimed at both dismantling our exploitative socioeconomic system (Capitalism), and building a democratic, cooperative system in its place.

“Symbiosis is in a position to build this support system.” 

Symbiosis has now released a launch statement announcing the congress, initially signed by 14 organisations.

It states: “Over the course of the past year our organisations have been strengthening our relationships with one another, learning from each other, generating shared resources, and honing a common vision of how to create together the genuinely democratic world that we need.”

Beyond the shared vision of radical democracy and egalitarianism, what unites these groups is a common political strategy, of building institutions of popular power from below to challenge and replace the governing institutions of capitalist society.

Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, said: “We have to move beyond the limitations of bourgeois democracy, particularly its representative forms, which intentionally limit the agency and power of communities and individuals in our societies.

“To get beyond these limitations we have to build democratic formations and practices in every facet of our lives—where we work, live, play, and pray — and utilize these formations to exercise dual power, that is utilising our own power and agency to govern our own lives beyond the limitations imposed upon us by the state and the forces of capital.” 

A shared commitment to building ‘dual power’ unites the member organisations of Symbiosis.

Formidable challenges

At the next congress delegates from grassroots organisations across North America will gather to form a confederation between their groups, to grow and coordinate a movement that can bring about a just, ecological, and free society.

Brian Tokar of the Institute for Social Ecology, a member organisation and sponsor of the event, said: “The problems we face today require a bold and unified response. We face the rising threats of authoritarianism and inequality, structural forms of domination between the haves and the have-nots, and the scapegoating and oppression of immigrants and people of color.

“We also know that the destabilization of the climate and the fossil-fuelled destruction of the Earth’s life support systems play a central role in all the problems we face.”

The idea behind the confederation is that these formidable challenges are insurmountable for individuals and small groups. Kelly Roache, a co-founder of Symbiosis, said: “By coming together, we can better recognize and organize the changes necessary to secure our future more than what any of us can do at the local level.”  

A common platform would also allow this growing movement to pool resources, raise their public visibility, and seed new organizing initiatives.

Local groups

The congress will prioritize local, democratically-run movements and organizations that are building new economic and political institutions, such as people’s assemblies, tenant unions, and cooperatives.

Local groups are invited to join the congress and sign on to the launch statement, and individuals can also join as members.

In April 2017, members of the Symbiosis Research Collective published the essay, Community, Democracy, and Mutual Aid: Toward Dual Power and Beyond, which won first prize in the Next System Project essay competition.

Journalist and author Naomi Klein, who reviewed the essay, said that the Symbiosis vision “sketches out a flexible roadmap for scaling up participatory democracy”.

Over the past year, the network has grown to over 300 individual members, in addition to the 14 member and partner organisations who have signed onto the launch statement thus far.

The Symbiosis Research Collective has also published an ongoing series of articles with The Ecologist reaching an audience of more than 23,000 readers.

In July 2018, Symbiosis co-coordinated the Fearless Cities North America conference (NYC), which convened 300 municipalist activists from the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Europe, and Latin America. In December 2018, they started a crowdfunder to fund the congress.

Currently, members are working on developing resources and information for people who wish to begin organizing where they live and work.

Endless possibilities 

Mason Herson-Hord, another co-founder of Symbiosis and co-coordinator of the research collective, said: “By the time of the congress, the Symbiosis Research Collective will have put together an in-depth primer on community organizing and dual power institution-building, including important historical examples, practical guides, and the theoretical underpinnings of our revolutionary project.” 

In their launch statement, these authoring organizations write that the congress is only the beginning.

“Ultimately, we will need such a confederation to carry our struggle beyond the local level. Ruling-class power is organized globally, and if democracy is to win, we must be organized at that scale as well. As this project advances, the possibilities are endless.”

This author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Symbiosis. Symbiosis is a network of community organisations across North America, building a democratic and ecological society from the ground up. Find out more on their website. 

Dale Vince describes himself as a “head-down-getting-stuff-done kind of person”. This approach has certainly achieved a lot so far.

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The company he founded in 1996, Ecotricity, is Britain’s largest green energy company, supplying over 200,000 customers across Britain from a growing fleet of wind and sun parks.

Ecotricity has electric vehicle charge points in motorway service stations across the UK and funds what it describes as the world’s first vegan football team. Ecotricity’s electricity supply has been 100% green (as opposed to a mixture of green and ‘dirty’ energy) since 2013.

Political will

I spoke to Vince in the week that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its special report on climate change stating we have 12 years to keep global warming to a max­imum of 1.5 °C.

To achieve a fall in CO2 emissions to net zero, coal will need to be largely phased out by mid-century and renewables will have to meet the majority of future electricity supplies. It’s a pretty good recommendation for green energy suppliers like Ecotricity, but to achieve it requires political will.

“The current [UK] government and the previous government under David Cameron have been pulling us in the total opposite direction, shutting down the onshore wind and solar industries and promoting fracking for all it’s worth, when in fact we can’t afford to burn the fossil fuel reserves we know of,” said Vince. “We certainly don’t need to find more.”

Ecotricity provides “frack-free” green gas and has set up a People Power Fund to support activists on the front line. At the time of our interview, three men were facing jail terms for causing a “public nuisance” after taking part in an anti-fracking protest. They were later freed on appeal.

As an alternative to fracking, in 2016 Ecotricity launched its Green Gas initiative, which involves anaerobic digesters breaking down grass to produce biogas by “cropping marginal land for its grass three times a year, creating great nature habitats in the process”.

A typical 5MW Green Gasmill will require about 3,000 acres of grassland to supply 3,500 homes with all the gas they need, according to the company. “We haven’t built one yet, but we’ve got planning permission and we’re hoping to start one before very long,” Vince said.

Pushing for change

Transport is another frontier. Private electric vehicle ownership has increased a lot since the Nemesis– built by Ecotricity engineers – became the fastest electric vehicle in the UK in 2012.

Even so, we are still in the very early days of electric car adoption, according to Vince. Again, the UK government seems to be dragging its feet on pushing for change, scrapping grants to buy low-emissions vehicles just months after publishing its Road to Zero strategy. Nevertheless, Vince is optimistic.

“I think we’re heading up an exponential curve actually and next year will see a big uptake as a whole raft of new models come on the market from the major manufacturers, with ranges of 300km [and] that can charge in about 20 minutes.” Ecotricity has certainly been at the forefront of developments. It provides more than 300 charging points for electric cars. It has not, however, invested in public transport.

Diet is also a big theme for the company. Vince himself has been vegan for “three or four decades”. This year the company announced accreditation from The Vegan Society. “It began with a story about dead fish in fish farms in Scotland being used by [Scottish energy company] SSE. We dug further and found slurry in pig farms and abattoir waste [being used in anaerobic digesters].” This, he said, affected millions of people.

“We knew the use of slurry went on, but the extent of it was a surprise.” As a response, the company audited its supply chain to make sure it was free of these ingredients, instead using ingredients like vegetable waste, maize and grass, and in July announced the ‘world’s first’ vegan tariff.

Anaerobic digestion

In response, the anaerobic digestion industry said the process was there to make the best of agricultural and other organic wastes, not to cause them in the first place. “In an ideal world, there would be no need for our industry,” said Charlotte Morton, chief executive of the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association.

“But where these wastes are produced – and they are, in huge quantities – it’s critical that they are recycled through anaerobic digestion, which gets by far the most out of them compared to other waste treatment technologies, into renewable energy and soil-restoring biofertiliser rather than left wasted and untreated to release climate-change-inducing methane into the atmosphere.”

Vince said the response from the industry had been “kind of a lame defence. The intensive farming of animals is an abomination and the conditions they are kept in is appalling,” he said.

“It’s also having a huge impact on the environment. So they were defending something that I think is indefensible, saying we produce all this slurry so we’ve got to do something with it, when we say don’t produce it in the first place.”

Facing the realities of climate breakdown is terrifying, so I ask Vince how he stays upbeat and motivated. “I don’t let stuff get me down,” he said. “There are too many things to do, too many battles to fight.” In the challenging months ahead, the world will need much more of this positive energy.

This Author

Marianne Brown is editor of Resurgence & Ecologist. The latest edition of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now! You can listen to the interview on the Resurgence Voices podcast: resurgence.podiant.co

The potential for technological development to play a positive role in future societies has been enjoying a revival in alternative political discussions of late.

Optimistic, imaginative conceptions of the future are important, and provide a much needed source of hope and inspiration in the context of impending environmental catastrophe and the continued dominance of capitalism. They’re a welcome change from ecological perspectives that suffer from a somewhat dim view of technology and the future in general.

But these new visions can too easily mistake technology as the solution to ecological problems, rather than accompanying and supporting  broader social and political approaches.

Capitalist realism

So how can we free our imaginations from the grip of capitalist realism – the idea that capitalism is the only viable option for organising society?

How can we picture possible future worlds and the role that technology will play in them, while keeping our imagined worlds grounded in social and ecological realities?

For example, not forgetting that we are living on a planet with limited natural resources or that we have to consider how to make these imagined futures real.

Three recently written pieces explore some of these themes: “Fully Automated Green Communism” by Aaron Bastani,“Accelerationism… and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows” by Aaron Vansintjan and “Pulling the Magic Lever”, by Rut Elliot Blomqvist.

Initially a tongue in cheek provocation, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) has morphed into a serious proposition about how technology and automation could be used to provide for everyone’s needs and free people from the drudgery of wage labour.

Bastani’s piece attempts to counter some of the ecological critiques of the idea, arguing that FALC can be green. Instead of trying to halt the progress of technological development and reduce energy consumption, Aaron argues that we should ride the technological horse to move beyond scarcity, proposing a kind of accelerationism where technology is rapidly advanced in order to bring about radical social change.

Shared ideas

In “Accelerationism… and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows”, Aaron Vansintjan looks at accelerationist ideas like FALC and compares them to ‘degrowth’, evaluating the similarities and differences between the two frameworks.

Degrowth is a movement that has emerged from environmentalism and alternative economics and is focused on theorising and creating non-growth based economies and societies.

Although accelerationism and degrowth are apparently opposed, Vansinjtan finds some shared ideas, including their recognition of the need for deep, systemic change, their calls for democratisation of technology and their rejection of ‘work’ (or at least the idea that work is inherently good).

The key differences centre around accelerationism’s focus on reappropriating technology to achieve a resource-unlimited society, versus degrowth’s aim of limiting the development of certain forms of technology and staying within resource constraints.

Degrowth also seeks to slow the metabolism of society, whereas accelerationism aims to increase the pace of social change. Ultimately, while supportive of accelerationism’s inspiring vision, Vansinjtan finds it seriously lacking in dealing with ecological critiques.

Design fiction

Rut Elliot Blomqvist examines three different visions of possible future worlds and the role that technology plays in them. ‘Pulling the Magic Lever’ is a reference to how technology is used to answer social or ecological problems without explaining how it will do so: you simply ‘pull the magic lever’ of technology and hey presto, it’s all solved. It’s a running theme in all three of the imagined futures Blomqvist chooses to analyse.

The first is in The World We Made, a novel by environmentalist Jonathon Porrit, then The Venus Project, a technology based political proposition, and finally Fully Automated Luxury Communism. In their analysis, Blomqvist uses a World Systems Theory approach to evaluate the ideas, critiquing the story of modernisation by framing it around colonialism.

The World We Made is based on Design Fiction, where fiction inspires possibilities of new designs. It sees the human species in general as the villain responsible for destroying the environment. In the novel’s fantasy scenario, however, humans manage to turn things around and start to use technology and various existing world institutions for the common good.

As Elliot points out, this book flags up an important discussion around the idea of the ‘anthropocene’ (a proposed name for a new human-affected geological epoch), which may support the view that the human species in general is the problem, rather than certain humans or, say, a capitalist growth-based economy. They also describe the book’s tendency towards technological optimism: it presents technology as providing the answers, without explaining how, and ignores the socio-cultural-political reasons for current ecological destruction.

The Venus Project is found to be even further along the techno-optimist spectrum and again ignores how its proposed technological utopia might be brought into existence. As well as highlighting its fetishisation of the scientific process, Elliot explains how The Venus Project often engenders conspiracy theories, a number of which are dangerously close to anti-Semitism.

Non-capitalist automation 

Continuing the trend, FALC is found to involve similar techno-utopianism, where the working classes seize the means of production and use automation to create a world of plenty.

Elliot points to a blind spot, as FALC doesn’t consider the limits of post-industrialism beyond the western world. Elliot describes how all three rely heavily on ‘pulling the magic lever’, and while they show imagination, they are also limited by the fossil-fuelled mentality they seek to criticise.

To finish, here are a few general questions reflecting on these discussions around technology and the role it might play in future ecologically sustainable societies.

The role of human agency is often missing in visions of techno utopias, so how can control of and production of technology be changed, how will these imagined futures be made real? How can technology’s potential within the ecological and degrowth movements be highlighted and developed, promoting positive future visions and countering environmentalism’s ‘hair shirt’ image?

Should it be assumed that technologies will inevitably be developed, or should certain developments be hindered or prevented, and if so, how? For example, can we change the basis on which automation takes places and is implemented? Is non-capitalist automation possible, and if so, do we want it? How could it be made non-capitalist?

Finally, instead of being seen as competing positions, how can ecological and technologically based visions of the future back together?

This Author 

Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism. Since 1996 our research, journalism, analysis and training have supported people affected by corporations and those taking action for radical social change.

Corporate Watch is currently working on a technology project, if you are interested in knowing more or collaborating on future work, please email contact@corporatewatch.org.

If you’ve decided to try Veganuary this year, congratulations and thank you. You’ve taken up a resolution that not only benefits yourself but also saves the lives of others.

The Ecologist’s very own editor, Brendan Montague, is currently trying a vegan diet for the month, prompted and helped by wonderful Ecologist readers. He’s not alone – 200,000 people have joined his this year so far, with numbers growing rapidly.

It’s important, particularly for those of us who care about the environment, to really consider the impact that our food choices have on the planet and those living on it – going vegan is one of the most significant actions an individual can take to combat climate change.

Even mainstream retailers like Greggs and McDonald’s have recognised that there is demand for vegan products, with their respective launches of a £1 vegan sausage roll and a vegan Happy Meal last week. No more excuses that vegan living is inconvenient or expensive!

Being vegan can be extremely rewarding when done right – so here are my tips how to make this happiness last beyond Veganuary.

1. Keep it exciting

The world of vegan food is more exciting than most people think – it’s an amazing opportunity to build on what you consider as food and learn new recipes.

As meat-eaters, we probably took food for granted and simply saw it as part of our daily routine but when you go vegan, every meal is a joy.  

If you’re not the cooking type, don’t worry because there are plenty of ready-made quick vegan meals available too.

Make sure to look into supermarket frozen sections for burgers and sausages; refrigerated sections for lunch on the go and meat alternatives; and snack aisles for a wide range of vegan friendly products.

On your next trip to the supermarket, why not look out for soya milk instead of cow’s milk? Trying out all the different options is an exciting experiment. If you don’t like soya or want a change you could always try almond, coconut, oat, hemp, hazelnut or rice milk next.

2. Make it easy 

Some people see going vegan as a challenge because they think it involves learning a whole lot of new recipes and using a range of new ingredients they don’t have the time to find.

But there is a simple and fun shortcut to going vegan – you can just replace the few non-vegan ingredients in your recipes to still enjoy the good old favourites.

You probably don’t realise this, but you actually eat a lot of vegan food already and anything you eat can be made vegan.

There are cruelty-free, delicious alternatives to anything you can think of from dairy-free spreads, to plant milk and yogurt, to vegan meat alternatives and cheeses.

Becoming a vegan isn’t about limiting or depriving yourself so make sure you start by replacing animal products; after a couple of weeks it will become as natural as anything.

3. Ingredient-swapping 

Whether at home, at a friend’s, or eating out, meals can often be easily veganised by removing one or two ingredients, or replacing them with their vegan counterparts. It’s handy to know what and how to do this, so here are some ideas:

• Swap the cheese on pizza for vegan cheese (available in most supermarkets) and top with lots of vegetables and olives
• Swap meat or seafood in a curry for chickpeas or lentils
• Cashew nuts can be used to add protein and flavour to stir-fried vegetables and rice noodles
• Dairy-free spread (such as Flora, Pure or Vitalite) and soya milk can be used to make mashed potatoes creamy
• Try houmous instead of butter in sandwiches
• Vegetable soup can be served with a swirl of soya cream or coconut milk
• Garlic bread can be created using dairy-free spread or olive oil
• Replace eggs, including banana, jam, apple sauce and tofu
• A lot of ready-made roll-out pastry is accidentally vegan.

4. Know where to eat out

There’s a good chance these days that the outlet you’re visiting already has vegan options but check online if it’s your first time there. If they don’t have anything exciting, the chef should be happy to prepare something for you. Make sure to call in advance and request this to make things easier.

Travelling or new to the city? Just download the app HappyCow – an online directory of vegan and vegan-friendly restaurants, cafés, shops and more – or check their website.

South and East Asian (particularly Thai, Chinese and Indian) cuisines are most likely to be rich in vegan options. Being nice to the waiter and explaining what you’re expecting from them can go a long way. Can you spot a menu item that’d be it vegan if it wasn’t for an ingredient or two? Ask them to swap or remove it for you and voila, you’ve created yourself a vegan meal. Don’t forget to check all the side dishes too – some may be real gems.

Zizzi, Pizza Hut and Pizza Express serve pizzas topped with vegan cheese, with the former sporting a huge vegan menu, while YO! Sushi, Bella Italia, Prezzo and Pho all provide great options. Wagamama, Frankie & Benny’s, Nando’s and ASK Italian all have delicious vegan menus.

In terms of pubs, Wetherspoons paves the way with its dedicated vegan menu, followed by Loungers, Harvester, Cosy Club, Sizzling Pubs, and even the meat-heavy places like Toby Carvery and Beefeater. Subway, YO Sushi, Wasabi, LEON and Bagel Nash are all great for lunch. If you’re looking for something more standard, you can head to coffee chains or supermarkets – every one of them offers vegan lunch options now.

5. Make vegan friends

Whether it’s in real life, through Facebook groups, apps, or local vegan meet-ups, making friends with similar interests is important.

Why not reach out to that person who keeps posting vegan food on Instagram?

They’re likely more than happy to chat to you about veganism.

If you want to be a little more pro-active, you can try searching for local meet-ups and surfing through forums, posting about wanting to meet up.

After all, who best to exchange recipes, ideas and talk about vegan problems with!

6. Find help online

Vegans are a very welcoming and helpful bunch, always ready to answer all the difficult questions or vegan dilemmas.

There are online forums and Facebook groups to join – it’s a good idea to search Facebook for a group in your area, e.g. ‘vegan London’.

There are some great resources out there, such as The Vegan Society’s VeGuide app which is free to download on Android and iOS devices.

Users receive a combination of daily informational videos, motivational quotes, quizzes, recipes and discounts, all of which aim to help you ease into vegan living.

If the tips above still leave you puzzled, feel free to contact us at The Vegan Society and we’ll be more than happy to help on your vegan journey – we’re on info@vegansociety.com or 0121 523 1730.

This author

Dominika Piasecka is media and PR officer at The Vegan Society and a keen vegan activist. If you care about the environment and want to learn about how veganism benefits it, take our seven-day planet-saving challenge here.

Environmentalists and community activists have claimed a major victory after the closure of an incinerator in Commerce, a city in the state of Los Angeles, USA –  a location as famous for its smog as its celebrities.  

The burner has been emitting contaminants above the legal maximum ever since it began operating in 1986, damaging the lives of people in the already overburdened surrounding community, they argue. But the people fought back and finally convinced Commerce to not renew its contract with the facility.

Unfortunately, there are still 76 similar garbage-burning plants across the US, notorious for emitting way too much. Another pattern is that the lower income communities and communities of color are disproportionately hit.

“No community should have to breathe in the pollution from other people’s garbage,” says Laura Cortez of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, the community organization that led the charge to defeat the Commerce incinerator.

Renewable energy

Her colleague Whitney Amaya added: “Communities have always been at the forefront of enacting positive change by standing together and fighting against facilities that threat our health and environment. The Commerce Incinerator shutdown not only serves as a model for other communities facing similar issues, but is also another clear example of community power and victory.”

Opportunities for ending incineration are rising, as a generation of incinerators is coming to the end of their normal lifespans. Cities hold the key. They need to choose between a lock-in of decades of harmful pollution or leaping forward by closing the incinerators. That’s not as hard as it may seem.

Studies show that more than 90 percent of materials currently disposed of in incinerators and landfills can be reused, recycled, and composted. Incineration actually destroys valuable resources and causes emissions of dangerous chemicals like mercury, dioxins and ultra-fine particles.

Contrary to the claims made by the big companies who run them, incinerators make our climate change problem a lot worse. Compared to coal, waste incineration produces twice as much carbon pollution per unit of energy.

Amazingly, these companies get subsidies for causing climate change because they brand themselves as renewable energy producers. In that process, they take money away from investments in real renewable energy like solar and wind.

Another incinerator

To make things worse, they locked both greenhouse gas emissions and waste production in, by writing in the contracts that the cities provide a minimum amount of waste in order to keep the facilities operational.

On top of that, incinerators are so costly that they even contributed to the bankruptcy of cities like Detroit and Harrisburg. Detroit’s incinerator is so bad that it exceeded emissions limits more than 750 times over the last five years.

When the health costs are included, the costs go ballistic. As an example: healthcare expenses related one facility’s emissions has costed Maryland $21.8 million annually. That is over half a billion during a normal lifespan of 30 years.

The good news is that people are fighting back against the dinosaur waste-burning machines and they are winning significant gains.

In Baltimore, a group of high school students won against the incinerator company Energy Answers, who wanted to build yet another incinerator in Baltimore.

Subsidies

The proposed plant would have burned 4,000 tons of solid waste per day, making it the largest incinerator ever built. It would have been built right next to schools, parks and homes in a neighborhood that already suffers the worst air pollution levels in the state. This madness was fortunately stopped before it ever became a reality.

Destiny Watford, one of the key leaders in the fight, won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in 2016. She didn’t stop there.

After founding the student group Free Your Voice, she and her fellow students and community members are building recycling programs and working with the city to install other zero waste systems that would make the existing incinerator, BRESCO, obsolete.

Just this fall, the city was awarded a scholarship to build a new program to reduce food waste through waste reduction, composting, and food donations.

Thanks to community efforts to educate policymakers on the dangers of the city’s incinerator, the Maryland Congress considered a bill to strip incinerators in the state of their “green energy” label that makes them eligible for subsidies.  

Zero waste

Back in Detroit, the group Breathe Free Detroit recently delivered a petition to Mayor Mike Duggan with nearly 15,000 signatures demanding he shut down the incinerator.

They also released a comprehensive report detailing the many emissions violations and other issues since it began operating in 1986.

At the same time, people know that just saying ‘no’ is not enough. Locals are also building solutions that focus on conserving natural resources, not burning them.

In 2014 the coalition Zero Waste Detroit worked with the city to roll out its first curbside recycling program. It helped to increase household participation to 20 percent, ahead of schedule.

Although communities continue to face incinerator pollution, the drumbeat for environmental justice and a transition to zero waste grows stronger every day.

Incinerators are closing across the country and cities are creating zero waste plans. There’s a sense of rising awareness that disposing waste and disposing whole communities are intertwined and that clean air is not a luxury but a right for all.

This Author

Claire Arkin is the Campaign and Communications Associate for GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives). For more information on failing incinerators across the country, visit: no-burn.org. You can find more information on the Detroit incinerator in the Atlas of Environmental Justice.