Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Urban Gardening, “Treibstoff,” and The Desire for Community
What would you get if you mixed together “Treibstoff,” the Viennese countercultural group that parks converted trucks in disused urban spaces, and the community gardening scene described by Jeffrey Hou in his recent lecture? Both movements have attracted considerable interest of late: The members of “Treibstoff” were profiled in a documentary screened at the DOK.fest…
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Photo of the Week: Shane McCorristine
This photo was taken a few months ago at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre in northern Canada. The sun is currently in a period of solar maximum and Churchill lies directly in the auroral zone, allowing for a series of fantastic displays in February and March. In this photo Shane is standing under the Aurora…
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Lecture Notes: Warwick Fox’s Responsive Cohesion
Last week, Warwick Fox gave a lecture at the RCC entitled “General Ethics and the Theory of Responsive Cohesion”. Below is a (subjective and unofficial) summary. Why is Warwick Fox proposing a General Theory of Ethics (with capital letters)? Because, in his view, previous theories have had too narrow a focus. Environmental ethicists extended ethical…
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Photo of the Week: Christof Mauch
Dalton Highway, Alaska, on the way to Deadhorse, near the Arctic Ocean. This photo was taken close to an oil pumping station. Dalton Highway was built to transport oil. Before the highway, the area looked like the top half of this photo. (Please click the picture for a larger image.)
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Governmental Coercion Is Our Only Hope? A Commentary
Post by Rachel Shindelar If we are going to stop producing greenhouse gases and successfully mitigate climate change, we do not have time to wait around for individuals to become virtuous. Governmental coercion is our only hope. At least, this is what Oxford University professor John Broome claimed before launching into his lecture on “The…
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Photo of the Week: Christof Mauch
This is a beach in Malibu. It is one of the most expensive places on the planet: the smallest bungalow is a multimillion dollar property. The sea is eating the land away. The sand is public but the owners are protecting their properties by shovelling up public sand and putting it in plastic bags to…
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Video: Donald Worster on “Facing Limits: Abundance, Scarcity, and the American Way of Life”
The Rachel Carson Center has produced a series of video interviews with fellows and associates regarding their work. Below is one video from this series. For the complete playlist (55 videos), click here.
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All Environmental Politics is Local: What Today’s Climate Activists Can Learn From Yesterday’s Antipollution Movement
Post by Christopher Sellers As we approach the forty-third Earth Day, American climate activism has finally gotten feisty. Hopes have arisen that its sway can approach that of the antipollution movement of the 1960s, out of which the first Earth Day sprang. A recent “Forward Climate” protest on February 17 drew an estimated 35–40,000 people…
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Five Minutes with a Fellow: Grace Karskens
Five Minutes with a Fellow offers a brief glimpse into what inspires researchers in the environmental humanities. The interviews feature current and former fellows from the Rachel Carson Center. Grace Karskens is an associate professor of history in the School of Humanities at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Her research interests include…