Others
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A Note on Recent Floods and Relocation in Australia
Post by Ina Richter The year 2013 is still fairly young but already there have been major natural disasters. Among these are the tremendous floods in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales, brought on by Cyclone Oswald. The cyclone had formed in the Gulf of Carpentaria just north of Australia. It was…
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Germany’s Great Green Gamble: Energy and Environmentalism in Transition
Post by Frank Uekoetter A specter is haunting Europe: the specter of the Energiewende. One of the leading industrial countries has decided to forgo nuclear power, staking its future instead on renewable energies, and the rest of the world is trying to make sense of the decision. And with that country being Germany, we have…
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Changing the Conversation with Ecofeminism: A Primer
Post by Jenny Seifert Changing a paradigm is no easy task—an understatement, no doubt. It probably seems just as easy as solving the world’s environmental problems. And shifting the paradigms that underlie those problems may seem like a doubly impossible task. Yet, the fate of humanity might hang on our ability to accomplish the impossible.…
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Living with Zombie Mines
Post by John Sandlos and Arn Keeling Mention the words “zombie mine” and you risk conjuring images of grotesque undead figures lurking in dark abandoned tunnels, more the stuff of movie or video game fantasies than anything to do with mining in the real world. And yet, the idea behind the zombie – that of…
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“Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw”: Jiang Rong’s “Wolf Totem”
Post by Brenda Black Jiang Rong’s autobiographical novel Wolf Totem was one of the group reads for the Global Environment Summer Academy held at the Rachel Carson Center last August. It recounts the experiences of a Chinese college student, Chen Zhen (the author’s alter ego), sent to live among the nomadic herders of Inner Mongolia…
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New Year, New Name, New Look, Same Mission!
Presenting the RCC’s blog, take two… We have a new look and a new name: Seeing the Woods! In our excitement about launching the RCC’s blog, we unfortunately overlooked an important step: making sure our desired name was not already taken. Alas, we have learned a lesson. A well-established political blog has been running under the…
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The Art of Ecological Thinking: documenta 13
Post by Ben Tendler Now held every five years for 100 days in Kassel, Germany, documenta is one of the largest and most important international contemporary art fairs in the world. It was originally one element among many aimed at social, political, and cultural recovery following the collapse of Germany’s Nazi regime. As such, at…
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Learning to Love Pesticides: A Look at Popular American Attitudes
Post by Michelle Mart Since the publication of Silent Spring in 1962, there have been numerous popular and scholarly studies of pesticide use in the United States. Environmentalists and others have credited Rachel Carson with awakening people to the dangers of overuse of these chemicals. Such praise is warranted, and it is clear that Silent…
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Questioning the Limits to Growth: Responses to a Lecture by Dennis Meadows
Following Dennis Meadows’ lecture, “The Limits to Growth and the Future of Humanity,” which was given at the Amerika Haus in Munich on Tuesday, 4 December 2012, the RCC is making available the slides used during the presentation and the questions collected from the audience. Many people responded to the issues Meadows raised. To make…