Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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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…
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The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree: “The Limits to Growth” through the Generations
By Annka Liepold; published in conjuction with a lecture by Dennis Meadows, co-author of The Limits to Growth, an event co-sponsored by the RCC. Growing up, most people are told by their parents what they can do to make this planet better. I remember that my dad’s advice was a little more radical than the…
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The Alpha Experiment
Post by Dominic Kotas Imagine that, at some point in the future, we discover another planet (Planet Alpha). It’s perfect for us. Somehow it satisfies all our requirements and renders Earth irrelevant to our survival. So, we leave Earth, and move into our new planet. After a few months, we start to feel at home…
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An Interview with Jane Carruthers
Combining histories to look at the whole picture is something very particular to environmental history, according to Jane Carruthers, a professor of history at the University of South Africa and an RCC board member. She offers this and other interesting insights into the present and future of environmental history in this video, produced by the…
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Assessing the Success of Silent Spring
Post by Katie Ritson, posted in conjunction with the publication of the RCC Perspectives issue, “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: Encounters and Legacies” Working for a center named after Rachel Carson and in the fiftieth anniversary year of her book Silent Spring, it’s easy to wax fulsome on the great woman and the role she played…
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Dust Storm
Post by Donald Worster On October 19 the American media excitedly reported “a massive dust storm” blanketing northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. For several hours the winds blew dirt eastward from the plains, limiting visibility on the ground to a mere ten feet. The storm turned Interstate 35, which runs from Kansas City to Oklahoma…
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Germany’s “Coal Pit” Reinvents Itself
This post was originally composed for polis and is re-posted here with their permission. “Deep in the West, where the sun is gathering dust,” bellows Herbert Grönemeyer in an ode to his home town, Bochum, “things are better, much better than you think.” Even for the bestselling German pop artist of all time, this was…