The Ecological Road
Eco Update #30
What’s In This Issue
The Ecological Road | Ben Lockwood
Roadside Verges | Chris Wyver
Workers and the World | Lorenzo Feltrin
Nature Photo of the Month | Emanuel Haas
Notes From A Radical Ecologist | Ariane Solwell
Eco Review | Three Roads: Labor, Music, Ecology
The Rotting Leaf | Jared Oliver Adams
The Ecological Road
Dear Readers,
Society is on the road to destruction. As I write this, wildfires are torching North America, covering vast swaths of the U.S. in smoke and extremely poor air quality. Heatwaves are scorching multiple continents, and the planet as a whole faces new global temperature records in the near future. All of this comes as world leaders pour gasoline into the machine of capitalism, grinding down workers and causing even more greenhouse gas emissions.
Of course, our destructive path isn’t just metaphorical. Actual, literal roads dominate Earth’s surface. A 2016 study found that, globally, 93% of land fragments created by roads are smaller than 100 km^2. As environmental Ben Goldfarb notes in Crossings, the proliferation of roads has disastrous effects on the ecology of the planet, killing wildlife, reducing biodiversity, and fragmenting habitat. In Life After Cars, the authors also bring to light the many, many ways in which cars also damage human health and society, including keeping children from outdoor play, polluting the air we breathe, breaking our bodies in crashes, and heating up both our local environments and the planet.
But it need not be so. There are different roads we might take, and different roads we might make. That’s what this issue is about: Finding new roads, both literal and metaphorical. Whether it’s research on creating more pollinator-friendly roads, or Joe Uehlein’s three roads of music, labor, and ecology, this issue explores how we might forge new paths to an ecological society, in recognition that the journey is the destination, that making society ecological is a never-ending process.
As always, we hope the pages here leave you with new ideas and more questions about how to make society ecological.
In Solidarity,
Ben
The articles of this issue will be live on our site in the coming days, but you can get the full issue, right now, at the link below:
It’s late, but I saved it. Will def read.