The first modern ‘War on’ was a War on Smog funded by the fossil fuel industry

by | Feb 9, 2024 | beyond liberalism, Climate Change, Conflicts of Interest, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, duh, Environmental Justice, fake loops, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Oil Barons, pollution, Priorities, Public Health, Syndemics, Systems thinking, the real, Verschlimmbessern, Wolves in sheep's clothing

A new exposé by Rebecca John at DeSmog Blog shows that as early as 1953 industry was up to capturing popular outrage and dishing out placation. To mollify disgust of Angelinos at the mounting smog in Los Angeles, industrialists got ahead of the public action curve to...

Denial of Death?

by | Sep 19, 2023 | Climate Change, Communication, death, Decolonization, deep ecology, Discursive Gap, Environmental Political Theory, Fake Freedoms, fake loops, Fragmentation, Harm Reduction, Industrial Epidemics, philosophy of science, Priorities, Semiotics, Syndemics, Systems thinking, Unpleasant Design, Verschlimmbessern

“Burnout is nature’s way of telling you, you’ve been going through the motions your soul has departed; you’re a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system.”?...

Ecological Sisyphus

by | Jun 23, 2023 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Climate Change, Communication, cruelty, death, Decolonization, deep ecology, Discursive Gap, duh, Environmental Justice, Environmental Political Theory, exploitation, Fake Freedoms, fake loops, folly, Naturverlassenheit, Normal is Over, pollution, Public Health, Syndemics, Verschlimmbessern

I feel like this as an environmental professional: expected to educate why we need to make sustainable change to all those convinced that everything’s fine. One must imagine Sisyphus happy… (Camus) I cannot imagine how it is for climate and environmental...

The Tech Megamachine

by | Jul 27, 2022 | Bad Advertising, beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Conflicts of Interest, death, deus ex machina, duh, Fake Freedoms, fake loops, Fragmentation, Industrial Epidemics, normalization, Perverse Incentives, Syndemics, Systems thinking, Unpleasant Design

As annoying as I find Russell Brand on occasion, in this case he makes a good point. The marriage of corporate and state power – technology and the monopoly on violence – which Mussolini called ‘fascism’ and Lewis Mumford called the...