Fossil fuels lie at the center of contemporary life — powering, despoiling, and altering everything around us. And that includes environmentalism itself, according to anthropologist David Bond. He discusses how concepts like toxic thresholds and environmental impact assessments are an accommodation to the continued existence of the oil and petro-chemical industries, rather than ways to address their inherent harms. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
David Bond, Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment UC Press, 2022
The post The Environmentalism of the Fossil Fuel Industry appeared first on KPFA.

The Environmentalism of the Fossil Fuel Industry

Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social, and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.

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For over half a century, Big Oil and the plastics industry, through their trade associations and front groups, have sold the public the false idea that plastics are recyclable. Recycling became the mantra of good ecological stewardship, promoted by the likes of city governments, school children, and environmental groups. Davis Allen lays out the mass-marketing of a deception.
Resources:
Center for Climate Integrity, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the Plastics Industry Deceived the Public for Decades and Caused the Plastic Waste Crisis February, 2024
The post The Plastics Recycling Deception appeared first on KPFA.

The Plastics Recycling Deception

Reclaiming the commons sounds good in the abstract, but what’s being done on a practical level? Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, the Hawai‘i-based co-founders of Eating in Public, describe projects like Free Gardens and Free Stores. Also: Wren Awry discusses the volume to which Chan and Sharma contributed an essay.
Eating in Public
Wren Awry, ed., Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid PM Press, 2023
The post Food & Freedom appeared first on KPFA.

Food & Freedom

In the United States, few things seem as wholesome as camping, letting us temporarily escape the daily grind and commune with nature and each other. But Phoebe Young argues that camping has a complicated history, which tell us a lot about Americans’ notions of nature and the nation. She discusses the various forms that camping has taken in this country, from recreational camping to the encampments of those without shelter to Occupy Wall Street. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Phoebe S.K. Young, Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement Oxford University Press, 2021 
The post The Politics of Camping appeared first on KPFA.

The Politics of Camping

A hallmark of our age is feeling we’re perpetually struggling with time—not having enough of it to accomplish seemingly endless tasks and obligations, while swimming in a sea of distractions. Can we cope if we learn, following the gurus of time management, to become ever more disciplined and productive? Or does that just feed into a capitalist logic that doesn’t benefit us? Journalist Oliver Burkeman discusses the perils of time management orthodoxy.
The post Fund Drive Special: Mastering Time? appeared first on KPFA.

Fund Drive Special: Mastering Time?

In “The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg,” Jerry Aronson paints a compelling portrait of the legendary writer, visionary, activist, and spiritual seeker.
The post Fund Drive Special: Allen Ginsberg appeared first on KPFA.

The Environmentalism of the Fossil Fuel Industry

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