Why ecological freedom begins with democracy,not domination
Author: Green Isles
By James Baker, Platform Power and Free Expression Program Manager at the Open Rights Group. As a child, I remember journeys before screens were commonplace. Sitting with my head against the cool window of a car or train, feeling the vibrations and watching landscapes roll past. The views of nature and the countryside were amazing, but too often I would see rows and rows of flats, shops, motorway barriers, pylons, or fields of the same monoculture crop. All these environments were built for efficiency and scale, but their uniformity creates a sense of unease, much like the digital backrooms of…
Republished on Green Isles with kind permission from our friends and colleagues at the Green European Journal. You can (and definitely should) subscribe to the GEJ here. _____________ Once a symbol of unrestrained freedom, islands are now an outpost of ecosystem loss. Meanwhile, billionaires are taking off into space, leaving behind the existential conflicts of a climate-damaged planet. If eco-anxiety has no earthly escape, argues Nikolaj Schultz, we need to find new ways of organising, and of relating to the non-human forms of life that we depend on to sustain our lives. Green European Journal: Eco-anxiety is increasingly recognised as a particularly…
Republished on Green Isles with kind permission from our friends and colleagues at the Green European Journal. You can (and definitely should) subscribe to the GEJ here. by Adam Ostolski In an effort to stop the far right’s rise, political parties in Europe have often tried to dismiss the issues articulated by these forces while adopting parts of their agenda. As recent elections clearly showed, this approach does not work. We must reimagine our own solutions to the problems that have allowed the far right to thrive, but first we need to forget the lessons we have picked up blindly. An uncanny…
Republished on Green Isles with kind permission from our friends and colleagues at the Green European Journal. You can (and definitely should) subscribe to the GEJ here. by Vladimir Bortun Unlike the notoriously fragmented Left, European far-right parties and leaders manage to convey an image of unity: they rejoice in each other’s successes, share a contempt for minorities and the “elites”, and employ rhetoric drawn from the same playbook. But beneath this superficial unity lie different social forces and programmes, reflecting divergent economic interests. For the past decade or so, the steady rise of far-right populism has been a defining feature of…
Republished on Green Isles with kind permission from our friends and colleagues at the Green European Journal. You can (and definitely should) subscribe to the GEJ here. Daphne Halikiopoulou and Wouter van de Klippe The far right has managed to gradually consolidate its position by capitalising on structural insecurities. Progressive forces are on the defensive, either imitating right-wing talking points or struggling to come up with a convincing alternative. To turn things around, Greens and the Left need to come together and provide answers to today’s existential threats, from climate change to the housing crisis. An interview with Daphne Halikiopoulou, chair in…
Republished on Green Isles with kind permission from our friends and colleagues at the Green European Journal. You can (and definitely should) subscribe to the GEJ here. by Florent Marcellesi By exposing the link between the growth imperative and today’s socio-ecological crises, post-growth thinking has made its way out of activist circles and into political institutions. But what makes the current system so difficult to challenge is its positive association with freedom in people’s minds. Moreover, denialist and reactionary movements have spared no effort to hijack freedom. To gain cultural and political hegemony to transform society, post-growth needs its own compelling vision…
How Greens and progressives can challenge the right’s reductive version of freedom
Addressing the tension between personal freedom and living within ecological limits
Republished on Green Isles with kind permission from our friends and colleagues at the Green European Journal. You can (and definitely should) subscribe to the GEJ here. The right-wing shift of prominent figures in the tech world has dispelled any myths about the good intentions of Silicon Valley billionaires. In the past few decades, a small number of increasingly powerful companies and individuals have established a near monopoly over critical digital infrastructure, bringing about dangerous risks to individual freedoms, countries’ sovereignty, and the planet’s wellbeing. How can we strive towards a different tech paradigm? A conversation with Paris Marx, Canadian tech critic,…
