Environment

Protests in Australia against a $12 billion coal mine project are on the rise. If the project goes forward, it would be the largest coal mine in Australia and one of the largest in the world. “Coal is killing people," anti-mining organizer Jodi Magi explained. "Pollution from burning coal is the single biggest contributor to dangerous global warming.”

The Standing Rock standoff over the Dakota Access Pipeline was a reminder that colonization, and resistance to it, both exist in the present tense. Fossil fuel pipelines that despoil indigenous lands and waters have become key flashpoints in long-standing anti-colonial resistance. An important precursor and inspiration for the Standing Rock camp is an indigenous occupation in northern British Columbia, Canada.

In a world where only 8 individuals – all of them men—possess as much as half of all the planet’s wealth, and it will take women 170 years to be paid as men are, inequality appears to be a key feature of the current economic model. Now a new study reveals that there is also a widening gap in hunger.

Each year, the electronics industry generates up to 41 million tons of e-waste, but as the number of consumers rises, and the lifespan of devices shrinks in response to demand for the newest and best, that figure could reach 50 million tons this year.

Last December, calls to defund the Dakota Access pipeline and “Stand with Standing Rock” led individuals to divest millions of dollars from banks extending credit to that project. As cities and tribes got involved, that amount increased to now more than $4 billion. Now, the movement that began at Standing Rock has gone global, since much of the Dakota Access pipeline funding came from overseas banks.

The UN estimates that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 – with over 5 trillion pieces of plastic weighing more than 260,000 tonnes currently floating in the world’s oceans. “Right when we need them the most, we are losing these crucial ecosystems,” the UN warns.