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  • In our latest legacy piece, we revisit Diego Arguedas Ortiz investigation of the the drastic ecological transitions experienced in his home country of Costa Rica. Recalling a childhood spent walking through cloud forests and collecting bugs in the mountains, Diego asks us to think about the visibility of climate change, and the places in which we might look for it. He reflects that articles and documentaries remain focused on polar bears and penguins, while, in reality, ecological change is far more widespread.

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    Ecology

    Topic: Ecology
    Witnessing the Anthropocene: fireflies and misty mountains

    By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
  • What is lost when we pave over vital ecosystems? In this beautifully lyrical piece, Fendy Satria Tulodo draws on his experience selling motorcycles in Malang, East Java. He explores the ways we struggle to keep in touch with memories embodied in asphalt, as carbon-intensive petrol based travel, and the infrastructure to support it, continue to proliferate.

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    Infrastructure

    Topic: Infrastructure
    The Faint Blue Flicker of Asphalt Ghosts

    By Fendy Satria Tulodo
    (Article)
  • Jemima Skala explores the way we think about mountains, through the lens of Mountainish by Zsuzsannah Gahse, which won the Swiss Grand Prix for Literature and was recently translated into English. Drawing on other giants of mountain literature, such as Nan Shepherd, Skala examines the way that mountains become diffuse with experience, melding the 'human' and the 'natural'.

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    Literature

    Topic: Literature
    Squinting at Mountains: a review of Zsuzsanna Gahse's Mountainish

    By Jemima Skala
  • Having spent the last few years retraining in horticulture, Chloë Webster, speaks of a renewed despair towards the inadequacies of our political systems, especially regarding inadequate climate responses. In an attempt to locate holistic and progressive alternatives, Webster considers the community garden, whose quaintness belies a surprisingly radical system of knowledge production.

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    Community

    Topic: Community
    Our community gardens are ripe for radical knowledge production

    By Chloë Webster
  • In this legacy article, first published in short form in our third issue, Lola Young, Baroness of Hornsey explains how storytelling can help tackle intertwined social and environmental issues, encouraging innovative solutions from marginalised voices. Lola Young has worked extensively with charities, organisations, and parliamentary groups to tackle issues ranging from modern slavery and Transparency In Supply Chains (TISC) to climate change, and diversity within the environmental movement.

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    Literature

    Topic: Literature
    Re-Imagining the Future: encouraging diverse visions of social and environmental justice

    By Lola Young
  • Ambient music, with calming tones for an anxious world, is thriving in popularity – providing a rich medium to reflect and connect to each other and the natural world. With that in mind, Bobby Jewell recently got in touch with three contemporary musicians working in and around ambient to learn more about their practice, and how sound can be used to process the conflicting emotions and realities of climate emergency.

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    Music

    Topic: Music
    A Space for Slowness and Softness: ambient music and the climate emergency

    By Bobby Jewell
  • The graphics that run throughout every issue of It's Freezing in LA! are constructed from environmental data, which is then explored in more detail in a special graphics-related feature. In Issue 11: Knowledge, we worked with researcher Madhuri Karak to put together typographic visuals that compare top-down satellite models of forests to Indigenous understandings of forests on the ground. For the first time, we're reinterpreting the original spreads so they can be accessed online. Words and research by Madhuri Karak. Research, design and typographic illustration by Matthew Lewis. For sharing your ways of the forest, gratitude to villagers of MR; Cindy Julianty and Dian Ekowati for interpretation and translation support.

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    Landscapes

    Topic: Landscapes
    Knowing From Above

    By Madhuri Karak
  • JC Niala explores the transmission of hands-on environmental knowledge, from Lake Victoria to Oxford, before turning to the Isle of Sheppey’s Intertidal Allotment. This community garden embraces intertidal movements, allowing organisms including algae, seaweeds, funguses, and crustaceans to thrive. This article was jointly commissioned by It’s Freezing in LA! and North Kent arts organisation Cement Fields. Together with artist Andrew Merritt, Cement Fields are currently working to establish the Intertidal Allotment as a space for human and non-human community alike. This article was originally published in Issue 11: Knowledge, you can pick up a copy here.

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    Community

    Topic: Community
    Intertidal Learnings From the Land and Sea

    By JC Niala
    (Article)
  • IFLA! Editor Jackson Howarth explores the role of Western scientific knowledge amid the climate crisis, looking at a different ways to frame, understand and communicate such knowledge in an age of uncertainty and lacklustre action. This piece is one of a pair developed together with Adrian Holme, pick up a copy of Issue 11 to read more! Edited by Katie Urquhart.

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    Science

    Topic: Science
    Trust the Science?

    By Jackson Howarth
  • We reached out to various people in the climate space to ask them what they’ve been reading in 2024. Featuring recommendations from Venetia La Manna, Joycelyn Longdon, Adrienne Buller, James Meadway, Ashish Ghadiali, Diyora Shadijanova, Guppi Bola, Nonhlanhla Makuyana and many, many more. Compiled by Martha Dillon.

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    Literature

    Topic: Literature
    Climate Reading Round-up 2024

    By Martha Dillon
  • Ecologist Ana Kilgore explores the burgeoning field of landscape memory, looking at ways that large-scale ecosystems come to know and remember through their myriad interconnected components and processes. Edited by Jackson Howarth.

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    Landscapes

    Topic: Landscapes
    How Landscapes Remember

    By Ana Kilgore
  • Many rewilding projects and other programs aimed at environmental recovery take a long view of history, and are set to be implemented over centuries. Liam Geary Baulch takes inspiration from the field of nuclear semiotics as he explores ways to communicate the importance of these programs, and the species and habitats they hope to protect, to our distant descendants. Edited by Zainab Mahmood.

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    Ecology

    Topic: Ecology
    Singing Through Trees and Time Warps: communicating eco-knowledge across aeons

    By Liam Geary Baulch
  • In Western thought, the apparently immaterial ‘rational mind’ has long been isolated from, and elevated above, other ways of knowing and being. Anna Souter visits Embodied Forms: Painting Now, an exhibition at Thaddeus Ropac, to explore the possibility that art might be able to help us dissolve these boundaries, opening the doors to new ways of coming to know the climate. Edited by Elspeth Wilson.

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    Art

    Topic: Art
    Ways of Knowing: art and the mind-body split

    By Anna Souter
  • Indigenous Communities and environmentalists are currently battling the deep sea mining industry’s attempts to establish the seafloor as a ‘resource frontier’. Nick LePage explains how the sensational discovery of oxygen-producing metallic nodules has extended this contest into the realm of knowledge production, and the light that this sheds on the struggle to define the deep sea. Edited by Jackson Howarth.

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    Activism

    Topic: Activism
    Metals That Breathe: contested knowledge in the deep sea

    By Nick LePage
  • Environmental knowledge can be encountered in an incredible array of places and ways. Eesha Srinivas, a musician of the Dhrupad tradition, describes the process of coming to know the changing climate via environmental information encoded in ragas. Edited by Adham Smart.

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    Music

    Topic: Music
    In Tune with Nature: encoding climate change in melody

    By Eesha Srinivas
  • In the latest 'Knowledge' issue of IFLA! we've wanted showcase showcase and explore scientific climate knowledge in a range of different ways. This piece details a collaboration between non-profit design research studio Climate Cartographics, who create visualisations and communication tools to address environmental concerns, and Indigenous weavers from Gadhdhoo island in the Maldives. Their collaboration uses ‘sounding’ to represent and explore changes to the orally kept Maldivian Nakaiy monsoonal calendar. Words by Climate Cartographics' Ben Pollock.

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    Science

    Topic: Science
    Sounding the Monsoon: weaving the Nakaiy

    By Climate Cartographics
  • Images of melting ice have become synonymous with the climate crisis, yet repetition has also made such images increasingly ineffectual. In this article, IFLA!’s own Holly O’Niell explores artistic efforts to break out of this mould. She reviews Emma Stibbon’s ‘Melting Ice: Rising Tides’ exhibition at Towner Eastbourne (open until 15th September 2024), which aims to draw parallels between processes of polar degradation and coastal erosion in Britain. Holly finds that creative documentation of place and time creates opportunities to more effectively communicate and convey change.

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    Art

    Topic: Art
    (Review) Melting Ice: Rising Tides

    By Holly O'Neil
  • Big tech companies have long used 'green' imagery to serve their own ends. In this article, Charlotte Rickards explores the green rolling hills and blue skies of Microsoft's 'Bliss', one of the most viewed images in history. She finds an unexpected, ironic story of globalism gone awry; a curious chapter in a long history of natural images divorced from the world they so casually claim to depict.

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    Landscapes

    Topic: Landscapes
    Ignorance is Bliss

    By Charlotte Rickards
  • It's Freezing in LA! art editor and co-director Nina Carter reviews the first ever Klima Biennale Wien and finds refreshing storytelling, artist activist events and fictional speculations.

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    Art

    Topic: Art
    Review: Klima Biennale Wien

    By Nina Carter
    (Review)
  • Rachel Carson's images of a 'Silent Spring' bereft of birdsong – robbed by harmful pesticides – are known for launching the Western environmental movement as we know it. In this piece, Rowan Jaines revisits Carson's 1962 classic, arguing that the book's success, and the industry backlash it provoked, can be credited to Carson's powerful synthesis of traditionally artistic and scientific practice – a synthesis that we might still learn from today.

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    Pollution

    Topic: Pollution
    Silent Spring Revisited: a revolutionary art-science synthesis

    By Rowan Jaines
    (Article)
  • The plant lives of Aotearoa (and the myriad meanings they embody) have long been threatened by Western colonists, facilitated by a belief that an ecosystem’s importance is defined by what it offers humans. Hana Pera Aoake describes a very different Māori worldview – one that emphasises the deep, non-linear interconnections between the people and their plant-relatives, and that continues to resist and flourish in the face of eco-cultural imperialism. Edited by Jackson Howarth.

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    Ecology

    Topic: Ecology
    Existing in Kinship with Everything

    By Hana Pera Aoake
    (Article)
  • Welcome to part two of an IFLA! two-part mini series on climate curation and exhibition (you can find the first here). In this second piece, It’s Freezing in LA! Art Editor and Co-Director Nina Carter meets with the Eden Project’s curation team. They discuss their recent exhibition, Acts of Gathering, which explores our changing relationship to food in the context of the climate crisis – and in the process continue our discussion of themes such as the grey area between art and science, community building, and the act of spanning time.

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    Art

    Topic: Art
    Climate and Exhibition: Acts of Gathering at The Eden Project

    By Nina Carter
    (Interview)
  • Welcome to part one of an IFLA! two-part mini series on climate curation and exhibition. In this first piece, It’s Freezing in LA! Art Editor and Co-Director Nina Carter meets with Ashish Ghadiali and Ben Borthwick to discuss Against Apartheid, a Plymouth based exhibition, organised by Radical Ecology, run by Ghadiali to discuss themes including the grey area between art and science, community building, and the act of spanning time.

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    Art

    Topic: Art
    Climate and Exhibition: Against Apartheid at KARST

    By Nina Carter
    (Interview)
  • Pippin’s golden honey pepper, Aunt Lou’s Underground Railroad tomato, the Paul Robeson tomato. Buried in the names of beloved fruits and vegetables is a rich tapestry of Black life, knowledge and history. In this sneak peak into our landmark Issue 10 (which you can pick up here) Amirio Freeman uncovers these stories, exploring how imperial Linnaean naming conventions continue to threaten essential endemic plant names, along with the ways of knowing and remembering that they embody. Illustration by Farida Eltigi.

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    History

    Topic: History
    The Black Histories Hiding in Plant Names

    By Amirio Freeman
    (Article)
  • The Israeli State’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories is a well-documented international crisis, and the project’s whitewashing and social justice implications are relatively well known. In this article, first published in IFLA! Issue 6, Zainab Mahmood reviews the occupation’s ecological component. Her words remain more relevant than ever today. She finds profound environmental tensions between the lifestyles afforded to Israeli citizens and those who live in occupied territories, and that greenwashing is frequently used to distract from colonial actions.

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    Activism

    Topic: Activism
    Colonialism and Greenwash in Occupied Palestinian Territories

    By Zainab Mahmood
    (Article)
  • Metaphors are powerful, especially where the fight for climate justice – and justice more widely – is concerned. They focus our attention on their components; connecting, reframing – creating associations between these constituent parts and so transforming them – uplifting, illuminating, distorting and deprecating. 'Natural' metaphors can be particularly potent. In this short piece, Barney Pau explores the metaphorical potential of the weed, finding it rich with resilience and binary-defying multiplicity. Edited by Jackson Howarth.

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    Ecology

    Topic: Ecology
    Weeds and their Metaphors

    By Barney Pau
    (Article)
  • more we learn about fungi, the more we realise how strange and complex they are. In this illustrated graphic novel, Holly O'Neil draws on thinking from Merlin Sheldrake, Sophie Chao, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Anna Tsing to imagine a mycological world hiding below the base of a matsutake mushroom. Pink moments spiral out from O'Neil's narrative and can been seen dotted throughout the pages of our latest special edition issue, in rhizomatic spirit.

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    Landscapes

    Topic: Landscapes
    Mushrooms: A graphic novel

    By Holly O'Neil
    (Graphic Novel)
  • Neurodiversity adheres neither to a single definition, nor a uniform experience. In this taster from our new issue, Elspeth Wilson describes how her nature writing and creative work intersect with both her sensory needs, and the environment around her, and speaks to Jane Burn, poet and illustrator, and Tzipporah Johnston, embroiderer and visual artist, about their own experiences. Edited by Zainab Mahmood.

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    Community

    Topic: Community
    How Present I Am: three perspectives on neurodiversity, creative work and ecology

    By Elspeth Wilson
    (Interview)
  • Field recordings are atmospheric conditions in which to create an album – but they’re also being used to understand the world around us a little better. Gail Tasker looks into efforts to catalogue the sounds of our changing planet. She finds works that tell ancient stories, uncover geographical mysteries and record the drivers of the climate crisis. Edited by Katie Urquhart.

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    Music

    Topic: Music
    The Sounds of the Climate Emergency

    By Gail Tasker
    (Article)
  • From gaming to virtual museum tours to Google Earth, the use of interactive digital spaces to record places, store information and build online worlds is well-established. But the metaverse is now recording real spaces and vanishing places. Nicholas Pritchard examines what museums and photographic records do to our sense of the world – and questions whether commercial cloud spaces are the right next step for our cultural and ecological memories.

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    Technology

    Topic: Technology
    Memory Loss and the Metaverse

    By Nicholas Pritchard
    (Article)
  • Are you a climate tech acolyte or an energy maximalist? A climate urbanist or an eco-globalist? Eirini Sampson takes a deep dive into forms of ‘neo-pastoral’ environmentalism that advocate returning to rural livelihoods – finding a controversial and fragmented community. Edited by Jackson Howarth.

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    Community

    Topic: Community
    The Rural Idyll?

    By Eirini Sampson
    (Article)
  • As the XR ‘Big One’ gears up for a more moderate approach to mass protests this month, factions within the movement have turned to increasingly radical activities. Olly Haynes explores how the thinking behind climate-based direct action has evolved in the UK and beyond. Edited by Katie Urquhart and Jackson Howarth.

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    Activism

    Topic: Activism
    The Climate Movement is Transforming

    By Olly Haynes
    (Article)
  • We’re starting to see buildings being created with a better ecological record in the UK, and their designers have been quick to claim the credit. But UK built environment firms take a very different approach to building at home than overseas, argues Krish Nathaniel. There is a ‘west and the rest’ approach emerging, with firms using the soft power of ‘green’ at home to mask their ecologically and socially damaging practices overseas. Edited by Martha Dillon.

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    Architecture

    Topic: Architecture
    UK Architecture is Greenwashing on a Global Scale

    By Krish Nathaniel
    (Article)
  • Still from the film, showing Iris in a car, looking towards the sun

    Film

    Topic: Film
    Solar Power and Peaches

    By Kitty Grady
    (Review)
  • ‘Climate anxiety’ is often used to describe horror at the environmental catastrophe we are living through. But what does it really mean to live through a crisis of such head- spinning, far-reaching and all-consuming proportions? Clayton Page Aldern digs deeper into the neuroscience as he seeks to understand emotional and physical responses to the climate crisis.


    Edited by Alice Skinner and Eleanor Leydon. Illustrated by Byun Younggeun. This article was commissioned and funded in collaboration with Wellcome Collection's Stories.

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    Science

    Topic: Science
    Climate of Anxiety

    By Clayton Page Aldern
    (Article)
  • In a climate crisis, many people who experience disabilities find themselves in uniquely vulnerable positions. Yet our bodies exist in complex, multilayered relationships with the wider environments in which we live. Elspeth Wilson unpicks her relationship with ecological systems and spaces, arguing that disabled perspectives can encourage a reframing of nature, place, and society. Edited by Eleanor Warr and Grace Duncan. Illustrated by Sally Booth.

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    Literature

    Topic: Literature
    Disabled Perspectives in Nature Writing

    By Elspeth Wilson
    (Article)
  • Though greenhouse gas emissions are the main focus of climate debates, the waste pollution crisis was the original cause of the environmental movement. Dr Arianne Shahvisi digs into the UK’s shaky recycling infrastructure and its dependence on overseas dumping. She argues that it's time we put a stop to waste colonialism once and for all.

    Edited by Harry Lloyd. Illustrated by Ifada Nisa. This article was commissioned and funded in collaboration with Wellcome Collection's Stories.

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    Waste

    Topic: Waste
    Recycling is a Colonial Delusion

    By Arianne Shahvisi
    (Article)
  • After Cyclone Idai, Mozambique

    Economics

    Topic: Economics
    The Case for Climate Reparations

    By Sahar Shah
    (Article)
  • Building walls

    Migration

    Topic: Migration
    Climate Crisis and the Hostile Environment

    By Rudy Wickremasinghe Schulkind
    (Article)
  • In recent years, the marketisation of ‘natural capital’ has made serious inroads in the finance sector. Adrienne Buller asks if so-called green financing can every really account for the dynamism and complexity of the natural world, or whether attempting to put a price on pollution will only fast track ecological decline. Illustrated by Anthony Padilla.

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    Economics

    Topic: Economics
    You Can't Put a Price on Nature

    By Adrienne Buller
    (Article)
  • Riverside

    Politics

    Topic: Politics
    A Primer for Ecosocialism

    By Martha Dillon
    (Interview)
  • Plastic bottles on shingle

    Pollution

    Topic: Pollution
    Plastic is Changing the Life of My Country

    By Seble Samuel
    (Article)
  • The last year has seen a surge in online protest, but how effective has it been? Molly Lipson argues that, while online activism offers an important opportunity for mobilising and organising action, it often fails to add up to action on the ground. With the ever-present threat of infiltration and state-surveillance, activists have to navigate a considerable minefield as they work to harness the potential of online protest. Illustrated by Fan Pu.

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    Technology

    Topic: Technology
    The Perks and Perils of Online Activism

    By Molly Lipson
    (Article)
  • London and the Thames

    Architecture

    Topic: Architecture
    How Local Authorities are Weaponising Sustainability

    By Tsiresy Domingos
    (Article)
  • In Benedikt Erlingsson’s 2018 feature film, Woman at War, protagonist Halla runs a choir, wants to adopt a child, and sabotages electricity pylons. Andrew Key takes a look at changing depictions of direct environmental action on film, considering the influence of XR on activist narratives and our predilection for the heroic individual.

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    Activism

    Topic: Activism
    Woman At War: direct action on film

    By Andrew Key
    (Review)
  • When we discuss changes to our surroundings, be it climate degradation or otherwise, we tend to think about changes that have taken place within living memory – over decades, rather than centuries. Over time, as decades pass, our standards gradually slip. This is ‘shifting baseline syndrome’; a tendency for conservation efforts to ignore the historic richness of our landscapes. But if we are going to look back, when should we look back to? Sophie Yeo explores what the phenomenon means for climate change, and what can be done to resolve it. Illustrated by Jake Alexander.

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    Landscapes

    Topic: Landscapes
    Frogs in Hot Water: short-term thinking

    By Sophie Yeo
    (Article)
  • Louis Rogers was relieved that Rebecca Tamás’ Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman moved away from typical descriptions of nature as ecstatic. He reviews this 'intelligently digested' collection of wide-ranging ideas about more complex relationships with ecology from the celebrated poet.

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    Poetry

    Topic: Poetry
    Being in Nature Can be Boring: Rebecca Tamás’ Strangers

    By Louis Rogers
    (Review)
  • Greyscale image of a power station

    Pollution

    Topic: Pollution
    The Unusual Chemistry of the Tar Sands

    By Aaron Bradshaw
    (Article)
  • 'It delivers not only a challenging ecological message, but also a gripping cyberpunk thriller.' Chen Qiufan’s first novel Waste Tide paints a bleak portrait of waste build-up in China, highlighting its harrowing effects on both the environment and the people who live in it. Martha Swift reviews, finding a fast-paced, violent read, pointedly critical of the ecological destruction wrought by the waste processing industry.

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    Literature

    Topic: Literature
    How Recycling Ruined the World: a review of Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide

    By Martha Swift
    (Review)
  • This year, Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You made waves exploring the experience of a young Black Londoner dealing with trauma. But the recurring images of climate crisis and discussions of the environment in the show have been overlooked. Christine Ochefu digs deeper into the varied Black experiences of UK climate activism. Illustrated by Bobbye Fermie.

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    Community

    Topic: Community
    I May Destroy You: lessons for environmentalism

    By Christine Ochefu
    (Article)
  • Didcot power station

    Pollution

    Topic: Pollution
    How the Beauty of a Coal Power Station Led to its Downfall

    By Kim Barrett
    (Article)
  • Flooded trees.

    Ecology

    Topic: Ecology
    Landscape Literacy: rambling and climate action

    By Eleanor Salter
    (Article)
  • Music festival

    Music

    Topic: Music
    Grimes, Billie and Lana: the rise of climate superpop

    By Arielle Domb
    (Article)
  • As people reach for their cookbooks during self-isolation, instagram influencers and food trends are seeing a huge influx of interest. Sharlene Gandhi explores the real origins of the zero waste movement, and the whitewashed gentrification that remains prevalent in environmentalist principles around eating. Illustrated by Hannah Percy.

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    Food

    Topic: Food
    The Real Origins of the Zero Waste Movement

    By Sharlene Gandhi
    (Article)

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