With the Line 3 and Dakota Access pipelines threatening Indigenous land, youth from the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes ran 2,000 miles to deliver a powerful message to the new administration.
Analysis
To Help Stop the Age of Extinction, Give Nature a New Pronoun
For Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer, Western grammatical norms of using “it” to refer to more-than-human relatives absolve settler cultures of moral responsibility for exploiting and dominating nature. Here’s what we can say instead, drawn from Kimmerer’s native Anishinaabe. Robin Wall Kimmerer Singing whales, talking trees, dancing bees, birds who […]
CPS Energy Couldn’t Stop the Freezing Blackout…Because People
CPS Energy’s CEO blamed failed conservation by local residents as a key contributor to the region’s multi-day blackout. Yet the conservation programs are voluntary, underfunded … and the utility didn’t send a single Spanish-language emergency tweet until Texas was 12 hours from near-total grid collapse. Let’s talk. Greg Harman You […]
Media struggles with mixed climate signals during Winter Storm Uri
This week, a blast of Arctic air has engulfed much of the central US, bringing freezing conditions and record low temperatures to many states. Texas, in particular, has been badly affected, with grid operators hit by power outages and struggling to provide electricity to millions of residents. The events have […]
Research Roundup: Critical Readings for A Vortex Postmortem
Marisol Cortez Y’all know Deceleration is Texas based, so like millions of others around the state, we just survived brutal Arctic storms followed by a near-collapse of the electric grid—brought about by centuries of secessionist ideology and decades of deregulation—on the heels of water and food shortages. All things considered, […]
Texas Clean Energy Debate Enters a Polar Vortex
Blistering Arctic weather poured into Texas this week, freezing wind farms and complicating debate over a needed transition to renewable energy. Greg Harman Two weeks ago, San Antonio’s city-owned utility, CPS Energy, published the Flexible Path Resource Plan (PDF), a report purporting to forecast the cost of moving off coal […]
How You Can Contribute to Critical Environmental Research Right Now
With many research projects sidelined by COVID-19, community members in Texas and beyond can help keep a range of important research on track, from taking local water samples to simply counting the birds. Theresa Crimmins, Erin Posthumus, & Kathleen Prudic The rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020 disrupted field research […]
Remembering Laura Sánchez
Two longtime migrant rights activists remember their compañera’s dedication to sanctuary in principal and action, as hopes rise for restoring a just U.S. asylum policy. Marisol Cortez In the summer of 2020, I asked Jack Elder to write a piece remembering Laura Sánchez, his friend and confederate in the Sanctuary […]
18 Charts: 2020’s Record-Breaking Warming as Biden Rejoins Paris
EDITOR’S NOTE: Even as President Biden enters the White House with an unprecedented commitment to fighting industrially driven global warming and taking several critical immediate actions, including reentering the Paris Agreement, the pledges we’ve seen to date are still too limited, if only because this global threat is so large, […]
Coup Averted, La Lucha Continua. But First: Breathe.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final dispatch from a group called Choose Democracy, who we introduced to readers in an October post just before the historic (and traumatic) 2020 election. Choose Democracy formed for the express purpose of training people to stop a coup should it arise, launching a coup-o-meter […]
‘Luz At Midnight’: San Antonio’s First Rare-Earth Cli-Fi Love Story
Love, politics, and rare earth mineral mining converge in this South Texas novel. Ten years in the making, San Anto’s first rare-earth cli-fi love story (we’d wager) has just been published by the superchingón FlowerSong Press and is ready for heavy reading. Rooted in the landscapes and issues Deceleration aspires […]
Drug Legalization, Community Power Critical For Police-Free World
Marijuana legalization advocates and members of community groups attend a rally against marijuana arrests in front of One Police Plaza on June 13, 2012 in New York City. The New York City Council is set to vote on a resolution that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana in […]