Adaptation. Mitigation. Justice.
To stop the destruction of life on this planet, international criminal codes must expand beyond human-focused war crimes and genocide to include ecocide—recognizing non-human life has inherent value. Heather Alberro & Luigi Daniele A movement of activists and legal scholars is seeking to make “ecocide” an international crime within the […]
It’s been three months since Winter Storm Uri scorched South Texas, leaving stands of gray stalks where living trees once stood, collapsing walls of cacti and making puddles out of aloe. What better time to rethink what we are growing and why—particularly in this time of global biodiversity crisis.
Two years ago, the City of San Antonio launched a war on the birds of Elmendorf Lake. The target was the hundreds of cattle egrets who have been roosting at this Westside ecological gem for decades. By razing the island to the ground, and dismantling possibly hundreds of nests, the assault destroyed the nesting ground for many related migratory birds. Many young were killed.
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 […]