Ecology without class struggle is gardening
and the EU is banning single-use plastics
Dear Earthlings,
Monday was Earth Day. As we said last year, and we’ll probably say next year, every day is Mother Earth Day.
🗞️ In Climate News
🇮🇳 India’s Supreme Court expands ‘right to life’ to include protection against climate change
🇳🇿 Whales and dolphins are officially granted personhood in Polynesia thanks to Indigenous leaders
🌏 Bloomberg launches youth action fund to drive climate solutions in 100 cities across the globe
🇿🇼 El Niño-linked drought threatens maize production in Zimbabwe
🇲🇱 Deadly heatwave in Mali and the Sahel, the worst in living memory, linked to climate change
🌍 Devastating floods ravage parts of east Africa, displacing thousands
📈 Cool Trends
♾️ eco-musing
Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, better known as Chico Mendes, was born in 1944 in a rubber reserve in the state of Acre, Brazil. His father was a rubber tapper, like his father before him, and Chico began work as a seringueiro (a rubber tapper) when he was nine years old.
Schools were forbidden on most rubber plantations in Brazil and Chico did not learn to read until he was 18 years old: a co-worker used the newspaper to guide Chico’s education. It was through reading the newspaper that Chico also started learning of the social and political issues in Brazil and throughout Latin America, which offered context to the mistreatment Chico and his fellow seringueiros were experiencing.
Once Chico learned to read, he started teaching literacy in his community, hoping to share his growing awareness of injustice and human rights. Soon they formed unions that engaged in peaceful protests around workers’ rights, human rights, indigenous rights and the rights of nature, calling for the cessation of logging and burning of the Amazon rain forest that created their livelihood. Chico once said “at first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rain forest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.” He also famously stated that “ecology without class struggle is gardening.”
On Earth Day, we often state our love for our great Mother Nature, who has generously provided us with the life we are so lucky to experience. On this day, it is also important to remember figures like Chico Mendes, a forefather of environmental activism, who understood the interconnection between humanity and our natural world and thus the clear connection between environmentalism and social justice. Chico Mendes was sadly assassinated in 1988 and on this Earth Day we offer our gratitude.
🌏 The Culture Column
📺 What we’re watching: Not On Our Soil – A Climate Justice Reality
📸 Profile of the week: @chicksforclimate
📖 What we’re reading: Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard
🤯 Shocking fact we learnt this week: There are over 300,000 items in an average American home