In two statements, internationally renowned climate-activists Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben have raised their voices to support the mass-action against coal-mining in the Rhineland that will take place right after our summer school.
Naomi Klein, author of "This changes everything. Capitalism vs the Climate" emphasizes the importance of the German anti-coal struggle for the global climate: "Germany's rapid energy transition has been driven by the people, a victory that now serves as a model to the rest of the world. But as long as the German political class insists on using massive machinery to tear up the earth, producing the continent's single largest source of carbon emissions, that transition will remain woefully incomplete. These coalfields pose an existential threat to humanity, which is why our movements need to step in once again and shut them down. This August, there is no more important place to be."
Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate-campaigning organization 350.org writes: "I'm so glad to see people drawing a firm line in the coalfields, and stopping the planet's largest coal-digging machines. We're driven not by ideology but by physics: there's simply no way to burn all this lignite and keep the climate intact. These protesters are lifeguards for an endangered planet."
In the 1980s, cities were defined as the ‘growth machines’ of the economy (Molotch, 1976). Today, urban economists epitomize them as economic ‘triumphs’ (Glaeser, 2011). Cities, intended as dense and mixed forms of urban living organized in agglomerations of economic activities, are presented as the solution to many of contemporary socio-ecological problems. They are viewed as the location of t...
Contribution for a dialogue between Degrowth, Human Development and Buen Vivir Over the last 50 years, the mounting evidence of a civilizational or multidimensional crisis has progressively dislocated the (still dominant) industrialist and developmentalist discourse, setting out the imperative of a socio-ecological transition to overcome this crisis. In particular since the turn of the cent...
According to German columnist Georg Diez, the violation of democratic processes in the wake of the financial crisis in 2007/2008 was an epochal break comparable to the great depression and the developments thereafter. One reason for the increase in racism and rise of the radical right, he writes, is also the helplessness of the left faced with the increasing numbers of people who feel abandon...
