Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: From your point of view, what are today's most pressing environmental problems?We're still treating nature primarily as a resource frontier.As long as this is our primary relation to nature, we can't innovate our way out of social-environmental crises.Even if we reduce the environmental impact of individual technologies, we'll just extract more resources to produce more stuff until we exhaust nature's self-sustaining and regenerative capacities. When looking at potential improvements in ourenvironment, what gives you hope?Many of the mechanisms driving social-environmental crises are inherent in the structure of global capitalism.As much as I would love to be an optimist about emancipatory alternatives, I don't see much evidence of imminent systemic change.To be honest, I sometimes struggle with hope.At the same time, I do not want to become a cynic who has nothing to offer beyond complaints about a broken system that can't be fixed.Community-based research inspires me to do better.I have learned most from working with communities who are taking action to change the material conditions around them, and for whom hope is a catalyst for solidarity and mutual help.
DOI: 10.14512/gaia.33.3.2
Author: David Ludwig
Institution: Wageningen University & Research
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4404086993