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Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Stratospheric aerosol injection
16 min read
The article discusses Stardust Solutions' controversial plans to release aerosols into the stratosphere to block solar radiation. Understanding the science, risks, and governance debates around this specific geoengineering technique provides essential context for evaluating such ventures.
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Britishvolt
9 min read
The article extensively discusses the failed Britishvolt battery factory in Blyth as a case study in Britain's failed green industrial policy. The full story of this company's rise and collapse illuminates broader tensions between political boosterism and industrial reality.
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Metabolic rift
14 min read
Alyssa Battistoni's book 'Free Gifts' draws on Marxist ecological theory about capitalism's relationship with nature. The metabolic rift concept, central to ecosocialist thought, provides theoretical grounding for understanding her arguments about pollution as 'byproduction' and class struggle.
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The second piece of news is that we are splitting up our ICYMI list of essays and podcasts the BREAK–DOWN editors have enjoyed over the past fortnight from our regular update. So, for the first time, see what we have been reading below.
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1. More Free Gifts
The good folk at the Law and Political Economy Project are currently hosting a symposium dedicated to Alyssa Batistoni’s new book, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature. The book is a brilliant, wide-ranging and sophisticated work of Marxist theory, and it’ll undoubtedly change the terrain on which we on the climate left will be working in future. As Alyssa writes in her introduction to the symposium:
...Free Gifts is, primarily, a work of critique; it does not offer an immediate policy program or political strategy. I hope, however, that it can inform both. Take, for instance, struggles over the classic example of social cost: the smokey chimney and its effects on nearby communities. From the left, these have typically been framed in terms of environmental justice, highlighting the uneven distribution of pollution and the disproportionate effects on working class communities and communities of color. While I draw on these analyses, I also locate pollution more firmly within the hidden abode of production itself, reading it as the byproduction of surplus matter alongside commodities, and identifying the forms of class power that allow some people to impose material harms on others in the pursuit of profit. The upshot is that we should understand struggles over pollution not as “new social movements” arising around “social
This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.