Mary Wollstonecraft is best known for her pioneering writing on human rights, feminism and education. But one of her lesser-known works contains a startlingly prophetic insight into humankind’s impact on the environment. By @BeeRowlatt How did you first become aware of the natural world’s vulnerability to the impact of humans? Did it come as an […]
Read More… from Mary Wollstonecraft as environmental prophetBee Rowlatt
Maryland, 1988. Junior high. Our task in Mr. M’s class: author a dispatch to a pal on Phobos, a moon of Mars, communicating highlights about our world. This task had a catch: ABC’s fifth and most common mark was off limits — for, as Mr. M told us, this symbol didn’t occur on Phobos. This […]
As Christmas approaches, Clare Druce, founder of Chickens’ Lib, reminds us of the damage done by factory farming chickens and turkeys. Factory farming promised plentiful cheap food. Instead, it has given us giant corporations where the profit motive reigns supreme, while ‘food animals’ suffer on an unprecedented scale. Treating animals like machines goes hand in […]
Read More… from How Factory Farming Threatens Us AllClare Druce
From micro-plastics in the snows of Everest and Antarctica, to carrier bags at the bottom of the 11km-deep Marianas Trench, and the billions of particulates infesting the brains of our children, nowhere and no-one on our planet remains uncontaminated by the polluting by-blow of early 21st century human activities. The atmosphere too is tainted, it’s […]
Read More… from The Case for Rewilding the ClimateBill McGuire
The real beauty of a coral reef is in the way it renews itself and creates the strongest of structures in the world with the most delicate of life forms. If the fragile polyps are damaged, the reef crumbles. You could say the same of us, and our world: that which is most fragile […]
What do we do when climate change threatens more than just a species and its habitat, but puts at risk thousands of years of relationships between land-based cultures and their most sacred plants? When Adla Massoud and her friends invited me to join them for a pilgrimage to the northernmost stands of Cedars of Lebanon […]
Read More… from Read: Sowing the Seeds of HopeGary Paul Nabhan
Tell us about what’s happening at Ardee bog, and why you are campaigning to stop it. Ardee Bog, in Ireland’s County Louth, is threatened by an absurd infrastructure project. If a proposed road, the N52 Ardee Bypass, is allowed to proceed in its current form it will cut through Ardee Bog and its […]
Read More… from Read: Trees breathe out. We breathe in.Katie Holten
This year for Remembrance Day for Lost Species, November 30th, Writers Rebel are bringing together 20 writers from around the globe including Margaret Atwood, Amitav Ghosh, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ben Okri, Homero Aridjis and others to each tell the story of one animal. Please join us for this free landmark event. Below, Writers Rebel member Alex […]
Read More… from READ: They All Run TogetherJoin us for On the Brink: Mon 30th Nov, 7pm GMT
M John Harrison is a much-celebrated multi-award winning veteran writer of science fiction and speculative fiction. He recently won the 2020 Goldsmiths/New Statesmen Award for The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Here, he talks to Writers Rebel co-founder, and writer Monique Roffey, whose novel The Mermaid of Black Conch was also shortlisted for the […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A with M John HarrisonMonique Roffey
Hau kea white snow, snow (Hawaiian) In this tropical archipelago, snow is most likely to be found on a simmering crater. In winter the temperature at the summits of Mauna Loa, Haleakala and Mauna Kea – the state’s three tallest volcanoes – drops to below freezing. Mauna Kea means ‘white mountain’ and it […]
Weather Gods I Tired of burnings, bulldozers, charred lungs, Chaac the Rain God decamps from Mayan rainforests, rides the bloated trade winds, comes to reign over the Old World. Days on end the swollen earth has swallowed till it’s soft as blotting-paper. The sun is an aspirin dissolving in a gauze of […]
There are a million species under threat of extinction throughout the world, with as many as two hundred disappearing every day. But amongst these there is one species whose passing we need not mourn: the Danish mink farmer. Even before Covid jumped the species barrier from humans to mink and back again, mutating into […]
Jimmy Piaguaje is a young indigenous Siekopai defender from Siekoya Remolino, a community of 53 families living on the banks of the Aguarico River in the northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon region. The Siekopai (which means multicoloured people) are renowned for their shamanic acumen and knowledge of medicinal plants, with uses for over 1,000 different plants. According […]
Read More… from Read: Hope in the Amazon: Interview with Jimmy Piaguaje
Jimmy Piaguaje es un joven activista indígena Siekopai de Siekoya Remolino, una comunidad de 53 familias que viven a orillas del río Aguarico en la región amazónica nororiental ecuatoriana. Los Siekopai (que significa personas multicolores) son conocidos por su perspicacia chamánica y su conocimiento sobre plantas medicinales, con usos para más de 1,000 plantas diferentes. […]
Read More… from Leer: Esperanza en la Amazonía: Entrevista con Jimmy Piaguaje
When the news finally came that the democratic candidate Joe Biden had won the state of Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the United States presidential election, our household cheered! I ran outside – not to the streets because where we live there are none – but because […]
It was the Prussian polymath, scientist and writer Alexander von Humboldt (1767-1835) who paved the way for biogeography – the study of species and ecosystems across space and time – becoming established as an empirical science. The publications that emerged from his many expeditions are recognised as foundational to our present understanding of nature as a single great […]
This year we went on holiday to the north west coast of Scotland. We were looking for some respite from overcrowded parks, bad news and the frenzy of disconsolation, and had heard good things. The drive was long and twisting but it didn’t disappoint. With every dark loch and crag from Fort William, and […]
Migration seasonal migration has lost its language. birds commence reverse flight. head for land that does not exist. island holds breath, throws up sick. human limbs made tides rogue whip. birds circle, cry. swansong is choking sob. our talk is famous. when lunged with death you were brick. a witness […]
Look at that tree, said Mimi, look at that tree and write about it. But Mimi, I don’t know the name of that tree. I can describe it but can’t distinguish it, tall, brown, bursting with leaves like a loaded wallet, autumn’s green and yellow receipts. Mimi, is it against my nature to notice the […]
Read More… from Read: City Boy Talks To TreesRaymond Antrobus
As a species, our lack of kindness has surely led the human race to where we are today. The majority of pandemics have been caused by our insufferable treatment of animals. Asiatic black bears are a case in point. The rebel in me wants to criticise the bear farming industry for its horribly cruel practices, […]
Read More… from Read: The Only Cure is KindnessJill Robinson
I am surprised at the nervousness in the pit of my stomach. I’m facing a tree-shaded track descending alongside the remains of an old quarry. Every single fibre of my being is screaming at me to plunder its unknown treasures. Yet I durstn’t. I durstn’t because whilst I know it is a path, it is […]