Environmental for Food Justice

Cartoon sketch courtesy of  People and Nature . Racism; blindness to capitalism in science communities allows continued exposure and risk disparities A FAILURE TO CONFRONT RACISM and CAPITALIST CONTROL OF SCIENCE UNDERMINES TIES TO OTHER MOVEMENTS The quest for gold brought to light many useful inventions and advanced society in innumerable ways. -Sir Francis Bacon I consider myself an “ethno-scientist.” The methods and practices I follow in the fields of agroecology, ethnoecology, and related areas reflect my grounding in millennia of indigenous knowledge and study of ecological processes in the human-nature interrelationship. The two cultures divide that C. P. Snow lamented because it separates the humanities from the natural sciences remains a central concern for me as a practitioner of community-based collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Yet, I am not marching today. And it is not because I am anti-science. I am against continued widespread reductionism of and in scien...

Moderator’s Note: Pope Francis has made a lot of news lately by enunciating against capitalism as a threat to the planet and humanity.   His encyclical on climate change, which you can down load from this link, Laudato Si , condemns capitalism as a threat to biodiversity, ecosystems, and indigenous peoples. He also charges capitalism with being the principal cause of climate change, which places him well ahead of the majority of climate scientists, most of whom are too weak-kneed to declare that the other “C” word is an abomination. In today’s guest blog, Steven Argue praises the Pope’s encyclicals but rightly criticizes him for: going ahead with the canonization of the genocidal missionary, Junipero Serra; failing to resolve the role of the Church in supporting Nazi expansionism; failing to reverse the Church’s longstanding misogynist policies that threaten the health and well being of women; for failing to challenge the Church’s “Band-Aids for poverty”, which Argue suggests “are...