Ihnji Jon, "Cities in the Anthropocene: New Ecology and Urban Politics" (Pluto Press, 2021)
Climate change is real, and extreme weather events are its physical manifestations. These extreme events affect how we live and work in cities, and subsequently the way we design, plan, and govern them. Taking action 'for the environment' is not only a moral imperative; instead, it is activated by our everyday experience in the city. Based on the author's site visits and interviews in Darwin (Australia), Tulsa (Oklahoma), Cleveland (Ohio), and Cape Town (South Africa), Ihnji Jon's Cities in the Anthropocene: New Ecology and Urban Politics (Pluto Press, 2021) tells the story of how cities can lead a transformative pro-environment politics. National governments often fail to make binding agreements that bring about radical actions for the environment. This book shows how cities, as local sites of mobilizing a collective, political agenda, can be frontiers for activating the kind of environmental politics that appreciates the role of 'nature' in the everyday functioning of our urban life.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
--------
43:07
--------
43:07
Charles Watkins, "Trees Ancient and Modern: Woodland Cultures and Conservation" (Reaktion, 2025)
Charles Watkins joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Trees Ancient and Modern (Reaktion, 2025). This delightful new book explores the relationship between trees and people and reveals how people have used, valued and understood forests over time. While trees are celebrated as symbols of natural beauty, they are increasingly at risk from climate change, disease, fires and urban expansion. Trees Ancient and Modern explores humanity’s deep connection with trees and woodlands, highlighting their beauty and importance and the challenges they face. The book looks at debates about creating new woodlands, exploring questions of location, ownership and management.Using diverse sources such as literature, art, historical records, scientific surveys and oral histories, Charles Watkins reveals how people have used, valued and understood forests over time. He also assesses modern threats to woodlands and considers how best to conserve them. Richly illustrated, this is a global social and cultural history of forests that provides valuable insights for future management.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
--------
55:02
--------
55:02
Michael Maniates, "The Living-Green Myth" (Polity Press, 2025)
Dr. Michael F. Maniates is a leading scholar in environmental politics and sustainability studies whose work has fundamentally reshaped how researchers and policymakers understand consumption, responsibility, and power in environmental change.
In this current book, The Living-Green Myth (Polity Press, 2025), he identifies recurring paradoxes in the sustainable-consumption agenda: the tendency to propose modest behavioral solutions for immense systemic problems, to depoliticize governance, and to avoid confronting growth. He believes the mantra of “buy green, live lean, save the planet” is a con of recent and unseemly origin. It fosters pernicious assumptions about social change, separates individuals from their real power in the world, and fuels damaging consumption. It thrives because it meets the short-term priorities of governments and business, not the long-term needs of the planet's human and non-human inhabitants. Environmentally concerned individuals can make a meaningful difference in the world, and living green is a start. But alone, it can do more harm than good.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
--------
51:20
--------
51:20
Garrett Hardin’s Tragic Environmentalism
An ecologist in California claimed that the iron laws of nature locked humanity into destroying our environment. This meant that we must take drastic measures to rein in unfettered capitalism and the American habit of overconsumption, lest we deplete our common resources. That argument made Garrett Hardin one of the most influential and celebrated environmentalists to ever live. Yet, he had a tragic view of the world that turned his green dream into a green nightmare.
This is the final episode of Cited Podcast’s new season, Green Dreams. Green Dreams tells stories of radical environmental thinkers and their dreams for our green future. Should we make those dreams reality, or are they actually nightmares? For the rest of the episodes, visit the series page, and subscribe today (Apple, Spotify, RSS).
There were a number of works that we pulled from to help us understand this story. If you want to learn more about conservative ecological thought, the population panic, and related themes, we recommend that you read: by Richard Hames and Alex Roberts, The Rise of Eco-Fascism: Climate Change and the Far Right; from Jason Oakes, Garret Hardin’s Tragic Sense of Life, a short article on the the ecological models that influenced Hardin; and finally, Thomas Robertson’s excellent survey of the population panic of the mid-60s to late-70s, The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
--------
1:15:27
--------
1:15:27
A Song for the Horses: Musical Heritage for More-than-Human Futures in Mongolia
As permafrost in Siberia continues to melt and the steppe in the Gobi turns to desert, people in Mongolia are faced with overlapping climate crises. Some nomadic herders describe climate change as the end of a world. They are quick to add that the world has ended before for Indigenous people in North Asia, as waves of colonialism have left the steppe with a complicated web of apocalypses. A Song for the Horses by K. G. Hutchins examines cases in which people respond to the pressures of climate change by drawing on cultural heritage to foster social resiliency. In this episode, K. G. joins me to discuss his research on the morin khuur, or “horse fiddle,” in Mongolia, and how Mongolians use the traditional instrument to express and envision human and more-than-human futures against the backdrop of anthropogenic climate change.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
Interviews with Environmental Scientists about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
Ireland