#Marxism festival at#SOAS, starting with Ian Rappel, #conservation #biologist on #rewilding as if humans mattered. Opening fact: drawing on #aquasphere across the world has tilted the earth axis https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-groundwater-pumping-has-changed-the-tilt-of-earths-axis/
Rampant Groundwater Pumping Has Changed the Tilt of Earth's Axis

Human depletion of groundwater has shifted the global distribution of water so much that the North Pole has drifted by more than four centimeters per year

Scientific American
Ian Rappel reminds that there’s a simplistic approach to #species in believing #humans ran amok and should be taken out of #nature which it wrecked. Population should be controlled, #malthusian approach etc… but we’ve always interacted with nature, we are part of it and impacted it in positive and negative ways. We should instead look at the systems of exploitation which self-perpetuate
#capitalism has brought in large #agribusinesses that have created an artificial #ecology and wiped out smallhold #farms, #indigenous groups, structures that had lived together with nature for 100s of years
#conservation now involves #displacement of groups, continues the idea that humans are in the way. This includes the idea of #rewilding
#halfearth idea: a #conservation idea that half is conservation, other half is humans. Not only politically dubious (#refugees) but also ecologically, because species need #freemovement.