As the wildfires rage and species die off in mass, who will defend Earth against mankind’s predations? Baffler no. 82, “Bloom and Gloom,” considers polluters, protectors, and profiteers alike, from water defenders to data centers to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Christopher Ketcham reports from one front, in France, where direct action against polluting agribusiness is met by violence from a state bent on defending reservoirs that destroy ancient riparian systems. In the United States, Lauren Markham explains how organic milk producers in Northern California have enlisted the MAHA crowd to fight conservationists trying to push cows off the land to make way for wild elk. Elsewhere in the Golden State, Tyler Maroney speaks to an anonymous public adjustor about what will happen to people—and their homes—when insurance companies pull out of the market.
Antinatalists champion our own demise, but matters remain complicated for those who have been born, and those who will give birth—though as Madeleine Watts learns reading throughout her pregnancy, other mothers aren’t always so reassuring. If we’ll never be able to undo the worst of our actions, perhaps we can appreciate nature’s adaptations, as Jennifer Kabat does with knotweed. The invasive plant species is particularly fond of highways and parking lots, “places humans have transformed or degraded.” We’ve given it plenty to work with.
“The story of how and why exactly the tule elk and their defenders led to the ranchers being kicked off their land has more twists and turns than the road on whose shoulder Evans and I were presently parked.”
“I wanted to know what it was like to give birth in the increasingly precarious social and economic conditions that the postpandemic years have turbocharged, amid epidemics of atomization and loneliness with no seeming solution.”
“I resist using the loaded term invasive. I worry, too, about the lengths we go to eradicate these vilified plants and what that says about us. But knotweed puts my tenderhearted sentiments to the test.”
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