05 – When environmental justice and ontological utopia are not enough

How do we comprehend and act upon environmental destruction beyond reason? In this first episode of the Humanitarianism and Transitions to a Low-carbon Future miniseries, Ekatherina Zhukova, Senior Lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, and David Bond, Associate Director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College in the United States, discuss the limitations of the concepts of environmental justice and ontological utopia in our understanding of the ability of the state and polluting industries to address the ecological crisis. Based on Bond’s newly published book Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment with University of California Press in 2022, they explore the alternative concept of negative ecologies and the possibilities it offers to comprehend the scale of environmental destruction and to provide adequate responses to it right now. Zhukova and Bond also discuss the importance of bridging academic theory with the everyday life experiences of destruction and the struggle for justice by frontline communities.