Fossil Fuels and Toxic Landscapes

Abstract

A year after Pres Trump's inauguration, our worst climate policy nightmares have become a reality. Fossil fuel interests have hijacked every part of the new administration--the State Department, Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the National Economic Council--and the list continues. The intensity of global-warming fueled devastation increases daily as over a century of fossil-fueled war and violence against labor and nature rages on. Latin America is familiar with this kind of violence. As hurricanes rip through the Caribbean and tear into Central America, it would seem common sense to acknowledge the ills of fossil fuel dependence and mobilize for radical transformation. Oil and gas expansion, and resistance to its effects--from physical displacement to destroyed landscapes to livelihoods subjected to poisoned air and water--continue to characterize the region. Lorena Riffo's piece on fracking in Argentina takes us close to the ground.