Seeking new definitions of ecology in the tar sands of northern Alberta and searching for the sweetness of life in the face of planetary crises. Confounded by global warming and in search of an affirmative politics that links ecology with social change, Matt Hern and Am Johal set off on a series of road trips to the tar sands of northern Alberta—perhaps the world's largest industrial site, dedicated to the dirty work of extracting oil from Alberta's vast reserves. Traveling from culturally liberal, self-consciously “green” Vancouver, and aware that our well-meaning performances of recycling and climate-justice marching are accompanied by constant driving, flying, heating, and fossil-fuel consumption, Hern and Johal want to talk to people whose lives and fortunes depend on or are imperiled by extraction. They are seeking new definitions of ecology built on a renovated politics of land. Traveling with them is their friend Joe Sacco—infamous journalist and cartoonist, teller of complex stories from Gaza to Paris—who contributes illustrations and insights and a chapter-length comic about the contradictions of life in an oil town. The epic scale of the ecological horror is captured through an series of stunning color photos by award-winning aerial photographer Louis Helbig. Seamlessly combining travelogue, sophisticated political analysis, and ecological theory, speaking both to local residents and to leading scholars, the authors propose a new understanding of ecology that links the domination of the other-than-human world to the domination of humans by humans. They argue that any definition of ecology has to start with decolonization and that confronting global warming requires a politics that speaks to a different way of being in the world—a reconstituted understanding of the sweetness of life. Published with the help of funding from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan fund

Alright. I want everybody to do up your seatbelts nice and tight. Wouldn't want your body to fly too far from the wreckage. Don't want yer mamas to have to search too far and wide.'' The pilot leaned back and leered at us with a wide, gap-toothed grin. The co-pilot turned and slid a big metal lunch box filled with chips and chocolate bars down in our direction.We were crammed into a ten-seater leaving Norman Wells, aiming for Fort Good Hope: half of us in this plane, half in another just behind. Very obviously Southerners.We had flown via Edmonton and Yellowknife then the Wells, each plane decreasing in size and bureaucracy. By the time we boarded the final Twin Otter, the security and baggage checks and official officiousness were long forgotten.As we loaded, the pilot and co-pilot eyeballed each traveler, then our bags, counting weight on their fingers and adding it up in their heads.

And I am not without hope. I knew a man who, in the age of chainsaws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts. 2 WENDELL BERRY ABSTRACT This article forwards an anarchist analysis of the internet as inherently degrading of local community and the possibility of real democracy emerging. The authors suggest that rampant virtuality, based on the eradication of time and space as functional communicative restraints, acts to separate individuals from their face-to-face relationships and localities. They forward that local community is the only forum in which genuine democracy and an ecological society can hope to thrive. The article argues that in asking the question Where do you want to go today?, the internet attempts to create a virtual everywhere, a universalising logic that is to communication what the WTO and globalisation are to economics. Further, the piece forwards a view of technology and society in dialectic relationship with one another, suggesting that democratic tools and a democratic society rely on one another for their emergence.

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