TEXTUAL SYNAPSES:
NOTES AND WORKS CITED

The following list of comments and works cited is intended, foremost, as an acknowledgement of the network of texts that created this book. Without these connections, no nerves, and very little learned. With that in mind, I have retained the non-English-language sources that helped me write. It’s my hope that English-language readers will still find them helpful, and seek out connections of their own.

‘WHAT HAVE I DONE?’ AND OTHER ILLUSIONS OF CONTROL

• The article in question was: ‘Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040’ by Coral Davenport. The New York Times 7 Oct 2018. Accessed 28 Dec 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html

• An example of these headlines was in The Guardian on 8 Oct 2018: ‘We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN’. Accessed 28 Dec 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report These headlines would later be criticised for being alarmist, and for underplaying the urgency for many areas around the world. This points to the audience these headlines were aimed at.

• Peter Kalmus describes his climate terror in the article ‘The Climate Crisis is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try’ by Elizabeth Weil. ProPublica 25 Jan 2021. Accessed 28 Dec 2021 https://www.propublica.org/article/the-climate-crisis-is-worse-than-you-can-imagine-heres-what-happens-if-you-try

• The Audre Lorde quote comes from the essay ‘Poetry Is Not a Luxury’, found in Your Silence Will Not Protect You, London: Silver Press, 2017. It was first published in Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture No. 3, 1977.

• Eliane Brum writes about the Amazon and the climate crisis here, amongst other places: ‘In Bolsonaro’s burning Brazilian Amazon, all our futures are being consumed’. The Guardian 23 Aug 2019. Accessed 2 Jan 2022: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/23/amazon-rainforest-fires-deforestation-jair-bolsonaro

• I began to explore thinking around slow violence thanks to Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

• The Lauren Berlant quote comes from Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

• The idea of environmental neurosis is discussed by Johannes Lehtonen and Jukka Välimäki in the article ‘The Environmental Neurosis of Modern Man: The Illusion of Autonomy and the Real Dependence Denied’. Although it doesn’t discuss eating disorders, it was hugely illuminating in writing this essay, and re-assessing my relationship with my body throughout my illness in retrospect. It is published in the anthology Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Ed. Sally Weintrobe. New York: Routledge, 2012.

• ‘What If We Stopped Pretending?’ by Jonathan Franzen. The New Yorker 8 Sep 2019. Accessed 30 Dec 2021 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending

• ‘“We did it to ourselves”: scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic’ by Phoebe Weston. The Guardian 25 Apr 2020. Accessed 30 Dec 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe

• ‘A Succinct Account of My View on Individual and Collective Action’ by Kevin Anderson. 24 Aug 2016. Accessed 30 Dec 2021 http://kevinanderson.info/blog/a-succinct-account-of-my-view-on-individual-and-collective-action/

• bell hooks’ words about solidarity come from Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre. London: Pluto Press, 2000.

THE WAYS WE USED TO TRAVEL

• Mark Augé writes about non-places in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995.

• A study published in November 2020 suggests that in 2018, 11 per cent of the world’s population travelled by air. For international flights, the figure was between 2 per cent and 4 per cent, further highlighting the nature of flight as a luxury. Findings are published in ‘The Global Scale, Distribution and Growth of Aviation: Implications for Climate Change’ by Stefan Gössling & Andreas Humpe. Global Environmental Change Vol. 65, Nov 2020.

• Emissions from international flights do not count toward any one country’s emissions, presenting few incentives to lower them. ‘Climate Change and Flying: What Share of Global CO2 Emissions Come from Aviation?’ by Hannah Ritchie. Our World in Data 22 Oct 2020. Accessed 2 Jan 2022 https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation

• Natalie Diaz’s poem ‘The First Water Is the Body’ can be found in Postcolonial Love Poem. London: Faber & Faber, 2020.

• George Monbiot argued that the only answer to aviation’s catastrophic impact on global warming is to ground most aircraft in ‘On the flight path to global meltdown’. The Guardian 21 Sep 2006. Accessed 2 Jan 2022 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/sep/21/travelsenvironmentalimpact.ethicalliving

• Henry Shue’s writing on emissions, privilege, and justice can be found in ‘Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions’. Law & Policy Vol. 15, No.1, Jan 1993.

THE GREAT MOOSE MIGRATION

• A video of highlights from SVT’s Den stora älgvandringen, 2020, remains available to watch on svtplay.se in Jan 2022. The entire live stream from 2021 is available on the same website.

• The (now former) Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven’s statement about Swedish people acting responsibly was published on 6 Apr 2020 by the Prime Minister’s Office. Accessed 2 Jan 2022 https://www.government.se/articles/2020/04/strategy-in-response-to-the-covid-19-pandemic/

• John Berger wrote about the dynamics of observing non-human animals in Why Look at Animals. New York: Penguin, 2009.

• Amber A’Lee Frost writes about the ‘wild’ in wild-life documentaries in ‘The Viewing of Nature’. Current Affairs 7 Jun 2017. Accessed 2 Jan 2022 https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/06/the-viewing-of-nature

• Jim Robbins’ article on the relationship between ecocide and pandemics: ‘The Ecology of Disease’. The New York Times 14 Jul 2012. Accessed 2 Jan 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-ecology-of-disease.html

• The Swedish government allowed so-called ‘leave traffic’ of German soldiers on Swedish railways to occupied Norway in order to avoid war. Later, this would include war materiel. ‘Sweden: Negotiated Neutrality’ by Klas Åmark in The Cambridge History of the Second World War Vol. 2. Eds. Richard Bosworth & Joseph Maiolo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• About the Swedish National Institute for Race Biology at Uppsala University, in Swedish: Allt som kan mätas är inte vetenskap: en populärhistorisk skrift on Rasbiologiska institutet (All that can be measured is not science: a popular history of the Institute for Race Biology) by Lennart Lundmark. Stockholm: Forum för Levande Historia, 2007. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/skriftserie-4-allt-som-kan-matas-ar-inte-vetenskap.pdf

• News article on moose and the threats of climate change published by Sweden’s University of Agricultural Science: ‘Klimatförändringar ett hot mot älgen’. 17 Apr 2022. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.slu.se/ew-nyheter/2020/4/klimatforandringar-ett-hot-mot-algen/

• The study confirming the spread of brain worm in Swedish moose: ‘Epizootiology of Elaphostrongylus alces in Swedish Moose’ by Margareta Stéen, Ing-Marie Olsson Ressner, Bodil Olsson & Erik Petersson, Alces: A Journal Devoted to the Biology and Management of Moose Vol. 52, 15 Aug 2016.

• Attenborough’s comment about the series Dynasties and politics was made in an interview: ‘David Attenborough: too much alarmism on environment a turn-off’ by Jonathan Watts. The Observer 4 Nov 2018. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/04/attenborough-dynasties-ecological-campaign

A NATURALISATION

• ‘Reinnervation Post-Heart Transplantation’ by Avishay Grupper, Henry Gewirtz & Sudhir Kushwaha. European Heart Journal Vol. 39, No. 20, 21 May 2018.

• ‘Post-Transplant Nerve Regrowth Better with Young Hearts, Quick Surgery’. ScienceDaily 15 Jul 2002. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020715075935.htm

• Stefan Zweig wrote about travelling before WWI in The World of Yesterday, transl. from the German by Anthea Bell. London: Pushkin Press, 2014.

• The quoted poem by Pia Tafdrup is ‘Pass, Passport, Passaporto, etc.’ transl. from the Danish by David McDuff, published in Salamander Sun & Other Poems. Hexham, England: Bloodaxe Books, 2015.

• ‘British citizenship of six million people could be jeopardised by Home Office plans’ by Ben van der Merwe. The New Statesman 1 Dec 2021. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/12/exclusive-british-citizenship-of-six-million-people-could-be-jeopardised-by-home-office-plans

• Home Office news story: ‘Government Cracking Down on Highly Disruptive Protest Tactics’, 2 Dec 2021. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-cracking-down-on-highly-disruptive-protest-tactics

• The term Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller (GRT) communities is used officially in the UK by community-led organisations advocating for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. For community-led coverage of the impact of the proposed law, I recommend following Travellers’ Times: http://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/

MIXED SIGNALS: FIVE MOMENTS OF UN-BELONGING

• ‘The Pandemic Is a Portal’ by Arundhati Roy in Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction. New York: Penguin, 2020.

OUT OF THE TUNNEL

• Adrienne Rich’s words on the humanly possible, quoted in this essay, are found in ‘Interview with Rachel Spence’ as published in Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations. New York: Norton, 2002.

• Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century by Andreas Malm. London: Verso, 2020.

• ‘In a Fight over a Colombian Coal Mine, Covid-19 Raises the Stakes’ by Lise Josefsen Hermann’. Undark 22 Jul 2020. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://undark.org/2020/07/22/colombian-coal-mine-wayuu-covid-19/

• ‘We Don’t Have To Halt Climate Action To Fight Racism’ by Mary Annaïse Heglar. HuffPost 12 Jun 2020. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-crisis-racism-environmenal-justice_n_5ee072b9c5b6b9cbc7699c3d

• Writer Derek Thompson explores the idea of ‘workism’ in the article ‘Workism Is Making Americans Miserable’. The Atlantic 24 Feb 2019. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/

• Ronald Melzack’s ‘neuromatrix’ theory of pain is accessibly explained in Chapter 8, ‘Chronic Pain’, of Pain: A Very Short Introduction by Rob Boddice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

• The mentioned study is ‘Cognitive Tunneling, Aircraft-Pilot Coupling Design Issues and Scenario Interpretation Under Stress in Recent Airline Accidents’ by Meredith A. Bell, Eugenio L. Facci & Razia V. Nayeem. International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, 2005.

• Amin Maalouf’s words on identity as a parchment can be found in In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, transl. by Barbara Bray. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2012.

• Audre Lorde’s talk ‘Learning from the 1960s’ is included in Your Silence Will Not Protect You. London: Silver Press, 2017.

FREAK AGUACERO

Although no works are cited in this essay, one book above all was key to finding my way in to writing about Colombia for the first time in many years. My Colombian War: A Journey Through the Country I Left Behind by Silvana Paternostro (New York: Macmillan, 2008) doesn’t deal with environmental degradation or climate collapse to any significant extent, but Paternostro’s writing about belonging and privilege with regards to the Colombian armed conflict was helpful and I’m very grateful to it.

BIRTH STRIKE: A STORY IN ARGUMENTS

• The analogy of a crashing airplane was made by Veerabhadran Ramanathan to illustrate the findings of the report ‘Well Below 2 °C: Mitigation Strategies for Avoiding Dangerous to Catastrophic Climate Changes’, co-authored by Ramanathan & Yangyang Xu (published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 114, No. 39, 6 Sep 2017). Ramanathan’s statement can be found in the news article ‘The Window Is Closing to Avoid Dangerous Global Warming’ by Jean Chemnick, Scientific American 15 Sep 2017. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-window-is-closing-to-avoid-dangerous-global-warming/

• The Oxfam report ‘Confronting Carbon Inequality’, from which these figures are taken, was published in Sep 2020. It can be downloaded from https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/confronting-carbon-inequality

• ‘The outcry over ICE and hysterectomies, explained’ by Nicole Narea, Vox 18 Sep 2020. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/9/15/21437805/whistleblower-hysterectomies-nurse-irwin-ice

• ‘Twice as many children waiting to be adopted as families to adopt’. The Guardian 14 Oct 2019. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/14/twice-as-many-children-waiting-to-be-adopted-as-families-to-adopt

• On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change by Jade S. Sasser (New York: New York University Press, 2018) was immensely helpful to Blythe and me when manoeuvring the development of Birth Strike and understanding the connotations for climate-justice work.

ON WHETHER OR NOT TO THROW IN WHOSE TOWEL:
A PERSONAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF HOPE

To learn about dystonia, the experiences of people living with the condition, and current research, please visit www.dystonia.org.uk

• I first came across the essay ‘We Need Courage, Not Hope, to Face Climate Change’ by Kate Marvel when it was quoted as part of a lecture. The essay was published on 1 Mar 2018 by the On Being Project. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://onbeing.org/blog/kate-marvel-we-need-courage-not-hope-to-face-climate-change/

• Rebecca Solnit’s quoted lines are from the 2016 edition of Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. London: Canongate, 2016).

• Jan Zwicky’s piece ‘A Ship from Delos’ can be found in the book Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis by Robert Bringhurst & Jan Zwicky. Regina, SK: University of Regina Press, 2018.

• ‘Uncivilisation’, the Dark Mountain manifesto by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine remains accessible on the project’s website.

• The quoted statements about hope by Paul Kingsnorth can be found in an interview by Wen Stephenson, published in Grist 11 Apr 2012. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://grist.org/climate-energy/i-withdraw-a-talk-with-climate-defeatist-paul-kingsnorth/

• The documentary De aarde draait door (English title: The Battle Against Climate Change by Paul Kingsnorth) follows Kingsnorth’s life in Ireland, and more recent thinking on climate and environmental collapse. It was broadcasted by VPRO in 2018 and is available on YouTube.

• Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. San Francisco, CA: New World Library, 2012.

• ‘El derecho de soñar’ by Eduardo Galeano. El País 26 Dec 1996. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://elpais.com/diario/1996/12/26/opinion/851554801_850215.html An English translation of the text, ‘The Right to Dream’ (quoted here), was published by New Internationalist. Accessed 3 Jan 2022 https://newint.org/blog/2015/04/13/galeano-right-to-dream