I have a new piece out on Counterpunch, which I wrote after two weeks at a biological station in the Amazon basin of southeastern Perú last month. In it I delve into the idea of value, and all the different ways people extract value from a rainforest; including all the ways people are contaminated by the process of getting what they want.

This was a nice opportunity to do some writing about biodiversity, something which I think about a lot but have struggled to write about. The crisis of biodiversity in the modern world is something that is not only happening on the landscape, but also in each of our lives and in our imaginations. The less we are exposed to other lives and other worlds, the weaker is our ability to imagine new ways of living in the face of our domination by the forces of money. As our cities and neighborhoods empty out of the little things that make up so much of the diversity of life on this planet, we lose our ability to understand that we are one among many, and that we have a responsibility to the planet that extends far beyond our responsibility to each other. At the same time, it can be easy to want to escape into the depoliticized context that the natural world represents, and we have to be careful to bring class politics with us into our efforts to save the living things we love.

I hope you’ll read the piece! I got to share some of my unprofessional macro photos in it, which was a pleasure. I’ve included a few more below.