Environmentalists can no longer afford the incremental changes that result from working within the system, counting on action from governments. Powerful industry lobbying has rendered most political action on the climate crisis negligible. Just a few months ago, Canada’s Trudeau government set aside all scientific reason and approved a new pipeline (the TransCanada Kinder Morgan Expansion project) that will see the country’s emissions rise to the equivalent of adding 34 million cars to its roads. (In)actions like these by governments are being fuelled worldwide by economic interests, and are in turn being challenged fiercely by people movements. Environmentalists need to put their collective faith in the power of communities at the front lines of environmental harm, re-politicizing environmental politics, and challenging traditional power imbalances.

In what Naomi Klein dubs “Blockadia”, this global resistance movement against extractive industries and the government policies that support them is rising. Blockadia does not have a fixed geography; rather, it is a collection of actions that have sprung up wherever harmful extractive industries seek to push environmental and human limits. Blockadia recognizes the deep human-nature relationship and the need for collective action to address harm to our environment. We are seeing the movement flourish in North Dakota for the protection of water, in Dhaka against dirty coal projects in the global South, across Canada to stop the expansion of the climate chaos tar sands.