Laurie Laybourn-Langton

Short History of Environmental Breakdown

happened through a three-step process of expansion, extraction and destruction

took around 200 years to clear 12,000 hectares of forest in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France; by the mid-seventeenth century, colonisers in Brazil were using slave labour to clear the same area in a single year, energised by a booming market for sugar.

history of environmental breakdown is the story of the making of the modern world.

assaulting these foundations in a self-defeating spiral. This spiral has three stages.

the final analysis, environmental breakdown is an issue of justice.

three major problems with the ‘good always wins’ story.

three major problems with the ‘good always wins’ story.

three major problems with the ‘good always wins’ story.

is not only those identifying with progressive causes that see both threat and opportunity in environmental breakdown