Institute for Human Sciences

The race for green transition supplies is on. But where’s the thrill in metals, discreet and hidden yet widespread? Mining, intensive due to low concentrations, throws up waste elements like arsenic. Space cowboys and deep-sea dredgers contest environmental stability more than China’s monopoly, based on 40-years of involved processing. Health and recycling regulations are a must.

Literary expressions of grief across the ages use representations of nature as soothing metaphors. But rarely does the death of non-human life merit a thanatography. Could literature that finds a non-anthropomorphic means to grieve for other sentiment beings provide our desperately needed resensitization to the natural world?

Europe is facing not only Orbán’s autocratic turn but also that of his ‘apprentice’: Slovakia’s prime minister, Fico, has taken an advanced course in attacking his country’s judiciary, media and cultural institutions. His first goal: to get away with it, say beleaguered intellectuals, theatre directors, political scientists and investigative journalists from Bratislava.

Unlike the political challenges and wars of the past, the climate and environmental crisis we now face is universal. Yet green movements remain on the political periphery and continue to be viewed in narrow, reductionist terms. What kind of solidarity can unite the emerging ecological class?