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This paper focuses on an unprecedented bark beetle epidemic in British Columbia, Canada. The epidemic has killed vast areas of forests, with significant impacts to ecosystems and timber-dependent communities. Explanations of this outbreak continue to overlook or underemphasize important actors and relationships. This paper offers a more detailed explanation of the actors and processes involved in the outbreak and associated responses. Political ecology was applied to guide this analysis, emphasizing both the ecological and social factors involved. Research methods entailed an extensive literature review and over seventy interviews with scientists, policy makers, land managers, and elected officials. Findings illustrate how the outbreak involved many actors, beyond bark beetles and trees, and resulted from complex interactions between ecological and social factors. This study also reveals how actors that prioritized short-term economic gains shaped the conditions that fostered the outbreak and continue to constrain responses. This study illustrates how applications of political ecology that give increased attention to ecology are necessary to fully understand the drivers of environmental change.

Abstract
An increasing number of scientists have illustrated how economic growth is an underlying driver of the climate crisis. This article examines how associated levels of excess work, production, and consumption repress human flourishing and drive global warming. Drawing from the work of Herbert Marcuse and André Gorz, we discuss the irrationality of a system of excess work, production, and consumption in terms of unnecessary human repression and environmental destruction. In the context of the climate crisis, this system becomes even more irrational as it threatens the habitability of Earth for humans. We examine work-time reduction and related sufficiency measures as a rational response to the climate crisis.

In December 2022, a scientific breakthrough in fusion energy resulted in widespread media attention with a focus on fusion as a key strategy to mitigate climate change. In this article, we draw from Herbert Marcuse's work on technological rationality to examine fusion technology in this context. We explore if fusion is seen as a way to master nature, if it protects current power relations, and if a focus on fusion might detract attention and resources from alternatives. Illustrating technological rationality, much attention is being given to the potential achievement of fusion energy, it is being championed by already powerful economic actors, and despite that it is unlikely to be ready in time to support necessary climate mitigation, it may be detracting support for more effective and just strategies that already exist. In this context, framing fusion as a solution to climate change represents what Marcuse calls 'one-dimensional thinking'.

In 2018, a wave of climate change activism emerged in response to calls from scientists for urgent, unprecedented, and far-reaching changes to address the climate crisis. Three social movements, Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, and the Sunrise Movement, have received the most attention and continue to grow. Synthesizing and integrating Erik Olin Wright's theories of social transformation, the authors apply Wright's work to analyze these movements and identify barriers and opportunities moving forward. While significant forces of social reproduction continue to shape politics and constrain climate action, unintended social consequences combined with new social movements are ripening conditions for transformation. The authors identify non-reformist reforms, a forceful form of symbiotic transformation pushed forward by social movements, as the most likely strategy to address the climate crisis and catalyze broader emancipatory transformation. While climate movements face significant opposition, they continue to grow and create a stronger trajectory for deep social change.