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Toxicity

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Painted artwork with vivid saturated colours. The scene shows a landscape with a blue river running through the middle of green, tree and grass covered banks. On the distant bank to the left, the trees look healthy and covered in leaves. On the near bank to the right, the trees are leafless and have twisted trunks and branches. This bank is littered with rubbish, mainly abandoned furniture, some of which is lodged in the tree branches. Floating in the middle of the river is a lone red chair, bobbing about beneath a blood red sun in the blue sky.
Delusional recycling and the problem with plastic. © Ifada Nisa/It's Freezing in LA!.

Early Western environmentalism was almost entirely a question of protecting ecosystems from pollution. We know that, in reality, the ecological crisis is wound tightly with extractivism, colonialism and capitalism. But, today, the only problem that national governments and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change truly seem to want to tackle is carbon dioxide.

In this series, It’s Freezing in LA! brings the human and ecological cost of the climate crisis to centre stage. From tear gas to industrial waste, from concrete to fast fashion – here five writers expose toxic hazards in our environment and what might be done about them. All five articles also appear in Issue #9 of It’s Freezing in LA! magazine, alongside other writing about climate and health.