Axel González (he, him) is originally from Miami, FL. He received his B.A. in American Studies from Ursinus College and his M.A. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico (UNM). He is currently a PhD student in American Studies at UNM. His research interests include environmental justice, climate politics, and the war on terror. His dissertation project places transnational climate justice movements in the context of the global war on terror, critically investigating the targeting of climate activists as “ecoterrorists” and the growing sense that climate change poses a threat to U.S. “national security.” He is currently working on several writing projects that consider the role that police and war play in fabricating and defending capitalist social relations in a rapidly warming world.

 Axel is contributing a chapter to a forthcoming edited collection, The Nature of Police, titled “Policing, Pipelines, and the Capillaries of Capital in a Warming World.” The chapter reads police violence against anti-pipeline activists as demonstrative of how police are the key technology through which capital secures access to its “lifeblood” (fossil fuels) amid a warming world and growing ecological and social revolt. He also has a forthcoming review essay for American Quarterly titled “Racial Capitalism and Nature,” which considers four recent texts that help us understand prisons, police, racial slavery, and colonialism as environmental justice issues.