How England’s government-licensed pirates stole the Newfoundland fishery from Europe’s largest feudal empire.
Author Archive | Ian Angus
![“In the sixteenth and partly still in the seventeenth, the sudden expansion of trade and the creation of a new world market had an overwhelming influence on the defeat of the old mode of production and the rise of the capitalist mode.” — Karl Marx[1]](https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boat-200x200.png "Intensive fishing and the birth of capitalism, Part 2")
Intensive fishing and the birth of capitalism, Part 2
While treasure fleets carried silver to Spain, far more ships were carrying men, fish and whale oil across the North Atlantic.
Intensive fishing and the birth of capitalism
Beginning a series on the role of fishing in the birth and spread of capitalism, and the role of capitalism in today’s mass extinction of ocean life.
Greenhouse gases set new record, despite COVID-19 lockdown
Top meteorologist: only a complete transformation of our industrial, energy and transport systems can stop climate change.
Triple Crisis in the Anthropocene Ocean. Part Three: The heat of 3.6 Billion Atom Bombs
Since 1987 the ocean has warmed 4.5 times as fast as in the previous three decades. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that even if emissions are substantially reduced, by 2100 the ocean will heat 2 to 4 times as much as it has since 1970–and if emissions are not cut, it will […]
Triple Crisis in the Anthropocene Ocean. Part Two: Running low on oxygen
Continuing Ian Angus’s examination of the ‘deadly trio’ of CO2-driven assaults on ocean life. Part two: The ocean is losing its breath.
Triple crisis in the Anthropocene Ocean
Scientists call them a ‘deadly trio.’ If acidification, oxygen loss, and overheating are not ended soon, a massive die-off of ocean life may be unstoppable.
Dead Zones: Industrial agriculture versus ocean life
Worldwide, there are now over a thousand coastal areas where fish can’t breathe. The nitrogen that makes crops grow is also destroying offshore ecosystems.
3.5 billion people may face ‘unlivable’ heat in 50 years
Every degree of global warming will push a billion people out of the human survival zone.
Ecosocialism or barbarism: an interview with Ian Angus
In an interview with roape.net, ecosocialist and writer Ian Angus discusses the environmental crisis, the Anthropocene and Covid-19. He argues that new viruses, bacteria and parasites spread from wildlife to humans because capital is bulldozing primary forests, replacing them with profitable monocultures. Ecosocialists must patiently explain that permanent solutions will not be possible so long […]
Blue Acceleration: Capitalism’s growing assault on the oceans
“A new phase in humanity’s relationship with the biosphere, where the ocean is not only crucial but is being fundamentally changed”
Capitalism versus life on Earth
Environmental destruction isn’t driven by human nature or mistaken ideas. It is an inevitable consequence of a system built on capital accumulation.
Capitalism ‘solves’ the Nitrogen Crisis: A brief history
Part Three of Ian Angus’s examination of the disruption of the global nitrogen cycle by an economic system that values profits more than life itself.
Ian Angus on the politics of ecosocialism
Ecosocialism — in particular the Marxist wing of the ecosocialist movement — builds and acts on that understanding.
The discovery and rediscovery of metabolic rift
Ian Angus discusses the scientific developments that led Marx to develop metabolic rift theory, and a new generation to rediscover it in our time.
Gee Whiz! Communism is sure gonna be keen!
When I was ten years old, I read and re-read a stack of decades-old Modern Mechanix magazines that I found in my grandfather’s basement. Throughout the Great Depression, MM regaled its readers with breathless accounts of technological marvels that were going to change the world, very soon.
A Marxist History of Capitalism
An important work of Marxist history and theory restores class struggle to central place in explaining how capitalism arose and grew, and can eventually be overcome.
Reply to Trump: Global warming explained in three easy tweets
On October 14, on the CBS television program 60 Minutes, the President of the United States admitted that climate change is not a hoax. It is probably happening, he said, but he doesn’t know what is causing it, and he thinks it might change back.
Climate change in the Anthropocene: an unstoppable drive to Hothouse Earth?
Leading Earth System scientists warn: “The Earth System may be approaching a planetary threshold that could lock in a continuing rapid pathway toward much hotter conditions.… Incremental linear changes to the present socioeconomic system are not enough to stabilize the Earth System.”
Vladimir Vernadsky and the disruption of the biosphere
Virtually unknown in the west, the great Russian geologist and geochemist pioneered scientific study of life’s impact on the Earth.
