Geography Archives: Global

Are recent weather patterns a prescient warning that Climate Change is upon us? Yes, according to John Molyneux, and time is running out.

Unfortunately for humanity, the naturalizing of capitalism by dominant mainstream neoclassical economics establishes a bulwark against the posing of vital economic questions which challenge capitalist rationality.

From the moment Karl Marx put pen to paper, pro-capitalist political commentators and academics have attempted to bury his ideas. But successive generations of political activists have continually turned to Marx’s ideas, from the best working class fighters who joined the various communist and socialist parties in the early 20th century to the student radicals who stood up to the horrors of Vietnam war in the 1960s, embracing his searing indictment of capitalism and his argument for revolution.

Ian Angus discusses the scientific developments that led Marx to develop metabolic rift theory, and a new generation to rediscover it in our time.

Trump has made nasty remarks about how Asian countries are the great polluters of the planet. Trump, in his shudderingly ignorant way, said that the United States of America would use its power to prevent Asians from destroying the planet.

Research argues that deadly Candida auris “may be the first example of a new fungal disease emerging from climate change.”

Whatever we are facing [in world politics], it is not twentieth-century fascism. Hell keeps on disgorging new demons to beset us. And as seasoned exorcists know, each must be called by its proper name before it can be cast out.
– (possibly J. R. R. Tolkien’s Gandalf)

Worsening economic inequality in recent years is largely the result of policy choices that reflect the political influence and lobbying power of the rich. There is now a self-reinforcing pattern of high profits, low investment, and rising inequality–posing a threat not only to economic growth, but also to democracy.

In this talk, Tanner Mirrlees scrutinizes the rhetorics of “technological optimism,” “technological pessimism,” and “technological revolutionism,” discusses the political economy of communication, highlights how capitalism’s basic logics endure in the “digital age,” and concludes with an overview of how workers, citizens, and publics are trying to redesign and rebuild the digital age in support of working class power, participatory democracy, and social justice.

The potential mass appeal of the Freedom Budget failed to materialize in part because “realistic” compromises were made by its supporters: partisans of the Green New Deal should not make the same mistake.

While the ratio of debt to GDP fell in 2018—for the first time in a decade—for both advanced & emerging market economies it remains high, much higher than at the start of the 2007-08 crisis; and has also continued to rise in some major economies.
https://mronline.org/2019/07/22/debt-update/

Impossible to deny the reality of poverty in our world. Studies of the data on income and wealth routinely show that billions of people on the planet live with minimal access to resources. These studies demonstrate that poverty cannot be measured merely by the financial resources that are not available; they demonstrate how billions of people have no access to electricity, safe drinking water, education, or health care.

I had an extraordinary Twitter Exchange with Richard Tol over the last few days. I’ve written this post to preserve that exchange in case, at a future date, Tol decides to delete his tweets. They provide a superb window into the thinking that lies behind mainstream economic modelling of climate change, and why this has led to humanity dangerously delaying taking action against climate change.

We know it’s bad but not quite how bad. We know we should do more about protecting our personal data but either we can’t be bothered or don’t know how.

It is not the collapse of Conservatism causing the rise of the far-right in America, Europe and Britain, it is the opposite.  It is, however, important to understand that this is exactly how fascism comes to power.

The BBC’s Panorama on antisemitism in the Labour Party provides no real evidence and shows how cynical the smear campaign is, argues David McAllister

Left tech bros are honing Marx into a capitalist tool

Carbon dioxide emissions may trigger a reflex in the carbon cycle, with devastating consequences, study finds.

This article focuses on the ‘poetics’ of the Theatre of the Oppressed. These are a set of forms and techniques that challenged the traditional model of theatre. Coudray argues that the key to Boal’s politics lay in the form and the process over the content of the plays.

To perish or to radically transform the way we relate to one another and to nature, that is the question humanity has never had to face until now.