Subjects Archives: Climate Change

China’s leadership has called in recent years for the creation of a new “ecological civilization.”  Some have viewed this as a departure from Marxism and a concession to Western-style “ecological modernization.”  However, embedded in classical Marxism, as represented by the work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, was a powerful ecological critique.  Marx explicitly defined […]

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass What can lobbyists do when science contradicts their political messages?  Some simply deny the science, as many conservatives do with climate […]

  400 ppm In January 2015, scientists recorded atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million on a regular basis — the first time such a level had been detected so early in the calendar year.  It is well established that levels of CO2 above 350 (already well above the preindustrial norm of […]

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont released a 12-step economic agenda on December 1, 2014.  Cyber Monday at the start of the holiday commercial frenzy is not the best time to capture public attention, but Sanders probably has a strict timeline as he decides whether to run for president. The goals of Sanders’ agenda are worthy. […]

  “Once labor has been embodied in instruments of production and enters the further process of labor to play its role there, it may be called, following Marx, dead labor [. . .].  The ideal toward which capitalism strives is the domination of dead labor over living labor.” — Harry Braverman1 “[T]here are no jobs […]

A long, warm, coatless autumn made some wonder whether climate change might cancel winter this year in a reverse of the canceled summer two centuries ago in a year called “Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.”  But no, I now read that the weather will change after all.  Northern blasts may soon be here. Perhaps […]

NYC Climate Convergence, September 20, 2014 A. The Environmental Crisis The “environmental crisis” is actually a number of crises, including the following: climate change; acidification of the oceans (related to elevated atmospheric CO2 levels); pollution of air, water, soil, and organisms with harmful substances; degradation of agricultural soils; destruction of wetlands and tropical forests; and […]

The Environment and Capitalism: Response to Ian Angusby Sam Gindin The most critical question confronting anyone concerned with the environmental crisis is the political one: how to build a social force able to do something about it.  The most important division among social activists is not between those who think an environmental collapse is imminent […]

Last year in Monthly Review, I debated Eddie Yuen, an anarchist who believes it is a mistake for radicals to focus on telling the truth about the global environmental crisis, because “awareness of climate crisis does not necessarily lead to increased political engagement.”  Not only can such awareness lead to apathy, he wrote, but “environmental […]

In “A Left ‘Exit Strategy’ from Fossil Fuel Capitalism?” published in Climate & Capitalism last week, Norwegian socialist Anders Ekeland urges ecosocialists to support the climate change program proposed by one of the world’s most-respected climate scientists, James Hansen, in many essays and speeches and in his book, Storms of My Grandchildren.  In support of […]

Steve da Silva (SD): Over the last decade you have emerged as a leading thinker in synthesizing radical ecology with the Marxist tradition.  From Marx’s Ecology (2000) to The Ecological Rift (2010) and everything in between, you’ve carried out the much needed intellectual work of recovering the overlooked ecological content of Marx’s original thought, presenting […]

It has become commonplace to observe that the Conservative government of Stephen Harper has been re-making the symbols and practices of the Canadian state.  Canada, in this view, was once the social democratic heartland of North America.  But under Harper, Canada has been transformed into a hyper-regime of neoliberal market fundamentalism.  Nowhere, it is argued, […]

A bibliography of work utilizing the theory of metabolic rift developed by Marx.

Is there a fundamental conflict between a healthy environment and a healthy economy? There has been a lot of concern lately about damage that we humans are inflicting on our small, beautiful Planet Earth.  Waste CO2 from our way of life has been dissolving in the oceans, increasing the acidity of the water and making […]

John Bellamy Foster: We need a society that is geared, as István Mészáros always tells us, to substantive equality.  And no compromise on the issue of equality.  Bolívar said equality is the law of laws.  So we need substantive equality and we need ecological sustainability.  And they have to go together.  How do we know […]

  Introduction Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist.  Born in New York City in 1936 and currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has also spent a number of years outside the United States.  Randall participated in the 1968 student movement while living in Mexico City, from where she was […]

  John Bellamy Foster is best-known as author of Marx’s Ecology (2000; in which he corrects the popular misapprehension that Marx did not ‘get’ environmental limits), and as editor of Monthly Review (monthlyreview.org), the journal founded by Marxist economist Paul Sweezy in the late 1940s.  In his latest book, The Endless Crisis (2012; written with […]

  Pablo Solon is the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South based in Bangkok.  He was formerly Bolivia’s Ambassador to the United Nations and Bolivia’s chief negotiator on climate issues as part of the UN COP process.  He was also instrumental in organizing the People’s Climate Summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He spoke with […]

Tunis, Tunisia Tens of thousands of people marched through downtown Tunis on Tuesday in a spirited march celebrating the beginning the 13th World Social Forum — the first to be held in an Arab country.  The majority of marchers were from Tunisia and neighboring nations, but there was substantial representation from Europe, as well as […]

Days before last month’s climate change demonstration on the doorstep of the White House, two Senate Democrats introduced legislation that they say would put the U.S. on the path to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.