Sociologist John Bellamy Foster on the modern divide between humanity and nature and his book “The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift” from Monthly Review.
Subjects Archives: Ecology
Marxist Ecology, Environmental Science and Ecological Crisis
Inside Extinction Rebellion: War reporting a global human conflict
Having our own media allows us to tell the stories that the millionaire press barons don’t want to engage with and it gives us a space to debate and explore issues without the toxic influence of climate deniers.
The climate and the fat tail risk
My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up.
Marxism and the Climate Crisis: African Eco-Socialist Alternatives
There is a rich inheritance of emancipatory Marxism in Africa, which includes Frantz Fanon, Ruth First, Samir Amin, Sam Moyo, Harold Wolpe and many others. Today, Satgar argues, the challenge is to defeat carbon capitalism accelerating the climate crisis and fomenting exclusionary nationalisms and for this there has to be a return to Marx.
Catastrophe is upon us–the grim view from Southern Africa
The word catastrophe is being used more and more by institutions reporting on the effects of extreme weather in the two regions of Africa, Southern and South Eastern Africa, and of late Australia. The word means a number of things: tragic; fiasco; utter failure; sudden and violent change in a feature of the Earth. All […]
Climate emergency: Indonesia faces catastrophic floods, disappearing islands
While the stark reality of the global climate emergency struck home in Australia with its worst bushfire season, its neighbour Indonesia faced catastrophic floods and islands disappearing below the rising sea. Green Left’s Peter Boyle interviewed Yuyun Harmono, the climate change campaigner of Friends of the Earth Indonesia (Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia – WAHLI).
Climate Change and Rebellion: an interview with John Molyneux
In an interview with the socialist writer and activist, John Molyneux, ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig asks him about climate change, capitalism and socialist transformation. In an important initiative John has recently founded the Global Ecosocialist Network (GEN) which brings together activists and researchers from across the Global North and South.
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”
Who owns the Green New Deal?
Making sense of remote ownership problems and place-based governance. Grappling with entrenched problems of remote ownership is one way to take a focused approach to building momentum for this movement.
Aboriginal society, European invasion, and the bushfire disaster
Now even right wing politicians are talking about using traditional Aboriginal land management techniques to mitigate fire risk. But pre-Invasion land management wasn’t about logging and clearing land for profit: it combined knowledge of land with collective, egalitarian planning.
Media on climate crisis: don’t organize, mourn
And while it turns out that the U.S. media have indeed ramped up their coverage of the climate crisis, they continue to give short shrift to what are arguably the most important factors for determining our future: what specific human practices are responsible for the changing climate, why carbon emissions continue to rise, and what […]
Notes on a novel coronavirus
The virus’s final penetrance worldwide will depend on the difference between the rate of infection and the rate of removing infections—by recovery or death. If the infection rate far exceeds removal, then the penetrance may approach the whole of humanity, although there will likely accrue large geographic differences.
Long shaped by fire, Australia enters a perilous new era
Australia has always been a dry continent where fire has played an important ecological role. But the latest massive conflagrations there are evidence that a hotter climate has thrust Australia into a new normal where fires will keep burning on an unprecedented scale.
Welcome to Global Ecosocialist Network
The Global Ecosocialist Network (GEN) is being launched at a moment of extreme danger for humanity. The intensity of the crisis and the scale of the danger is hard to grasp or express adequately because, unless you are in one of the parts of the world currently experiencing extreme weather, it cannot yet literally be […]
Climate change, the Green New Deal, and the struggle for climate justice
Most calls for a Green New Deal correctly emphasize that it must include a meaningful commitment to climate justice. That is because climate change—for reasons of racism and capitalist profit-making—disproportionately punishes frontline communities, especially communities of color and low-income.
Climate journalism and fossil fuel ads: an unholy marriage?
NBC’s Camel News Caravan was one of the earliest television news programs in the United States. Sponsored by Camel Cigarettes, the program had an anchorman who not only kept an ashtray on his desk and often smoked while delivering the news, but also encouraged viewers to light up a Camel.
Where is the rift? Marx, Lacan, capitalism, and ecology
When, decades ago, ecology emerged as a crucial theoretical and practical issue, many Marxists (as well as critics of Marxism) noted that nature–more precisely, the exact ontological status of nature–is the one topic where even the crudest dialectical materialism has an advantage over Western Marxism.
World’s super rich meet in Davos to discuss the climate change problem they created
Research has shown that the people most responsible for a warming planet were disproportionately the same people attending the summit and an increasing number of observers see climate change, inequality and capitalism as bound together.
Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight
Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond.
The Juliana 21 continue to fight for justice in the biggest climate lawsuit in America
Decision of Divided Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals finds primarily for Juliana plaintiffs, but holds Federal Judiciary can do nothing to stop the U.S. Government in causing climate change and harming children.
