Marxist Ecology, Environmental Science and Ecological Crisis
COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the second severe acute respiratory syndrome virus since 2002, is now officially a pandemic. As of late March, whole cities are sheltered in place and, one by one, hospitals are lighting up in medical gridlock brought about by surges in patients.
What are the underlying structural reasons for the coronavirus outbreak? According to Monthly Review Press author Rob Wallace, you have to look at global agriculture if you really want to understand the nature of global outbreaks.
The real danger of each new outbreak is the failure or—better put—the expedient refusal to grasp that each new Covid-19 is no isolated incident. The increased occurrence of viruses is closely linked to the proliferation of capitalist food production and distribution.
It is one of the great personal accounts of the anguished decline of our uncivilization, both a riveting eye-witness account of many of the horrors and perfidies, and a primer for students of history and all those struggling to not only dismantle the beast, but to prepare us for what follows it.
As the 21st Century’s second decade opens, the increasingly severe symptoms of climate change comprise a pivot in the struggle for hegemony, globally and within national formations. With the highest per capital carbon emissions among the G20 states, Canada is a climate laggard and, in some respects, a first-world petro-state (Nikiforuk 2010), organized as a […]
On July 15, 2013, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), led by Berta Cáceres Flores, went to protest the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River. This river, in western Honduras, is considered to be sacred by the indigenous Lenca community. No one from the company that wanted […]
No, we’re not all in it together. Our rulers are responsible for the system that’s creating an ecological catastrophe. As that crisis intensifies, it’s exposing and intensifying the divide between us and them.
“Don’t want to hear Greta Thunberg or Extinction Rebellion? Try J.P. Morgan instead.”
Climate change, unchecked, promises planetary disaster. All forms of life are threatened. Scientific evidence strongly suggests capitalistforms of production and consumption gave rise to climate change in the first place and have allowed the process to advance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 […]
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).
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.
“A new phase in humanity’s relationship with the biosphere, where the ocean is not only crucial but is being fundamentally changed”
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.
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.
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 […]
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