Subjects Archives: Ecology

Nicolas Graham’s book on forces of production and fossil-fuel capitalism gives an important analysis of why fundamental change is needed to solve the climate crisis, finds John Clarke

In June, members of the Sierra Club unit of the Progressive Workers Union (PWU) passed a resolution pledging solidarity with the Palestinian people as the environmental organization pushes forward with its planned trips to Israel.

The recent article Socialism and Ecological Survival in Monthly Review by John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clarke makes three essential points about the past and future of the climate movement, is well worth reading in full and poses some crucial strategic questions that we have to confront and work through in praxis.

Corporate and capitalist forces are driving us toward civilizational collapse but institutional myopia and crass electoralism also play their parts in the unfolding planetary tragedy.

Scientists blame ever warming human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

Under the capitalist model, urban planning lacks a holistic approach, leaving human well being and ecological needs as an afterthought, which will continue to have a degenerative effect on the environment and global climate.

Humans have an infinite capacity for wishful thinking, but a revolutionary project is by definition a recognition that wishes are for fairy tales.

Canada’s unprecedented wildfires drive home the harsh realities of climate change, in all their enormity. We are fighting an incorrigibly destructive social and economic system, but we are also, at the same time, engaged in a struggle for survival.

THE fossil fuel industry, particularly the oil and natural gas lobby, always has new cards. Earlier, the fossil fuel industry came up with carbon credits: We, the rich countries, will burn coal, oil and natural gas so that we can continue with our current lifestyles but “compensate” by planting trees in poor countries.

It seemed utterly absurd that, even as the Australian federal government announced its purchase of over 200 tomahawk cruise missiles—because that is exactly what the country needs—there are moves afoot to prune and cut projects conducted by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD).

The Aug. 8 wildfires that devastated parts of Maui are the deadliest in the U.S. since the 1918 Cloquet fire in northern Minnesota. Some two weeks after the fires, the official death toll stands at 115, and authorities in Hawaii have released the names of 388 people still unaccounted for. Tens of thousands have evacuated. Over 3,000 acres burned in Lahaina and neighboring communities.

Clarke: The social and economic consequences of climate change will play out along deeply entrenched fault lines of inequality

The title of this week’s episode is taken from an article to be published in September’s Monthly Review. The author, Jason Hickel, talks to Steve about the topic in his third visit to the podcast.

Thomas Sankara, radical leader and martyr of Burkina Faso, understood that the problem of ecological destruction was rooted in capitalism and imperialism.

While most of the focus was on the general elections in Ecuador, a national referendum was held on oil exploitation in the Amazon.

The industrialized food system is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but it is not a major topic at climate talks.

Ottawa has long undermined efforts by impoverished countries to draw greater benefits from their natural resources.

The recent climate victory in the US state Montana is welcome, but a legal strategy must not replace mass mobilisation to combat capitalist economic logic, argues John Clarke

Basically the problem is that our whole planet has been gamified. All the Earth’s life, resources and geography have been folded into this sick game where people commodify them into points called money, for no other reason than to score as many points as possible.

The worst natural disaster in Hawaiian history is still blazing, where Indigenous residents are being pushed out of their homes.