The keynote address at the “Climate Change, Social Change” conference (organized by Green Left Weekly), Sydney, Australia, 12 April 2008. This address became the basis for John Bellamy Foster, “Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism” (Monthly Review, November 2008), which in turn became the last chapter of The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with […]
Subjects Archives: Ecology
Marxist Ecology, Environmental Science and Ecological Crisis
Patent Fundamentalists Threaten the Future of the Planet
The battle over “intellectual property rights” is likely to be one of the most important of this century. It has enormous economic, social, and political implications in a wide range of areas, from medicine to the arts and culture — anything where the public interest in the widespread dissemination of knowledge runs up against those […]
The East Palestine Archipelago
The East Palestine Archipelago Above: Imagined map by Julien Bousac, graphically illustrating the Palestinians’ difficulty in getting around. All the zones of the West Bank occupied by Israel are pictured as the sea. Left: The legend of the map in English. Source: L’Atlas, Un monde à l’envers, Paris: Le Monde diplomatique, 2009. Download the […]
Climate Change Biggest Threat to Health, New Study
JOHANNESBURG, 14 May 2009 (IRIN) — Climate change will be the biggest global health threat in the 21st century, but little is known about its possible effects on developing countries, where the impact will be felt most, says a new report. “Information that is reliable, accurate, and disseminated is fundamental for effective adaptation and to […]
One World Ecology
John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, is the author of The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet, just published by Monthly Review Press. He gave this talk in Eugene, Oregon, on 23 May 2006.
Shield the Commodity Markets against Excessive Speculation
The latest economic indicators in the United States and other industrial countries suggest that economic decline might finally be coming to an end and a recovery can begin by late 2009. Once it starts, however, the global recovery can face a new potential threat from rapidly rising commodity prices, particularly for oil, food, and […]
Africa: Tractored Out by “Land Grabs”?
JOHANNESBURG, 11 May 2009 (IRIN) — Rich countries and firms are leasing or buying massive tracts of land in developing nations for the production of food or biofuel. An area equivalent to Germany’s farmed land is at stake, and tens of billions of dollars on offer. On the plus side, agro-industrial production could develop underused […]
Energy (and Empire) in World History
Introduction Vaclav Smil’s Energy in World History (1994) provides an overview of global changes in human energy use from before the Neolithic Revolution to modern times. In various places in the book, Smil discusses the relationship between energy use and the rise of centers of economic and political power in world history. In explaining what […]
The Return of the Shadow
A talk given at a Left Forum panel, April 2009. It’s spring and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about reincarnation. If I’m a good adjunct can I come back as a tenured professor? If I stay a loyal Cub fan, can I come back as a Yankee fan? Actually, it’s political reincarnation that I’ve […]
Troubled Assets: The IMF’s Latest Projections for Economic Growth in the Western Hemisphere
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published its latest projections for economic growth around the world.1 At first glance, the IMF projections for Latin America seem unlikely. The IMF has a lengthy record of biased projections of growth in the region2 and has been consistently underestimating growth in countries such as Argentina and Venezuela, which […]
Has Change Come to Post-Katrina New Orleans? Bush, Obama, and the First 100 Days
As people in the U.S. and around the world evaluate President Barack Obama’s first one-hundred days, many — that is, those who truly wanted a break from the racist, militarist, anti-working class policies of the Bush regime — are coming to the conclusion that the ‘change’ his campaign promised seems to have turned into […]
Lessons from History: The Case against AFRICOM
Africa has historically been less of a priority to U.S. foreign policy planners than other regions, such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. This was certainly the case when George W. Bush took office in 2001. But during the course of his tenure, “Africa’s position in the U.S. strategic spectrum . […]
Unions in New Zealand Organize the Unorganized, Win Gains in Minimum Wage
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND — On April 6, 2009, I spent a day visiting the offices of New Zealand’s newest, and among its most dynamic, trade unions, Unite. Unite is at the forefront of a revitalization of a section of the labour movement in New Zealand that has resulted in thousands of young and marginalized workers […]
Wretched Conditions of Syrian Workers in Lebanon
Rights and labor groups say almost all the estimated 300,000 Syrians working in Lebanon have no official status, often endure dangerous conditions, and earn about US$300 a month doing jobs shunned by most Lebanese. In 2006, the Labor Ministry issued just 471 work permits to Syrian nationals, meaning the remainder worked unregistered. According to 2008 […]
Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
Industrial production fell 1.5 percent in March after a similar decrease in February. For the first quarter as a whole, output dropped at an annual rate of 20.0 percent, the largest quarterly decrease of the current contraction. At 97.4 percent of its 2002 average, output in March fell to its lowest level since December […]
Patterns of Adjustment in the Age of Finance: The Case of Turkey as a Peripheral Agent of Neoliberal Globalization
Abstract Following the 2000-01 crisis, Turkey implemented an orthodox strategy of raising interest rates and maintaining an overvalued exchange rate. But, contrary to the traditional stabilization packages that aim to increase interest rates to constrain domestic demand, the new orthodoxy aimed at maintaining high interest rates to attract speculative foreign capital. The end result was […]
Cuba: Economic Restructuring, Recent Trends and Major Challenges*
Abstract The collapse of the European socialist block at the end of the 1980s caused a deep crisis in the Cuban economy. One of the distinctive features of the process of adjustment and reform of the Cuban economy carried out by the government was that even during the worst period of the crisis, the Revolution’s […]
China’s Way Forward? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Hegemony and the World Economy in Crisis
2008 — Annus Horribilis for the world economy — produced successive food, energy, and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the commanding heights of the US and core economies and ushering in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s depression. As all nations strive to respond to the financial […]
This Crisis of Capitalism Is Not All Bad News
I think that what we’re going through now — which is really just starting, we’re nowhere in the middle of it yet either, I think — is much bigger and more extensive than the Great Depression. There are particular difficulties of fixing it because of the fact that it is bigger, it is more global, […]
Wanted: Red-Green Alliance for Radically Democratic Reorganization of Production
Private capitalism (in which productive assets are owned by private individuals and groups and in which markets rather than state planning dominate the distribution of resources and products) has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to flare out into overproduction and/or asset inflation bubbles that burst with horrific social consequences. Endless reforms, restructurings, and regulations were all […]
