Subjects Archives: Ecology

The Green New Deal is an exciting social program generating a great deal of interest on the left. Like its predecessor, the New Deal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the GND holds out the promise of preventing the worst effects of anthropogenic climate change, and guaranteeing a better standard of living for its participants.

A recent study that found no general decline in the numbers of species in individual ecosystems has sparked controversy. Some scientists see it as evidence of how species adapt, while others see it as a sign that common invasive species, such as rats and mosquitoes, are the real winners.

This is the tenth edition of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report. It provides the latest assessment of scientific studies on current and estimated future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and compares these with the emission levels permissible for the world to progress on a least-cost pathway to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The chain of infernos stretches from Rockhampton in northern Queensland to the bush south of Wollongong. For the first time in history, Sydney’s fire danger forecast was made “catastrophic” for 12 November. All before summer has started.

Even before summer has begun, bushfires and toxic smoke have threatened the lives, health and homes of millions of people in nearly every Australian state and territory this week. The fire emergencies that first erupted two weeks ago in two states have spread across the country, worsened by dust storms, asthma alerts and electricity blackouts.

Environmental destruction isn’t driven by human nature or mistaken ideas. It is an inevitable consequence of a system built on capital accumulation.

It’s bad enough to imagine blame and scenarios of dread, as if from science fiction, but add in the presently feeble response to dire threats and we’re in a funk. If tools were available, we’d get a lift. Marc Brodine’s book Green Strategy, reviewed here, is about tools.

Since 1996, activists in Xolobeni, a coastal region in South Africa, have been fighting a foreign mining conglomerate that learned that their ancestral lands happen to be rich in titanium. The anti-mining activists of Xolobeni, who have lost many comrades to hit squads, continue to struggle against this foreign company and its partners in the South African government. Given that their land is located in a global biodiversity hotspot, their struggle is the struggle of us all: it is the fight for water, soil, food, and air.

Three out of four nations have yet to start to honour the global climate treaty. The world waits, the seas go on rising – and greenhouse gases too.

Through the global climate strike and mass demonstrations for the planet launched by Greta Thunberg, an entire generation has gotten a taste of political action, understanding the need for dramatic change to deal with environmental degradation. It is in this context that the group Extinction Rebellion (XR) has struck a chord.

It’s going take a fully democratic anti-capitalist movement to fight climate change. The case of South Africa shows how long we have to go.

Growing up in the midst of a climate crisis is pretty overwhelming.

Most public discussions on climate change are based on global surface temperature only, an inadequate measure to capture the breadth of human activities and the real dangers stemming from a warming planet. Policymakers and the public now urgently need access to a set of indicators that convey the effects of human activities.

The alternative to the social and ecological pathology which is becoming all-pervasive in the socioinstitutional and economic fabric of modern capitalist society is to be found in the development of an appropriate, harmonious relationship between humanity, their productive powers, and nature.

This short, readable and stimulating book begins with the author overturning perceived knowledge about the 18th century economist Robert Malthus.

With Extinction Rebellion growing rapidly across the world in the fight against climate change, John Molyneux gives his perspective on how socialists should respond to this phenomenon.

While environmentalist Greta Thunburg was at the UN, John Bellamy Foster, environmental sociologist and editor of the Monthly Review, was in Mauritius to discuss climate change. Weekly had an opportunity to talk with him.

Climate change is occurring, highlighted by dramatically shifting weather patterns and ever more deadly storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires. And the evidence is overwhelming that it is driven by the steady increase in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide and methane, produced by our fossil fuel-based economic system.

This is a love letter to Extinction Rebellion.

Facing a total ban on their protest in London, the activists are now embroiled in a struggle for their right to assemble.