Subjects Archives: Environment

In 2020, we were forced to put our lives on pause. Countries were divided from one another; communication between people moved to the more diluted online space. The schedules of jet setters across the world became completely blank, and one German artist passionate about the environment went as far as to say they’d never fly again.

How many minutes till midnight? Two different but related news stories give us a clue.

At the U.S. State Department’s Summit for Democracy (9–10 December), U.S. President Joe Biden announced a range of initiatives to ‘bolster democracy and defend human rights globally’.

Pentagon documents estimate that 13,744 whales and dolphins are legally allowed to be killed as “incidental takes” during any given year due to military exercises in the Gulf of Alaska.

What does COP26 mean for the climate movement? simon hannah offers his assessment.

Fighting back against extractivism, false solutions, and social and climate abuse around the world.

Funding for developing countries to address global warming is grossly inadequate. Very little finance is for adaptation to climate change, the urgent need of countries most adversely affected. Also, adaptation needs to be forward-looking rather than only addressing accumulated problems.

Capitalist accumulation has always depended on cheap labor and resources extracted from the Global South. To end this violence we need a post-capitalist transition—otherwise, as climate breakdown accelerates, the ceaseless search for profit will drive us further into barbarism.

Thirty years ago, climate modeling scientists predicted exactly the global events–massive wildfires, intensified tropical storms, flooding and droughts–that we’re seeing right now.

In the week before the COP26 international summit, John Bellamy Foster analyzed the climate emergency and how we can achieve climate justice.

Environment is human right, said and resolved a recent UN meet. It’s a reiteration of an already discussed issue–essential to all of the human society.

This recent disaster is just a hint of the climate-related challenges to come.

The balance sheet is clear: on paper, Glasgow clarifies the ambiguous Paris goal by making it more radical (1.5°C is now the target) and mentions the responsibility of fossil fuels; but in practice, the conference did not take any steps to stop the catastrophe.

Carbon offset markets allow the rich to emit as financial intermediaries profit. By fostering the fiction that others can be paid to cut greenhouse gases (GHGs) instead, it undermines efforts to do so.

Max Ajl’s ‘People’s Green New Deal’ is a brutal reminder for the American left that even the most celebrated and progressive developments in American politics are still simply American politics, in other words they are a politics for America, and America first.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson observed, “People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty,… nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster.”

COP26 reaffirmed what has been obvious from the beginning: the Northern colonial and capitalist states most responsible for creating the climate crisis are unwilling to place people before profits in order to address the planet’s looming ecological collapse and humanitarian catastrophe.

The organisers of COP26 designated themes for many of the days during the conference, such as energy, finance, and transport. There was no day set aside for a discussion of agriculture; instead, it was bundled into ‘Nature Day’ on 6 November, during which the main topic was deforestation.

We need to abandon Petropolis to prevent climate breakdown–and start building the ecomegacities of the future.

A conception of the sublime, liberated from its racist, sexist and domineering classic form, should form a part of any ecosocialist imaginary.