Subjects Archives: Environment

Without class struggle the emancipatory potential of degrowth will fail to be realized. A revolutionary pedagogy can help to unify them.

In some cases, these “chemical releases” aren’t illegal. In others, state regulators give polluters the benefit of the doubt.

In his latest book, Socialism or Extinction: The Meaning of Revolution in a Time of Ecological Disaster, Martin Empson neatly lays out his argument as to why the climate crisis cannot be solved under capitalism.

For most of human history, the oceans have been seen as a global commons, the benefits and resources of which belong to us all in equal measure. But our seas–and the marine environment as a whole–are being ravaged by exploitation for corporate profit. The result is a social, economic and ecological crisis that threatens the very life support system of the Earth.

Our contemporary era of perpetual crises demands, we contend, a critical reappraisal of the state’s potential role, to supplant the predominant market-led responses to crisis, to advance a more equitable society. Historically, all major theories of the state—liberal and radical—have been generated in tumultuous eras.

Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead is dangerously close to dead pool status for the first time since construction in the mid 1930s. A vicious hammering drought sequence for over two decades throughout the West threatens to bring America’s biggest water reservoir to its knees.

The new climate package furthers the U.S.’ most profligate pastimes: drilling oil and driving big cars.

The global biodiversity crisis is one of the great threats to planetary health.

Cuba has more than 380,000 urban farms producing 1.5 million tons of vegetables each year.

When Exxon’s CEO is celebrating, you know there’s a problem. But there’s also a solution.

China has vowed to accelerate the installation of clean energy. Rooftop solar installations have emerged as a major force to achieve that. Nearly 53 gigawatts of solar capacity were added in 2021, with more than half coming from rooftop installations.

A letter obtained by The Lever shows the call for climate action is now coming from inside the administration.

The heat wave devastating southern and western Europe gradually began to recede yesterday, as violent storms brought cooler weather across parts of France and Britain. The heat wave continued in southern Europe, with temperatures close to 40°C across much of southern Spain and Italy, and wildfires are still burning across the region.

Alejandro Pedregal – in conversation with Max Ajl

The core countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the rest of Europe (collectively referred to here as the Global North) use on average about 130 gigajoules of energy per capita each year, nearly ten times more than what low-income countries use (13·4 GJ/capita).

It rained for 9 hours at Summit Station/Greenland, 10,530’ elevation.

The population of the world is enduring crises from climate change that, until recently, climatologists thought may only happen decades from now. 

John Bellamy Foster explains the capitalist ‘solution’ master-minded by global finance to resolve the imminent environmental crisis: create a multi-quadrillion dollars worth of assets on the back of everything nature does and expropriate it from the global commons to make a profit. Worse still: it is already happening.

The 51-year-old agency has been losing both power and credibility over recent decades, and SCOTUS’s recent ruling undermines it even more.

After all, Western economies–and their economic growth–depend utterly on labour and resources from the South.