Subjects Archives: Environment

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.

In a 6‒3 decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled on June 30 against the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, a move that signals a major setback in the fight against climate change.

The Supreme Court’s undermining of the EPA’s ability to fight climate change brings the terms and stakes of the current crisis into blinding focus.

The rulers of rich nations are like arsonists who, after lighting the fire, prevent anyone calling the fire brigade. An example of this took place at the Bonn Climate talks that finished on June 16.

ExxonMobil responded to the US President by urging his administration to enact emergency measures.

Throughout their history, agricultural, chemical and food corporations have created and implemented tactics to marginalize the peasant farmer community and indigenous people.

In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’.

The labour relations on South African farms continue to maintain race, gender, and class inequalities as a central character of work and life.

The world faces a food crisis due to war, sanctions, and inflation. China has shown how to strengthen food sovereignty, while fighting poverty, with state-funded agricultural cooperatives, government crackdown on waste, and investment in technology.

Two new books trace the history of global inaction over the climate emergency, and seek to identify the culprits.

A vital effort to establish a legal right to a living planet could soon move forward—but the Biden administration is trying to stop it.

Land is and means different things to different people. Indigenous, pastoralist, and rural farming communities are especially dependent on land, which is widely recognised by conservation organisations. Such communities are often uniquely vulnerable to the effects of ecosystem destruction while simultaneously having strong social norms and cultural values that support ecosystem preservation.

This week, Grace talks to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. They discuss Marx’s theory of nature and the relationship between humanity and nature under capitalism.

For years, the loss of land and livelihood has been upheld as the sacrifice people would have to make in order to get jobs and money later on. It does not seem to matter that any sort of prosperity has failed to trickle down to the people till date, barring those few who get to fatten their pockets.