by Fred Magdoff. If population growth is causing the environmental crisis, here’s a simple 3-step solution that would actually work …
Archive | March, 2012
Riots and role models
A UK government report blames last year’s riots on the participants’ “materialism and consumerism.” They couldn’t possibly have learned such anti-social values from Britain’s ruling class. Could they?
Occupy climate change!
Occupy Wall Street is calling for a month of action leading up to Earth Day on April 22, to draw the Occupy movements further into the struggle to protect the climate, and to show the connections between the power of the 1% and the destruction of the planet
George Novack: The mission of humankind
[Quotes and Insights #32] “The present inhabitants of the earth are the raw material for the production of an authentically human race.”
Michael Lebowitz: In the beginning is the dream
[Quotes and Insights #31] “That dream moves us – even as we catch only fleeting glimpses.”
In Harm's Way
A new report from the IPCC provides extensive evidence that climate change is already increasing the frequency of droughts, floods, heatwaves and other extreme events, and shows how that combines with societal vulnerabilities to produce human disasters.
On the origins of green liberalism
How did the strange idea that individual actions and capitalist markets can save the world become the dominant ideology of mainstream environmentalism? Historian Ted Steinberg traces the rise of green liberalism from the counterculture of the 1970s to the White House.
Emissions from tar sands will be worse than expected
The oil giants, and the governments that supposedly regulate them, frequently claim that after mining the Alberta tar sands they will restore the area to its previous condition. They are lying
No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s climate change affects the entire planet
Book Review: Nikolas Kozloff documents environmental destruction in Peru and Brazil, and shows its global impact
Can capitalism survive the end of growth?
Book review. Richard Heinberg shows that if business as usual continues, life in a degrowth economy will be painful for everyone but the very rich, but he stops short of calling for radical system change.
Green energy won't save the earth without social change
The most popular techno-fix for global warming is green energy. If energy companies would only deploy wind, hydro, solar or nuclear, then emission-intensive fossil fuels will eventually disappear. But will that work?
Ocean damage from climate change will cost $2 trillion a year
Some things are too valuable to be assigned meaningful prices. Rather than asking the impossible question of what the ocean itself is worth, a new study asks what ocean-related costs could be avoided by rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Robert Biel: Imperialism and ecocide
If capitalism had been established in one small society in a small area it would consume itself in its unsustainability and cease to exist. But it is inherently global, and this is the problem.
Truthout review: Too Many People? is 'sane, clear, and forthright'
Feminist writer Eleanor J. Bader says new book by Ian Angus and Simon Butler is “a clear and convincing challenge to the idea of population control as political necessity”
Canada undermines the human right to water at World Water Forum
At the 6th World Water Forum, Canada’s government successfully undermined the UN-recognized human right to water, and supported efforts by multinational water corporations to promote the privatization of water
Grim news from Cape Grim: Australian temperatures rising fast
Report projects an average temperature rise in Australia of 1 to 5°C by 2070, long-term drying over southern and eastern Australia and an increase in extreme weather events such as severe floods, droughts and extreme cyclones.
Paulo Freire: The 'generosity' of the oppressors is nourished by death, despair, and poverty
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands.
Canada's tar sands: The true cost of dirty oil
Video: What does massive environmental devastation look like? In this powerful and moving presentation, photographer Garth Lenz shows the world’s largest and most destructive industrial project and shares his stunning photos of the ecosystems and human communities that are under attack…
Great Lakes have lost 71% of winter ice cover
Need proof of global warming? Ice cover on the Great Lakes fell nearly three-quarters between 1973 and 2010.
Carbon Blood Money in Honduras
A bloody struggle in Central America shows how schemes supposedly designed to offset carbon emissions can destroy lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.