The 109 articles we published in Climate & Capitalism in 2017 were read by more people than ever before. These were the most popular …
10. The terrifying mathematics of the Anthropocene. For four billion years, one formula summarized global change. That has changed in just four decades, and if we don’t act quickly, human civilization may not survive.
9. Creating a society that meets human needs. How might economic needs be met in a post-capitalist society? Is it possible to eliminate markets and make production choices democratically?
8. Zapatistas urge scientists to join in building a better world. ‘With all the damage that the capitalists have done to the people through their misuse of science, can you create a science that is truly human? Can we work collectively to defend life and humanity?’
7. Another attack on Anthropocene science. A new conservative campaign aims to discredit efforts to define the new and dangerous stage of planetary history, by driving a wedge between social scientists and the Anthropocene Working Group.
6. ‘We need a resistance movement for the planet’. The climate movement is central, but we have to fight on all fronts, combining broad defense of human rights and opposition to war and imperialism, with the fight to save Earth as a place of human habitation.
5. John Bellamy Foster on Jacobin and Ecomodernism. The editor of Monthly Review responds to ‘socialists’ who view the environmental crisis as a problem of technology, not a fundamental rift in society’s relationship with nature.
4. The significance of Naomi Klein: An ecosocialist exchange. Should ecosocialists support or distance themselves from the author of This Changes Everything? Richard Smith and John Bellamy Foster discuss the prominent activist’s role.
3. István Mészáros: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction. István Mészáros, one of the finest political philosophers of our time, died on October 1. As this article shows, he was one of the first Marxists to identify the global environmental crisis as a central contradiction of late capitalism.
2. Essential Books on Marxism and Ecology. As the great American labor organizer and socialist Mary Harris ‘Mother’ Jones said: “Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.”
And the most-read C&C article in 2017 was (drum roll, please) …
1. Memo to Jacobin: Ecomodernism is not ecosocialism. Ian Angus challenges a left-wing magazine that promotes geoengineering, nuclear power, carbon storage and other techno-fixes as solutions to climate change.