Planetary Health, a new field of scientific research, focuses on the human health impacts of the growing disruption of Earth’s metabolic systems
Science
Archive | Health threats
Book review
Poisoned City: How Flint fought back
Anna Clark’s new book shows how working people in Michigan organized and fought back when neoliberal austerity policies poisoned their drinking water.
Capitalism fouls things up
What the Monsanto Papers tell us about corporate science
Internal documents released in a lawsuit by cancer victims show how the chemical giant actively subverts science to promote its products and profits.
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2018
Six new books for reds and greens … climate change and disease … capitalist power and the planet’s future … brain, body, and environment … oceanic art and science … essential fungi and life … the political economy of water.
New books for reds and greens
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, March 2018
Six new books on the science for the people movement, health care under capitalism, the criminalizing of poverty, Yemen in crisis, the origins of everything, and communism and democracy
Reading, red and green
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, February 2018
Five important books on famines and world hunger, on Ebola and other deadly epidemics that spread from animals to people, and on the pesticide poisons in our food.
Metabolic rifts
Heatwaves can kill 27 ways, and climate change puts 74% of humanity at risk
Two recent studies show how dangerous heatwaves can be, and how global warming will put three-quarters of humanity at risk by 2100. “We are running out of choices.”
Heat vs. humans
Lancet report: Health impact of climate change impact is ‘the major threat of 21st century’
The health of millions of people across the world is already being significantly harmed by climate change, a major new report finds.
Reading, green and red
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, October 2017
Six new books on Marx’s ecosocialist views, climate change and health, theory and action, inevitability versus contingency in evolution, new politics, and the meaning of Capital
Reading, red and green
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2017
Five new books on climate change and human health, ecology and imperialism in the global south, environmental economics, capitalism and universities, and the meaning of hegemony
Environment & Health
Unhealthy environments kill 12.6 million a year
An estimated 12.6 million people died as a result of living or working in an unhealthy environment in 2012 – nearly 1 in 4 of total global deaths, according to new estimates from the World Health Organization.
Recommended Reading
Ecosocialist resources, February 2016
Reading for reds and greens: Michael Moore on Flint water; Bill McKibben and Robert Fanney on climate and the Zika virus; Richard Fidler on Venezuela; Martin Empson on jobs, climate, justice
Pentagon Pollution, 2: Military waste sickens land and people
The U.S. military generates more toxic waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined.
Pentagon Pollution, 3: Chemical warfare and Agent Orange
Four decades after the U.S. military fled Vietnam, millions of children and adults still suffer the devastating effects of its deliberately ecocidal assault
Pentagon Pollution, 4: A biological bargain with the devil
The “war on terror” includes massive federal funding for secret research on the most lethal bacteria and viruses with no known cure
Pentagon Pollution, 5: The deadly impact of depleted uranium
The use of depleted uranium weapons in the Balkans and Iraq has left a long-term legacy of cancers and birth defects among civilians
Pentagon Pollution, 6: Weapons of mass destruction in slow motion
During and after the Pentagon’s wars, landmines and cluster bombs kill and maim, while blocking resettlement and agriculture in the poorest regions
Ecosocialist resources, 63
Quebec vs tar sands; Systemic roots of ebola; Class interests in economics; SPGB vs ecosocialism; Naomi Klein and extractivism; Trends in Third world debt
In Ohio, don’t drink the water!
Nearly half a million people have been told that their tap water is unsafe to drink, poisoned by industrial farming, sewage, storm water runoff and industrial pollution.
Air pollution hits people of color hardest
Study shows that non-white people in U.S. inhale 38 percent higher levels of air pollution than whites