In ‘Burning Up’ Simon Pirani shows why fossil fuel consumption has grown so fast, and why only radical social change can prevent climate disaster now
Book review
Archive | History
Climate change vs biodiversity
Greenhouse gases and mass extinctions: Speed kills
In past warming events, atmospheric CO2 rose too fast for many species to adapt. Today it is rising 10 times faster than at any time in 66 million years.
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, October 2018, Part 2
Can the Working Class Change the World? Plagues and the Paradox of Progress. Fishing and Civilization. History of Fossil Fuel. Monopoly Seeds and the Fight to Save Food
Book Review
A Marxist History of Capitalism
An important work of Marxist history and theory restores class struggle to central place in explaining how capitalism arose and grew, and can eventually be overcome
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, October 2018
New books: Essays for Richard Levins … The Earth is not for Sale … Defending Howard Zinn … The Rise of Capitalism … Degrowth … Climate Justice … Below Freezing
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, September 2018
New books for reds and greens. Three centuries of factories; Holland in the Little Ice Age; Thinking in deep time; Horizontal Gene Transfer; The physics of evolution
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, August 2018
Six new books for reds & greens. Marxist History of Capitalism. Superbugs. Rising Oceans. Capitalism in Critical Theory. Food Bank Nations. American Oligarchy
Profile
Barry Commoner’s Science for the People
In honor of the relaunch of Science for the People, Climate & Capitalism is proud to co-publish this profile of a great scientific fighter for radical social change.
Book Review
‘Kill All the Gentlemen’ — seven centuries of class struggle in rural England
In his insightful history of rural rebellion, Martin Empson shows how farmers and farm-workers across England have repeatedly risen against the rich and powerful
Reading from the left
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2018, Part 2
Five new books: Ecological Crisis and Capital … El Niño in World History … Plate Tectonics … Marxist Essays … Origins of Agriculture and the State
Metabolic rifts
Vladimir Vernadsky and the Disruption of the Biosphere
Virtually unknown in the west, the great Russian geologist and geochemist pioneered scientific study of life’s impact on the Earth.
Reading from the left
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2018
New Books! Red-Green Revolution. Rural Class Struggle. Climate Anthropology. Will Big Business Destroy the Planet? A Climate Justice Comic. Plundering Africa. Global Inequality.
Metabolic rifts
Earth’s Circular Economy: Recycling as a Law of Life
On every scale, from the smallest cells to the entire planet, the essential elements of life are constantly used and re-used. Biogeochemical cycles are the basis of the biosphere.
Metabolic rifts
Five Revolutions: How bacteria created the biosphere and caused the first climate crisis
Metabolic Rifts Today. Beginning a new series by Ian Angus, on how contemporary science illuminates and extends metabolic rift theory in the 21st century.
Book Review
14 Billion Years of Revolutionary Change
‘Quarks to Culture’ is an important but flawed account of emergence in history, of 12 major transitions that created the world we live in, from the Big Bang to the Geopolitical State.
Reading for reds and greens
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, January 2018
Seven new books on the new terrain of class war, social reproduction theory, limits to NGO radicalism, ideas for change, shrinking the technosphere, technology and inequality, and property formation in colonial North America
Book Review
Do seven cheap things explain the history of capitalism?
Ian Angus says a new book by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore replaces concrete analysis with an artificial schema that reduces the complex organic relationship between society and the rest of nature to cheap things
reading, red and green
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, December 2017
Six new books on democratic eco-socialism, war and the environment, genes and intelligence, climate change and the Roman Empire, the little ice age in North America, and views of the Anthropocene
Revolutionary art
Again: “I paint what I see,” said Rivera
C&C published E.B. White’s 1933 poem six years ago, to mark the 125th anniversary of Diego Rivera’s birth. We repeat it now to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest artists of the 20th Century.
What If?
Cholera, Contingency, and Marx’s Drinking Water
Ecosocialist Notebook: A visit to two historic sites in London prompts thoughts about the role of individuals in history, and the possibility that Marxism might never have happened.