The Ecosocialist Resources column is published at irregular intervals. It features links to new articles, reports, talks and videos that are relevant to Climate & Capitalism’s mission and goals.
Inclusion of a link does not imply endorsement, or that we agree with everything (or even anything!) the item says.
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- Can we shop our way to a better world?Lifestyle change and ‘ethical consumerism’ are not bridges to effective social change, but barriers to it. To build effective social movements, we must begin by rejecting individualist approaches.---READ-->>
- Population and food sovereignty: An exchangeIan Angus replies to a reader. If ‘overpopulation’ is not a primary cause of global environmental problems, what about island nations with limited space and resources?---READ-->>
- Climate justice movement shakes
Canada’s New Democratic PartyThe impact of the Leap Manifesto at the party convention opens major opportunities to deepen the debate on climate justice and to build an ecosocialist left in and around the NDP.---READ-->> - Fishers and plunderers: The tragedy of the commodityOverfishing, pollution and warming water have pushed the world’s oceans into crisis. If nothing is done the results will be catastrophic for marine systems and the billions of humans who rely on them. To stop this destruction our society has to be organized in a completely different way.---READ-->>
- Canada: Leap Manifesto unites broad forces, builds climate justice campaignsThe Truth and Reconciliation Commission has acknowledged shocking details about the violence of Canada’s near past. Deepening poverty and inequality are a scar on the country’s present. And Canada’s record on climate change is a crime against humanity’s future.---READ-->>
- Understanding and confronting the great inequalityMichael Yates explains why inequality matters, how it negatively affects nearly every aspect of our lives, how its underlying causes are rooted in modern capitalism, and why informed radical action by working people, the unemployed and the poor is needed to overcome the great inequality that marks our time.---READ-->>
- The real population problem is too many capitalists“There are too many coal barons, too many oil tycoons, too many politicians who are completely tied to the fossil fuel industry, too many vested interests that don’t want change.” Radio Adelaide interviews Simon Butler.---READ-->>
- John Bellamy Foster answers three questions on Marxism and ecologyIn the present planetary epoch, the concept of sustainable human development, as a way of conceiving of socialism, represents Marx’s most valuable legacy. No other ecological analysis has such breadth and power.---READ-->>
- Unhealthy environments kill 12.6 million a yearAn 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.---READ-->>
- Why we don’t bother to debate with climate science deniers, illustratedIf people are just confused about climate, they can be reasoned with. The facts are convincing, to anyone who is willing to see. But nothing convinces hard core science deniers, as this 2009 episode from Wiley Miller’s comic strip Non Sequitur illustrates.---READ-->>
- The True Cost of Cheap MeatMartin Empson reviews Farmageddon, an important expose of the disastrous failings of the global food system that never quite gets to the bottom of why the agricultural system is like it is.---READ-->>
- Condemn the murder of Honduran indigenous leader!Berta Cáceres was a firm defender of small farmers and indigenous peoples’ rights and an inspiring social activist, both at regional and continental level, in defense of social and environmental justice, She was murdered in her home on March 3, by “unknown” gunmen.---READ-->>
- Imperialism and super exploitationMichael Roberts reviews John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century. This “powerful and searing indictment of the exploitation of billions of people,” argues that “the huge low wage proletariat that has emerged in the last 30 years is the key to the profits of imperialism.”---READ-->>
- The Socialist Alternative: Real Human DevelopmentCuban scholar Olga Fernández Ríos at the launch of the Cuban edition of Michael Lebowitz’ book. “Its publication contributes positively to the defense of the socialist ideal and to the necessary contemporary debate around the construction of the new society.”---READ-->>
- Varieties of anti-capitalist economicsIn “Economics After Capitalism: A Guide to the Ruins & a Road to the Future,” ecosocialist Derek Wall offers an insightful overview of non-orthodox economics, from Social Credit to Marxism to Elinor Ostrom.---READ-->>
- Book Announcement: ‘Facing the Anthropocene’“Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the causes and consequences of the Anthropocene, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis.”---READ-->>
- Greenhouse Gas Escalation, IllustratedWe don’t need models or computer projections. As these graphics show, we already face a planetary emergency, and it is getting more serious every day.---READ-->>
- Cowspiracy: stampeding in the wrong directionBy focusing on veganism to the exclusion of all else, Cowspiracy implies that anyone who eats meat isn’t a ‘proper’ environmentalist. This is deeply offensive and elitist, and it harms the movement we need to build.---READ-->>
- Specter of geoengineering haunts Paris climate dealTo avoid challenging the fossil fuel profiteers, the Paris negotiators bet on untested and dangerous geoengineering technologies.---READ-->>
- Flint’s poisoned water and capital’s second contradictionThe politicians who poisoned the water supply in Flint are as bad as they come, but it’s the system they serve that makes such disasters inevitable.---READ-->>