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.
If you read or write an article that might be appropriate for this column, please post your suggestion in the Climate and Capitalism Facebook group.
- Land privatization = More hungerThe growing wave of privatization of land in Africa has made its precarious agricultural and food system even more vulnerable by Esther Vivas The tragedy of hunger again becomes current news from the food emergency in the Horn of Africa, but famines are a silent daily reality. Worldwide, more than a billion people, according to the United ...---READ-->>
- Foundations of an ecosocialist strategyThis article by a leading European ecosocialist, Daniel Tanuro, was written for the latest issue of the Montréal-based journal Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme (NCS), which features a number of articles on what is commonly referred to as the ecological crisis (not yet on-line). Tanuro is the author of an important book-length Marxist critique of green capitalism, L’impossible capitalisme vert, ...---READ-->>
- Canadian groups tell ambassador: 'Stop lobbying for the Keystone XL pipeline'We can’t let the tar sands be Canada’s greatest legacy of the 21st century. The devastation already visited by tar sands development should be proof enough of what a shortsighted plan it is. The Council of Canadians, the Indigenous Environmental Network and Greenpeace Canada presented a letter addressed to Ambassador Gary Doer at the Canadian ...---READ-->>
- The Great Distraction: ‘Overpopulation’ Is Back in Townby Betsy Hartmann CommonDreams.org, August 30, 2011 What’s next to hit New York after Hurricane Irene? If you’re in the heart of Times Square during the month of September, you’ll get the chance to see a scary video about overpopulation playing every hour on a huge screen. Sponsored by the Human Overpopulation Campaign of the Arizona-based Center for ...---READ-->>
- Europe's third try at emissions trading: another failureEurope’s carbon trading plan has produced windfall profits for major polluters, while undermining efforts to reduce pollution Emissions trading is the European Union’s flagship measure for tackling climate change, and it is failing badly. In theory it provides a cheap and efficient means to limit greenhouse gas reductions within an ever-tightening cap, but in practice it ...---READ-->>
- Ten propositions on the climate crisisCanadian Dimension editor Cy Gonick identifies key challenges facing the climate emergency movement---READ-->>
- Population book misdiagnoses Australia's environmental crisisDick Smith’s Population Crisis: The Dangers of Unsustainable Growth for Australia. Allen & Unwin, Sydney Australia, 2011. ISBN 978-1-74237-657-8 reviewed by Simon Butler Green Left Weekly, August 28, 2011 Those who say today’s big social and ecological problems stem from there being too many people on the planet face a special difficulty. As the Australian ecologist Alan Roberts once said, ...---READ-->>
- Native American and Canadian First Nations join civil disobedience to stop tar sands pipelineThe Indigenous Day of Action, September 2, 2011, at the White House will express the solidarity of Native Nations, to protect Mother Earth and demand Obama respect the treaty rights and survival of Native Nations of the US and Canada (It’s Hot in Here. Aug 27, 2011) The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is a national environmental justice ...---READ-->>
- ‘Capitalism cannot respond to climate change’Noted Marxist economist and ecologist John Bellamy Foster is a feature guest speaker at the World at a Crossroads: Climate Change Social Change conference, which will take place in Melbourne Australia, September 30 to October 3. He was interviewed by Peter Boyle for Green Left Weekly. ================ What will be some of the effects of the ongoing global financial crisis and the global ...---READ-->>
- Canadians call for civil disobedience to stop tar sandsCall urges “one of the largest acts of civil disobedience on the climate issue that Canada has ever seen” in Ottawa, September 26 There comes a time when you need to take a stand. When sending letters and signing petitions isn’t enough. When together we must say, “enough is enough — not on our watch”. That time ...---READ-->>
- Interview: Fred Magdoff on What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism“It appears inconceivable to most of the people I spoke with that somehow there might be a future economic system that wasn’t capitalist.” ++++++++++++++++++++ [Climate & Capitalism Editor’s Note: My copy of this book arrived two days ago and I immediately read it right through. It is an invaluable resource. Buy, share it, use it, give copies to your ...---READ-->>
- Deforestation is worse in 'protected areas' than in community-managed forests“When done properly, the benefits of community-based management can be seen over the long term, leading to greater conservation participation, reduced poverty, increased economic productivity and the protection of many forest species” News Release from the Center for International Forestry Research August 23, 2011 Tropical forests designated as strictly protected areas have annual deforestation rates much higher than those ...---READ-->>
- South African food sovereignty campaigners expand land occupations“The land reform has failed us. The municipality has failed us. We will not fail ourselves. We are occupying this land. We will not be removed. Ever!” by Ronald Wesso Pambazuka News, August 18, 2011 Furious emerging farmers in the Kareeberg municipality in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province have decided to stop paying rent for the municipal owned ...---READ-->>
- Anti-capitalism and environmentalism as a political alternativeWe cannot analyse the global ecological crisis separately from the crisis in which we are immersed or the critique of the economic model that has led us into it. by Esther Vivas Speech at a conference to commemorate José Saramago at the University of Granada, 28 April 2011. Published in International Viewpoint, August 2011. The starting point for ...---READ-->>
- How Jeffrey Webber's From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia turns reality on its headGiven the hostile tone of his sweeping attacks on the government and its supporters, one would expect a thorough and detailed analysis. Instead we get a litany of errors and misleading statements. Jeffrey Webber. From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo Morales. Haymarket Books, 2011. Reviewed by Federico Fuentes Alborada, August 19, ...---READ-->>
- Why GMOs won’t feed the world (despite what you read in the New York Times)We need proven sustainable intensification agriculture that creates resilient communities, not the hollow promises of GMO promoters by Anna Lappé Anna Lappé is the authorof Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, and the co-founder of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund. With all due respect, Nina ...---READ-->>
- Marxism has an ecological heartIn the past two decades several scholars have gone back to the writings of Marx and other early socialists. They have found that humanity’s relation to the planet’s ecology was a key element to a Marxist analysis of political economy. by Ash Pemberton Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2011 We all know there’s a big problem with the environment ...---READ-->>
- Population debate heats up on C&CThe article “Seven questions for a populationist” has prompted some interesting comments and debate. Now one of the big guns of populationism, Simon Ross, CEO of the UK-based Optimum Population Trust, has posted his answers. He accuses socialists of dividing the environmental movement and “generating fruitless debates.” Click here to join the conversation …---READ-->>
- David Harvey on the English riots: Feral capitalism hits the streetsA political economy of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day by David Harvey “Nihilistic and feral teenagers” the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced ...---READ-->>
- Building an ecosocialist network in New ZealandThe time is right to encourage further cooperation among people who identify as ecosocialists Statement by Socialist Worker-New Zealand Unity, 11 August 2011 The crises of global capitalism, coupled with catastrophic climate change and peak resources, is going to bring about profound social, ecological and political upheavals. There is evidence of this happening globally already. We can point to ...---READ-->>