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
New books for reds and greens
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2018
Environmentalism of the Rich, A Scientist’s Fight for a Nuclear Test Ban, Limits to Capitalist Nature, Cocoa, Extracting Profit from Africa, Indigenous Struggles in Peru
Global Environmental Change
Marx, nature, and political morality
Marx saw the rift between people and nature not only as a primary failing of capitalism, but also as a mechanism through which capitalism may be superseded.
Metabolic Rifts
Marx and Metabolism: Lost in translation?
Why wasn't Marx's concept of metabolic rift recognized until recently? Changed circumstances, unpublished works, and bad translations all played a role.
Populationism never dies
Ecological Marxism vs. environmental neo-Malthusianism: An old debate continues
Despite being consistently discredited, overpopulation ideology resurfaces with the same predictable regularity as capitalist crises. Only Marxism offers a clear alternative.
Metabolic Rift
The Keeling Curve at 60: A portrait of climate crisis
If you’ve ever wondered what a scientific representation of metabolic rift might look like, check out this graph.
Book Review
Hugo Blanco on the indigenous struggle for land in Peru
"I have taken the term 'Indian' as the title of the book. It is the pejorative term used against us. The whip they use to hit our faces. I have picked up the whip. I find it more appropriate than using terms that soften or diminish the oppression...
Books for Lefts
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2018, Part 2
Three highly recommended books in the Democratic Marxism series: Marxisms in the 21st Century, Capitalism’s Crises, and The Climate Crisis.
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.
False alternatives
Where’s the ‘eco’ in ecomodernism?
Eco-modernists promise that technology can solve all environmental problems and provide abundance for all. There is no sustainable way to do that.
Resilience
Project Life: Cuba’s action plan prepares for climate change
As an island nation, Cuba is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Project Life (Tarea Vida), now being implemented across the country, aims to increase the country's resilience and minimize future damage
Science for the People
Why we are marching for science
Statement on the second annual March for Science on Saturday, April 14, 2018. "We need to transform the role of science in our world."
Author Focus
Sustainable Food Systems: An interview with Robert Biel
Conventional farming destroys the complex soil ecosystem and ultimately the soil itself, so the risk of not changing it is too great. (Free book available for download)
Corporate liars exposed
Shell knew about climate threat decades ago
Secret documents reveal that the giant oil company's scientists warned executives about the global impact of fossil fuels as early as 1981
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.
ocean destruction
Can information technology save global fisheries?
Masses of new data reveal where fish are being captured and by whom, and what determines fishing schedules. Will this information lead to sustainable fishing, so long as profit rules?
Discussion
Ecosocialism and consumerism
Commodity accumulation leads people to identify with the means of destruction. We must aim to disintegrate links in the chain of capital reproduction.
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.
The movement we need
Andreas Malm: Revolutionary Strategy in a Warming World
How can climate justice activists stop capitalism's drive to catastrophe? The author of Fossil Capital considers lessons from past revolutions and proposes an action program for today.
Sengwer people attacked
Conservation as genocide: REDD versus Indigenous rights in Kenya
Neo-colonial ‘developmentalist’ forces with a green sheen are evicting and murdering people in the guise of conservation and climate change mitigation