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.
Reading, red and green
Environmental philosophy
New materialism: ‘Idealism of the most useless sort’
Following my review of The Progress of This Storm, a reader comments on a philosophical fad that is 'burning through academia faster than a forest fire'
Book Review
The progress of this storm:
Nature and society in a warming world
Andreas Malm’s powerful critique of current environmental philosophies puts historical materialism and cutting-edge science at the center of a call for militant action
Book announcement
Face à l’anthropocène: Le capitalisme fossile et la crise du système terrestre
Facing the Anthropocene, by Ian Angus, will soon be available in French, published by Éditions Écosociété
Interview
Andreas Malm: ‘Without a mass movement we don’t stand a chance against fossil capital’
The author of 'Fossil Capital' and 'The Progress of This Storm' says there are reasons to be hopeful, but success depends on building a global movement of unprecedented scale
Imperialism
Africa: New evidence of ongoing corporate looting
World Bank report shows massive depletion of Africa's natural wealth by transnational corporations. Only mass action can block the extractivist plunder
Book Review
How to create an ecological society
Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams make a powerful case that ecological disaster can be only be overcome by a revolutionary transformation on socialist principles
Unprecedented forecast
Global warming may pass 1.5°C in the next five years
UK climate scientists say that warming in at least one year in the next five could blow past the target set in the Paris Accord.
creative self-destruction
Why corporate promises to cut carbon can’t be trusted
Relying on markets and corporate responses to the climate crisis will not work, because profits always come first
A tribute
Alan Roberts, 1925-2017: A pioneer of radical environmentalism
The Marxist author of The Self-managing Environment rejected techno-fixes for environmental crises and exposed the fallacies of populationism
Agadir Declaration
ATTAC: For food sovereignty, against ‘free trade’ agreements
"The so called free trade agreements are new colonial agreements that serve the interests of multinationals, favouring the pillage of lands, indigenous peoples’ communal areas, their water resources, their fish and their food"
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?
A new book by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore replaces concrete historical analysis with an artificial schema
Book Review
Private Oceans: The enclosure and marketisation of the seas
Neoliberal policies boost profits for corporate fishing, encourage overfishing, and squeeze out small fishers whose communities have fished for generations
Essential reading
Paul Burkett on Kohei Saito’s ‘Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism’
The author of Marx and Nature evaluates and introduces an important new book on the deep connections between natural science and political economy in Marx’s work
Food sovereignty
Who will feed a changing world — industrial agriculture or peasant food webs?
Industrial agriculture uses 75% of farm land but delivers only 30% of the world's food. Peasant farmers feed 70% of the world's people using just 25% of the land
Readers' choices
Top ten Climate & Capitalism articles in 2017
The 109 articles we published in Climate & Capitalism in 2017 were read by more people than ever before. These were the most popular ...
Book Review
Ecological science fiction: Two hits and a miss
Three novels by Kim Stanley Robinson: Aurora is monumental and Shaman is a great evocation of the past, but New York 2140 understates both the climate crisis and the solutions needed
Facing the Anthropocene
“An accessible and convincing case for ecosocialism”
"This necessary book details the full spectrum of environmental issues facing us today, demonstrates their scientific and political causes, and delivers a sobering warning"
Interview: JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER
Capitalism, exterminism and the long ecological revolution
C&C begins the new year with an extensive interview with John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, about the need to fight for a revolutionary ecosocialist alternative to the profit-driven world capitalist system.