With Donald Trump in the White House the future for our climate looks bleak, but capitalism’s love affair with fossil energy runs much deeper than the desires and personalities of individual politicians.
Deadly devotion
Reading matter
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, January 2017
Ian Angus offers his opinions and recommendations, pro and con, on seven books he read while Climate & Capitalism was taking a break.
Marxist Ecology
Metabolic Rift and Ecological Value: the Ecosocialist Challenge
To understand what ecological restoration will involve, we need to see clearly what is happening, what processes are taking place, what is irreversible, what can be refused, what can be overcome.
¡Companero Fidel, presente!
Fidel Castro: Fight the ecological destruction threatening the planet!
Climate & Capitalism joins millions of people around the world in mourning the death and honoring the life of Fidel Castro Ruz. In this short talk at the 1992 Earth Summit, Fidel described the Earth System crisis and identified its causes more...
Climate Negotiations
COP22: Can we UNF*CK the UNFCCC?
The outcome of the latest UN climate negotiations is a page of bold promises, stirring calls, and grand statements, woefully empty of anything actionable.
Profit vs People
Corporate Power + Climate Change = Geocide
Susan George: We are faced with determined adversaries who care nothing about human rights or climate change. They only want a world in which they can make endless amounts of money using all available resources, no matter what the costs to nature...
Movement building
Andreas Malm in conversation with trade union climate activists
VIDEO: Andreas Malm, author of Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, speaks to the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group in London.
Movement Building
Food Sovereignty: A Strategy for Environmental Justice
Food sovereignty offers a strategy for social mobilization that confronts rural disintegration while addressing environmental crises.
Movement Building
Key to the Leap: Leave the oil in the soil
Ian Angus and John Riddell argue that using the Leap Manifesto as the basis for building a new socialist movement in Canada must include confronting the climate crisis and the power of Big Oil.
Geology
The Age of Garbage
How will future geologists recognize the beginning of the Anthropocene in rock records? Quite possibly by an unprecedented accumulation of fossilized trash.
Research Report
The British Columbia Carbon Tax: A Failed Experiment
British Columbia’s carbon tax has been held up as a climate success, but an analysis of the province’s emissions under the tax tells another story.
The World in 2050
Announcing:
The nearly carbon-free climate justice conference
A three-week discussion of 'The World in 2050: Imagining and Creating Just Climate Futures' has begun on a computer screen near you.
Book Review
Victor Wallis reviews ‘Facing the Anthropocene’
'Ian Angus’s distinctive contribution is to underscore, with his geologically grounded perspective, the need to combine immediate measures of relief with a long-term agenda of transformation.'
Interview
Hannah Holleman on environmental justice and ecological imperialism
"The pace and scale of ecological degradation we confront today is unfathomable without understanding the legacy and persistent realities of ecological imperialism."
Forms of denial
Corporate climate risk is about profit, not fixing the problem
'Like latter-day wizardry, corporate risk calculations suggest that markets and capital can, not only control the natural world, but somehow anticipate it'
We won't be long, but ...
What to read while C&C takes a break
Climate & Capitalism will resume its regular publishing schedule on or about October 24. In the meantime, have you read these top-rated articles from the summer of 2016?
Environmental Justice
If Nature Is Sacred, Capitalism Is Wicked
Under capitalism, everything is a business opportunity. Disasters are not viewed by business leaders as problems to be solved, they are seen as circumstances of which they must take advantage.
Enviro
Is renewable energy really environmentally friendly?
Renewable energy sources may have low CO2 emissions at the point of use, but the mines that make the technology possible are often environmentally destructive
Book Review
‘Anthropocene or Capitalocene?’ misses the point
The authors of this book have very little to say about the Anthropocene, the crisis of the Earth System, or the new global epoch, and most of what they do say is misleading or wrong.
Fossil Capitalism
Ecocide in the Niger Delta
In Nigeria, oil extraction and production has devastating consequences for the people living in the Niger Delta, but those who flee are not protected by the Geneva Convention on Refugees.