Received wisdom says that to save the planet we have to change our eating habits. Elaine Graham-Leigh explains why the received wisdom isn't just wrong, it blames working people for a crisis they didn't cause.
Book Review
Books and Reports
Ecosocialist bookshelf, June 2016
Six new books for left-greens and green-lefts: Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century; Militarizing the Environment; The Great Acceleration; The Great Inequality; Congo's Environmental Paradox; How Did We Get Into This Mess?
Theory and practice
In Defense of Ecological Marxism: John Bellamy Foster responds to a critic
“Jason Moore has joined the long line of scholars who have set out to update or deepen Marxism in various ways, but have ended up by abandoning Marxism’s revolutionary essence and adapting to capitalist ideologies.”
Poem
When the climate comes for you
"I wrote this poem after I read about people in Pakistan digging mass graves in advance of the forecast heatwave, so as to not be caught unprepared, as they were last year." — Kamala Emanuel
Book Launch
Video: Ian Angus introduces ‘Facing the Anthropocene’
Author's presentation at book launch meeting for 'Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System,' at the Socialism for the 21st Century Conference in Sydney, Australia, May 13, 2013.
Via Campesina
Food sovereignty and climate change
Industrial agriculture is grounded in the use of fossil fuel and high energy consumption. Campesino agriculture with an agro-ecological basis is the only force capable of achieving food sovereignty and responding to climate change.
Climate Injustice
Planetary Crisis: We are not all in this together
Climate change and extreme weather events are not devastating a random selection of human beings from all walks of life. There are no billionaires among the dead, no corporate executives living in shelters, no stockbrokers watching their children...
Capitalism in crisis
Global inequality is much worse than we’ve been told
New analysis of global inequality shows that the income gap between people in rich and poor countries is far wider than policymakers are willing to admit.
Earth System in Crisis
Explaining the Anthropocene:
An interview with Ian Angus
"We don’t know how long we have before climate change goes from dangerous to extremely dangerous, but we know that continuing with business as usual makes such a shift increasingly likely."
Ecosocialist Notebook
Climate & Capitalism editor on Australian speaking tour, April 30-May 14
C&C will be taking a break while Ian Angus speaks at ecosocialist meetings in seven Australian cities, and launches his new book at the Socialism for the 21st Century conference in Sydney.
Movement building
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.
Too Many People?
Population and food sovereignty: An exchange
Ian 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?
Movement Building
Climate justice movement shakes
Canada’s New Democratic Party
The 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.
Book Review
Fishers and plunderers: The tragedy of the commodity
Overfishing, 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...
Movement Building
Canada: Leap Manifesto unites broad forces, builds climate justice campaigns
The 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...
Capitalism today
Understanding and confronting the great inequality
Michael 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...
Too Many People?
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.
Ecosocialism
John Bellamy Foster answers three questions on Marxism and ecology
In 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.
Environment & Health
Unhealthy environments kill 12.6 million a year
An 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.
Climate Change
Why we don’t bother to debate with climate science deniers, illustrated
If 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...