Category: Environment
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The Canadian Pension Plan: The Deadly Hand of the Market
A recent article in the Toronto Star and its accompanying photo bear comment. The reaching hands are not of rioting, starving people grasping for food but of stockbrokers on the … Keep reading »
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Revolution in a Warming World: Lessons from the Russian to the Syrian Revolutions
It doesn’t take much imagination to associate climate change with revolution. If the planetary order upon which all societies are built starts breaking down, how can they possibly remain stable? Various more or less horrifying scenarios of upheaval have long been extrapolated from soaring temperatures. Keep reading »
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On Consumerism, Capitalism, and Ecosocialism
Sebastian Livingston provides an introduction to an ecosocialist approach to production and consumption and looking at some issues that are problematic in achieving an ecological society. Keep reading »
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First Nations Leaders Pledge to Block Pipeline Expansion
At the 2015 Paris COP 21 climate conference Justin Trudeau pledged his newly-elected government would help “to limit global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius as well … Keep reading »
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Paris Climate Goals Depend on Promoting Biodiversity
A sweeping new report released on March 23rd emphasizes just how intertwined the challenges of climate change and loss of biodiversity truly are. The Paris Climate Agreement and several other … Keep reading »
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Ecological Crisis and Capitalist Accumulation in Contemporary Turkey
Zafer Ülger spoke with Arielle Concilio of Left Voice to discuss environmental issues in Turkey, their relation to capitalist accumulation, and the increasing violence against environmental activists in the country. Keep reading »
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Focus on China: The East is Green?
Martin Empson examines the contradictions behind the green rhetoric of the Chinese government and its continued reliance on fossil fuels. Keep reading »
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Ecological Sustainability, Inequality and Social Class
Karl Marx’s concept of sustainability is connected to his concepts of metabolism and reproduction. While the first connection is well recognized in recent literature (famously in the work of Paul … Keep reading »
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Red and Green: The Ecosocialist Perspective
The contemporary international political economy is marked by a great contradiction. On a planet characterized by finite resources, the economy is predicated upon an absurd and irrational logic of infinite expansion and accumulation. With its fossil fuel based operations continually spewing carbon into the earth’s atmosphere, the capitalist system’s productivist obsession with profit has brought humanity to the brink of an abyss. Keep reading »
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COP23: From the Gap to the Precipice
The Twenty-Third Conference of the Parties Signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate has just concluded in Bonn, Germany. It was an intermediate meeting between COP21 in Paris in 2015 and COP24 in Katowice (Poland) in 2018. Keep reading »
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Copping Out at COP23, Avoidance and Possibility in a Burning World
During the recent COP23 summit in Bonn, a taxi driver provided a clear summary. Asked what he thought of COP 23, he replied “the climate is in crisis, but here, … Keep reading »
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UK Unions Call for Energy to be Returned to Public Ownership
The annual congress of the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) has passed a historic composite resolution on climate change that supports the energy sector being returned to public ownership and … Keep reading »