3 April 2020– Origin: Climate & Capitalism
Essays by pioneering ecosocialist Joel Kovel argue that radical social change is the only way to prevent ecocatastrophe
Mike Shaughnessy is a member of Green Left, the ecosocialist current in the Green Party of England and Wales.
Quincy Saul, Editor
THE EMERGENCE OF ECOSOCIALISM
Collected Essays by Joel Kovel
2Leaf Press, 2019
reviewed by Mike Shaughnessy
London Green Left Blog
1 April 2020 — MROnline
Farooque Chowdhury and John Bellamy Foster
In the backdrop of the ravaging coronavirus pandemic, John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, the famous socialist magazine, discusses the pandemic in relation to the present condition of capitalism and economic crisis in the following interview conducted by Farooque Chowdhury in late-March, 2020. Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, and author of numerous books on political, economic, and ecological issues, relates the pandemic to the capitalist economy, its crisis and climate change.
1 March 2020 — Media Lens
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the most immediate objective is to slow its spread, minimise the death toll and help people through the crisis. But, despite government promises to support citizens who are now losing their jobs and income, the underlying establishment concern will be as it always has been: to preserve the global inequitable system of wealth and power.
24 March 2020 — Climate & Capitalism
Ian Angus
“A conscious and collective struggle to stop capitalism’s hell-bound train is our only hope for a better world.”
In an interview with the African Review of Political Economy, Climate & Capitalism editor Ian Angus discusses the environmental crisis, the Anthropocene and Covid-19.
21 March 2020 — Climate & Capitalism
Six new books to read while maintaining social distance. Yellow Earth; Socialist Practice; Friedrich Engels; Chicken History; Traveling Plants; Coal and Empire
Ecosocialist Bookshelf is an occasional feature. We can’t review every book we receive, but we will list and link to any that seem relevant to Climate & Capitalism’s mission, along with brief descriptions. Titles listed here may be reviewed in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that we agree with everything (or even anything!) these books say.
25 February 2020 — Climate & Capitalism
Robbery of nature; Choosing a future; Neoliberal lives; Indigenous resistance; Canadian oil vs the climate; Environmental justice in danger; Agrobiodiversity; Cars and capitalismEcosocialist Bookshelf is an occasional feature. We can’t review every book we receive, but we will list and link to any that seem relevant to Climate & Capitalism’s mission, along with brief descriptions. Titles listed here may be reviewed in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that we agree with everything (or even anything!) these books say.
21 February 2020 — Common Dreams
Protesters picket outside a Chase Bank branch in November 2019. An Extinction Rebellion campaigner released a leaked document from the bank Thursday in which JP Morgan Chase economists warned the company’s investment in fossil fuels is contributing to the climate crisis. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Climate campaigners on Friday expressed hope that policymakers who are stalling on taking decisive climate action would reconsider their stance in light of new warnings from an unlikely source: two economists at J.P. Morgan Chase.
19 February 2020 — Media Lens
If you were mad enough to judge the state of the world by the daily outpourings of ‘mainstream’ media, you would have no real understanding of the perilous state of the human race. Or, if you had concerns on seeing the latest news on climate breakdown, you would not be fully informed about the powerful elites that are driving all of us towards this looming catastrophe. Nor would you be alerted to the overriding and immediate imperative for the public to exert its own huge power to avert almost unimaginable disaster, not least human extinction.
18 February 2020 — Climate & Capitalism
What’s behind the breakdown of the relationship between human society and the natural world on which we depend?
by James Plested
Red Flag (Australia), February 17, 2020
Amid the infinite, silent expanse of the universe, the emergence of any kind of life at all on the small speck we call Earth is miraculous enough. That those first primitive forms of life, after 3 to 4 billion years of development, would give rise to a species that can ask about the origin and meaning of the universe and our place in it, and that can, at least potentially, freely and consciously try to build a good society and live a good life within it, is truly wondrous.
16 February, 2020 — MROnline
Introducing an important book series on Democratic Marxism in Africa, Vishwas Satgar explains that the project is premised on a rejection of the authoritarianism of vanguardist politics and the need to learn critical lessons from all the left projects of the 20th century. There is a rich inheritance of emancipatory Marxism in Africa, which includes Frantz Fanon, Ruth First, Samir Amin, Sam Moyo, Harold Wolpe and many others. Today, Satgar argues, the challenge is to defeat carbon capitalism accelerating the climate crisis and fomenting exclusionary nationalisms and for this there has to be a return to Marx.
14 February 2020 — DesSmogUK
Who is really in charge of the UK’s government? Is it a) the elected MPs that won a landslide victory for the Conservative Party in December last year? Or b) the special advisors that always walk a respectful 5 paces behind them holding a device that looks suspiciously marionette-like?
After Boris Johnson’s first cabinet reshuffle as Prime Mininster, it looks possible it could be the latter.
28 January 2020 — Global Ecosocialist Network
Rehad Desai
The word catastrophe is being used more and more by institutions reporting on the effects of extreme weather in the two regions of Africa, Southern and South Eastern Africa, and of late Australia. The word means a number of things: tragic; fiasco; utter failure; sudden and violent change in a feature of the Earth. All are completely fitting for the situation we now face.
