Once again, on ‘environmental catastrophism’. A reply to Sam Ginden.

Last year in Monthly Review, I debated Eddie Yuen, an anarchist who believes it is a mistake for radicals to focus on telling the truth about the global environmental crisis, because “awareness of climate crisis does not necessarily lead to increased political engagement.” Not only can such awareness lead to apathy, he wrote, but “environmental catastrophism is very likely to be mobilized by economic and national elites to reinforce existing inequalities and expand enclosures, commodification, and militarization.”[1]

I never expected to hear similar arguments from a Marxist, much less one I respect as much as Sam Gindin, a long time leader of the labor movement in Canada who is now an adjunct professor at York University and co-author of the Deutscher-prize winning book The Making of Global Capitalism.