Capitalism

My hometown, Grand Rapids, Michigan, was once known as the Furniture Capital of the world. The furniture industry moved south, and then overseas, but in the 1970s a few stalwarts still plied the pretensions of the uppity class with vestiges of noblesse oblige. We made reproductions of antiques. Why not? We had the blueprints, patterns, jigs, fixtures, and most importantly, the experience. I worked at John Widdicomb Furniture Co.

Tom Steyer, who has spent over $10 million to help defeat the Keystone XL pipeline, challenged the oil billionaire Koch brothers to a debate last night on the Bill Maher show.

To stand any chance of keeping global warming below dangerous levels, a large percentage of fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground unburned. 1 Lord Stern endorses an estimate of 60-80% of current reserves being unburnable, assets which support share values of around $4 trillion, about 27% of US Gross National Income ($15 trillion), or about 5% of Gross World Product ($85 trillion).

The Supreme Court on Wednesday released its decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the blockbuster money-in-politics case of the current term. The court's five conservative justices all agreed that the so-called aggregate limit on the amount of money a donor can give to candidates, political action committees, and political parties is unconstitutional.

Exxon Mobil Corp. is leading a parade of energy companies that will confront the issue of the so-called “carbon bubble” – the idea that fossil-fuel assets such as Canada’s oil sands are overvalued and risky for investors in a world that must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. In an agreement with institutional shareholders, Exxon has agreed to disclosure by the end of March of how climate change regulations could affect the value of its worldwide assets, including its major holdings in Alberta’s oil sands.

By now much of the world has heard of Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford. Media outlets have treated us to a staccato drumbeat of astounding revelations about the mayor of Canada’s biggest city. Outside Toronto, observers gleefully tut-tut the city that Canadians love to hate for its municipal leader’s failings. Beyond Canada, people follow the city’s ongoing political soap opera with a mix of amazement and amusement. It’s little surprise that so easy a target has become the object of global mockery, especially in the United States.

Last year BP projected global climate pollution would "most likely" surge 26% by 2030. As I reported at the time, this would crank up the Earth's thermostat a disastrous +4C according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That is twice the +2C threshold for "dangerous climate change" that all major nations have promised to stay below.

The oil giant Exxon Mobil has agreed for the first time to report on how climate change could affect its business model, campaign groups say. The groups said on Thursday that Exxon had agreed to prepare a public report on “carbon asset risk” – the prospect that the company might be forced to leave some of its oil and gas in the ground as a result of climate regulations. The campaigners said the move by Exxon was an important step forward in getting companies to recognise that oil, gas and coal holdings could potentially drop in value under climate regulations.

The Hupacasath First Nation may not have succeeded the first time around, but its fight to keep the federal government from ratifying the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPPA) is heating up again. The tiny Vancouver Island nation has filed an appeal with the Federal Court of Appeals and expects the Crown to file by March 17.

Arguably the single most important mistake the revolutionary movements of the 60s and 70s made was to overlook the resilience of capitalism. The idea – catastrophism, as it is often called – that the system was going to crumble under the pressure of its own contradictions, that the bourgeoisie produces its own "gravediggers" (as Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto) has been disproved.