Has anyone else noticed how over the past few years the corporate media has been dedicating ever more space to articles on how to deal with loneliness, anxiety and insomnia, as well as ways to immerse ourselves in escapist new technology?
"This is an excellent article, explaining the central, crucial need for radical ecological-economic transition plans. But it also stresses why asking/expecting the corporations and their governments to devise/implement such plans may be a useful tactic but is definitely a doomed strategy."
The Canadian right has taken symbolic and practical control over the carbon-tax debate. To understand the ease with which this has happened, just look at the significant differences between the yellow vest movement in France and the co-optation of those vests here with protests against Trudeau, carbon taxes, and immigration in this country.
The onslaught of extreme weather and the increasingly stark scientific assessment leave no doubt that we face an ecological and civilizational emergency. But in the year since the 23rd annual Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, a constant stream of headlines and reports have confirmed that governments are not on track to meet their climate commitments.
There have been millions of conflicts that reflect the fundamental antagonism between the working class and capital: in workplaces, in politics, in most of the institutions that help make the system tick. Through struggles, workers, sometimes in alliance with peasants, have won markedly better working conditions, protective laws, extensive social welfare provisions, even, in a few cases, sweeping revolutionary transformations. They have fought against racism and sexism and the destruction of Mother Earth. Indeed, the working class has significantly changed the world.
The term “political revolution” is an odd one. Bernie Sanders never said that voting for him or building his campaign would overthrow capitalism (the traditional meaning of “revolution” in the socialist movement). The idea was radical but vague. It was rightly inspirational while what was actually asked of us was within the sphere of voting and elections, and in the Democratic Party at that.
The images from the streets of Paris over the past weeks are stark and poignant: thousands of angry protesters, largely representing the struggling French working class, resorting to mass civil unrest to express fear and frustration over a proposed new gas tax. For the moment, the protests have been successful. French President Emmanuel Macron backed off the new tax proposal, at least for six months. The popular uprising won, seemingly at the expense of the global fight against climate change and the future wellbeing of our planet.