The fossil fuel industry, political lobbyists, media moguls and individuals have spent the past 30 years sowing doubt about the reality of climate change - where none exists. The latest estimate is that the world’s five largest publicly-owned oil and gas companies spend about US$200 million a year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate policy.
On August 24, 1978, Murray Bookchin gave a lecture at the Toward Tomorrow Fair in Amherst, Massachusetts. Also speaking at that year’s gathering were several prominent thinkers, including R. Buckminster Fuller and Ralph Nader. In his speech, Bookchin argues against the ideology of futurism and for ecological utopianism. In the Q&A session, he points out that he is not against technology itself, he is against technocracy, and he also describes, in detail, his political vision for the future.
Environmental destruction isn’t driven by human nature or mistaken ideas. It is an inevitable consequence of a system built on capital accumulation.
Climate & Capitalism editor Ian Angus spoke at an educational conference organized by Socialist Action in Toronto, on November 16, 2019. His talk has been edited for publication.
These sentences are from a recent report on the consequences of climate change:
China’s failure to kick a long-standing addiction to coal has thrown a knockout punch to the Paris Agreement of 2015, including its 195 signatories. Suddenly, out of the blue, the world has turned upside down!
There are already two Canadas when it comes to climate pollution, and they've been heading in opposite directions for years. A successful "Wexit" would split them into two separate countries:
The Ecofiscal Commission says quadrupling Canada's carbon price by 2030 is the easiest and most cost-effective way for the country to meet its climate targets.
But the independent think-tank also warns that might be the toughest plan to sell to the public because the costs of carbon taxes are highly visible.
Rightwing government claims former president is guilty of terrorism and sedition
The interior minister of Bolivia’s rightwing interim government has vowed to jail the former president Evo Morales for the rest of his life, accusing the exiled leftist of inciting anti-government protests that he claimed amounted to terrorism.
The Trans Mountain pipeline received $320 million in subsidies from the Canadian and Alberta governments in the first half of 2019, says a new report by an economic institute that analyzes environmental issues.
The money included $135.8 million in direct subsidies and $183.8 million in indirect subsidies that were not clearly disclosed to taxpayers, says the report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Canada’s biggest pension fund says it's “unfathomable” that the fossil fuel sector could wield disproportionate influence over its investment decisions, after a new report claims members of its board of directors and staff are "entangled with the oil and gas industry."
