June 4, 2019  

News | SCNCC | June 3, 2019

On Tuesday, June 4, at 2 p.m. Pacific Time, three judges of the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments by the Trump Administration seeking to stop the Juliana v. United States lawsuit brought by a group of young people claiming a constitutional right to "a climate system capable of sustaining human life" and asserting that the United States government is violating that right.

Global warming connects the local and the global. As Canada dumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at a rate of 22 tonnes per person each year, sea levels in Bangladesh rise, swallowing coastal communities.

The economic system is incompatible with the survival of life on Earth. It is time to design a new one

How can we reconcile social struggle and environmental struggle? This question poses problems for trade unionists. To avoid a climate catastrophe, it would be necessary to reduce economic activity, to suppress useless or harmful production, to give up a substantial part of the means of transport ... But what would happen to employment then? How can we avoid a surge of unemployment, a new rise of poverty and precariousness? In today’s relationship of forces, in the face of financialized and globalized capitalism, these challenges seem impossible to meet ...

If we want a Green New Deal that can take on climate change, we need to challenge powerful business interests.

March 21, 2019 

Climate change is the most visible, most threatening expression of a larger, planetary ecological crisis, the result of an economic system (capitalism) with an inherent growth and profit dynamic which ensures that the exploitation of natural resources (both renewable and non-renewable) exceeds the carrying capacity of nature. You have read the almost-daily scientific reports, each more alarming than the ones before, on the scope of the crisis. I won’t belabour the point.