Ecosocialism

The following remarks were made by Seattle City Councilor Kshama Sawant on Monday, June 2, as the council voted unaminously to pass a $15 minimum wage, the highest in the nation:

Americans are regularly told that climate change is happening here and now, in real time, and that nobody will be left unscathed.

Where we strongly disagree with Parenti is in his notion that such an enormous transformation in the structure of the economic and social order as is now required can be accomplished through what he presents as a mild, and thus necessarily slow, “reformist” strategy, relying primarily on the two proposals he advances: (1) using the power of the executive branch of the federal government in the United States to order the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to impose additional costs on fossil-fuel use through the Clean Air Act, and (2) ordering government agencies, presumably at the initia

When David Harvey looks at the global economic crisis, he sees a situation that demands alternatives be found. Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York (CUNY) and is currently a visiting scholar at the National Centre for Strategy on the Right to Space (CENEDET) at the National Institute of Post-Graduate Studies (IAEN) in Quito, Ecuador.

Amid tours of prospective students criss-crossing the Northeastern University campus, some one hundred climate justice activists from the Boston area converged on the Raytheon Amphitheater to hear an amazing assembly of intellectuals and activists discuss "race, class, and the anti-ecological logic of capitalism."

THE BRITISH Marxist Terry Eagleton has observed, "You can tell that capitalism is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism. It indicates that the system has ceased to be as natural as the air we breathe, and can be seen instead as the historically rather recent phenomenon that it is. Moreover, whatever was born can always die."

There can be little doubt about the centrality and severity of the environmental crisis in the present day. Driven by the mindless "grow-or-die" imperative of capitalism, humanity's destruction of the biosphere has reached and even surpassed various critical thresholds, whether in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, freshwater depletion, or chemical pollution.

The question of what demands ecosocialists should put forward in response to the climate crisis is a pressing one.  Robin Hahnel, in “An Open Letter to the Climate Justice Movement”, argues that the climate justice movement should demand a cap-and-trade policy, abandoning its traditional stance against carbon trading.  To Hahnel, carbon trading is the most realistic way for society to make carbon emissions cuts in the necessary time frame, and, contrary to the arguments of activists, it can be done in a sociall

I am going to discuss the political implications of climate change as regards the role of the state. The punch line is this: climate change means that the state is coming back. The choice is whether the state’s return will be violent and repressive or whether its return can involve a renovation and transformation that enhances the state’s progressive and democratic features.

"It’s very humbling to be in this room, not to mention on this stage, with all the vision and dedication that’s packed within these four walls. Thanks to the board and Seth Adler, the volunteers, and all of you here tonight for making this conference happen." Dr. Jill Stein was the 2012 US Green Party presidential candidate. She co-authored In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, which promote green local economies, sustainable agriculture, clean power, and freedom from toxics.