Dec 9, 2013--Two important events occurred last week concerning the future of fossil fuel projects in British Columbia. One was the release on Dec 5 of the report by Special Federal Representative Douglas Eyford. He's the lawyer appointed earlier this year by Stephen Harper to find a way for fossil fuel projects in BC to overcome the opposition of First Nations.
Both the words “environment” and “violence” have so many meanings, that they require some definition of how they can be of use in the context of a struggle for social justice. Regarding the word violence, according to Merriam Webster, one definition is “the use of brute strength to cause harm to a person or property”; a definition that doesn’t seem to have an immediately obvious connection to ecological issues associated with climate change, loss of biodiversity and various forms of pollution.
On December 3, the Vancouver Ecosocialist Group put on an event, "Strategies to Fight Climate Change." We are republishing the speech by VEG member Gene McGuckin. A report on the event and links to videos of all the speakers' talks is online here -- NSW I thank the speakers before me for their valuable contributions – in actions as well as words -- to the discussion at hand. So, what does an eco-socialist perspective add to these contributions? We all start in the same place, of course.
"Capitalism's gotta go," was the consensus among four panelists and over 50 people attending a public forum on "Strategies to Stop Climate Change" in Vancouver, December 3. The Vancouver Ecosocialist Group hosted the event and supplied one of the panelist, retired union member and paperworker Gene McGuckin (see speech text and video). Other panelists were Carleen A.
In rejecting the antigrowth approach of the first wave of environmentalists in the 1970s, pro-growth “green capitalism” theorists of the 1980s-90s like Paul Hawken, Lester Brown, and Francis Cairncross argued that green technology, green taxes, eco-conscious shopping and the like could “align” profit-seeking with environmental goals, even “invert many fundamentals” of business practice such that “restoring the environment and making money become one and the same process.” This strategy has clearly failed.
Amid disputes between developed and developing countries, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP19) in Warsaw, Poland are set to conclude today [November 23, 2013] with little in the way of progress. Environmental groups and trade unions walked out of the conference on Thursday [November 21], just after developing nations had staged a dramatic exit of Wednesday morning's session. “Warsaw, which should have been an important step in the just transition to a sustainable future, is on track to deliver virtually nothing.
At the People's Voice Café in New York City, the incomparable Brooklyn rapper Professor Louie offers a heavy lesson in Marxism to the 99% in rhythm and rhyme. January 7, 2012 ( Louie is the uncle of singer /songwriter Jeffrey Lewis).
EXCLUSIVE: Climate and Capitalism is proud to republish a long unavailable pamphlet that introduced the coming together of greens and reds in comic strip form, in 1980. The usually reliable Oxford English Dictionary says the first English-language appearance of the word “eco-socialism” was in the London Times in 1985, as a translation of the German ökosozialismus. The OED is wrong. Five years earlier, in 1980, the Socialist Environment and Resources Association, an affiliate of the British Labour Party, published a pamphlet titled Eco-Socialism in a Nutshell.
The future of the human species - if there is to be a future - must be radically green, red, black and female. If we take this seriously - a human future, that is, if we really care about whether there will be a human future - each one of us who claims to care has to be willing to be challenged, radically. How we think, feel, and act - it's all open to critique, and no one gets off easy, because everyone has failed. Individually and collectively, we have failed to create just societies or a sustainable human presence on the planet.
