Republished by Climate and Capitalism with permission, from the UK magazine Socialist Review, January 2017
With Donald Trump in the White House the future for our climate looks bleak, but capitalism’s love affair with fossil energy runs much deeper than the desires and personalities of individual politicians.
Once again, Pope Francis has made global headlines, shocking reporters late Sunday after blaming the “god of money” for the extremist violence that is taking place in Europe and the Middle East. A ruthless global economy, he argues, leads disenfranchised people to violence.
"He deployed a prolific critical analysis of environmental depredation and the poverty generated by capitalism."
With Fidel’s death Latin America’s principal revolutionary figure of the last century has left us. Amidst our great sorrow at his passing it is difficult to assess his stature. But while emotion clouds any evaluation, the Comandante’s influence[1] can be appreciated with greater clarity now that he has left.
The country’s worst drought in 25 years, spurred by poor management, El Niño and climate change, has reservoirs drying up and hospitals struggling
Teodora Cauna de Quispe hasn’t had water at her house in Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, for two weeks. “We can’t wash ourselves or our clothes,” she said. “Every so often there is a bit of muddy water that spurts out of the tap on my patio.”
Legendary Cuban revolutionary and former president Fidel Castro passed away on November 25 aged 90 (having survived hundreds of failed CIA assassination attempts). An internationalist dedicated to a fairer and sustainable planet, Castro long warned that capitalism was threatening to destroy human civlisation through ecological destruction, with the poor of the global South its first victims.
