Blackened trees, dead animals and scorched earth – early wildfires have already devastated Brazil’s Pantanal and local people worry they may lose the battle to save them
Perched atop blackened trees, howler monkeys survey the ashes around them. A flock of rheas treads, disoriented, in search of water. The skeletons of alligators lie lifeless and charred.
As the world inevitably transitions away from fossil fuel extraction, there’s a growing international consensus that mining critical minerals — including copper, nickel, cobalt, zinc and more — will have to ramp up in order to power clean energy sources.
Is each man’s priority to lead a dominant U.S. empire?
If there has been anything clear about presidential politics since the June 27 debate between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, it is that both men are running on a platform of empire first.
There is no path to a renewable future which leaves American hegemony in place
The United States has a material, vested interest in obstructing progress on climate change. This argument, laid out by Amitav Ghosh in his 2021 book The Nutmeg’s Curse, is crucial for understanding the politics not just of climate change, but of the world: everything from the American trade war against Chinese renewable technologies to the ongoing genocide in Gaza can be linked to it.
You can have a scientifically rigorous diagnosis of climate change, together with a plethora of reasonable policies to tackle the problem, but if your program lacks a strong coalition and powerful political strategy, it will fail.
