Green New Deal/LEAP

Feb. 2, 2022

The Green New Deal proposal is one of the only effective, broadly recognized pathways to tackle the climate crisis and address its social and economic consequences. It is technologically possible and economically sustainable. Yet although the Green New Deal project is already under way in some shape or form in various states, it has yet to be scaled up to the national level. In fact, climate policy as a whole has been stalled in Congress, and the Biden administration has so far engaged more in symbolic gestures than in living policy processes.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Karl Marx observed that class struggle can create circumstances and relationships that make “it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.”1 Donald Trump can be viewed as one such grotesque mediocrity, inflated to “heroic” proportions by his reactionary followers. Unwilling to accept defeat, Trump attempted to seize power after losing the 2020 presidential election.

(Dec 01, 2021) John Bellamy Foster is the editor of Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. John Molyneux edits the Irish Marxist Review, is a member of People Before Profit, is coordinator of the Global Ecosocialist Network, and has written widely on Marxism and ecosocialism. Owen McCormack is a longstanding socialist activist. He is a bus driver who has also worked as a parliamentary researcher for People Before Profit, with a special focus on ecology.

Clink here to view video of the lecture by Andrew Nikiforuk at UVIC on Nov 17, 2021.

[Web page editor: Particularly useful is the critique of 'green' technological 'solutions', e.g., see from about minute 23 to minute 42.]

Uploaded Nov 21, 2021

Where was the EFFECTIVE climate plan?

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/iX7Je7BSFgc

The SUA seeks to unify and bring together various socialist groups for coalition building and related work.

This Panel Show was produced by a collaborative SUA Working Group.

November 18, 2021

An impressively comprehensive (and scary) summary of “the task before us, if we would not fail, is to build the earth.” And, though the author does not say it explicitly, he convincingly documents why this task cannot be accomplished with the required urgency under capitalism.

• Gene McGuckin

Climate-Change Transition in the Age of the Billionaire

It was supposed to be the greatest transition of modern times.

Pleased with her good fortune, the woman remarked, “We’d planned to go to Mexico this summer, but we didn’t need to. It was hot enough here!”

In a different time, it wouldn’t be such an unsettling comment to have overheard while out and about in Alberta, where summers were short and often cool.

But in the midst of a season marked by climate extremes and disasters, it made me wonder how well it’s understood that what we’re seeing is not some temporary aberration; this new summer heat is the sign of a lasting condition. And it isn’t one we should delight in.