We live in curious times. Just when intellectuals of the Left in the West have a rare opportunity to do something useful, if not actually world-historic, they – or large sections of them – are in full retreat. Just when reformers in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are looking to Western capitalism for paradigms of economic and political success, many of us appear to be abdicating the traditional role of the Western left as critic of capitalism.
Capitalism & Climate Change:
The Science and Politics of Global Warming
By David Klein, illustrated and edited
by Stephanie McMillan
An ebook available for download at Gumroad, a site where people can sell their work directly to their audience: https://gumroad.com/l/climatechange#. You choose your own price.
Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist, but the US needs its own version, not Denmark’s
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ public defense of socialism in the Oct. 13 Democratic presidential debate has kicked off America’s first major discussion of the idea in more than a generation. Columnists, talk show hosts and Donald Trump have all joined in. Most of the discussion, however, has been wildly misleading, and almost all of it has bypassed some of the most interesting forms of a very American and practical form of socialism emerging throughout the United States.
Soon after the horrific terror attacks in Paris, last Friday, our phones filled with messages from friends and colleagues: “So are they going to cancel the Paris climate summit?” “The drums of war are beating. Count on climate change being drowned out.” The assumption is reasonable enough. While many politicians pay lip service to the existential urgency of the climate crisis, as soon as another more immediate crisis rears its head—war, a market shock, an epidemic—climate reliably falls off the political map.
[An important article: "I would argue that it's much more likely to come from social protest than from the eventual exhaustion of natural resources."- says Chris Williams - read the full article - Editors]
We are now officially living amid the sixth great extinction, according to scientists, but the global economy has still not shifted to prevent climate change's existential threat to human civilization and much of the biosphere.
Five trillion US dollars annually – that’s how much is being lavished in various forms of subsidies on the global fossil fuel industry, according to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). US$10 million a minute – more than the health budgets of every country on earth combined.
We’re told that there’s not enough money for decent health care, education or welfare. But the equivalent of 6.5 percent of global GDP is being poured into an industry that’s driving the world to social and environmental catastrophe.
