Website editor: This article makes some very good points about 'free transit' campaigns and more.
Dec. 19, 2022
Ottawa’s light-rail transit system has made headlines in the last years – but not for any good reasons. Trains don’t work in the cold. Technical problems cause frequent delays, and a derailment once led to all the trains being taken out of service for weeks. On top of this, Ottawa’s city council voted to increase fares.
With their futuristic designs and new technology, electric vehicles are the seductive consumer-friendly face of the energy transition.
As first incarnated by Tesla, the EV is increasingly seen as sleeker, slicker, faster and more stylish than traditional internal combustion engine cars and trucks that burn those dirty fossil fuels blamed for disrupting weather patterns and killing off species.
Ecosocialist responses to “degrowth” analysis and proposals have ranged from full support to total rejection. The author of the following critical commentary is an emeritus professor of biology at Howard University, and co-author of The Earth is Not for Sale (World Scientific, 2019). We encourage respectful responses in the comments, and hope to publish other views in future.
A potential showdown between organized labor and Wall Street looms over the world of freight trains: An influential railroad workers group is urging fellow union members to reject a tentative labor agreement that has prevented an industry-wide strike, and to fight for public ownership of railroads. Negotiations are tense, and the unions are telling members that every vote counts.
LAS VEGAS—For the first time in slightly more than 100 years Railroad Workers United, is demanding public ownership of railroad infrastructure in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Then, railroads “would be operated in the public interest,” it says.
Unlike the major media in the U.S. which tries to divorce the threat to democracy from the fight for economic justice, their call for nationalization, clearly a demand for economic democracy, is an aspect of democracy that papers like the New York Times don’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
Oct. 18, 2022
French trade unions have begun a nationwide strike to demand higher
salaries amid the highest inflation in decades, one of the biggest
challenges to President Emmanuel Macron since his reelection in May.
Tuesday’s strike, which primarily affects public sectors such as schools
and transportation, is an extension of the weeks-long industrial action
that has disrupted France’s major refineries and put petrol stations’
supply in disarray.
BC NDP leadership hopeful Anjali Appadurai is promising a sweeping climate action plan including free transit in urban centres, an immediate moratorium on new fossil fuel extraction permits and a new oil and gas excess profits tax.
An informative but not comforting article--recent studies from Spain showing that a) the transition to "green" energy will be much more problematic than most expect, b) the possibility for a future for humanity will require an end to "growth", and c) what is required cannot be accomplished under capitalism.
