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environment
Nuclear disaster at Chernobyl: reality and unreality
By Don Fitz
May 19, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — With the escalating doom of climate change hovering over us, it is tempting to push nuclear horror to the back of our minds. To those of us who grew up in the 1950s, it was omnipresent. Nuclear war could not exist without nuclear power and on April 26, 1986 the world experienced a form of nuclear horror it will never forget.
Why did Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explode on that day? Did operator error cause it? Was design flaw the reason? Should we look deeper into the Soviet system for the cause? Or should we look deeper still into the very existence of nuclear power?
Project Life: Cuba’s action plan prepares for climate change
“An important biological species is facing the risk of extinction given the rapid
and progressive elimination of its natural conditions for life: humanity”
—Fidel Castro Ruz (Earth Summit, Río de Janeiro, June 12, 1992)
By Yisell Rodríguez Milán and Danae González Del Toro
April 30, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Climate & Capitalism, an earlier translation first appeared at Granma — What is to be done about high temperatures, rising sea levels, and increasingly powerful hurricanes? What can we do to be less vulnerable to climate change? Preliminary observations by groups of specialists in the country indicate that sea level has increased on the island an average of 6.77 centimeters since 1966, a process that has accelerated during the last five years. Since the middle of the last century, the average annual temperature has risen 0.9 degrees Celsius, and the coastline is today more fragile than ever. This reality calls for action, and Cuba is acting on the premise of preparing, to avoid lamenting later.
Jobs and industry in the Hunter Valley: Context for a conversation about a Just Transition away from coal
By Steve Phillips
May 5, 2017 –– Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal –– The Hunter Valley is famously, or infamously, one of the most coal-mining-dominated regions in the world. We have one of the highest concentrations of mines on the planet, and we host its biggest export coal facility. Many will tell you that the Hunter has always been a coal-mining region, and it's true. But in the past it played a lesser role, and only in recent years has mining come to dominate the physical, social, and economic landscape of the Hunter Valley.
The BRICS New Development Bank meets in Delhi to dash green-developmental hopes?
By Patrick Bond
March 30, 2017 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – Will the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc ever really challenge the world financial order?
Will science go rogue against Donald Trump?
By Chris Williams
February 22, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Worker with the author's permission — IN THE age of Trump, the person writing those words has much to teach us about the impending scientific struggles of our own time."Please let us remember that to investigate the constitution of the universe is one of the greatest and noblest problems in nature, and it becomes still grander when directed toward another discovery."
Facebook server farm powered by ‘clean energy’ will increase Denmark's greenhouse emissions
By Stan Cox and Paul Cox
February 8, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Last month, social-media giant Facebook announced plans to build a new data center near Odense, Denmark. The expansion of server capacity was needed, the company said, to support "richer content" such as live-streaming and virtual reality.
Trump and climate catastrophe
By John Bellamy Foster
This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has
got to stop.
Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW
scientists are stuck in ice.
February 5, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Monthly Review — The alarm bells are ringing. The climate-change denialism of the Trump administration, coupled with its goal of maximizing fossil-fuel extraction and consumption at all costs, constitutes, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “almost a death knell for the human species.” As noted climatologist Michael E. Mann has declared, “I fear that this may be game over for the climate.”[2]
Protecting business as usual: Another attack on Anthropocene science
By Ian Angus
January 26, 2017 –– Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Climate & Capitalism –– About 11,700 years ago, the last ice age of the Pleistocene ended and
a new time of relative warmth and climate stability began, an epoch
that geologists call the Holocene. Now, a large body of scientific
evidence shows that “the Earth has been pushed out of the Holocene Epoch
by human activities.”[1] A new and unprecedented time of sweeping global change, the Anthropocene, is now underway.
Dakota (USA) – Standing Rock: Battle won, but war continues
By Barry Sheppard
December 9, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Native Americans and their allies won an important battle in their fight to prevent the Dakota Access Pipeline going through historic tribal lands of the Sioux, and under part of the Missouri River where the Sanding Rock Sioux reservation gets its drinking water.
A Kurdish response to climate change
By Anna Lau, Erdelan Baran, and Melanie Sirinathsingh
November 23, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Open Democracy — For 4000 years since the breakdown of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, almost every major societal collapse has featured five trends: spiralling migration, state collapse, food shortages, epidemic disease and climate change.[1] What makes the present era distinct is that whilst previous collapses have been geographically contained, the globalisation of carbon-intensive industry since the 1800s and particularly over the last four decades means that the relationship between cause and effect has been obscured. Many of the people worst impacted by human-caused climate change today are also the least responsible for it. The Climate Stories project believes that averting further damage and building a different future means being led by those who are the first to hear the earth rise up in protest, have considered the causes and are innovating solutions. In this spirit, this article documents reflections from a series of conversations with members of the Kurdish movement on climate change.
Exploring the roots of a 21st century ‘climate crisis’
The ecosocialist imperative
October 28, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Voice — Hannah Holleman is an activist and professor of sociology at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Her work has appeared in numerous publications on subjects including imperialism and colonialism, political economy ecology, ecological justice, feminism, advertising and propaganda, financialization, mass incarceration, and social theory.
CITES comes to South Africa: Militarizing game parks and marketing wildlife are unsustainable strategies
By Libby Lunstrum and Patrick Bond
September 23, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — A potentially momentous summit of environmental officials takes place in Johannesburg starting this weekend, through October 4: the 17th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, better known as CITES. Based on an agreement between 182 countries, CITES’ aim is to “ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.”
Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil capitalism and the crisis of the Earth system
October 3, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from LeftStreamed -- Science tells us that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun, the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. Humanity faces not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System. If business as usual continues, this century will be marked by rapid deterioration of our physical, social, and economic environment. Large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable, and civilization itself will be threatened. Facing the Anthropocene shows what has caused this planetary emergency, and what we must do to meet the challenge.
Agricultural expropriation: Making money from farmers
By Alan Broughton
September 7, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Soil Alliance — There is money to be made in farming, but not by the farmers. This paper examines the reasons why farmers around the world are poor and there are a billion hungry people. The terms of trade for farmers continually declines and farmers are forced off the land. Governments and international bodies advocate further deregulation and trade liberalisation and greater use of technology, yet these policies have undoubtedly failed in their stated aims of increasing food security and rural prosperity. The beneficiaries have only been the agribusiness corporations which have been instrumental in the design of the new order of agricultural production.
Degrowth, green capitalism and the promise of ecosocialism
By Richard Smith
August 22, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from New Politics — I don’t need to tell you we face an existential threat. Scientists tell us we face a “climate emergency.” Last year was the hottest year ever recorded, beating 2014, which beat 2012. We break new records every year. The fourteen hottest years ever recorded have been recorded since 2000. January and February temperatures were torrid. Global temperatures hit new all-time highs in February; the northern hemisphere breached the 2 degrees-Celsius-above-normal mark for the first time in recorded history. Svalbard, Norway, averaged 10 degrees Celsius above normal. Parts of the Arctic were more than 16 degrees Celsius warmer—basically no winter. There were record-setting low measures of maximum Arctic sea ice this “winter.” In the United States, the winter was record-warm from coast to coast, breaking all-time temperature records for February. The same in Asia. In the tropics, record warmth is massively bleaching the Great Barrier Reef.
From the tar sands to ‘green jobs’? Work and ecological justice
By Greg Albo and Lilian Yap
July 29, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project -- The ecological and social implications of climate change have – or should – become a central parameter for all discussions of work and capitalism.
John Bellamy Foster: The anthropocene and Marxism today
July 24, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal via Climate & Capitalism -- John Bellamy Foster discusses the theoretical and programmatic challenges that the Anthropocene, a dangerous new epoch in planetary history, poses for socialists in the 21st century.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and co-author of The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. He spoke at the Marxism 2016 conference in London on July 2.
Greening the Revolution: a documentary about food justice
June 16, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- This high-definition documentary explores the far-reaching effects of international food injustice, from world hunger to the consumption of industrial food. Focusing on issues such as GMOs, farmer suicides, diabetes, migrant farm workers and hunger, the film turns to look at the resistance to harmful economic policies, amazing sustainable alternatives and organic agriculture practiced by brilliant small farmers, and the overall courage and hope found in the hearts of people refusing to accept a food system based on profits over human dignity.
Filmed in India, Kenya, Zambia, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti and the United States, in "Greening the Revolution" features interviews with small farmers and revolutionaries from the Landless Workers Movement (Brazil), Zambia Womens Alliance, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (US), Zapatista communities in Chiapas Mexico and political intellectuals such as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Vandana Shiva.
For more information or to support the film, visit http://www.greeningtherevolution.org
Ian Angus on the climate crisis: ‘We are NOT all in this together’
June 2, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Climate & Capitalism, a shorter version also appeared in Green Left Weekly — Climate & Capitalism editor Ian Angus recently completed a three-week tour of Australia, organized by the Socialist Alliance and Links to introduce his new book, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System. He gave this talk, which draws on material in Chapter 11, at forums in Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Brisbane and Newcastle.
Facing the Anthropocene: talk and book launch by Ian Angus
May 30, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- At the recent Socialist Alliance's "Socialism in the 21st Century Conference" held in May 2016 and co-hosted with Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Ian Angus launched his new book, "Facing the Anthropocene".
Ian Angus is an author and veteran of socialist and environment movements in Canada and internationally and is the founder and editor of the online journal, Climate and Capitalism.
