ALTERNATIVES
Jason Hickel writes: Many people were thrilled when they heard that the Economics Nobel went to William Nordhaus, known for his work on climate change. But many climate scientists and ecologists believe that the failure of the world’s governments to pursue aggressive climate action is in large part due to arguments that Nordhaus has advanced….
Read More about The Nobel Prize for climate catastrophe
Bookshelf
Native American scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer tells the story of mosses, the first plants to develop the ability to live on land. Unlike other plants they can survive long periods of drought in a condition of dessication – dry, brittle, brown – then spring back to life as soon as a drop of rain hits…
Read More about Gathering Moss, or the resilience of small things
CLIMATE CRISIS
From PeakProsperity.com: Many people are expecting some degree of approaching collapse — be it economic, environmental and/or societal — thinking that they’ll recognize the danger signs in time. As if it’ll be completely obvious, like a Hollywood blockbuster. That’s not how collapse works. Collapse is a process, not an event. And it’s already underway, all around us….
Read More about Chris Martenson: Collapse is already here
ALTERNATIVES
Michael Löwy writes: Capitalism, driven by the maximization of profit, is incompatible with a just and sustainable future. Ecosocialism offers a radical alternative that puts social and ecological well-being first. Attuned to the links between the exploitation of labor and the exploitation of the environment, ecosocialism stands against both reformist “market ecology” and “productivist socialism.”…
Read More about Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green future
CLIMATE CRISIS
From The Guardian: Thousands of Central American migrants trudging through Mexico towards the US have regularly been described as either fleeing gang violence or extreme poverty. But another crucial driving factor behind the migrant caravan has been harder to grasp: climate change, even if migrants don’t often specifically mention “climate change” as a motivating factor….
Read More about The unseen driver behind the migrant caravan: climate change
ALTERNATIVES
Carol Dansereau writes: Is there a place for incremental reforms in our struggle to save humanity? Yes. But support for such reforms must be carried out in the context of our larger goal: securing and using real power through democratically managed public-ownership and guaranteed economic rights. Everything we do needs to feed into that goal….
Read More about What It Will Take: Rejecting Dead-Ends and False Friends in the Fight for the Earth
ALTERNATIVES
Naomi Klein writes on the game-changing proposal for a ‘Green New Deal’ mooted by popular U.S. politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Also, an inside view of the youth climate movement unexpectedly making waves in Trump’s America, and an interview with co-founder Varshni Prakash. Also included is a critical take on the Green New Deal by Don Fitz….
Read More about The Sunrise Movement and the ‘Green New Deal’: Climate hope from Trump’s America?
Conserve/Resist
The full text of a Public Interest Litigation initiated before the Supreme Court of India, by Akhilesh Chipli and Shankar Sharma, requesting the court to draw firm legal limits on India’s suicidally destructive economic growth during the last three decades, which has led to rapidly deteriorating ecological conditions (air, water, soil, climate) in the country….
Read More about Read: A PIL to protect India’s vital, life-supporting natural resources
CLIMATE CRISIS
Luke Darby writes: A damning UN report says we have about 12 years to prevent climate change from wreaking havoc on the world. To do that, governments need to look seriously at the forces driving it. And an honest assessment of how we got here lays the blame squarely at the feet of the 1%….
Read More about Billionaires are the leading cause of climate change
Bookshelf
From Vox.com: “For a long time I was a climate change denier,” says William T. Vollmann, the award-winning American author, journalist, and war correspondent. Yet, he has just completed a sprawling, two volume polemic called Carbon Ideologies, which explores the ideology of energy consumption, and is addressed to humans living in a “hot dark future.”…
Read More about Carbon Ideologies: ‘The most honest take on climate change yet’
ALTERNATIVES
From The Conversation: The eminent American naturalist Aldo Leopold described the emotional toll of ecological loss thus: “One of the penalties of an ecological education,” he wrote, “is to live alone in a world of wounds.” Ecological grief reminds us that climate change is not just some abstract scientific concept or a distant environmental problem….
Read More about Hope and mourning in the Anthropocene: Understanding ecological grief
CLIMATE CRISIS
This September, Greta Thunberg went on strike and sat on the steps of Sweden’s parliament building in Stockholm. Her demand? That the government take radical action on climate change. Since then, this autistic 15-year-old has become the face of climate resistance in Europe. Her motto? “We can’t save the world by playing by the rules.”…
Read More about ‘It is time to rebel’: Meet Greta Thunberg, 15-year-old climate firebrand
CLIMATE CRISIS
From Los Angeles Times: As yet another mega-fire rages through California, we present the powerhouse 1996 essay by Mike Davis, covering history, science, Marxist analysis— and a certain amount of trolling. Its main point is that Californians will never accept that fire is not only common there, but part of its ecology going back centuries….
Read More about Let Malibu burn: A political history of California’s Fire Coast
William Nordhaus
Bookshelf
William Nordhaus’ low-ball estimates of the costs of climate change and high-ball estimates of the costs of containing the threat contributed to a lost decade in the fight against climate change, lending intellectual legitimacy to denial and delay. The IPCC report, released the day Nordhaus got his Nobel, heightens the award’s absurdity, writes Eugene Linden….
Read More about The economics Nobel went to a guy who enabled climate change denial and delay
CLIMATE CRISIS
A new group called Extinction Rebellion, has called for mass civil disobedience in the UK starting next month and promises it has hundreds of people – from teenagers to pensioners – ready to get arrested in an effort to draw attention to the unfolding climate emergency. The group is backed by almost 100 senior academics….
Read More about Extinction Rebellion: The green movement making waves in the UK
Bookshelf
Most people have passed through some kind of initiation; a crisis that defies what you knew and what you were. Societies can also pass through a similar initiation. That is what climate change poses to the present global civilization. A key element of this transformation is from a geomechanical worldview to a Living Planet worldview….
Read More about Charles Eisenstein: Initiation into a living planet
ALTERNATIVES
Jason Hickel, Foreign Policy: Many policymakers have responded to ecological breakdown by pushing for what has come to be called “green growth.” It sounds like an elegant solution to an otherwise catastrophic problem. There is just one hitch: New evidence suggests that green growth isn’t the panacea everyone hopes for. In fact, it’s not even possible….
Read More about Why growth can’t be green
CLIMATE CRISIS
A Special Report on Global Warming has been released today by the IPCC, considered the international benchmark on climate change. Ahead of it, Donald Brown reviewed three independent studies which show that climate change is a much more urgent and serious threat than indicated by past IPCC reports, and examines the ethical questions they raise….
Read More about The IPCC systematically underestimates climate risks: here’s the proof
CLIMATE CRISIS
A research-paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by an academic journal, citing the emotional impact that it might have on readers. The paper offers a new framing to make sense of the disaster we face, called “deep adaptation.” It has now been released online by the author, Prof. Jem Bendell….
Read More about The study on climate-collapse they don’t want you to read – yet
Development/Growth
To the shock of greens everywhere, Indian PM Modi, whose government has absolutely the worst environmental track record in the country’s history, has been declared a UN “Champion of the Earth”. However, coming from Erik Solheim, the UN environment chief facing a string of corruption allegations himself, this ‘honour’ may not be all that surprising….
Read More about Presenting Narendra Modi, ‘Champion of the Earth’ (Disclaimer: This is not a joke)
