Ecosocialism in the age of climate change needs to stop being a niche, an abstract ideological program, and turn into a concrete, practical, non-dogmatic plan for the future.
We need to make some serious changes in the ecosocialist project.
It’s good that we have the idea of ecosocialism. Because the words stand for a basic idea that ecology and socialism go together. Linked, they are the hope of the world.
Denial, lies, and now gimmicks--the body count doesn't phase them, as long as the profits keep rolling in. Future intergalactic travelers may highlight humanity as the only species to knowingly make itself extinct.
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.
Website Editor: A great summary of Canada's fossil fuels situation and politics in this article.
Nov. 22, 2022
Canada wants to be the last country producing fossil fuels, even if it kills us
COP27 is over. The UN summit took one big step forward on climate justice with the creation of a loss and damage fund for the most impacted nations, while taking two enormous steps backwards by failing to call for a phaseout of all fossil fuels.
This essay is dedicated to the memory of Herman Daly, the father of ecological economics, who began writing about the absurdity of perpetual economic growth in the 1970s; Herman died on October 28 at age 84.
Politicians and economists talk glowingly about growth. They want our cities and GDP to grow. Jobs, profits, companies, and industries all should grow; if they don’t, there’s something wrong, and we must identify the problem and fix it. Yet few discuss doubling time, even though it’s an essential concept for understanding growth.
Corporations, the province and allies like the Fraser Institute are pushing ahead with a flawed alternative to greener energy.
Big Oil and supportive governments have stalled action on climate change for so long that, as the clock ticks toward catastrophe, one of the last hopes is the expensive and unproven technology of carbon capture and storage, or CCS.
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.