Aug 15, 2017

VANCOUVER, Canada—For nearly two weeks, beginning August 1, the skies over Vancouver were filled with the smoke of forest fires burning in central and northern British Columbia. The smoke from those fires and others farther afield has waxed and waned over much of North America since July. Three days ago, Vancouver and coastal BC and Washington State gained a respite thanks to a weather front from the Pacific Ocean that pushed the smoke eastward. But the respite could end soon, depending on the vagaries of weather patterns.

“In order to replace capitalism with an ecological society we need a revolution.” That modest sentence is how Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, the authors of Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation, begin the last chapter of their new book. Although the chapter is the end of the book, it is also an opening to a new direction, a new movement. It is also the essence of the entire text.

Climate change is widely recognized as the most urgent issue facing planet Earth. The scientific community is clear: we must take strong action to stop practices that are causing global warming or risk passing a tipping point. [1]

Yet instead of democratic leadership to protect the wellbeing of the planet ahead of all other interests, the UN is giving a stronger role to the fossil fuel industry in setting global climate change policy.

Canadian authorities are seeking to beef up their oversight of publicly-traded companies so that they come clean about the costs of doing business on a warming planet.

The locales say that actions by oil, natural gas and coal companies intensified climate change

Two California counties and a city yesterday sued 37 oil, natural gas and coal companies and trade groups, saying their actions intensified climate change and exacerbated costly sea-level rise.