In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on ‘the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists’ to discuss the ‘rapid crumbling of capitalism’ and the beckoning of another war. They were electric events which, according to one account, were attended by 3,500 members of the public with more than a thousand turned away.
". . . the idea that the big crime is to build a pipeline, and not potentially blow it up – that idea has a very broad appeal.”
Apr. 21, 2023
Andreas Malm says he has no hope in ‘dominant classes’, and urges more radical approach to climate activism
International climate diplomacy is hopeless, the author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline has said, as the film adaptation of the radical environmentalist book is released.
"By focusing on pressure campaigns against private actors with no direct effect on the fossil fuel industry, well-intentioned people inadvertently delay the necessary struggle to win and engage state power to phase out the extraction and production of fossil fuels.". . . . "Indeed, doing so buys into the neoliberal logic that government can do nothing when, in fact, only government can shut down the fossil fuel industry."
In the summer of 2021, the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru gave the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the body that regulates international seabed mining, two years to complete regulations governing the new and contentious deep-sea mining industry.
With the deadline on the horizon, Episode 11 of Hot Politics tackles why some countries and mining companies want to harvest the bottom of the ocean and what impacts that will have on ecosystems that deep.