Marxist economist Michael Roberts reviews Kohei Saito's forthcoming book.
John Bellamy Foster
In the US, the young new socialist Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made a splash by setting out concrete plans for a 鈥淕reen New Deal鈥 to transition away from fossil fuels to a 100% renewable, zero-emissions economy within 10 years.
John Bellamy Foster听is editor of Marxist journal Monthly Review, whose books include 惭补谤虫鈥檚 Ecology (2002) and The Ecological Revolution (2009). He spoke to听Fiona Ferguson, a听Belfast-based听activist in听People Before Profit. The interview below is posted the Irish socialist website听.
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It鈥檚 wrong to think that we can campaign to stop climate change in the same way we might campaign to end a war. All the evidence says we are well past that stage now. That is, even if by some impossible, magical course of events all carbon pollution on Earth was stopped tomorrow, we鈥檇 still be in really, really deep trouble.
So many greenhouse gases have been pumped into the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere that we have rushed far past the safe upper limit 鈥 the famous 350 parts per million of CO2, the number that climate action group 350.org took for its name.
Do oil spills make good economic sense? A witness called by Canadian firm Enbridge Inc鈥 which wants approval to build a $6.5 billion pipeline linking Alberta鈥檚 tar sands with the Pacific coast 鈥 in British Columbia that the answer is yes.
In recent debates around solutions to the climate crisis, several ideas hold the largest share of government support and media coverage. These include: green consumerism, carbon offsetting, carbon taxes, carbon trading, geo-engineering and carbon capture and storage.
But do these 鈥渟olutions鈥 take, as their frame of reference, the full extent of the problem? Here are some reasons to be doubtful.
Green consumerism is one variation of the argument whereby 鈥測our dollar is your vote鈥.
John Bellamy Foster, the keynote speaker at the upcoming 鈥 to be held in Melbourne from September 30 to October 3 鈥 is the co-author (with Fred Magdoff) of a newly published book: .
It can sometimes feel like we鈥檙e losing a race against time to avoid environmental catastrophe and social collapse.
Climate change is already extinguishing species, destroying essential food production and forcing thousands of people to flee their island homes.
People are directly affected by more wars than ever before in history.
While the underlying causes of the recent global financial crisis remain, governments are imposing vicious austerity policies on the majority of people in the Global North and South to pay for the capitalists鈥 greed.