Climate change

In its pursuit of profit, capitalism is frying and boiling our planet. The uncontrolled wildfires burning through July and August — from Hawaii to Greece, from western Canada to Tenerife — not only symbolise runaway climate change, but give a warning of worse to come. The eight hottest years on record are the last eight. 2023 is set to beat them. We haven’t yet reached the key threshold of 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. As we race towards and most likely past it, the events of this summer will start to look minor. Events like the new uncontrolled wildfires are only part of the...

Death Valley, California 53.3C; Sanbao, Xinjiang 52.2C; Mexicali, Mexico 50.2C; Tunis 50C; Sicily 47.3C. The July heatwave has been as unrelenting as it has been extensive. And now (31 July) Rishi Sunak has announced that the government intends to give over 100 new licences for oil and gas development in the North Sea, with all their carbon-emission implications. While the UK has experienced a month of damp weather, large parts of the world have suffered temperatures near the limits of human survivability. This is the world at 1.2C warming. Emissions are still rising, and temperatures will...

The government’s own Climate Change Commission has found the UK is missing its climate targets on every front. The home insulation scheme needs to expand tenfold. Road traffic emissions have increased for lack of investment in public transport. There is no plan for heavy industry like steel. Lack of regulation means new homes will have to be retrofitted to make them climate resilient. Wind turbine and photovoltaic installation is far too slow. There is no plan for green hydrogen. There are not enough trees being planted. The list goes on. In fact, it’s worse than the CCC finds. The Tories are...

Earlier this month, Sunak and other prominent Tories declared that Starmer and Labour were taking climate change too seriously. Sunak frothed that “eco-zealots at Just Stop Oil are writing Keir Starmer's energy policy" — alongside other dishonest smears from other champions of climate catastrophe. Paul Vernadsky’s recent letter seems to take a similar tactic: “I am alarmed that Solidarity ’s ecological politics is collapsing into a callow regurgitation of Extinction Rebellion and its offshoots.” He doesn’t specify what are the similarities or specific limitations of XR, Paul simply uses XR as...

The “left” has a long and ignoble tradition of the spinning or selective reading of thinkers, activists, or traditions: building a cardboard army to back up this or that position.

Two years ago we said that we would write a pamphlet on the ecological crises. In the course of attempting that we realised there was a need for further study and discussion. We should use the conference period to discuss the controversial issues that have arisen from this study in more detail, clarify the lines of agreement and disagreement. This document is not intended as a comprehensive statement but simply an attempt to move these discussions forward. I think for a long time we only really thought about climate change as the big ecological problem. More recently we have come to see...

Pic: @gewman The Asian heatwave has broken hundreds of temperature records across over a dozen countries. Thailand (45.4°C), Vietnam (44.1°C) and Turkmenistan (42.2°C) have all experienced national records. In Maharastra, India, 13 people died and over a hundred people were hospitalised with heat stroke at an outdoor award ceremony. In Chiang Mai, Thailand, heat and the burning of crop residues have created a noxious smog that has overwhelmed health services with patients suffering respiratory problems. In Tripura and West Bengal, India, schools closed due to the rising temperatures. Record...

It’s taken me some time to recognise this but Paul Vernadsky and Paul Hampton have a perculiar way of describing metabolism. In the Pauls' reading, the word "metabolism" is a "metaphor". Throughout their writing they explain "metabolism" as a codeword: "[1] to define how labour mediates the relationship between society and nature [2] to describe how class societies generate metabolic rifts in the ecology of the Earth; and [3] to outline the systemic conditions of necessary for metabolic restoration." You can find this three-part explanation every time either Paul mentions metabolism (See 2022...

Tens of thousands of people participated in the 22 April central London march that marked the highpoint of Extinction Rebellion’s 21-24 April, “The Big One”, a long weekend of events and protests. Workers’ Liberty was there, as were some other socialists and trade unionists, including the organised XR Trade Unionists grouping. The civil service union PCS officially backed the event. There are left-wing, class-struggle-oriented stirrings in the XR milieu, or at least on its edges. At The Big One XR Trade Unionists ran a lively and interesting “hub” with speakers, ran stalls, collected contacts...

Zack Muddle’s response to my critique of Andreas Malm (30 March 2022) is to dismiss it as “much ado about nothing”. Zack says there is “much to agree with and of value” in my articles, although does not say what is acceptable. Zack denies we have “major and profound disagreement”. Actually, there remain significant differences that cannot be glossed over. Zack’s response is – sticking with Shakespeare – a comedy of errors. The disagreement centres on Malm’s book, Fossil Capital (2016), which Zack still believes is a useful contribution to Marxist ecology. I strongly dispute that and see it as...