Climate change

The anti-G7 protests in Cornwall confirmed to me a trend I had suspected for a while: that XR, coming out of the year(s) of lockdowns, is by far the biggest activist environmental force around. However many criticisms we have of their politics, that makes it imperative for us to engage with them. As well as organising and mobilising for national and international protests, there are countless local XR groups which are still — or becoming once more — active. Urgency was added to my longer-standing intentions to get involved, not only by the recent upsurge in extreme weather events, flooding...

Workers’ Liberty argues that real progress on the climate will only happen when trade unionists embrace environmentalism and make it their own, and when the environmental movement learns to appreciate the potential power of workers to make change. Bringing the two together is not easy but it is essential. One possible avenue opens up in the form of the new Climate Emergency Centres. As 500 local councils declared a climate emergency in response to the youth climate strikes, a group called Space Generators, with experience in the squatters movement and then Occupy, seized the opportunity to...

Cycling across London the day after our summer school Ideas For Freedom (10-11 July), I was soaked to the bone in, I believe, the heaviest rainfall I’ve experienced in the UK. The tropical-style downpour turned roads into rivers. A premonition of things to come? Very soon, in fact. In the week since, over 165 people have been confirmed dead from flooding across western Europe. Up to 1,300 further people are unaccounted for in one German district alone: whole villages have been destroyed, bridges twisted out of place, as rivers have burst banks. In Verviers, in Belgium, an overnight curfew was...

For a study session on degrowth, I thought I'd share some more readings on the topic. This is by no means comprehensive but should give a flavour of the arguments that have been taking place in Capitalism Nature Socialism and New Left Review. Personally I think none of them manage to develop a Marxist analysis of the matter. Nonetheless, it is important to engage in and contribute to this discussion. Happy to help any questions about the texts - and please share more [e.g. in the comments] if you have come across something. We will be reading the first too for our reading group (a...

Marxism and ecosocialism: study course Thursdays 8pm (UTC+1), 15 July 2021 to 5 August 2021 Please register (free) on Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.com/e/karl-marxs-ecosocialism-study-group-on-saitos-book-tickets-162039455373 Zoomlink each Thursday https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81679399952?pwd=WW9lRzF1M1l4VVVsWTZVOFdyTS84dz09M Study guide for the course Powerpoint for session 1 (15 July) Powerpoint for session 2 (22 July) Powerpoint for session 3 (29 July) Powerpoint for session 4 (5 August) Click here for review of Saito's book

For debate and discussion on Malm, see here. Andreas Malm has developed a deeply authoritarian climate politics, using Marxist phraseology to mask a thoroughgoing anti-democratic, anti-working class position. His zigzags from compulsory veganism to sabotage badly mislead the climate movement. But his most heinous error is the proposal to import the approach of Hamas-type Palestinian “resistance” into climate politics. To do so would strangle the climate movement in its infancy. Malm rarely misses the opportunity to refer to “the Palestinian resistance” in his climate change writings. His...

Clive Lewis, Labour MP for Norwich South, spoke to Sacha Ismail in late March. There could still be another 30,000 deaths as we approach the end of lockdown, and maybe much more. Even with the vaccine program at full tilt, in the absence of a proper test and trace system, an isolation system and social support for people, it’s still potentially a dire situation and could still overwhelm the NHS. [This was even before the "Indian variant" of Covid was widely discussed.] NHS workers have launched their demand for a 15% pay rise. Do you support that? Yes, absolutely. We need to aim high. I’m...

Climate scientists are beginning to panic. According to a new report from the government-commissioned Climate Change Committee the UK is even worse prepared for climate change than we were five years ago. The latest and third CCC report was released with some provocative statements “designed to elicit a response” from government. So far no response has been forthcoming. For decades now scientists have been raising the alarm about the threats of climate change. For the almost entire time that humans have been on Earth, the planet’s climate has been extremely erratic, with repeated ice ages and...

More photos below article My trip to Cornwall to demonstrate around the G7 summit (11-13 June) felt a bit like a set of concentric circles: I was part of and helping to cohere a delegation of Workers’ Liberty supporters and friends; we were seeking to imbue socialist politics, internationalism, and a working-class orientation into the wider anti-G7 movement; and that movement was challenging the G7 and the politics they represent. It was only en route towards the most southwesterly tip of this island, cutting through the darkening fog in a car-share with newly-acquainted comrades — and...