The environment

Stuff about nature etc.

Keir Starmer and the "growth mantra"

On 23 February, Keir Starmer set out his dream of leading a migrant-bashing, law-and-order government whose first aim is to have “the fastest growing economy in the G7”. In place of detail there is wonkish drivel. “Cross cutting-mission boards” “working across silos” with “flexible budget horizons” will “end sticking plaster politics”. But mission number 1, as with Truss, Sunak and every other bourgeois politician, is to deliver growth. Yet undifferentiated GDP growth can only deepen the ecological crisis. GDP growth involves increased production, which in turn means increased material...

Eleven rail cars of hazmat crash

On 3 February, a freight train derailed near the town of East Palestine, Ohio. The crash upended and set ablaze 50 of the train’s 150+ cars. Despite the Norfolk Southern freight train trailing a mass of over 18,000 tonnes and having a total length of 1.8 miles, miraculously no one was killed in the crash itself. Instead, the damage has been paid by locals’ health and the surrounding environment: eleven of those cars were loaded with hazardous, carcinogenic chemicals. Firefighters were unable to tackle the fire in the immediate aftermath given the outpouring of toxic gas. Days later, local...

When the lakes run dry

Without immediate emergency measures, one of the Western Hemisphere’s keystone ecosystems is at risk of collapse. The Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA, has lost 73% of its water since 1860 and scientists have warned “without a dramatic increase in water flow to the lake in 2023 and 2024, its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment, and economy.” The saline lake provides habitat for ten million migratory birds and is the only significant body of water in North America’s most arid region. It is running dry mostly due to local farmers extracting water from...

Protest against Bristol airport expansion

On 4 February 250 people protested in Bristol following a High Court ruling to allow Bristol Airport to expand, dismissing campaigners’ appeal. This ruling is a blow both to local democracy and to the climate. The local councils have repeatedly rejected the expansion, but have been overruled by central government. The government’s own advisors, the Climate Change Committee, have advised against net airport expansion. No- or low-emission flying is not viable on any scale in the near future — despite green-washing claims — so any serious attempt to curb climate change must seek to restrict, not...

How capitalist productivity boosts eco-destruction

“You can’t have wage rises unless they are backed by improvements in productivity.” This is the bosses’ line on the growing number of pay disputes. On the rail it means replacing 1,950 maintenance workers and 1,000 ticket office staff with machines, cutting routine maintenance by 50%. On the post, automated parcel sorting machines are part of a “modernisation agenda” that is putting 10,000 jobs at risk. The government has even suggested there are productivity gains to be squeezed from NHS workers. There are many good reasons to oppose these “modernisation” plans. One is that capitalism’s...

The toll of fertilisers and pesticides

At the Davos World Economic Forum, the boss of fertiliser giant Yara accused Putin of “weaponising food”. He has a point. Russia and Ukraine together produce 30% of the world’s wheat exports, 20% of barley exports and 75% of sunflower oil exports. But even bigger impact is the effect of the war on fertiliser and natural gas exports. Russia is the world’s top exporter of both fertiliser (15% of global output) and the key raw material for fertiliser production, fossil gas (18% of global output). This summer fertiliser prices were three times what they were last year. A study from University of...

Letter: Worker-led conversion, not just shrinking

Stuart Jordan ( Solidarity 656 ) contends that “capitalist work… needs to stop”. Capitalism itself needs to stop: not through piecemeal reductions in work under capitalism, but through collective social revolution. We stand in solidarity with the rail strikes. Yet in their direct impact, they surely increase car usage, and net carbon emissions. In the medium term, rail workers may fight for more rail, more work on the rails, against airport expansion — to ecological advantage. And, as Stuart suggests, workers’ power built through strikes is key to the fight to replace capitalism. “Work is...

Solidarity versus squandering

Karl Marx wrote of capitalism “enforcing economy in each individual business”, while “on the other hand, [it] begets, by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social means of production, not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous”. He further wrote of its “shameful squandering of human labour-power for the most despicable purposes”, notably through overdriving workers by bullying us, atomising us, and setting us to compete against each other. Capitalism promotes...

Letter: Stop the acceleration of matter

Zack Muddle ( Solidarity 653 ) is of course right that the problem is capitalist work, rather than work per se, is driving the ecological crises. But capitalist work is what three billion wage workers do at the moment, and it needs to stop. The capitalist mode of production involves a constant pressure to do more work in less time. We sense this at work through our boss’s efforts to squeeze more work out of our working day. It also manifests as the replacement of human workers with ever more powerful machines. Work is always a physical movement of matter, the creation and distribution of use...

The New Pangaea and biodiversity

The government’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, Defra, has announced a £156,000 fund aimed at protecting Britain’s sea bird population. Of the 4,400-plus islands in the British Isles, a number are particularly important for migrating sea birds. The fund is designed to improve “biosecurity” measures and prevent invasive predators, like rats and stoats from getting to these islands. Alongside direct predation, habitat destruction, climate change and the production and release of biocidal chemicals, invasive species are one of the great drivers of the current mass extinction...

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