Science and Technology

Carbon offset is deceit

Oil giant Total is in the process of opening up a new oil field off the coast of Suriname containing an estimated ten billion barrels of oil and 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. Total’s exploration and drilling takes place in a world where 60% of developed reserves must stay in the ground if we are to have half a chance of halting warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, according to the Total, this project remains within their “Net Zero” goals because of a $50 million carbon offset bought from the Suriname government. The “carbon offset” will not draw down any carbon from the atmosphere; it...

Cells, complexity and chaos

Paul Nurse’s What is Life? is a useful primer in modern biology, especially for Marxists who are trying to get to grips how the word “metabolism” helps illuminate questions of ecology. He starts with explaining that cells are much more than the basic building block of life. Cells are “the simplest thing that embodies all the signature characteristics of life” (ch 9). Cells, like all lifeforms, are “bounded physical entities separate from, but in communication with, their environments”. Each cell is surrounded by a lipid membrane that is two molecules across. Cells absorb materials and energy...

20,000 days: a history of life expectancy

Throughout history, life expectancy (LE) has been around 30 years, sometimes lower, e.g. with the adoption of agriculture, plague, or cramming the new industrial working class into slums (described in Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England ; he called their accelerated deaths “social murder”). Marx predicted increasing immiseration of the working class relative to the ruling class so it is doubtful whether he could have predicted what would actually happen to all classes, LE more than doubling in under 200 years, an average extra 20,000 days of life. A sharp change Though the rich...

James Webb telescope: celebrating homophobia?

James Webb (right) with JFK In writing ( Solidarity 619 ) about the science of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) I omitted the political dispute about its name. James Webb was the NASA administrator (effectively, the Chief Executive Officer) from 1961 to 1968: the “Apollo Era”, which saw the birth of human space-flight. During his tenure, Webb was keen to stress the dual purpose of NASA, as an agency not just for space flight and exploration, but also scientific discovery. He was right to do so. For this reason Webb’s eventual successor, the NASA administrator in 2002, Robert O’Keefe...

James Webb: in search of our cosmic origins

As I write this, nearly one million kilometres away the James Webb Space Telescope ventures into the Solar System as part of humanity’s latest endeavour to understand the origins of the universe. Webb is the biggest and most powerful telescope ever put into space. It has been referred to as the long-term replacement to the Hubble Space Telescope. However, Webb has a primary mirror nearly ten times the collecting area of Hubble, and will observe primarily at longer “infrared” wavelengths. In comparison to Hubble, Webb will peer much deeper into the universe, and observe phenomena at different...

The invention of tradition on Marxist ecology

In his influential book The Invention of Tradition , Eric Hobsbawm explained the process by which historians seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, attempting to establish continuity with a suitable historic past. Marxism is not exempt from the manufacture of tradition. In fact the battle of ideas is often fought around the legitimacy of decisions made by individuals and parties at crucial times in the past. Thus we openly proclaim our affinity with the methods, theories and practices of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Luxemburg and Gramsci, the foremost...

How to curb Omicron

As the Tory government flounders on Omicron, Keir Starmer could tell us on 13 December only that out of “patriotism” he would back its Plan B measures against the let-the-virus-rip Tory right, the people who call themselves “libertarians” though they back the Police Bill, the Borders Bill, anti-union laws, and voter ID. Labour left MP Richard Burgon has rightly pushed the need also for full sick or isolation pay for all, and reinstatement of furlough pay. Emergency measures are needed to boost the NHS and social care, which were already overstretched before Omicron and before winter proper set...

The future of Covid-curbing

We know less about the future of the Omicron variant of the virus behind Covid than do the scientists who insist that it will be weeks before a clear picture. But from what the scientists are reasonably sure of, already some political conclusions follow. The months for which governments have stalled demands to requisition Big Pharma assets — at least the patents and the technical know-how which would allow ultra-fast worldwide expansion of vaccine production and distribution — will now take a toll in Africa. The world jab rate has been more or less static, around 0.4 doses per 100 people per...

To curb Omicron, requisition Big Pharma

On 23 November South African medical authorities identified the Omicron variant of the virus behind Covid. It had probably been circulating for a while before that, and has already spread to many countries. This sharpens the urgency of requisitioning the patents and other assets of Big Pharma. It focuses three facts: 1. Covid can’t be abolished by a lockdown or even a vaccination drive. Governments which say they will “send coronavirus packing” are blustering. 2. Curbs like mask mandates, work-from-home rules, vax-or-test rules for entering higher-risk spaces, and even full lockdowns, only...

Facebook and its plan for “proper empires”

The future is not what it used to be. The tech giants were once seen as harbingers of a new utopia even by some leftists, but no more. Facebook has seen its moral stock crash, first with its role in the election of Trump and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Social media is now subject to harsh criticism even by some of those who made it (see Netflix’s The Social Dilemma ). In recent weeks, the cache of documents released by ex-Facebook employee Frances Haugen has further damned Facebook. At the same time, Facebook’s rebranding as Meta points to plans that will make its commercial proposition...

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