Category Archives: climate change

a Marxist critique of the Green New Deals and Extinction Rebellion

Posted on May 3, 2019 by | 23 comments

‘Selling Extinction is a short introduction to the capitalist notion of a “Green New Deal”, the NGOs that support it and the recent Extinction Rebellion protests in London.’

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Posted in climate change, compromised NGOs and non-profit industrial complex

Venezuelan Ecosocialism

Posted on March 14, 2019 by | Leave a comment

Featuring the following essay works well for me, as the triple themes I hold near and dear to my heart are represented: the coup against Nicolás Maduro (and past ones against Hugo Chavez), media bias, and ecosocialism.  Rather than bring some of the ghastly news in the next-generation attempts to overthrow his regime, I’ll focus on this and bring the rest another day.  And happy π day to all.

‘The Path to Climate Justice Passes Through Caracas’, March 9, 2019, counterpunch.org, David Schwartzman & Quincy Saul

In their Fighting the Media War section, the authors quote Karl Marx calling it “the war of calumny undertaken by the lying power of the civilised world,” and extras, describing the media war against the International Workingmen’s Association, which later became known as The First International.
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Posted in capitalism and anti-capitalism, climate change

Scurrying Fascist Cockroaches

Posted on March 1, 2019 by | 19 comments

…is the title of a recent essay of John Steppling’s, and I contacted him at his website  (http://john-steppling.com/) to ask if given its length and breadth if I might use more of it than is strictly Fair Use as neither the Café nor c99% are for profit.  He wrote back and kindly said, “Use what you want from any of my writings”.  So I’ll most all of his Feb. 25 essay at DissidentVoice, although there’s a version at Counterpunch as well.
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Posted in capitalism and anti-capitalism, climate change, democrats as stautus quo gatekeepers

Green Capitalism Aglow

Posted on February 12, 2019 by | 12 comments

There seem to have been quite a number of past iterations of Ocasio-Cortez & Co.’s #GreenNewDeal, as she now indicates, and offers her ‘Submitted’ One (text version is here).  This is Senator Markey’s Resolution (pdf) with ten cosponsors.

But here’s the main thing: the GND doesn’t confront the fossil fuel industry, but enables it instead.  Ecosocialists first came on my radar while covering the Rio 2012 sustainability conference.  Indigenous groups from Mexico, Central and South America had caravanned to the global elite conference, but weren’t allowed inside, so they held their own remarkable side conferences.  The Bolivian 2010 Peoples Agreement of Cochabamba was presented (as well as other heady Indigenous documents); it was the day I’d first understood the true evils of capitalism.  From their metaphorical second cousins the Indigenous Environmental Network:
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a current climate chaos compendium: Part III: water

Posted on June 27, 2018 by | 22 comments

This part will be full of horrifying facts and news, but my theory is ‘it’s better to know than to not know’.  Given its intensity, you may want to begin by wrapping your spirits and psyches in some sort of protective bubble that you’ve found helpful in the past.  Many readers will prefer ‘hope’ to ‘hopelessness’, and more on that at the bottom, but I did stick in a music video at the end that might be a bit of a tonic.
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Posted in capitalism and anti-capitalism, climate change

a current climate chaos compendium: Part II

Posted on June 21, 2018 by | 2 comments

subtitled: They have apps for that! 

(part I is here (café version), (c99% version))

‘Our Climate is Changing Rapidly; It’s Time to Talk about Geoengineering’, futurism.com, Jan. 12, 2018.  The author discusses several high-tech methods afoot, deconstructs most of them as to the dangers of unintended consequences, costs, and what the actual bio-chemical science of some of the ‘solutions’ would wreak. To save quoting extensively, I’ll borrow their graphics, then bring a few lines from a 2017 piece at the Guardian as explanations.
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Posted in climate change, compromised NGOs and non-profit industrial complex

a current climate chaos compendium: Part I

Posted on June 18, 2018 by | 5 comments

First, from Robert Hunziker’s  “State of the Climate – It’s Alarming!’, counterpunch, ‘June 15, 2018, (in which  he actually does explain his use of the exclamation point in his title.)
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Posted in climate change