The Most Dangerous Climate Catastrophe Delusions

Human activities have unequivocally overheated our planet (Lee et al., 2023). According to the sixth and latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), without radical changes, the current global trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions will lead to an average global temperature increase of 3.2°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the 21st century (Lee et al., 2023). If this occurs, the lives of almost half of the human population would be threatened (Lee et al., 2023), as large areas of the planet would become uninhabitable. Even though we have had a solid scientific consensus for decades on the causes and consequences of the climate crisis, the increase in emissions has not been slowed, and in fact they are now 60% higher than in the 1990s (Stoddard et al., 2021). Every year, emissions and temperature records are broken, and increasingly extreme weather events hit us. In order to change the trajectory we are on, it is necessary to debunk several myths that proliferate, which are listed below (IPCC, 2022).

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Research and analysis to provoke public awareness and critical thinking

We contribute to the liberalisation of the democratic instituions of society, for they have been captured by the owners of the market. They work in tandem with their market agents, who, posing as public servants, are entrenched in the halls of government. The political class has betrayed its public mandate and instead operates to impose a marketocratic state to maximise the shareholder value of the institutional investors of international financial markets. They own the global corporations and think they own the world on behalf of their very private interest.

Our spheres of action: true democracy – true sustainability – living wage – basic income – inequality – ecological footprint – degrowth – global warming –human development – corporate accountability – civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights, responsible consumption, sustainable autonomous citizen cells...

Parting from an ethos of true democracy and true sustainability, We, the citizenry, work to advance the paradigm whose only purpose is to go in pursuit of the welfare of People and Planet and NOT the market.

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• © The Jus Semper Global Alliance

Just population policies for an overpopulated world

After three decades of neglect, environmentalists are waking back up to the need to limit human numbers. But like Rip Van Winkle, we find that the world changed while we were asleep. There are now billions more people, hundreds of millions of new members in the global middle class, and elevated consumption among the wealthy. Meanwhile the planet has grown warmer, more polluted, tamer and more depauperate. This article specifies what just population policies look like for an overpopulated world: one where most national populations must decrease significantly to create sustainable societies, and where failure to do so threatens environmental disaster for humans and the rest of life on Earth. It argues that governments in both underdeveloped and overdeveloped countries should encourage and enable one-child families and discourage larger ones, striking a proper balance between reproductive rights and reproductive responsibilities.

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Ecosocialism and Degrowth

(an interview of John Bellamy Foster)

The Degrowth Approach

Arman Spéth: Degrowth is on the rise. In recent years, several internationally recognised publications have appeared that speak out in favour of the ecosocialist degrowth approach. The journal Monthly Review, of which you are editor, has adopted this approach recently in your “Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development.” What are the motives behind this and how do you explain the popularity of left-wing degrowth approaches?

John Bellamy Foster: Although “degrowth” as a term has caught on only recently, the idea is not new. Since at least May 1974, Monthly Review, beginning with Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, has explicitly insisted on the reality of the limits of growth, the need to rein in exponential accumulation, and the necessity of establishing a steady-state economy overall (which does not obviate the need for growth in the poorer economies). As Magdoff and Sweezy stated at that time, “instead of a universalpanacea, it turns out that growth is itself a cause of disease.” To“stop growth,” they argued, what was necessary was the“restructuring [of] existing production” through “social planning.” This was associated with a systematic critique of the economic and ecological waste under monopoly capitalism and the squandering of the social surplus.

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The fertility of death

From compost we come, and in compost we shall turn

We call it planet Earth, but it should be called planet Life. This is the thesis of Catalan ecologist Jordi Miralles Ferrer because "the real peculiarity of our planet is not the land, nor the oceans, but this thin layer that covers everything called the biosphere". It is unique in that, so far, no life has been found to exist anywhere else in the universe. Thin because, although we can find a few birds flying ten kilometres above sea level or deep-sea fish at a depth of eight kilometres, the space where life takes place is equivalent, if the planet were the size of an apple, to the skin that covers it.

What if we were to call it planet Death? Again, it would describe a peculiarity of the planet because, until proven otherwise, there is no death anywhere else in the universe. Indeed, without life, there is no death, and vice versa. We call it the biosphere, but we might as well call that thin layer where organic matter dances a dance without choreography the thanatosphere. But the culture of modernity no longer worships life and death as it deserves. On the contrary, by imposing rational thinking, it ends up forgetting the mystery of this infinite cycle.

In any case, it is clear that we die as we live or vice versa, that the same ways of inhabiting the world are found in the ways of abandoning it. While urban macro-cemeteries and their skyscrapers of niches are a clear expression of how most lives materialise on the margins of nature, chain cremation in mortuaries is a faithful reflection of the level of industrialisation and urbanisation we have reached.

As is already happening in other places, and looking for inspiration in past cultures or cultures different from the capitalist Western one, hopefully, we can free ourselves from fears and prejudices to review not only how we face death but also because it has a lot to do with it, how we face life, to propose and demand alternatives of natural funerals such as green cemeteries or humusation to facilitate our metamorphosis. We come from compost and we will turn into compost.

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"The most terrible consequence of monoculture is how it camouflages itself in a false landscape"

The monoculture forestry industry has many harmful consequences for the environment and society. On the one hand, there is the impact on the environment, expressed in problems of water, biodiversity, bee mortality and human illnesses caused by pesticides, as well as a notable increase in the frequency and size of mega wildfires.

In any case, the most terrible consequence of monoculture, I think, is the way it is camouflaged as if it were a landscape. After all, people get used to living surrounded by forests that are not forests. Naturalising that landscape that stretches thousands of kilometres to the south and that, in those rows and rows of identical trees, prevents us from seeing the multiple acts of violence that have made it possible to put them there. And there is an enormous danger of their presence because a spark is enough to set everything on fire.

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Degrowth under discussionin the heart of the beast

An analysis of the main positions and interventions at the recent 'post-growth Woodstock' in the European Parliament

For three days, from 15 to 17 May, the European Parliament hosted a historic event. Some have called it the Woodstock of post-growth. In the Beyond Growth conference series, organised by 18 MEPs of different colours, many of the world's best minds on the issue of degrowth/post-growth debated with some of the continent's leading politicians.

The first plenary was a taste of what was to come, of the fracture that is increasingly opening up between science and politics, a fracture between the irrefutable evidence of scientific urgency and the limits of the Union's realpolitik to achieve transformations that are not patches or, even worse, disguises. If you follow the story of what has happened, you will see that, despite everything and everyone, there is a way out for Europe and the rest of the world.

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Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: a: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism (an interview...)

Zhao Dingqi: During the Cold War, how did the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conduct the “Cultural Cold War”? What activities did the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom carry out, and what impact did it have?

Gabriel Rockhill: The CIA undertook, along with other state agencies and the foundations of major capitalist enterprises, a multifaceted cultural cold war aimed at containing—and ultimately rolling back and destroying—communism. This propaganda war was international in scope and had many different aspects, only a few of which I touch on below. It is important to note at the outset, however, that in spite of its extensive reach and the ample resources dedicated to it, manybattles have been lost throughout this war. To take but one recent example that demonstrates how this conflict continues today, Raúl Antonio Capote revealed in his 2015 book that he worked for the CIA for years in its destabilisation campaigns in Cuba targeting intellectuals, writers, artists, and students....

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The Necessity of System Change: An Ecological and Marxian Synthesis

Over the last few decades, we have witnessed both an intensification and a convergence of a number of crises: from the 2008 global financial crisis to the emergence of new infectious diseases (the SARS outbreak of 2003 and the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19, to mention two), to the acceleration of climate change and biodiversity loss, to the persistence of various forms of malnutrition. Such crises have offered the opportunity to reflect on the most important drivers. For example, we know that the encroachment of human activities related to the expansion of farming, logging, and mining into previously remote wild habitats is an important driver for biodiversity loss and the emergence of new infectious diseases, while also accelerating climate change (for example, through deforestation). We know that the continuous extraction and use of fossil fuels in transport and production is the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, we also know thatthe deregulation of the financial markets has encouragedspeculative behaviours, which can wreak havoc on economic and social systems.

In all of these cases, we have heard experts, regulators, and members of civil society calling for radical changes to financial, food, and energy systems. But while such outlooks are important, they remain incomplete, since they tend to focus on the proximate causes while missing the deeper systemic elements. In what follows, we provide a more comprehensive narrative that looks at the systemic cause of the different crises: the accumulation and circulation of capital on an ever-increasing scale.

For a full read of this brief, ~ file.

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Einstein’s “Why Socialism?” and ‘Monthly Review’: A Historical Introduction

A Spring 1949 memorandum in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Albert Einstein File,” part of the FBI’s Vault of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, states:

Advised [by an agent in the field that] in April 1949, a circular was distributed in the Nashua, New Hampshire area, announcing a new magazine entitled “Monthly Review,” “an independent Socialist magazine.” The first issue was dated to come out as the May 1949 edition. The first issue would contain articles by Albert Einstein—“Why Socialism[?]”; Paul M. Sweezy—“Recent Development[s] in American capitalism”; Otto Nathan—“Transition to Socialism in Poland”; Leo Huberman—“Socialism and American Labor”…. Re: New York report, dated 3-15-51 Espionage-CH.

The rest of the message is blacked out. Another memorandum that immediately follows in the FBI’s Einstein file, and which is similarly redacted, reads:

Advised the New York Office that the “Monthly Review” 66 Barrow Street, New York City, self-proclaimed “an independent Socialist magazine” made its initial appearance in May of 1949. The first issue contained articles by Albert Einstein and others. This [investigative] report stated further that a study of the articles contained in a background check of the editors and contributors revealed that this magazine was Communist inspired and followed the approved Communist Party line…. New York report, dated1-30-50; Re: Internal Security.

Albert Einstein, the world’s most famous theoretical physicist and its most celebrated scientist, had fled Germany upon Adolf Hitler’s rise, immigrating to the United States in 1933, where he became a citizen in 1940. Yet, for J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, Einstein remained a dangerous and Un-American figure, threatening the internal security of the United States by his very presence in the country. His publication in 1949 of an article titled “Why Socialism?” for the new periodical Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine was thus viewed by the FBI as a direct confirmation of his strong “Communist sympathies.”