Chris Hedges made these remarks Saturday at a panel discussion in New York City titled “The Climate Crisis: Which Way Out?” The other panelists were Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Kshama Sawant and Sen. Bernie Sanders. The event, moderated by Brian Lehrer, occurred on the eve of the People’s Climate March
Continue readingTag: Environment and Climate Change
Canadian Dimension | Articles: We Need System Change to Stop Climate Change
Viking I landed on Mars, the Ramones released their first album, the Soweto Uprising began in South Africa, North and South Vietnam reunified to become the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and Gerald Ford was in the White House. 1976: The same year scientists discovered that refrigerant chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons, better known
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: A Debate on Capitalism, Environmentalism, and “Environmental Catastrophism”
Once Again on “Environmental Catastrophism”: A Reply to Sam Gindin by Ian Angus Last year in Monthly Review, I debated Eddie Yuen, an anarchist who believes it is a mistake for radicals to focus on telling the truth about the global environmental crisis, because “awareness of climate crisis does not
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: The Last Gasp of Climate Change Liberals
The climate change march in New York on Sept. 21, expected to draw as many as 200,000 people, is one of the last gasps of conventional liberalism’s response to the climate crisis. It will take place two days before the actual gathering of world leaders in New York called by
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: An interview with Vandana Shiva
Canadian Dimension: The standard narrative about India in the mainstream Anglo-American media is that spiralling growth in recent decades, along with globalization, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Some figures that have been put forward are that in 1978 half of all Indians lived below the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Climate change and the military-industrial complex
This letter was written in reply to our recently published interview with Noam Chomsky about climate change. You can read the original Chomsky interview HERE. The one important aspect of climate change the Left keeps missing is the fact that Wall Street’s very lucrative military-industrial complex leaves the largest carbon
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: The greening of Noam Chomsky: a conversation
This interview was held in Montréal in October 2013 and has been edited for length and readability. Canadian Dimension: There’s a tremendous amount of evidence accumulating about the gravity of the ecological crisis, but some people argue that disseminating this kind of information can actually put a damper on building
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Climate scientists demand radical change
“Today, after two decades of bluff and lies, the remaining 2°C budget demands revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony.” That was in a blog posting last year by Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at Manchester University. One of Britain’s most eminent climate scientists, Anderson is
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Climate scientists demand radical change
“Today, after two decades of bluff and lies, the remaining 2°C budget demands revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony.” That was in a blog posting last year by Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at Manchester University. One of Britain’s most eminent climate scientists, Anderson is
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Climate politics must be as radical as the climate crisis
It’s wrong to think that we can campaign to stop climate change in the same way we might campaign to end a war. All the evidence says we are well past that stage now. That is, even if by some impossible, magical course of events all carbon pollution on Earth
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: How science is telling us all to revolt
In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco. This year’s conference had some big-name participants, from Ed Stone of Nasa’s Voyager
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Protests held worldwide against Monsanto, genetic modification of food and use of pesticides
October 16, 2013 was World Food Day. Four days before this event thousands took to streets across the World to protest the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) products and pesticides that are suspected of being linked to diseases. The giant multi-national corporation Monsanto was one of the main targets
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Canada’s New Climate Abolitionists
In the lead-up to and during the 2009 Copenhagen climate change talks, climate groups still relied on appeals to reason to sway the government, perhaps hoping for a quick shift back to the greener pastures of a few years prior. Young people organized call-in days, flash mobs, and for the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Where’s the Democracy in the Environmental Movement?
With tar sands, fracking and mining all on the rise, there’s never been a more important time for a strong environmental movement in Canada. Surveying the landscape of organizations, one thing is missing: democracy. Which is to say, meaningful informed participation among equal participants. The images are familiar. People gathered
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Overcoming ‘Overburden’: The Climate Crisis And A Unified Left Agenda
I’m so very happy and honored to be able to share this historic day with you. The energy in this room — and the hope the founding of this new union has inspired across the country – is contagious. It feels like this could be the beginning of the fight
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Lac-Mégantic: A Social and Ecological Tragedy
Québec has just experienced the most brutal ecological catastrophe of its history. On July 6, 2013, a train loaded with 72 cars carrying crude oil derailed during the night. It exploded in downtown Lac-Mégantic, a small municipality (pop. 6000) in the Eastern Townships. A series of explosions and a fire
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Corporate money preventing all-out campaign to stop global warming
Highly-regarded former Toronto Mayor David Miller says he is “very excited” about becoming the new President and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund-Canada in September. “They’ve made such a difference,” Miller told The Toronto Star, “and to be part of an organization that knows how to make real change is
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Corporate money preventing all-out campaign to stop global warming
Highly-regarded former Toronto Mayor David Miller says he is “very excited” about becoming the new President and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund-Canada in September. “They’ve made such a difference,” Miller told The Toronto Star, “and to be part of an organization that knows how to make real change is
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: What Happens When the Shale Boom Goes Boom?
Recent headlines in the US press about the coming economic boom heralded by the shale gas revolution would lead you to think we are literally swimming in oil. A spate of reports last year, in particular the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook (WEO) in November 2012, forecast that
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: What Happens When the Shale Boom Goes Boom?
Recent headlines in the US press about the coming economic boom heralded by the shale gas revolution would lead you to think we are literally swimming in oil. A spate of reports last year, in particular the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook (WEO) in November 2012, forecast that
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