A lot of radical things were said at this year’s The World Transformed festival. As one participant said, many speeches only scratched the surface. Clear political conclusions or concrete demands weren’t always drawn out. For example, at a panel on “Kill The Bill,” speakers said that we cannot support police reform and that we must instead “abolish the police” – all the while talking about the negative implications of the police bill.
A historical look at how profit and capitalism have ravaged the natural world is the subject of our new BookShelf review. Contributor Melody Kemp offers her take on award-winning Australian journalist Jeff Sparrow’s forthcoming volume, which explores the damage wrought by cars, roads and PR spin, as well as solutions suggested by models of Indigenous land management.
On 17 February, the Office for National Statistics published figures showing that the number of green jobs in the UK is stagnating; in Scotland, host to the COP26 summit in November 2021, it is falling.
The lack of progress toward meaningful climate action was one of the issues addressed on 19 February at a day-long meeting of local representatives of the COP26 Coalition.
The gathering had been planned to take place in-person in Birmingham together with a local climate festival (which went ahead), but it moved online after Storm Eunice disrupted travel.
I want to add some books that we’ll be covering in our upcoming Workers’ Liberty reading groups to Stuart Jordan’s “Reading on environment emergencies”, Solidarity 617.