Read online at https://workersliberty.org/node/37417
Malm s Fossil Capital : mired in slurry Submitted by AWL on 1 June, 2021 - 2:45
Author: Paul Vernadsky
Andreas Malm’s writings on climate change have been widely lauded across the left in recent years, including in
Solidarity (Zack Muddle, 588, 14 April 2021). In my view, Malm is a charlatan, a pretentious poseur, who sows confusion on Marxism and climate change politics. This became clear with his book
Fossil Capital (2016) and has worsened subsequently.
Fossil Capital
Britain was the first industrial capitalist state. Climate scientists estimate that Britain accounted for 80% of global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion in 1825 and 62% in 1850. Therefore accelerating fossil fuel use, which later led to climate change, started with British capitalism.
Corporate interests want to divert the climate movement into individual solutions, but paper straws and low-energy light bulbs won t save the planet – we need a movement to end the system that s destroying it.
It was once the case that a major obstacle for environmental activists was climate change denialism. Funded in secret by the fossil fuel industry, the science was fiercely discredited. Misinformation was pumped out to hide a deadly truth.
Today, with some notable exceptions, there are few who would deny the evidence of climate change. That argument has largely been settled. Even oil giant Shell is compelled to acknowledge the climate emergency, recently imploring us, in a tweet, to consider, ‘
In a World on Fire, Is Nonviolence Still an Option?
In a World on Fire, Is Nonviolence Still an Option?
In a World on Fire, Is Nonviolence Still an Option?
Spring 2021
Feb 16, 2021
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” John F. Kennedy, March 13, 1962
Over the past few years, advocates of nonviolence (such as myself) have been losing the debate in the climate movement. After decades of a well-funded and organized movement that has tried every nonviolent strategy, yet failed to pressure power structures away from the path of climate catastrophe, the promise of nonviolent success rests mainly on faith.
How class struggle shaped fossil fuel | Workers Liberty workersliberty.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from workersliberty.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Can a righteous resistance ever cross the line?
Activist Andreas Malm urges sabotage as a way to save the planet
published : 22 Jan 2021 at 04:00
Sabotage, in French and in English, indicates the act of deliberately destroying or damaging property. It s an apparatus that aims at weakening an enemy or oppressor through means such as subversion and obstruction. It is a tool that, we are told, has been adopted by French workers as a substitute for strikes, but sabotage doesn t limit itself only to workplaces. Its literature survey connotes that it occurs within a variety of contexts in wars, political and social campaigns, or socio-economic programmes that effect someone s livelihood. In all cases, however, the intent of sabotage is analogous to use extreme civil disobedience to inflict damage upon goods or properties in order to serve a particular purpose or higher goal. The end justifies the means, according to the saboteurs.