Articles

The Political Economy and Ecology of Biofuels

by Fred Magdoff

July 1, 2008

The huge increase in oil and other fuel prices over the last few years and a concern that we have reached (or will soon reach) peak oil—after which oil extraction begins to decrease—have created renewed interest in alternative sources of energy. These include solar, wind, ocean wave and tidal flow, geothermal, and biofuels. Sometimes lip service is given to the need for greater energy efficiency, changes in lifestyles (including the ecologically irrational over-reliance on automobiles and living far from one's job), the need to redesign economic activity from the factory floor to office buildings and homes, and the need for affluent societies to move away from ever higher levels of consumption. However, a radical analysis of actually putting these into effect would lead to questioning the very basics of how capitalism works

Climate Change, Limits to Growth, and the Imperative for Socialism

by Minqi Li

July 1, 2008

The 2007 assessment report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms that it is virtually certain that human activities (mainly through the use of fossil fuels and land development) have been responsible for the global warming that has taken place since the industrial revolution. Under current economic and social trends, the world is on a path to unprecedented ecological catastrophes. 1 As the IPCC report was being released, new evidence emerged suggesting that climate change is taking place at a much faster pace and the potential consequences are likely to be far more dreadful than is suggested by the IPCC report

The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global Warming

by John W. Farley

July 1, 2008

Most Americans today believe that the burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming, but not everybody agrees. Climate contrarians proclaim that global warming is not occurring at all, or that it is occurring but is entirely natural, i.e., that the anthropogenic (human) contribution to global warming is negligible. The contrarian ranks include the well-known radical journalist Alexander Cockburn, who forcefully proclaimed anthropogenic global warming to be a myth in three articles published in 2007 on the CounterPunch Web site and in The Nation

The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem

by Brett Clarkand Rebecca Clausen

July 1, 2008

The world ocean covers approximately 70 percent of the earth. It has been an integral part of human history, providing food and ecological services. Yet conservation efforts and concerns with environmental degradation have mostly focused on terrestrial issues. Marine scientists and oceanographers have recently made remarkable discoveries in regard to the intricacies of marine food webs and the richness of oceanic biodiversity. However, the excitement over these discoveries is dampened due to an awareness of the rapidly accelerating threat to the biological integrity of marine ecosystems

Framing India’s Hydraulic Crisis: The Politics of the Modern Large Dam

by Rohan D'Souza

July 1, 2008

For several decades following 1947, the modern large dam in India presented itself as a political conundrum, often voiced in strange, contradictory tones. In an oft-quoted speech in July 1954 Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister (1947–64), likened the large dam to a "modern temple." Later, in a less remembered speech before a gathering of engineers and technocrats in 1958, Nehru, as if in contrition, bemoaned the quest for big dams as a "disease of gigantism

Blue Covenant: The Alternative Water Future

by Maude Barlow

July 1, 2008

The three water crises—dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water, and the corporate control of water—pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all. Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater— between nations, between rich and poor, between the public and the private interest, between rural and urban populations, and between the competing needs of the natural world and industrialized humans

Bill Livant (May 24, 1932-June 2, 2008)

by Ben Livant

July 1, 2008

Bill Livant was an independent Marxist intellectual whose main purpose was to provide theoretical tools to people engaged in revolutionary struggles. The Red Scare after the Second World War did not diminish the admiration he had felt for the Soviet Union during the war. The subsequent execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was an ideological turning point for him. While working on his PhD in psychology at the University of Michigan, Bill stood out as a prominent radical. He was part of the Students for a Democratic Society movement that produced the Port Huron Statement

Notes from the Editors, June 2008

by The Editors

June 1, 2008

The first third of 2008 should have been a wake-up call to those who, in the short-lived days of capitalist triumphalism, were inclined to lose sight of the immediacy of the internal contradictions of capitalism and of the resistance that the system continuously regenerates. The enormous extent of today's combined world food-and-economic crisis is now patently obvious. Anti-imperialist and anticapitalist initiatives are once again mushrooming around the globe.

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