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Climate Change

Monthly Review Volume 76, Number 5 (October 2024)

October 2024 (Volume 76, Number 5)

It is undeniable that the rapidly worsening ecological crisis is threatening not only future generations, but the youth of today. Why, then, is the U.S. educational system failing to teach students the reality of this human-caused catastrophe? “Even science itself,” MR editors write, “is to be sacrificed on the altar of capital.” | more…

The Ecological Rift by John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York

The Ecological Rift in the Anthropocene

In an interview with Brazilian magazine Margem Esquerda, John Bellamy Foster shares with Fabio Querido, Maria Orlanda Pinassi, and Michael Löwy the formative experiences that contributed to his work as a young activist and, later, a preeminent scholar of ecological Marxism. The interview concludes with a message to the ecological left in Brazil and elsewhere: “Whatever solutions there are to the present planetary crisis must, in historical-materialist terms, arise from concrete social formations, on the basis of which the new revolutionary transformations will take place.” | more…

Xie Zhenhua, Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs

Net-Zero and the China Challenge: Decarbonization amid Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific

As the world hurtles toward planetary catastrophe, driven in large part by the unchecked burning of fossil fuels in the Global North, China has emerged as a leader in renewable energy. This dynamic, Julie de los Reyes and Jewellord Nem Singh contend, mirrors China’s ascendance in many sectors, revealing “the glaring failure of the liberal international order to address pressing social and environmental issues.” | more…

Smokestacks in Garneau, Edmonton, Alberta

Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Other “-Cenes”: Why a Correct Understanding of Marx’s Theory of Value Is Necessary to Leave the Planetary Crisis

The perception that we are living in a critical historical period regarding the conditions of habitability on Earth—not only for humans but for many other living organisms too—is gaining more and more adepts among common people, academics, politicians, and social movements. This critical period has been typified as the planetary crisis of the Anthropocene Epoch and studies undertaken in the present century show that habitability on Earth is progressively deteriorating. | more…

Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution

Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution

Over the last 11,700 years, during which human civilization developed, the earth has existed within what geologists refer to as the Holocene Epoch. Now science is telling us that the Holocene Epoch in the geological time scale ended, replaced by a new more dangerous Anthropocene Epoch, which began around 1950. The onset of the Anthropocene Epoch is characterized by an “anthropogenic rift” in the biological cycles of the Earth System, marking a changed reality in which human activities are now the main geological force impacting the earth as a whole, generating at the same time an existential crisis for the world’s population. | more…

Climate Justice

Socialism and Ecological Survival: An Introduction

Time is running out for humanity to avoid a catastrophic planetary tipping point. Widespread mass mobilizations of populations worldwide must fight to bring about revolutionary societal changes and dismantle neoliberal monopoly capitalism, with its reliance on extractive exploitation of our planet’s resources and communities. | more…