You can have a scientifically rigorous diagnosis of climate change, together with a plethora of reasonable policies to tackle the problem, but if your program lacks a strong coalition and powerful political strategy, it will fail. Continue reading
This 55-minute lecture assesses approaches for surmounting the accelerating climate crisis. i focus on the desirability, viability, and potential feasibility of these approaches.
The argument is simple.
Humanity faces the gravest crisis in our short history. Our governmental leaders are unwilling or unable to grapple effectively with two looming catastrophes: escalating climatic disasters and growing arsenals of increasingly deadlier nuclear arsenals, combined with rising tensions among nuclear powers. Authoritarian tendencies throughout the world make matters worse, as far-right deniers and conspiracy theorists rise to the fore. Continue reading
However, in practice, principled proponents, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, proved to be adept at pragmatically using nonviolent methods, Equally, some pragmatists, in their hearts, are pacifists as well as hard-headed realists. Continue reading
This is the decisive decade for humankind and other species. We tackle dire trends now. Or we face a bleak future in which our constricted pandemic life now becomes the norm for all but the wealthiest. Our rational and technological prowess, in combination with market-based power structures, has brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Can movement politics be part of a solution?
“Winning is a moral imperative. The stakes are too high, and time is too short, to settle for anything else.” Naomi Klein addressed these words to the British Labour Party, but they aptly express the urgency of the climate movement today. Continue reading
Recently, I had occasion to ponder the important role of activism, especially today under conditions of impending disaster. Continue reading
Since Margaret Thatcher made her famous pronouncement about the lack of an alternative to free-market capitalism, many on the left have seemed to agree. Continue reading
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world [but] the point is to change it.” Those of us in the peace, justice and environmental movements embrace this Marxian aphorism. If we want to live by the dictum, what does that entail? Continue reading
Nearly everyone agrees that the left is a mess. The main clash in most Western countries today pits mainstream neoliberals against right-wing authoritarian populists, with the latter channeling the rage instigated by the policies of the former. The mainstream social-democratic parties in Europe are in electoral free-fall. The ‘Pink Tide’ in Latin America has rapidly receded (with a couple of exceptions). And far-right populism is becoming the movement of the traditional working class. A crisis may erupt at any time in the form of another financial meltdown, an ecological disaster, an authoritarian reaction or a foreign-policy miscalculation. Continue reading