The Unbearable Unawareness of our Ecological Existential Crisis

Over the past two years, the full report on Climate Change Mitigation by IPCC scientists, as well as research from other centres such as the Stockholm Resilience Centre, has consistently confirmed that we are on a doomsday trajectory. Unless we move rapidly in the opposite direction, the chances that we will face planetary catastrophes that seriously threaten the existence of life on our planet in the next twenty years are realistic and probable. Unsustainable capitalism keeps us deluded and largely unaware that we are on the brink of a serious existential risk. Therefore the great challenge is to provoke the awareness and critical thinking of ordinary citizens. Only a Citixens Revolution can stop our demise, but capitalism’s behemoth keeps people deceitful and mostly unaware of being on the verge of a catastrophic end. We must arouse Now! –– Álvaro J. de Regil

Marine plastic pollution as a planetary boundary threat – The drifting piece in the sustainability puzzle

The exponential increase in the use of plastic in modern society and the inadequate management of the resulting waste have led to its accumulation in the marine environment. There is increasing evidence of numerous mechanisms by which marine plastic pollution is causing effects across successive levels of biological organisation. This will unavoidably impact ecological communities and ecosystem functions. –– Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, Sarah E. Cornell, Joan Fabres

Sustainable deaths

Maritime transport is responsible for 14% of polluting gases. There is already talk of miracle proposals to make this sector sustainable. –– Gustavo Duch

World Development under Monopoly Capitalism

In the recent period of globalisation - following the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the reintegration of China into the world economy - global value chains have become the dominant organisational form of capitalism. From low-tech to high-tech, from basic consumer goods to heavy capital goods, from food to services, goods are now produced in many countries, integrated through global value chains. According to the ILO, between 1995 and 2013 the number of people employed in global value chains increased from 296 million to 453 million, representing one in five jobs in the world economy. We live in a world of global value chains. -- Benjamin Selwyn and Dara Leyden

Controversial Demographic Projections Under Climate Collapse in 2050 - South and Mesoamerica in a Global Context

The corporate sector is building another aggressive re-engineering of global agrifood systems in South America and Mesoamerica. The region represents a pillar for global food security, warns the UN in the New Mission. Capitalist euphoria assumes 10 billion inhabitants by 2050. This is forging higher agricultural productivity, innovation, digitalisation and the expansion of standardised agriculture. Thus, they produce and market food destined for populations with some or enough consumption capacity, overconsumption and waste of food with equivalent carbon footprints. –– Nubia Barrera Silva

Capitalism and Extreme Poverty: A Global Analysis of Real Wages, Human Height, Mortality Since the Long 16th Century

This paper assesses claims that, prior to the 19th century, around 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty (defined as the inability to access essential goods), and that global human welfare only began to improve with the rise of capitalism. The rise of capitalism caused a dramatic deterioration of human welfare. In all regions studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. –– Dylan Sullivan y Jason Hickel

Making Sense of the World: Why Education Is Key to Change

A precondition to creating a different world is the capacity to imagine it. But many education systems continue to bear the imprint of the industrial, nation-state societies they emerged from. What would be required to empower people to first envision and then build a more sustainable and just society? A conversation with economist Maja Göpel on how education could spark the shift. –– Maja Göpel

The Left and the Imperial Mode of Living

The question of freedom is crucial for an emancipatory strategy and an emancipatory project. the imperial mode of living breaks with the universal norm of equality based on human rights; it represents freedom tantamount to not touching one's way of life and sacrosanct consumption. This aspect has not been sufficiently elucidated in our work, which is more focused on social structures and the practices and routines of everyday life. The current rediscovery of Karl Polanyi in critical debates has to do with this challenge for the left: What does it mean to act and live responsibly in a society characterised by the systematic production of irresponsibility? A relevant political question is: How can we maintain individuality without living at the expense of others?. –– Ulrich Brand | Markus Wissen

The United States of War

Between 1980 and 2020, two U.S. wars and sanctions in Iraq and the U.S. war in Afghanistan killed more than two million people. Washington’s proxy wars in Angola, Mozambique, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Syria resulted in roughly nine million deaths. U.S. military interventions, support for client states and rebels, and related famines in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria cost the lives of another five million people. The U.S. Empire’s role in the collapse of most socialist regimes [including the imposition of economic shock therapy] made it partly responsible for well over seven million deaths. “Imperialism,” Magdoff wrote in 1969, “necessarily involves militarism. Indeed, they are twins that have fed on each other in the past, as they do now.” To combat the spread of militarism and war throughout the globe today, it is necessary to confront the imperialist world system centred in Washington. –– The Editors of Monthly Review

Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development

The word degrowth designates a family of political-economic approaches which, in the face of the acceleration of the current planetary ecological crisis, reject exponential and unlimited economic growth as the definition of human progress. With continuous technological development and the improvement of human capabilities, mere replacement investment is capable of promoting constant qualitative advances in production in mature industrial societies, while eliminating exploitative labour conditions and reducing working hours. Degrowth, which is specifically targeted at the most affluent sectors of the world's population, is thus aimed at improving the living conditions of the vast majority, while maintaining environmental conditions of existence and promoting sustainable human development. –– John Bellamy Foster

Assessing the suitability of sustainability frameworks for embedding sustainability in higher education curricula: pragmatism versus transformation

This viewpoint paper addresses the use of sustainability frameworks in embedding education for sustainability into the curriculum of higher education institutions (HEIs). The purpose of this paper is to explore the paradox that sustainability frameworks must facilitate transformation of existing structures whilst also being well-enough aligned with current conditions to be readily adopted by today’s HEIs. –– Simon Mair, Angela Druckman

The Case for Universal Basic Services

This paper shifts the focus from transfers to public services. It mounts a case for Universal Basic Services (UBS): a proposal to safeguard and develop existing public services and to extend this model of provision into new areas. The first part argues that public services require a distinct conceptual justification and sets this out in terms of shared human needs and a foundational economy. The second part develops the normative arguments for UBS, in terms of efficiency, equality, solidarity and sustainability. The third part considers some of the issues to be faced in delivering UBS and the role of state institutions, with brief service provisions. The final section summarises some developments, including experience of Covid-19, which might enhance the political impetus for UBS. –– Ian Gough

The Progressively Accelerated Degradation of the Environment COP28

–Eighteen years after the Paris Agreement and on the eve of COP 28 –– The explanation for the progressively accelerating degradation of the environment is complex because it is due to several factors. But the root causes lie, on the one hand, in the systematic plundering and destruction of nature - particularly deforestation - carried out on a global scale by colonial powers for centuries and, on the other, in the superfluous and uncontrolled production and consumption of all kinds of objects and products, some necessary and some not. This is the result of what is known in economics as extended reproduction. Extended reproduction is inherent to the capitalist system. Understanding how it works is essential tounderstanding and explaining the ecological catastrophe. –– Alejandro Teitelbaum

El Niño and its (flaming) sea in the era of the Great Acceleration

We are breaking records with an increasingly unnatural naturalness: 40°C in Siberia, historic fires and the slowing of ocean currents essential for sustaining marine life. –– Juan Bordera

The End of Seasons?

Extreme temperatures and events such as Hurricane Daniel tell us we are approaching a point of no return. There is a good chance that in 2023, we will exceed the 1.5°C limit [and we have exceeded it]. –– Juan Bordera – Antonio Turiel

The New Cold War Washington

O n April 27, 2023, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan gave a speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. Sullivan’s talk was unusual and attracted widespread attention for at least three reasons. First, what was being announced was a fundamental shift away from the previous “Washington Consensus” associated with neoliberal globalisation and its replacement by what Sullivan called a “New Washington Consensus” organised around the de facto U.S. New Cold War against China. The purported China threat was used to justify economic sanctions against rival states, and government supply-side subsidies to corporations in a militarised industrial policy. –– The Editors of Monthly Review

The irrelevance of animals

So-called "laboratory meat" is simultaneously generating great expectations and concerns. The huge investment and research efforts of economically powerful private initiatives have uncovered an important economic niche waiting to be exploited. The promoters of the market for laboratory meat or meat derived from vegetable products have seen in their ethical and ecological foundations the great lever that will mobilise consumers on a massive scale towards their products. The growth in supply and speculation around these products responds, among other factors, to two very different pressures: on the one hand, the climatic behaviour of meat production. On the other hand, the growing pressure from animal and vegan groups on the living and dying conditions of the animals that are raised for their consumption. –– Pedro M. Herrera

The pressing priority of saving the Amazonia

The world's most biodiverse region is threatened by deforestation levels close to the point of no return. Despite this, the countries involved failed to reach agreements at the last summit in Brazil in August. –– David Roca Basadre

The Ecological Collapse We Were Warned About Has Begun

Raging fires rage across Canada, an unprecedented drought is raging in Uruguay and global temperatures have broken all records. An urgent people's plan to adapt and mitigate the situation is still possible. –– José Seoane

Two Scenarios for Sustainable Welfare: A Framework for an Eco-Social Contract

More nation states are now committing to zero net carbon by 2050 at the latest, which is encouraging, but none have faced up to the transformation of economies, societies and lives that this will entail. This article considers two scenarios for a fair transition to net zero, concentrating only on climate change, and discusses the implications for contemporary ‘welfare states’. The first is the Green New Deal framework coupled with a ‘social guarantee’. I argue that expanded public provision of essential goods and services would be a necessary component of this strategy. The second scenario goes further to counteract runaway private consumption by building a sufficiency economy with ceilings to income, wealth and consumption. This would require a further extension of state capacities and welfare state interventions. The article provides a framework for comparing and developing these two very different approaches. –– Ian Gough

Settler Colonialism in Palestine

Direct expropriation of the land and promotion of outright extermination –– T he genocide being inflicted by the Israeli state on the Palestinian people has now (as we write this in late November 2023) reached a particularly lethal stage, giving rise to a second and perhaps final Nakba, akin to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land in 1948. Under these circumstances, it is crucial to turn to the concept of settler colonialism as it emerged over the last century and a half from the Marxian critique of colonialism/imperialism. –– The Editors of Monthly Review

Transitioning to Geocratia — the People and Planet and Not the Market Paradigm — First Steps

Parting from the fact that saving Planet Earth, our home, changes everything, we need to build a new ethos where the majority of humankind commits to a system whose only purpose is the pursuit of the welfare of people and Planet Earth. This requires that all Earth resources necessary for the enjoyment of life of all living things be managed to achieve true long-term sustainability. — Álvaro J. de Regil

Why strike action is climate action

Striking pushes against the core capitalist dynamics also responsible for global warming, CUSP researcher Simon Mair writes. Reducing fossil fuel use will not happen without a major shift in the centres of power. Strike action is one way to build towards these shifts, and in this way can be a precursor to stronger climate action. –– Simon Mair

There will be no ecological transition without a social and labour transition

At present, hardly anyone doubts the need for an ecological transition. Environmental denialism, although it exists, seems to be in retreat in the face of overwhelming evidence of the negative effects of our way of life on nature. The energy model must be changed. But even more urgent is a transformation that addresses the limitation of wealth, consumption and the necessary sharing of labour. –– Vicente López

Marketocracy and the Capture of People and Planet — The acceleration of Twenty-First Century Monopoly Capital Fascism through the pandemic and the Great Reset

This study examines the trajectory that the world has followed since neoliberalism was imposed on humanity half a century ago, assessing the subsequent motivations—and their consequences for humanity and the planet as a whole—of key global elite groups and individuals (Gates, Musk, Bezos and the World Economic Forum, and its proclaimed "Fourth Industrial Revolution" through "The Great Reset") who have powerful influence on the world's governments. We live in dangerous times on our planet that threaten the future of all living things, but there is a way to avoid such a future –––– Álvaro J. de Regil

The Transnational Capture and Pillage of Central America

Massive invasion of transnational corporations, a multifaceted and tragic toll on the Central American Dry Corridor Region. –– Nubia Barrera Silva

Is Population Crucial for Degrowth?

Most proponents of degrowth tend to avoid the population factor, many of them fearful of being perceived as Malthusian. This is not the case. However, in the context of a genuinely democratic ethos, we must incorporate population degrowth into the core of any degrowth imaginary, as we are the preeminent source of our planet's unsustainable consumption. If people become aware of the existential danger we face, we expect that many will choose to embark on a transition that includes gradual population degrowth as a key driver of our trajectory. If the majority refuses, that is always their right. In such a case, we will have to face the consequences of significantly reducing the chances of achieving a safe and just transition-ecologically safe for all species and socially just for people, especially in the Global South-to avoid the obvious existential threat we face. –– Álvaro J. de Regil

Lithium and the Contradictions in the Energy Transition that Devastate the Global South In Favour of the Global North

Green Capitalism is a Hoax, because switching to batteries is not sustainable and it keeps depredating the ecosystems. — Nubia Barrera Silva

“Not growing but thriving”: The Beginning of a Paradigm Shift

20th-century economics starts with the market, with supply and demand, and so prices are the metric of concern used to calculate everything. As if everything were for sale, because money means price, means market, means sale. We need to move from the singular metrics of money to a dashboard of social and natural metrics. Let’s measure life in her own terms. Measure the life expectancy, the educational achievements, the self-reported wellbeing, to gauge the strength of a community. Let’s measure the quality of housing and the access to essential services in people’s lives, the stability of the climate and the health of our soils and our oceans. Let’s measure the integrity and intactness of the ecosystems on which life depends. We can do this. We have the data. –– Kate Raworth

Post-Second World War SocialChristianity and Its Relevance to

A Christian social analysis that continues to be held by those like Pope Francis, who in May 2022 criticised NATO as “barking at Russia’s door.” –– Toby Terrar

Population in the IPCC’s new mitigation report.

A new IPCC climate change mitigation report confirms that population increase and economic growth are the main drivers of today’s historically high greenhouse gas emissions. — Philip Cafaro

Spiral of contradictions between financialised capitalism and rural smallholdings in South and Mesoamerica

Irreversible destruction of the Earth's soil food webs leads to drought and collapse of global food security. The logic of peripheral capitalism slips through the cracks of economic growth without development... Thus we have a direct correlation between the dispossession of land, the alienation of the rural workforce and the loss of food sovereignty. — Nubia Barrera Silva

Urban Commons and Collective Action to Address Climate Change

Community centres can have a key role in the social mobilisation of community climate commons. Group-based learning on climate change is more effective than individual learning. We deal with three types of urban commons, i.e., “urban green commons,” “coworking spaces,” and “community climate commons.” — Johan Colding, Stephan Barthel, Robert Ljung, Felix Eriksson and Stefan Sjöberg

Heroes, villains and opportunists at Dubai climate summit

For small countries, these meetings are the only way to confront the major global powers face to face and have their opinions considered


Last December, COP28 concluded in Dubai, yet another summit in which the meagre progress is still far from addressing the real climate emergency we are experiencing. Although the need to get rid of fossil fuels has finally been recognised after 28 years of negotiations, the result is still bitter, especially because of the inclusion of false solutions such as nuclear energy, carbon capture, or gas as an alternative fuel, all of which are too expensive and dangerous technologies.

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Research and analysis to provoke public awareness and critical thinking

We contribute to the liberalisation of the democratic instituions of society, for they have been captured by the owners of the market. They work in tandem with their market agents, who, posing as public servants, are entrenched in the halls of government. The political class has betrayed its public mandate and instead operates to impose a marketocratic state to maximise the shareholder value of the institutional investors of international financial markets. They own the global corporations and think they own the world on behalf of their very private interest.

Our spheres of action: true democracy – true sustainability – living wage – basic income – inequality – ecological footprint – degrowth – global warming –human development – corporate accountability – civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights, responsible consumption, sustainable autonomous citizen cells...

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Parting from an ethos of true democracy and true sustainability, We, the citizenry, work to advance the paradigm whose only purpose is to go in pursuit of the welfare of People and Planet and NOT the market.

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Corporate Media, Political and Perpetual War

Long recognised as one of this country’s most incisive journalists and media critics, Norman Solomon has written a new book that deserves to be widely read. In less than three hundred pages, he marshals a remarkable amount of information to document the contours of the so-called war on terror waged by the United States since 9/11, the terrible human costs incurred abroad and at home, and the ways in which corporate media and political elites strive to make this perpetual war and its catastrophic consequences almost entirely invisible to the public. The book is replete with important insights into how the media establishment and government officials from both major political parties promote the interests of the military-industrial complex. In War Made Invisible, readers will also find an eloquent moral call to end this state of affairs. All things considered, this volume is a valuable contribution to the literature on the role of corporate media and political elites in sustaining the war on terror.

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A New Environmental History of Socialist States

For a long time, discussion of the environmental legacy of the Soviet Union on the left was characterised by hasty dismissals of the irrelevance of the experience for contemporary struggles or suspicion of anyone raising the question as a mouthpiece for capitalism. The recent openness to rethinking non-capitalist environmental efforts of the past has been a welcome development. In a spirited 2015 article on Soviet ecology, John Bellamy Foster argues that “the USSR can be seen as a society that generated some of the worst ecological catastrophes in history but that also gave birth to some of the most profound ecological ideas and practices, based on materialist, dialectical, and socialist intellectual foundations.” He focuses primarily on ecological thinking in the late Soviet era to highlight the fresh, innovative, and under-appreciated contributions of Marxist scientists and philosophers, who were grappling intellectually with environmental problems. While seeing positive trends in environmental performance at the very end of the Soviet period, he also echoes a claim of historians that the ecological revolution in environmental consciousness came to an abrupt and tragic end with the collapse of the country in 1991.

Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro advances this interpretative thread even further in his revelatory new book, Socialist States and the Environment: Lessons for Ecosocialist Futures. By expanding the study to all known efforts to establish socialism in modern states, he comes to an even more recuperative conclusion. Not only “were some disastrous environmental impacts of state socialism…neither pervasive nor intrinsic,” but the net effects of socialist states were “environmentally constructive.” The “accomplishments within state-socialist countries” are “practicable examples from which ecosocialist futures can be built.”

An additional lesson from the environmental history of state socialism for ecosocialist efforts today concerns the imperative for economic growth. Where socialist states mirrored the logic of unending economic expansion in the capitalist world (following a fair, or at least widespread, reading of Marxism that views history as unfolding in a series of stages), they tended to dramatically despoil the environment. Where socialist states followed more sustainable practices, such as nature conservation, recycling, ecological monitoring, strict regulations, and aiming for sufficient conditions for living well (instead of ever-increasing and evermore intensive consumption of material resources), they offered possible environmental paths for the future. The fraught struggles within the left in Ecuador over extractivism in the twenty-first century portend the continued salience of the problem of growth economies for ecosocialist efforts. While ecosocialists and current advocates of degrowth have not always seen eye-to-eye, Engel-Di Mauro has played a significant role in helping bridge these divides by hosting two discussion forums on degrowth ideas in Capitalism Nature Socialism in 2012 and 2019. Judging from his editorials, he became more open to the possibility for a unification of these two approaches over the interim. Though degrowth perspectives barely feature in the analysis of Socialist States

 

 

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From Imperialism to Green Imperialism: Tools of World-Systems Analysis in the Face of the Great Ecosocial Crisis

Humanity is at the most challenging crossroads in its history. Anthropogenic productive activity, framed within the capitalist mode of production, has caused most planetary boundaries to be exceeded and others to be strained. This has caused, among other things, temperatures to reach maximums never before experienced by our civilisation, species to become extinct at an unprecedented rate, the loss of soil fertility to become the norm, and the oceans to boil to the point of leaving the poles on the brink of their disappearance while acidifying and suffocating life in them. At the same time, civilisation does not lose sight of an increasingly threatening war horizon in which a nuclear outbreak cannot be entirely ruled out. And against this backdrop, a galloping decline of materials and energy sources is unfolding, putting pressure on every vector of the eco-social apparatus to the point of casting a shadow over the future accessibility of our societies' livelihoods and their very survival as we know them.

Amid this panorama of ecological devastation and military escalation, there is a growing impression, both justified and worrying, that mainstream geopolitical analyses are often too lazy to address the role of the planet's biophysical limits in shaping the global hierarchy between states and their regimes of dependency. On the flip side of this impression, but equally justified and worrying, there is also a growing sense that modern environmentalism suffers from excessive naïveté (and often ambiguity) in understanding the global political-economic dynamics that condition eco-social conflicts.

This combination of "oversights" has allowed capitalist elites, among many other things, to adopt many expressions of a supposedly environmentalist character to protect and perpetuate their domination. Thus, by means of the "green" label, global capitalism has managed to actualise its planetary and human plunder in a highly efficient manner. Greenwashing camouflages the interests of exploitation and appropriation of life and natural goods on which capitalism itself is based to adapt them to a terminology that paves the way for its expansion. It is the continuation of business as usual by other means: a new mode of accumulation that tunes business to the fashion of the times of ecological emergency. The "creative destruction" of capitalism sees business everywhere, even in disaster.

The dangerousness of this handling of reality, even more so in an era marked by a combination of eco-social crises, makes it essential to identify and unmask those central aspects of the green narratives of global capitalism in order to understand its conjuncture and the projections it allows us to glimpse. This paper aims to contribute to studying the relationship between imperialism and political ecology, the characteristics that identify the historical development of ecological imperialism and the eco-social implications of its cosmetic adaptation in a context of growing threat and biophysical concern. In order to do so, it is essential, first of all, to offer an updated, if succinct, definition of the notion of imperialism.

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On the United States Policy to destroy the WTO because it could no longer control it

What the Joe Biden administration has called the “rules-based international order” stands for those institutions of world governance that were created under the control of the United States during its period of undisputed economic hegemony after the Second World War and during the subsequent unipolar order following the demise of the USSR in 1991. The rapid decline of U.S. power in the twenty-first century, associated both with the economic stagnation of the core capitalist countries and the rise of China and other emerging economies, is now calling into question the entire U.S.-dominated rules-based international order. Seeing the writing on the wall, Washington launched its New Cold War on China in 2018, aimed at regaining undisputed U.S.hegemony and unipolarity.

At the center of the New Cold War is the World Trade Organization (WTO), often seen as the crown jewel of the liberal international order.

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 Transitioning to Geocratia — the
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The Spectre of ‘Knowledge as Commons’

On October 3, 2023, in an egregious violation of press freedom, the founder of the progressive Indian media company NewsClick, Prabir Purkayastha, was arrested on trumped up charges of accepting foreign donations in exchange for spreading Chinese propaganda. Purkayastha is a Monthly Review author, political commentator, analyst, proponent of open science and technology, and, perhaps most significantly, critic of the Indian government.1 Purkayastha’s arrest must be understood in the broader context of a crackdown on press freedom in India as a means of shoring up the hegemony of Narendra Modi and the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an issue that Purkayastha himself has analysed in both his book on Indian politics, science, and technology, Knowledge as Commons, as well as in his fascinating new memoir, Keeping Up the Good Fight (both published by LeftWord Press, 2023).2 Knowledge as Commons in particular lays out a vision of an inclusive, secular nation based on the open sharing of knowledge that is directly at odds with the political reality in India today.

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Conceptual approaches to the crisis, extractivism and its alternatives

This article discusses in depth the conceptual and reflective elements shared by the various works that form part of this dossier of Ecuador Debate. We introduce our reflection by critiquing capitalist modernity and its relentless pursuit of unlimited economic growth. This allows us to analyse the extractivist drift produced in Latin America as part of the global capitalist reconfiguration. We conclude by discussing various alternative approaches - post-growth, Sumak Kawsay and food sovereignty - that are capable of guiding and inspiring transformative options for Ecuador, such as those presented here.

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A New Earth Culture

Decrease the material and energetic scales and fight against the unfair accumulation of wealth to build a fairer reality for all living species and the planet

Summers with historic temperatures, droughts and torrential storms; escalating armed conflicts in different parts of the planet; the Mar Menor is dying, hundreds of people arrive in cayuco boats to the Canary Islands while others die on the way; the Sixth Mass Extinction... How we can tackle or even manage to understand the ecosocial crisis in which we find ourselves is not a simple political task.

The environmental movement has long been explaining the scientific causes of the decline processes and ecological alarm in which we find ourselves today, but also proposing initiatives and alternatives that allow us to think that there is a way out. However, the multiplicity of processes and symptoms in which we find ourselves today can generate a feeling of overwhelm and despair. It is, therefore, vital to understand but also summarise and order the events currently causing our lives to be traversed in different ways by the multisystemic crisis in which we find ourselves. To dismantle and rethink the cultural assumptions that sustain them. Putting ideas in order is also necessary for building alternatives, exits, and solutions.

 

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Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

We report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second, we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. Third, this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on scientists to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government, business, and the public. We especially draw attention to the lack of appreciation of the enormous challenges to creating a sustainable future. The added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our politicalcapacity to mitigate the erosion of ecosystem services on which society depends. The science underlying these issues is strong, but awareness is weak. Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals.

I.A.

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