Global Warming | World Change Cafe

Nature’s Bottom Line

Ecological collapse is all around. But faith in economic growth as the only path to prosperity shows no sign of fading. Wayne Ellwood examines the folly of endless growth on a finite planet. [...more]

Capitalism, Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Government, Sustainability Comments (0)

How to Solve Our Economic and Environmental Crises

Everything from our food systems, water sources, oceans and deserts is negatively influenced by our obsession with mining, transporting and burning carbon-based fossil fuels. [...more]

Disease, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Green Living, Health, Sustainability Comments (0)

Humans vs. the environment – A thought experiment

Protecting the environment isn't a "liberal" idea; it's everybody's business. Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, the environment provides life support for us all, and if we fail to recognize that, we are truly doomed as a civilization. [...more]

Civilization, Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Population, Sustainability Comments (0)

Climate Change And Social Justice: Towards An Ecosocialist Perspective

There is a certain urgency to the present ecological crisis. Now it has been proved that the world economy has been driven to the limits, and in some cases beyond a whole range of ecological thresholds. The global ecological crisis is not impending, it is already here. [...more]

Capitalism, Consumerism, Environment, Global Warming, Human Rights, Social Justice, Socialism, Sustainability Comments (0)

An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification

A new study says the seas are acidifying ten times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. And, the study concludes, current changes in ocean chemistry due to the burning of fossil fuels may portend a new wave of die-offs. [...more]

Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Ocean Comments (0)

We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity’s Most Dangerous Moments

Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort. [...more]

Community, Democracy, Environment, Fascism, Global Warming, Government, Human Rights, Social Justice, Sustainability Comments (0)

After Copenhagen: How Can We Move Forward?

First, a confession: This is not another enumeration of confident judgments. I will not tell you that Copenhagen was an unmitigated failure. Or that this failure was Obama’s fault. Or that, as is the new fashion, China was the ugliest of them all. I will not say that the South’s negotiators made impossible demands. Or argue that the United Nations’ process is unwieldy and obsolete. I will not claim that only domestic U.S. action really matters. Nor will I talk of a “North-South impasse” or a “U.S.-China polluters pact,” two popular formulations that misleadingly imply an equal division of blame. [...more]

Environment, Global Warming, Government, Human Rights, Social Justice Comments (1)

China or the U.S.: Which Will Be the Last Nation Standing?

Silly me. Here I had thought that world leaders would want to keep their nations from collapsing. They must be working hard to prevent currency collapse, financial system collapse, food system collapse, social collapse, environmental collapse, and the onset of general, overwhelming misery—right? But no, that's not what the evidence suggests. Increasingly I am forced to conclude that the object of the game that world leaders are actually playing is not to avoid collapse; it's simply to postpone it a while so as to be the last nation to go down, so yours can have the chance to pick the others' carcasses before it meets the same fate. [...more]

Consumerism, Economics, Energy, Environment, Fascism, Global Warming, Government, Hunger, Poverty, Social Justice Comments (2)

The Attack on Climate-Change Science

The campaign against climate science has been enormously clever, and enormously effective. It’s worth trying to understand how they’ve done it. The best analogy, I think, is to the O.J. Simpson trial, an event that’s begun to recede into our collective memory. [...more]

Environment, Global Warming Comments (0)

Zero Point Of Systemic Collapse

The indifference to the plight of others and the supreme elevation of the self is what the corporate state seeks to instill in us. It uses fear, as well as hedonism, to thwart human compassion. We will have to continue to battle the mechanisms of the dominant culture, if for no other reason than to preserve through small, even tiny acts, our common humanity. We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door. Hope endures in these often imperceptible acts of defiance. This defiance, this capacity to say no, is what the psychopathic forces in control of our power systems seek to eradicate. As long as we are willing to defy these forces we have a chance, if not for ourselves, then at least for those who follow. As long as we defy these forces we remain alive. And for now this is the only victory possible. [...more]

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