What if its all a hoax?

                                                From USA Today

Green Jobs and Power

Building a New and Just Economy
By John Cartwright
Our Times

We often propose that green jobs and stronger public services are part of the solution to the economic crisis we face. But the question that keeps nagging at me is one of power: how will we achieve the political power needed to overcome the natural instincts of global capitalism? It's like we're architects who can imagine truly inspired designs, but have yet to bring together the skilled workforce and essential materials to turn the designs into reality.

What are the obstacles to a green, prosperous future? Some will say it is the industrial model, which seeks to conquer nature rather than complement it. Others will point to vested interests like big oil, the auto giants, or government bureaucracies. No doubt there is an element of truth in all those observations. But I believe the problem is something more fundamental: the relentless assertion of corporate power in Canada, and across the entire globe.

That power is nothing new. The first multinational joint-stock corporation was the Dutch East India Company. It was chartered in 1602 with the right to claim foreign lands, raise private armies, and make slaves of indigenous peoples. This business plan generated an 18 per cent annual profit for over two centuries. Its success was mirrored by the British East India Company, which, at one point, employed 100,000 private soldiers.

Collective Action

The point of relating this history is that global corporate rule has been around for a long time, and humankind has had to take some serious steps to curtail its worst impulses. There have been revolutions, colonial uprisings, and many gains made by people's collective action. Along the bumpy road, the Declaration of Universal Human Rights was an important marker. So was the Kyoto Accord. Now we need a new marker; one that points in the direction of a globaleconomy that is both sustainable and equitable.

There are inspiring examples of how we might green our world, from alternative energy generation to zero-footprint buildings to industrial design based on "bio-mimicry" emulating the rhythms of natural world. Europe is usually seen as the leader in this, but much is also happening in the global south that should not be ignored. The world's largest cities have carved out a special role in figuring out solutions, and unions are exploring how best to embrace a green agenda.

Teachers and Grocery Workers

The challenge is how to paint a picture of a sustainable future where all of us can see a place for ourselves. People who work in industry, resource extraction, construction; First Nations and newcomers; teachers and grocery workers; youth and people of colour. Everyone needs to be able to describe a green or greener job that they could be doing in years hence. A new ecological vision needs to be crafted that will become as widely embraced as today's social networking.

Attaining all this will require overcoming real obstacles. You only have to look south of the border to see the relentless Republican/Fox News assault on the Obama administration for daring to dream green. Van Jones, one of the most inspiring environmental leaders in the United States, was hounded out of the White House by a vicious smear campaign reminiscent of the McCarthy years.

Canada has its own demons to deal with, including a Prime Minister smitten with delusions of leading an energy superpower. For the last quarter century the Business Council on National Issues has shaped nearly all key government policy. That elite group of CEOs has changed its name to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, but their main goals remain the same: free trade and continental integration.

The Crucial Question

Free market supremacy stands directly opposed to basic green principles such as local procurement - getting governments to require things they buy to be built locally. The CCCE boys want to be able to outsource the work and get what they need anywhere in the world, from the cheapest sweatshops available. They will only accept controls on greenhouse gases if money can be made in carbon trading schemes. Whether a greener economy provides jobs for the next generation of Canadians is irrelevant to them. But, for everyone else, this is a crucial question.

We have won some important victories around contracts for transit vehicles, and Ontario's Green Energy Act gives a nod in the right direction. But what about the materials needed for retrofitting thousands of buildings, or building fuel-efficient cars? Will young trainees get a true apprenticeship or only a limited skill set?

The challenge is not just to imagine an economy that provides good green jobs for all. The real challenge is how to force that to happen. I would suggest that the first step is to identify the potential benefits from greening every sector of the economy. The second step is to create a policy framework, for both the public and private sector, that will ensure living wages and true accountability. The third step will be to fight like hell to make sure those good jobs and benefits are shared by all.

John Cartwright is the president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, which is part of the Good Jobs For All coalition of community, labour, social justice, youth and environmental organizations in the Toronto region. For more information visit http://www.goodjobsforall.ca/ or www.labourcouncil.ca.

This is just a sample of the kind of commentaries you'll find in Our Times. For more commentaries like this of solidarity and struggle, plus feature stories, poetry and reviews, subscribe to Our Times. You'll get 6 issues for just $25. Subscribe online, or mail your cheque, along with your name and address, to: Our Times, Ste. 407, 15 Gervais Drive, Toronto, Ontario M3C 1Y8.

Let's Keep the Blue Green Movement Moving!

By Ken Delaney for Blue Green Canada

Ken Delaney is the Assistant to the National Director of the United Steelworkers Union and Co-Chair of Blue Green Canada.

There is a lot of dissatisfaction among environmentalists and trade unionists with the outcome of the Copenhagen talks. World leaders did not get the job done and a lot of work remains.

But still, I could not not help but be moved by the number of environmental and trade union activists that showed up in Copenhagen. And I could not help feeling that a new emerging alliance between the labour and environmental movements has some real potential.

Together we have more credibility and a stronger voice that we do individually.

We did bring our message to Canadian provincial politicians, municipal politicians, and to representatives of the Government of Canada. We also forged relationships with environmentalists and trade unionists in the United States, and with other Canadian trade unionists and environmentalists. As we continue to advocate for effective climate change policies and green job strategies, these relationships will prove valuable.

It was a pleasure to work with people who believe that economic activity can and should be regulated in a way that both protects our climate and provides good jobs for all. It is that commonality of thought, and a shared belief that both goals can be achieved, that binds the alliance together and forms the foundation of a new partnership.

We have a lot of work to do. We have to hold governments accountable when they fail to act, and we have to acknowledge them when they do. We have to advocate effective policies, and we have to raise awareness of both the importance of addressing the issues and of the solutions we propose.

I think both trade unionists and environmentalists will be more effective in doing so if they can do it together.

Let's keep the Blue Green Movement moving!

Canadian Ecosocialists: A job still in progress

The following was written by Ian Angus in 2007. The challenges he outlined then still require much patient work (read the full article link).

The growing worldwide interest in ecosocialism is reflected in two political trends: 

• Many people in the green movement are turning to Marxism to understand the ecological crisis and are concluding that only socialism offers a way out.
• Many on the Left believe that socialism will succeed only if it is based on sound ecological practice - and that the fight against capitalism’s destruction of the environment (especially through global warming) will play a central role in the fight for socialism.

As these parallel developments illustrate, “ecosocialism” is not separate from the existing left and green movements, and it is not a structured movement on its own. Rather, it is a current of thought within existing socialist and green-left movements, seeking to win ecology activists to socialism and to convince socialists of the vital importance of ecological issues and struggles.

In Canada, ecosocialism is new, and still a distinctly minority current. Most progressive movements address ecological issues from time to time, but few have made them a key focus of their activity. And while socialist views are beginning to get a hearing in green circles, few ecology activists advocate anything more radical than the market-based “solutions” of the Kyoto Accord.

We might say that the central goal of ecosocialism today is to make the greens more left and the lefts more green. The path to this goal is still being worked out — we are learning as we go — but the time to accelerate the process is now...

The Time is Ripe

It is far easier to write socialist essays about climate change than to actively build movements against it. But, as Marx wrote, interpreting the world is not enough — the point is to change it.

The time is ripe for ecosocialists to move beyond criticizing capitalism — to supporting, building and learning from real movements for change. If we don’t do so, all of our words and theories will be irrelevant.

Ian Angus
Five Challenges for Ecosocialists in 2008
Canadian Dimension

As the World Burns

How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming

by Jeff Goodell

Rolling Stone

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson's "The Climate Killers."

This was supposed to be the transformative moment on global warming, the tipping point when America proved to the world that capitalism has a conscience, that we take the fate of the planet seriously. According to the script, Congress would pass a landmark bill committing the U.S. to deep cuts in carbon emissions. President Obama would then arrive in Copenhagen for the international climate summit, armed with the moral and political capital he needed to challenge the rest of the world to do the same. After all, wasn't this the kind of bold move the Norwegians were anticipating when they awarded Obama the Nobel Peace Prize?

Rolling Stone article here
Illustration by Victor Juhasz

Marxism and Ecology

Marxism and Ecology: Capitalism, socialism and the future of the planet.
By Martin Empson. A Socialist Worker pamphlet.

Reviewed by Derek Wall, U.K.
Another Green World

"'In this pamphlet I will look at how the ideas of Marx and Engels explain how human society has related to the environment at different stages in our history. At why capitalism is so environmentally damaging and why placing Marxist ideas back at the heart of the debate about what sort of society we need to save us from ecological destruction is so urgent."

Its been a pleasure to work with Martin Empson, I have shared platforms with him, the last time was in Nottingham at a discussion about the failed Copenhagen conference along with Labour MP Alan Simpson in December.

Martin is a keen advocate of green trade unionism. He is a leading light of the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union group in the UK, he has strongly supported the Vestas workers on the Isle of Wight who occupied their wind turbine factory when it was closed down, he has also been involved with the One Million Green Jobs project.

His booklet is a gem. With clear prose and concise delivery he looks at the relationship between Marxism and green politics, or perhaps to be more precise the relationship between Marx and the science of ecology.

Three Meanings of Ecosocialism

Canadian activist Ian Angus has been a key actor in the organisation of the international ecosocialist movement, through his initiation - together with well-known figures like Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy - of the Ecosocialist International Network. Here he is interviewed by the Greek socialist paper Kokkino.  Re-posted from International Viewpoint.

Let’s begin with a big question — what is ecosocialism?

ANGUS: Ecosocialism has grown out of two parallel political trends — the spread of Marxist ideas in the green movement and the spread of ecological ideas in the Marxist left. The result is a set of social and political goals, a growing body of ideas, and a global movement.

Ecosocialism’s goal is to replace capitalism with a society in which common ownership of the means of production has replaced capitalist ownership, and in which the preservation and restoration of ecosystems will be central to all activity.

As a body of ideas, ecosocialism argues that ecological destruction is not an accidental feature of capitalism, it is built into the system’s DNA. The system’s insatiable need to increase profits — what’s been called “the ecological tyranny of the bottom line” — cannot be reformed away.

With that said, it is important to realize ecosocialist thought is not monolithic — it embodies many different views about theory and practice. For example, there is an ongoing debate about the view, advanced by some ecosocialist writers, that social movements have replaced the working class as the engine of social change.

Finally, ecosocialism is an anti-capitalist movement that varies a lot from place to place. In the imperialist countries, it is a current within existing socialist and green-left movements, seeking to win ecology activists to socialism, and to convince socialists of the vital importance of ecological issues and struggles. In the Third World there is a growing mass pro-ecology movement that incorporates socialist ideas — that’s especially true in Latin America, where anti-imperialist governments headed by Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Fidel Castro in Cuba, are pressing for strong anticapitalist, pro-environment measures.

What is the Ecosocialist International Network?

Latin Stars in Ecology Calendar

In a new calendar for 2010, Latin actors and models are featured in shocking poses sending home eco-messages. A collaboration between the Azara Foundation and fashion photographer Gaby Herbstein, the calendar showcases 12 famous Latin stars representing some of the most important environmental issues of our time.

Part of the campaign Ecological Footprint, the calendar was conceived to raise awareness and motivate people to change their approach to deforestation, global warming, air pollution, and more.

View the slideshow of these images at TreeHugger.com .

Marx on the Animal/Human Distinction

Reposted from Kasama.

"We are all trying to understand more deeply the relationship between human beings and the rest of the planet’s living species. And we have touched a few times (too fleetingly) on the ethical questions for revolutionaries in viewing how animals are treated, industralized and consumed in this society. The following article raises some related questions by examining some little known passages in the writings of Karl Marx (one of the founders of modern communism).

Please share with us titles of other articles (including more recent/modern treatment) that could be shared on this topic — so that we can engage the ecology, ethics, and production transformations that communists and radicals should consider around the treatment of animals in both food production and the wild."

Mike E - Kasama

This article was originally published in Capital & Class, Issue no.72, Autumn ‘00. It appears on the Marx Myths and Legends site.

Marx on the Animal/Human Distinction: “The Creatures Too Must Become Free”
by Lawrence Wilde

The clarion call for the liberation of animals quoted in the title of this paper is cited approvingly by Marx in On the Jewish Question (Marx, 1975: 172). The words themselves belong to Thomas Münzer, the leader of the German Peasants’ Revolt in the early sixteenth century, and what attracted Marx was Münzer’s view that under the dominion of private property and money, nature is treated in such a contemptuous way that it is debased. Münzer had conduded:

“…all creatures have been turned into property, the fishes in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth; the creatures, too, must become free.”
Read the full article at Kasama.

Tommy Douglas on Jobs and the Environment

A short audio clip from the 1983 NDP Convention. Also available at TommyDouglasTube.

Copenhagen and Canada

Scoring Zero for Zero Emissions
Canadian Dimension Editorial Collective
January 7th, 2010

A climate emergency threatens mass extinctions this century. Species are already disappearing at one thousand times the normal rate. Ample evidence points to the need for zero emissions plus more and further negative reductions of atmospheric carbon as soon as possible. Yet most “leaders” parade their gossamer fabrics of pseudo proposals, concealing the naked greed and criminality of the non-renewable energy (carbon and nuclear)- military-agricultural extraction privatized water-pharmaceutical banking-media business elites.

Massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are needed now. The longer current greenhouse gas concentrations stay in the atmosphere, the greater the danger of irreversible, non-linear triggering effects. What must be avoided at all costs are the melting of polar ice sheets and the melting of the permafrost, which will precipitate far worse and rapid changes, including huge reductions in food and water.

The worst country in the world is now Canada — a bigger danger than any past despotic or colonial power because the threat is now much larger. In his recent Toronto talk and subsequent article about Canada, George Monbiot speaks of Canada’s psychopathic leaders and of three areas in which they sabotage all efforts to prevent runaway climate change. First, there is the tar sands subsidized by huge government funding, the most destructive industrial project on earth. Second, Canada’s proposed emission cuts are smaller than any other rich nation. Third, Canada has single-handedly tried to prevent other nations from reaching an agreement.

Climate change is not some futuristic scenario. Societies are already facing threats of unprecedented severity as climate change is happening faster than predicted. More intense and longer droughts occur over larger areas. Extreme weather events are more frequent and have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Melting mountain glaciers threaten water systems vital to agriculture, sea level rise begins to inundate island nations and the low lying regions of Bangladesh and already causes increased salinity in the Nile Delta which is the breadbasket of Egypt. The Inuit people are losing their means of subsistence, and there is altered distribution of diseases.

There is growing insight that the underlying cause of the problem and the stonewalling of solutions comes from the intrinsic expansionist nature of capitalism. Capitalism can’t survive without economic growth, the ultimate enemy of nature and the planet.

What needs to be done? Right now it is fairly impossible to do anything — the biggest step in many cities has been to ban plastic bags. But if people were really convinced that this is an emergency — that this is a race against time to save billions of people — many measures would come to mind.

Here’s a short list: Eliminate non-essential goods and services and implement fair distribution of the basic necessary supplies of non-renewable energy, food, water, shelter, health care, in terms of peoples’ needs and not their wealth; expand public goods such as libraries, parks, community rec centres, museums, education; reduce work-time; implement massive income redistribution; ration personal use of air travel and restrict carbon intensive aviation and shipping to essential services (no mangos in winter); introduce free public transit; halt the tar sands operations; massively expand renewable energy supplies; restore agricultural land and utilize urban space for farming; protect watersheds; retrofit existing buildings; and globally, convert the carbon intensive military complex to a civilian conservation corps.

Not long ago James Hansen, the pre-eminent climate scientist, called on young people to do whatever is necessary, including civil disobedience, to block construction of dirty U.S. coal-fired power plants. To its credit, Greenpeace has undertaken some direct action in Alberta’s tar sands fields. We need others to join Greenpeace in much larger actions of this kind. Nonviolent direct action has been a significant catalyst in nearly every major social change movement in world history.

Canadian Dimension

Slavoj Zizek on Radical Ecology

Slavoj Žižek, dialectical-materialist philosopher and Lacanian psychoanalyst, is codirector of the International Centre for Humanities, Birkbeck College, London. His latest book is First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.