Accumulating extinctions

Reivew of Mark Bould, The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture The Salvage Collective, The Tragedy of the Worker: Towards the Proletarocene
Mark Bould, The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture (London and New York: Verso, 2021). 176pp., £12.99 pb., 978 1 83976 047 1 The Salvage Collective, The Tragedy of the Worker: Towards the Proletarocene (London and New York: Verso, 2021). 104pp., £8.99 pb., 978 1 83976 294 9 Catastrophe is inevitably attracting much discussion in relation […]

A differing shade of green

Adrian Parr, The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. 224 pp., £20.50 hb., 978 0 23115 828 2. This book is a welcome addition to the spate of recent books on the ecological and resource calamities currently facing the planet. Unlike so many others – one thinks in […]

Ecologism and the Relegitimation of Socialism

Ecologism and the Relegitimation of Socialism Andrew Dobson Ever since 1974 – at least – and the publication of Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s ‘A Critique of Political Ecology’, I the relationship between socialism and ecologism has been a source of contention. Sometimes this relationship has been one of outright hostility as the differences between the analyses […]

Value, Rationality and the Environment

Val ue, Rationality and the Environment Andrew Collier Today most people on the Left are aware that ecological damage, and the threat of ecological disaster, are among the foremost contradictions of capitalism, second only to the impoverishment of the Third World. In addition to ecology in the strict sense, the damage done to the material […]

The Meaning of Political Ecology

The Meaning of Political Ecology Tim Hayward ‘Political ecology’ is an expression which has become quite familiar in recent years, but does not appear to have acquired a clear and settled meaning. * Evidently it is used to point up some kind of connection between politics, or the political, and ecology, yet the project of […]

Ecology and Human Emancipation

Ecology and Human Emancipation Tim Hayward Humanism vs Prometheanism The entry of ecological considerations into political thought raises new questions about the meaning of human emancipation.* In particular, traditional socialist conceptions of emancipation as a move from a sphere of necessity to one of freedom are rendered radically problematic from an ecological perspective. i As […]

Humanism = Speciesism: Marx on Humans and Animals

Humanism = Speciesism Marx on Humans and Animals Ted Benton INTRODUCTION This paperl is intended to fonn part of a more extended exploration of some key texts ofMarx from the standpoint of the so-called ‘new’ social movements (though some of these pre-date the Marxist tradition itself!). Here, I shall be focussing on the early work […]

A Critique of Deep Ecology: Part II

A Critique of Deep Ecology Part 11 Richard Sylvan 5. Beyond the value core: central metaphysical and epistemological ‘intuitions’ of deep ecology. Extension beyond the value core is essential to explain how the core themes can be maintained. In particular, it is required to explain what values-in-nature suggests; how it is, and can be, that […]

A Critique of Deep Ecology

A Critique of Deep Ecology Richard Sylvan Part I Deep ecology appears to be some elaboration of the position that natural things other than humans have value in themselves, value sometimes perhaps exceeding that of or had by humans. But which elaboration is quite another matter. Indeed deep ecology has not just been rapidly converted […]

Thinking naturally

36* Tim Hayward, Ecological Thought, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995; Kate Soper, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995.realism of postmodernism and accept the significance of the ways in which the concept of ʻnatureʼ has been used for ideological purpose. Soperʼs own position occupies that political space. Her strategy is to carve […]

No to Kyoto

Commentary No to Kyoto Chris wilbert Much has been made of the Bush administrationʼs withdrawal from negotiations on, and refusal to complete ratification of, the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change. Yet more bile has been raised by the subsequent announcement of new energy policies to address Americaʼs supposed ʻenergy crisisʼ, policies which involve further […]

One more symptom: The foot and mouth crisis in Britain

power, or by the view that market mechanisms and profit are the solutions to environmental problems, to gather together, to reject Kyoto, to tell the world why this system is no good, and to force real changes based on social justice, leading to wider economic transformation. Sources World Bank carbon website: www.prototypecarbonfund.org/. [archive]Equity Watch, Centre […]