The environment

Stuff about nature etc.

West Papua: occupation and deforestation

The case for the West Papuan people to have the right to self-determination, including separation from Indonesia, the state power which currently rules their territory, is straightforward and unanswerable. The Netherland was the colonial power over the whole archipelago most of which is now Indonesia. It stayed in West Papua after quitting Indonesia in 1949. In the early 1960s, the US government pressured the Netherlands to accept newly-independent Indonesia as a successor to its rule rather than look to the potential for West Papuan self-determination. The territory (one half of the island of...

Letter: Less work? Less capitalism

Stuart Jordan in “Winning the cooperation we need” ( Solidarity 652 ) makes a persuasive case that workers’ action to win democratic rational economic planning — not moral appeals to capitalist leaders — is needed to halt climate catastrophe. But one of his claims is incomplete at best. “We need to slow down, do less work and have more leisure time, resisting the bosses’ incessant drive to intensify the rate of work.” There are many important reasons to fight for a shorter working week and against intensification. Longer weeks and overworking degrade our quality of life, harming workers for...

Winning the cooperation we need

Download a PDF of a bulletin based on this article here “We’re on the highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator”. These measured words from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened COP27. He called on humanity to "cooperate or perish." But moral appeals to world leaders will not work. Cooperation is antithetical to the capitalist world order. Businesses and nation states are locked in competitive rivalry. So where could this cooperation come from? Where is the brake and reverse gear? Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre explains that we now "very, very...

A new world food system

In the second half of his new book Regenesis , George Monbiot explores alternatives to the Global Standard Farm. (See previous articles on the book in Solidarity 647 and 648 .) Monbiot rejects the commonplace green advocacy of low-tech, small-scale localist food production. “The systems we should favour are those that deliver high yields with low environmental impacts”. He argues for moving away from our unsustainable dependence on livestock farming and liberating grazing land for ecological restoration, while finding low-impact ways to replace the protein currently provided by domesticated...

Capitalist farming is wasteful

The Global Standard Farm, as George Monbiot’s book Regenesis calls it, is extraordinarily wasteful. 71% of the world’s birds by weight are poultry; 60% of mammalian biomass is domesticated animals (36% are humans and only 4% wild animals). While providing only a small proportion of our protein, our animals take up a lot of space and resources and produce a lot of waste. Grazing animals provide just 1% of the world’s protein but occupy 28% of the land. Domesticated animal excrement leaches into our rivers, creating algal blooms that strip rivers and seas of oxygen and kill off aquatic life. Our...

Aviation: already approaching disaster point

Finlay Asher of Safe Landing , a climate-oriented group of aviation workers campaigning for long-term employment by challenging industry leaders to conform with climate science, spoke to Sacha Ismail. This is part one; part two, mainly about Safe Landing's idea of "workers' assemblies", is here . As well as running Safe Landing, I’m also involved in Extinction Rebellion [XR] Trade Unionists . Building the links between the trade union movement and the climate movement, and between struggles against the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis, is for me the most relevant thing going on at...

Letter: 280 million years too late

Stuart Jordan’s article “The case against fracking” ( Solidarity 646 ) outlines the many downsides of fracking. In particular, he reports geologists’ opinions that the amount of gas available would supply less than 5% of Britain’s domestic supply in five years’ time. It may be worse than that. Results from exploratory drilling before the moratorium were disappointing, with rock samples found to contain only small quantities of extractable gas or oil. Unlike American deposits, these were at low pressure, making it even more difficult to extract usable quantities. This low pressure is a result...

How capitalist farming destroys our world environment

The literary tradition of pastoral promotes a common misconception that the countryside is a land of vitality and plenty, a place of easy leisure unsullied by the filth and corruption of the city. It’s a myth that has been progated since the time of the Greek rhapsodes. It’s central to the Christian tradition with its imagery of god as good shepherd. Nowadays we find versions of it in the friendly farmyard animals that populate children’s picture books and scenes of bucolic rural whimsy that dominate Sunday afternoon TV. For George Monbiot, in his new book Regenesis , the myth is so ancient...

The case against fracking

Liz Truss has pledged to lift the ban on fracking. At a time when every scientific authority on earth is calling for an end to all new fossil fuel exploration, Truss is using the energy crisis to back an unpopular technology that will nudge us ever closer to the more apocalyptic climate scenarios. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a way of extracting hard-to-reach fossil fuels from impermeable shale rock. High-pressure injection of fracking fluid (water plus chemicals plus sand) fractures the bedrock and allows fossilised methane gas and oil to rise to the surface. The process poisons soil...

Feminist cities

Rebecca Lawrence reviews: • Feminist City, Claiming Space in a Man-Made World (2021), by Leslie Kern • Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City , exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, May-September 2022 • Making Space (1984), by feminist collective Matrix How does the man-made built environment impact women and how we live? How does the design of our homes and cities affect not only our safety, but our happiness, convenience, and the very structure of our lives? Feminists can gain some insight on this topic from Leslie Kern’s book Feminist City and Birmingham’s Women in the...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.