Category: Less of What We Don’t Need

Jackson is 82.5% Black, and has been hit with multiple water crises in recent months.  As of September 2, the vast majority of the residents of the city of Jackson, Mississippi—over 150,000—still have no access to safe drinking water. The Jackson water crisis began on August 30 when flooding caused the pumps at the main…

Geothermal, like hydroelectric dams, is often cited as a renewable energy source, since the technology harnesses heat from the earth to produce electricity, which in theory is endless. Even so, large geothermal plants consume a lot of land and spit out a lot of water. The Dixie Meadows project, which was proposed in Nevada, was…

This, to me, is a fair inquiry. If a Republican introduced a piece of legislation that included opening up 600 million acres of oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico, dedicated billions of dollars to unproven “false climate solutions” like so called carbon capture and sequestration, extended the life of aging nuclear power…

While Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine [and Western sanctions on Russia] has exacerbated this crisis, climate change and capitalism are the primary engines behind this global food emergency.  The IPCC has estimated that by 2030, global warming will have diminished the world’s average agricultural production by more than a fifth.  This process really took…

In his recent book, Climate Change as Class War, Matthew Huber argues that the ecological crisis is primarily caused by the capitalist mode of production, especially the preponderant deployment of fossil capital, ‘the forms of capital that generate profit through emissions’. For many on the anti-capitalist left, this is a conclusion that hardly bears repeating. I want to…

More electric cars are needed to save us from using fossil fuels to save us from global warming. These electric cars need cobalt, a naturally occurring metal and an essential ingredient in the lithium-ion batteries powering everything from cell phones and laptops to Elon’s Tesla. Today, 60% of the global supply of cobalt comes from copper mines…

Environmentalists have long argued for federal and state subsidies for renewable energy as a means of combating climate change.  However, as our data analysis shows, the owners who benefit from renewable energy incentives can in some cases be the same fossil fuel companies that actively oppose a green energy transition. The results of a 2021 study,…

Many of the desert plants do indeed resemble ocean creatures: coral-like cactus and urchin-like succulents. Although it is commonly thought of as desolate and emptiness, the high desert steppe is incredibly abundant and alive. 350 species of wildlife and insects depend just on sagebrush herself. … There is so much in the sagebrush sea, so…

When the European imperialist powers decided among themselves to carve up Africa during the 1884-5 Berlin Conference, they granted Léopold his wish, officially recognizing the International African Association of the Congo (later the Congo Free State). In what was to represent a long-lasting relationship, the United States was the first nation to recognize Léopold’s claim…