Green Social Thought

Produce less. Distribute it fairly. Create a greener world for all.

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Topic: Less of What We Don’t Need

  • As Reactors Shut in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Nuke War Rages in Ohio and New York

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    by

    henryr874
    in

    As the nuke power industry slumps toward oblivion, two huge reactors are shutting in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.  The shutdowns are a body blow to atomic energy. The soaring costs of the decayed US reactor fleet have forced them to beg gerrymandered state legislatures for huge bailouts.  Just two US reactors are still being built. Stuffed…

  • Between the Devil and the Green New Deal

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    by

    fitzdon

    We cannot legislate and spend our way out of catastrophic global warming. …nearly every renewable energy source depends upon non-renewable and frequently hard-to-access minerals: solar panels use indium, turbines use neodymium, batteries use lithium, and all require kilotons of steel, tin, silver, and copper. The renewable-energy supply chain is a complicated hopscotch around the periodic…

  • Pompeo’s Arctic Shipping Lanes

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    by

    rsburke
    in

    America’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at the prestigious Arctic Council biannual meeting in Finland, christened the Arctic meltdown: “A wonderful economic opportunity for international trade.” In a nutshell, here’s a critique of the Secretary’s advice: An ice-free Arctic reduces travel time for shipping lanes between Asia and the West by three weeks, which…

  • No shortcuts: The climate revolution must be ecosocialist

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    fitzdon

    The mobilization against climate change continues to build, gaining new social layers beyond the initial circles of environmental activists and tending toward a systemic critique of capitalist productivism with its underlying competition for profit. Particularly significant is the fact that young people are joining the struggle. On March 15 more than a million people, a…

  • The “Green New Deal” Supported by Ocasio-Cortez and Corbyn is just a New Form of Colonialism

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    by

    henryr874

    Scratch the surface of the current plans to decarbonise the economy and replace it with renewable energies and beneath it lays the same logic that has made the UK the 6th richest country in the world. Britain is planning to go green through a new phase of resource and wealth extraction of countries in the…

  • Welcome to Hell: Peruvian Mining City of La Rinconada

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    by

    fitzdon

    La Rinconada, which lies at over 5km above sea level, is the highest settlement in the world; a gold mining town, a concentration of misery, a community of about 50,000 inhabitants, many of whom have been poisoned by mercury. A place where countless women and children get regularly raped, where law and order collapsed quite…

  • Concrete is tipping us into climate catastrophe. It’s payback time

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    fitzdon

    Tucked away in volume three of the technical data for Britain’s £53bn high speed rail project is a table that shows 20m tonnes of concrete will have to be poured to build the requisite 105 miles of track, culverts, bridges and tunnels. It is enough, it has been calculated, to pave over the entire city…

  • The insanity of global trade

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    fitzdon

    The way trade works in the global economy is absurd. It hurts small farmers, increases emissions and lines corporate pockets. But we can stop it.

  • A “Green New Deal”?: The Eco-syndicalist Alternative

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    by

    fitzdon

    Capitalist dynamics are at the very heart of the current crisis that humanity faces over global warming.  When we talk of “global warming,” we’re talking about the rapid — and on-going — rise in the average world-wide surface and ocean temperature. Thus far a rise of 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880. According…

  • Word to the Wise: Beware the Green New Deal!

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    by

    fitzdon

    Seemingly overnight, the Green New Deal has arrived. Given the sorry state of our environment, what possible objections could there be? In this case, plenty – and they all trace back to the Green New Deal’s deeply complex and surreptitious ties to UN Agenda 21. Those who claim that Agenda 21 amounts to little more…