Alberta Tar Sands Industry's Troubled Export Ambitions to the U.S.: In the wake of the reported delay by the U.S. government of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry
Alberta tar sands product to refineries in Texas, the tar sands industry and Canadian government are making noises about shifting export sales ambitions towards Asia and away from the United States.
Whatever It Takes: Protecting the Tar Sands, Protecting Capitalism by Ryan Katz-Rosene
Something is rotten in the province of Alberta! And it's not just the tar sands. It's the way political and corporate elites do whatever it takes to extinguish potential threats to the bituminous megaproject. The attempt to protect the tar sands from criticism can be framed as a part of a broader effort to protect the ‘rights’ of private interests to profit from bitumen production.
Racism in the Tar Sands: exploiting foreign workers and poisoning indigenous people
by Macdonald Stainsby
The giant corporations that are determined to exploit the Alberta tar sands face a major problem – a serious shortage of local labour to do the actual work. So the Canadian and Albertan governments have a plan, ideal in their eyes, to solve the crunch.
If your goal is ecological sustainability, how often have you been urged to get active on the local level?
Greg Albo critiques localist projects that deny or ignore the extra-local capitalist and neoliberal context.
He also questions whether small-scale enterprises and local political practice are in fact more environmentally
responsible and democratic. And Leo Panitch shares some of the other insights offered in the anthology
Socialist Register 2007.
Growing numbers of people are beginning to realize that an ecocatastrophe is both possible and likely.
Joel Kovel's best-selling book, The Enemy of Nature, outlines how the world capitalist system is unsustainable and unreformable. A longtime anti-war
and Latin American solidarity activist, Joel has been increasingly active in ecological struggles. In 2000, he sought the Presidential nomination of the
U.S. Green Party. Since 2003 he has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal,
Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. He is Distinguished Professor of Social
Studies at Bard College, New York.
• May 2007: ZNet: Global Warming Suspicions and Confusions by Justin Podur
“In recent years, a number of important contributions have influenced the growing debate on global warming.
Paul Baer and Tom Athanasiou's book, Dead Heat, from a few years ago, was excellent. Noam Chomsky's latest book,
Failed States, mentions global warming as one of the three more urgent problems humanity faces (the others being
war and the lack of democratic institutions to deal with problems).”
• May 2007: The Debate Heats Up by Fidel Castro Ruz
“Capitalism is preparing to perpetrate a massive euthanasia on the poor, and particularly on the poor of the South, since it is there that the greatest reserves of the earth's biomass required to produce biofuels are found. Regardless of numerous official statements assuring that this is not a choice between food and fuel, reality shows that this, and no other, is exactly the alternative: either the land is used to produce food or to produce biofuels.”
• April 2007:Capital and Nature: An Interview with Paul Burkett by João Aguiar
“The year 2007 marks the 140th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marx’s Capital.
In your perspective, what is the main contribution of that major work to the understanding of contemporary capitalism?”
• Feb. 2007:The Limits of Eco-Localism: Scale, Strategy, Socialism by Gregory Albo
“The shadow cast by neoliberalism over the prospects of the Left in the current period has been unrelenting.
A few rays of hope have broken through with signs of a resurgence of the Latin American Left, the defeat of the Nepalese monarchy,
and a number of specific campaigns, both local and global, in opposition to the privatization of basic services.”
• Dec. 2005: Bullet #9: Montreal 2005 Climate Change Conference by Graham Erion and Michael Dorsey
“For persons in the Artic watching permafrost and polar ice melt; in small island states watching the sea levels
rise around them; in drought-filled regions watching another year's crop fail; or in the path of yet another destructive
hurricane watching their homes and livelihood get destroyed, the fact that climate change is happening is not a news
story they have to read about to comprehend.”
Representatives from organizations and peoples' movements from around the globe came together in Durban, South Africa
October 4-7, 2004 to discuss realistic avenues for addressing climate change. The group emerged from the meeting with a
call for a global grassroots movement against climate change. More information on the SinksWatch website.
Climate and Capitalism
aims to present a wide range of Marxist perspectives on climate change, and to provide socialists with the information and analysis they need to understand and respond to the crisis.
The Corner House
Since its founding in 1997, The Corner House has aimed to support democratic and community movements for environmental and social justice.
Ecosocialist Horizons
seeks to advance ecosocialism as a world-view and as a movement capable of offering real answers to the crises caused by capitalism. Whether these crises be social, economic or ecological, an integrated approach is necessary. While we conceive of our work holistically, we can categorize our activities into three areas aimed at creating ecosocialist consciousness.
Green Lefts:Left Greens
is an Australian based hub that aggregates resources and commentary on the environment and climate change from a green left and a left green perspective.
Monbiot.com
Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it.
The Oil Sands of Canada
a slide show designed for all who are interested in oil as a source of energy, and those who recognize the often-destructive connection between energy and the environment.
(May 3, 2007: Globe and Mail article about this website:
U.S. activist takes on Syncrude)
Real Climate is a commentary site on climate science by
working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. It aims to provide a quick response to
developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.
Tar Sands Watch is a part of
the Polaris Institute. Polaris is designed to enable citizen movements to act for democratic social change on major
public policy issues in an age of corporate driven globalization.
Weather Task Force
is an alliance of environmental, labour, and community groups who came together to recreate the original spirit of Earth Day: mobilized, political, visionary, and ambitious. We believe that a solution to the climate crisis will come about through a comprehensive approach to energy, consumption, transportation, and the economy. And this approach must be rooted in justice. Earth Day is just the beginning.
