By LUCAS ALAN DIETSCHE — SUPERIOR, Wis. — On April 26, around 10 a.m., on the same day as the anniversary of the explosion at Chernobyl, the Husky Refinery here exploded and caught fire. For nine hours, toxic fumes blew 30 miles to the south. Eleven workers were injured but soon recovered. Most of this…
By BARRY WEISLEDER and GARY PORTER Q: When should workers oppose nationalization of an industry? A: When it is a bail-out of a nature-destroying, Indigenous rights violating, ruthlessly greedy corporation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision on May 29 to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline is that, and much worse. While the Liberal federal government can’t come…
By GARY PORTER On May 29, Canada’s federal government announced that it would purchase the Trans Mountain Pipeline from the American corporation Kinder Morgan—despite opposition from environmentalists and Indigenous people. “The Trans Mountain expansion project is of vital interest to Canada and Canadians,” Bill Morneau, the finance minister, told reporters after a cabinet meeting to…
By CLIFF CONNER Following World War II, a think tank named the RAND Corporation took the lead in formulating policies guiding military-industrial Big Science. Some of the titles of books and articles about RAND provide a hint of what it represented in the public imagination: “The Think Tank that Controls America,” “America’s University of Imperialism,”…
By CHRIS TEI We don’t need to be removed from nature. We need to radically change the way we relate to it. Capitalism’s endless pursuit of profits for the few continues to destroy the ecosystems upon which human beings base our very existence. And while one political wing of the capitalist class ceaselessly denies climate…
WEST HARTFORD, Conn.—On Feb. 24, around 170 crowded into the Elmwood Community Center here to hear, as the promotional material described the event, “Experts and activists exploring some of the toughest questions facing the climate movement.” Jacqui Patterson, the director of the national NAACP’s Environmental and Justice Program, told the stories of individual people of…
By CHRISTINE MARIE As Bill McKibben and other climate leaders keep reminding us, the cost of solar and wind energy keeps dropping. They assure us that if government continues to incentivize private investment with guarantees of profits it would make these renewable sources competitive with fossil fuels and lead to a green capitalism. This thinking…
By GARY PORTER On Dec. 11, British Columbia’s New Democratic Party Premier John Horgan announced that his government would complete the third massive power dam on the beautiful Peace River in northeastern BC at a cost of $11 billion. Andrew Weaver, leader of the BC Green Party—who signed a “confidence and supply” agreement with the…
By BILL ONASCH On Feb. 5, civil rights, trade union, student, church, and environmental activists in communities across North America will come together in a variety of events to call attention to a looming crisis in public transit. The diversity of these groups indicates that they recognize not only the urgent need to save what…
By CLIFF CONNER — Cliff Conner is currently writing a book entitled “The Tragedy of American Science.” How loathsome is the Trump administration? Let me count the ways. On second thought, let me not—it would take too long. But one important threat it poses to the United States and the world is to the integrity…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER At the same time that Donald Trump was gallivanting around Asia, with objectives that included arming Japan with U.S. missiles and cajoling China into the plan to isolate North Korea, other heads of state were in Bonn, Germany, for the 23rd annual “Conference of the Parties” (COP23) UN-sponsored climate talks. The two…
By KEITH LESLIE “The only thing we need now is a hurricane.” These were the words of a financial advisor in Puerto Rico this summer, anticipating the business opportunities the devastation of a hurricane would produce. This framework—which understands disaster as an opportunity for profit—is not unusual. As Naomi Klein showed in her famous book,…
Trump’s recent visit to Puerto Rico illustrated an arrogant attitude toward a dire situation. At least 30 percent of Puerto Rican’s have no electricity, and electric power is not likely to return until the end of October. The president’s threats to cut off aid expose the real intentions of the U.S. ruling class. Prior to…
By CARL SACK At the time of this writing, Hurricane Nate is plowing through the eastern United States, the 14th named storm of what is on track to be the most costly Atlantic hurricane season on record. Over the summer, wildfires scorched millions of acres across the western U.S. and Canada, darkening the skies with…
Soon after hurricane Irma devastated islands in the Caribbean and parts of Florida, Socialist Action reporter Ernie Gotta interviewed Omar Pérez Figueroa about the effects of the storm on Puerto Rico. Gotta followed up with Perez after hurricane Maria decimated the island. Pérez, a native of Puerto Rico, is a member of the Juventud Hostosiana, the youth…
Soon after hurricane Irma devastated islands in the Caribbean and parts of Florida, Socialist Action reporter Ernie Gotta interviewed Omar Pérez Figueroa about the effects of the storm on Puerto Rico. Pérez, a native of Puerto Rico, is a member of the Juventud Hostosiana, the youth group of the Hostosian National Independence Movement. He is an…
INTERVIEW BY ERNIE GOTTA Puerto Rico has suffered for generations under the direct and indirect rule by the United States. The wealth of the island has been stripped by corporate interests while farmers and workers on the island have struggled with political, economic, and environmental degradation. Activists both at home and in the diaspora are…
By CHRISTINE MARIE Many cheered when Connecticut joined other states in proclaiming that they would stick to the Paris Agreement although the U.S. was pulling out. Unfortunately, the limits of that gesture became clear very soon. On July 26, the Connecticut Department of Energy and the Environment released a long-awaited report, a draft Comprehensive Energy Strategy. The…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER After swamping Houston and the Galveston Bay region, Tropical Storm Harvey wheeled into eastern Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Residents of Tyler County, Texas, were told by authorities, “Get out or die!” Over two feet of water was dumped on cities and towns that were still rebuilding from the legendary Hurricane Katrina in…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER “We’re getting out!” President Trump declared before the press and a knot of governmental officials who had gathered in the White House Rose Garden on June 1. “In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.” Trump characterized…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER On April 29, more than 200,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., in a powerful show of determination to rescue the earth from the ravages of climate change. Over 370 sister marches took place simultaneously across the United States and in countries around the world from Britain to Brazil, and from Mexico to…
By BILL ONASCH On the eve of the April 29 People’s Climate Mobilization in Washington and other cities, Bill Onasch describes what working people and the labor movement must do in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. The working class faces challenges on many fronts today. But one crisis is overarching.…
By BUD SCHULTE and JOHN SCHRAUFNAGEL Rob Wallace is an evolutionary biologist and the author of “Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science” (Monthly Review Press). Through a dialectical process he shows us how Big Agriculture and its organization and methodology conflict with the epidemiological controls needed…
By CLIFF CONNER The Earth Day 2017 March for Science signals resistance to Donald Trump’s sharp infusion of irrationality into the national discourse. Official support for climate-change denial and other anti-science agendas has suddenly become much more explicit. At the same time, many protestors recognize a continuity linking Trump’s bizarre bluster with a pre-existing condition…
Alexandre Araujo Costa, a Brazilian ecology activist, spoke to Belgian ecology writer and activist Daniel Tanuro on a range of questions concerning ecology and ecosocialism. For many years, left-wing organizations did not pay much attention to environmental issues in general but at least since its 15th Congress, the Fourth International seems to be increasingly concerned about what…
