climate change
Trade unions must join the fight against climate change

Ian Angus speaking at the Climate Change Social Change conference. Photo by Alex Bainbridge.
September 29, 2011 -- Climate and Capitalism, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Ian Angus, editor of Climate and Capitalism, is currently in Australia to speak at the Climate Change Social Change conference in Melbourne, September 30 – October 3.
During his pre-conference speaking tour, he was invited to address several meetings of trade union members. The following is a lightly edited transcript of the opening comments he made at union meetings in Melbourne and Geelong.
[For more articles by Ian Angus, click HERE.]
* * *
Thank you for inviting me to speak today.

Protests at COP16 in Cancun, Mexico, December 2010.
Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster: A `realistic’ answer to the ecological crisis

"What is clear from ...
Pakistan: Arrested, tortured for assisting climate change victims

Baba Jan speaking at a demonstration for the flood affected earlier this year.
John Bellamy Foster: The ecology of Marxian political economy

[This article is an extended version of a talk delivered at the Marxism 2011 Conference, University College of London, July 3, 2011.
Marxism and ecology (video): John Bellamy Foster at Marxism 2011
John Bellamy Foster addresses the British SWP's Marxism 2011, July 3, 2011.
For an extended text version of the talk delivered at the Marxism 2011 Conference, University College of London, July 3, 2011, click HERE. John Bellamy Foster will be a featured international guest at the second World at a Crossroads: Climate Change – Social Change Conference, Friday, September 30 – Monday, October 3, 2011, Melbourne University.
Keynote speech by John Bellamy Foster: "Capitalist crises, ecology and socialism"
Friday, September 30, 2011, 7.30-9.30 pm,
Sidney Myer Asia Centre (http://maps.unimelb.edu.au/parkville/building/158), Melbourne University.
As COP17 approaches: Dirty Durban’s manual for climate greenwashing

Durban’s infamous Bisasar Road dump: Africa’s largest “Clean Development Mechanism” is one of the world’s prim
Mauritius: Marxism, ecology and the contribution of John Bellamy Foster
By Lalit de Klas
June 2011 – Lalit [the revolutionary socialist party in Mauritius] sees the natural universe, whether it be the air above us, the sea around us or the Earth we walk upon, and all that lives upon it, and even outer space, as being our collective heritage as human beings. We are part of it, and also the guardians of it. This natural universe, our Mother Earth, is now endangered.
Our planet is already suffering irreversible damage, damage so serious as to threaten the very existence of the totality of human civilisation in all its varied forms. We humans have the minds to know this.
The threat is posed by our own human-made forms of agricultural and industrial “development”. This is serious because it is our way of survival that has become this destructiveness.
The main damage has been done in the past 250 years. Increasingly serious damage is being done. And yet most of us are oblivious to it, and once we know, we are “helpless”. We sit and watch a potential meltdown of a nuclear plant in Japan, as the capitalists who run it admit their own helplessness.



