CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, JUNE 21, 2021

 28.  Climate Memo Mondays, June 21, 2021

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.  2020. Art told us about this book a few months ago, and OMNI’s PANDEMICS AND WARMING MOBILIZATION NEWSLETTER #1 (April 15, 2021) cited it, so this is a reminder.  The review I read  was by Rick Claypool and published in Public Citizen News (May-June 2021).  He praises the book as “a welcome, hopeful vision” that “does not sugar-coat the challenges of the transition away from carbon.”  The “overheating  planet triggers catastrophes that kill millions,” while “corporations and the U.S. government actively resist change.”  But the Ministry for the Future leads the way to plausibly overcoming our “death spiral” and creating a green new world.   (Claypool is PC’s research director.)  --Dick    6-14-21

 Varshini Prakash, “Climate : For a Green New Decade.”  The Nation (1-11/18-2021). 

Prakash and Guido Girgenti edited the essays from leaders and experts championing the Green New Deal titled Winning the Green New Deal. Why We Must, How We Can.

John Bellamy Foster.  The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology.  2020.

Publisher’s Description:

Twenty years ago, John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature introduced a new understanding of Karl Marx’s revolutionary ecological materialism. More than simply a study of Marx, it commenced an intellectual and social history, encompassing thinkers from Epicurus to Darwin, who developed materialist and ecological ideas. Now, with The Return of Nature, Foster continues this narrative. In so doing, he uncovers a long history of efforts to unite issues of social justice and environmental sustainability that will help us comprehend and counter today’s unprecedented planetary emergencies.

The Return of Nature begins with the deaths of Darwin (1882) and Marx (1883) and moves on until the rise of the ecological age in the 1960s and 1970s. Foster explores how socialist analysts and materialist scientists of various stamps, first in Britain, then the United States, from William Morris and Frederick Engels to Joseph Needham, Rachel Carson, and Stephen Jay Gould, sought to develop a dialectical naturalism, rooted in a critique of capitalism. In the process, he delivers a far-reaching and fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology. Ultimately, what this book asks for is nothing short of revolution: a long, ecological revolution, aimed at making peace with the planet while meeting collective human needs.