OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS #250, September 29, 2025.

 

 OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS #250,   September 29, 2025.    Compiled by Dick Bennett

 

TWO SOURCES OF INFORMATION, CONCERN, and REMEDY FOR THE CLIMATE CALAMITY 
PBS Documentaries.
Books Reviewed in “Ecosocialist Bookshelf.”

 

Climate on PBS One Week in September 2025 (available on Passport)
Sacred Planet, Gulnaz Khan documentaries:
“Stopping the Desert” and “Saving the World’s Forests.”  Khan travels the world locating examples of people resisting the climate emergency.
Frontline, “Hurricane Heleine’s Deadly Warning.”  The film reports several hurricanes, their increasingly disastrous causes and consequences, but also responses:  e.g., need for significant improvement of flood plain mapping and enforcement.
Age of Nature, “Understanding.”   Roaming the nation to identify endangered species and their protection; e.g., salmon.

“Ecosocialist Bookshelf,” Climate and Capitalism, September 2025
Ecosocialist Bookshelf is a monthly column, hosted by Ian Angus. Books described here may be reviewed at length in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that C&C agrees with everything (or even anything!) it says. Climate & Capitalism has received review copies of some of these books, but we do not receive any payment for reviews or for reader purchases.

Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez.  SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World.   Public Affairs / Hachette.   Two leading climate scientists take on the “highly organized, well-funded campaign of antiscience that … makes it nearly impossible to combat future pandemics or the climate crisis.” They identify five p’s—plutocrats, pros, petrostates, phonies, and the press—as the enemies of science and propose ways to counter their lies.

Nicholas Beurat.  OR SOMETHING WORSE: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition.
Verso.   The push for net zero has become a new arena for class conflict, where the powerful profit and the rest suffer. Existing policies won’t limit global heating to anything close to a safe level. Beuret argues that we need to seize control of the transition and reshape it, n only to stop climate change but to build a fairer future.

Laleh Khalili.   EXTRACTIVE CAPITALISM: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy.   Verso.   Whether it is pumping oil, mining resources, or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. In this wry and revealing account, Khalili exposes the dark truths behind the world’s most voracious industries.

Don Gillmor.  ON OIL.    Biblioasis.   A short and compelling book by a journalist who formerly worked as a roughneck on oil rigs in Alberta. Gilmour examines how the industry dominates politics in Canada and elsewhere, and contributes to armed conflict and war across the world—as well as  misdirecting conversations about environmentalism and frustrating efforts for change.