I READ PLENTY of articles, short and long, on all sorts of topics, but — I hesitate to mention this to ATC readers — I rarely read full length nonfiction books. But those by Michael A. Lebowitz, including his recent The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now (Monthly Review Press, 2015), have been an easy exception. It is a pleasure and a relief to read theory that has such practical application to the questions socialists must address in our work to transform the world.
[VESG member reports:"David Black of Black Press was on the CBC Early Edition this morning arguing against Kinder Morgan and for setting up a refinery on the north coast instead (Prince Rupert?). He had some interesting nuggets on the Exxon Valdez grounding.
1) The ship lost only 8% of its load. [Editor: Black said an eighth of its load]
2) The most intensive part of the cleanup took four years.
3) 11,000 workers and 1,400 vessels were involved.
4) Only 7% of the spill was actually able to be cleaned up.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Christy Clark and most of Canada’s premiers recently signed the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. “Framework” is a good title for this agreement — it is barely a start on what is needed. But it contains a policy shift that could dramatically reduce climate pollution from transportation.
Are you ready to add more power to the transcontinental movement against unnecessary and harmful new tar sands pipelines (they're all unnecessary and harmful)? You can do this by helping to join the struggles against the Kinder Morgan and Energy East pipelines.
Author and environmentalist Naomi Klein published a feature article in the Globe and Mail‘s edition of Saturday, Sept 24 in which she defends against its detractors the Leap Manifesto issued in Canada in April 2016. Her unique argument in this essay explains that Canada’s “founding economic myth” has been that of the ‘good’ created by the vast pillaging of the country’s natural resources following the arrival of settlers from Europe.
Often the best way to begin to understand something is to consider what it is not. Socialism for the twenty-first century is not a society in which people sell their ability to work and are directed from above by others whose goal is profits rather than the satisfaction of human needs. It is not a society where the owners of the means of production benefit by dividing workers and communities in order to drive down wages and intensify work—i.e., gain by increasing exploitation. Socialism for the twenty-first century, in short, is not capitalism.
The fresh new face Canada showed the world at the Paris COP21 climate meetings held out hope for many Canadian climate activists that a national course change was in the works.
In its less than a decade in power, the Harper government extinguished multiple important Canadian environmental laws, muzzled climate scientists, harassed environmental NGOs, created "anti-terrorism" legislation that targets First Nations and other pipeline activists, and generally introduced regressive and reactionary social policy while promoting Canada as the world's new petro-state.
Sept 14, 2016 - Capitalism has run so amok, producing so much waste and life-destroying pollution, that scientists now say that Earth has entered an entirely new epoch: The Anthropocene
[Editor's note: Following is one of the many great presentations made to the Ministerial Panel in Burnaby on August 9, 10, and 11. In general the presentations were intelligent, very well researched, and presented with great passion. I was there for most of the day on Wednesday and most of the afternoon/evening on Thursday and I heard no presentations that supported the expansion but many that agreed with Gene that the panel was a sham!]
Presentation – Ministerial Panel – Aug. 10, 2016 – Burnaby, BC
