Wednesday 10 December @ 7.30
Ecosocialism for the 21st century
A socialist response to climate change and the financial crisisS
Speaker: Sean Thompson (Green Left)
Venue: Indian YMCA, 41 Fitzroy Square, W1 (Warren Street tube)
Public borrowing, public spending and tax cuts to inject money into the economy so that people will spend, spend, spend. And of course most of what is bought is either useless, thrown away or environmentally harmful.
It is possible to have a society in which everyone's needs are met and which does not follow Gordon Brown's route of production, profit making and environmental degradation. Sean Thompson will explain how it is possible for working people not to pay the price for the capitalist crisis and to have an ecologically sustainable future.
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This may be of interest:
Call for Papers : Left Forum 2009, New York City, April 17-19. Please ciruclate.
Call for Papers : Left Forum 2009, New York City, April 17-19. Please ciruclate.
Calling all Ecosocialists, Left Greens and Green Lefts,
This is a call to join the Praxis Reasearch and Education Center and other groups in presenting a series of ecosocialist panels at the Left Forum in NYC next April. Green anticapitalist speakers/presenters are needed on a variety of topics, from the gravity of the ecological crisis and capitalism's inherent inability to reverse it, to Green Left and ecosocialist strategies and solutions.
For those who aren't familiar with this annual event, the Left Forum (formerly the Socialist Scholars' Conference) has been bringing together « intellectuals and activists from around the world to address the burning issues of our times » for at least forty years. It is sponsored by an array of Left journals and institutions from Monthly Review, to the National Lawyers Guild, New Politics, Radical Teacher, Rethinking Marxism, and URPE to the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Regular participants at the Forum include Cornel West, Stanley Aronowitz, Frances Fox Piven, Manning Marable. The Forum puts on nearly a hundred panels over two days and is regularly attended by several hundred activists and left academics from across the U.S. and abroad.
In 2007, ecosocialists like Joel Kovel, Michael Löwy, Heather Rogers, Richard Smith and myself presented panels, but the issue was apparently off the agenda at the 2008 Left Forum -- partly due to lack of initiative on our part. This year, the Forum's theme is 'TURNING POINTS', but sad to say the prospectus, while talking about the economic crisis and the new 'moment' epitomised by the Obama victory, fails even to mention the environmental crisis which threatens to engulf humanity within the next twenty or thirty years.
In our opinion it is essential that we awaken the Left to the immanence of ecological collapse and the urgency of an ecosocialist solution. Our ambition is to propose a series of panels under the heading : 'Turning Points : Ecosocialism or Capitalist Ecocide' and mobilize our best speakers so as to attract a serious audience. The deadline for submission of panels (including speakers and topics) is January 1, and the number of panels we are able to put on will depend on the availability of speakers (generally three to a panel). Since at every Left Forum Session there are several competing panels, it is important that we present a series of panels to reach participants who may have conflicts at a given Session. If you are interested in participating, please send us your proposal (topic) and some sort of CV or identification as soon as possible. Also, your organizational affiliation if you wish to co-sponsor these panels. Finally, please recommend any speakers you would like to hear, especially if you have personal relation or a contact address where we can invite them.
Hoping to hear from you,
Another world may still be possible.
Yours, Richard Greeman
Contact : rgreeman@gmail. com
Also perhaps of interest may be the latest issue of 'Capitalism, Nature, Socialism' which features news on how Ecuador's new leftist government is considering bestowing legal "rights" upon nature. There's also an interesting article setting out a red-green philosophy: 'Ideas for a Critical Theory of Nature' by Adrian Wilding.
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