Capitalism

Why does capital love fossil fuels?

Why does capital love fossil fuels? It’s not hard to explain. They exist in a small number of discrete locations, where the right to exploit them can be owned and monopolised. Most can be extracted commercially only at scale, excluding small competitors. They can be stored and traded all over the world, allowing prices to

Capitalism

Donald Trump and the Return of Capitalist Nihilism

The Trump administration is frequently operating outside the logic of capitalist self-interest, powered by an appetite for cruelty and destruction for the sake of cruelty and destruction and an all-consuming resentment. Insurgents and revolutionaries across the political spectrum have sought, in different ways and for different reasons, to smash the state. Until recently, however, few

Capitalism

Inventing the Commons: On Alternative Technologies

We need to uncouple the concept of technology from the ideas of progress and development. It often happens that, when I talk about the relationship between technology and capitalism, someone pops up to present me with an argument I call the iPhone fallacy. “Without capitalism, we wouldn’t have the technology you use to write from

Climate

New York’s first offshore wind hub to be built…

The agreement prioritizes hiring locally for union construction jobs to build a ‘linchpin’ of the Biden administration’s offshore wind ambitions. Labor groups inked a first-of-its-kind deal to support local hiring and union jobs with the developer of New York’s first offshore wind port. It’s an agreement for the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, envisioned as a

Climate

A climate conference’s startling, self-defeating contradictions

The many ironies of this year’s United Nations climate meeting have not been lost on anyone. The world’s seventh-largest oil-producing country, the United Arab Emirates, is hosting it. That country’s top oil executive is presiding over it. It’s happening at the end of the hottest year on record, during which the United States alone faced

Climate

The Mainstream Media Is Failing to Highlight the Climate…

Donald Trump has spent the past month openly courting fossil fuel money and mocking the very idea of climate change. This delusional and catastrophic posture has barely registered in the US news media. On November 14, the US Global Change Research Program released the Fifth National Climate Assessment, which found that the United States is already