Ecosocialism

via YouTube Capture Demonstration at Zuccotti Park before marching around Wall Street. Earlier activities had been held at Union Square Park, which was sponsored by Toyota, Con Ed and other corporations.

This morning’s Democracy Now! features coverage of the growing fossil fuel divestment movement, recently the subject of a supportive op-ed from Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the U.K. Guardian.

“We cannot necessarily bankrupt the fossil fuel industry,” the former anti-apartheid leader writes, “But we can take steps to reduce its political clout, and hold those who rake in the profits accountable for cleaning up the mess.”

The questions facing environmental activists, and socialists in particular, range from the sheer scale of the environmental disasters already underway to the problems of beginning a transition from a system organized around massive consumption of fossil fuels, vast megacities and global agribusiness. In the process of doing so, how will an ecosocialist movement and society address the crisis of global inequality and the need to “develop the productive forces” without pushing the planet and human civilization over the environmental cliff?