CSS Public Lecture: Climate and Capitalism

Climate and Capitalism: A Public Lecture on Climate Change and Capitalism

“It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism.”
-Fredric Jameson

“Socialists have all too often failed to take ecological issues seriously enough. However, this is not a fault of socialists alone, as the fault applies even more to the liberal tradition taken as a whole. But whatever we choose to say about socialism in the twentieth century, it has to be emphasized that no one can be truly socialist and indeed Marxist in the twenty-first century and fail to acknowledge the full severity of the planetary ecological crisis. We are either at the forefront of the struggle to protect the earth as a place of human habitation (and as a home for innumerable species) or we are on the side of the system’s creative exterminism of the Earth system as we know it.”
-John Bellamy Foster

The Canterbury Socialist Society presents a public talk on ecology, climate change and capitalism. We are now living in a climate changed world. With the Australian fires raging, unseasonable ice melt in the Himalayas, and continued ocean acidification all ongoing, to name just a few, we are beginning to see the effects of this change.

Climate and Capitalism will explore the relationship between the capitalist marketplace and the climate and discuss the ways in which the current economic model accelerates the destruction of natural environment required for human flourishing. Laws of capitalist accumulation, the perpetual need for continued market growth, and the historical role fossil fuels have played in the acceleration of capitalism, all interact to create a recipe for ecological disaster.

Mark and Tom from the Canterbury Socialist Society executive will present some thoughts, followed by questions and open discussion time.

Free, all welcome.