Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

 It is time to end extractive tourism

 Human-made materials now outweigh Earth’s entire biomass

  The Return of Nature

Class and the Parable of an Environmental Victory

A liberal view that doesn't answer the questions: How could capitalism, a system based on profit and capital accumulation, protect nature? Could capitalist production develop technological means to maintain both: private accumulation and safe eco-systems? Could that happen without exploitation and obscene inequality, and with continuous growth? We are seeing some movement towards green transport, for example. To what an extent though such a movement could be extended to encompass the major global industries without at the same time jeopardising the rate of profit? Will states be able to impose new ways of production in a system where private owenership of such industries reign? Or, will states themselves carry out a change in investing in green and sustainable ways of how we produce, eat, and move? Coronavirus is a warning to us to mend our broken relation with nature . Who's "us"? "Us" implies that we are all responsible and we should work together

A short video about COVID19 crisis, its origins and its remedy (more details in the synopsis below). Video is produced by the North African Food Sovereignty Network and has English subtitles (settings: caption ON). Synopsis Capitalist production penetrates brutally to the depths of the earth and disturbs the balance that allows society to live in harmony with its environment. This is the concern of the North African Network for Food Sovereignty as it works towards alternatives to agribusinesses which have aggravated food dependency but have also caused major disruptions in our ecosystems, ultimately leading to epidemics such as Covid-19.

The film offers only one concrete solution to our predicament: the most toxic of all possible answers. “We really have got to start dealing with the issue of population … without seeing some sort of major die-off in population, there’s no turning back.” A review of Michael Moor's Planet of the Humans

The multidimentional crisis and alternative approaches

First of all, there's Shell, a company you will be familiar with.   This week they're holding an annual "green-washing" event in London to try and persuade the public it cares about our future. But Shell doesn't really care, and thanks to their unfair employment policies, near 200,000 contract workers at Shell have no future, as they work in temporary, insecure jobs.  Contract workers outnumber permanent workers more than two to one at Shell, and as the company freely admits, do the most dangerous jobs.  We've been asked by IndustriALL global union to pressure Shell to limit precarious work and protect precarious workers' rights; to respect commitments to international standards on the environment, communities and human rights; and to apply the same health and safety standards at operations everywhere, including suppliers.   Please support this important campaign here . Second, we have a somewhat more unusual campaign.  Norway is historically known as o

"Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and like boni patres familias [good fathers of families] they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition... The rational cultivation of the soil as eternal communal property", is "an inalienable condition of the existence and reproduction of a chain of successive generations of the human race." — Marx, Capital , vol. 3 "It seems to me axiomatic that the expansionary, competitive and exploitative logic of capitalist accumulation in the context of the nation-state system must, in the longer or shorter term, be destabilizing, and that capitalism . . . is and will for the foreseeable future remain the greatest threat to world peace." Capitalism "may be able to accommodate some degree of ecological care, especially when the technology of environmental prote

Pessimist Monbiot?

Paradises on Earth The title “Paradises of the Earth” is inspired by the great Amazigh historian Ibn Khaldoun who once described thecoastal oasis of Gabes as a "paradise on earth.” But Gabes isn’t the only place that used to be a paradise. Many more paradises have been victim of colonial and neo-colonial violence, just like their inhabitants: “the Wretched of theEarth.” Thus, the title "Paradises of the Earth" is a reference to both Ibn Khaldoun and the revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon. You can read more here on  Paradises of The Earth Website

Lenin's eco-warriors    ( The New York Times )

"Environmental defenders being killed in records numbers"

"The conscious capitalism model is appealing. It’s simple, easy. We can avert looming environmental catastrophe by becoming conscious consumers who frequent conscious companies. After all, shopping at Whole Foods is a heck of a lot more fun than lobbying for regulations on corporations or convincing people to consume less. More Whole Foods, less Walmart. Problem solved." Whole Foods' "conscious capitalism"

A great scientist. I recommend The Richness of Life . When I started reading it I couldn't put it down. " Homo sapiens, I fear, is a “thing so small” in a vast universe, a wildly improbable evolutionary event well within the realm of contingency. Make of such a conclusion what you will. Some find it depressing; I have always regarded it as exhilarating, and a source of both freedom and consequent moral responsibility." Remeasuring Stephen Jay Gould

The writer, from the London School of Economics, is questioning the existent profit-based economic system. I wonder whether we can have capitalism without profit. I am curious to know if that is possible. Clean energy won't save us

Forbes or how to save capitalism and therefore humanity Unless it changes, capitalism will starve humanity by 2050

" At this critical moment in history, three questions need to be answered: What does the latest scientific evidence tell us about the approach of climate catastrophe? How is today’s monopoly-finance capitalism—with Donald Trump as its authentic representative—contributing to this impending planetary catastrophe? And what possibilities remain for humanity to avert an Earth-system calamity?"

" A major problem is that global warming, as with the associated environmental problems, can’t be solved within the capitalism that has caused, and is accelerating, the problem. All incentives under capitalism are for more growth and thus more greenhouse-gas emissions, and there is no provision to provide new jobs for the many people who would be displaced should the heavily polluting industries in which they work were to be shut down in the interest of the environment. The private capital that profits from environmental devastation is allowed to externalize the costs onto society, an inequality built into the system. The concept of  “green capitalism” is a dangerous chimera ." Systemic Disorder