My weekly Guardian column: Political success for society’s invisible souls is rare. So when US investor Westbrook Partners announced last week that it had withdrawn from evicting families at the New Era estate in East London, it was cause for celebration. Instead of building expensive properties, the company sold its development to Dolphin Square Charitable…
Showing all posts tagged climate change

Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything advocates serious climate change action
My following book review appears in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age: THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: Capitalism vs the Climate by NAOMI KLEIN ALLEN LANE, $29.99 “If the news that in the past 40 years the world has lost over 50 per cent of its vertebrate wildlife fails to tell us there is something wrong…

Little scrutiny of mining companies in Greenland
My weekly Guardian column: This is a story about an Australian company you’ve never heard of, operating in a nation that rarely enters the global media: Greenland. It’s a story about the intense search for energy sources in a world that’s… moving away… from the dirtiest fossil fuels. Aleqa Hammond, the prime minister of Greenland, is the…

Naomi Klein damns big greens groups as aiding and abetting climate change
One of the finest journalists in the world, and somebody who inspired my new book Profits of Doom, is Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine. She continually challenges mainstream thinking on war, politics and environment. She’s currently working on a film and book about climate change and was interviewed by Earth Island Journal recently:…

Can divesting in fossil fuel companies help the climate crisis?
The US campaign 350.org aims to lead a public movement against climate change by putting financial and painful pressure on fossil fuel companies that cause climate change. It’s an interesting idea, debated below on Democracy Now!, as similar tactics were used against apartheid South Africa and today’s apartheid Israel:

Naomi Klein tells the Left to think about real climate change action
One of the savviest writers around, Naomi Klein issues a challenge in this interview with Solutions: Members of the Left have been resistant to acknowledging that this worldview is behind their support of climate action, while the Right confronts it head on. Why this hesitancy among liberals? There are a few factors at work. Climate…

Ignore the world’s warming and pay a heavy price
My following book review appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: An investigative journalist finds altered weather patterns are already having a significant impact. We are constantly bombarded with evidence of apocalyptic climate change – uncontrollable weather patterns that will irreversibly destroy sustainable life on planet Earth. Deniers argue such warnings are exaggerated. The Republican US…

Solution to the climate crisis; force everybody to buy stuff
Democracy Now!, this week in Durban for the UN climate conference, offers one deluded perspective on solving the world’s problems: On Sunday, Democracy Now! producer Mike Burke attended the corporate-sponsored World Climate Summit here in Durban that advocates a market approach to solving the climate crisis. One of the people who attended was the South…

Using bio-fuel and chocolate to cure the world
I met this lovely British guy, former journalist Andy Pag, in Ubud, Bali last week and he’s on quite a journey: