Social Ecology and Communalism by Murray Bookchin. Edited by Eirik Eiglad. Oakland, AK Press: 118 pages. ISBN 978-1-904859-49-9 [Available to purchase from AK Press]
The American presidential election season has pundits and pollsters proclaiming “change” a primary factor in the minds of many voters. It’s little wonder that this stark period – marked by the so-called “War on Terror,” the extension of neoliberalism across the globe, and the urgency of global warming – has motivated such vague desires among the citizenry. Undefined, undifferentiated and ultimately relegated to mere platitudes, “change” …

- For In the Middle of a Whirlwind/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, Summer 2008
(inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info)
Complaining about the weather is about as American as apple pie, sitcoms and rock and roll. But while the rest of the world has been noticing for years that our increasingly unstable weather is an initial sign of potentially devastating global climate changes, our nation’s collective heads have mostly remained in the sand. Finally, over the past year or so, things have begun to shift a little.
It helps, of course, that weather changes over the past year …

While the presidential primary season lurches onward with Obama and Hillary struggling to secure the Democrat nomination, progressives are finding themselves in predicament similar to both 2000 and 2004. Al Gore and John Kerry left a lot to be desired, though Bill Bradley, Dennis Kucinich, and Al Sharpton never gained much traction with their “inside the party” candidacies. We can’t forget Howard Dean either, who was considered the frontrunner in 2004 before faltering and eventually becoming the chair of the Democratic National Committee.
The question, yet again, is whether or not …

- For Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, March 2008
Murray Bookchin was a leading theoretical progenitor of the many currents of left ecological thought and action that emerged from the 1960s, and his voluminous and many-faceted work has continued to influence theorists and activists to this day. Marcel van der Linden of the International Institute of Social History, based in the Netherlands, has described Bookchin’s collection of sixties-era essays, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, as “definitely… one of the most influential works on the international generation of 1968.”1 His magnum opus, The Ecology of Freedom, was …

For Synthesis/Regeneration Spring 2008
With all the fanfare that usually accompanies such gatherings, delegates to last December’s UN climate talks on the Indonesian island of Bali returned to their home countries declaring victory. Despite the continued obstructionism of the US delegation, the negotiators reached a mild consensus for continued negotiations on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, and at the very last moment were able to cajole and pressure the US to sign on.
But in the end, the so-called “Bali roadmap” added little beside a vague timetable to the plans for renewed …

- For Z Magazine, January 2008
If 2006 was the year that the “inconvenient truth” of global climate disruption made its way into the popular consciousness—and sparked a huge new wave of green products and corporate greenwashing—then hopefully the results of 2007’s revelations about the earth’s rapidly changing climate will prove more substantive and long-lasting. Not only did the UN’s Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issue a massively comprehensive report on climate science and its consequences, but the disturbing, and sometimes catastrophic, reality of worldwide climate collapse began to affect …

(This article was published by Gene Watch, Volume 20 Number 3 May – June 2007.
http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/volume20.html)
Since the year 2000, in many parts of New England — especially Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts —  there has been renewed interest in bringing resolutions to town meeting on a range of national and global issues. Measures concerning the USA PATRIOT Act, the military occupation of Iraq, impeachment of Bush Administration members, and global climate disruption have appeared on many town meeting warrants. One of the issues that has gained the most attention at New England …

- For GeneWatch, Spring ‘07
Since 1999, activists across North America have created comprehensive educational events, colorful parades, and determined oppositional media campaigns in response to the annual conventions of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). BIO is the world’s largest biotech lobbying organization. Their annual conventions have grown in recent years to bring nearly 20,000 biotech executives to major cities across the continent, and have featured high profile speakers from Presidents Clinton and Bush, to Hollywood celebrities, such as the late Christopher Reeve and Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J. Fox. These conventions …

- For Z Magazine, January 2007
One of the most pressing issues facing us all, including the new Democratic-controlled Congress, is what to do about energy policy and climate change. With sweeping changes in the leadership of key congressional committees, and heightened public concerns about the consequences of disruptive climate shifts, the time appears ripe for significant changes in US policy. Environmental lobbyists in Washington, however, are bracing themselves for only minimal steps. California Senator Barbara Boxer, the new chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, is planning comprehensive hearings …

Green Energy: Panacea or Just the Latest Hype?
You can hardly open up a major newspaper or national magazine these days without encountering the latest hype about biofuels, and how they’re going to save oil, reduce pollution and prevent climate change. Bill Gates, Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla, and other major venture capitalists are investing millions in new biofuel production, whether in the form of ethanol, mainly derived from corn in the US today; or biodiesel, mainly from soybeans and canola seed. It’s virtually a “modern day gold rush,” as described by …