The Socialist Register 2007

Coming toTerms with Nature

Edited by Colin Leys and Leo Panitch  

Paperback $29.95

Can capitalism come to terms with the environment? Can market forces and technology overcome the ‘limits to growth’ and yet preserve the biosphere? What is the nature of oil politics today? Can capitalism do without nuclear power, or make it safe? What is the significance of the impasse over the Kyoto protocol?

How far has socialist thought developed to help us understand the environmental dilemma? Has it even begun to provide answers to it? Does socialist internationalism imply accelerated growth in the South? If so, what are the possibilities for redefining standards of living for more limited consumption in the North?

How can class and environmental politics be brought together? What are the shortcomings Green parties and “green commerce”? What are viable Eco-Socialist strategies, and how can they marry democracy with the planning needed to come to terms with nature?

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Contents

  • Crisis and Nature
  • The Ecological Contradictions of Capitalism
  • Accumulation and Nature
  • Historical Materialism and Climate History
  • Oil Politics and Consumption
  • The Market Driven Politics of Renewable Energy
  • Feeding the World: Development and Ecology
  • Petty Commodity Production and the Environment
  • Ecological Implications of China’s Development
  • The Environmental Crisis in Latin America
  • Weather Report: Excerpts from a Film Journey
  • Garbage Capitalism and ‘Green Commerce’
  • A World of ‘Shortages’?
  • A Critical Analysis of Kyoto Protocol
  • Social Metabolism and Ecological Conflicts
  • Class and Consumerism
  • Working Class Movements and Environmentalism
  • What Happened to the European Green Parties?
  • Community Eco-Socialist Development Strategies
  • Eco-Socialism, Planning and Democracy

Authors

  • Colin Leys

    Queen’s

    Before coming to Queen’s in 1975 Colin Leys taught at Balliol College, Oxford; Kivukoni College in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; and the Universities of Sussex, Nairobi, and Sheffield. His work has primarily been on the theory and politics of development, with particular reference to Africa and the UK. His publications include European Politics in Southern Rhodesia; Underdevelopment in Kenya;The Political Economy of Neocolonialism; Politics in Britain; Namibia’s Liberation Struggle: The Two-Edged Sword (with John S. Saul and others); The Rise and Fall of Development Theory; The End of Parliamentary Socialism (with Leo Panitch); and Market Driven-Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest.

  • Leo Panitch

    York University

    Leo Panitch is a Distinguished Research Professor, renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register. He received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba in 1967 and a M.Sc.(Hons.) and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1968 and 1974, respectively. He was a Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at Carleton University between 1972 and 1984. He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.

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