Daily News 11/10
Daily News 11/10
This Changes Everything Capitalism vs. The Climate
The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems. In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option. In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.
Capitalism’s failures arise from two of its defining elements. The first is perpetual growth. Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity. Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. Last week a paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion. A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine. — George Monibot, Dare to declare capitalism dead – before it takes us all down with itThe economic system is incompatible with the survival of life on Earth. It is time to design a new one.
State of the Climate 2026: ‘A New Age ofTemperature Extremes’Earth’s energy imbalance is rising; Earth is accumulating heat at an accelerating rate
Video: WMO State of the Climate Update 2026 – English
Video: The West Coast Is About to Get 10 INCHES of Rain — And a MASSIVE Snow Shift Is Coming Next!
State of the Climate Update for COP31 The WMO State of the Climate Update 2026 shows that the past 12 years (2015–2026) are set to be the warmest on record. The global average surface temperature from January to September was about 1.47 °C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial average. El Niño has intensified since August and is expected to reach record strength by December. El Niño releases heat from the ocean and is expected to increase the risk of extreme heat, drought and heavy rainfall well into 2027. Global mean sea level reached its highest point in the satellite record, which began in 1993. Preliminary data through July point to a tenth consecutive year of record ocean heat content. The WMO State of the Climate 2026 Update was released on the first day of the UN Climate Change Conference in Antalya, Türkiye, as an authoritative, science-based report. It includes data – where available – up to September 2026 and therefore does not reflect the most recent impacts of El Niño.
‘A new age of climate extremes’: Earth accumulating heat at accelerating rate Increased heat will supercharge extreme weather events, warns UN agency as Cop31 climate summit begins
George Monbiot: The next global pandemic could be brewing on a mink farm in Utah – and little is being done to stop it Mink farms are the perfect petri dishes for deadly flu strains to emerge. Yet officials appear to be protecting business interests over human lives
‘Off the Charts’: UN Sounds Alarm as Planet Plunges Deeper Into Climate Emergency“Leaders must get serious by cutting emissions faster,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a report released as COP31 kicked off in Türkiye.
How the U.S. Stole America A Legacy of Exploitation and Deceit The version of American history most of us learned—manifest destiny, a young country filling an empty map, a bargain at under three cents an acre—makes no room for the people already standing on the map. I’m Jermaine Fowler, and everything below comes from the treaties and court records the textbook version squeezes into a single line. Each of the eight episodes sets the story you were taught beside the record, then follows that record into the present.
A Blue Wave Rejected Trump. Will Democrats Confront His Racism?
A Blue Wave Rejected Trump. Will Democrats Confront His Racism?
No to the ‘social conference’! We must bring the economy to a standstill! With 1.6 million people on the streets yesterday, the French government has proposed a ‘social conference’ on wages. This obvious distraction tactic offers crumbs to the working class at a time when they have the bosses and the political establishment on the back foot.