Memo to Jacobin: Ecomodernism is not ecosocialism

http://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/09/25/memo-to-jacobin-ecomodernism-is-not-ecosocialism/
Date Written:  2017-09-25
Publisher:  Climate & Capitalism
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21405

Ian Angus challenges a left-wing magazine that promotes geoengineering, nuclear power, carbon storage and other techno-fixes as solutions to climate change.

Abstract: 
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Except:

This summer, the left-wing magazine Jacobin published a special issue on climate change. The lead article declares that "climate change … has to be at the center of how we mobilize and organize going forward. From now on, every issue is a climate issue."

That's excellent news: a magazine that calls itself "a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture," ought to be a leader in the fight against capitalism’s deadly assault on the earth's life-support systems.

Unfortunately, if the special issue is any indication, Jacobin is heading in the wrong direction. Although the term eco-socialism appears from time to time (always with a hyphen, which may indicate some uneasiness with the combination) there is nothing in this issue resembling an ecosocialist analysis or program. There's not a word about stopping coal or tar sands mining, and no mention of shutting down the world's biggest polluter, the US military. Instead we are offered paeans to technology in articles that advocate nuclear power, geoengineering, new power grids, electric cars and the like.