What Does Climate Change? - New York

80 Years of Environmental Politics - Left and Right

 December 10, 2015  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Cora Bergantiños PhD., Socialist Alternative NYC, Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University Joel Kovel, founder of Ecosocialist Horizons, Author of _The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?_ Andrew Needham, History NYU, Author of _Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest_ Christian Parenti, Liberal Studies NYU, Author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence [Read More]
The Platypus Review  Environmentalism  Climate Change 

What Does Climate Change? - Chicago

80 Years of Environmental Politics - Left and Right

 November 24, 2015  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Howard Ehrman (System Change Not Climate Change) Lindsey French (SAIC) Joy Holowicki (Rising Tide) Peter Hudis (International Marxist-Humanist Organization) Description The awareness of a growing planetary climate crisis in the 1990s appeared to coincide with a change: the final collapse of the traditional forces of the Old Left (communism and social democracy) and the consolidation of what many characterize as neoliberalism. [Read More]
Environmentalism  Climate Change 

What Does Climate Change? - London

80 Years of Environmental Politics - Left and Right

 October 24, 2015  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Hannah Fair, climate justice activist, doctoral student, Red Pepper writer James Heartfield, author of “Green Capitalism” Ru Raynor, anti-aviation activist at Grow Heathrow Wood Roberdeau, Lecturer in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths Description The awareness of a growing planetary climate crisis in the 1990s appeared to coincide with a change: the final collapse of the traditional forces of the Old Left (communism and social democracy) and the consolidation of what many characterize as neoliberalism. [Read More]
Environmentalism  Climate Change 

Revolutionary politics and thought

Revolutionary politics and thought

 September 5, 2014  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

No coarser insult, no baser defamation, can be thrown against the workers than the remark, ‘Theoretical controversies are for the intellectuals’ —Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900) Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement the only choice is – either bourgeois or socialist ideology… This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. [Read More]
C. Wright Mills  Democracy  Environmentalism  French Revolution  Hannah Arendt  Ideology  Jacobin  Karl Marx  Vladimir Lenin  Leon Trotsky  Organization  Political party  Praxis  Revolution  Rosa Luxemburg  Theory and practice  Thomas jefferson 

Freedom in the Anthropocene, Chicago

 November 19, 2013  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A moderated panel discussion hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society on the interrelation of capital, history and ecology, held at Loyola University on November 19, 2013. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Franklin Dmitryev (News and Letters) Author of “Ecosocialism and Marx’s Humanism” Fred Magdoff (University of Vermont) Author of “What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism” Steven Vogel (Denison University) Author of “Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory” [Read More]
Anthropocene  Environmentalism  Climate Change 

The Anthropocene and Freedom

Terrestrial time as political mystification

 October 1, 2013  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

The Anthropocene as Past/Present/Future THE RECENT COINAGE OF “THE ANTHROPOCENE” as a technical term of art presents an intriguing intellectual and political puzzle.1 Arguments for accepting the Anthropocene as a fundamental change in all hitherto experienced human history appear driven less by the hopes to chronicle accurately natural history, than by designs for redirecting how human beings ought to act now. On the one hand, its proponents present themselves as vigilant scientific sentries of individual freedom, declaring alarm as experts on current ecological crises prompt nation-states “to do something” about the destruction that mankind has wrought in the environment for 250 years. [Read More]
Anthropocene  environmentalism 

Capital, History and Environmental Politics

 April 6, 2013  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel held on April 6, 2013, at the 2013 Platypus International Convention at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Eirik Eiglad (New Compass) Joseph Green (Communist Voice) Roger Rashi (Québec solidaire) Moderated by Alex Stoner. Description Today, to perceive the link between human society and the natural environment does not require that we engage in an effort of great abstraction. [Read More]
Platypus International Convention  Platypus International Convention 2013  Communist Voice  New Compass  Quebec Solidaire  Environmentalism  Climate Change 

The Environmentalism of Occupy

 March 18, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

PLEASE NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the first twenty minutes of this panel were not captured onto video. We apologize for the inconvenience. The first twenty minutes as well as the full audio for the panel can be found in the audio version below. Held at Left Forum 2012 at Pace University, New York on March 18, 2012. Hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society. Video Recording Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Phil Aroneanu(US Campaign Director, 350. [Read More]
Occupy  Left Forum  Left Forum 2012  Ecology  Environment  Environmentalism  OWS  Sustainability 

Oil and the Left

Oil and the Left

 November 6, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN SEPTEMBER OF THIS YEAR, Andony Melathopoulos interviewed Imre Szeman, author, professor, and founder of the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies, on behalf of the Platypus Review, to discuss his analysis of oil politics in light of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the political responses to it. The interview was prepared in conjunction with Brian Worley. Andony Melathopoulos: In your estimation, did the recent BP disaster precipitate any new thinking from the Left? [Read More]
Imre Szeman  The Left  environmentalism  oil 

Disappearances

Reflections on the collapse of honey bees and the Left

Disappearances

 May 9, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A bustling city at dawn. Industrious workers set out from their homes, coming and going in a perfect and productive ballet. But by evening the workers vanish. No trace of foul play. No bodies left behind. Mass disappearances like this have recently occurred across the globe, not of humans, but of millions of honey bees.1 THE OMINOUSLY TITLED 2007 PBS documentary Silence of the Bees begins with a montage of the streets of a major U. [Read More]
Bees  Freedom  History of the Left  New Left  Regression  environmentalism  ecology