User Profile

Yet another great Marxist analysis by Malm (and Carton, whom I didn't know before this). They don't shy away from confronting the dire situation and don't offer optimism - for which I'm grateful, we have enough of those tracts already and they have had zero results.

It's built around three parts: 1. Where and how the idea of overshoot came to be, and how it became hegemonic in contemporary neoliberal political discourse. They posit this as an 'anti-revolution': a move to cut off an as-of-yet non existent radical move to stop emissions. 2. What it would mean to stop emissions, and thus the fossil industry itself. What the impact of massive asset stranding would do (hint: the collapse of much of capitalism itself). They also explain how, on the one side, a energy transition is technically feasible, but economically improbable since prices and profits tend to collapse from a certain point on. The logic of capital dictates that it will seek those profits, and those are to be found in the fossil industry. And the more capital is sunk into it (which is necessary anyway to drive up extraction and access the more difficult sources), the less likely it is that fossil capital will divest itself from it. 3. A preliminary 'what is to be done?': why the situation demands forceful, radical action, why compromising with capital won't work, and a frontal attack on fossil assets is needed. The two options are: collapse of (fossil) capitalism, or civilizational collapse.