In part two of a two part interview, Bill Resnick speaks with Richard A. Smith about the looming climate disaster. In part one Bill and Richard discussed whether human society can survive climate change if it continues under the management of elites determined to maintain capitalism with its requirements for exponential growth. They concluded that unfettered growth is not possible on a finite planet. This week they discuss the immediate future, which is likely to feature more frequent and damaging climate disasters, which in turn will lead to growing demands for a sweeping mobilization of all resources and a command war economy to meet the threat. Such a development would trigger the political war of the century, the left with its program in opposition to capitalist forces seeking ongoing and unsustainable growth. Who will prevail depends on how we organize today.
Richard Smith is an historian of modern China and also an environmentalist activist who co-founded the organization System Change Not Climate Change. His writings include two books: China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse and Green Capitalism: the God that Failed.
Image by Vladimir Morozov/akxmedia; Copyright: © Vladimir Morozov 2019
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