Wind, water, solar and socialism

Electricity systems: building blocks of a socialist view. A think piece published on my blog - Part 1 on energy supply, and Part 2 on electricity networks.

How to do away with fossil fuel consumption

This article offers an overview of the processes through which fossil fuels are consumed, and how researchers analyse these; discusses how Karl Marx’s theoretical approach might help us develop this analysis; suggests ways to envisage the transition away from fossil fuels; and comments on the strategies needed to hasten the transition. It is based on a talk I gave at the Rosa Luxemburg foundation in Berlin.

Communist Dissidents in early Soviet Russia

Five documents translated and introduced by Simon Pirani.

This book, published in 2023, gives voice to Russian communists who participated in the 1917 revolution, but found themselves at odds with the Communist party as it consolidated its rule in the early 1920s. One Red army veteran demands action against corrupt officials; another mourns the dashed hopes of 1917 and the loss of friendship and solidarity. A “collectivist” group aspires to new cultural and technological revolutions; other oppositionists denounce material inequalities, the return of workplace exploitation and creeping state authoritarianism. The five documents in the book are published in English for the first time, with an introduction and notes.

Copies can be ordered from the publisher here. A PDF version, free to download, is now available here.

Ukraine: war makes just energy transition more urgent

While powerful interests are pushing Kyiv to invest in fossil fuels and nuclear energy, a movement is taking shape in former mining communities to develop decentralised renewables. An article published by Foreign Policy in Focus

We need social change, not miracles

A review of No Miracles Needed: how today’s technology can save our climate and clean our air, by MarkJacobson, published by The Ecologist

Governments are reinforcing fossil fuels’ power. We need to build alliances against it

An article based on an on-line talk I gave on 4July at the Humanitas Unisinos Institute (IHU) of the University of Vale do Riodos Sinos, Brazil. (A video, in Portuguese only, is here.)

Corporate pressure versus climate action

Breathe by Sadiq Khan offers a glimpse into the London Mayor's “internal struggle between action on climate and corporate interests”. Published in The Ecologist

Rhetoric aside, India must find answers to these seven critical questions on green hydrogen

An article scrutinising India's "Green Hydrogen Mission", From The Wire (India), written together with Pritam Singh.

The Nord Stream pipeline explosions: challenging false narratives

The claim that the Nord Stream gas pipeline was blown up by US special forces, made by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, is being used to reinforce false narratives about Russia’s culpability for the war in Ukraine. In this article in New Politics, I write that Hersh’s claims about the purpose of the sabotage are factually incorrect, his account of the build-up to the explosion is misleading, his explanation for US motivation is flawed, and his failure to examine Russian motivation is one-sided.

Transport: how Silicon Valley turns technologies against us all

A review of Road to Nowhere: what Silicon Valley gets wrong about the future of transportation, by Paris Marx 

Appeal to Labour Party members: help turn back this tide of greenwash

A letter to Maggie Ferncombe, chair of the London Regional Labour party, Ed Miliband, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for climate change, and friends in the Labour party in London, about the Silvertown tunnel project

Greenwashing governments and oil companies turned COP27 into a climate disaster

The international climate talks in Egypt have become a dystopian nightmare: Oil companies, dictators and greenwashers captured the process more effectively than ever. But there is hope: Alliances are taking shape — between civil society, scientists and labor — that aim to break the fossil fuel companies’ deathly grip on climate policy. Read the full story on Truthout.