it's not doom if it's the best case scenario
Nicholas Beuret & David Harvie20 January 2026 – Jacobin The UN is putting refugees to work in poorly paid green jobs to generate carbon credits for billion-dollar firms. It’s one of the most cynical instances of a corporate greenwashing agenda that has done little to address climate change. At the start of 2026, the White…
published DOPE Issue 32 Just in the last 24 hours of writing this article storms have smashed both New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, while in Jamaica, government officials warned that as Hurricane Melissa intensified into a Category 5 storm, many impacted communities ‘will not survive the flooding’, and that no community in…
The Jacobin A decade ago, Western governments pitched the green transition as a solution to reindustrialization and economic decline. The failure of these policies to produce well-paying jobs has triggered a right-wing backlash in both the UK and the US. In just over a year, the British right-wing political party Reform, led by Nigel Farage,…
The rolling mills are still working, but the furnaces are long cold. Of the 4,000 people previously employed at the steel mill in Port Talbot, Wales, only half still work there. Despite union protests and local rallies, one year ago on September 30 2024, the plant’s last coal-burning blast furnace was shut down. This ended…
Edited excerpt published with The Ecologist Members of the Oklahoma National Guard’s wildland firefighting program work to prevent the spread of a fire at Camp Navajo, Arizona, August 16, 2025. Image: The National Guard / Creative Commons 4.0. ‘The choice is clear. Either we suffer their squeeze, or come together to fight for a real transition, one…
Published on the Autonomy blog What is the transition economy? The green transition has been presented as a win for both workers and the environment: this is the promise that underpins its tenuous legitimacy as public policy. In its most radical incarnation, that of the Green New Deal, the transition to a low-carbon economy would…
Authors: Nicolas Beuret and Peter Bloom Published: June 2025, The Ecologist To assume ‘green capitalism’ is more progressive than its fossil opposition would be a critical mistake. Authoritarian populists from Trump to Modi are gaining ground globally, often with a fervent embrace of fossil fuels and anti-environmental rhetoric. There is a clear ideological component to this insipid ‘fossil fascism’….
Published: May 2025, The Ecologist The culprit for Monday’s countrywide blackout in Spain is all too familiar: privatisation and profiteering. The anti-net zero brigade has swung into action blaming Spain’s huge, country-wide power blackout on Monday on “too much renewable energy in the grid” and declaring net zero to be “sabotage fueled [sic] by sheer…
Published: March 2025, Novara Media Net zero isn’t dead. In February, BP announced it was undertaking a “fundamental reset” of its investment strategy, savagely cutting back plans for renewable energy and instead investing in 20 new oil and gas projects by 2030. CEO Murray Auchinloss said the fossil fuel giant’s previous 2020 plan of reducing oil production and reaching…
Published: Feb 2025, The Ecologist Is Trump the end of the green transition or the start of America’s decline? It’s all over for the green transition. Donald Trump, the newly elected US president, has withdrawn the world’s superpower from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolled back environmental regulations, ended support for electric vehicle production, is trying…
Published: July 2024, openDemocracy After years of neglect, rural voters are abandoning the Tories and Labour to back a radical green conservation movement Perhaps the most worrying aspect of this year’s UK general election, if the polls are to be believed, is the resurgent far right. Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party failed to win a single…
Published: July 2024, Novara Media It’s the Greens versus Blackrock. The first few weeks of the new Labour government have seen a burst of activity, with a substantive legislative agenda unveiled in the King’s speech. Sleeves are being rolled up as the serious people look to get on with fixing Broken Britain. Labour are intent on…
Authors: Nicholas Beuret, Matilda Fitzmaurice & David HarviePublished: April 2024 The Ecologist How the UN plans on making money from environmental refugees. Environmental disasters to 2022 have displaced more than 30 million people – more than half the total number of ‘internal displacements’. This number has been steadily rising for years, but the states most…
Published: December 2023, The Conversation Climate change is overwhelmingly a problem of wealthy people. The wealthiest 1% of humanity produce over 1,000 times the emissions of the poorest 1%. In fact, these 77 million people are responsible for more climate-changing emissions than the poorest 66% (5 billion people) of humanity. Since 1990, the personal emissions of the world’s wealthiest…
Authors: Elise Lobbedez and Nicholas BeuretPublished: November 2023, The Ecologist Lessons we can learn from the emergence of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement. The emergence of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement surprised the world as they started occupying roundabouts across France, opening tolls for free, and gathering massively in city centres every weekend to…