John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Norwegian

  • James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy

    James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy

    “James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy,”, Monthly Review, vol. 64, no. 9 (February 2013) pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-09-2013-02_1

    The world at present is fast approaching a climate cliff. Science tells us that an increase in global average temperature of 2°C (3.6° F) constitutes the planetary tipping point with respect to climate change, leading to irreversible changes beyond human control. A 2°C rise is sufficient to melt a significant portion of the world’s ice due to feedbacks that will hasten the melting. It will thus set the course to an ice-free world. Sea level will rise. Numerous islands will be threatened along with coastal regions throughout the globe. Extreme weather events (droughts, storms, floods) will be far more common. The paleoclimatic record shows that an increase in global average temperature of several degrees means that 50 percent or more of all species—plants and animals—will be driven to extinction. Global food crops will be negatively affected.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 33 Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2013).
    • Norwegian translation in Vardøger no. 35 (May 2015): 98-116;

     

  • Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism

    Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism

    “Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism“, Monthly Review vol.60, no. 3 (July 2008), pp. 12-33. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-03-2008-07_2

    The rise in overt militarism and imperialism at the outset of the twenty-first century can plausibly be attributed largely to attempts by the dominant interests of the world economy to gain control over diminishing world oil supplies. Beginning in 1998 a series of strategic energy initiatives were launched in national security circles in the United States in response to: (1) the crossing of the 50 percent threshold in U.S. importation of foreign oil; (2) the disappearance of spare world oil production capacity; (3) concentration of an increasing percentage of all remaining conventional oil resources in the Persian Gulf; and (4) looming fears of peak oil.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Mao Jiaqiang and Xing Yingli, Foreign Theoretical Trends (China), no. 12, 2008.
    • Norwegian translation in Ødeleggelsens Økonomi (Tidsskrifter Rødt!, 2008), 75-99.
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition (Brazil), July 2009.
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (December 2008).
    • Translated by Farooque Chowdhury; Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 19 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2008).

     

  • The Ecology of Destruction

    The Ecology of Destruction

    “The Ecology of Destruction“, Monthly Review vol. 58, no. 9 (February 2007), pp.1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-09-2007-02_1

    I would like to begin my analysis of what I am calling here “the ecology of destruction” by referring to Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1969 film Burn!. Pontecorvo’s epic film can be seen as a political and ecological allegory intended for our time. It is set in the early nineteenth century on an imaginary Caribbean island called “Burn.” Burn is a Portuguese slave colony with a sugar production monoculture dependent on the export of sugar as a cash crop to the world economy. In the opening scene we are informed that the island got its name from the fact that the only way that the original Portuguese colonizers were able to vanquish the indigenous population was by setting fire to the entire island and killing everyone on it, after which slaves were imported from Africa to cut the newly planted sugar cane.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted and published in Norwegian in Torstein Dahle (and to artikler av John Bellamy Foster, Ødeleggelsens Økonomi (Tidsskrifter Rødt!, 2008), 100-16.
    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Dong Jinyu, Foreign Theoretical Trends (China), no. 6, 2008, and translated separately by Liang Yongqiant, Internet Fortune (China), no. 4, 2009.
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008.
    • French translation in La Brèche-Carré Rouge, December 2007-January February 2008, pp. 46-53.
    • German translation in Perspectiven: Magazin Für Linke Tehoerie Und Praxis, 2007, no. 2 (Vienna);
    • Portuguese translation in O Comuneiro, no. 4, 2007, www.ocomuneiro.com.
    • Norwegian translation in Rødt–special edition in Norwegian daily Klassekampen (Class Struggle), June 2007.
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, 2007.
    • Korean translation October 15, 2009, at http://programto.net/wordpress/.
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, no. 3 (June 2007). Translated by Tushar Chakrabarty.

     

  • The End of Rational Capitalism

    The End of Rational Capitalism

    “The End of Rational Capitalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 10 (March 2005), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-10-2005-03_1

    The twentieth century’s dominant myth was that of a “rational capitalism.” The two economists who did the most to promote this idea were John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Both were responding to the great historical crisis of capitalism manifested in the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. In the wake of the greatest set of horrors the world had ever seen, accompanied also by the rise of an alternative, contending system in the Soviet Union, it was necessary for capitalism following the Second World War to reestablish itself ideologically as well as materially. In terms of the ideological requirement, the two economists who accomplished this most effectively were Keynes and Schumpeter—not simply because they epitomized the best in bourgeois economic ideology, but also because they were the leading representatives of bourgeois economic science. What they set out in their analyses were the requirements of a rational capitalism and at least the hope that these requirements would be achieved.

    Translations:

     

  • Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millenium

    Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millenium

    “Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millennium,” Monthly Review, vol. 51, no. 11 (April 2000), pp. 1-18. 10.14452/MR-051-11-2000-04_1

    This article is dedicated to Paul Sweezy on his 90th birthday. It is also meant as a personal expression of my conviction that Monopoly Capital (1966) by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, which provided a rich analysis of capital accumulation and crisis rooted in insights from Marx, Keynes, Kalecki, and Schumpeter, is still the most useful starting point from which to view the historical evolution of the United States and other advanced capitalist economies. My intention in this article is to use that general analysis to comment on some of the central empirical developments within the economy in our time—in a new millennium and under conditions of the globalization of monopoly capital.

    Translations:
    • Translated into Norwegian and published in Røde Fane, no. 4 (2000), pp. 32-38.
    • Hungarian translation in Ezmélet (Consciousness) vol. 12 no. 47 (Autumn 2000), pp. 96-112.
    • Greek translation in Socialist Ecology (November 2011).