With France breaking heat records by nearly 2°C and 1.5 metres of hail fall on Guadalajara in Mexico, Australian blog Lethal Heating has been blogging a storm on the climate emergency. LH selects and republishes three articles per day, adding value by making some available that may be paywalled, and adding a list of links to relevant previously published articles.
Below I’ve linked to some recent articles. Continue reading Climate clippings 232: climate emergency edition
As I noted back in 2014, Immanuel Wallerstein, the great sociologist of capitalism in the late 20th century, has been writing about the instability of the ‘world system’ (a term he coined) for over 40 years. He believes that the ‘world system’ of capitalism has been in decline since about 1968, so that we are now in a transition phase. The new system will not necessarily be better for ordinary people. In an intriguing piece from May 2014 – “The center isn’t holding very well” – he says:
Wallerstein usually doesn’t make short-term predictions, but has made an exception in the case of Trump. He says:
Continue reading Wallerstein looks at the world in the era of Trump
Domestically he says it doesn’t matter how much he won by or whether he won the primary vote. He won.
What is more he won the trifecta – the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court. Continue reading Wallerstein on the consequences of Trump
In a season of lists, George Friedman, Chairman of the global intelligence company Stratfor, has made a list of his top five events for 2104.
1: Europe’s Persistent Decline
Europe, taken together, remains the world’s largest economy and a centre of global commerce, science and culture. It’s inability to solve its problems or make any significant progress has the potential to disrupt the world system. There is general economic malaise and huge unemployment in the south. Continue reading Friedman’s top five events of 2014
