Articles by: John Feffer

Lithium mine at Salinas Grandes salt desert Jujuy province, Argentina
UTS report cover photo by EARTHWORKS is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 / Flickr

More Butterflies, Fewer Billionaires — Unrigging the Global Economy

Welcome to the New Green Colonialism- One Last Shot at Reducing Global Inequality and Saving the Planet In a fit of madness or just plain desperation, you’ve enrolled in a get-rich-quick scheme. All you have to do is sell some products, sign up some friends, make some phone calls. Follow that simple formula and you’ll soon be pulling in tens[Read More…]

by 20/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The Shift from Pink to Green in Latin America

The Shift from Pink to Green in Latin America

Gustavo Petro doesn’t just want to transform his own country; he wants to change the world. The new leader of Colombia, who took office last August, is targeting what he calls his nation’s “economy of death.” That means pivoting away from oil, natural gas, coal, and narcotics toward more sustainable economic activities. Given that oil and coal make up half his[Read More…]

by 05/04/2023 Comments are Disabled World
The Code Behind the Far Right’s Success

The Code Behind the Far Right’s Success

Arizona is ground zero for the wackiest theories and craziest political candidates. Exhibit A: Kari Lake, the Republican who ran for governor in the recent midterm elections. Though she lost in November, she’s still campaigning — on social media, in the courts, and in her own beclouded imagination. She refuses to accept that Katie Hobbs, her Democratic opponent, won by 0.6% of[Read More…]

by 19/12/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Debunking the Eternal Economic Growth Model

Debunking the Eternal Economic Growth Model

Can those who advocate hitting the brakes on economic growth get their message across before it’s too late? Over the last three decades, a growing number of scientists and ecologists have argued that economic growth has long outstripped the capacity of the planetary ecosystem. They have developed numerous sophisticated models to demonstrate their point. They have boiled down the technical information—about[Read More…]

by 23/12/2021 1 comment Counter Solutions
The Donald Also Rises? The Far Right Continues to Build Its International

The Donald Also Rises? The Far Right Continues to Build Its International

What alt-right guru Steve Bannon failed to create, German taxpayers have just stepped in to revive: a Nationalist International. Thanks to the German government, the far right is about to get its own well-heeled global think tank, complete with the sort of political academy that was so dear to Bannon’s plan for world domination. Germany’s gift to the far right is[Read More…]

by 06/12/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Climate Change and the Limits of Economic Growth

Climate Change and the Limits of Economic Growth

The only effective way to control carbon emissions, as well as related problems of pollution and biodiversity loss, is to address “overshoot,” the unconstrained use of energy and material resources well beyond planetary limits, particularly in the richer parts of the world. Since the nineteenth century, human society has experienced extraordinary but uneven economic growth thanks to the energy unleashed[Read More…]

by 05/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The Real Meaning of Squid Game

The Real Meaning of Squid Game

You’ve either seen the Netflix show Squid Game, considered watching the South Korean series before giving it a pass because of its violence, or read about it and wondered what all the fuss is about. You know, therefore, that this global hit is about hundreds of indebted Koreans competing against one another for a huge jackpot. The competitions are children’s games[Read More…]

by 30/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Potential Pitfalls of a Green New Deal

The Potential Pitfalls of a Green New Deal

It was supposed to be the greatest transition of modern times. Practically overnight, a dirty, inefficient, and unjust system that encompassed 11 time zones was to undergo an extreme makeover. Billions of dollars were available to speed the process. A new crew of transition experts came up with the blueprint and the public was overwhelmingly on board. Best of all,[Read More…]

by 05/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Artificial Intelligence Wants You (and Your Job) – We’d Better Control Machines Before They Control Us

Artificial Intelligence Wants You (and Your Job) – We’d Better Control Machines Before They Control Us

My wife and I were recently driving in Virginia, amazed yet again that the GPS technology on our phones could guide us through a thicket of highways, around road accidents, and toward our precise destination. The artificial intelligence (AI) behind the soothing voice telling us where to turn has replaced passenger-seat navigators, maps, even traffic updates on the radio. How[Read More…]

by 22/07/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Twilight of the Pandemic? Bracing for a Surge of Trumpism or…

Twilight of the Pandemic? Bracing for a Surge of Trumpism or…

I went to a birthday party recently. The celebrants greeted each other with hugs on the patio. After an outdoor barbeque dinner, we stood shoulder to shoulder around the island in the kitchen, eating cake from small paper plates. We sang “Happy Birthday.” Ordinarily, an event like that wouldn’t be worth noting, but these aren’t exactly ordinary times. In this[Read More…]

by 08/06/2021 1 comment World
Waiting for the Cyber-Apocalypse

Waiting for the Cyber-Apocalypse

The Cold War Has Already Turned Hot — on the Internet America has a serious infrastructure problem. Maybe when I say that what comes to mind are all the potholes on your street. Or the dismal state of public transportation in your city. Or crumbling bridges all over the country. But that’s so twentieth century of you. America’s most urgent[Read More…]

by 28/04/2021 Comments are Disabled World
The World Welcomes Biden But Hedges Its Bets

The World Welcomes Biden But Hedges Its Bets

The nightmare is over. The vanquished beast has crawled back to Mar-a-Lago to lick his wounds. The heroes are hard at work repairing the damage. As America returns to the international stage, the world heaves a collective sigh of relief. That, at least, is the story the incoming Biden administration is telling. “America is back, multilateralism is back, diplomacy is[Read More…]

by 08/02/2021 1 comment World
There’s No Returning to Normal After Trump

There’s No Returning to Normal After Trump

 Imagine for a moment that Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election in 2016. Imagine, in other words, that the “blue wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had held firm four years ago. Claiming election fraud, Donald Trump would have insisted on a recount and Election Day would then, too, have stretched into election week and election month. Eventually, Trump[Read More…]

by 16/11/2020 1 comment World
The Mobster-in-Chief : Will the November Election Be Decided in the Streets?

The Mobster-in-Chief : Will the November Election Be Decided in the Streets?

The white mobs didn’t care whom they killed as long as the victims were Black. They murdered people in public with guns and rocks. They set fire to houses and slaughtered families trying to escape the flames. In East St. Louis in July 1917, white vigilantes lynched Blacks with impunity. It was the prelude to what civil rights activist James Weldon[Read More…]

by 30/09/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 How Covid-19 Could Upend Geopolitics

 How Covid-19 Could Upend Geopolitics

I don’t trust you. Don’t take it personally. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a friend or a stranger. I don’t care about your identity or your politics, where you work or if you work, whether you wear a mask or carry a gun. I don’t trust you because you are, for the time being, a potential carrier of a deadly[Read More…]

by 28/07/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 What Will It Take to Defeat Trumpism?

 What Will It Take to Defeat Trumpism?

Learning Lessons from the End of the Confederacy, Nazi Germany, and Saddam’s Iraq Let’s assume that Donald Trump loses the election in November. Yes, that’s a mighty big assumption, despite all the polls currently favoring the Democrats. If the economy begins to recover and the first wave of Covid-19 subsides (without a second wave striking), Donald Trump’s reelection prospects could[Read More…]

by 27/06/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Trump Rex

Trump Rex

  In retrospect, it’s no surprise that, after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, dystopian fiction enjoyed a spike in popularity. However, novels like George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which soared on Amazon, would prove more horror stories than roadmaps. Like so many ominous sounds from a dark basement, they provided good scares but didn’t foreshadow the actual Trumpian[Read More…]

by 16/04/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Far Right’s War on Culture

The Far Right’s War on Culture

The far right is on a roll. Just a few years ago, liberals and conservatives would have considered its recent political victories a nightmare scenario. Right-wing extremists have won elections in the United States, Brazil, Hungary, India, and Poland. They pushed through the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. In the most recent European Parliament elections, far-right parties captured the[Read More…]

by 21/10/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Is China or the Green New Deal the Answer to Climate Change? 

Is China or the Green New Deal the Answer to Climate Change? 

At its best, the earth was once likened to a spaceship that sails through the heavens with a crew working together for the common good. Thanks to climate change, this metaphor no longer works. Our planet is now more like a lifeboat that’s sprung a major leak. People onboard are beginning to panic and the clock is ticking. It is, however, the[Read More…]

by 31/07/2019 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The Threat of Political Climate Change

The Threat of Political Climate Change

In the Americas, the Trump tsunami has swept across both continents and the “pink tide” of progressivism has all but disappeared from the southern half of the hemisphere. In Europe, with the recent exception of Spain, the left has been banished to the political margins. In Africa and Asia, socialism has devolved into nationalism, authoritarianism, or just plain corruption. And forget about the[Read More…]

by 14/05/2019 Comments are Disabled World
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