Ecosocialism and ecofeminism might be new phrases to some people, but they are growing movements in the United States. The U.S. is a latecomer to these topics in many respects because Ecosocialism is already an established movement in Europe and Australia and elsewhere. But finally the U.S. is starting to catch up. The video below was recorded at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit that was held at the end of June. It was a workshop titled Building Ecosocialism and led by environmentalist Joel Kovel. Described as, “Meeting at USSF in which ecosocialist activists discussed commoning, ecofeminism, the destruction of capitalism, strategy, convergence.” (I have to admit to lack of familiarity with “commoning”.) Here is just one of many websites about ecosocialism.
If you are born in the United States, it’s a given that you grow up with certain things drilled into your head. One is that buying and selling, capitalism, and profits, having a job to make a lot of money, is the purpose of life on the path to the American Dream. We are told that capitalism equals freedom, and it’s the natural desire of every human being everywhere. (This is how they sell wars to us too).
Then we are told that this system, which is built on pursuing money (a human invention) as a life goal, is the dream of people everywhere, so we must help them pursue it. Think about how unnatural that all is. The system is based on a cutthroat philosophy that some people get rich (those who are successful) and some people don’t, (those who are failures) so you should try very hard to pursue this life goal of having a “good job” (i.e., one that pays you a lot of money) is the dream of all people everywhere. On the path to this “success” you must buy and discard and buy and discard many things, some of which are status symbols, like expensive cars and expensive clothes and jewelry, etc.
Of course a LOT of people don’t pursue jobs just for money, but those other jobs are simply not as valued in the U.S. as much because we are a super-capitalist country. An investment banker in the U.S. is much more admired by many people than a scientist, who’s status is somewhere between garbage collector and public school teacher. (Many right-wingers want to destroy public schools). Look at the scorn heaped on James Hansen, NASA Scientist and climate change expert — if Americans have heard of him at all. Look at the climate change deniers and who they hate — scientists. (Look at who they revere — religious leaders, even the most fake and perverted.)
This is all due to cultural brainwashing, in my opinion. But eventually as people grow older they realize that other things matter a lot more than business, profits, denying science they don’t understand, and stepping on people just to maximize profits. Things like the environmental matter more than a business’s profits, for instance, because the environmental is vitally important to every person and every living thing on earth. Things like our survival matter more.
Some people, usually pro-business people who are on the political right-wing, think that we are a great country because we have “freedom”. Freedom to them means “free markets” and spreading the myth that everyone is equally able to pursue the “American dream”. This “dream” has been defined for us as lots of money and a big house and lots of stuff. This leads to “freedom” in the minds of many.
The largest protest so far against the Toronto-area G8/G20 summits heads south on University Avenue from the Ontario legislature on Saturday afternoon. People were marching in support of a variety of causes, including the environment. (Timothy Neesam/CBC)
This is about how regular people have so little control over their own future, and little to say about whether the human race survives or not. It’s long and convoluted, but there are some interesting bits in it. In Obama’s speech at the end of the G20 today, he said that nations agree that fossil fuel use has to end and that they all have to work to get climate change stopped. However, he didn’t elaborate. There was a G20 “Climate agreement” and a document that I haven’t seen yet. It reportedly called for reductions in the use (or subsidies) of fossil fuels voluntarily, and President Obama pushed them to remove the “voluntary” wording, supposedly making it mandatory. Even if it is mandatory, it’s still not an official climate agreement, and there is no way of enforcing it that I’m aware of. When I find the text of it, I will reprint it here.
Unfortunately, calling for governments to keep on growing and spending and consuming and supporting bank health might sound good to people in America, and it’s what all the leaders did, but this is just more propping up a broken capitalistic system that’s falling apart, instead of inventing a new and more equitable economic system for everyone. That system should be based on renewable energy and ending hunger and poverty. Instead, they want to save all the banks. Everything world leaders and Obama and our Congress is doing amounts to putting Bandaids on an unsustainable system.
What we need right now is a better system, one that phases out constant consumption, waste and corruption, and takes all the money out of politics. Money in politics is the main reason why we have no climate change bill. We have an economic system that feeds on itself, looping itself in with our politics, and that is bound to fail. Unlimited growth on a limited planet will be disastrous, and we are already seeing evidence of that. It’s harder and harder to get the oil and the coal out of the ground, because there is less of it, yet we need more and more of it. Something, besides the oil rig that sank, is bound to crash and burn very soon. From the LA Times:
International negotiators, under pressure from the Obama administration, agree to omit the term when describing efforts to cut production and consumption incentives. Summit also focuses on arriving at a consensus on the global economic crisis.
In a last-minute turn in global climate talks, international negotiators agreed over the weekend to adopt more ambitious plans than expected to trim government subsidies to oil companies worldwide, part of a broader effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Earlier this week, negotiators were hammering out an agreement among the top 20 industrialized and emerging nations that called for each to take “voluntary” measures to cut production and consumption incentives.
But privately under pressure from the Obama administration over the last two days, the group now is preparing to sign an agreement that omits the word “voluntary.”
If that really meant they were going to get to work on climate change, I’d be celebrating.
Meanwhile, there is still a massive effort in the United States by corporations and politicians to demonize anything that does not emphasize and support free markets and profits, and in doing so they are killing any hope of a domestic climate bill. Nearly our entire government is part of the effort to save capitalism around the world all costs. Most of our politicians, not just those on the right-wing, don’t want us to do anything about climate change because it might “screw up” the economy in some way, as if they haven’t done a pretty good job of that already. It’s worth mentioning they are politicians working with corporations, because this is a very blatant political movement that depends on millions of dollars in bribes (donations) changing hands, this movement to stop any real action on climate change. The greenwashing efforts these slimy people do support are those that keep coal and oil humming along with various tricks like “carbon capture” and somehow making offshore drilling safe. That’s all a bunch of funhouse mirrors.
People who favor a lifestyle that does not emphasize wealth hoarding and living every day for making money are called “liberals” and “socialists”. Maybe they should be called “survivalists.” Don’t the rest of us have the right to make a choice over how we live and what the future is like? Obviously, it’s hard to make the choice to live a life that is about something other than making a lot of money and consuming more and more things, including fossil fuels, when it’s so encouraged by and ingrained into our culture.
A map of the world from an atlas which concentrates on population rather than land mass released last year. The Earth's population is due to hit 7bn by next year
Doomsday will be decided in 2014, not 2012, according to an Australian scientist who says that if we keep doing what we’re going, Drill-Baby-Drilling and having lots of babies, it’s the end of the human race in about 100 years. Seriously, I wonder if we will last that long. He also claims that attempts to stop climate change will not stop our extinction, only buy us time. Well he doesn’t have to worry about that, because the United States isn’t going to do anything about climate change, thanks to our obstructionist right-wing politicians. Some of them are still busy denying climate change, like they deny evolution, and claim that dinosaurs lived with people. In other words, they suffer from serious science-backwardness, and the sheer force of it just might lead to our demise. Here’s to “Livin’ la Vida Loca” while we still can. From the Daily Mail:
And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.
He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and ‘unbridled consumption.’
Fenner told The Australian newspaper that ‘homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years.’
‘A lot of other animals will, too,’ he added. ‘It’s an irreversible situation. I think it’s too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.’ Since humans entered an unofficial scientific period known as the Anthropocene – the time since industrialisation – we have had an effect on the planet that rivals any ice age or comet impact, he said.
Fenner, 95, has won awards for his work in helping eradicate the variola virus that causes smallpox and has written or co-written 22 books.
He announced the eradication of the disease to the World Health Assembly in 1980 and it is still regarded as one of the World Health Organisation’s greatest achievements He was also heavily involved in helping to control Australia’s myxomatosis problem in rabbits.
Last year official UN figures estimated that the world’s population is currently 6.8 billion. It is predicted to exceed seven billion by the end of 2011.
Fenner blames the onset of climate change for the human race’s imminent demise. He said: ‘We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island. ‘Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we’re seeing remarkable changes in the weather already.’
‘The Aborigines showed that without science and the production of carbon dioxide and global warming, they could survive for 40,000 or 50,000 years.
‘But the world can’t. The human species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that we’ve seen disappear.’
Retired professor Stephen Boyden, a colleague of Professor Fenner, said that while there was deep pessimism among some ecologists, others had a more optimistic view.
There was a good article called “Going Green? Good Luck” about consumers really going green versus just thinking they are in the Star Tribune on Sunday. It was based in part on an article in Discovery magazine by Thomas M. Kostigen about water use.
“Water is a precious resource, and there is embedded or “virtual” water in everything we consume. According to a Discover magazine article by Thomas Kostigen, “Virtual water is a calculation of the water needed for the production of any product from start to finish.”
Kostigen goes on to quote the virtual water for everything from a banana (27 gallons) to a cup of coffee (37 gallons) based on calculations from Waterfootprint.org, which has a virtual water footprint calculator that allows you to see how much water is in the food you are consuming.” — From The Lifecycle of Your Dinner, another related article.
Of course, American consumerism is a big source of CO2 emissions in the first place. But our economic systems demands we shop or it all collapses. So we should make choices in what we buy that are as smart as possible (or stop being capitalists, which is always an option).
The point of “Going green? Good Luck” is to show us how we never think of all the energy and water that goes into our great ideas that we think are “green”, when it turns out they are not. For instance, in Canada there is a push, like everywhere else, to “eat local” food. That involves eating locally grown tomatoes, which are grown in a giant 1,600 greenhouse covered in glass, even in the winter. What they save in transportation costs to get tomatoes from California in the winter is completely overcome by the energy required to light and heat a greenhouse in Canada in the colder months of the year. So there is a net rise in CO2 emissions overall from that locally-grown tomato. “When you consider how much water is used in growing, processing, transporting and selling coffee, the virtual water use of a single cup of coffee is 37 gallons”. That’s enough to make you think twice about throwing out that half pot of coffee that you don’t want to drink. Maybe you could refrigerate it and drink it over ice later instead of making new coffee tomorrow.
How much water is used to make leather shoes? This is shocking — 4,400 gallons. Even the “green” shoes use hundreds of gallons of water to manufacture. The greenest shoes are the ones you already own. That goes for clothes, furniture, books, and other things that don’t use energy to operate.
Another example is going electronic with your books and other reading. It seems like a no-brainer. With an e-reader you save paper, and trees, and read on an electronic device. It sounds like common sense. But it’s not the greenest way to read anything.
Will it work? No one knows yet whether the “top kill” procedure has succeeded (as I write this) but they are currently suspending whatever it is they are doing in order to “assess their progress.” ScienceMag calls it “How to Kill a Well with Gravity“.
Oil giant BP has a very long straw stuck 3048 meters into the Gulf of Mexico sea floor with oil and gas spouting out the top at several thousand pascals. How do BP engineers stop the flow when none of the control valves at the top is working and there’s no way to put a stopper in the straw’s end? The only option is using gravity, notes petroleum engineer Paul Bommer of the University of Texas, Austin. To get gravity on their side, engineers yesterday started trying to quiet down the well by pumping drilling “mud” into the side of the leaky straw as hard as they could. “If they get it quiet,” says Bommer, “gravity will take over.”
If all goes well, the stopper that holds in the oil and gas will be 3048 meters of drilling mud—a colloid of water, clay, and other solids—filling the well. Twice as dense as water and far more dense than the hydrocarbons coming up the well, the weight of a well full of drilling mud would more than balance the force of fluids trying to rise from the well bottom. This is the way drillers normally control well pressures. . . . . But if that resistance erodes under the higher pressure and faster flow escaping the wellhead, it could be time for a “junk shot.” That’s the injection of large particles of, um, … stuff intended to clog leaks and let the backpressure rise again. No word on what sort of stuff might be used, but shredded tires and golf balls have come up.”
Wonderful. President Obama gave a tough public speech today, frowning a lot, looking serious, telling us all he’s on top of this disaster and this is his number one priority. I believe that like I believe the earth is flat. Then again, for political reasons, maybe he’s telling us part of the truth. (This could very well affect the mid-term elections.) Is this Obama’s Katrina? Well it’s not the same of course, since about 2,000 people died in Katrina, but it’s hard not to argue that this is a bigger mess overall, and Obama seemingly ignored it much longer than Bush ignored New Orleans. Of course we don’t know all that Obama has been doing behind the scenes since the blowout occurred. He claims it has been a huge priority since day one, but that oil has been floating in the Gulf now for 5 weeks and plenty of people, (including stalwart Democrats like James Carville and Donna Brazil) are furious. We’ll find out more tomorrow when the President visits the Gulf region in person. If we see super tankers in the Gulf in a few days sucking up that oil, it may restore some trust and belief in Obama’s ability to handle a disaster, but for now, my faith in that has evaporated a lot.
The Cochabamba World People’s Conference on climate change ended last week in Bolivia, and most greeniacs agree it was a good boost for the cause of environmental and climate justice and acknowledging peoples’ rights to their resources. The Copenhagen climate summit, by comparison, seemed mostly geared towards protecting corporations, economic systems, and preserving forms of governments, and suggesting how much they should contribute to help those suffering from climate change, that these big economic giants have mostly caused. There was little serious talk of climate justice in Copenhagen among the big “capitalist” players (the U.S. and Europe), but it was very prevalent at the Cochabamba summit.
There is no doubt that most of those who will suffer the most from climate change are those with the least money. They are also the people who will lose their way of life and even their land and resources first as climate change progresses.
What came out of the Cochabamba conference was not firm commitments from anyone, but it was a good starting point for environmental justice conversations and a framework to demand rights, and it was a big push to a movement based on ecosocialism, instead of preserving capitalism (aka profits) for the richest corporations and countries who are doing most of the polluting. Exxon Mobile is just one example of what is wrong with capitalism butting heads with climate. Exxon posted record profits again last year ($45.2 billion in profits) and paid no American taxes, so they aren’t even contributing to cleaning up the climate, or environmental disasters that the EPA needs to be involved in and pay for. That’s outrageous, but that will continue as long as corporations run our government and our govenrment worships capitalism. (See below the declaration for more comments.)
Meanwhile, this Declaration came out of the People’s Climate summit. See more at Climate and Capitalism for their coverage of Cochabamba and related events. Also see the official website’s declaration here which starts out:
“Today, our Mother Earth is wounded and the future of humanity is in danger.
If global warming increases by more than 2 degrees Celsius, a situation that the “Copenhagen Accord” could lead to, there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20% and 30% of species would be in danger of disappearing. Large extensions of forest would be affected, droughts and floods would affect different regions of the planet, deserts would expand, and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen. Many island states would disappear, and Africa would suffer an increase in temperature of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would diminish in the world, causing catastrophic impact on the survival of inhabitants from vast regions in the planet, and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people.The corporations and governments of the so-called “developed” countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.
We confront the terminal crisis of a civilizing model that is patriarchal and based on the submission and destruction of human beings and nature that accelerated since the industrial revolution.”
Below are a couple of articles on Ecosocialism for people who just want to read about it or are interested in it. It’s a new model of solving the climate crisis with something besides capitalism, which is based on selling as many things as possible in order to make as high a profit as possible. Waste is built into capitalism to the point where it is seen as a plus. Anyone who has seen Michael Moore’s movie called “Capitalism” knows this economic system is killing us, and you can’t solve climate change with the free market, while making lots of money. See the video “The Story of Stuff” too, for why it’s impossible to continue on with this model and still stop climate change. We can either have growth and capitalism, many believe, or we can stop climate change, but we can’t do both.
There are many resources online for people interested in ecosocialism that explain why it should be the model of the future. The current model of using our planet to make things that we throw away to make more and more things, using tons of energy in the process, shipping them all over the world — isn’t working anymore.
People should get back in touch with nature and appreciate our planet, basic as that may sound. President Obama agrees with that, and is creating a Conservation Summit. Great idea! Naturally, anti-nature corporate types will ridicule the idea and call it “socialist”. The fact is that eco-socialism might be the best option for a new economic model as we attempt to stop and/or adapt to climate change.
Today, climate change is an undeniable reality. The political, social and media impact of the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009 was a good proof of this. A summit that showed the inability of the capitalist system to give a credible response to a crisis that it has itself created. Green capitalism offers a series of technological solutions (nuclear power, capture of carbon from the atmosphere to be stored, biofuels and so on) that will have a major social and environmental impact. These are false solutions to climate change that try to hide the structural causes that have led us to the current crisis situation and raise the contradiction between the short term calculations of capital and the long rhythms of ecological equilibrium.
In this context, a movement able to challenge the dominant discourse of green capitalism, recognising the impact and the responsibility of the current model of capitalist production, distribution and consumption and linking the global climate threat with everyday social problems is urgent. Copenhagen saw the increased expression of the movement for climate justice, precisely to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the mobilizations against the WTO in Seattle. A protest which, under the slogan “Change the system, not the climate” expresses this diffuse relationship between climate and social justice, between social crisis and ecological crisis. But the success of the protests in Copenhagen contrasts with the weakness of demonstrations around the world, with some exceptions such as London.
The current crisis raises the urgent need to change the world from below and do so from an anti-capitalist and radical eco-socialist perspective. Anti-capitalism and climate justice are two struggles which must be closely linked. Any prospect of rupture with the current economic model that does not take account of the centrality of the ecological crisis is doomed to failure and any environmental perspective without an anti-capitalist orientation of a break with the current system will deal with the surface of the problem and end up being an instrument at the service of green marketing policies.
Slowing down climate change involves modifying the current model of production, distribution and consumption. A superficial and cosmetic retouching is of no point. Solutions to the ecological crisis mean taking up the foundations of the current capitalist system. If we want climate change we need to change the system. Hence, the need for a true eco-socialist perspective, or eco-communist perspective as Daniel Bensaïd said in one of his last articles.
Also, we must combat the thesis of green neo-Malthusianism blaming the countries of the South for their high rates of population growth and seeking to control the bodies of women, undermining our right to decide on our bodies. To fight against climate change means to fight poverty: the greater social inequality, the more climate vulnerability. It is necessary to convert productive sectors with a serious social and environmental impact (military, cars, extractive industries and so on), creating employment in ecologically just and social sectors such as organic farming, public services (health, education, transport), among others.
Putting an end to climate change means asserting the right of peoples to food sovereignty. The current agro-industrial model (delocalised, intensive, mileage intensive, oil-dependent) is one of the maximum greenhouse gas generators. An ecological, local peasant agriculture with short marketing circuits allow, as La Via Campesina say, the cooling of the planet. It should also incorporate the demands of native peoples, control of their lands and natural goods and their worldview and respect for the “pachamama”, “mother earth”, and defence of the “good life”. Enhancing these contributions posing a new type of relationship between humanity and nature is key to addressing climate change and the commodification of life and the planet.
From a North-South perspective, climate justice involves unconditional cancellation of the debt of the countries of the South, an illegal and illegitimate debt and demanding recognition of a social, historical and ecological debt from North to South, the result of centuries of pillaging and exploitation. In cases of disaster, it is necessary to promote mechanisms of “popular relief”. We have seen as climate change increases the vulnerability of the popular sectors, especially in the countries of the South. The earthquakes in Haiti and in Chile are two of the most recent cases. These threats necessitate networks of international solidarity of rank and file social movements allowing a channelling of immediate and effective aid to local populations. The initiative cannot be in the hands of an international “humanitarianism” empty of political content.
The fight against climate change is a fight against the current model of industrial production delocalised, “just in time”, massive, dependent on fossil resources and so on. Union bureaucracies tail and legitimize policies of “green capitalism” with the farce of “green technology” to create employment and generate increased prosperity. It is necessary to remove this myth. The trade union left must call into question the current model of growth without limits by another “development” model in accordance with the finite resources of the planet. Climate change and environmental demands must be a central axis of combative trade unionism. Trade unionists cannot see ecologists as enemies and vice versa. All suffer the consequences of climate change and we need to act collectively.
It is wrong to think that we can combat climate change only by individual attitudes changing, and when more when half of the world’s population lives in conditions of “chronic underconsumption”, and is also wrong to think that we can combat climate change only with scientific and technological responses. Structural changes are necessary to the models of production of goods, energy and so on. In this respect, local-based initiatives pose practical alternatives to the dominant model of consumption, production, energy… they have a demonstrative character and raise awareness which is fundamental as a basis.
By its nature, talk of how to confront climate change implies discussing strategy, self-organization, planning and the tasks that lie ahead for those of us who consider ourselves anti-capitalists.”
Esther Vivas is a member of the Centre for Studies on Social Movements (CEMS) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is author of the book in Spanish “Stand Up against external debt” and co-coordinator of the books also in Spanish “Supermarkets, No Thanks” and “Where is Fair Trade headed?”. She is also a member of the editorial board of Viento Sur (www.vientosur.info).
Three billion human beings lack the essentials of life. The satisfaction of their needs requires increased production of material goods. Therefore increased consumption of energy. Today, 80 per cent of this energy is of fossil origin, and consequently a source of greenhouse gases which are unbalancing the climatic system.
However, we can no longer permit ourselves to unbalance the climate. We are probably no longer very far from a “tipping point” beyond which phenomena which are uncontrollable and irreversible on a human timescale are likely to be set in motion, which could lead to a situation that humanity has never experienced and which the planet has not experienced for 65 million years: a world without ice. A world in which the sea level would rise by approximately 80 metres compared to its level today.
The total disappearance of ice is certainly not for tomorrow: the process could take up to a thousand years. But it could be set in motion in twenty, thirty or forty years and involve a rise in the sea level of several metres before the end of the century. To prevent this happening, it is necessary to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, therefore to completely do without fossil fuels within two or three generations.
Do without coal, oil, natural gas? It is possible: the technical potential of renewable energies is sufficient to take over. But in practice, in the very short period of time we dispose of, the energy transition is possible only if it goes hand in hand with an important reduction in energy consumption. A reduction so great that it cannot be only attained by an increase in energy efficiency: a reduction of material production and of transport of goods is necessary.. . . . “
President Obama portrayed himself as a business-loving centrist today at a Business Roundtable. Obama is stepping up his pursuit of an energy/jobs/climate bill and he did say that we need to address climate change. But as always, he emphasized jobs and the economy, calling this the ‘lost decade’. Though it was a good speech, it was uninspired-sounding. (possibly due to his audience; see photo below.) You can read a summary of his remarks here. He also said we need a price on carbon.
If this helps sell a climate bill it will be worth it. He did say quite a bit about energy and climate and keeping America competitive through keeping up with the rest of the world. Here are those remarks from the transcript:
[President Obama]: “A competitive America is also America that finally has a smart energy policy. We know there’s no silver bullet here. We understand that to reduce our dependence on oil and the damage caused by climate change, we’re going to need more production in the short term, we’re going to need more efficiency, and we need more incentives for clean energy.
Business Roundtable audience. Are the people who run America's businesses really this homogenous? Capitalism needs some diversity! Photo from whitehouse.gov
And already, the Recovery Act has allowed us to jumpstart the clean energy industry in America -– an investment that will lead to 720,000 clean energy jobs by the year 2012. To take just one example, the United States used to make less than 2 percent of the world’s advanced batteries for hybrid cars. By 2015, we’ll have enough capacity to make up to 40 percent of these batteries.
We’ve also launched an unprecedented effort to make our homes and businesses more energy efficient. We’ve announced loan guarantees to break ground on America’s first new nuclear plant in nearly three decades. We’re supporting three of the largest solar plants in the world. And I’ve said that we’re willing to make tough decisions about opening up new offshore areas for oil and gas development. So what we’re looking at is a comprehensive strategy, not an either/or strategy but a both/and strategy when it comes to energy.
But to truly transition to a clean energy economy, I’ve also said that we need to put a price on carbon pollution. Many businesses have embraced this approach — including some who are represented here today. Still, I am sympathetic to those companies that face significant potential transition costs, and I want to work with this organization and others like this to help with those costs and to get our policies right.
Esther Vivas is a member of the Centre for Studies on Social Movements (CEMS) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is author of the book in Spanish “Stand Up against external debt” and co-coordinator of the books also in Spanish “Supermarkets, No Thanks” and “Where is Fair Trade headed?”. She is also a member of the editorial board of Viento Sur (www.vientosur.info).
