Foreshore and Seabed: A New Wave of Attacks
Another round of Crown confiscations stand before us. Among the current onslaught of law-changes, the Government has recently announced its plans to overturn the 2023 Court of Appeal decision which lowered the threshold for meeting Customary marine title claims. The history here gets tangled easily, so let’s break it down in chronological order (an oversimplification, […]
E for Environment
The ABCs of Socialism is a series of short articles on key socialist concepts. In this issue we look at the environment, and the profound crisis that is facing us today. At the heart of this ongoing crisis is the inescapable interdependence between human society and the wider environment, and the way that this fundamental […]
Strawberries, Olives, Oranges: Israel’s War as Ecocide
North Gaza is famous for its strawberries. Harvest season, in the northern hemisphere, is from December through to March. Normally thousands would be employed gathering the fruit to bring it to market across Palestine. This year, as they were killing thousands of Palestinian civilians in their ongoing attacks, Israeli forces also used bulldozers and heavy […]
Dealing with climate catastrophe
School strike for Climate are mobilising students once again to strike against climate change. The political demands connect the issues of climate justice with Toitū te Tiriti, Freedom for Palestine, National’s plans to fast-track environmentally damaging projects, amongst others. Josh O’Sullivan argues for why we need to dismantle capitalism – root and branch – to […]
Te Tairawhiti: The Sun Rising Over a Troubled Land
Ehara toku tu he tu ka neke, a, ko toku mana ki Hikurangi, ehara nana te nuku. Ehara toku kaha he kaha naku noa, ko toku kaha ki Waiapu, nana te kaha. Ehara ahau noa, ko Ngati Porou kei te mihi. I stand unmoving, as my mana is at Hikurangi, he does not move. My […]
Labour and Greens’ Inaction on Climate Change
Image: Forestry slash and flooding near Gisborne. Photo courtesy of Gisborne City Council. The Labour Party and the Green Party have had a Cooperation Agreement for the current Parliament. Under the agreement the Greens got two ministers, both outside Cabinet. James Shaw continued as Minister of Climate Change, a post he held in the 2017-2020 […]
A Profile on Wayne Brown
Current Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown ran as an independent candidate and won the election for appointment of mayoralty in October 2022. Described as “centre-right” by news publications such as 1 News and RNZ, the self-described ‘anti-establishment’ businessman campaigned on a platform of slimlining council staff roles, reducing rates and replacing all council entity directors. Just […]
Teachers and the Climate Crisis: An Interview With a Unionist
Note that this interview was conducted on the 8th of February 2023. Subsequent events such as Cyclone Gabrielle, which has devastated parts of the North Island, have shed further light on these issues. Simon Hirini is a secondary school teacher, chair of the Taita College branch of the Post-Primary Teachers Association, and Executive rep for […]
Thinking About Ecology with Marx – A review of Kohei Saito’s Marx in the Anthropocene
The destruction of the natural environment in the Stalinist regimes through the twentieth-century made it understandable that, for many, Red and Green seemed incompatible. Think about the disaster at Chernobyl and the erosion of the Black Sea coast in the USSR, the catastophes of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ in China, the coal-fired pollution across Eastern […]
Planet, Politics and Power: Climate Justice is Class Struggle
The Problem In 1977 James Black, a senior scientist at leading oil and gas corporation Exxon, delivered a presentation to the company titled ‘The Greenhouse Effect’. He outlined, with startling prescience and the best modelling available at the time, the danger that humanity faces if we continue with our acceleration of fossil fuel consumption. He […]
