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Climate Talks End With ‘Empty Deal’ That Fails on Forests, Finance, and Fossil Fuels

Olivia Rosane

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, concluded on Saturday in Belém, Brazil with a deal that does not even include the words “fossil fuels”—the burning of which scientists agree is the primary cause of the climate crisis.

Environmental and human rights advocates expressed disappointment in the final Global Mutirão decision, which they say failed to deliver road maps to transition away from oil, gas, and coal and to halt deforestation—another important driver of the rise in global temperatures since the preindustrial era.

“This is an empty deal,” said Nikki Reisch, the Center for International Environmental Law’s (CIEL) director of climate and energy program. “COP30 provides a stark reminder that the answers to the climate crisis do not lie inside the climate talks—they lie with the people and movements leading the way toward a just, equitable, fossil-free future. The science is settled and the law is clear: We must keep fossil fuels in the ground and make polluters pay.”

COP30 was notable in that it was the first international climate conference to which the US did not send a formal delegation, following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. Yet, even without a Trump administration presence, observers were disappointed in the power of fossil fuel-producing countries to derail ambition. The final document also failed to heed the warning of a fire that broke out in the final days of the talks, which many saw as a symbol for the rapid heating of the Earth.

“The venue bursting into flames couldn’t be a more apt metaphor for COP30’s catastrophic failure to take concrete action to implement a funded and fair fossil fuel phaseout,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “Even without the Trump administration there to bully and cajole, petrostates once again shut down meaningful progress at this COP. These negotiations keep hitting a wall because wealthy nations profiting off polluting fossil fuels fail to offer the needed financial support to developing countries and any meaningful commitment to move first.”

The talks on a final deal nearly broke down between Friday and Saturday as a coalition of more than 80 countries who favored more ambitious language faced off against fossil fuel-producing nations like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and India.

During the dispute, Colombia’s delegate said the deal “falls far short of reflecting the magnitude of the challenges that parties—especially the most vulnerable—are confronting on the ground,” according to BBC News.

Finally, a deal was struck around 1:35 pm local time, The Guardian reported. The deal circumvented the fossil fuel debate by affirming the “United Arab Emirates Consensus,” referring to when nations agreed to transition away from fossil fuels at COP28 in the UAE. In addition, COP President André Corrêa do Lago said that stronger language on the fossil fuel transition could be negotiated at an interim COP in six months.

On deforestation, the deal similarly restated the COP26 pledge to halt tree felling by 2030 without making any new plans or commitments.

Climate justice advocates were also disappointed in the finance commitments from Global North to Global South countries. While wealthier countries pledged to triple adaptation funds to $120 billion per year, many saw the amount as insufficient, and the funds were promised by 2035, not 2030 as poorer countries had wanted.

“We must reflect on what was possible, and what is now missing: the road maps to end forest destruction, and fossil fuels, and an ongoing lack of finance,” Greenpeace Brazil executive director Carolina Pasquali told The Guardian. “More than 80 countries supported a transition away from fossil fuels, but they were blocked from agreeing on this change by countries that refused to support this necessary and urgent step. More than 90 countries supported improved protection of forests. That too did not make it into the final agreement. Unfortunately, the text failed to deliver the scale of change needed.”

Climate campaigners did see hope in the final agreement’s strong language on human rights and its commitment to a just transition through the Belém Action Mechanism, which aims to coordinate global cooperation toward protecting workers and shifting to clean energy.

“It’s a big win to have the Belém Action Mechanism established with the strongest-ever COP language around Indigenous and worker rights and biodiversity protection,” Su said. “The BAM agreement is in stark contrast to this COP’s total flameout on implementing a funded and fair fossil fuel phaseout.”

Oxfam Brasil executive director Viviana Santiago struck a similar note, saying: “COP30 offered a spark of hope but far more heartbreak, as the ambition of global leaders continues to fall short of what is needed for a livable planet. People from the Global South arrived in Belém with hope, seeking real progress on adaptation and finance, but rich nations refused to provide crucial adaptation finance. This failure leaves the communities at the frontlines of the climate crisis exposed to the worst impacts and with few options for their survival.”

Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at Oil Change International, said: “Rich polluting countries that caused this crisis have blocked the breakthrough that we needed at COP30. The EU, UK, Australia, and other wealthy nations are to blame for COP’s failure to adopt a road map on fossil fuels by refusing to commit to phase out first or put real public money on the table for the crisis they have caused. Still, amid this flawed outcome, there are glimmers of real progress. The Belém Action Mechanism is a major win made possible by movements and Global South countries that puts people’s needs and rights at the center of climate action.”

Indigenous leaders applauded language that recognized their land rights and traditional knowledge as climate solutions and recognized people of African descent for the first time. However, they still argued the COP process could do more to enable the full participation of Indigenous communities.

“Despite being referred to as an Indigenous COP and despite the historic achievement in the Just Transition Programme, it became clear that Indigenous Peoples continue to be excluded from the negotiations, and in many cases, we were not given the floor in negotiation rooms. Nor have most of our proposals been incorporated,” said Emil Gualinga of the Kichwa Peoples of Sarayaku, Ecuador. “The militarization of the COP shows that Indigenous Peoples are viewed as threats, and the same happens in our territories: Militarization occurs when Indigenous Peoples defend their rights in the face of oil, mining, and other extractive projects.”

Many campaigners saw hope in the alliances that emerged beyond the purview of the official UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, from a group of 24 countries who have agreed to collaborate on a plan to transition off fossil fuels in line with the Paris goals of limiting temperature increases to 1.5°C to the Indigenous and civil society activists who marched against fossil fuels in Belém.

“The barricade that rich countries built against progress and justice in the COP30 process stands in stark contrast to the momentum building outside the climate talks,” Ioualalen said. “Countries and people from around the world loudly are demanding a fair and funded phaseout, and that is not going to stop. We didn’t win the full justice outcome we need in Belém, but we have new arenas to keep fighting.”

In April 2026, Colombia and the Netherlands will cohost the First International Conference on Fossil Fuel Phaseout. At the same time, 18 countries have signed on in support of a treaty to phase out fossil fuels.

“However big polluters may try to insulate themselves from responsibility or edit out the science, it does not place them above the law,” Reisch said. “That’s why governments committed to tackling the crisis at its source are uniting to move forward outside the UNFCCC—under the leadership of Colombia and Pacific Island states—to phase out fossil fuels rapidly, equitably, and in line with 1.5°C. The international conference on fossil fuel phaseout in Colombia next April is the first stop on the path to a livable future. A Fossil Fuel Treaty is the road map the world needs and leaders failed to deliver in Belém.”

These efforts must contend with the influence not only of fossil fuel-producing nations, but also the fossil fuel industry itself, which sent a record 1,602 lobbyists to COP30.

“COP30 witnessed a record number of lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry and carbon capture sector,” said CIEL fossil economy director Lili Fuhr. “With 531 Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) lobbyists—surpassing the delegations of 62 nations—and over 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists making up 1 in every 25 attendees, these industries deeply infiltrated the talks, pushing dangerous distractions like CCS and geoengineering. Yet, this unprecedented corporate capture has met fiercer resistance than ever with people and progressive governments—with science and law on their side—demanding a climate process that protects people and planet over profit.”

Indeed, Jamie Henn of Make Polluters Pay told Common Dreams that the polluting nations and industries overplayed their hand, arguing that Big Oil and “petro states, including the United States, did their best to kill progress at COP30, stripping the final agreement of any mention of fossil fuels. But their opposition may have backfired: More countries than ever are now committed to pursuing a phaseout road map and this April’s conference in Colombia on a potential ‘Fossil Fuel Treaty’ has been thrust into the spotlight, with support from Brazil, the European Union, and others.”

Henn continued: “The COP negotiations are a consensus process, which means it’s nearly impossible to get strong language on fossil fuels past blockers like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the US, who skipped these talks, but clearly opposed any meaningful action. But you can’t block reality: The transition from fossils to clean energy is accelerating every day.”

“From Indigenous protests to the thunderous rain on the roof of the conference every afternoon, this COP in the heart of the Amazon was forced to confront realities that these negotiations so often try to ignore,” he concluded. “I think the climate movement will be leaving Belém angry at the lack of progress, but with a clear plan to channel that anger into action. Climate has always been a fight against fossil fuels, and that battle is now fully underway.”

[Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit news portal.]

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COP30: The Shift to Green Capitalism Fails to Materialise

Christian Zeller

November 15, 2025: At the 30th World Climate Conference, COP30, held in Belém from 10 to 21 November 2025, powerful nations and representatives of large corporations presented their positions on how to respond to the climate crisis. Escalating geopolitical tensions formed the backdrop and complicate the process of reaching agreement. This ‘climate conference’ – like its predecessors – has nothing to do with a transformation away from fossil fuels.

The US government under Trump has withdrawn from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Recently, the US president described ‘climate change’ as a “hoax”. New ‘climate targets’ are not on the agenda. By February of this year, most countries had not fulfilled their obligation to set climate targets to be achieved by 2035. Moreover the national climate targets submitted in the previous five-year period were all insufficient. If they had been met, they would have pushed global warming well above two degrees above the pre-industrial global average. The European Union only recently agreed on its new targets after lengthy haggling and is scaling back its previously formulated targets. It wants to reduce emissions by 66.25 to 72.5 per cent by 2035 compared to 1990 levels. In addition, the EU also wants to count investments in emission reductions outside the EU towards its own 2040 emission target. It is postponing the start of the new emissions trading scheme for transport and buildings until 2028. The host country, Brazil, is no better. With its national oil company, Petrobras, it is vigorously pushing ahead with the expansion of oil production.

Adapting to barbarism

The conference in Belém will focus on strategies for adapting to global warming and on indicators for measuring the success of these adaptations. Another key topic is ‘climate finance’. At COP29 in Baku last year, the early industrialised countries agreed to support developing countries with at least 300 billion US dollars annually for climate protection and adaptation. However, there is still disagreement about where the money will come from, where it will go and under what conditions. A key project is the expansion of carbon markets. This pleases the players on the financial markets.

The conference spectacle seems rather cynical in view of the massive changes to the Earth’s climate system caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas. The recently published Lancet Countdown Report reports that millions of people lose their lives every year due to heat, air pollution, the spread of disease and worsening food insecurity. The number of heat-related deaths has risen by 63 per cent since the 1990s, reaching an average of 546,000 deaths per year between 2012 and 2021. The year 2024 was the hottest since records began, with the most vulnerable people (under one year old and over 65) exposed to an average of more than 300 per cent additional heatwave days compared to the annual average between 1986 and 2005. Extreme precipitation events, including flash floods and landslides, as well as droughts, increased over 60 per cent of the Earth’s land area. These climate extremes affect crop yields, disrupt supply chains and threaten food security. Added to this is the increased risk of transmission of deadly infectious diseases and air pollution caused by fossil fuels. In short, the rule of capital is forcing humanity into barbarism.

Emissions continue to rise

Despite these alarming findings, there is no sign of a reversal in the trend of global greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Emission Gap Report published in early November, total greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases and land use change) rose by 2.3 per cent worldwide in 2024 to 53.7 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalents (up 1.6 per cent in the previous year). This increase is roughly equivalent to the annual increase in emissions in the 2010s, but is four times higher than in the 2000s. According to the Global Carbon Project, CO2 emissions alone, including land use changes, will rise by 1.1 per cent this year to a record high of 42.2 gigatonnes of CO2. In the EU and the US, CO2 emissions are actually increasing again, contrary to the long-term trend. The massive growth seen in China and India to date is slowing down.

The fossil fuel counter-offensive that I analysed over two years ago has prevailed. The illusions of green capitalism have now vanished. COP28 in Dubai two years ago annointed the fossil fuel backlash (see ak 699). The development shows that there is no climate-relevant energy transition; rather, renewable energies are being added to the fossil fuel base of the capitalist economy.

According to Energy Outlook 2025, global energy demand rose by an average of 1.3 per cent per year from 2010 to 2023, but by more than two per cent in 2024. Energy intensity, the measure of energy consumption in relation to economic output, fell by an average of around two per cent per year between 2010 and 2019. In 2024, it fell by only 1.1 per cent. Measures to increase energy efficiency are running out of steam. However, global electricity demand increased by 4.3 per cent in 2024, far more than in previous years. The global economy thus became more electricity-intensive. Yet fossil fuels continued to account for 80 per cent of primary energy consumption. Even in 2024, investment in fossil fuels was higher than investment in renewable energies.

The rapid increase in the use of artificial intelligence and the construction of huge data centres are partly responsible for the huge increase in electricity consumption. They already account for 1.5 per cent of global electricity consumption. In Europe, the figure is three per cent, and in Ireland as high as 20 per cent. It should be noted that data centres require a constant supply of electricity. This argues against the unpredictable supply patterns of renewables as long as there is no comprehensive grid and storage infrastructure in place.

Oil consumption will rise

For the first time since 2019, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2025 once again includes a scenario that extrapolates current developments and policies and models energy consumption up to 2050 on this basis. In doing so, it departs from the sometimes optimistic portrayals of an energy transition in recent years. This ‘Current Policies Scenario’ (CPS) depicts development trends much more realistically than the ‘Stated Policies Scenario’ (with an oil peak around 2030) or the normative climate neutrality scenario by 2050, which is completely illusory under capitalist conditions. Similar scenarios to the CPS one from oil companies and OPEC have unfortunately proven to be quite realistic in the past.

Global energy consumption in the CPS will increase by about 1.3 per cent per year over the next ten years, similar to the average over the last ten years. Demand for oil will rise to 113 million barrels per day by 2050, mainly due to increased use in emerging and developing countries for road transport, petrochemical feedstocks and aviation. Global demand for natural gas will rise to 5,600 billion cubic metres by 2050. The United States will remain the world’s largest oil and gas producer until 2050. However, OPEC+ oil production in 2050 will be 15 per cent higher than ever before in history.

Electricity demand is rising in all countries and regions. Solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind energy are cost-effective in many regions, but their introduction faces integration challenges that are slowing further growth: annual capacity growth for solar PV will average 540 gigawatts until 2035, roughly matching the growth seen in 2024.

Coal will remain the largest single source of global electricity generation over the next decade. The People’s Republic of China alone, now admired by uncritical contemporaries as the last hope of an energy transition after the faded illusions of green modernisation in Europe, is currently building more coal-fired power plants than it has in ten years. Even in the emerging imperialist power of China, energy security is more important than ecological restructuring. The construction of new nuclear power plants will accelerate worldwide in the 2030s. This scenario will result in a warming of around three degrees by the end of the century.

Strategic errors of the left

However, the persistence of fossil capital is not only the result of the rise of national conservative and fascist forces. Rather, the capitalist mode of production is completely interwoven with fossil fuels. Without the advantages of fossil fuels – easy storage, transportability, high energy density and high energy yield – the capitalist accumulation machinery would lose its central fuel. Investments in fossil fuels are many times more profitable than investments in renewables. Large financial companies have long since abandoned their grandiose announcements about their ‘green’ investment strategies. The so-called Net-Zero Banking Alliance of large financial institutions has dissolved. Green finance is languishing in obscurity. Furthermore, it is often forgotten that the infrastructure for renewable energies is largely built using fossil fuels. The CO2 emissions associated with this energy demand (around 195 GtCO2) already exceed the remaining budget (130 GtCO2) for meeting the so-called 1.5°C target. These structural economic and energy realities, as well as the requirements of a genuine energy transition, make it clear that there can be no non-fossil capitalism. The compulsion to accumulate capital cannot be satisfied on the basis of renewable energies. A capitalist energy transition is impossible.

Developments in recent years show that the discourse on the competition between a fossil-reactionary and a green-modernist hegemony project, which is particularly prevalent among critical and often Gramsci-oriented social scientists and on the left of the political spectrum, is a gigantic fallacy. The protagonists of this interpretation have examined the political discourses. This is interesting, but it does not help to understand the material and economic dynamics and constraints of the current phase of capitalism.

This discourse on the green-modernist hegemony project has contributed to two fatal strategic errors on the part of significant sections of the climate movement and the left. First, they underestimated the fossil fuel dependency of capitalism and thus lost sight of the power of fossil fuel capital – the main opponent. Second, they considered green modernisation to be probable and positioned themselves primarily as a left-wing socio-ecological corrective force to this modernisation project, which ultimately lacks material foundations. As long as there is not even the slightest success in undermining the power of fossil capital and the financial capital closely linked to it, any discourse on a ‘socio-ecological transformation’ remains hollow.

Climate conferences do not negotiate an energy transition. In fact they are about which powers and capital groups can portray and enforce their interests in the expansion of renewable energies on a fossil fuel basis – but under rapidly changing geopolitical and geo-economic conditions – as ‘climate-friendly’. Rather than critically monitoring one diplomatic initiative or another, it is more important to consider how the power of fossil fuel companies and their political representatives can truly be challenged.

To summarize our key points:

• Capitalist rule is forcing humanity into barbarism.
• Coal will remain the largest single source of global electricity generation for the next ten years.
• Without the advantages of fossil fuels, the capitalist accumulation machine would lose a key fuel.
• There can therefore be no non-fossil capitalism. The compulsion to accumulate cannot be satisfied on the basis of renewable energies.

[Christian is an Austrian Eco-activist and socialist. He is a professor at the University of Salzburg. Courtesy: Anti-Capitalist Resistance, an ecosocialist organisation in England & Wales. It is engaged not just in a struggle to end capitalism and for a socialist society, but also to have a viable planet.]

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COP30 Isn’t a Failure—It’s a Farce

Peter Gelderloos

November 21, 2025: As the COP30 climate summit comes to a close here in Belém, in the Brazilian state of Pará, conference organizers have little to show after two weeks of highly publicized talks. This is bad for everyone. The United Nations Climate Change Conference desperately needed to restore its reputation. After all, last year’s COP29 took place in Azerbaijan, where fossil fuels make up 90% of the exports and where the government was being accused of carrying out genocide in the months leading up to the conference. The previous year, the COP28 was held in Dubai, capital of another petrostate.

This year, the marketing strategy for the climate conference began with a mea culpa for the historic exclusion of Indigenous peoples. A UN press release announcing the findings of a recent report on Indigenous peoples and the climate crisis put it this way: “From green energy projects imposed without consent to policy decisions made in rooms where Indigenous voices are absent, these communities are too often excluded from climate solutions, displaced by them, and denied the resources to lead the way.”

To address this, Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples (MPI) invited 360 Indigenous leaders to participate in negotiations inside the COP, after a six-month process in which events were held with 80 Indigenous peoples whose territories are occupied by the Brazilian state. The goal was “to ensure the largest Indigenous participation in the history of the UN Climate Conferences,” according to the official COP30 website. In a sort of call and response, The New York Times and other mainstream media uncritically echoed these claims, with headlines like “Indigenous People, Long Sidelined at Climate Talks, Take the Stage.”

What these declarations assume is that, while there may be errors in the process, the solution is greater participation. None of these institutions — the UN, big media outlets, major NGOs and world governments — seem willing to face the truth that the COP process is not simply failing to solve the climate crisis: It cannot solve the climate crisis. And this farce is getting in the way of actual, active strategies to protect Indigenous peoples and address the ecocide.

The Times’ metaphor of a stage is an appropriate one, given the showy, spectacular nature of these efforts. Cities across Brazil have been covered in colorful advertising showcasing Indigenous peoples and Amazonian wildlife. And on Monday, when an Indigenous peoples march kicked off the second and final week of COP30, Indigenous representatives supportive of the government and the conference had their place at the front of the march, with big banners and a mobile sound system, while more critical groups talking about a lack of actual results were relegated to the back.

To condition Indigenous movements, governments use carrots and sticks. The carrots include promises of investment and funding, like the $1.8 billion that four European countries and thirty-five industry-supported philanthropies have pledged to Indigenous peoples over the next five years. Most of that money is destined for NGOs working with Indigenous peoples. Such investments have a dubious record when it comes to protecting the land or increasing Indigenous autonomy, though it is certainly a significant resource for propping up compliant Indigenous representatives who are often appointed by the states that occupy their lands.

The sticks, meanwhile, can range from hard to soft techniques of repression. The day of the march, human rights and environmental groups published an open letter accusing UN climate chief Simon Stiell of “creating a chilling effect and a feeling of unsafety for Indigenous peoples,” after Stiell called on Brazil to increase security forces around the COP venue.

The day before, gunmen attacked the Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous community of Pyelito Kue in the southern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, killing land defender Vicente Fernandes Vilhalva, injuring four other community members and burning down all the community’s homes and property. The assault, the fourth of its kind in two weeks, comes as the Guarani Kaiowá have engaged in a struggle to reoccupy some of their ancestral lands.

Of all the accomplishments the mainstream climate framework can boast, not one of them has to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions or slowing deforestation and the devastation of wetlands around the world. When specific countries are able to claim a reduction in emissions, it’s thanks in part to carbon trading and carbon accounting systems that corporate lobbyists have made sure are included in climate agreements, as I’ve reported on previously here, here and here. On the contrary, the COP’s accomplishments have to do with securing investments and funding. Companies that can claim a green label are enjoying a growing market and the profits that come with it, but the benefit to Indigenous communities or the broader movement to stop the ecological crisis is doubtful.

Indigenous peoples across Brazil have made their greatest advances in recovering their territory not with investment plans but through direct action. The Ka’apor of the Amazon have been burning logging trucks. The Guarani of the Atlantic Forest used protests and blockades to force the government to return a small part of their lands that had been stolen. Gah Te Iracema, a spiritual leader in the Kaingang community from Porto Alegre in the state of Rio Grande do Sul who had travelled to Belém for COP30, tells me that “we have recovered a part of our land, but it’s not recognized by the government. So, we are here to speak about our fight. We call it land reclamation, but it’s like coming back to our house.”

The Guarani Kaiowá, mentioned above, were violently expelled from their lands in the 1980s. Major cattle ranching interests then moved in and took over. The Guarani Kaiowá have been trying to reclaim some of their lands, but FUNAI, the Brazilian government agency assigned to protect Indigenous peoples, has not followed through with official demarcation. A report by Survival International, an organization that advocates for the rights of Indigenous peoples around the world, called the stalling “a violation of Brazilian and international law” that has forced “the Guarani to endure violent attacks and killings at the hands of the ranchers and police backed by local politicians who act with impunity.” The report goes on: “An official agreement made between public prosecutors, FUNAI, and the Guarani in 2007, and recent land demarcation promises by [Brazilian] President [Luiz Inácio] Lula [da Silva] — have not been upheld.”

The Guarani Kaiowá are facing food shortages and poisoning from agricultural chemicals. Meanwhile, those ranchers and plantation owners have a less publicized but far more effective voice at the COP30: the agricultural lobbyists, more than 300 of whom have descended on COP30, where some have been granted “privileged access” to key negotiations. Currently, cattle ranching and cropland expansion, largely for soy plantations to feed cattle, is the main driver of deforestation across the Amazon biome. Brazil’s President Lula has proposed a shift to another profitable industry, and one with a greener reputation: biofuels that can replace fossil fuels. However, the plantations that grow biofuels also drive deforestation. A recent study by the thinktank Transport and Environment found that, when their impacts are tallied up, biofuels can cause 16% more emissions than fossil fuels.

This points to an incorrigible flaw in the mainstream climate framework. For all key participants — government ministers, industry lobbyists and even the directors of major NGOs — the unquestionable foundation of a climate solution is a growth-based economy organized by governments. The fundamental question at COP30 and all the previous climate conferences is not, “how do we stop climate change?” The question they are working with is, “what responses to climate change are compatible with state power and growth-based economies?” And the answer they refuse to admit is that effective responses are not compatible with the present system, because this system itself — its acceptable forms of political and economic organization — are the root causes of the crisis.

Investors are not in the business of giving money to programs they can’t profit from. Fully empowering cultures that are eco-centric and communal, that do not treat land as a commodity, is the real solution — but that would be bad news for business and for all the governments worldwide that peg their power to economic growth. It doesn’t matter how many representatives of marginalized peoples are at the table: Economic growth is at odds with life on this planet. We can’t have both.

For all of us trying to survive amidst cascading catastrophes on this beleaguered planet, the choice between profit and life should not be a difficult one.

[Peter Gelderloos is an independent researcher, writer, gardener, and social movement participant. He is the author of The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below, How Nonviolence Protects the State, Anarchy Works, Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation, and They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us. His works have been translated into fifteen languages. Courtesy: In These Times, an American independent, nonprofit magazine dedicated to advancing democracy and economic justice.]