INTRODUCTION

Welcome to this latest post in my series about Marxism 2017. This post deals with three meetings from the event and also features some external links as well. This post features green body text because of the subject matter – headings still in red. This post features pictures in ’tiled mosaic’ form – to view them at full size left-click/ single finger push an image to open the gallery, and if you right-click/ two finger push you get a drop down menu that enables you to open a single image.

MEETING 1: FACING THE ANTHROPOCENE – JEFFREY HALL, SATURDAY – IAN ANGUS

The Jeffrey Hall is the second largest venue in the Institute of Education, with a seating capacity of 500. It was pleasingly full for Ian Angus’ talk about Facing the Anthropocene. This talk was accompanied by numerous slides. Here are the first few pictures:

Due to the size of the venue a speaker slip system in operation, and Martin (crouched) was assisting the chair to decide what order speakers should be called in.

From this start the speaker went on to define the anthropocene:

This what the Anthropocene is NOT

Note – current CO2 Levels are at 409-10ppm, with almost no one reckoning they can be stabilised below 450ppm and some talking in terms of 560ppm.

Before the Anthropocene the earth had seen five mass extinction events, and all evidence points to the fact that a sixth is upon us. Here are a few links to recent articles about this:

• A piece in The Guardian titled “Earth’s sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn”
  
• A piece on http://www.independent.co.uk titled “Humans may face extinction sooner than we thought, study finds“

Now here are my remaining pictures from this meeting:

The TEAM logo

one of those who spoke from the floor

A collection at the meeting – venue hire for this event cost £60,000 in total – in Central London everything is expensive.

The website climateandcapitalism can be accessed here.

MEETING 2, SUNDA: A REDDER SHADE OF GREEN – MALET SUITE – IAN ANGUS

This was conducted in an informal style. Martin, chairing, asked Ian questions about his latest book (it is a good read btw) and Ian answered. After about half an hour questions were taken from the floor, and they were mainly excellent contributions. At the end of the meeting Ian signed copies of his book for those who were interested. Here are some photos:

PART 3: BUILDING THE MOVEMENT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE AFTER TRUMP WITHDRAWS FROM PARIS – SUZANNE JEFFERY

This meeting was in the session immediately after the second Ian Angus meeting, and before the closing rally. This was a really excellent meeting, with many people speaking from the floor about campaigns they were involved in, and the mood generally confident. Here are some photos:

AFTERWORD

This post being about climate change and by extension nature I have decided to end with some links courtesy of Anna who has produced some excellent stuff about nature:

• This “Save Trosa Nature” post
• This “humans lost in space” picture
• For those willing to undertake a longer read the ‘how not to’ story of Yanno, Dunno and Victor.