Upcoming Events
Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition.
We are pleased to announce our upcoming event, featuring activist scholar and University of Essex lecturer Nicholas Beuret, who will be presenting on his new book, Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition.
The net-zero transition isn’t saving the planet — it’s a rigged game where the rich get richer and the rest of us pay the price. Or Something Worse exposes the brutal truth: green capitalism is a scam. Soaring bills. Broken promises. A future stolen in the name of “sustainability.” Governments and corporations are waging a one-sided class war, dressing up exploitation as progress while workers struggle and communities collapse. But resistance is growing. From “Don’t Pay” rebellions to fossil fuel blockades and community counter-planning – people are fighting back. Or Something Worse reveals how we can seize the transition, dismantle green capitalism, and build a future that works for all — not just the powerful. This isn’t just a crisis. It’s a war. Which side are you on?
Date and time: January 14, 2026, at 3 pm CET, 2 pm GMT, 9 am EST
Location: Online (Zoom)
Link: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/n4Foa-C-TLubYx6VSWDvZA#/registration
Rethinking Labour on a Troubled Planet
Just Transitions, Trade Unions, and Labour Environmentalism (part of the SASE 2026 Conference in Bordeaux: July 1-3)
As climate change disrupts industries and livelihoods, labor movements are redefining solidarity and sustainability. This mini-conference explores how trade unions and allied organizations address environmental crises, negotiate just transitions, and advocate for social justice in a rapidly transforming global economy.
Our conference is a “mini conference” within the larger SASE 2026 conference scheduled for July 1-3, 2026 in Bordeaux, France.
Past Events
We are pleased to announce our upcoming event, featuring Alyssa Battistoni, who will be presenting on her new book, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature.
Alyssa Battistoni is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College. She works and teaches on climate and environmental politics, capitalism, Marxism, feminism, and other topics in modern social and political theory. Her book Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature was published by Princeton University Press in August 2025. Other academic work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, and Nomos. She is the co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso 2019), with Kate Aronoff, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos.
🗓️ October 6
📍 Online
🕕 3pm EST
About the Book:
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.
Lessons from the Ground. What does a just transition look like for workers and communities facing refinery closures? This session brings together insights from two regions grappling with the realities of the energy transition.
Dr. Jessie HF Hammerling will present on the Contra Costa Refinery Transition Partnership (CCRTP)— a coalition of environmental and labor organizations— formed after the 2020 closure and mass layoffs at a major California refinery.
Dr. Ewan Gibbs will present his and Riyoko Shibe’s research with Scottish oil refinery workers after the 2023 Grangemouth closure announcement, highlighting workers’ frustration with just transition promises and feelings of exclusion from key decisions.
🗓️ May 21
📍 Online
🕕 12pm EST
Registration link here
We’re thrilled to co-sponsor, alongside the Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education, a special event with Ståle Holgersen in Toronto for the launch of his new book: Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World 🔥🌍📘
🗓️ April 11
📍 Centre for Social Innovation – Annex, 720 Bathurst St. Toronto/ online
🕕 7pm
Online registration here
