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Venture capital is designed to demand large returns in the short term. This makes VC firms unlikely to support the sort of research that produces technological breakthroughs, which requires generous financing over long periods of time. Science operates on a different timetable than capitalism.

In response to the charge of hubris and Prometheanism, it is just as important to emphasize that though we accept the inevitability of attempting to “plan” nature, the socialist project does not aim at controlling nature. Nature is never under our control, and there are always unintended conseque…

[...] We have to recognize that we are, and have been for a long time, the manipulators and managers of nature. Even those who acknowledge this in one breath will still fall back on metaphors like reduced “carbon footprint” — as if we could just step more lightly and allow nature to repair itself. …

Cap and trade doesn't disciple capital; it coddles it. It does alarmingly little to force a sharp break from fossil fuel dependence. In fact, it actually establishes barriers to the comprehensive zero-carbon transition we need by giving big emitters an easy out. Instead of making the big, risky inv…

That McDowell coal miner might be skeptical about climate change but that’s only because those are the cards (and the economy) capitalism has dealt him. Instead of trying to get him to #FuckingLoveScience, we should be trying to organize him into a socialist program of full employment and democrati…