Where is the global warming Left?

Perhaps "Left", as in left-wing, is not the right word, but sometimes I feel like Erasmus, looking for a group that comes at global warming, peak oil, global ecological crises in general from a radical point of view. By "radical" I mean "root", as in getting to the root of the problem, and I don't mean a blanket condemnation of capitalism, and I also don't mean going back 1,000 years technologically while most of the planet dies. As can be seen at the top of this blog, I'm looking for concrete solutions. And so, we have the interesting spectacle of Counterpunch.

After two columns blasting global warming, we can, I feel, simply skip the scientific arguments he makes (there are probably better global warming skeptics elsewhere, and for a good place for anti-anti-global warming arguments, see "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic" at Grist, and realclimate.org recently had a response to Cockburn's first piece). Now Jeffrey St.Clair, an excellent environmental investigative journalist, and Cockburn's co-editor of Counterpunch, has also come forth with his take on global warming, which is pretty much opposite to his co-editor.

However, they are both interesting in terms of the problems they ascertain facing global warming movements. If you skip past the scientific discussion in Cockburn's pieces, and combine it with St. Clairs, you can see the rudiments of a Left critique of the global warming movement, but still they don't seem to want to come up with what it is we should do. Herewith, my best shot at their list of, shall we say, concerns:

1) Global warming concern could lead to a new lease on life for nuclear power. Al Gore and others sort of mumble about nukes under their breath, and used to scream a bit from the rooftops. Tony Blair manages to mangle his own concern about global warming by pushing nuclear power, and what do you know, Margaret Thatcher did the same (she also hated coal workers). I'm not too worried about this, because I think nuclear power has so many problems it's not going to be easy. Although, amid an alleged win for the environment, when the Texan utility was bought by KKR and canceled all but two of 11 proposed coal-powered plants, they turned around and announced they were going to build 2 nukes instead. We shall see, but uranium may be just as peak-ish as oil

2) The corporados are making hay with carbon trading. This is a big problem, and all kinds of hanky-panky is going on, globally (Adam Stein at the Gristmill blog seems to have a good focus on this).

3) Biofuels (Ban the Biofuels, anyone?). This is a huge boondoggle, I have a blog on it below, there may be a "tipping point" emerging against this one. However -- if gasoline gets very expensive, people won't care, so global warming activists should combine peak oil with their analysis so that they are not side-swiped when oil starts to run out.

4) "Clean coal". John Kerry likes this one, so there must be something wrong with it. I remember being very taken with this, but now it sounds like another boondoggle, and it would require a huge commitment in resources, which could be better used for solar, wind, etc.

5) The big environmentalists aren't doing shit. If you look at all of their sites, most of their advice on global warming starts with, "Things you can do", in other words, no collective action, no legislation even, no government-led programs, not much of anything. If you look around their sites, it certainly looks like there are some things they are doing right, but I have a feeling that they have a certain problem: if they get out in front of too many of their 100s of 1000s of supporters, they'll lose some, therefore, they aren't going to do it. Much less corporate donors. So, to return to the beginning of this post, there doesn't seem to be any large organization that is trying to get to the root of global problems.