KPFA - Against the Grain

As global warming accelerates, what would it take to reclaim our future? Malcolm Harris describes the obstacles to moving beyond fossil fuels — not just from elites, but also from below. He lays out three interlocking paths out of the climate crisis.
Malcolm Harris, What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis Little, Brown and Company, 2025
The post Fighting for the Future appeared first on KPFA.

The Trump administration has been unabashed in its intention to criminalize dissent, labeling protestors “domestic terrorists.” A recent verdict against anti-ICE protestors in Texas promises to be consequential in that effort.  Scholar Thomas Zeitzoff reflects on the administration’s widespread attempts to quash opposition, from targeting fundraising by liberal nonprofits, knocking on the doors of former activists, or charging people with conspiracy for communicating on Signal about protests.
Thomas Zeitzoff, No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis Oxford University Press, 2026
The post Criminalizing Dissent appeared first on KPFA.

It’s often observed that Democratic Party paved the way for Trump’s rise. Historian Lily Geismer discusses how we got here, examining the remaking of liberalism and the Democratic Party, populated by a professionally-trained, technocratic elite who did what technocrats do: tweaking the system, not fundamentally changing it.
Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer (eds), Mastery and Drift: Professional-Class Liberals since the 1960s University of Chicago Press, 2025
The post The Shaping of Professional Class Liberalism appeared first on KPFA.

“Smart” devices like TVs, speakers, and thermostats. Our cars. DNA tests we might take to learn about our ancestry. Our searches online. Along with Flock cameras and other forms of big data policing contracted by local governments, we’re unwittingly surveilling ourselves at every turn. Legal scholar Andrew Guthrie Ferguson describes how sensor-driven digital technology tracks our daily lives — whether we’re seeking an abortion or protesting our government — and are only, at best, a warrant away from being used against us.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance NYU Press, 2026
Photo credit: r.nial.bradshaw
The post Surveilling Ourselves appeared first on KPFA.

In 2024 the world, for a year, exceeded 1.5C – the line in the sand we weren’t supposed to cross or risk runaway global warming. We’re now in an era of overshoot, in which elites are depending upon untested technologies for managing the heating which they refused to halt. Political ecologist Wim Carton contends that there is no substitute for slashing carbon emissions and shutting down the fossil fuel industry. He discusses the perils of continuing to emit carbon dioxide with the plan of capturing it later or eventually harnessing geoengineering to cool the planet by spraying aerosols to block the sun.
Wim Carton and Andreas Malm, The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late Verso, 2025
The post Emit Now, Reverse Global Warming Later? appeared first on KPFA.