2391 – Reconciling Labor & Environmental Imperatives w/ Stefania Barca

Happy Monday! Sam and Emma speak with Stefania Barca, distinguished researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, to discuss her recent book Workers Of The Earth: Labour, Ecology and Reproduction in the Age of Climate Change. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the GOP’s government shutdown, ABC’s inauguration plans, Social Security, Trump’s cabinet, Trump’s plan to privatize the post office, Syria’s changing political landscape, Gaza’s massive death toll, and McKinsey’s liability in Purdue Pharma’s opioid case, also touching on preparations for Trump’s authoritarianism and the centrist “No Labels” party’s struggles to not capitulate to the right. Dr. Stefania Barca, PhD, then joins, diving right into work on the broadening of “reproductive work” – a form of labor regarding social reproduction and the socializing, educational, and care work required for it – to include the need to cultivate and maintain a healthy environment for society to flourish sustainably. Stepping back, Barca unpacks the historical tension between labor and environmental movements, with the two being seen as in conflict between the interests of blue- and white-collar workers, respectively, despite that very tension being very prevalent within these specific movements themselves, expanding on that latter point by walking through the myriad strains of environmentalism – be it green capitalism, environmental justice, ecomodernism or degrowth – and how they approach concepts like consumption, labor transitions, production, and wealth inequality, with each taking on a different approach to the relationship between capitalism and the environment. After expanding on the true alignment of the crises of care and the environment, Stefania parses through the value of understanding this reproductive work – in both social and environmental contexts – as one worthy of financial compensation, from the value it directly provides society in its immediate provisions to the central role it can play in pushing a necessary labor shift away from industries directly associated with environmental decay toward ones that can build to a sustainable future.

And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma tackle the growing call for Biden to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, unpack the coalescence of the GOP around alleged islamophobe, predator, abuser, and alcoholic Pete Hegseth’s nomination, and look to history in their response to Marc Andreessen’s call for an antithesis to FDR. Jimmy Dore responds to Peter Hotez’s critique of RFK Jr. by… blaming the existence of polio on the polio vaccine, plus, your calls and IMs!

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