Ecología y acción social

The American biologist and ecologist Barry Commoner (1917-2012) is also one of the founding thinkers for environmentalism (especially for that left-wing antiproductivism that we have later called ecosocialism). In the early 1950s, alarmed by the risks to human health arising from nuclear testing, he is one of the founders of the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information (later to become the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information). Environmental), and their complaints and works reach national repercussion. He promotes the magazine Scientist and Citizen, elaborates a profound critical reflection on the role of scientists and technologists in the phase of human history that we have later called the Great Acceleration, and in 1966 he founded the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems (Center for the Study of Natural Systems Biology at Queens College of the City University of New York, one of the first dedicated to the study of ecological problems with a multidisciplinary perspective). In the 1970s his influence is worldwide and he publishes several books that become ecological bestsellers, including The Closing Cycle. His constant democratic commitment made him a presidential candidate for the Citizen's Party in 1980, the US Citizens' Party, spreading his eco-socialist principles in the campaign. Francisco Fernández Buey, co-founder of the collection Clásicos del Pensamiento Crítica, wrote about him: "Few people have influenced the environmental movements of recent decades as much as Barry Commoner. His evolution from protesting against nuclear experiments for military purposes to criticizing the The use of nuclear energy for the production of electricity synthesizes very well what has also been in Europe the passage from the anti-militarism of the left of the fifties to the social environmentalism of the seventies".