ABSTRACT
The science is incontrovertible. We are facing a catastrophic climate crisis with less than a decade left to keep temperature rises to no more than 1.5° C above preindustrial capitalist levels. Digital communications are making a substantial contribution to this deepening crisis, first as a saturated space for the product promotion fuelling hyper consumption and second as proliferating arrays of infrastructures and devices that deplete scarce resources in their design and manufacture, which require increasing amounts of energy in their production and use and contribute to mounting levels of waste and pollution. The centrality of digital communications to the organization of contemporary capitalism places a particular obligation on critical political economist of communications to oppose the corporate and political advocates of a continuing reliance on fossil fuels and business as usual and to integrate radical proposals for ecological sustainability and restoration into a general advocacy of public communication systems that advance social justice and solidarity.
