Books Bio Videos Recent articles
Brian Tokar's books
Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis & Social Change
The outlook of Climate Justice offers a renewed grassroots response to the climate crisis. Toward Climate Justice explains the case for Climate Justice and explores the evolution of climate justice as an emerging movement. The book explores the evolution of climate policy through various UN summits and US legislation, and also challenges the myths underlying carbon markets and other false solutions. The concluding chapters explore utopian vs. apocalyptic outlooks in the movement and the contributions of social ecology.
Stan Cox, a prolific author and research coordinator at the Land Institute in Kansas, recently reviewed Toward Climate Justice for the online journal, Green Social Thought.
The failures of “free-market” capitalism are perhaps nowhere more evident than in the production and distribution of food. In Agriculture and Food in Crisis, Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar have assembled an exceptional collection of scholars from around the world to explore the politics of growing food insecurity and the rise of global resistance. International contributors include Walden Bello, Miguel Altieri, Peter Rosset, Christina Schiavoni and many others.

Seven international authors show how the interplay of trade policy, “development” politics and biotechnology increases dependency and hunger, while compromising the survival of traditional farmers and their communities.

Twenty-six internationally respected critics offer their analysis of the issues, their social and ethical implications, and the stories behind the headlines that have brought genetic engineering to the forefront of public controversy worldwide.
Short biography
Brian Tokar is an activist and author, Lecturer in Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont, and a board member of 350Vermont and the Institute for Social Ecology. He is the author of The Green Alternative, Earth for Sale, and Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change (Revised edition, 2014). He is an editor of the 2010 book, Agriculture and Food in Crisis (with Fred Magdoff), and also edited two collections on biotechnology and GMOs: Redesigning Life? and Gene Traders. Tokar is a contributor to the Routledge Handbook of the Climate Change Movement, A Line in the Tar Sands, and other recent books. His articles on environmental issues and popular movements appear in Z Magazine and in web-based publications and sites such as CommonDreams, Counterpunch, ZNet, Popular Resistance, New Compass, Toward Freedom, and Green Social Thought. He has lectured across the US and internationally on social ecology and the links between environmental and social movements.
Full list of published articles: Download
Recent videos
On Global Warming and Climate Justice (Marshfield, Vermont, Spring 2016)
Climate Change as a Challenge to Democracy (University of Oslo, September 2014)
GMO Labeling Celebration (Vermont State House, July 2016)
(Full interview begins at 26:31)
Recent articles
"Communalism Against Climate Chaos," ROAR Magazine Issue #7, Winter 2018 (link coming soon)
"On Social Ecology and the Movement for Climate Justice," in Stefan G. Jacobsen, ed., Climate Justice and the Economy: Social mobilization, knowledge and the political (Routledge, Summer 2018)
"On the evolution and continuing development of the climate justice movement," in Tahseen Jafry, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice (May 2018)
"Social Ecology," in the Post-Development Dictionary, edited by A. Kothari, A. Escobar, A. Salleh, F. Demaria and A. Acosta (forthcoming)
"Fighting Climate Change in the Age of Trump," The Indypendent (New York City), May 2017, also available at Green Social Thought, ZNet, New Compass, System Change Not Climate Change, and the IWW's Ecology site
“The Paris Climate Agreement: Hope or Hype?,” CommonDreams, December 2015, also posted on Counterpunch, ZNet, Toward Freedom, Popular Resistance, Resilience.org, and other websites
“Is the Paris climate conference designed to fail?,” CommonDreams, November 2015, also posted on The Ecologist, Counterpunch, ZNet, Toward Freedom, Popular Resistance, and other websites
“Democracy, Localism and the Future of the Climate Movement,” World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, Volume 71, Issue 3-4, 2015
“50 Years Ago This Summer: When Dylan Went Electric” (Book review), Counterpunch, September 2015
“45 Years of Earth Days – A Critical Overview,” The Long View No. 19 (Oregon State Bar Sustainable Future Section), Spring 2015
“Climate Change as a Democratic Challenge,” in E. Eiglad, ed., Social Ecology and Social Change, New Compass Press, 2015
“The Project of Making History,” Occupied Times of London No. 26 (October 2014), reposted by Counterpunch, ZNet, Toward Freedom, and Green Issues (groenekwsties.nl, in Dutch translation)
“The GMO threat to food sovereignty: Science, resistance and transformation,” in W. Schanbacher, ed., The Global Food System: Issues and Solutions, Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2014
“Tar Sands, Extreme Energy and the Future of the Climate Movement,” in Black, D’Arcy, Weis & Russell, eds., A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice, Toronto: Between the Lines and Oakland: PM Press, 2014 (in press); Greek translation of this chapter appeared in Eutopía, Number 22, December 2013
“Myths of ‘green capitalism’,” New Politics, Winter 2014
“Movements for Climate Justice” and “Organizational Profiles,” in M. Dietz & H. Garrelts, eds., Die internationale Klimabewegung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013, in German); English edition: Routledge Handbook of the Climate Change Movement, Oxford: Routledge International Handbooks Series, 2013
“Apocalypse, Not?” (Book review), published on ZNet and Toward Freedom, March 2013, and in print in Capitalism-Nature-Socialism, March 2014