John C. MenziesAs someone deeply invested in the purity of scientific inquiry, particularly Earth sciences, I’ve been watching with growing concern the politicization of once-revered journals. Today, we’re diving into Gondwana Research, a flagship publication in geoscience known for its rigorous exploration of ancient supercontinents, tectonics, and paleontology. Established in 1997 and published by Elsevier, this journal has historically maintained a high impact factor and focused on empirical, data-driven research about Earth’s deep history.
However, in its latest volume (Volume 148, December 2025), something alarming is happening: an influx of articles blending environmental policy advocacy with Socialist undertones, prioritizing equity and social justice over objective analysis. This isn’t just a shift in scope, it’s an ideological invasion that threatens the journal’s credibility and damages geoscience.
In this post, I’ll break down the Socialist roots of this “just energy” and environmental focus, including the origins of key terms like “just energy transition” and “green finance,” compare the problematic articles (including four recent ones I’ve analyzed) to the rest of the volume. Drawing from the journal’s own contents and broader academic discourse, I’ll argue that this trend dilutes geoscience research platforms into vehicles for collectivist agendas.
The Socialist Underpinnings: “Just Energy” and “Green Finance” as Repackaged Class Struggle
At the heart of this drift is the “just energy transition” (JENT) framework, which promises an equitable shift from fossil fuels to renewables while addressing socioeconomic disparities. To understand its insidious nature, we must trace the origins of these terms, which reveal deep ties to leftist labor movements and environmental activism, movements often infused with Socialist ideology emphasizing class struggle and systemic redistribution.
The term “just transition,” which serves as the foundational concept for JENT, first emerged in the 1980s through efforts by US trade unions in response to environmental regulations that threatened jobs in fossil fuel industries. Labor activists initially conceived it during the 1990s while advocating for workers displaced by green policies, framing the shift away from polluting industries as a moral duty to protect the proletariat from capitalist exploitation. This concept evolved from broader discussions surrounding energy transitions, with its roots dating back to President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Oval Office speech on energy independence, soon becoming a tool for union-led demands including retraining, economic diversification and naturally, government intervention. All of these elements represent hallmarks of Socialist-inspired social justice, and by the 2010s, global climate discourse had fully co-opted it, as evidenced in UN frameworks and policy papers that now mandate “equitable” resource allocation to marginalized groups. This approach echoes the principles of dialectical materialism, which views environmental harm as a byproduct of bourgeois dominance, revealing from a conservative perspective that JENT’s true nature lies less in science and more in advancing collectivist agendas. It achieves this by protecting “workers” through state mandates that ultimately stifle market innovation, much like historical socialist labor protections which consistently prioritize ideology over practical efficiency.
Green finance, which complements JENT and boasts activist origins that have infiltrated scientific discourse, stems from the 1970s environmental movement and gained formal traction in the late 1980s alongside the “green economy” idea. That idea emphasized sustainable development over unchecked capitalism, as defined by the UN Environment Program which describes it as channeling financial flows into eco-friendly projects like renewables and conservation to counter fossil fuel dependencies. Policies often drive their adoption in response to industry exposures. The European Commission further solidified it by integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into investments and grants, a framework that critics argue enforces ideological conformity in markets. Like JENT, green finance’s roots lie in 1970s activism fueled by anti-corporate sentiments. These align closely with Socialist critiques of capitalism’s environmental toll by positioning finance as a lever for systemic change rather than neutral capital allocation. In practice, it frequently results in subsidized green bonds and loans that distort free markets, favoring state-preferred projects over those that are proven and efficient solutions.
These origins underscore how terms like JENT and green finance, born from union activism and environmental radicalism, now masquerade as apolitical science in journals like Gondwana Research. Take the article “Unveiling the green path: The role of green finance and just energy transition in environmental sustainability” (Gondwana Research, Volume 148, pp. 348–367, 2025). Using advanced econometric tools like quantile-on-quantile regression, it argues that JENT and green finance boost U.S. environmental sustainability (proxied by the load capacity factor), while GDP growth and trade openness, symbols of capitalist expansion, worsen it. The paper calls for proactive strategies like worker retraining in fossil fuel sectors and global collaboration to ensure equitable access for marginalized groups, framing wealthy nations’ “historical obligations” and “climate justice” as debts to the developing world or in more recent parlance, the Global South. This isn’t neutral science, it’s a dialectical critique of capitalism as environmentally destructive, advocating for socialist-style interventions under the guise of sustainability while conveniently neglecting to mention the environmental disasters that characterized former USSR economies.
This Socialist flavor permeates other recent pieces. In “Diversity analysis and risk assessment of microplastics in terrestrial soil across different landuses of northern India” (Gondwana Research, Volume 148, pp. 293–311, 2025), microplastic pollution is portrayed as a byproduct of industrial capitalism’s failures, with calls for “targeted mitigation strategies” and “policy interventions” that emphasize equity in landuse impacts, implicitly critiquing unequal development in developing nations. Similarly, “Synergies and struggles: Water security and climate action in South Asia’s quest for SDG 6 and SDG 13” (Gondwana Research, Volume 148, pp. 393–414, 2025) leverages Sustainable Development Goals to highlight rural-urban disparities (e.g., only 58% of rural South Asians have improved sanitation), positioning climate action as a tool to redress colonial and capitalist legacies through integrated resource management.
Even “Energy transition, globalization and FDI: Pathways to achieve sustainable development goals in T-MEC countries” (Gondwana Research, Volume 148, pp. 1–12, 2025) fits the mold, employing CS-ARDL models to show how clean energy and foreign direct investment reduce CO2 emissions, but bidirectional causality tests imply that globalization (neoliberal trade) harms the environment, a classic anti-imperialist trope. From an anti-Socialist perspective, these articles treat environmental data as fodder for advocacy, ignoring how free-market innovations (like U.S. fracking) have driven real emission reductions without coercive equity mandates.
A Tale of Two Volumes: Traditional Geoscience vs. Ideological Activism
To see how out of place this is, let’s compare these articles to the broader contents of Volume 148. The volume features 17 articles, roughly 70% rooted in classic geoscience and 30% veering into environmental policy. This split underscores the journal’s heritage, focused on Gondwana’s tectonics and paleoenvironments, being eroded by activism.
Traditional Geoscience (The Core Majority)
These research articles embody Gondwana Research‘s mission: empirical studies of Earth’s ancient dynamics, free from policy preachiness.
- “Global perspectives on radium isotopes in subsurface brines” – The use of Radium isotopes to understand brine resources.
- “Lower Devonian crinoid pluricolumnals from Morocco are severely infested by sclerobionts: Evidence for a parasitic outbreak on the shelf of northern Gondwana” – Paleontological analysis of fossil ecosystems in Gondwana.
- “Evidence for arc-related extension on the periphery of Rodinia: First report of Neoproterozoic magmatism in the South Yellow Sea, China” – Tectonics of supercontinent evolution.
- “Paleoproterozoic metamorphic basement in Central Borneo: linking Indochina and Laurentia in Columbia” – Supercontinent assembly.
- “Linkage of paleolake to climate change during the Early Permian Artinskian warming” – Sedimentological study of ancient climate proxies.
- “Quantifying the basin dynamics of the Proterozoic Carrara Sub-basin to understand the assembly and evolution of the Australian continent” – Quantitative modeling of continental tectonics.
- “Refined U-Pb zircon age of the Kusandong Tuff: A key stratigraphic marker for Cretaceous arc magmatism in northeast Asia” – Geochronological study of Asian Gondwana remnants.
- “Tectonic and paleogeographic evolution during closure of the Paleo-Asian Ocean and their effects on biosphere” – Tectonics and biosphere interactions.
- “Global redox and bio-productivity changes during the oceanic anoxic event 2 (OAE2): Insights from combined U-C isotopes of the Trans-Saharan epicontinental Seaway” – Isotopic analysis of ancient oceanic evolution.
- “Core-refracted shear-wave anisotropy beneath the Korean Peninsula: insights into its tectonic evolution” – Seismological insights into tectonics.
- “Lithosphere structure and evolution of the Southern Indian Shield: Constraints from 2-D joint potential field modelling, seismological and geochronological data“. Structure and evolution of the South India craton
These are pure science: U-Pb dating, isotopic proxies, basin modeling, no SDGs or equity lectures.
The Disruptive Environmental/Policy Outliers: In contrast, the activist pieces shoehorn contemporary issues into the journal
- The four research papers I mentioned earlier, plus others like those mentioned below, are little more than policy advocacy and are in stark contrast to the pure geoscience content of Gondwana Research.
- “Enhancing environmental quality and mitigating climate change: a renewable energy policy perspective based on evidence from most polluted European countries” – Advocacy for renewable energy
- “Multidimensional assessment of energy-related carbon emissions and their spatiotemporal dynamics: insights from three major urban agglomerations in China” ) – Emissions mapping with sustainability calls.
- “Model-based estimation of microplastic stock in China’s reservoirs: A continental assessment” – Microplastics with implicit policy urgency and advocacy.
- Applied papers like “Enhancing land subsidence susceptibility mapping using deep tabular learning optimization with metaheuristic algorithms” and “Edge-attentive graph convolutional network and positive-unlabeled framework for landslide susceptibility mapping” border on environmental tech and bear no relationship to the historical geoscience mandate of Gondwana Research.
This 70/30 split shows a journal clinging to its roots while flirting with ideology. The policy articles use metrics like risk indices or causality tests to push anti-capitalist narratives, alienating geoscientists who expect tectonics, not treatises on “vulnerable populations.”
The subtle use of language to conceal the underlying agenda and enter mainstream scientific discourse
In the most recent edition of Gondwana Research, authors use neutral or progressive language to hide underlying Socialist ideologies. This hides an agenda of systemic redistribution, class-based critiques and state-driven interventions. They present it all as objective science.
Terms like “just energy transition” appear in “Unveiling the green path.” These seem like simple calls for fairness in sustainability. Yet, they echo Socialist ideas. They frame environmental harm as capitalist exploitation. Phrases like “historical obligations” suggest reparations from rich nations to developing countries. This nods to anti-imperialist redistribution without naming class struggle.
In “Diversity analysis and risk assessment of microplastics,” words like “policy interventions” and “targeted mitigation strategies” mask calls for centralized planning.
This pattern continues in “Synergies and struggles.” Here, “integrated water resource management” and notes on rural-urban disparities position climate action as a fix for colonial and capitalist legacies. SDG jargon softens demands for collective resource allocation however this aligns with Socialist views on shared ownership over individual enterprise.
Finally, “Energy transition, globalization, and FDI” uses neutral econometrics to suggest globalization harms the environment through bidirectional association. This is a classic anti-imperialist trope hidden as data insight. It conceals a critique of free markets in favor of state-led transitions and control.
Overall, euphemisms as discussed above help these papers enter scientific discourse unnoticed. They advance collectivism and prioritize social justice over pure empirical inquiry. It blurs the line between science and activism.
Broader Implications of the De-Scientification of Gondwana Research
The de-scientification of Gondwana Research, exemplified by its shift toward ideologically charged environmental advocacy infused with Socialist undertones, mirrors a broader crisis in academia where leftwing and Socialist influences have increasingly dominated tertiary educational campuses, prioritizing equity narratives and systemic critiques over empirical rigor. This trend, rooted in the Socialist and Cultural Marxist penetration of higher education since the post-World War I era has led to politicized curricula and research agendas. A trend that simply views institutions like universities as battlegrounds for class struggle and anti-capitalist activism, resulting in biased peer reviews, suppressed dissenting voices and a homogenization of thought that stifles innovation.
In geoscience research, this manifests as diluted scientific output, where journals like Gondwana once focused on tectonics and paleontology now host policy-laden papers, eroding credibility. Indeed, it could be argued that this dilution could divert always scarce funding from objective studies to activist-driven projects, ultimately hindering geoscience advancements. For industry, particularly in energy and mining sectors reliant on geoscience, this fosters misguided regulations based on flawed, ideologically skewed data (see the draft 2024 JORC Code), increasing costs, reducing competitiveness and promoting inefficient “green” transitions that ignore market realities. Society suffers from heightened polarization, as Socialist academia amplifies narratives of oppression and inequality, eroding public trust in science, fueling anti-establishment sentiments and contributing to cultural divisions that impede collaborative problem-solving on global challenges.
Reclaiming Geoscience from the Ideological Tide, An Urgent Call to Fellow Geoscientists and Researchers
Gondwana Research Volume 148 is a microcosm of academia’s broader woes: a revered journal, once a bastion of empirical discovery, now diluted by Socialist-inspired environmentalism. By contrasting the non-geoscience eco-advocacy articles with the volume’s solid core, we see the risk, science twisted into socialism’s service. Geoscientists must demand ideology-free scientific inquiry.
But this isn’t just an abstract concern, it’s a crisis demanding action from you, fellow geoscientists and researchers. If we allow this ideological encroachment to continue under the current editorial leadership, the journal’s reputation will inevitably decline, if it has not already done so. Serious scholars will abandon it for more professional, less politicized outlets like Earth and Planetary Science Letters or Tectonophysics, where empirical rigor trumps activist narratives. We’ve already seen warning signs: inflated impact factors masking subpar content, pal review allegation and investigations and social media exposés branding the journal in unfavorable terms. The only viable solution is a dramatic overhaul: pressure Elsevier and the International Association for Gondwana Research review the entire editorial board and appoint impartial, ethics-focused geoscientists committed to geoscience’s core mission.
Is this drift inevitable, or can we push back? The future of objective science depends on our collective resolve, drop a comment below and let’s start the conversation. Stay vigilant!