The Long Ecological Revolution

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:37 am

Ecuador's Amazon Indigenous Sue Gov't, Oil Firms Over Spill

Image
Crude oil on the banks of the river near the city of Coca, Sucumbios, Ecuadorian Amazon, April 10, 2020. | Photo: Amazon Frontlines / Photo: Telmo Ibarburu

Published 29 April 2020

Fifteen thousand barrels of crude oil poured into two of the country’s most important rivers after two major oil pipelines ruptured.

Indigenous people in Ecuador’s Amazon launched a lawsuit against Ecuador’s government as well as private and State oil companies over their responsibility in the country’s biggest oil spill in more than ten years, NGO Amazon Frontlines reported Wednesday.

The legal action was filed in the provincial Court of El Coca, in the northeastern region of Sucumbios near the Colombian border.

Earlier this month, on April 7, an estimated 15,000 barrels of crude oil poured into two of the country’s most important rivers, after two major oil pipelines ruptured.

The pollution from the spill affected more than 2,000 families and left some 120,000 people stranded without a safe source of food and water, as COVID-19 has already isolated indigenous peoples.

Authorities are accused of failing to meet their responsibilities toward indigenous communities, including undertaking a proper clean-up effort, providing communities with water and food, and providing timely information about the magnitude of contamination, the NGO said.


“We are already suffering from various illnesses caused by oil contamination, and now we are also facing this pandemic. We face discrimination as the State has failed to include us in its emergency plans yet again,” Kichwa leader and President of Kichwa indigenous federation (FCUNAE), Carlos Jipa, told the NGO.

“This is why the families, represented by FCUNAE, decided to join this lawsuit: we don’t want this to happen ever again,” Jipa said.

Dozens of community members testified that the spill had violated their constitutionally enshrined rights of territory, health, information, water and food sovereignty, a clean and ecologically balanced environment, and the rights of nature, according to Amazon Frontlines.

“By not taking action to prevent the risks, they (the government) failed to comply with their constitutional duty to protect people and nature, as enshrined in article 389 of our Constitution. We will be holding the State accountable and responsible for this oversight,” Lina Maria Espinosa, attorney for the case from Amazon Frontlines, said.


The spill is estimated to be the largest since 2004. Photo: Telmo Ibarburu
Experts have been warning for years that severe erosion along the Coca River put the pipelines at risk. Yet, Ecuador’s government took no action.

Hundreds of kilometers of rainforest riverways will be affected, and environmental impacts in one of the most bio-diverse areas on the planet will be devastated as a consequence of the spill.

The legal action urges immediate reparation, relief for affected peoples, and repair or relocation of the pipelines to prevent future spills. It was filed by FCUNAE and the Amazonian indigenous organization (CONFENIAE) along with other national and international human rights organizations against the Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Resources, the Ministry of the Environment, the state-owned oil company PetroEcuador, and OCP Ecuador.

The Provincial Court is expected to hold the trial within a few weeks. The plaintiffs also filed an injunction requesting the State to act immediately for the environment and the impacted communities pending prosecution and judgment.


An indigenous boy plays on the banks of crude oil-stained rivers in the community of San Pedro de Rio Coca, Sucumbios, Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo: Telmo Ibarburu
This lawsuit comes almost one year after the Waorani people of Ecuador won a historic legal battle against the government to protect 500,000 acres of rainforest from oil extraction.

Indigenous, civil society groups and activists hope that this new lawsuit, combined with the nation’s massive foreign debt, will raise reflection and awareness over continued fossil fuel extraction in the Amazon, the “lungs” of the world.

“Oil spills are the death of biodiversity and life. The Ecuadorean State must remedy and suspend all extractive activities, and the extraction of other minerals polluting the environment,” President of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorean Amazon (CONFENIAE) Marlon Vargas said.

“This pandemic has shown the world very clearly that oil doesn’t sustain life. Instead, it is the forests and harvests of indigenous peoples and rural communities that are keeping us alive today.”

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ecu ... -0016.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Sat May 30, 2020 2:01 pm

State Duma deputy proposed to ban the export of food waste to landfills
05/29/2020
Garbage collapse just around the corner

State Duma deputy Sergei Vostretsov proposed to ban legal entities from exporting food waste to solid domestic waste landfills. A letter with such a proposal has already been sent to the government. The initiative is caused by the fact that the country has a critical situation with waste. Of the 2832 landfills currently operating, only 1153 comply with legal requirements. At the same time, the capacity of the existing landfills will be enough for 3-5 years.

Image
Garbage dump "Kuchino" near Balashikha

The difficult situation with waste has developed not only in Russia, but also throughout the world , especially in developed countries. Plastic trash has already formed an island in the Pacific. Researchers find plastic in the stomachs and even meat of marine animals. On land, huge landfills create a lot of problems: bad smell , poor sanitary conditions; in addition, large areas of land are withdrawn from circulation in order to use them for landfills.

Meanwhile, a significant part of the garbage - plastic, glass, textile waste, metals - can be recycled, moreover, it is a valuable raw material. Irreplaceable resources will be saved. Food waste can be used to feed livestock, and this measure will reduce feed consumption. The proper use of waste makes it possible, on the one hand, to save the Earth’s resources, and on the other, it eliminates the need to bury huge masses of waste, which is harmful to the environment and also requires large material costs.

A prerequisite for the transition to a modernized method of processing waste is the creation of a unified economic system in which the collection and processing of recyclables are established. Implementation requires appropriate infrastructure, the development of which requires large investments. What to do? At a minimum, create a unified system for the collection and recycling of garbage nationwide, only in this case the desired effect will be achieved. Naturally, in the conditions of capitalism it is impossible to create such a system, since in the conditions of a market capitalist economy, the concentration of efforts of all sectors of the national economy is unattainable.

https://www.rotfront.su/deputat-gosdumy ... -zapretit/

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 24, 2020 1:54 pm

Of capitalist intoxication
Mission Truth
Jun 23 · 8 min read

By José Roberto Duque

Image
Humanity has nothing to do with climate change, it is the capitalist system. Photo: Archive

Humanity, Greenpeace reports say , has just pulverized a singular record: May 2020 was the month with the highest CO2 concentrations recorded in the atmosphere. The barrier of 400 parts per million (ppm) of this poisonous gas has not been reached on this planet for about 2.5 billion years, when a kind of biogenic uprising of extremely high and devastating impact occurred.
3 million years ago in the world, anaerobic organisms ruled, those bugs that do not need oxygen to live. In their photosynthesis process they did not expel dioxygen, a substance that was toxic to all of them. Back then, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was around 400 parts per million (ppm). Suddenly, all the cyanobacteria began to proliferate and subvert, organisms that did give off molecular oxygen by obtaining and releasing energy. The enormous biodiversity of that young planet was anaerobic, and oxygen, as has already been said, was poison for most living species.
And what had to happen happened: the multiplication of cyanobacteria caused the progressive death by oxygenation or oxidation of almost all species, and a violent climate change that almost did not lead to the cyanobacteria themselves, causing all these imbalances . This period in the history of life on the planet has been called the Oxygen Revolution, the Oxygen Holocaust, The Great Oxidation, Oxygen Catastrophe.
Two million 500 thousand years elapse, and behold, very intelligent particles, which cannot live without oxygen, are releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, a residual element that is toxic to these extremely intelligent particles and to the other gross species of the planet.
After several decades of announcements, protests, projections and warnings about climate change (not only about global warming, but about all the madness that the climate has made chicha) a few days ago the news came that all anaerobic bacteria and organisms were waiting: the human being is achieving the feat of reversing the functional predominance of oxygen-generating entities. For the first time since the human species has kept a record of these phenomena, the trees of the earth have not managed to process all the CO2 present in the atmosphere. And you don't have to be very shrewd or a great connoisseur of the subject to know that this situation announces serious problems.
***
Posted to review and analyze the multiple traps of language, from the outset we will have to start crossing out with a marker: it has not been “the human species” but capitalism, in just over 200 years of the Industrial Revolution, the model that is leading us down this path of self-destruction. As the beneficiaries and exploiters of that revolution are also in charge of telling the story, the palaword armory of ecologists from left and right, Swedish girls who know how to wrinkle their faces before cameras and audiences, and sellers of hippie formulas, has consolidated in the atmosphere, like toxic CO2, the idea or proposal: "Humanity is destroying the planet". You are human? Feel guilty, even personally. But it is not humanity, stupid: it is this collective disease called capitalism.
The good news is that the planet will not be destroyed, and the bad news is that it is on the way to becoming a place not suitable for human life and other species. We and many millions of beings can only live in the presence of oxygen, but there are others (almost all of the trees, for example) that depend on CO2. So if we achieve the feat of self-extinction, there will be species that will survive, as cyanobacteria survived 3 million years ago after the cataclysm they caused, and the Earth's crust will manage to absorb plastic, gases, and other debris caused by our Suicidal facet, the one that binds us to capitalism as an insurmountable vice.
***
The unusual processes of obtaining energy for the operation of large cities have led to the central phenomenon, which is global warming. And the claim and the action against this devastating evidence cannot always be considered revolutionary, anti-system and not even progressive: there is ecofascism and that is another political disturbance that will be good to analyze in other installments.
***
An alert Chávez and a chavismo in 2012 formulated a Plan of the Fatherland that expressed in writing a working paper (the fifth objective), the spearhead to tackle the problem. That of "Contributing to the preservation of life on the planet and the salvation of the human species" was a headline of such emphaticity that it opened the floodgates to other components of that spear thrown into the rarefied winds of the earth. For example, ecosocialism: how to start playing fair to nature from a collective and politically alert attitude. With more vigor than that proposal, the well-known contradiction with the third objective of the same plan spread, which proposes an acceleration of the mining extraction processes.
There is a revolution in Venezuela and it must be financed: that starting point raises, even rhetorically, one of the fundamental contradictions and paradoxes of "where to" and "how" we are building what we are supposed to build.

Image
Oil extractivism has dominated the socio-economic dynamics of Venezuela for more than 100 years. Photo: Archive

***
Painfully and inevitably, it is necessary to embrace and admit that the mission of abandoning the capitalist system or mode of energy management (the unlimited predation of resources that do have a limit) and design, while it is underway, another model of humanity It is something that a single country cannot execute, because it is a planetary mission, of the entire species. It is not as easy as decreeing one day that from tomorrow we will stop all industries and all forms of exploitation of nature (mining, intensive agriculture), and that from now on we will face the enemy with the withered weapons of pre-industrial society. It is not played like this; So we are overwhelmed and despaired by the feeling that we are getting stuck in the model that we are supposed to destroy.
Our mission as a people, as a society and as a species is that it is no longer necessary to keep the machines of the Orinoco Mining Arc on. But the current survival of the project called the Bolivarian Revolution needs the Mining Arc to resist while building the other alternative.
Our other mission is to abandon the model of intensive "agriculture", the monoculture that depends on agro-toxins and that murders real agriculture, which activates all the people in the production of food, but that transition cannot be immediate: While that entity called “the town” is reunited with its vocation for the Conuk, we must think about lunch tomorrow and next week, and the task of feeding 30 million people is only possible, for now, at the point of great plantations, imports of agro-industrial items and toxic and enslaving processes.
Slightly more graphic example: just as some people propose the immediate suppression of all mining activity and the elimination of the entire construct called agribusiness, there is another (or the same) that proposes the elimination of the institution of the army. The argument: "If Costa Rica can, why can't we?" The answer falls like a beast but it must be verbalized: because Costa Rica DOES have an army, and it is the United States Army. Venezuela is not in a position to decide the day after tomorrow, while the monster from the North and the beloved neighboring brothers plan an invasion and an attack against us, that today we are going to eliminate the military structure and proclaim that we are pacifists and Buddhists and anti-weapons. , those ugly things that make noise and kill people.
Humanity is supposed to be advancing in several of those entelechies or goals (elimination of poisoning "agriculture", elimination of all polluting industries and deactivation of the war industry) but that is not something that Venezuela is under obligation to do. to abolish with one stroke. Much less in a moment and with a social component like ours, one of whose factions declares itself chavista and anti-capitalist but cries with emotion every time a gasoline-fueled ship breaks the horizon to continue burning and squandering. Hitting him hard and fetishizing overheating by fossil fuel explosion.

Image
Capitalism is part of a civilizing order today in collapse. Photo: Modern Times - Charles Chaplin
***
It is time to prepare the generations that come to get used to another way of moving and moving the country. An atavism under construction, which sounds like a catastrophe and fatalism is actually a sign that should remoralize us: if someone wants to know what awaits cities like Paris, New York, Madrid or Berlin, they should look out to San Cristóbal, Valera and Maracaibo. The inhabitants of these cities know more than 90% of the inhabitants of the western hemisphere how to live inside a collapsed city.
Thanks (or because of) that body learning, we are advantageous to the inhabitants of other countries in that facet of our preparation for the future: in Madrid people believe that the prodigy of turning on the tap and letting water flow will occur to forever. Madrid is very proud and confident of the enormous glacier or frozen block of the Sierra Nevada. But that mass of ice that supplies the people of Madrid is going to disappear. And the people who are warning you are seen in Spain and almost everywhere with more pity than attention.
***
If Venezuela as a country and "revolutionary vanguard", as they say and as we want to continue to believe it is, cannot make dramatic leaps at this time because it would end with all the broken bones, then to whom or by when will that decisive leap occur? ? Everything indicates that the leap is already happening: San Cristóbal, Maracaibo and other scenes of the war announce it and confirm it. Cities whose operation is no longer and cannot be as it was a few years ago; people doing out of necessity things that no proposal or manual had raised: magic to cook without gas, magical procedures to obtain water, to live without electricity and without fuel. Videos proliferate in which pedal-powered washers and blenders stand out, but those who look at these phenomena with shame or with laughter still predominate,
It is up to the citizens, especially the militants, to prepare focal, local, family and community-based generations that come for when these situations deepen. Will there be a prodigy that will take us back to bonanza and energy waste? It doesn't matter: our mission is, and it was when we swam in bills, to live with austerity and criteria of war. This is the fifth objective of the country, which should be the first: not to live "tasty" according to the capitalist table of values, but to live in harmony with the environment.
***
I know that these lines will pass under the table, like the screams of another deranged man, because the hope that everything will be good and cool again, that we have a high salary to return to the waste of life and resources. Then these lines will be floating around, ready to be read when the intoxication is irreversible and these things don't really matter anymore.

https://medium.com/@misionverdad2012/de ... d131a89a5d

Google Translator

This is the sort of thing which the anarchopunks cannot understand because of their idealism. It is much the same with China, but they've 'gotten over the hump'.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 13, 2020 1:55 pm

Trump, Fauci and Ecomodernism
BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON JULY 12, 2020 •
Compared to the lies of Trump and the religious mysticism of Mike Pence, Anthony Fauci seems like a breath of fresh air. He bases himself on science, after all.

Image

Why, then, has he allowed himself to be silenced by Trump? Why hasn’t he simply defied Trump’s orders and spoken out to the US media? After all, with the confidence of 2/3 of the US public, he’s far more popular than not only Trump but almost any other public figure.

Not a working class hero
Fauci, however, is not some working class hero. Writing in the left liberal Nation magazine, Mike Davis recently scrutinized some of Fauci’s pronouncements. This includes actually saying that it is “absolutely not” necessary to wear masks in public. Fauci is also starting to come under indirect criticism for his acceptance of being sidelined by Trump.

But the real problem with Fauci is far, far deeper than this. Basically, Fauci’s entire approach is how to slow the spread of Covid-19. This includes the famous social distancing and use of facemasks. In addition, he is pushing the development of a vaccine, although even he admitted that it might be impossible to develop a vaccine that provides long term immunity. (Note: “might be”!)

Image
Rob Wallace & his book. Fauci diverts attention away from the issues raised in this book.

Diverting attention away from the causes
No, the real harm that Fauci does is in leading the discussion away from the cause of Covid 19 and similar zoonotic diseases. Rob Wallace (Big Farms Make Big Flu) explains that the bases for the rise of new zoonotic diseases (ones which jump the species barrier to human beings) are factory farming and habitat destruction. These are putting humans and domesticated meat animals (like fowl, pigs, etc.) into ever closer contact with wild species (like bats) and also encouraging the evolution of viruses into new forms that can infect humans. (See this article for a fuller explanation.) What Wallace also explains is that once a new virus has been discovered it’s already too late. What’s necessary is to change the conditions that lead to the evolution of these viruses. Anything else is really just closing the barn door after the horses have gotten out.

The approach of Fauci and the majority of scientists fits with that of the less insane politicians like Joe Biden. From global warming to endocrine system disruption to zoonoses, what they advocate is in effect that human society – meaning capitalism – can continue to rape the natural world with impunity and all that’s needed is some technical fixes. This idea is most clearly expressed in the school of thought called ecomodernism. In a way, ecomodernism could be called “scientific capitalism” as opposed to the lies of Trump and the mysticism of the likes of Mike Pence and others like him.

“Ecomodernism”
The ecomodernists first announced themselves with their 2015 “Ecomodernist Manifesto”. In it, they celebrated the “personal, economic, and political liberties [that] have spread worldwide.” They also recognized the threat of “human caused” climate disruption. But they also said, “we reject [the idea] that humans societies must harmonize with nature” and advocated a “significant decoupling of human well-being from environmental impacts.” They also denied that species extinction is a problem.

The manifesto recognized that the expansion of human society into wilderness areas is a potential problem. The fix they advocate is more intensive use of that land that is already developed. That more intensive use includes genetically modified crops (GMO’s) and industrial or factory farming. They also advocate developing both solar and nuclear (both fission and fusion) power.

Image
The Pritzker family, including J.B. Pritzker at center. This billionaire family is a major force behind the Breakthrough Institute.

Breakthrough Institute
Today, the ideas of ecomodernism is most strongly represented through the Breakthrough Institute. Located in Oakland, California, the major force behind this nonprofit is the Pritzker family. According to Wikipedia, this family is one of the wealthiest families in the US. Family members own Hyatt hotel corporations as well as Berkshire Hathaway, Superior Bank of Chicago (which collapsed in 2001), and other assets. One member of their family, J.B. Pritzker, is the (Democratic) governor of Illinois.



Defenders of factory farming
They agree that habitat destruction has led to increased contact between humans and wild animals like bats and that this has led to the rise of new zoonotic diseases. However, their solution is to further intensify the exploitation of the land that is occupied by humans. In other words, more factory farming and more GMO’s. “ If anything, intensification [of factory farming] is the solution to reducing the risk of zoonotic disease,” they write. It may be true that SARS-CoV2 evolved purely through that “wet market” in China, although even that is not definite. But the ecomodernists ignore all the other zoonotic diseases that have clearly evolved through factory farming.

Their entire approach is wrong because the natural world is just too complex for humans to understand every aspect of it. Disrupt one part and there will be inevitable unpredicted consequences, and factory farming is a perfect example. From depletion of topsoil to pollution of waterways and the creation of dead zones off the coast of the United States, factory farming is a growing disaster.

Technical fixes not enough
To return to Fauci and zoonoses: There may be some technical fixes that can lessen the impact of Covid-19. And a long-term effective vaccine might be possible. But so long as factory farming and habitat destruction continue unchecked, the rise of new and even more deadly zoonotic diseases are inevitable. That’s what Fauci and the “scientific capitalism” that he represents divert attention away from.

Once again we are reminded of the fact that understanding science is too important to be left to the capitalist class. We workers have to understand it also.

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/07/12 ... modernism/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 15, 2020 4:32 pm

The Gates Foundation’s “Green Revolution” in Africa: Agribusiness Wins, Small Scale Farmers Lose
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 15 Jul 2020

Image
The Gates Foundation’s “Green Revolution” in Africa: Agribusiness Wins, Small Scale Farmers Lose '/ Photo: Rwandan President Paul Kagame and billionaire Bill Gates
Ann Garrison interviews Timothy Wise on why US-style corporate agriculture pushed by billionaire Bill Gates has been disastrous for Africa.

“The number of hungry people in those 13 countries actually rose by 30% to 131 million people.”

Fourteen years ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the stated goal of doubling productivity and incomes by 2020 for 30 million small-scale farming households while reducing food insecurity by half in 20 countries. AGRA claims success, but a broad-based civil society alliance has just published "False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)," i n which they conclude that the number of Africans suffering extreme hunger has increased by 30 percent in the 13 countries that AGRA eventually focused on. I spoke to researcher and writer Timothy A. Wise, Senior Advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and author of the book Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food . His background paper, “Failing Africa’s Farmers ,” laid the groundwork for the critical publication.

Ann Garrison: Timothy Wise, this is a scientific story, but can you summarize, in layman's terms, what happened?

Timothy Wise: Sure. The Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa in 2006 with ambitious goals. They were setting out to double incomes and crop productivity by 2020 in 13 African nations that they considered to have great agricultural potential. Since then they've spent a billion dollars to impose all the inputs used by our own corporatized, industrialized agriculture in Africa. These include commercial seeds, petrochemical fertilizers, and pesticides—the kind of high-tech agriculture that we're used to here. And it was backed by African governments who spent huge sums on subsidies to farmers so they could buy all those expensive inputs.

AG: Let me stop you for a moment just to make sure we understand. If African governments were giving farmers money to buy seeds, petrochemical fertilizers, and pesticides, what were the Gates Foundation and its partners spending $1 billion on?

TW: AGRA gives grants to government, non-governmental, and even private-sector projects to further the spread and adoption of these technologies. For example, they have focused on getting so-called agro-dealers set up in rural areas to sell those high-tech inputs.

AG: How much of AGRA’s budget did the Gates Foundation pay for? And how much of it was paid for by AGRA’s partners ?

TW: The Gates foundation has provided about two-thirds of the billion dollars AGRA has spent so far. The rest comes from other foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation, a partner in launching AGRA, and from donor governments and some private sector partners.

AG: Who are the civil society partners who have just published this critique of AGRA, and what might we want to understand about them?

TW: It is a coalition of African and European non-governmental organizations that have campaigned for a shift in development priorities to agro-ecology and other sustainable practices. They include The Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya , Bread for the World (Germany ), F IAN [For the Right to Food and Nutrition] (Germany) , The German NGO Forum on the Environment and Development , INKOTA (Germany) , IRPAD (Mali) , PELUM ( Zambia ), Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Germany and South Africa) , T anzania Alliance for Biodiversity , and T anzania Organic Agriculture Movement .

AG: You say that there’s been very little accountability as to how AGRA spent a billion dollars.

TW: There's been no public evaluation of what all that money has achieved, not from AGRA or Gates, which is a real failure of accountability. So we sought to fill that gap with this study. We were stunned to learn how little has been achieved with so much money. Productivity growth in the 14 years since AGRA set its goals, which were supposed to come due in 2020, was very low. Yields of the staple crops that farmers rely on rose just 18% in that 14-year period. AGRA’s goal was to push them up by 100%.

AG: CropsReview.com defines a staple food as “one that is regularly consumed in large quantities to form the basis of a traditional diet and which serves as a major source of energy and nutrients.” It also says that “ninety percent of the world’s food energy intake comes from a mere 15 crops with rice, corn and wheat contributing two-thirds of this.” So when you say that these are the crops farmers “rely on,” do you mean that they rely on them for income or rely on them to feed their families?

TW: AGRA claimed to be targeting small-scale farmers with its programs. They are mostly growing crops for food but selling surpluses on local markets. Staples vary from country to country. Corn is a staple crop in many countries, but other more nutritious staples include millet, sorghum, cassava, sweet potato, and leguminous crops like cowpeas.

AG: What sort of productive relationships are involved in the AGRA context? Are we talking about small farms worked by a single family, cooperative farms, or larger farms whose owners employ farm laborers? Or some sort of mix?

TW: Mostly small family farms working less than five acres of land, though it seems AGRA’s costly high-tech inputs get more uptake from wealthier farmers, those who are already established commercial farmers.

AG: OK, before I stopped you to clarify those few points, you were saying that you were shocked by how much AGRA spent to produce so little.

TW: Yes, even yields of corn—one of the crops that AGRA most supported—rose just 29% in 14 years. And that came at the expense of other important food crops like sorghum, millet, sweet potato, and cassava. And the sad part of the story is that even with production rising, rural poverty remained high. And the number of hungry people in those 13 countries actually rose by 30% to 131 million people. So our report shows that AGRA is failing on its own terms.

AG: That sounds worse than failure on anyone’s terms. You refer to Rwanda as “Africa’s Hungry Poster Child” because it’s a nation that AGRA counts as a success even though the people there are hungrier than ever. In 2010, I spoke to then presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire—before she went to prison for the next eight years—and she didn’t name AGRA as an aggressor, but she did describe destructive agricultural policy much as you have. She said that traditional subsistence crops have been sacrificed for cash crops, especially corn, which mostly benefit elite urban traders and leaves Rwandans with less and less to eat.

TW: The former presidential candidate was exactly right. That is what’s come to pass under Rwandan Agriculture Minister Agnes Kalibata as Rwanda has focused more and more on increasing corn production. They did quadruple corn production with subsidies and authoritarian measures such as fining farmers who failed to switch to corn, but the number of hungry Rwandans increased by half a million between 2006 and 2018. All those subsidies for corn drove land out of the more nutritious crops like sorghum and sweet potatoes, key staples that offer far more nutrition than corn, and that leaves farmers more vulnerable to climate change. Sacrificing crop diversity sacrifices their families’ diet diversity, and when drought hits their corn crop they have nothing to fall back on. Monocropping also degrades their soil over the long term, as the soil grows more acidic with repeated applications of petrochemical fertilizers.

Agnes Kalibata rode this specious success of quadrupling corn production to become the president of AGRA, but our report shows that overall staple crop yields increased a meager 24% in 14 years, and AGRA had promised a 100% increase.

AG: The idea behind this would seem to be that when farmers produce higher yields of corn for market, they will earn more income that they will then be able to use to buy foodstuffs they’re no longer growing themselves, but that apparently hasn’t happened. As Victoire said, the profits have gone instead to elite urban traders. Am I right in imagining that those traders typically control the price of the farmers’ product?

TW: That is often the case. The bigger problem is that even with subsidies, farmers have to pay every year for seeds they used to save from year to year and for fertilizer, which is very expensive. Most farmers do not grow enough extra corn to make back those costs. This can leave them in debt if there is a bad harvest. In Malawi, we found that yield increases would have to be three times greater than AGRA is producing just to pay for a year’s inputs. The Green Revolution just doesn’t pay off for most small-scale farmers, especially without subsidies.

AG: I can’t imagine there are supermarkets, like those we know, in the Rwandan and other African countrysides, and if fewer and fewer farmers are growing much besides corn, then the farmers’ markets must be suffering too, no?

TW: Rural Africa has not lost its food cultures and traditions, and they are trying to conserve their traditional crops and seeds in the face of this Green Revolution onslaught. In Rwanda, the pushback from farmers has forced the government to relax some of its strict rules favoring corn, so traditional crops are making a small comeback.

AG: The other entities benefiting from this would seem to be the international corporations selling seeds, petrochemical fertilizers, and pesticides in African markets kicked open by AGRA, no?

TW: Yes. Monsanto and the other multinational seed companies are all there, benefiting from sales they never would have had without subsidies. Seed and fertilizer companies are the clear winners from these policies.

AG: What was it that Michael Pollen said about fossil fuel-based agriculture?

TW: Looking at US corn, he said we are basically “eating oil,” because our corn grows with such heavy applications of fertilizers made from natural gas. They are a fossil-fuel input, as are many pesticides and other agro-chemicals. With climate change increasingly impacting farmers in Africa, it is crazy that donors are actively campaigning to increase farmers’ dependence on fossil-fuel inputs. AGRA may call it “climate-smart agriculture,” but dissident African farmers call it “climate-stupid agriculture.”

AG: I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Bill Gates imagines big technology monopolies will solve the world’s problems.

TW: He made his money as a technology monopolist, from Microsoft, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that his solutions to the world’s problems put big technology corporations at the center. The Gates Foundation claims to be very scientific and data-driven, very results-oriented, so AGRA’s failures, after $660 million in Gates funding, should really prompt a reconsideration of such policies.

AG: Africans in the organizations you’ve worked with call this neocolonial agriculture, don’t they?

TW: They do, because again developed country “experts” are coming to Africa with their solutions to Africa’s problems, pushing theirindustrial technologies, and promoting crops like corn that the United States and other rich countries know how to grow, at least as industrial commodities.

AG: Is AGRA pushing GMOs?

TW: Most African governments do not permit genetically modified crops, so for now the seeds they are promoting are conventional so-called hybrid seeds developed by crop breeders, the kinds of seeds farmers have to buy every year. Gates and others are clearly trying to open the door to GMOs, pushing reforms to seed laws through the Africa n Regional Intellectual Property Organization and other initiatives.

AG: What else would you like a lay audience to understand about this for now?

TW: Well, our food systems are at a crossroads. Climate change and now the coronavirus have highlighted the fragility of long supply chains and dependence on commercial and imported seeds and on petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. The last thing we should be doing is forcing our own failing fossil fuel-based agriculture on African countries.

Our report shows that AGRA has led to weak productivity growth and rising hunger, and African farmers want something different. Groups like the Alliance for F ood S overeignty in Africa are demanding a shift in all that support for failing Green Revolution policies to policies that help local farmers improve native seeds and adopt sustainable practices using local resources. They call for “food sovereignty,” policies that put communities and countries in a position to determine their own food choices. Many studies have shown that such practices generate higher productivity while increasing farmers’ incomes and food security. Exactly what AGRA is failing to do.

The United Nations has scheduled a Global Food Summit for June 2021 to address the crisis in our food systems. Global hunger has increased in each of the last five years. Unfortunately, Agnes Kalibata, the former Rwandan Minister of Agriculture who is now the president of AGRA, has been chosen to chair the summit as the UN’s special envoy. Her failures in Rwanda and her leadership of a failing AGRA really should disqualify her from that role. Farmers and food consumers need a profound and sustainable transformation of our food systems that she is in no way prepared to lead.

AG: Is there a movement to wrest control of this UN Summit from AGRA and the fossil fuel-based, industrial agriculture profiteers?

TW: A wide range of civil society organization has demanded that the UN hit the reset button, particularly with the COVID-19 crisis. The food summit was proposed because “business as usual” in our food systems is no longer an option. With AGRA and Kalibata in charge, and the World Economic Forum and its well-heeled corporate members sponsoring the summit, the World Food Summit will just be agribusiness as usual.

AG: We’ll have to touch base again about how this is going as this 2021 UN World Food Summit draws closer.

TW: Thank you, we are indeed at a crossroads, and Africa has the opportunity to avoid taking its farmers and consumers down our failed path of industrialized agriculture.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/gates ... rmers-lose
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 03, 2020 1:40 pm

Better protecting environment to alleviate poverty
By Kang Bing | China Daily | Updated: 2020-07-28 07:17

Image
A farmer harvests crops in a seawater rice paddy in Nanniwan of Yan'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, on Nov 29, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]

Editor's Note: China is striding firmly toward realizing its target of eliminating absolute poverty by the end of this year. What are the factors behind China's imminent success? In the fifth of a series of commentaries, a senior journalist of China Daily tries to find the answers:

Combining poverty alleviation and environmental protection measures is like sowing once to reap two harvests. This is what China has been doing since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. When the central government decided to make the final dash in its efforts to eliminate abject poverty and improve the environment over 30 years ago, it found that regions with large numbers of impoverished people and environmental degradation often overlapped.

So the State Council formed its leading group with more than a dozen ministries including those responsible for poverty alleviation and environmental protection.

Yan'an in Shaanxi province has significantly benefited from the decision. Located on the Loess Plateau, Yan'an is regarded as the holy land of communist revolution. One reason that the Red Army could built its base in Yan'an after the Long March was that it was so poor that the warlords controlling the neighboring regions didn't care much about the place.

I have visited Yan'an three times. When I visited the city for the first time in the early 1990s, I didn't see much greenery even though it was summer. To collect fuel for cooking and heating, local residents chopped down trees and cut all the grass they could find, turning the mountain slopes and grasslands into farmlands, and thus causing serious soil erosion.

This gave rise to a vicious circle: starving farmers needing more food exploited more land causing more soil erosion. As a result, the crop yields remained low and the farmers became poorer. During his youth, President Xi Jinping worked in a village in that region for seven years. On several occasions, he has talked about the hard life he and the villagers lived. Although I visited the place 20 years after Xi had left, the landscape was similar to what Xi had seen.

Fortunately, the central government selected Yan'an as a pilot site for its combined anti-poverty and environmental-protection campaign 20 years ago. Farmers were encouraged to reconvert their barren plots into grasslands and forests. For each mu (0.067 hectare) of farmland they returned, the government compensated them with a few hundred yuan every year, which earned a family a few thousand yuan per year, enough to lift it out of poverty.

The government hired some farmers as forest rangers, which was an extra source of income for them, while also offering preferential loans to encourage them to grow apple trees on the land close to their villages; the locals now call them the "fruit tree bank".

During my second visit about 10 years ago, I looked through the window of the plane before landing in Yan'an and was amazed to see the area under a green cover.

I visited Yan'an again last year and was happy to learn that it had successfully eliminated absolute poverty. Its party secretary surnamed Xu told me that, due to the remarkable improvement in the environment, rainfall had greatly increased in the region.

The Yan'an model has been replicated in thousands of places. Maduo county in Qinghai province is one such place.

Located on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Maduo is four times the size of Shanghai but has only 15,000 residents, more than 90 percent of whom are ethnic Tibetans who depend on livestock, especially sheep, for their livelihood. The average altitude of the county is 4,500 meters, where there are no trees and grass grows slowly. Excessive grazing had caused extensive damage to the environment of the area, which is the origin of the Yellow River.

The central government intervened 15 years ago, reducing the number sheep in the area by half. Herdsmen who gave up livestock received decent compensations, those who agreed were hired as grassland rangers, and families were resettled in newly built villages close to towns with at least one member from each family being offered a job.

"Life is much better than before; now we can send kids to school, we can go to the hospital when we are ill, we can live in 'warm houses' provided by the government, we can have vegetables and fruits," a former herdsman told me.

In July 2019, I got a phone call from a county leader who said Maduo had been declared free of absolute poverty. According to rough statistics, in the past 20 years, China has spent more than 500 billion yuan ($71.18 billion) on the poverty-alleviation program to reconvert more than 33.33 million hectares of barren farmland into forests and grasslands and helping lift millions of people out of poverty.

That is, sowing seeds once to reap harvests twice.

http://img2.chinadaily.com.cn/images/20 ... 0a443.jpeg

This is a lesson that the bourgeoisie of all stripes are incapable of learning due to the contradictions with their class interests. But there are no contradictions outside of their narrow interests because the harmony of humans with their environment are the baseline of survival for both. The ruling class insists upon, thru many channels, a zero sum game of 'saving the environment'(for themselves!) or meeting the needs of the mass of humanity. There is no 'either/or' here, fools! What part of the Anthropocene do they not understand? The parts without profits, undoubtedly.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 17, 2020 1:33 pm

China's environmental progress over the years
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2020-08-15 07:00
During a visit to Yucun village in Anji county of East China's Zhejiang province in 2005, Xi Jinping, the then-Party chief of the province, put forward the concept that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets."

After becoming the top leader of China, Xi has on multiple occasions emphasized the importance of green development. China has made much progress in advancing green development since that trip 15 years ago. Let's take a look at how China has risen to Xi's call.

Image

Not bad, perhaps a bit 'airbrushed' but over-all the numbers are good.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 11, 2020 4:44 pm

“Green” Billionaires Behind Professional Activist Network That Led Suppression of “Planet of the Humans” Documentary

September 8, 2020 Max Blumenthal 350.ORG, Africa, big tech, Bill Mckibben, Bolivia, climate change, climate justice, cobalt, congo, divestment, Eirc Schmoiot, elon musk, Enviromentalism, google, Josh Fox, lithium, Mark Jacobson, Michael Moore, Minig, Naomi Klein, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Planet of the Humans, Renewables, Sierra Club, Solar, Solar Power, Sunrise Movement, Wind
By Max Blumenthal – Sep 7, 2020

The Michael Moore-produced ‘Planet of the Humans’ faced a coordinated suppression campaign led by professional climate activists backed by the same ‘green’ billionaires, Wall Street investors, industry insiders and family foundations skewered in the film.

“We must take control of our environmental movement and our future from billionaires and their permanent war on Planet Earth. They are not our friends.”

-Jeff Gibbs, director of “Planet of the Humans”

It is hard to think of an American film that provoked a greater backlash in 2020 than “Planet of the Humans.” Focused on the theme of planetary extinction and fanciful proposals to ward it off, the documentary was released for free on YouTube on April 21. The date was significant not only because it was the eve of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, but because a global pandemic was tearing through America’s social fabric and exposing the human toll of the country’s globalized, growth-obsessed economic model.

Even before “Planet of the Humans” was released, however, the producers of the film had fallen under pressure to retract it. Upon the film’s release, a who’s who of self-styled climate justice activists proceeded to blanket the internet with accusations that it was a racist, “eco-fascist” screed that deliberately advanced the interests of the oil and gas industry. When “Planet of the Humans” was briefly yanked from YouTube thanks to a questionable copyright claim by an angry climate warrior, the free speech organization Pen America issued a remarkable statement characterizing the demands for retraction as a coordinated censorship campaign.

What had this documentary done to inflame so much opposition from the faces and voices of professional climate justice activism? First, it probed the well-established shortcomings of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power that have been marketed as a green panacea. “Planet of the Humans” portrayed these technologies as anything but green, surveying the environmental damage already caused by solar and wind farms, which require heavy mining and smelting to produce, destroy swaths of pristine land, and sometimes demand natural gas to operate.

While major environmental outfits have lobbied for a Green New Deal to fuel a renewables-based industrial revolution, and are now banking on a Democratic presidency to enact their proposals, “Planet of the Humans” put forward a radical critique that called their entire agenda into question.

As the director of the documentary, Jeff Gibbs, explained, “When we focus on climate change only as the thing destroying the planet and we demand solutions, we get used by forces of capitalism who want to continue to sell us the disastrous illusion that we can mine and smelt and industrialize our way out of this extinction event. And again, behind the scenes, much of what we’re doing to ‘save’ the planet is to burn the ‘bio’ of the planet as green energy.”

“Planet of the Humans” crossed another bright green line by taking aim at the self-proclaimed climate justice activists themselves, painting them as opportunists who had been willingly co-opted by predatory capitalists. The filmmakers highlighted the role of family foundations like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in cultivating a class of professional activists that tend toward greenwashing partnerships with Wall Street and the Democratic Party to coalitions with anti-capitalist militants and anti-war groups.

Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and guru of climate justice activism, is seen throughout “Planet of the Humans” consorting with Wall Street executives and pushing fossil fuel divestment campaigns that enable powerful institutions to reshuffle their assets into plastics and mining while burnishing their image. McKibben has even called for environmentalists to cooperate with the Pentagon, one of the world’s worst polluters and greatest exporters of violence, because “when it speaks frankly, [it] has the potential to reach Americans who won’t listen to scientists.”

Perhaps the most provocative critique contained in “Planet of the Humans” was the portrayal of full-time climate warriors like McKibben as de facto lobbyists for green tech billionaires and Wall Street investors determined to get their hands on the whopping $50 trillion profit opportunity that a full transition to renewable technology represents. Why have figures like Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Michael Bloomberg, Virgin’s Richard Branson, and Tesla founder Elon Musk been plowing their fortunes into climate advocacy? The documentary taunted those who accepted these oligarchs’ gestures of environmental concern at face value.

For years, leftist criticism of professional climate activism has been largely relegated to blogs like Wrong Kind of Green, which maintains an invaluable archive of critical work on the co-optation of major environmental organizations by the billionaire class. Prominent greens might have been able to dismiss scrutiny from radical corners of the internet as background noise; however, they were unable to ignore “Planet of the Humans.”

That was because Oscar-winning documentarian Michael Moore put his name on the film as executive producer, alongside his longtime producer, Gibbs, and the scholar-researcher Ozzie Zehner. “Michael Moore validates this film,” Josh Fox, the filmmaker who led the campaign against “Planet of the Humans,” told me. “So if Michael Moore’s name is not on that film, it’s like a thousand other crappy movies.”

By racking up millions of views after just a month on YouTube, “Planet of the Humans” threatened to provoke an unprecedented debate about the corruption of environmental politics by the one percent. But thanks to the campaign by Fox and his allies, much of the debate wound up focused on the film itself, and the credibility of its producers.

“I had some sense that the film was going to ruffle some feathers, but I was unprepared for that response from what ended up being a group of people who are like an echo chamber – all related to the same funding organizations,” said Zehner. “It’s a pretty tight circle and it was a really strong, virulent pushback.”

The line of attack that may have gained the most traction in progressive circles portrayed a convoluted section of the film on the dangers of population growth and overconsumption as Malthusian, and even racist. Zehner told me he considered the attacks opportunistic, but “from a public relations standpoint, they were effective. What we were trying to do was highlight the dangers of a consumption-based economic model.”

The backlash to “Planet of the Humans” also related to its portrayal of renewables as badly flawed sources of energy that were also environmentally corrosive. Many of those attacks painted the film’s presentation of solar and wind to present the documentary as out of date and filled with misinformation.

Oddly, the professional activists who coordinated the campaign to bury “Planet of the Humans” glossed over an entire third of the documentary which focused on the corruption and co-optation of environmental politics by “green” foundations and “green” investors.

As this investigation will reveal, those climate justice activists were bound together by support from the same family foundations, billionaire investors, and industry interests that were skewered in the film.

Image
Josh Fox Planet of the Humans billionaires
Filmmaker Josh Fox
“Censorship, plain and simple”

The ringleader of the push to suppress “Planet of the Humans” was Josh Fox, the Oscar-nominated director of the film “Gasland,” which highlighted the destructive practices inherent to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fox launched the campaign with a sign-on letter calling for the documentary to be retracted by its producers. Then, in an incendiary takedown published in The Nation, he branded Michael Moore “the new flack for oil and gas,” a racist, and “eco-fascist” for producing the film.

As videographer Matt Orfalea reported, Fox’s crusade began the night Moore’s film was released, with an unhinged mass email to online publishers that blasted the documentary as “A GIGANTIC CROCK OF SHIT.” Fox commanded, “It must come down off your pages immediately.”

Hours later, Fox fired off another breathless email to a group of public relations professionals. “A number of reputable websites are hosting this abomination and I need your support in getting them to take it down,” he wrote. The following day, Fox took to Twitter to assure his ally, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, “We are on it.”

Next, Fox organized a sign-on letter demanding the film “be retracted by its creators and distributors and an apology rendered for its misleading content.” Among the letter’s signatories was academic and renewables advocate Leah C. Stokes, who proclaimed her wish in an article in Vox that “this film will be buried, and few will watch it or remember it.”

On April 24, Josh Fox claimed he had successfully pressured an online video library, Films For Action, into removing “Planet of the Humans” from its website. His victory lap turned out to be premature, as Films For Action re-posted the film and publicly condemned Fox’s campaign to drive it into oblivion.


The relentless push by Fox and others eventually triggered a striking statement by PEN America, the free speech advocacy group. “Calls to pull a film because of disagreement with its content are calls for censorship, plain and simple,” PEN America declared.

“Listen, nobody called to censor this movie,” Fox insisted to me. “We asked the filmmakers as part of their community to retract it, because it unfairly attacked people that we know are good, honest dealers and its premise was wrong and false.”

Fox likened “Planet of the Humans” to radio host Mike Daisey’s monologue on visiting the Foxconn factory in China where iPhones are made, and which was retracted by NPR after major fabrications came to light. “It’s clear to me that the filmmakers… put incorrect information into the film that they knew was incorrect. That thing was out of date,” Fox said of the Moore-produced documentary. “And many, many people from within our community reached out to them, which I didn’t know actually, prior to the release of the film and said, ‘This information is incorrect. What are you doing?’”

Fox was particularly incensed at Michael Moore for attaching his reputation to the film. He described the famed director as one of “the bad guys”; “a megalomaniacal multi-millionaire who craves attention unlike anyone I’ve ever met”; “the 800-pound elephant in the room”; the maker of a “racist” and “eco-fascist” film; and “a multi-millionaire circus barker” guilty of “journalistic malpractice.”

“The real bully is Michael Moore here,” Fox maintained. “It’s not me.”

Though Fox and his allies did not succeed in erasing “Planet of the Humans” from the internet, the documentary was momentarily removed from YouTube on the grounds of a copyright claim by a British photographer named Toby Smith. In a tweet he later deleted, Smith said his opposition to the film was “personal,” blasting it as a “baseless, shite doc built on bull-shit and endless copyright infringements.”

As the attacks on “Planet of the Humans” snowballed, director Jeff Gibbs attempted to defend his film. Following an article at The Guardian branding the film as “dangerous,” Gibbs emailed the paper’s opinion editors requesting a right of reply. He told me they never responded. However, just hours after Toby Smith’s politically-motivated copyright claim prompted YouTube to remove Gibbs’ documentary, he said The Guardian reached out to him for comment. “How’d they catch that so early?” he wondered.

A few left-wing journalists tried to push back on the attacks as well. But in almost every case, they were spiked by editors at ostensibly progressive journals. Christopher Ketcham, author of “This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West,” was among those unable to find a venue in which to defend the documentary.

“I have come across very few editors radical enough to have the exceedingly difficult conversation about the downscaling, simplification, and the turn (in the developed world) toward diminished affluence that a 100 percent renewable energy system will necessarily entail,” Ketcham reflected to me. “You see, they have to believe that they can keep their carbon-subsidized entitlements, their toys, their leisure travel — no behavioral change or limits needed — and it will all be green and ‘sustainable.’”

Naomi Klein, perhaps the most prominent left-wing writer on climate-related issues in the West, did not weigh in to defend “Planet of the Humans.” Instead, the Intercept columnist, social activist, and Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University was an early participant in the campaign to suppress the film.

According to McKibben, “Naomi [Klein] had in fact taken Moore aside in an MSNBC greenroom” before the documentary’s release to lobby him against publishing the film. Klein later signed Josh Fox’s open letter demanding the film be retracted.

On Twitter, Klein condemned “Planet of the Humans” as “truly demoralizing,” and promoted a “big blog/fact check” of the film by Ketan Joshi, a former communications officer for the Australian wind farm company Infigen Energy.


Mining a green future and burying the cost

Like most opponents of “Planet of the Humans,” Ketan Joshi painted the documentary as “a dumb old bull in the china shop that is 2020’s hard-earned climate action environment.” And along with other critics, he accused the film’s co-producers, Gibbs and Zehner, of wildly misrepresenting the efficiency of renewables.

To illustrate his point, he referenced a scene depicting the Cedar Street Solar Array in Lansing, Michigan with flexible solar panels running at 8% efficiency – purportedly enough to generate electricity for just 10 homes. Because that scene was part of a historical sequence filmed in 2008, Joshi dismissed it as an example of the film’s “extreme oldness.”

However, this February, the solar trade publication PV Magazine found that Tesla’s newest line of flexible solar shingles had an efficiency rate of 8.1% – almost exactly the same as those depicted in “Planet of the Humans.”

While it is true that mono-crystalline solar panels boast a higher efficiency rate (between 15% and 18% in commercially available form), they were also on the market back in 2008. These panels are significantly more expensive than the flexible, less efficient panels, however. And their efficiency levels do not account for the intermittency inherent to solar energy, which does not work well in cloudy or dark conditions.

RELATED CONTENT: Michael Moore Again Predicts that Trump Could Win

Yet according to Josh Fox, the most vehement opponent of “Planet of the Humans,” the planet-saving capacity of solar and other supposedly clean forms of energy was so well-established it was beyond debate.

“The premise of the film is renewable energy doesn’t work and is dependent on fossil fuels. And that is patently ridiculous,” Fox remarked to me. “And the reason why I got into this is because I had young environmentalists – young people who are steadfast campaigners – calling me in the middle of the night, freaking out, [telling me] ‘I can’t believe this!’ And I looked at them and I said, ‘Well, there’s a reason why you can’t believe this; it’s because it’s not true.’”

But was the presentation of renewable energy sources in “Planet of the Humans” actually false? Ecological economist William Rees has claimed that “despite rapid growth in wind and solar generation, the green energy transition is not really happening.” That might be because it is chasing energy growth instead of curtailing it. Rees pointed out that the surge in global demand for electricity last year “exceeded the total output of the world’s entire 30-year accumulation of solar power installations.”

Are there not reasonable grounds then to be concerned about the practicality of a full transition to renewables, especially in a hyper-capitalist, growth-obsessed economy like that of the United States?

A September 2018 scientific study delivered some conclusions that contradicted the confident claims of renewables advocates. A research team measured solar thermal plants currently in operation around the world and found that they are dependent on the “intensive use of materials,” which is code for heavily mined minerals.

https://orinocotribune.com/green-billio ... cumentary/

Much more to this. I had never heard of this film, but then I don't do the social media anymore. We can thank our old comrade chalmor for an early 'head's up' on the draw-backs of some of this tech. It doesn't have to be this way but that's capitalism for ya.
To me the only surprise is that Michael Moore has got anything to do with it. Would have expected him to line up on the other side. Oh yeah, and Max Blumenthal, ditto.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Mon Sep 14, 2020 12:56 pm

The Progressive International, a Global Green New Deal and the Limits of ‘Left Unity’

Image
Still taken from the Progressive International promotional video
It is time for progressives of the world to unite.

The Progressive International, May 2020
One must not allow oneself to be misled by the cry for ‘unity.’ Those who have this word most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension… Those unity fanatics are either the people of limited intelligence who want to stir everything up together into one nondescript brew, which, the moment it is left to settle, throws up the differences again in much more acute opposition because they are now all together in one pot … or else they are people who consciously or unconsciously … want to adulterate the movement.

Frederick Engels, June 1873


On 11 May 2020, Bernie Sanders and Yanis Varoufakis announced the establishment of a new political project, the Progressive International (PI). Varoufakis, a man who believes that the revolution will take place miraculously as a result of technologies like 3-D printing ‘rendering corporations obsolete’, rather than protest, which he dismissively refers to as ‘people waving flags and going out’, does not exactly inspire confidence as a leader invested in real change. Indeed, his main claim to fame is his disastrous handling of the EU-Greece bailout negotiations which resulted in the country’s immiseration. Sanders, meanwhile, is a man who, through both word and deed, has repeatedly demonstrated his opposition to communism and his allegiance to US imperialism – including a staunchly pro-Israel position. Therefore, I immediately had serious reservations about the global ambitions of a movement led by such individuals.

My instinctive reaction was that the PI seemed like an attempt to promote a ‘leftist’ fig leaf for a global Green New Deal – a kind of worldwide Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) that will draw well-meaning potential radicals into supporting the continuation of an inherently irreformable system through vague promises of ‘progressive’ change. All this without actually opposing or even impeding capitalism and imperialism in any way. These fears were not alleviated when I saw it receive positive coverage in The New Statesman, an ostensibly leftist UK publication, for which even the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn Labour government was too radical to support. However, not wanting to judge the group solely on the basis of its most well-known members, and because a handful of people and organisations I respect are listed as being affiliated to the PI, I decided to research it more closely before making a judgement. Far from allaying my concerns, what I found has served to heighten them.



A Global Green New Deal: ‘Progressive’ Imperialism

Describing itself as ‘a global initiative with a mission to unite, organize, and mobilize progressive forces around the world’, the PI is the outcome of a joint call made in December 2018 by the Sanders Institute and Varoufakis’ Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) to form ‘a common front in the fight against the twin forces of fascism and free market fundamentalism’. The group’s general coordinator and member of its cabinet is David Adler, who is also Policy Director for DiEM25 and was previously a Research Fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Varoufakis and Adler made the aims of the PI explicit in an op-ed published in The Guardian in December 2018. In a comically ahistorical and disingenuous argument, the pair hail the ‘remarkable’ Bretton Woods Conference as the ‘heyday of Western internationalism’ and paint a picture of a once virtuous World Bank and IMF being turned awry in the 1970s. Lavishing such praise on the conference which established the mechanisms and institutions through which the US formalised the dollarization of the post-war global economy, destroyed Western European communist parties and instigated the era of neo-colonialism across Africa, Asia and Latin America is troubling to put it mildly.

Adler and Varoufakis then make their pitch for the PI: a movement ‘to mobilize people around the world to transform the global order and the institutions that shape it’. Specifically, they call for the IMF to ‘oversee an international monetary clearing union that rebalances the current gross capital and trade imbalances’; the World Bank to oversee a Green New Deal; and a ‘reinvigorated’ United Nations to ‘forge binding commitments to swift ecological transition’. In the words of Adler, ‘the vision we are putting forward is to build precisely on the foundations set out in 1944 [at Bretton Woods]’, to ‘redeem its radical spirit’ and use these ‘amazing institutions’ in the service of a global Green New Deal. At best, the notion that the IMF and the World Bank can be repurposed to solve problems of their own creation is naïve in the extreme; as Audre Lorde famously wrote, ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’. And at worst, it appears to be a cynical attempt to generate support from the left for the very institutions that have impoverished the Global South for more than half a century, and whose raison d'être has been the perpetuation of US-led capitalist hegemony.

It is unlikely a coincidence that Adler’s recent employer, Tony Blair, has been calling for a Green New Deal along similar lines for over a decade. Adler is currently a policy fellow at the EU’s university in Florence where he is writing ‘a policy framework for a new Bretton Woods’. In January 2020, when expanding upon what his vision of a Europe-wide Green New Deal would look like, Adler in fact described an exploitative imperialist process through which German pensioners extract profit from ‘environmental investments in communities that have been hit by austerity in Southern Europe’. He underlined the fact that ‘we can deliver a healthy return on investments for…pensioners in France and Germany and, at the same time, provide…jobs to workers in Greece’. Thus, what Adler is advocating is essentially a mechanism for France and Germany to extract further value from what is left of the post-bailout Greek state and other weaker member states of the EU. It is safe to assume that the PI’s vision for a global Green New Deal is similarly unequal, with investors in the imperialist core receiving a ‘healthy return’ from investments in ostensibly green development projects in the Global South; or, in other words, a direct continuation of imperialist exploitation but with a ‘progressive’ veneer.

The specific aims and demands previously outlined by Adler and Varoufakis are missing from both the PI's founding charter online and its launch video, an omission which is striking to say the least. In their place is a host of vague and non-committal language – much like that of the Western NGO ‘activist’ milieu – that amounts to little more than platitudes without substance. Nor is it surprising that, given the individuals behind the enterprise, there are no specific demands for the end of US imperialist aggression against Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and elsewhere. In fact, there is not a single mention of the existence of US imperialism, let alone an acknowledgment that it is the primary threat to humanity’s survival, or any statement made in opposition to it. Similarly, there is no call for reparations for the victims of colonialism and neo-colonialism and no statement in support of the right to armed resistance against these destructive forces, in Palestine or elsewhere. The ambiguity of the PI’s statement stands in marked contrast to the positions of earlier progressive internationalist alliances. By way of comparison, the general declaration of the 1967 Afro-Asian Writers Conference is replete with specific demands, including ‘an immediate end to the barbarous bombings and US aggression in Vietnam’, as well as forthright denunciations of ‘the bitterest enemies of mankind’, Zionism, neo-colonialism and US imperialism.



A Channel for Imperialist Propaganda

Exploring the PI’s website and the limited amount of material currently available online, it is concerning, – though still unsurprising, – to see an article by Claire Wordley, a prominent proponent of the spurious narrative that claimed Evo Morales’s responsibility for the Amazon fires, as it paved the way for the 2019 US-backed coup in Bolivia. As Lucas Koerner reported in FAIR, Wordley ‘explicitly compared the Morales government to Bolsonaro in Brazil, calling MAS policies “every bit as extractivist and damaging as those of the capitalists Morales claims to hate”.’ Koerner continued: ‘more damning, [Wordley] cites Jhanisse Vaca-Daza, a Western-backed regime change operative, to disparage the Morales government’s handling of the fires’. As the coup was unfolding, Wordley repeatedly argued that it was not a coup, and that it was ‘US-centered’ to label it as such. One of the publications that gave Wordley a platform to project these transparently imperialist talking points was Novara Media, which happens to be a media partner of the PI. Novara is a small media organisation, the most prominent members of which have shown themselves to be cynical opportunists who, despite radical pretensions (like many on the UK Left), are neither communist nor anti-imperialist in any meaningful way – a lamentable trend which characterizes several other media partners of the PI, notably the US-based Jacobin magazine.

A further worrying sign is the PI’s affiliation with the Lausan Collective, a Hong Kong based group that was involved in the violent, pro-US protests that took place there last year, and that continues to agitate against what it calls ‘Chinese imperialism’. The canard of China being an imperialist power is echoed in another piece published by the PI, in which historian Mike Davis takes several swipes at China. In language nearly indistinguishable from that of the US State Department, Davis repeatedly describes China as an ‘authoritarian regime’ guilty of ‘mass repression’. He also spuriously equates China’s international aid with US imperialism, for which its recipients are compelled to be thankful in a manner that ‘is little different from Washington’s heavy hand in the past’. Similarly, a piece hosted by the PI from another of its media partners, Nueva Sociedad, contains a series of attacks against China, repeats a number of falsehoods about its response to the virus outbreak (which are debunked here) and even scolds those in the West who have praised China’s handling of the crisis. Such rhetoric not only diverts attention from Western Government’s own failures in managing the crisis, most notably those of the US and UK, but builds the justification for further imperialist aggression against China in the future.

The PI’s anti-Communist orientation, reminiscent of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom, is revealed in manifold ways, not least of which is the absence of any explicitly communist parties or groups among its membership. Furthermore, according to the online profile of another writer for the PI, Albena Azmanova, she actively participated ‘in the dissident movements that brought down the communist regime in her native Bulgaria’. This explicitly anti-communist tendency is also evident in the career of ‘Cypherpunk’ Harry Halpin, a member of the PI’s council. The CEO of a secure technology company and an alternative currency advocate, Halpin has received over one million dollars in funding from the US Government’s anti-Communist propaganda outfit, Radio Free Asia (as well as from the European Commission). It is telling too that although references to the US Empire are absent, this PI-hosted article mentions the ‘Soviet Empire’. There are countless more examples of similarly worrying connections and content on the PI website, but for the sake of brevity, I have focused on a few revealing examples. I encourage others to delve further into the organisation and its affiliates to come to their own conclusions.



The Limits of Left Unity

Anyone who criticizes or questions a seemingly well-intentioned venture like the PI will likely be labelled a ‘sectarian crank’ guilty of undermining sorely needed unity on the left. But it is evident that the unity for which the PI is calling is so all-encompassing that it includes supporters of what should be anathema to any “progressive" – imperialism. As Lenin once observed, ‘before we can unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise, our unity will be purely fictitious, it will conceal the prevailing confusion and binder its radical elimination’. The movement’s council, due to meet at an inaugural conference in Iceland in September, contains a surreal array of individuals. Yet, notably absent are any representatives of the already existing anti-imperialist forces in the world, such as the governments of Venezuela or Cuba, or those who, despite continuous pressure and aggression from the US, are already engaged in tangible internationalism and transnational solidarity without a need for a conference in Iceland. Ominously, it is not at all clear from the PI’s website how and why its council or cabinet were selected, or what role its members play in that process.

As the Marxist philosopher Marshall Berman argued in his 1982 work, All That is Solid Melts into Air, crises ‘can force the Bourgeoisie to innovate, expand and combine more intensively and ingeniously than ever’, and it appears that the PI is a manifestation of this phenomenon. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed even more starkly both the inequality and unsustainability of the capitalist system, and there is a growing awareness among the ruling class that the status quo is not sustainable. Much like the original New Deal in the 1930s was a means to salvage capitalism in the US and forestall the growth of a popular revolutionary communist movement at a time of crisis and mass unemployment, it appears that this is a comparable effort on a global scale. It is likely that the PI is an attempt to corral those who identify as left-wing back into supporting the very institutions and ideologies that are pushing the planet ever closer to the point of no return. It seems to represent a means to generate leftist support for an EU policy document by Adler and represent it as a harbinger of revolutionary change. The American communist William Z Foster presciently wrote in 1951 that the so-called ‘third force’ of social democrats ‘has nothing to offer the world but a perspective of rotting, disintegrating capitalism’, and that ‘capitalism can never be made “progressive”, it is hopelessly reactionary”.’ This truth is lost amidst the slick aesthetic of the PI, which wants us to believe that the answers to the existential crises humanity faces lie within the same institutions that are causing and profiting from them.

When concluding his 1974 exposé Inside the Company, CIA whistle-blower Philip Agee wrote:

Now, more than ever, indifference to injustice at home and abroad is impossible. Now, more clearly than ever, the extremes of poverty and wealth demonstrate the irreconcilable class conflicts that only socialist revolution can resolve. Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as international order. It’s harder now not to realize that there are two sides, harder not to understand each, and harder not to recognise that like it or not we contribute day in and day out either to the one side or the other.

It is clear that the PI serves to blur the line between those two sides. Everyone involved with it should ask themselves what impact associating with such an organisation will have on causes they are invested in. Are they lending their credibility and reputation to an organisation that does not share the same core principles as they do? Evidently, the PI intends to be much more than a flash in a pan; its opening declaration, written by Adler, announces its intention is ‘to build a lasting infrastructure for internationalism’. Instead of ‘relying on temporary campaigns and petitions, the PI strives to be a durable institution that can bind progressive forces together and support them to build power everywhere’. Such plans bring to mind Engels’ assessment of bourgeois socialists that,

come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations...of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.

So, the question for anyone who sincerely opposes imperialism and capitalism is: how does one respond to the creation of such a seemingly disingenuous movement that has lofty, lasting and global ambitions? The first step will be to preserve the revolutionary sentiments emerging throughout the world in the face of a glossy effort clearly intended to misdirect and weaken them.



Louis Allday is a writer based in London.

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/pro ... ernational
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:24 am

Red-hot capitalism in the fires of the American West
Mission Truth
Sep 16 · 7 min read

Image
A group of inmates goes to the firefighting front, they receive 64 hours of training and their work saves the state up to 80 million dollars. Photo: bussinesinsider.in

The fires that occurred a month ago in the west of the United States have left tragic consequences and economic losses, and have also evidenced the lack of coherence in the speech of the presidential candidates and the deficient capacity to adapt that exists in that country to the effects of climate change. .
This is aggravated when the federal government, led by Trump, denies this phenomenon, differences emerge in this regard and, therefore, the affected populations remain in the middle of them.
A detonating and lethal combination: winds, lightning, heat and drought
While on the other side of the North American country, in the Atlantic, up to five tropical cyclones are present , on the Pacific coast of the United States more than 100 fires in 12 states suffocate 52 million people , according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
The combination of cold air blasts from the Rocky Mountains into warmer-climate lands on the Pacific coast, which had just experienced a record heat wave in California, Oregon and Washington, intensified fires already burning in brush and dry wood. .
Already in mid-August, California's Death Valley had one of the highest temperatures on the planet so far: 54.4 degrees Celsius. On the weekend of August 15 and 16, a thunderstorm occurred in much of the state, with 10,800 lightning strikes and little rain; This, together with the dryness of the land, caused thousands of fires.
There have been 700 fires, just over 20 are huge and firefighters continue to fight them. At least 33 people have perished in the flames and dozens of missing persons are still being searched in all three states.
In California, 6 of the 20 major fires in its history have occurred this 2020. The California Forest and Fire Protection Department (Cal Fire) reported that the August Complex fire , one of the many that occur these days in the state is now officially the largest ever recorded in its recent history. In this decade there have been 10 of the largest forest fires since 1932, the date on which they began to be registered.

Image
A house is burned to the ground by one of the largest fires in the last decade at the August Complex, Ben Lomond, California. Photo: fox59.com

Its 18 national forests were closed due to "unprecedented and historic fire conditions," the US Forest Service said. One of California's oldest giant sequoia nature reserves, some of which are more than 2,000 years old, has also been heavily affected.
The number of burned hectares in California rose from 800,000 to 1.3 million in four days, breaking another all-time record, and the fire season, which does not end until October, has increased in duration by 75 days in recent years.
California authorities said about 64,000 people were under evacuation orders Wednesday, while crews battled 28 major fires in its most populated areas. It is estimated that more than 3,600 buildings have been destroyed.
In Oregon, half a million people have already been evacuated, which represents more than 10% of the population of the state, in which 4.2 million people live. At least 15 people have died and entire neighborhoods have already been destroyed in up to five cities.
Its Governor Kate Brown wrote on Twitter that “I wish the 2020 wildfires were an anomaly, but this will not be a one-time event. Unfortunately, it is a benchmark for the future. We are seeing the devastating effects of climate change in Oregon, across the West Coast and around the world, ”as firefighters fight 35 fires on more than 160,000 acres that are burning.
In Washington state, Gov. Jay Inslee said more than 240,000 hectares were burned, an area larger than the area typically burned during an entire fire season, according to the Associated Press .
Climate change inflames the electoral arena
It is clear to experts that the rapid spread of fire has been aggravated, in part, by climate change which not only causes temperatures to be higher, but also causes dry periods to become even drier, while wet periods become more humid, which makes the vegetation even more mature to light.
In recent years there have been two types of fire seasons: one from June to September (current) with warmer and drier weather in which fires tend to occur inland; another from October to April (what's next) that includes the rainy season and is triggered by strong westerly winds coming from the deserts of eastern California, crossing the mountains to reach the state. These types of fires tend to spread three times faster than the former and occur closer to urban areas.

Image
As the United States is the second country that emits the most greenhouse gases, Trump announced in June 2017 the withdrawal of his country from the Paris Agreement, which is supported by 185 countries, and will take effect next November 2020. Photo: yahoo .com

US policies to mitigate or adapt to climate change have regressed from a point where they had not made much progress, and have also been absent from the electoral debate.
During his tenure, the tycoon President Donald Trump has ordered the repeal of at least 100 environmental regulations in areas as diverse as the reduction of greenhouse gases, the protection of natural areas or the cleaning of water, in addition to boasting on multiple occasions of their withdrawal of the Paris Agreement encouraged by oil transnationals.
On the other hand, his electoral opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, denounced "an existential threat" adding in the same statement:
“President Trump may seek to deny reality, but the facts are undeniable. We must absolutely act to avoid a future marked by an endless deluge of tragedies, like the one American families suffer today in the West. "
He bases his speech focused on the climate crisis and its consequences in the American West (less rain, more dryness and very high temperatures) as the main reason behind the fires. On Monday the 14th he called Trump a "climate arsonist" for his global warming denier environmental policies.
Trump visited the state of California that day to be informed about the wildfires and, when asked if climate change was a factor behind the fire, he referred to "insufficient forest management" that allows weeds to accumulate. for months and then burn out of control.
He suggested that the flames are due to failures in the administration and maintenance of the forests by the state authorities (of a Democratic tendency) and pointed out that "good and strong forest management" is necessary, something that he recalled that he has been asking for three years.
Although California leads the institutional race against climate change compared to other states, its governor Gavin Newsom has granted 1,400 permits to enable oil and natural gas extraction wells throughout the state, as well as 48 for hydraulic fracturing. (or fracking ) with high emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide.
On a recent visit to Pennsylvania, a crucial pivot state in the elections, Biden said he would not ban fracking , a polluting industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people in the region.
In addition, both candidates promote an unsustainable model of agriculture that consumes tons of water per year and makes inappropriate use of the land, including deforestation. This model is the second cause of global warming behind the combustion of coal, oil and gas, according to John Holdren , professor of environmental policy at Harvard.
Austerity as a time bomb
Last week Trump approved the declaration of a state of emergency in the area, which in the United States is a permit to mobilize more federal public aid. Just as the health system has been reduced to the point of not having reserves to face the pandemic when it arrived, as a result of austerity policies, the fire-fighting system in many states, including California, has finds reduced.
However, authorities have sponsored a cyberinfrastructure system called WIFIRE, which was designed to predict the trajectories of forest fires in real time. It is artificial intelligence software that examines high-resolution satellite images to predict the combustibility of the vegetation surrounding a fire, and then incorporates that information into its predictions alongside real-time weather information.
WIFIRE was funded by a $ 2.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation, but that financial support has recently reached its scheduled completion date, requiring about $ 200,000 a year.

Image
Californian prison inmates fight fires receiving payments below the state minimum wage, bear the brunt of neoliberal austerity that reduced the health and disaster relief system. Photo: dailyprogress.com

To fight fires, the state of California incorporates inmates with whom it manages to reduce expenses by reducing the usual firefighting positions. For decades, inmates have played "a crucial role in containing the fires that have hit the state most frequently and fiercely in recent years," according to The New York Times .
For their efforts, these individuals have received up to $ 5.12 per day plus an additional $ 1 per hour, well below the state minimum wage, far less than the average income of a firefighter. Prisons are also not paid and it is obvious that regular firefighters struggle to get more firefighters hired.
Having more firefighters on the scene could have also helped fight the fire surge on various fronts, but it appears that the state's reliance on cheap and exploitative labor from prisons to contain wildfires has only contributed to this crisis. in progress.

https://medium.com/@misionverdad2012/ca ... 64e0d68bf8

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

Post Reply