The Long Ecological Revolution

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Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Skyrocket To $7 Trillion
Posted on August 29, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Many sites, including this one, criticized UK and EU energy subsidies last year as contradicting their climate change goals. Recall that after electricity prices spiked last year, many countries introduced broad-based subsidies, which is tantamount to supporting overconsumption.

Note the IEA earlier highlighted a big increases in fossil fuel subsidies, but they came up with a much lower total that the IMF:

Prices for fossil fuels were extraordinarily high and volatile in 2022 as energy markets grappled with the strains caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – in particular the sharp cuts in Russian natural gas deliveries to Europe. In many countries, though, the prices actually paid by consumers for these fuels remained at a much lower level. A range of policy interventions insulated consumers from ballooning prices, but with the adverse effect of keeping fossil fuels artificially competitive with low-emissions alternatives. In 2022, subsidies worldwide for fossil fuel consumption skyrocketed to more than USD 1 trillion, according to the IEA’s latest estimate, by far the largest annual value ever seen.

The IEA has been tracking fossil fuel subsidies for many years, examining instances where consumer prices are less than the market value of the fuel itself (adjusted for transport costs and VAT, as applicable). Our first estimates for 2022 show that subsidies for natural gas and electricity consumption more than doubled compared with 2021, while oil subsidies rose by around 85%. The subsidies are mainly concentrated in emerging market and developing economies, and more than half were in fossil-fuel exporting countries.

As the story below explains, the IMF included undercharging for fossil fuel externalities like global warming and pollution.

By Irina Slav, a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. Originally published at OilPrice

BP’s CEO Bernard Looney and even the most pro-transition governments believe investing in immediate energy needs, like oil and gas, is essential, leading to record subsidies in 2022.
The IMF report indicates that the majority of the $7 trillion in subsidies is “undercharging for global warming and local air pollution,” while climate think tank IISD criticizes the G20 for record-breaking state support for the fossil fuel industry.
The IMF suggests that full fossil fuel price reform could reduce global CO2 emissions significantly but faces challenges from governments wary of public backlash due to increased living costs.
This weekend, the chief executive of BP, Bernard Looney, said that the world needs to invest in more oil and gas production.

Just two years ago, such a statement from Looney would have caused a shock. The then-new CEO of the supermajor had wholeheartedly embraced the energy transition and had big plans for BP’s expansion into virtually every facet of it.

Things have changed. Now, Looney says, “We need to invest in today’s energy system responsibly,” while also keeping the transition going, per a Reuters report from Saturday.

He is by far not the only one with the belief that investment in securing the immediate energy needs of the global population is a smart investment. In fact, even the most pro-transition governments share this belief. And that’s why subsidies in oil and gas hit a record in 2022.

The news came from the International Monetary Fund, which said in a new report that global subsidies for oil and gas had hit an all-time high of $7 trillion in 2022. Of this, the fund said, 18% was direct subsidies. These direct subsidies represented a twofold increase over 2012.

The rest, however, the bulk of what the IMF called fossil fuel subsidies, was actually “undercharging for global warming and local air pollution,” and not actual government support for oil and gas.

Interestingly, the IMF report comes out just days after another organization, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a climate think tank, slammed the G20 for failing to end oil and gas subsidies despite pledges made at the COP26 two years ago.

The IISD said it had calculated that the world’s 20 largest economies had spent a record-breaking $1.4 trillion on state support for the coal, oil and gas industry in 2022. The author of the calculations, Tara Laan, said, “These figures are a stark reminder of the massive amounts of public money G20 governments continue to pour into fossil fuels–despite the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change.”

In fairness, the jump in direct oil and gas subsidies last year came in response to the energy crunch that began in Europe in late 2021, worsened sharply after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting sanctions, and later reverberated around the globe.

That was the year when even the German government—the poster boy of the energy transition—began subsidizing fuels to avoid an even worse standard of living crisis than it already had on its hands. All European governments did the same. That is how global subsidies for coal, oil, and gas soared to all-time highs.

The more interesting element of the IMF report, however, is the conclusion that some $5 trillion of the total it estimated for global hydrocarbon subsidies is in the form of unpaid compensation for harm done by hydrocarbon use.

According to the fund, it is the affordability of hydrocarbons that is the problem. And this affordability is supported by direct subsidies. The solution to this problem is price reform.

“Full fossil fuel price reform would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to an estimated 43 percent below baseline levels in 2030 (in line with keeping global warming to 1.5-2oC), while raising revenues worth 3.6 percent of global GDP and preventing 1.6 million local air pollution deaths per year.”

In other words, the IMF proposes that governments make hydrocarbons too expensive to use in order to remedy the harm they do to the environment and people, and to reach Paris Agreement temperature goals.

Indeed, the IMF believes all forms of subsidies for the industry need to go. “We estimate that scrapping explicit and implicit fossil-fuel subsidies would prevent 1.6 million premature deaths annually, raise government revenues by $4.4 trillion, and put emissions on track toward reaching global warming targets.”

Government revenues would certainly spike if all state support for oil, gas, and coal is removed. The trouble is that they would only spike for a short time before the effect of higher energy prices spreads everywhere and purchasing power drops off a cliff. That, after all, is why European governments subsidized fuels last year amid galloping inflation, soaring energy prices, and increasingly agitated populations.

It’s a tricky situation, and not everyone agrees that the solution lies in shrinking the supply of oil and gas by making them less affordable. In fact, some are of the opinion that the main object of governments’ attention should be the demand side of the energy equation.

The EU recently hosted a conference on what proponents call “degrowth” and what ultimately comes to people learning to make do with less of everything, including energy. There have been tentative calls for lower consumption in the U.S. and Canada, too, with the latest such call not really tentative at all, coming from the editorial board of the Globe and Mail.

“As long as people keep buying fossil fuels, climate-heating emissions will continue,” the G&M editorial board wrote. “The real solution is reducing demand – and that’s where governments may be able to make the biggest difference.”

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08 ... llion.html

The delusion of consumer demand ruling the markets one of capital's biggest scams. People can only buy what the capitalists produce and capitalists only produce that which maximizes their profits. Governments cannot control; greenhouse gas emissions because they are owned by the emitters. Control of these resources requires public ownership which requires expropriation without compensation which requires revolution.

Get a move on.

[blindpig]

“Aerial view of Xinzheng.” (Photo: Wikicommons)

Capitalist urbanization, climate change, and the need for sponge cities
Originally published: Liberation School on September 4, 2023 by Tina Landis (more by Liberation School) | (Posted Sep 06, 2023)

Tina Landis is the author of the book Climate Solutions Beyond Capitalism, for which Liberation School has a study and discussion guide. Additionally, we host a 4-part video course Landis taught on the relationship between climate change, capitalism, and socialism.

Introduction
According to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2009 report, 2008 was the first time in history that over 50 percent of the world’s population resided in cities instead of rural areas. Because of the different ways countries define cities, others date the qualitative shift to as recently as 2021 1. Regardless, across the spectrum it’s undisputed we now live in an “urban age” and, as such, transforming the relationship between cities and the natural world is essential for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The international capitalist institutions like the World Bank that are increasingly taking up the issue of cities and climate change can’t explain the various factors behind urbanization nor can they pose real solutions to its impact on or relationship to climate catastrophes. Cities consume 78 percent of the world’s energy resources and produce 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2022 UN Habitat report 2. Under the capitalist model, urban planning lacks a holistic approach, leaving human well being and ecological needs as an afterthought, which will continue to have a degenerative effect on the environment and global climate.

Although Marx and Engels lived during a time in which capitalist urbanization was a nascent phenomenon concentrated mostly in some European cities, like Manchester, the English city about which Friedrich Engels wrote his first and classic book, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Engels demonstrates how the “great town” of Manchester, the first major manufacturing center in England, was great only for capitalist profits. The concentration of capital required for the invention and adoption of machinery outproduced independent handicraft and agricultural production, forcing both into the industrial proletariat of the city. There, they had to work for the capitalists, whose wages were so low they could, if they were lucky, live in overcrowded houses and neighborhoods just outside the city limits. Because the city was produced chaotically for capitalist profits, no attention was given to accompanying environmental impacts 3. As the masses were driven from their land into the urban factories, the ancestral ties to the land and ecological knowledge of how to live sustainably on that land was lost.

It was not the “industrial revolution” that produced the new sources of power needed for machinery, but the need for new sources of power that produced the industrial revolution. For the machinery required more powerful and reliable sources of energy than wind or the water wheel, animals or humans could provide. They were replaced at first by coal and the steam engine, “whose power was entirely under man’s control, that was mobile and a means of locomotion, that was urban and not, like the water wheel, rural, that permitted production to be concentrated in towns” 4. Capital was thus not bound to any particular place and free to move and establish new “great towns” wherever they could accumulate the greatest profits, and with this came increasing detrimental effects on people and the planet.

Today’s crisis
We see the result of centuries of unfettered capitalist development in the climate crisis today. Atmospheric rivers, bomb cyclones, hurricanes, heat waves, and drought are all becoming more frequent and extreme with climate change. This summer, with the onset of El Nino, these extremes are amplifying 5.

The first week of July 2023 was the hottest week on Earth ever recorded, with one-third of the United States under excessive-heat advisories. Sweltering heat domes brought triple-digit temperatures across the northern hemisphere from the U.S. to Europe and Asia, while countries in South America experienced record-high temperatures during their winter months 6. Annually, around 1,500 people die of heat-related deaths in the U.S. States, a count that is likely low since many extreme-heat deaths aren’t documented as such. As of early August, extreme heat in the United States had killed at least 147 people in just five counties in 2023.

As air and water temperatures increase globally, the frequency of extreme weather increases. In the 1980s, billion-dollar disasters occurred every 60 to 120 days on average. In the last decade, they have occurred every 20 to 30 days 7. Intensifying extreme weather includes more extreme flooding and extreme drought, as the air and water currents globally are becoming destabilized due to the increasing heat in the atmosphere.

Cities were, generally speaking, built near rivers or coastlines. Often, wetlands and floodplains were drained and blockaded with dams and levees to direct water away from population centers. As flooding and drought increase with climate change, these systems are creating even more detrimental conditions in the short and long term.

The U.S. has experienced an urban flooding event every two to three days for the past 25 years, costing $850 billion since 2000. Heavier rains are causing flooding in many parts of the globe, and the eastern U.S. has seen a 70 percent increase in heavy rain events annually 8. Sea level rise also contributes to flooding events. While the 6.5-inch increase in sea level in the United States may seem minimal, this increase impedes gravity-fed drainage from working during storms and high tides, bringing water into the streets.

Capitalist cities and the surrounding urban sprawl are major contributors to climate change and environmental degradation. The majority of the world’s cities today were built for profit and speculation in mind, with little to no consideration given to negative impacts on either ecology or humanity. They were premised on the idea that nature could be controlled and dominated instead of the proven conception that construction should work collaboratively with natural cycles. Vast hardscapes—sidewalks, roads, parking lots, buildings—and gray infrastructure that channels water away as it falls, places these urban centers at odds with biodiversity and the natural cycling of water through the landscape. Green spaces that are created within urban environments are often highly managed areas separate from the rest of the city, filled with non-native ornamental plants and thirsty grasses that require intensive irrigation, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, while providing little to no benefit to native species of birds, insects, and others.

With climate change, the existing city-structures are becoming increasingly disastrous for all residents. The heat island effect that adds more warming to the atmosphere has accelerated deadly implications as the climate warms, making heat waves and droughts even more severe. Hardscapes, such as pavement, buildings, and rooftops, as well as bare earth, absorb solar radiation and continue to radiate heat long after the sun has set. Vehicles, air conditioning units, buildings, and industrial facilities also heat the atmosphere.

The heat island effect results in daytime temperatures in urban areas to be 1-7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than temperatures in outlying areas, and nighttime temperatures about 2 to 5 degrees higher 9.

What can be done? China leads the way
To cool and rebalance the climate, we need to not only eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, but also reduce ecological impacts and restore what has been lost.

Just 40 percent tree cover in a city can reduce temperatures by up to 9 degrees F 10. Trees and other vegetation not only provide shade from the sun but reduce surrounding air temperatures. Plant leaves are like miniature solar panels and transform solar radiation into sugars and oxygen. Unlike human made structures, plants do not add heat to the surrounding atmosphere; they actually cool the atmosphere when they get hot by releasing water vapor

Water also has a cooling effect on the surroundings due to evaporation. When water bodies are integrated within the landscape they not only cool air temperatures, but also supply hydration to surrounding soil and vegetation, and recharge groundwater. Global heat dynamics regulated by water are between 75-95 percent, so creating more space for water throughout landscapes and urban areas is a key climate change mitigation tool.

Wetlands, floodplains, and bioswales act as flood prevention giving water space to flow and be absorbed into the ground when heavy rains fall, unlike concrete structures that increase the power of water and cause flooding downstream or down the coast from where these structures exist. By allowing water to pool within the landscape, rather than channeling it away into storm drains, rivers and oceans as it falls, makes water available during times of drought. Gray infrastructure flood control mechanisms often fail, with greater frequently in the U.S., which received a “D” on its Infrastructure Report Card from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021.

These increasing challenges from climate change are happening globally, but one country in particular is taking comprehensive action to address how urban areas impact the environment and how climate impacts are demanding more resilience in urban planning.

China is one of the countries most severely impacted by floods globally due to geographic and environmental conditions, as well as experiencing increasing droughts and heat waves. To minimize the impacts of climate change, China has implemented their sponge cIty model that aims to retrofit and create 30 cities by 2030 as climate resilient population centers. At a cost of $1 trillion, or around $33.3 billion each, transforming these cities will save billions in annual flood recovery costs and save thousands of lives 11. For comparison, the U.S. government spends $1 trillion annually just on military expenditures. Imagine what we could accomplish if those funds went to things like sponge cities that improve our lives and the health of the planet!

Sponge cities utilize green infrastructure so that surfaces act as a sponge absorbing water. They integrate space for water to collect such as wetlands and bioswales, create vegetative cover and trees throughout including green roofs and vegetation integrated into building structures, and porous pavement and roads so water can infiltrate soil and catchments underneath to be available during dry times. These cities have areas integrated throughout that have a dual purpose, such as parks adjacent to water bodies that can be enjoyed in dry times, which then act as wetland areas during heavy rains. These sponge cities can deal with four times the amount of rainwater than a normal city, reducing flooding by 50 percent. These cities, when complete, can absorb and reuse 70 percent of rainfall.

How the sponge city movement emerged
China, over the past few decades, has seen major achievements in development. From a mainly agrarian society at the time of the 1949 revolution, China has seen the rapid industrial growth and development of urban centers and has made great achievements in overcoming the legacy underdevelopment imposed by colonial and imperialist powers that the country was plagued with for centuries. At the time of the revolution, extreme poverty, floods and famine plagued the country.

Since that time, China has made major advances, improving the quality of life of the population. In 2020, China eradicated the last vestiges of extreme poverty through the mobilization of Communist Party cadres to the countryside to investigate the needs of the people and bring services and economic opportunities to those most in need 12. This process which began in 1949 has lifted 850 million out of dire poverty, an unparalleled achievement for humanity.

Chinese culture has historically had a deep connection with nature and connection to ancestral lands. Through rapid development and misunderstanding of the environmental impacts, Chinese cities, as with most cities of the world, have created a separation of the people from nature.

Renowned ecologist and landscape architect, Kongjian Yu, has been the driving force behind the sponge city movement within China and globally, taking inspiration from traditional Chinese irrigation systems 13. Yu recognized the shortcomings of China’s development path and spearheaded a new way of looking at cities—“big feet” versus “little feet” aesthetics and negative planning 14.

Little feet aesthetics references the debilitating foot binding practices of imperial China that viewed unnaturally small feet on women as beautiful. Yu compares this practice to modern China’s urban development, which often mimics western architecture and imperial Chinese styles with grand plaza and parks that do not serve the general population or ecological needs. These urban parks integrate exotic plants requiring intense irrigation and other inputs with little to no ecological or human benefits.

Yu instead promotes big feet aesthetics, creating green spaces throughout cities using native plants for all populations to interact with in their daily lives that integrate urban areas into the ecosystem rather than inserting a manufactured version of nature for aesthetics only. His argument for big feet aesthetics is to bring people and nature back into coexistence for the well-being of all, which also improves biodiversity and air and water quality, and cools air temperatures. These methods also alleviate flooding and drought, which are increasing with climate change.

Using big-feet aesthetics, Yu has led the eco-city and sponge city movements in China and leads similar projects across the globe. He first made his appeals to local leaders within China and later won over President Xi Jinping to the need to marry development with ecological sustainability. The need to address environmental impacts received broad support within China’s Communist Party which included the goal of building an ecological civilization in their constitution in 2012 15. Sponge cities are one of many tools that China is utilizing to achieve that goal 16.

How sponge cities aid in climate change mitigation and adaptation
Yu’s promotion of eco-cities and sponge cities stems from the concept of negative planning, which has its roots in the early Chinese practice of feng-shui and focuses on urban growth based on ecological infrastructure. Rather than a city with green space included here and there, Yu’s eco-city model looks more like a natural area with urban infrastructure woven in.

It is crucial with increasing droughts and floods for urban areas to allow space for water to sit rather than trying to drain it away, which in the end gives water more power and creates flooding in other areas. Slow water systems are being embraced globally as populations experience the negative impacts of gray infrastructure and rains become more intense and erratic.

While water consumption and waste must also be addressed, particularly regarding industrial agriculture and lawns—the single most irrigated crop in the United States—we must also shift away from gray infrastructure to green. Damming of rivers and draining of floodplains and wetlands, not only decimate river ecosystems and harm biodiversity, but inhibit the recharging of groundwater resources. Aquifers are being drained at an alarming rate and as the world warms, water resources are becoming scarcer 17.

Urban development, the creation of hardscapes, and the damming of rivers only continues this trend of a drying landscape, blocking natural water cycling that replenishes groundwater and supports biodiversity.

Yu’s projects aim to work with nature instead of against it, shifting past practices of creating parks as ornamental spaces to ones that mimic wild landscapes filled with native plant species. The use of native plants is crucial to conserve water resources in dry times by greatly reducing or eliminating the need for irrigation and creating a more climate resilient system. Birds, insects and other wildlife benefit from native plant species for food and shelter, increasing overall biodiversity, which in turn increases ecosystem resilience.

A few examples of how detrimental the introduction of non-native plants can be are the example of California and Hawaii. The recent wildfires in Maui were not fueled solely by climate change-induced drought, but also due to the introduction of non-native grasses for livestock feed that dry out quickly and become tinder during drier months 18. The same is true in California, where early colonizers replaced perennial grasses (which have deep roots and stay green even through the dry season) with annual grasses for livestock feed, which die in early summer, drying out soil and greatly increasing drought and fire risk 19.

The vegetation and bodies of water integrated throughout sponge cities also addresses the heat island effect, lowers air temperatures, and improves air and water quality.

If left to thrive, vegetation captures carbon from the atmosphere aiding in climate change mitigation. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and transpire water vapor and microbes that seed cloud formation and maintain a healthy, balanced small water cycle bringing moderate rainfall rather than deluges. Trees also transpire chemicals that are beneficial to human health, immunity, mental health, and stress reduction. They also act as windbreaks and shelter for animals during storms.

Conclusion
Sponge cities are a crucial tool to address climate change and minimize the negative impacts of urban areas on the overall health of the planet and its inhabitants. Other nature-based solutions such as reforestation of native tree species, a return to agro-ecological methods for food production, and restoration of marine habitats are also key to our survival. None of these solutions will be profitable for corporations to implement, which is why there is a lack of widespread implementation of sponge cities outside of communist China. Only under a socialist planned economy, like that of China, can real solutions to climate change be implemented on a mass scale, as resources are directed to projects not according to the needs of profit, but to those of humanity and the planet.

References
1.↩ United Nations Population Fund, Annual Report 2008 (New York: UNFP, 2009), 20. Available here; Megha Mukim and Mark Roberts (Eds.), Thriving: Making Cities Green, Resilient, and Inclusive in a Changing Climate (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2023), 75. Available here.
2.↩ Nicola Tollin, James Vener, Maria Pizzorni, et. al. (2022). Urban Climate Action: The Urban Content of the NCDs: Global Review 2022 (Nairobi: United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2022), 6. Available here.
3.↩ Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1845/2009). Available here.
4.↩ Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Vol. 1): A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York: International Publishers, 1867/1967), 361.
5.↩ Tina Landis, “Atmospheric Rivers, Weather Whiplash and the Class Struggle,” Liberation News, 14 January 2023. Available here; Evan Branan and Tina Landis, “Heat Waves Bake the World: Workers Don’t Have to Bear the Brunt,” Liberation News, 13 July 2023. Available here.
6.↩ Ayesha Tandon, “Record-Breaking 2023 Heat Events Are ‘Not Rare Anymore’ Due to Climate Change,” Carbon Brief, 25 July 2023. Available here.
7.↩ Climate Matters, “Billion-Dollar Disasters in 2022,” Climate Central, 11 October 2022. Available here.
8.↩ Flood Defenders, “America’s Most Frequent and Expensive Disaster.” Available here.
9.↩ Sara Dennis, “Heat Island Effect,” Moody Engineering, 28 September 2022. Available here.
10.↩ Tamara Iungman, Marta Cirach, Federica Marando, et. al. “Cooling Cities Through Urban Green Infrastructure: A Health Impact Assessment of European Cities,” The Lancet 401, no. 1076 (2023): 577-589.
11.↩ Tom Carroll, Sponge Cities: A Solarpunk Future by 2030,” Freethink, 28 April 2022. Available here.
12.↩ Tings Chak, Li Jianhua, and Lilian Zhang, “Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China,” Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, 23 July 2021. Available here.
13.↩ See, for example, Xu Tao, Yu Kongjian, Li Dihua, and Miao Wang, “Assessment and Impact Factor Analysis on Stormwater Regulation and Storage Capacity of Urban Green Space in China and Abroad,” China City Planning Review 32, no. 1 (2023): 6-16; Kongian’s website is here.
14.↩ Kongjian Yu, Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City(New York: Terreform, 2018).
15.↩ The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, “Document: Responding to Climate Change: China’s Policies and Actions,” China Daily, 28 October 2021. Available here.
16.↩ Ken Hammond, “China’s Environmental Problems: Beyond the Propaganda,” Liberation School, 08 December 2020. Available here.
17.↩ Tina Landis, “Colorado River Water Deal: A Bandaid or Real Progress?” Liberation News, 27 May 2023. Available here.
18.↩ Simon Romero and Serge F. Kovaleski, “How Invasive Plants Caused the Maui Fires to Rage,” The New York Times, 15 August 2023. Available here.
19.↩ Masanobu Fukuoka, Sowing Seeds in the Desert: Natural Farming, Global Restoration, and Ultimate Food Security (Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012).

https://mronline.org/2023/09/06/capital ... ge-cities/

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‘There is nothing green about economic growth in high-income countries’
September 5, 2023

Lancet study finds ‘green growth’ policies fall far short of what’s needed to prevent dangerous change



Supposedly “decoupled” CO2 emission reductions in 11 rich countries fall far short of what’s needed to limit warming to 1.5°C or even below 2°C as required by the Paris Agreement. As Jefim Vogel, co-author of new research published in The Lancet Planetary Health, says, “There is nothing green about economic growth in high-income countries.”

Politicians and media have been celebrating recent decoupling achievements of high-income countries as “green growth” — claiming this could reconcile economic growth with climate targets. To investigate this claim, the new study compared carbon emission reductions in these countries with the reductions required under the Paris Agreement.

Vogel, from the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, says:

“It is a recipe for climate breakdown and further climate injustice. Calling such highly insufficient emission reductions ‘green growth’ is misleading, it is essentially greenwashing. For growth to be legitimately considered ‘green,’ it must be consistent with the climate targets and fairness principles of the Paris Agreement — but high-income countries have not achieved anything close to this, and are highly unlikely to achieve it in the future.

“Continued economic growth in high-income countries is at odds with the twin goal of averting catastrophic climate breakdown and upholding fairness principles that protect development prospects in lower-income countries. In other words, further economic growth in high-income countries is harmful, dangerous, and unjust.”

The study identified 11 high-income countries that achieved “absolute decoupling” (defined as decreasing CO2 emissions alongside increasing GDP) between 2013 and 2019, which were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

For each country, it compares “business-as-usual” future emission reduction rates to the “Paris-compliant” rates needed to comply with the country’s “fair-share” (or population-proportionate share) of the respective global carbon budget that must not be exceeded if we are to limit global warming to 1.5°C (the aspirational Paris target) or even just to 1.7°C (reflecting the lower-ambition Paris target of “well below 2°C”).

None of the high-income countries who have “decoupled” emissions from growth have achieved emission reductions anywhere near fast enough to be Paris-compliant. At current rates, these countries would on average take over 200 years to get their emissions close to zero, and would emit more than 27 times their fair share of the global carbon budget for 1.5°C.

The scale of the gap between achieved and Paris-compliant emission reductions is dramatic. Among the 11 high-income countries examined, emission reductions between 2013 and 2019 were on average just 1.6% per year. By contrast, reduction rates of 30% per year are needed by 2025 for countries to comply with their fair-shares of the global carbon budget for 1.5°C.

Countries varied in how far they fell short from the reductions required to stay within their 1.5°C fair-shares. However, even the best-performing country, the United Kingdom, would need to reduce its emissions five times faster by 2025 (from its 2013–2019 average of 3.1% per year to 16% per year by 2025).

Other countries would need even greater accelerations of their emission reductions — with Belgium, Australia, Austria, Canada, and Germany needing to reduce their emissions more than 30 times faster than they did between 2013 and 2019 under absolute decoupling.

Even a less ambitious and more dangerous target of limiting global warming to 1.7°C, with the same fairness requirements, would require average annual emission reductions by 2025 to be eight times faster than what was achieved between 2013 and 2019. Therefore, the authors argue that for most high-income countries, even this less ambitious target appears out of reach within a growth-oriented approach.

In light of their findings, the authors say that attempts to pursue “green growth” in high-income countries will not deliver the emission reductions required to meet the climate targets and fairness principles of the Paris Agreement, and argue that a “post-growth” approach is needed instead.

Co-author Jason Hickel, from the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, explains:

“The pursuit of economic growth in high-income countries makes it virtually impossible to achieve the required emission reductions. If high-income countries are to meet their Paris obligations, they should pursue post-growth approaches: scale down energy-intensive and less-necessary forms of production, reduce the consumption of the rich, shift from private cars to public transit. This reduces energy demand and enables us to decarbonize much faster.

“We also need to accelerate renewable energy deployment and efficiency improvements with public financing. Post-growth can help by liberating productive capacities — factories, labor, materials — that can be remobilized to achieve urgent social and ecological goals. Policies like a green job guarantee can be used for this, ending unemployment and ensuring adequate livelihoods for all. We should focus the economy on what is required for well-being, fairness, and ecological sustainability.

“This year’s devastating climate extremes are a dire warning of where we are headed. If we are to prevent even more catastrophic climate breakdown, high-income countries urgently need to pursue post-growth approaches that slash emissions while enhancing well-being and fairness.”

Vogel adds:

“Moving away from economic growth towards post-growth is fundamentally different from a recession, it does not entail hardship or loss of livelihoods. Post-growth can secure and improve livelihoods and well-being without economic growth, through policies such as a public job guarantee, worktime reduction, living wages, a minimum income guarantee, and universal access to affordable housing and quality public services.”

Unlike high-income countries, lower-income nations have lower emissions per capita, making it more achievable for them to stay within their carbon budget fair-shares, even while increasing their production and consumption for human development objectives. With sufficient access to finance and technology, and a development strategy focused on human needs, lower-income countries should be able to stay within their carbon budgets fair-shares while increasing production and consumption to levels needed to achieve decent living standards for all.

The study does not include emissions from agriculture, forestry, and land use, nor emissions from international aviation and shipping. If included, high-income countries would need to reduce their emissions even faster to comply with the Paris Agreement.

They also note that their approach of distributing “fair-shares” of the remaining global carbon budget to countries in proportion to their population size should be considered a minimum interpretation of the fairness principles set out in the Paris Agreement, because this approach does not directly account for historical inequality in emissions (which the authors argue must be compensated in other ways).

Stronger interpretations of fairness would however result in smaller carbon budget shares for high-income countries, and thus require even faster emission reductions, making growth-based approaches even more unsuitable, and putting green growth even further out of reach.

(Adapted from materials provided by The Lancet Planetary Health.)

Excerpts from
IS GREEN GROWTH HAPPENING?
An empirical analysis of achieved versus Paris-compliant CO2–GDP decoupling in high-income countries
by Jefim Vogel and Jason Hickel
The Lancet Planetary Health, September 2023
Background: Scientists have raised concerns about whether high-income countries, with their high per-capita CO2 emissions, can decarbonize fast enough to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement if they continue to pursue aggregate economic growth. Over the past decade, some countries have reduced their CO2 emissions while increasing their gross domestic product (absolute decoupling). Politicians and media have hailed this as green growth. In this empirical study, we aimed to assess whether these achievements are consistent with the Paris Agreement, and whether Paris-compliant decoupling is within reach.

Methods: We developed and implemented a novel approach to assess whether decoupling achievements in high-income countries are consistent with the Paris climate and equity goals. We identified 11 high-income countries that achieved absolute decoupling between 2013 and 2019. We assessed the achieved consumption-based CO2 emission reductions and decoupling rates of these countries against Paris-compliant rates, defined here as rates consistent with national fair-shares of the remaining global carbon budgets for a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1·5°C or 1·7°C (representing the lower [1·5°C] and upper [well below 2°C] bounds of the Paris target).

Findings: The emission reductions that high-income countries achieved through absolute decoupling fall far short of Paris-compliant rates. At the achieved rates, these countries would on average take more than 220 years to reduce their emissions by 95%, emitting 27 times their remaining 1·5°C fair-shares in the process. To meet their 1·5°C fair-shares alongside continued economic growth, decoupling rates would on average need to increase by a factor of ten by 2025.

Interpretation: The decoupling rates achieved in high-income countries are inadequate for meeting the climate and equity commitments of the Paris Agreement and cannot legitimately be considered green. If green is to be consistent with the Paris Agreement, then high-income countries have not achieved green growth, and are very unlikely to be able to achieve it in the future. To achieve Paris-compliant emission reductions, high-income countries will need to pursue post-growth demand-reduction strategies, reorienting the economy towards sufficiency, equity, and human wellbeing, while also accelerating technological change and efficiency improvements.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... countries/

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RICH COUNTRIES POLLUTE AND LATIN AMERICA PAYS THE PIPER
Sep 5, 2023 , 12:56 p.m.


The situation is further complicated when, to the effects of climate change, food insecurity, poverty and homelessness are added (Photo: File)

While the richest and most industrialized countries pollute and continue not meeting their environmental goals, those of Latin America face the consequences of climate change in their most vulnerable regions.

Although the region is responsible for only 8% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, its ecosystems are among the most sensitive to the effects of climate change, Bloomberg notes .

To this we must add that the bad practices of the agricultural sector put more pressure for the conservation of the territories, at the same time that the effects of such a situation would already be reflected in the productivity of the different industries. The cost of inputs, raw materials and energy have increased, which affects the entire supply chain.

The situation is complicated when, to the effects of climate change, food insecurity, impoverishment and lack of housing are added. The media collects from the World Bank that this year some 5.8 million people could fall into extreme poverty as a result of climate change and in 2050 some 17 million could be displaced by these impacts.

VULNERABILITIES OF THE REGION
*The fact that Latin America and the Caribbean are surrounded by the Pacific and Atlantic oceans puts them at risk.
*Coastal cities such as Rio de Janeiro are exposed to hurricanes, while cities in the Andes mountains could experience consequences from flooding and landslides.
*Other territories located in places where different ecosystems existed before, such as wetlands, are at high risk of landslides. Bogotá or Mexico City could be at risk.
EFFECTS
*Climate-related events and their impacts left more than 312,000 dead in Latin America and the Caribbean and more than 277 million people affected between 1998 and 2020 alone, according to figures released by the UN.
*In Latin America and the Caribbean, the agricultural sector may suffer the greatest consequences from the blow of climate change. Droughts and floods will impact crops and affect food security, which could lead to changes in the type of food grown due to increased temperatures.

https://misionverdad.com/los-paises-ric ... atos-rotos

Google Translator

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Another ruling class attack on the environment: this time, wetlands
Tina Landis September 5, 2023

Tina Landis is the author of the book Climate Solutions Beyond Capitalism.

Following on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA in May, the Biden administration recently approved an amendment that weakens Clean Water Act protections for wetlands. The EPA regulation language on wetlands was amended — while excluding the standard public review process — with EPA administrator Michael Regan stating there was “no alternative” due to the court’s ruling.

Language in the Clean Water Act will now designate wetlands under EPA protection as those with a “continuous surface connection” to larger, regulated bodies of water. This amendment will impact over 50% of wetlands in the United States – nearly 118 million acres — that do not have year-round surface waters connecting to rivers, lakes or oceans, even where they are connected through underground waters.

In Sackett, the court sided with an Idaho couple who claimed the EPA impeded their private property rights by blocking them from filling in a wetland area on their property. Like many rulings over the past few years, the politicized, right-wing court has ruled against what is beneficial to the majority and to long-term sustainability, such as their rulings on abortion rights, affirmative action, the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions and more.

Despite claims from the Biden administration and the EPA that their hands are tied, the Sackett ruling — along with any other Supreme Court rulings — could be overturned by Congress if the political will existed to do so. While many individual states could pass their own protections for wetlands that supersede the EPA regulations, 20 U.S. states have statutes in place that prohibit them from having regulations that are more stringent than federal regulations. Environmental organizations, Native tribes and others are opposing the Supreme Court ruling and EPA regulation change, and there are likely to be lawsuits against this rollback of wetland protections.

Why wetlands are important

More than 50% of U.S. wetlands have been destroyed since colonization began. Why does this matter? Who wants a swamp in their backyard anyway?

Developers and agricultural interests have led the charge of draining, filling in and paving over wetland areas, which are everything from ephemeral vernal pools, swamps, bogs, and coastal salt marshes, to waterlogged floodplains around rivers and lakes. Many wetlands disappear above ground during dry times and re-emerge during rainy periods. All wetlands are crucial to flood prevention and drought, acting as sponges for rainfall and holding water above or below ground during dry times to continue feeding plant life. Just one acre of wetland can store over one million gallons of flood waters.

Wetlands also act as the kidneys of the earth, slowing water and filtering out pollutants, preventing fertilizer run-off from reaching larger water bodies and locking chemical pollutants into the soil. They are also crucial wildlife habitats, supporting some of the densest biodiversity on the planet and accounting for 40% of the planet’s biodiversity. Of the 12 million waterfowl that inhabit the United States, two-thirds reproduce in midwestern wetlands. Wetlands also play a crucial role in the life cycle of 70% of commercially harvested fish and shellfish in the country.

As our climate continues to warm and extreme weather, wildfires and droughts worsen, we must use every tool at hand to slow and eventually reverse the crisis if humanity is to survive. Wetlands are a key climate change mitigation tool. Coastal wetlands protect coasts from storm surge, diminish the power of waves and absorb rising seas. They also lock in carbon drawn from the atmosphere — about one-third of carbon globally is stored in wetlands — which is then released back into the atmosphere when these habitats are drained or disrupted. Coastal wetlands sequester carbon at a rate 55 times faster than tropical rainforests. Maintaining and restoring wetlands throughout the landscape, helps cool surrounding air temperatures and the overall climate and reduces wildfire risk.

United States heading in the wrong direction

Wetlands have been recognized by the United Nations Environmental Program as vital to our survival. Head of UNEP’s Marine and Freshwater Branch Leticia Carvalho stated, “In line with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, we must stop policies and subsidies that incentivize deforestation and wetlands degradation from source to sea and promote their urgent restoration.”

Many countries are making efforts to restore and protect their wetlands, including China’s extensive sponge city program, Argentina’s protections of their peatlands – a type of wetland and a major carbon sink — and the UK’s Great North Bog restoration project.

The environmental protections that were won in the United States in the 1970s through a people’s movement against pollution and environmental degradation have been slowly whittled away, beginning with the massive defunding of the EPA under Reagan. Most recently, West Virginia v. EPA further reduced the power of the agency by blocking their ability to regulate climate-warming carbon emissions, followed by the Biden administration’s weakening of National Environmental Policy Act procedures by curtailing the environmental review process for federally-funded projects or those on federal land.

The evisceration of wetland protections is the latest in these attacks. This is the trajectory of capital in the absence of a mass, sustained people’s movement demanding otherwise. Without that mass public pressure, the courts and government side with big business and private property interests over rational, long-term planning for the wellbeing of humanity.

Socialism does the opposite through a planned economy that puts resources toward what is most needed by society and for long-term environmental sustainability. The socialist worker-led government and decision making bodies are made up of experts in their field, elected through a democratic participatory process at the grassroots level. Under socialism, it’s workers with training in science and ecology who make decisions on what environmental protections and initiatives are taken, not millionaire career politicians and justices.

The unelected, undemocratic Supreme Court — which lacks the knowledge to make decisions on what’s best for the environment — should be abolished along with the capitalist system that allows this grouping of millionaire justices to determine our fate.


The prairie pothole region of the Upper Midwest, spanning 780,000 square kilometers, is vital for aquifer recharge and as a breeding ground for waterfowl. Public domain.

https://www.liberationnews.org/another- ... rationnews

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Global Biodiversity Panel Warns Humans’ Introduction of Invasive Species Threatens Nature, Food Security
Posted on September 5, 2023 by Yves Smith

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 49 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what we’ve accomplished in the last year,, and our current goal, strengthening our IT infrastructure.

Yves here. Readers were worrying over the last few days about the visible decline of birds in some of the areas in which they live. This article warns of one threat to the biosphere, that of invasive species. And that’s hardly the only threat to diversity of birds and beasts.

By Julia Conley, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams


As wildfires burned through 3,200 acres of land on the Hawaiian island of Maui earlier this month, ultimately killing at least 115 people and destroying the city of Lahaina, some observers noted that the dry grasses that colonial occupiers introduced in the place of Hawaii’s natural forests made the fires spread faster than they would have if the land had been left intact.

On Monday, a study resulting from nearly five years of research by experts from 49 countries revealed how the grasses are among thousands of harmful invasive alien species that have been introduced by human activities and placed communities across the globe at risk, with the human-driven climate emergency often exacerbating the negative impact of invasive plant and animal species.

The report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), titled the Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and Their Control, catalogues more than 3,500 harmful invasive species that are already “seriously threatening nature, nature’s contributions to people, and good quality of life,” with Indigenous communities facing the greatest threats.

The harmful invasive species are among 37,000 alien species that have been introduced by human activities such as colonization and trade, and that number is “now rising at an unprecedented rate,” according to IPBES, making it likely that the species’ harms will grow.



“The future threat from invasive alien species is a major concern,” said Prof. Helen Roy, co-chair of the assessment and a researcher at the U.K. Center for Ecology & Hydrology. “Thirty-seven percent of the 37,000 alien species known today have been reported since 1970—largely caused by rising levels of global trade and human travel. Under ‘business-as-usual’ conditions, we project that total numbers of alien species will continue to increase in this way.”

“But business-as-usual is actually unlikely,” continues Roy. “With so many major drivers of change predicted to worsen, it is expected that the increase of invasive alien species and their negative impacts, are likely to be significantly greater. The accelerating global economy, intensified and expanded land- and sea-use change, as well as demographic changes are likely to lead to increases in invasive alien species worldwide… Climate change will make the situation even worse.”

The report, which includes “very significant contributions from Indigenous peoples and local communities, making it the most comprehensive assessment ever carried out of invasive alien species around the world,” found that nearly 80% of the documented impacts of invasive alien species on nature’s contributions to people are negative, particularly as food supplies are damaged. The Caribbean false mussel, which researchers believe traveled from its native South and Central America to India via ships, has damaged local fisheries while the European shore crab has been blamed for the collapse of shellfish industries in New England.

In addition to damaging people’s livelihoods, invasive species such as the Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegyptii—types of mosquitoes—can spread diseases such as malaria, Zika, and West Nile virus.

The global economic cost of invasive alien species has quadrupled every decade since 1970, exceeding $423 billion in 2019.

Invasive species are also a major driver of the majority of global plant and animal extinctions, and “the only driver in 16%” of extinctions recorded by IPBES.

“At least 218 invasive alien species have been responsible for more than 1,200 local extinctions,” said Prof. Anibal Pauchard, co-chair of the study and an investigator at the University of Concepción’s Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity. “In fact, 85% of the impacts of biological invasions on native species are negative.”



For example, Pacific oysters—intentionally introduced in the North Sea in the 1960s to compensate for the loss of Indigenous oysters and support commercial fisheries—have overtaken mussel beds in the region, affecting the seabirds that feed on mussels and microorganisms living between them.

The researchers emphasized that having introduced invasive alien species to ecosystems around the world, humans have the power to mitigate the damage done by the species.

The report suggests prevention measures such as border biosecurity and import controls, which have been effective in reducing the spread of the brown marmorated stink bug in Australasia, and public awareness campaigns such as “Check, Clean, and Dry” in the U.K., which encourages people to check their boating equipment for aquatic animals or plants before leaving the water, clean equipment thoroughly, and dry it before using it again.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), said the report fills “knowledge gaps” that remain around invasive species, as the effects of over-exploitation, climate change, and pollution on biodiversity are relatively well-understood.

“By providing critical information on trends in invasive species and policy tools to address them, this report can provide a springboard to concrete action on invasive species,” said Andersen. “I ask all decision-makers to use this report’s recommendations as a basis to act on this growing threat to biodiversity and human well-being.”

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09 ... urity.html

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So far, 2023 is the second hottest year on record, behind 2016, according to Copernicus [File: Fethi Belaid/AFP]


Originally published: Al Jazeera on September 6, 2023 (more by Al Jazeera) (Posted Sep 08, 2023)

Climate Change, Environment, StrategyGlobalNewswireEuropean Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
“Climate breakdown has begun”, the United Nations chief has warned as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that the world went through its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer on record.

The WMO, citing data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), said on Wednesday that last month was the the hottest August on record “by a large margin” and the second hottest ever month after July 2023.

August is estimated to have been about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial average. It also saw the highest global monthly average sea surface temperature on record, nearly 21C (69.8F).

“The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement after the report’s release.

According to C3S, so far, 2023 is the second hottest year on record behind 2016.

Scientists blame ever-warming human-caused climate change on the burning of coal, oil and natural gas with an extra push from a natural phenomenon El Nino, which is a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide.

Usually, an El Nino, which started earlier this year, adds extra heat to global temperatures but more so in its second year.

“What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” C3S’s Climate Change Service Director Carlo Buontempo said.

Copernicus, a division of the EU’s space programme, has records going back to 1940, but in the United Kingdom and the United States, global records go back to the mid-1800s and those weather and science agencies are expected to soon report that the summer was a record-breaker.

Scientists have used tree rings, ice cores and other proxies to estimate that temperatures are now warmer than they have been in about 120,000 years. The world has been warmer before, but that was prior to human civilisation, seas were much higher and the poles were not icy.

So far, daily September temperatures are higher than what has been recorded before for this time of year, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer.

While the world’s air and oceans were setting heat records, Antarctica continued to set records for low amounts of sea ice, the WMO said.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/08/un-anno ... mmer-heat/


The bombing of Nagasaki as seen from the town of Koyagi, about 13 km south, taken 15 minutes after the bomb exploded. In the foreground, life seemingly went on unaffected. (Wikipedia)


Originally published: Socialist Action on September 5, 2023 by Charlie WIlson (more by Socialist Action) (Posted Sep 09, 2023)

The recent article Socialism and Ecological Survival in Monthly Review by John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clarke makes three essential points about the past and future of the climate movement, is well worth reading in full and poses some crucial strategic questions that we have to confront and work through in praxis. Direct quotations from the article are in italics.

1. The origin of the ecological movement was inextricably combined with that of the peace movement
Both were at the beginning of the Anthropocene era in the 1950s. Rachel Carson’s publication of “Silent Spring” in 1962 was predated by 8 years by the reaction to the U.S. thermonuclear test at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. Due to scientific error, a test intended to have a yield of six megatons hadtwo and a half times as much (and a thousand times the power of bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

The resulting explosion blewten million metric tons of radiated coral into a mushroom cloud 100,000 feet high and seventy-five miles wide,releasingradioactive fallout across 11,000 square kilometres, leaving radioactive tracesacross the whole planet. Global alarm was generated when the crew of a Japanese fishing boat developed radiation sickness after being coated in fallout while supposedly well outside the danger zone.

Although the Eisenhower administration tried to cover this up for almost a year, “alarmed scientists immediately began to research the effects of radioactive fallout and how it was distributed by air, water, and living organisms throughout the global ecosystem”. This showed:

*how the Earth’s weather system led to fallout being concentrated in the Arctic, even though this is far from the site of the test.
*how iodine-131 adversely affects thyroid glands.
*how plants and lichen absorb the radioactive isotope strontium-90, which then concentrates in food chains, and gets incorporated into bones and teeth, leading to cancers.

These studies raised fears of a planetary ecological crisis, whereby the world’s population would share a common environmental fate from the spread of radiation, threatening survival everywhere.

The connection between the threat of exterminism through climate breakdown and nuclear war preparations is explored by Bellamy Foster here and socialists should be campaigning on this link in both movements.

2. Capitalism is locked into exterminism
The climate movements in the Global North have for the most part developed within a social democratic paradigm, envisaging necessary action by a benign state acting within a popular consensus in the common interest in the form of “the environment state”; ignoring the way that all capitalist states operate to serve the interests of capital, not people.

Demands from the climate movement for a Climate Emergency to be declared operate in this framework, presuming that the necessary emergency powers would be exercised in the common interest,

*with radical curbs on unsustainable consumption by the wealthy,
*redistribution of wealth and technology from the Global North to the Global South,
*control taken of private finance and energy companies to direct capital where it is needed,
*wind down fossil fuel production and ramp up renewables,
*mass expansion of public transit,
*revamping our towns and cities around 15 minute neighbourhoods,
*wholesale and rapid insulation,
*pulled together by a mass education campaign cum social debate to ensure that everyone knows what is happening, what part they can play and set them up to innovate collectively as a many headed popular genius.

The removal of calls in the draft of the 2021 IPCC Report for “transformational change operating on processes and behaviors at all levels: individual, communities, business, institutions and governments” to “redefine our way of life and consumption” for “coordinated action, massive public mobilization, political leadership and commitment, and urgent decision-making to change the global economy and support an effective and accelerated mitigation-adaptation strategy” underlines that the problem with this is that the states expected to act on the emergency are run by the people who created it in the first place; whose wealth and power is inextricably bound up with maintaining it, and are currently postponing the necessary action while mobilizing massive disinformation campaigns to buy their system time while it drives us off the edge of the cliff.

*Shell, for example, have just shelved plans to slowly cut oil production by 2% a year, because keeping on pumping creates so much profit, and blithely predict that Net Zero can only be achieved some time in the next century.
*The Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are currently putting through a “Real Emergencies Bill”, to make sure no climate emergency measures can be taken that would cut into fossil fuel profits; as if the Biden administration had any intention of doing anything of the sort.
*And in Britain we have the Sunak government trying to open up more oil and gas fields, giving the green light to airport expansion and taking up the cudgels on behalf of “motorists”.

But this does not mean that, when climate and social breakdown has gone far enough, they will not introduce emergency powers to deal with the consequences of having let it rip.

What that will look like was spelled out in the “Age of Consequences” report on the “National Security implications of Climate Change”, published in 2007 by the U.S. Centre for Strategic and International Studies, written by advisers to Al Gore at the time. Their projection for the sort of “severe scenario” we are heading for could not be clearer.

Beyond tipping points, and facing uneven but large scale social and political collapse they say;

Governments with resources will be forced to engage in long, nightmarish episodes of triage, deciding what and who can be salvaged from engulfment by a disordered environment. The choices will need to be made primarily among the poorest, not just abroad but at home.

That is a warning, and a road map, for what is coming. The fossil fuel core of the ruling class, having created the crisis, will try to sustain it as long as possible, then take emergency powers to try to save themselves from the consequences of their actions at the expense of “the poorest”, at “home” as well as“abroad”. Heightened military spending, of course, is an aspect of this.

Bellamy Foster and Clarke’s stark conclusion that, as “the world is now on a runaway train to disaster, rapidly approaching the edge of the cliff… a whole new revolutionary ecological civilization and mode of production, dedicated to sustainable human development, one in which the associated producers regulate the metabolism between humanity and nature, is now necessary for survival and for life” is a crucial one for the climate movement to take to heart as a strategic aim; within whatever mobilisations, blocs and compromises we might have to make at any given point.

3. As part of that process, socialist, post-revolutionary societies are better able to resist the logic of capital
Cuba has developed an ecosocialist model for a society built on “a reduction of unnecessary and destructive production by and for rich countries (and people),” and “exceeds the…growth of production of necessities by and for poor countries (and people).”

Cuba, rather than following the dominant capitalist strategy of promoting maximum energy usage and simply converting to “alternative” energies … has chosen energy conservation, seeking to minimize both energy usage and the resultant negative effects.

Cuba’s Special Period, following the demise of the Soviet Union and its fossil fuel subsidies to Cuba, forced Havana, faced also with a tightening U.S. embargo, to develop agroecology and urban farming at very high levels, resulting in Cuba’s eco-revolutionary transformation into a model of sustainable human development.

It has therefore repeatedly been defined by international indicators as “the most ecological nation on the earth”.

It is also “the one most prepared for disasters” When Hurricane Maria, hit Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony, in September 2017its impact killed almost 3,000 people. When Irma, another category 5 hurricane, hit Cuba the same month, only ten people died.

Cuba’s low mortality was the result of comprehensive disaster protection measures introduced from the beginning of its revolution and built into the entire structure of the society.

They also note that “Although still one of the world’s largest polluters, the Chinese economy has made rapid ecological advances, in line with its goal—outside the capitalist framework—of promoting an ecological civilization, a concept that originated with socialist environmentalists in the final decades of the Soviet Union, and that has now taken on Chinese characteristics.

While still “having a low per capita income relative to the developed capitalist states, China has set 2060 as its target to reach zero net carbon emissions” and ”become the world leader in solar power—both production and consumption—and in reforestation/afforestation”.

China is also setting the pace in investment. Next year, the IEA projects that China’s investment in renewable energy will be double the U.S. and EU combined.

Their conclusion is a crucial guide to how we need to be organising, what we have to aim for and the grim and tumultuous situation in which we have to do it.

A revolt by the world’s environmental proletariat…. in which hundreds of millions, even billions, of people will inevitably take part, is destined to come about in the coming decades as a result of the struggle for ecological survival.

It will lead to new microcosms of existence and an assault on the macrocosm of capital and its state.

But this struggle can only succeed in the end if it takes the form of a revolutionary transformation directed at the creation of a socialist ecological civilization, drawing on the rich reservoirs of human knowledge and community.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/09/sociali ... -survival/

Excuse me, but wtf does " world’s environmental proletariat" mean? Just say "working class", just say "capitalism", jfc....


What the Dream EDSAs of Urban Planners and Architects Look Like (2020 Update!) – EnP Tinio

Left, right and centre blind to crazy car culture
By Yves Engler (Posted Sep 09, 2023)

Originally published: Yves Engler Blog on September 5, 2023 (more by Yves Engler Blog)

Corporate and capitalist forces are driving us toward civilizational collapse but institutional myopia and crass electoralism also play their parts in the unfolding planetary tragedy.

Recently the Montréal fire department objected to a city proposal to remove traffic from the road running through the big park atop the mountain at the centre of the city. The sub headline on the front-page of the Montréal Gazette stated,

Fire department says closing road to all cars, trucks would be unsafe.

Incredible! According to the fire department, reducing the public space devoted to the form of transport that kills more people than any other is not safe. In fact, all evidence suggests the more a city relies on walking, biking, buses and metros the fewer hurt or killed per kilometer of travel (intercity travel by train and plane is also far safer than by private car).

The particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants released by private cars are also ‘unsafe’. And the massive recent forests fires–exacerbated by automobile greenhouse gas emissions–are definitely unsafe.

Last week Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew announced that he’d ‘axe the tax’–to borrow the slogan of a supposedly polar opposite Conservative politician. Standing in front of a Winnipeg gas station, Kinew said an NDP government would temporarily eliminate the provincial fuel tax if it wins the upcoming election. Currently Manitobans are charged a measly 14 cents per litre in provincial fuel taxes while the OECD average is three times that. Instead of a cut, a mildly climate conscious, social democratic politician would push to increase that tax to European rates of around $.70 per litter.

Kinew’s ecocidal electoral pandering isn’t unique. During the 2015 federal election Green Party leader Elizabeth May added her voice to the main opposition parties telling suburbanites they should expect the federal government to continue aggressively subsidizing the most costly, unhealthy and ecologically destructive form of land transport. She told Le Devoir that her party didn’t necessarily support the Stephen Harper government’s plan to implement a toll when the Champlain Bridge, Canada’s busiest crossing and a key connection between the island of Montreal and the city’s South Shore, was rebuilt for $4 billion.

In office the BC NDP removed tolls on the Vancouver area’s Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges. They’ve also further subsidized BC Ferries despite its automotive bias. In its ecologically upside-down world, a 150-pound person pays $18.50 to go from Vancouver to Victoria while a 4,000-pound vehicle costs $63.85.

As the climate crisis spirals further out-of-control, private car travel is growing. In a province that touts its ecological mindset the number of cars in Québec increased by 2,616,872 between 2011 and 2021. With a population of 8,602,335, there are 6,995,085 cars in Québec. Nearly one automobile per person of driving age.

Vehicles are also getting bigger and heavier as the size of families declines. So are houses, which is made possible by private cars. In fact, the private automobile underpins a land, energy and resource intensive big box retail/suburban economy that is not only spurring the climate crisis but broader ecological collapse.

As discussed in Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay the private car is an engine of profit accumulation and conspicuous consumption. Class and corporate forces drove the private car’s rise but institutional myopia and crass electoralism help explain its ongoing dominance.

As we drive ourselves towards a climate apocalypse expect myopic politicians to justify further subsidies for roads on the grounds people have to escape the forest fires.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/09/left-ri ... r-culture/

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The Pentagon is the Elephant In the Climate Activist Room
Posted on September 9, 2023 by Yves Smith

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Yves here. Your humble blogger does endeavor to point out the significant role of the military-industrial complex in climate change, and how it’s weirdly omitted from Green New Deal and similar schemes. This piece is a badly-needed counterweight.

By Melissa Garriga, the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK and Tim Biondo, the digital communications manager for CODEPINK. Originally published at Common Dreams


With nearly 10,000 people expected to take to the streets of New York City on September 17 for the March to End Fossil Fuels, the climate justice movement seems more organized than ever. But, there’s a big elephant in the room, and it has the Pentagon written all over it.

The U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional oil consumer. It causes more greenhouse gas emissions than 140 nations combined and accounts for about one-third of America’s total fossil fuel consumption. The Department of Defense (DoD) also uses huge amounts of natural gas and coal, as well as nuclear power plants at its bases around the country. How can we demand the U.S. be part of a movement that aims to end the use of fossil fuels and protect our planet when their own institution is wreaking havoc without accountability? The answer: you can’t.

As long as we ignore the Pentagon’s role in perpetuating climate change, our fight to protect the planet is incomplete. We also risk undermining our own effectiveness by not taking into account how the nearly trillion-dollar military budget takes away from people’s access to resources that not only affect their capacity to fight for climate justice but also to live under extreme economic inequality.

While United States officials want the consumer public to be responsible for their personal carbon footprint, such as making motorists switch to electric vehicles or banning incandescent light bulbs they are avoiding responsibility for the large carbon “bootprint” the military is leaving across the globe. From burn pits in Iraq, or the use of depleted uranium and cluster munitions in Ukraine, to the ever-expanding list of domestic and oversea military bases—the United States military is not only destroying its own country but devastating indigenous communities and sovereign nations through extreme environmental degradation.

According to the Environmental Working Group, “more than 700 military installations are likely contaminated with the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.” But the problem goes far beyond drinking water. In Japan, the indigenous Ryukyuan is pushing back against yet another military base being built on the island of Okinawa. The new base is a major threat to the fragile ecosystem the Ryukyuans work hard to maintain. The damage to their marine ecosystem of course coincides with the poisoning of their drinking water—a fight both Hawaii and Guam are all too familiar with.

All of these contributing factors of climate destruction are happening in “conflict-free” zones, but what impact does the U.S. military have on active warzones? Well, take a look at the Russian/Ukraine war—a war that the U.S. is helping to sustain to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars. CNN recently reported that “a total of 120 million metric tons of planet-heating pollution can be attributed to the first 12 months of the war.” They explained how those measures are “equivalent to the annual emissions of Belgium, or those produced by nearly 27 million gas-powered cars on the road for a year.” The damage doesn’t end there. The war in Ukraine has compromised pipelines and methane leaks; attributed to dead dolphins and marine harm; caused deforestation, farmland destruction, and water contamination; as well as the increase in production of dirty energy like coal. It also carries the imminent threat of radiation leaks and nuclear catastrophe. The continuation of this war is the continuation of ecocide. We must do what we can to end it now and without further death and destruction.

The United States is not only fueling the current climate crisis but it is also funding it at our expense and peril. The Pentagon uses up 64% of our government’s discretionary spending (which includes things like education and healthcare). We are spending our money that could fund social programs into the continuation of climate disaster.

Ordinary Americans, especially Black, Brown and poor communities, are forced to pay for endless war and environmental degradation through higher taxes, fees, and utility bills. Climate change is a threat to national security, with the potential to affect global stability and the ability of governments to provide essential services. Who remembers Vice President Kamala Harris ominous quote, “For years there were wars fought over oil; in a short time there will be wars fought over water.”

The Pentagon’s core mission is to prepare for potential attacks by human adversaries, but none of the United States’ “adversaries” —Russia, Iran, China and North Korea—are certain to attack the United States. Nor is a large standing military the only way to reduce the threats these alleged adversaries pose who all have much smaller militaries in comparison. “As the government tries to scare Americans over these hypothetical “threats,” they refuse to address the real danger communities across the world face every day due to climate change.”

The climate crisis is here now with real consequences. In the United States, climate change is already contributing to drought and wildfires in California, Hawaii, and Louisiana. Sea level rise threatens coastal communities and rising temperatures are likely to increase civil unrest and contribute to more job-related deaths.

We have to act now by pushing peace and cooperation around the globe. We must divert spending away from military base occupation and war and into climate crisis aversion. Or else.

We need a climate justice platform that calls for an end to wars abroad and at home. We need to permanently end the war on terror, which has cost trillions of dollars, killed millions of people, and created an endless cycle of violence and instability around the world.

We need to stop spending billions on weapons systems designed to fight imaginary enemies. Instead we should use that money for domestic priorities like health care, education, and infrastructure projects.

We need to work side by side with all nations to address climate issues. This includes those we have deemed as enemies as well as the Global South—who are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

We need to make sure that our tax dollars are being spent on the things that matter most to us–and that means an end to endless war and environmental degradation. We need a Green New Deal which redirects federal funds from military spending towards domestic priorities like health care, education, and infrastructure projects.

When it comes to the fight for climate justice, the Pentagon is the elephant in the room. We can’t keep ignoring its enormous “bootprint.” It’s simple—to defend earth we must end war and we must end it now. Peace is no longer something that should be looked at as an utopian idea—it is a necessity. Our survival depends on it.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09 ... -room.html

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In 2023, deforestation in the Amazon rainforest dropped to pre-Bolsonaro levels. – FLORIAN PLAUCHEUR / AFP

Brazil stopped deforestation in the Amazon, but ‘the point of no return’ is still close
Originally published: Brasil de Fato on September 5, 2023 by Murilo Pajolla (more by Brasil de Fato) | (Posted Sep 12, 2023)

According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE, in Portuguese), deforestation of theAmazon rainforest fell by 42.5% in the first semester of this year compared to the same period of 2022. The numbers continued to drop in the second semester when the dry period boosts fires. In July, deforestation fell by 66%. Still to be officially released, INPE’s deforestation data to August this year will probably be between 55% and 60% reduction.

Unlike the previous government, which dismantled the structure of environmental monitoring and welcomed deforesters, numbers show that the Amazon deforestation resumed to pre-Bolsonaro levels. However, scientists warn of the possibility of agribusiness causing the biome to reach the so-called point of no return when the environmental degradation will be so stark that it will become impossible to revert it.

“Agribusiness has the power in Brazil’s Congress. We must convince parliamentarians of the need to draw a plan for the future. Otherwise, we will all walk towards [an environmental] collapse”, says Luciana Gatti, a climate change scientist and coordinator of INPE’s Greenhouse Gases Laboratory.

She explains that it is difficult to predict a date when the frightening point of no return will be reached, but she confirms that “we are very close to it”. Luciana says the desertification of the Amazon rainforest will not happen all at once in the whole of the biome, but will probably start in areas where deforestation is more intense and where it is already causing climate and rainfall changes.

“Our uttermost priority has to be the southeast portion of the Amazon. It should be proclaimed a state of emergency in that region: to prohibit any kind of deforestation and fire and start broad projects to restore the forest, by producing seedlings and planting”, Gatti added.

The mayors of the “point of no return”
The southeastern region of the Amazon includes the north portion of Mato Grosso state and the south portion of Pará state. In these areas, agribusiness and the cultivation of grains are the main causes of deforestation. These activities frequently place the towns of the region at the top of the deforestation ranking in Brazil. Recently, the president of the Chamber of Deputies Environment Committee, federal deputy José Priante (Brazilian Democratic Movement—Pará state), mediated a conversation between local mayors and representatives of the Ministry of the Environment.

“They [mayors] want to be better informed about the areas where there are deforestation activities and those that do not have it and want environmental and land regularization”, said the extraordinary secretary of Deforestation Control and Territorial Environmental Planning of the Ministry of the Environment, André Lima, to Brasil de Fato.

“We are building a broad political articulation involving fund transfers from the Amazon Fund to the towns that join the pact. We are trying to change the conversation: instead of parliament being reactive to control measures, we are calling them to lead a positive agenda linked to reduction of deforestation”, he explained.

André Lima acknowledges that the rural caucus opposition at Congress is an obstacle to the “zero deforestation” goal the federal government is seeking, but reveals governmental strategies to ease, with a republican approach, the reaction of parliamentarians. The Amazon Fund, which until recently only financed projects presented by states or the federal administration, will start to support municipal initiatives. He said the priority will be forest restoration and economic activities with traditional peoples and communities.

“Obviously, there are specific reactions of parliamentarians regarding some tougher measures, such as cattle seizure, destruction of goods and seizure and equipment seizure during inspections. It always causes some kind of reaction because parliamentarians are called to try to ease inspections—and we have been doing this. Ibama’s (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) president is a former federal deputy. He has been firm, but as far as possible, it has responded to requests,” said Lima.

The government promises a continued drop in deforestation
In 2023, the total of embargoed areas in the Amazon was 280,000 hectares: 213,000 hectares of private estates and 67,000 hectares of public lands. The total amount of environmental fines applied in the biome is already close to 1 billion reais.

André Lima, the national secretary for combating deforestation, sees the numbers as satisfactory, but says they will probably drop even more. Up until now, the government has been working to make inspection operations more efficient. However, plans to boost sustainable economic development, which depends on time to be implemented, stay on the drawing board.

“Something new that we implemented was the remote embargoes, that is, we are boosting the use of technology not only to detect deforestation and mobilize on-the-ground staff, but also to enforce sanctions remotely. It is generating results, because we multiply the inspection capacity by ten”, explained André Lima to Brasil de Fato.

According to Lima, new measures have still to take effect in deforestation estimates. The Central Bank published a resolution blocking rural credit to owners of embargoed properties or those whose Rural Environmental Registry (CAR, in Portuguese) was cancelled or suspended. The change affects farm owners embargoed by federal and state agencies or have properties that overlap with Indigenous lands and conservation units. The new standards come into effect between August of this year and January 2024.

Imminent catastrophe
An analysis by the MapBiomas project released at the end of August this year showed that, between 1985 and 2022, the area occupied by agribusiness in the Amazon jumped from 3% to 16%. In the same period, the forest lost 52 million hectares, equivalent to the area of France. “If we don’t stop it, we could soon reach the point of no return. We must inspect, monitor and combat illegal deforestation”, highlights Luiz Oliveira, a researcher at MapBiomas.

Publishing in the scientific journal Nature researches about the Amazon, Luciana Gatti discovered in 2021 that the Amazon had become a source of carbon for the atmosphere. In 2023, another paper she published with colleagues concluded that emissions had doubled in the first two years of the Bolsonaro administration. She acknowledges that the Lula government represented an environmental shift for the country, but says this is not enough.

“We need to change this agricultural production model—and fast—, because this will lead Brazil to a climate collapse. Soon, it will cause consequences, a major socio-environmental and ecological problem. We are heading towards a catastrophic future. We must change, so let’s sit down together and draw up a plan for this change”, summoned the scientist.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/12/brazil- ... ill-close/


In August, millions of Ecuadorians voted in a landmark referendum to halt oil exploration and development in the Yasuní National Park in the Amazon rainforest, one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. Signs urging the public to vote “Sí al Yasuni” or “yes” appeared across the country. (Photo: Amazon Frontlines.)

Ecuador just showed the world what it means to take climate change seriously
Originally published: Canadian Dimension on September 5, 2023 by Josh Gottlieb (more by Canadian Dimension) | (Posted Sep 12, 2023)

In 2017, Justin Trudeau addressed a crowd of energy executives in Houston, Texas and proclaimed,

No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.

It’s not quite 173 billion barrels, but Ecuador just proved him wrong.

On August 20, the country voted by national referendum to end oil drilling in Yasuní National Park by a margin of nearly 20 percent. The “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to help protect one of the world’s most vital ecosystems will keep 726 million barrels of oil in the ground.

According to Canadian politicians, this exercise is meaningless: if Ecuador doesn’t produce that oil, Saudi Arabia—or Russia, Iran, or some other designated “bad actor”—will.

But according to research on global oil market dynamics, the Ecuadorian vote is the equivalent of removing 156 million tonnes of carbon dioxide accumulation from our future atmosphere. How? Through a radical theory that the United Nations Environment Programme has called “the basic economics of supply and demand.” According to the UN’s Production Gap Report:

if there is less available of a commodity—such as oil—its price will increase, meaning less of it will be consumed.

This phenomenon is known as the price elasticity of demand. By removing 726 million barrels of oil from the future global oil market, Ecuador is shrinking global supply, thus driving up prices. Price increases lead to lower demand, and lower demand means lower total consumption, combustion, and emissions.

While the magnitude of this effect can vary based on the oil and market conditions, researchers have found that, on average, the per-barrel impact is roughly half a barrel, meaning that for every barrel left in the ground, total global oil consumption will decrease by half a barrel.

This principle means that actions like Ecuador’s, which restrict the production of oil and gas, are actually mitigation strategies, tools that can help reduce global emissions. They are an approach known as “supply-side climate policy”—managing emissions by restricting the production of fossil fuels.

Canada has some supply-side policy: we don’t allow drilling in national parks (just surrounding them), for example, although unlike Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park, our parks don’t tend to sit on huge deposits. More significantly, Québec became the first jurisdiction to ban oil and gas exploration altogether in 2022, although again, that’s a far cry in significance from ending development in Alberta.

Yet, overall, oil and gas production is not just continuing unrestricted in Canada. It is growing. Canadian oil production set a record in 2022 and is expected to grow eight percent more in the next two years, largely because of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

The Liberals argue that the Trans Mountain purchase was some kind of political sacrifice meant to placate the right as they moved forward with their carbon tax. But the ongoing drama between Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and the federal government should make it abundantly clear: not only did it not work, but it was never going to work. It was a form of “climate appeasement” comparable to Chamberlain’s failure to prepare for war in the 1930s.

But even the idea that it was a compromise in the first place is a stretch: there’s a simple, multi-partisan consensus among Canada’s political parties, including the bulk of the NDP, that the oil we export isn’t our problem. Our leaders scoff at calls for reducing production by claiming “if we don’t produce it, someone else will.” These assertions are typically heard alongside absurd regurgitations of Ezra Levant’s “ethical oil” argument, which is often rebranded as “net zero” oil.

That claim is simply wrong, and is inconsistent with the “basic economics of supply and demand.” The more we export, the cheaper fossil fuels are, the more fossil fuels are burned.

As the fourth-largest oil producer in the world, we could lead the way by drawing down production. Strong supply-side policy in Canada would have durable, measurable impacts on global emissions that would dwarf our attempts at domestic decarbonization.

Supply-side policy would also help us mitigate some of the risks associated with the demand-side climate policies we are already pursuing. Electric vehicles, public transit, home retrofits: these all achieve emissions reductions by reducing demand for fossil fuels. But you know what reduced demand means? A lower price.

Successful demand-side climate policies are subject to a perverse rebound effect: any inroads we make into total fossil fuel use will be partially offset by the newfound cheapness of fossil fuels. Levers like supply restriction can help maintain the price level, maximizing the emissions reductions that demand-side climate policies can bring.

Demand-side policies are also something of a gamble: countries model the potential emissions reductions of subsidies, vehicle standards, and so on, and use those models to claim they are “on track” for meeting targets. But the real world is complex. It’s possible policies will produce the expected result, but it’s also possible they won’t. What if these policies ultimately fail, or fail to succeed at the scale needed? We’re betting the planet on economic modelling of a kind of energy transition that’s never happened before.

Which is another argument for complementing our existing mitigation policies with a supply-focused approach. A cap on fossil fuel production that shrinks over time leaves nothing to chance: it’s a hedge, a guarantor. The combustion of fossil fuels is the unequivocal cause of the climate crisis. The one way to be sure we’re on track to ending it is to regulate it directly.

Today, the combination of far-off net zero pledges, planned future policies, and yes, some existing policies and economic trends, are forecast to limit future warming to around 3C, an outcome that is almost certain to be catastrophic. We need to take the guesswork out of it: instead of an emissions cap for the industry, Canada needs a production cap that declines over time. Alberta’s done it before—the province legislated production caps from 2018-2020 in an effort to save the industry from itself. And, of course, they’ve done it again under Smith, just for the wrong industry.

Ecuador just showed the world what it means to take climate change, biodiversity loss, and Indigenous sovereignty seriously, all with one national referendum, and at significant cost in a country wrestling with the challenging reality of being a resource producer in the Global South. Canada is a rich country and one of the nations most responsible for climate change. It is long past time we catch up to reality and end our mad rush to burn the planet to the ground.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/12/ecuador ... seriously/


Illustration by MintPress News

Sierra Club workers challenge leadership’s greenwashing ‘apartheid tours’
Originally published: MintPress News on July 20, 2023 by Jessica Buxbaum (more by MintPress News) | (Posted Sep 09, 2023)

In June, members of the Sierra Club unit of the Progressive Workers Union (PWU) passed a resolution pledging solidarity with the Palestinian people as the environmental organization pushes forward with its planned trips to Israel.

The workers’ resolution puts its words into action by ensuring union funds aren’t investing in Israel’s settler enterprise and contributing to the oppression of Palestinians. It also calls for establishing a Palestine solidarity committee to foster relationships with Palestinian-led organizations and help educate members on the connections between Palestine and Indigenous struggles in the U.S.

“Our members overwhelmingly voted to recognize that colonialism is part of the climate crisis here and abroad, making it clear that we have the power to put our values into practice, even when our employers don’t,” Zach Kopkin, Sierra Club employee, Progressive Workers Union member, and spokesperson for the PWU Palestine Solidarity Group, said in a statement.



According to a press release from the Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian-led advocacy group based in the U.S.,

This resolution is a clear message from Sierra Club workers to Sierra Club leadership that continuing ‘nature’ trips to an apartheid state—despite being asked by Palestinians to respect their struggle for justice and cancel—does not align with a true vision of environmental justice.

Sierra Club did not respond to requests for comment.

GREENWASHING APARTHEID


Palestinians scramble to put out fires set by Jewish settlers in an olive grove near the West Bank village of Burin, near Nablus. (Nasser Ishtayeh | AP)

In response to pressure from pro-Palestinian groups, Sierra Club canceled its educational tours to Israel in March 2022–only to put them back on the docket five months later.

The March 2024 two-week trip titled Natural and Historical Highlights of Israel is led by an Israeli tour guide and features similar activities to its previous Israel tours like time at a kibbutz (Jewish settler commune) and a visit to Tel Aviv.

However, in a likely attempt to appease activists, the trip also includes meeting with Palestinian environmentalists.

“Sierra Club’s planned ‘new’ trips to Palestine still depend on Zionist consultants and trip leaders but include a token nod to Palestinians,” the Adalah Justice Project said, labeling the trips as “apartheid tours.”

Israel is no environmentally friendly haven. While Israel continues bombing Gaza, pollutes water resources, burns olive trees, and prevents Palestinians from access to their land, there is no gray area.

The Sierra Club Union formed the Palestine Solidarity Group in May 2021 amid Israel’s assault on Gaza and escalating attacks on Palestinians. The union has been vocal about its opposition to the trips and demands Sierra Club cancel them.

“The climate justice movement has finally started to grapple with the role colonialism has and continues to play in worsening the climate crisis–that includes colonialism here and abroad,” PWU Palestine Solidarity Group’s spokesperson, Kopkin, said.

For decades, Palestinians have been fighting for their freedom from Israeli oppression and theft of their land. Our members have made it clear that the Sierra Club must honor its stated values of a commitment to racial and Indigenous justice and side with the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli apartheid.

Despite branding itself as environmentally friendly, Israel is anything but.

Through the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a Zionist organization exploiting environmentalism to seize more Palestinian land, Israel has razed countless indigenous trees in Palestine and replaced them with non-native plants like pine and cypress. Touting their afforestation efforts as “making the desert bloom,” JNF’s tree-planting campaign has harmed Palestine’s ecosystem and increased wildfires.

Israel’s building of the apartheid wall, separating the occupied West Bank from 1948-occupied Palestine (or modern-day Israel), has also contributed to the uprooting of more than 2 million trees. Additionally, Israeli settlers frequently torch Palestinian olive groves.

Many of Israel’s settlement industrial zones process waste in the West Bank considered too dangerous to treat under Israel’s environmental protection laws. With less stringent environmental regulations, wastewater runs into Palestinian villages–destroying wildlife and making people sick.

Israeli settlement expansion also continues to devastate Palestine’s biodiversity, like in the region of Wadi Rabah, where activists and environmental experts say plans to build a cemetery there will damage the area’s fragile habitat.

FROM TURTLE ISLAND TO PALESTINE


Israeli machinery tears the ground asunder during the construction of Israel’s so-called “separation barrier” in the occupied West Bank. (Bernat Armangue | AP)

Like Palestine, the U.S. was founded on European settler colonialism–making Native Americans’ and Palestinians’ struggles for justice inextricably intertwined. Genocide, massacres, ethnic cleansing, cultural appropriation, systematic dispossession, and forced relocation mar both of these peoples’ pasts and presents.

Similar to the environmental destruction Palestinians have faced, indigenous peoples in the U.S. have also had their lands exploited.

Standing Rock Sioux and other First Nations tribes have opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline built on their land over concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, and that potential oil spills could poison drinking water.

In November 2021, the U.S. Navy’s Red Hill underground fuel storage facility on O’ahu leaked 19,000 gallons of petroleum into the islands’ main drinking water aquifers–contaminating the water for over 90,000 people. Native Hawaiians have warned about the Navy’s fuel leaks and water pollution for years without any military response.

In Arizona, Indigenous communities are being surveilled with technology made by Israeli corporation Elbit Systems–just as that same technology surveils Palestinians and Syrian Druze. And similar to how Palestinians have been cut off from their lands because of the apartheid wall, members of the Tohono O’odham tribe say the U.S-Mexico border wall will also sever them from their lands.

In these ways, environmental justice and indigenous rights are linked, and Sierra Club workers recognize that connection, even if their administration hasn’t.

“Sierra Club leadership refused to hear their employees’ demands for racial and Indigenous justice,” Adalah Justice Project’s executive director, Sandra Tamari, said.

We proudly support the Sierra Club workers of the Progressive Workers Union, who boldly declare that true earth justice starts by centering Indigenous peoples worldwide, including the Palestinian people.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/09/sierra- ... eid-tours/

[blindpig]

A wasted planet gone on sale
Originally published: Al Mayadeen on September 12, 2023 by Janna Kadri (more by Al Mayadeen) | (Posted Sep 13, 2023)

Amid the global trends of de-dollarization and de-neo-liberalization, the climate crisis has been relegated to a secondary concern. Not that it ever was a primary concern, since capital must destroy more than it creates to produce commodities, but there is less media hype on the issue. To waste people and nature is necessary for higher profit rates, and the hype is no more than an advertisement to market the wasted social nature. Still, at this juncture, the changing dynamics of the global power landscape drive countries to seek military advantage and technological superiority to fare better in the geopolitical convulsions, and even the lip service paid to the environment takes a back seat.

In contrast to previous summers, this year has seen some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded. Wildfires, droughts, hazes, flash floods, and mudslides have increased in size, frequency, and intensity, while temperatures are predicted to rise. Crops and water basins are drying out, infectious diseases are spreading, and cancer rates are rising. Despite the token initiatives taken to address this crisis, the world increasingly faces the prospects of a climatic Armageddon. If more social nature must be metabolized to raise profit rates, history, under the command of the profiteers, will erode the basis for sane human existence. What is certain for all to see is that the current and future moneyed value of destroyed nature exceeds the value of the useful wealth already created.

By the many climate reports already published, global society steps closer and closer to the edge of the abyss. When capital’s science speaks of the natural disaster, it does so to financialize the debris capital has created and raise resource prices at present; since science commandeered by capital serves its functional purpose, and since wasted social nature increases capital gains, the climate crisis can no longer be shrugged off as pseudoscience.

Formulaically, to cut costs, capital must reduce much of nature and man to rubble. It requires a society sickened by war and pollution and deprived of autonomy to mark up prices in ways that maximize profits. Since it is man, and not nature, that negotiates prices, nature is destroyed to further reduce the negotiating power of society over its resources. The logic is that the subject in nature, man or society, must be weakened and, relatedly, a destroyed nature weakens the sovereignty of developing nations, which a fortiori means that the consequences of climate change on the environment are real. They are visible, continuous, and have an everlasting impact on the lives of people.

Attempts to formulate practical solutions are a chimera; so long as profit-maximizing capital manifest in its ideological forms reigns, a solution is not possible. Only labor, as a subject of history, may be able to conceptualize a plan of action that would bring about a remedial process of climatic ills. To be sure, the key takeaways from the last COP summit included the introduction of a fund for poorer countries, which would increase their financial dependency. More to the point, however, no blueprint has been laid out to reduce the ransacking of nature, natural resources, and society in the South, since these raise input/commodity costs in the North.

The notion of the reversibility of natural damage is a sham. The damage is permanent, and nothing could be reversed. Moreover, when profits are derived from the premature death of man and the concomitant erosion of nature, or when society perishes prematurely, less is spent on its reproduction, and more of the economic surplus goes to profits. Capital must lay the social foundation for its continuity, the immiseration of labor, and this is done over longer periods of time whose outcome is the recurrent positive quarterly profit rates of major corporations in the North. Hence, sickened social nature serves a profit-making function for capital.

However, rather than looking at the climate crisis as an inevitable outcome of the rationale of capital, mainstream reasoning, which is the ideological edifice of the capital class, places the cause of the crisis in personalized subjects or justifies the losses by the progress of Western civilizational discoveries. When the planet is about to cease supporting life, the latter argument is meaningless. Capitalism is regression rather than progression. It is no longer valid to say that it is worth it to eradicate natives as subjects of nature to push through with an agenda of progress.

Waste accumulation
So far, the planet has been laid to waste, and society pays for the waste in money and lost years of life. As the input and output of production, social nature was commodified and priced. Before the dying forests, there were societies obliterated for a price. It takes machine and labor to kill forests and people, and these are industries with moneyed output that went for a price. Scalping the native Indian for a dollar is a case in point. These waste industries are also pedestals for production in the North.

Since war and pollution sell, capital produces more waste than good things. Such waste accumulation involves a process of destruction of man and nature wherein the commodified waste registers for a price convenient to capital across the time spectrum. One can imagine how the difficulty of future production arising from wars and climate degradation raises future prices and, by implication, raises current prices.

In this, one ought to recall that it is wasted lives as the ubiquitous commodity, and not nature, which are the principal source of surplus value that become profits. Society immerses itself in the production and consumption of waste, otherwise a process of auto-consumption. To excessively deplete oneself for living wages is the source of the economic surplus. Laterally, the most basic commodity, such as food, is laden with pollutants and serves as a surrogate war machine that shortens life expectancy. The commodity consumes the consumer in an act of production. The product, in this case, is the premature death of the consumer.

The social acceptance of waste as a consumption item reinforces the waste reproductive cycle while eroding the independence from want that fosters social emancipation. What is of dis-use value to society has been construed as a necessary measure of survival on the basis of fabricated scarcity. Whether by choice or coercion, society overproduces and consumes what is fatal to its longevity.

Since the market is the gyroscope of social reproduction, the waste commodity rules over society and its resource allocation decisions. Social labor, or the physical and mental effort workers invest in the production of commodities, also creates pollutants or waste. These, in turn, become a machine for which capital has not paid and which shortens the lives of labor.

Society labors to self-destruct in shorter periods to lessen its living costs and raise profits over its lifecycle. In addition to the labor effort expropriated and embedded in the private means of production (dead labor in Marxian terminology), capital has a freebie offshoot in a sickened nature it has produced that cuts life expectancy short. In a state of socialist ideological defeatism, waste is construed as wealth, and production for profits becomes a process of auto-consumption.

In a polarized world, the North/South divide delineates the structures of capital from those of labor. The associated balance of power, including the ideological balance, also serves to determine the terms of exchange. That less is paid to the South for its resources may be attributed to the ideological potency of capital. For society to consume or be consumed by the waste-imbued commodity is not owed to capital’s theoretical rigor.

People have been beaten into submission, once and again, before they come to accept the industries of war and pollution as a necessary evil that they must pay for. Wars make up the medium through which dominant ideology, including the neoliberal order, is reconstituted as the weight of history. Violence foregrounds the submission of society. For capital to metabolize man and nature in social production at rates that take out of social nature more than it puts back into it, it must subdue global society, especially the South. Capital pays more to the Northern working class, not as counter value for its productivity, it does so because the Northern working class shares with capital its basis of social reproduction, which is to live off the dividends of the South.

Capital’s ideological reign relies on wars and a continuous re-adjustment of the balance of power against the South. The South must be beaten into subservience or acknowledge that it cannot break through the imposing power structure, or in other words, against the weight of history. Such wars are a magnified reflection of the fact that capital must cut its expenditure on Southern society, which happens when people die prematurely, in order to sell to the upper consuming tier of global society. Capital’s cost-cutting measures arising upon competition antecede its desire to raise incomes in order to sell to a larger upper tier. This formula, the antecedence of production over consumption, including the positive spinoffs from the production of waste upon profits, makes the destruction of social nature a sine qua non for social reproduction.

With social nature being the unity of man with nature, to which man is organic and subject, the destruction of nature becomes an end in itself. To consume nature on the cheap is to consume humans on the cheap. Long before the climate calamity, colonized peoples as subjects of nature, have been consumed or wasted for a price. Only under capitalism, the waste of human lives for a buck constitutes the basis of accumulation. The war industry, in particular, forms the initial building block to the process of production and consumption under capital. War is not ten or twenty percent of production, it is the predicate in the commodification of social processes. Capital totalizes and commodifies all that comes its way. It commodifies people, air and water. Even health and education, as ideologically steered spheres of production under capital, widen the chasm between North and South, and ensure that the gap between potential life expectancy and actually lived lives is larger. Correlatedly with the structural power divide between North and South, and while the North accumulates by the immiseration of the South, health and education contribute to the formation of Northern soldiers and civil society apparatuses which entrench the waste accumulation. With the North living off the South, the consumption process turns into a cannibalistic order in which the North, defined as the class whose potential unfolds on metabolizing more of social nature, grows by the eradication of the South.

The rule of the commodity dictates the de-reproduction of labor. As commodification proceeds, sentience vanishes, and so go with it the ethics that evolve on the basis of the existential condition. People turned into commodities do not feel to be empathetic with others. Commodification lays the groundwork for converting living labor literally into dead labor—man becomes thing.

While the capitalist adheres to the market diktat and acts like a thing bereft of feeling, which also means bereft of ethics, Northern laboring classes, whose parasitism centers on living off the proceeds of the wasted South, also become things. Their potential is not to shed capital, but to work with it to self-reproduce by cannibalizing the Southern classes. While class lines crisscross the national boundaries, the latter classes reproduce by gaining independence from capital. As the planet altogether sinks, the process of auto-consumption becomes a process of auto-exploitation, rooted in the self-consumption of a society absorbed or beaten into the acceptance of waste.

Over the life cycle of society, as opposed to the hours worked in factories, the premature death of society, the prematurely wasted man, becomes the source of value. In the time of social reproduction, in contrast to the time of social production measured in quarterly or yearly output, it is all of society as the set of social relations, which labors to produce, in contrast to the single worker spending eight hours on the job. It should be noted that the price and accounting systems are constructed by capital to efface social production (society produces) and replace it with an abstract and hypothetical-time producer. In social reproduction, the rate of surplus value that undergirds the profit rate may be measured by rate of premature death relative to the longevity experienced in the more advanced countries.

Understanding the climate crisis
In the Anthropocene, the climate crisis is the outcome of social activity. These activities are products of the governing social class instantiated in the forms of dominant ideology. Ideology is the driver of class actions. Ideology blindfolds society as capital pursues profits at its expense. The case is such that the activities which have been done so far culminated in the preponderant waste. Yet, the waste is trumpeted as progress. Waste in its subdivisions of pollution, war, and climate crises, is progress to no one.

The mainstream view maintains that climate change is an externality, which can be corrected if each paid a price for the pollutants. Missing in this, the pollution itself is a cost-cutting measure to a whole class represented in political forms that boosts profits. Since the world is organized in terms of power structures that dictate the terms of exploitation to the weaker South, the class in power will re-organize time and again to pollute more. That people act through class forms of social organization, as opposed to atomistic individuals voting to change the course of history, is a forgotten point. Individuals vote under the spell of dominant reason, and when the reason of a Northern population stems from imperialist dividends based on the waste of the South, the result of the vote will bring to power the class that is committed to waste.

The so-called democratic societies of the North, in particular, its social democratic platforms, are in command of a history that annihilated nearly a billion people in colonial wars since the sixteenth century. Meanwhile, Western democracies are set to bring the planet to the point of unlivability. The obvious methodological fallacy that the perfect market, which surfaces as innately imperfect in logic and outcome, escapes the imagination of the North because it is vested in the waste. While the long-term trends indicate that the ‘healthier’ an economy gets, the sicker society gets, the salient reasoning remains irreconcilable with the facts because it is based on narrow class interests that rationalize waste by class-imposed normative values.

Under the mantra of class-obedient social science, as the world overproduces and suffers from crises of overproduction, harming social nature in order to efficiently produce becomes necessary to sustain an ‘overpopulated’ world. While scarcity and overpopulation are concepts that fly in the face of the facts, the ethic of the capital class boils down to thinning down the world population in order to reduce an otherwise unsuitable harm to more people. True, one must ensure the welfare of more people in any policy, but the mainstream falsifies initial reality/assumptions to achieve its profit goals.

The destruction of the climate has a great deal to do with capitalist overproduction. As waste lowers costs and also sells, the overproduction of wasted nature and man becomes the mainstay of capital. Overproduction implicates the South by the degree to which the North needs to maintain salient profit rates. Super-exploitation is not only about the 12-hour shifts in Third World sweatshops, it is more about shortening the life expectancy of Southern society. This latter process was witnessed in primitive accumulation as slavery and genocide, and it continues to date as structural genocide, or the invisible premature deaths and the deaths from wars and their reverberations.

The North boasts about its commitment to environmentalism, however, such is a scare tactic that raises prices in the present in relation to the difficulty of future production. Prices are malleable symbols. Most commodities, for instance, have a spot and a future price, while the picture of prices in social reproduction is way more fluid. Most waste sickens people and raises their medical bills, which means that society ends up footing the bill for the waste. The price of medication is not imputed in the polluted commodity, yet in reality, it is there. It is easy to see that capital makes a killing as people die earlier and pay to treat themselves while doing so. Capital gains by commodifying the waste, and, more so, it now funnels resources to green bonds against the future damage it creates.

To inject political instability in the South is a precondition that enables the mechanism of resource extraction. To this end, wars as a domain of militaristic accumulation serve to consolidate the power structure fueling waste accumulation. Wars are themselves production processes whose products are premature dead people. Each victim of war was mown down by a war machine operated by a worker-soldier working for a wage, while the victim also labors in self-defense, while his corpse counts as an output going for a given price.

The financialization of war implies that the earnings of war-finance are earmarked against the war dead. In addition to war, the international institutions that carry the banner of development infiltrate developing state infrastructure to weaken regulations and make resource depletion occur at a faster pace. For instance, the green revolution has forced many farmers into debt—including in India, where farmers’ suicides have soared. The green revolution has increased poor countries’ exposure to economic vulnerabilities by introducing new dependencies (i.e. technologies, fertilizers, seeds). These disruptions often lead to political turmoil, and in the displacement of many, governments find themselves incapable of solving emerging security issues. Moreover, climate change disrupts food production in the South, uproots labor from the land into redundancy, and creates new avenues for conflict. As it increases the risk of food insecurity, climate change is also enabling the North to weaponize food against the South.

A glimmer of hope?
As the rate of surplus value rises by the rate of premature death, the only way out is the abolition of the value relation. The only labor with the potential for revolution is the labor whose longevity rises by ridding itself of imperialism. The rise of China and the West’s impending defeat in Ukraine, through dialectical inversion, shifts the platforms for the development of revolutionary consciousness. To prioritize the struggle against imperialism at this point is to shed the weight of history, a weight stocked by centuries of defeat to the Western war machine.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/13/a-waste ... e-on-sale/

[blindpig]

Waterborne poison from metal mines affects over 23 million people
September 26, 2023

Huge areas contaminated by lead, zinc, copper, arsenic and other toxic wastes



A global assessment of the impacts of metal mining on rivers and floodplains, published this week in the journal Science, finds that over 23 million people worldwide are affected by potentially dangerous concentrations of toxic waste. The study offers the first comprehensive understanding of the environmental and health threats associated with metal mining activities.

The research is based on a new database of 185,000 metal mines to determine the global scale of metal mining contamination in river systems and its repercussions for human populations and livestock. It modelled contamination from all known active and inactive metal mining sites, including tailings storage facilities – used to store mine waste – and looked at potentially harmful contaminants such as lead, zinc, copper, and arsenic, which are transported downstream from mining operations, and often deposited along river channels and floodplains for extended periods.

The results highlight the widespread reach of the contamination, affecting approximately 479,200 kilometers of river channels and encompassing 164,000 square kilometers of floodplains on a global scale. Approximately 23.48 million people reside on these affected floodplains, supporting 5.72 million livestock and encompassing over 65,000 square kilometers of irrigated land.

Incomplete reporting of mine locations and tailing dam failures, particularly in China, India, and Russia, means that these figures underestimate the population at risk.

Various pathways exist for humans to become exposed to these contaminant metals including from direct exposure through skin contact, accidental ingestion, inhalation of contaminated dust, and through the consumption of contaminated water and food grown on contaminated soils.

This poses an additional hazard to the health of urban and rural communities in low-income countries and communities dependent on these rivers and floodplains, especially in regions already burdened with water-related diseases. In industrialized nations in Western Europe and the United States, metal mining contamination constitutes a major and growing constraint to water and food security, compromises vital ecosystem services, and contributes to antimicrobial resistance in the environment.

The authors say that metal mining began to contaminate river systems as early as 7000 years ago, making it humanity’s earliest and most persistent form of environmental contamination. Since the mid-19th century, tailings dams have been used to store mine waste, which has reduced the direct supply into rivers, but such structures are prone to failure, with often severe consequences for ecosystems and human communities downstream. The new study shows that the number of people exposed to contamination sourced from long-term discharge of mining waste into rivers is almost 50 times greater than the number directly affected by tailings dam failures.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... on-people/

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The Climate March: Magnificent and Misdirected
Originally published: Countercurrents on September 25, 2023 by Ellen Isaacs (more by Countercurrents) | (Posted Sep 26, 2023)

At least 75,000 marched in New York City on September 17, quite impressive, inspiring to be a part of. As compared to previous marches, last seen pre-Covid, there were more people of color, indigenous and immigrant participants. But the question is, what exactly were the demands of this mass assemblage? Of course, the overwhelming message was “End Fossil Fuels,” but to whom was this demand addressed? For the most part, the ask was for liberal politicians, like Biden, to take action and for the banks to stop funding corporate climate-destroying ventures. In other words, the overall assumption put forward by the organizers was that there is a separation of interests between the political, corporate and banking sectors. The featured speaker was Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, a congresswoman and democratic socialist who thinks workers’ lives can be bettered under capitalism and even voted to support the war in Ukraine.1

Eight groups were the official march sponsors, one of the largest being the Global Campaign to End Climate Justice (demandclimatejustice.org), a network of over 200 organizations, that even has the slogan System Change Not Climate Change. Their statement of principles says that climate change arises from profit-driven and growth-oriented systems, unequal and exploitative economic and social structures, and policies and practices promoted by global corporations, rich industrialized countries, international institutions and economic and political elites. They then have a long list of demands with which none of us could disagree, but the strategy is to “build our capacity for coordinated mobilizations” and “fight for an international climate agreement.” Of course this agreement would have to be made between existing governments, since their replacement is not contemplated. There is no actual plan for system change.

How Capitalism Actually Works
In order to frame their demands as asks from capitalism, the march organizers must fundamentally ignore the structure of that capitalist society. The purpose, the basic operating mechanism of capitalism, is to maximize profits. Profits are generated by selling goods or services for more than it costs to make them, which includes obtaining resources, maintaining equipment and paying workers’ wages and benefits. Corporations and often governments finance their huge investments by borrowing money from banks There is competition between manufacturers of similar products as well as competition between nations to preserve the pre-eminence of their corporations. Since profits, which attract investors, are tallied on a quarterly basis, there is no room to delay profitability in order to make long range expensive changes. In order to maintain their hold on industries, nations compete to source raw materials from around the world, protect the supply lines to import them, and control the sources of the cheapest labor. This competition is the basis of most wars involving major powers, be it the World Wars or the many nearly continuous smaller ones.

Last year, 2022, the global oil and gas industry made $4 trillion in profits, up from the average of $1.5 trillion in recent years, according to the head of the International Energy Agency.2 Less than half of one percent went back into clean energy. According to the IMF, the fossil fuel industry receives subsidies from governments of $11 million every minute in the form of tax breaks and price controls as well as not being required to pay for the pollution they produce.3 The industry also heavily subsidizes politicians, including $28 million to 50 members of the House.4 Even as banks have said they are going green, they provided $673 to finance the fossil fuel industry last year.5 Meanwhile, Biden has approved the Willow drilling project in Alaska, the Mountain Valley pipeline in west Virginia and more oil and gas permits than Trump.6

The largest user of energy in the U.S. is the Department of Defense, 77-80% of all government energy consumption. It goes to support over 800 military installations around the world, weapons production, and combat operations as well as other uses.7 The war in Ukraine, which has cut off supplies of gas and oil from Russia, has also led to a scramble for easily available new energy sources, including the increased use of coal.8

What is to be done
The main conclusion of this discussion is that no matter how militant and how large the environmental movement, it is impotent if it limits itself to choosing villains among the rulers of capitalism. It is not the governments, the manufacturer or their financiers who can be singled out, it is the system of capitalism of which they are the integral parts. Thus we need to recognize that the climate movement must become an integral part of an anti-capitalist movement, even though this makes our task more complex and difficult. Only if workers are running society in their own interest can workers’ survival and wellbeing be the priority. Only then will we be able to investigate energy solutions, limit energy use in the rich nations and increase it in the poor, and invest in such efforts rapidly enough to save our planet.

It is now clear to millions of us that our world is under imminent threat, due not only to climate change but the specter of world war between the competing super powers, the U.S. and China. Those who are suffering the most are the poor of the world, both from environmental disasters and from being called upon to fight each other. But all of us face a daunting future. Our urgent priority is to build an international, class conscious anti-capitalist organization to take on this monumental struggle to build a new world, a communist world, a worker run world. That means integrating our climate struggle with union movements, anti-colonial movements, anti-war movements, anti-racist movements, indeed all the movements that unite and strengthen us and grow the strength of our class. We must not limit ourselves to demonstrations but must consider how to be organized and powerful enough to actually overthrow the current rulers of this planet. Then we might survive.

Ellen Isaacs is a physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org.

Notes:
1.↩ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esLJRHU-GvA
2.↩ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 023-02-14/
3.↩ https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -imf-finds
4.↩ https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... -industry/
5.↩ https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/investin ... index.html
6.↩ https://www.eenews.net/articles/biden-f ... -his-left/)
7.↩ https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/fil ... awford.pdf
8.↩ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 022-12-13/

https://mronline.org/2023/09/26/the-cli ... sdirected/



Building pipelines as Canada burns
Originally published: Counterfire on September 24, 2023 by John Clarke (more by Counterfire) | (Posted Sep 26, 2023)

The Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion in British Columbia is running into another round of problems and generating even more opposition. ‘The controversial government-owned fossil fuel company is seeking regulatory approval to change its pipeline construction methods and route, after running into problems drilling a tunnel.’

Indigenous people impacted by this project are coming out strongly against this development. The ‘Stk’emlúpsemc te Secwépemc Nation, who have a ‘“historical, cultural and spiritual connection” to the lands the pipeline is being built on, said they never supported or consented to such a change.’ They contend that the new approaches sought by the company ‘would cause “significant and irreparable harm” to their culture, and to the integrity of the spiritually significant lands in question.’

The Trans Mountain pipeline constitutes a key element of Canada’s expanding role as a major oil and gas producer and a look at its history offers some insights into the nature of fossil-fuel capitalism in this country. Such an examination becomes even more compelling because this year Canada has experienced its most severe wildfire season ever.

In the 1950s, ‘representatives from the federal government, Alberta and B.C. endorsed the idea of a new pipeline from the Prairies to the West Coast …’ in order to ‘create a vital market for Alberta’s crude oil resources.’ The project was justified at the time on the grounds that it would serve ‘as a piece of Cold War strategic defence infrastructure, supplying the West with energy in the event of war.’

Initially, the pipeline could carry 150,000 barrels of oil a day and this grew due to the increased output of the Alberta oilsands so that, by the early 2000s, 300,000 barrels a day could pass through it. Trans Mountain has ‘helped solidify Canada’s status as the fourth-largest crude oil exporter in the world’ and the goal of the present project is to triple the flow of oil.

The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs has charted the harmful effects of the whole project on Indigenous communities. There have also been serious environmental impacts since the pipeline was first laid, with dozens of oil spills having occurred over the years.

By 2013, the Texas-based Kinder Morgan company had bought Trans Mountain and developed plans that would involve ‘building almost 1,000 kilometres of new pipeline and increasing capacity so that it could ship up to 890,000 barrels per day. The expansion also proposed many more pump stations, storage tanks and tanker facilities.’ It would also mean that ‘oil tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet, near Vancouver, (would increase) from roughly 60 tankers per year to more than 400.’

With the strong support of the Alberta government, the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa approved the Kinder Morgan project in November 2016. This was despite intense criticism over the fact that the ‘regulator’s review didn’t consider climate and other environmental impacts, and … ignored scientific information such as the impact of oilsands development on at-risk species and human health.’

In 2018, with protests taking place across the country and the BC government now in opposition to the pipeline extension, ‘Kinder Morgan paused its work and threatened to walk away from the project in a matter of weeks.’ Trudeau declared that ‘access to world markets for Canadian resources is a core national interest. The Trans Mountain expansion will be built.’ His ‘government announced it was purchasing both the pipeline and its expansion project from the company for $4.5 billion. Trans Mountain became a subsidiary of a Crown corporation called the Canada Development Investment Corporation.’

When Kinder Morgan first announced its plans for the expansion, ‘it projected it would cost $5.4 billion and be “operational in late 2017.” The cost is now estimated at a staggering $309 billion and it is hoped to complete the project next year but this is called into question by present developments. Each additional month of delay results in roughly $200 million in lost revenues and roughly $190 million in carrying charges.’

The changes in construction methods that Trans Mountain wants to implement have produced a backlash. The company intends to abandon its earlier commitment to micro-tunnel through a particularly culturally significant portion of the lands of the Stk’emlúpsemc te Secwépemc Nation (SSN). Due to encountering hard rock formations, Trans Mountain ‘is facing mounting financial and deadline pressure’ and wants to revert to digging an open trench.

For its part, SSN is clear that such a change would ‘“destroy, damage, or degrade habitat” in the sensitive grasslands and old growth forests that are home to many at-risk wildlife species.’ SSN has made clear that it would never have accepted the pipeline route through its land had it known that the threat of an open trench would emerge and it asks the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) to prevent this. Should the CER rule in favour of Trans Mountain, active opposition to the project is certain to intensify.

Climate impacts
This readiness to proceed with an environmentally destructive pipeline project of this magnitude, trampling on Indigenous rights in the process, is shocking but hardly surprising. As previously noted, Trans Mountain is taking this initiative at the tail end of what has been the most dreadful wildfire season in Canadian history by far.

A statement issued by the federal government notes that ‘Canada’s 2023 wildfire season is the most destructive ever recorded, and it’s not over yet. By September 5, more than 6,132 fires had torched a staggering 16.5 million hectares of land. To put that in perspective, that’s an area larger than Greece and more thandouble the 1989 record.’

From one side of the country to the other, fires forced the evacuation of tens ofthousands of people and the populations of North American cities choked on the smoke that filled the sky. The raging fires, moreover, while they were an effect of climate change, became a cause of its intensification. By the end of July, ‘accumulated carbon emissions from wildfires across Canada from Jan. 1 to July 31 totalled 290 million mt …This is already more than double the previous record for the year as a whole and represents over 25% of the global total for2023 to date.’

Trans Mountain’s antics, however, are in line with the approach taken by other fossil-fuel interests operating in Canada. In July, the Canadian Energy Centre gloated that the ‘value of Canadian oil and gas exports climbed 57.1 per cent in 2022 due to strong prices’ and expressed confidence that ‘Canada’s energy sector is positioned for another large expansion.’ Empty assurances of an eventual transition to sustainable energy sources notwithstanding, Canadian fossil-fuel capitalism remains an exceptional threat and a dangerous enemy.

Between 15-17 September, some 600,000 people in over sixty countries took to the streets to demand climate justice. This included a march in New York City, where the UN General Assembly was meeting and the UN secretary-general was convening a ‘Climate Ambition Summit.’ That people mobilised in this way, rather than trusting ‘world leaders’ to deal effectively with the climate crisis, is important and points the way forward for all of us.

As the impacts of climate change become increasingly dire, Trans Mountain is ready to go back on its undertakings to the Stk’emlúpsemc te Secwépemc Nation, inflicting further environmental damage in the process, so that it can massively increase a deadly but profitable flow of oil. Such reckless and destructive conduct is just one further indication among many of the need for mass action in the face of the climate crisis.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/26/buildin ... ada-burns/

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Fracking Fallout: Is America’s Drinking Water Safe?
Posted on September 26, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. A predictable outcome of fracking, which is contamination of aquifers, may be happening on a big enough scale to get out of the so-called progressive media into the mainstream. I recall years ago photos of dirty yellow and brown water coming out of taps in parts of Pennsylvania, and even some being able to get ignition when they held a lighter near the water stream, presumably due to high methane concentrations.

I would like to know where in “southern Ohio” the water problems are. Cobb links to an article in Athens County Independent from earlier in the month which also came up in a quick search. lists Athens and Washington counties in southern Ohio as afflicted areas:

Four fracking waste injection wells in Athens County have temporarily suspended operations by order of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which says the wells present an “imminent danger” to health and the environment.

On May 1, ODNR Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management ordered the suspension of a Class II injection well in Rome Township on grounds that its operator, Reliable Enterprises LLC, violated an Ohio Administrative Code section that bars operators from contaminating or polluting surface land and surface or subsurface water. In late June, three wells in Torch operated by K&H Partners were suspended on the same grounds.

Applications for new Class II injection wells from both Reliable Enterprises and K&H were denied because of the suspensions. K&H’s application for a fourth well at its $43 million facility in Torch generated controversy when it was proposed in 2018.


Class II wells are used to contain toxic waste from oil and gas production thousands of feet underground. The wells are intended to isolate the waste water, known as brine, from groundwater.

However, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management found that waste fluid injected into the three K&H wells had spread at least 1.5 miles underground and was rising to the surface through oil and gas production wells in Athens and Washington counties.

Note that a May article, Ohio Environmentalists, Oil Companies Battle State Over Dumping of Fracking Wastewater, describes fracking water contamination in a different Ohio county, Coshocton County.

By Kurt Cobb, a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has also appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Le Monde Diplomatique, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He is currently a fellow of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. Originally published at OilPrice

Southern Ohio discovers toxic fracking wastewater migrating from deep injection wells, contaminating local groundwater.
Fragmented state-level regulations and undisclosed fracking fluid compositions hinder effective monitoring and risk assessment.
Calls grow for stricter regulations and transparency in fracking practices to protect public health and drinking water supplies.
Eleven years ago, I wrote about the how millions of holes drilled deep into American soil were already destined to pollute groundwater across the United States, making many areas uninhabitable to humans who rely on such water. I warned that the so-called shale oil and gas boom would make this problem dramatically worse.

Now that problem has reached the news pages of southern Ohio, and this will likely just be the beginning of coverage of fracking-related damage to the country’s groundwater supplies. (There has been much coverage of studies that suggest such harm is inevitable and likely happening from fracking. But, we are now shifting into the stage where the actual harm will start to be discovered—almost certainly too late to prevent contamination in many cases.)

The main culprit (for now) is not the oil and gas wells themselves, but the injection wells used to dispose of huge volumes of water laced with toxic chemicals that have been injected into wells under great pressure to fracture underground rocks containing oil and natural gas in shale deposits. A lot of that water comes back to the surface and so must be disposed of. One of the easiest ways to do that is to pump it deep underground—many thousands of feet down—where it can supposedly be safely deposited away from the surface and far below drinking water aquifers used by us humans.

The trouble is—as I pointed out in my piece 11 years ago—the injected wastewater doesn’t necessarily stay put. And, that’s the problem in southern Ohio. In the Ohio case, “the [Ohio] Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management found that waste fluid injected into the three K&H [waste injection] wells had spread at least 1.5 miles underground and was rising to the surface through oil and gas production wells in Athens and Washington counties.”

This is why a former EPA scientist referenced in my 2012 piece believes that groundwater practically every there is any kind of drilling will become contaminated within the next 100 years as toxic fluids migrate from working and abandoned oil and gas wells and wastewater injection wells into fresh drinking water aquifers.

Part of the problem is the piecemeal regulation of oil and gas operations and wastewater injection. States do the regulation and currently face large and powerful oil and gas companies and the companies that haul their toxic fracking wastewater away. The states have a difficult time monitoring what these companies are dumping, not least of all because the composition of the fluids used to fracture shale oil and gas deposits is considered a trade secret. States cannot easily pry open the files of these companies to find out exactly what is in these fluids.

The fact that companies which use hazardous chemicals that can easily get into the drinking water supply are not obliged to divulge publicly the formulas for the mixtures they inject underground ought to shock the public. But unless Congress fixes some or all of the exemptions from federal disclosure laws enjoyed by the oil and gas industry, the public will continue to be in the dark about the makeup of the waste fluids from oil and gas drilling, especially in shale oil and gas fields, and associated injection of toxic fluids deep into the Earth.

Without crucial information about contaminants which threaten public drinking water supplies, regulators and the public will be shadow-boxing their oil and gas industry foes. My guess is that if companies were obliged to release their fracking formulas and be subject to analysis of the actual fracking fluids and every community was by law informed of this information and its implications for public health, regulation of these practices would be far stricter and some current practices, such as injection of wastes underground, would be banned.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09 ... -safe.html

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World Bank Pumps Billions into Fossil Fuels
September 25, 2023

Exploiting a “trade finance” loophole, the bank dumped an estimated $3.7 billion into oil and gas projects in 2022, finds an analysis by the German research group Urgewald.


David Malpass in April, shortly before he stepped down as president of the World Bank Group. (World Bank, Flickr, Grant Ellis, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

A recent analysis by the German nonprofit Urgewald estimated that the World Bank spent nearly $4 billion on fossil fuel financing last year, when it was under the leadership of a climate denier nominated by former U.S. President Donald Trump.

The World Bank pledged in 2017 to end financing for upstream oil and gas — with narrow exceptions — after 2019. But Urgewald observed in its new report that the World Bank’s pledge applied only to direct finance, allowing the powerful institution to funnel cash to oil and gas projects through “trade finance” dished out by its private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

“Despite trade finance’s vast and still-growing share of the IFC’s budget, over 70% of it is given out in secrecy,” Urgewald noted. “The types of goods and businesses it is funding are not even reported to the World Bank’s shareholders, i.e., our governments. The public has a right to know where all this money is going.”

Citing the IFC’s “severe lack of transparency,” Urgewald stressed that it was only able to “formulate an estimate” for oil and gas transactions. The group calculated that the World Bank spent roughly $3.7 billion on oil and gas trade finance in 2022.

“This would more than triple the current annual level of fossil fuel finance attributed to the World Bank and cast serious doubts on Bank claims of alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement,” Urgewald’s Heike Meinhardt said in a statement.

“The easiest way for a big oil company or coal operation to escape attention surrounding public assistance is to cloak it in trade finance.”


IFC headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Castelobranco, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The World Bank has long been accused of reneging on its climate commitments. A report released last year by Big Shift Global estimated that the World Bank has spent nearly $15 billion supporting fossil fuels since the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

Late last year, former World Bank President David Malpass sparked global outrage by saying he’s not sure whether he accepts the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, further validating climate activists’ longstanding calls for systemic reforms at the bank.

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“I don’t know,” Malpass said in response to a reporter’s question about his views on climate change. “I’m not a scientist.”

The comments prompted widespread calls for Malpass to step down, which he did in June. Current World Bank President Ajay Banga, who U.S. President Joe Biden nominated to replace Malpass, is a former private equity executive who has worked for Nestlé, PepsiCo and Citibank.


Biden with newly appointed World Bank President Banga on May 4 in the Oval Office. (White House/Adam Schultz)

Urgewald warned in its report Tuesday that the World Bank will remain a major source of funding for the fossil fuel industry until it enacts reforms that prevent the IFC from bolstering oil and gas under the guise of “trade finance.”

“The easiest way for a big oil company or coal operation to escape attention surrounding public assistance is to cloak it in trade finance,” the group said. “It is a huge loophole that must be closed and evaluated through public disclosure.”

Urgewald added that “there is no doubt” the World Bank and IFC “are going to deny” its findings and “claim the figures are inaccurate.”

That’s exactly what an IFC spokesperson did on Tuesday, tellingThe Guardian that “Urgewald’s report contains serious factual inaccuracies and grossly overstates IFC’s support for fossil fuels.”

“IFC regularly reports accurate and timely project information through various channels,” the spokesperson added.

Urgewald disputed that narrative in its report, asserting that the “continued secrecy surrounding trade finance makes it impossible to determine how much fossil fuel business the IFC is ultimately facilitating and whether the World Bank is actually aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.”

“An exorbitant amount of IFC money, i.e., more than half its budget, is streaming through banks without any oversight by the [World Bank Board of Directors], without any opportunity for public scrutiny, without any accountability,” the group said.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/25/w ... sil-fuels/

[blindpig]

Waterborne poison from metal mines affects over 23 million people
September 26, 2023

Huge areas contaminated by lead, zinc, copper, arsenic and other toxic wastes



A global assessment of the impacts of metal mining on rivers and floodplains, published this week in the journal Science, finds that over 23 million people worldwide are affected by potentially dangerous concentrations of toxic waste. The study offers the first comprehensive understanding of the environmental and health threats associated with metal mining activities.

The research is based on a new database of 185,000 metal mines to determine the global scale of metal mining contamination in river systems and its repercussions for human populations and livestock. It modelled contamination from all known active and inactive metal mining sites, including tailings storage facilities – used to store mine waste – and looked at potentially harmful contaminants such as lead, zinc, copper, and arsenic, which are transported downstream from mining operations, and often deposited along river channels and floodplains for extended periods.

The results highlight the widespread reach of the contamination, affecting approximately 479,200 kilometers of river channels and encompassing 164,000 square kilometers of floodplains on a global scale. Approximately 23.48 million people reside on these affected floodplains, supporting 5.72 million livestock and encompassing over 65,000 square kilometers of irrigated land.

Incomplete reporting of mine locations and tailing dam failures, particularly in China, India, and Russia, means that these figures underestimate the population at risk.

Various pathways exist for humans to become exposed to these contaminant metals including from direct exposure through skin contact, accidental ingestion, inhalation of contaminated dust, and through the consumption of contaminated water and food grown on contaminated soils.

This poses an additional hazard to the health of urban and rural communities in low-income countries and communities dependent on these rivers and floodplains, especially in regions already burdened with water-related diseases. In industrialized nations in Western Europe and the United States, metal mining contamination constitutes a major and growing constraint to water and food security, compromises vital ecosystem services, and contributes to antimicrobial resistance in the environment.

The authors say that metal mining began to contaminate river systems as early as 7000 years ago, making it humanity’s earliest and most persistent form of environmental contamination. Since the mid-19th century, tailings dams have been used to store mine waste, which has reduced the direct supply into rivers, but such structures are prone to failure, with often severe consequences for ecosystems and human communities downstream. The new study shows that the number of people exposed to contamination sourced from long-term discharge of mining waste into rivers is almost 50 times greater than the number directly affected by tailings dam failures.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... on-people/

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The Climate March: Magnificent and Misdirected
Originally published: Countercurrents on September 25, 2023 by Ellen Isaacs (more by Countercurrents) | (Posted Sep 26, 2023)

At least 75,000 marched in New York City on September 17, quite impressive, inspiring to be a part of. As compared to previous marches, last seen pre-Covid, there were more people of color, indigenous and immigrant participants. But the question is, what exactly were the demands of this mass assemblage? Of course, the overwhelming message was “End Fossil Fuels,” but to whom was this demand addressed? For the most part, the ask was for liberal politicians, like Biden, to take action and for the banks to stop funding corporate climate-destroying ventures. In other words, the overall assumption put forward by the organizers was that there is a separation of interests between the political, corporate and banking sectors. The featured speaker was Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, a congresswoman and democratic socialist who thinks workers’ lives can be bettered under capitalism and even voted to support the war in Ukraine.1

Eight groups were the official march sponsors, one of the largest being the Global Campaign to End Climate Justice (demandclimatejustice.org), a network of over 200 organizations, that even has the slogan System Change Not Climate Change. Their statement of principles says that climate change arises from profit-driven and growth-oriented systems, unequal and exploitative economic and social structures, and policies and practices promoted by global corporations, rich industrialized countries, international institutions and economic and political elites. They then have a long list of demands with which none of us could disagree, but the strategy is to “build our capacity for coordinated mobilizations” and “fight for an international climate agreement.” Of course this agreement would have to be made between existing governments, since their replacement is not contemplated. There is no actual plan for system change.

How Capitalism Actually Works
In order to frame their demands as asks from capitalism, the march organizers must fundamentally ignore the structure of that capitalist society. The purpose, the basic operating mechanism of capitalism, is to maximize profits. Profits are generated by selling goods or services for more than it costs to make them, which includes obtaining resources, maintaining equipment and paying workers’ wages and benefits. Corporations and often governments finance their huge investments by borrowing money from banks There is competition between manufacturers of similar products as well as competition between nations to preserve the pre-eminence of their corporations. Since profits, which attract investors, are tallied on a quarterly basis, there is no room to delay profitability in order to make long range expensive changes. In order to maintain their hold on industries, nations compete to source raw materials from around the world, protect the supply lines to import them, and control the sources of the cheapest labor. This competition is the basis of most wars involving major powers, be it the World Wars or the many nearly continuous smaller ones.

Last year, 2022, the global oil and gas industry made $4 trillion in profits, up from the average of $1.5 trillion in recent years, according to the head of the International Energy Agency.2 Less than half of one percent went back into clean energy. According to the IMF, the fossil fuel industry receives subsidies from governments of $11 million every minute in the form of tax breaks and price controls as well as not being required to pay for the pollution they produce.3 The industry also heavily subsidizes politicians, including $28 million to 50 members of the House.4 Even as banks have said they are going green, they provided $673 to finance the fossil fuel industry last year.5 Meanwhile, Biden has approved the Willow drilling project in Alaska, the Mountain Valley pipeline in west Virginia and more oil and gas permits than Trump.6

The largest user of energy in the U.S. is the Department of Defense, 77-80% of all government energy consumption. It goes to support over 800 military installations around the world, weapons production, and combat operations as well as other uses.7 The war in Ukraine, which has cut off supplies of gas and oil from Russia, has also led to a scramble for easily available new energy sources, including the increased use of coal.8

What is to be done
The main conclusion of this discussion is that no matter how militant and how large the environmental movement, it is impotent if it limits itself to choosing villains among the rulers of capitalism. It is not the governments, the manufacturer or their financiers who can be singled out, it is the system of capitalism of which they are the integral parts. Thus we need to recognize that the climate movement must become an integral part of an anti-capitalist movement, even though this makes our task more complex and difficult. Only if workers are running society in their own interest can workers’ survival and wellbeing be the priority. Only then will we be able to investigate energy solutions, limit energy use in the rich nations and increase it in the poor, and invest in such efforts rapidly enough to save our planet.

It is now clear to millions of us that our world is under imminent threat, due not only to climate change but the specter of world war between the competing super powers, the U.S. and China. Those who are suffering the most are the poor of the world, both from environmental disasters and from being called upon to fight each other. But all of us face a daunting future. Our urgent priority is to build an international, class conscious anti-capitalist organization to take on this monumental struggle to build a new world, a communist world, a worker run world. That means integrating our climate struggle with union movements, anti-colonial movements, anti-war movements, anti-racist movements, indeed all the movements that unite and strengthen us and grow the strength of our class. We must not limit ourselves to demonstrations but must consider how to be organized and powerful enough to actually overthrow the current rulers of this planet. Then we might survive.

Ellen Isaacs is a physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org.

Notes:
1.↩ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esLJRHU-GvA
2.↩ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 023-02-14/
3.↩ https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -imf-finds
4.↩ https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... -industry/
5.↩ https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/investin ... index.html
6.↩ https://www.eenews.net/articles/biden-f ... -his-left/)
7.↩ https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/fil ... awford.pdf
8.↩ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 022-12-13/

https://mronline.org/2023/09/26/the-cli ... sdirected/



Building pipelines as Canada burns
Originally published: Counterfire on September 24, 2023 by John Clarke (more by Counterfire) | (Posted Sep 26, 2023)

The Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion in British Columbia is running into another round of problems and generating even more opposition. ‘The controversial government-owned fossil fuel company is seeking regulatory approval to change its pipeline construction methods and route, after running into problems drilling a tunnel.’

Indigenous people impacted by this project are coming out strongly against this development. The ‘Stk’emlúpsemc te Secwépemc Nation, who have a ‘“historical, cultural and spiritual connection” to the lands the pipeline is being built on, said they never supported or consented to such a change.’ They contend that the new approaches sought by the company ‘would cause “significant and irreparable harm” to their culture, and to the integrity of the spiritually significant lands in question.’

The Trans Mountain pipeline constitutes a key element of Canada’s expanding role as a major oil and gas producer and a look at its history offers some insights into the nature of fossil-fuel capitalism in this country. Such an examination becomes even more compelling because this year Canada has experienced its most severe wildfire season ever.

In the 1950s, ‘representatives from the federal government, Alberta and B.C. endorsed the idea of a new pipeline from the Prairies to the West Coast …’ in order to ‘create a vital market for Alberta’s crude oil resources.’ The project was justified at the time on the grounds that it would serve ‘as a piece of Cold War strategic defence infrastructure, supplying the West with energy in the event of war.’

Initially, the pipeline could carry 150,000 barrels of oil a day and this grew due to the increased output of the Alberta oilsands so that, by the early 2000s, 300,000 barrels a day could pass through it. Trans Mountain has ‘helped solidify Canada’s status as the fourth-largest crude oil exporter in the world’ and the goal of the present project is to triple the flow of oil.

The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs has charted the harmful effects of the whole project on Indigenous communities. There have also been serious environmental impacts since the pipeline was first laid, with dozens of oil spills having occurred over the years.

By 2013, the Texas-based Kinder Morgan company had bought Trans Mountain and developed plans that would involve ‘building almost 1,000 kilometres of new pipeline and increasing capacity so that it could ship up to 890,000 barrels per day. The expansion also proposed many more pump stations, storage tanks and tanker facilities.’ It would also mean that ‘oil tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet, near Vancouver, (would increase) from roughly 60 tankers per year to more than 400.’

With the strong support of the Alberta government, the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa approved the Kinder Morgan project in November 2016. This was despite intense criticism over the fact that the ‘regulator’s review didn’t consider climate and other environmental impacts, and … ignored scientific information such as the impact of oilsands development on at-risk species and human health.’

In 2018, with protests taking place across the country and the BC government now in opposition to the pipeline extension, ‘Kinder Morgan paused its work and threatened to walk away from the project in a matter of weeks.’ Trudeau declared that ‘access to world markets for Canadian resources is a core national interest. The Trans Mountain expansion will be built.’ His ‘government announced it was purchasing both the pipeline and its expansion project from the company for $4.5 billion. Trans Mountain became a subsidiary of a Crown corporation called the Canada Development Investment Corporation.’

When Kinder Morgan first announced its plans for the expansion, ‘it projected it would cost $5.4 billion and be “operational in late 2017.” The cost is now estimated at a staggering $309 billion and it is hoped to complete the project next year but this is called into question by present developments. Each additional month of delay results in roughly $200 million in lost revenues and roughly $190 million in carrying charges.’

The changes in construction methods that Trans Mountain wants to implement have produced a backlash. The company intends to abandon its earlier commitment to micro-tunnel through a particularly culturally significant portion of the lands of the Stk’emlúpsemc te Secwépemc Nation (SSN). Due to encountering hard rock formations, Trans Mountain ‘is facing mounting financial and deadline pressure’ and wants to revert to digging an open trench.

For its part, SSN is clear that such a change would ‘“destroy, damage, or degrade habitat” in the sensitive grasslands and old growth forests that are home to many at-risk wildlife species.’ SSN has made clear that it would never have accepted the pipeline route through its land had it known that the threat of an open trench would emerge and it asks the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) to prevent this. Should the CER rule in favour of Trans Mountain, active opposition to the project is certain to intensify.

Climate impacts
This readiness to proceed with an environmentally destructive pipeline project of this magnitude, trampling on Indigenous rights in the process, is shocking but hardly surprising. As previously noted, Trans Mountain is taking this initiative at the tail end of what has been the most dreadful wildfire season in Canadian history by far.

A statement issued by the federal government notes that ‘Canada’s 2023 wildfire season is the most destructive ever recorded, and it’s not over yet. By September 5, more than 6,132 fires had torched a staggering 16.5 million hectares of land. To put that in perspective, that’s an area larger than Greece and more thandouble the 1989 record.’

From one side of the country to the other, fires forced the evacuation of tens ofthousands of people and the populations of North American cities choked on the smoke that filled the sky. The raging fires, moreover, while they were an effect of climate change, became a cause of its intensification. By the end of July, ‘accumulated carbon emissions from wildfires across Canada from Jan. 1 to July 31 totalled 290 million mt …This is already more than double the previous record for the year as a whole and represents over 25% of the global total for2023 to date.’

Trans Mountain’s antics, however, are in line with the approach taken by other fossil-fuel interests operating in Canada. In July, the Canadian Energy Centre gloated that the ‘value of Canadian oil and gas exports climbed 57.1 per cent in 2022 due to strong prices’ and expressed confidence that ‘Canada’s energy sector is positioned for another large expansion.’ Empty assurances of an eventual transition to sustainable energy sources notwithstanding, Canadian fossil-fuel capitalism remains an exceptional threat and a dangerous enemy.

Between 15-17 September, some 600,000 people in over sixty countries took to the streets to demand climate justice. This included a march in New York City, where the UN General Assembly was meeting and the UN secretary-general was convening a ‘Climate Ambition Summit.’ That people mobilised in this way, rather than trusting ‘world leaders’ to deal effectively with the climate crisis, is important and points the way forward for all of us.

As the impacts of climate change become increasingly dire, Trans Mountain is ready to go back on its undertakings to the Stk’emlúpsemc te Secwépemc Nation, inflicting further environmental damage in the process, so that it can massively increase a deadly but profitable flow of oil. Such reckless and destructive conduct is just one further indication among many of the need for mass action in the face of the climate crisis.

https://mronline.org/2023/09/26/buildin ... ada-burns/

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Fracking Fallout: Is America’s Drinking Water Safe?
Posted on September 26, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. A predictable outcome of fracking, which is contamination of aquifers, may be happening on a big enough scale to get out of the so-called progressive media into the mainstream. I recall years ago photos of dirty yellow and brown water coming out of taps in parts of Pennsylvania, and even some being able to get ignition when they held a lighter near the water stream, presumably due to high methane concentrations.

I would like to know where in “southern Ohio” the water problems are. Cobb links to an article in Athens County Independent from earlier in the month which also came up in a quick search. lists Athens and Washington counties in southern Ohio as afflicted areas:

Four fracking waste injection wells in Athens County have temporarily suspended operations by order of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which says the wells present an “imminent danger” to health and the environment.

On May 1, ODNR Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management ordered the suspension of a Class II injection well in Rome Township on grounds that its operator, Reliable Enterprises LLC, violated an Ohio Administrative Code section that bars operators from contaminating or polluting surface land and surface or subsurface water. In late June, three wells in Torch operated by K&H Partners were suspended on the same grounds.

Applications for new Class II injection wells from both Reliable Enterprises and K&H were denied because of the suspensions. K&H’s application for a fourth well at its $43 million facility in Torch generated controversy when it was proposed in 2018.


Class II wells are used to contain toxic waste from oil and gas production thousands of feet underground. The wells are intended to isolate the waste water, known as brine, from groundwater.

However, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management found that waste fluid injected into the three K&H wells had spread at least 1.5 miles underground and was rising to the surface through oil and gas production wells in Athens and Washington counties.

Note that a May article, Ohio Environmentalists, Oil Companies Battle State Over Dumping of Fracking Wastewater, describes fracking water contamination in a different Ohio county, Coshocton County.

By Kurt Cobb, a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has also appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Le Monde Diplomatique, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He is currently a fellow of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. Originally published at OilPrice

Southern Ohio discovers toxic fracking wastewater migrating from deep injection wells, contaminating local groundwater.
Fragmented state-level regulations and undisclosed fracking fluid compositions hinder effective monitoring and risk assessment.
Calls grow for stricter regulations and transparency in fracking practices to protect public health and drinking water supplies.
Eleven years ago, I wrote about the how millions of holes drilled deep into American soil were already destined to pollute groundwater across the United States, making many areas uninhabitable to humans who rely on such water. I warned that the so-called shale oil and gas boom would make this problem dramatically worse.

Now that problem has reached the news pages of southern Ohio, and this will likely just be the beginning of coverage of fracking-related damage to the country’s groundwater supplies. (There has been much coverage of studies that suggest such harm is inevitable and likely happening from fracking. But, we are now shifting into the stage where the actual harm will start to be discovered—almost certainly too late to prevent contamination in many cases.)

The main culprit (for now) is not the oil and gas wells themselves, but the injection wells used to dispose of huge volumes of water laced with toxic chemicals that have been injected into wells under great pressure to fracture underground rocks containing oil and natural gas in shale deposits. A lot of that water comes back to the surface and so must be disposed of. One of the easiest ways to do that is to pump it deep underground—many thousands of feet down—where it can supposedly be safely deposited away from the surface and far below drinking water aquifers used by us humans.

The trouble is—as I pointed out in my piece 11 years ago—the injected wastewater doesn’t necessarily stay put. And, that’s the problem in southern Ohio. In the Ohio case, “the [Ohio] Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management found that waste fluid injected into the three K&H [waste injection] wells had spread at least 1.5 miles underground and was rising to the surface through oil and gas production wells in Athens and Washington counties.”

This is why a former EPA scientist referenced in my 2012 piece believes that groundwater practically every there is any kind of drilling will become contaminated within the next 100 years as toxic fluids migrate from working and abandoned oil and gas wells and wastewater injection wells into fresh drinking water aquifers.

Part of the problem is the piecemeal regulation of oil and gas operations and wastewater injection. States do the regulation and currently face large and powerful oil and gas companies and the companies that haul their toxic fracking wastewater away. The states have a difficult time monitoring what these companies are dumping, not least of all because the composition of the fluids used to fracture shale oil and gas deposits is considered a trade secret. States cannot easily pry open the files of these companies to find out exactly what is in these fluids.

The fact that companies which use hazardous chemicals that can easily get into the drinking water supply are not obliged to divulge publicly the formulas for the mixtures they inject underground ought to shock the public. But unless Congress fixes some or all of the exemptions from federal disclosure laws enjoyed by the oil and gas industry, the public will continue to be in the dark about the makeup of the waste fluids from oil and gas drilling, especially in shale oil and gas fields, and associated injection of toxic fluids deep into the Earth.

Without crucial information about contaminants which threaten public drinking water supplies, regulators and the public will be shadow-boxing their oil and gas industry foes. My guess is that if companies were obliged to release their fracking formulas and be subject to analysis of the actual fracking fluids and every community was by law informed of this information and its implications for public health, regulation of these practices would be far stricter and some current practices, such as injection of wastes underground, would be banned.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09 ... -safe.html

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World Bank Pumps Billions into Fossil Fuels
September 25, 2023

Exploiting a “trade finance” loophole, the bank dumped an estimated $3.7 billion into oil and gas projects in 2022, finds an analysis by the German research group Urgewald.


David Malpass in April, shortly before he stepped down as president of the World Bank Group. (World Bank, Flickr, Grant Ellis, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

A recent analysis by the German nonprofit Urgewald estimated that the World Bank spent nearly $4 billion on fossil fuel financing last year, when it was under the leadership of a climate denier nominated by former U.S. President Donald Trump.

The World Bank pledged in 2017 to end financing for upstream oil and gas — with narrow exceptions — after 2019. But Urgewald observed in its new report that the World Bank’s pledge applied only to direct finance, allowing the powerful institution to funnel cash to oil and gas projects through “trade finance” dished out by its private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

“Despite trade finance’s vast and still-growing share of the IFC’s budget, over 70% of it is given out in secrecy,” Urgewald noted. “The types of goods and businesses it is funding are not even reported to the World Bank’s shareholders, i.e., our governments. The public has a right to know where all this money is going.”

Citing the IFC’s “severe lack of transparency,” Urgewald stressed that it was only able to “formulate an estimate” for oil and gas transactions. The group calculated that the World Bank spent roughly $3.7 billion on oil and gas trade finance in 2022.

“This would more than triple the current annual level of fossil fuel finance attributed to the World Bank and cast serious doubts on Bank claims of alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement,” Urgewald’s Heike Meinhardt said in a statement.

“The easiest way for a big oil company or coal operation to escape attention surrounding public assistance is to cloak it in trade finance.”


IFC headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Castelobranco, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The World Bank has long been accused of reneging on its climate commitments. A report released last year by Big Shift Global estimated that the World Bank has spent nearly $15 billion supporting fossil fuels since the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

Late last year, former World Bank President David Malpass sparked global outrage by saying he’s not sure whether he accepts the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, further validating climate activists’ longstanding calls for systemic reforms at the bank.

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“I don’t know,” Malpass said in response to a reporter’s question about his views on climate change. “I’m not a scientist.”

The comments prompted widespread calls for Malpass to step down, which he did in June. Current World Bank President Ajay Banga, who U.S. President Joe Biden nominated to replace Malpass, is a former private equity executive who has worked for Nestlé, PepsiCo and Citibank.


Biden with newly appointed World Bank President Banga on May 4 in the Oval Office. (White House/Adam Schultz)

Urgewald warned in its report Tuesday that the World Bank will remain a major source of funding for the fossil fuel industry until it enacts reforms that prevent the IFC from bolstering oil and gas under the guise of “trade finance.”

“The easiest way for a big oil company or coal operation to escape attention surrounding public assistance is to cloak it in trade finance,” the group said. “It is a huge loophole that must be closed and evaluated through public disclosure.”

Urgewald added that “there is no doubt” the World Bank and IFC “are going to deny” its findings and “claim the figures are inaccurate.”

That’s exactly what an IFC spokesperson did on Tuesday, tellingThe Guardian that “Urgewald’s report contains serious factual inaccuracies and grossly overstates IFC’s support for fossil fuels.”

“IFC regularly reports accurate and timely project information through various channels,” the spokesperson added.

Urgewald disputed that narrative in its report, asserting that the “continued secrecy surrounding trade finance makes it impossible to determine how much fossil fuel business the IFC is ultimately facilitating and whether the World Bank is actually aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.”

“An exorbitant amount of IFC money, i.e., more than half its budget, is streaming through banks without any oversight by the [World Bank Board of Directors], without any opportunity for public scrutiny, without any accountability,” the group said.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/25/w ... sil-fuels/

[blindpig]

Carbon offsets don’t work, and that’s not news
October 1, 2023

It’s been clear from the beginning that the market for ’emissions offsets’ is based on lies.



by Chris Lang
REDD-Monitor, September 30, 2023

Criticism of carbon offsets and carbon markets is increasing in both academic research and investigative reporting. This week, Kate Aronoff writes in The New Republic that,

“Over the last few years, a drumbeat of academic research and investigative reporting has painted a bleak picture of carbon offsets and the carbon markets through which they’re traded. Just this week, a team of journalists at Carbon Brief published an exhaustive explainer on offsets and the many damning studies poking holes in a practice that’s long been a darling of climate policy wonks. That includes a study now making its way through the peer review process, which estimates that only 12 percent of carbon-offset projects ‘constitute real emissions reductions.'”

It’s an excellent article, highlighting the fact that the vast majority of carbon offsets on Verra’s registry are worthless “phantom credits.”

Aronoff interviewed Danny Cullenward, Senior Fellow with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Cullenward points out that,

“The entire market is structured around a fundamental falsehood: that a ton of carbon we get from burning fossil fuels is identical to a ton of carbon stored in forests. That is 100 percent false. If you store carbon for less time than it takes to stabilize temperatures, that storage does not have any climate benefit.”

Cullenward also tells Aronoff that, “There’s nothing happening today that wasn’t happening five years ago. It’s just that there was no one paying attention to it.”

Hmmm. I don’t know who Cullenward is referring to when he says “no one” was paying attention. It’s a slightly odd comment because he’s been paying attention to the problems with carbon offsets for way longer than five years.

Deja vu, all over again

Anyway, this seems like the perfect opportunity to point out that criticism of carbon markets and carbon offsets is nothing new.

Here, for example, is a REDD-Monitor post from 2009, listing 10 papers highlighting the problems with carbon offsets on the Corner House website: The Corner House on Carbon Trading.

What’s interesting is the similarity of the arguments from 14 years ago to the critiques of carbon offsetting today. Here’s just one example, from a discussion between Larry Lohmann of the Corner House and Abyd Karmali, then-Managing Director, Global Head of Carbon Markets, Merrill Lynch. Lohmann points out that,

“Setting precise targets on paper is futile unless accompanied by immediate steps toward structural change. Carbon markets are explicitly designed to delay those steps. They give the polluters who most urgently need to make a start on major reinvestment – such as big electricity generators – a way to continue business as usual for as long as possible, by buying in cheap greenhouse gas pollution rights from elsewhere.

“By allowing companies to buy offsets instead of reducing their emissions, government are allowing years of inaction before the industries in question begin to do what they have to do to deal with global warming. Worse, these credits do not always even represent verifiable reductions. They come from projects that merely claim to be saving carbon over what would have happened without the credit sales.

“Evidence suggests that most such projects – for example, the bulk of the 763 Chinese hydroelectric dams that have applied or are planning to apply to the United Nations to be allowed to sell over 300 million tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution rights – were going to be built anyway, and are merely topping up their finance by claiming otherwise.”

14 years later, Verra is still in denial about the fact that the vast majority of its carbon credits still do not represent verifiable reductions. And many of the Chinese dams that sold carbon credits through the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism are still selling carbon credits on Verra’s registry. Verra’s ex-CEO, David Antonioli even admitted that the dams were not additional. In an April 2022 interview he told Energy Monitor that, “Those projects were developed before we came to the conclusion that they were no longer additional.”

What’s the difference between carbon offsets and mortgage-backed securities?

In a comment following the post listing the Corner House reports, I linked to a 2008 article by Joe Romm on Climate Progress. Romm asks the question, “What is the difference between carbon offsets and mortgage-backed securities?” His answer is lipstick: “the offsets look on the surface to be more attractive.”

“In the case of the securities, before paying good money for them, you have to figure out what the value of the underlying mortgages are. Oftentimes they are almost worthless. In the case of carbon offsets, before you pay good money for them, you have to figure out the value of the underlying projects they fund. Oftentimes they are almost worthless.”

Romm notes that a major 2008 analysis from Stanford found that,

“’between a third and two thirds’” of emission offsets under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) — set up under the Kyoto treaty to encourage emissions reductions in developing nations — do not represent actual emission cuts.”

Again, it all sounds very similar to today’s arguments about the vast majority of Verra’s carbon offsets being worthless.

Romm recently wrote a paper published by the University of Pennsylvania Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, which concludes that “carbon offsets are unscalable, unjust, and unfixable — and a threat to the Paris Agreement.”

“No trees”

In a 2007 post, Romm explains the “First Rule of Carbon Offsets: No Trees”. He quotes from a 2005 study that is critical of using trees to offset emissions from burning fossil fuels. One of the authors of the study, Ken Caldeira of Stanford University told The Guardian that,

“The idea that you can go out and plant a tree and help reverse global warming is an appealing, feel-good thing. To plant forests to mitigate climate change outside of the tropics is a waste of time.”

The Guardian wrote that,

“Prof Caldeira said planting trees was a diversion, letting consumers pollute more. He said it would be better to transform the way energy was derived and used, for instance through investment in renewable and carbon-free electricity generation.”

Grist picked up on Romm’s argument and pointed out that the biggest problem is timing:

“Unfortunately, trees grow rather slowly. And particularly when they’re small, they don’t sequester much carbon. The small print on tree-planting offsets typically indicate a 40-year maturity. If you buy a tree-based offset today, you’re sponsoring a reduction that won’t be complete until 2047, by which time we’ll either be living in hurricane-proof seaside bunkers in the Rockies or flying around in hydrogen-fueled jet cars.”

Grist also noted five other problems with tree-based offsets: permanence; measurability; sunlight absorption (the albedo effect); leakage; and the dangers of plantations consisting of monocultures of non-native species.

Needless to say, none of these problems have gone away.

This week, Carbon Brief has run a series of articles about carbon offsetting. One of them gives a timeline of carbon offsetting. It includes a quotation from Mark Trexler, who worked on the first ever land-based carbon offset scheme in 1988.

Trexler tells Carbon Brief that offsets were aimed at “getting companies and electric utilities to think about carbon dioxide for the first time, to make some commitments, even if they were based on using offsets.”

And he adds that,

“No one ever thought that carbon offsets were going to save the world. That just wasn’t the way we were thinking about this. We were thinking: this is an interim measure until public policy gets going. It was a way of getting the conversation started. No one then thought that we would be doing offsets 35 years later.”

Surely, then, now would be a really good time to scrap carbon offsets.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/1 ... -not-news/

We knew it was a racket from the git-go. Would you buy an environmental program from this guy?

[blindpig]

News from nowhere: Game over
Originally published: Al Mayadeen on October 2, 2023 by Alec Charles (more by Al Mayadeen) | (Posted Oct 04, 2023)

So that’s it. Game over. World done. It was nice knowing you.

In a mind-numbingly irresponsible political gamble, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last month announced a reversal of the UK’s key climate change pledges.

His former colleague Alok Sharma, who last year served as president of COP26, denounced the move, saying it had caused “consternation” among international colleagues at the UN’s Climate Action Summit, an event which Mr. Sunak had chosen not to attend, and at which the Secretary General of the United Nations had declared, quite unambiguously, that our species had “opened the gates to hell.”

Mr. Sharma suggested that other nations were wondering why they should honor their environmental pledges if Britain–which had once led the way in this field–was going to abandon its own.

Meanwhile, the UK government’s own climate advisor described the idea that the country could reach its 2050 net zero target by junking its 2030 interim objectives as merely “wishful thinking”.

This foolhardy and dangerous gambit resulted from a recent surprise win for the Conservatives at an outer London by-election, as a consequence of an unpopular environmental policy being rolled out by the Labour mayor of the capital.

Urged on by those on the right of his party, the premier clearly believes that, with the opposition well ahead in the opinion polls, the only way he can win the next general election is by ditching costly environmental policies and letting British people continue to buy new petrol and diesel vehicles for a further five years.

He may not have started the fire, but, having recently agreed to give new North Sea drilling licenses to his friends in the fossil fuel industries, he’s certainly willing to stoke it.

He’s also extended the period during which people will still be able to buy new gas boilers, scrapped energy efficiency rules for rented properties, and dissolved his government’s energy efficiency task force, just six months after he’d established it.

In a curious move, he even felt it was worth promising to reverse green proposals that had never in fact been mooted, such as the imposition on households of six separate recycling bins, mandatory car-sharing, and the introduction of a meat tax.

He seems not to care that by watering down the United Kingdom’s flagship climate change policies, he’s pretty much condemning the planet to burn.

Yet, Sunak’s bid to draw a thin blue line through a mass of healthy green has been somewhat frustrated by Labour’s immediate and deafening silence on the subject. It seems that brave Sir Keir has yet again chosen to sit on the fence for fear of rocking the boat and giving the Tories the electoral advantage for which they’re obviously so desperate.

Having watered down its own plans for environmental investment, the Labour Party appears more enthusiastic about presenting its differences with the Tories in terms of their economic policies, principles, and credentials. A year on from Liz Truss managing to crash the British economy in the space of a day, Labour has said that in office they would extend the authority of the Office for Budget Responsibility to publish its analyses and forecasts without needing the approval of the administration in power. This would in effect have left Ms. Truss’ mini-budget dead on arrival.

At the same time, the Conservative Chancellor announced that he had no intention of introducing tax cuts under the current economic conditions. This was evidently his own attempt to distance himself from his predecessor’s disastrous fiscal intervention.

Once more, the United Kingdom’s two main parties are finding it hard to define any clear ground that might distinguish them from each other.

As the Tories lurch back to the right on the environment, Labour goes with them. As Labour declares a safe and progressive approach to the economy, the Conservatives do their best to join them there.

As things stand, it seems that the next election will be a contest that sees the emergence of the least worst prospective Prime Minister, a face-off between a pair of similarly uninteresting and uncharismatic men… a battle between pragmatists to demonstrate their greater levels of competence and their lower number of fixed political convictions, a war of moral attrition whose casualties may include the economic stability of the nation and the environmental sustainability of the planet Earth.

https://mronline.org/2023/10/04/news-from-nowhere/

******

How Effective Are Electric Vehicles In Reducing Emissions?
Posted on October 4, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Readers are sure to debate the conclusions presented below on the emissions impact of electric vehicles, but they profess to have made a very detailed analysis of the carbon cost of manufacturing and operation over a typical electric vehicle lifespan. It concludes that electric vehicles are much better than internal combustion engines. and with current electric generation mixes, cut emissions by about 50%, which could rise to 86% as electricity generation shifts more and more away from coal and gas use.

Of course, the real message should be that consumers and governments need to do more to curb the use of cars. But suggesting what might sound like sacrifice is not on.

By Rystad Energy, an independent energy consulting services and business intelligence provider offering global databases, strategic advisory and research products for energy companies and suppliers, investors, investment banks, organisations, and governments. Originally published at OilPrice


Battery electric vehicles (BEV) are the clear winner when trying to reduce emissions in the transportation sector, according to Rystad Energy research. Despite incurring higher emissions in the manufacturing process of electric vehicles and an enduring reliance on fossil fuel power generation in many countries, the positive environmental impact of switching to a BEV over the vehicle’s lifetime is unmistakable.

Our analysis shows that battery-powered vehicles contribute at most half the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) of diesel or gasoline cars across their lifecycle, regardless of the country of operation. Even in countries where the power grid is dominated by fossil fuels, battery-powered cars emit about 50% of the CO2e of an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. As renewable sources replace coal and gas-fired generation, emissions related to the operation of BEVs could drop by 86%.

Our in-depth research of lifecycle BEV and ICE vehicle emissions considers every stage of the manufacturing process and the vehicle’s operation. This includes the manufacturing of the vehicle’s body, known as body in white (BIW), powertrain assembly, maintenance, fuel and electricity-related emissions, and battery production for BEVs. We are conscious that there are often societal and humanitarian impacts associated with EV manufacturing, battery production, and associated mining. However, this research is purely focused on the emissions comparison between battery electric and traditional-fuel vehicles.

Based on the current power generation mix in China, the lifecycle emissions of a BEV are about 39 tonnes of CO2e versus almost 85 tonnes for an ICE vehicle. The difference in the US is even starker. A BEV emits 42 tonnes of CO2e across its life in the US, 58% lower than a gasoline or diesel vehicle that emits more than 100 tonnes. Of these totals, emissions related to the extraction, refining, and burning of fossil fuels contribute about 90% of all ICE emissions. The breakdown of emissions across a battery-powered vehicle’s life is directly tied to its electricity consumption and how that power is generated.

Overall, battery electric vehicles are clearly the right technology to reduce emissions in the transportation sector. Switching to a BEV will reduce long-term emissions despite a larger environmental impact at the beginning of the vehicle’s life. Contrary to some claims, electric car adoption is not a fool’s errand; it will slash emissions in the long run and accelerate the energy transition.

Abhishek Murali, senior clean tech analyst, Rystad Energy



Learn more with Rystad Energy’s Energy Transition Solution.

We selected five countries for our analysis – China, the US, India, Germany, and France – due to their diverse transportation factors like driving patterns, type of vehicle dominant in each country, and varying power mixes, both historical and forecast. Germany and France were chosen to reflect the European market in general and assess different power mixes, keeping other factors mostly similar. We used our base case power generation forecast for each country when evaluating lifecycle emissions to accurately reflect the evolving nature of electricity generation and its impact on BEV emissions. Each vehicle is expected to last 18 years, after which age most vehicles are scrapped.

Annual distance driven varies widely by country, with consumers in the US driving longer distances than every other country we studied. US vehicles travel on average about 23,000 kilometers (km) every year, compared to 19,000 km in China and about 13,500 km in Germany, France, and India. When forecasting emissions over the next 18 years, we predicted the evolution of driving distance based on historical data. Mileage in the US, China, and Europe is expected to fall about 1% annually based on official driving statistics and surveys, while distances driven in India are expected to increase by 0.5% per year as the country is still in the middle of its motorization period.

The Power Market Holds the Key

A country’s power mix will play a significant role in determining how quickly emissions reduction can be achieved when switching to BEVs. Whereas ICE vehicles become more emissions-heavy as they age, BEVs will emit less over the years as power generation becomes greener. For instance, in our base case scenario predicting the development of the US power grid, battery-powered cars will emit just 14% of the emissions equivalent from a gasoline or diesel car in 2041.

Stark contrasts can also be found in regions where most other factors are similar. Comparing Germany and France, the only deviation is in the emissions intensity of the grid. France, largely dominated by nuclear power, has about an 84% lower carbon intensity than Germany, which relies heavily on gas generation. Hence, emissions from charging an electric vehicle in France will be about 70% lower, resulting in around 37% lower lifecycle emissions.

Performing the same comparison for a coal-heavy power mix, in the case of India, results in 43% lower lifecycle emissions. Overall, adopting BEVs – even in a status quo power mix future – will be beneficial to the environment, especially in countries with high annual mileage like the US.



How Much CO2 Can Electric Vehicle Sales Displace?

Using this power-mix analysis, we can estimate the volume of emissions avoided through BEV sales, assuming driving distance is the same across both vehicle types. The average displacement factor varies widely by country depending on driving patterns and model availability. For instance, China has low annual average mileage and widespread BEV model availability, leading to an almost 1:1 emissions displacement factor. However, BEV adoption in the US can vary hugely from state to state. California has an almost 1:1 displacement factor, but the national average is estimated at 0.6. European countries have anywhere from a 0.8 to 1.1 displacement factor.

To illustrate this, 5 million passenger BEVs were sold in China in 2022, versus 17 million ICE cars. Assuming each of these BEVs emits 39 tonnes CO2e in its lifetime and an ICE emits 85 tonnes CO2e, ICE sales would emit 1.4 gigatonnes CO2e total, while the BEVs sold will add about 200 million tonnes of CO2e to the environment. However, if the same 5 million BEVs had been ICEs, added emissions would have been around 430 million tonnes CO2e. Thus, BEVs result in a lifecycle emissions reduction of 230 million tonnes CO2e – almost 14% of total passenger car emissions. A similar analysis in the US shows this figure at 25 million tonnes CO2e.



https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10 ... sions.html

Of course, the real message should be that consumers and governments need to do more to curb the use of cars. But suggesting what might sound like sacrifice is not on.

What she said...

Bad News for Oil, Good News for Water
Posted on October 5, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Thomas Neuburger presents a grim forecast for oil prices, and better for water supplies. The usual belief is that high oil prices beget lower oil prices because they kill the economy. The oil price peak of $147 in July 2008, which using a CPI calculator, would be about $205 today. But the big runup was from about $87 in September 2007 until then. Although our analysis shows the financial crisis to have been a derivatives crisis, those who hew to the real real estate crisis view argue that the 2008 energy price spike is what kicked the housing market over.

As for water, the technology described below sounds like potentially great news. But I thought another issue with desalination was what to do with the salt.

By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies



Two items for this week, one ominous — it’s an ominous world these days — and one truly hopeful. Let’s start with the bad news and end with the good.

Is Crude Oil Headed for $150 in 2026?

According to the analysts at JPMorgan, crude oil is headed from today’s price in the mid-nineties to as much as $150 a barrel. That would be clearly devastating for American households, not only for the resulting price of gasoline and heating oil, but also for the price of all energy-dependent goods, which is most of them.


Chart source: OilPrice.com

From OilPrice.com:

JPMorgan’s head of EMEA energy equity research, Christyan Malek, warned markets on Friday that the recent Brent price surge could continue upwards to $150 per barrel by 2026, according to a new research report.

Several catalysts went into the $150 price warning, including capacity shocks, an energy supercycle—and of course, efforts to push the world further away from fossil fuels.

Most recently, crude oil prices have surged on the back of OPEC+ production cuts, mostly led by Saudi Arabia who almost singlehanded took 1 million bpd out of the market, followed by a fuel export ban from Russia. Increased crude demand paired up with the supply restrictions, boosting crude oil prices and contributing to rising consumer prices.

For this year:

JPMorgan said in February this year that Oil prices were unlikely to reach $100 per barrel this year unless there was some major geopolitical event that rattled markets, warning that OPEC+ could add in as much as 400,000 bpd to global supplies, with Russia’s oil exports potentially recovering by the middle of this year. At the time, JPMorgan was estimating 770,000 bpd in demand growth from China—less than what the IEA and OPEC were estimating.

But:

JPMorgan now sees the global supply and demand imbalance at 1.1 million bpd in 2025, but growing to a 7.1 million bpd deficit in 2030 as robust demand continues to butt up against limited supply.

JPMorgan blames the supply imbalance on “capacity shocks, an energy supercycle,” and of course, efforts to deal with climate change. The word “Ukraine” never appears, but the Russian export ban gets a mention.

Is this likely? I’m not sure, but there are forces in the world that can’t be forced, and keeping us stuck on oil is one of them. To the extent that oil is cheap enough to power this overburdened planet for decades ahead, that’s the size of the flood of trouble we’ll face when the big dams finally break.

Do we want to face a fraction of that trouble now, in exchange for better times to come? Our betters, in their usual self-dealing way, are not giving us that choice.

Desalination System Could Produce Freshwater That’s Cheaper Than Tap Water

You read it right. That’s the news from MIT, and it’s refreshing indeed.

MIT engineers have been working on a passive system to use the sun’s energy to evaporate and capture fresh water from salt water sources, and after three iterations, they appear to have gotten it right.

MIT engineers and collaborators developed a solar-powered device that avoids salt-clogging issues of other designs.

Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun.

In a paper appearing today in the journal Joule, the team outlines the design for a new solar desalination system that takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight.

The configuration of the device allows water to circulate in swirling eddies, in a manner similar to the much larger “thermohaline” circulation of the ocean. This circulation, combined with the sun’s heat, drives water to evaporate, leaving salt behind. The resulting water vapor can then be condensed and collected as pure, drinkable water. In the meantime, the leftover salt continues to circulate through and out of the device, rather than accumulating and clogging the system.

The new system has a higher water-production rate and a higher salt-rejection rate than all other passive solar desalination concepts currently being tested.

I’m especially pleased to see that it’s a passive device — no moving parts, no required energy input (read, fossil fuel) other than what we freely get from the sun.

[T]he researchers calculated that if each stage were scaled up to a square meter, it would produce up to 5 liters of drinking water per hour, and that the system could desalinate water without accumulating salt for several years. Given this extended lifetime, and the fact that the system is entirely passive, requiring no electricity to run, the team estimates that the overall cost of running the system would be cheaper than what it costs to produce tap water in the United States.

Human water needs are roughly three to four liters per day. A one-square-meter device producing five liters per hour could supply up to twenty-five people for years without needing maintenance. That’s very good news.

My only concern: The design, when it’s all worked out, should belong to the public, not Wall Street ghouls who think water’s their ticket to wealth.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10 ... water.html

As to that 'concern', only one sure solution to that....

[blindpig]

Worldwide, 41% of amphibians are threatened with extinction
October 5, 2023
Climate change, disease and habitat destruction are major factors in population decline



by Lindsay Renick Mayer and Devin Murphy
Re:wild, October 4, 2023

Habitat destruction and disease are both well-documented causes of the decline of amphibians—among the most threatened animals on the planet—but a new paper analyzing two decades’ worth of data from around the world has found that climate change is emerging as one of the biggest threats to frogs, salamanders, and caecilians. The study was published today in the scientific journal Nature.

The study, “Ongoing declines for the world’s amphibians in the face of emerging threats,” is based on the second global amphibian assessment, coordinated by the Amphibian Red List Authority, which is a branch of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission’s Amphibian Specialist Group, hosted and managed by Re:wild.

The assessment evaluated the extinction risk of more than 8,000 amphibian species from all over the world, including 2,286 species evaluated for the first time. More than 1,000 experts across the globe contributed their data and expertise, which found that two out of every five amphibians are threatened with extinction. These data will be published on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Between 2004 and 2022, a few critical threats have pushed more than 300 amphibians closer to extinction, according to the study. Climate change was the primary threat for 39% of these species. This number is expected to rise as better data and projections on species’ responses to climate change become available. Climate change is especially concerning for amphibians in large part because they are particularly sensitive to changes in their environment.

“As humans drive changes in the climate and to habitats, amphibians are becoming climate captives, unable to move very far to escape the climate change-induced increase in frequency and intensity of extreme heat, wildfires, drought and hurricanes,” said Jennifer Luedtke Swandby, Re:wild manager of species partnerships, Red List Authority coordinator of the IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group, and one of the lead authors of the study. “Our study shows that we cannot continue to underestimate this threat. Protecting and restoring forests is critical not only to safeguarding biodiversity, but also to tackling climate change.”

Habitat destruction and degradation as the result of agriculture (including crops, livestock like cattle and livestock grazing, and silviculture), infrastructure development and other industries is still the most common threat, according to the paper. Habitat destruction and degradation affect 93% of all threatened amphibian species. Expanded habitat and corridor protection in the places most important for biodiversity is going to continue to be critical.

Disease caused by the chytrid fungus—which has decimated amphibian species in Latin America, Australia and the United States—and overexploitation also continue to cause amphibian declines. Habitat destruction and degradation, disease, and overexploitation are all threats that are exacerbated by the effects of climate change.

The study also found that three out of every five salamander species are threatened with extinction primarily as the result of habitat destruction and climate change, making salamanders the world’s most threatened group of amphibians. North America is home to the most biodiverse community of salamanders in the world, including a group of lungless salamanders abundant in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. Because of this, conservationists are concerned about a deadly salamander fungus that has been found in Asia and Europe, called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), entering the Americas.

“Bsal has not yet been detected in the United States, but because humans and other animals can introduce the fungus to new places, it may only be a matter of time before we see the second global amphibian disease pandemic,” said Dede Olson, a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, member of the IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group, and co-author on the paper.

The Nature paper provides an update to the 2004 landmark paper that was based on the first global amphibian assessment for the IUCN Red List, which revealed the unfolding amphibian crisis for the first time and established a baseline for monitoring trends and measuring conservation impact. According to this new study, nearly 41% of all amphibian species that have been assessed are currently globally threatened, considered critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable. This is compared to 26.5% of mammals, 21.4% of reptiles and 12.9% of birds.

Four amphibian species were documented as having gone extinct since 2004—the Chiriquí harlequin toad (Atelopus chiriquiensis) from Costa Rica, the sharp snouted day frog (Taudactylus acutirostris) from Australia, Craugastor myllomyllon and the Jalpa false brook salamander (Pseudoeurycea exspectata), both from Guatemala. Twenty-seven additional critically endangered species are now considered possibly extinct, bringing the total to more than 160 critically endangered amphibians that are considered possibly extinct. The assessment also found that 120 species improved their Red List status since 1980. Of the 63 species that improved as the direct result of conservation action, most improved due to habitat protection and management.

“The history of amphibian conservation itself proves how vital this information is,” said Adam Sweidan, chair and co-founder of Synchronicity Earth. “If the IUCN Red List had been updated on a similar scale in the 1970s that it is today, we could have traced the sweeping amphibian disease pandemic 20 years before it devastated amphibian populations. It isn’t too late—we have this wealth of information, we have the Amphibian Conservation Action Plan, but plans and information are not enough. We need to act. We need to act fast.”

Conservationists will use the information from this study to help inform a global conservation action plan, to prioritize conservation actions at the global level, to seek additional resources, and to influence policy that can help reverse the negative trend for amphibians.

“Amphibians are disappearing faster than we can study them, but the list of reasons to protect them is long, including their role in medicine, pest control, alerting us to environmental conditions, and making the planet more beautiful,” said Kelsey Neam, Re:wild species priorities and metrics coordinator and one of the lead authors of the Nature paper. “And while our paper focuses on the effects of climate change on amphibians, the reverse is also critically important: that the protection and restoration of amphibians is a solution to the climate crisis because of their key role in keeping carbon-storing ecosystems healthy. As a global community it is time to invest in the future of amphibians, which is an investment in the future of our planet.”

Executive Summary
STATE OF THE WORLD’S AMPHIBIANS
The Second Global Amphibian Assessment


Amphibians are incredibly diverse, occur in nearly every habitat, and span almost the entire planet. Many species have narrow habitat preferences and small distributions, often making them especially sensitive to the rapid environmental changes taking place worldwide. Amphibian populations can provide valuable insights into the overall health and ecological balance of an ecosystem.

Through the second Global Amphibian Assessment (GAA2), more than a decade of research on amphibians by over 1,000 experts has been compiled to assess the extinction risk of 8,011 species worldwide. The GAA2 follows on from the first GAA, completed in 2004, which illuminated the unfolding amphibian extinction crisis and established a baseline for monitoring trends and measuring conservation impact. Now, the GAA2 reveals that the conservation status of the world’s amphibians continues to deteriorate.

We now know that 41% of amphibians are globally threatened with extinction, making them the most threatened vertebrate group. Salamanders are particularly at risk, with 3 out of every 5 species threatened with extinction. The number of amphibian extinctions could be as high as 222, when considering the 37 confirmed extinctions and an additional 185 species with no known surviving population.

Habitat loss remains the most common threat to amphibians, affecting 93% of threatened species. Agricultural expansion continues to be the main cause of habitat loss and degradation, followed by timber and plant harvesting, and infrastructure development. Amphibians are also threatened by disease in many parts of the world. Over the past few decades, chytridiomycosis has had a devastating impact on amphibian populations, and the emergence of a new fungal pathogen in Europe that targets salamanders has raised fears of another epizootic. The effects of climate change are emerging as a concerning threat as amphibians are particularly sensitive to changes in their environment.

Amphibian species are not evenly distributed across the globe. They are predominantly clustered in tropical montane humid forests as well as on tropical islands. Islands with high endemism and extensive habitat loss, such as those in the Caribbean, dominate the list of 15 countries or territories with an extraordinarily high percentage of threatened species. The Neotropics, home to almost half of the world’s amphibians, is also the most highly threatened realm, with 48% of species at risk of extinction. Other large concentrations of threatened amphibians are found in western Cameroon and eastern Nigeria, the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, Madagascar, the Western Ghats of India, Sri Lanka, and central and southern China.

Conservation needs to be massively scaled-up. Since 1980, the extinction risk of 63 species has been reduced due to conservation interventions, proving that conservation works. We must build on this momentum and significantly scale-up investment in amphibian conservation if we are to stop and reverse declines. Drawing on the results of the GAA2, this report provides guidance for conservation by identifying landscapes with disproportionately high numbers of threatened species, as well as the most highly threatened amphibian genera. It also highlights the need to protect globally important sites for amphibians, and the urgent necessity to better understand and find solutions to the problems that disease and climate change present. It is imperative that we now use this information to effectively conserve and restore the world’s amphibians.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/1 ... n-decline/

******

Like a Rogue Nation, Japan Releases Its Nuclear Garbage Without Concern for Its Neighbors or People
OCTOBER 6, 2023


Japan's dangerous move. Photo: Liu Rui/GT.

Editor’s Note:
The commencement of the second phase of dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater from Fukushima is scheduled for October 5. Despite widespread opposition both domestically and internationally, Japan has insisted on its dumping plan.What could countries do during the planned discharge of nuclear-contaminated water during the next 30-40 years? Einar Tangen (Tangen), a senior fellow of the Beijing-based think tank Taihe Institute, founder and chairman of China Cities Bluebook Consulting and former chairman of the State of Wisconsin’s International Trade Council, shared his insights with Global Times (GT) reporter Li Aixin.

GT: You have been opposing Japan’s dumping of the nuclear-contaminated water into the sea and you said that this is basically throwing garbage on the front lawn of the Pacific Islands. People from countries around the Pacific have been the main force opposing Japan’s dumping plan. Why did we fail to stop Japan?

Tangen: Japan seems concerned only about its internal politics and short-term costs, but there seems to be a massive misunderstanding in terms of what the Japanese people want. The mainstay of the Japanese people is seafood. It’s not only that they’ve thrown garbage out onto the front lawn of the South Pacific, but they’ve also done so in their own backyard.

Japan will see higher seafood prices. The Japanese fishing industry will suffer a severe decline. That puts a lot of fishermen out of work, in an industry that provides livelihoods for thousands and adds billions to Japan’s economy.

It’s going to be devastating, but the Japanese government seems paralyzed and unable to consider rational alternatives to what will bring long-term damage to their economy. Keep in mind the release of nuclear-contaminated waste water, which was exposed to the melted core, will continue for the next 30 years.

A number of alternatives were presented and then rejected without study. One strategy has been trying to hide behind the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). The ALPS system, which is the treatment system they use, was never approved by the IAEA. The truth is, that the IAEA has only had access to information provided by TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), which has been found guilty of lying repeatedly from the moment of the tsunami.

TEPCO lied about the safety precautions. They tried to obfuscate the fact that the plant should never have been built so close to the water, and they secretly released additional water. The Japanese government itself has been less than opaque, it has fined TEPCO executives severely but continues to rely on them for data and recommendations. Both the Japanese and international communities are concerned about the opaque decision-making process.

At this juncture, Japan is acting like a rogue nation, releasing its nuclear garbage without concern for its neighbors or people. With a few exceptions, the international press has played down the massive protests and strong opposition in Japan, South Korea, China, the US, and the South Pacific.

Washington continues to cite its shared values with Japan, but what do they stand for? At this point, it looks like values only have meaning when they are convenient to Washington. It’s like nothing counts unless it’s good for America. The problem with this kind of “realpolitik” has its own logical direction and one that doesn’t match Washington’s lofty rhetoric.

GT: While Japan is discharging nuclear-contaminated water, China, on the other hand, is somehow facing criticism from the West for opposing the release of nuclear-contaminated water. How do you view this?

Tangen: This is just gaslighting. If China was releasing nuclear-contaminated water, what do you think Washington’s reaction would be? Politics above science, like Covid-19 when there is a short-term political or economic goal in sight.

If there is no scientific basis for China’s concerns, then maybe the US should agree to buy up all of the seafood that’s coming out of that area, and see if they can sell it to their consumers. “Fresh from Fukushima!” That would be interesting. Let’s see Washington tell Americans that they shouldn’t worry about anything. Or, perhaps, they can sell the idea to the Japanese people directly and save the transportation costs.

It’s amazing, when a country that holds its own sovereignty so dear it won’t participate in the International Criminal Court, sign on to UN Conventions to protect women and children, ratify the UN Convention on Laws of the Seas, it nevertheless enforces against others, all while continuing to neuter the WTO by refusing to allow Appellate judges; feels entitled to tell other sovereign nations how to protect the health of their people. It’s even more ironic given the polarized, violence-plagued, debt-ridden, reality of the US itself.

The only thing that the elites in Washington can agree on is “it’s China’s fault” – environmental problems in the US, China’s fault; global climate change, China’s fault; the unrest in America, China’s fault; the US economic decline due to lack of competitiveness, China’s fault; America’s runaway national debt, China’s fault, and so on. The only thing I am certain of is that there will come a point when the American people are not going to be fooled and told, that it’s China’s fault.

GT: Some regions have started to suspend the import of Japanese seafood products. Apart from this, what do you think other countries can do during the planned discharge of nuclear-contaminated water during the next 30-40 years?

Tangen: There is nothing they can do except monitor. The problem is that the monitoring done by the Japanese and spoon-fed to the IAEA is not reliable. Given TEPCO’s track record of lying, what are the chances that they’re telling the truth now?

TEPCO has only sampled three percent of the water that they’re holding, many of the tanks have not been tested or the results have not been released. I doubt any scientist would agree that three percent is a correct sampling, especially since testing each holding tank could be done within hours.

They have hundreds of storage tanks, they just need to withdraw a little water from each and do a test. How difficult is that, right? Instead, they’re saying, we’ve tested three percent and that’s good enough. Clearly, they don’t want to disclose what’s in those tanks.

At a minimum the IAEA should be doing the tests, they are qualified, have the equipment, and are supposedly neutral, so why aren’t they allowed to do independent testing? Why do they continue to say what is happening is “consistent with an effort to address the situation”? Why aren’t they insisting, they certainly haven’t been shy in the past when confronted with issues in Iran and other countries. You have to ask yourself why would anybody trust a company that has repeatedly lied. A company that continues to make it clear they have no detailed knowledge of what’s in the storage tanks, despite the obvious fact that they control access to the storage tanks. Under such circumstances, the “just dilute and release it” approach has to be questioned.

It seems they figure that if they keep releasing it for the next 30 years, people will get used to it and won’t complain.

TEPCO executives were ordered by the court to pay billions of dollars for the Fukushima disaster. (The Tokyo district court judged that the executives could have prevented the disaster if they had exercised due care.) And yet, TEPCO continues to be in charge of one of the most sensitive nuclear disasters. And no one seems to think that that’s odd. It’s like a criminal who robbed a bank is tasked with supervising the investigation.

Why on earth would the Japanese government be relying on them? It begs a lot of questions and certainly is cause for any nation to take action to protect their people. Because that is what good governments are supposed to do.

https://orinocotribune.com/like-a-rogue ... or-people/

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Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon Falls by 59%


Between January and September of this year, the area destroyed reached 4,302 km2. Oct. 6, 2023. | Photo: X/@jornalistavitor

Published 6 October 2023 (13 hours 4 minutes ago)

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which took office on January 1, resumed fines and penalties for environmental crimes, especially in the Amazon rainforest.

The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reported on Friday that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon decreased 59 percent in September compared to the same month in 2022, going from 1,454.7 to 590.3 square kilometers.

Between January and September of this year, the area destroyed reached 4,302 km2, a little more than half of the 8,590 km2 recorded in the same period of 2022.

However, according to INPE data deforestation increased in the Cerrado biome, a savannah located in the center of Brazil, advancing 89 percent in September in the annual comparison.

In that biome, destruction of 516.7 km2 was reported last September, 89% more than in the same month of 2022 and a record for the month of September since measurements began in 2018. The Cerrado biome occupies 23.3 percent of Brazil's territory.


The tweet reads, "According to data from the National Institute for Space Research ( INPE ), the deforestation rate in the Amazon showed a significant reduction of 42.5% during the first half of this year compared to the same period of the previous year."

The South American country owns 60 percent of the territory of the great Amazon rainforest. The region is currently experiencing an extreme drought enhanced by the El Niño phenomenon, which has lowered river levels and is keeping authorities on alert.

Amid this situation, the federal government sent reinforcements to the state of Amazonas to fight the fires and guarantee the supply of water and food to the population.

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which took office on January 1, resumed fines and penalties for environmental crimes, especially in the Amazon rainforest, in order to reduce the advance of deforestation in the region.

The trend of reduction of deforestation coincides with the first months of the government of President Lula, who has pledged to reverse the rates of deforestation recorded during the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro. During his administration, the Amazon deforestation advanced 75 percent compared to the average of the previous decade.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Def ... -0017.html

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How the Fossil Fuel Industry Came to Love Climate Change
By Gloria Guillo - October 6, 2023 0


[Source: skymetweather.com]

Has Carbon Taxation Become an Expedient Way to Redistribute Wealth, Cover Up Environmental Crimes, Promote Hazardous Energy Policies, and Control the Working Class and Developing Nations?
Does the Threat of Climate Change Misdirect the Anti-War Movement?

(Much more....)

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/1 ... te-change/

There's a whole lot here, more than I got time to reproduce.If this topic interests you(it should!),go to link. I neither endorse nor reject the views here. I have long supported what I have been told is the scientific consensus. And there's the rub...we should always observe the admonishment of those old Narodniks, "Accept no given wisdom." Now, get to work.