The Long Ecological Revolution

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 16, 2023 3:51 pm

Ohio Derailment Leads to Long-Term Environmental Concerns

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Toxic cloud over East Palestine, Ohio, U.S., Feb. 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @noreward_norisk

Published 16 February 2023 (4 hours 2 minutes ago)

Vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ethers have been released to the air, soil, and surface waters.


Residents in and around the village of East Palestine, in Ohio, feared for their health and concerns have mounted about the environmental effect, after about 50 Norfolk Southern train cars, including 20 carrying hazardous materials, derailed on Feb. 3.

No one was injured in the derailment that investigators said was caused by a broken axle. Fearful of a major explosion, authorities have carved out an evacuation zone and carried out a "controlled release" of toxic fumes to neutralize burning cargo inside some of the cars.

"Plumes of smoke, questions about dead animals, worries about the drinking water. A train derailment in Ohio and subsequent burning of some of the hazardous chemicals has people asking: How worried should they be?" reported The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Concerns about air quality and the hazardous chemicals on board the train prompted some village residents to leave, and officials later ordered the evacuation of the immediate area as fears grew about a potential explosion of smoldering wreckage.


TOXINS
Three days after the accident, authorities decided to release and burn vinyl chloride inside five tanker cars, sending hydrogen chloride and the toxic gas phosgene into the air.

Vinyl chloride is associated with increased risk of certain cancers, and officials at the time warned burning it would release two concerning gases -- hydrogen chloride and phosgene, the latter of which was used as a weapon in World War I.

According to the Associate Press report, environmental officials said that monitors detected toxins in the air at the site during the controlled burn and that officials kept people away until that dissipated. They said continuing air monitoring done for the railroad and by government agencies, including testing inside nearly 400 homes, hasn't detected dangerous levels in the area since residents were allowed to return.

However, even in communities beyond East Palestine, some residents said they worry about long-term effects of even low-grade exposure to contaminants from the site.

The village scheduled a town hall at the local high school Wednesday evening to hear questions from residents, whose concerns have included lingering smells, how to ensure accountability for the cleanup, and what to make of pets and livestock that have appeared ill or died since the derailment.


CONTAMINATION
On Feb. 10, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that about 20 rail cars were reported to have been carrying hazardous materials. Chemicals including vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ethers were "known to have been and continue to be" released to the air, surface soil and surface waters.

On Feb. 12, the EPA, after monitoring the air, said it had not detected contaminants at "levels of concern" in and around East Palestine, although residents might still smell odors. The agency insisted that it had not detected vinyl chloride or hydrogen chloride, which could cause life-threatening respiratory issues.

On social media and in news reports, some residents said that fish and frogs were dying in local streams and people have shared images of dead animals or said they smelled chemical odors around town.

"Residents of the area have complained of headaches and feeling sick since the derailment," reported The New York Times on Wednesday.

Ten days after the derailment, Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican of Ohio, said in a statement on Twitter that it was a "complex environmental disaster" that would require long-term study.

The Ohio EPA is working on a two-stage cleanup, starting with the removal of materials from the site before moving to an assessment for a remediation plan.


LAWSUIT
Residents have filed a federal lawsuit over the derailment along the Ohio-Pennsylvania line, seeking to force Norfolk Southern to set up health monitoring for residents in both states.

The lawsuit filed on Feb. 9 by two Pennsylvania residents calls for the rail operator to pay for medical screenings and related care for anyone living within a 30-mile radius of the derailment to determine who was affected by toxic substances released after the derailment. The lawsuit is also seeking undetermined damages.

Environmental regulators have been monitoring the air and water in surrounding communities, saying that so far the air quality remains safe and drinking water supplies have not been affected.

While some residents have complained about headaches and feeling sick since the derailment, Norfolk Southern declined to comment on the lawsuit.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ohi ... -0001.html

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Environmental Disaster in Ohio: Decrepit Infrastructure and Unfair Working Conditions Culminate in Train Derailment
FEBRUARY 15, 2023

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A black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio, resulting from the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying chemicals on Monday, February 6, 2023. Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP.

The derailment of a train transporting highly toxic chemical material in Ohio has been reported as an event that could affect the local population’s health. However, in the last few hours, the United States government has issued more information about the sightings of unidentified aerial objects than about this event.

The accident occurred during the night of February 3 in ​​East Palestine, Ohio, very close to the border with Pennsylvania.

According to the authorities’ latest account, five to ten of the nearly 50 carriages contained vinyl chloride, a dangerous chemical lethal to humans due to its high degree of toxicity.

The National Cancer Institute of the United States considers this substance to have properties that can lead to blood or lung cancer if breathed for a prolonged period of time. According to local media reports, the risk is that the vinyl chloride contaminates the region’s drinking water or continues to mix with the local air. Burning vinyl chloride produces hydrogen chloride and phosgene. The latter was common in World War I during chemical attacks.

Despite this disaster, most US press — and even the White House itself — issued more information about the aerial objects that appeared in different parts of the United States and Canada. At the same time, conspiracy theories circulated on social media about alleged UFOs or extraterrestrial life being used as smokescreens to cover up the spilling and burning of toxic chemicals in Ohio.

“East Palestine, Ohio is undergoing an ecological disaster because authorities blew up the train derailment cars carrying hazardous chemicals and the press are being arrested for trying to tell the story. Oh, but UFOs! What is going on?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a Republican, wrote on social media.


The train that derailed belongs to the Norfolk Southern railway company. In late 2022, railway workers were about to strike. One of their main grievances was the urgent need for safety improvements. However, in its characteristic desire to prioritize profits over workers — and later the community’s safety — the Biden Administration intervened in the union’s attempts to strike. This disaster comes after several governments, led by both democrats and republicans, have failed to fulfill their promises of improving US infrastructure.

According to reports from local authorities, several carriages exploded, generating a fire that was visible from miles away. The vinyl chloride stored in some carriages is used in the manufacturing of plastics such as cable coatings and packaging materials.

Faced with the risk of a major explosion, the authorities decided to perform a controlled release of the toxic gases caused by the burning of the transported material. They also decided to evacuate the population living within a one-mile radius of the accident. However, the measure was extended to Beaver County, Pennsylvania. Not all the residents wanted to leave their homes.

The authorities also warned that a plume of hydrogen chloride and phosgene would be created, a gas that causes health problems and is potentially lethal.

“Residents living within a mile of the train derailment site who have not yet left their homes are asked to immediately evacuate due to the potential of a major explosion,” Governor Mike DeWine stated.

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Amid the disaster, journalist Evan Lambert was detained while investigating the environmental impact of the accident. Although he was released hours later, the case caused conspiracy theories to spread, including doubts regarding the true impact of the toxic gas release.

So far, residents of the area and some media have reported the death of fish, frogs, chickens, dogs and foxes, as well as air and water pollution.

[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1623658262125072386[/youtube]

Smokescreen?

On February 12, the Pentagon called a press conference to report on the alleged appearances of unidentified aerial objects in the United States and Canada. According to General Glen D. VanHerck, head of Air Force Northern Command, the United States intelligence and counterintelligence community continues to assess “every threat or potential threats unknown that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.”

These statements came after the shooting down of the third unidentified flying object in just three days. “We call them objects [and not balloons] for a reason,” VanHerck said.

It was not long until conspiracy theories appeared on social media amid the lack of clarity from the US authorities, to the point that some media outlets in other countries have called the train accident the US Chernobyl.

For its part, the National Transportation Safety Board reported that a mechanical problem was the cause of the accident. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated that the environmental damage is limited.

https://orinocotribune.com/environmenta ... erailment/

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Train wrecks, earthquakes and profits
February 16, 2023 Stephen Millies

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Toxic mushroom cloud rises over East Palestine, Ohio.

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In the Turkey-Syria quake, construction shortcuts helped kill thousands.

What’s the connection between the earthquake in Syria and Turkey with the train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio?

More than 41,000 people, including thousands of children, have been killed by the Feb. 6 earthquake. No one has died so far in the Feb. 3 train wreck or from the dangerous chemicals that were released because of it.

Earthquakes are terrible natural events caused by the shifting and collision of plates inside the earth. Reinforced buildings designed to withstand shocks can greatly reduce fatalities.

Real estate sharks seeking more profits aren’t interested in constructing safer buildings. Thousands of people were killed because of contractors trying to cut costs

There was nothing natural about the wreck of the Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed. The 150-car train was 9,300 feet long and weighed 18,000 tons.

Railroad tycoons like long trains, which are part of their Precision Scheduled Railroading model. PSR has helped destroy 62,000 railroad jobs since 2015 while increasing average train length by 25%.

It’s simple logic that the longer a train is, the more likely there will be an equipment defect. Excluding the locomotives, a 150-car freight train has 600 axles.

An overheated roller bearing on a wheel axle apparently failed, causing 38 cars to derail with catastrophic results. Another 12 cars were damaged.

Twenty cars carried hazardous materials. Residents of East Palestine were told to temporarily evacuate and drink bottled water.

A huge mushroom cloud rose above the town. Dead fish have been found in streams within 7.5 miles of the catastrophe. Toxic residue was found in the Ohio River.

While Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was holding a news conference on the train wreck, his state troopers arrested Evan Lambert, a Black TV reporter for News Nation. Lambert’s resisting arrest and trespassing charges were later dismissed.

Five tank cars were deliberately exploded on Feb. 6. “We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” said Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist.

Cancer time bomb

Among the dangerous cancer-causing chemicals that continue to be released into the air, soil and water are vinyl chloride gas, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ethers. Also released was phosgene gas that was used in World War I to kill and blind soldiers.

Railroad workers cleared the important transportation artery by Feb. 4. That’s what Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw and the outfit’s big stockholders care about: keep the trains rolling and the profits coming in.

Among the 10 biggest Norfolk Southern stockholders, holding a total of more than 24 million shares, are JP Morgan Investment Advisors, BlackRock and Wells Fargo.

Shaw made $4.5 million last year but doesn’t want to give any sick days to railroad workers. Shaw’s lobbyists got Trump to throw out a safety rule adopted under the Obama administration. It mandated a new electronic braking system for trains carrying hazardous goods like the train that derailed.

Big-hearted Norfolk Southern, which hauled in $4.8 billion in profit last year, is offering $1,000 “inconvenience checks” to East Palestine residents. Warren, Ohio, Attorney David Engler is advising clients not to take the chump change since it could be used as an excuse by NS management to deny further compensation.

Economic sanctions and deindustrialization

In the Turkey-Syria quake, construction shortcuts helped kill children and their parents. So did the U.S. capitalist government.

The Pentagon has been at war with the elected Syrian government since 2011. U.S. forces seized Syrian oil and wheat fields.

U.S. sanctions, some of which have been lifted, prevented aid from going to Syria. U.S. sanctions against socialist Cuba haven’t stopped Cuban doctors and other healthcare workers from helping Syrians.

One of the biggest U.S. Air Force bases is in Incirlik, Turkey, near the earthquake zone. Nuclear weapons continue to be stored there.

East Palestine, Ohio, almost touches the Pennsylvania border. Western Pennsylvania and Northeastern Ohio were once one of the biggest concentrations of steel mills and heavy industry in the world.

Hundreds of thousands of union jobs were destroyed in a region that includes Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Deliberate deindustrialization is also an economic sanction.

East Palestine is named after the country of Palestine. David Ben Gurion was the first prime minister of the apartheid regime that occupies Palestine.

He said of the Palestinians driven out during the Nakba or catastrophe that “the old will die and the young will forget.” Palestinians have never forgotten their homeland and are continuing to fight for their freedom against a racist colonial government.

If East Palestine becomes a cancer cluster 10 or 20 years from now, railroad owners also hope that “the old will die and the young will forget.” Many of those possible cancer victims will be youthful.

The U.S. government has shoveled over $140 billion into Israel while it has lavished money on railroads for 160 years. General Custer had it coming, and he died for the Northern Pacific Railway that was invading Lakota Sioux land. The Northern Pacific is now part of billionaire Warren Buffet’s BNSF railway.

From Palestine to East Palestine, it’s poor and working people who suffer from capitalist disasters.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... d-profits/

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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the campaign to greenwash natural gas (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack).

The corporate campaign to greenwash natural gas
Originally published: The Lever on February 14, 2023 by Naomi LaChance (more by The Lever) | (Posted Feb 15, 2023)

Last month, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed legislation to call natural gas a “green energy.” The law was pushed by conservative dark money groups and passed by Republican lawmakers backed by the oil and gas industry.

A few weeks later, former congressman and 2022 Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan joined a fossil fuel front group that claims “natural gas is accelerating our transition to a clean energy future.”

These greenwashing efforts are examples of how politicians from both parties are helping the fossil fuel industry’s campaign to promote the use of natural gas and brand it as a climate-friendly energy source. At times, this help has entailed former elected officials getting hired by the industry.

The efforts come as the Biden administration considers banning gas stoves, based on concerns about asthma. Some cities have banned natural gas hookups in new buildings, while others are considering a ban.

Despite the claims of the energy industry and their political allies that natural gas is a climate-friendly alternative to other fossil fuels, the production and use of natural gas, which is essentially methane, has a negative impact on both the planet and public health. Natural gas, which people use to heat their homes and power their stoves, contributes to increasing global temperatures. Experts warn the effects of natural gas leaks could make its use even worse for the planet than coal.

“Earth’s Cleanest Traditional Fuel”

The American Gas Association, a gas industry lobbying group, has described natural gas as “the earth’s cleanest traditional fuel,” claiming that its use cuts emissions. Oil and gas giant ExxonMobil’s website calls natural gas a cleaner fuel, while Chevron says it’s the “​​cleanest burning conventional fuel.” Other companies are pushing the idea of “green” liquified natural gas, the form in which gas is stored and transported. In 2019, the Trump Administration even tried to rebrand natural gas as “freedom gas.”

But research has shown that methane is worse for the environment than fossil fuel companies let on. Methane molecules, the main component of natural gas, are as much as 90 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide molecules are. While methane releases far less carbon than coal, its use contributes to rising global temperatures.

For years, energy companies have downplayed the amount of methane they are leaking into the atmosphere. Researchers have found that the effects of methane leaks during the fracking and transportation process could outweigh the supposed climate benefits of using natural gas over coal.

In addition to the broader climate impacts, there are also health and safety risks associated with using gas appliances in homes and workplaces. These factors have led some cities–and some state and federal policymakers–to look to move away from natural gas.

Berkeley and San Francisco, California, have banned natural gas hookups in new buildings. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal government agency that assesses risks associated with products and creates bans or recalls, is considering banning gas stoves, citing concerns about asthma.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) recently voiced her support for a ban on the use of fossil fuels for heating beginning in 2030. She also said she supported a ban on gas stoves in new construction. Last year, New York City banned fossil fuel heating equipment in certain buildings starting in 2024.

The gas stove ban floated by the Biden administration quickly drew ire from conservatives concerned about a purported lack of personal freedom. Coal magnate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have now introduced legislation to preemptively block any federal ban on new gas stoves.

In many states, politicians have also already stepped in to protect the gas industry. In 2019, Flagstaff, Arizona, was focused on using electric power as a way to reduce emissions. The next year, the state legislature passed a preemption law barring cities and towns from banning natural gas on a local level.

Nineteen other states have followed Arizona’s lead and made it so cities and towns cannot ban natural gas–often with backing from the fossil fuel industry. For instance, former Utah state Rep. Steve Handy (R) told Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts, that gas utility Dominion Energy requested that he propose legislation barring natural gas bans, which he sponsored and Utah passed in 2021.

In Ohio, energy companies hold a notoriously strong influence. In 2020, the chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio resigned after electric utility FirstEnergy Corp allegedly bribed Ohio lobbyists and political officials to try to get a $1.3 billion buyout for two Ohio power plants.

FirstEnergy and its affiliates allegedly passed $60 million through a dark money group to former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder (R) and other politicians in exchange for the bailout. A federal corruption trial is underway.

There was also a dark money campaign behind the effort to develop and pass Ohio’s new law enshrining natural gas as a “clean energy.” Ohio lawmakers passed the legislation as part of a collaboration with dark money groups tied to the fossil fuel industry, according to documents obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group focusing on renewable energ,.

The documents show one of the bill’s cosponsors, Ohio state Sen. George Lang (R), wrote from a conference held last summer by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a dark money group and policy hub for conservative politicians, that he would “be leaving the ALEC convention with some model legislation to define on the ORC [Ohio revised code] that natural gas is clean energy.”

One recipient of Lang’s email was Tom Rastin, executive vice president at the Ariel Corporation, the largest producer of natural gas compressors in the world. Natural gas compressors are crucial to pipelines because they make the gas easier to transport.

Rastin and his wife, Ariel CEO Karen Buchwald Wright, lead the Empowerment Alliance, a dark money group that supported the Ohio bill characterizing natural gas as clean energy. The couple has given money to the Republican Governors’ Association, which bankrolled ads supporting DeWine.

On their website, the Empowerment Alliance details its energy agenda. The first point is to “recognize natural gas as green.” They write:

American natural gas is affordable, clean, abundant, and reliable energy that improves the environment while securing American energy independence.

Emails show Rastin corresponding with Lang as well as state Sen. Mark Romanchuk (R), another sponsor. Romanchuk has publicly claimed the bill was inspired by a 2022 E.U. decision to call natural gas “sustainable” in some instances.

According to the documents obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute, in October 2022, Romanchuk’s office sent language from the bill at least three times to Adam Hewitt, a lobbyist for the Empowerment Alliance.

Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, told the Washington Post:

What the emails reveal is just how closely Ohio lawmakers coordinated with a natural gas industry group on the new law that misleadingly defines methane gas as green energy, as the first step of a plan to introduce similar legislation in multiple states.

DeWine, Ohio’s Republican governor, has taken campaign contributions from several utilities that rely on or distribute natural gas, including American Electric Power, Duke Energy, NiSource, Dominion Energy, and FirstEnergy.

“We reviewed the ‘Green Energy’ language, and it has no effect on any state funding or regulations. The language is merely an opinion of the Ohio General Assembly,” Dan Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, told The Lever.

“Pro-Climate, Pro-Affordability, and Pro-Natural Gas”
A prominent Ohio Democrat, meanwhile, is now aiding a separate fossil fuel industry campaign to greenwash natural gas.

Former congressman Tim Ryan, who lost the Ohio Senate race to J.D. Vance in November, recently joined the leadership council of Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a front group for natural gas interests.

“I am excited to join Natural Allies and promote the role natural gas plays in meeting global climate goals faster, while advancing reliability and affordability here at home,” Ryan said in a press release.

These are kitchen table issues voters understand–people’s livelihoods and jobs often depend on rational energy policy. As Democrats, we can be pro-climate, pro-affordability, and pro-natural gas.

During his Senate campaign, Ryan told the Washington Post that fracking, a process commonly used to extract natural gas, has “provided enormous economic benefits and moved the U.S. towards energy independence. However, we need to significantly ramp up our oversight and regulation of the industry and its practices, especially in regard to its use and disposal of water, as well as methane leaks.”

Natural Allies recently released a video ad narrated by young people that claims,

replacing coal with natural gas is the best way to cut emissions, reach climate goals, [and] empower our future reliably, cleanly, and affordably.

Ryan joined former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) on Natural Allies’ leadership council. Landrieu, a conservative Democrat, became a lobbyist after losing her race in the 2014 election. She recently registered to lobby for the Williams Companies, a natural gas company supporting Natural Allies, on pipeline issues. Landrieu has also lobbied to help the oil and gas firm Enterprise Products obtain authorization to build a crude oil export hub off the coast of Texas.

https://mronline.org/2023/02/15/the-cor ... tural-gas/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Sat Feb 18, 2023 3:31 pm

Wary Ohio town wants answers over derailment
China Daily Global | Updated: 2023-02-17 09:19

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Aerial view of a train derailment containing the toxic chemical, vinyl chloride derailed on Feb 3 in the village of 5,000 people near the Pennsylvania border in East Palestine, Ohio, US, on Feb 8, 2023. [Photo/Agencies]

The derailment of a train carrying hazardous materials in Ohio, the United States, earlier this month is continuing to raise questions and fuel public distrust of authorities.

At least 38 cars of the Norfolk Southern freight train, including 11 carrying toxic chemicals, derailed in East Palestine, an Ohio town on the state's border with Pennsylvania, on the night of Feb 3.

On Wednesday, local residents upended by the derailment packed a school gym to seek answers on whether they were safe from toxic chemicals that spilled or were burned off, The Associated Press reported.

Hundreds of people gathered to hear state officials insist yet again that testing shows the air in East Palestine is safe to breathe so far, and promise that air and water monitoring will continue, according to the AP.

Michael Regan, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, is scheduled to visit the town on Thursday to assess the situation and hear grievances.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost told Norfolk Southern on Wednesday that his office is considering legal action against the rail operator.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said the train was not considered to be carrying "highly hazardous materials" and, hence, the state was not notified in advance that it would be passing through.

"This is absurd, and we need to look into this. Congress needs to take a look at how these things are handled," he said.

According to the US National Transportation Safety Board, 38 rail cars derailed and a fire ensued, damaging an additional 12 cars. A total of 20 rail cars were carrying hazardous materials, 11 of which derailed.

Five of the derailed "hazmat cars" were carrying vinyl chloride, a colorless gas that burns easily and is industrially produced for commercial use. There were no reported fatalities or injuries.

Fears of possible explosions prompted the evacuation of hundreds of residents, and a so-called "controlled burn" of the chemicals on Feb 6 released toxic — and potentially deadly — fumes into the air.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources estimates that spilled contaminants affected more than 11.2 kilometers of streams and killed some 3,500 fish, mostly small ones.

Norfolk Southern announced on Tuesday that it is creating a $1 million fund to help the community, while continuing remediation work, including removing spilled contaminants from the ground and streams, and monitoring air quality.

An estimated 4.5 million metric tons of toxic chemicals are transported by rail each year, according to the US Department of Transportation.

The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, a branch of the department, which has been tracking train derailments since 1975, found that between 1990 — the first year the statistics agency began tracking derailments and injuries each year — and 2021, there have been 54,539 accidents in which a train derailed, an average of 1,704 derailments per year.

The Ohio incident is only "the tip of the iceberg", Ron Kaminkow, general secretary of the cross-union group Railroad Workers United, was quoted as saying by The Guardian. "If something is not done, then it's going to get worse, and the next derailment could be cataclysmic," he said.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... af51f.html

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Feds are sending medical experts to Ohio toxic train wreck site as residents’ safety concerns simmer
By Aya Elamroussi, CNN
Updated 10:40 AM EST, Fri February 17, 2023


The Biden administration said it has deployed federal medical experts to help assess what dangers remain at an Ohio village where a train carrying hazardous materials derailed this month, a ramp-up of federal support at the governor’s request as anxious residents point to signs of adverse effects.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday asked the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health and Human Services to send teams to East Palestine, where the train derailed February 3 and sparked a dayslong blaze.

“This request for medical experts includes, but is not limited to, physicians and behavioral health specialists,” DeWine wrote in a letter to the CDC. “Some community members have already seen physicians in the area but remain concerned about their condition and possible health effects – both short- and long-term.”

Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, and the surrounding area line up outside for a town hall meeting at East Palestine High School in East Palestine, Ohio, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023. Hundreds of worried residents of the Ohio village upended by a freight train derailment and the intentional burning of some of the hazardous chemicals on board gathered Wednesday evening to question officials about lingering questions over health hazards. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
EPA chief pledges to hold train company accountable over Ohio toxic train disaster as residents' frustrations grow
The Biden administration approved the request and began deploying teams from both federal agencies in part for public health testing and assessments, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday.

It is in addition to aid the Federal Emergency Management Agency is providing, according to Jean-Pierre, who noted Thursday the train derailment situation is “much more expansive” than what FEMA can offer.

The federal support boost to a community of some 5,000 people along the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line comes amid some residents’ growing concerns some areas may not be safe to live in.

There have been at least eight class action lawsuits filed in Ohio courts following the derailment two weeks ago.

The lawsuits, pending in the United States District Court of Northern Ohio, similarly accuse Norfolk Southern of negligence, saying the company failed to keep residents and businesses safe among other claims.

Norfolk Southern told CNN they were “unable to comment on litigation,” following the announcement of the first lawsuit.

An evacuation order in place for areas near the crash site was lifted February 8 after officials said air and water sample results led them to deem the area safe, officials said.

But a chemical stench lingered in areas, with some residents saying the odor left them with headaches and pains in their throat. Plus, officials estimate thousands of fish were killed by contamination washing down streams and rivers.

Further spurring residents’ questions about safety – some of which were expressed at an emotional community meeting Wednesday – were crews’ decision to conduct controlled detonations February 6 of some tanks carrying toxic chemicals to prevent a more dangerous explosion. Though a larger blast was averted, the detonations essentially released chemicals into the air, including vinyl chloride, which at high levels could increase cancer risk or cause death.

On Thursday, the head of the federal Environmental Agency Administration visited East Palestine and vowed to use the agency’s enforcement authority to hold the train operator, Norfolk Southern, accountable.

“I want the community to know that we hear you, we see you, and that we will get to the bottom of this,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said Thursday during a news conference. “We are testing for all volatile organic chemicals. We’re testing for everything. We’re testing for everything that was on that train. So, we feel comfortable that we are casting a net wide enough to present a picture that will protect the community.”

Drone footage shows the freight train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, U.S., February 6, 2023 in this screengrab obtained from a handout video released by the NTSB. NTSBGov/Handout via REUTERS
THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY.
6 key things to know after the toxic train derailment in Ohio
During the visit, Regan observed some of the ongoing remediation efforts following the hazardous train derailment. While the state EPA has the primary responsibility over the scene, Regan noted the federal arm is ready to provide aid when needed.

Regan also noted Norfolk Southern has signed a notice of accountability, acknowledging the company will be responsible for the cleanup.

Regarding the safety of the water supply, DeWine said Friday on Fox News “The water we have tested comes back good. We are telling people that if you’re on the city water, the village water, you can certainly drink that.”

He said it has been “a very, very traumatic, horrible experience” for people, and he understands their concerns.

A community health clinic will open next week “out of an abundance of caution,” DeWine said. “We’re going to bring in the best experts in the country.

“The railroad created this problem. The people didn’t create this problem,” DeWine added, saying about holding Norfolk Southern accountable for the derailment. “We’re going to hold their feet to the fire. We’re going to stay on them. They’re going to do it.”

Testing of water from the Ohio River at various points downstream shows no high concentrations of chemicals, Jeff Swertfeger of the Greater Cincinnati Water Works told CNN on Friday morning. More than 5 million people in the state get drinking water from the river, he said.

“Fortunately we’re not finding the high concentrations that they’re seeing up in the East Palestine area,” Swertfeger said. He added one compound, butyl acrylate, is “decreasing a bit as it’s coming down the river.”

He noted the compound would not normally be detected in the river.

Earlier, another train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed Thursday morning in Michigan’s Van Buren Charter Township, and local officials said there was no evidence the area was exposed to hazardous materials.

(more...)

https://us.cnn.com/2023/02/17/us/ohio-t ... index.html

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Insect Apocalypse in the Anthropocene, Part I
February 16, 2023
The rapid decline of Earth’s most numerous animals is a major threat to the biosphere

Image
Source: Wiki Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

by Ian Angus

“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”[1]

It is six decades since Rachel Carson wrote her brilliant book Silent Spring, often described as the foundational work of the modern environmental movement. Carson’s aim was to stop the killing of insects, and many people thought her cause had succeeded when widespread use of DDT ended.

The victory was short-lived.

When Silent Spring was published, my family had recently moved to a rural area of eastern Ontario. As a teenager, I wasn’t happy about losing urban social life, but I was enthralled by visions I never saw in the city. In particular, in summer a field near our house was filled by day with monarch butterflies, and by night with fireflies. I spent many hours just watching the insect displays.

Lis and I still live in that house, and that field is still there, growing wild, but we haven’t seen a monarch or a firefly for decades. The continuing slaughter of six-legged animals is greater, and more damaging, than anything Rachel Carson could have imagined.

On February 3, a comprehensive report showed that 80% of butterfly species in the UK have decreased in abundance or distribution since the 1970s, and half of them are now listed as threatened or near-threatened.[2] Since butterflies are by far the most consistently monitored wild insects, their decline is like the proverbial canary whose collapse warned coal miners that deadly gas was accumulating. If there are fewer butterflies, there are probably fewer insects of all kinds.

On the same day, scientists from China’s Academy of Agricultural Sciences reported that since 2005 there has been a steady decline in the 98 species of flying insects that migrate every year over Bohai Bay between China and Korea. The number of plant-eating insects has declined 8 percent, and the predator insects that eat them have dropped nearly 20 percent. The authors say the data identifies “a critical decline in (insect) functional diversity and a steady loss in ecological resilience across East Asia.”[3]

These studies, conducted on opposite sides of the globe, add to the growing evidence of a rapid worldwide decline of insect life. While most conservation groups illustrate their fund-raising pitches with pictures of pandas and tigers and rare birds, the pervasive decline of insects poses the greatest threat to all life in the Anthropocene. Scott Black, Executive Director of the Xerces Society, a non-profit that emphasizes protecting insects and other invertebrates, concisely sums up the danger:

“No matter how roughly we treat the planet, we are going to vanish before the insects will. But what we will see is fewer or no birds in the sky. If you want birds, you need insects. If you want fruits and vegetables, you need insects. If you want healthy soils, you need insects. If you want diverse plant communities, you need insects.”[4]

Insects are central to what Karl Marx called the universal metabolism of nature, the constant recycling of energy and matter that makes life possible. Arthropods — mostly insects but including spiders, mites, centipedes and millipedes — pollinate 80 percent of all plants, recycle life’s essential nutrients, create healthy and fertile soils, purify water, and are the primary food of many birds and animals. If they were to disappear entirely, the biosphere would collapse and humans would not last long.

“Most of the fishes, amphibians, birds, and mammals would crash to extinction about the same time. Next would go the bulk of the flowering plants and with them the physical structure of the majority of the forests and other terrestrial habitats of the world. The earth would rot. As dead vegetation piled up and dried out, narrowing and closing the channels of the nutrient cycles, other complex forms of vegetation would die off, and with them the last remnants of the vertebrates. The remaining fungi, after enjoying a population explosion of stupendous proportions, would also perish. Within a few decades the world would return to the state of a billion years ago, composed primarily of bacteria, algae, and a few other very simple multicellular plants.”[5]

To be clear, the disappearance of all insects is not likely in the foreseeable future: indeed, some insects are likely to outlive humanity. What the evidence shows is a combination of outright extinctions and radical population declines that some scientists call defaunation. “If unchecked, defaunation will become not only a characteristic of the planet’s sixth mass extinction, but also a driver of fundamental global transformations in ecosystem functioning.”[6]

Most accounts of life on earth focus on mammals, birds, fish and reptiles, but in fact the vast majority of animals are insects. Nobody knows exactly how many there are, but a good estimate is ten quintillion — 10 followed by eighteen zeros, well over a billion insects for every human being. Together they weigh substantially more than all other types of animals (including humans) combined. They are immensely varied: in the U.S. alone, there are about 23,700 species of beetles, 19,600 species of flies, 17,500 species of ants, bees, and wasps, and 11,500 species of moths and butterflies. Worldwide, a million insect species have been catalogued, and it’s thought that another four million haven’t yet been identified or named. At present rates, many will disappear before humans even know they exist.

With populations that large, it is difficult to imagine that all or even a significant proportion of them could be at risk. Apart from butterflies, which are pretty, and honeybees, which are profitable, until recently threats to insect life were rarely mentioned in accounts of biodiversity loss.[7] Elizabeth Kolbert’s prize-winning 2014 book The Sixth Extinction, for example, refers to insect declines only briefly, as a difficult-to-measure consequence of Amazon deforestation. Anthony Barnosky’s Dodging Extinction, also published in 2014, mentions insects just twice in passing, Similarly, David Wallace-Wells’ 2019 bestseller The Uninhabitable Earth, contains just three paragraphs about insects.

These authors were not arbitrarily ignoring our six-legged relatives — the omissions reflected the fact that few scientists study insects: their research generally focuses on single species, not on populations, and most insect species have not been studied at all. So there wasn’t a lot to report.[8] Even among bees, one of the most studied insect groups, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences lamented in 2007 that “long-term population data are lacking and knowledge of their basic ecology is incomplete.”[9]

A major turning point came in October 2017, when twelve European scientists published a groundbreaking report on the decline of flying insects in nature protection areas in Germany. For nearly three decades, members of the volunteer-run Entomological Society Krefeld had been trapping and counting insects in sixty-three nature reserves, using tent-like traps. An analysis of their records, published in the journal PLOS One, revealed a shocking trend that affected bees, wasps, butterflies, flies, beetles and more.

“Our results document a dramatic decline in average airborne insect biomass of 76% (up to 82% in midsummer) in just 27 years for protected nature areas in Germany. …

“The widespread insect biomass decline is alarming, ever more so as all traps were placed in protected areas that are meant to preserve ecosystem functions and biodiversity. While the gradual decline of rare insect species has been known for quite some time (e.g. specialized butterflies), our results illustrate an ongoing and rapid decline in total amount of airborne insects active in space and time.”[10]

In 2018, another group of scientists showed that between 2008 and 2017 there had been substantial declines in insect diversity, biomass, and abundance in German grasslands and forest areas, and a study published the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that insect populations in Puerto Rican rain forests had plummeted up to 98% since the 1970s. [11] Although there were debates about precise figures and methodology, there was now, as noted British ecologist William Kunin wrote in the prestigious journal Nature, “robust evidence of insect declines.[12]

Those findings prompted ecologists and entomologists around the world to look into past studies and records, looking for data that could be used to measure changes in insect populations. In 2019, the journal Biological Conservation featured a detailed review of 73 published studies of insect declines.

“From our compilation of published scientific reports, we estimate the current proportion of insect species in decline (41%) to be twice as high as that of vertebrates, and the pace of local species extinction (10%) eight times higher, confirming previous findings. At present, about a third of all insect species are threatened with extinction in the countries studied. Moreover, every year about 1% of all insect species are added to the list, with such biodiversity declines resulting in an annual 2.5% loss of biomass worldwide.”[13]

Since then, as the studies cited at the beginning of this article illustrate, research on insect populations has exploded. In February 2023, Google found over 30,600 entries for “endangered insects,” and Google Scholar found over 1,000 academic papers. For accessible accounts of the latest research, I strongly recommend two recent books, Silent Earth by Dave Goulman and The Insect Crisis by Oliver Milman. Both are by serious authors who eschew sensationalism, and yet one refers to an “insect apocalypse,” and the other describes the decline of insect populations as “a dire situation [that] can barely be comprehended.”[14]

In The Cosmic Oasis, a history of the biosphere published in 2022, leading Anthropocene scientists Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz warn that it is impossible to overstate the threat posed by the decline of insect life that recent research has confirmed.

“Something of the order of two-fifths of the world’s insect species may be threatened with extinction within a few decades; they are being widely exterminated across both urban and agricultural landscapes, and are decimated by pollution in aquatic settings. … Because insects are deeply embedded in the functioning of Earth’s ecosystems, a major loss to their numbers and diversity would have incalculable effects; indeed, would likely cause wholesale collapse to ecosystems, including those that sustain us.”[15]

Part II will discuss how capitalism is driving and accelerating the insect apocalypse.

Notes

[1] Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Mariner Books , 2002), 99.

[2] R. Fox et al., The State of the UK’s Butterflies 2022 (Butterfly Conservation, 2023).

[3] Yan Zhou et al., “Long-Term Insect Censuses Capture Progressive Loss of Ecosystem Functioning in East Asia,” Science Advances 9, no. 5 (February 3, 2023).

[4] Quoted in Oliver Milman, The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World (W.W. Norton, 2022), 61.

[5] E. O. Wilson, “The Little Things That Run the World* (the Importance and Conservation of Invertebrates),” Conservation Biology 1, no. 4 (1987), 345.

[6] Rodolfo Dirzo et al., “Defaunation in the Anthropocene,” Science 345, no. 6195 (July 25, 2014): 406.

[7] An obvious exception was Rachel Carson, but her primary concern was not the insects themselves, but the effect of DDT on the birds that ate insects.

[8] Simon Leather, “Taxonomic Chauvinism Threatens the Future of Entomology ,” Biology 56, no. 1 (February 2009): pp. 10-13.

[9] May Berenbaum et al., Status of Pollinators in North America (National Academic Press, 2007), 1.

[10] Caspar A. Hallmann et al., “More than 75 Percent Decline over 27 Years in Total Flying Insect Biomass in Protected Areas,” PLOS ONE 12, no. 10 (October 18, 2017), 14, 15-16.

[11] Sebastian Seibold et al., “Arthropod Decline in Grasslands and Forests is Associated with Landscape-Level Drivers,” Nature 574, no. 7780 (October 30, 2019): pp. 671-674; Bradford C. Lister and Andres Garcia, “Climate-Driven Declines in Arthropod Abundance Restructure a Rainforest Food Web,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 44 (October 15, 2018).

[12] William E. Kunin, “Robust Evidence of Declines in Insect Abundance and Biodiversity,” Nature 574, no. 7780 (October 30, 2019): 641.

[13] Francisco Sánchez-Bayo and Kris A. G. Wyckhuys, “Worldwide Decline of the Entomofauna: A Review of Its Drivers,” Biological Conservation 232 (2019): 16, 22.

[14] Oliver Milman, The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World (W.W. Norton, 2022), 5; Dave Goulson, Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse (HarperCollins, 2021).

[15] Mark Williams and J. A. Zalasiewicz, The Cosmic Oasis: The Remarkable Story of Earth’s Biosphere (Oxford University Press, 2022), 130-131.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... opocene-i/

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Ohio Train Disaster Could Happen Elsewhere in The US

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Site of a derailed freight train in East Palestine, Ohio, U.S., Feb. 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @Macsbooks1

Published 17 February 2023 (20 hours 39 minutes ago)

"We cannot risk the lives of millions of people in our region for the gas industry's profits," the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out.


The train disaster along the Pennsylvania border in East Palestine, Ohio, serves as a stark reminder about the dangers of shipping toxic materials through U.S. communities.

"What we witnessed in Ohio could certainly happen again. On average, there are more than 1,700 train derailments per year in the U.S.," reported the Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday.

"There's no way around it: The abundance of trains shipping toxic and hazardous substances across the country poses a serious threat to public safety and the environment," it added.

Members of Congress must speak to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and call on the White House to stop the transportation of liquefied natural gas by rail.

"We cannot risk the lives of millions of people in our region for the gas industry's profits. The Ohio train derailment should serve as a wake-up call for our nation's leaders, and a call to action for all of us," the Philadelphia Inquirer added.


On Wednesday, East Palestine residents crowded in a high school gym in a meeting with officials to demand concrete answers about the environmental risks. The next day, Michael Regan, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), traveled to that community.

"I visited the site of the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — a terrible incident that has rightfully shaken this community to its core. But I want residents to know: EPA will be here as long as it takes the ensure the health and safety of this community," he said.

Meanwhile, dozens of U.S. voices on social networks recalled that this type of accident does not occur without prior history.

"Never forget how we got here: in 2018, the Association of American Railroads spent US$4,737,989, and Norfolk Southern spent US$1,025,330, lobbying to reverse the Obama-era ECP brake safety rule that was designed to prevent disasters like this. The Trump administration reversed it," environmental activist Melanie D'Arrigo recalled.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ohi ... -0011.html

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CovertAction Bulletin: On the Ground Report from East Palestine Train Derailment
By Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa - February 15, 2023 1

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podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903718/1225 ... ayer=small

On February 3rd, a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Days later, officials released some of these chemicals into the air, fearing a larger explosion. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern railroad—the company responsible—has offered no more than a pittance of meaningful help to people from the area. We discuss how corporate greed is the underlying cause of this crash, and the potential long-term impacts.

We’re joined by John Russell, editor of the newsletter, The Holler to hear more about the situation. John also grew up in Columbiana County, where East Palestine is located. Follow John’s Substack at TheHoller.co, and on TikTok at @heyjohnrussell.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... erailment/

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Bodies of three people were discovered north of Sacramento, California, near the site of a large-scale wildfire, which has left several others seriously injured as rescuers search for more missing persons. (Photo: Tasnim News Agency)

Researchers warn of climate ‘doom loop’ as impacts forestall Green Energy transition
Originally published: Common Dreams on February 16, 2023 by Julia Conley (more by Common Dreams) | (Posted Feb 18, 2023)

A new study released Thursday warned that the planet has entered “a new chapter in the climate and ecological crisis,” in which communities are forced to direct massive resources to responding to the escalating impacts of the climate emergency, taking focus away from efforts to slash fossil fuel emissions—causing what the report authors called a “doom loop” that will make avoiding the worst effects of planetary heating increasingly difficult.

The report, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research and Chatham House, calls on policymakers to “actively manage” the risk that further global heating poses to a green transition itself.

“It’s too late to avoid the climate storm altogether, and the challenge of navigating around a storm is very different to the challenge of navigating through it,” said Laurie Laybourn, an associate fellow of IPPR and visiting fellow at Chatham House who co-authored the study.

Our ability to steer out of the storm is frustrated by having to manage the impacts of the storm on the ship.

“This is an analogy for the challenge facing environmentalism as we head closer to 1.5°C of global heating,” he added.

The worsening symptoms of the climate and ecological crisis—storms, food price shocks, conflict—will increasingly distract us from realizing action to tackle its root causes.

It’s too late to avoid the climate storm altogether, and the challenge of navigating around a storm is very different to the challenge of navigating through it.


The report notes that the cost of climate disasters—such as catastrophic flooding last year in Pakistan and in 2021 in Europe and prolonged drought in the western United States and parts of Africa—is already expected to reduce global economic output by $23 trillion by 2050, and recovery efforts could cost the U.S. $2 trillion per year by the end of the century.

“Such demands could come at the cost of diverting effort away from the rapid switch now needed to decarbonize the global economy,” said the researchers in a statement.

The report argues that this risks creating a vicious circle, or ‘doom loop’; the impacts of the climate and nature crises draw focus and resources away from tackling their underlying causes and the urgent steps needed to address them.

The researchers referred to the dynamic that has emerged in the debate over whether limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, the target agreed upon in the Paris climate accords, is still possible and how the global community can meet that goal.

“Some argue that declaring the target to be still in reach remains the most powerful motivator, but others believe that breaching the limit could be the ‘wake-up call’ that would spur activists and policymakers to step up their efforts,” said the authors.

But both stances can be exploited by ‘climate delayers’ who don’t want to see rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and wish to block transformational change.

A failure to move past that debate could lead to policymakers pursuing untested geoengineering methods of limiting planetary heating instead of passing policies to eliminate fossil fuel emissions, as energy experts and climate scientists have clearly stated they must in order to avoid the worst effects of the planetary emergency.

“This is a doom loop: the consequences of the crisis draw focus and resources from tackling its causes, leading to higher temperatures and ecological loss, which then create more severe consequences, diverting even more attention and resources, and so on,” reads the report.

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The study bolsters the argument made earlier in February by researchers at the University of Hamburg in Germany. As Common Dreams reported, their study said that continued despair over reaching climate “tipping points” such as the melting of sea ice and glaciers risks taking attention away from “the best hope for shaping a positive climate future… the ability of society to make fundamental changes.”

Laybourn and his co-author, Chatham House research analyst Henry Throp, likened the “strategic risk” of losing sight of solutions to the danger “facing a ship that sailed too long towards a storm on the horizon without significantly changing course.”

“As the storm begins to engulf the ship, making the changes needed to escape it is ever more difficult for the crew, who are distracted by its immediate impacts,” they said.

The authors called on policymakers to:

Develop narratives that motivate even as the climate and nature crises deepen, focusing on the benefits climate action will brig to societies around the world;
Decisively shift the focus of environmental politics toward realizing economic transformation by moving beyond describing the problem and setting climate targets to focusing more strongly on the economic policies needed to transform societies, such as an approach to public finances that enables the required government-led green investment;
Better understand the risks to the green transition as the crisis deepens by improving analysis of complex, cascading risks that could feed into the dynamic of the ‘doom loop’; and
Ensure that younger people are better prepared to lead the green transition despite the distractions and chaos of a world where temperature rises are close to or above 1.5°C or even 2°C.

“As global temperatures tick up ever closer to the 1.5°C threshold, collective narratives are needed that can convey the accelerating, cascading dangers and spur rapid transformative change,” said Thorp.

These narratives must challenge actors and assumptions that delay action on climate change and should create the basis, direction, and momentum for a climate transition aligned with nature restoration and opportunities for sustainable development.

https://mronline.org/2023/02/18/researc ... ransition/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Sat Feb 25, 2023 3:19 pm

Climate change increases infectious diseases worldwide
February 22, 2023
Global warming has already worsened more than 200 infectious diseases

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by Neha Pathak
Yale Climate Connections, February 22, 2023

Heat waves, floods, droughts, and rising temperatures fueled by climate change have made the world more vulnerable to disease outbreaks and the spread of a wide variety of pathogens — from bacteria and viruses to fungi and protozoa.

Climate change has already increased the risk of nearly 60% of all known infectious diseases, including tick- and mosquito-borne diseases — like Lyme disease and dengue — and various food- and waterborne infections, according to an analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The risks will grow as summers get longer and warmer, winters get shorter and milder, and weather events worldwide get more extreme and unpredictable. Growing risks from infectious diseases that thrive in these environments will come not only from known pathogens, experts say; new infectious diseases are also more likely to emerge.

“Outbreaks of emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats are only accelerating,” says Syra Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist and senior director of the system-wide special pathogens program at New York City Health + Hospitals.

Years of a global assault from COVID combined with increasingly severe climate disruptions have given people worldwide a preview of what a future of unabated climate change may bring.

To promote better health, individuals and society will need to juggle immediate vigilance with long-term steps like sharply cutting heat-trapping carbon pollution and environmental degradation while putting more resources into educating the public about the risks of their local pathogens and the benefits of better nutrition, hygiene, and staying up to date with vaccines.

Climate fever

Climate change is creating increased exposure pathways by bringing humans and pathogens closer together while also selecting for pathogens that evolve to survive in higher temperatures.

Some infections spread through vector-borne transmission, meaning through the bites of mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, and other organisms. Warmer temperatures across greater geographical areas, shorter winters, and earlier springs encourage people to spend time outdoors and also allow these vectors to claim a foothold in more territory. This puts more people at risk of exposure to illnesses like Lyme disease, West Nile virus disease, and ehrlichiosis. The number of U.S. illnesses reported from flea, mosquito, and tick bites doubled between 2004 and 2018, according to the CDC.

Higher temperatures and an increase in recreational activities around water also bring more people closer to the source of waterborne infections that can cause illnesses like diarrhea, intestinal infections, and in rare and more severe cases infections like primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, caused by an amoeba that can find a home in warm fresh water like lakes and rivers.

Increased temperatures also increase the risk that infectious diseases will evolve to tolerate and thrive in warmer environments. This makes it harder for humans to fight infections with one of the best defense mechanisms against invading infections: mounting a fever. Pathogens that evolve a better ability to overcome this defense will be ever more dangerous.

Along with risks for the spread and increased virulence — or strength — of known infectious diseases, we are living in an era with higher risks for exposure to completely novel infections.

“Our ecological footprint is expanding, and spillover events are increasing,” Madad says. Spillover events are those in which a pathogen jumps from an original host to a new species, as happened with MERS, or Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, from a virus first reported in humans in 2012. A spillover event is also a likely explanation for the origin of the virus that causes COVID-19, which closely resembles viruses that circulate in bats.

The dangers of an infectious disease to a host depend on many factors, but the first is the pathogen’s ability to actually infect a host cell. As humans encroach more and more on the natural habitats of wildlife, new pathogens gain opportunities to develop the right mutations to jump from an animal host to infect a human host. With additional opportunities, other mutations may arise that eventually allow for human-to-human transfer of a completely new pathogen. The combination of climate change forcing wildlife out of their habitats and the expanding footprint of humans into the habitats of wildlife will only increase the risks for novel infections in spillover events.

Increasing human vulnerability

Human vulnerabilities also affect the ability of a pathogen to cause disease. In general, infection with a completely novel pathogen, meaning no previous exposure, means that a person has no immune protection from previous infection (though there are some exceptions, as exposure to a similar family of viruses may confer some cross-immunity).

Other factors also play a role in underlying susceptibility. For example, preexisting chronic disease or frailty because of extremes of age can also greatly alter the severity of a given infectious disease. Climate change can exacerbate these problems, too: Extreme weather events can lead to displacement, droughts can lead to food insecurity, and wildfires may worsen air quality. All these factors can make people more vulnerable to more severe infections. And as with COVID and other global problems, climate change impacts often hit hardest at the people who are already marginalized or most vulnerable.

James Ford, a climate change adaptation researcher and professor at the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds, studied how the combined vulnerabilities to climate change and COVID-19 play out among Indigenous people in 12 nations, including those from the Arctic, Peru, India, and parts of Africa.

Ford said his research suggests that previous climate disasters had consequences for COVID management, because of the destruction of health posts and other critical infrastructure needed to serve local communities.

Climate events can also threaten a community’s ability to respond to infectious disease threats with routine public health safeguards. For example, extreme weather events can crowd people into unsafe shelter areas where it is impossible to maintain social distance. Also, heat waves may make it less desirable to spend time outdoors or wear masks indoors to stay safe from airborne infectious diseases.

What can people do?

The world’s experience in responding to COVID and climate disasters provides a guide for strategies that can protect health.

Countermeasures that decrease exposure to escalating climate and infectious disease threats in both the short and long term are critical. That includes reducing carbon pollution, minimizing environmental degradation and land use changes, and encouraging public education about the local risks of various pathogens. Individuals and communities can also take actions such as staying up to date with vaccines, optimizing health with high-quality nutrition, and ensuring access to health services in the event that infectious disease does take root in a community.

“Even with the most marginalized communities this can be a story of resilience as well as vulnerability,” Ford says.

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

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Lawyer warns toxic Ohio train derailment could lead to "explosion of cancers": NYP
Xinhua | Updated: 2023-02-24 01:32

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A burnt container is seen at the site where toxic chemicals were spilled following a train derailment, in East Palestine, Ohio, US, Feb 15, 2023. [Photo/Agencies]

NEW YORK -- Residents of East Palestine should fear the toxic train derailment that's rocked the small town in the US state of Ohio, because it's an "explosion of cancers waiting to happen," a lawyer who represents sickened 9/11 victims told the New York Post (NYP) on Wednesday.

Attorney Michael Barasch issued the dire warning after the devastating Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine exposed locals to a slew of spilled hazardous materials, sparking fears about the safety of air and drinking water.

"Be afraid, very afraid," Barasch said of the potential health risks that lie ahead. "This is an explosion of cancers waiting to happen. And you won't see it for years -- sometimes 5, 10, 20 years. This is scary stuff."

The attorney, whose firm has represented tens of thousands of 9/11 victims, including many diagnosed with cancer years after consuming toxic dust at Ground Zero, said he didn't believe the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) assurances the air and drinking water were once again safe after the toxic spill.

"It sent shivers down my spine when the EPA told residents of East Palestine the air was safe to breathe," Barasch said. "That's exactly what EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told downtown New Yorkers (after 9/11). It wasn't safe at all."

"If the World Trade Center attacks taught us anything, it's that 9/11 didn't end on 9/11," he added.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b089a.html

The way the MSM is back-paging this thing ya know it's gotta be bad.

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ARE THE POOR THE ONES WHO POLLUTE THE MOST? THE MYTH OF OVERPOPULATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
24 Feb 2023 , 2:11 pm .

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Image of the Bombardier Global 8000, the new fastest private jet on the planet (Photo: File)

The ultra-rich blame the poor classes for the pollution and ecological destruction the planet is experiencing. Ever since it was said that the world population had reached 8 billion, the issue of overpopulation has been at the center of the discussion. But, is the world really polluted and decadent because of the poorest?

Verso collects that the places in which the population has grown more quickly are those in which carbon dioxide has grown more slowly, and vice versa. Between 1980 and 2005, for example, sub-Saharan Africa produced 18.5% of global population growth and only 2.4% of CO2 growth. North America produced 4% of the additional population, but 14% of the additional emissions. 63% of the world's population growth occurred in places with very low emissions.

The poorest, however many they may be, do not produce significant emissions, nor do they cause much pollution because they are the ones that consume the least.

Emissions of toxic gases from burning fuel, deforestation driven mainly by commercial operations that supply wood, meat and feed, are practices of the rich for the rich, even when carried out in poor areas.

The paper's author, David Satterthwaite of the International Institute for Environment and Development, points out that the old formula taught to all development students - that total impact equals population times wealth times technology (I = PAT) - It is wrong. The total impact should be measured as I = CAT: consumers by technology wealth. Many of the planet's inhabitants consume so little that they would not figure in this equation.

How can you blame the poor for climate change if they don't have year-round outdoor pools at bath temperature, don't spend fuel or electricity on expensive vehicles, or own private planes or yachts, to name the least innocuous examples?

https://misionverdad.com/los-pobres-son ... -climatico

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While the "ultra-rich", 1% or whatever are easy targets their existence is predicated upon the existence of capitalism. Chop off the tall heads and others will replace them, capitalism must be torn out by the roots.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 01, 2023 3:01 pm

East Palestine, Ohio and the Oligarchy
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 01 Mar 2023

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(Photo: AP)

A freight train derailment brought environmental catastrophe to a small Ohio town. While the circumstances are somewhat unique, events followed a predictable pattern in a country run by and for the ruling class.

The U.S. is an oligarchy. Stating this fact explains events that may seem mysterious if this simple truth is not spelled out. The ruling class are fully in control and ensure that their needs are met. They disregard the public good and any claims of democracy are easily exposed as a cruel hoax. Americans have no representation in congress or the white house and the corporate media are also part of the oligarchic class. They expose nothing that their partners in crime want to hide. Governmental action and inaction if the wake of a freight train derailment exemplify all of these dynamics.

On February 3, 2023 a 150-car Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio near the Pennsylvania border. Twenty of those cars were carrying chemicals such as vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylene glycol, isobutylene, and ethylhexyl acrylate. One doesn’t need to be a scientist to figure out that none of these should be in the air or water.

Despite photographic and video evidence of an environmental catastrophe, the accident initially received little media attention. Nothing is covered unless the Biden administration wants it to be and East Palestine didn’t make the cut when there was war propaganda about Ukraine to stir up. In addition, Biden had already made clear that the railroads are in the class of corporate untouchables who are to be placated. They are among those who were promised that “nothing would fundamentally change” and he kept his promise to them by giving the derailment little attention. However he did give these corporations all the attention they demanded.

When railroad unions rejected a contract that didn’t include paid sick leave provisions the Biden administration forbade them to strike. There was a phony show among “progressives” about having made a good deal but they were lying. Barack Obama excluded the railroads from a requirement that federal contractors provide paid sick leave. Biden could have issued an executive order changing that policy. But he had no intention of doing anything that might upset the oligarchs, and the Democratic Party succeeded in presenting a false narrative.

Pete Buttigieg is Secretary of the Department of Transportation (DOT), and is responsible for overseeing railroad safety. But he has made it clear that he follows his boss’s dictate to change nothing that would upset their oligarchic bosses.

As DOT Secretary, Buttigieg has the ability to regulate corporations such as airlines in regard to their public service. When a series of Southwest airlines snafus left thousands of passengers stranded during the holiday season, Buttigieg made a great show of saying his hands were tied. Of course he is the one person who can direct the airlines or levy large fines. Buttigieg was a no-show when the people needed him to act.

It took Buttigieg three weeks to show up in East Palestine and he only did so after Donald Trump visited. The town residents may have been better off without him. When he arrived he whined about railroad companies, “fighting us every time we try to do a regulation.” It is hard to believe that Buttigieg makes any effort to fight back when corporate chieftains tell him what to do.

The duopoly worked together to cover up their mess. Ohio’s republican governor Mike DeWine and Biden’s EPA Administrator Michael Regan took a page out of Barack Obama’s Flint, Michigan book by dramatically drinking East Palestine water . Fortunately the U.S. still has plenty of lawyers, and one of many lawsuits filed in recent days specifically names the stunt as having made a “mockery of Ohio citizens.”

The back and forth over freight train regulations isn’t complicated. Trump undid regulations that Obama enacted but Biden didn’t undo what Trump had done. But even worse, regulations currently on the books allowed Norfolk Souther to get away with not labeling the train as carrying hazardous materials because it also carried wheat and vegetables. All over the country trains go through residential areas carrying hazardous materials but the law doesn’t require anyone to be informed of the dangers. And yes, the oligarchs like it that way.

The Biden administration is siding with Norfolk Southern in a case before the Supreme Court . A worker claims to have developed cancer as a result of exposure to carcinogens without having had the proper protective equipment. Norfolk Southern wants to restrict plaintiffs from choosing the venue in which they file suits, a practice known as forum shopping. Corporations are the biggest proponents of forum shopping, for themselves, but want to restrict where they can be sued. The Biden administration filed a brief in favor of Norfolk Southern. It doesn’t matter if the presidents are democrats or republicans, at the end of the day they end up doing what the oligarchs want.

Next year in 2024 the people will be subjected to the quadrennial political hoax, i.e., a presidential election. Let’s tell the truth before the theater begins anew. The power doesn’t rest with the presidency. It rests with the people who do the presidential hiring, and they don’t care about railroad workers or any other workers or people who have hazardous chemicals traveling through their communities. Should an accident happen, their hirelings will just drink water for the camera.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/east- ... -oligarchy

******

Top 1% emit over 1,000 times more CO2 than bottom 1%
February 28, 2023

To stop climate change, target the rich

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by Jeremy Williams
The Earthbound Report, February 22, 2023

“The world’s top 1% of emitters over 1,000 times more CO2 than the bottom 1%.”

That’s the kind of killer fact that we’ve come to expect from organizations like Oxfam – a shocking and blunt illustration of climate justice. But this one’s not from Oxfam or any other development or environmental group. It’s from the International Energy Agency.

Their latest piece of analysis looks at the breakdown of CO2 emissions by income, and finds that emissions are grossly tilted towards the top:

Image

That’s a pretty extraordinary chart, and it’s one to show to anyone who persists in saying that population is the main driver of environmental decline. It’s about overconsumption by a few.

As the graph shows, almost half of all energy related emissions come from the top 10% of emitters – who are also the wealthiest. The lowest 10% of emitters have just 0.2% of emissions to their name.

Lest we be thinking about millionaires and billionaires, consider that the top decile of the world’s population is 782 million people. If you’re reading this in the US or Europe, you’re likely to be part of it, though there are people from every continent included in the top 10% of emitters. By contrast, the lowest emitters are clustered in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

The IEA draw the same conclusion that I always do, climate action needs to begin with the richest. They have the highest footprints, and they also have the means to change.

“If the top 10% of emitters globally maintain their current emissions levels from now onwards, they alone will exceed the remaining carbon budget in the IEA’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario by the year 2046. In other words, substantial and rapid action by the richest 10% is essential to decarbonize fast enough to keep 1.5°C warming in sight.”

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... -bottom-1/

*********

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How degrowth can help reduce global conflict
Originally published: Science for the People on February 21, 2023 by Andrew Ahern (more by Science for the People) | (Posted Feb 27, 2023)

As the ecological emergency accelerates, so do proposals to address it. Over the last few years, the concept of degrowth has grown in popularity with features in major publications, growing political support, and best selling books like Kohei Saito’s Capital in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism in Japan.1 Defined as an equitable and democratic reduction of energy and material throughput targeted at rich nations and the globally wealthy, degrowth is based on three first principles: strong ecological sustainability, designing economies and social systems that are not predicated on the economic growth imperative, and global social justice. As Rahila Gupta describes, “degrowth emphasizes a time-rich society of solidarity, equality and mutual care, redistribution of resources and proper democracy based on extended political participation—all ways of living proven to enhance well-being rather than anxiety-producing materialism.”2

While degrowth predominantly targets the Global North’s unsustainable use of fossil-fuels or contributions to biodiversity loss, in a highly interconnected global system, growth in the North necessarily impacts the South in terms of their development, their ecosystems, and the kind of vulnerability these countries are subject to. At the most basic level, increased economic growth means more demand for energy and materials. In a period of an energy transition where those materials are largely found in the Global South—Latin America, Asia, and Africa predominantly—conflicts, injustice, and greenwashing would be inevitable without some kind of just transition that reduces the relative demand for these materials.3 This is where degrowth’s commitment to global justice and ecological sustainability set it apart from other green transition narratives.

Let’s use the example of electric vehicles. The batteries in these vehicles rely on minerals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium, which, according to the World Bank, could drive demand up to 500 percent depending on the mineral, all else being equal.4 Indonesia, for instance, holds the world’s largest nickel reserves and environmental degradation is already underway in the pursuit of such a mineral. According to the Environmental Justice Atlas, “Fisheries are declining and health is deteriorating in Kawasi since the local nickel mining and smelting project started dumping waste in the sea.”5 Such local deterioration is explored in visual detail in the Yale Environment 360 film contest winner “From Dreams to Dust,” which shows how the pursuit of materials for green technologies result in polluted drinking water, barren landscapes, and threatened workers and communities.6 Since 2012, at least fourteen Indonesian environmental defenders have been killed.7 This extractive logic applies to other green technologies like solar panels and wind turbines as well, since renewables are still materially intensive (although less so than fossil fuels).8 While it is no doubt true that we need to get off fossil fuels, there are choices to be made about how much energy we use, where it comes from, and who is faced with the risks and benefits.

We are already seeing these conflicts play out in real time all over the world, and while still at the earliest stage of the energy transition—if we can even call it that. According to Global Witness, an international nongovernmental organization that tracks the deaths of environmental defenders, the rise in murders among people defending their local land or natural resources has risen almost every year for the last two decades, with the largest source of conflict typically in the mineral sector.9 It is no coincidence that at the same time environmental protection is most needed, environmental conflict has reached its highest point yet. To add insult to injury, the US military is well aware of the importance of these minerals. In the words of the US Department of Defense, “Strategic and critical materials are vital to our national defense and economic prosperity, enabling the United States to develop and sustain emerging technologies. They also improve our warfighting capability, support family-sustaining jobs, and strengthen our alliances and partnerships.”10 In no uncertain terms the US military sees access to these “strategic and critical minerals” as vital to sustain economic growth and the United States’ dominance on the world stage. Unfortunately, without drastic changes in energy demand, this trend will only continue.

Given these technologies and materials are largely to service the Global North’s high consumption, a reduction in energy and material use by rich nations would reduce the potential for environmental conflict in the Global South. In addition to reducing conflict over the minerals themselves, it would also help hasten our pursuit of a more sustainable society, thereby reducing the impact of climate change and environmental degradation in countries like Nigeria or Pakistan, both of which experienced major floods this past year.11 As research demonstrates, countries struck by climate-induced disasters see a rise in authoritarian governments and draconian policy shortly in the aftermath.12 A warming world spells increased oppression among the world’s poor both directly by ecological disasters and how governments respond. Moreover, as the United Nations International Resource Panel found, 90 percent of biodiversity loss and water stress are caused by the extraction and processing of natural resources.13 A reduction in energy and material use would thus also reduce biodiversity loss—another area of life-and-death struggle for many (especially Indigenous people) in the Global South.14 Degrowth increasingly appears as one of, if not the only, Northern political programs that can avert ecological collapse, ensure global justice, and provide everyone with good lives.

A scenario where demand for production and consumption is reduced in the Global North would allow Global South countries room for their own development without having to service Northern growth or follow the ecologically destructive path set by the United States and Europe. Degrowth seeks to reverse this unequal ecological exchange where the North and South’s resource use converge.15 In such a scenario, Global South countries could focus on using their productive capacity and resources to meet their own needs. For instance, according to the research by Jason Hickel and colleagues, an estimate of roughly 43 percent of Global North materials have come from the South. They state, “in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labor, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices—enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion.”16 Such an analysis, Hickel and his team claim, confirms that unequal ecological exchange is a significant driver of uneven development, inequality, and ecological breakdown. A degrowth program that is international in scope and decolonial in principle will lessen environmental damage, raise living standards for billions of people, and provide some level of equality on the world’s stage.

It should be noted that degrowth is not a zero-sum game where those in the Global North would be “worse off” than before. In fact, life would be much better for the global majority, whether you live in the United States or Ecuador. While it can’t be denied that degrowth would allow us to avert ecological breakdown, the types of policies and provisioning systems at the heart of the degrowth program would put a special emphasis on wellbeing and sustainability in all countries. In a degrowth transition, as opposed to the “grow or die” ethos of modern economics, all people would have access to life’s necessities: healthcare, education, housing, energy, internet—what some call a “social guarantee.”17 Moreover, people would work less and have more free time to enjoy friends, family, and nature; people would buy less consumer goods since these items would have repair mandates; people’s health would improve due to less pollution from fossil fuels and more plant-based diets as well. There is a bevy of research demonstrating how we can collectively live better lives than we do now while reducing our use of energy and materials.18

Critics of degrowth often ask “who would this vision appeal to?” The answer: the people. In my own research analyzing the world’s citizens assemblies, I found that randomly selected citizens preferred policies that fit within the degrowth framework: the reduction of energy use, transportation systems centered around walking, biking, and public transit, and minimizing flights, to name a few.19 In the case of Spain, their citizens’ assembly advocated for increased understanding of degrowth among the population. Poll after poll shows that people prioritize the environment over economic growth.20 Contrary to bad-faith projections coming from both the right as well as some on the left, people are willing to enact much more radical ecological policies than political ideologues are willing to give them credit for.

Scientific experts also agree with the urgency for degrowth. In a study on support for growth-critical or growth-supportive statements, researchers found that the majority of scientific experts support either degrowth or “a-growth” (also called postgrowth).21 In a survey of experts who work for the German Environment Agency, these workers were given explicit and implicit statements about growth where they took a position supporting green growth, a-growth, or degrowth.22 In both the explicit and implicit answers, these experts were found to be much more growth critical than accepting the current economic dogma of green growth. In fact nearly half of the respondents supported degrowth positions when they were implicitly stated, demonstrating the strong scientific foundation of degrowth without the political “baggage” of the term that may turn off some scientists.23 This makes sense since there is no existing evidence for green growth.24 Degrowth, as it has matured, is no longer becoming an evidential question, but one of strategy and how to gain political power.

At the beginning of this piece I mentioned how in a highly interconnected global system, growth in the North impacts those in the South. While reducing the demand for energy and materials would likely help reduce conflict in these countries, lessen impact on local ecosystems, and allow them to use their productive capacity to meet their own needs, it is possible that without careful attention, degrowth may also exert unforeseen, negative impacts on the South. Firstly, the degrowth movement is largely composed of individuals who are white, Western, and materially well-off. This poses a risk that the policies and proposals on offer from the degrowth movement may not be inclusive and diverse to include the Global majority. Although the degrowth movement has been clear that its intentions are directed towards the Global North, this lack of direct contact has resulted in Global South’s environmental justice movements questioning the applicability, framing, and analysis of degrowth.25 In a series of interviews with environmental justice organizers in the Global South, Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos and her team found that, “For many people in the South – especially social movements – ‘degrowth’ will not make sense because of their own history and experiences, having often suffered from situations of poverty and scarcity of the most basic needs. Some ‘growth’ to reach more security in terms of survival is regarded as logical. Therefore, focusing the struggle on degrowth is not only perceived as ‘missing the point’, but is also in some ways a ‘luxury’ debate.” As the labor movement saying goes, “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” While degrowth has comprehensive policy focused on the Global North, the most direct way to clarify degrowth’s intentions is to make a concerted effort to directly engage with movements in the Global South in bringing the ingredients and drafting the degrowth menu. We can build off the efforts already being made, especially with recently increased support among Global South political and thought leaders.26

Furthermore, as the degrowth movement has developed, so has its strategy.27 In its earlier stages, the degrowth movement was largely focused on the local scale with an emphasis on bottom-up organizing. Since then, degrowth scholars and activists have recognized the need for a complementary strategy of both bottom-up organizing and centrally directed implementation. Like all political projects that rely on existing institutions, there is an inherent risk that degrowth can be co-opted or lose its connection with the grassroots. In this way, the degrowth movement could become too provincial with electing the right people, playing “pragmatic” politics, and betraying the interests of the Global majority. This critique is not exclusive to degrowth; all major political projects require navigating this difficult political space.

These criticisms are not to condemn degrowth, but rather, to present intellectual clarification and greater coordination between the degrowth movement and its siblings in the South including Buen Vivir, La Via Campesina, and other post-development and ecosocialist movements. On a strategic basis, degrowth could remedy the lack of North-South solidarity where the Northern environmental movement takes direct responsibility for transforming how the Northern ways of life and production systems rely on the labor, energy, and materials from the South (including the waste and ecological consequences), thereby demonstrating our commitment to a decolonized and anti-imperialist ethos. The Northern environmental movements have thus far largely ignored this Global interdependence. Making this point explicit in our organizations’ communications, education, and political advocacy is a first step. Implementing policies that reduce demand and ensure global justice can happen on both local and national levels in which movements target energy efficiency efforts, reduce working weeks, shift tax burdens from labor to consumption, and first and foremost target the wealthy through global redistribution of wealth via luxury taxes and debt relief. Furthermore, Ideas and actions that provide the Global South with the opportunity to take back its fiscal and productive sovereignty will also hasten a move towards degrowth.28

In addition, a key industry for degrowth is the US military. As it stands, the US military is the world’s largest institutional polluter, emitting more greenhouse gasses annually than over 140 other countries, largely due to its massive transportation system.29 Further, the US military has over 585,000 facilities, at least 750 military bases in 80 countries and owns nearly 27 million acres of land in the US alone, whereby they cut down forests, pollute landscapes, and threaten biodiversity in the process.30 Given the US Military’s neocolonial goals of subjugating the Global South, this is one institution the degrowth movement should prioritize in its efforts to promote global social justice and build international solidarity. The military can never be “greened”; it can only be “degrown” or abolished.31

In a recent Upstream Podcast documentary about the green transition, guest participant and human rights activist Sergio Chaparro framed the current “Green New Deal Discourse” into three buckets: a centrist version like the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which seeks public-private partnerships through tax credits; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s social democratic Green New Deal that centers Keynesian public investment and racial equity; and thirdly, an internationalist ecosocial Green New Deal in which Caparro placed degrowth.32 Unlike either Biden’s IRA or AOC’s Green New Deal which are largely nationalistic, parochial, and predicated on expanding economic growth, degrowth is international in its scope, ecologically sound in its science, and thinking beyond carbon tunnel vision.33 These are the terms and scales we need to be thinking in if we are to avert ecological collapse and transform society for the better. Degrowth offers a framework for coordination and solidarity between Global North and South movements in our strategies, tactics, and vision for a better world — free from the extractivist and unjust nature of colonial capitalism that has sacrificed the South’s autonomy and livelihood for the North’s growth, all the while failing to deliver a decent life to ordinary people in the process. In a highly connected economic-ecological system, there is a moral and material imperative for degrowth.

(Notes at link.)

https://mronline.org/2023/02/27/how-deg ... -conflict/

'De-growth' cannot have but bad connotations for the world's poor. Let's just call it a planned economy......

Green has gotta be 'Red'.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:35 pm

The East Palestine, Ohio, burn pit: How many cancers will train wreck cause?
March 2, 2023 Stephen Millies

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At a town hall meeting attended by more than 200 people, East Palestine residents made a list of demands including: Relocation for anyone who wants it; independent environmental testing; ongoing medical testing and monitoring; safe disposal of toxic waste; and for Norfolk Southern to pay 100% of costs.

The profits-first safety-last Norfolk Southern railway has turned East Palestine, Ohio, into a burn pit. Like the dumps operated by the U.S. military in formerly occupied Afghanistan and still occupied Iraq, the Feb. 3 train wreck poisoned a wide area.

The deliberate ignition of five tank cars on Feb. 6 released a mushroom cloud of toxins. A temporary evacuation didn’t help much. Residents are reporting health problems, including bronchitis and skin rashes, while thousands of fish have died.

“The whole sky was black,” was how Darlington, Pennsylvania, resident Amanda Kemmer described conditions after the cars were blown up. Darlington is just nine miles from East Palestine.

“And then you get this chemical smell in the house,” the mother of four children said. “Everyone had a headache and didn’t feel well and was sick to their stomach.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called this disaster a “controlled release” and said he approved of it. A hole was punched into each of the tank cars so that the vinyl chloride inside could pour into a pit and be set on fire.

Used to make PVC pipe, packaging, and coatings, vinyl chloride is dangerous, according to the National Cancer Institute. Exposure to it increases the risk of liver, brain, and lung cancers as well as lymphoma and leukemia.

That’s a reason why vinyl chloride is being phased out around the world. Germany banned dumping it in landfills in 2005. Truckloads of the burned residue are now being shipped to Indiana, Michigan, and Texas.

The excuse given by both the railroad and Gov. DeWine for the deliberate burning of this poison was to prevent the tank cars from exploding. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro thinks the real reason was more about clearing the tracks quicker.

“Amtrak Joe” in the White House knows about burn pits. President Biden blames them for killing his 49-year-old son Joseph “Beau” Biden III, who died from brain cancer.

So why doesn’t Biden sanction Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw like he does Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe? While Shaw raked in $4.5 million last year, the U.S. government is trying to economically strangle these countries.

Saving money, wasting lives

Eighteen years ago, a Norfolk Southern train hauling chlorine and other chemicals derailed in Graniteville, South Carolina, on Jan. 6, 2005. Poisonous chlorine gas was released, killing 10 people.

The train was operating in what railroaders call “dark territory”—a track without wayside signals. Only a small switch target warned engineer Christopher Seeling too late that the track was misaligned for a factory siding.

Signals save lives, but profits come first to the railroad brass. Greed cost 28-year-old Brother Seeling, who was secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen Division 85 – Teamsters, his life.

Last year Norfolk Southern reported profits of $3.27 billion. The outfit has gotten rid of 12,000 workers since 2015 – 40% of its workforce.

The corporate model called Precision Scheduled Railroading is responsible for these cutbacks. PSR calls for longer trains with fewer workers.

The train that poisoned East Palestine was 150 cars long. Fortunately, there were three railroaders in the lead locomotive: an engineer, conductor and a conductor trainee. They were able to cut off the locomotives from the burning train.

The railroad monopolies want to operate with just a one-person crew. Forty-seven people were killed when a runaway train with 72 oil tank cars crashed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada, on July 6, 2013. There was just one engineer on it, who had been instructed to leave the train.

Last year U.S. railroads reported 1,049 derailments. That’s about three per day.

That’s almost the same number of people killed by police last year. Of the derailments, 355 of them involved hazardous materials.

Gambling with safety

The train wreck in Ohio was caused by an overheated bearing on one of the train axles. Wayside defect detectors are supposed to catch a failure before a tragedy occurs. But there’s no government standard for how high the temperature has to be before the crew is alerted.

Around 30 miles before the train reached East Palestine, a detector showed the bearing was 103 degrees Fahrenheit above the surrounding temperature. A surveillance camera captured flames coming from underneath the car.

Norfolk Southern, however, set the detectors so they wouldn’t report a problem until a bearing reached at least 170 degrees above air temperature. This was gambling a train could stop in time.

By the time the train reached the next detector near East Palestine, the bearing was 253 degrees above air temperature. The train crew was finally alerted, but it was too late to prevent the wreck, even though the engineer and other employees were blameless.

Why was the alarm set at such a high temperature? With the super long trains demanded by Precision Scheduled Railroading, the conductor might have to walk back a mile or more over stone ballast to check a car.

That is if there wasn’t a bridge or some other obstacle. Cutting off freight 100 cars back and then pushing the car with a “hot box” into a siding that might be miles away would cause delays.

An example of railroad management’s recklessness is cutting the number of workers that specialized in checking the defect detectors. According to Christopher Hand, director of research at the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, as recently as three years ago, there were five members of the union, called “electronic leaders,” assigned to inspect Norfolk Southern’s wayside detectors in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Now there are none.

The obvious solution is to run shorter trains and keep more employees on the payroll. But that means less profits for Wells Fargo and the hedge funds that are Norfolk Southern’s biggest stockholders.

Right-wing clown show

Bringing a pallet of bottled water with his name on the label, Donald Trump has visited East Palestine. So did that well-known public health expert Rudy Giuliani.

When he was New York City’s mayor in 1995, Giuliani sought to sell three public hospitals and get rid of 1,000 hospital beds.

Why should anybody think these two racist clowns care about poor and working people in East Palestine?

Tucker Carlson on Fox News is claiming that people in East Palestine are being ignored because they are overwhelmingly white. That’s what a fascist demagogue sounds like.

Where were Trump and Fox News when the water systems in Jackson, Mississippi, and Flint, Michigan, failed? Both cities have Black majorities. Black people were mocked as they were drowning in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Tucker Carlson attacks defunding killer cops, but he says nothing about the defunding of the Federal Railroad Administration and its safety inspectors.

The genuine anger at Norfolk Southern management has helped force it to discuss giving sick days to 3,000 track workers. They’re members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, part of the Teamsters union.

Talks with other railroad unions will follow. Last year the railroad outfits refused to budge on this issue.

Nobody should be fooled by pseudo-populist attacks on rail companies by right-wingers. The railroad monopolies are envied by other capitalists for their above-average profits.

By slashing jobs, Precision Scheduled Railroading delayed service to many shippers. Even containers from West Coast ports were embargoed for a time.

Norfolk Southern has its own defenders in the media. One of the CNN talking heads is David Urban, a Norfolk Southern lobbyist.

The real answer to the East Palestine disaster is a people’s takeover of the railroads. They’re a public utility that should be run in the interests of people, not super-profits.

The writer is a retired Amtrak worker.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... eck-cause/

*****

Biden administration busy disguising problems
By Zhang Zhouxiang | China Daily | Updated: 2023-03-03 07:44

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A burnt container is seen at the site where toxic chemicals were spilled following a train derailment, in East Palestine, Ohio, US, Feb 15, 2023. [Photo/Agencies]

A month ago, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, a small town in Ohio, United States, releasing gallons of toxic gases.

But even a month later, the US government is far from solving the problems that have cropped up. While some local residents are complaining of a sore throat and are coughing blood, almost 44,000 aquatic animals have died there, but the US Environmental Protection Agency insists the water and air there are "safe" and "normal".

Besides, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg showed up in leather dress boots instead of protective work boots while surveying the train derailment, and there is no plan for US President Joe Biden to visit the site. Former US president Donald Trump was there though, doling out bottled water belonging to his own company, Trump Ice Natural Spring Water, which his opponents claimed had been discontinued since 2010.They even circulated photographs showing the water was yellow in color, but AP Photos ran a fact check to say the water was clear and the photograph had been altered.

In a nutshell, while the Republicans were busy blaming those in power, those in power were busy fighting back, but nobody had a minute to spare for the victims.

All this points to the failure of governance in the US. Politicians can put on a brilliant performance asking for votes, while doing little to solve the problems of residents.

On March 1, the US Department of Justice was trying to compel a controversial manufacturing plant in Louisiana to curb its emissions. The authorities have finally woken up nearly 36 years after a local stretch of the Mississippi River was nicknamed Cancer Alley in 1987.Who knows how many more such problems exist in the US and how much longer it will take to address them. After all, the country seems more interested in covering up problems rather than solving them.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b1db3.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 04, 2023 4:16 pm

US Company to Sample for Dioxins at Ohio Train Derailment Site

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Environmental worker collecting water samples, East Palestine, Ohio, U.S., Feb. 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @detroitwon

Published 3 March 2023

The "controlled release" of chemicals after the train derailment raised further concern about environmental contamination in the East Palestine area.

On Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that it will require railroad company Norfolk Southern to test directly for dioxins in East Palestine, Ohio.

The announcement came nearly a month after a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine. Responders later conducted a "controlled release" of some of those chemicals to avert a larger explosion at the site, raising concerns of pollution in the region.

"If dioxins are found at a level that poses any unacceptable risk to human health and the environment, EPA will direct the immediate cleanup of the area as needed," the agency said, adding that it will require Norfolk Southern to conduct a background study to compare any dioxin levels around East Palestine to dioxin levels in other areas not impacted by the train derailment.

"Over the last few weeks, I've sat with East Palestine residents and community leaders in their homes, businesses, churches, and schools. I've heard their fears and concerns directly," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said, adding that the EPA it has collected at least 115 samples in the potentially impacted area, which include samples of air, soils, surface water, and sediments.


"To date, EPA's monitoring for indicator chemicals has suggested a low probability for release of dioxin from this incident. EPA's air has detected only low levels of 1,4-dichlorobenzene typical of ambient background concentrations, the U.S. agency said.

Dioxins may be found in any urban or rural environment as a result of common processes such as burning wood or coal. Dioxins break down slowly in the environment so the source of dioxins found in any area may be uncertain, it noted.

The incident, which occurred on the night of Feb. 3, involved 11 tank cars carrying hazardous materials that subsequently ignited, fueling fires that damaged an additional 12 non-derailed railcars.

First responders implemented a one-mile evacuation zone surrounding the derailment site that affected up to 2,000 residents. There were no reported fatalities or injuries, according to a report issued by the National Transportation Security Board (NTSB) last week.

Responders mitigated the fire on Feb. 5, the NTSB report stated. But five derailed "specification tank cars carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride" continued to concern authorities because the temperature inside one tank car was still rising.


The NTSB said responders later scheduled a "controlled venting" of the five vinyl chloride tank cars to release and burn the vinyl chloride and dug ditches to contain released vinyl chloride liquid while it vaporized and burned. The controlled venting began on Feb. 6, which discharged toxic and potentially deadly fumes into the air.

While residents were allowed to return to their homes in East Palestine two days later, they remain concerned about the handling of the incident as well as the health impact of exposure to those chemicals.

On Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden said that he will visit East Palestine "at some point." He has been under pressure from Republicans who have lashed out at his administration's response to the incident and pointed to his absence from East Palestine as a failure.

Biden issued a statement talking about new legislation that "provides us with tools to hold companies accountable to prevent terrible tragedies like the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine and to make those communities whole."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/US- ... -0009.html

Residents Confront Rail Company Over Ohio Derailment, Pollution

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A Norfolk Southern freight train runs past the site of the Feb. 3 derailment on the outskirts of the village of East Palestine, Ohio, the United States, on Feb. 14, 2023. | Photo: Phil Zhang/Xinhua

Published 3 March 2023

The fiery clash underscored how deeply anxiety and mistrust still run in East Palestine, a town of about 4,700 people, after the derailment on Feb. 3.

Frustrations boiled over Thursday night in the largest public confrontation yet between the people of East Palestine, Ohio, and the operator of the freight train that derailed early last month, with angry residents in an emotional town hall lashing out at the lone representative from Norfolk Southern who took questions at the meeting, The New York Times has reported.

As Darrell Wilson, a top government relations official for Norfolk Southern tried repeatedly to apologize to the community and outline the company's recovery efforts, residents interrupted and shouted over him, demanding that he commit to getting them out of the area, and that the company "do the right thing."

Standing before Wilson and an assortment of environmental, health and political officials in the auditorium of East Palestine High School, residents vented and pleaded, describing how their families were still living in hotels or experiencing lingering health problems, including repeated vomiting and rashes, the report said.

They told the officials how they felt trapped, with few resources to move away from the homes they had spent their lives building, and demanded more answers about the validity of the testing done on their air, water and soil, according to the report.

"The fiery clash underscored how deeply anxiety and mistrust still run in East Palestine, a town of about 4,700 people, after the derailment on Feb. 3," said the report.

The decision to burn the train's cargo of vinyl chloride and other chemicals in order to avert the threat of an explosion heightened fears in the community about the long-term consequences of chemical exposure, and the meeting on Thursday night appeared to do little to assuage them, it added.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Res ... -0019.html

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Green Marx. (Photo: Montecruz Foto / Flickr (CC))

Kohei Saito: ‘Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism’
Originally published: Marx & Philosophy on February 27, 2023 by Tim Christiaens (more by Marx & Philosophy) | (Posted Mar 03, 2023)

In 2017, Japanese Marx scholar Kohei Saito published Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism, which won the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize the following year. It is a study of Marx’s notebooks after the publication of Capital: Volume I, detailing his inquiries into the natural sciences. Saito demonstrated that they constituted not mere distractions to the project of Capital, but a fundamental rethinking of Marx’s critique of capitalism. In those notebooks, Marx abandoned his growth-oriented and techno-optimistic views about communism while investigating the environmental unsustainability of industrial capitalism. If the capitalist mode of production leads to resource depletion, soil exhaustion and the destruction of livable environments, then communist revolution cannot be a mere working-class takeover of the means of production. The production system itself has to be redesigned from scratch.

Marx in the Anthropocene continues this line of inquiry, but moves from scholarly Marx exegesis to a theoretical confrontation with other strands of contemporary Marxist scholarship. Saito links his approach to John Bellamy Foster’s metabolic rift theory from the 2000s and defends it against, among others, post-humanist theories of the Anthropocene (Latour, Moore), Marxist social constructivism (Smith, Castree) and prophecies about fully automated communism (Bastani, Srnicek). Though these polemics excel in their creative use of Marx’s complex and esoteric conceptual experimentations (Saito is less successful in painting an honest picture of the aforementioned opponents), let us focus on Saito’s own position.

Saito’s starting point is volumes I and III of Capital, where Marx worries that industrial, urbanized capitalism and large-scale agriculture disrupt ‘the metabolic interaction (Stoffwechsel) between man and the Earth’ (25). Saito convincingly argues that these sparse references are symptoms of a larger shift in Marx’s thought, evinced in other, previously unpublished work. Marx’s notebooks show that the references to metabolism are part of a larger ecological critique of capitalism.

Nature is, for Marx, not a passive material substratum for human action but a dynamic ecosystem, in which multiple species and substances generate rich living environments. Humankind, however, is unique in this metabolic network of nature insofar as it deliberately reflects on its interactions with its environment and reflexively gives social form to these exchanges with nature. Human society consciously coordinates the labor process, the moment when human activity and natural reality meet, rather than simply left to instinct. This coordination process requires constant adjustments between the social metabolism of human communities and the natural metabolism of their living environments. The dynamics of social and natural processes must align in order to foster stable forms of life.

Capitalism, however, generates misalignments, or ‘metabolic rifts’. The capitalist valorization cycle subsumes both human and non-human beings in pursuit of profit, but ignores the underlying metabolic equilibria of nature. Both workers and nature have to serve the particular purpose of profit-maximization, independently of their own flourishing or subsistence. Whatever fails to enhance economic value production is ejected as waste. The social metabolism of capitalism hence clashes with the metabolism of nature, resulting in pollution, soil exhaustion, biodiversity losses, etc. Capital subsumes nature under a social form that stretches the elasticity of nature beyond its limits, until the elastic band inevitably snaps. Capitalist expansion thereby undermines its own conditions of possibility. Saito’s version of metabolic rift theory thereby masterfully shows how nature can be a dynamic and open-ended agent, and yet still confront humankind with insuperable biophysical limits.

According to Saito, this ecological critique of capitalism and the limits to growth leads Marx to change his perspective on communism after 1868. In these final years, ‘Marx ultimately became a degrowth communist’ (173). However, Saito acknowledges the opposition between the green and red branches of the left, and is aware of the controversy that a term like ‘degrowth communism’ will spark. Yet he convincingly detects some strategic points of convergence: environmental movements are turning away from ‘green capitalism’ and seem increasingly open to revolutionary activism, while socialists have largely abandoned the Stakhanovite promise of proletarian redemption through work and have become more critical of Promethean techno-solutionism. Anti-capitalist environmentalism and post-work socialism converge into degrowth communism.

In his post-1868 notebooks and correspondence, Marx turns to the study of natural scientists and ethnologists who focus on how non-Western, rural communities organized their economies around collective and commons-based use-value production. These communities sustained economic systems that might not grow exponentially, but also did not create metabolic rifts with their natural environments. They were de facto stationary economies run through the collective ownership over the means of production. In earlier years, Marx would have dismissed these examples as isolated relics from a primitive past doomed to be soon integrated into global capitalism. This Marx would have argued that pre-capitalist communities must first assimilate to capitalism and thoroughly industrialize before they can make the jump to communism.

The later Marx, however, upholds a multilinear understanding of historical materialism. The general laws of capitalism always interact with very specific local conditions. They consequently generate variegated trajectories of historical development. The road to socialism can hence vary for different societies. Especially in the case of Russia, Marx regarded the Narodniks’ rural communes as active sites of resistance against capitalism. He praised the communes’ alignment of social and natural metabolisms: these communities had successfully fostered sustainable interaction between economic and ecological processes. They had created a social system that interacted with nature not to maximize capital accumulation, but in order to optimally satisfy the collective needs of their members. They had thereby achieved economic abundance not by technologically enhancing the productive apparatus, but by harmonizing people’s needs and nature’s fecundity through a commons-based agricultural regime.

Marx is not a romantic advocate for returning to subsistence farming, but he speculates about what those in the West can learn from these agrarian communities. He argues that they should mimic elements from the social form of these communes’ production process in order to overcome capitalist metabolic rifts. Capitalism subsumes everything under a strict valorization process that incessantly ousts exhausted nature and surplus populations. The alternative focuses on the production of use-values governed in common without putting excessive strains on the environment. These examples point to a future where the sustainable, free and full development of human potential reigns.

Marx in the Anthropocene provides an original and engaging reformulation of Marx’s thought that not only demonstrates the relevance of even Marx’s most obscure writings, but also uses these texts to formulate a poignant critique of capitalism that unites environmentalist and socialist concerns. The book’s ability to articulate a common critical framework for both movements is its main achievement. That is no easy project given the decades-long heated debates between socialists and degrowth activists. But to keep both camps satisfied, Saito’s ultimate depiction of degrowth communist politics remains underdetermined. The book ends with a programmatic list of demands, like an investment shift toward sectors that promote of use-values instead of economic value (e.g. education, healthcare, or the arts), reducing the workday, enhancing workplace democracy and restraining technologies that dispossess workers from the power to coordinate their own labor. These general policy-suggestions are open-ended enough to simultaneously accommodate red and green demands, but also not terribly specific. In this programmatic vagueness lies this reviewer’s main criticism to Saito’s book.

Marx in the Anthropocene excels at diagnosing the objective contradictions of the logic of capital vis-à-vis the metabolism of nature. The depiction of how the general tendential structures of capitalism clash with the needs of nature’s metabolic processes is impressive in its insight and presentation. However, this theory of the objective contradictions of capitalism in the abstract does not link up to a concrete conjunctural analysis of today’s ecological struggles. We get a general exploration of the logic of capital and its limits, but not of the political power dynamics and divergent subject-positions of the current moment, nor of how these power-relations can be leveraged for a better future. As Saito himself claims, the general laws of capitalism interact with particular local environments with variegated effects. Degrowth communism must consider these localized variations in order to efficaciously articulate its politics. While, for example, the overworked cognitariat of the Global North might cheer for a reduction of the workday, informal workers in the Global South have had only limited access to governmentally regulated labor-time in the first place. While indigenous populations might rejoice at a movement that respects ancestral claims to their land and opposition to industrialization, the working class of the Global North – a net beneficiary of the ecological exploitation of the Global South – would mainly perceive degrowth communism as an enforced limitation on its ability to drive polluting cars, go on holiday abroad or eat meat. To make degrowth communism work as a political strategy, these variable subject-positions and their divergent social demands must be ideologically aligned.

As a political strategy, degrowth communism cannot solely rely on the objective logic of capital and its metabolic rifts to lead people to a better future. It must also work on the libidinal economies of the oppressed in order to render a non-growth, commons-based economy a desirable and shared vision of a post-capitalist future. If people are expected to experience degrowth as a form of radical abundance rather than painful asceticism, the libidinal metabolism of their desires must also change, which is a blind spot in Saito’s current framework. Saito has thereby expertly shown what is at stake in the struggle for an ecologically sustainable future, but the ideological work of writing a degrowth communist manifesto is yet to be completed.

https://mronline.org/2023/03/03/kohei-s ... communism/

Well, don't think you're gonna get far with 'de-growth' with poor people, nations. How about we call it a 'scientifically planned economy'?

Because we got better science than we did in 1930 and if we ain't scientific then we ain't Marxists. And time's a wastin'.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 06, 2023 3:47 pm

High readings of chemicals after crash
By AI HEPING in New York | China Daily | Updated: 2023-03-06 07:49


Scientists warn of lingering impacts amid worries among townspeople

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A general view of the site of the derailment of a train carrying hazardous waste in East Palestine, Ohio, US, on Feb 23, 2023. [Photo/Agencies]

The train derailment in Ohio last month released dozens of chemicals, and nine of them are in a higher concentration than would normally be found in the area, scientists say.

On Feb 3, 38 cars of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, in northeast Ohio near Pennsylvania, derailed, and several of the train's cars carrying hazardous materials burned.

Though no one was injured, nearby neighborhoods in both states were imperiled. The crash prompted an evacuation of about half the town's 5,000 residents, a multigovernmental emergency response and lingering worries among villagers of long-term health impacts.

Scientists of Texas A&M University and Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania said on Friday that if the levels of some of the chemicals remain high, they could pose challenges to residents' health in the long term.

"It's not elevated to the point where it's necessarily like an immediate 'Evacuate the building' health concern," Albert Presto, an associate research professor of mechanical engineering in the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, told CNN.

"We don't know necessarily what the long-term risk is or how long that concentration that causes that risk will persist," said Presto, who is working on the university's chemical monitoring effort with a mobile laboratory in East Palestine.

The analysis has found that the highest levels were of acrolein, a herbicide used to control plants, algae, rodents and microorganisms.

It is a toxic chemical that can cause inflammation and irritation of the skin, respiratory tract and mucous membranes, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Toxic combustion

While acrolein was not on the list of chemicals carried on the derailed train cars, it can be created during the combustion of fuels, wood and plastics, the International Agency for Research on Cancer said.

The scientists found that values of benzene, toluene, xylenes and vinyl chloride were below the minimal risk levels for intermediate exposures as set by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The team said no "hot spots" were found in their mobile sampling and that the analysis corroborates data collected by the federal Environmental Protection Agency between Feb 8 and Feb 22.

Some in East Palestine say they continue to experience symptoms such as headaches, vomiting, dizziness and persistent coughs.

On Friday the Ohio Health Department issued the results of surveys conducted at its East Palestine Health Assessment Clinic, as well as door-to-door visits by the US Health and Human Services Department.

A total of 168 After Chemical Exposure community surveys were completed, with the following symptoms reported most: 74 percent of people said they experienced headaches, 64 percent reported anxiety, 61 percent reported coughing, 58 percent listed fatigue, and 52 percent said they had irritation, pain or burning of their skin.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b25db.html

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They report another derailed freight train in the state of Ohio. USA

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Twenty wagons had an accident, four of which contained tankers containing non-hazardous materials such as diesel exhaust fluid and residual polyacrylamide. | Photo: EFE
Published 5 March 2023

This time it was in the town of Springfield, about 74 kilometers west of Columbus, the state capital.

A month after a train carrying toxic waste derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, in the Midwest of the United States (USA), this community experienced a new catastrophe this Saturday when a freight train collapsed in the county from Clark, in the same state, local media reported.

On this occasion, it was in the town of Springfield, about 74 kilometers west of Columbus, the state capital, and according to the authorities, 20 wagons had an accident, four of them tankers containing non-hazardous materials such as diesel exhaust fluid and residual polyacrylamide.

A report from the Springfield Fire Department stated that a specialized hazmat team had been deployed to the scene although no injuries or public health risks had been identified so far.



For its part, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency pointed out that the derailment had not occurred near a protected water source, therefore no risks were identified for public and private supply systems, since no type of derailment has been verified. shedding yet.

The Clark County Emergency Agency has established an on-site operations center with the active collaboration of the Springfield Fire Department, County Sheriff's Office, State Highway Patrol, Department of Public Safety and others.

The accident put the inhabitants of the derailment site on notice, as the havoc caused by the Norfolk Southern locomotive accident that caused spills and fires of toxic materials on February 3 in East Palestine is still fresh.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/eeuu-tre ... -0006.html

Google Translator

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Faster, higher, hotter: What we learned about the climate system in 2022 (Part 1)
Originally published: Climate Code Red on February 20, 2023 by David Spratt (more by Climate Code Red) (Posted Mar 06, 2023)

Beyond all the hype and all the anxiety about climate policymaking, the upbeat newsmaking about energy transitions and the growing dread of civilisational collapse, what have we learned about the climate system in the last year? Here are some key observations drawn from research and data published in 2022.

1. Record emissions
Covid supply-chain disruption and the war in Ukraine have distracted from the task of rapid emissions reductions and contributed to inflation, falling real wages and a political focus on cost-of-living pressures. The war has disrupted energy markets, driven a return to coal whose use is at an all-time high, prompted an increase in emissions-intensive arms production and use, and become an excuse for governments to delay climate action.

Atmospheric levels of all three main greenhouse gases reached record highs in 2022. Carbon Monitor reported emissions data for full year 2022 as: “Global CO2 (carbon dioxide) increased by +1.6% in 2022 (+8.0% than 2020, and +2.1% than 2019)”, an all-time record. In November 2022, the Global Carbon Project had estimated carbon emissions from fossil fuels in 2022 would reach 37.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the highest ever recorded. The latest International Energy Agency (IEA) projections show that global carbon emissions from energy are still growing and may peak in 2025, but are likely to plateau at a high level after that for a decade or more, rather than decline in any significant manner.

Likewise, the UNFCCC estimated that total global greenhouse emissions, taking into account implementation of the latest commitments by nations, would in 2030 be “50.8% higher than in 1990, 10.6% higher than in 2010, and 0.3% lower than in 2019, as well as 1.9% lower than the estimated level for 2025, indicating the possibility of global emissions peaking before 2030”. Note that in this statement, emissions peaking by 2030 is judged a “possibility,” not a high probability.

2. The 1.5°C target
The warming trend will reach 1.5°C around 2030, irrespective of any emission reduction initiatives taken in the meantime, according to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Working Group 1 Summary for policymakers (Table SPM.1); and the UN Environment Program said there is no longer a credible path to holding warming below 1.5°C in the short term (without deploying immediate cooling interventions, which are nowhere on the policymaking agenda).

Prof. Bill McGuire says “continuing to argue for the viability of 1.5°C is misleading and raises false hopes”, and The Economist editorialised that “the world is going to miss the totemic 1.5°C climate target”. Matthews and Wynes concluded that human activities have caused global temperatures to increase by 1.25°C and “the current emissions trajectory suggests that we will exceed 1.5°C in less than 10 years”.

In 2022, Prof. Will Steffen wrote that “the only reasonable conclusion… is that the lower Paris target of 1.5°C is now out of reach… past inaction, and in particular, failure to begin significant emission reductions before 2020, have cost us dearly”. And Australian scientists said that:

The latest science, viewed alongside continuing increases in global greenhouse gas emissions, suggests that limiting warming to 1.5°C is now almost certainly infeasible. It would now require not only rapid emission reductions, but also the large-scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There is no evidence that this can be achieved at sufficient scale to meet the 1.5°C target.

3. What about overshooting 1.5°C and cooling back to that level by 2100?
Most policy talk about achieving the 1.5°C target is somewhat a sleight-of-hand; it is actually about “overshooting”, in which the temperature exceeding 1.5°C, perhaps significantly and for decades, with carbon drawdown helping reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas and temperature levels back to 1.5°C in the latter part of the century.

The Washington Post reported on work which examined 1200 future emission paths, and found that only 112 get warming back down to 1.5°C or less by 2100, once unrealistic near-term emission reduction assumptions are excluded. [As noted above, greenhouse emissions are still increasing, not reducing.] Of the 112 paths, 86 were identified as “high” overshoot which involve “spending decades above 1.5°C” which is “an unsettling prospect” because “it raises the possibility, for instance, of the world experiencing dangerous tipping points and even calamities such as the irreversible loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet”. [In fact there is convincing evidence that several such tipping points have already been passed, and scientists have warned that warming in the 1.5–2°C range risks “a cascade of feedbacks could push the Earth System irreversibly onto a ‘Hothouse Earth’ pathway”.]

The 26 “low” overshoot scenarios remaining have varying assumptions about the level of technological development of carbon drawdown methods. The Potsdam Institute has characterised such technology use as having “speculative,” “challenging” or “reasonable” assumptions. When those 26 scenarios remaining were assessed under the “reasonable category” for all the five main drawdown methods — carbon capture and storage, land-based removal, carbon intensity, energy demand and less methane — no path was left. If, instead, technologies identified as “challenging” are considered, there are 11 scenarios available of the 1200 examined. What makes these 11 scenarios work? The Post reported:

One common theme is much more dramatic carbon removal from the atmosphere, storing it either underground or in forests and agricultural landscapes. The majority of these scenarios require us to be able to subtract over seven billion tons per year from the atmosphere by 2050. This will require a huge scale up of interventions like carbon capture and storage, which only has an estimated capacity of about 43 million tons per year today. Capacity has roughly doubled in the past decade, but a far faster pace of change would be needed to achieve this outcome.

4. Likelihood of achieving the 2°C target
As noted above, the IEA has reported that emissions from energy may peak in 2025, but are likely to then plateau at a high level after that for a decade or more. And The Economist reported that emissions slashed today won’t slow warming until mid-century.

To keep warming to 2°C means achieving a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2030 according to the “carbon law”, which on the basis of equity means zero emissions by 2030 for high-per capita emitting nations. Clearly, given the emissions data and projections, the world is not going to get anywhere near this. Current models, reported in the 2021 IPCC report, project around 0.3°C warming between 2020 and 2030, and more than 2°C by mid-century for the medium- and high-emissions scenario paths that the world is currently on. Current climate models show that the Earth likely will reach 2°C of global warming by the 2040s without significant policy changes, and significant players including big oil are backtracking on previous commitments, whilst central bankers express scepticism about having a climate role to play.

“Global warming of at least 2°C is now baked into Earth’s future,” wrote former NASA climate chief James Hansen in the memo co-authored with Makiko Sato and Pushker A Karecha: “That level of warmth will occur by mid-century.” And there are warnings that the rate of global warming over the next 25 years could be double what it was in the previous 50 years, in part due to the aerosol “Faustian bargain”. [Short-lived atmospheric sulfate aerosols are a by-product of burning fossil fuel and have a cooling effect which has been masking up to 1°C of global warming. Reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and clean air policies will also reduce this aerosol cooling, so there is little prospect that decarbonisation policies will significantly bend down the temperature curve over the next two decades.]

In addition, the paleoclimate evidence is that the last time CO2 levels were similar to today, there were sea level fluctuations of 20-40 metres associated with global temperature variations between today’s temperature and 3°C warmer.

It should be noted here that 2°C is not a reasonable target. In a chapter in a book published in 2022, Steffen pointed out that even the current level of warming is dangerous:

It is clear from observations of climate change-related impacts in Australia alone – the massive bushfires of the 2019–2020 Black Summer; the third mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in only five years; and long-term cool-season drying of the country’s southeast agricultural zone – that even a 1.1 °C temperature rise has put us into a dangerous level of climate change.

…. to be continued.

https://mronline.org/2023/03/06/faster-higher-hotter/

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Insect Apocalypse in the Anthropocene, Part 2
March 5, 2023
The world’s insects are among the principal victims of capitalist agricultural concentration

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Source: Wikimedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation License 1.2

Part 1 discussed the sharp decline in insect populations around the world.https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... opocene-i/
Part 2 considers the role of monocropping

by Ian Angus

In the years following World War II, global capitalism went into overdrive, with devastating effects on the biosphere. Powered by fossil fuels and petrochemicals, the Great Acceleration ended 12,000 years of relative environmental and climate stability in the Holocene epoch, and began the Anthropocene epoch. As a synthesis report from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme concluded in 2004,

“The second half of the twentieth century is unique in the entire history of human existence on Earth. Many human activities reached take-off points sometime in the twentieth century and have accelerated sharply towards the end of the century. The last 50 years have without doubt seen the most rapid transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind.”[1]

The IGBP report included graphs that illustrated unprecedented increases in human activity and global environmental destruction, beginning about 1950.[2] One, labelled Global Biodiversity, tracked the rate of animal extinctions, which the authors estimated to be 100 to 1,000 times greater than past natural extinction rates.[3] It is a measure of the weakness of insect studies that the discussion of biodiversity decline mentioned mammals, fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles, but not insects or any other invertebrates.[4]

As we’ve seen, recent research has decisively changed that picture. Not only are insect populations in decline, but they are shrinking much faster than other animals. Insects comprise half of the one million animal species that scientists believe face extinction in this century.[5] The world’s insects are among the principal victims of the Great Acceleration. If it continues, their rapid decline will be among the most deadly features of the Anthropocene.

Concentration and simplification

The most important driver of insect decline is habitat destruction — in particular, the role of industrial agriculture in evicting uncountable species from their homes. Other insect habitats have been disrupted and destroyed, but farmland is critical because of its unequalled scale — agriculture occupies 36% percent of the world’s total land and 50% of the habitable land. Within that huge area, immense swaths are engaged in what can reasonably described as a war on insects.

All farming disrupts local ecosystems and disturbs insect life, but, as ecologist Tony Weis explains, until recently successful farming required working as much as possible with natural environments, not against them:

“Throughout history the long-term viability of farm landscapes has depended upon the maintenance of functional diversity in soils, crop species (and seed germ plasm within species), trees, animals and insects to maintain ecological balance and nutrient cycles. To this end, agro-ecosystems were managed with a variety of different techniques, such as multi-cropping, rotational patterns, green manures (turning undecomposed plant tissue into soils, typically from nitrogen-rich legumes), fallowing, agro-forestry careful seed selection and the integration of small animal populations.”[6]

The decades after World War II saw the agricultural equivalent of the nineteenth century industrial revolution — a shift from petty commodity production to large scale mass production, dependent on fossil fuels. While most farms were still family owned, decisions about what to grow and how to grow it were increasingly made in corporate boardrooms. Agricultural ecologists Ivette Perfecto, John Vandermeer, and Angus Wright describe the metabolic revolution in food production:

“The post-World War II capitalization of agriculture was accomplished primarily through the substitution of inputs that were generated from within the farm itself, with inputs that were manufactured outside the farm and needed to be purchased. Starting with the early mechanization of agriculture that substituted traction power for animal power, to the substitution of synthetic fertilizer for compost and manure, to the substitution of pesticides for cultural and biological control, the history of agricultural technological development has been a process of capitalization that has resulted in the reduction of the value added within the farm itself. In today’s farms, the labor comes from Caterpillar or John Deere, the energy from Exxon/Mobil, the fertilizer from DuPont, and the pest management from Dow or Monsanto. Seeds, literally the germ that makes agriculture possible, have been patented and need to be bought.”[7]

The postwar boom in agricultural production rested on a wide variety of new technologies, including mechanized equipment, mass-produced animal feeds, synthetic fertilizers, and proprietary seeds. The new inputs worked very well, but as agricultural historian Michelle Mart points out, “the technological revolution in agriculture was more accessible for some than for others.”

“Many small family farmers could not afford the heavy investment needed for the new technologies, nor did they have the vast swaths of land that made the technologies economically feasible. By 1955, total operating costs for the average farm had tripled from just fifteen years before, precipitating a decline in the number of farms and in the number of people who worked on the land. From 1939 to 1950, the number of farms in the United States fell 40 percent, and the number dropped almost another 50 percent from 1960 to 1970, while the size of an average farm went up 2 acres each year.”[8]

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2012, “36 percent of all cropland was on farms with at least 2,000 acres of cropland, up from 15 percent in 1987.”[9] While only about 12 percent of U.S. farms can be described as very large commercial operations, they reap 88% of annual net farm income.[10]

In North America and Europe, large farms have typically been created by merging smaller farms. In the global South, deforestation plays the primary role: about five million hectares of forest a year is cleared and replaced with giant corporate-run farms and ranches.[11] Between 1980 and 2000, over half of the new agricultural land in the tropics was created by clearing forests. Between 2000 and 2010, the figure was 80 percent.”[12]

Profitable management of large farms with expensive machinery requires specialization. Each crop has its own particular requirements, so rather than buy multiple machines, farmers concentrated on single species: just corn, or just wheat, or just soy, and so on. The matrix of fields growing different crops that characterized traditional farming was replaced by immense areas of genetically-identical plants. Most fences, hedges, woodlots and wetlands —homes for small mammals, birds and insects — were removed to maximize production and to allow machines to easily cover the entire area.

There are still millions of small farms growing multiple crops, but production and sales everywhere are dominated by a small number of very large farms, each raising just one or two species of plants or animals. Worldwide, about 75% of plant crop varieties have effectively vanished, leaving just nine plant species that now comprise close to two-thirds of all crops. As Michael Pollen comments, this has important implications for human diets: “the great edifice of variety and choice that is an American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation comprised of a tiny group of plants that is dominated by a single species: Zea mays, the giant tropical grass that most Americans know as corn.”[13]

Ecological historian Donald Worster writes describes the twentieth century transformation of farming as a “radical simplification of the natural ecological order.”

“What had once been a biological community of plants and animals so complex that scientists can hardly comprehend it, that had been changed by traditional agriculturists into a still highly diversified system for growing local foodstuffs and other materials, now increasingly became a rigidly contrived apparatus competing in widespread markets for economic success. In today’s parlance we call this new kind of agroecosystem a monoculture, meaning a part of nature that has been reconstituted to the point that it yields a single species, which is growing on the land only because somewhere there is strong market demand for it.”[14]

This “disconnection of natural processes from each other and their extreme simplification” is, as John Bellamy Foster writes, “an inherent tendency of capitalist development.”[15] For an economic system that constantly drives towards the simplification and commodification of all things, the millions of species of insects are an unneeded and unwanted complication.

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Monoculture. For most insects, this wheat field is a nutrient desert. (Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

All by itself, the shift to monocrop farming has substantially reduced insect diversity. Some insects have evolved to live just about anywhere but many cannot survive without access to specific plants. Monarch butterflies, for example can only eat milkweed leaves, and their eggs will not hatch if laid on any other plant. The simplification of millions of hectares has radically reduced the number of monarchs, along with many other habitat specialists. For them, thousands of hectares devoted to corn, or soy, or wheat might just as well be deserts, for all the nutrition and life support they provide.

But industrial agriculture doesn’t just passively withdraw support for insects: it aggressively attacks them.

(Continued in Part 3)

Notes

[1] Will Steffen et al., Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure (Springer, 2004), 231.

[2] For the 2015 update of the Great Acceleration see Ian Angus, When Did the Anthropocene Begin…and Why Does It Matter?, Monthly Review, September 2015; and Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System, (Monthly Review Press, 2016) 44-5.

[3] Will Steffen et al., Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure (Springer, 2004), 218.

[4] Will Steffen et al., Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure (Springer, 2004), 118-9. In fact, in the entire report the word insect appears just once!

[5] Pedro Cardoso et al., “Scientists’ Warning to Humanity on Insect Extinctions,” Biological Conservation 242 (2020).

[6] Tony Weis, The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming (Fernwood Publishing, 2007), 29.

[7] Ivette Perfecto, John Vandermeer, and Angus Wright, Nature’s Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty (Earthscan, 2009), 50-1.

[8] Michelle Mart, Pesticides, A Love Story (University Press of Kansas, 2015), 13. (After checking the sources Mart cites. I have corrected typographical errors in the dates.)

[9] James M. MacDonald, Robert A. Hoppe, and Doris Newton, Three Decades of Consolidation in U.S. Agriculture (USDA Economic Research Service, 2018), iii.

[10] Timothy Wise, “Still Waiting for the Farm Boom: Family Farmers Worse Off Despite High Prices” (Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute, 2011), 5.

[11] Erik Stokstad, “New Global Study Reveals the ‘Staggering’ Loss of Forests Caused by Industrial Agriculture,” Science, September 13, 2018.

[12] Christine Chemnitz, “Global Insect Deaths: A Crisis Without Numbers,” in Insect Atlas 2020, ed. Paul Mundy (Friends of the Earth Europe, 2020), 15.

[13] Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Books, 2006), 18.

[14] Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1993), 58, 59.

[15] John Bellamy Foster, The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment (Monthly Review Press, 1999), 121.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... e-part-ii/
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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 15, 2023 2:47 pm

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| How The Fracking Revolution Is Killing the US Oil and Gas Industry
Imperialism and natural resources
By Prabhat Patnaik (Posted Mar 13, 2023)

Originally published: Peoples Democracy on March 12, 2023 (more by Peoples Democracy) |

There is an overwhelming asymmetry between the level of “development” and the possession of natural resources among countries of the world. Take the group of most advanced countries, the G-7 comprising the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada. This group, while accounting for only 10 per cent of the world’s population, possessed over half of global net wealth as of 2020, and roughly two-fifths of the gross domestic product of the world (I have taken for convenience the mid-point of a range of estimates that lie between 32 and 46 per cent). Its economic might is indubitable; and yet in terms of reserves of natural resources it is quite poorly endowed.

Let us consider the most important natural resource of the present time, oil and natural gas. Estimates of world oil and gas reserves vary greatly, as do estimates of their distribution across countries. Yet certain points are so clear that variations in estimates do not affect their veracity. Of the total proven oil reserves in the world, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the United States, the G-7 countries possessed only about 13 per cent, and that too mainly on account of Canada (which has nearly 10 per cent of the world oil reserves). True, this figure excludes shale oil towards which the U.S. has been moving of late, because shale oil reserves of most countries are still not known; but even the inclusion of shale oil would not make much difference to the basic fact that the bulk of the world’s oil reserves lie outside the boundaries of the most advanced countries.

Now consider the reserves of natural gas. Here again we have significant variations in estimates of total reserves and their distribution across countries. But taking EIA estimates for the end of 2020 for G-7 countries and dividing by total estimated world gas reserves of 188 trillion cubic meters, we find that the G-7 share of the world reserves comes to just over 8 per cent. Shale gas again is excluded from these estimates, but the conclusion is unmistakable that the bulk of world gas reserves lie outside of the most advanced countries. And yet the dependence of these countries on oil and gas is overwhelming. True, there are efforts of late by some of them to move away from these fuels, with France becoming more reliant on nuclear energy; and fears of climate change have somewhat hastened this diversification. But the fact remains that as of now the reliance of the advanced countries on oil and gas still remains very substantial, while the availability of these resources within their boundaries remains extremely limited.

We have not talked so far about agricultural goods, in whose case the capacity of the advanced countries is limited by geographical considerations. The cotton textile industry was the harbinger of the industrial revolution in Britain and hence of industrial capitalism; but Britain cannot grow any raw cotton at all which was entirely imported. Likewise the capitalist metropolis, located as it is mainly in the temperate regions of the world, simply cannot grow a whole range of crops, or cannot grow them in adequate quantities, or all the year around; the tropical and subtropical regions on the other hand can grow these crops and supply them to the metropolis. The metropolis therefore remains heavily dependent on the tropical and sub-tropical regions for a steady, year-round, supply of a range of crops, from beverages to fibres to food items. True, in recent years the advanced countries have started producing a surplus of foodgrains; but this fact does not alter their heavy dependence on the tropical and sub-tropical regions. Indeed their foodgrain surpluses have been used to force the third world countries, located mainly in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, to abandon foodgrain production and shift to the production of those crops which the metropolis desires.

The indubitable fact remains therefore that the most advanced countries of the world are overwhelmingly dependent for a whole range of primary commodities, both mineral resources and agricultural goods, on the “outside” world. They have to obtain a steady supply of these commodities at low prices. Under colonialism they got a substantial part of these commodities from outside without any payment at all, i.e. gratis, as the physical form of the “drain of surplus” from colonies and semi-colonies; but their need for such supplies remains paramount whether or not they possess colonies.

Such a smooth flow at low (or zero) prices of a whole range of essential goods from “outside” to the metropolis, which simply cannot produce these goods, is ensured by imperialism of which the colonial phase was a part. Installing regimes in third world countries, including oil-producing ones, that toe the line of the metropolis is one way that the latter imposes its will. Trapping countries within a neoliberal world order where they are compelled to abjure any protection of their domestic economies and forced to become trade-dependent, is a more general tactic towards the same end.

The removal of “disobedient” regimes in the third world is effected through a variety of means, ranging from CIA-sponsored coups to the imposition of sanctions against countries with such regimes. It is a hallmark of the growing resistance against imperialism that the number of countries being targeted through sanctions has been growing of late; and therein lies the Achilles heel of imperialism.

If sanctions are imposed against just one or two countries then they can be effective for imperialism; but if the number of sanction-hit countries grows then that poses a serious threat to the imperialist world order. The targeted countries can get together to escape the adverse effects on them individually, of sanctions; and even other countries that belong neither to the metropolis nor to the list of sanction-hit countries, will have an incentive to by-pass the sanctions in order to avoid damaging consequences for their own economies. Likewise, if the sanction-hit country is large and itself quite diversified, then the sanctions against it have a good chance of boomeranging against imperialism, as has happened of late with the sanctions against Russia.

The western media present the Ukraine war as if it began only a year ago and was the result of a large power’s aggressive behaviour towards a smaller neighbour. In fact however the conflict began nearly a decade ago when Viktor Yanukovych, the democratically elected president of Ukraine, was overthrown in a neo-con planned, CIA-aided operation. Underlying the current conflict therefore there is a more fundamental conflict between western imperialism and Russia which has vast reserves of natural gas, that amount to one-fifth of total world reserves and constitute the largest among all countries; and it also has about 5 per cent of the world’s oil reserves.

Even those commentators on international affairs who locate the Ukraine war within a conflict between western imperialism and Russia, see this conflict entirely as an attempted transition from unipolarity to multipolarity; the western desire to control the vast Russian natural resources scarcely ever figures in such discussions. But the potency of this desire cannot be underestimated. Imperialism had succeeded in controlling Boris Yeltsin who had reportedly been surrounded always by scores of CIA personnel; with Putin however, no matter what his other faults, this western domination over Russian affairs has come to an end. It is hardly surprising that U.S. President Joe Biden blurted out the other day that the American objective in the Ukraine war was a regime change in Russia, that is, installing a regime “obedient” to the capitalist metropolis.

But having sanctions simultaneously imposed on so many countries, including even a large country like Russia, is beginning to take its toll on western imperialism. It is not only the people in the targeted countries who are suffering from their effects but even the working people in the countries imposing sanctions. The hardships they have been pushed into because of the absence of natural gas imports has brought thousands of workers into the streets all across Europe in anti-war, anti-inflation demonstrations, whose scale has been unparallelled since the 1970s. And contrary to what one expects when sanctions are imposed, namely a depreciation in the currency of the targeted country and an acceleration of inflation there, the rouble has actually climbed up relative to the dollar, and the countries imposing sanctions are themselves being ravaged by inflation. There can be little doubt that imperialism has currently entered what for it are trying times.

https://mronline.org/2023/03/13/imperia ... resources/

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Marx and crisis of the dead tigress
Originally published: Ecological Society on July 18, 2019 by Gurudas Nulkar (more by Ecological Society) (Posted Mar 15, 2023)

A single bullet snuffed the life out of Avni 1. The tigress had crossed our line of tolerance for other species. In the Western Ghats, the earth movers closed in on the forest. Notwithstanding the recommendations of the WGEEP 2, minerals must be mined. Industry can no longer tolerate the forest’s impunity which stops us from taking it away. We love our country and respect her denizens to the extent they don’t challenge our sovereignty on the land. Marx would have smiled at Avni’s death and the barren land where the forest once stood. His conceptualization of the ‘metabolic rift’ has now turned into an insurmountable crevasse–humans on one side and nature on the other. The promise of technology and the dazzle of the market economy has placed us in a continually confrontative position with nature.

Few thinkers have had the privilege of having their name appended by an ‘ism’, Karl Marx being one of them. While Marxism is synonymous with communist ideology, Marx’s arguments on the capitalists’ exploitation of nature are relatively under researched. Perhaps they were too early to be considered important, or perhaps the social issues of his times deprecated their gravity. Either way, historians label him as a revolutionary socialist and not as an ecologist.

While the ecological approach to sustainability has evolved largely in the last hundred years, Marx displayed a deep understanding of this in the nineteenth century. His resentment of the class system probably took roots in his University history classes where social oppression is so graphically described by historians. But his angst for capitalism developed during his journalistic phase. In Friedrich Engels he found an ally and their theses on the conditions of the labour class launched an assault on the industrial revolution. Although their works formed the foundations of communism, much of Marx’s writing is an ecological critique of capitalism. However, contemporary critics considered his dialectics on nature-economy relation to be peripheral to his mainstream ideology. It is only in the last few decades that ecological Marxism has been a subject of deep study. In recent times, authors like John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett and Kohei Saito have expounded his works from the ecological perspective.

Marx saw that in the capitalistic system regarded industry’s raw materials derived from nature, as free gifts. They were assigned an exchange value in the market, but the intrinsic value of their existence in ecosystems was ignored.

At a time when the last remaining tigers are being shot and life supporting forests are denuded in the pursuit of growth, Marx’s metabolic rift 3 is conspicuously visible in society. Foster argues that concept of metabolic rift is the backbone of Marx’s ecological ideology. In this, Marx extends his interpretation of labour to the human-nature relation. Metabolism is the process by which organisms draw upon material and energy from their environment for sustaining life. Inspired by this relation Marx described labour as

….an appropriation of what exists in nature for the requirements of man. It is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence….4

Marx argued that capitalism inflicted an antagonistic relation upon man and nature, which violated the ‘everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence’. This leads to a metabolic rift between man and nature. Manual labour, Marx believed, keeps the rift within nature’s assimilative capacity, but energy intensive labour of the industrial revolution, widens it.

Furthermore, he saw that in the capitalistic system regarded industry’s raw materials derived from nature, as free gifts. They were assigned an exchange value in the market, but the intrinsic value of their existence in ecosystems was ignored. Moreover, there was no consideration of the social and environmental costs of their depletion in nature. Marx regarded this as the ‘robbery of nature’, and this, he said, shaped society’s attitude towards nature. Readers will no doubt be reminded of the brilliant lectures by Leonard Elmhirst and Rabindranath Tagore at Calcutta University in 1922, titled “Robbery of the soil” 5.

Marx was influenced by the German scientist Justus von Liebig6. Liebig condemned the intensive farm practices calling them a ‘robbery system’. Liebig saw that crop trade created a one-way flow of nutrients, as the soil which produced the crop supplied nutrients to cities where they were consumed but did not return to the place of extraction. Marx recognised that agriculture is the foundation of an economy and was critical of intensive farming triggered by industrial progress. In analysing the destructive side of modern agriculture Marx’s comprehension of ecological processes is evident. He warns that large-scale agriculture and long-distance trade under a capitalist economy only intensifies and extends the metabolic rift. Applying Liebig’s analysis of nutrient flows, Marx writes

In London, they can find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense.

In another chapter Marx critiques the of growth of cities.

Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer. 7

While the word sustainability was not in vogue during his time, Marx’s understanding of the term comes out brilliantly in this famous passage from Capital

Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].8[

Humanity’s separation from nature, Marx believed, was not a natural state but an outcome of the capitalist system. For Marx, the original sources of wealth were soil and the worker–nature and man–the capitalist system relegated both as factors of production. Marxian eco-socialism has been severely criticised and debated. However, it has also influenced the evolution of ecological economics. Today, in the debates of sustainable development, Marx’s analysis of ecology and equity are even more relevant, as is the question whether capitalism is sustainable.

A society which trusts economic growth to bestow happiness upon it, is a society on a divergent metabolic rift. It is no surprise that they would be averse to living alongside tigers and unmindful of the life supporting services of natural forests.

Further reading on Marx’s ecological critique:
Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature; John Bellamy Foster. Monthly Review Press, 1999.
The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth; John Bellamy Foster, Robert York and Brett Clark. Monthly Review Press, 2011.
Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective; Paul Burkett. Haymarket Books 2014.
Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy; Kohei Saito. Monthly Review Press (2017)
Cited book chapters, articles and papers:

1.↩ Read here https://indianexpress.com/article/citie ... a-5435319/
2.↩ Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, 2011. Read here http://www.moef.nic.in/downloads/public ... 052012.pdf
3.↩ Marx uses the German word ‘Stoffwechsel’ which literally means material exchange. Early translations of Capital use this term and not metabolism. John Bellamy Foster has used the term metabolic rift. In one translation (Pelican, 1981) predating Foster’s article, the term ‘irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism’ is used.
4.↩ Capital, Vol 1 Ch 7 sec 1 available here https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... 1/ch07.htm
5.↩ Available here http://www.tonu.org/tag/robbery-of-the-soil/
6.↩ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ju ... von-Liebig
7.↩ Capital Vol 1 Ch 15 Sec 10 available here https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... 5.htm#a244
8.↩ Capital Vol 3 Ch 46 available here https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... 3/ch46.htm

https://mronline.org/2023/03/15/marx-an ... d-tigress/

The discovery & rediscovery of metabolic rift
By Ian Angus (Posted Mar 14, 2023)

Originally published: SWP TV Youtube Channel on July 2019 (more by SWP TV Youtube Channel)



Thousands of campaigners came together in east London last weekend to discuss how to change the world. Marxism Festival 2019 took place as far right groups gain influence and mainstream parties face crisis. Student Khai said that Marxism “tells the truth that the establishment don’t want us to hear”. Extinction Rebellion member Joseph described it as a “great weekend and fantastic opportunity”. “We need to bring people round to ideas that matter,” he said. “We all need to take action to save our planet.” The climate crisis was a major theme as was Brexit, the Labour Party and the fight against racism. School climate strikers, Extinction Rebellion activists and others discussed what kind of action can be taken to stop climate catastrophe. Author Ian Angus described the fight for the planet as “the most important struggle of our time”. “Capitalism has driven us to a crisis point,” he said. “If ‘business as usual’ continues, major ecological collapse is not possible, but probable.” Suspended Labour MP Chris Williamson was warmly welcomed as he spoke to over 700 people in a meeting on Corbynism and the future of politics. Other meetings ranged from discussing Karl Marx’s Capital to knife crime, drugs and gangs. A panel of artists spoke at a meeting on the demonisation of drill and grime music. Sheila Coleman from the Hillsborough Justice Campaign spoke at a meeting debating the usefulness of inquiries and inquests in fights for justice. She warned against people in justice campaigns being “co-opted by the state”. “It’s so important we look to each other and stay strong,” she said. Marcia Rigg, whose brother Sean died in police custody, spoke at a meeting on institutional racism and also at the festival’s closing rally. Read the whole article here https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/486

https://mronline.org/2023/03/14/the-dis ... olic-rift/
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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 29, 2023 3:36 pm

In a more equal world, population could peak by 2040
March 27, 2023

Report explodes myth that population growth is driving global environmental crisis

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Comparing five population scenarios to 2100 (United Nations, Wittgenstein,
Lancet, Earth4All – Too Little Too Late, Earth4All – Giant Leap).

In November 2022, the world crossed a milestone of 8 billion people but new analysis suggests the global population could peak just below 9 billion people in 2050 then start falling.

The new projection is significantly lower than several prominent population estimates, including those of the United Nations. The researchers go further to say that if the world takes a “Giant Leap” in investment in economic development, education and health then global population could peak at 8.5 billion people by the middle of the century.

The new projections by researchers from the Earth4All initiative for the Global Challenges Foundation is published as a working paper People and Planet: 21st Century Sustainable Population Scenarios and Possible Living Standards Within Planetary Boundaries.

The team used a new system dynamics model, Earth4All, to explore two scenarios this century. In the first scenario – Too Little Too Late – the world continues to develop economically in a similar way to the last 50 years. Many of the very poorest countries break free from extreme poverty. In this scenario the researchers estimate global population could peak at 8.6 in 2050 before declining to 7 billion in 2100.

In the second scenario, called the Giant Leap, researchers estimate that population peaks at 8,5 billion people by around 2040 and declines to around 6 billion people by the end of the century. This is achieved through unprecedented investment in poverty alleviation – particularly investment in education and health – along with extraordinary policy turnarounds on food and energy security, inequality and gender equity. In this scenario extreme poverty is eliminated in a generation (by 2060) with a marked impact on global population trends.

The authors argue that other prominent population projections often underplay the importance of rapid economic development.

“We know rapid economic development in low-income countries has a huge impact on fertility rates. Fertility rates fall as girls get access to education and women are economically empowered and have access to better healthcare,” said Per Espen Stoknes, Earth4All project lead and director of the Centre for Sustainability at Norwegian Business School.

“Few prominent models simulate population growth, economic development and their connections simultaneously,” comments Beniamino Callegari, an Associate Professor from Kristiania and member of the Earth4All modelling team.

The analysis uses ten world regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, China and the United States. Currently, population growth is highest in some nations in Africa, such as Angola, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, and Asia, for example Afghanistan.

“If we assume these countries adopt successful policies for economic development then we can expect population to peak sooner rather than later,” continues Callegari.

The team also analyzed the connection between population and exceeding planetary boundaries, which is linked to the carrying capacity of Earth. Contrary to public popular myths, the team found that population size is not the prime driver of exceeding planetary boundaries such as climate change. Rather, it is extremely high material footprint levels among the world’s richest 10% that is destabilizing the planet.

“Humanity’s main problem is luxury carbon and biosphere consumption, not population. The places where population is rising fastest have extremely small environmental footprints per person compared with the places that reached peak population many decades ago.” said Jorgen Randers, one of leading modelers for Earth4All and co-author of The Limits to Growth.

According to the team’s demographic projections, the entire population could achieve living conditions exceeding the United Nations minimum level without significant changes in current developmental trends, provided an equal distribution of resources.

The researchers also concluded that at current population levels it is possible for everyone to escape extreme poverty and pass a minimum threshold for a dignified life with access to food, shelter, energy and other resources. However, this requires a (much more) equal distribution of resources.

“A good life for all is only possible if the extreme resource use of the wealthy elite is reduced,” concludes Randers.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... k-in-2040/

Greenland ice sheet nears point of no return
March 28, 2023

“Once we start sliding, we will fall off this cliff and cannot climb back up”

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(American Geophysical Union, March 27, 2023) The Greenland Ice Sheet covers 1.7 million square kilometers (660,200 square miles) in the Arctic. If it melts entirely, global sea level would rise about 7 meters (23 feet), but scientists aren’t sure how quickly the ice sheet could melt. Modeling tipping points, which are critical thresholds where a system behavior irreversibly changes, helps researchers find out when that melt might occur.

Based in part on carbon emissions, a new study using simulations identified two tipping points for the Greenland Ice Sheet: releasing 1000 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere will cause the southern portion of the ice sheet to melt; about 2500 gigatons of carbon means permanent loss of nearly the entire ice sheet.

Having emitted about 500 gigatons of carbon, we’re about halfway to the first tipping point.

“The first tipping point is not far from today’s climate conditions, so we’re in danger of crossing it,” said Dennis Höning, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who led the study. “Once we start sliding, we will fall off this cliff and cannot climb back up.”

The study was published in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters, which publishes short-format, high-impact research spanning the Earth and space sciences.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is already melting; between 2003 and 2016, it lost about 255 gigatons (billions of tons) of ice each year. Much of the melt to date has been in the southern part of the ice sheet. Air and water temperature, ocean currents, precipitation and other factors all determine how quickly the ice sheet melts and where it loses ice.

The complexity of how those factors influence each other, along with the long timescales scientists need to consider for melting an ice sheet of this size, make it difficult to predict how the ice sheet will respond to different climate and carbon emissions scenarios.

Previous research identified global warming of between 1 degree to 3 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) as the threshold beyond which the Greenland Ice Sheet will melt irreversibly.

To more comprehensively model how the ice sheet’s response to climate could evolve over time, Höning’s new study for the first time used a complex model of the whole Earth system, which includes all the key climate feedback processes, paired with a model of ice sheet behavior. They first used simulations with constant temperatures to find equilibrium states of the ice sheet, or points where ice loss equaled ice gain. Then they ran a set of 20,000-year-long simulations with carbon emissions ranging from 0 to 4000 gigatons of carbon.

From among those simulations, the researchers derived the 1000-gigaton carbon tipping point for the melting of the southern portion of the ice sheet and the even more perilous 2,500-gigaton carbon tipping point for the disappearance of nearly the entire ice sheet.

As the ice sheet melts, its surface will be at ever-lower elevations, exposed to warmer air temperatures. Warmer air temperatures accelerate melt, making it drop and warm further. Global air temperatures have to remain elevated for hundreds of years or even longer for this feedback loop to become effective; a quick blip of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) wouldn’t trigger it, Höning said. But once the ice crosses the threshold, it would inevitably continue to melt. Even if atmospheric carbon dioxide were reduced to pre-industrial levels, it wouldn’t be enough to allow the ice sheet to regrow substantially.

“We cannot continue carbon emissions at the same rate for much longer without risking crossing the tipping points,” Höning said. “Most of the ice sheet melting won’t occur in the next decade, but it won’t be too long before we will not be able to work against it anymore.”

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... no-return/

Modeling, IMHO, does not absolutely predict an event or scenario but most certainly does predict the varying degrees of likelihood of given events. That said, we should always play the odds.

Nothing but world-wide socialism can in any meaningful way remedy the situation which should not be denied for ideological or parochial reasons. Yes, Western capital is promoting the idea with specific recommendations curiously beneficial to themselves and in fact futile if capitalism remains dominant. These of course should be rejected for the self-serving exploitation that they are but we cannot reject sound science(which it is as best as we can) and call ourselves Marxists.

China leads the way, far from perfectly but with effectiveness which the anarchy of capitalism abhors and is incapable of. As the oceans lap upon our cities the Chinese Marxist priority of human need, understood in the ecological context, is the good example which Western capital would now make war upon.

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 03, 2023 2:30 pm

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A car is partially submerged after heavy rains in Chennai, India, 12 November 2021. (Photo: Idrees Mohammed/EPA/EFE)

IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change
Originally published: The Conversation on March 24, 2023 by Kevin Anderson (more by The Conversation) | (Posted Apr 03, 2023)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavouring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating. What’s changed since the last one in 2014? Well, we’ve dumped an additional third of a trillion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels. While world leaders promised to cut global emissions, they have presided over a 5% rise.

The new report evokes a mild sense of urgency, calling on governments to mobilise finance to accelerate the uptake of green technology. But its conclusions are far removed from a direct interpretation of the IPCC’s own carbon budgets (the total amount of CO₂ scientists estimate can be put into the atmosphere for a given temperature rise).

The report claims that, to maintain a 50:50 chance of warming not exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, CO₂ emissions must be cut to “net-zero” by the “early 2050s”. Yet, updating the IPCC’s estimate of the 1.5°C carbon budget, from 2020 to 2023, and then drawing a straight line down from today’s total emissions to the point where all carbon emissions must cease, and without exceeding this budget, gives a zero CO₂ date of 2040.

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If emissions stay at their current levels, we will exhaust the 50% chance of 1.5°C in 9 years. If we begin to immediately cut emissions following the blue line, then to stay within the carbon budget for 50:50 chance of not exceeding 1.5°C we need zero global emissions by 2040. The vertical axis represents how much carbon is emitted each year – note the pandemic-related blip in 2020. (Graph: Kevin Anderson / Climate Uncensored, Author provided)

A full description of the above chart is available here. https://climateuncensored.com/how-alive ... king-fast/

Given it will take a few years to organise the necessary political structures and technical deployment, the date for eliminating all CO₂ emissions to remain within 1.5°C of warming comes closer still, to around the mid-2030s. This is a strikingly different level of urgency to that evoked by the IPCC’s “early 2050s”. Similar smoke and mirrors lie behind the “early 2070s” timeline the IPCC conjures for limiting global heating to 2°C.

IPCC science embeds colonial attitudes

For over two decades, the IPCC’s work on cutting emissions (what experts call “mitigation”) has been dominated by a particular group of modellers who use huge computer models to simulate what may happen to emissions under different assumptions, primarily related to price and technology. I’ve raised concerns before about how this select cadre, almost entirely based in wealthy, high-emitting nations, has undermined the necessary scale of emission reductions.

In 2023, I can no longer tiptoe around the sensibilities of those overseeing this bias. In my view, they have been as damaging to the agenda of cutting emissions as Exxon was in misleading the public about climate science. The IPCC’s mitigation report in 2022 did include a chapter on “demand, services and social aspects” as a repository for alternative voices, but these were reduced to an inaudible whisper in the latest report’s influential summary for policymakers.

The specialist modelling groups (referred to as Integrated Assessment Modelling, or IAMs) have successfully crowded out competing voices, reducing the task of mitigation to price-induced shifts in technology—some of the most important of which, like so-called “negative emissions technologies”, are barely out of the laboratory.

The IPCC offers many “scenarios” of future low-carbon energy systems and how we might get there from here. But as the work of academic Tejal Kanitkar and others has made clear, not only do these scenarios prefer speculative technology tomorrow over deeply challenging policies today (effectively a greenwashed business-as-usual), they also systematically embed colonial attitudes towards “developing nations”.

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March 2023’s synthesis report capped eight years of research. (Photo: IISD/ENB/Anastasia Rodopoulou)

With few if any exceptions, they maintain current levels of inequality between developed and developing nations, with several scenarios actually increasing the levels of inequality. Granted, many IAM modellers strive to work objectively, but they do so within deeply subjective boundaries established and preserved by those leading such groups.

What happened to equity?

If we step outside the rarefied realm of IAM scenarios that leading climate scientist Johan Rockström describes as “academic gymnastics that have nothing to do with reality”, it’s clear that not exceeding 1.5°C or 2°C will require fundamental changes to most facets of modern life.

Starting now, to not exceed 1.5°C of warming requires 11% year-on-year cuts in emissions, falling to nearer 5% for 2°C. However, these global average rates ignore the core concept of equity, central to all UN climate negotiations, which gives “developing country parties” a little longer to decarbonise.

Include equity and most “developed” nations need to reach zero CO₂ emissions between 2030 and 2035, with developing nations following suit up to a decade later. Any delay will shrink these timelines still further.

Most IAM models ignore and often even exacerbate the obscene inequality in energy use and emissions, both within nations and between individuals. As the International Energy Agency recently reported, the top 10% of emitters accounted for nearly half of global CO₂ emissions from energy use in 2021, compared with 0.2% for the bottom 10%. More disturbingly, the greenhouse gas emissions of the top 1% are 1.5 times those of the bottom half of the world’s population.

So where does this leave us? In wealthier nations, any hope of arresting global heating at 1.5 or 2°C demands a technical revolution on the scale of the post-war Marshall Plan. Rather than relying on technologies such as direct air capture of CO₂ to mature in the near future, countries like the UK must rapidly deploy tried-and-tested technologies.

Retrofit housing stock, shift from mass ownership of combustion-engine cars to expanded zero-carbon public transport, electrify industries, build new homes to Passivhaus standard, roll-out a zero-carbon energy supply and, crucially, phase out fossil fuel production.

Three decades of complacency has meant technology on its own cannot now cut emissions fast enough. A second, accompanying phase, must be the rapid reduction of energy and material consumption.

Given deep inequalities, this, and deploying zero-carbon infrastructure, is only possible by re-allocating society’s productive capacity away from enabling the private luxury of a few and austerity for everyone else, and towards wider public prosperity and private sufficiency.

For most people, tackling climate change will bring multiple benefits, from affordable housing to secure employment. But for those few of us who have disproportionately benefited from the status quo, it means a profound reduction in how much energy we use and stuff we accumulate.

The question now is, will we high-consuming few make (voluntarily or by force) the fundamental changes needed for decarbonisation in a timely and organised manner? Or will we fight to maintain our privileges and let the rapidly changing climate do it, chaotically and brutally, for us?

https://mronline.org/2023/04/03/ipccs-c ... te-change/

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The first signs of an ecological class struggle in Germany
Originally published: Progressive International on March 31, 2023 by Franziska Heinisch and Julia Kaiser (more by Progressive International) | (Posted Apr 03, 2023)

During the global climate strike on 3 March, climate activists and public transport workers in Germany went on strike together in around 30 cities. This could be the first step towards ecological class struggles–and their coordination on an international scale.

On 3 March 2023, on the occasion of the global climate strike, a special political alliance took to the streets in Germany: side-by-side, climate activists and public transport workers went on strike. In at least 30 cities, climate activists visited workers’ pickets and brought them along for joint demonstrations. According to Fridays for Future, a total of 200,000 people participated in the nation-wide protests.

The way employers reacted showed that this alliance of workers and climate activists is a potential threat to the ruling class. Steffen Kampeter, CEO of the Confederation of German Employers (BDA), publicly denounced them on the morning of the joint strike day as “a dangerous crossing of the line”. He said that the German service union ver.di was blurring the lines between strikes for collective bargaining and general political concerns, thereby entering the terrain of political strikes. To the delight of campaigners, this accusation contributed to the fact that the joint strike dominated the news that day.

This unity between the labour and climate movement was long overdue: a wider and more affordable public transport system is one of the central measures to achieve socially just climate protection. However, the mobility transition in Germany has so far been made impossible: many employees in local transport work in shifts under terrible conditions and barely make ends meet–with salaries just above the minimum wage. Many therefore decide to quit their jobs. There is already a shortage of tens of thousands of drivers. And this problem will only get worse in the coming years. At the same time, ticket prices are rising steadily and the passenger transport systems, especially in rural areas, are thinned out.

The struggle against wage cuts and the climate crisis belong together

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Under the slogan #wirfahrenzusammen (“we ride together”), the nationwide alliance between the climate movement and workers demands both better working conditions and more investment in local transport infrastructure. This shows a refusal to accept any trade-off between social or ecological measures to solve the current problems. This struggle for a good life for all turned words into actions during the climate strike on 3 March, which joined the strike of transport workers and Fridays for Future in a movement for socio-ecological public infrastructure.

But this alliance isn’t just based on programmatic convergence. Both the German trade unions and the climate movement have to tackle their respective decline in membership and growing disillusionment. Their cooperation could be an answer to this dilemma. If they join forces, they could both regain strength by harnessing their respective power. While the trade unionists gain more publicity and legitimacy for their demands during collective bargaining through the participation of Fridays For Future, the climate movement can gain broader social support by focusing on the alliance with workers.

In recent months, cooperation on the ground has taken very different forms: Activists started by organising concrete solidarity for the striking workers–collecting solidarity statements from passengers, confronting politicians with the workers’ demands or organising meetings with citizens where workers spoke about their working conditions. In this way, they built broad public solidarity with the workers. In some cases, activists themselves even helped to convince workers to go on strike.

The convergence of struggles has been built systematically

The fact that a labour strike coincided with the climate strike on 3 March is the result of years of bridge-building by trade unionists and climate activists. As early as 2020, climate activists in many places supported striking public transport workers.

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The idea of an alliance emerged as a result of a strategic vacuum in Germany’s Fridays For Future branch. The movement slowly died down and did not succeed in appealing to broader segments of society. The slogan of “system change” was on everyone’s lips, but in practice the movement stuck to symbolic actions of civil disobedience or large protests directed at political decision-makers. In 2020, the alliance aimed to bring the climate question into workplaces in order to actively involve broader segments of the working class in the struggle for climate justice—and to add the power of labour strikes as a form of struggle to the climate fight.

Concretely, the organising took the form of small working groups discussing collective bargaining and the mobility transition. However, at the time a joint strike still seemed unrealistic. The local alliances consisted of a handful of people and the climate strikes did not appeal to the majority of public transport workers. First, common forms of action and a common language had to be developed. If climate activists, who are mostly students, want to stand together with public transport workers, many questions arise: How do you build such a nationwide alliance? Which forms of interaction are needed? Locally, there’s a question of how to overcome initial mutual scepticism. Or more concretely: At what time should an alliance meeting be scheduled so that workers can participate too?

The 2020 campaign already achieved initial successes. Externally, the high-profile actions and press statements with Friday for Future gave the public transport strikes more legitimacy. The alliance and the joint action days have also led to a stronger identification of the workers with their collective bargaining round. In some cities, in the course of the social-ecological alliances, company groups were founded that still exist today and are actively helping to build up the strikes. A lot of mutual scepticism could be reduced and the climate movement gained legitimacy in some transport companies. This year it was possible to build on this trust and on the contacts established years ago.

The organic leaders in workplaces and the climate movement used their networks to win over workers and activists to the idea of a renewed alliance. This way, joint days of action could be planned well in advance. Meeting formats that worked well in 2020 served as inspiration for many local groups.

The transport “mega strike”

The campaign is still growing every month. On 27 March, ver.di called for a massive strike in the entire transport sector. In addition to public transport workers, the employees of air, rail and waterborne transport also went on strike. Once again, joint actions by climate groups and transport workers took place in 25 cities as part of the so-called “mega strike”. According to ver.di, this was the largest strike since 1992.

The next logical and necessary step would be for climate and labour movements in other countries to join this struggle. Friday for Future’s greatest achievement is that it built a global movement for a global problem. Accordingly, we should set up common European–or, even better, global–demands for a radical mobility transition, and plan common days of action and strikes. An internationalist climate turn of the trade unions and a labour turn of the climate movement could strengthen both social and ecological progress.

https://mronline.org/2023/04/03/the-fir ... n-germany/

Gotta wonder how much the boomerang of sanctions against Russia has added kindling to the fire.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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