The Long Ecological Revolution

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Wed Sep 08, 2021 1:41 pm

200+ medical journals demand emergency climate action
September 7, 2021
Editors urge ‘fundamental changes to how our societies and economies are organized’

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The editorial below is being published this month by over 200 medical journals, including the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the East African Medical Journal, the Chinese Science Bulletin, the National Medical Journal of India, and the Medical Journal of Australia, and others from around the world. (Click here for a full list of the authors and journals.)

Wealthy nations must do much more, much faster

The UN General Assembly in September 2021 will bring countries together at a critical time for marshaling collective action to tackle the global environmental crisis. They will meet again at the biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, and the climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, UK. Ahead of these pivotal meetings, we — the editors of health journals worldwide — call for urgent action to keep average global temperature increases below 1.5°C, halt the destruction of nature, and protect health.

Health is already being harmed by global temperature increases and the destruction of the natural world, a state of affairs health professionals have been bringing attention to for decades. The science is unequivocal; a global increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse. Despite the world’s necessary preoccupation with Covid-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions.

Reflecting the severity of the moment, this editorial appears in health journals across the world. We are united in recognizing that only fundamental and equitable changes to societies will reverse our current trajectory.

The risks to health of increases above 1.5°C are now well established. Indeed, no temperature rise is “safe.” In the past 20 years, heat related mortality among people aged over 65 has increased by more than 50%. Higher temperatures have brought increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality. Harms disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including children, older populations, ethnic minorities, poorer communities, and those with underlying health problems.

Global heating is also contributing to the decline in global yield potential for major crops, falling by 1.8-5.6% since 1981; this, together with the effects of extreme weather and soil depletion, is hampering efforts to reduce under-nutrition. Thriving ecosystems are essential to human health, and the widespread destruction of nature, including habitats and species, is eroding water and food security and increasing the chance of pandemics.

The consequences of the environmental crisis fall disproportionately on those countries and communities that have contributed least to the problem and are least able to mitigate the harms. Yet no country, no matter how wealthy, can shield itself from these impacts. Allowing the consequences to fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable will breed more conflict, food insecurity, forced displacement, and zoonotic disease — with severe implications for all countries and communities. As with the Covid-19 pandemic, we are globally as strong as our weakest member.

Rises above 1.5°C increase the chance of reaching tipping points in natural systems that could lock the world into an acutely unstable state. This would critically impair our ability to mitigate harms and to prevent catastrophic, runaway environmental change.

Global targets are not enough

Encouragingly, many governments, financial institutions, and businesses are setting targets to reach net-zero emissions, including targets for 2030. The cost of renewable energy is dropping rapidly. Many countries are aiming to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.

These promises are not enough. Targets are easy to set and hard to achieve. They are yet to be matched with credible short and longer term plans to accelerate cleaner technologies and transform societies. Emissions reduction plans do not adequately incorporate health considerations. Concern is growing that temperature rises above 1.5°C are beginning to be seen as inevitable, or even acceptable, to powerful members of the global community. Relatedly, current strategies for reducing emissions to net zero by the middle of the century implausibly assume that the world will acquire great capabilities to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

This insufficient action means that temperature increases are likely to be well in excess of 2°C, a catastrophic outcome for health and environmental stability. Critically, the destruction of nature does not have parity of esteem with the climate element of the crisis, and every single global target to restore biodiversity loss by 2020 was missed. This is an overall environmental crisis.

Health professionals are united with environmental scientists, businesses, and many others in rejecting that this outcome is inevitable. More can and must be done now — in Glasgow and Kunming — and in the immediate years that follow. We join health professionals worldwide who have already supported calls for rapid action.

Equity must be at the center of the global response. Contributing a fair share to the global effort means that reduction commitments must account for the cumulative, historical contribution each country has made to emissions, as well as its current emissions and capacity to respond. Wealthier countries will have to cut emissions more quickly, making reductions by 2030 beyond those currently proposed and reaching net-zero emissions before 2050. Similar targets and emergency action are needed for biodiversity loss and the wider destruction of the natural world.

To achieve these targets, governments must make fundamental changes to how our societies and economies are organized and how we live. The current strategy of encouraging markets to swap dirty for cleaner technologies is not enough. Governments must intervene to support the redesign of transport systems, cities, production and distribution of food, markets for financial investments, health systems, and much more. Global coordination is needed to ensure that the rush for cleaner technologies does not come at the cost of more environmental destruction and human exploitation.

Many governments met the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic with unprecedented funding. The environmental crisis demands a similar emergency response. Huge investment will be needed, beyond what is being considered or delivered anywhere in the world. But such investments will produce huge positive health and economic outcomes. These include high quality jobs, reduced air pollution, increased physical activity, and improved housing and diet. Better air quality alone would realise health benefits that easily offset the global costs of emissions reductions.

These measures will also improve the social and economic determinants of health, the poor state of which may have made populations more vulnerable to the covid-19 pandemic. But the changes cannot be achieved through a return to damaging austerity policies or the continuation of the large inequalities of wealth and power within and between countries.

Cooperation hinges on wealthy nations doing more

In particular, countries that have disproportionately created the environmental crisis must do more to support low and middle income countries to build cleaner, healthier, and more resilient societies. High income countries must meet and go beyond their outstanding commitment to provide $100bn a year, making up for any shortfall in 2020 and increasing contributions to and beyond 2025. Funding must be equally split between mitigation and adaptation, including improving the resilience of health systems.

Financing should be through grants rather than loans, building local capabilities and truly empowering communities, and should come alongside forgiving large debts, which constrain the agency of so many low income countries. Additional funding must be marshaled to compensate for inevitable loss and damage caused by the consequences of the environmental crisis.

As health professionals, we must do all we can to aid the transition to a sustainable, fairer, resilient, and healthier world. Alongside acting to reduce the harm from the environmental crisis, we should proactively contribute to global prevention of further damage and action on the root causes of the crisis. We must hold global leaders to account and continue to educate others about the health risks of the crisis. We must join in the work to achieve environmentally sustainable health systems before 2040, recognizing that this will mean changing clinical practice. Health institutions have already divested more than $42bn of assets from fossil fuels; others should join them.

The greatest threat to global public health is the continued failure of world leaders to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5°C and to restore nature. Urgent, society-wide changes must be made and will lead to a fairer and healthier world. We, as editors of health journals, call for governments and other leaders to act, marking 2021 as the year that the world finally changes course.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2021/0 ... te-action/

So what I want to know is when youse guys, and all the scientists declare the necessity of socialism? Because, you know, nothing else can hope to address the problem.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 10, 2021 2:19 pm

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Capitalism vs. the Planet
Originally published: Socialist Alternative by Hazel Grinberg (September 1, 2021 ) | - Posted Sep 09, 2021

The latest IPCC report paints a picture of five potential futures for humanity. In the worst one, if corporations keep calling the shots, we could see catastrophic warming of up to 5.7˚C. This would spell disaster for ordinary people the world over who would have to cope with extraordinary heat, droughts, storms, and fires. But this could still be avoided. In the best scenario, we limit emissions and warming to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, which would allow us to maintain a relatively stable climate.

These potential futures are radically different but, even for the most dire, there is a glimmer of hope. But winning a sustainable, habitable, and healthy planet will require revolutionary change. Workers didn’t cause the climate crisis, but we do hold the solution. An international workers’ movement can, and must, fight for an end to capitalist exploitation of the planet and to secure a safe future for ourselves and our children.

Capitalism Is To Blame

Capitalist exploitation of people and the planet has, up to this point, been enormously profitable for big business. While the super rich can, have, and will build bunkers and sea walls to protect themselves from the worst impacts of wildfires and hurricanes, nothing can protect them from the growing rage of working people who are suffering from the consequences of these disasters. Poor air quality and a subsequent rise in lung disease, rainstorms, and floods on a drastic scale, brutal heat endured in buildings with no air conditioning, and snowfall that keeps people stuck at home unable to work with no guarantee that we will still be paid will all continue to radicalize ordinary people and expose the rot in this capitalist system.

The largest drivers of climate change are major industries like energy, agriculture, and fast fashion. They emit recklessly in order to guarantee mega-profits and then buy off and sponsor politicians to ensure these profits are secure, meaning deregulation and endless subsidies for fossil fuel companies to gobble up.

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest companies by revenue, has lobbied against climate science since the 1970s, proving they are (shockingly) capable of thinking long-term, but just for their shareholders of course. In 1982, an internal Exxon memo described “potentially catastrophic events” if fossil fuel use was not reduced. Decades went by and Exxon, BP, Chevron, Mobil, and Shell—all of whom also conducted internal research that predicted global warming and its catastrophic impacts, all while increasing their profits through continued extraction of fossil fuels—fought tirelessly to discredit the science of global climate change.

Now, rather than outright denying climate change, corporations like BP and Shell are rebranding as “integrated energy companies,” hoping that paltry investments in renewables will distract everyone from their ongoing mammoth fossil fuel operations. They continue to expand their existing oil and gas extraction projects while dedicating as little as 3% of their overall spending to low-emissions developments. They are fully aware of the deadly consequences of their actions, but because of just how profitable dirty energy is, they are simply not incentivized to prioritize anything other than their bottom line. In just the first quarter of 2021, ExxonMobil made $3 billion in profits, showing that, despite mass support for moving to renewable energy, polluting industries are still king.

We Can’t Rely On Corporate Politics

The Democratic Party, which claims to be on the side of working people, has limited itself to, at best, quick fixes for the climate and, at worst, total inaction. Frankly, the science has been clear about climate change since the 80s; both parties have had ample time, resources, and power to stop this train in its tracks, but their numerous ties to corporate interests have brought us to the crossroads we face today. Biden entered office paying lip service to youth climate activists, and many of us were frankly relieved after four years of Trump and his horrific attacks on the planet. But Biden completely removed all meaningful climate measures from the $1 trillion infrastructure plan and punted the spending to a future $3.5 trillion “budget reconciliation” bill, which we can be confident will be whittled down by moderate Democrats unless a mass movement is built to force politicians to take serious action to stop climate change.

Biden and establishment Democrats are making big promises to get the country to net-zero emissions by 2050. But getting there will mean taking on major polluting industries, something we know they’re unwilling to do. The establishment takes its cues from big business; we saw this clearly in July when Nancy Pelosi came out against student debt cancellation just days after receiving a letter from billionaire Democratic donors Steven and Mary Swig urging her to do so. What happens when Exxon or BP or Chevron come knocking on their door?

The only guarantee we have that corporate-controlled Democrats will follow through on their climate promises is if we force them to by building a mass movement with concrete, sweeping demands and democratic structures. An important first step could be climate conferences across the country bringing together youth climate activists and working-class people. Like they did with the struggle to extend the eviction moratorium, Cori Bush and the Squad should use their platforms to amplify the call for a democratic, mass movement to pass sweeping climate legislation.

In November, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) will convene in Glasgow, Scotland and mobilizations across Europe are being planned to demand more than another useless meeting of politicians who are all talk and no walk. International Socialist Alternative will be there in full force on the ground, with members from dozens of sections from around the world, including the U.S. This could be a crucial flashpoint in the struggle for the planet.

We Need a Working Class Movement for the Planet

The working class and youth who make up the vast majority of society are the only force which can bring an end to the capitalist exploitation that allows climate change to continue and worsen unchecked. Admirably, many young people turned quickly toward student strikes in 2019 when the environmental movement was coming to the fore, pointing toward one of the most effective strategies the working class has for winning demands. Demonstrations in the streets, direct action, and—crucially—strikes are the tactics needed to win because they affect businesses where it hurts: their bottom lines.

The system we have right now isn’t broken; it’s working exactly how it’s meant to. The reckless drive for profits inherent in the capitalist system is fundamentally at odds with the health of the planet and of ordinary people. While helping to build the broader struggle to slow climate change, socialists need to tirelessly make the point that the only permanent solution to this emergency is the socialist transformation of society. Given the timeline we have to turn things around, incremental sustainability measures are not enough. We need to take the top 500 companies into democratic public ownership, allowing for the democratic allocation and extraction of resources.

A socialist world is necessary, and possible, if working-class and young people around the world unite to fight for it. To join the fight for a sustainable and genuinely democratic future, join Socialist Alternative today.

https://mronline.org/2021/09/09/capital ... he-planet/

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We are scientists, calling for a climate revolution
Posted Sep 09, 2021 by Scientist Rebellion

Originally published: Scientist Rebellion (2021 )



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Rise in Global Temperature above 1880-1899 baseline

The climate and ecological crises threaten every aspect of human civilisation. Despite decades of warnings from scientists and others, greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures continue to soar. A domino effect of climate tipping points threatens to push the Earth into a state that is alien and inhospitable to human civilisation.

Still, mega-corporations ransack the natural world with support from their servants in public office. Governments who stray from protecting corporate interest in favour of human need are attacked and delegitimised in the billionaire press, face the prospect of international capital flight, and of political or military coups. This corruption of democracy sits at the heart of climate inaction.

Billions are threatened with starvation, displacement, drought and inundation within the next few decades. Scientists know business as usual cannot continue: it’s time to put our bodies where our mouths are and resist, for truth and life.

The Climate and Ecological Crisis

Human industrial activity has impacted the world as severely as the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs. 70% of the mammals, fish, birds, plants, amphibians, reptiles, and around half of the insects annihilated. Greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures soaring faster than at perhaps any point in Earth’s history. Climate tipping points being crossed – like the melting of the Arctic – accelerating heating and stripping humanity of meaningful control over our future.

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Global Emissions in Billion Tonnes of CO2

We are heading toward a world at least 4°C hotter this century. The effects will be catastrophic. Even 2°C – which we are set to burn through by 2050 – means billions without enough food and water, hundreds of millions of refugees, historic natural disasters virtually every year, war, disease. Without political and economic revolution we face a nightmare from which we cannot wake. Scientists know this, and we are starting to resist.

Why We Rebel

Scientists have spent decades writing papers, advising government, briefing the press: all have failed. What is the point in documenting in ever greater detail the catastrophe we face, if we are not willing to do anything about it?

Academics are perfectly placed to wage a rebellion: we exist in rich hubs of knowledge and expertise; we are well connected across the world, and to decision-makers; we have large platforms from which to inform, educate and rally others all over the world; and we have implicit authority and legitimacy, which is the basis of political power. We can make a difference. We must do what we can to halt the greatest destruction in human history.

https://mronline.org/2021/09/09/we-are- ... evolution/

That's fine and dandy, certainly better than the 'science is above politics' bullshit. Now, if they'd declared for socialism, the only real alternative, they'd be a step ahead of the political academics who run MR but find it almost impossible to say 'revolution'.

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Advance Release! The Leaked IPCC Reports: Notes from the Editors, October 2021
by The Editors
(Sep 08, 2021)

Monthly Review Volume 73, Number 5 (October 2021)

On August 9, 2021, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. This was Part I of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), written by its Working Group 1, detailing the current state of climate change. Part I is to be followed by two additional parts of the overall AR6 report. Part II, written by Working Group II, on “Impacts,” is scheduled to appear in February 2022. Part III, written by Working Group III, on “Mitigation,” is to appear in March 2022.

It is a sign of just how serious matters have become—with the UN COP26 talks on climate in Glasgow this November now regarded by many as a last-ditch effort to achieve a global solution on behalf of humanity as a whole—that the early draft versions of both Part II and Part III reports were leaked during the summer. In late June, Part II of AR6 was leaked to the French news agency, Agence-France Presse (AFP), which then preceded to publish an article based on the leaked report (“Crushing Climate Impacts to Hit Sooner than Feared,” June 23, 2021).

Days before the publication of Part I, the key section of Part III, a “Summary for Policymakers,” was leaked by scientists associated with Scientist Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion Spain (mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/summary_draft1.pdf). An article announcing the leak, entitled “IPCC Sees Degrowth as Key to Mitigating Climate Change,” was published on August 7 by journalist Juan Bordera and ecologist Fernando Prieto in the Spanish online magazine Contexto y Acción (CTXT). The leaked “Summary for Policymakers” for Part III was the draft document accepted by Working Group III, before the various participating governments—which in the IPCC formal adoption process are able to make changes to the “Summary for Policymakers” prior to its publication—could excise key elements of the report and water it down.

Near the end of August, there was a second leak from Part III of the Sixth Assessment Report emanating from the same sources—this time of Chapter One of the third report (mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/chapter01.pdf). This leak was announced in an article by Bordera, Prieto, and three others published in CTXT, entitled “Leaked Report of the IPCC Warns that the Growth Model of Capitalism Is Unsustainable” (MR Online, August 23, 2021).

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Flooding in Norristown, PA from remains of Hurricane Ida (September 2, 2021). Image credit: Michael Stokes, Flickr.

The published Part I, the Physical Science Basis report, contained few revelations for those following climate science, but provided greater certainty and concreteness in its results. What was most significant about the report was that it revealed that, even in the case of SSP1-1.9, the most optimistic projection of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways—in which carbon emissions globally peak in the next four years, a 1.5°C increase in global average temperatures over preindustrial levels would be avoided until 2040, and the goal of net zero carbon emissions would be reached by 2050—the consequences for global humanity would nonetheless be catastrophic by the measure of all historical precedents. This would include various “compound” events of extreme weather sometimes known as global weirding (including heavy precipitation, record floods, heatwaves, droughts, monsoon breakdowns, megastorms, glacier melts, and sea level rise) affecting every region and ecosystem of the world. The second scenario (also optimistic), SSP1-2.6—in which the increase in global average temperature would remain slightly below a 2°C increase, in the “best estimate” for 2081–2100—is a sort of last hope and carries with it dangers disproportionately greater. The other three scenarios are almost unthinkable, although more consistent with current trends, threatening the very existence of civilization and humanity itself.

Under the most optimistic scenario, or SSP1-1.9, in which 1.5°C is not reached until 2040, it is estimated that the mid–term (2041–2060) increase in global average temperature will remain in the 1.2–2°C range, with the best estimate 1.6°C, and then, near the end of the century (2081–2100), will fall back to 1.4°C due to the implementation of negative emissions technologies. Yet, what is important to understand is that even in this highly optimistic scenario (SSP1-1.9) extreme heat and heavy rainfall will be far more frequent. Sea level rise will be irreversible over centuries and maybe millennia. Ocean acidification will increase, carrying its own dangers. The best that can be hoped for at this point, therefore, is that the ultimate threat to humanity will be held off, and by the end of the century global average temperature could be reduced below 1.5°C again. Yet, even then, some of the negative effects of climate change, posing dire threats to billions of people, will nevertheless continue to play out over the twenty-first century. In the case of SSP5-8.5, the fifth and most apocalyptic scenario, resulting from the unhindered continuation of capitalist “business as usual,” global average temperature is projected to increase by the end of the century by 3.3–5.7°C, with the best estimate at 4.4°C, spelling absolute catastrophe for humanity and innumerable species on the planet.

The leaking to AFP of sections of Part II of the Sixth Assessment Report, on “Impacts,” written by Working Group II, has led to a number of statements from Part II of the report being quoted and becoming public knowledge. According to AFP, the report “warns that previous major climate shocks dramatically altered the environment and wiped out most species, raising the question of whether humanity is sowing the seeds of its own demise. [In the words of the report itself:] ‘Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems. Humans cannot.’” The leaked Part II concludes: “We need transformational change operating on processes and behaviours at all levels: individual, communities, business, institutions and governments. We must redefine our way of life and consumption.”

However, it is Part III on “Mitigation” of the latest IPCC report (AR6) that offers the biggest surprises. On August 7, CTXT indicated in the article by Bordera and Prieto that it had obtained a leaked draft copy of the “Summary for Policymakers” of Part III, accepted by Working Group III, from which a number of key passages were quoted in the article (see also: “We Leaked the Upcoming IPCC Report!,” Scientist Rebellion, scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-report). Other parts of the leaked “Summary for Policymakers” but not quoted in that article are equally significant and demand close consideration. One key finding of the Part III report is that no new net addition to current coal or gas plants can be built and that existing ones need to be eliminated within a decade if the below-1.5°C target is to be met.

In many ways, the most important part of the “Summary for Policymakers” in the leaked Part III is its insistence that technological improvements that allow for relative decarbonization are not enough. Rather, what is required is a massive social transition in material production and consumption. Although stabilizing the climate below 1.5°C necessitates some carbon dioxide removal (CDR), there is no mere technological fix to the climate change problem. Attempts to intervene massively in the climate by technological means to counteract the effect of carbon emissions carry with them their own extraordinary threats to the planet as a safe space for humanity.

At present, solar and wind technology only account for 7 percent of world energy use, with fossil fuels making up most of the rest. Although solar and wind expansion is to be encouraged, the economic entrenchment of fossil fuel technology has inhibited any real rapid progress. Incremental decarbonization strategies favored by corporations have resulted overall in relative decoupling but not absolute decoupling of emissions due to economic growth, with total carbon emissions rising even as the carbon input of production has declined. The biological or nature-based CDR approaches, such as afforestation/reforestation, ecosystems restoration, and soil management, are those that offer the most hope in the immediate future. In contrast, the potential for direct air capture and carbon storage, enhanced mineral weathering, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and bioenergy and carbon capture and storage are all limited by lack of research and development, high cost, and potentially dangerous consequences. Nuclear energy poses too many obstacles and hazards to be an important part of the solution. In general, “the scale-up, diffusion and global spread of carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear energy, and carbon removal (CDR) technologies” are questionable and cannot play the primary role in climate change mitigation.

Thus, the overall thrust of the AR6 “Mitigation” (or Part III) report is—for the first time in the IPCC process—that it is essential to turn to demand-side strategies, exploring cutbacks in energy use and across all economic sectors, as well as aggressively pursuing conservation and low-energy paths. Cities need to be redesigned to become “new cities” constructed on an entirely different sustainable basis. Transportation has to move away from sports-utility vehicles and other gas guzzlers, and shifted toward mass transportation, electrified cars, bikes, tuk-tuks (auto rickshaws), and motorbikes. Heavy meat-based diets have to be curtailed. Plastic production needs to be drastically reduced. “In low-energy demand scenarios,” the report states, “final energy demand is 40% lower in 2050 than in 2018, while wellbeing is maintained and improved.” What is required “is fundamental structural changes at the global level” (and at every other level) in production and consumption systems. Accelerated climate-change transitions require a shift to entirely new systems of sustainable development. “Transformative change” must replace incremental changes favored by the status quo.

The Part III “Summary for Policymakers” places a strong emphasis on climate injustice as a central aspect of the whole climate problem. Thus, the report emphasizes that “the top 10% of emitters (the global wealthy on a per capita basis) contribute ten times as much to global emissions as the poorest 10%.” Specifically, “the global richest 10% contribute about 36–45% of global GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, while the world’s poorest 10% contribute around 3–5%.” As much as “46 percent of developing country CO2 emissions in 2010 and 41% in 2015 were from export production to developed countries,” indicating that accounting for climate emissions should be on a consumption rather than production basis. Half of all aviation emissions stem from the wealthiest 1 percent.

At every point, the “Summary for Policymakers” in Part III indicates that the “just transition concept,” initially promoted by labor unions, must be incorporated into climate change policy. “Lack of integration of environmental justice in climate mitigation activities…risks growing inequality at all levels” and inhibits “effective climate mitigation,” which requires a just transition that ensures that “workers, frontline communities and the vulnerable are not left behind in low-carbon pathways.” Even more startlingly, the report declares: “Increasing participation by women, and racialised and marginalised groups, amplifies the impetus for climate action. Collective action through formal social movements and informal lifestyle movements expands the potential for climate policy and supports system change (high confidence). Climate strikes have given voice to youth in more than 180 countries.”

The leaked Chapter One of Part III of AR6 is primarily a review of the recent literature on mitigation. However, it is notable, in comparison to earlier IPCC reports, in citing a number of critics on the left, including Jason Hickel, Andrew Jorgenson, and Andreas Malm, calling attention to fundamental issues of political economy and power such as the dominance of fossil capital, the reality of global unequal exchange, and the rationality of degrowth. As the report indicates at one point, referring to the analysis of Malm and others, “the character of social and economic development produced by the nature of capitalist society,” is viewed by many political-economic critics “as ultimately unsustainable.” Indeed, a close, critical reading of the leaked Chapter One leaves little doubt that radical system change is now the only remaining path to a sustainable future for humanity. As UN secretary general António Guterres exclaimed in a statement accompanying the release of the new IPCC report, this is “a code red for humanity.” There is simply no hope for the world unless people everywhere are determined to surmount the main barrier to human survival: the barrier of capital itself.

https://monthlyreview.org/2021/09/08/mr ... 2021-09_0/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 16, 2021 1:31 pm

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People walk through flooded streets in New York as the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the city on the night of 1 September

The Northern Hemisphere’s summer of climate carnage
Originally published: Red Flag by Xavier Dupé (September 11, 2021 ) | - Posted Sep 14, 2021

The climate crisis is raging across the Northern Hemisphere. Fires stretch from Algeria and Spain to Palestine, from Siberia to Ontario. Floods have killed hundreds in China and India and displaced thousands more. Three of the biggest countries in the world—Russia, the U.S. and Canada—have been blanketed with smoke. So too, for the first time ever, was the north pole.

There is no doubt among scientists that the increasing frequency of extreme weather and associated disasters like fires is a result of climate change. Despite the dip in CO2 emissions in mid-2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere still rose to their highest level ever—and 2021 is set to break that record again. The global average temperature has increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius already, and the effects are being felt.

This is most obvious in the record high temperatures. July was the world’s hottest month ever. Temperature records were smashed in numerous countries around the world. In Canada, the small town of Lytton in British Columbia had a high of 49.6 degrees on 29 June—smashing the previous Canadian record of 45 degrees, recorded in 1937. Less than a week later, the town was consumed by a massive wildfire. The heatwave in Canada also caused an estimated one billion sea creatures to be boiled alive.

In Europe, the town of Syracuse on the Italian island of Sicily hit 48.8 degrees on 11 August, beating the previous European record of 48 degrees, set in Athens in 1977.

The increasing heat speeds up evaporation and reduces average rainfall in many parts of the world, making drought more common and more severe. As in Australia in 2019-20, this has created tinderbox conditions that make wildfires burn out of control. This is a worldwide problem, with devastating fires in places as geographically distant and environmentally dissimilar as Lebanon and Siberia.

The problem is exacerbated by the chronic underfunding of firefighting services. The US, for instance, relies on temporary firefighters, who are paid as little as US$13.45 an hour and work twelve-hour days with few breaks or days off. Ordinary people pay the price. Towns like Lytton are left to burn, and in other cases, for example on the Greek island of Evia, poorly equipped and untrained local residents are forced to battle the flames on their own.

The situation in Russia is particularly troubling. Fires have burnt through vast areas of forest that sit on top of permafrost. Russian authorities didn’t even try to fight them: regulations don’t require it if the cost of fighting the fire is more than the value of the forest destroyed. The cold logic of capitalism means millions of hectares of land have been incinerated (and vast quantities of carbon released into the atmosphere—further contributing to climate change), because it can’t be exploited for profit.

Rising temperatures aren’t only contributing to more extreme droughts and fires. Warmer air can absorb more water, which means that, when rain does fall, it can be more intense. In mid-August Zhengzhou, in China’s Henan province, had a year’s worth of rain in just three days. At the peak of the downpour, 202 millimetres—equivalent to over a third of Melbourne’s annual average rainfall—fell in just one hour. The resulting floods killed more than 300 people across the region. Many drowned after being trapped by water flowing into the subway. Hundreds of thousands of people had to be evacuated from their homes.

Extreme rainfall and flooding also hit Germany, India, Japan and parts of the US. India had its worst monsoon in decades, while floods in Japan forced 1.4 million people to evacuate their homes and triggered landslides that killed 23 people in a single town. In the US state of Tennessee, a series of severe thunderstorms dumped 431 millimetres of rain in only a few hours. Twenty-two people were killed and many more are missing. Most recently, on the night of 1 September, New York was drenched by a record 70 millimetres of rain in an hour as the remnants of Hurricane Ida swept past—with some among the dozens killed drowning after being trapped by water rushing into their basement apartments.

These are just the most obvious effects of climate change. There are also signs that we may be passing tipping points that scientists think may accelerate the climate crisis.

One explanation that has been proposed for the increased severity of both heatwaves and floods is the disruption of the Arctic jet stream. The jet stream is a feature of our climate that (mostly) keeps cold air over the north pole and warm air further south, while at the same time keeping those weather systems in motion. When it slows, as some scientists believe is happening with increasing frequency, more hot air gets north—hence the heatwaves in Canada and Siberia—and more cold air gets south—hence an extreme cold snap in Texas in February.

Even worse, it means that weather systems get trapped in place. Instead of a heatwave lasting a few days, it can last for weeks. Conditions under such “heat domes” become almost unlivable. In the North American heatwave in June, hospitals were overrun, rains that could have controlled fires never came, and the heat just kept rising. The Dixie fire, which started on 13 July and is still burning today, is the largest single fire in California’s history. Canada has had fires burning continuously since April. Practically the whole Mediterranean was aflame in early August because of such a stationary heat dome.

In the past, firefighters have relied on the off season to recover. But as the Washington Post’s climate and science reporter Sarah Kaplan put it, “now there is no offseason; one fire year simply bleeds into the next, as winter rain and snow is delayed and diminished by climate change”.

Catastrophic as this is, it is only the beginning. Every fraction of a degree of warming will invite more, and greater, disasters. A 2020 study published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found the chance of a tropical storm developing into a category three or above hurricane has increased 8 percent per decade over the past 40 years. That’s in a period in which the global average temperature has risen by just 1 degree. Another study, published in Science Advances in 2017, found—based on an examination of heatwave deaths in India between 1960 and 2009—that warming of just half a degree resulted in a 150 percent increase in the number of heatwaves that kill 100 or more people.

At the world’s current rate of warming, a 1.5 degree increase on the pre-industrial era average is unavoidable, and if there are not rapid cuts to emissions from now, we can expect 3-4 degrees of warming by the end of the century. This is a future we should do everything in our power to avoid. And we can’t trust the global capitalist class and their political servants to make the changes we need. Workers and the poor—the people who are suffering the most from the effects of climate change—must wage the fight ourselves.

We are not just victims, we are the solution. In the “bushfire summer” of 2019-20 tens of thousands of Australians protested—calling for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to be sacked for his refusal to take the climate crisis seriously. Iran is in the grip of a massive strike wave and social rebellion motivated in part by water shortages. Protests in Greece against the government’s handling of the fires there are part of the broader movement against austerity that has increased the suffering of ordinary people.

The climate crisis is driving people not just to fear and sorrow, but to rage. There lies our best hope—working-class revolution to use the vast productive power of society, not for the profits of the few, but for the sake of humanity and the planet we depend on.

https://mronline.org/2021/09/14/the-nor ... e-carnage/

**********************************

Indigenous actions stop billions of tons of emissions
September 15, 2021

Stopped or delayed projects equal 25% of US and Canadian emissions

The Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International have released a new report, Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon, that analyzes the impact of Indigenous resistance on fossil fuel projects in the United States and Canada has had on greenhouse gas emissions over the past 10 years. From the struggle against the Cherry Point coal export terminal in Lummi territory to fights against pipelines crossing critical waterways, Indigenous land defenders have exercised their rights and responsibilities to not only stop fossil fuel projects in their tracks, but establish precedents to build successful social justice movements.

The new report shows that Indigenous communities resisting the more than 20 fossil fuel projects analyzed have stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least 25 percent of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions. Given the current climate crisis, Indigenous peoples are demonstrating that the assertion of Indigenous Rights not only upholds a higher moral standard, but provides a crucial path to confronting climate change head-on and reducing emissions.

As Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network says: “The numbers don’t lie. Indigenous peoples have long led the fight to protect Mother Earth and the only way forward is to center Indigenous knowledge and keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

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https://www.ienearth.org/wp-content/upl ... n-2021.pdf

Kyle Gracey of Oil Change International adds: “Indigenous communities resisting oil, gas, and coal projects across their territory are demonstrating true climate leadership. Brave resistance efforts by Indigenous land and water defenders have kept billions of tons of carbon in the ground, showing that respecting and honoring the wisdom and sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples is a key solution to the climate crisis.”

The recently released United Nations climate change report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that in order to properly mitigate the worst of the climate crisis, rapid and large-scale action must be taken, with a focus on immediate reduction of fossil fuel emissions. As the United Nations prepares for its upcoming COP 26 climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, countries are being asked to update their pledges to cut emissions — but as the IPCC report states, current pledges fall short of the changes needed to mitigate the climate chaos already millions of people around the world.

While United Nations member countries continue to ignore the IPCC’s scientists and push false solutions and dangerous distractions like the carbon markets in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, Indigenous peoples continue to put their bodies on the line for Mother Earth. False solutions do not address the climate emergency at its root, and instead have damaging impacts like continued land grabs from Indigenous Peoples in the Global South. Indigenous social movements across Turtle Island have been pivotal in the fight for climate justice.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 05, 2021 1:42 pm

FROM THE GREEN REVOLUTION TO THE GREEN TRANSITION
Clara Sanchez

4 Oct 2021 , 9:07 pm .

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The logic of the Green Revolution has dominated world food plans (Photo: Archive)

WORLD FOOD SUMMITS (1963–2021)

After the Second World War, the United Nations has developed a few times, among its main summits and conferences , the issue of food or food systems, as 2021 has been called. What has been promoted? What have been your goals? What is its fulfillment? Who are its main actors? And under what global context have they been carried out?

These questions and their answers highlight the relationship between power and food in the world that, incidentally, will not be different this time.

FIRST WORLD FOOD CONGRESS (1963)

In 1963, through FAO, the first World Food Congress was held to promote the agrarian development plan at the world level, better known as the Green Revolution, although it was not yet called that, directed mainly to the countries in development, particularly to promote the use of seeds with high genetic yield and greater use of fertilizers, whose objective was to increase food production in the face of the problem of population growth in the world as a key strategy for the fight against hunger, with the support from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others.

A technological advance for modern agriculture, where food production went from being directly dependent on vital natural resources such as water and land to additionally needing oil and gas, making it dependent on hydrocarbons and, therefore, on a greater use of energy necessary for the development of this agroindustrial model and the need for various means of production such as seeds, machinery (tractors, harvesters, sprayers, fertilizers), inorganic fertilizers (N, P, K), agrochemicals (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides ), artificial irrigation, processing industry, silos and storage infrastructure, transportation, among others. Bringing with it, at the same time, the environmental damage that has been caused to the planet and the lack of sustainability.

To give an example, it is estimated that the use of fertilizers, the main input associated with the increase in crop yields at the beginning of the "Green Revolution", increased annually by 14% during the 1960s and has since been increasing by 10% every year.

Before this congress, guidelines had been issued for the use of surplus commodities as "development promotion", which were actually intended to contain communism by the United States from 1954, through public law. Lp-480; the World Seed Campaign for the installation of infrastructure worldwide; soil mapping; and even the Fertilizer Program, which was carried out within the framework of the World Campaign Against Hunger in 1961.

With this congress, a greater influence of the power of the United States began to control the supply of food in the world as part of its foreign policy, which began in 1940 and was reinforced in the 1960s with the creation of the Agency for International Development ( USAID), and the launch of the Food for the World Program in the same 1963, becoming the main food assistance program of the North American country abroad, laying the foundations for a permanent expansion of exports of agricultural products with benefits for the United States. United.

That was later reconfigured with the approval of Public Law Lp-808, moving from the elimination of surpluses to planned production for export, in order to meet world food needs.

The world context of this first congress was the end of the Missile Crisis, October Crisis (Cuba) or Caribbean Crisis (Russia), considered one of the worst scenarios of confrontation between the two first world powers during the Cold War in 1962: the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States.

Crisis that affected a new direction in the foreign policy of the United States, revealed in June 1963 (same month of the Food Congress) by the American President John F. Kennedy, when he announced talks for the signing of a treaty and eventual nuclear disarmament between the USSR and the United States, which historians consider truncated having been assassinated three months later.

In short, with this first congress that attracted the attention of the world in a way never seen before , it became clear the conviction "that at the mercy of the progress of science and technology was possible to free the world of hunger (...) through economic development and balanced social, human and natural resources ".

And specifically, in addition to the worldwide promotion and installation of the Green Revolution, it served as an object for the creation of the World Food Program (WFP), which the FAO and the United Nations worked since 1961, coincidentally since the same year that the United States created its Office of Food for Peace as a projection of its foreign policy.

FIRST WORLD FOOD CONFERENCE: END HUNGER IN 10 YEARS (1974)

In 1974, the first World Food Conference was held so that "within a decade, there would be no child who had to go to bed without having satisfied his hunger, no family that feared for the bread of the next day and that, not even the future, nor will human capacities be impaired by malnutrition. "

On this occasion, the eradication of hunger in ten years was proposed by increasing food production in the developing world, but also in developed countries, improving food consumption and distribution, with the establishment of a better security system. world food, trade organization and agricultural readjustment.

The expansion of markets for exports from developing countries, as well as for emergency relief and food aid, was suggested. Although the problem of agricultural trade was really the controversial topic throughout the Conference.

Conference that recognized the fundamental role of fertilizers and pesticides in increasing food production, setting the goal of achieving a desirable balance between population and food supplies.

From this space, the reduction of military expenditures was promoted to increase food production, the seed industry, food assistance to the victims of wars in Africa; and the IBRD proposed the joint organization of a program to help developing countries improve the performance of their fertilizer factories.

It was originally raised at the Conference of Non-Aligned Countries held in Algiers from September 5 to 9, 1973 and later by the Secretary of State of the United States, Henry Kissinger, during the 28th Session of the General Assembly, the same month, considering according to his observations the existence of a "growing threat to the world's food supply", for which the United States "proposed that a World Food Conference be convened in 1974, under the auspices of the United Nations , in order to examine means of maintaining an adequate food supply, and to harness the efforts of all nations to address hunger and poor nutrition as a result of natural disasters. "

The context of this summit was the World Oil Crisis, which in the last four months of 1973 and in the first part of 1974, posed serious problems of fuel shortages and increased prices, and also generated shortages and high prices of fuel. fertilizers.

The same year in which Henry Kissinger, former United States Secretary of State and national security adviser in the midst of the oil crisis, during the governments of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, raised the relationship between food and strategic natural resources in the presentation of an energy independence bill for the United States in 1974, holding that "whoever controls food will control the people, whoever controls oil will control nations"; therefore, food became a national security issue .

At this time, it was debated whether the Green Revolution had begun to lose its initial momentum, which depended on the continued increase in the use of fertilizers, which in that world context were scarce and expensive, but beyond what were considered some caveats. It was stated that there were no technical reasons to suppose that the Green Revolution had nothing more to offer, and although there were other conditions at stake, the program was aimed at increasing food production; To maintain its momentum, it needed the availability of essential factors of production, especially fertilizers, that is, to guarantee supplies of natural gas.

The term Green Revolution, first used by USAID director William Gaud on March 8, 1968 during a talk at the International Development Society, held in Washington, when he referred to the accelerated diffusion of technology : "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the elements of a new revolution. It is not a violent red revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a white revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. But rather, what I call a Green Revolution based on the application of science and technology. "

Hence the terminology with which the United States' food power policy for the containment of countries during the cold war is coined and "destined to obtain new techniques for the production of food in the conditions of the so-called Third World."

However, this Green Revolution was not only a purely technical impulse designed for the non-industrialized countries; Those who carried it out were the main North American corporations related to the agri-food and hydrocarbons sector in order to specify US foreign policy.

Ten years later, in 1984, in the midst of economic globalization (1981-1990), the goal of eradicating hunger since 1974 had not been met, with 450 million people being hungry according to the FAO, while the WHO stated that they were 850 million, and UNICEF suggested that 40 thousand children died daily from this scourge. However, it was still being argued that it was due to poor harvests and the increase in population that had to be brought to zero, according to the Club of Rome, to reduce food consumption.

On the other hand, it was maintained that the main cause of the slow growth of food production in developing countries lay with government institutions and services that did not respond to the needs of farmers.

However, world cereal production was increasing by 9-10%, raising estimated supplies at the beginning of the 1984-85 season to the highest level ever achieved.

Since then it has become more and more evident that the increase in world production did not automatically guarantee, by itself, access to available food for the people who needed it most.

WORLD FOOD SUMMIT: HALVING HUNGER (WFS-1996)

To solve the problem of hunger that the Green Revolution did not solve, in 1996 another event considered historic was convened: the World Food Summit, whose objective was to reduce by half the number of hungry people in the world, that is, to 400 million, by the year 2015.

It was once again seen as a landmark event for discussion on one of the most pressing issues facing world leaders in the new millennium: the eradication of hunger.

It was called for widespread malnutrition and, again, growing concern about the ability to meet future food needs.

On this occasion, 22 years later, FAO stated that the objective set in 1974 "was not achieved for various reasons, including failures in policy formulation and financing", estimating that, unless accelerate this progress, there could remain some 680 million hungry people in the world by 2010, of which more than 250 million would live in sub-Saharan Africa. "

The context of this summit was the end of the Cold War and the imposition of a New World Order, characterized by the rise of the United States as a hegemonic power. In the midst of the "renewal" of the multilateral organizations, in charge of regulating international free trade, accompanied by the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, where the countries of the socialist bloc were incorporated, at the same time as The neoliberal era happened with the application of the adjustment measures imparted by the IMF, particularly in Latin America, which led to the processes of privatization and transnationalization with greater opportunities for North American groups.

The 1990s in which the United States "sought a Post-Cold War justification for its development" and that in the agricultural area began in 1990, when George W. Bush signed the Food, Agriculture and Conservation Act as a reform to the Lp -480 of 1954, in which it begins to move from only foreign policy to the issue of "food security".

Concept approved by FAO in 1996 at the World Food Summit, being adopted by all the countries of the world up to the present, being drawn up in Point 1 of the Plan of Action: "When all people have physical and economic access to food at all times. enough safe and nutritious food to meet your dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. "

It stressed the need for further and significant increases in world food production through the sustainable management of natural resources to cope with population growth and improve diets, in combination with food imports through international trade, already established, to strengthen food security in each country.

And finally 1996 is constituted with technological change, in the introduction in the world agri-food system of genetic engineering and genetically modified seeds, becoming the main resource for the production of food associated with the same agro-industrial matrix deployed with the Green Revolution, and whose main protagonists are transnational biotechnology corporations.

WORLD FOOD SUMMIT: FIVE YEARS LATER (2002)
In 2002, the World Food Summit: Five Years Later sought to accelerate action to reduce hunger in the world, unanimously adopting a declaration that called on the international community to fulfill its previous commitment to reduce the number of hungry people around the world. 400 million for the year 2015, whose fulfillment was "disappointingly slow".

Of the total hungry, at least half of the world's most food insecure people were said to be poor small-scale farmers in low-income countries, and farming on marginal lands, who had to produce food in order to eat. What they needed. As if producing your own food was a sin. But the imposed model was not criticized, without access for small producers.

The global context was the attacks perpetrated on the United States, mainly on the Twin Towers, and with them the declaration of the War on Terrorism by George W. Bush, which began immediately with the unilateral US military invasion of Afghanistan.

And, of course, in this scenario, the president of the summit, the Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi, considered that "besides terrorism, hunger was one of the biggest problems facing the international community" at that time. Because precisely terrorism was imposed as "the new threat" worldwide.

To advance the fight against hunger, greater political will, financial resources, technology and fairer trading conditions were proposed.

The new technological way to advance in this fight against hunger had been installed since 1996, and in 2002 the European Union and the United States faced each other in the debate for the liberation of the market for genetically modified (GMO) or transgenic products.

With the United States were mainly Canada, Australia and Argentina, who did not want limitations on the freedom of trade in transgenics, and on the other hand, the European Union that asked for a moratorium on these.

Among the agreements, the International Alliance Against Hunger was created, which in its declaration called on FAO to promote the research of new technologies, including biotechnology and the introduction of these to developing countries and economies of transition to take greater advantage of the opportunities that globalization represented, particularly in relation to agriculture and food security.

To this end, they ensured that the responsible use of biotechnology would be studied, shared and facilitated with a view to meeting development needs, as a way to contribute to increasing agricultural productivity in developing countries.

The current reality is that genetically modified products, in this case seeds, can be used only through patents that you have to pay for to gain access. At the same time that they ended up entering the world race for control of natural resources, therefore, of the planet's biodiversity, where a handful of corporations have come to control their sales in the world; that in 2020 reached 65% between Bayer-Monsanto, Corteva Agriscience and Syngenta.

WORLD SUMMIT ON FOOD SECURITY (2009)
In 2009, another event was convened in relation to food, by renewing the commitment to eradicate hunger from the planet as soon as possible. Among the most important issues to be addressed were food security, the effects of climate change, rural development and the economic crisis.

Precisely because the context was the Great Global Financial Crisis of 2008, triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble in the United States since 2006, the instability of oil prices in 2009 and the world food crisis between 2007-2008.

Food crisis generated, according to the same FAO , by the malfunctioning and manipulation of the markets, the speculation closely related between the rise in world food prices with the volatility and turmoil of the financial, mortgage and real estate markets triggered by the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market and, on the other hand, export restrictions in the staple food market.

In addition, the high cost of energy, making agricultural production and food processing and distribution more expensive through inputs such as fertilizers (see next image), seeds and pesticides, the use of agricultural machinery, irrigation systems and transportation. Not forgetting the biofuel industry, among others.

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Increase in world prices of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium-based fertilizers with impact on world prices of rice, wheat and corn (Photo: FAO)

At this time the "Second Green Revolution" was being debated, with which it was foreseen that in the next 20 years the increase in crop yields would be due mainly to the application of the technology already available, but pending to be fully applied, especially for raising its limit, accompanied by the need to further mechanize agricultural activities in order to replace the previous use of intensive labor, which would possibly not be available, due to the increase in migration of the rural population to the cities.

For rural development, the creation of conditions necessary for increased production was assumed, in particular through access to improved seeds and inputs, as well as for the adaptation of agriculture to climate change.

The concern in this case was about the deceleration of the maximum yield of the genetic potential of the crops, which needed to be raised to the top, and whose investigations in rice, wheat and corn were already advanced.

On the other hand, climate change begins to take center stage, arguing that, although there were different opinions, there was consensus on three things: first, the probability that extreme weather episodes would increase through strong storms, more floods and more droughts , more frequent and intense.

Second, the possibility that the best lands would enjoy even more favorable conditions, as well as the areas with the most floods and droughts suffering further devastation.

And finally, that all agricultural research aimed at overcoming the effects of heat, drought, and associated biotic and abiotic pressures, with many potential to contribute to ameliorating the potential negative effects of global warming.

Climate change that posed serious additional risks to food security and the agricultural sector. But with greater effects and special danger for small farmers in developing and least developed countries, as well as for populations that were already vulnerable. Because since 1963 the policies of those developed in these summits have always been directed at the poorest, the least developed and industrialized, who coincidentally continue to be in the same conditions.

At this summit, the use of biotechnologies and other new technologies and innovations was finally adopted for the creation of transgenic events that were "safe, effective and environmentally sustainable", always considering the growing demand for food, limitations in the amount of land and water. for food production.

In short, the FAO was finally betting on transgenics, after years of negotiation, to fight hunger in the world.

Even eliminating restrictions on the importation of these foods. And it is that, despite the positions against transgenic crops, between 1996 and 2009 the cultivated area increased from 1.7 million hectares to 67.8 million in 2003 and to 134 million hectares in 2009 and spread over 25 countries according to ISAAA (International Service for de Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications). Being the United States, Brazil and Argentina the largest producers worldwide.

With this new technological change called "Second Green Revolution", the most important trait of these crops is resistance to herbicides by introducing expressions in plants to make them resistant to glyphosate, or the well-known "terminator" seeds, which are They sterilize themselves after the first harvest, not being able to be used again, and presented by the large agribusiness transnationals since 2008 as the "future of agriculture", which will now do what the first revolution did not achieve: "solve the problem of hunger of the world "with the help of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), inserted since the mid-90s.

And it is precisely genetically modified organisms or transgenic crops that, since 2004, at the 30th session of FAO of the Committee on World Food Security, are expected to be adopted as a vigorous "natural" instrument to give greater protection to the environment. ; and by the main agribusiness transnationals, such as Bayer, since 2008, made investments in the order of 3.4 billion euros until 2012 to continue research and development of new protection methods and plant varieties, ensuring that the Genetic engineering "will play a very important role in making plants less stressed, less susceptible to changes in the climate", therefore "they will make it possible to combat climate change and make better use of water".

Finally, this cycle of summits considered historic came to an end in 2015, without achieving the objectives that through the "Green Revolution" and the "Second Green Revolution" had been proposed. Again this year the Millennium Goals (MDGs) were not met in relation to reducing hunger by half.

Only 72 countries out of 129 reached the MDG goal of reducing the proportion of hungry in 2015, and of them 29 only achieved the ambitious goal of the World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996. Only 216 million people were released from the hunger and not the 400 million that had been raised.

FOOD SYSTEMS SUMMIT (2021)

In 2021, the United Nations Summit on Food Systems (CSANU) was held at the headquarters of the UN General Assembly, in New York, again with criticism for and against by the actors involved in its convocation.

The context, the global pandemic by covid-19, which was initially considered a threat to the world's food systems, amid the debate on the need for a new post-pandemic, post-capitalist order that goes further from a new economic model to a life sustained in equilibrium, against those who, considering the complexity of the current economic crisis, like Henry Kissinger , demanded "to safeguard the principles of the liberal world order", that is, to guarantee that everything remains as is It is and at the same time, from the World Economic Forum and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the "great reset" of the global economy was promoted.

The latter have called for "pressing the reset button of capitalism" for a "new social contract" post-pandemic, due to the evident "long-term rupture in economies and societies", therefore, they consider that it is "the moment of a great reboot of capitalism. "

And according to Klaus Schwab, founder and executive president of the World Economic Forum, taking into account climate change as the next global disaster, with more dramatic consequences for humanity, it is necessary to decarbonize the economy, and in this context there is a need to evolve the current economic model, this time putting "people and the planet at the center", with what they have called "the era of the fourth industrial revolution" and a "new green economic system", whose accelerated transition is underway precisely because of covid-19.

Meanwhile, from the UN, Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for transforming food systems , not only to eradicate hunger, but to reduce the incidence of food-related diseases and heal the planet, considering that "food systems they were failing and with the coronavirus pandemic they were getting even worse, "for which immediate action is necessary in the face of an imminent global food emergency, with long-term repercussions, particularly due to interruptions in supply chains.

And, in short, that the transformation of food systems is necessary in the context of climate change, because they contribute 29% of all greenhouse gas emissions, including 44% of methane, with negative effects on the biodiversity, which is why it is necessary to support and effect the "green transition".

Green transition that, in relation to the global agri-food system, is already underway because genetically modified organisms are precisely those considered to face climate change and global warming since 2004.

However, in this context a new technological change is imposed that began to expand precisely in the middle of the global pandemic: food 4.0, 3D bioprinting, food tech ( food and technology ), synthetic meat or of the future, but which has been spreading to other edibles, with replicas of milk, mayonnaise or ice cream using artificial intelligence, Big Data and other technologies to recreate food flavors, aromas and textures under two pillars: ecology and health.

And, in this sense, the richest in the world have started the race for control of this new technology and investments in relation to the global agri-food system, including Bill Gates, who has become the largest owner of agricultural land in the United States. United, not because of their concern for the climate, but because of their interest in seed science and biofuel development , just as Jeff Bezos is investing in land, mainly in Texas; but also the Rockefeller Foundation and different partners that have brought together more than 1,300 collaborative organizations focused on building new food systems.

Now, with this new way of making edible products in their different versions, whether from soy protein, but also from cell culture of animal origin, using samples of genetic livestock and vegetable breeds, a new revolution is expected. in the production of food created in laboratories under the label of "higher quality, healthier and more ethical", which means that they will leave less environmental footprint than the food consumed today. But that will obviously unleash a new race for the control of biodiversity.

Among the objectives, to develop the so-called "flexitarian" diet that will avoid or reduce the consumption of meat in the world to reduce the emissions of methane gas from livestock, and with it the reduction of global warming, reproducing cells and muscles that will later pass to hamburgers or steak.

The new way of fighting against climate change, reducing the catastrophic effects that are expected while promising, once again, to guarantee with these foods, food security for the 9 billion people estimated in the world by the year 2040, the which will be impossible to continue producing with less arable land and irrigation water available because "it is simply not possible to produce enough meat for everyone to eat the way people do in richer countries."

And finally, as supposedly the demand for meat in the world is already pushing the environment to its limits, and only the agri-food system would add enough additional temperature to bring global warming to more than 1.5 degrees, for which "we are all responsible. "It is not precisely the populations of the least developed, poor and hungriest countries that contribute to this emission, on the contrary, it is the populations of the most developed countries that have the highest consumption per person per day, call it the United States or the United Kingdom, among others.

The truth is that in 2021, 25 more years after 1996, there are 768 million people or 9.9% of the world population hungry , with 418 million hungry in Asia, 282 million in Africa, 60 million in Latin America and the Caribbean and 8 million between North America, Europe and Oceania.

And according to the Prevalence of the Food Insecurity Scale (FIES), there are 2.368 million people in moderate and severe food insecurity, indicating 30.4% of the world population without access to adequate food due to lack of availability or resources economic to buy food.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Since 1963, each World Food Summit has served to reinforce the model installed with the Green Revolution , with which it was not possible to feed the entire population, even with record harvests each year, and bringing with it the complexes of wheat, corn, soybeans and rice accounted for 60% of the calories consumed, changing diets, leading to a process of land grabbing, where 1% of large companies exploited 70% of the planet's agricultural land.

In addition, it is responsible for large areas of deforestation and forest burning and promotes the sale of highly dangerous pesticides, especially for developing countries, with which schools or entire towns near the planting fields continue to be sprayed, and impacting in biodiversity. It even aims to turn water into another commodity.

Being able to affirm, in the framework of the World Summit of 2021, that if there is a failed food system, that it has failed, it is precisely this model of agro-industrial production implemented since the first World Food Congress, whose stated objectives of ending hunger are not They were fulfilled, nor will they be fulfilled, and what has been reinforced is a food hegemonic power closely related to the energy that is needed to function, dependent on fossil fuels, particularly hydrocarbons, highlighting the relationship between food and international competition for strategic natural resources such as oil and gas, but also, land, water and biodiversity.

And if there is something that demonstrated the global crisis due to the coronavirus as stated by Pope Francis , it was "the failure of the capitalist system" and that "the market alone cannot solve all problems, no matter how much one may ask to believe. in this dogma of the neoliberal faith. " So true that it cannot even end hunger in the world, making 58 years after installing the Green Revolution make the same hegemonic food power decide the need to "transform food systems" through the so-called "green transition" .

But furthermore, the reality is that the world economic model, including this way of producing food, is protected by unsustainable practices for the planet that not even the economic slowdown during the first year of the pandemic will have a significant long-term impact in terms of emissions. of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, because it continues to depend on the same energy matrix for its operation: oil, coal and gas, its main sap, which comprises more than 83% of current energy demand and It is the source of three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions (see image below).

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Global greenhouse gas emissions sector by sector, year 2020 (Photo: Our world in data)

And it is that oil continued to have the largest part of the world energy mix (31.2%) in 2020, followed by coal, which is the second most used fuel in the world, representing 27.2% of total primary energy, consumption that had a slight increase compared to 2019.

In third place, natural gas continued to rise to historical highs of 24.7%, while hydroelectric energy represents only 6.9%, renewable energies only 5.7% and nuclear occupies 4.3% of the energy matrix (see next image).

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World energy matrix, year 2020 (Photo: Food and Power)

And even if it is believed that the "green transition" is just around the corner and that by reducing the number of animals we will immediately solve part of the problem, because supposedly 11% less water, 8% less land, and even 24 % less nitrogen and 18% less phosphorus, that is, fertilizers, in itself the production model is not changing.

Therefore, " let's change the system " on which you want to "evolve", the one you want to restart, because what has happened during each world food summit is the reinforcement of the same hegemonic power around food to maintain the status quo implemented with the Green Revolution, which this time is no different.

It is the rearrangement of the main actors of the international system seeking to control the food supply in the midst of the global competition for natural resources, deciding what will be eaten on the planet, and at the same time guaranteeing food security for their populations, while they travel their way. towards a supposed and immediate "green transition" without losing its status of power, at the same time that the world moves towards what has been called " tripolarity " and which will surely set the context for future food summits.

Originally published in Food and Power on October 4, 2021 .

https://misionverdad.com/investigacione ... cion-verde

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 06, 2021 1:17 pm

A 13-inch tear in a pipe was likely the source of a California oil spill. Here's how it may have gotten there

(CNN)Authorities believe they have identified the source of an oil spill off the California coast that has shuttered beaches and threatened wildlife. But as more information is revealed about the ecological emergency, more questions arise.

The source of the spill that spewed up to 144,000 gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean likely came down to a 13-inch split found in a 4,000-foot section of the pipe that had been pulled about 105 feet to the side, authorities said.

"The pipeline has essentially been pulled like a bow string. And so at its widest point is about 105 feet away from where it was. So, it is kind of an almost a semicircle," Amplify Energy CEO Martyn Willsher said at a news conference Tuesday.

The discovery may provide insight into the source of the leak, but not the cause. Authorities are still investigating what precipitated the displacement and split in the pipe.
The 17-mile long, 41-year-old pipeline is about 98 feet under water. About 16-inches in diameter, the steel pipe is encased in concrete as it lays along the ocean floor.
A preliminary report indicates the partial tear could have been caused by an anchor that hooked the pipeline, the US Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said in a notice to Amplify Energy, the owner of the ruptured pipeline.

<snip>

The timeline confirms that California authorities were notified late Friday of reports of an oil sheen at the site of the spill, more than 12 hours before Amplify Energy Corp., the operator of the line, reported it to state and federal officials, according to documents reviewed by CNN.

<snip>

The spill is just the latest such incident to hit California's shores, including the 1969 spill of as much as 4.2 million gallons of crude oil near Santa Barbara. Locally, Huntington Beach bore the brunt of a 1990 spill of about 417,000 gallons of crude oil when an oil tanker ran over its anchor and punctured its hull.
The current spill's volume pales in comparison to the most serious oil spills in history, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (11 million gallons) and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico (134 million gallons).
As of Tuesday morning, about 4,800 gallons of oil had been recovered from the water and about 11,400 feet of boom -- a term for floating barriers designed to contain an oil spill -- had been deployed.

(more)

https://us.cnn.com/2021/10/06/us/califo ... index.html
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RETALIATION FOR A BILLION-DOLLAR ECOLOGICAL FAILURE IN ECUADOR
CORPORATE POWER STRIKES WITH ALL ITS POWER: CHEVRON VS. STEVEN DONZIGER
4 Oct 2021 , 3:21 pm .

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Chevron is responsible for the pollution of kilometers of jungles in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Photo: EFE)

The conviction of Steven Donziger, the human rights lawyer who spent almost three decades fighting Chevron on behalf of 30,000 people in the Ecuadorian jungle, has received little resonance in the corporate media, who was sentenced by a court in Manhattan (New York) to six months in jail for "criminal contempt" ( criminal contempt ).

The conviction was given last Friday, October 1, after more than two years of house arrest related to the famous lawsuit he filed decades ago against the oil giant Chevron.

The sentence against the environmental lawyer came a day after the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stated that it was "dismayed" by the treatment that the US legal system gave to Dozinger and demanded that the US government "remedy the situation. by Mr. Steven Donziger without delay and bring her in in accordance with relevant international standards, "releasing him immediately.

His attorneys will challenge the criminal contempt conviction and will also ask a higher court to postpone his prison sentence pending that appeal. But Judge Loretta Preska will keep him under house arrest, calling him once again a "flight risk" due to his "contacts" in Ecuador.

During the trial, Donziger told the court:

"I have been attacked and demonized for years by Chevron in retaliation for helping indigenous peoples in Ecuador try to do something to save their cultures, their lives and our planet from massive oil pollution. That is the context of why we are here today".

In effect, Chevron triggered a massive industrial poisoning in the Amazon that shattered the lives of indigenous peoples in the region. Six courts and 28 appellate judges found the company guilty in large part because of Donziger's work.

TEXACO / CHEVRON DISASTER AND VENDETTA

Donziger represented a group of farmers and indigenous peoples in the Lago Agrio region of Ecuador in the 1990s in a lawsuit against Texaco, later acquired by Chevron. The company was accused of polluting the soil and water with its "deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of carcinogenic waste in the Amazon."

The size of the contaminated area is said to be more than 2 million hectares, larger than Rhode Island (United States).

Donziger joined the fight against Texaco, taken over by Chevron in 2001, began in the late 1980s in eastern Ecuador, where the oil company drilled and operated wells from 1972 to 1992. Texaco had disposed of its drilling waste for Methods that in some cases have been illegal in the United States: pouring crude oil, drilling mud and an oily, watery mixture known as formation water into unlined waste pits, a procedure that has been banned in Texas since 1969.

Locals began to organize against pollution in rivers and streams and on oil-soaked expanses of their land. The case began in federal courts in New York, but then a judge ordered that it be sent back to Ecuador, a move Chevron's lawyers welcomed at the time.

Then, in 2003, the legal battle was reopened in the eastern oil border town of Lago Agrio.

An Ecuadorian court awarded the plaintiffs a $ 9.5 billion judgment in 2011 to clean up the contaminated area, a decision upheld by multiple courts in Ecuador, in addition to paying for medical care for the 30,000 plaintiffs whose communities have seen a growing number. of cancer cases in recent years.

However, an American judge rejected that ruling, accusing Donziger of "bribery" and "tampering with evidence."

Chevron also countersued Donziger in 2011.

In 2019, the US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, a former lawyer corporate investments in Chevron according to journalist Julia Conley of Common Dreams , arrested Donziger in contempt of court after he refused to disclose Insider information about your clients to the fossil fuel industry.

Kaplan placed Donziger under house arrest, where he has been under strict judicial control for more than 780 days.

In addition to Kaplan's own connections to Chevron, the judge appointed private attorneys to prosecute the case, including one who had worked for a firm representing the oil giant.

Common Dreams reveals that Judge Preska , who convicted Donziger of the contempt charges, is a leader of the right-wing Federalist Society, which counts Chevron among its financial backers.

The aforementioned UN communiqué does not hesitate to denounce that both judges, Kaplan and Preska, had shown "an astonishing lack of objectivity and impartiality." In court, Preska briefly acknowledged the UN findings only to dismiss them.

TRACES OF CORPORATE POWER

The retaliation campaign by Chevron has been very large, if we take into account the deployment of resources and the way in which the mainstream media has olympically ignored the case against the environmental lawyer.

The Donziger thing perfectly encapsulates how corporate power has twisted America's judicial system to protect corporate interests and punish its enemies.

Furthermore, the conviction is a deterrent to anyone trying to lead a crusade against corporate interests not only in "the land of the free" but in other jurisdictions.

We can verify this with the aforementioned ties between the judges and Chevron, also with how the corporate retaliation occurred. This is explained by journalist James North, who has been covering the case for a long time for The Nation :

"Only a corporation like Chevron worth billions of dollars could have funded such a prosecution. The oil giant paid for a disgraced former judge named Alberto Guerra and his family to move to the United States. Chevron's attorneys rehearsed Guerra's testimony with him 53 times before he took the witness stand, where Guerra claimed that Donziger and an Ecuadorian lawyer had offered him a $ 500,000 bribe and that the couple had written the final judgment against Chevron. Donziger and his defense team They estimate that Chevron has spent $ 2 billion on legal fees and other costs. (Chevron's designated spokesman, James Craig, declined to give the corporation's own figure for how much it has spent on the case.Craig also declined to say whether Chevron still pays Guerra or whether he still lives in the United States. "

With wads of bills and the will on the part of a billion dollar corporation, they are enough to achieve an unprecedented legal prosecution against an environmental lawyer. Follow North:

"It is vital to acknowledge Chevron's role in this legal pursuit. Their attorneys appear in all Donziger legal cases, even those that do not directly involve the company. At the same time that Donziger was defending himself against the criminal contempt charge, He was also fighting the effort to take away his license to practice law in New York. The state bar association appointed a special officer named John Horan to preside over the public hearings, and he ruled in favor of Donziger. Horan, a former former prosecutor, had harsh words for Chevron: 'The scope of [Donziger's] prosecution by Chevron is so outlandish, and at this point so unnecessary and punitive, [which] while not a factor in my recommendation, [is] nonetheless , antecedent of the same '".

This kind of abuse can only occur in a country like the United States, which privileges the freedom of corporations to do what they want outside its borders at the cost of the slavery of the majority.

This is demonstrated by the fact that, although the judgment of 9.5 billion dollars against Chevron in Ecuador still stands, the plaintiffs must collect in other countries where the corporation has interests (since the oil giant withdrew its assets from there) less in the United States, since Judge Kaplan specifically prohibited Ecuadorians from forcing Chevron to pay the sentence in the United States.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/el ... n-donziger

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Context really is everything...and you'll not see anything like this hideous truth in the US mainstream media:

"This kind of abuse can only occur in a country like the United States, which privileges the freedom of corporations to do what they want outside its borders at the cost of the slavery of the majority."
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 09, 2021 1:11 pm

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Construction site of the Nam Theun 1 hydropower project in Laos. New research has shed light on the various environmental and social risks posed by Chinese-funded overseas development projects (Photo: Kaikeo / Alamy)

Rhetoric, meet reality: how to green the Belt and Road Initiative
Posted Oct 09, 2021 by Rebecca Ray

Originally published: China Dialogue (October 8, 2021 ) |

As China prepares to host the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) in October, the world will be watching and considering the impacts of Chinese overseas activities on biodiversity, and on local communities who base their livelihoods around their environment.

While China has made commitments for sensitive territories domestically through its Ecological Conservation Red Line (ECRL) initiative and its commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, it has not yet implemented these same policies for its international investments along its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Following the significant announcement from President Xi Jinping at the recent UN General Assembly that China will no longer finance new coal-fired power projects abroad–increasing support for other developing countries in low-carbon energy instead–it appears that China is turning its attention to improving the sustainability of its international investments.

Risks facing Chinese overseas development finance

China has funnelled nearly half a trillion U.S. dollars in overseas development finance to developing countries since 2018–a figure with the potential to make a much-needed dent in the estimated US$3.2 trillion annual infrastructure gap standing in the way of lower- and middle-income countries’ economic development. Given the impressive scale of this increased financing, it is no surprise that interest is growing in ensuring that China’s international economic activity aligns with global climate and development goals.

Until recently, a lack of data had circumscribed scientists, policymakers and other stakeholders from understanding and responding to the environmental and social risks posed by China’s overseas development projects.

New research from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center (GDP Center) sheds light on the level and location of risks in China’s overseas projects and provides recommendations for greening and aligning the BRI with global biodiversity goals.

Notably, Chinese policy banks lend to the same countries as the World Bank, but for very different projects. From 2008 through 2019, most of the money lent to governments by the World Bank went to healthcare, education, water and sanitation, and other governments services. In contrast, about three-quarters of Chinese development finance went to infrastructure and extraction projects, such as roads, pipelines and mining projects. As these sectors can be prone to environmental and social risks, it is crucial for China to give attention to mitigating the risks intrinsic to its portfolio.

Another important source of environmental and social risk is the locations of the projects. Chinese-financed projects are more likely to face these location-based environmental risks than those funded by World Bank loans, especially in the important sectors of extraction and energy. About half of the Chinese-financed projects were located within critical habitats, about one-third were within designated protected areas, and about one-fourth were within Indigenous lands.

However, World Bank projects pose their own risks as well. In particular, World Bank-financed agricultural projects are more likely to overlap with Indigenous territories than Chinese projects in the same sector. Overall, however, the GDP Center’s results point strongly to the need for more environmental due diligence for Chinese-financed overseas projects.

How to green the BRI

Fortunately, policy frameworks for greening the BRI are already underway in China.

Measuring progress on environmentally sustainable investments has been gaining attention in China. Domestically, the Ecological Conservation Red Line (ECRL) process has within one decade succeeded in designating one-fourth of China’s land area for protection, based on years of biodiversity and land use data. Notably, these conservation steps include special provisions for communities’ traditional livelihoods, showing a growing recognition among Chinese leaders of ecological fragility and the communities whose livelihoods depend on them. The ECRL work has made China a global leader in deploying data-driven conservation.

A study produced in 2020 by the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) explored how China could adopt a policy of collaborating with environment ministries in BRI host countries to assist them in establishing their own systems of conservation areas, akin to China’s ECRL system. Offering such assistance to help host countries further develop their own conservation areas is one powerful way of addressing the location-based risks to biodiversity and Indigenous territories.

In September 2021, CCICED released a report, to which I contributed, outlining how environmental governance of China’s overseas activities is implemented and recommendations for greening the BRI. A high-level international advisory body operating with the approval of the Chinese government, CCICED works with international scholars and the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) to produce its recommendations.

To green the BRI, it will be essential to incorporate sustainability policies into the practices set out for China’s policy banks and contractors. Other major international development finance institutions (DFIs), particularly those with South–South focuses like the CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Development Bank of Southern Africa, begin by working “upstream” with borrower countries, long before specific projects are proposed, to build strategies for new sectors like renewable energy, and to develop proposals with high environmental standards. Incorporating this kind of upstream collaboration will be necessary for China to ensure the long-term sustainability of their overseas projects.

This summer, China adopted new inter-ministerial Green Development Guidelines for Overseas Investment and Cooperation, which recommends project sponsors respect host-country environmental regulations or, where those regulations are weaker than China’s, to rely on international standards instead. This is an important step forward, and the first time that guidelines at this high governmental level have included this recommendation. To strengthen this initiative even further, China could also adopt binding requirements for environmental performance of project proposals and mechanisms for monitoring compliance.

To strengthen processes for environmental due diligence, the MEE developed and proposed a “whole process green assessment framework” for BRI projects. The framework broadly consisted of requiring evidence that the sponsors of a new project have enough expertise to carry it out responsibly. It also suggests that an investor examination by financial institutions would be needed to determine project risk level. From that stage, stakeholders would proceed to carry out pre-investment studies, and an environmental policy review that includes third-party evaluation of the mitigation actions necessary for the risks identified in previous steps. Any project implementation contract would formally commit to the mitigation actions found in the discovery period and there should be formal processes for monitoring implementation, in order to ensure performance meets commitments.

With the CBD COP15 around the corner, the scene is set for China to export its green ambitions and know-how along the BRI–a development that would be to the benefit of China, host countries and, indeed, the world.

https://mronline.org/2021/10/09/rhetori ... nitiative/

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White paper highlights biodiversity experience
By LI HONGYANG | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2021-10-09 07:50

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Employees release artificially bred Przewalski's horses, an endangered species, into the wild at the Kalamaili Nature Reserve in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, one of the original habitats of the species, on Sept 1. [Photo by DING LEI/XINHUA]

China published its first white paper on biodiversity conservation on Friday to share the nation's achievements and experience with the globe.

Zhao Yingmin, vice-minister of ecology and environment, told a news conference held by the State Council Information Office that the white paper will build confidence in boosting the global response to address biodiversity risks.

It also aims to promote a good outcome at the upcoming COP 15, the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, to be held in Kunming, Yunnan province, from Monday to Friday, Zhao said.

He called for more efforts among the parties, including making viable goals and securing funds, techniques and talents especially for developing countries.

He added that international cooperation is needed to strengthen the sector and China would like to share its practices and ideas in biodiversity conservation through the white paper.

In 1993, the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity entered into force. As one of the first participating parties, China has achieved remarkable results.

Since China set up its first nature reserve in 1956, the country has safeguarded 71 percent of its wild animal and plant species under State-level protection and 90 percent of its terrestrial ecosystem types including forests, grasslands, deserts and wetlands, the white paper said.

Over the past 40 years, the nation's population of wild giant pandas has increased from 1,114 to 1,864. The number of crested ibis in China has grown from seven at its discovery to more than 5,000-including those in the wild and artificially bred ones, the white paper said.

Meanwhile, 112 species of rare and endangered plants unique to China have returned to the wild, the white paper said.

The increasing numbers were due to the expanding space of habitats, the white paper said.

China has established about 10,000 nature reserves, accounting for about 18 percent of its land area.

The country also carried out endangered species rescue projects to expand their population through artificial breeding and then releasing them into the wild. For example, giant pandas have integrated themselves well in the wild, the white paper said.

One of China's innovative models is to draw red lines in protection areas, which the United Nations included as one of its 15 classic cases. Protection in areas within red lines is rigorously enforced.

Major red line areas in China focus on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Tianshan Mountains, the Inner Mongolia Plateau, the Qinling Mountains, the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin.

"China will provide assistance to other developing economies and contribute the nation's plans and power to the harmonious coexistence of man and nature," Zhao said.

The white paper said that China has cooperated with many countries to establish cross-border nature reserves.

For example, wild species continue to increase in the Sino-Russian protected area and Siberian tigers were spotted roaming freely in the area.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20211 ... 6db4b.html

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China becomes strong supporter, contributor to global biodiversity agenda, says UN official
Xinhua | Updated: 2021-10-08 10:20

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Hundreds of mosaicultures set to greet the upcoming 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) appeal to tourists in Kunming, capital city of Southwest China's Yunnan province. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

BEIJING - China has greatly supported and contributed to protecting biodiversity and its philosophy of ecological civilization is "critical for all countries to achieve the global biodiversity goals," a United Nations (UN) official has said.

"Ecological civilization is an interesting concept. And why interesting? Because it's looking at the relationship between the society and nature," said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The concept demonstrates "the mainstream of biodiversity across sectors, across departments, which is also critical for all countries to achieve the global biodiversity goals," she told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Mrema has arrived in China to participate in the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), which is to be held in China's southwestern city of Kunming.

Themed "Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth," the meeting is the first global conference convened by the United Nations on the topic of ecological civilization.

The first part of the meeting is set to kick off on Monday when participants are expected to review the "post-2020 global biodiversity framework" to draw a blueprint for biodiversity conservation in the future. The second part, to be held in person in the first half of 2022, will see broad and deepened negotiations toward an ambitious and practical framework.

"This framework will actually replace the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which guided our implementation for the last 10 years," she said.

Mrema expects that a Kunming Declaration will be adopted at the first part of the meeting, saying it will help "build momentum on the importance of biodiversity conservation" and demonstrate that "loss of biodiversity is not waiting for us."

In the past several decades, "China has been a strong supporter and contributor to the global biodiversity agenda," she said.

Mrema mentioned that China is among the first countries to become a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity. It has also ratified two protocols to the convention, namely the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing.

Moreover, "China has been one of the biggest donor countries to the core budget of the convention and the protocols, particularly since 2019," Mrema said.

Offering to host the COP15 conference is "a clear demonstration of China's leadership and commitment to biodiversity," she said.

Mrema also recognized the restoration efforts that China has carried out over the last decades to protect and conserve biodiversity, saying the efforts clearly represent a good model for future work, which can also be emulated and learned by other countries.

"The Chinese government has continued to apply a long-term approach to halt and reverse biodiversity loss with multiple disciplinary teams that can offer evidence-based solutions to address social economic complexities and can provide inclusive and accessible policy directions, including the ecological red line policy, which will enable to build a resilient environment able to adapt to future impacts and shocks," she said.

"And the Chinese notion of unity, of nature and man, we hope, will be a good example for other countries to follow or to emulate," she added.

Speaking of challenges in terms of biodiversity, Mrema said the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is "a major one," which has affected both our health and biodiversity.

A UN report released in 2019 identified five direct drivers of biodiversity loss as changing use of sea and land, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution and invasive non-native species.

To prevent biodiversity loss, Mrema said, the whole world should effectively protect more land and oceans, ensure sustainable consumption and production, ensure that all actors are engaged in protecting nature, and enhance cooperation among governments and with all stakeholders.

"We are responsible for really taking the transformative actions to ensure that harmonious relationship with nature. And therefore, our relationship with nature needs to change," she said.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20211 ... 6d810.html

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President Xi on biodiversity
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2021-10-09 06:30

The UN Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, will be held in Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province, from Oct 11-15. Let's review what President Xi Jinping has said on biodiversity.

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http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202110/0 ... b05_1.html
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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 13, 2021 2:44 pm

WILL COP26 ACT?

‘Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity’
October 12, 2021
World Health Organization urges ‘rapid and ambitious action to halt and reverse the climate crisis’

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On October 11, the World Health Organization published a special report on climate change and health. The Health Argument for Climate Action is being submitted to participants in the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which opens in Glasgow on October 31. During COP26, WHO will hold a Global Conference on Health & Climate Change, with a special focus on climate justice and the healthy and green recovery from Covid.-19

The following is from the report’s introduction. The full report, including detailed resources and case studies for each recommendation, can be downloaded here (PDF 4.7 MB).


The health impacts of climate change

Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.

While no one is safe from these risks, the people whose health is being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are the people who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it — people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities.

The climate crisis threatens to undo the last fifty years of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction, and to further widen existing health inequalities between and within populations. It severely jeopardizes the realization of universal health coverage (UHC) in various ways – including by compounding the existing burden of disease and by exacerbating existing barriers to accessing health services, often at the times when they are most needed. Over 930 million people — around 12% of the world’s population — spend at least 10% of their household budget to pay for health care. With the poorest people largely uninsured, health shocks and stresses already currently push around 100 million people into poverty every year, with the impacts of climate change worsening this trend.

Climate change is already impacting health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues. Furthermore, climate change is undermining many of the social determinants for good health, such as livelihoods, equality and access to health care and social support structures. These climate-sensitive health risks are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, including women, children, ethnic minorities, poor communities, migrants or displaced persons, older populations, and those with underlying health conditions.

Although it is unequivocal that climate change affects human health, it remains challenging to accurately estimate the scale and impact of many climate-sensitive health risks. However, scientific advances progressively allow us to attribute an increase in morbidity and mortality to human-induced warming, and more accurately determine the risks and scale of these health threats.

In the short- to medium-term, the health impacts of climate change will be determined mainly by the vulnerability of populations, their resilience to the current rate of climate change and the extent and pace of adaptation. In the longer-term, the effects will increasingly depend on the extent to which transformational action is taken now to reduce emissions and avoid the breaching of dangerous temperature thresholds and potential irreversible tipping points.

The health argument for climate action

Taking rapid and ambitious action to halt and reverse the climate crisis has the potential to bring many benefits, including for health. Co-benefits are defined as: the positive effects that a policy or measure aimed at one objective might have on other objectives, thereby increasing the total benefits for society or the environment.

The public health benefits resulting from ambitious mitigation efforts would far outweigh their cost. Strengthening resilience and building adaptive capacity to climate change, on the other hand, can also lead to health benefits by protecting vulnerable populations from disease outbreaks and weather-related disasters, by reducing health costs and by promoting social equity. The health co-benefits from climate change actions are well evidenced, offer strong arguments for transformative change, and can be gained across many sectors, including in energy generation, transport, food and agriculture, housing and buildings, industry, and waste management.

For example, many of the same actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions also improve air quality, and support synergies with many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Some measures — such as facilitating walking and cycling — improve health through increased physical activity, resulting in reductions in respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, some cancers, diabetes and obesity. Another example is the promotion of urban green spaces, which facilitate climate mitigation and adaptation while also offering health co-benefits, such as reduced exposure to air pollution, local cooling effects, stress relief, and increased recreational space for social interaction and physical activity. A shift to more nutritious plant-based diets in line with WHO recommendations, as a third example, could reduce global emissions significantly, ensure a more resilient food system, and avoid up to 5.1 million diet-related deaths a year by 2050.

Research has shown that climate action aligned with Paris Agreement targets would save millions of lives due to improvements in air quality, diet and physical activity, among other benefits. However, many climate decision-making processes currently do not account for health co-benefits and their economic valuation. The 2021 WHO Health and Climate Change Global Survey of governments found that less than 1 in 5 countries have conducted an assessment of the health co-benefits of national climate mitigation policies, while a 2021 WHO review of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) found just 13% of current NDCs commit to quantifying or monitoring the health co-benefits of climate policies or targets.

While there are significant health co-benefits available for various climate interventions, which can act as important ethical and economic incentives, some climate mitigation and adaptation policies may not maximise health gains or may potentially cause harm. Additionally, several challenges and barriers remain for the comprehensive inclusion of health in the cost assessment of climate policies. It is therefore critical that health and other experts are fully involved in climate decision-making processes at all levels, to ensure health and equity considerations are well understood and accounted for when developing climate policies.

Recommendations for climate change and health

The recommendations outlined in the COP26 Special Report have been developed by health professionals, organizations and stakeholders worldwide, and represent a broad consensus statement by the global health community on the actions that are needed to tackle the climate crisis, restore biodiversity, and protect health.

The recommendations were developed in consultation with over 150 organizations and over 400 experts and health professionals, through a series of consultations and workshops in all six WHO regions. They are intended to inform governments and other stakeholders ahead of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

COP26 is considered a crucial moment for the world’s governments to commit to collective action on limiting climate change. The conference aims to operationalize the Paris Agreement on climate change, and Parties to the agreement are expected to bring forward national climate plans reflecting their highest possible ambition.

The ten recommendations, and their respective action points, highlight the urgent need and numerous opportunities for governments to prioritise health and equity in the international climate movement and the sustainable development agenda. Each recommendation is accompanied by a selection of resources and case studies to help inspire and guide policymakers and practitioners in implementing the proposed solutions.

Ten Recommendations
(Summary: See Report for details)

1.Commit to a healthy recovery.
Commit to a healthy, green, and just recovery from COVID-19.
2.Our health is not negotiable.
Place health and social justice at the heart of the UN climate talks.
3.Harness the health benefits of climate action.
Prioritise those climate interventions with the largest health-, social- and economic gains.
4.Build health resilience to climate risks.
Build climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable health systems and facilities, and support health adaptation and resilience across sectors.
5.Create energy systems that protect and improve climate and health.
Guide a just and inclusive transition to renewable energy to save lives from air pollution, particularly from coal combustion. End energy poverty in households and health care facilities.
6.Reimagine urban environments, transport, and mobility.
Promote sustainable, healthy urban design and transport systems, with improved land-use, access to green and blue public space, and priority for walking, cycling and public transport.
7.Protect and restore nature as the foundation of our health.
Protect and restore natural systems, the foundations for healthy lives, sustainable food systems and livelihoods.
8.Promote healthy, sustainable, and resilient food systems.
Promote sustainable and resilient food production and more affordable, nutritious diets that deliver on both climate and health outcomes.
9.Finance a healthier, fairer, and greener future to save lives.
Transition towards a wellbeing economy.
10.Listen to the health community and prescribe urgent climate action.
Mobilise and support the health community on climate action.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2021/1 ... -humanity/

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How capitalism shackles the fight against climate change
October 9, 2021 Scott Scheffer

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Youth-led protest at climate change meeting in Milan, Italy, Oct. 1. Photo: World Federation of Democratic Youth

Journalists from the U.S. and Europe have warned that the summer of 2021 should be a wakeup call on climate catastrophe. Rightfully so. A slew of recent studies and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had already issued dire assessments even before the wildfires, droughts, floods, Hurricane Ida and extreme heat waves shocked the world.

Everything points to the same reality – the efforts of climatologists to predict the timing and impact of global warming have been too conservative. The events of summer 2021 rendered the newest scientific pronouncements almost unnecessary. Deaths in the thousands and destruction in the billions of dollars, widespread and all in a matter of a few weeks, spelled it out clearly.

You don’t have to be a scientist to understand that climate change’s terrible effects are worsening sooner than expected. The situation is urgent.

What the mainstream journalists and scientific studies omit is the weakness of capitalist government responses, the conspiracy of sabotage by big corporations and banks, and the meticulously concealed contribution of the imperialist U.S. military to pollution and climate change.

The fight against global warming is shackled by capitalists chasing down profits at all costs. That planet-threatening quest for markets and money isn’t a policy that can be changed by electoral politics. It’s an inherent trait of the capitalist system. The fight against climate change must be a revolutionary struggle against capitalism and imperialism.

Damning admission, toothless response

Just before the 2021 disasters began raining death and destruction in June and July, a Greenpeace investigation – a climate activists’ sting operation — tricked a top ExxonMobil lobbyist into revealing company efforts to promote climate change denial. It’s egregious and normally kept under wraps, yet all perfectly legal under capitalism.

ExxonMobil’s senior director for federal relations talked about working with “shadow groups,” supporting a carbon tax that had no chance of getting through Congress just for the sake of climate change PR, all the while influencing senators to weaken climate elements of Biden’s infrastructure bill.

“Joe Manchin, I talk to his office every week,” the Big Oil flack bragged. “We look for the moderates on these issues.”

The “shadow groups” are a huge network of think tanks and pressure groups like Heartland Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The oil giants have been using them to spread disinformation and downplay the dangers of global warming for decades. ExxonMobil alone spent more than $30 million doing that between 1998 and 2014.

The sting resulted in a congressional investigation, which is still going on, but is predictably toothless. Letters to ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron Corporation and Shell Oil ask them to testify about their disinformation campaigns and commit to stopping them so that future legislation to mitigate climate change might stand a chance of getting through Congress.

Essentially, the investigation demands that they admit their guilt and promise to be better, but nothing will happen to them if they don’t abide.

Imperialism is the culprit

A bill proposed by two members of the congressional group known as “The Squad” aims to choke off Federal Reserve financing for projects that contribute to the climate change disaster.

It has little chance of getting past the corporate-backed politicians in either party, but it revealed the extent to which the major institutions of capitalism add to the crisis, even as their politicians feign concern. The Federal Reserve is supposed to supervise and regulate bank operations, but is financing the continued extraction of fossil fuels.

There is also a concerted push to shift the onus of climate change efforts onto the backs of those countries that have been exploited and underdeveloped in the age of imperialism. The biggest factor in the existential threat of global warming is still the global dominance of the capitalist system, even as the development of the Chinese economy is affecting that balance.

The narrative of the U.S. major media places the blame on poor countries and China’s rising economy for greenhouse gases while touting the “greening” of U.S. capitalism. This marketing subterfuge conceals the efforts by giant energy companies and multi-trillion-dollar banks to maintain their profits at all costs.

It’s made easier by the successful U.S. pressure to leave massive Pentagon pollution out of international calculations.

Blaming the Global South is a purposeful distraction. Placing the blame where it belongs — on the big imperialist powers and the profit system — is an essential part of being able to leave the planet in inhabitable condition for future generations.

As a result of the Paris Accords, wealthier countries were obliged to contribute $100 billion to impoverished countries to help finance clean energy projects before the next major international climate talks, scheduled to take place in November in Copenhagen.

In an international pre-meeting that concluded in early October in Milan, Italy, the fact that the rich capitalist economies still haven’t met that obligation became a contentious issue — not only inside the meeting hall, but outside, too, as hundreds of youth, led by activist Greta Thurnberg, lambasted their foot-dragging.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2021/ ... te-change/

Well boys & girls, those nasty capitalists ain't going away because you wish so, ain't relinquishing control of civilization because that's what's required.They must be ejected with extreme prejudice.

***************************************************

Xi launches $233m biodiversity fund
By CAO DESHENG in Beijing and YANG WANLI in Kunming | China Daily | Updated: 2021-10-13 06:58

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President Xi Jinping addresses the leaders' summit of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was held in Kunming, Yunnan province, via video link from Beijing on Tuesday. LI XUEREN/XINHUA

President calls on intl community to facilitate global sustainable growth

President Xi Jinping called on Tuesday for international solidarity and cooperation to build a community of all life on Earth, and he announced China's initiative to establish a fund to support developing countries in protecting biodiversity with an initial investment of 1.5 billion yuan ($233 million).

Xi made the statement in a keynote speech at the Leaders' Summit of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP 15, via video link in Beijing.

The phase-one meeting of COP 15 is being held in Kunming, Yunnan province, from Monday to Friday. It will work for the conclusion of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, and identify targets and pathways for global biodiversity protection.

Addressing the summit, Xi called on the international community to make joint efforts to solve the problems brought by industrial development, and build a green, low-carbon and circular economic system to facilitate global sustainable development.

He underlined the need to make the global environmental governance system fairer and more equitable.

"We need to practice true multilateralism, and effectively honor and implement international rules, which are not to be exploited or discarded at one's own will," Xi said.

"The new environmental protection targets we set need to be ambitious on the one hand and pragmatic and balanced on the other."

Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic has cast a shadow over global development and compounded challenges to the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, he said that faced with the dual tasks of economic recovery and environmental protection, developing countries need help and support all the more.

He announced China's initiative to establish a Kunming Biodiversity Fund to support biodiversity protection in developing countries. China is taking the lead in investing 1.5 billion yuan, and is calling for and welcoming contributions from other parties to the fund, Xi said.

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Participants attend the leaders' summit in Kunming on Tuesday. LI XIN/XINHUA

Saying that China has made remarkable progress in building an ecological civilization, Xi reiterated the country's commitment to implementing the new development philosophy, which emphasizes innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared growth, and building a beautiful China.

China is moving faster to establish a protected areas system with national parks as the mainstay in order to strengthen biodiversity protection, he said, adding that the protected land area is around 230,000 square kilometers and covers nearly 30 percent of the key terrestrial wildlife species found in China.

To achieve its targets for a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, Xi said China will release implementation plans and supportive measures to cut carbon dioxide emissions in key sectors, and put in place a related policy framework.

"China will continue to readjust its industrial structure and energy mix, vigorously develop renewable energy, and make faster progress in planning and developing large wind power and photovoltaic bases in sandy areas, rocky areas and deserts," he said, adding that construction started recently of the first phase of projects with an installed capacity of approximately 100 million kilowatts.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and leaders of countries including Russia, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica also addressed the summit via video link.

Guterres thanked China for hosting the UN meeting, and called for a global consensus on ending the biodiversity crisis that threatens the survival of humankind. "Ecosystem collapse could cost almost $3 trillion annually by 2030," he said, adding that its greatest impact would be on developing countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also called for closer international cooperation on preserving biodiversity and providing related support to developing countries.

This conference is a good illustration that the objectives of nature conservation cannot be met by any country individually, Putin said, adding that is a common task for all countries and for all humankind.

He expressed his appreciation to China for supporting efforts to enhance international cooperation on environmental matters.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of the impact of the destruction of biodiversity on the environment, saying that Turkey is determined to preserve its rich biological diversity both on land and sea.

"We believe that the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which is based on minimizing biodiversity loss by 2030, will duly serve the purpose," he said, adding that he hopes "fair, equitable and conscientious" solutions will be found to all global challenges.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov said his country is open and ready for active international cooperation on biodiversity protection.

"Only by joint efforts could we preserve the biodiversity of our planet and achieve desirable sustainable development in harmony with the environment."

Xinhua contributed to this story.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20211 ... 6e7c2.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 16, 2021 2:11 pm

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Cryptocurrency: a new and dangerous climate disruptor

Originally published: System Change Not Climate Change by Maura Stephens and Karen Edelstein (October 12, 2021 ) | - Posted Oct 14, 2021

In capitalism every few years or decades something new comes along that causes rapid creation of wealth—think microwaves, electronics, and military weapons expansion during the Cold War; semiconductors; the rise of venture capital as an industry; the personal computer craze of the 1980s; the rise of the Internet and hedge funds in the 1990s followed by Internet commerce, genomics, nanotechnology, and the commercialization of information gathering and surveillance (data mining) to benefit corporations and investors.

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Fluctuation of Bitcoin value. (Photo: CoinDesk – Oct. 4, 2021)

One of the latest “innovations,” as they’re known in the financial sector, is cryptocurrency, which has exploded since its public introduction in 2013. Related to data mining, cryptocurrency mining has taken off like wildfires in a windstorm–and like those deadly events can accelerate climate chaos in ways we couldn’t imagine just a few years ago.

In the fight to slow the buildup of greenhouse gases, many scientists, policymakers, and environmental advocates have focused largely on the extraction of fossil fuels. Fracking for methane (“natural” gas), frack-sand mining, bitumen (“tar sands”) extraction, and mountaintop demolition to access coal are certainly implicated in the alarmingly steep increase in carbon in our atmosphere in recent years. But fossil fuel extraction is only one of the culprits in the carbon buildup.

Other significant human-exerted forces include; agricultural practices, land clearing, industry, and decomposition of wastes in landfills. But aside from the ecological and energy-extraction components, there is a behavioral component we cannot ignore, and that’s where cryptocurrency mining fits in.

We need to look at patterns of consumption and, importantly, the environmental, health, and biodiversity costs associated with making money the capitalist way, which is not designed to have positive bearing on the health and wellbeing of anyone but the super-rich.

Cryptocurrency, not in itself a fossil fuel, is far from benign environmentally; its operators are appropriately called “miners,” and the industry is as perilous as the plastics industry–both intricately tied to fossil fuel extraction.

What’s the Appeal?
Bitcoin is big.

Let’s note here that the term “bitcoin” (lowercase) has become synonymous with and is frequently used interchangeably with “cryptocurrency,” although Bitcoin (uppercase) is a brand name among many other cryptocurrency brands.

FracTracker experts estimate that nearly 40% of U.S. investors own Bitcoin, a huge number, especially considering the industry is only a few years old.

In early October 2021 Bitcoin’s price, which like all cryptocurrencies has fluctuated wildly, was at nearly $50,000, bumping the global value of the currency close to $930 billion. Estimates from July 29 indicated that all cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, Dogecoin, and others had a “value” of close to $1.6 trillion, or about 2.1% of the world’s money supply.

Who Loves It Most?

Many believe, with enthusiasm approaching religious fervor, that this form of cryptocurrency is the answer to an otherwise centralized banking system that has benefited the privileged few.

Anyone who opens an online account and puts some cryptocurrency into it can send “money” across the world in a matter of minutes–24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year–which makes this system appealing. And many supporters of Bitcoin tend to look to their short-term gains, rather than long-term impacts, claiming that the “societal value Bitcoin provides is worth the resources needed to sustain it.”

This technology is being used in many industries, as Billy Silva lists in Medium: “capital markets, financial services, payments and remittances, derivatives, identity and reputation management, governance, sharing economy, supply chain, auditing, stock trading, internet of things, insurance, healthcare, and others.”

Many financial publications and advisers are featuring stories and webinars about cryptocurrencies. Some of them are enthusiastic, salivating over the potential success of this new “disruptor” along the lines of Netflix, which sent Blockbuster Video to the graveyard.

Who Loves It Less?

Some, like Investopedia’s Nathan Reiff and Somer Anderson, publish disclaimers such as this:

Investing in cryptocurrencies and other initial coin offerings (ICOs) is highly risky and speculative, and this article is not a recommendation by Investopedia or the writer to invest in cryptocurrencies or other ICOs…

The value of one type of cryptocurrency does not necessarily follow that of another. Cryptocurrency values are volatile for a variety of reasons, including their relative newcomer status as investments.

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Unscrupulous lending by unregulated banks and private firms (light green and blue) were largely responsible for the housing bubble that led to the 2007-10 financial crisis. In all, 12 million loans “valued” at nearly $2 trillion were given. (Chart reprinted with permission from The Orange County Register / June 9, 2007)

Plus, anytime an unregulated industry’s stocks skyrocket amid speculative behavior and seem both too good to be true and grossly overvalued, we may be looking at a bubble.

Jeremy Grantham, an investment analyst and asset-management firm CEO widely quoted in capitalist financial circles, has been warning that the current market situation is a “fully fledged epic bubble. Featuring extreme overvaluation, explosive price increases, frenzied issuance, and hysterically speculative investor behavior, … this event will be recorded as one of the great bubbles of financial history.”

He’s not talking about only cryptocurrencies, but they are certainly a prime driver of the bubble.

The world learned about the aftermath of bubbles most recently during the 2007-10 great economic meltdown, the fallout from which hit people all around the world. Essentially a Ponzi scheme, it was caused by the United States’ deadly combination of unscrupulous lenders and greedy or misinformed borrowers looking for a short-term payout.

There had been attempts by bipartisan legislators in Congress to restrict subprime mortgages–loans given, mostly by unregulated private firms, to high-risk or no-credit-history borrowers, often with hidden and crippling payback requirements–as well as the hedge funds and derivatives they spawned. But they were unsuccessful in the age of President George W. Bush and Federal Reserve Board chair Alan Greenspan. Indeed, Bush stopped all attempts to check the predatory lending schemes even amidst strenuous opposition from the attorneys general and banking superintendents of all 50 states.

Who Should Love It Least?

The simple fact is that cryptocurrencies are unregulated. They’re on a rampage. They’re already benefiting only the rich–exactly the opposite of an initially intended economic goal of democratization and equalization. They are a smoke-filled bubble.

Bubbles eventually burst.

Plowing through the pandemonium, environmentalists, social-justice advocates, community stewards, and labor organizers need to focus on the even broader risk connected with crypto mining–one that could affect the survival of our planet, not just the wealthiest of investors.

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Digiconomist reports that the carbon footprint of a single Bitcoin block in 2021 is roughly equal to the carbon footprint generated by 1,890,394 Visa transactions. A single mined Bitcoin has a carbon footprint of 259 tons (235 tonnes),in comparison to that of a Bitcoin’s worth of gold, at 24.25 tons (22 tonnes).

Another term that is perhaps less known, but crucial in discussing the impacts of cryptocurrency on the environment, is “proof-of-work,” a process used by both Bitcoin and Ethereum. This form of cryptocurrency validation uses a method to achieve consensus on the blockchain. Simply put, proof-of-work cryptocurrency is created as many machines all work to solve the same complex mathematical equation, or puzzle. The first machine to solve the problem wins.

Thus, the more machines you have working on the same puzzle, the greater your chances of profiting. As the complexity of the computations increases, it becomes harder for the average person to profit, since one must have thousands of machines to remain competitive.

And so the system begins to resemble a traditional centralized capitalist system that remains profitable–to the very wealthy.

Unregulated, Climate-Crazy Profiteering

This facet of current cryptocurrency mining has drawn criticism from previous enthusiasts, including Jackson Palmer, who cocreated Dogecoin. He now calls it “an inherently right-wing, capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight, and artificially enforced scarcity.”

And, he adds, “Cryptocurrency is like taking the worst parts of today’s capitalist system (e.g., corruption, fraud, inequity) and using software do technically limit the use of interventions (e.g., audits, regulation, taxation) which serve as protections or safety nets for the average person. Financial exploitation undoubtedly existed before cryptocurrency, but cryptocurrency is almost purpose built to make the funnel of profiteering more efficient for those at the top and less safeguarded for the vulnerable.”

And it’s catastrophically energy-intensive.

While there are other models for cryptocurrency mining, the proof-of-work model is of particular concern to environmentalists worldwide because of its energy-intensive nature. Proof-of-work mining can use the same amount of energy as an entire country such as Argentina (population 45.2 million).

A 2018 study published in Nature estimated conservatively, based on 2017 transactions, that the number of computers used to mine Bitcoin alone could produce enough greenhouse gases to raise global temperatures above the 2-degree Celsius tipping point before 2048. It’s important to note that cryptocurrency mining energy use has risen 320% in the past five years.

Megatons of Electronic Waste and Attendant Toxins

Emissions from the electrical use are not the only ecological disaster. The machines generate a lot of heat, so they need to kept cool, requiring more energy. Being used for ever increasingly sophisticated computations, they need to be the speediest and most powerful models available. Computer companies build in fast obsolescence–underscored in summer 2021 by Apple’s response to the revelation by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab of “ForcedEntry,” as they call the Pegasus spyware that made 1.65 billion Apple iPhones and other devices vulnerable to a complete, almost undetectable takeover by the private Israeli surveillance firm NSO.

To counter the problem Apple issued a patch, but only for newer devices, thus forcing those with devices six or more years old to remain vulnerable or purchase new ones.

These electronics contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals, which leach into soil, water, and air–and the bodies of humans and other species.

In September 2021 a Dutch team economics team published a study, “Bitcoin’s growing e-waste problem,” in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling. The researchers found that as of May 2021, Bitcoin’s annual e-waste generation had added up to 6.6 million pounds (30.7 metric kilotons), with an average per-transaction e-waste of 9.6 ounces (272 grams).

Who’s Fighting Back?

Everything we do about climate change will be undermined by growing cryptocurrency mining operations unless governments address this industry, around which facts and figures are changing daily.

China had been historically the worldwide center of cryptocurrency mining. However, on September 24, 2021, China’s central bank made all cryptocurrency-related activities illegal (supposedly to support the country’s climate goals). This alone at least temporarily dropped the global energy use for the industry as Chinese facilities went offline.

But this also means that the most attractive new geographic centers for mines are now elsewhere, especially in the United States.

Unless truly energy-efficient alternatives to proof-of-work mining are adopted, the energy use for this industry remains impossibly outsized. There is one potentially less energy-intensive model known as “proof-of-stake,” but there is no proof that it would either work for transactions or cut energy use sufficiently, and the biggest cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin are unlikely to switch from their current proof-of-work model.

It’s imperative to keep on top of its whack-a-mole next appearances.

The Finger Lakes: Test Case for Lunacy

What began as a small protest against cryptocurrency mining along the western shore of Seneca Lake, the deepest of the stunning Finger Lakes of New York State, is now an international story as the world watches Bitcoin operators bulldoze their way into the United States.

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Location of Greenidge Generation Facility, Dresden, NY. (Map/Image: FracTracker Alliance)

The Greenidge facility along the shores of Seneca Lake is now the test case for proof-of-work crypto in the United States. This once-mothballed coal-fired plant sat dormant for seven years before it was repurposed to burn methane (“natural” gas from fracklands in neighboring Pennsylvania) to supply power to the grid in times of high demand, even as public opposition to fracking in New York was growing to a crescendo and prompted the state government to issue a moratorium, and later a ban, on fracking within the state’s boundaries.

Quickly finding the gas power plant unprofitable, the owners installed 7,900 Bitcoin machines. This change in usage increased the air emissions at the Greenidge plant tenfold compared with its previous levels as a “peaker” power plant. In January 2020, for example, operating at 5% of its capacity (similar to when it was serving as a power plant) the plant emitted 28,301 tons of CO2. This is equivalent to what would be produced by the electricity consumption in more than 4,000 households. By December 2020 CO2 emissions jumped to 243,103 tons, increasing by almost ten times. During that same 12-month period, emissions of polluting nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxides, together known as nitrogen oxides (NOx), jumped from 5.2 to 49.2 tons; again, by ten times in the same 12-month period. CO2 and NOx are both potent greenhouse gases that fuel climate warming and instability.

Greenidge’s plan is to expand 25-fold by 2025, using at least 500 megawatts of power along Seneca Lake and elsewhere. It has applied for a renewal of its air permit, which allows annual emissions of up to 641,878 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq). This is after zero emissions for five straight years (2011-16).

Neighbors are alarmed about the plant’s negative impacts, worried at the thought of losing the region’s clean air, their trust in the 4.2 trillion-gallon freshwater lake that serves as a drinking water source for 100,000 people and the life within and around it, and the region’s vibrant economic engine of agriculture, much of it organic, and tourism–which supports 58,000 jobs and generates $3 billion annually for New York.

As well, the plant is legally permitted to discharge up to 134 million gallons of 108 degree F water daily into Keuka Outlet, a protected trout stream that drains directly into Seneca Lake. Furthermore, thermal inputs of any sort can enhance the growth of environmentally destabilizing harmful algal blooms (HABs), which in recent years have been plaguing the Finger Lakes and many other water bodies.

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The Greenidge bitcoin mining facility and fracked-gas power plant mar the landscape of Seneca Lake’s west shore. (Photo by Bob Nilsson)

Opponents of the facility include residents, property owners, grape farmers, winery owners, and vacationers who flock to the region each year to enjoy this popular tourist destination.

Supporters, aside from Atlas Holdings, the private investment firm behind the project, appear to be limited to politicians in local and state offices, including disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, who received $95,000 in donations from the company and its managing partners in 2014, shortly before they purchased the plant. Interestingly, soon afterward the facility received a $2 million state grant to help convert the once-shuttered plant to methane (fracked-gas) from the state, and the NYS DEC also waived any requirements for a comprehensive environmental impact statement.

Thirty other upstate New York power plants could be converted to data centers, with catastrophic consequences for statewide CO2-equivalent emissions.

Before he resigned in August 2021, Governor Cuomo had positioned New York as a leader on climate, instituting the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bitcoin miners have discovered a loophole: By buying up old power plants to generate power for private use, thus operating “behind the meter” (by not supplying power to the grid for public consumption), they’re able to evade the CLCPA requirement that stipulates 70% of the state grid’s electricity must come from renewable sources by 2030.

Greenidge, like other cryptocurrency peddlers, calls itself a “carbon neutral” facility, because it now purchases carbon offsets. But carbon offsets are a form of public relations greenwashing and do not protect communities from industry’s pollution. (Furthermore, the CLCPA does not allow power plants to use carbon offsets. Laws such as this one must be enforced to be effective.)

Coming Soon to a Community Near You?

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Data center locations around the world. (Source: datacenters.com)

Cryptocurrency mining requires four things: computing power capable of running complex calculations, a ready source of cheap energy to run the mining computers, proximity to high-capacity power lines, and a way to cool the equipment. In general, locations that require fewer months of air conditioning are more economically attractive. So many mining operators are shopping around for structures like retired electrical generation facilities, including old coal, gas, and nuclear power plants. These typically have desirable features for miners including high-capacity powerlines connected to the grid and built-in cooling systems that often discharge waste heat into an adjacent lake or river.

According to datacenters.com, there are nearly 2,600 data centers worldwide: 930 in the eastern United States, 378 in the western United States, 556 in Europe, and 498 in Asia. Many are used for other purposes such as cloud-based computer file storage, but an increasing number are used for cryptocurrency mining.

| Click on the map to explore the dynamic version Data sources are also listed at the end of this article Use the Layers dropdown menu to turn layers off and on Courtesy of FracTracker Alliance | MR Online

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Retired power plants

Regardless of whether a facility is intended to be a general data center or a specific cryptocurrency mining operation, communities will want to be aware of where retired electrical generating facilities are in their regions, because those can be attractive for repurposing.

FracTracker Alliance used the Energy Information Administration’s list of retired electrical generation facilities and created this map showing U.S. facilities that could become targets.

Many of these formerly fossil-fuel-fired facilities were sited in “environmental justice” communities whose residents fall into one or more of these demographic groups: low-income, people of color, indigenous, elderly, immigrant, less than high school-educated, rural. On first glance it seems like a benefit that they’re no longer polluting these communities. But replacing them with bitcoin mining would negate any such relief.

Who’s in the Cross-Hairs Next?

Environmentalists and policy-makers in Montana have tried to slow down the expansion of cryptocurrency mining’s climate impacts by implementing zoning restrictions.

Elsewhere communities are being taken by surprise. Journalist Peter Mantius, who runs the Finger Lakes’ only news organization devoted to environmental issues, revealed in July 2021 that Atlas Holdings is planning to open a second bitcoin mining operation in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in a bankrupt printing plant, and another company has sights on one in Paducah, Kentucky.

Pennsylvania is already ravaged by fracking and related infrastructures. Now it is under assault by the bitcoin mining industry as well. Among other projects, a coal plant in Venango County, northwest of Pittsburgh, is being transformed into a cryptocurrency operation, burning waste coal. Two nuclear power plants–one in Beaver County intended to supply energy to a mining operation in Ohio, and another in Luzerne County–are being “repurposed.” In all cases–coal, gas, and nuclear–marketing campaigns claim they are contributing to a “carbon-free future.”

Surprising Resistance, Unsurprising Support

El Salvador became the first government to embrace the use of cryptocurrency, with less than perfect early results including massive public protests.

Other countries besides China have been banning and even criminalizing cryptocurrency because it’s defeating their climate goals and robbing power from the public. Algeria, Bolivia, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia have banned or severely restricted its use, and Bangladesh has made jail sentences mandatory for anyone caught using or owning any cryptocurrency.

Because of this, as we’ve seen, miners are moving rapidly across the United States, where there are currently no industry regulations and the Securities and Exchange Commission might actually approve an exchange-traded fund that allows investors to put their money directly into cryptocurrencies.

The primary concern for governmental regulators, of course, would be to regulate cryptocurrency so that its volatility would not imperil investors eager to get rich. In early October the Department of Justice announced the creation of a “national cryptocurrency enforcement team” to prosecute criminal uses such as money laundering and cyber crimes, but that’s a far cry from serious regulation of pollution to communities and watersheds or beginning to halting the socio-ecological harm.

This is a serious nationwide problem. Biden’s Build Back Better initiative, which contains a strong climate component, and the United States has rejoined the Paris Climate Accord. Not that these activities are nearly enough. But clearly, allowing the cryptocurrency industry to proliferate can serve only to undermine overdue plans to reduce greenhouse gases and slow down catastrophic weather events like the floods, fires, and megastorms that have become daily occurrences.

What Can We Do?

The future of our species and others on the planet is made even more precarious unless proof-of-work cryptocurrency changes its climate-busting model.

It will be very difficult to stem the tide of cryptocurrency, given the thrill it seems to give speculative investors and the inroads it has already made into the public consciousness. According to nasdaq.com, nearly 50 million U.S. Americans now own a share of Bitcoin.

Cryptocurrency operations must be required by enforceable laws to use 200% renewables. This means that they use only their own on-site renewable energy sources to power their machines, while simultaneously producing an equal amount of renewable energy for the public power grid. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress must immediately enact a moratorium on cryptocurrency operations lasting a sufficient time to both (a) study proof-of-work’s impacts on air, water, climate, and the long-term economy and (b) give the industry time to make its operations truly sustainable, if indeed that is possible.

In this, New York activists want to position the state as a national leader. Indeed, the Finger Lakes region is home to Ithaca Hours. The brainchild of the visionary Paul Glover, it was the first modern local currency in the United States. An “ecological economic bartering model,” as Glover termed it, Ithaca Hours is based on the value of an hour of work; every type of work, from lawyer to farmworker, rocket scientist to doula, is equally valued.

Imagine spreading the idea of local currencies nationwide, or a currency based on things that have real–not fictional–value such as water or food. That would be the intelligent way forward, instead of permitting energy-intensive cryptocurrency operations that serve only to further enrich certain already-wealthy investors while spewing a staggering amount of greenhouse gases and intensifying climate chaos.

The United States could position itself as a global leader on this front and take a strong stand against cryptocurrencies. From a capitalist standpoint, that’s not such a bad deal as it props up the modern banking and financial sectors. From a competition standpoint, if China could ban cryptocurrencies outright, why can’t the USA?

And from an ecosocialist perspective, banning mining and using cryptocurrencies stops both this massive emissions source and this insane new capitalist craze, both of which harm everyone in society; no amount of wealth based in paper or gold or fiat will serve to save anyone from the ravages of climate chaos.

In New York, statewide groups are asking residents to:

*Sign the online petition and submit a written public statement against the Greenidge power plant before October 22nd.
*Call Governor Kathy Hochul: (518)-474-8390. Tell her that unregulated “behind the meter” Bitcoin operations completely evade the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), and that she must direct the DEC to deny Greenidge’s Title V air permit renewal.
*Ask your state legislators to support legislation that would place a moratorium on any new or expanding Bitcoin operations in the state of New York until a comprehensive study of the industry and its impacts on air, water, human health and agriculture can be fully evaluated.

Everywhere:

*Watch for announcements about plans to repurpose retired electrical generating stations in your community.
If you are an investor or have a mutual fund or retirement fund, talk to your financial adviser about why cryptocurrency is a bad bet. We still live in a capitalist society, and as long as we do, we need to use our funds, whatever they are, as tools.
*Do not invest in cryptocurrency.
*Instead, invest locally! There are all sorts of ways to do so including local cooperatives, credit unions, community-supported farms, artist collectives, funding established local businesses seeking to expand or improve. Some financial analysts, including Michael Shuman, author of Local Dollars, Local Sense and a workshop leader on the subject, have shown that overall, the return on these investments is as good as or better than gambling on the stock market and other capitalist ventures.
*Don’t be hoodwinked by industry spin claiming that cryptocurrency enables businesses and governments to “reduce their environmental impact” or “catalyze the development of renewable energy.”
*Talk to your municipal and statewide policymakers about climate impacts from cryptocurrency mining, and then pressure them to make laws outlawing the practice. It’s hard if not impossible to stop it once it begins, but it it’s not allowed in the first place, your community and all of us will be better off.
*Push federal policymakers to pass, at the very least, the moratorium as noted above, but seriously, with heavy fines and criminal penalties for any corporate executives and board members found guilty of violating it.
*If China can ban it altogether, why can’t the United States?
*Spread the word about the dangers of this new threat.

https://mronline.org/2021/10/14/cryptoc ... disruptor/

Capital continually ups it's game of producing massive exchange value without a modicum of use value, and in this case equally massive 'externals', blythely ignored. All of these schemes to control the growth of this tendency reek of reformism by people wanting capital to 'be nice', which is nowhere in it's 'mission statement'. As China shows, only socialism can respond effectively.

The repourposing of old power plants is a shining example of Say's Law and the futility of reforming a profit driven system.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:19 pm

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Why the climate movement needs the working class

Originally published: Red Flag by Emma Black (October 12, 2021 ) | - Posted Oct 16, 2021

The scale of the climate crisis has driven a new generation of radical young activists to demand “system change, not climate change”. This is a welcome leftward shift within environmental politics—away from a focus on individual consumption and towards confronting the capitalist system. However, many of those making this demand lack both a coherent analysis of how a system like capitalism might be changed and a strategic orientation toward those who have the power to change it.

You don’t have to be a revolutionary to recognise that addressing climate change entails the total transformation of our society. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—a body not known for hyperbole—argued in a 2018 report on global warming, avoiding ecological catastrophe means implementing “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”.

Faced with this scientifically established existential threat to human society, our rulers appear complacent at best, and at worst—as is the case with the Australian government—they’re actively stoking the flames. Under the guise of taking action, global leaders occasionally interrupt their carbon-intensive pursuit of economic and imperialist interests to attend international conferences, like the upcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow, where they set long-term emissions reduction targets. Meanwhile, as Greta Thunberg argues, “The gap between what needs to be done and what we are actually doing is widening by the minute”.

In recent years, climate activists have attempted to close this gap by making more provocative appeals to politicians and the public. In 2019, Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists attracted international attention by engaging in mass disruptive actions in major cities around the world. While this initial burst of activity gained widespread public support, it was soon pushed back by state repression and mainstream media spin. Around the same time, millions of school-age activists—inspired by Thunberg—flooded city streets in protest, only to be condescended to by politicians, who told them, in effect, to “get over” their anxiety about the future.

Political progressives eager to appeal to public sentiment on the climate question have adopted Green New Deal (GND) style policies for state-led reform. In a recent interview in Jacobin magazine, Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt celebrated the GND’s growing appeal. “Whether you call it a GND or not, key elements of the proposal are gaining in popularity”, he said. “Even conservatives such as the UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, are saying that some form of Green Industrial Revolution will be crucial in the next twenty to thirty years.”

While some of the demands associated with more radical versions of the GND—such as raising corporate tax rates and increasing state investment into renewables—are supportable, the GND “brand” is fast becoming green cover for government stimulus policies designed to bolster the status quo.

US President Joe Biden provides an example. His election campaign website described the GND as “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face”. And much has been made of the supposedly “green” aspects of his infrastructure plan. But it appears certain now that the majority of that will be junked in negotiations with Republicans, and what’s left will largely be the kind of infrastructure investment (roads, bridges and so on) that will encourage ongoing dependence on fossil fuels. Meanwhile, his administration is presiding over a record pace of approvals of new oil and gas wells on public land.

Talk by the likes of Biden and Boris Johnson of a Green New Deal or a Green Industrial Revolution simply can’t be taken seriously. Thunberg was right when, in a recent speech at the Youth4Climate summit in Milan, she dismissed such rhetoric as just more “blah, blah, blah”—empty words designed to greenwash an ongoing commitment to the status quo of a fossil-fuelled capitalism.

It appears then, that the climate movement is stuck in a bind. Lobbying and the kind of peaceful street marches that the school strikers engage in are ignored. The direct, disruptive action of minorities of committed activists—as with XR—runs-up against the overwhelming repressive and ideological forces at the disposal of the state. And attempts to bring change through state reforms—to the extent that they go beyond merely “on paper” proposals by minor parties like the Greens—are appropriated into the arsenal of rhetoric deployed by those in power to greenwash the status quo.

Given all this, it seems the prospects for any genuine “system change” are dim. For Marxists, however, there’s a way out. The first step is recognising that at the core of the climate crisis—both in terms of what’s driving it, and what can overcome it—is class. In short: it’s the global capitalist ruling class that’s responsible for the climate crisis and for blocking attempts to address it adequately, and it’s the global working class that’s best placed to win the radical change we need.

Addressing the climate crisis means confronting some of the most powerful sectors of global capital. This includes the mere 100 companies that—according to the 2017 CDP Carbon Majors Report—have been responsible for 71 percent of carbon emissions since 1988. The owners of the fossil fuel industry and other carbon-intensive sectors (e.g. steel, chemicals and cement) won’t simply stand by while revolutionary transformations render their business models obsolete.

To pose a real challenge to such powerful and entrenched economic interests—which are connected to the capitalist state by a thousand threads—we need to look outside the spheres of political action that liberal climate activists focus on. And this is where the working class comes in.

If workers withdraw our labour, we can bring workplaces and even entire industries to a halt. This kind of action, which cuts off the flow of profits that are the lifeblood of the capitalist system, is vastly more disruptive and hard for the capitalist state to deal with than traditional forms of protest. And not only do workers have the economic power to shut down environmentally destructive industries, but we also share a political interest in pushing back against the destructive “business as usual” of the capitalist system. No member of the working class benefits from the environmental damage wrought by the capitalist class in pursuit of profit. In fact, it’s poor and working-class people who always suffer the worst effects of ecological crises.

If this is the case, however, then why are environmental and working-class politics so commonly pitted against each other?

To answer this question, we have to look at environmentalism’s origins. The rise of the modern environment movement—beginning in the late 70s and early 80s—coincided with a period of historic defeat for the left. The subsequent evolution of environmental politics—away from confronting big business and “the system” and towards a focus on individual consumption—was symptomatic of this defeat.

From the late 1970s onwards, the ruling class unleashed a series of ruthless attacks on workers. Under the guidance of neoliberal economists, those in power gutted living standards and bulldozed working conditions. What followed were decades of wage stagnation, increasing debt, eroding job security and longer working hours.

At the same time, environmentalists began criticising the “hollow materialism” of “consumer society”. Middle-class recriminations about supposed “overconsumption” aligned well with state-driven austerity measures slashing public spending. Whereas working-class politics always aimed to improve overall living standards, many in the modern environment movement promoted individual asceticism to save the planet.

The middle-class elitism implicit in this political framework was made explicit by Rudolph Bahro of the German Greens in a 1984 interview published by New Left Review. “The working class here [in the West] is the richest lower class in the world”, he said, “I must say that the metropolitan working class is the worst exploiting class in history.”

For many activists of the older generation in the Greens and in movements like XR, sentiments like this no doubt retain some currency. Fortunately, however, the new generation of high school and university-aged environmental activists seems largely to have moved past the moralistic focus on the consumption patterns of the “plebs”—on proselytising about carbon footprints, keep-cups and so on. As the evidence for the capitalist roots of the environmental crisis have grown, the need for collective action to disrupt the system has gained new currency.

For this movement to go forward, we must fight for a perspective that sees environmental and working-class politics not as antagonistic, but as inextricably and powerfully linked. Only a mass social movement with a substantial base in the working class has the power to force major concessions from capital. And fortunately for us, one of the best historical examples of this kind of movement happened in our very own backyard.

At its high point in the early 1970s, the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) was easily the most radical union in Australia. The activity of the union, which was led by Communists like BLF secretary Jack Mundey, went well beyond the “bread and butter” issues of wages and conditions. The union sought to act as a tribune of the people, campaigning around a broad range of political issues that impact on the working class—from racism, homophobia, and women’s rights, to public housing and the Vietnam War.

The BLF’s most famous campaign, however, was a series of actions known as the “green bans”. These were bans on union members doing work on any proposed development which was considered socially or environmentally irresponsible by local residents. Interestingly, the term “greenies” was coined by the press at the time to refer to supporters of the bans, only later broadening out to encompass environmentalists in general.

Not only did BLF members refuse to work on “green banned” sites, but they also actively defended them against developers by threatening additional strike action on other sites if work went ahead. By 1975, the BLF had managed to block more than $5 billion worth of development—saving parkland, heritage buildings and working-class neighbourhoods all over Sydney.

According to Meredith and Verity Burgmann, authors of Green Bans, Red Union: The saving of a city, the green bans “contained both an environmental element and a social element: they expressed the union’s determination to save open space or valued buildings and to ensure that people in the community had some say in what affected their lives.”

For Jack Mundey, environmentalism was a working-class issue. “It’s not much good winning a 35-hour week,” he argued, “if we’re going to choke to death in planless and polluted cities where rents are too high, and where ordinary people can’t live”. The union didn’t engage in environmental struggles for purely altruistic reasons. As class-conscious workers, they saw the exploitation of the environment and the exploitation of people as two sides of the same coin.

For the BLF, workers’ living conditions—including access to open spaces as well as clean air and water —were as important as wages and working conditions. “Workers had to look further ahead than wages and conditions and ensure that the environment was protected”, Mundey insisted, because “developers would do irreparable damage if they were allowed to go unchecked”.

The green bans movement shows what can be achieved when environmentalism and militant working-class politics walk hand in hand. By arming environmental struggles with industrial power, the BLF helped force concessions from capital that would have otherwise been impossible. As the Burgmanns write, “environmentalists everywhere, and others who had felt powerless to halt destruction, realised that there did exist an organised strength in the trade unions whose help they could invoke to bring effective force to their cause”.

Expecting those at the top of our society to address climate change on our behalf is a death wish. Avoiding ecological catastrophe means pulling the brake on the entire capitalist system. The only force capable of doing this is the working class.

As such, environmental activists must treat climate change as a class issue. In the short term, this means raising class-conscious environmental demands. For example, alongside the necessary demand for a rapid shutdown of the fossil fuel industry, demanding that workers impacted by the closures be given full support to retrain where necessary and find secure jobs in alternative areas. Or foregrounding, when discussing other sustainability measures, things that will result in clear improvements in working-class living standards—such as massively expanded public transport, more green space in cities and so on.

At the same time, we need to fight to rebuild the radical traditions of socially and environmentally engaged unionism exemplified by Jack Mundey and the BLF. Only a class-conscious environment movement, equipped with the industrial strength to confront capital, can actually achieve the “system change” we need. Environmentalists and workers unite: we have a world to win!

https://mronline.org/2021/10/16/why-the ... ing-class/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Long Ecological Revolution

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 19, 2021 2:01 pm

Coal-fired power is on the rise in America for the first time since 2014

By Matt Egan, CNN Business

Updated 11:36 AM ET, Mon October 18, 2021

New York (CNN Business)In a blow to the climate movement, US power companies are ramping up their coal consumption due to surging natural gas prices.

US coal-fired generation is expected to surge by 22% in 2021, the US Energy Information Administration said Monday. That would mark the first annual increase in coal-fired electric power generation since 2014, the EIA said.
Coal was long the main fuel source for the US power grid — even though its environmental footprint is the largest.
In recent years, utilities ditched coal because of concerns about the climate crisis and due to the abundance of very cheap natural gas. US coal consumption fell in 2019 for the sixth straight year, dropping to the lowest level since 1964, as natural gas prices fell to record lows.

Yet this trend has reversed in recent months because natural gas prices have spiked, making coal more competitive.
The EIA report said coal power generation is rising this year because of "significantly higher natural gas prices and relatively stable coal prices." The delivered cost of natural gas to US power plants has averaged $4.93 per million British thermal units this year, more than double 2020's price, the EIA said.
This comes after US power plants have retired nearly one-third of their generating capacity at coal plants since 2010.

The EIA said the rise of coal generation in the United States "will most likely not continue." The report forecasts a 5% decline in US coal-fired generation in 2022 due to the retirement of coal-fired units and slightly lower natural gas prices.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/10/18/business/ ... index.html

Utilities concerned about climate change? Gimme a break. They respond to the market like any other capitalist, a little greenwash pr never hurts and cost nothing.

Even were he sincere in his environmental proposals(not!) and given what power the Executive has, Biden couldn't contradict the market without facing a shit storm from the suckfish of capital and others who are easily misdirected. With his numbers tanking as is, watch the climate change parts of his budget proposal get eviscerated in the poisonous pursuit of bipartisan (or intra-party) compromise, the ruling class consensus.

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Biodiversity protection now more pressing than ever
By Alfred Romann | China Daily Global | Updated: 2021-10-19 09:00

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Aerial photo taken on June 7, 2021 shows wild Asian elephants in Jinning district of Kunming, Southwest China's Yunnan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The world is losing its biodiversity faster than at any time in the recorded past centuries. The danger this loss represents is enormous, and reversing the damage will require a coordinated global effort.

The loss of biodiversity is both the cause and the effect of climate change-a self-fulfilling cycle of more loss, faster climate change, even more loss, and so on. The potentially devastating cliff that the world faces is getting higher.

Speaking on Oct 12 during the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, President Xi Jinping addressed the danger directly by calling for building a shared community of all life on Earth. He underlined China's efforts to develop an "ecological civilization" in which humans and nature coexist in harmony, and he said the country would launch the $233 million Kunming Biodiversity Fund to protect biodiversity in developing countries.

The announcement marks a step forward in global efforts to protect biodiversity, and other countries should follow suit. China's commitment represents the kind of effort that the world badly needs.

The issue of protecting plants and animals is more pressing than ever.

The danger may be particularly acute in parts of the world that have the most biodiversity. These include places like Brazil, with its Amazon rainforest, central African regions, Indonesia or China, which is home to almost 10 percent of all plant species and 14 percent of all animal species on the planet.

So far, 20 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are identified as mega-diversity countries by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre of the UN Environment Program.

In the declaration of COP 15, which China hosted in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, all participants are called on to take "urgent and integrated action", and countries are urged to put biodiversity at the heart of their development plans.

The problem is that while such declarations are nice enough, they are political documents and in no way binding. It is very easy for countries to put a signature at the bottom of such a declaration and just as easy to forget about it. The United States, for example, despite its power and resources, has not ratified the convention after signing it in 1992.Although the first UN Convention on Biological Diversity was signed in 1992, few of its targets have been met. A 2010 agreement signed in Aichi, Japan, led to countries setting 20 targets to slow biodiversity loss and protect habitats but, again, hardly any of those targets were met either.

The difference now is that the cost of not putting biodiversity-and climate change-at the heart of development policies is much, much higher.

An index developed by Britain's Natural History Museum suggests that the world in 2020 had only 75 percent on average of its biodiversity left-far lower than the 90 percent identified in the index as a safe limit to prevent an "ecological recession".

The massive loss of biodiversity is speeding up climate change. Protecting biodiversity, on the other hand, could help limit the worst impacts and perhaps even help reverse some of them. This is why the idea of building an "ecological civilization" is important.

Still, a new target in place to protect 30 percent of the territories of UN member countries by 2030, known as"30 by 30", may prove to be difficult for many nations.

Some countries, like Brazil and Indonesia, where much more than 30 percent of the landmass is covered with biodiversity, would be put at a disadvantage if they are blocked from leveraging the resources of large chunks of their landmass.

Given the problems, it will be important for countries to work together to average each other out. Brazil, for example, may be able to set aside much more than 30 percent of its landmass and, in so doing, protect enough biodiversity-heavy land to also account for the shares of several other countries.

But for this to work, countries will need a multilateral push that compensates them for their efforts. One way may be for richer countries to "pay" for their share and work with peers that may have the land resources to meet the"30 by 30" goal but not the financial ones.

Another proposed goal coming out of the biodiversity conference-for countries to cut subsidies by at least $500 billion per year for activities that harm biodiversity-has yet to be met in earnest.

China's new commitment is part of yet another effort that would require governments to dedicate an additional $200 billion per year to developing countries to protect biodiversity. Contributing to the Kunming Biodiversity Fund is conducive to easing the concerns of the developing world.

Amid the challenges, the biodiversity fund and those of other countries can help to average out the efforts of individual nations. This would go a long way in promoting "ecological civilization "and helping to restore balance to the world.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20211 ... 6fb75.html

(Those are some 'chill' elephants, in captivity elephants almost never lay down. Speaks volumes...)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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