disaster capitalism

By Rhiana Gunn-Wright - Hammer & Hope, Summer 2023

I’m an architect of the Green New Deal, and I’m worried the racism in the biggest climate law endangers our ability to get off fossil fuels.

This summer, the earth raged. Fires in Maui and Canada, floods in Delhi and Beijing, heat everywhere — this is the beginning of the climate impacts scientists have long predicted, and the U.S. is unprepared in terms of everything from infrastructure to public health. And if I’m honest, I raged, too. Never in my life have I wished more to be a cyclone, blowing away everything in my path, or an earthquake, shaking everyone to their core until they take seriously the concerns of Black and Indigenous frontline communities.

August marked a year since the Inflation Reduction Act passed, arguably the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history. But the racist compromises and the marginalization of Black people and their demands that facilitated the bill’s passage have seeped into the climate movement, sowing division and narrowing discourse in ways that not only threaten to keep Black people at the bottom of a new green economy but also undermine efforts to address thornier issues, such as who owns energy resources or how to navigate conflicts about resource distribution and land use, questions that money alone cannot answer.

By Sarah Jaffe - The Progressive, May 5 2023

It was the workers’ nightmare come true.

The Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3 sent a toxic barrage of hazardous chemicals into the air, soil, and water and caused untold damage to waterways, wildlife, air quality, and people’s health. It was a grim confirmation of what rail workers have been saying would happen for years. And it could have been worse.

No one was killed or badly injured in the derailment itself, and most of the 149-car train’s cargo was nontoxic. Fears of a massive explosion, which led to the evacuation of nearby residents, did not happen. But it’s hard to say there’s a silver lining to a disaster that prompted a “controlled burn” of toxic chemicals producing a cloud visible from passing airplanes, says Ross Grooters, a longtime railroad worker and co-chair of Railroad Workers United, a caucus of rail workers that spans multiple unions. Still, they add, after an attempt by rail workers to strike over working conditions—including ongoing safety concerns—was squelched by members of Congress and President Joe Biden late last year, at least there is renewed attention on the rails.

But if the politicians and the rail companies had listened to the workers, this accident, and others, might have been prevented. In the weeks following the disaster, three more Norfolk Southern trains derailed—in Ohio, Michigan, and Alabama—the latter occurring just before the company’s CEO, Alan Shaw, appeared before Congress to answer questions about the Ohio disaster.

I first spoke to Grooters in late January for a story about the rail workers’ fight for paid sick leave. At the time, they described a constant pressure to do more with less, exemplified by a system known as precision scheduled railroading, or PSR.

“The ‘precision’ part of ‘precision scheduled railroading’ is how precisely can we cut the operation to the bone and still have it walk around as a full skeleton,” Grooters told me. “They’ve cut so deep that it just doesn’t function and they don’t have people to fill the jobs.”

There had been cutbacks to track and equipment maintenance, and more equipment fatigue and derailments. “It just feels really unsafe when you’re in the workplace. It’s like we’re rolling the dice with all these things.”

In 2020, for example, The Washington Post reported that more than 20,000 rail workers had lost their jobs in the previous year, of which more than 3,500 had been at Norfolk Southern. Simultaneously, train lengths were increasing, adding more cars to the workload of the same tiny train crew. A rail engineer told the Post at the time, “They found they can hook two trains together and cut a crew.”

Rail workers were stressed, but railroad stock prices jumped. The following year, two rail workers’ unions filed suit, alleging that Norfolk Southern had sliced rail crews so deeply because of PSR that engineers were having to do the work of conductors and brakemen. “[Norfolk Southern] cannot lawfully lay off roughly 4,000 conductors and brakemen, and then give their work to another craft,” the two union presidents said in a statement at the time.

By Willy De Backer - European Trade Union Institute, May 2, 2023

IPCC 6th assessment report – synthesis

On 20 March 2023, climate scientists published another ‘last warning’ on the climate emergency. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the synthesis report of its 6th assessment on the state of the global climate crisis. This synthesis draws together all the main findings of the three working group reports which were already published in 2021 and 2022.

The IPCC press release points to the fact that greenhouse gas emissions are still rising globally, and demands more ambitious actions to secure a ‘liveable future for all’. For a longer summary of the main messages of this synthesis report, read the analyses by Carbon Brief and the World Resources Institute.

Despite these scientifically alarming reports, the IPCC’s political impact in terms of real effective climate policies remains extremely low and therefore every cycle of reports leads to a more fundamental critique of the organisation’s way of working.

Hereunder, a collection of links to some of the critical articles we found on this new IPCC report:

• The Conversation: IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change
• Inside Climate News: Corporate Interests ‘Watered Down’ the Latest IPCC Climate Report, Investigations Find
• European Green Journal: Why the IPCC Can’t Escape Climate Politics
• The Nation: The Media’s Recent Turn to “Climate Optimism” Is a Cruel Fantasy
• Carbon Copy: IPCC’s climate reports reveal an unequal science

By Amanda Kiger - Global Justice Ecology Project, May 1, 2023

By Kari Lyderson, Ron Kaminow, and Maximillian Alvarez - The Real News Network, April 26, 2023

By Johanna Bozuwa, Arturo Massol-Deya, Patrick Robbins, Ted Glick, Seth Berry, and Gaby Sarri-Tobar - Center for Biolgical Diversity, April 24, 2023

By Mel Buer and Paul Lindsey - The Real News Network, April 11, 2023

By Jason Clifford - CleanTechnica, March 22, 2023

When it comes to energy efficient transportation in America, no transportation option is better than the railroads. They have been the freight transportation backbone of America for nearly 200 years, which is why all the recent news about train derailments and union strikes deserves our attention. While more profitable then they have ever been for investors, the railroads are moving less freight and employing fewer workers now then they did in 2006. After underinvesting in their labor force, rolling stock, and tracks for decades, are America’s railroads entering a state of decline, and if so, should we start discussing the pitfalls and possibilities of public rail ownership?

A Brief History Of Railroads & Railroad Ownership In The US

For some context, it will be good to have a brief history lesson. Starting with the birth of America in the late 1700s and early 1800s, bulk goods were moved by waterways, as the only other option was horse-drawn carriage. In the early days of the country, cities were built around the navigable waterways to transfer goods and services. However, as the nation grew westward, it was harder and took longer to ship goods and services by waterway. Baltimore, wanting to retain its importance as a major shipping port, looked to Europe’s emerging train technology as an opportunity to more quickly deliver goods and people to inland areas of the country. Hence, starting in 1828, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad was built as the first major railroad in the US. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad company was founded to build the tracks and run the trains, with significant investments from the State of Maryland and other private investors.

Beginning in the 1830s and 1840s, railroads were built across the young nation, bringing people westward, reducing travel times and shipping costs. Investors like Cornelius Vanderbilt, with money from their waterway shipping enterprises, started investing in the railroads and profiting from the new technology frontier.

The United States government, wanting to rapidly expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was not satisfied with the gradual growth of the railroads. Conversely, private investors were not interested in investing a large amount of money to build track in sparsely populated areas that may not give them a return for decades. Considering these factors Congress passes and President Abraham Lincoln signs the 1862 Pacific Rail Act which grants the railroad companies land and government bonds to build the tracks. In total, the legislation created four transcontinental railroads and gave away 174 million acres of public lands to rail companies. Union Pacific was founded during this time and took advantage of the legislation to build out the railroads and establish itself as a dominant player in the western United States.

Hence, the railroad companies have always been a private enterprise but with serious public backing from the state and federal governments.

By Justin Mikulka - DeSmog, March 21, 2023

On February 25, Greece experienced its deadliest rail disaster ever when a freight train ran headlong into a passenger train coming towards it on the same track, killing 57 people. This tragic accident, near the city of Larissa, occurred just weeks after the East Palestine, Ohio rail disaster, and while the outcomes are different, the root cause is the same: corporate greed and deregulation. 

While two trains colliding on the same tracks might seem unfathomable to Americans, it shouldn’t be. A similar accident occurred in Texas in 2016, a year after the U.S. rail industry refused to meet a Congressionally mandated deadline for installing a safety system called positive train control, which would have prevented the accident.

Threatened with a rail shutdown, Congress buckled and gave the industry an extra three years to install the safety system, with the option for an extension until the end of 2020. On December 29, 2020, the Federal Railroad Administration announced that positive train control was finally installed on all of the required rail lines. 

As DeSmog has reported, the U.S. rail industry has lobbied against the requirement to install positive train control since 1970. In fact, one rail lobbyist received an award for being “part of a successful push for a congressional agreement to extend a deadline for automated trains on most of the nation’s railways.” The National Transportation Safety Board first recommended positive train control in 1970 after two Penn Central commuter trains collided head-on near Darien, Connecticut, the previous year. Four people were killed and 43 were injured.