disaster capitalism

By Ross Grooters and Nick French - Jacobin, March 15, 2023

Fed up with rail companies putting profits before workers and surrounding communities, the rank-and-file group Railroad Workers United is launching a campaign for railroad nationalization. We spoke with one of their leaders about the proposal.

Just months after a high-profile contract fight between rail unions and railroads ended with Congress imposing a contract on workers, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. The environmental and health disaster — exacerbated by the federal government’s lackadaisical response — has laid bare the safety practices of rail carriers.

Railroad Workers United (RWU), a caucus of rank-and-file workers spanning all thirteen national rail unions, has responded to the East Palestine derailment by calling for public ownership of the railroads. According to RWU, the railways cannot be run safely or efficiently so long as they are operated in the pursuit of profit at all costs.

Jacobin spoke with one of the cochairs of RWU, Ross Grooters, about why the group is pushing for railroad nationalization and their efforts to organize with other workers along the supply chain.

By J.T. Chapman - Second Thought, March 11, 2023

By Maddock Thomas - Brown Political Review, March 7, 2023

Railroads in the United States have avoided electrification, lagging behind much of the rest of the world. Consequently, American railroads are some of the largest consumers of diesel. In 2018, they used 4.2 billion gallons of diesel, second only to the US military. This diesel becomes quite expensive when prices spike during fuel crises. While railroads often claim to be improving fuel efficiency, they have failed to invest in the obvious solution: electrification. Railroad electrification would massively reduce pollution, improve operating efficiency, lower costs, and clear the way for faster rail service. With all these benefits, why have American railroads failed to electrify? The answer has to do with monopolization, a short-sighted focus on profit, and lack of national planning. However, it is not too late to correct our failures now. The US can still create a world-class, electrified rail network by nationalizing railroad infrastructure and recognizing it as a public good.

The US rail network is privately owned, largely by two sets of regional duopolies: CSX and Norfolk Southern in the east, and BNSF and Union Pacific in the west. These companies are fastidiously opposed to deploying capital that would improve infrastructure. As a result, they are unwilling to fund electrification and focus on cutting costs and services in order to reap higher profits. 

This refusal to invest in better rail infrastructure in pursuit of short-term profits is short-sighted at best and downright counterproductive at worst. The operating cost of electrified railways is markedly lower than that of those that run on diesel. A study from the 1980s found that electrification had an “economic advantage” over diesel, with a 19 percent pre-tax rate of return on electrifying 29,000 miles of US mainlines. Additionally, it is more than 50 percent cheaper to power a train on electricity than on diesel, especially considering current price hikes. Plus, with regenerative braking and catenaries, when trains are going downhill or slowing, they can sell power back to the grid.

By Union Jake and Adam - Valley Labor Report, March 3, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam - Valley Labor Report, March 2, 2023

By Union Jake, and David Story - Valley Labor Report, February 22, 2023

By Mel Bauer - The Nation, February 15, 2023

As public outrage has grown over the toxic fallout from last month’s fiery derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio, the urgent questions behind this disaster echo the past year’s confrontations over working conditions in the lightly regulated rail industry.

Indeed, the catastrophe in Ohio—together with another hazardous derailment in Houston, Tex., just a week later—drives home the steep costs in health and well-being that we all incur when we fail to heed rail workers’ calls for more regulation and adequate staffing mandates. 

As rail workers sought to win basic guarantees of staffing support and sick leave from rail carriers long accustomed to selling labor short and winning major regulatory concessions from federal agencies, they stressed how the unsustainable demands placed on their working lives would result in disasters just like the one in East Palestine. The northeast Ohio village of about 5,000 people is 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh and 20 miles south of Youngstown; already those metropolitan areas are under alert for the air and water contamination originating from the Palestine derailment. And in Palestine proper, many residents are already reporting troubling health symptoms and dying area wildlife as they weigh the risks of remaining exposed to the toxic fumes and chemical leaks from the derailed tanker cars carrying hazardous materials.

In the immediate aftermath of the derailment, rail officials ordered that the vinyl chloride hauled by five of the Norfolk Southern cars in the 150-car train be burned off to prevent a still greater explosion—but that action sent hydrogen chloride and phosgene, two dangerous gasses, spuming into the air. EPA investigators have since identified other hazardous chemicals the train had been hauling, including ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene, and butyl acrylate. And the EPA has released a report saying that chemicals from the derailment have leached into the soil and water in the aftermath of the accident.

By Rehad Desai, Dr. Claire Cohen, Sarah Eleazar, Zahid Ali, Rehad Desai, and Suda Sim Meriç - Global Climate Jobs, September 19, 2022

By John Molyneux - Global Ecosocialist Network, September 4, 2022

Recent events – the terrible floods in Pakistan, the drought and floods in China, the drought and floods in many parts of Africa, the heatwave and fires in France, Spain and Portugal, the fires in the American West and floods in Kentucky and more disasters by the day– make it clear that the catastrophe of climate chaos is upon us. To this must be added the chilling knowledge that this is only the starting point of a process that can only get worse.

The simple fact is that decades of warnings of impending disaster by scientists and the environmental movement have been studiously ignored by our rulers in clouds of greenwashing and ‘blah! blah! blah!’ The fact that COP 27 is being held in Sharm el-Sheik under the hideous Al-Sisi dictatorship, where no real protest is possible and that COP 28 will be held in the United Arab Emirates, is further confirmation that global capitalism is not going to change its spots.

This raises a serious strategic problem: what should the movement, and in particular ecosocialists, do next?

Up to now the climate movement as a whole has focused on raising the alarm: a) in the hope that our rulers will take effective action; b) in the hope of making the international public sufficiently aware to change its own behaviour and to pressure governments to change theirs. Within this framework, ecosocialists have focused on making the general intellectual case for the ecocidal nature of capitalism and the necessity of ecosocialist transformation. Doubtless these efforts will continue and doubtless we should continue to support them. But what if they are not enough and what if the hopes on which they are based are false or at least questionable?

By staff - Fight the Fire, September 2022

There are three aspects to the war in Ukraine.

First, the war began as a Russian invasion. A large majority of Ukrainians support the resistance by the Ukrainian armed forces. This is a fight for democracy. Invasion is always an act of dictatorship, whether in Ukraine, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq or Palestine.

Putin’s invasion is of a piece with his previous military interventions in Chechnya, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan and Syria. This is part of reestablishing Russian power and influence in the region of the old Soviet Union and the previous Russian Empire.

But Putin is also afraid of the spreading movements for democracy in Belarus and Central Asia. And he is afraid of the growing internal opposition in Russia. Military excursions to solidify internal power are a constant in the history of Putin’s Russia.

A victory for Ukraine would make the movements for democracy in Central Asia and Eastern Europe stronger.

But then there is the second aspect: this is a real war between Russia and Ukraine. But it is also a proxy war between the United States / NATO and Russia.

What this is not is a confrontation between the forces of democracy led by Biden, Scholtz and Macron and the forces of dictatorship led by Putin. What Russia is doing to Ukraine now, the US has done to many countries. Joe Biden supported the American invasions of Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington, Paris and Frankfurt have supported the Israelis, the Assads in Syria, the Saudis in Yemen and Sisi in Egypt. The list goes on and on.

The most important climate crime in the world right now is the US economic blockade of Afghanistan. The purpose of this blockade is to punish the Taliban and the Afghan people for defeating the American military. The blockade has turned a serious drought caused by climate change and a massive earthquake into a serious famine.

A victory of Ukraine over Russian invasion would also strengthen the power of NATO and American imperialism in many parts of the world.

The third aspect of the war is political. Putin is the leading figure in the growing global movement of the racist right. Other leading figures include Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the United States, Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France and Duterte and Marcos in the Philippines. There are many more leaders, in many more countries, that constitute this reactionary international, which is a bullwark for climate chaos.