Barack Obama

By Arnold Schroder - Rising Tide Portland, December 1, 2016

The day before police evicted the Frontline Encampment directly in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Jesse Jackson appeared at the blockade on horseback. Celebrity appearances at the DAPL resistance always gave the sleepless days and nights of Native American ceremony, construction equipment lockdowns, and riot police deployments a surreal tinge. But as police violence escalated and the conflict land defenders had anticipated for months loomed, the appearance of the civil rights icon and 1980s presidential candidate riding toward the burning barricades on North Dakota State Highway 1806 pushed the confrontation into the territory of a dream.

Now Governor Jack Dalrymple has ordered the eviction of the main encampment where thousands are resisting the pipeline—which is being constructed behind a fortress of razor wire fencing, floodlights, and armored vehicles—and is refusing to plow roads into the camp, refusing emergency services, and preventing delivery of supplies to water protectors. Police violence has already cost one woman her arm and potentially another vision in an eye and sent an elder into cardiac arrest, but now the state is simply trying to kill people.

This waking nightmare trajectory—events which simultaneously suspend one’s sense of reality and fill one with overwhelming dread—is of course paralleled in the ascendancy of a delusional fascist reality television star to the office of President and his subsequent appointment of a cadre of comic book villains to cabinet positions. In these moments of almost unbelievable human crisis and global change, in addition to political theory and movement history, one might look for guidance on how to respond in fictional narratives. As a friend recently said, “We are living in dystopian science fiction, and we better start acting like it.”

The following are a few thoughts on how to live up to that mandate. They begin with those narrowest in scope, pertaining directly to addressing the climate crisis and systemic ecological collapse, then move to inherent connections between movements attempting to do this and others addressing incarceration and repression, and finally into thoughts on general strategies against Trump’s assault on human dignity. What they have in common—the motivation for citing science fiction as a useful road map forward—is that they assume a situation that is so terrible it does not seem real engenders possibilities for liberatory action which otherwise would not be possible.

By Nick Engelfried - Waging Nonviolence, November 22, 2016

The climate movement woke on Nov. 9 to a new reality few of us had expected to be faced with: the specter of a Trump presidency and perhaps the most anti-environment administration and Congress in U.S. history. Suddenly our job of stopping new oil pipelines and fracking wells, preventing the construction of fossil fuel plants and shutting down existing fossil fuel infrastructure felt much harder.

Although the possibility of a Trump presidency had loomed for months, polls consistently showing Hillary Clinton in the lead made it seem remote. Many climate organizations laid their plans based on the presumption that they would most likely be dealing with a Clinton administration. “Assuming that as a nation we’ve managed to elect Hillary Clinton,” 350.org founder Bill McKibben wrote in an Election Day email to supporters, “we’ll need to start pressuring her from the earliest moments of her presidency.”

What the polls failed to account for was unexpectedly low voter turnout, caused in part by voter disaffection with both presidential candidates and a growing nationwide frustration with the existing political system. Despite Clinton winning the popular vote, low progressive turnout in key swing states granted Trump enough Electoral College votes to claim the presidency.

“We at The Climate Mobilization were not expecting a President Trump,” wrote leaders of The Climate Mobilization, a group that advocates for a Word War II-scale deployment of clean energy to fight climate change. “His election shows us that this country is desperate for change, but is still deeply in denial about the truth of the climate emergency.”

If there is any silver lining from the Trump victory, it would seem to be the evidence that vast numbers of people are hungry for a radical shift in politics. But Trump wants to take us in the opposite direction of progress on climate change. During his campaign, he pledged to scrap the Paris climate deal and the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. He promised to re-start approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and resurrect a dying coal industry. And his suite of potential cabinet nominees include climate science deniers and oil drilling proponents.

To many activists, the coming Trump presidency calls to mind the darkest days of the George W. Bush administration, when fossil fuel industries were basically invited to write national policy. But much has changed in the U.S. climate movement since the days of Bush. The last six years have seen the birth of climate campaigns that are bigger, bolder and more direct-action oriented than any environmental movement in decades.

Although this recent movement growth occurred during the Obama administration, its origins can be traced to a time when the climate movement was reeling from a series of shocking defeats. Obama’s campaign promises in 2008 had caused mainstream environmental groups to welcome his administration with the expectation of unprecedented progress. But this dream soon faded.

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, Spetember 29, 2016

Just months after becoming president of the United States, Barack Obama met with some of the world's most powerful executives.

It was a time of crisis: The economy was wavering dangerously in the aftermath of the housing bubble's great burst, and many of the nation's largest financial institutions had just been yanked from the brink of collapse.

Though the effects of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression were disastrous for countless Americans, the executives with whom the president spoke on that day in March of 2009 were doing just fine. In fact, many were doing better than ever.

While millions faced the prospect of losing their homes, their jobs, and their life savings, the same CEOs that helped spark the crash were paying themselves and their employees lavish bonuses.

The executives reportedly "offered several explanations" for their salaries, but the president quickly reminded them, "The public isn't buying that."

"My administration," Obama famously added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

It was a striking, even prescient, remark. Having ascended to the White House on a wave of grassroots support, the president was expected to take a stand for the public—it was expected that those guilty of wrongdoing would be held to account, that those harmed by Wall Street's rampant fraud would receive the full support of the administration.

But such high hopes were quickly dashed.

Or perhaps they were, from the start, misplaced. While President Obama did indeed ride a wave of grassroots support into the White House, that wave, it must be remembered, was generously bolstered by Wall Street cash.

And while the hopes of the millions who voted for change they could believe in may have, in the last analysis, been ill-advised, Wall Street certainly got its money's worth.

"Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street," Matt Taibbi noted in 2009. "What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place."

The Obama administration quickly downplayed such concerns, attempting to foster a genial relationship between the winners and losers of the crisis.

"The President emphasized that Wall Street needs Main Street, and Main Street needs Wall Street," Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, said after the high-profile meeting.

Thankfully, the public didn't buy that either.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 13, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

• Neither the TPP Nor National Sovereignty – By Elliot Sperber, CounterPunch, September 9, 2016; [related]: Leading Economists Oppose TPP Provision Giving Corporations Upper Hand in Investor-State Disputes – Lori Wallach interviewed by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now!, September 8, 2016 | As White House Spotlights Conflict With Democratic Presidential and Congressional Candidates by Escalating Toward TPP Lame-Duck Vote, Sen. Warren and Hundreds of Academics Urge Rejection – By Jeffrey Sachs, et. al., Public Citizen, September 7, 2016 | Good News for the People of Europe: The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Is Dead. Negotiations have Failed – By Peter Koenig, Global Research, September 7, 2016 | Obama’s TPP Would Widen the Divide –  By Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Institute for Policy Studies, September 1, 2016
• Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth's wilderness in 25 years – By Adam Vaughan, The Guardian, September 8, 2016; [related]: The Sick Ocean – By Robert Hunziker, CounterPunch, September 8, 2016
• Our energy system has changed since 1913; why hasn’t this subsidy? – By Julia Raven, Oil Change International, September 7, 2016
• Frack, Rattle and Roll: Drilling into Oklahoma’s Earthquake Epidemic – By Joshua Frank, CounterPunch, September 6, 2016; [related]: ‘Preemption’ Is Major Obstacle Across the Country as Progressive Laws Like Fracking Bans Passed in Liberal Cities Are Immediately Crushed by Right-Wing State Legislatures –  By Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, September 2, 2016

The Man Behind the Curtain:

• The Clean Power Plan: Justice Delayed — For Whom the Rule Tolls – Joel B. Stronberg, Renewable Energy World, September 9, 2016
• Fox News acknowledged climate change, then promptly took it back – By Katie Herzog, Grist, September 8, 2016
• 13 Academics Who Have Become Shills for Corporate Giants in the Food, Agrochemical and Fossil Fuel Industries – By Lorraine Chow, AlterNet, September 8, 2016
• The Truth Behind The Kochs’ New Fossil Fuel PR Campaign – By Jeremy Deaton, Think Progress, September 8, 2016
• To Fight Clean Power Plan, Fossil Fuel Companies Paid for Private Meetings with Republican State Prosecutors – By Ashley Braun, DeSmog Blog, September 7, 2016; [related]: Confidential Documents Show Fossil Fuel Industry Plotted With GOP AGs to Attack Clean Power Plan – By Climate Denier Roundup, EcoWatch, September 8, 2016 | Fossil Fuel Industry Paid for Meetings With GOP Attorneys General to Plan Attack on Clean Power Plan – By Nick Surgey, PR Watch, September 7, 2016 | Republican State AGs Met With Coal, Electricity Companies Before Filing Against The EPA’s Carbon Rule – By Samantha Page, Think Progress, September 7, 2016
• Hillary Clinton Is Raking In Fossil Fuel Money At An Alarming Rate – By Farron Cousins, DeSmog Blog, September 7, 2016; [related]: Big Oil is backing Hillary Clinton – By Emma Foehringer Merchant, Grist, September 7, 2016
• U.S. companies tout climate policies, fund climate skeptics – By Richard Valdmanis and Grant Smith, Reuters, September 6, 2016; [related]: New Reuters Exposé On Climate Change Denial Aims At Small Fry, Misses The Big One – By Tina Casey, Clean Technica, September 8, 2016 | Major corporations that claim to support climate action are funding politicians who oppose it – By Ben Adler, Grist, September 7, 2016 | U.S. Companies Publicly Support Climate Action, Privately Fund Deniers – By Natasha Geiling, Think Progress, September 6, 2016
• Conservative media bias is inflating American climate denial and polarization – By Dana Nuccitelli, The Guardian, September 6, 2016; [related]: Who's Driving Climate Denial? Big Companies and Conservative Media – By Jax Jacobsen, EcoWatch, September 6, 2016

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 24, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

• As Sirens Go Off, Richmond Residents Fear the Worst - By Isabella Zizi, Richmond Pulse, August 17, 2016
• Prepare for TPP’s Big Brother: The Trade In Services Agreement - By Paola Casale, Economy in Crisis, August 17, 2016
• Can a 'green growth' strategy solve climate change? - Samuel Alexander interviewed by Ian Sinclair, Open Democracy, August 16, 2016
• An Indiana City Is Poised To Become The Next Flint - By Alex Zielinski, Think Progress, August 15, 2016
• Political revolution can stop Trans-Pacific Partnership - By Larry Cohen, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, August 15, 2016
• We have almost certainly blown the 1.5-degree global warming target - By Andrew King and Benjamin J. Henley, The Conversation, August 15, 2016
• Free People from ‘Dictatorship’ of the 0.01% - By Vandana Shiva, Common Dreams, August 10, 2016
• As Coal Mining Declines, Community Mental Health Problems Linger - By Roberta Attanasio, The Conversation, August 1, 2016

The Man Behind the Curtain:

• Ohio Residents Clash With State and County Government in Fight to Ban Fracking via the Ballot - By Simon Davis- Cohen, DeSmog Blog, August 20, 2016
• British Columbia’s cynical new climate plan proposes new fossil fuel subsidies and banks on climate catastrophe - By Alex Doukas, Oil Change International, August 19, 2016;  [related]: Christy Clark Hopes You’re Not Reading This - By Emma Gilchrist, DeSmog Canada, August 18, 2016
• Changing the Language of Renewable Energy, the Electric Monopoly’s Newest Ploy - By Nick Stumo- Langer, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, August 18, 2016
• Koch Brothers Waging War Against Local Effort to Expose Dark Money - By Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, August 17, 2016
• Scott’s Undeclared Polluters’ Holiday Stains Florida - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, August 17, 2016
• The Steel Magnate Helping Trump Assail Pollution Regulations - By Marianne Lavelle, InsideClimate News, August 17, 2016
• Clinton Transition Team Headed by Anti-Climate 'Powerbroker' - By Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams, August 16, 2016; [related]: Clinton’s Transition Team: A Corporate Presidency Foretold - By Norman Solomon, Common Dreams, August 22, 2016 | Why Did Clinton Just Tap a Pro-TPP, Pro-KXL, Pro-Fracking Politician to Head Her Transition Team? - David Sirota interviewed by Juan González and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, August 17, 2016 | Clinton’s Salazar Pick Undermines Her Climate Promises, Putting Fracking Industry Before People - By Molly Dorozenski, EcoWatch, August 16, 2016
• Feeling Cornered, Coal Industry Borrows From Tobacco Playbook, Activists Say - By John Schwartz, New York Times, August 16, 2016
• Instead of Supporting Trump, Here's What the Koch Brothers Are Doing With Their $750 Million - By Climate Denier Roundup, EcoWatch, August 16, 2016; [related]: DeSmog Reporter Interviewed on Thom Hartmann About New Koch-Funded Initiative, Fueling U.S Forward - By Graham Readfearn, DeSmog Blog, August 18, 2016 |  As Renewables Soar, Oil Industry Launches New PR Offensive - By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International, August 16, 2016 | Koch bros want you to think fossil fuels are great for the whole family - By Katie Herzog, Grist, August 16, 2016
• Environmentalists split over Jay Faison and his push for “conservative clean energy” - By Ben Adler, Grist, August 15, 2016
• WEA lawsuit appears to blame BLM for low oil prices - By Chris Saeger, Western Values Project, August 12, 2016
• Why Bill Gates Is Hugely Misinformed About Renewables & Loves Impractical Nuclear - By Zachary Shahan, Clean Technica, August 11, 2016
• Ending Tax Dodging by Utilities Can Prompt Clean Energy Transition - By Janet Redman, The Real News Network, July 21, 2016

Green is the New Red:

• The spirit of Berta Cáceres: The power and playful defiance of Indigenous women at the World Social Forum - By Rachel Warden, Rabble.Ca, August 17, 2016
• Did federal agents spy on offshore oil lease protesters in New Orleans? - By Sue Sturgis, Facing South, August 11, 2016
• In Latin America, environmentalists are an endangered species - By Lindsay Fendt, Mongabay, August 11, 2016

By Kate Aronoff - Waging Nonviolence, January 20, 2016

Image: Activists deliver the Our Power Plan to the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco on January 19, 2016 (Facebook/CEJA)

Yesterday (January 19, 2016), activists at each of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 10 regional offices issued their own corrective on the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. Days before the end of the federal comment period, the Climate Justice Alliance’s Our Power Campaign — comprised of 41 climate and environmental justice organizations — presented its Our Power Plan, which identifies “clear and specific strategies for implementing the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, in a way that will truly benefit our families’ health and our country’s economy.”

Introduced last summer, the CPP looks to bring down power plants’ carbon emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels within 15 years. The plan was made possible by Massachusetts vs. EPA, a 2007 Supreme Court ruling which mandates that the agency regulate greenhouse gases as it has other toxins and pollutants under the Clean Air Act of 1963. Under the CPP, states are each required to draft their own implementation plans by September of this year, or by 2018 if granted an extension. If they fail to do so, state governments will be placed by default into an interstate carbon trading, or “Cap and Trade,” system to bring down emissions.

Michael Leon Guerrero, the Climate Justice Alliance’s interim coordinator, was in Paris for the most recent round of UN climate talks as part of the It Takes Roots Delegation, which brought together over 100 organizers from North American communities on the frontlines of both climate change and fossil fuel extraction. He sees the Our Power Plan as a logical next step for the group coming out of COP21, especially as the onus for implementing and improving the Paris agreement now falls to individual nations.

“Fundamentally,” he said, “we need to transform our economy and rebuild our communities. We can’t address the climate crisis in a cave without addressing issues of equity.”

By Nick Mullins - The Thoughful Coal Miner, December 12, 2015

I keep seeing people pointing fingers at Obama and the EPA for the woes of the Appalachian Coal Miner, so let’s think about it…

How hard would it be to believe that the power companies, the natural gas (oil) companies, and the coal companies sat down over a nice steak dinner to discuss our nations energy future?

Perhaps they worked things out like this….

The coal industry knows there’s not that much coal left, but they can still get to it and make a hell of a profit if they can do it cheaply, but there’s a catch—they have to surface mine it and tear up hell to do it (mountain top removal). The natural gas companies know they have a product that is cleaner than coal and the power companies know they can build cheaper plants, but they don’t want to leave their long time buddies with the coal industry hanging either. I should also add that they are all investing in each others stock.

So let’s devise a plan. Natural gas can get by  as a “clean” energy alternative or “bridge” fuel. In the mean time, they can allow their politician buddies to garner a few votes by enacting new regulations which doesn’t affect natural gas as badly, makes them look good with the “treehuggers” and puts a squeeze on coal markets. The benefit to the coal industry is it makes it look like there is a “War on Coal” which does two things. Not only does it get the democratic vote with people thinking they’re helping fight MTR and climate change, but it also gets all the republican voters to fight against regulations and vote in candidates who they think will help them keep their jobs.

On the surface (no pun intended) it appears like a big struggle, the “liberal” politicians hold up 36 surface mining permits letting the “treehuggers” feel like their winning, but it also gets all the working people in Appalachia to ignore the “treehugger’s” information on climate change and cancer rates, and to even go a step further and fight for de-regulation that paves the way for the coal companies to tear up hell without any consequence.

At the same time all the working people are so damn job scared they are willing to do whatever it takes to keep their jobs. This would mean working mandatory overtime and being forced into taking short cuts for fear of getting fired if they don’t meet production (Upper Big Branch). The coal companies can even get by with filing bankruptcy and jerking all the benefits from their pensioners while everyone points all their blind hatred towards the EPA and the president. Coal mining families continue to vote in the conservatives who have everyone thinking they’re for the working people, but in truth they are cutting the working man’s throat by blocking safety regulations (giving miners the right to shut a section down if it’s unsafe to operate) and labor rights laws (that could put an end to mandatory overtime and cause them to have to hire more miners). The “War on Coal” also focuses everyone’s hatred away from where it should be.

Everyone should be focusing their hatred on all the coal companies and politicians who have manipulated them into believing coal is all there is and ever will be, while not lifting one single finger to build up local infrastructure and bring in job alternatives. Billions of dollars of coal have left Appalachia in just the last decade and not a damn thing has been done to bring in job alternatives or build up our roads, or our towns, or our education systems. Instead, they give everyone “Friends of Coal” stickers and go into the public schools to teach our kids about their version of coal in Appalachia without all the bloody union struggles and company hired mercenaries killing the families of coal miners trying to fight for a living wage.

They want people poor and desperate enough to fight for the high wages of a mining job and who aren’t afraid to cut their neighbors throat to keep it, whether it’s in the superintendent’s office or running equipment and destroying some poor person’s backyard.

And it looks like the companies and politicians have done a hell of a job at it because people aren’t thinking about the bigger picture. They just want to blame the EPA and Obama.

That’s business my friends. Each company get’s what they want. The coal companies walk away with everything and have all their earnings invested in natural gas, the natural gas industry makes bank, and the politicians—on both sides—get all the perks and votes they can handle.

Just imagine if one day we all woke up and realized we didn’t have to go in debt and work full time jobs for companies that treat us like crap, that we can still grow our own food and live simpler, happier lives with plenty of time to spend with friends and family, raising our children the right way—to be good to each other, to give freely, and that happiness doesn’t come attached to a dollar bill dangling from a coal company’s fishing pole….

By Nafeez Ahmed - Medium.Com, September 4, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

At the end of this month, the UN will launch its new 2030 Sustainable Development agenda for “people, planet and prosperity” in New York, where it will be formally adopted by over 150 world leaders.

The culmination of years of consultations between governments, communities and businesses all over the world, there is no doubt that the agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer an unprecedented vision of the interdependence of global social, economic and environmental issues.

But records from the SDG process reveal that insiders at the heart of the UN’s intergovernment engagement negotiations have criticised the international body for pandering to the interests of big business and ignoring recommendations from grassroots stakeholders representing the world’s poor.

Formal statements issued earlier this year as part of the UN’s Post-2015 Intergovernmental Negotiations on the SDGs, and published by the UN Sustainable Development Division, show that UN ‘Major Groups’ representing indigenous people, civil society, workers, young people and women remain deeply concerned by the general direction of the SDG process — whereas corporate interests from the rich, industrialised world have viewed the process favourably.