capitalism

By Brendan Montague - DeSmog UK, July 1, 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.

The winds are changing for the energy giants. And so the black plumes of smoke emitted by the climate deniers in an attempt to provide cover for the coal, oil and gas industry have already been refined.

The free market think tanks funded by dirty energy have spent the last decade claiming there is no global warming. But now their message is subtly different. 

The primary concern has become the plight of Indian peasants, Chinese factory workers and African children who are, we are told, being denied a prosperous and dignified life by uncaring environmentalists and climate alarmists.

The most eloquent and charming of the sophists selling this new line of snake oil for the world’s most profitable and powerful companies is Matt Ridley, the popular science writer and also a viscount and a member of the House of Lords.

By Ian Rappel - International Socialism, Issue 147, June 24, 2015

Life on earth is arguably the most extraordinary phenomenon in the perceivable universe. And, among living things, 21st century humans are uniquely possessed with the means to appreciate this remarkable occurrence. Scientifically, for example, we can consider the sheer number and diversity of species in existence today. The Catalogue of Life1 project lists 1.58 million species identified to date, and the final tally looks likely to fall between 2 and 8 million.2 It is also worth considering that our geological moment holds the highest levels of species diversity in the Earth’s history, and that extant species probably represent only 1 percent of those that have ever lived on Earth—a total of between 200 and 800 million species.

This richness of life on Earth is described as biodiversity. At one level, this term applies to the number of species and genetic diversity within species. But it also includes the aggregated interactions of individual organisms and species through the multilayered food webs and trophic levels that we describe, in turn, as ecology and ecosystems. The outputs of these units and interactions of biodiversity define and reflect the world in which we live. Thus viewed, we can describe biodiversity as nothing less than living nature itself.

Beyond the numbers it is worth encountering some of the curious wonders of our planet’s biodiversity at the individual species level. Take Australia’s gastric-brooding frog Rheobatrachus silus. Discovered in the babbling brooks of south eastern Queensland in 1973, the female frog of this species has the unique ability to host its own offspring through all stages of metamorphosis—from egg spawn to tadpole to juvenile—within its own digestive system. It effectively turns its stomach into a brooding chamber and gives birth to its young through its mouth, returning the stomach to digestive duties a few days later. For another example, consider the Arctic cod Boreogadus saida. This fish lives at oceanic depths of 900 metres within 70 miles of the North Pole. The water temperatures within its habitat hover around 0°C—conditions that would ordinarily freeze the biological tissues and fluids of an organism. The Arctic cod survives these extreme temperatures by producing “antifreeze” proteins that reduce the freezing temperatures of its own body fluids. The physical, chemical and biological mechanisms necessary to undertake these functions, and the route through which these evolutionary strategies must have developed, are testimony to the creative force inherent within biological evolution.

Aside from the science, biodiversity also plays an inspirational role in our lives in other ways—through our culture, art, poetry and language, for example. Within our own individual consciousness, our fellow life forms are used as one of the tap-wells of human imagination, providing us with a rich seam of metaphors with which to explore our cognitive horizons, and sensory alternatives to contrast with our own human frailties. In our social context, connection with other living forms helps us a little to cope with alienation—whether this entails the keeping of pets and houseplants, or pausing to feed the pigeons on a lunch break.

From the perspective of human livelihoods, however, the most ­significant intersection between ourselves and wider biodiversity revolves around our dialectical interrelationship with life as the chief material means through which we feed, clothe and shelter ourselves.

By Patrick Bond - Triple Crisis, June 17, 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.

Who’s not heard the great African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral’s injunction, fifty years ago, “Tell no lies and claim no easy victories”? If, like me, you’re a petit bourgeois who is hopeful for social progress, then let’s be frank: this advice hits at our greatest weakness, the temptation of back-slapping vanity.

The leading framers for the 41-million strong clicktivist team from Avaaz need to remember Cabral. They over-reached ridiculously last week in praising the G7:

Many told us it was a pipe dream, but the G7 Summit of leading world powers just committed to getting the global economy off fossil fuels forever!!! Even the normally cynical media is raving that this is a huge deal. And it’s one giant step closer to a huge win at the Paris summit in December – where the entire world could unite behind the same goal of a world without fossil fuels – the only way to save us all from catastrophic climate change… Our work is far from done, but it’s a day to celebrate – click here to read more and say congratulations to everyone else in this incredibly wonderful community!!

Actually, according to The Economist: “no fossil-fuel-burning power station will be closed down in the immediate future as a result of this declaration. The goal will not make any difference to the countries’ environmental policies, since they are mostly consistent with this long-range goal anyway. Where they are not (some countries are increasing coal use, for example) they will not be reined in because of the new promises… the G7’s climate effort raises as many questions as it answers. The group seems to have rejected proposals for more demanding targets, such as decarbonisation by 2050.”

Or Time: “The results were disappointing to say the least… The G7 announced an ‘ambitious’ plan to phase out all fossil fuels worldwide by 2100. Unfortunately, they didn’t make any concrete plans to scale back their own conventional fuel consumption. That’s a big deal when 59 percent of historic global carbon dioxide emissions—meaning the greenhouse gases already warming the atmosphere—comes from these seven nations. Taken as a group, G7 coal plants produce twice the amount of CO2 as the entire African continent, and at least 10 times the carbon emissions produced by the 48 least developed countries as a whole. If the G7 is serious about tackling climate change, they should start at home.”

So what was going on, really? Here’s a talking head from the Council on Foreign Relations (an imperialist braintrust): “The United States has long pressed for a shift away from binding emissions reduction commitments and toward a mix of nationally grounded emission-cutting efforts and binding international commitments to transparency and verification. European countries have often taken the other side, emphasizing the importance of binding targets (or at least policies) for cutting emissions. Now it looks like the big developed countries are on the same page as the United States. The language above is all about binding countries to transparency – and there isn’t anything elsewhere in the communiqué about binding them to actual emissions goals.”

There is an even tougher critique from the left, e.g. from Oscar Reyes of the Institute for Policy Studies, who annotated the G7 climate communique here. He lands many powerful blows, not least of which is that you simply cannot trust these politicians. This is well known in Africa. Exactly a decade ago, Tony Blair led the (then-G8) Gleneagles Summit that made all manner of ambitious redistributive promises for the continent that weren’t fulfilled.

By James Plested - Red Flag, May 30, 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.

Five trillion US dollars annually – that’s how much is being lavished in various forms of subsidies on the global fossil fuel industry, according to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). US$10 million a minute – more than the health budgets of every country on earth combined.

We’re told that there’s not enough money for decent health care, education or welfare. But the equivalent of 6.5 percent of global GDP is being poured into an industry that’s driving the world to social and environmental catastrophe.

The shocking findings of the IMF’s working paper, “How large are global energy subsidies?”, are based on calculations of the true cost of fossil fuels when all their destructive environmental, health and other impacts are taken into account – what in economic terms are called “externalities”.

The most obvious of these externalities is climate change. Phenomena such as rising sea levels, increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events (droughts, floods, cyclones) and bushfires are already costing the world hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

But even this, according to the IMF’s analysis, is only a small part of it. The larger portion of the hidden costs of fossil fuels relates not to climate change, but rather to more “everyday” impacts such as the negative health effects of air pollution.

Astoundingly, the headline figures coming out of the working paper – subsidies totalling US$4.9 trillion in 2013, rising to US$5.3 trillion this year – are likely to be a significant underestimate. For a start, the IMF based its calculation of the cost of climate change on a highly optimistic US government model. The list of damaging impacts of the fossil fuel industry could also easily be broadened. A strong case could be made, for example, that the cost of wars associated with global competition for fossil fuels should also be included.

By Richard Smith - World Economics Association - 2015

This book is a collection of five essays that deal with the prime threat to human life on Earth: the tendency of global capitalist economic development to develop us to death, to drive us off the cliff to ecological collapse. It begins with a review of the origins of this economic dynamic in the transition to capitalism in England and Europe and with an analysis of the ecological implications of capitalist economics as revealed in the work of its founding theorist – Adam Smith. I argue that, once installed, the requirements of reproduction under capitalism – the pressure of competition, the imperative need to innovate and develop the forces of production to beat the competition, the need to constantly grow production and expand the market and so on, induced an expansive logic that has driven economic development and overdevelopment, down to the present day.

In successive essays I explicate and criticize the two leading mainstream approaches to dealing with the ecological consequences of this over-developmental dynamic – décroisance or “degrowth”, and “green capitalism”. I show that the theorists and proponents of no-growth or de-growth – like Herman Daly or Tim Jackson – are correct in arguing that infinite economic growth is not possible on a finite planet, but that they’re wrong to imagine that capitalism can be refashioned as a kind of “steady state” economy, let alone actually “degrow” without precipitating economic collapse. There are further problems with this model, which I also investigate. I show that the theorists and proponents of “green capitalism” such as Paul Hawkin, Lester Brown and Frances Cairncross are wrong to think that tech miracles, “dematerialization”, new efficiencies, recycling and the like, will permit us to grow the global economy – more or less forever – without consuming and polluting ourselves to death. I show that while we’re all better off with organic groceries, energy-efficient light bulbs and so on, such developments do not fundamentally reverse the eco-suicidal tendencies of capitalist development, because in any capitalist economy the environment has to be subordinated to maximizing growth and sales, or companies can’t survive in the marketplace. Yet infinite growth, even green growth, is impossible on a finite planet.

In the final essays I argue that since capitalism can only drive us to ecological collapse, we have no choice but to try to cashier this system and replace it with an entirely different economy and mode of life based on: minimizing not maximizing resource consumption; public ownership of most, though not necessarily all, of the economy; large-scale economic planning and international coordination; and a global “contraction and convergence” between the North and the South around a lower but hopefully satisfactory level of material consumption for all the world’s peoples. Whether we can pull off such a transition is another question. We may very well fail to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a viable alternative. That may be our fate. But around the world, in thousands of locations, people are organizing and fighting against corporate power, against land grabs, against extreme extraction, against the incessant commodification of our lives. Here and there, as in Greece and China, ruling classes are on the defensive. All these fights have a common demand: bottom-up democracy, popular power. In this lies our best hope. This little book is intended as more ammunition for that fight.

Read the report (Link).

By Robert Kuttner - Common Dreams, April 18, 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.

On Thursday, legislation moved forward that would give President Obama authority to negotiate two contentious trade deals: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). But for the most part, these aren’t trade agreements at all. They’re a gift to corporations, here and in partner countries, that claim to be restrained by domestic regulations.

If these deals pass, the pharmaceutical industry could get new leverage to undermine regulations requiring the use of generic drugs. The tobacco industry has used similar “trade” provisions to attack cigarette package warnings.

A provision in both deals, known as Investor State Dispute Settlement, would allow corporations to do end runs around national governments by taking their claims to special tribunals, with none of the due process of normal law. This provision has attracted the most opposition. It’s such a stinker that one of the proposed member nations, Australia, got an exemption for its health and environmental policies.

To get so-called fast-track treatment for these deals, the administration needs special trade promotion authority from Congress. But Obama faces serious opposition in his own party, and he will need lots of Republican votes. He has to hope that Republicans are more eager to help their corporate allies than to embarrass this president by voting down one of his top priorities.

But the real intriguing question is why Obama invests so much political capital in promoting agreements like these. They do little for the American economy, and even less for its workers.

The trade authority vote had been bottled up while the Senate Finance Committee Chair, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and his Democratic counterpart, Ron Wyden of Oregon, worked out compromise language in the hope of winning over skeptical Democrats. The measure announced Thursday includes vague language on protections for labor and environmental standards, human rights, and Internet freedoms. Congress would get slightly longer to review the text, but it would still have to be voted on as a package that could not be amended.

Wyden trumpeted these provisions as breakthroughs, but they were scorned by leading labor and environmental critics as window dressing. Lori Wallach, of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, points out that the language is almost identical to that of a 2014 bill that had to be withdrawn for lack of support. Only about a dozen House Democrats are said to support the measure — and many Republicans won’t back it unless more Democrats do.

But why would they, at a time when Hillary Clinton sounds more populist and momentum is increasing for campaigns to raise the minimum wage? Speaking last week at the Brookings Institution, Jason Furman, chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, proclaimed that, according to an elaborate economic model, by 2025 the Pacific deal would increase US incomes by 0.4 percent, or about $77 billion.

That’s pretty small beer. And as Furman admitted, the projection is only as good as its economic assumptions. One such heroic assumption is full employment, but this deal might well reduce US employment by increasing our trade deficit.

The TPP was rolled out with great fanfare in 2012 as part of Obama’s “pivot to Asia.” The subtext was that a Pacific trade deal would help contain China’s influence in its own backyard.

Since then, Beijing has unveiled a development bank that rivals the US-dominated World Bank, and our closest allies — Britain, France, Germany, Italy — are lined up to join. It’s not at all clear how the TPP, whose only large Asian member would be Japan, helps contain China, whose economic influence continues to grow.

Basically, ever since the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993 (NAFTA), trade policy has been on autopilot. Tariffs are now quite low, and these deals are mainly about dismantling health, safety, consumer, labor, environment, and corporate regulations.

These agreements are conceived and drafted by corporations, and sponsored by both political parties. For the Obama administration, the key official negotiating these deals is US Trade Ambassador Michael Froman, a protégé of former Citigroup and Goldman Sachs executive Robert Rubin, who was a big promoter of NAFTA while serving as Bill Clinton’s top economic official.

Mainly, these deals help cement a corporate alliance with the presidential wing of the Democratic Party and divert attention from the much tougher challenge of enacting policies that would actually raise living standards. In the closing days of the Obama era, this is what passes for bipartisanship.

By Chaparral - Chaparral Respects No Borders, March 1, 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.

The Resolution Copper land grab is also a water grab, with a projected use of millions of gallons per year and contamination of more; and during what could be a mega-drought. Water is often compared to gold as its value increases the more scarce it becomes, which means we may soon be fighting not only the increasing privatization of land, but also of water. Despite the fact that the Resolution Copper deal, having been snuck into a defense bill, involves an exchange of land, it is being done to the advantage of a transnational mining corporation and to the detriment of the Chi’Chil’Ba’Goteel/Oak Flat/Apache Leap area and the people who hold it sacred. This land grab represents a continued prioritization of economic development in so-called Arizona, which means more resource-extraction and increased international trade (specifically with or through Mexico). Mining and other industries shaped by trade-related demand bring not only risk to water, but also more roads like Interstate 11 and rail (which require land acquisition), and increased border militarization. US trade policy is largely culpable for the violence on the border and south of the border.

Economic development is portrayed as bringing more jobs, but these “free-market” policies, as in the case of NAFTA, are meant to redistribute wealth to the hands of the rich. Because of their trade relationship and connecting infrastructure, Arizona and Sonora have a shared fate as land, water, safety, indigenous ways of life and sacred sites are all at risk. The state governments enable resource-extraction and other infrastructural projects, lucrative to those who would build them and those who would finance them, through subsidization and protection with our tax dollars.

Arizona's connection to a port in Guaymas, Sonora is crucial to the Arizona mining industry. Copper is one of the fastest growing US exports, and much of what is and would be mined in Arizona would be transported down to where mining companies such as BHP Billiton (of Resolution Copper) and Freeport McMoran do business at this Mexican port on the Sea of Cortez. Guaymas is also significant because shipping companies can have lower standards for working conditions in Mexico versus the US. This port is the southernmost point of the CANAMEX Corridor, the NAFTA trade route connecting Canada and Mexico through five US states including Arizona. The Port of Guaymas has been expanding over the years and brings along its own set of problems in the vicinity, requiring its own energy sources and water, damaging the environment, impacting the local communities, etc. Arizona is counting on the continued growth of the Mexican economy, yet the importance of the Port of Guaymas also signifies that a lot of exports from the US are meant to cross the Pacific ocean (especially if the Trans Pacific Partnership goes into effect), not stay within its favored trade partner's borders.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 10, 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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• Register now for the Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conferences: Richmond, California (March 14, 2015) and Olympia, Washington (March 21, 2015) - railroadconference.org
• An Oil Worker & a Union Staffer Explain Why 1,000s of Oil Workers Across the Country Are On Strike - By David Bacon, In These Times, February 12, 2015 [related] USW Web Petition: Safe Refineries Save Lives!

USW Refinery Workers Strike News:

• Climate activists have to stand with the strikers - By Ragina Johnson, Socialist Worker, February 12, 2015
• Labor talks to resume Tuesday - By L.M. Sixel, FuelFix, February 9, 2015 [related] Oil Union Says Shell Talks to Resume in a Week Amid Strike - By Lynn Doan, Bloomberg, February 11, 2015
• Nurses Stand in Solidarity with Steelworkers Amid Safety Concerns - National Nurses United, February 9, 2015
• Oil Workers Are Striking Because They're Underpaid and Overworked—and It's Killing Them - By Rebecca Leber, New Republic, February 10, 2015
• Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on the USW Oil Workers’ Unfair Labor Practice Strike - By Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO, February 11, 2015
• Striking Oil Workers Say They’re Fighting Deadly Working Conditions - By Rebecca Burns, In These Times, February 11, 2015
• Tesoro Refinery strike moves into second week - By Laura Anthony, KGO ABC 7 News, February 10, 2015
• USW Building International Solidarity; Steelworkers President Seeks Meeting with Shell CEO - United Steelworkers, February 9, 2015

Rail Safety:

• Teamsters give CP Rail 72-hour strike notice; 3,330 locomotive engineers and conductors could walk off the job this weekend - By Tracy Johnson, CBC News, February 10, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Abandon ship! Riggers flee the collapsing shale oil industry - By Giles Parkinson, ReNew Economy, February 11, 2015
• FMC Technologies to cut about 2,000 jobs - By Collin Eaton, Fuel Fix, February 11, 2015
• Fracking Industry in “Severe Crisis” - By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International, February 11, 2015
• Global oil layoffs exceed 100,000 - Bloomberg, February 12, 2015
• Halliburton to cut 5,000 to 6,500 jobs - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, February 10, 2015
• Oil budgets slashed to protect shareholder dividends - By Joshua Cain, Fuel Fix, February 9, 2015
• Oil layoffs could come back to haunt the industry - By Tom DiChristopher, CNBC, February 10, 2015
• Why Public Banks Outperform Private Banks: Unfair Competition or a Better Mousetrap? - By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Blog, February 10, 2015

Green Jobs and Just Transition:

• Solar Jobs Boom Makes Keystone XL Pipeline Look Like A Tinker Toy - By Tina Casey, Clean Technica, February 12, 2015
• Texas solar jobs increasing - By Ryan Honeywell, FuelFix, February 12, 2015

Global Anti-Capitalism:

• Can Bolivia Chart a Sustainable Path Away From Capitalism? - By Chris Williams and Marcela Olivera, Truthout, January 28, 2015
• Naomi Klein on how to build a more kick-ass climate movement - By Staff, Grist, February 10, 2015
• Photos: Coal strike in Poland intensifies - Al Jazeera, February 9, 2015
• Polish Farmers Blockade Motorways Across Country - La Via Campesina, February 10, 2015
• Syria’s Kurdish Revolution; the Anarchist Element & the Challenge of Solidarity - By Bill Weinberg, Fifth Estate, Spring 2015 [related] The No State Solution: Institutionalizing Libertarian Socialism in Kurdistan - By Alexander Kolokotronis, New Politics, November 2, 2014

An Injury to One is an Injury to All!:

• Rising Tide North America Statement of Solidarity with Anti-Fossil Fuel Activists in the Northwest - By Rising Tide North America, February 9, 2015

Other News:

• A City Where Everyone Works, There is No Police, and the Salary is 1200 Euros - Live Travel Enjoy, February 6, 2015
• Court denies appeal by worker who claimed fracking chemicals blinded him - By Matt Miller, The Patriot News, February 11, 2015
• The looming climate catastrophe - By Chris Williams, Socialist Worker, February 4, 2015
• Making occupational illness visible: a call for a coalition between scientists and workers - European Trade Union Institute, February 10, 2015
• Market no solution to climate catastrophe - By James Plested, Red Flag, January 29, 2015
• It May Not Be Making Headlines But That Doesn’t Mean It’s Over….Update on EBOLA [audio] - By Pattie Lockard, Nurse Talk Radio, February 10, 2015
• Oil ship explosion in Brazil kills three, union says - Associated Press, February 11, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC