climate change

By Tyler Zimmer - Socialist Worker, October 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.

IT'S ONLY been a week, but it's already being dubbed one of the biggest-ever corporate scandals.

Volkswagen, the world's largest auto manufacturer, was recently caught rigging millions of its cars to cheat on emissions tests. Software known as "defeat devices" was installed in more than 11 million cars that enabled the vehicles to pass emissions tests they would otherwise have failed. The illicit devices detect when a car is being tested and direct the engine to pump out far less pollutants--98 percent less--into the air than they ordinarily do when on the road.

The fallout has been swift and profoundly damaging for the company. In a single week, more than a quarter of the company's total value of shares has been completely wiped out. Governments in Germany and the U.S. are already promising to impose heavy fines--some sources say the total amount could add up to as much as $10 billion to $20 billion. Executives have resigned, sales have been suspended, and a massive recall of rigged cars looms large.

Of course, if you were to take the VW brand's self-image at face value, these revelations would come as something of a severe shock. Volkswagen has spent the last several years cultivating a public image that evokes precision, efficiency and ecological sensitivity--VW's are "clean, quiet and powerful" as a recent advertisement put it.

The company has courted millennials with talk of "clean diesel technology." Indeed, before the scandal broke, VW was held up by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index as the "greenest," most environmentally conscious carmaker in the world. This is only one of many awards that the company has racked up over the years for its supposed commitment to ecological sustainability.

No doubt much of the public outrage directed at VW owes to the contradiction between the company's "green" reputation, on the one hand, and its systematic engagement in fraudulent polluting, on the other. As more and more information about the company's decision-making comes to light, the easier it becomes to see the matter in purely ethical terms, as a case where greed blinded those at the top.

The public will be encouraged to conclude that this scandal is the result of cynical, deceptive actions on the part of a few corporate executives--"a few bad apples"--at the top of Volkswagen. But thinking about the issue in this way would be a mistake, since it would lead us to overlook the larger, systemic problems with capitalism that this scandal reveals.

By Kristen Lyons and Peter Westoby  - The Conversation, September 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.

In recent years there has been significant movement toward land acquisition in developing countries to establish forestry plantations for offsetting carbon pollution elsewhere in the world. This is often referred to as land grabbing.

These carbon trading initiatives work on the basis that forestry plantations absorb carbon dioxide and other polluting greenhouse gases. This helps to undo the environmental damage associated with modern western lifestyles.

Carbon markets are championed as offering solutions to climate change while delivering positive development outcomes to local communities. Heavy polluters, among them the airline and energy sectors, buy carbon credits and thereby pay local communities, companies and governments to protect forests and establish plantations.

But are carbon markets - and the feel good stories that have sprung up around them - all just a bit too good to be true?

There is mounting evidence that forestry plantations and other carbon market initiatives severely compromise livelihoods and ecologies at a local level. The corporate land grabs they rely on also tend to affect the world’s most vulnerable people – those living in rural areas.

But such adverse impacts are often written out of the carbon market ledger. Sometimes they are simply justified as ‘externalities’ that must be accepted as part of ensuring we avoid climate apocalypse.

Green Resources is one of a number of large-scale plantation forestry and carbon offset corporations operating on the continent. Its activities are having a profound impact on the livelihoods of a growing number of people. Norwegian-registered, the company produces saw log timber and charcoal in Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. It receives carbon revenue from its plantation forestry operations.

In Uganda, the focus of our research, Green Resources holds two licenses over 11,864 hectares of government-owned, ‘degraded’ Central Forest Reserve. Historically, villagers could access this land to grow food, graze animals and engage in cultural practices.

Under the licensed land agreement between Uganda’s government and Green Resources, more than 8,000 people face profound disruptions to their livelihoods. Many are experiencing forced evictions as a direct result of the company’s take over of the land.

By Mel Barnes - Green Left Weekly, August 29, 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.

This week Canadian author Naomi Klein is visiting Australia to speak about why capitalism is incompatible with action on climate change.

Her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate encourages everyone already involved in fighting for social justice and equality to see climate change as the “best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world”.

This vision is the antidote to the bleak picture painted by climate scientists and the knowledge that not just Australia, but the US and China have set targets that put the world on track for rises far above what the science says we can all survive.

Last week, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July was the warmest month ever recorded and with a predicted El Nino, Australia is set to experience another hot summer.

Rising temperatures and chaotic weather are not the only outcomes of climate change. When this intersects with poverty, racism and unemployment, it is clear that the most vulnerable will be the worst off.

The good news is these issues can be tackled through the same measures we take to tackle climate change. It means transforming our economy and society from one where power is concentrated in the hands of the rich, into one where we enjoy a higher quality of life and greater equality thanks to the need to share resources.

It will mean investing in public infrastructure, such as transport, housing and health, and the creation of permanent, green jobs. It will mean greater democracy for communities to make decisions about issues that affect them; this includes Aboriginal communities having control over their land.

But it will not happen if we leave it up to politicians negotiating through international agreements.

By Flor Avelino, et. al. - Transformative Social Innovation (TRANSIT), September 2015

There are numerous social innovation networks and initiatives worldwide with the ambition to contribute to transformative change towards more sustainable, resilient and just societies. Many of these have a specific vision on the economy and relate to alternative visions of a ‘New Economy’. This paper highlights four prominent strands of new economy thinking in state-of-the-art discussions: degrowth, collaborative economy, solidarity economy, and social entrepreneurship.

Taking a perspective of transformative social innovation, the paper draws on case studies of 12 social innovation initiatives to analyse how these relate to new economies and to transitions toward new economic arrangements. The 12 cases are analysed in terms of a) how they relate to narratives of change on new economies, b) how they renew social relations, and c) how their new economy arrangements hold potential to challenge established institutional constellations in the existing economy.

Read the text (PDF).

By Nicole Colson - Socialist Worker, August 16, 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 "most important action any president has taken to address the climate crisis." America's "strongest-ever climate action." An example of "visionary leadership necessary to reduce emissions and to tackle climate change."

It would be an understatement to say that the mainstream press was effusive in praising Barack Obama's plan to stem climate change--dubbed the "Clean Power Plan"--unveiled earlier this month.

According to the narrative, Obama, with nothing left to lose at the close of his presidency, is finally focusing on creating a legacy of real change, rather than playing politics with the Republicans. Thus, he's doing now what he should have long ago and directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tighten existing regulations on U.S. power plants in order to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the main driver of climate change.

But when some of the loudest applause for Obama's "visionary" plan comes from corporate polluters themselves, we should be more than skeptical that what Obama is proposing is in any way a game-changer for the environment.

By Erik D. Kojola - Sage Publications, August 20, 2015

Environmental protection is presumed to damper economic growth and media accounts of resource extraction often portray trade-offs between jobs and the environment. However, there is limited evidence that environmental protection universally costs jobs and heavily polluting industries provide few jobs in comparison to environmental impacts.

Therefore, how has media discourse contributed to the taken-for-granted division between the economy and the environment? This paper uses the Keystone XL pipeline controversy as a case of the symbolical conflict between supporters of growth and conservation to explore the role of ideology and power in media discourse.

I use frame analysis of newspaper articles to explore the representations of labor and the environment and how hegemonic ideology legitimizes resource extraction. My analysis reveals binary framing that constructed the pipeline as a political controversy over the trade-off between the environment and the economy, which made conflict between workers and environmentalists sensible, and silenced alternatives.

Read the text (link).