climate change

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 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.

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

Lead Stories:

• Beyond Extinction: Transition to post-capitalism is inevitable (A response to Margaret Atwood's, It’s Not Climate Change It’s Everything Change) - By Nafeez Ahmed, Medium.Com, July 28, 2015
• The Hurricane Katrina Pain Index: 10 Years Later - By Bill Quigley, Portside, July 20, 2015

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Flood the System - Fall 2015: Flood, blockade, occupy and shut down the systems that jeopardize our future! | #FloodTheSystem
• People’s Climate Strike - November 26 - December 12, 2015
• Railcon15 - Chicago, Illinois Saturday, September 19, 2015 | #Railcon15
• Trade Union Climate Summit - September 14 & 15, 2015 Paris | #unions4climate

Bread and Roses:

• Strike Suspended in Potosi, Bolivian VP Declared "Persona non Grata" - By EFE, Earth First! Journal, August 3, 2015
• Farmworkers score big in new tomato deal - By Eve Andrews, Grist, July 29, 2015
• Farmworkers Walk Out Again in Organic Blueberry Fields Over Continuing Unattainable Production Standards Under Sakuma’s New Pay Scale - By Staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, July 24, 2015

By Dan Bacher - Daily Kos, July 21, 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 yet another carefully choreographed photo opportunity to tout his "green" image while he promotes the expansion of fracking, Governor Jerry Brown today urged the world's mayors to "light a fire" and "join California in the fight against climate change."

Brown was speaking on the first day of the Vatican's symposium on climate change and modern slavery hosted by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences.

"We have fierce opposition and blind inertia," Brown claimed. "And that opposition is well-financed, hundreds of millions of dollars going into propaganda, into falsifying the scientific record, bamboozling people of every country. We have to fight that propaganda and overcome the inertia and the tremendous opposition."

"Mayors, you are at the bottom of this power chain and you have got to light a fire. We have to join together. We have to make a change. It's up to us to make it happen," Brown said.

Without a hint of irony, Brown also gushed about the "interconnectedness of all beings" as his administration rushes the construction of the Delta tunnels, potentially the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history, and presides over water policies that have brought winter run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and Sacramento splittail to the brink of extinction.

"The role of nature, the interconnectedness of all beings, these are ideas that while implicit, have never been so clear as they have been made in this encyclical," stated Brown.

The Vatican's symposium aims to drive awareness, dialogue and action at the local level on climate change and modern slavery – two interconnected issues highlighted in the pope's recent encyclical, according to an announcement from the Governor's Office.

Governor Brown will address the symposium again during tomorrow's program.

You can expect the mainstream media and some corporate "environmental" groups to gush over Brown's grandstanding at the Vatican with little critical analysis of the Governor's actual environmental record, a toxic legacy that I have documented in article after article.

Fortunately, faith leaders from Brown’s home state and environmental experts introduced a critical note to the narrative about Brown's visit to the Vatican when they commended the Pope for his leadership and urged him to take this opportunity to call on Brown and other leaders to ban fracking and take every possible measure to protect "our climate."

“We in the faith community applaud Pope Francis for highlighting the moral imperative of addressing climate change and protecting creation, and appreciate that he is bringing leaders like Jerry Brown to the Vatican to highlight the issue,” said Rev. Ambrose Carroll, a senior pastor at the Church by the Side of Road in Oakland, Calif., and a member of Faith Against Fracking. “We hope he will be able to get Governor Brown to see the indisputable incompatibility of his attempts to fight climate change while enabling the worst climate polluters to continue fracking.”

From the Introduction:

Desperate to avoid climate regulation that may affect profits, polluting corporations are working hand-in-hand with governments, presenting a dizzying array of false solutions that deepen inequalities in our societies. There is a clear agenda: Manage the climate crisis without compromising profits, the power structures or the economic system that got us here, even if that means exacerbating the problem. Wall Street financiers, the synthetic biology industry, “green” venture capitalists and a host of others are jumping on the “we care about the climate, too!” bandwagon.

These actors have reduced one of the clearest consequences of an unsustainable system into a mere technical problem that can be “efficiently” dealt with through market-based solutions. This market fundamentalism diverts attention away from the root causes of the problem, encouraging us to imagine a world with price tags on rivers, forests, biodiversity and communities’ territories, all in the name of “dealing with the climate crisis.” At the heart of all false solutions is an avoidance of the big picture: the root causes.

False solutions are constructed around the invisible scaffolding that maintains the dominant economic, cultural and political systems—the idea that economic growth is both desirable and inevitable; that progress means industrial development; that Western science and technology can solve any problem; that profits will motivate and the markets will innovate. Most of us in the Global North, whether sensitized to it or not, are participants and, at times, even take comfort in this world view. Sadly, many find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of a globalized economy built upon the unsteady legs of expanding empire, ecological erosion and exploitation of workers and communities.

We can take steps, large and small, to stop the climate crisis. What we cannot afford to do is go down the wrong road. Hoodwinked in the Hothouse is an easy and essential guide to navigating the landscape of false solutions—the cul-de-sacs on the route to a just and livable climate future.

--Gopal Dayaneni, Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project

PDF File

By Tyler Hansen - Socialist Worker, July 9, 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 his book Storms of my Grandchildren, leading climate scientist James Hansen writes that "continued exploitation of all fossil fuels on Earth threatens not only the other millions of species on the planet but the survival of humanity itself and the timetable is shorter than we thought."

The effects of this are apparent all over the world. For example, California is facing its worst drought in 1,200 years. "Right now, the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs," warns NASA water scientist Jay Famiglietti. "And our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing."

Meanwhile, record levels of flooding in Texas and Oklahoma this spring have killed 23 people, while a heat wave that sent temperatures as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit has devastated South Asia--India's death toll is over 2,300, while more than 1,000 people have died in Pakistan.

In the Midwest and Northeast U.S., "February 2015 ranked as one of the coldest Februaries on record for many major cities," wrote Chris Dolce at weather.com. "In Syracuse, New York, and Bangor, Maine...it was...the coldest of any month since records began."

The cold winter prompted Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, speaking on the floor of the Senate, to foolishly attempt to disprove climate change because of...the existence of a snowball. "In case we have forgotten," Inhofe lectured, "because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, you know what this is? It's a snowball. And that's just from outside here. So it's very, very cold out."

As chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Inhofe ought to know that one of the effects of climate change in certain areas is extreme winters--which doesn't negate the fact that 2014 was, indeed, the warmest year on record. In fact, 13 of the 15 warmest years in history have all happened since 2000.

Africa has seen some of the worst effects of climate change. The Department for International Development (DfID) estimates that during the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa, between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya--more than half of them children under five.

Across the world in 2013, "22 million people were displaced by disasters brought on by natural hazard events," according to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees. The number of climate refugees is only expected to increase, possibly up to 200 million by 2050.

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 Faramarz Farbod - Common Dreams, June 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.

Global capitalism is the 800-pound gorilla.  The twin ecological and economic crises, militarism, the rise of the surveillance state, and a dysfunctional political system can all be traced to its normal operations.

We need a transformative politics from below that can challenge the fundamentals of capitalism instead of today's politics that is content to treat its symptoms.  The problems we face are linked to each other and to the way a capitalist society operates.  We must make an effort to understand its real character.  The fundamental question of our time is whether we can go beyond a system that is ravaging the Earth and secure a future with dignity for life and respect for the planet.

What has capitalism done to us lately?

The best science tells us that this is a do-or-die moment.

We are now in the midst of the 6th mass extinction in the planetary history with 150 to 200 species going extinct every day, a pace 1,000 times greater than the 'natural' extinction rate. The Earth has been warming rapidly since the 1970s with the 10 warmest years on record all occurring since 1998. The planet has already warmed by 0.85 degree Celsius since the industrial revolution 150 years ago.  An increase of 2° Celsius is the limit of what the planet can take before major catastrophic consequences.  Limiting global warming to 2°C requires reducing global emissions by 6% per year.  However, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels increased by about 1.5 times between 1990 and 2008.

Capitalism has also led to explosive social inequalities.  The global economic landscape is littered with rising concentration of wealth, debt, distress, and immiseration caused by the austerity-pushing elites.

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.