Jane Goodall: If We Don’t Make Peace With Nature, Expect More Deadly Pandemics
Huffpost – May 28, 2021 – Alexander C. Kaufman
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jane-goodall-pandemic_n_60ad594fe4b09604b5288c36
The famed primatologist spent the quarantine broadcasting to the world about the threat of climate change, zoonotic disease and biodiversity loss… “Every single day,” she says on a recent afternoon with a sigh. “Zooms and interviews, virtual lectures and virtual conferences, and there is no letup, no weekend, no nothing. Just sitting where you see me now, the same background, reaching out to the world.”… We’ve got to do something to slow down climate change and biodiversity loss. And we can only do all those things by giving people hope that if we take action, in time we can actually make change.
There Can be No Biodiversity Without Human Diversity
Portside – Equal Times – May 29, 2021 – Fiore Longo
https://www.portside.org/2021-05-29/there-can-be-no-biodiversity-without-human-diversity
If we want to save biodiversity, we must tackle the real causes, namely the exploitation of natural resources for profit and growing overconsumption, driven by the countries of the North… Not all human beings destroy the earth. It is our consumerist lifestyle and economic model based on infinite growth that are at the root of the climate crisis and the decline of biodiversity. Other human societies have a completely different relationship with nature and do not, like Western societies, have this profound dissociation between human and nature.
“This Will Change the World:” Dutch Court Orders Shell to Reduce CO2 by 45% by 2030
Informed Comment – May 27, 2021 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2021/05/change-orders-reduce.html
The likelihood is that the ruling will influence other judges in other countries. This could be like the moment when the first court in the U.S. imposed penalties on a tobacco company for killing its customers with lung cancer… You see now why ExxonMobil had Trump take the US out of the Paris climate accord. As a treaty, it can produce legal obligations that can be adjudicated in the courts.
ExxonMobil and Chevron suffer shareholder rebellions over climate
The Guardian – May 26, 2021 – Jillian Ambrose
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/26/exxonmobil-and-chevron-braced-for-showdown-over-climate
Exxon failed to defend its board against a coup launched by dissident hedge fund activists at Engine No. 1 which successfully replaced two Exxon board members with its own candidates to help drive the oil company towards a greener strategy. Meanwhile, a majority of Chevron shareholders rebelled against the company’s board by voting 61% in favour of an activist proposal from – Dutch campaign group “Follow This” – to force the group to cut its carbon emissions… Mark van Baal, who founded Follow This, said Wednesday’s shareholder revolts mark an investor “paradigm shift” and a “victory in the fight against climate change”… “Institutional investors understand that no investment is safe in a global economy wracked by devastating climate change,” Van Baal said.
Oil companies are going all-in on petrochemicals – and green chemistry needs help to compete
The Conversation – May 25, 2021 – Constance B. Bailey
https://theconversation.com/oil-companies-are-going-all-in-on-petrochemicals-and-green-chemistry-needs-help-to-compete-153598
Here’s the problem: Researchers are working to develop more sustainable replacements for petrochemical products, including bio-based plastics and specialty chemicals. However, petrochemicals can be manufactured at a fraction of the cost. As a biochemist working to develop environmentally benign versions of valuable chemicals, I’m concerned that without adequate support, pioneering green chemistry research will struggle to compete with fossil-based products… The overall goal is to put carbon and oxygen together in a predictable fashion, similar to the chemical structures created through petroleum-based chemistry. But the green approach uses natural substances instead of oil or natural gas as building blocks… In my view, the growing climate crisis and increasing plastic pollution make it urgent to wean the global economy from petroleum. I believe that finding replacements for petroleum-based chemicals in many products we use daily can help move the world toward that goal.
Richest nations agree to end support for coal production overseas
The Guardian – May 21, 2021 – Fiona Harvey
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/21/richest-nations-agree-to-end-support-for-coal-production-overseas
After nearly two days of wrangling at a meeting of the G7 environment and energy ministers, hosted virtually by the UK on Thursday and Friday, all reaffirmed their commitment to limiting global heating to 1.5C, and committed to phasing out coal and fully decarbonising their energy sectors in the 2030s.
The Particular Psychology of Destroying the Planet
The New Yorker – May 19, 2021 – Bill McKibben
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/the-particular-psychology-of-destroying-a-planet
How is it that some people, or corporations, can knowingly perpetuate the damage? Or, as people routinely ask me, “Don’t they have grandchildren?”… A reminder that plenty of people have been engaged in this kind of planetary sabotage came last week in a remarkable paper by Harvard’s Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes… The authors found a model: “These patterns mimic the tobacco industry’s documented strategy of shifting responsibility away from corporations—which knowingly sold a deadly product while denying its harms—and onto consumers. This historical parallel foreshadows the fossil fuel industry’s use of demand-as-blame arguments to oppose litigation, regulation, and activism.”… In her conclusion, Weintrobe contrasts this narcissistic entitlement with the “lively” (and psychologically appropriate) entitlement of young people who are now demanding climate action so that they will have a planet on which to live full lives.
Climate crisis behind drastic drop in Arctic wildlife populations – report
The Guardian – May 20, 2021 – Gloria Dickie
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/20/climate-crisis-drastic-drop-arctic-wildlife-populations-aoe
A drastic drop in caribou and shorebird populations is a reflection of the dire changes unfolding on the Arctic tundra, according to a new report from the Arctic Council… “Climate change is the overwhelming driver of change in terrestrial Arctic ecosystems, causing diverse, unpredictable and significant impacts that are expected to intensify,” the report says.
Boycotts and sanctions helped rid South Africa of apartheid – is Israel next in line?
The Guardian – May 23, 2021 – Chris McGreal
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/23/israel-apartheid-boycotts-sanctions-south-africa
Twenty-seven years after the end of white rule, some see the boycott campaign against South Africa as a guide to mobilising popular support against what is increasingly condemned as Israel’s own brand of apartheid. As South Africa showed, building popular support for action takes years – and those who back the campaign face a far more effective opponent in the Israeli state. For all that, significant shifts in attitudes toward Israel, particularly in the US and within the Jewish diaspora, have presented campaigners with their best prospects to date for building a boycott and they are looking to the anti-apartheid movement as the example.
Rogue State
Commonweal Magazine – May 18, 2021 – editorial
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/rogue-state
An early test of the new administration’s commitment to human rights has now appeared in a part of the world Biden had hoped to put on the back burner: Israel and the Palestinian territories… President Biden belatedly joined the rest of the world in calling for a cease-fire, but that’s not enough. His administration must do whatever it can to change the conditions that keep leading to this cycle of violence… The effort to remove or subjugate Palestinians “from the river to the sea” is a textbook case of ethno-nationalism and a clear violation of human rights—the kind of thing we routinely denounce when it happens anywhere else in the world. We must denounce it in Israel too, and demand that the Israeli government stop treating Arab Israelis like second-class citizens and Palestinians in the occupied territories like captives.
Why Arundhati Roy Should Not Support Hamas’ ‘Rockets of Resistance’
Haaretz – May 26, 2021 – Khinvraj Jangid
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-why-arundhati-roy-should-not-support-hamas-rockets-of-resistance-1.9844620
It is important to challenge the Indian left’s approach to Hamas and Islamic Jihad; this is in no way an attempt to defend the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories or the policy of retaliation for the sake of deterrence. Yet, Arundhati Roy and others err here. It is paradoxical to condemn the violence used by a state, like Israel or India in the name of national security, while endorsing killing, suicide bombing and rockets of Hamas.
America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales)
Tom Dispatch – May 25, 2021 – William Hartung
https://tomdispatch.com/america-dominant-again-in-arms-sales/
It’s a money-making, military-industrial tale from hell and Hartung tells it today in all its grim horror… In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the U.S. of A. Between 2016 and 2020, this country accounted for 37% of total international weapons deliveries, nearly twice the level of its closest rival, Russia, and more than six times that of Washington’s threat du jour, China. Sadly, this was no surprise to arms-trade analysts. The U.S. has held that top spot for 28 of the past 30 years, posting massive sales numbers regardless of which party held power in the White House or Congress.
The pandemic has taken a devastating toll on undocumented women in New York
The New York Times – May 24, 2021 – Annie Correal and Desiree Rios
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/world/the-pandemic-has-taken-a-devastating-toll-on-undocumented-women-in-new-york.html
Undocumented women were hit particularly hard, a recent estimate by the Fiscal Policy Institute found. Many had low-wage jobs in the service sector. Some were suddenly obligated to stay home with children when schools closed. Roughly 35,000 undocumented women in New York City had too little food to eat this past March.
Covid’s Deadliest Phase May Be Here Soon
The New York Times – May 28, 2021 – Zeynep Tufekci
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/opinion/covid-vaccine-variants.html
If world leaders don’t act now, the end of the Covid pandemic may come with a horrible form of herd immunity, as more transmissible variants that are taking hold around the world kill millions. There’s troubling new evidence that the B.1.617.2 variant, first identified in India, could be far more transmissible than even the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in Britain, which contributed to some of the deadliest surges around the world.
100 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, lessons from my grandfather
The Conversation – May 25, 2021 – Gregory B. Fairchild
https://theconversation.com/100-years-after-the-tulsa-race-massacre-lessons-from-my-grandfather-161391
That it took so long for the city to acknowledge what took place shows how selective society can be when it comes to which historical events it chooses to remember – and which ones to overlook. The history that society colludes to avoid publicly is necessarily remembered privately… After the celebrations, there’s hard work ahead. From my grandfather’s memory of the riot’s devastation to my own work addressing low-income communities’ economic challenges, I have come to see that change requires harnessing economic, governmental and nonprofit solutions that recognize and speak openly about the significant residential, educational and workplace racial segregation that still exists in the United States today.
The Mark of History Still Scars Tulsa Today
The Chicago Sun-Times – May 24, 2021 – Jesse Jackson
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2021/5/24/22452055/tulsa-race-massacre-reparations-the-mark-of-history-still-scars-jesse-jackson
Memorial Day marks one year since the murder of George Floyd by the hands of the Minneapolis police. This week also marks the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a brutal government-aided leveling of a prosperous African American community for which there still has been no accounting and no justice. Few even know about the massacre. It hasn’t even been taught in the Tulsa public schools until this year. Although 100 years old, the massacre poses questions of justice and of decency that America cannot avoid… The issue of reparations always meets with resistance. Why should this generation pay for the crimes of those who lived 100 years ago? Yet once the massacre is admitted, the violation done to people can’t be simply ignored. And the damage incurred — erasing a prosperous Black community and enforcing racially discriminatory policies through the decades — is real.
Workers Matter and Government Works: Eight Lessons From the Covid Pandemic
The Guardian – May 23, 2021 – Robert Reich
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/23/workers-government-covid-pandemic-lessons-biden-trump-vaccines
Workers are always essential… Healthcare is a basic right… An informed public is essential… The stock market isn’t the economy… Raise the minimum wage, strengthen labor unions and push companies to share profits with their workers… Remote work is now baked into the economy… Billionaires aren’t the answer… Government can be the solution.
Daniel Ellsberg Is 90 Years Old and Still Causing Trouble
Esquire Magazine – May 24, 2021 – Charles P. Pierce
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a36519487/daniel-ellsberg-china-nuke-leak/
The man behind the Pentagon Papers is back with some horrifying revelations about the American Cold War government… The Espionage Act has deserved a good disemboweling for decades now. It’s an authoritarian legacy of the awful President Woodrow Wilson and his completely awful Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. It’s a meat ax of a statute that’s still stained with the blood of Emma Goldman, for god’s sake. It needs to be torn out of the law, root and branch, and something less authoritarian put in its place. In that process, by the way, the presumption should be that a great deal of material that is classified probably shouldn’t be.
Daniel Ellsberg Disclosure: Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known
The New York Times – May 22, 2021 – Charlie Savage
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/us/politics/nuclear-war-risk-1958-us-china.html
American military leaders pushed for a first-use nuclear strike on China, accepting the risk that the Soviet Union would retaliate in kind on behalf of its ally and millions of people would die, dozens of pages from a classified 1966 study of the confrontation show. The government censored those pages when it declassified the study for public release. The document was disclosed by Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked a classified history of the Vietnam War, known as the Pentagon Papers, 50 years ago. Mr. Ellsberg said he had copied the top secret study about the Taiwan Strait crisis at the same time but did not disclose it then. He is now highlighting it amid new tensions between the United States and China over Taiwan.
The Banality of Democratic Collapse
The New York Times – May 24, 2021 – Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opinion/republicans-donald-trump-loyalty.html
The Big Lie about the election didn’t well up from the grass roots — it was promoted from above, initially by Trump himself, but what’s crucial is that almost no prominent Republican politicians have been willing to contradict his claims and many have rushed to back them up. Or to put it another way, the fundamental problem lies less with the crazies than with the careerists; not with the madness of Marjorie Taylor Greene, but with the spinelessness of Kevin McCarthy. And this spinelessness has deep institutional roots… The point is that neither megalomania at the top nor rage at the bottom explains why American democracy is hanging by a thread. Cowardice, not craziness, is the reason government by the people may soon perish from the earth.
The Growing Anti-Democratic Threat of Christian Nationalism in the U.S.
Time Magazine – May 27, 2021 – Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry
https://time.com/6052051/anti-democratic-threat-christian-nationalism/
For all their rhetoric of ensuring “fair elections” and claims of “proven voter fraud,” one might believe that these Americans, the insurrectionists and lawmakers and the millions who support their efforts, are driven by an abiding passion for democracy. But that’s not what the data tell us. Or history. In order to understand what led to the deadly Capitol insurrection and the spate of proposed voting laws we must account for the influence of Christian nationalism, a political theology that fuses American identity with an ultra-conservative strain of Christianity.
Keeping the expanded child tax credit would help 65.6 million American kids
CNBC – May 26, 2021 – Carmen Reinicke
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/26/keeping-expanded-child-tax-credit-would-help-65point6-million-american-kids.html
Continuing the expanded child tax credit, which is set to expire after 2021, would help millions of American children, including lifting some out of poverty, according to new research. As many as 65.6 million American children — 90% of all kids in the U.S. — would benefit from an expanded child tax credit, such as the one proposed in President Joe Biden’s American Families Plan, a study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has found. In addition, the changes to the child tax credit proposed by the act would lift 4.1 million children out of poverty, cutting the overall poverty rate by about 40%, the study found… “The anti-poverty effects are historic and important,” said Kris Cox, deputy director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and one of the study’s authors. The research found that an expanded continued child tax credit will benefit nearly all children in the U.S., she said.
A Resolution to End Poverty in the World’s Wealthiest Country
Newsweek – May 28, 2021 – Barbara Lee and Pramila Jayapal (U.S. Representatives)
https://www.newsweek.com/resolution-end-poverty-worlds-wealthiest-country-opinion-1595159
We can’t end poverty without attacking the interconnected injustices of systemic racism, inequality, militarism and the climate emergency. That’s why our resolution calls for a comprehensive response that prioritizes the needs of these 140 million people. Alongside expanded social welfare programs and unemployment insurance, we’re calling for a national, universal single-payer health care program that puts people before profits. We’re calling for a living minimum wage, the right to form unions and a federal jobs guarantee. We’re calling for a housing guarantee that ends evictions and expands affordable housing options and accessible quality education at all levels. We’re calling to transform our climate chaos to a green and renewable future—with equitable public transit, dramatic reductions in pollution and green jobs and infrastructure.
Why We Need International Union Solidarity Now More Than Ever
Portside – May 27, 2021 – IndustriALL Global Union
https://www.portside.org/2021-05-27/why-we-need-international-union-solidarity-now-more-ever
Unlike NGOs or consumer groups, unions have a mandate and democratic legitimacy. Unlike charities and pressure groups trying to solve problems from the outside, unions give people the power to stand together and solve their own problems. And unlike political parties, unions unite workers regardless of their political views, gender, race, religion or nationality. Whoever you are, whatever your identity, if you work for a living you are united by a common economic interest. This produces inclusive politics rooted in experience rather than ideology: unions give us the opportunity for mass, democratic participation in the economy.
Are We Entering a New Political Era?
The New Yorker – May 24, 2021 – Andrew Marantz
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/are-we-entering-a-new-political-era
Justice Democrats is one of a handful of like-minded organizations—others include a climate-action group called the Sunrise Movement, a polling outfit called Data for Progress, a think tank called New Consensus, an immigrants’-rights group called United We Dream, and an organizer-training institute called Momentum—that make up an ascendant left cohort. Their signature proposal is the Green New Deal, a gargantuan legislative agenda that would decarbonize the American economy in the course of a decade, rebuild the country’s infrastructure, and, almost as an afterthought, provide a national jobs guarantee and universal health care.
How America Went From Mom-and-Pop Capitalism to Techno-Feudalism
Portside – Scheer Post – May 24, 2021 – Ellen Brown
https://www.portside.org/2021-05-24/how-america-went-mom-and-pop-capitalism-techno-feudalism
The crisis of 2020 has created the greatest wealth gap in history. The middle class, capitalism and democracy are all under threat. What went wrong and what can be done?… Varoufakis calls our current economic scheme “postcapitalism” and “techno-feudalism.” As in the medieval feudal model, assets are owned by the few. He notes that the stock market and the businesses in it are essentially owned by three companies – the giant exchange-traded funds BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. Under the highly controversial “Great Reset” envisioned by the World Economic Forum, “you will own nothing and be happy.” By implication, everything will be owned by the techno-feudal lords… The flaw is in the competitive capitalist model itself. The winners will inevitably capture and exploit the losers, creating an ever- growing gap in wealth and power. Studies of natural systems have shown that cooperative models are more efficient than competitive schemes.
Walls Divide and Break Us, Both in the U.S. and Palestine
Yes! Magazine – May 27, 2021 – Jen Marlowe
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2021/05/27/walls-palestine-united-states-mexico-border
Israel and the U.S. were both founded on the violent displacement of the Indigenous peoples on the land, with the domination of ever more territory justified by the White supremacy inherent in “Manifest Destiny” and the Jewish supremacy inherent in Zionism. Not only do the walls entail land grabs (in Israel’s case, one wall effectively annexes almost 10% of the West Bank), but they are intended to keep out, make invisible, demonize, and criminalize the very people who have been most harmed by those colonial powers and policies.
Cuba’s Five COVID-19 Vaccines
Global Research – May 30, 2021 – Helen Yaffe
https://www.globalresearch.ca/cubas-five-covid-19-vaccines/5746526
What Cuba has achieved is remarkable, but as Caballero underlined, “without the unjust US blockade, Cuba could have achieved bigger and better results”. Cuba spends a tiny proportion of what Britain and the United States spend on healthcare, but by maximising scarce resources the country has managed to mount a highly effective response to a global pandemic. The key to Cuba’s success has not just been state intervention per se, but rather the nature of that intervention: Cuba’s socialist system is set up to prioritise social welfare over private profit. It may not be a lesson that other countries are ready to hear, but Cuba’s international assistance during the pandemic shows the benefits of global cooperation and solidarity in addressing global problems.