A Planet on the Brink
Tom Dispatch – February 24, 2022 – Alfred W. McCoy
https://tomdispatch.com/china-is-digging-its-own-grave-and-ours-as-well/
After more than 180 years of Western global dominion, leadership is beginning to move from West to East, where Beijing is likely to become the epicenter of a new world order that could indeed rupture longstanding Western traditions of law and human rights. More crucially, however, after two centuries of propelling the world economy to unprecedented prosperity, the use of fossil fuels — especially coal and oil — will undoubtedly fade away within the next couple of decades. Meanwhile, for the first time since the last Ice Age ended 11,000 years ago, thanks to the greenhouse gases those fossil fuels are emitting into the atmosphere, the world’s climate is changing in ways that will, by the middle of this century, start to render significant parts of the planet uninhabitable for a quarter, even possibly half, of humanity… As long as nations have the sovereign right to seal their borders, the world will have no way of protecting the human rights of the 200 million to 1.2 billion climate-change refugees expected to be created by 2050, both within their own borders and beyond. Faced with such extreme disorder, it is just possible that the nations of this planet might agree to cede some small portion of their sovereignty to a global government set up to cope with the climate crisis… A planet ever more battered by climate change, one in which neither an American nor a Chinese “century” will have any meaning, will certainly need a newly empowered world order that can supersede national sovereignty to protect the most fundamental and transcendent of all human rights: survival.
The Russia-Ukraine Crisis Shows the Need for Real Solutions to Climate Change
Common Dreams – February 25, 2022 – Anthony Pahnke
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/02/25/russia-ukraine-crisis-shows-need-real-solutions-climate-change
European plans to confront climate change are problematic, if not wrongheaded. The Russia/Ukraine crisis puts on display for the world to see how one such way of confronting climate change is deeply flawed, namely, crafting energy plans according to the concept of ‘net zero carbon emissions,’ or ‘carbon neutrality.’ In short, it’s possible that Russia’s invasion of its neighbor would never have happened if Europe had been serious about alternatives to fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel companies are trying to exploit this war for their gain. We can’t let them
The Guardian – February 26, 2022 – Jamie Henn
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/26/big-oil-ukraine-russia-putin
The fossil fuel industry’s attempt to exploit this particular crisis is all the more galling because of their central role in causing it. Putin’s ability to wage war in Ukraine and threaten the stability of Europe comes exclusively from his control over Russian oil and gas production. Forty per cent of Russia’s federal budget comes from oil and gas, which make up 60% of the country’s exports. This October, Russia was making more than $500m a day from fossil fuels, money that goes directly into funding Putin’s war machine.
No one in the oil and gas industry denies this. What they’d like us to conveniently forget is how they helped Putin get to this point… Instead of letting big oil use each new shock to knock us off course, we need to stay clear eyed on how we can create peace, stability, and protect our planet for generations to come: ending our addiction to fossil fuels.
The environmental costs of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Grist – February 25, 2022 – Diana Kruzman
https://grist.org/international/environmental-costs-of-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/
On Twitter, the United Nations Environment Programme pleaded for a ceasefire “to ensure the safety of all people and the environment that sustains life on the planet.” Others worried about the potential fallout from intense fighting around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, or raised concerns that artillery could hit one of Ukraine’s four operating nuclear power plants, releasing radioactive contamination that could spread throughout the region and last thousands of years… Fighting in dense urban areas, in particular, poses a high risk because of the chance that artillery will accidentally hit a vulnerable site. But intentionally targeting this kind of civilian infrastructure, Pearshouse told Grist, would be illegal under the laws of war. He urged military commanders to “take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects.”
How the ‘Peaceful Atom’ Makes Ukraine a Nuke War
Reader Supported News – February 26, 2022 – Harvey Wasserman
https://www.rsn.org/001/how-the-peaceful-atom-makes-ukraine-a-nuke-war.html
More critical are Ukraine’s 15 operating reactors, which supply about 50% of the country’s electricity. The six nukes at Zaporozhe comprise the largest reactor site in the world. It’s about 100 kilometers from the Donbass region Putin has recognized as an independent breakaway republic. Any one of those nukes could be triggered toward a melt-down/explosion with a single missile (shot on purpose or by accident), or a relatively light land attack, sabotage of cooling or backup power systems, disruption of the electric grid, a threat to the operating crew or a cyber-attack meant to debilitate the control rooms at reactors which are nearly all more than thirty years old. The impacts on global health would (again) be cataclysmic… In light of what’s happening there now, anyone who advocates buliding new nuke reactors, or prolonging the operation of those still precariously on line, need only look to the game of Ukrainian roulette Putin is now playing with the fate of the Earth to realize
UN report warns climate change could spur 50% more wildfires by 2100
Grist – February 23, 2022 – Zoya Teirstein
https://grist.org/climate/un-report-warns-climate-change-could-spur-50-more-wildfires-by-2100/
Wildfires won’t just continue to grow in intensity and frequency, the report warns, they’ll start cropping up in areas that haven’t seen fires in millennia. Even the Arctic, a region that has historically been too wet and cold for large wildfires, could start to regularly host big fires like it did in 2020 and 2021 as global warming transforms permafrost and peatland swamps from soggy, fire-resistant areas into flammable tinderboxes… Ultimately, the report recommends creating an international standard for wildfire management that’s the product of joint cooperation and problem solving between nations that regularly deal with fire. Right now, nations frequently tap one another for help quenching fires. The report’s authors want countries to work together before fires break out, too.
To Take Climate Change Seriously, the U.S. Military Needs to Shrink
Time Magazine – February 17, 2022 – Alejandro de la Garza
https://time.com/6148778/us-military-climate-change/
Military vehicles, along with the forces that use them and the industries that supply them, represent a huge climate problem, accounting for 5% of the world’s carbon emissions every year. And there’s no bigger actor in that space than the U.S. military, which sucks up more petroleum than any other institution on earth to fly jets, heat buildings, and ferry food and supplies to 750 bases spread across the world, a process that, all told, produces an emissions footprint greater than that of the entire country of Sweden… The military’s climate footprint is a serious issue—even if they don’t seem to be quite getting to the root of the matter. “I liken it to Alcoholics Anonymous,” says Weir. “The first step is admitting that you have a problem.”
Republicans Respond to World-Historical Drought by Propping Up Fossil Fuels
The New Republic – February 21, 2022 – Kate Aronoff
https://newrepublic.com/article/165429/republicans-respond-world-historical-drought-propping-fossil-fuels
The American West is 22 years into its worst megadrought since the year 800. That’s being fueled by the climate crisis, which is, in turn, being fueled largely by the burning of coal, oil, and gas. A study published last week in Nature Climate Change found that 42 percent of this extended drought can be attributed to climate change, as can 19 percent of last year’s extraordinary heat and dry spell. GOP lawmakers in many Western states, meanwhile, are going out of their way to protect the fossil fuel executives doing everything in their power to make droughts worse.
Green investing: the risk of a new mis-selling scandal
Financial Times – February 19, 2022 – Laurence Fletcher and Joshua Oliver
https://www.ft.com/content/ae78c05a-0481-4774-8f9b-d3f02e4f2c6f
A series of high-profile scandals, most notably regulatory probes into fund firm DWS over whether it misled clients about its sustainable investing efforts, has now raised fears that some of the bolder green claims made by asset managers could amount to mis-selling. Some industry insiders believe they are on the brink of a mis-selling scandal in the mould of payment protection insurance, mortgages or diesel cars.
A Top Labor Official Joins Greenpeace USA.
The New York Times – February 24, 2022 – Noam Scheiber
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/business/economy/tefere-gebre-labor-greenpeace.html
Signaling the growing importance of ties between labor and environmental organizers on climate change, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s third-ranking official has announced that he was leaving to join Greenpeace USA. The official, Tefere Gebre, the labor federation’s executive vice president, will become chief program officer for the environmental group on Tuesday. He will oversee all of Greenpeace USA’s campaigns, communications, direct action and organizing and report to the group’s co-executive directors. “I’m not leaving the workers’ movement — I’m bringing workers to the environmental movement,” Mr. Gebre said in an interview.
Cremation is as bad as burials for the environment. Human composting is where it’s at
The Daily Kos – February 21, 2022 – Rebekah Sager
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/21/2081457/-Want-to-save-the-environment-Start-with-a-greener-death
In recent years most Americans have turned away from the traditional formaldehyde-pumped bodies buried in caskets on top of one another in overcrowded cemeteries and opted for cremation instead. Although cremation is less harmful to the environment, it still requires massive amounts of fuel and spews out millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, so really it’s not all that great.
PFAS pollution led to contamination of US drinking water wells, study finds
The Guardian – February 25, 2022 – Tom Perkins
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/25/pfas-us-drinking-water-wells-study
Pollution by toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in America’s aquifer system has led to widespread contamination of private and public drinking water wells, data from a new study by the US Geological Survey finds. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, detected PFAS chemicals in 20% of private wells and 60% of public wells sampled in 16 eastern states, and offered new insights on how to predict which drinking water sources may be contaminated… Most of the 16 states from which the USGS checked samples don’t have any standards in place, which leaves it up to well owners to protect themselves. That underscores how regulators have “failed us”, Faber said, and highlights the need to ban further PFAS production.
A century ago, Mississippi’s Senate voted to send all the state’s Black people to Africa
The Washington Post – February 19, 2022 – Joshua Benton
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/02/20/mississippi-black-africa-mccallum/
One hundred years ago, the Mississippi state Senate voted to evict the state’s Black residents — the majority of its total population — not just out of Mississippi, but out of the country. The Senate voted 25 to 9 on Feb. 20, 1922, to ask the federal government to trade some of the World War I debts owed by European countries for a piece of colonial Africa — any part would do — where the government would then ship Mississippi’s Black residents, creating “a final home for the American negro.” The act is a reminder of just how long after the end of slavery some White Southerners were pushing not just to strip African Americans of their political rights but also to remove them from the land of their birth.
The Hate We Give
The Boston Globe – February 25, 2022 – Jeneé Osterheldt
https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/crime-courts/graphics/2022/02/hate-we-give/
According to the FBI data, over 60 percent of the victims were targeted because of a racial, ethnic, or ancestral bias. Of those crimes, Black folk were victims of hate crimes more than any other group: 2,871 crimes,up 45 percent from 1,972 crimes the year before. The report is based on data received from 15,138 of 18,625 law enforcement agencies, and represent the most recent year for which the FBI has data. Hate is a harrowing fact of life.
Why Are We Torching Our Best Tool to End Child Poverty?
Informed Comment – February 21, 2022 – Clara Moore
https://www.juancole.com/2022/02/torching-child-poverty.html
A Columbia study found that the December payments alone kept 3.7 million children out of poverty, reducing the monthly child poverty rate by about 30 percent. But in the first month without payments, Columbia experts project that the monthly child poverty rate may rise from the current 12 percent to over 17 percent — the highest it’s been in over a year. As these numbers show, parents weren’t squandering these payments on luxuries. They used them to live less precariously. New research has found that cash payments to low-income families significantly improve infant brain development and learning later in life. This is the sort of lifeline that changes children’s lives. So why are we taking a torch to it? Why would we lift children out of poverty only to slam them back into it a few months later? The failure to renew the expanded Child Tax Credit isn’t just cruel and short-sighted — it’s economically unsound.
‘A Great Loss’: Partners In Health Co-Founder Dr. Paul Farmer Dead at 62
Common Dreams – February 21, 2022 – Andrea Germanos
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/21/great-loss-partners-health-co-founder-dr-paul-farmer-dead-62
The international health organization noted in a statement upon his pasing that “Farmer and his colleagues pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality healthcare in resource-poor settings. He wrote extensively on health, human rights, and the consequences of social inequality.”… In a December 2020 appearance on Democracy Now!, when the U.S. then accounted for 20% of the world’s Covid-19 infections and deaths, Farmer said that “all the social pathologies of our nation come to the fore during epidemics. And during a pandemic like this one, we’re going to be showing the rest of the world, warts and all… how badly we can do.”
Robust COVID Relief Achieved Historic Gains Against Poverty and Hardship, Bolstered Economy
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – February 24, 2022
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/robust-covid-relief-achieved-historic-gains-against-poverty-and
Amid intense fear and hardship, federal policymakers responded, enacting five relief bills in 2020 that provided an estimated $3.3 trillion of relief and the American Rescue Plan in 2021, which added another $1.8 trillion. This robust policy response helped make the COVID-19 recession the shortest on record and helped fuel an economic recovery that has brought the unemployment rate, which peaked at 14.8 percent in April 2020, down to 4.0 percent. Various data indicate that in 2021, relief measures reduced poverty, helped people access health coverage, and reduced hardships like inability to afford food or meet other basic needs.
The Government Just Admitted An Inconvenient Truth
Popular Resistance – February 25, 2022 – David Sirota And Aditi Ramaswami
https://popularresistance.org/the-government-just-admitted-an-inconvenient-truth/
Every now and then, federal officials admit some truths that are inconvenient to the corporations that own the government — and this latest admission is pretty explicit: Scrapping corporate health care and creating a government-sponsored medical system would boost the economy, help workers, and increase longevity. Those are just some of the findings from the Republican-led Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in a new report that implicitly tells lawmakers just how the existing corporate-run health care system is immiserating millions of Americans — and how a Medicare for All-style system could quickly fix the catastrophe.
Europe Needs to Ban trade with Israeli Squatter Settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories
Informed Comment – February 24, 2022 – Human Rights Watch
https://www.juancole.com/2022/02/settlements-palestinian-territories.html
“Settlements unlawfully rob local populations of their land, resources, and livelihoods,” said Bruno Stagno, chief advocacy officer at Human Rights Watch. “No country should be enabling the trade in goods produced as a result of land theft, displacement, and discrimination.”… Human Rights Watch joins more than 100 civil society organizations, grassroots movements, trade unions and politicians in backing the Initiative. It utilizes a provision designed to enable European citizens to direct the European Commission to consider proposed legislative action. If it amasses a million signatures, the Commission will be legally obliged to consider a ban on the trade of settlement goods.
The Defeat of Progressive Movements in the Global South Made US Hegemony Possible
Jacobin – February 20, 2022 – Sean T. Byrnes
https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/us-imperialism-third-world-movement-vietnam-global-south-foreign-policy-intervention
Given the disastrous course of the United States’ “war on terror” and its attendant neocolonial projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, how is it that the US government can so confidently proclaim its right and ability to shape the world? Didn’t American planes just leave Kabul in disgrace mere months ago? Did this not mandate some period of reflection — one that might, perhaps, recommend a slightly humbler approach to the crisis in Eastern Europe?… Ironically, the United States and Russia now agree on much more than they ever did during the Cold War. Neither questions the prevailing neoliberal order and its distribution of wealth. Russian influence over Ukraine, something taken for granted in the twentieth century, is the new sticking point. It’s not only Russian history that provides the answer as to why.
This Is Putin’s War. But America and NATO Aren’t Innocent Bystanders.
The New York Times – February 21, 2022 – Thomas L. Friedman
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nato.html
Putin literally said Ukraine has no claim to independence, but is instead an integral part of Russia — its people are “connected with us by blood, family ties.” Which is why Putin’s onslaught against Ukraine’s freely elected government feels like the geopolitical equivalent of an honor killing. Putin is basically saying to Ukrainians (more of whom want to join the European Union than NATO): “You fell in love with the wrong guy. You will not run off with either NATO or the E.U. And if I have to club your government to death and drag you back home, I will.”
Statement on Ukraine Invasion
RootsAction – February 24, 2022
https://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/2722-statement-on-ukraine
The world desperately needs a single standard of accountability to prevent the crime of war — a crime that the Russian government is now committing in Ukraine and the U.S. government continues to commit elsewhere as part of the ongoing “war on terror.” RootsAction condemns crossing borders and killing, no matter what the nationality of the military forces. Hypocritical condemnations in both directions ring hollow, as when President Biden late Wednesday night insisted that “the world will hold Russia accountable.” Most of the world has long been trying to hold reckless war-makers accountable. The latest actions by the Russian government will cause death and suffering, and those actions will further destabilize global security while rendering institutions like the United Nations even more powerless. As always, in this instance the aggressor has couched its aggression by claiming to act in defense, as the U.S. government often has. At this extremely dangerous moment in world history, diplomacy — not warfare — remains the only hope. In the process, the perilous history of NATO’s eastward expansion and the threat of further expansion must be faced. Fueling a conflict between the two nuclear superpowers is insanity.
Antiwar Activists Take to the Streets in Russia to Protest Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine
Mother Jones – February 24,, 2022 – Dan Spinelli
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/02/antiwar-activists-protest-putin-russia-ukraine-invasion/
In Moscow and St. Petersburg, and in the few news outlets courageous enough to defy Putin’s censorship regime, the Russian people made clear how they feel about those words. “The invasion of Ukraine was started on behalf of Russian citizens but against our will,” declared an editorial in Meduza, an independent outlet in Latvia that reports on Russia. “The shame that comes with it will be with us forever.”
Putin’s Revisionist History of Russia and Ukraine
The New Yorker – February 23, 2022 – Isaac Chotiner
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/vladimir-putins-revisionist-history-of-russia-and-ukraine
The historian Serhii Plokhy discusses the Russian President’s “very imperial idea” of his country, and the potential for Ukrainian resistance… Putin’s statements bristle with frustration with American and European leaders for what he perceives as bringing Ukraine into the Western orbit after the end of the Cold War. But at the heart of his anger is a rejection of the political project embodied in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. For years, Putin has questioned the legitimacy of former Soviet republics, claiming that Lenin planted a “time bomb” by allowing them self-determination in the early years of the U.S.S.R. In his speeches, he appears to be attempting to turn back the clock, not to the heyday of Soviet Communism but to the time of an imperial Russia.
This is how we defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats
The Guardian – February 25, 2022 – Bill McKibben
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/25/this-is-how-we-defeat-putin-and-other-petrostate-autocrats
Now is the moment to remind ourselves that, in the last decade, scientists and engineers have dropped the cost of solar and windpower by an order of magnitude, to the point where it is some of the cheapest power on Earth. The best reason to deploy it immediately is to ward off the existential crisis that is climate change, and the second best is to stop the killing of nine million people annually who die from breathing in the particulates that fossil fuel combustion produces. But the third best reason – and perhaps the most plausible for rousing our leaders to action – is that it dramatically reduces the power of autocrats, dictators, and thugs… Caring about the people of Ukraine means caring about an end to oil and gas.