by Robert Hunziker

Three years ago, 15,000 scientists declared a climate emergency by signing onto a State of the Climate Report. That signing led to annual updates, for example, the most recent version: The 2023 State of the Climate Report: Entering Uncharted Territory, Bioscience, vol. 73, issue 12, December 2023, Oxford Academic (aka: “The Report”).

The initial paragraph of The Report suggests a planetary juggernaut of cascading ecosystems altering life systems: “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in uncharted territory… a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.” Therefore, it’s fair to say nobody really knows how this uncharted territory will play out.

The Report is a compendium of all-time climate record events depicting big-time trouble, going in the wrong direction versus maintaining a healthy planet. In and of itself, the analysis in The Report, researched and authored by top notch scientists, should be enough for world policymakers to insist upon going back to COP28 in Dubai/2023, redoing the two-week UN climate conference and adopting effective solutions to replace the mealy-mouthed inadequate proposals adopted at COP28. The world deserves better.

Thirty years of UN climate conferences failing to move the needle to help Earth’s ecosystems thrive and survive, and not collapse, has unintentionally cast a dark shadow over scientists’ climate warnings within the context of a commanding capitalistic socio-economic system based upon infinite growth at center stage, humming along like “no worries” economic growth always bails us out, but what’s left behind? 

The Report makes the case that under the surface, and not clearly visible to society, a monstrosity of ecosystem turmoil threatens the entire foundation of capitalistic growth. The Report’s warnings are real, not fictional, not misleading but real warnings of a premature collapsing Earth system that’s the foundation for everything. This challenging situation has progressively gotten worse by the year, but it’s now starting to burst at the seams. The year 2023 exposed an off the charts dangerous climate system broadcasts on nightly news programs reporting massive wildfires, massive flooding, massive droughts, massive atmospheric rivers, massive everything, never witnessed previously. Scientists believe it’ll get worse.

According to the scientists: “We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered. Conditions are going to get very distressing and potentially unmanageable for large regions of the world… We warn of potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems… Massive suffering due to climate change is already here, and we have now exceeded many safe and just Earth system boundaries, imperiling stability and life-support systems.”

The Report states that 20 of 35 vital planetary signs are now at record extremes. This means that nearly 60% of the planet is huffing and puffing to stay on track of life-sourcing support. For example, the chart of Ocean Heat Content shows a nearly vertical upward thrust. This is viewed by scientists as especially troubling because of the knockoff impacts, including loss of sea life, coral reef bleaching, and intensified tropical storms. Hidden from view, the world’s oceans are under severe stress, not to mention extremely abusive overfishing, especially China’s inordinately large distant water fishing fleet of thousands of trawlers (“world’s worst abuser of sea laws” – IUU Fishing Index, US Coast Guard).

With 60% of the planet limping and few, if any, serious signs of governmental policy helping the 20 vital signs in various stages of deterioration, The Report addresses the root cause of trouble by identifying cause and effect, i.e., the ecological footprint of economic activity overwhelms any chances to heal the planet. In short, infinite economic growth and a steady state planet are like oil and water that do not mix. 

According to the scientists, “economic growth, as it is conventionally pursued, is unlikely to allow us to achieve our social, climate, and biodiversity goals. The fundamental challenge lies in the difficulty of decoupling economic growth from harmful environmental impacts.”

More to the point, egregious, superfluous, redundant, unneeded wealth creation is at the heart of the problem. As it happens, 60% of planetary ecosystems hobbling along on crutches is the result of 10% of the world population enjoying a great ride at the top of a great economic bubble expanding year by year, as this minority of people lead the best possible lifestyle in classic double or triple or quadruple, or maybe even as much as 100 to 1,000 times overshoot. The 10% global footprint tramples the lowly 90%. 

In a faux complexity of hopefulness, many GDP models assume that growth can be decoupled from emissions and from consumption-oriented environmental impacts and all will be hunky-dory, e.g., carbon capture will bail us out of the global warming imbroglio. However, The Report makes special mention of such assumptions as not realistic: “Negative emissions technologies are in an early stage of development, posing uncertainties regarding their effectiveness, scalability, and environmental and societal impacts. As such, we should not rely on unproven carbon removal techniques.” 

In the final analysis, the hard truth is fossil fuel emissions must be halted at the source as soon as possible or future state of the planet reports will show surrealistic evidence of a sickly planet. At some point in time this image of a sickly planet will become unbearable, and the masses will turn extremely restless, similar to unwelcomed disruptions, as well as threats of disruptions, already becoming evident throughout the globe. Under the circumstances, this type of behavior is not at all surprising. After all, it’s only too obvious that nearly two-thirds of the planet’s vital signs are flashing code red, not code yellow. It’s too late for caution when immediate action is required.

According to the scientific evidence, the underlying message is clear: Do something different. The current trajectory is not working. What could policymakers of the world do differently to put the planet back to a steady state so that it doesn’t flame out near term? Climate change, like a wild roller coaster ride, is full of surprising turns and sudden rapid descent.

The Report contains ideas to hopefully shake off what looks like an inevitability of more and more failing ecosystems: “The fundamental challenge lies in the difficulty of decoupling economic growth from harmful environmental impacts. Although technological advancements and efficiency improvements can contribute to some degree of decoupling, they often fall short in mitigating the overall ecological footprint of economic activities. The impacts vary greatly by wealth; in 2019, the top 10% of emitters were responsible for 48% of global emissions, whereas the bottom 50% were responsible for just 12%. We therefore need to change our economy to a system that supports meeting basic needs for all people instead of excessive consumption by the wealthy.” 

Frankly, that sounds like some version of socialism, but in America socialism is equated to Mephistopheles. But what if that’s not really true? What if socialism benefits everybody, except for the one percent? 

Broadly speaking, The Report recommends: “Efforts must be directed toward eliminating emissions from fossil fuels and land-use change and increasing carbon sequestration with nature-based climate solutions.” All of which is doable., but honestly, that’s an often-repeated prescription that never seems to stick, never gains traction.  If otherwise, if it gained traction, over time The State of the Climate Reports would fade into the sunset without anything to write about. 

Nevertheless, the ecological overshoot of human demands on natural resources, or overexploitation, is seemingly an insurmountable issue that points a finger at endless growth and its sidekick overconsumption by rich countries and wealthy individuals. And since socialism is out of the running to fix ecological overshoot, one way forward is a circular economy. Instead of a throw-away economic system, learn to recirculate across the board, like British economist Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics designed to avoid ecological overshoot.

In the final analysis, The Report is more relevant now than ever before simply because nearly 2/3rds of the planet’s vital signs are screaming for help, but none is forthcoming.  Therefore, and unfortunately, The Report is destined to grow and grow as ecosystems fail one by one, until one day Eureka! The State of the Climate Report will become sought after and studied and discussed by policymakers standing knee-deep in water.

Realistically, the issues described within this article about the state of the climate system do not get as much attention as warranted by policymakers or by the public. Assuming this article is read, the gist 0f it, alas, may be tossed aside as easily and quickly as our disposable-oriented society tosses aside paper wrappers, plastic containers, and pretty much everything, including nuclear waste, but where to? 

Meanwhile, of special interest, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion (XR) Roger Hallam has decided to accept the inevitability of collapsing ecosystems. He is turning his focus away from climate demonstrations and disruptions of society, gluing people to buildings, roadways, and airplanes to the discovery of a new type of civilization. He’ll be conducting a worldwide zoom session January 14 at 8:00 AM Pacific Coast time. It’ll be a rare opportunity to learn about and/or join a new world order that’s not sinister. To register for the zoom meeting: Here’s the link.

Robert Hunziker 
Los Angeles
 

by Steve Showen

SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!

The Crucial Demand of Our Time!

Degrowing from Chaos to a Steady-State Economy

ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

• TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM, CHANGE THE MONEY!
• PARITY ECONOMY
• JUST TRANSITION
• MAKE CARBON OUR FRIEND NOT OUR FOE

People get it. The realization that we are in the midst of a climate emergency has galvanized youth, keenly aware their futures are at risk. The largest public demonstration since covid was held in the streets at Climate Week NYC, displaying signs demanding “System Change, Not Climate Change.” Having made virtually no progress in climate goals since the first Earth Day fifty plus years ago, the system is the obvious culprit, devouring Earth’s resources to feed an avaricious profit-making machine that’s never satisfied with enough, wreaking havoc and spewing carbon in its wake. Our growth-driven economic system has pushed us to the limits of our finite planet’s ability to sustain us, to the brink of environmental collapse and climate catastrophe. It is imperative that humans transform the way we live upon the Earth and relate to the web of life on which we depend, lest we cross a catastrophic tipping point.

Rachel Jetel of World Resources Institute lays out our challenge:

“And yet to limit global temperature rise, conserve nature, and build a fairer economy that benefits everyone, we will need deep change across every aspect of our economies at a pace and scale we have not yet seen.

“The latest science tells us that we must limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) to prevent increasingly dangerous and irreversible climate change impacts. It also tells us that we must protect, sustainably manage, and restore ecosystems, among other actions, to halt biodiversity loss as soon as possible. To achieve all this, we need fundamental change across nearly all major systems by 2030 — power, buildings, industry, transport, forests and land, and food and agriculture. Cross-cutting transformations of political, social, and economic systems must also occur to enable this and ensure the change is socially inclusive with equitable outcomes for all.”

ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

In accord with these criteria, the imperative for fundamental change necessitates stopping the runaway growth train and downsizing and reconfiguring our economy and its subsystems to operate within the carrying capacity of the Earth. This entails progressing through a phase of “degrowth” until a “steady-state economy” has been achieved, so that we and the planet may thrive with a stable economy, justly and sustainably, into the foreseeable future.

Degrowth and steady-state economy are related fields within ecological economics, pioneered by the late Herman Daly. Unlike mainstream neoclassical economics and environmental economics, ecological economics recognizes that our economy is an open subsystem within Earth’s finite ecosystem. For example, to mitigate the climate emergency directly, we clearly want to phase out fossil fuels and adopt some form of truly renewable energy. However, the immediate priority is to massively draw down atmospheric carbon and sequester it wisely in the soil, avoiding the costly farce of corporate carbon capture schemes. The expense of effective and realistic mitigation measures in relation to economic restructuring must be prefigured to prevent a continuation of the growth-based system, greenwashed in the guise of “green growth” or even “green degrowth,” to ensure we’re not still headed for disaster, and Sustainable Climate Goals (SCG’s) can actually be met.

In a steady-state economy, for example, a stable size of population and material wealth are sustained by a stable flow of natural resources, with low resource throughput and low emissions, not overshooting the ability of the earth to replenish human consumption and absorb waste.

In this report of the Steady State Economy Conference, a steady-state economy is defined as:

“an economy where the goal is enough instead of more. … It is an economy where energy and resource use are reduced to levels that are within ecological limits, and where the goal of maximising economic output is replaced by the goal of maximising quality of life…And an emphasis on high quality of life means that economic growth takes a backseat to things that really matter to people, like health, well-being, secure employment, leisure time, strong communities, and economic stability.”

The introduction to the Green Party U.S. platform Article IV. Economic Justice and Sustainability begins with: “Green economics is rooted in ecological economics.” Here follow selected excerpts from Article IV, which extends from Sections A. through N., comprising numerous policy proposals. 

Our economy should serve us and our planet. Our economy should reflect and respect the diverse, delicate ecosystems of our planet.

Green economic policy places value not just on material wealth, but on the things which truly make life worth living — our health, our relationships, our communities, our environment, and building peace and justice throughout our nation and the world. We aim to maximize our quality of life with a minimum of consumption. We aspire to less “stuff” but more happiness. We propose a shift away from materialism to help people live more meaningful lives as we save the planet from climate change and ever-larger mountains of waste. We need to acquire the ability to distinguish between need and greed.

From Section A. Ecological Economics: Recognition of limits is central to this system. The drive to accumulate power and wealth is a pernicious characteristic of a civilization headed in a pathological direction.

From Section B. Measuring Economic Health: From 1: The steady-state economy has become a more appropriate goal than economic growth in the United States and other large, wealthy economies. From 3: Ultimately, however, the global ecosystem will not be able to support further economic growth. Therefore, an equitable distribution of wealth among nations is required to maintain a global steady-state economy.  

A circular economy (CE) is a separate field with a similar sounding name that’s a source of confusion. CE aims “to tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste and pollution”…by “sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible.” CE is lauded by proponents “as a facilitator of long-term growth.” While Herman Daly agrees such circular or closed loop processes are all good policies, he observes they are “destined to fall short of their goal of ‘sustainable growth’.” Recycling is limited, costing energy, material and equipment, and passing through a limited number of cycles before metals become more dispersed and inaccessible, according to the law of entropy. Sustainable growth is an oxymoron. “There is always a scale limit to a sustainable economic subsystem, beyond which growth, even in a ‘circular’ economy, breaks down, and sustainability requires a steady state economy.” Daly emphasizes: “The basic issue of limits to growth that the Club of Rome did so much to emphasize in the early 1970’s needs to remain front and center.”

 TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM, CHANGE THE MONEY!

To initiate the transition, we must derail the engine that drives the growth train: our privatized monetary system. Contrary to popular belief, commercial banks create our money from nothing when they make loans, at interest. Our money is a form of interest-bearing debt, driving economic growth, inflation, inequality, environmental plunder, political corruption, endless war profiteering, and generating a debt-based economy that funnels wealth and power to the top. Banks own our money system, which grants them immense power, determining who gets money and who doesn’t. They own controlling interest in the major corporations, back fossil fuel companies, and manipulate our political process. Our economy is overburdened by speculative finance. “On an average we pay about 50% capital costs [interest] in the prices of our goods and services.”  

Opening the political space to create and fund public policy for overhauling our economic system begins with ending the banks’ money creation privilege. We can then proceed to enact recovery and restructuring programs, as the growth oriented Green New Deal purported to do, which “is really about the transition to a steady state economy. At least, that’s what it must be about, to be truly green and new,” asserts Brian Czech, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy (CASSE). Daly and CASSE hold that money creation and allocation as a public utility is an essential feature of a steady-state economy. Thus a True Degrowth / Steady-State Green New Deal will be funded by a democratic sovereign public money system, established by a true peoples’ Congress that has recovered its money creation power to spend on the general welfare, debt free, as granted in the American Constitution, Article I, Section 8. Previously, a bought-and-paid-for Congress had surrendered its money power to the banking cartel with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

The U.S. Green Party’s Banking and Monetary Reform Committee (BMRC) educates about “Greening the Dollar,“ a critical initiative found in the party’s platform Article IV., Section N., outlining a program to democratize the money and restore Congress’s constitutional authority over currency creation, based on the NEED Act, introduced into Congress by Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2011. Its core principles are:

1. End bank creation of money.
2. Restore to Congress the exclusive authority to create money, free from debt, and spend it for public purpose.
3. Nationalize the Federal Reserve System, now owned by private member banks, making all its remaining operations accountable to the public.

This makes our money system a public utility, able to fund a Truly Green New Deal debt free, and reshape our economy to run in balance with the Earth’s ability to sustain us.

An historic example of the success of public money was when President Lincoln issued debt-free government Greenbacks during the civil war, which were a major factor spurring the economy and retaining the union. There was also a diminution of debt and interest rates during that period, before the banking cartel overcame the Greenbacks.

The BMRC collaborates with other monetary reform organizations. In the U.S. this includes the Alliance for Just Money (AFJM), and the American Monetary Institute (AMI). AMI issued this urgent statement to COP28 regarding “The Monetary Dimension of Environmental Degradation,” inviting signatures from individuals and groups:

“We, the undersigned, believe there exists a significant correlation between the current, dysfunctional debt-based monetary system and environmental degradation, and we strongly believe that sovereign monetary reform will allow a substantial contribution to climate [solution] finance.”

AFJM is organizing a Mayday for Money rally and march in front of the Chicago Fed in 2024, reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street, but with a more informed, focused and transformative objective, to take back our money creation power from the banking cartel, via the NEED Act.

JUST TRANSITION

The IPCC defines “just transition … as a set of principles, processes and practices that aim to ensure that no people, workers, places, sectors, countries or regions are left behind in the transition from a high-carbon to a low carbon economy.” 

While the transition to a steady-state economy must be socially just, that does not necessarily mean transitioning to a “low carbon economy”as defined by the IPCC, permitting carbon credits and such. True, we want to get to low or net-zero carbon emissions. But what we really want is net negative carbon emitting industries that remove or capture more CO₂ from the atmosphere than they emit, and cycle it eventually to the soil. This would be an instrumental feature of a steady-state economy, which can be done by utilizing carbon to our benefit, by reversing its role from nemesis to benefactor, as we shall see in a moment.  

To achieve a just transition to a steady-state economy, a Report of the Steady State Economy Conference calls for global co-operation to be improved: 

“Many nations need to increase their consumption of resources to alleviate poverty and allow people to meet their basic needs. These nations stand in stark contrast to wealthy countries like the UK where the benefits of growth have already been realised. The UK and other wealthy countries must stabilise, if not degrow, their economies in order to provide the ecological space needed for poorer nations to grow.”

The fact is “we would need 5.1 Earths if everyone lived like Americans,” and roughly three Earth’s if everyone lived like Europeans. Quality of life is not determined by GDP, which is criticized for being more of an indicator of “illth” than wealth or health. Indices more suited to measuring development and social well-being include the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). Notably, growth is not the same as development. It follows that there is both a necessity and potential for every nation to creatively develop comfortable novel lifestyles and innovative means of production that require far fewer resources to avoid overshooting the one Earthship we have. For example, here is an inspiring proposal:

PARITY ECONOMY

Facilitated by monetary reform and applicable within a steady-state economy is a parity (pricing) economy, which is founded on economic research begun during the first decades of the 20th century, establishing raw materials production to be the foundation of the national  (income) economy, thus confirming the maxim of natural law that “All wealth comes from the Earth.” It was discovered that raw materials production had to be priced fairly (parity pricing) or the national income (which includes all sectors of the economy) would be impaired. The Raw Materials National Council educated all the State Commissioners of Agriculture about how our NATIONAL INCOME (our economy) depends on the production of raw materials. Its successor in the study of the economic record, the National Organization for Raw Materials (NORM), explains:

“When raw materials enter trade channels at prices in balance with the prices of labor and capital in the rest of the economy, THE ENTIRE COUNTRY can operate on an earned-income basis with no buildup of public and private debt. Conversely, when raw materials enter trade channels at less than parity prices with labor and capital, the economy lacks sufficient dollars to operate on a debt-free basis, therefore, public and private debt accumulates.”

Prompted by the necessity of providing for the nation during WWII, and educated by the Raw Materials Council, Congress passed a parity bill in April 1942, allowing the entire economy to function without debt. However, after 1952 federal farm policy was controlled by international traders and corporations aligned with the banking power, who slowly eroded prices placed to support our major raw material producer, the farmer. Since then we’ve lost a million and a half family farms to agribusiness. Rural communities have been impoverished.

Getting more farmers back on the land to grow healthy fertile soil while they produce food and fiber is the best way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and rebuild rural communities, potentially becoming part of relatively self-sustaining bioregions. 

Today, with the control of federal economic policy in the hands of the financial sector, money flows to financial elites. They understand that a parity economy feeds the real economy with goods and services for the population, and that the same parity economy would cut them off.  They serve only their own interests and not those of our country.

Parity policy is not strictly for agriculture. It is for the ENTIRE ECONOMY — an economy where farmers can keep their farms without losing it to debt, where industrial businesses can pay solid wages and run a profitable business, where retailers can have customers that have money in their pockets to buy what they need for a decent life. A Parity Economy allows all citizens to stay out of debt to the private commercial banks, earn enough money to get their needs met, and support the local communities in our nation.

MAKE CARBON OUR FRIEND NOT OUR FOE

In their book Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth, Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper introduce a revolutionary approach to mitigating our climate crisis that would profoundly change our relationship to carbon by “transitioning carbon from a wasted resource to a (CO2) drawdown super hero.” Building upon ancient methods of “transforming impoverished soils into fertile black earth by converting organic materials into long lasting carbon, or biochar,… we can go from spending carbon to banking it.”

“This stable form of carbon can pass through many useful stages as food, filter, fodder, or building materials before returning to the part of the (carbon) cycle where the story began, the soil. During its transformation, useful services like heating, cooling, and power can also be generated. It can restore degraded lands and rebuild biodiversity. It can mitigate the effect of changing climate and ease or enable adaptation.”

“It contains the seeds of a new, circular economy in which energy, natural resources, and human ingenuity enter a virtuous cycle of improvement with bold new solutions that can begin right now.”

 SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!

An overarching structural change of system is immediately imperative to enable the “deep change across every aspect of our economies at a pace and scale we have not yet seen, …that ensures the change is socially inclusive with equitable outcomes for all.”

This is the existential challenge of our lives. We know what must be done. Let’s do it!

by Robert Hunziker

Antarctica has finally succumbed to rapid climate change. This past year (2023) brought changes to the icy continent that left climate scientists feeling a “punch in the gut.” (Source: Red Alert in Antarctica: The Year Rapid Dramatic Change Hit Climate Scientists Like a “Punch in the Guts,” The Guardian, December 30, 3023)

Antarctic sea ice cover crashed for six months straight to a level so far below anything else on the satellite record that scientists struggled for adjectives to describe what they were witnessing.

Global warming’s impact on Antarctica is serious, dangerous, threatening, hard to believe, and maybe unstoppable. Warnings like this, but not as serious as this, have been happening for years. As a result, too much negativity has turned the public numb to climate change. It’s been an endless stream of bad news that never gets good, always bad. But, in all honesty, that’s the nature of the beast unless reality is simply ignored.

Mainstream news recognizes the frustration. For example: “Global efforts to reach net-zero carbon emissions are failing in almost every way, with one exception: the boom in electric vehicles.” (Source: EVs Are the Only Bright Spot in Climate Fight, Study Shows, Bloomberg, Nov. 14, 2023) 

At the other end of the spectrum, Extinction Rebellion (XR) famous for gluing people to airplanes, roadways, and fossil fuel HQ doorways, and one of the most famous or infamous (take your pick) internationally organized groups against the root causes of global warming has heard enough bad news. It’s changing strategy by accepting reality. 

Co-founder Roger Hallam just took XR off the streets, so to speak, with his 2024 new year email broadcast: “Balance: Building the Next Civilization in 2024,” which is a brilliant practical strategic change of heart. In Roger’s words: “Look, the carbon regime has totally fucked up, so the climate crisis is now locked in. We don’t need to create massive social disruption because it’s going to happen anyway! The regime will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. So, what next? We need to build the next civilization and stop fascism from taking us to a terminal hell.”

Roger sees the inevitability of what’s already set in motion, including the burgeoning fascist movement, and he sees the rotted failure of UN climate conferences (for over 30 years now) not addressing the root cause of ecosystem destruction. As a result, nothing is going to be done soon enough to make a difference. All the chatter about nuclear power and tripling renewables, blah-blah-blah, at the end of the day, will be greenwashing to appease people who’ve seen one “natural disaster” unfold after another on nightly news over the past couple of years, massive floods, massive droughts, massive storms, massive wildfires, and massive atmospheric rivers. Everything is massive these days. 

In the real world, none of the proposed solutions for climate change meet the “scale of the problem” after more than 200 years of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Climate change is climate change is climate change, the same for eons, but the 21st century brand is radically different from anything in the paleoclimate record because it’s 10 times faster, in some instances 100 times faster, than ever before. Humans can’t keep up with the biogeological turbocharged monster. Scientists complain it’s happening so much faster than their models.

Ipso facto, ecosystems teeter throughout the planet, e.g., Greenland, in bad shape. Some scientists don’t even want to talk about Greenland any longer once it rained for the first time in recorded history at the Summit, 10,551 feet elevation.

A recent study about Greenland’s past is horrifying: “A recently discovered ice core taken from beneath the ice sheet decades ago has revealed that a large part was ice-free around 400,000 years ago, when temperatures were similar to those what we are now approaching. It’s an alarming finding that has implications for sea level rise. The study overturns previous assumptions that most of Greenland’s ice sheet was frozen for millions of years. Instead, moderate, natural warming led to large-scale melting and sea level rise of more than 1.4 meters (4.6 feet), according to the report in the journal Science.” The lead author of the study, Paul Bierman, University of Vermont: “When you look at what nature did in the past, as geoscientists, that’s our best clue to the future.” (Source: Long Lost Greenland Ice Core Suggests Potential for Disastrous Sea Level Rise, CNN, July 20, 2023)

Interestingly, and nerve-wracking, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today are 1.5 times higher than 400,000 years ago when sea levels increased 4.6 feet. Melt events take time but how much time nobody knows.

According to Copernicus ‘Ice Sheets’, since 1980 the rate of ice mass loss tripled for Greenland (pre-1980s, it was stable and in balance) and Antarctica. And now accelerating. 

According to the science, Antarctica is in big trouble, and it may be irreversible. Coastal cities could be under water; it’s just a matter of time; nobody knows how soon or later, but at the current rate of global fossil fuel emissions, it looks grim. After all, the fossil fuel industry has publicly announced intentions to go full-bore, like there’s no tomorrow, according to statements by big oil companies.  “Global fossil fuel production in 2030 is set to be more than double the level deemed consistent with meeting climate goals set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.” (Source: Global Fossil Fuel Production Plans Far Exceed Climate Targets, UN Says, Reuters, Nov. 8, 2023)

Massively increasing oil production conforms to a recent James Hansen (Earth Institute-Columbia University) publication about exceeding the world’s most recognizable threshold, aka: the danger zone, the Climate Maginot Line or 2C above pre-industrial. Hansen’s prediction is way ahead of expectations — the upcoming decade, the 2030s.  That’s early! It should be noted that scientists claim exceeding 2C wreaks havoc with life-sourcing ecosystems. For example, it’s already happening at above 2C with Arctic permafrost melting 2-4 times the average of global warming. Arctic rivers turn toxic and orange, one of the biggest sore thumbs on the planet, but Antarctica, the Amazon rainforest, Greenland, and the Great Barrier Reef are challenging. 

A British Antarctic Survey found the record drop in sea ice led to a catastrophic breeding failure for animals. Meanwhile, East Antarctica recorded its biggest heatwave ever at 39C above normal. And making matters worse, a major study published in Nature found meltwater slowing down by a nerve-rattling 30% to the Southern Ocean Overturning Circulation; this has huge negative implications for global weather, especially for northern Europe, which could lose its warm tropical current flow. And the implications for marine life are a major concern. 

Meantime, West Antarctic melting has tripled, and studies show accelerated melting of the ice shelves has locked in a cascading impact for West Antarctica which is in much worse shape than its eastern cousin.

Even worse yet for sea level rise expectations, Antarctica’s enormous loss of sea ice was never expected so early. According to Tony Press, former head of the Australian Antarctic Division: “There’s a chance that it could come back again, but there’s also a very, very high chance that sea ice in Antarctica has moved into a new state… You would not be an alarmist if you said you were really worried about that,” Ibid. 

Researchers claim a permanent loss of sea ice would accelerate ocean warming, as dark water absorbs more heat than ice and amplifies the rate of global sea level rise by removing a buffer protecting the continent’s ice shelves.

Antarctica, like so many other ecosystems throughout the globe, such as the Amazon rainforest (20% gone for good, 40% severely degraded) no longer adhere to the flow of Mother Nature. Human activity dictates the flow.

Roger Hallam co-founder of XR has seen the future, and it’s an analog of the past but much worse. Now, he’s searching for answers to building the next civilization. Not a bad idea. But where?

Robert Hunziker
Los Angeles
 

by Robert Hunziker

Global warming can add one more notch to its gun belt. The rapid onset of global warming is turning Alaska’s wilderness rivers orange. Global warming impacts Arctic temperatures 2-4 times warmer than the global average, and permafrost that’s been around since before humans sat round crackling cave fires is rapidly melting. Eons of frozen stuff is making its first appearance in tens of thousands of years, clobbering wilderness rivers with deadly toxicity. 

Researchers believe the cause(s) is/are (1) acid from minerals leaching iron out of bedrock exposed to water for the first time in millennia and/or (2) bacteria mobilizing iron from the permafrost soil in thawing wetlands prompted by global warming.

A group of scientists at Alaska’s Kobuk Valley National Park reported numerous sightings of orange river water 60 miles from the nearest villages and 250 miles from road systems. Patrick Sullivan, an ecologist/University of Alaska, Anchorage, analyzed a screen of a sensor he had dipped into the water: “This is bad stuff.” (Source: Why Are Alaska‘s Rivers Turning Orange? Scientific American, January 1, 2024) 

Dissolved oxygen in the orangish water was very low, the pH factor was 6.4 or 100 times more acidic than normal, and the electrical conductivity of the orange water was similar to industrial wastewater. Sullivan, stating the obvious: “Don’t drink this water,” Ibid. Honestly, think about the level of ridiculousness; it’s pristine (normally) drinkable water in the vast wilderness.

The scientists started their investigation of the water near the entry point of one of many streams to Salmon River that runs south from the peaks of Brooks Range, Alaska, known as “the last frontier,” which is a 650-mile line of slopes that separates northern Alaska from the rumbling Arctic coastline. A federal government act designated the Salmon River as a wild and scenic river with “water of exceptional clarity with deep luminescent blue-green pools and large runs of chum and pink salmon.” Sullivan: “It was a famous, pristine river ecosystem, and it feels like it’s completely collapsing now,” Ibid. 

Ultimately, the Brooks Range rivers flow into the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.

Similar fate is discoloring rivers and streams throughout the Brooks Range. The researchers believe Russia and Canada are likely experiencing the same. Timothy Lyons, geochemist, University of California-Riverside said: “Almost certainly it is happening in other parts of the Arctic,” Ibid. 

The scientists who studied the Range agree the major cause is climate change. For example, Kobuk Valley National Park has warmed by 2.4°C since 2006, and it’s believed the excessive heat has already begun thawing up to 40% of the permafrost. This is a good example of why global climate meetings, like COP28 recently held in Dubai, must come to grips with putting a stop to fossil fuel emissions, the number one agent on behalf of excessively harmful global warming.

The Brooks Range group of scientists conducted the first ever comprehensive sampling of an entire watershed on a six-day mission down the Salmon River. They believe a combination of (1) acid from minerals leaching iron out of bedrock exposed to water for the first time in millennia and/or (2) bacteria mobilizing iron from the permafrost soil in thawing wetlands is/are behind the dirty deeds, which means rusting will gradually “smother streams almost anywhere there’s permafrost,” inclusive of one-fourth of the entire Northern Hemisphere. This is a prime example of how far-reaching excessive global warming destroys the most pristine ecosystems on the planet and speaks to the necessity of halting fossil fuel emissions, yesterday. After all, this is what happens at 2°C above pre-industrial — ecosystems collapse. Only recently, Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University shocked science by saying 2°C will arrive during the 2030s, way-way earlier than IPCC projections.   

Traversing the river, they found murky water over orange rocks where only a couple of years ago it was clear and full of fish. At some spots the water ran half orange and half green and at others further downstream the river had the color and opacity of pea soup. Forrest McCarthy, a former US Antarctic Program coordinator, claimed: “Most climate change is subtle. This is like, bam!” Scientists claim they could not find any fish or insects in some areas of the Range, stating: “Biodiversity just crashed,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, 50 miles west of Salmon, the Agashashok River also turned orange-brown. Sullivan and company expressed shock by how fast streams started transforming, e.g., Clear Creek water was so acidic that it curdled the powered milk used for nightly tea, as the scientists traversed the Range.

On a trip to Timber Creek, 20 miles west of Salmon River, one of the members of the team who had fly-fished in the creek a few years ago, discovered: “More iron than fish… I looked at the creek, and I said, ‘this creek is dead. It’s just blanketed with metals,” Ibid. It’s what’s found in a national park, in the wilderness.

Additionally, the team discovered several blackened ground patches the color of fresh asphalt scattered throughout the Range. They took a sample of the trickling water flowing out of one dark patch. It had a pH factor of 2.95, like vinegar. The ground burn was caused by acid, and according to the team: “If it’s got that low of a pH… it’s actively burning. There’s at least a dozen burns in this valley,” Ibid. 

Brooks Range, Alaska is a preeminent example of how global warming enhanced by, driven by, fossil fuel emissions from cars, trains, and planes and industry impacts the most precious ecosystems of the planet where nobody lives but where life is supposed to thrive. It isn’t thriving any longer. Only an international forum like the UN climate change conferences held yearly, called COP, can come close to fixing this open sore on the planet, maybe?

Robert Hunziker
Los Angeles

by Henry Robertson

“Faith is the conviction of things not seen.” 
Fate is the coming of things seen too late.

They told the farmers to plow up the dry land.
“Rain will follow the plow,” said the railroads,
the government, the agricultural experts.
In the 1930s Dust Bowl the shadow fell
on the farmers as they looked up in awe
at churning clouds of soil that filled the sky.

This new dust bowl is invisible.
The rising global heat slides a manmade layer  
under the spikes and valleys of daily variation.
The invisible dust bowl has deniability.
What is it, really? Nothing new, just worse.
Like Covid-19 it has many symptoms:
droughts, floods and storms, heat waves and polar vortexes.

The whole climate changing is too much!
The changes it warns us to make are too big.
We can’t change it back, we can’t change what we are.
It’s the most natural thing in the world to drive
three tons of steel, glass, plastic and rubber
propelled by burning fossil plants.

If drought kills the crops, we’ll import food
until there are too many droughts at once.
Then we’ll look back down the highway and the railroad,
trace in our minds the sea lanes and air freight routes,
and realize that we’re in chains — supply chains
made possible by those same fossilized plants.
Investors with invisible capital organize it all for us.
They gather, transport, assemble, store and deliver
just about everything with their invisible corporations.
If you want to make something yourself they’ll sell you the parts.
Long supply chains are their monopolies against self-reliance.
But if the supply chain breaks, if there’s nothing to deliver,
if fossil fuels have to be discarded for the sake of our survival,
then we’d better collectively redirect our energy.

We should’ve declared war by now
on coal and oil and methane gas, 
but we’re still enchanted and enchained 
by fossil-fueled ease, mobility and entertainment.
Gratitude must become grievance.
The fossil fuel companies are the enemy.
Whatever they have done for us, 
they are devoted now to our destruction.
The Supreme Court says they are persons,
but they’re bigger than we are, 
potentially immortal,
many-headed yet single-minded, bent on profit.
They will not stop themselves.
Their power must be brought down by boycotts, bankruptcy,
resistance, revocations, new laws, injunctions, dissolution.
Nationalize and phase out fossil fuels;
they can no longer be consumers’ choice.
Make war on hardware with trespass, obstruction, sabotage.

Lay down the old Prometheus.
Transfuse his dwindling fuels into a new one
with power to stand alone, forging with their dregs 
the tools to draw our energy straight from the sun,
a power spread evenly among the peoples,
a power diminished in destructive force,
energy of the present, not the past, 
and energy, not ash, for the future.
 

Adam Aron’s The Climate Crisis:

Science, Impacts, Policy, Psychology, Justice, Social Movements

–Review Essay by Kim Scipes

Cambridge University Press, 2023; Paperback; ISBN: 978 1108987158

Adam Aron has written an ambitious book, one he intends to be the book on the subject of the climate crisis; and he has succeeded in many ways, especially for those who want as many of the specifics as possible.  He has written a book carefully supported by evidence and much research that not only includes the science behind “global heating”—his term for “global warming”—but also argues for the necessity of generating sufficient public pressure to facilitate political will to force governments and corporations to take action to keep fossil fuels in the ground, while transitioning to an electricity-based infrastructure and society.

Aron’s first three chapters are not anything that someone familiar with the issue of climate change would not have seen before, although he has put them together in a coherent package that is quite useful.  He joins the information with charts that well illustrate his points.  He notes that James Hansen testified to Congress in 1988 that human activities were affecting the planet to dangerous levels, and that “Since his testimony, more than 50 percent of all greenhouse gases in human history have been omitted…” Further, Aron argues, “Time is now running out to keep global heating from reaching levels that would be catastrophic for millions of species and for organized human existence as we know it” (p. 7).

He describes the history of efforts to stop climate change, climate science, and impacts of these changes.  Most importantly—and he refers to it numerous times throughout the book—“… as the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading and internationally recognized “expert” on climate change-KS] recognized in 2018, even a 66-percent probability of keeping [planetary warming below 1.5 degrees Centigrade] would require cutting 2010-level emissions by about 45 percent by 2030” (p. 57).  [According to statistica.com, greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 were 46.99 billion metric tons; a 45 percent cut would limit emissions to approximately 21.5 billion tons; the actual emissions in 2022 were 53.79 billion tons-KS.]

The importance of not exceeding a warming of more than 1.5 degrees Centigrade is monumental; it is the upper limit, according to general scientific consensus, to prevent potentially irreversible effects of climate change (Chu, 2023).  Above 1.5 C, it gets riskier as the temperature increases, ultimately risking crossing “tipping points,” beyond which processes initiated cannot be stopped or reversed, such as a river boat going over a waterfall!

The fourth chapter looks at capitalism and the climate crisis.  It is in the fourth chapter where things get interesting and he opens up ideas that heretofore have been confined overwhelmingly to those who are political radicals of one sort or the other; here, he essentially connects the climate crisis with capitalism.

In Chapters 5, 6, and 7, he focuses on how people who deny climate change develop their beliefs, and he suggests how that can be counteracted.

In Chapters 8, 9, and 10, he focuses from moving people to getting them to engage in collective action.

Aron begins Chapter 8 with a quote from long-time environmental activist and author, Brian Tokar, who argues that the problem of the climate crisis “is not a technical problem to be ‘solved’, but rather a systemic problem, rooted deeply in social and economic structures.”

 Aron talks about national responsibilities for greenhouse gas emissions, noting that the New York Times argues that “just twenty-three wealthy, developed countries have been responsible for half of all historical CO2 emissions, while more than 150 nations have shared responsibility for the other half.”  He further notes that “the USA ,,,  by itself is responsible for almost a quarter of all of these historical emissions,” and then comes Germany, the UK, Japan, and France, with the rest being western European countries and Australia” (p. 192).

Further in this chapter, Aron focuses on the problems of “extractivism,” the metal mining and projects to extract raw materials from the Earth to help advance the supply of renewable energy.  And here he’s generally focusing on multinational corporations’ effects on developing countries.

The rest of the chapter is extremely interesting:  he focuses on technical and market solutions to the climate crisis.  In doing this, among technical fixes, he considers large hydropower projects (dams); bioenergy, biomass, and biofuels; new nuclear power plants; and geoengineering.  Under the section on market fixes, he considers cap-and-trade efforts, carbon offsets, and carbon pricing or taxing.  In short, he argues, “… the only sure way to prevent more global heating is to leave remaining fossil fuels in the ground and invest in a fast and massive build-up of renewable energy sources” (p. 220).

And what I find especially of interest in this chapter is that he carefully examines and largely refutes all of the various proposals put forth by multinational capital and most of their controlled governments, including projects advanced by the US government.  To carefully address these various proposals in the way that he did should provide activists with ammunition to knowledgably oppose these kinds of projects.

Chapter 9 is where Aron provides a technical and social framework to guide climate action.  He starts off by quoting another climate activist and author, this time Stan Cox, who argues “to free ourselves from fossil fuels as soon as we can, to establish ecological stability and to ensure fair shares for all” is our goal.  Aron follows that path.

He examines the technical feasibility of the transition to renewable energy by examining challenges for a near-total reliance on renewable energy sources—examining the cost; and land, raw materials, and energy requirements—and then advances a framework for political action, including economic support, regulations and policies, social programs, and strategies for combatting the compulsion for consumption.

The penultimate chapter, Chapter 10, is exciting.  Although he did not put as sharply as would have I, he argues the necessity of collective action to make the changes necessary:  “… the kinds of changes that will be necessary to complete the transition from fossil fuels in time to avoid the worst consequences of global heating are unlikely to take place without concerted governmental oversight and action, which in turn is unlikely to take place unless national decision makers are compelled to act by pressure from below” (253).  In other words, people have to get mobilized and organize themselves to force governmental officials to do the right thing when they are deciding these issues; without this grassroots mobilization, it is unlikely that the government will take necessary action.

In this chapter, Aron discusses social movement theory, including forms of organizing, types of struggle, frames of meaning, and locus at which social change is focused.  He then discusses social psychology theory.  Then he gives examples of climate change movements, during which he discusses 350.org, Extinction Rebellion, and the Sunrise Movement.  He then follows with an interview of Masada Disenhouse, the Executive Director of San Diego 350.  Then, interestingly, he discusses how an individual can be active without being an activist, which suggests a number of things one can do to contribute to making the world better without having to devote your life to activism, suggesting how they can contribute to the struggle.  This is something quite useful that I have not seen previously.

Altogether, he concludes his book with three “conclusions”:  (1) that international agreements will not be made workable until they have succeeded at the national level; (2) that to avoid catastrophe, fossil fuels must be left in the ground; and (3) that the key to widespread public support can only be won when individuals and collective efforts join together create active grassroots mobilization.

—

There is both a lot of excellent information and, in my opinion, political confusion in this book.  As far as I can tell, his analysis of the climate crisis is well done and congruent with many critical thinkers.  It seems excellent and is based on the best scientific knowledge currently available.

However, there are a number of areas that I feel are inadequate for his purposes and are worthy of further discussion.  I take them in turn.

Aron never considers conservation efforts; and “conservation” is not even listed in the index.  This is important because there are studies showing that we cannot replace all energy requirements met today by fossil fuels with renewables alone; we are going to have to considerably reduce our energy usage or continue to use fossil fuels.

His proposed “solution” or set of solutions is contradictory and inadequate; like many “Green New Deal” advocates, he has thoughtful ideas.  However, while he believes that capitalism is causing the environmental problems, his proposed solutions are limited to reforms—yes, fairly radical reforms in places—but they do not address the heart of the problem:  capitalism is killing us.  We simply cannot live as we are today, building onto the growth model, and ensure the survivability of large numbers of humans, animals, and many plants into the 22^nd Century:  we are going to have to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and quickly.  From the science I’m reading, there is no alternative.

While I think he’s absolutely correct to specifically interrogate the role of capitalism in the role of climate change—and agree with many of his findings—I don’t think he goes far enough.  While I do not know if Aron considers himself a Marxist or not, his approach limits his work in ways comparable to how Marxist analysis is generally limited.

In other words, the strength of the Marxist approach is the focus on the economic system and the political institutions that support it (specifically, their version of the state).  And this is certainly a key part of any critical analysis. 

However, Aron ignores the issue of power and domination beyond the economic system.  In other words, I argue that there is more to the world than economics; that there is also a political realm that is not limited by economic production, distribution, and consumption.  [There are other realms as well—such as community and kinship—but I want to limit my comments here to the political aspect.]  In other words, this political realm operates on its own dynamic—the striving for power and domination—that is not constrained by economics.

This is important in that it allows us to include the concept of “Empire” in our analysis.  Basically, the idea of Empire incorporates much of human history, where those having power actively seek to dominate and control not only people and area of their own land, but also those of other lands, whether because of seeking economic resources (such as raw materials, natural resources, related production, and/or human beings for home-country development), geo-strategic advantages (such as naval base locations), or even social benefits [such as demonizing “others” (i.e., “minorities”)] so as to buy social acquiescence from the majority), or any other reason that those seeking this power can put forth; a capitalist analysis simply cannot encompass all of this without stretching itself all out of shape.

In other words, Empire allows us to understand how one capitalist—or usually, one group of capitalists—can either seek to dominate or protect itself from another group of capitalists:  by mobilizing the productive capacity of multiple capitalists and converting some of their economic resources into military weaponry under military leadership of armies, navies, and air forces, as well as other forces such as the CIA and/or the NED (the so-called National Endowment for Democracy), they extend the reach of their power.  Thus, capitalists within an empire are able to project their control and/or defend their land in ways simply unavailable through general capitalist production.  And, when used offensively, an empire can secure more economic resources, geo-strategic advantages and/or social benefits for enhanced capitalist production and profitability not only in the “home” country but in the subjugated lands as well.

Aron makes the same mistake that many leftists today make:  they do not recognize that the United States of America is the homeland of the US Empire, the greatest, strongest, and most destructive empire (to date) that the world has ever seen.  Accordingly, there is no discussion in this book of the US Empire seeking to maintain control over as much of the world as possible since at least 1945, if not earlier.

Nonetheless, the cost of the US Empire has been great on the world’s peoples, with the costs escalating dramatically since 1981, with the Reagan Administration but continuing under both subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations.  Its military is the single largest polluter in the world, and each invasion involves much killing and destruction, and is an environmental nightmare that continues for decades if not longer:  Vietnam is still suffering from Agent Orange and unexploded ordinance utilized in the American war, which ended in 1975, and Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering as well, along with the other countries bombed by the US Empire but not invaded (Libya, Syria, and former Yugoslavia come immediately to mind although the list is much longer.) 

Over $18 trillion dollars of US taxpayer money has been spent on the Empire’s war machine alone—I refuse to call it “defense”—over the past forty years, resources stolen from the American people that could have been utilized for advancing education, providing health care, improving the infrastructure, addressing social inequities, aiding environmental recovery, addressing homelessness, and mitigating against climate change here at home.  Somehow, this was not mentioned, much less addressed, by Aron.  [While I am commenting specifically on Aron’s positions, I do not mean to demonize him; most leftists still do not understand the US Empire, and I am arguing it is way past time that each of us incorporate this understanding into our respective analyzes.]

However, an Empire cannot depend solely on its economic and military power alone; it must gain acquiescence if not active support from its “home” population; after all, this home population is where it has got to obtain “soldiers,” the cannon fodder, for the imperial armies.  Thus, there needs to be a cultural apparatus to tell the population that basically—and traditionally—“war is good business; invest your sons” (and more recently, daughters), and encourage them to do so.  This gets projected in many ways, starting with the education system, and this usually includes the religious system, but this is where plays, novels, TV, radio, film, and much of social media come into importance; seize the imagination, seize the acquiescence! 

If you think I’m exaggerating, think about all of the cultural energy in the United States that goes into sports (both local high school and college, as well as professional); explicit sexual material (“pornography” and all things related); celebrity gossip; beauty, fashion, and modeling; and news production; each intended to draw attention away from problems such as hunger, poverty, and inequality, much less capitalism, war, empire, and the climate crisis.

And these “diversions” are not “small” things; each of these areas require overall investments in the multiple billions of dollars, seeking even greater profits.

And we on the left have generally failed to include the mainstream corporate media and their role in “setting the agenda” in our analysis as to what people should focus upon.  During Fall 2023, an incredible amount of attention was paid to Donald Trump’s attempted coup on January 6, 2021—as it should have been—but there was so much focus on the details of this that the climate crisis had all but disappeared from US news reporting.  Then, after October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its military attack on Israel, almost all coverage was of Israel as “victim,” and for a long time, was the only perspective seriously reported; it was only after massive protests across the US that some news from a Palestinian perspective or even from critical Israeli sources even was shown.

At the same time, despite all of the extravaganza, our political elections are generally devoid of providing substantive information and addressing real issues, usually only providing to audiences of Americans the “thinking” of those who have been able to raise the most money from the rich.  Money buys further attention which, in turn, attracts further financial contributions, which allows the successful candidate to represent the interests of contributors, not constituents.  And much of the political “debate” is in-fighting among political candidates; and almost as soon as one election cycle is completed, other candidates emerge and start the diversionary process anew, always seeking money, time, and attention.

At the same time, however, even these people are constrained by the interests of the “news” producers, who do not allow candidates to address issues inimical to their’s, or to go beyond their limited parameters; think how little time has been devoted to the climate crisis in contemporary mainstream political discussion/debate.

And yet, the consequences of such elections can have profound impacts on people around the globe, both abroad and at home.  They behoove those of us who are politically aware to participate, at least to certain extents.

In short, this larger “ideological apparatus” is as important to the Empire as is the economic system or the war machine although perhaps not as immediately noticeable.

And, once established, cultural norms become especially important because of the dominative power they project over subjects; questioning established norms, and especially challenging them individually, risks making oneself vulnerable to counterattack, however defined, but covering the range from denigration, mockery, to being made to feel vulnerable and, ultimately, physical violence.

Thus, central for effective cultural domination is the establishment of individualism as desirable; “I don’t want to be with anyone else; they’ll betray me, they’ll cheat on me, they’ll make me limit my desires.”  And they may persuade me to look at things differently than I would on my own.

Yet—and this is the key point—individualism precludes resistance at much of any level.  And this is illustrated by the old saying, “You can’t fight City Hall,” a warning, if there ever was one, of the futility of challenging power, whether structurally, culturally, or even normatively.

However, that saying and all it suggests can be easily undermined by simply adding one word, which illuminates the power of collectivity:  “You can’t fight City Hall alone!”  Add that one word, and you change everything:  broadscale social change, while perhaps extremely difficult it might still be, is now possible when you seek others to join you in the same project.

This is where we come back to capitalism, which is essential to confront.  The fact is that capitalism is killing us.  And it’s killing us through growth; an essential requirement of capitalism is that it must grow to survive; i.e., it is a growth machine.  And it is so much of a growth machine that it must grow beyond what is needed for survival or even living at a sustainable level by every human being on the planet; it must create the demand for growth beyond what is naturally there.  In other words, to put it in terms perhaps more metaphorically understandable, it is like a cancer that must continue to grow even if it destroys the host, ultimately causing its own destruction and demise.

In plain language, we either kill the cancer or we kill the host:  there is no alternative.

The point I’m making here is that Aron is basically on target:  our established production system threatens the existence of humans, animals, and most plants on this planet.  By utilizing fossil fuels for energy, each—oil, coal, and natural gas which, when burnt, attack the atmosphere surrounding and protecting the planet from the sun’s rays by emitting “greenhouse gases” (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and low altitude ozone)—are contributing to the escalating threat to survival of living things on this planet.

As Aron has explicated, for over 100 years, scientists have shown that adding carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere has raised the temperature of the Earth.  We now know that for over 800,000 years—no misprint!—the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere have never exceeded 300 parts per million (ppm).  Yes, natural processes, such as exploding volcanoes have released CO2 into the atmosphere, causing heating to increase and decrease over time, but never in this time period has it ever exceeded 300 ppm.  Until around the year 1950. Today, according to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), one of the most scientifically renown bodies in the world, it is 422 ppm (see NASA, 2023).

As the greenhouse gases have attacked the atmosphere, which is overwhelmingly made up of oxygen (78%) and nitrogen (21%), it has allowed more heat from the sun to get inside of the atmosphere and keep more of what gets in for a longer period of time.  This has warmed the planet approximately 1.1 degree Centigrade since the 1850-1900 period, roughly the beginning of widespread industrialization.

While that might not seem like much of a warming, nonetheless, it has caused myriad changes to our planet.  Most importantly, it has melted glaciers and the ice that cover the planet, and this has led to rising oceans, changes in weather patterns around the world (with increased deaths and destruction by hurricanes and typhoons, along with more deforestation and increased fire damages), death of coral reefs (the home of plankton, the base of the aqua-marine food system that feeds approximately one-third of the world’s population), etc., etc.  And the melting ice does not reflect as much sunlight back into space, keeping that heat inside the atmosphere, and further increasing the temperature of the planet, which leads to more ice melting….

To prevent this problem from escalating further, emissions must be stopped and, ideally, the CO2 and associated chemicals removed from the atmosphere; but in any case, stopped. 

And not in the real-distant future:  if we don’t make major changes by roughly 2030, we’re going to see the beginning of extermination of the human species by the turn of the 22^nd Century, a mere 77 years from now.  That’s within the lifetimes of many of us, and certainly within the lifetime of Gen Z’s children.

This is why incorporating empire into our analysis is so important:  it allows us a way forward beyond which a simple capitalist analysis does not.  By arguing that the United States is the physical homeland of the US Empire—the site of economic production to produce the military weaponry, the financing that enables its use, and the location of politicians who can decide to use/not use it—the US effort to dominate the other countries of the world (usually through political and economic domination, instead of the traditional territorial acquisition) is foregrounded and brought into focus. 

The US has been consciously trying to dominate the rest of the world since at least 1945, if not earlier—and that US governments under both the Democrats and Republicans increasingly have been diverting resources away from the American people since about 1981 so as to ensure the continuation of the US Empire (see Scipes, 2023a).  Accordingly, with this understanding, we can show the necessity of building global solidarity between “ordinary” Americans and the peoples of the world for the good of each of us.

From that, we can mobilize our resources to join together to challenge our respective forms of capitalism that is threatening to destroy us all.

We Americans must reject the US Empire’s efforts to dominate other people’s out of solidarity with the peoples of the world, as only through global solidarity do we have a chance to kill the cancer of capitalism; in other words, only by uniting in global efforts to refuse to overproduce can we have a chance to stop the climate crisis.

That will look different in diverse countries.  The imperial countries, who have tried to capture and monopolize the resources of the world, will have to give up usage of large amounts of them.  This is so as to give the formerly colonized countries additional resources to improve the lives of their peoples, and then keeping the rest in the ground.

In other words, by recognizing the US Empire, we activists are forced to look at all the countries of the world, and not just concentrate on our own.

Concurrently, the issue is do we forthrightly confront that problem collectively and try to come up with solutions addressing historical inequities and having the least impact on the largest numbers of people, or do we continue as usual, and let the rich make the decisions—either directly or through their bought-off politicians—which will hurt most of us dramatically and detrimentally?  That is the issue at hand.  Yet nowhere in this book is this laid out so forthrightly.

And finally, I must go even further.  To his credit, Aron recognizes that mere “policy positions,” scientific papers, etc., while necessary, are not sufficient to fight climate change; we need to mobilize the citizen to force the end of greenhouse gas emissions as well as other forms of environmental destruction.  He is clear on that.

However, in my mind, even that recognition is not sufficient.  We must have a program by which to try to win support from the US population as part of the global upsurge; for an earlier effort, see Scipes (2017).  But I’d also go further than Aron in another way:  he argues for mobilization, but that, too, is not sufficient; as I’ve argued elsewhere (Scipes, 2023b), we need to build organization as the foundation for mobilization.

In short, I argue that while Aron is raising critically important issues—and I give him credit for going as far as he has done—I don’t think he goes far enough in fully understanding them so that we can attempt to resolve them.

CONCLUSION

Overall, how do I see Adam Aron’s The Climate Crisis?  I think the scientific material to be quite strong, although I wish he could write more directly; his use of charts and graphs is quite helpful.

I am less impressed with his political “answers.”  However, he raises a lot of key points not usually included that have stimulated my responses, and I expect they will raise responses from others.

I think this is an important contribution, and definitely deserves additional attention.

References:

Chu, Jennifer. 2023.  “Explained:  The 1.5 C Climate Benchmark.”  MIT News, August 27.  On-line at https://news.mit.edu/2023/explained-climate-benchmark-rising-temperatures-0827.

NASA.  2023.  Evidence as to climate change:  on-line at https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/.

Scipes, Kim.

—        2017.  “Addressing Seriously the Environmental Crisis:  A Bold, ‘Outside of the Box’ Suggestion for Addressing Climate Change and Other Forms of Environmental Destruction.”  Class, Race and Corporate Power.  On-line at http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol5/iss1/2.

—        2023. “Forty Years of the United States in the World.”  Z Network.  On-line at https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/special-history-series-40-years-of-the-united-states-in-the-world-1981-2023/.

—        2023.    “Organizing to Save the World:  Building Organizations from the Group-up.” Green Social Thought.  On-line at http://www.greensocialthought.org/content/organizing-save-world-building-organizations-ground.

Biography

Kim Scipes, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana, and a long-time political activist.  He has published four books and over 260 articles in peer-reviewed and specialty journals, general interest magazines, and local newspapers in the US and 11 different countries; a complete list of his publications, many with links to original articles, can be found at https://www.pnw.edu/faculty/kim-scipes-ph-d/publications/.  Scipes taught a course on “Environment and Social Justice” bi-annually between 2006-2022.

by Charles Posa McFadden

Through prodigious intellectual work during the height of the industrial revolution in England, building on prior and concurrent achievements by humanity in science and philosophy, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels gave humanity the intellectual scaffolding for understanding and ultimately overcoming the death spiral that accompanies capitalism. That scaffolding includes dialectical and historical materialist theory and the identification of the three laws that govern the behavior of the capitalist class.

It was that intellectual scaffolding that enabled Lenin and his comrades to respond to the conjuncture of capitalism’s first world war by leading the Russian working class and its allies to create the world’s first country-wide socialist society. That achievement in turn created the material foundation for a second wave of global revolutionary advance in the wake of capitalism’s second world war, notably including the success of the revolutionary worker-peasant alliance in China, which continues as a globally influential model today.

In the three-quarters of a century since the first global defeat of the fascist alliance, capitalism took the opportunity to complete its historical mission by extending socialized production to every corner of the Earth, but within the shell of private appropriation of the surpluses human creativity has produced. This contradiction between social production and private appropriation has reached its ultimate spatial limits, creating an existential crisis for humanity in both social and ecological dimensions.

During this post World War II era, the most economically and politically powerful representatives of the capitalist class have utilized the remaining time given them to support the continuity, expansion, and development of a global fascist alliance as its ultimate defense. The intellectual foundation for fascism includes the negation of (1) science and its foundation in dialectical and historical materialism, and (2) the socialist project, and its foundation in communal morality (human rights). It follows that the struggle for a future for humanity requires the intellectual struggle for science, including its dialectical and historical materialist foundation, and the organizational struggle for institutionalizing communal morality (human rights). In what follows, we briefly argue for key aspects of the struggle for empirically validated science and its methodology.

The ecological crisis facing humanity can best be understood through application of the relevant scientific laws, natural and social scientific. Scientific analysis of the ecological crisis begins with recognition that the Earth’s biosphere is the region where two natural systems intersect, namely the solar system and the ecological system (Ecology Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster).

Most influential on the dynamics of the biosphere today are the natural laws of motion of the globally dominant capitalist economic and political system, those identified by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and addressed in their collaborative work, primarily Capital, Volumes 1-3, and identified briefly below taken together with the thermodynamic laws applicable to the biosphere.

Contrary to the dominant capitalist ruling class perspective, the biosphere is not a thermodynamically closed system. It is not threatened primarily by laws that act outside and independent of human agency. The biosphere’s role as a necessary supporting system for human existence is threatened primarily by the behavior of the globally governing capitalist ruling class, acting in conformity with the requirements of the capitalist economic and political system.

The biosphere receives energy from the Sun, which among other things drives the process of photosynthesis, creating higher order in the form of life from relative disorder in the form of non-living matter. Managed sustainably, there is no natural scientific law that precludes many future generations of human life on Earth, generations who have a qualitatively improved social system and relationship with nature to look forward to. Our Sun is expected to be around for at least another four or five billion years.

The biosphere also receives energy from the decay within the Earth of radioactive elements. This geothermal energy is the driving force behind tectonic activity and together with solar energy represents a vast potential source of energy for supporting a much higher quality of life than most of humanity experiences today and for a greatly extended history on Earth, providing, of course, that humanity follows the path of conservative use of energy and natural resources.

The biosphere is therefore clearly not a system that can be exclusively addressed through application of the concept of entropy (the second law of thermodynamics). Life on Earth is itself the proof that entropic processes (disorder) are countered, at least in part, by negative entropy, or more specifically Gibbs Free Energy (Entropy and life – Wikipedia).

Those prominent in the development of this scientific conceptualization were guided by dialectical materialist conceptions, including:

(1) every system needs to be studied in its relationship to those other systems that have a significant effect on its behavior, and

(2) all objects of human contemplation and analysis need to be viewed in relation to their opposites.

Hence, (1) the study of the biosphere needs to include the influence on it of both the Earth and the Sun, and (2) the consideration of decay (entropy) within the biosphere should be undertaken together with consideration of its opposite (negentropy). This is the essential journey needed to achieve a sustainable relationship between humanity and a human life sustaining biosphere. This consideration needs to be central to the socialist project.

Capitalism, by its nature, has both created the existential crisis humanity now faces and is the principal barrier to achieving an ecologically sustainable future. This is a consequence of the three laws that govern the behavior of the capitalist class, laws which act outside the volition of individual capitalists and their supporters.

The first law of capitalism is the exploitation of labor by capital, a consequence of social production for private profit.

The second law of capitalism is competition between the private owners of capital to expand their ownership at the expense of labor and each other, making increasing private accumulation of capital, with all its associated inequities and cultural and environmental consequences, a defining characteristic of capitalism.

The third law of capitalism is the tendency of the rate of private profit to fall as the productivity of labor increases, resulting in non-equilibrium (that is, chaotic) behavior, including the short term boom-bust business cycle (averaging a decade approximately) and in the longer term cycle of global depressions, the first in the last quarter of the 19^th century, the second in the second quarter of the 20^th century, and the current one, in this quarter of the 21^st century, each followed by partial resolution in the form of increasingly violent global dislocations (the first and second world wars, followed by the first and now second “cold” wars.)

In contrast to the many shortcuts attempted by petit bourgeois theorists (who thereby, perhaps unwittingly, serve to extend the life of capitalism), all three of these laws need to be considered together if the exploitative heart of capitalism is to be recognized and the capitalist system overcome.

Characteristic of revolutionary Marxism, therefore, is the recognition that freedom begins with the recognition of empirically validated (scientific) laws. Characteristic of fascism, on the other hand, is the rejection of any scientific law that would constrain human behavior.

Given the global extension and connectivity of capitalism and the global dimension of the biosphere which supports humanity, the resolution of the current crisis (with its profound concomitant economic and ecological dimensions) is the challenge now facing humanity. A favorable resolution depends on the emergence of increasing cooperation and collaboration among the progressive social forces world-wide, sufficient to turn the tide in favor of the working and oppressed classes, based on scientific socialism, as defined by the examples above.

The struggle for a multipolar world, including common prosperity and qualitative development, is likely the path to the necessary unification of the progressive forces into a decisive political force, one capable of placing capitalism in the dustbin of history and achieving a global ecological civilization, undoubtedly a long-term project that should keep problem-solving humanity constructively busy for many generations ahead.

∞

Those interested in related articles from Charles Posa McFadden and Karen Howell McFadden can find them on our website: https://www.greensocialdemocracy.org

Charles Posa McFadden (M.Sc. 1966, Ph.D. 1969, in Geophysics) has studied and worked as a mathematical physicist and geophysicist (1960-1972), and science educator (1965-2009), combining teaching, developmental projects, and published research in these and related fields. From 2010 to the present, he has worked in collaboration with Karen Howell McFadden (M.A.,1966 and Ph.D., 1976 in English Literature) in addressing questions related to the challenge of the conjuncture between ecological and socio-economic crises, creating an existential crisis for humanity. Their published work includes an 11- chapter argument for Achieving an Ecological Civilization, available on their website and, also, published as 11 articles by Green Social Thought, http://GreenSocialThought.org. Charles and Karen have been active in the student, peace, labor, environmental, and social justice movements throughout their adult lifetimes, including associated published research linking theory and practice. Throughout they have been guided by dialectical and historical materialist theory (sometimes referred to as “scientific socialism”).

by Robert Hunziker

Northern Greenland is under attack by global warming at the same time as delegates to COP28 heap praise on a purported landmark deal to transition out of fossil fuels — but beware of the true meaning behind the language. Its disingenuousness is a stamp of approval for much more climate upheaval imprinted onto one more UN Conference of the Parties, COP flop.

According to Dr. Friederike Otto of Imperial College London: “The lukewarm agreement reached at COP28 will cost every country, no matter how rich, no matter how poor. Everyone loses. It’s hailed as a compromise, but we need to be very clear what has been compromised. The short-term financial interests of a few have again won over the health, lives and livelihoods of most people living on this planet.” (COP28: Landmark Deal to Transition Away from Fossil Fuels Agreed — As It Happened, The Guardian, Dec. 13, 2023)

“Down to Earth’s” publication d/d Dec. 14, 2023 hit the nail on the head re COP28: “Despite the hottest summer in 120,000 years, the oil, gas, coal, and farming companies that are heating the planet can continue to expand production for the foreseeable future.”

Meanwhile, new research has identified extremely disturbing deep trouble brewing in Greenland: Three of eight major ice shelves in the northern region have collapsed or retreated, leaving five ice shelves as gigantic corks holding back major glaciers from rapidly flowing into the sea, in turn raising sea levels beyond comfort levels. The three biggest are Petermann, Ryder, and Nioghalvfierbrae. This threesome alone equals 3.6 feet of sea level rise. (Source: Alarming Collapse of Greenland Ice Shelves Sparks Warning of Sea Level Rise, LiveScience, November 2023)

A separate study by Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences/University of Texas found Greenland’s glaciers melting 100 times faster than previously thought. (Source: K Schulz, et al, An Improved and Observationally Constrained Melt Rate Parameterization for Vertical Ice Fronts of Marine Terminating Glaciers, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 49, Issue 18, Sept. 20, 2022)

Moreover, according to the Oden study: “The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a major predictor of sea level rise. This frozen stretch of glaciers is the second largest on Earth and covers about 80% of the Nordic nation. If it melts entirely, as it did at the height of the Eemian interglacial period about 125,000 years ago, global sea levels could rise by 20 feet—or approximately 6.1 meters.”

An entire meltdown would take centuries, but we’re only concerned with the first several feet which will likely happen this 21^st century, enough to flood coastal cities, for example, wiping out Miami Beach, unless Florida encircles the entire state with a gigantic seawall creating a medieval city-state moat.

For as long as anybody can remember, the eight ice shelves in the northern region of Greenland were always stable. However, stability has suddenly disintegrated, according to the report: “We show that since 1978, ice shelves in North Greenland have lost more than 35% of their total volume, three of them collapsing completely. For the floating ice shelves that remain we observe a widespread increase in ice shelf mass losses.” (Source: R. Millan, et al, Rapid Disintegration and Weakening of Ice Shelves in North Greenland, Nature Communications, November 2023)

There’s no emphasis required to know that COP28’s greenwashing compromise and the global warming threat to Greenland are not only interrelated but really bad news. And, once again, it exposes the hollowness of annual UN Conferences of the Parties that should address the compelling issue of excessive CO2 emissions creating a blanket trapping global heat. Ipso facto, Greenland’s glaciers, 100 times faster, start filling up the oceans. This, in turn, creates the mystery of all mysteries as nobody knows how high, or when, sea level rise overwhelms coastal metropolises.  But based upon the feebleness of 30+years of COP meetings that are attended by world leaders (154 heads of state at COP28), it looks dismal.

Amongst the referenced ice shelves, the Peterman ice shelf is a focal point. It lies at the seaward end of a deep sub-ice canyon that could open-up ocean penetration into the center of the entire Greenland ice sheet. The initial step to such a horrifying prospect would be loss of Peterman’s ice shelf.

“Ice shelves are the parts of an ice sheet that float on the water, preventing glaciers on the land from slipping into and melting in the ocean, which would increase sea levels. If the glaciers the North Greenland ice shelves support were to collapse, sea levels could rise by nearly 7 feet (2.1 meters).” (LiveScience report)

Therefore, the Millan scientific analysis should raise eyebrows of policymakers to the necessity of immediate powerful mitigation measures, not mealymouthed halfway-commitments that are broadcast as “landmarks,” oh, please! Yet brokenheartedly, the recently concluded Dubai 28th annual UN climate conference did not address the issue of excessive CO2 emissions forcing increased warming, other than to stress “transitioning” out of fossil fuels pretty much on a ho-hum basis. This approach has not worked for more than 30 years of COP meetings; frustration reigns supreme. According to COP28 president Al-Jaber, COP28 is a “true victory,” but “his comments clash with reactions by scientists who have praised parts of the UAE consensus but criticized its vague, weak and caveated language on fossil fuels, which are the main cause of climate change.” (The Guardian, Dec. 13)

As a result of decades of weak COPs, there’s a price to be paid: “We are heading toward an ice-shelf-free Northern Hemisphere.” (Millan) The implications are horrendous and impossible to describe. Based upon the results of COP28, a major question going forward is whether adaptation measures, such as tall seawalls, can be erected ahead of rising sea levels?

The results of too much ocean heat (oceans absorb 80-90% of planetary heat) entering underneath the ice shelves has been studied in detail by scientists based at institutions in France, the US, and Denmark, using satellite data, ocean observations, and climate modeling to measure changes in the ice shelves’ spatial area and thickness. Grounding lines where the ice shelves come aground were evaluated. The areas where the floating shelves end, and the grounded glacier begins are retreating inland across nearly all the shelves, a key sign of weakening. This is a prime example of the nemesis of global warming fueled by rising CO2 emissions at work. COP28 was supposed to deal with issues like this. It did not.

Robert Hunziker

Los Angeles

Francisco Dominguez looks at the grim implications of the shock victory for a
shocking candidate, assessing how much damage they might do to the nation
and the continent

Latin America and the world were stunned to learn that on November 19 2023,
Argentina’s most extreme right-wing politician, Javier Milei, had been elected
president with a hefty 56 per cent of the vote.
His rival, Peronist Sergio Massa, minister of economics of Alberto Fernandez’s
outgoing administration, scratched 44 per cent of the vote. The support of the
electoral coalition Juntos por el Cambio, which obtained 24 per cent in the first round,
was crucial to guarantee Milei’s victory.
Javier Milei is not just an extreme right-wing politician; he is also a very odd character.
He suffered humiliation and physical violence from his parents, thus, for years he did
not have any relationship with them; he was the rock band Everest’s singer; in
secondary school, he won the nickname “El Loco” (“the crazy one” or “the
madman”) because of his outbursts; he has faced court cases on issues related to
plagiarism, gender violence, illicit association, and for the finances of his electoral
campaign; he has claimed to talk to God; he lives with four dogs (he calls “my four-
legged children”) which he has named after famous economists; he claims to talk to
“Conan” a dead dog he used to own; and in TV chat shows he has talked about
threesomes and other sexual exploits.
A biography narrates that he made his first friend at 33 and had his first love at 47; he
is charismatic, highly aggressive, offensive, and has been labelled misogynistic; he
strongly opposes abortion, he also opposes feminist politics and policies and has
stated to be in favor of “liberalising” the sale of weapons and human organs.
He sees himself as a warrior in the world’s culture wars and he thinks sex education is
a Marxist plot to destroy the family. He defines himself as a libertarian or “anarcho-
capitalist,” and is an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, Donald Trump, and Jair
Bolsonaro.
His proposals are ultra-neoliberal and include replacing the Argentine peso with the
US dollar and the eventual abolition of the nation’s central bank; the abolition of all
ministries except economy, justice, interior, security, defense, and foreign relations;
abolition of all subsidies, especially, energy, coupled with an economic reform aimed
at drastically reducing both public and social expenditure as well as taxes; and he
favors total economic deregulation.

Furthermore, Milei has also confirmed his determination to carry out a wave of
privatizations of services such as health, education, and all state companies,
particularly the system of public media, and state oil and gas companies YPF and
ENARSA.
He will also restructure AFIP (Argentina’s Inland Revenue) and ANSeS (national
administration of social security) and, he has promised to “turn [over] Argentina
Airlines to its employees.”
On foreign policy, Milei proposes to break relations with Brazil and China and he is
opposed to Argentina joining the BRICS (a trade group of Brazil, Russia, India,
China, and South Africa) because he “will not promote agreements with
communists.” Instead, he said Argentina will align with the US and Israel, countries he
will visit before his inauguration.
Milei also rejects Argentina joining the BRICS because it is a group that favors and
promotes the de-dollarization of trade. Milei’s top foreign affairs adviser, Diana
Mondino, in an interview with Sputnik News, said Argentina would not go ahead with
plans to join BRICS.
Breaking links with Brazil will be damaging to Argentina, but breaking with China
would be disastrous: in 2022 Argentina exported 92 per cent of soya and 57 per cent
of meat there, and China has carried out substantial investment in the country’s
energy sector and its lithium industry.
Ideologically, Milei is an ultra-conservative who defends the 1976 military dictatorship
and denies that it murdered over 30,000 people, a figure he says is only 8,753, the
result of a “war” in which state forces perpetrated “excesses” but “so did the
terrorists,” as he labels the dictatorship’s victims.
Milei was a political associate of genocidal military officer General Antonio Bussi,
condemned to life in prison for crimes against humanity (repression, forced
disappearances, kidnappings, torture, and assassinations) in Tucuman province during
the dictatorship.
In 2022, Milei entered into a political agreement with Fuerza Republicana, led by
Bussi’s son, Ricardo. Furthermore, Milei combines an anti-system populism with an
extreme version of economic liberalism, ideally with “no state” participation in the
nation’s economy.
His notion of anarcho-capitalism includes, among other things, loosening the
country’s labor laws. In his propaganda he has amalgamated government officials,
trade union bureaucrats, the working class, and the 40 per cent of Argentineans who
depend on social benefits, labelling them “parasites and thieves.”
Milei considers the state to be worse than the mafia and proposes the arming of
individuals as a “solution” to ensure public safety against crime. To symbolize his
commitment to carry out drastic cuts in state spending he campaigned with a revving
chainsaw in his hands.

In his victory speech, Milei declared that in the implementation of his economic
policies, there would be no room for gradualism and, against those who resist the
elimination of what he labelled “privileges” (working-class gains) “we will be
implacable.”
It is unimaginable that such an economic shock can be implemented without grave
attacks on political and democratic rights, the right to strike, the right to demonstrate,
and even the right to organize. Milei’s views are inimical to liberal democracy since he
deems it to be ruled by a “caste.”
Milei’s calls for purging the “political caste” are almost identical to Trump’s
commitment to “drain the swamp,” and like the latter’s mantra “Make America Great
Again,” the Argentinean constantly repeats his intention to restore his nation to a
position of greatness “in the world that it should have never lost.” He even wears hats
with the slogan “Make Argentina Great Again.”
Internationally, he has linked up with Spain’s extreme right-wing party, Vox, with Jair
Bolsonaro. and his son Eduardo in Brazil, and with people like Chile’s extreme right-
winger, Jose Antonio Kast. Trump tweeted a euphoric message predicting Milei will
“truly Make Argentina Great Again.” Milei has contacted Jair Bolsonaro to personally
invite him to his inauguration.
What underlies the Peronist defeat was the IMF-mandated austerity policies of
Alberto Fernandez’s government which received a hugely indebted economy, the
legacy of the Macri administration, which took out a loan of $57 billion (127 times
greater than the indebtedness capacity of Argentina).
Between 2018-20 the IMF granted Macri the largest loans in its history: $100bn
($56bn in 2018 and $44bn in 2020). Thus between 2012-21, Argentina had the largest
increase in public debt: 40.5 percentage points of GDP.
When Fernandez assumed office in 2019 the country’s debt was more than $320bn
which by November 2023 had reached $420bn — a dire situation.
In August 2023 the Financial Times reported: “Argentina faces mounting pressure to
devalue its currency again as its government struggles to avoid economic collapse…
with inflation more than 100 per cent a year; about 40 per cent of people living in
poverty; and a recession looming.”
The primary win by Milei led to an 18 per cent devaluation of the peso and an
increase in interest rates to 118 per cent aimed at restoring confidence, and a
generalized price hike of consumer goods by double digits overnight. No wonder
demoralized and disenchanted voters flocked in such large numbers to Milei’s
simplistic proposals.
However, given the country’s experience with neoliberalism, dollarization, and IMF
austerity in the past, the Fernandez government failed to mobilize its political base to
exert pressure on the IMF to extract concessions to improve Argentina’s bargaining
position.

Milei’s plans to slash public spending from 38 per cent to 15 per cent of GDP will
involve severe cuts in highly sensitive areas such as pensions, transport subsidies (12
and 2.5 per cent of GDP, respectively), and welfare benefits support for 40 per cent of
the population.
Dollarizing the economy, technically very difficult to implement, will massively
exacerbate inequality and poverty, a situation which in the past has led to militant
social unrest making non-Peronist administrations unable to finish their mandate.
Given the significance of Brazil and China for Argentina’s economy, it remains to be
seen whether Milei is really willing to implement such a self-harming break.
Where Milei may also cause substantial damage is his opposition to continuing to
develop a Brazil-Argentina common currency for their mutual trade but also for Latin
America as a whole. It would substantially complicate, but not stop, the ongoing
process of regional integration.
The election of Javier Milei as president will take Argentina into a gigantic and
multifaceted crisis, leading his extreme right-wing administration to assault people’s
rights and gains.
His promised brutal ultra-neoliberal policies will be supplemented by implacable
repression and persecution of opponents. Thus, we must build the broadest solidarity
movement to defend democracy and people’s democratic rights in Argentina.
Dr Francisco Dominguez is a former senior lecturer at Middlesex University,
where he was head of the Research Group on Latin America. He is a specialist
on Latin America's contemporary political economy. He is National Secretary
of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Dominguez came to Britain in 1979 as a
Chilean political refuge. Ever since he has been active on Latin American
issues, about which he has written and published extensively. He is co-author
of Right-wing politics in the New Latin America (Zed Books).

                                        “ … because I don’t love the oppressed. I love those whom I love, who are always beautiful and sometimes oppressed, but who always rise up in revolt.”

                                                                      Jean Genet – The Miracle of the Rose

                     “An almost sick anti-Arab racism is so present in all Europeans that we wonder if the Palestinians should count on our help, however small?”

These words were written by Jean Genet in 1971, in his first major text dedicated to the Palestinians. (1)

Genet was one of the most original and combative writers of the 20th century. Born in 1910 in Paris to an unknown father, he was handed over to public care by his mother at the age of seven months. One can imagine what enormous efforts this mother must have made to keep her child, since she kept him for his first seven months, probably abandoning him to an institution only when the struggle to keep herself and her child became an impossible task. Genet never met her. The authorities handed him over to be raised by a family of craftsmen in the small village of Alligny-en-Morvan. However, the bonds of affection that Genet could develop towards his adoptive family were also threatened from the outset, as he grew up knowing that when he turned thirteen, by law, he would be placed as an apprentice elsewhere, as indeed happened. At the age of fifteen, Genet ran away from the apprenticeship center where he had been taken and, as punishment, was imprisoned for the first time. From then on, a large part of his life would be spent in successive prisons.

At eighteen, he joined the armed forces as a way of escaping poverty and imprisonment. He served in the French colonial army in Morocco where he saw the brutal reality of colonialism first hand. Back in France in 1937, he was arrested several times on charges of vagrancy, desertion and, above all, theft. It was in prison, in 1942 and 1943, that Genet wrote his first novels, Our Lady of the Flowers and The Miracle of the Rose. In 1949, thanks to a petition launched by Jean Cocteau and Jean Paul Sartre and signed by several writers, Jean Genet was granted a pardon by the President of the Republic and left prison for good.

Genet never hid his homosexuality and his first books caused a scandal due to the frankness and freedom, unseen until then, with which he wrote about homosexuals and himself.

But it was in his writings in solidarity with the Black Panther Party and the Palestinian people in the fight against racism and oppression that Jean Genet left us a fundamental legacy and perhaps his most important message for our time.

Jean Genet in the United States

“So, wherever I find myself, I will always feel linked to the movement that will bring about the liberation of men. Today and here, it’s the Black Panther Party, and I’m at their side because I’m with them.”

In 1970, two emissaries from the US Black Panthers went to France to ask Jean Genet, then a worldwide literary celebrity, to support their fight against racism. Genet’s play The Blacks had been a huge success in New York in the 1960s, running for four years, when only a few years earlier it had become possible by law for African-Americans and whites to attend the same theater in the United States. For a large part of the white audience, this play was a shock. But for the African-American spectators, Genet’s text was liberating and cathartic. For James Baldwin, Genet’s play was a revelation. Hence the Black Panthers’ interest in this white author who understood the reality of oppression and racism so well. In response to the Black Panthers’ appeal, Genet immediately proposed going to the United States.

The context of this 1970 visit is thus described by Genet’s American biographer, Edmund White (2):

“Nixon’s vice-president, Spiro Agnew, had vowed to wage merciless war on the Panthers, which he did with total conviction until he was ousted from office in 1972 for tax evasion. In Chicago and Philadelphia, police engaged in shootouts with the Panthers – or, more precisely, stormed their local headquarters. In Chicago, for example, on December 4, 1969, police raided the apartment of Fred Hampton, president of the Illinois Black Panthers. Peoria party leader Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were killed. Four other Panthers and two police officers were wounded. The police called it an exchange of shooting, but no bullet holes were found to support this version.

In reality, the police had been waging open war on the Panthers since the party’s creation, and by 1970 all the leaders (including Bobby Seale and Huey Newton) were dead, in prison or in hiding, with the exception of David Hilliard, the National Chief of Staff (who in 1992 was preparing a book on Genet’s friendship with the Panthers in 1970).

On April 2, 1969, twenty-one Panthers were arrested in New York and charged with conspiracy to stage explosive attacks on stores and public buildings. Sixteen were remanded in custody (with bail set at one hundred thousand dollars per person) for ten months until their trial, which opened in February 1970. It was against this backdrop that Jean Genet arrived in the United States. The Americans, he said, couldn’t stand ‘a red ideology in a black skin’ and had massacred twenty-eight Panthers over the previous two years.”

In the USA, Genet gave several lectures accompanied by the Black Panthers at various American universities. There he drafted a ‘Letter to American Intellectuals’, which was widely circulated at those meetings and where he wrote:

“For a white person, History, past and future, is very long, and very imposing in its system of references. For a Black man, Time is short. He cannot go back in his history beyond the periods of slavery. And in the U.S.A., we still strive to limit Blacks’ Time and Space. Not only is each of them increasingly entrenched in his or her own person, but we imprison them. When necessary, we murder them…

“Faced with the vigor of their action (of the Panthers), and the rigor of their political thinking, the whites, and particularly this offshoot of the dominant caste in the USA, the Police, had a racial reaction: since the blacks were showing themselves capable of organizing themselves, the simplest thing to do was to discredit their organization.

 “In this way, the police were able to conceal the true meaning of their interventions behind unspeakable pretexts: drug, murder or vice trials. In fact, they wanted to massacre the leaders of the Black Panther Party.”

In another speech, given on May Day in the USA, Genet said:

“Another thing that worries me is fascism.    We often hear the Black Panther Party talk about fascism, and white people have a hard time accepting the word. It takes a great effort of imagination for white people to understand that black people live under an oppressive, fascist regime. For them, this fascism is not just the work of the American government, but of the entire white community, which is truly privileged.

“Here, whites are not oppressed directly, but blacks are, in spirit and sometimes in body.

“Blacks are right to accuse the white community of this oppression, and they are right to bet on fascism.

 “We may live in a liberal democracy, but the Blacks do live under an authoritarian, imperialist, domineering regime. It’s important to communicate a taste for freedom among you. But white people are afraid of freedom. It’s too strong a drink for them. They have yet another fear, and it’s growing all the time, and that’s the fear of discovering the intelligence of black people.

“What we call American civilization will disappear. It’s already dead, because it’s based on contempt. For example, the contempt of the rich for the poor, the contempt of whites for blacks, and so on.      Any civilization based on contempt must necessarily disappear.”

Jean Genet had a civilizing influence on the Black Panther Party. It was common in the Panthers’ language at the time to use adjectives referring to homosexuality as insults, revealing enormous prejudice. Jean Genet’s solidarity did not prevent him from seeing or denouncing the prejudices of the Black Panthers and demanding a change in behavior, which led one of the party’s most important leaders, Huey Newton, to take a written position. In an article written in prison, Newton had the admirable courage to confess his own unease in the presence of male homosexuals and to acknowledge that he felt threatened by them. Newton then stated that homosexuals were “perhaps the most oppressed people on the planet”, defended their dignity and demanded that the Panthers respect them and stop using pejorative and offensive terms in relation to homosexuality. This text by Huey Newton was extremely important for the fledgling gay liberation movement in the US at the time.

Jean Genet and the Palestinians

His experience in the French army in Morocco very early on awakened Genet’s awareness of the reality of colonialism. He would later write a play that he himself called a “long meditation” on the Algerian liberation war, The Screens.

The French far right at the time, especially through its armed wing, the O. A. S. (Organisation de l’Armée Secrète) carried out acts of terrorism in France against Algerians and anyone who supported the Algerian independence movement.  Anticipating virulent attacks from the right and the extreme right, the producers of Genet’s new play decided to hold five openings instead of only one “premiere” of the play The Screens in April 1966. This way, journalists could choose which one to attend. But on the night of April 30, a group invaded the stage of the play throwing bottles and a chair. From then on, every performance of the play was attacked in a similar way. On one occasion, a group, including a young Jean Marie Le Pen, tried to bar the audience from entering the theater by shouting. Years later, Jean Marie Le Pen would become the leader of the far right in France and the father of Marine Le Pen.

From his involvement in the anti-colonial struggles of the Arab people, it was only natural that Jean Genet would dedicate himself, in the last years of his life, to the Palestinian cause.

In 1971, about a year after his visit to the United States in support of the Black Panthers, Genet published The Palestinians, his first major text devoted to the Palestinian cause:

“As for Israel, conceived at the end of the 19th century perhaps to offer security to the Jews, it soon became and remained, in this part of Asia, the most offensive Western imperialist threat.

(…) “Let’s be clear: for the Palestinians, the enemy has two faces: Israeli colonialism and the reactionary regimes of the Arab world.”

For Jean Genet, both the African Americans represented by the Black Panther struggle and the Palestinians suffered from the same colonial oppression, hence the similarity of their struggles and positions. In fact, a group of Black Panthers went to Palestine around that time to learn about their strategies and offer their solidarity and support, in a movement that aimed to unify all struggles against colonialism, including those within the US itself. Jean Genet clearly understood and expressed that the anti-colonial struggle, as it still is today in Palestine, is inseparable from the struggle against imperialism.

The Shatila Massacre

The crucial moment in Genet’s experience of defending the Palestinian cause took place in Lebanon. In 1982, Genet returned to the Middle East ten years after his first visit, in the company of his friend Layla Shahid, head of the Journal of Palestinian Studies. Once again, I turn to Edmund White’s biography to contextualize the historical moment of Jean Genet’s visit:

“When Genet arrived in Lebanon on September 12, 1982, after a ten-year absence, Beirut was calm. It was a crucial moment in the Lebanese war. Under siege for three months — the Israeli army was at the gates of the city — the Palestinian fighters, who had taken refuge in the western districts of the capital, had finally agreed to leave the country and be evacuated to Tunisia, Algeria and Yemen. The Palestinian camps were then disarmed and, on August 23, a new Lebanese president, Béchir Gemayel, was elected. The Palestinian civilians who remained in Lebanon were promised protection by an international force made up of American, French and Italian soldiers…. On September 13, Genet watched from the balcony [of the flat he was staying at with Layla] as the international force departed. No sooner had the ships left port than, on September 14, the new president [who was also the leader of the Christian Right] was assassinated. The next morning, in violation of all agreements, the Israeli army entered Beirut ‘to maintain order’. The Israelis set out to hunt down the last remaining Palestinian fighters in the city, and that very evening took over the Sabra and Shatila camps on the outskirts of Beirut, setting up their headquarters in an eight-storey building two hundred meters from the entrance.

“At 5 a.m. on Wednesday September 15, Israeli troops entered West Beirut. … Determined to sweep away the last vestiges of the Palestinians, the Israeli forces, under the command of General Sharon, made a secret agreement with the Phalangists, eager to avenge the death of Béchir Gemayel, which they attributed to the Palestinian secret service. The Israeli General Staff decreed, under the terms of Order No. 6, that ‘the refugee camps are off-limits, the search and cleaning of the camps will be carried out by the Phalangists of the Lebanese army’. A small unit of Phalangist militiamen, probably no more than a hundred and fifty men, entered Shatila and massacred all occupants under Israeli army projectors and flares.  As Thomas L Friedmann, author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, concludes, ‘…Red Cross officials told me they estimated the total death toll at between eight hundred and one thousand’.”

Jean Genet was one of the first to enter the refugee camp after the massacre. Here I reproduce parts of an interview Genet gave to Austrian journalist Rüdiger Wischenbart in Vienna about what happened:

R.W.: It’s said that it was more or less by chance that you were in Beirut at the time of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. How did you get to the Shatila camp and what did you see?

J.G.: No, I wasn’t there by chance, but invited by the Journal of Palestinian Studies. So, on Monday, I arrived in Beirut. On Tuesday, Béchir Gemayel was assassinated … The next day, Israeli troops crossed the Museum passage, moved through other parts of West Beirut and occupied the Sabra, Shatila and Borj el Barajneh camps, among others. The reasons they gave were to prevent a massacre. But the massacre took place. It’s difficult to say that the Israelis wanted this massacre. Indeed, I’m not sure. But they let it happen. It was carried out under their — as it were — protection, since they lit up the fields of Sabra, Shatila and Borj el Barajneh. When we send up flares, it’s so that we can see ourselves, to help our supporters. And Israel’s supporters were obviously the people who committed the massacre.

R.W.: There has been an Israeli parliamentary inquiry into responsibility. Are your observations, your on-the-spot investigation more or less identical to those of the parliamentary inquiry?

J.G.: The purpose of my visit and the purpose of this inquiry don’t coincide. Not at all. The purpose of the inquiry — from what I’ve read — was to save Israel’s image. Right. An image is useless. … So I don’t give a damn about the image. When the investigation was led by Israel, it wanted to save an image. I wanted to discern a reality, a political reality and a human reality. So, I can’t dwell on Israel’s aim with its investigation. Its investigation, in my opinion, was part of the massacre. Let me explain. There was the massacre, which tarnishes an image, and then there’s the investigation, which erases the massacre. Am I making myself clear?”

Genet wrote one of the most important texts of his last decade of life about what he saw in Shatila: Four hours in Shatila.

Jean Genet’s analysis, his indignation and the forceful clarity of his words can help us understand much more deeply what is happening in Palestine today. Nothing started now, everything has a history. And a history that is intertwined with other histories.  In Jean Genet, the struggle of the Black Panthers is intertwined with the struggle of the Palestinians and above all with the struggle against colonialism, imperialism and its implicit racism, because the mythical superiority of the “white race” has always been the central justification for both colonial oppression and imperial conquests.

For everything he saw, felt and expressed; for his courage and the clarity of his positions, Jean Genet remains our annoying and necessary contemporary.

                                                                                                   Franklin Frederick

1. The text, like all the others by Jean Genet cited here, was published in France by Gallimard under the title L’ennemi déclaré, 2010.
2. Edmund White. Jean Genet, Knopf Publishing, New York, 1993.