‘They were omnipresent in this space,’ said Carroll Muffett, chief executive of the Center for International Environmental Law. Composite: The Guardian/Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego/Lyndon B Johnson Library
Documents show industry-backed Air Pollution Foundation uncovered the severe harm climate change would wreak.
The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called “Keeling curve” that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels.
A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the documents reveal.
Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This “Keeling curve” has tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon that drives the climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important scientific works of modern times.
The fossil fuel interests backed a group, known as the Air Pollution Foundation, that issued funding to Keeling to measure CO2 alongside a related effort to research the smog that regularly blighted Los Angeles at the time. This is earlier than any previously known climate research funded by oil companies.
In the research proposal for the money – uncovered by Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center,and published by the climate website DeSmog – Keeling’s research director, Samuel Epstein, wrote about a new carbon isotope analysis that could identify “changes in the atmosphere” caused by the burning of coal and petroleum.
“The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” Epstein, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.
Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.
“They contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt Earth’s climate on a scale significant to human civilization,” said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in historic climate disinformation at the University of Miami.
“These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years – for twice my lifetime – and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. They make a mockery of the oil industry’s denial of basic climate science decades later.”
Previous investigations of public and private records have found that major oil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the consequences of burning their product, often to an uncannily accurate degree – a study last year found that Exxon scientists made “breathtakingly” accurate predictions of global heating in the 1970s and 1980s.
The newly discovered documents now show the industry knew of CO2’s potential climate impact as early as 1954 via, strikingly, the work of Keeling, then a 26-year-old Caltech researcher conducting formative work measuring CO2 levels across California and the waters of the Pacific ocean. There is no suggestion that oil and gas funding distorted his research in any way.
The findings of this work would lead the US scientist to further experiments upon the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii that were to provide a continual status report of the world’s dangerously-rising carbon dioxide composition.
Keeling died in 2005 but his seminal work lives on. Currently, the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level is 422 parts per million, which is nearly a third higher than the first reading taken in 1958, and a 50% jump on pre-industrial levels.
A total of 18 automotive companies, including Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, gave money to the foundation. Other entities, including banks and retailers, also contributed funding.
Separately, a 1959 memo identifies the American Petroleum Institute (API), the US’s leading oil and gas lobbying body, and the Western Oil and Gas Association, now known as the Western States Petroleum Association, as “major contributors to the funds of the Air Pollution Foundation”. It’s not clear exactly when API started funding the foundation but it had a representative on a research committee from mid-1955 onwards.
A policy statement of the Air Pollution Foundation from 1955 calls the problem of air pollution, which is caused by the emissions of cars, trucks and industrial facilities, “one of the most serious confronting urban areas in California and elsewhere” and that the issue will be addressed via “diligent and honest fact finding, by wise and effective action”.
The unearthed documents come from the Caltech archives, the US National Archives, the University of California at San Diego and Los Angeles newspapers from the 1950s, and represent what may be the first instance of the fossil fuel industry being informed of the potentially dire consequences of its business model.
The oil and gas industry was initially concerned with research related to smog and other direct air pollutants before branching out into related climate change impacts, according to Carroll Muffett, chief executive of the Center for International Environmental Law.
“You just come back to the oil and gas industry again and again, they were omnipresent in this space,” he said. “The industry was not just on notice but deeply aware of the potential climate implications of its products for going on 70 years.”
Muffett said the documents add further impetus to efforts in various jurisdictions to hold oil and gas firms legally liable for the damages caused by the climate crisis.
“These documents talk about CO2 emissions having planetary implications, meaning this industry understood extraordinarily early on that fossil fuel combustion was profound on a planetary scale,” he said.
“There is overwhelming evidence the oil and gas industry has been misleading the public and regulators around the climate risks of their product for 70 years. Trusting them to be part of the solutions is foolhardy. We’ve now moved into an era of accountability.”
API and Ralph Keeling, Charles’s son who is also a scientist, were contacted for comment about the documents but did not respond.
Oliver Milman is an environment reporter for Guardian US. Twitter @olliemilman
The Line 5 oil pipeline that snakes through Wisconsin and Michigan won a key permit this month: pending federal studies and approvals, Canada-based Enbridge Energy will build a new section of pipeline and tunnel underneath the Great Lakes despite widespread Indigenous opposition. You may not have heard of Line 5, but over the next few years, the controversy surrounding the 645-mile pipeline is expected to intensify.
The 70-year-old pipeline stretches from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario, transporting up to 540,000 gallons of oil and natural gas liquids per day. It’s part of a network of more than 3,000 miles of pipelines that the company operates throughout the U.S. and Canada, including the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota where hundreds of opponents were arrested or cited in 2021 for protesting construction, including citizens and members of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and White Earth Band of Ojibwe.
Now, Enbridge Energy, with the support of the Canadian government, is seeking approvals to build a new $500 million conduit to replace an underwater section of Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac, while facing lawsuits backed by dozens of Indigenous nations as well as the state of Michigan.
A key concern is the aging pipeline’s risk to the Great Lakes, which represent more than a fifth of the world’s fresh surface water. Environmental concerns are so great that three years ago, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered Enbridge’s dual pipelines that run for 4 miles at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac to cease operations.
“The state is revoking the easement for violation of the public trust doctrine, given the unreasonable risk that continued operation of the dual pipelines poses to the Great Lakes,” the governor’s office said at the time.
The move came just a year after the Bad River Band tribal nation filed a lawsuit against Enbridge regarding another, separate section of Line 5 in Wisconsin located across 12 miles of the Bad River reservation. The pipeline had been installed in 1953 and, at the time, had received easements to do so from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
But the easements expired, and in a court filing, the tribal nation said the company “has continued to operate the pipeline as if it has an indefinite entitlement to do so,” despite federal law that bans the renewal of expired right-of-way permits on Indian land and would require Enbridge to obtain new permits and approvals from the Band.
The Bad River won a key victory last summer when a Wisconsin judge ruled that the company must shut down the portion of its pipeline that trespasses on the reservation by 2026.
Enbridge has resisted calls to cease Line 5 operations. Instead, the company contends that it has the right to continue operating there, citing a 1992 agreement with the Band, and is planning to reroute the pipeline while appealing the Wisconsin judge’s decision. The company also argues that building a new pipeline 100 feet below the lake bed through the Straits of Mackinac will virtually eliminate the chance of a spill.
“Line 5 poses little risk to natural and cultural resources, nor does it endanger the way of life of Indigenous communities,” company spokesperson Ryan Duffy said. “Line 5 is operated safely and placing the line in a tunnel well below the lake bed at the Straits of Mackinac will only serve to make a safe pipeline safer.”
To that end, Enbridge successfully appeared before the Michigan Public Service Commission, the state’s top energy regulator, this month and got permission to build a new concrete tunnel beneath the channel connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The commission cited the need for the light crude oil and natural gas liquids that the pipeline transports, and said other alternatives like driving, trucking or hauling by barge or rail would increase the risk of a spill.
The commission’s approval contradicts Governor Whitmer’s efforts to shut down the pipeline. In the wake of the permit, the governor’s office told reporters the state commission is “independent.” Both of the governor’s appointees on the board voted in favor of the permit.
The approval doesn’t mean that the project will proceed, but it is encouraging for the company as it seeks federal clearance. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the process of putting together a draft environmental impact statement for the project. That document isn’t expected to be published until spring 2025.
In the meantime, Line 5 has gotten lots of support from the government of Canada, where Enbridge Energy is based. The government has repeatedly invoked a 1977 energy treaty between the U.S. and Canada to defend the pipeline.
That’s frustrating to Indigenous peoples who have seen their treaty rights repeatedly violated.
“What we’re simply trying to continue to preserve and protect is an Indigenous way of life, which is the same thing our ancestors tried to preserve and protect when they first entered into those treaty negotiations,” said Whitney Gravelle, chairperson of the Bay Mills Indian Community, one of numerous tribal nations opposing Line 5.
The Straits are also the site of Anishinaabe creation stories, the waters from which the Great Turtle emerged to create Turtle Island, what is currently called North America. Gravelle said that maintaining clean lakes where Indigenous people can fish is about more than just the right to fish. It’s about the continuation of culture.
“It’s about being able to learn from your parents and your elders about what fishing means to your people, whether it be in ceremony or in tradition or in oral storytelling, and then understanding the role that that fish plays in your community,” she said.
Last summer, José Francisco Calí Tzay, United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, called for suspending the pipeline’s operations “until the free, prior, and informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples affected is secured.” Free, prior, and informed consent is a right guaranteed to Indigenous Peoples under international law that says governments must consult Indigenous nations in good faith to obtain their consent before undertaking projects that affect their land and resources — consent that Bad River, for instance, has refused to give.
“Canada is advocating for the pipeline to continue operations, following the decision of a Parliamentary Committee that did not hear testimony from the affected Indigenous Peoples,” Calí Tzay wrote, adding the country’s support for the pipeline contradicts its international commitments to mitigate climate change in addition to the risk of a “catastrophic spill.”
Part of what makes Line 5 such a flashpoint is the importance of the Great Lakes and Enbridge’s spotty environmental record. As the Guardian reported last month, the Great Lakes “stretch out beyond horizons, collectively covering an area as large as the U.K. and providing drinking water for a third of all Canadians and one in 10 Americans.”
In 2010, two separate pipelines run by Enbridge ruptured, spilling more than a million gallons of oil between them into rivers in Michigan and Illinois. The Environmental Protection Agency found that Enbridge was at fault not only for failing to upkeep the pipeline but also for restarting the pipeline after alarms went off without checking whether it failed. The company eventually reached a $177 million settlement with federal regulators over the disaster.
A 2017 National Wildlife Federation analysis found that Line 5 has leaked more than a million gallons on 29 separate occasions. The company said just five of these instances were outside of Enbridge facilities, and that no spills have occurred in the Straits of Mackinac or on the Bad River Reservation. Still, the section of the pipeline on the floor of the Straits of Mackinac has been dented by boat anchors dropped in the lakes, including from Enbridge-contracted vessels.
Despite Indigenous peoples’ concerns, Line 5 continues to gain momentum, in part because of the amount of energy it supplies to the U.S. and Canada and the countries’ continued dependence on fossil fuels. While the international community agreed to curb fossil fuels this month at COP28, there’s no agreed-upon timeline for actually doing so, and the consumer demand for affordable energy remains high, especially in light of inflation driving the prices of food and housing.
Meanwhile, more than 60 tribal nations, including every federally recognized tribe in Michigan, have said the pipeline poses “an unacceptable risk of an oil spill into the Great Lakes.”
“The Straits of Mackinac are a sacred wellspring of life and culture for tribal nations in Michigan and beyond,” the nations wrote in an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit challenging the pipeline.
To Gravelle from the Bay Mills Indian Community, the issue is deeply personal and goes beyond maintaining access to clean water and the ability to fish safely. Fishing is deeply intertwined with her peoples’ culture. When a baby is born, their first meal is fish, and when her people hold traditional ceremonies, they serve fish.
“Our traditions and who we are as a people are all wrapped up into what we do with fish,” Gravelle said. “Our relationship with the land and water is more important than any commercial value that could ever be realized from an oil pipeline.”
Anita Hofschneider is a journalist based in Honolulu, currently a senior staff writer at Grist, a nonprofit news site dedicated to climate solutions and a just future.
Flames burn a forest in Vati village, on the Aegean Sea island of Rhodes, southeastern Greece, on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. | Petros Giannakouris/AP
Originally published in the People’s World on August 1, 2023
July is expected to be the hottest month experienced on Earth in 120,000 years – a temperature not felt by human civilization since the end of the ice age.
In a joint report published Thursday by the World Meteorological Organization, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, and Leipzig University, the temperature for the first three weeks of July averaged 62.51 Fahrenheit, breaking the previous record of 61.93 Fahrenheit set in 2019.
In parts of the United States, temperatures have risen above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In Arizona, people have experienced life-threatening burns from falls on hot pavement, in California, inmates swelter as cooling systems fail, and in the Florida Keys, ocean temperatures rose above 100 Fahrenheit this week, the average temperature of a hot tub.
The report adds that the heat in July has already been so extreme that it’s caused fires around the world including in Italy, Greece, and Spain killing 40 people and spreading through 13 countries, while in Canada, the worst fire season in 34 years has led to the destruction of nearly 39-thousand square miles.
An analysis published Monday by the World Weather Attribution group, an international science and research team, found that recent heat waves in North America and Europe were nearly impossible without climate change. Researchers also found that this month’s heat wave in China was 50 times more likely to occur in our current warmer world. All three heat waves were hotter than they would have been without the boost from global warming.
The World Meteorological Organization predicts a 98 percent chance that one of the next five years will be 1.5 Celsius hotter than average in the 19th century—1.5 Celsius is the agreed upon temperature rise limit that world leaders promised to avoid by the end of the century in the Paris Climate Agreement.
“Short of a mini-Ice age over the next days,” said U.N.Secretary-general António Guterres. “July 2023 will shatter records.”
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A swan stands between dumped plastic bottles and waste at the Danube river in Belgrade, Serbia, on April 18, 2022. A new study says Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for well-being of people living on it. The study, published Wednesday, May 31, 2023, for the first time it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm for groups of people. | Darko Vojinovic/AP
Originally published in the People’s World on June 1, 2023
Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people living on it, according to a new study.
The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but for the first time, it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities, and genders.
The study by the international scientist group Earth Commission published in Wednesday’s journal Nature looks at climate, air pollution, phosphorus and nitrogen contamination of water from fertilizer overuse, groundwater supplies, fresh surface water, the unbuilt natural environment, and the overall natural and human-built environment. Only air pollution wasn’t quite at the danger point globally.
Air pollution is dangerous at local and regional levels, while the climate was beyond the harmful levels for humans in groups but not quite past the safety guideline for the planet as a system, the study from the Swedish group said.
The study found “hotspots” of problem areas throughout Eastern Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, and much of Brazil, Mexico, China, and some of the U.S. West — much of it from climate change. About two-thirds of Earth don’t meet the criteria for freshwater safety, scientists said as an example.
“We are in a danger zone for most of the Earth system boundaries,” said study co-author Kristie Ebi, a professor of climate and public health at the University of Washington.
If planet Earth just got an annual checkup, similar to a person’s physical, “our doctor would say that the Earth is really quite sick right now and it is sick in terms of many different areas or systems and this sickness is also affecting the people living on Earth,” Earth Commission co-chair Joyeeta Gupta, a professor of environment at the University of Amsterdam, said at a press conference.
It’s not a terminal diagnosis. The planet can recover if it changes, including its use of coal, oil, and natural gas and the way it treats the land and water, the scientists said.
But “we are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these,” said study lead author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
A woman bathes her daughter in the Yamuna River, covered by a chemical foam caused by industrial and domestic pollution as the skyline is enveloped in toxic smog, in New Delhi, India, on Nov. 17, 2021. A new study says Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people living on it. The study, published Wednesday, May 31, 2023, for the first time includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm to groups of people. | Manish Swarup/AP
“This is a compelling and provocative paper – scientifically sound in methodology and important for identifying the dimensions in which the planet is nearing the edge of boundaries that would launch us into irreversible states,” Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the Environment said in an email. She wasn’t part of the study.
The team of about 40 scientists created quantifiable boundaries for each environmental category, both for what’s safe for the planet and for the point at which it becomes harmful for groups of people, which the researchers termed a justice issue.
Rockstrom said he thinks of those points as setting up “a safety fence” outside of which the risks become higher, but not necessarily fatal.
Rockstrom and other scientists have attempted in the past this type of holistic measuring of Earth’s various interlocking ecosystems. The big difference in this attempt is that scientists also looked at local and regional levels and they added the element of justice.
The justice part includes fairness between young and old generations, different nations, and even different species. Frequently, it applies to conditions that harm people more than the planet.
An example of that is climate change.
The report uses the same boundary of 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times that international leaders agreed upon in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The world has so far warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), so it hasn’t crossed that safety fence, Rockstrom and Gupta said, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t being hurt.
“What we are trying to show through our paper is that even at 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) there is a huge amount of damage taking place,” Gupta said, pointing to tens of millions of people exposed to extremely hot temperatures.
The planetary safety guardrail of 1.5 degrees hasn’t been breached, but the “just” boundary where people are hurt of 1 degree has been.
“Sustainability and justice are inseparable,” said Stanford environmental studies chief Chris Field, who wasn’t part of the research. He said he would want even more stringent boundaries. “Unsafe conditions do not need to cover a large fraction of Earth’s area to be unacceptable, especially if the unsafe conditions are concentrated in and near poor and vulnerable communities.”
Another outside expert, Dr. Lynn Goldman, an environmental health professor and dean of George Washington University’s public health school, said the study was “kind of bold,” but she wasn’t optimistic that it would result in much action.
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press science writer, covers earth sciences and climate change. APNewsGuild member. Teaches at NYU/DC.
The ice island that calved off the Petermann Glacier in northwestern Greenland is seen in this NASA photo taken on August 16, 2010. | Jesse Allen / Robert Simmon / NASA Earth Observatory
Originally published in the EcoWatch on May 10, 2023
A glacier in the north of Greenland is melting faster and in a different way than scientists previously thought, and this has troubling implications for the future speed of global sea-level rise.
The new discovery was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday. The scientists found that warming ocean water had melted a cavity in the bottom of Petermann Glacier taller than the Washington Monument, as The Associated Press reported. If other glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica behave the same way, it could double predictions for how quickly the burning of fossil fuels will melt ice and raise sea levels.
“It’s bad news,” study author Eric Rignot, a University of California, Irvine (UCI), glaciologist, told the AP. “We know the current projections are too conservative.”
The Petermann Glacier is a massive glacier in Northwest Greenland that contains enough ice to raise sea levels by a little more than a foot, the study authors noted. It is one of four Greenland ice masses that make up “the largest threat for rapid sea-level rise from Greenland in the coming decades” since they drain into the ocean below sea level.
Up until recently, however, the glacier was relatively stable, gaining about as much mass each year as it lost. That began to change in 2016, when the center of its grounding line began to edge backward at a rate of 0.6 miles per year.
A glacier’s grounding line is the place where it moves from being supported by land to floating on the ocean, and it’s this feature of Petermann that is the focus of the new study. The scientists from UCI, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, the University of Houston, Finland’s Iceye mission, China’s Tongji University, the German Aerospace Center, and the Italian Space Agency used satellite radar data to learn that the grounding line was moving significantly with the tides.
“Petermann’s grounding line could be more accurately described as a grounding zone, because it migrates between 2 and 6 kilometers [approximately 1.2 to 3.7 miles] as tides come in and out,” lead author Enrico Ciraci, a UCI assistant specialist in Earth system science and NASA postdoctoral fellow, said in a statement. “This is an order of magnitude larger than expected for grounding lines on a rigid bed.”
This movement, in turn, accelerated ice melt.
“These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming,” Rignot explained.
Between 2016 and 2022, the grounding line retreated by more than two miles. During that time, the warmer ocean water melted a 669-foot tall cavity at the bottom of the glacier. The melt rates around the cavity for 2020-21 were 50% greater than the melt rates for 2016-19, and, during 2022, the cavity stayed open the entire year.
What’s especially concerning to the study authors is that what happens in Petermann may not stay in Petermann.
“These dynamics are not included in models,” Rignot said.
If they were included, it could double sea-level rise projections, the study authors observed.
Hélène Seroussi, a glaciologist at Dartmouth College who was not involved with the study, cautioned The Washington Post that models for ice melt and sea-level rise would not incorporate these findings overnight, since scientists still need to determine how many glaciers they really apply to. However, Seroussi acknowledged that the measurements were unprecedented.
“The melt rates reported are very large, much larger than anything we suspected in this region,” Seroussi said.
Andreas Muenchow of the University of Delaware, a scientist who studies Petermann Glacier but was also not a part of the study, further told the Post that the high melt rates were observed over a relatively small area.
“My main takeaway is that models need to be improved,” Muenchow said.
Olivia Rosane is Opinion Editor and News Writer at Common Dreams, a reader-supported independent news outlet “To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.” Rosane previously wrote for EcoWatch, a long-time leader in environmental news.
Decisions made this decade will largely determine whether world leaders can limit global warming to 1.5 or two degrees Celsius of warming below pre-industrial levels and avoid the increasingly more drastic impacts of the climate crisis.
That’s one key takeaway from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Synthesis Report of the findings gathered in its Sixth Assessment Cycle. The Summary for Policymakers, released Monday, found that all economic sectors would need to launch “rapid and deep and, in most cases, immediate” cuts in greenhouse gas emissions before 2030 in order to have a more than 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or a more than 67 percent chance of limiting it to two degrees Celsius of warming. However, the IPCC emphasized that it is entirely possible to improve the global outlook if world leaders act urgently.
“Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits,” IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee said in a press release. “This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”
The report had 93 authors, but drew on the findings of all of the IPCC reports published since the UN review body began its Sixth Assessment Cycle in 2015. These include the Special Report on Warming of 1.5 Degrees Celsius, the Working Group I report on the Physical Science Basis, the Working Group II report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability and the Working Group III report on Mitigation of Climate Change. The IPCC’s assessment cycles last every six to seven years, and its Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2014, was the main scientific source for negotiators of the Paris agreement. The UN climate science review body is hoping that its latest offering will be similarly influential.
The report states “unequivocally” that human activity, in particular the releasing of greenhouse gas emissions, has already warmed the planet by 1.1 degrees Celsius above the average for 1850 to 1900, and this has already led to “widespread and rapid changes” in the air, ocean and on land. What’s more, the World Resources Institute pointed out, these changes are more severe than expected, with flooding and other extreme storms displacing more than 20 million people from their homes annually since 2008 while, at the same time, around half of the world’s population deals with severe water scarcity at least one month out of every year. Each degree of warming will only make matters worse, and the report authors noted that many of the risks assessed in the report were higher than assumed by the Fifth Assessment Report.
“What the new SYR shows is the gravity of the problem,” report core author and senior lecturer in climate science at Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, Dr. Friederike Otto said in a statement shared by the Science Media Centre. “The very first figure shows all the human and natural systems that are already adversely affected. In other words, many more people have lost their lives and livelihoods than originally thought. The climate changes as much as we’ve expected for decades, but we humans and our societies are more fragile than we thought before.”
At the same time, these impacts have not been suffered equally, something the report authors were keen to point out.
“Climate justice is crucial because those who have contributed least to climate change are being disproportionately affected,” report author Dr. Aditi Mukherji said in the IPCC release. “Almost half of the world’s population lives in regions that are highly vulnerable to climate change. In the last decade, deaths from floods, droughts and storms were 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions.”
Governments, companies and individuals have begun to act in response to the climate crisis, and, if they had not, it is likely that yearly emissions would be several gigatons of carbon dioxide higher. That said, current policies remain drastically insufficient. Policies implemented to date still put the world on track for 3.2 degrees of warming by 2100.
“The existing policy trajectory represents a profound failure of our governments, and of our international political system,” Jason Hickel of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona wrote on Twitter. “We need much more aggressive mitigation and much stronger international cooperation.”
However, it is still possible to limit global warming to 1.5 or two degrees Celsius by the end of the century if emissions are nearly halved this decade and reach net zero by either the early 2050s for 1.5 degrees or the early 2070s for two degrees. Achieving this will require major reduction to the development and extraction of fossil fuels: current fossil fuel infrastructure would emit enough on its own to overshoot the 1.5 degree temperature target, the report authors found, while both current and planned developments devour the remaining carbon budget for two degrees of warming.
The news comes the week after President Joe Biden approved ConocoPhillips’s controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, despite promises to halve U.S. emissions by 2030.
“Reading the UN’s latest dire climate warnings just days after Biden approved massive new Arctic oil drilling is utterly infuriating,” Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. “The fossil-fueled path to more climate disasters, mass displacements and wildlife extinctions is bleak, but it’s not inevitable. Chief among world leaders, Biden has the tools to not only ratchet up renewables but move us decisively off fossil fuels. Scientists have mapped the way to a livable planet, but we need the political will to get us there.”
Beyond putting an end to fossil fuel use, the report offered many solutions to both reduce emissions and help vulnerable communities adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change, including expanding access to renewable energy, improving transportation through enabling more walking, cycling and public transit options and preserving 30 to 50 percent of Earth’s land and ocean area. Many of these solutions would also address other health, environmental or equity problems. For example, the air pollution reductions from decarbonizing electricity and transit would lead to public health benefits that would counterbalance the cost of cutting emissions.
“The threats are huge, but so are the opportunities for change. This is our moment to rise up, scale up and be bold. Governments must stop doing just a little better and start doing enough,” Greenpeace Nordic senior policy advisor Kaisa Kosonen said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. “Thanks to brave scientists, communities and progressive leaders around the world, who’ve persistently advanced climate solutions like solar and wind energy for years and decades, we now have everything needed to solve this mess. It’s time to up our game, deliver on climate justice and push fossil fuel interests out of the way. There’s a role for everyone to play.”
Olivia Rosane is a freelance reporter for EcoWatch, a leading online environmental news company.
Demonstrators carry a coffin over Brooklyn Bridge during a march against gun violence, 06.02.18, in NY. | Mary Altaffer – AP
Under U.S. capitalism, industrial production and consumerism expand. Greenhouse gases increase, the climate changes, and people die. U.S. imperialism leads to wars and potentially nuclear war.
U.S. life expectancy has fallen. According to government statistics released in December, 2022, life expectancy at birth (LEB) for 2021 was 76.4 years. LEB was 77.0 years in 2020 and 78.8 years in 2019. Public health officials claimed this “was the biggest two-year decline in life expectancy since 1921-1923.”
Mothers fare badly. In 2020,19.1 mothers in general and 55.3 Black mothers died per 100,000 live births. They died from illnesses related to childbearing, most of them preventable. In the Netherlands that year, the maternal mortality rate was 1.2 mothers per 100,000 live births. In 2018, 55 nations showed a rate more favorable than that of the United States.
Americans, mostly working-age adults, die from “diseases of despair” – substance abuse, accidental drug overdose, alcoholism, and suicide. They also died of Covid 19 infection, the U.S. rate of 332.81 Covid deaths per 100,000 population being the 16th highest in the world.
During most of the pandemic, Black people died at two or more times the rate of infected white people. Now the cumulative death rates of each group are similar, with 355 deaths of whites and 369 deaths of Blacks per 100,000 population. Cumulative Covid deaths for American indigenous peoples register at 478 deaths per 100,000 population. Vaccine skepticism may account for increased vulnerability of whites.
The pandemic aside, Blacks and American Indians live far shorter lives than white people do. As of October 2022, LEB for Hispanics was 77.7 years; white people, 76.6 years; Blacks, 70.8 years; and American Indians, 65.2 years. In 2020, 65 nations showed longer LEB than did the United States.
Healthcare failings may have contributed to the high U.S death rates. Proposals for reform, especially for universal healthcare, center on its financing. The United States is the top healthcare spender among all nations.
Paying $12,914 per capita for healthcare in 2021, the United States outspent second-place spender Germany whose outlay was $7383 per capita. Total spending on health that year amounted to $4.3 trillion –18.3% of the U.S. GDP. The United States accounted for 42% of healthcare spending in the world in 2018.
Healthcare in the United States is a profit center. The pricing of drugs, medical equipment, medical insurance, and services provided by hospitals and outpatient facilities in general is exorbitant. Executives of medical supply and pharmaceutical companies, specialty physicians, and administrators of hospitals and healthcare networks receive enormous salaries.
Profitmaking hospital chains, health insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies generate enough revenue to allow for stock buybacks and dividend payments. Over nine recent years 14 pharmaceutical companies spent $747 billion on stock buybacks. Payments to private insurance companies and private hospital networks are large enough to cover astronomically high administrative costs and profit-taking.
Some healthcare and health-promotion activities produce no revenue, or very little. They tend to receive relatively little support and skimpy funding.
The U.S. public health sector, charged with health education and illness prevention, is a low-priority item. Inadequate preparation and preventative measures largely accounted for the U.S. Covid-19 debacle.
Insurance companies dedicate effort to denying coverage for particular diagnostic and therapeutic interventions.
Multi-hospital, multi-service conglomerates are cutting back on health services in rural and economical depressed areas because of decreased “productivity.”
Many hospitals have recently dropped children’s hospital services as being less remunerative than care for hospitalized adults.
Small rural hospitals unable to pay bills have been closing down in droves throughout the nation, depriving area residents of care.
Specialty practitioners and hospitals often prioritize expensive medical procedures and high-technology diagnostic modes over care centering on provider – patient interaction and communication.
Many physicians during training opt for a specialty rather than a primary-care career, often because of income considerations. Primary care physicians now comprise only 20% of all U.S. physicians.
Diminished emphasis on a “medical home,” that hallmark of primary care, opens the door to inefficient, low-quality care.
Other capitalist countries have achieved long life expectancies. The average life expectancy for 2021 in eight European countries plus Australia and Japan was 82.4 years. Their average per- capita health spending was $6,003. Japan spent $4,666 per capita on healthcare; LEB was 84.5 years.
Those countries protect healthcare as a public good, mainly because labor unions and social democratic or labor political parties apply pressure. Universal access to care is the norm.
Universal care in the United States is but a dream. U.S. unions are weak and there is no working people’s political party. Some 25 million working age adults had no health insurance in 2021; insurance for 23% of them was inadequate. Too many have no care or fragmented care.
Reform efforts will continue in the United States, propelled perhaps by worsening life expectancy. But healthcare has its limitations. Steven Woolf, retired director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health, told an interviewer recently that better healthcare is “only a partial answer” to extending life expectancy, accounting “for about 10 to 20 percent of health outcomes.”
He explained: “Our health is really shaped by our living conditions, jobs, the wages we earn, our wealth accumulation, the education that enables us to get those jobs … The country that we live in is the richest in the world, but we have the highest level of income inequality. So, much of the resources that we need for a healthy population are not available to most of the population.”
Woolf is saying, in effect, that people die early because of inequalities, oppression, and organized greed. The United States appears as different from other rich capitalist counties. Social guarantees are fragile. The wealthy have few restraints on satisfying their wants. A besieged working class lacks voice and agency.
The prospect that reforms, alone, will restore justice and decent lives for working people is nil. They confront a voracious, extreme kind of capitalism. Its rulers tolerate, promote, and seek out collaborators for actions and policies leading to die-offs. Think climate catastrophe, wars, and nuclear war.
In response to impending disaster, Americans desiring better and more secure lives for everyone would adjust their forward vision. Working for reforms, they would aim at something new, which is top-to-bottom social and political change. New motivation, determination and hope would be a shot in the arm.
Revolutionary change is a worldwide project, and not to be left to one people – except in special circumstances. One such was pre-1917 Czarist Russia and another would be that anomaly among capitalist nations which is the death-dealing U.S. nation.
W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.
“Climate Change” by Riccardo Maria Mantero is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
As the ugly war in Ukraine drags on, with more lives lost and atrocities (apparently) committed, energy and food prices hit yet more highs. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the UN publishes a monthly global price index. The FAO Food Price Index reached yet another record high of 159.3 points in March, up 12.6% from February.
Oil and gas prices are also near all-time high levels. In Europe, gas prices hit a record €335 per megawatt-hours, and at that level, it is now cheaper for some power stations to burn coal rather than gas even when the cost of carbon permits is taken into consideration. Europe wants to follow NATO’s bidding and cut back on Russian energy imports. The irony is that some countries, like Italy, say that will need to burn more coal, in order to burn less Russian gas. The International Energy Agency (IEA) posed the dilemma in relation to global warming and energy needs, given the Ukraine war and the sanctions against Russia. “The faster EU policymakers seek to move away from Russian gas supplies, the greater the potential implication, in terms of economic costs and near-term emissions,” the IEA said, in a report.
Can the circle be squared: ie getting more energy supply to reduce prices, while still trying to reduce fossil fuel production to lower greenhouse gas emissions? “We are determined to limit [Vladimir] Putin’s capacity to finance his atrocious war,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, wrote on Twitter. And then went on to say: “The EU must get rid of its dependency on fossil fuels”. At first sight, these two aims might be compatible. Cutting back on fossil fuel energy from Russia will reduce energy use and lower carbon emissions, no? After all, clean energy, says Christian Lindner, finance minister of Germany, should be considered the “energy of freedom”. So the German government plans to cut its dependence on Russian energy imports by accelerating renewables and reaching 100% ‘clean power’ by 2035. But in the same breath German Chancellor Olaf Scholz accepted that, in the short term, it has little choice but to continue buying gas and oil from Russia!
COP26 in Glasgow contained an agreement to draw down fossil fuel production, even though there was a fierce argument that broke out over whether coal should be “phased down” or “phased out”. COP26 president Alok Sharma. “Countries are turning their back on coal,” he said. “The end of coal is in sight.” And yet, even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, far from declining, coal use globally surged to record levels this last winter, causing emissions to rise, while clean energy installations fell below the levels needed to reach climate targets. In the US, coal-fired power generation was higher in 2021 under President Joe Biden than it was in 2019 under then-president Donald Trump, who had positioned himself as the would-be saviour of America’s coal industry. In Europe, coal power rose 18 per cent in 2021, its first increase in almost a decade. Economist Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, says the shift away from fossil fuels has rarely looked more complicated. “The energy transition was already in trouble — 80 per cent of the world’s energy is still from fossil fuels,” he said. “I expect that in the short term, the US will increase oil and gas output and EU coal consumption could increase”.
This conflict of aims by ‘the West’ comes at a time when global warming and climate change are reaching a ‘now or never’ tipping point, where the Paris target to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C cannot be met. In presenting the latest IPCC report on climate change (which supposedly outlines ‘solutions’ to mitigate global warming and meet targets), UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres commented: “The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership (by governments) is criminal.” By this, he meant that the 198 countries which had gathered in Glasgow for the COP26 Climate Change Conference last November were failing to hit any of their (already inadequate) targets for emission reductions. So global temperatures look set to barrel past the 1.5ºC degrees limit above 1850 industrial levels. Instead, the world faces a 2.7C temperature rise on current climate plans, the UN warned. Current pledges would reduce carbon emissions by only about 7.5% by 2030, far less than the 45% cut that scientists say is needed to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C.
And it’s not just reducing current emissions that are necessary, but also cutting back on the already accrued levels of carbon in the atmosphere. It’s a stock problem because many gases are long-lived. Nitrous oxide can stay in the atmosphere for 121 years, methane for 12 years. Carbon dioxide’s lifetime cannot be represented with a single value because the gas is not destroyed over time, but cycles through the ocean-atmosphere–land system. Some carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years and the melting of the glaciers could release into the atmosphere previously trapped carbon.
Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC, bluntly explained that: “human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability.” While “some development and adaptation efforts have reduced vulnerability,” he continued, “the rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.” Co-chair of the IPCC working group, Hans-Otto Portner, spelt it out: “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human well being and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”
Lee made it clear what he thought should be done immediately. “The time to stop the exploration of fossil fuels, which are destroying our planet, is now. Half measures are no longer an option,” But just stopping fossil fuel exploration is precisely that – a half measure. That’s because to meet the Paris agreement, the world would have to eliminate 53.5 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide each year for the next 30 years.
The problem is that it is ‘the West’: the mature capitalist economies, that have built up the stock of dangerous carbon and other gases in the atmosphere over the last 100 years and are doing the least to solve the climate crisis. About one-third of the current stock of greenhouse gases has been created by Europe and one-quarter by the US. Yes, China and India are the first- and third-largest emitters today. But measured in terms of emissions per head of population, they are around 40th and 140th and measured in terms of their stock per capita, they are one-tenth of the level of Europe. And ironically, the main contributors to carbon emissions stock benefit from global warming as these mature capitalist (imperialist) economies are mainly in cold climates.
The countries of the ‘global North’ (Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan) are responsible for 92% of total emissions that are causing climate breakdown. Meanwhile, the Global South – the entire continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America – are responsible for only 8% of ‘excess emissions’. And the majority of these countries are still well within their fair shares of the emissions boundary, including India, Indonesia and Nigeria. To make matters worse, the impacts of climate breakdown fall disproportionately on the countries of the global South, which suffer the vast majority of climate change-induced damages and mortality within their borders.
But a recent research paper in the journal Nature found that G20 countries spent$14tn on economic stimulus measures during 2020 and 2021 — but only 6 per cent of this was allocated to areas that would cut emissions. Investment bank Morgan Stanley reckons to achieve sufficient emissions reduction would cost about $50trn. About $20 trillion of cumulative investments will be required to switch out of fossil fuels. Solar, wind, and hydro will require $14 trillion of investment to deliver 80% of global power by 2050 and electric vehicle take-up will require $11 trillion to build the factories and infrastructure and develop battery technology. Biofuels, like ethanol, could be important for future global transportation alongside hydrogen and could eventually spread to aircraft, but to develop this would require a further $2.7trillion of investment. Carbon capture and storage could play a critical part in the energy transition but a further $2.5 trillion is needed for development. Compare the $50 trillion price tag to the barely $100 billion that it has taken six years for countries to scrounge together.
Yes, greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced in some countries and there are technical solutions available. Alternative renewable energy costs have come down 85% over the last ten years. But coal production must be cut by 76% by 2030. And oil/gas infrastructure projects must be stopped. The current flow of finance is dramatically insufficient to boost renewables and manage fossil fuel reduction. Funding for all this change is minuscule compared to the task.
And a switch to ‘clean energy’ won’t be enough, especially as mining and refining alternative fuels and systems also require more fossil fuel energy. All the batteries, solar panels and windmills in the world won’t lower fossil fuel demand in the near term. Internal combustion vehicles – commercial and passenger – use plenty of steel, but electric vehicles use a wider variety of more expensive metals. For example, the average internal combustion passenger vehicle uses less than 50 pounds of copper, whereas a Tesla uses about 180 pounds of copper-wound up in its electric motors. Additionally, the batteries essential to electric vehicles rely on materials like lithium and nickel, which require intense electric and chemical outlays to process. All this means more fossil fuel production to mine more metals.
I have discussed before why market solutions like carbon pricing and carbon taxes will not deliver the required reductions in emissions. Market solutions will not work because it is just not profitable for capital to invest in climate change mitigation: “Private investment in productive capital and infrastructure faces high upfront costs and significant uncertainties that cannot always be priced. Investments for the transition to a low-carbon economy are additionally exposed to important political risks, illiquidity and uncertain returns, depending on policy approaches to mitigation as well as unpredictable technological advances.” (IMF). To save the planet and all species who live on it cannot be achieved through market pricing mechanisms or even more clever technology. Remember clever science gave us vaccines and medicines to save lives in the COVID pandemic, but it was capitalism and pro-capitalist governments that still allowed the pandemic to happen and were unable to stop around 20m ‘excess deaths’ globally.
To stop global warming, we don’t need just clever new technology, we need to phase out old fossil fuel technology. And we need a global plan to steer investments into things society does need, like renewable energy, organic farming, public transportation, public water systems, ecological remediation, public health, quality schools and other currently unmet needs. Such a plan could also equalize development the world over by shifting resources out of useless and harmful production in the North and into developing the South, building basic infrastructure, sanitation systems, public schools, and health care. At the same time, a global plan could aim to provide equivalent jobs for workers displaced by the retrenchment or closure of unnecessary or harmful industries. But such a plan requires public ownership and control of fossil fuel companies and other key energy and food sectors. Without that, there can be no plan.
As the war in Ukraine rages on, we should be reminded that the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are the military. The US military is the world’ssingle largest consumer of oil, and as a result, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters. The Pentagon’s greenhouse gas emissions annually total over 59 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. If it were a nation-state, the US military would be the 47th largest emitter in the world., with emissions larger than Portugal, Sweden or Denmark.
And the US military is expanding all the time to protect US interests in oil and fossil fuel resources around the world. The Cost of Wars Project found the total emissions from war-related activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria to be estimated at more than 400 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide alone. Thus global warming and fossil fuel exploration, production and refining are inextricably linked by military spending. Wars and increased spending on arms are not just killing people and destroying lives and homes, but also adding to the climate disaster that is engulfing humanity globally. World peace would not only save lives and livelihoods but also contribute to saving the planet and nature.
Michael Roberts has worked in the City of London for over 30 years as an economist. He is author of several books on the world economy: The Great Recession, The Long Depression and World in Crisis. He blogs at thenextrecession.wordpress.com
Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt(CATDM), April 10, 2022, https://www.cadtm.org/
The Maine Legislature voted on a number of important issues this week, ranging from high-profile tribal sovereignty measures to bills related to economic justice, health care, housing and the environment. Here’s a rundown of some of the recent decisions made in Augusta.
Tribal sovereignty
The legislature this week took up multiple measures designed to reinforce the inherent sovereignty of the Wabanaki in what has been a multi-year campaign by Indigenous nations in Maine to be treated like all other tribes around the country.
On Thursday, the House approved a bill that would alter the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980. The bill, LD 1626, would change the Settlement Act to create “an enhanced process for tribal-state collaboration and consultation as well as a process for alternative dispute resolution.” Other aspects of the legislation include strengthening tribal communities’ criminal jurisdiction, recognizing the rights of tribes to regulate hunting and fishing on their lands, and affirming the Wabanaki’s right to regulate natural resources and land use on their territory. The vote was 81-55 in favor of the bill.
Also this week, the legislature approved another tribal sovereignty bill, LD 906. That bill would address the unsafe and deteriorating water system at the Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy Reservation, known as Sipayik, where dangerous levels of toxic chemicals have been found. Along with LD 1626, Gov. Janet Mills has expressed skepticism about the water legislation. But given the bipartisan support LD 906 received in both the House and the Senate, advocates have a chance to overcome a potential veto from the governor. The bill now goes to Mills for consideration.
Juniper Ridge
Lawmakers this week sent a bill to Mills designed to close a loophole in Maine law that has allowed Juniper Ridge landfill to become a dumping ground for waste from surrounding states.
As Beacon previously reported, about 90% of the waste sent to a processing facility in Lewiston that ends up in Juniper Ridge is from out of state. The amount of waste going into Juniper Ridge is increasing every year, the coalition noted earlier this year, filling 32% faster than anticipated. A continuation of that would mean additional expansions of the landfill, which environmental advocates have argued would lead to increased pollution.
The bill to address the issue, LD 1639, was approved with strong bipartisan votes in both the House and the Senate.
Housing
The legislature took action on several housing bills this week. On Thursday, the House passed on a 78-51 vote a bill aimed at reforming zoning laws and cutting red tape to allow for development of affordable units. The Senate then approved the bill April 15 on a 20-13 vote.
That bill, LD 2003, sponsored by House Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford), was originally larger in scope. However, it was scaled back last month amid opposition from some groups. While advocates still support the bill and view it as a step forward, they argued the changes made to the measure represent a missed opportunity for a more ambitious effort to address the affordable housing crisis.
It was a similar story with LD 1673, another affordable housing bill that was scaled back in the face of opposition. That bill cleared final votes in both the House and the Senate this week and was placed on the Appropriations Table for funding consideration. Originally designed to set affordable housing goals in each municipality, the measure was significantly amended to include non-binding goals and reduce the scope of communities covered by such goals.
PFAS
The House gave its final approval this week for a bill, LD 2019, that would prohibit a person from distributing a pesticide contaminated with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, which have been linked to a wide variety of harmful health impacts. The bill also bans the distribution of pesticides that contain intentionally added PFAS beginning in 2030.
The measure also adds “any substance or mixture of substances intended to be used as a spray adjuvant” to the definition of pesticide.
The Senate also gave initial approval to the bill this week. The measure still faces a final vote in the chamber.
In addition, the House this week approved another PFAS-related bill. LD 1911 would authorize the Department of Environmental Protection to “require a person licensed to discharge wastewater to sample the effluent discharged for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances and to report the sample data to the department,” among other provisions. The bill was then approved by the Senate on a bipartisan vote.
Criminal justice
The Senate this week officially killed a bill that would have established certain motor vehicle-related violations as secondary offenses. The measure, LD 1479, sponsored by Rep. Victoria Morales (D-South Portland), sought to make such offenses enforceable only if an officer had detained a driver for the suspected violation of another law.
Offenses that would have been classified as secondary by the bill include operating a vehicle after suspension for not paying a fine, not registering a vehicle if the registration has been expired for less than 150 days, and hanging an object from the rearview mirror, among other similar violations.
Supporters of the legislation added that the measure was meant to address discrimination in who is stopped, with myriad lawmakers in the House saying drivers of color are often pulled over more than white drivers. Still, the Senate voted the bill down 27-3, with only Cumberland County Democratic Sens. Ben Chipman, Anne Carney and Heather Sanborn voting for the measure. That result came after the House voted against the bill last week.
The Senate also took action this week on a bill dealing with the issue of solitary confinement in Maine. The bill, which the House passed to define the practice as confinement in a cell for over 22 hours in a day, was then amended in the Senate this week to simply remove the term solitary confinement from statute in a move that advocates said would obscure how the practice is used in Maine prisons and jails.
On Thursday, however, the House voted to reject the Senate’s amendment and instead passed its own amendment to the bill, sponsored by Rep. Grayson Lookner (D-Portland), that would require prisons and jails to send a report to the Maine Department of Corrections if a person is held in isolation for more than 22 hours in a day.
Economic justice
The House and Senate this week passed a bill to direct the Department of Administrative and Financial Services to study the impact on the state of adopting “a corporate income tax system that requires worldwide combined reporting for income tax purposes.” The report on the issue would be due by February 1.
The measure, LD 428, is an effort to start the process of eventually closing a loophole used by multinational corporations to avoid paying taxes in Maine. It will now go to Mills for consideration.
The House this week also gave initial approval to a bill designed to improve labor standards on renewable energy projects. The bill, LD 1969, sets standards for pre-apprenticeship training programs by the Maine Apprenticeship Program, including the payment of “meaningful stipends” to participants.
The measure also requires that renewable energy projects of a certain size pay construction workers “the prevailing rate for wages and benefits,” among other stipulations. The bill was passed Wednesday by the House 81-57 and now moves to the Senate.
Health care
The Senate gave final approval Monday on a bill to close a loophole that has let insurance companies deny no-copay coverage of birth control. The measure, LD 1954, sponsored by Senate President Troy Jackson (D-Aroostook), mandates insurance coverage of all birth control methods approved by the FDA.
The legislation was passed unanimously in the Senate, sending the bill to Mills for consideration.
In another unanimous vote in the Senate on Monday, the chamber sent to Mills a bill that would require the Maine Health Data Organization to document the 100 most expensive prescription drugs and the 100 most frequently prescribed drugs each year. LD 1636 also mandates the organization to determine the potential savings from subjecting such prescription drugs to a “referenced rate,” defining that rate as “the lowest cost from official publications of certain Canadian provincial government agencies and the wholesale acquisition cost.”
Climate
The House gave approval this week to a bill, LD 2018, that would ensure the incorporation of “equity considerations in decision making” at the Department of Environmental Protection, the Public Utilities Commission and other state agencies.
The measure also requires the Department of Environmental Protection to adopt rules so that “environmental justice populations and frontline communities are provided with fair and equitable access to the department’s decision-making processes.”
The bill was then passed by the Senate and given final approval by the House. It now returns to the Senate.
This story was updated April 15 to reflect the Senate vote on LD 2003.
Photo: The Maine State House | Beacon
Evan Popp studied journalism at Ithaca College and interned at the Progressive magazine, ThinkProgress and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He then worked for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper before joining Beacon. Evan can be reached at evan@mainebeacon.com.
Debunking the Myth of American Exceptionalism | Credit: TRANSCEND Media Service
Three years after the end of World War II, diplomat George Kennan outlined the challenges the country faced this way:
We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.
That, in a nutshell, was the postwar version of U.S. exceptionalism and Washington was then planning to manage the world in such a way as to maintain that remarkably grotesque disparity. The only obstacle Kennan saw was poor people demanding a share of the wealth.
Today, as humanity confronts a looming climate catastrophe, what’s needed is a new political-economic project. Its aim would be to replace such exceptionalism and the hoarding of the earth’s resources with what’s been called “a good life for all within planetary boundaries.”
Back in 1948, few if any here were thinking about the environmental effects of the over-consumption of available resources. Yet even then, however unknown, this country’s growing wealth had a dark underside: the slow-brewing crisis of climate change. Wealth all too literally meant the intensified extraction of resources and the production of goods. As it happened, fossil fuels (and the greenhouse gases that went with their burning) were essential to every step in the process.
Today, the situation has shifted — at least a bit. With approximately 4% of the world’s population, the United States still holds about 30% of its wealth, while its commitment to over-consumption and maintaining global dominance remains remarkably unshaken. To grasp that, all you have to do is consider the Biden White House’s recent Indo-Pacific Strategy policy brief, which begins in this telling way: “The United States is an Indo-Pacific power.” Indeed.
In 2022, the relationship between wealth, emissions, and climate catastrophe has become ever clearer. In the crucial years between 1990 and 2015, the global economy expanded from $47 trillion to $108 trillion. During that same period, global annual greenhouse-gas emissions grew by more than 60%. Mind you, 1990 was the year in which atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) first surpassed what many scientists believed was the level of safety — 350 parts per million, or ppm. Yet in the 22 years since then, more CO2 and other greenhouse gases have been emitted into the atmosphere than in all of history prior to that date, as atmospheric CO2 careened past 400 ppm in 2016 with 420 ppm now fast approaching.
Inequality and Emissions
Growing global wealth is closely associated with growing emissions. But the wealth and responsibility for those emissions are not shared equally among the planet’s population. On an individual level, the wealthiest people on Earth consume — and emit — far more than their poorer counterparts. The richest 10% of the world’s population, or about 630 million people, were responsible for more than half of the increase in greenhouse-gas emissions over the last quarter-century. On a national level, rich countries are, of course, home to far more people with high levels of consumption, which means that the larger and wealthier the country, the greater its emissions.
In terms of per capita income, the United States ranks 13th in the world. But the countries above it on the list are mostly tiny, including some of the Persian Gulf states, Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Switzerland. So, despite their high per-capita emissions, their overall contribution isn’t that big. As the third largest country on this planet, our soaring per-capita emissions have, on the other hand, had a devastating effect.
With a population of around 330 million, the United States today has less than a quarter of either China’s population of more than 1.4 billion or India’s, which is just under that figure. Four other countries — Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan — fall into the population range of 200 to 300 million, but their per-capita gross domestic products (GDPs) and their per-capita emissions are far below ours. In fact, the total U.S. GDP of more than $19 trillion far exceeds that of any other country, followed by China at $12 trillion and Japan at $5 trillion.
In sum, the United States is exceptional when it comes to both its size and wealth. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn then that, until 2006, it was also by far the world’s top CO2 emitter. After that, it was surpassed by a fast-developing China (though that country’s per capita emissions remain less than half of ours) and no other country’s greenhouse gas emissions come close to either of those two.
To fully understand different countries’ responsibility, it’s necessary to go past yearly numbers and look at how much they’ve emitted over time, since the greenhouse gases we put in the atmosphere don’t disappear at the end of the year. Here again, one country stands out above all the others: the United States, whose cumulative emissions reached 416 billion tons by the end of 2020. China’s, which didn’t start rising rapidly until the 1980s, reached 235 billion tons in that year, while India trailed at 54 billion.
Having first hit 20 billion tons in 1910, U.S. cumulative emissions have only shot up ever since, while China’s didn’t hit that 20 billion mark until 1979. So the U.S. got a big head start and, cumulatively speaking, is still way ahead when it comes to taking down this planet.
The U.S. Climate Action Network (USCAN) arguesthat excessive emitters like the United States have already used up far more than their “fair share” of this planet’s carbon budget and so, in fact, owe a huge carbon debt to the rest of the world to make up for their outsized contribution to the problem of climate change over the past two centuries. Unfortunately, the 2015 Paris Agreement’s voluntary, non-enforceable, and nationally determined limits on emissions functionally let rich countries continue on their damaging ways.
In fact, nations should be held responsible for repaying their carbon debt. The world’s poorest people, who have contributed practically nothing to the problem, deserve access to a portion of the remaining budget and to the sort of aid that would enable them to develop alternative forms of energy to meet their basic needs.
Under the fair-share proposal, it’s not enough for the United States just to stop adding emissions. This country needs to repay the climate debt it’s already incurred. USCAN calculates that to pay back its fair share the United States must cut its emissions by 70% by 2030, while contributing the cash equivalent of another 125% of its current emissions every year through technical and financial support to energy-poor nations.
Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal proposal adopted the concept of the “fair share.” True leadership in the global climate fight, Sanders has argued, means recognizing that “the United States has for over a century spewed carbon pollution emissions into the atmosphere in order to gain economic standing in the world. Therefore, we have an outsized obligation to help less industrialized nations meet their targets while improving quality of life.”
On this subject, however, his voice and others like it sadly remain far outside the all-too-right-wing mainstream. (And if you doubt that, just check Joe Manchin’s recent voting record.)
Are We Making Progress Thanks to New Technologies?
In 2018, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report on our chances of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade — the goal that the countries involved in the Paris Agreement, including the United States, accepted as their baseline for action. It concluded that, to have a 50% chance of staying below that temperature increase, our future collective emissions couldn’t exceed 480 gigatons (or 480 billion tons). That, in other words, was humanity’s remaining carbon budget.
Unfortunately, as of 2018, global emissions were exceeding 40 gigatons a year, which meant that even if they were flattened almost immediately (not exactly a likelihood), we would use up that budget in a mere dozen years or so. Worse yet, despite a Covid-induced decline in 2020, global emissions actually rebounded sharply in 2021.
Most scenarios for emission reductions, including those proposed by the IPCC, rely optimistically on new technologies to enable us to get there without making substantive changes in the global economy or in the excessive consumption of the world’s richest people and countries. Such technological advances, it’s hoped, would allow us to produce as much, or possibly more energy from renewable sources and even possibly begin removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, there’s little evidence to support the likelihood of such progress, especially in the time we have left. No matter how much new technology we develop, there seems to be no completely “clean” form of energy. All of them — nuclear, wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, biomass, and perhaps others still to be developed — rely on massive industrial operations to extract finite resources from the earth; factories to process them; facilities to create, store, and transmit energy; and, in the end, some form of waste (think batteries, solar panels, old electric cars, and so on). Every form of energy will have multiple dangerous environmental impacts. Meanwhile, as the use of alternative forms of energy production increases worldwide, it hasn’t yet reduced fossil-fuel use. Instead, it’s just added to our growing energy consumption.
It’s true that the world’s wealthiest countries have achieved some gains in decouplingeconomic growth from rising emissions. But much of this relatively minor decoupling is attributable to a shift from the use of coal to natural gas, along with the outsourcing of particularly dirty industries. Decoupling has, as yet, made no dent in global greenhouse gas emissions and seems unlikely to accelerate or even continue at a meaningful enough pace after these first and easiest steps have been taken. So almost all climate modeling, like that of the IPCC, suggests that new technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere will also be needed to counter rising emissions.
But negative emissions technologies are largely aspirational at this point. Instead of counting on what still to a significant extent remain technological fantasies, while the wealthy continue their profligacy, it’s time to shift our thinking more radically and focus, as I do in my new book Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice, on how to reduce extraction, production, and consumption in far more socially just ways, so that we can indeed begin to live within our planet’s means. Call it “post-growth” or “degrowth” thinking.
Make no mistake: we can’t live without energy and we desperately do need to turn to alternatives to fossil fuels. But alternative energies are only going to be truly viable if we can also greatly reduce our energy needs, which means reconfiguring the global economy. If energy is a scarce and precious resource, then ways must be found to prioritize its use to meet the urgent needs of the world’s poor, rather than endlessly expanding the luxuries of the wealthiest among us. And that’s precisely what degrowth thinking is all about: scaling back the mindless pursuit of production, consumption, and profit in favor of “human wellbeing and ecological stability.”
Abandoning Exceptionalism
In April 2021, President Biden made a dramatic announcement, setting a new goal for U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions — to reduce them 50% from 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. Sounds pretty good, right?
But given that this country’s CO2 emissions had hit a high of 6.13 billion tons in 2005, that means by 2030 we’d still be emitting three billion tons of CO2 a year. Even if we could reach net-zero by 2050, our country alone would, by then, have used up one quarter of the entire remaining carbon budget for the planet. And right now, given the state of the American political system, there’s neither a genuine plan nor an obvious way to reach Biden’s goal. If we stay on our current path — and don’t count on that if the Republicans take Congress in 2022 and the White House again in 2024 — we would barely achieve a 30% reduction by 2030.
At this point, there’s no guarantee we’ll stay on that path, no matter the political party in power. After all, consider just this:
+ In 2010, about half of the new vehicles sold in the United States were cars and half were SUVs or trucks. By 2021, close to 80% were SUVs or trucks.
+ In 2020, more than 900,000 new houses were built in this country, their median size, 2,261 square feet. Most of them had four or more bedrooms and 870,000 had central air conditioning.
+ President Biden’s infrastructure bill, signed in November 2021, included $763 billion for new highways.
And let’s not even talk about the military-industrial-congressional complex and war. After all, the Department of Defense is the single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and emitter of CO2 in the world. Between its worldwide bases, promotion of the arms industry, and ongoing global wars, our military alone produces annual emissions greater than those of wealthy countries like Sweden and Denmark.
Meanwhile, in the run-up to the climate-change meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, in the fall of 2021, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry insisted repeatedlythat the United States must work to bring China on board. Joe Biden too kept his attention focused on China. And indeed, given its greenhouse gas emissions and still-expanding use of coal, China does have a big role to play. But to the rest of the world, such an insistence on diverting attention from our own role in the climate crisis rings hollow indeed.
A 2021 study shows that almost all of the world’s remaining coal, not to speak of most of its gas and oil reserves, will need to stay in the ground if global warming is to be kept below 1.5 degrees centigrade. Back in 2018, another study found that even to meet a 2-degree centigrade goal, which it’s now all too clear would be catastrophic in climate-change terms, humanity would have to halt all new fossil-fuel-based infrastructure and immediately start decommissioning fossil-fuel-burning plants. Instead, such new facilities continue to be built in a relentless fashion globally. Unless the United States, which bears by far the greatest responsibility for our climate emergency, is ready to radically change course, how can it demand that others do so?
But to change course would mean to abandon exceptionalism.
Degrowth scholars argue that, rather than risking all of our futures on as-yet-unproven technologies in order to cling to economic growth, we should seek social and political solutions that would involve redistributing the planet’s wealth, its scarce resources, and its carbon budget in ways that prioritize basic needs and social wellbeing globally.
That, however, would require the United States to acknowledge the dark side of its exceptionalism and agree to relinquish it, something that, in March 2022, still seems highly unlikely.
Aviva Chomsky is an American teacher, historian, author, and activist. She is a professor of history and the Coordinator of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts
The latest UN Climate Report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability released Feb. 28 once again urges immediate action and outlines the catastrophic effects that humanity faces with the continued lack of meaningful action. Compiled by 270 researchers from 67 countries, it outlines the impacts that are already unfolding and how these disasters will increase even if warming is limited to the 1.5 Celsius temperature threshold above pre-industrial levels.
The world is currently at around 1.1 C warming and we are already experiencing unprecedented heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and extreme weather events that has led to 84 million climate refugees and increasing food and water insecurity. These issues will only multiply as the world warms. The non-binding commitments that came out of the recent COP26 Climate Summit, have us on track for around 2.4 C warming, which would result in mass devastation and displacement for large portions of the global population.
The UN report criticizes the incremental changes currently being implemented as falling far short of the transformational shifts that are needed. The report goes on to lay out the catastrophic impacts of 2 C and 3 C warming and calls for immediate comprehensive action from global governments to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, along with financial support from the wealthy countries for those most vulnerable.
Situation is more urgent than UN report indicates
Due to inadequate infrastructure, weak social safety nets, and a greater reliance on the natural world, the climate impacts already being felt by countries of the Global South have much more devastating effects than climate impacts occurring in the Global North. This is due to the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism that has created a development gap that must be addressed by those most responsible for the problem–mainly the United States and the European Union.
While these UN IPCC reports are useful for climate activists and policymakers to point to, we must keep in mind that they take a more conservative approach than independent scientific reports. Since they rely on the consensus of hundreds of contributors and have a several year lag time between data collection and publishing due to the long peer review process, in reality, the situation is even more urgent than what the report outlines as a result of the rapidly changing conditions.
Supreme Court expected to undercut Environmental Protection Agency
Meanwhile in the United States, even meager efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are only in the planning phase are seeing push-back from right-wing forces. On Feb. 28, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency case that aims to undermine the EPAs ability to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which are the second largest source of planet-warming emissions in the United States.
This case is a preemptive attack by Big Coal and its backers against a nascent regulation to be proposed by the EPA later this year that is expected to draw from the failed Obama-era Clean Power Plan. Opponents of the forthcoming regulation argue that the EPA should not have powers to set industry-wide regulations on power plants, but only to set regulations on individual power plants–undercutting the already weak federal authority to implement significant emissions reductions.
To reach the Biden administration goals of 50% emissions reductions below 2005 levels by 2030–which scientists urge is necessary to keep below 1.5 C warming –will take herculean efforts. The Biden proposal for meager climate actions that stalled out in Congress last year lacked a clear path to achieving this level of reductions, and would be further undermined if the West Virginia case wins. In general, this Supreme Court case would have far-reaching implications toward a future diminishing of the already insufficient powers of the EPA and other regulatory bodies.
The broader question is, how can the United States–which is responsible for the largest share of emissions globally based on historic and per capita contributions–ever achieve the reductions needed to stem climate catastrophe when corporations and their government backers have the power to undermine regulatory authority and legislation? Time and again we see fossil fuel corporations use their bottomless coffers to bully and buy off legislators and regulators through lawsuits, lobbying and campaign contributions. And at the same time, these corporations have spent billions of dollars on PR campaigns to spread disinformation about climate change and their role in creating this crisis.
Capitalism not capable of resolving the crisis
The weak regulatory mechanisms under capitalism and the lack of authority of the UN IPCC to hold countries accountable to their commitments fall far short of meeting the challenge that humanity faces. We need a socialist planned economy that can implement a long term plan to make the transformations that are needed for our very survival: a rapid and just transition off fossil fuels and a restoration of ecosystems to draw down carbon from the atmosphere, restore the water cycle and cool the climate.
We can see glimpses of what is possible in Cuba’s 100-year climate change adaptation plan and China’s rapid reductions in particulate pollution and massive investments in renewable energy that far surpass any other country. Only through a socialist planned economy can such comprehensive shifts occur in the rapid timeframe that is crucial.
Under free market capitalism, the government can only give incentives for corporations to implement technologies that aid in emission reductions through penalties or subsidies, in hopes that enough corporations will “do the right thing.” This haphazard, piecemeal approach to emissions reductions–that can be undone with a new administration, a midterm election, or a Supreme Court ruling–is a far cry from the urgent action that is needed and what is possible for humanity to achieve.
This is why it is crucial that we continue to build a broad people’s movement–a movement of the working class–to force concessions from the top, and in the end, to overthrow the corrupt and irrational system of capitalism and build a society that is based on the needs of the people and the planet.
Climate change is not some crisis that will happen far in the future. It is happening now. We collectively have the tools and knowledge needed to transform society from one that is based on a degenerative relationship with the planet to one that is regenerative and for the benefit of all life. This is what is needed for humanity’s survival. And the time to act is now.
Tina Landis is the author of the book Climate Solutions Beyond Capitalism |Courtesy: Liberation News, a US socialist publication.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF MAINE 