Global citizens moving forward to SoulLife God Promised Land.

An extract from Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si

The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. Industrial waste and chemical products utilised in cities and agricultural areas can lead to bioaccumulation in the organisms of the local population, even when levels of toxins in those places are low. Frequently no measures are taken until after people’s health has been irreversibly affected.

These problems are closely linked to a throwaway culture which affects the excluded just as it quickly reduces things to rubbish. To cite one example, most of the paper we produce is thrown away and not recycled. It is hard for us to accept that the way natural ecosystems work is exemplary: plants synthesise nutrients which feed herbivores; these in turn become food for carnivores, which produce significant quantities of organic waste which give rise to new generations of plants. But our industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations, while limiting as much as possible the use of non-renewable resources, moderating their consumption, maximizing their efficient use, reusing and recycling them. A serious consideration of this issue would be one way of counteracting the throwaway culture which affects the entire planet, but it must be said that only limited progress has been made in this regard.

The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognise the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. It is true that there are other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the Earth’s orbit and axis, the solar cycle), yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity. Concentrated in the atmosphere, these gases do not allow the warmth of the sun’s rays reflected by the Earth to be dispersed in space. The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system. Another determining factor has been an increase in changed uses of the soil, principally deforestation for agricultural purposes.

Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change. However, many of these symptoms indicate that such effects will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption. There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy. Worldwide there is minimal access to clean and renewable energy. There is still a need to develop adequate storage technologies. Some countries have made considerable progress, although it is far from constituting a significant proportion. Investments have also been made in means of production and transportation which consume less energy and require fewer raw materials, as well as in methods of construction and renovating buildings which improve their energy efficiency. But these good practices are still far from widespread.

***

The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation. In fact, the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet: both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest. For example, the depletion of fishing reserves especially hurts small fishing communities without the means to replace those resources; water pollution particularly affects the poor who cannot buy bottled water; and rises in the sea level mainly affect impoverished coastal populations who have nowhere else to go. The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor, in conflicts sparked by the shortage of resources, and in any number of other problems which are insufficiently represented on global agendas. It needs to be said that, generally speaking, there is little in the way of clear awareness of problems which especially affect the excluded. Yet they are the majority of the planet’s population, billions of people.

These days, they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems are brought up as an afterthought, a question which gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile. This is due partly to the fact that many professionals, opinion makers, communications media and centres of power, being located in affluent urban areas, are far removed from the poor, with little direct contact with their problems. They live and reason from the comfortable position of a high level of development and a quality of life well beyond the reach of the majority of the world’s population. This lack of physical contact and encounter, encouraged at times by the disintegration of our cities, can lead to a numbing of conscience and to tendentious analyses which neglect parts of reality. At times this attitude exists side by side with a “green” rhetoric. Today, however, we have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.

***

The same mindset which stands in the way of making radical decisions to reverse the trend of global warming also stands in the way of achieving the goal of eliminating poverty. A more responsible overall approach is needed to deal with both problems: the reduction of pollution and the development of poorer countries and regions. The twenty-first century, while maintaining systems of governance inherited from the past, is witnessing a weakening of the power of nation states, chiefly because the economic and financial sectors, being transnational, tends to prevail over the political. Given this situation, it is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organised international institutions, with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments, and empowered to impose sanctions. As Benedict XVI has affirmed in continuity with the social teaching of the Church: “To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago”. Diplomacy also takes on new importance in the work of developing international strategies which can anticipate serious problems affecting us all.

***

Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. Compulsive consumerism is one example of how the techno-economic paradigm affects individuals. Romano Guardini had already foreseen this: “The gadgets and technics forced upon him by the patterns of machine production and of abstract planning mass man accepts quite simply; they are the forms of life itself. To either a greater or lesser degree mass man is convinced that his conformity is both reasonable and just”. This paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume. But those really free are the minority who wield economic and financial power. Amid this confusion, postmodern humanity has not yet achieved a new self-awareness capable of offering guidance and direction, and this lack of identity is a source of anxiety. We have too many means and only a few insubstantial ends. The current global situation engenders a feeling of instability and uncertainty, which in turn becomes “a seedbed for collective selfishness”. When people become self-centred and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality. In this horizon, a genuine sense of the common good also disappears. As these attitudes become more widespread, social norms are respected only to the extent that they do not clash with personal needs. So our concern cannot be limited merely to the threat of extreme weather events, but must also extend to the catastrophic consequences of social unrest. Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.

Yet all is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start, despite their mental and social conditioning. We are able to take an honest look at ourselves, to acknowledge our deep dissatisfaction, and to embark on new paths to authentic freedom. No system can completely suppress our openness to what is good, true and beautiful, or our God-given ability to respond to his grace at work deep in our hearts. I appeal to everyone throughout the world not to forget this dignity which is ours. No one has the right to take it from us.

Pope Francis’s encyclical is published in full by the Vatican here

Pope Francis is Pope of the Catholic Church, a title he holds ex officio as Bishop of Rome, and Sovereign of the Vatican City

According to one dictionary definition the term “propaganda” should be understood as “information, ideas, opinions etc. propagated as a means of winning support for, or fomenting opposition to, a government, institution etc.” There is nothing here to indicate whether the information, ideas and opinions propagated need be true or false.

The Second World War was the most colossal armed struggle in history. It is no exaggeration to say that had German imperialism in the form of the Nazi Third Reich triumphed in that war, the genocidal barbarism that it brought wherever its rule extended would may well have spelled the end of human civilization. It is estimated that 60 million people lost their lives between 1939 and 1945 in the war. This is about 3% of the world’s population in 1939. If we compare fatalities for four member states of the wartime alliance against the Axis (which excludes of course many other participant nations), the discrepancies are striking. The figures in brackets are the percentages of the country’s total population:

I am Russian. I was born in Russia, and my mother is half Russian and half Chinese. But even my Chinese part comes from Kazakhstan, from a former Soviet republic. My grandfather, Hussein, was a top ‘commissar', equivalent to a cabinet minister, an ethnic Chinese, a linguist, a man who died many decades before I was born.  

At first, a few progressive heads-of-state in Europe were appalled at U.S. President Barack Obama's pressure for them to reject Russia's invitation to an upcoming 9 May 2015 celebration of victory against Hitler, and Czech President Milos Zeman even came out publicly saying, in a conspicuous face-slap to Obama, on 3 January 2015, that the U.S. overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 had been a coup and that “only poorly informed people” were comparing that to Czechoslovakia's own “Velvet Revolution” against communism on 29 December 1989. Zeman even said that Ukraine's 22 February 2014 U.S. overthrow of Yanukovych, or the event (under the cover of public demonstrations at the) “Maidan, was not a democratic revolution” but instead a coup. Or, as the head of Stratfor, the private CIA firm, has acknowledged, it was even “the most blatant coup in history,” because it was so well doumented in videos taken by bystanders at the time, as well as by internal intelligence leaks (such as this and this). So: indeed, “only poorly informed people” didn't know about it. (And some still don't.)

The pro-Nazi core of the Ukrainian government that was installed by the U.S. in February 2014 is too well-documented to be denied, and so the West's major propaganda media (self-styled as being ‘news' media) instead simply hide it — most don't report any of it, but a few report snippets along with excuses to make individual events seem like aberrations, not the core, which they actually are.

Here is a photo from Russia's "Life News" on May 13th, headlining “Soldiers of ‘Azov' Teach Students to Shoot a Grenade Launcher and Throw Grenades":

That “wolfsangel” insignia on their T-shirts is Ukraine's version of the German Nazis' original, which is shown here from the ADL:

http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/wolfsangel-3a.jpg

And here it is in an ad for a wolfsangel T-shirt:

And here it is in a flag at a rally by the Right Sector organization, which is the gang that goes back to Ukraine's Nazis during World War II and that actually constituted the foot-soldiers the Obama Administration hired to bring the present, racist-fascist, Ukrainian Government, into power February 2014:

And here is a video that gives the Hitlerite history of the Right Sector:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5EkV_PhPI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h22oHs3eiLg

And here is the Right Sector's leader, the man who actually organized the overthrow:

http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/meet-ukraines-master-mass-murderer-dmitriy-yarosh/

And here are the Azov Battalion displaying a photo of their hero Hitler:

http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150131/1017591477.html

And here they are dancing and shouting “White Power!”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMNdXbP_oNU

And here is a video showing how Obama brought Ukraine's far-right into power:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-RyOaFwcEw

And here is Obama's agent Victoria Nuland telling her flunky Geoffrey Pyatt whom to choose to be the leader of the new Ukraine that would become installed 22 days later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM

And here's the shock when the EU's officials found that the overthrow of Yanukovych was a coup, nothing legitimate, which had brought to power the new government, this pro-EU junta:

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-paet-ashton-transcript.html

And here's the ethnic-cleansing campaign that Obama's Ukrainian regime subsequently carried out, bombing whole regions that resisted the Obama junta's legitimacy to rule over them:

http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/enemies-ukraine-speak/

And here's more shown of that (and you see troops from both Azov and Right Sector, plus some plain military conscripts, doing the killing in these scenes):

http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/obamas-ukrainian-stooges/

How much of this, which has been shown in Russia and in other countries that aren't yet controlled by the U.S., has been shown also on the nightly 'news' in the West, and reported in ‘news'papers such as The New York Times, and the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung — 'news' organizations that deny these realities, whenever they're brought up, but that can provide no counter-evidence and therefore prefer to ignore altogether these realities, even while claiming to 'report the news'?

But how else can democracy be killed, than by such a coordinated campaign to hide reality and deceive the masses? After all, what you've just now seen documented here is “Leftist.” But it's also reality. So: fascist regimes need to hide it.

And, similarly, how much coverage, and how much public discussion and debate, occurred about the Obama regime's having made the U.S. one of only three nations in the entire world that voted in the U.N.'s General Assembly against a resolution condemning the recent rise (in unnamed nations) of racist fascism and ethnic cleansing, and of Holocaust-denial? (Ukraine and Canada were the other two nations.)

News-cleansing fits well with ethnic-cleansing.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of  Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.

Tags

Eric Zuesse

Ukraine Nazism

The Syrian war stalemate appears to be over. The regional powers surrounding Syria — especially Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and Jordan — have re-ignited their war against the Syrian government. After over 200,000 dead and millions of refugees, the U.S. allies in the region recently re-committed to deepening the war, with incalculable consequences.

The new war pact was made between Obama’s regional darlings, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who agreed to step up deeper military cooperation and establish a joint command in the occupied Syrian region of Idlib.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are now openly backing Islamic extremists under the newly rebranded “Conquest Army.” The on-the-ground leadership of this “new” coalition consists of Jabhat al-Nusra — the “official” al-Qaeda affiliate — and Ahrar al-Sham, whose leader previously stated that his group was the “real al-Qaeda.”

The Huffington Post reports:

“The Turkish-Saudi agreement has led to a new joint command center in the northeastern Syrian province of Idlib. There, a coalition of groups — including Nusra and other Islamist brigades such as Ahrar al-Sham that Washington views as extremist — are progressively eroding Assad's front. The rebel coalition also includes more moderate elements of the Free Syrian Army that have received U.S. support in the past.”

The article admits that the Free Syrian Army — that Obama previously labeled as “moderates” and gave cash and guns to — has been swallowed up by the extremist groups.

This dynamic has the potential to re-engulf the region in violence; deep Saudi pocketbooks combined with reports of looming Turkish ground forces are a catastrophe in the making.

Interestingly, the Saudi-Turkish alliance barely raised eyebrows in the U.S. media. President Obama didn’t think to comment on the subject, let alone condemn it.

The media was focused on an odd narrative of Obama reportedly being “concerned” about the alliance, but “disengaged” from what two of his close allies were doing in a region that the U.S. has micromanaged for decades.

It seems especially odd for the media to accept that Obama has a “hands off” approach in Syria when at the same time the media is reporting about a new U.S. program training Syrian rebels in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

It’s inconceivable that Obama would coordinate deeply with Turkey to set up a Syrian rebel training camp on Turkish soil, while at the same time be “disengaged” from the Turkish-Saudi war coalition in Syria.

One possible motive behind the fake narrative of “non-cooperation” between Obama and his Turkish-Saudi allies is that the U.S. is supposed to be fighting a “war on terrorism.”

So when Turkey and Saudi Arabia announce that they’re closely coordinating with terrorists in Syria — like al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham — Obama needs an alibi to avoid being caught at the crime scene. He’s not an accomplice, simply “disengaged.”

This is likely the reason why Obama has insisted that his new “moderate” rebels being trained in Turkey will fight ISIS, not the Syrian government. But this claim too is ridiculous.

Is Obama really going to throw a couple hundred newly-trained “moderate” Syrian rebels at ISIS while his Turkish-Saudi allies focus all their fire on the Syrian Government? The question answers itself.

The media has made mention of this obvious conundrum, but never bothers to follow up, leaving Obama’s lame narrative unchallenged. For example, the LA Times reports:

“The White House wants the [U.S. trained rebel] proxy force to target Islamic State militants, while many of the Syrian rebels — and the four host nations [where Syrian rebels are being trained] — want to focus on ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad.”

The article simply shrugs its shoulders at the irreconcilable. The article also fails to mention that Obama’s “new” training camps aren’t new at all; he’s been arming and training Syrian rebels since at least 2012, the only difference being that the “new” training camps are supposedly meant to target ISIS, compared to the training camps that were openly used to target the Syrian government.

Here’s the LA Times in 2013:

“The covert U.S. training [of Syrian rebels] at bases in Jordan and Turkey began months before President Obama approved plans to begin directly arming the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to U.S. officials and rebel commanders.”

This is media amnesia at its worse. Recent events can’t be understood if the media doesn’t place events in context. In practice this “forgetfulness” provides political cover to the Obama administration, shielding his longstanding direct role in the Syrian war, allowing him to pretend to a “passive,” “hands off” approach.

When it was reported in 2012 that the Obama administration was funneling weapons to the Syrian rebels, the few media outlets that mentioned the story didn’t bother to do any follow up. It simply fell into the media memory hole. After the weapons funneling report came out, Obama incredulously stated that he was only supplying “non lethal” support to the rebels, and the media printed his words unchallenged.

Consequently, there was no public discussion about the consequences of the U.S. partaking in a multi-nation proxy war against Syria, a country that borders war ravaged Iraq.

In 2013 when Obama announced that he would be bombing the Syrian government in response to a supposed gas attack, the U.S. media asked for no evidence of the allegation, and strove to buttress Obama’s argument for aggression.

And when Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh wrote an article exposing Obama’s lies over the aborted bombing mission, the article didn’t see the light of day in the U.S. media. Critically thoughtful voices were not welcome. They remain unwelcome.

In 2015 direct U.S. military intervention in Syria remains a real possibility. All the conditions that led to Obama’s decision to bomb Syria in 2013 remain in place.

In fact, a U.S. intervention is even more likely now that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are fighting openly against the Syrian government, since the Saudi-Turkish alliance might find itself in a key battle that demands the special assistance that only the U.S. air force can offer.

Unsurprisingly, there has been renewed discussion of a U.S. enforced “no fly zone” in Syria. ISIS doesn’t have an air force, so a no fly zone would be undeniably aimed at the Syrian government to destroy its air force. The new debate over a “no fly zone” is happening at the same time as a barrage of new allegations of “chemical weapons” use are being made against the Syrian government.

If a no fly zone is eventually declared by the Obama Administration it will be promoted as a “humanitarian intervention, that strives to create a “humanitarian corridor” to “protect civilians” — the same rhetoric that was used for a massive U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign in Libya that destroyed the country and continues to create a massive refugee crisis.

As the Syrian war creates fresh atrocities the Obama administration will be pressured to openly support his Saudi-Turkish allies, just as he came out into the open in 2013 when he nearly bombed the Syrian government.

History is repeating itself. But this time the stakes are higher: the region has already been destabilized with the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and the regional conflicts have sharpened between U.S. allies on one hand, and Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia on the other.

Such a volatile dynamic demands a media willing to explain the significance of these events. The truth is that Obama has been a proxy war president that has torn apart the Middle East as badly as his predecessor did, and if the U.S. public remains uninformed about developing events, an even larger regional war is inevitable.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail

Truth-out.org

Are we going to let capitalism destroy life on Earth?

According to 99 percent of climate scientists – we'll know by the end of the century.

Scientists have agreed for three decades about what is causing atmospheric temperatures to rise – humans are burning Earth's carbon resources to fuel economic activity.

But even before we knew what was causing the temperature to rise – scientists warned about the dire global impacts of a two degree increase in atmospheric temperatures.
Earth's climate has been basically stable for hundreds of thousands of years.

But that changed during the industrial revolution - when Great Britain realized the potential of coal-powered steam engines.

Soon continental Europe and the US followed suit.

And more than 150 years later – coal, oil and natural gas dominate the global politics and economics: wars are fought over oil; communities are destroyed for coal; and increasingly scarce water supplies are poisoned by natural gas extraction.

The Earth has already warmed about one degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels – which means we have to change our energy system completely before the Earth warms another degree in order to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Is it possible?

Scientists say "Yes!" - BUT it will require us to take bold and immediate steps towards a completely renewable energy system.

The technology exists – the shortfall is in investment.

According to the IMF – oil companies get $5.3 trillion in subsidies worldwide per year.

And the oil companies pay only a portion – if any – of the environmental costs of ripping fossil fuels from the ground and burning the CO2 into the atmosphere.

In other words, every living human being and government are paying for coal, oil, and gas companies to profit from the destruction our planet.

And that's not a market failure – that's how the market was set up.

Capitalism as we know it isn't the solution – it's the problem.

In a report in "Nature Climate Change" – scientists point out that we can keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius – if every country takes bold and immediate action to deploy current clean energy and limit the use of fossil fuels.

The biggest failure in our system is that there is no price on carbon.

Burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon into our atmosphere has very real costs that corporations aren't paying for – costs that are being kicked down the road for future generations.

In America, we've let the fossil fuel industry become so profitable that it relentlessly funds campaigns and lobbies to keep oil subsidies in place and weaken environmental regulations - all at the expense of our communities and our planet.

Our current oligarchs claim that renewable power isn't efficient or cheap enough to be competitive or to reliably replace fossil fuels – but that's just not true.

Solar, wind, and wave technology are all ready to be deployed at large scales – and Denmark, Germany, the UK and China, among others, are doing it right now.

Our transportation system is ready for renewables – solar roadways in the Netherlands are proving more effective than expected – and over two dozen models of electric cars are now out on the market.

Our households are ready for renewables: LED lightbulbs and high efficiency appliances mean that households use less energy – and affordable rooftop solar means that households can meet a lot their own energy needs.

We can make renewables competitive if we just cut subsidies to oil and coal companies and enforce our clean air and clean water regulations – but that means getting money out of politics so that legislation is written in the interest of communities and the planet - instead of corporations.

Capitalism is great at creating profits and products – but it doesn't care about environmental justice.

Capitalism doesn't care whether we restore our forests and soils so that the planet can begin to reabsorb the carbon we've dumped into the atmosphere.

Capitalism doesn't care whether streams are poisoned or if the air is noxious – it doesn't care if a river burns because of pollution – and it doesn't care if another technology is 'cleaner' - unless the 'dirty' option becomes unprofitable.

That's why we need both more regulation of the fossil fuel industry - and public investments into clean energy like solar and wind.

Capitalism is to make money - but a government like our republic is put into place to protect the people from those whose quest for money harms society. We cannot replace democratic government with capitalism – and climate change proves this.

In fact - climate change challenges capitalism at its very root – is an economy really growing when all the costs are dumped on society while a handful of corporations and billionaires take all the profits?

Science says that we can keep global temperatures from rising another half degree – but it can't be left to a private sector that makes its profits from leaving the costs to everybody else.

It's time for a New Green Deal – we need to stop directly and indirectly subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and we need to invest in a large-scale deployment of current clean energy technologies – one that will create permanent, sustainable jobs, and protect the Earth for future generations.

This article was first published on Truthout. Truthout is the original site of publication.

In the post-Communist era now more than two decades old, many people around the world are questioning what is the best economic development model? One reason for such a question is the very deep recession of 2008-present that has thrown many economies into a downward spiral of unemployment, rising public and private sector debt, and lack of rapid growth in the remainder of the decade. So, what are some models of modern economic development and to what degree do they improve people's lives, and do economic growth and development alone account for human happiness - with the broader meaning of the latter term?

The mode of production that determines the social order has been capitalism that has evolved from the Commercial Revolution in the 16th century to globalization in the late 20th-early 21st century. Under the world-system of capitalism, there have been different models of development in the history of capitalism, determined to a large degree by the shifts from the primary sector of production (agriculture, forestry, mining and fisheries) to the secondary sector (manufacturing) and to the tertiary (service) and high tech/biotechnology sector.

Before analyzing some models of economic development, it is instructive to consider the following questions about “development economics”.

a) What development model best serves the needs of the people, presumably all people and not just the financial and or political, military, bureaucratic elites?

b) Is it possible to separate politics from economics and speak in terms of pure economics instead of a system of political economy and social structure?

c) Is there such a thing as "the perfect" or 'ideal' system that can be applied perfectly in practice as it may appear in theory, whether such a system is market-based, statist, or some model based on a mixture?

d) Different countries would require to adopt variations of different models depending on their natural resources, labor force, level of current development.

e) Change is required to models of political economy to keep up with changes in the real economy and society."

f) As perfect as they may be in theory for any given society, economic models in practice do not mean very much, simply because the decision on what policies to pursue are always taken by those who command economic and political power. Add to the equation the factor of corruption and the model is coffee table reading material.

g) There is no such thing as the ideal model in theory that is not in practice a mixture of several theories. For example, is the US a "free market model" economy when in essence it has been practicing corporate welfare economics for decades? Is Indonesia a neoliberal economy under an Islamic regime, similar to Malaysia, Turkey, and now Egypt and Tunisia? Is China a statist economy or a mixed economy that allows a heavy dose of free enterprise?

Can there be a development model that serves all people based on social justice?

In the 19th century, there were a number of intellectuals from Adam Smith to Karl Marx who believed that it was possible to have an economic system that best served all people. However, Smith was an advocate of free market economic development, while Marx believed only Communism, the natural state of human beings, can best serve the people by eliminating elites, not reinforcing them.

Because people have differing views on what best serves society, that is, best serves every person equally in every respect in institutional terms, most economic models are necessarily based on what best serves interest groups within society. There are of course economic development models that claim to best serve everyone, including Socialist and Communist models, but in practice some sectors and some individuals are better served even by those models, as history has clearly demonstrated in the 20th century, than other groups in society. In short, as Jean-Paul Sartre and many others correctly maintained, there will always be elites in society, and that means that no economic model can possibly be free of that reality. Another way to view this is that there is no such thing as an economic development model that is "objective", because models are rooted in everything from investment to terms of trade that invariably benefit certain groups and not society as a whole.

Should GDP growth be the sole criteria for human happiness?

It is true that in world public opinion polls the top ten "happiest countries" are those that we consider developed economically, that is, those with diversified economies and high incomes. This is an indication that in the age of materialism where the value system is rooted in wealth and the security provided to maintain it people believe their happiness hinges on things associated primarily with material possessions. However, national economic growth and development do not necessarily translate into individual happiness, if a percentage of the population, anything above 10%, lives in chronic poverty.

Moreover, human happiness is also predicated on spiritual fulfillment for many non-Western societies. In the early 1970s, Bhutan rejected GDP as the sole criterion for progress, asserting that quality of life, social progress and the psychological well being of people are significant indicators to take into account. The Bhutan example became the UN standard as well. Although this is something that can be used as distraction by those trying to justify socioeconomic injustice by arguing why do people need material improvement when they have spiritual fulfillment, it is important to note that we cannot use the Western material criterion alone for it does not reflect the human experience worldwide.

Defining "Development"

The term development in economics does not mean the same thing for an advocate of "dependency theory" as it does for a monetarist. Nor does it necessarily mean the same thing for an advocate of sustainable development in India vs. one in Canada. For this reason, I need to lay some groundwork for this synoptic perspective of what the term means to intellectuals and politicians who do not share common views.

1. Centrally-planned models.

The old Soviet centrally-planned economy from the 1920s until the early 1980s was a model in which the command economy was rooted. The government decided on productivity and investment by sector as well as absorption of the surplus labor force from one sector by the other, not to satisfy consumer demand, but rather to meet the greater societal or national needs as the state defined them. In varying degrees, this model became a prototype for Eastern Europe after 1945, and for Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and China under Mao.

Development was measured by the state in terms of meeting production quotas, though in practice, the bureaucracy falsified reports to make productivity appear much better than it was. In the end, such a non-consumption-geared economy did not translate into rising living standards across the board, but it did absorb the surplus labor force and it tried to meet essential needs such as housing, health, and education. Command economies had enormous problems, not only because their civilian economies failed to meet mass consumer demand, but also because of the emphasis on durable goods focus vs. consumer goods, and heavy military spending that absorbed resources otherwise needed for the civilian economy. In practice, the politically-connected elites (the 'new class' linked to the Communist Party) benefited, while the broader masses lagged behind and lacked basic freedoms that many of them valued, such as freedom of worship, expression, and others that are common in open societies of the Western World.

2. Quasi-statist and neo-corporatist models.

Government permits free enterprise, but invests heavily in certain industries and/or subsidizes others even if they show chronic deficits instead of profits, because it deems it is in the 'national economic' interest. It is difficult to argue that quasi-statism and neo-corporatism, both of which are inter-related and have many aspects to them, are alike in South Korea as in Brazil, or in Russia as in Argentina and Venezuela. The common denominator is heavy government involvement in investment with the intent to promote certain sectors, trade regulation intended to promote national capitalism and not permit international capital to determine economic planning, and strengthening the state structure so that the private sector, especially foreign capital does not have a dominant role.

After the Second World War, a number of countries, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, among others, began to adopt 'top-down' development models so they can help build sectors such as steel industry, shipbuilding, and others. This model in varying degrees found expression in Brazil, Argentina after 2001, post-Communist Russia, even Spain in the late 1980s-early 1990s before the wave of neoliberalism swept the EU that had itself aspects of corporatism and quasi-statism as a regional bloc rooted in heavy subsidies of certain sectors.

The quasi-statist model is also operating in a number of countries as different as Norway and Saudi Arabia. There is the Norwegian development model, (to some extent also practiced in other Scandinavian countries) essentially a variation of Keynesian economics, is rooted in a strong state structure that relies on a solid welfare state with a private competitive sector backed by the social-democratic state.

The benefits of this model are that there is a sense of national control over the economy, vs. foreign capital control, thus it is an issue of national sovereignty prevailing in the age of globalization. Another benefit is that the state helps to plan for the country's future with the intent of long-term development that presumably would meet the needs of the majority of the people. Moreover, the nation retains a strong national capitalist class that is able to compete internationally instead of becoming subservient to exporters from developed core countries.

How well has this model worked? The examples of South Korea, Taiwan, all of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) indicate that the national economies experience phenomenal growth. This does not mean, however, that the wealth is evenly spread across the population.It is true that South Korea, and Taiwan developed a middle class on the basis of this model and it is also true that the fastest middle class growth is taking place in the BRICS. However, the world's largest percentage of poor live in the BRICS. With the promise that national economic growth and development will some day in the future translate into individual prosperity the quasi-statist countries can continue to operate as they do until such time as the broader masses rise up and demand results filter down to them.

3. Neo-classical (free enterprise) model.

The classical free enterprise system theory of Adam Smith and its apologists in the 20th century, from the neo-classical advocates (Robert Solow and T. W. Swan) to Milton Friedman and the Chicago School that rejected Keynesian economics in favor of rigid monetarism that is an integral part of the neo-classical movement. Productivity and capital accumulation based on a fiscal system that favors capital, allows maximal freedom of capital movement and investment and limits organized workers' rights that inhibit capital expansion and accumulation are at the core of this school of thought.

With many variations, the neo-classical school and its advocates ranging from supply side economics to neoliberalism and monetarism as expressed by IMF-World Bank economists as well as purists of the classical theory made a major comeback in the 1980s and they have triumphed ever since. In practice, the theory never worked as its advocates claim, because the state became a vehicle to transfer massive income from the welfare state to corporate welfare, thus a form of statism was part of this model. Moreover, the model in practice proved to have many flaws as it permitted numerous scandals from banking to corporate corruption and investor fraud on which fortunes of the very few were built at the expense of the general economy.

The market-oriented growth and development model is presumably one that takes place under an open, free and democratic society where free market forces trade, invest and consume with minimal government intervention. This is the theory. In reality, the role of government is very heavy in every aspect from monetary to fiscal policy, and society is not nearly as free and open as one would argue in theory. The quasi-police state methods of the US, everything from illegally tapping into the private phone records of millions of people to denying due process to anyone that government has the right to brand terrorist indicate a slippery slope toward authoritarian capitalism. "The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs..."

Putting aside the reality that economic models necessarily work within a political system that makes all kinds of lofty claims about what best serves "the people", let also consider that many people actually believe that if the "national economy" is performing well, so will they, because they identify with the nation-state, even though they as individuals may be in the lower socioeconomic strata and derive no benefits from any growth and development. This is the case in many countries, most notably the US. The latest (June 2013) Department of Labor report shows that labor costs are the lowest since 1947 when the US began keeping records. Hourly compensation continues to sink, most notably in the manufacturing sector that was historically the best-paying sector for workers. This trend of downward socioeconomic mobilization has been a reality for the past three decades, but the US economy continues to develop and grow, though without such development translating into income growth for the middle class and workers.

There are variations of authoritarian capitalist models found in many non-Western countries such as Saudi Arabia but also in a number of African nations. This model allows for free enterprise, it rests on one or very few sources for economic growth and development, and it has a strong state monopolized by authoritarian regimes, invariably more corrupt than countries where there is some semblance of checks and balances. There is the Indonesian, Malaysian, Turkish model of neoliberalism under Islamic regimes; something that is now spreading across other Muslim nations, including Tunisia and Egypt. This model is an integral part of the neoliberal one under globalization.

Clearly, there are models today that result in tremendous GDP growth, but that does not translate to upward socioeconomic mobility and the qualitative and quantitative growth of a middle class. For example, the result of globalization, especially from 2007 to the present, is that the middle class in the US and EU has been shrinking, while it has expanded in Asia and to some degree in Latin America and parts of Africa. Therefore, versions of the neoliberal model of development that the US and EU have been pursuing has resulted in downward socioeconomic mobility for the most advanced nations as well as semi-developed ones in Southern Europe. Nevertheless, more than half of the middle class in in North America and EU, while the vast majority of the poor are in the non-Western world.

According to OECD statistics, "In 2009 the middle class included 1.8 billion people, with Europe (664 million), Asia (525 million) North America (338 million) accounting for the highest number of people belonging to this group. ... The size of the “global middle class” will increase from 1.8 billion in 2009 to 3.2 billion by 2020 and 4.9 billion by 2030. The bulk of this growth will come from Asia: by 2030 Asia will represent 66% of the global middle-class population and 59% of middle-class consumption, compared to 28% and 23%, respectively in 2009..."

One paradox in economics is that it is possible to have growth without development (vertical growth), or growth accompanied by underdevelopment as in the case of African, Latin American and some Asian countries that are relying on one or two export products, while using the proceeds to import everything else. This kind of dependency has been characteristic of the core-periphery divide in the capitalist world system for the past five centuries; for there is a vast difference between an undeveloped country enjoying self-sufficiency and an underdeveloped that one that is financially, commercially and industrially dependent on the advanced capitalist (core) countries. Moreover, there is a vast difference between a country experiencing ephemeral growth owing to the availability of some export product –let us say oil – and sustainable development that leads to diversified economic development and greater self-sufficiency.

Conclusions

The idea that there is any model that can possibly reflect "human behavior" and its idiosyncratic proclivities assumes that there is such a thing as a "uniform generic model" of human behavior, rather than "atomic action constraints, as determined genetically and by cultural conditioning". In fact, the reason I argue that there cannot be a perfect model, is because I made certain assumptions about human nature, namely that the irrational tendencies play a far greater role than the rational.

This is a very old argument rooted in the philosophical debates that goes back to the 17th century (Hobbes and Locke) and continuing in the Age of Reason as well as the 19th century when Marx and Mill who relied on the rationalist tradition to formulate significant political theories on which society could build. In short, just as a scientific theory can provide solid and unquestioned answers, similar philosophical models of political economy could do the same, at least this was the assumption. But can scientific certainty be applied to economic models, given that they must in the end apply to human beings that are neither neutrons nor algebraic equations? Are the domains of economics, political science, sociology and social science as "scientific" as mathematics, chemistry and physics, or are we ultimately dealing with a question of societal structure based on a social contract? To what degree is the social contract itself modeled after rationalist assumptions, as was the case for both Jon Locke and Karl Marx and F. Engels, is a legitimate issue. However, the matter of societal organization, mode of production, is subject to historical dynamics (dialectical materialism, to be sure, but certainly not limited to it).

Is there a single development model that works best to serve the people of all countries around the world; like us say the neoliberal that IMF, World Bank, European Central Bank, US and EU governments are promoting globally as the panacea? Economic development models, whether like that of the US, or regional bloc one like the one of the European Union, are always designed down to the smallest detail to serve and promote the privileged socioeconomic and political elites, within the boundaries of what the middle class and working class will tolerate so there would not be social unrest or revolt.

Development models under capitalism are not intended to foster greater upward socioeconomic mobility, but to further concentrate capital in the hands of the privileged elites that enjoy policy influence. The social safety net, social welfare measures within varying degrees that have been in place in many countries around the world are now threatened by the neoliberal model that encourages the erosion of welfare measures amid an era of downward pressure on wages and limited opportunities for youth suffering high unemployment. These are explosive social conditions that could result in social upheaval if the trend continues.

Lower global poverty, gender equality, basic education and health care, and a sustainable future for all people are desirable goals of many human-centered rather than market-focused people for the past two centuries. The question is which development model can achieve such goals i9f the political economy is structured to serve narrow class interests. Not any time in the near future, or in the next half century do I expect systemic changes in the neoliberal political economy. On the contrary, statistics indicate that there is regression in the areas of social progress. Why? I repeat that people who have economic and political (military/police) power always prevail, while the broader masses of the population, middle classes and workers continue to demand social justice. The social dialectic (Marxian-based "dialectical social theory") leads me to conclude that concessions will be made to the broader masses only when absolutely necessary to preserve the status quo.

Jon Kofas is a retired university Professor from Indiana University.

During pre-capitalist civilisation, competition and its avoidance was its hallmark, it’s the reason for the strata that separated the people who could do and have whatever. But no mater, competition will occur when there’s inequality. Capitalism has gradually replaced the inherited stratified static society with a fluid one controlled with competition for wealth, measured with fiat money. That intensified the competition, which increased the clout of winners to boost their share of the world’s wealth and political power. We can live with unfairness within human society even with its wars, but nature can no longer sustain that life style, therefore, we can’t either.

Then, we must drastically reduce our demands on nature or die. The most wasteful and destructive activities are preparation for high tech wars, and the fighting to test the weaponry, and take assets, all of them are incredibly destructive so, its peace or perish. Nevertheless wars are an important part of civilisation; furthermore capitalism has evolved to a global status, therefore we could regard wars as revolutions. Those conflicts by their nature are very messy with unknowable outcomes and inflicting unbearable pain on people and nature. To save an environment that can sustain 9 billion people, we must have peace; but, it’s impossible to have peace in competitive societies that’s also changing the climate to an unliveable one.

Competition for wealth and power has a feedback loop, which is, having succeeded in a competitive endeavour that brings more wealth; it therefore increases the chance of winning in more of the same due to the extra power that wealth brings. To avoid the advantage of that extra wealth brings to a few individuals; up to 1970s it was contradicted by the negative feed backs the governments imposed on wealth, mainly taxes. But neoliberals reversed that by giving positive feed backs to the wealthy. This has changed the ratio in the wealth distribution in society where in 1970s we reach the minimum difference between the rich and poor, while today we are getting to the maximum divergence of wealth tolerable. Negative feedbacks such high rate of taxes on high earners and to avoid difficulties and conflicts - positive feedback, which is, society spending on health, education, public transport, and food supply such as fresh fruit and vegetables. That’s essential for peace

Peace for social beings is a state of cooperation where individuals can take pleasure helping each other so that we can all share in the participation of receiving and giving, as a part of nature. Where the success of an individual is regarded as a success for everyone and ones feeling of security is enhanced by how well others are doing, furthermore, because it’s both safe to be honest and with no obvious benefit to be dishonest people will tend to be more honest even for a psychopath.

On the other hand when money is so important as it is today, competition for it is the key to success and the more one has the more important one is and the more power one has especially in democracies. Capitalist democracies are the most competitive social system to ever exist, and cartels, monopolies, and trusts are the ultimate winners of competition. The goal of business is to be above competition, which is to have a competitive advantage preferably a monopoly, and that’s the logical outcome of competition. As neoliberals took over the economy, industrial worker had fraternal relationships that held them together; that was gradually replaced with competition within that working class.

Competitive relations have conflicts that are either overtly violent or covertly mean; they contrast with peaceful relationships that are cooperative, supportive, safe, and predictable. Unlike competition, cooperation doesn’t require forsaking ones feeling of comradeship, because we then see people as potential friend instead of probable enemies. While to be successful in a competitive milieu requires a deceptive friendliness, secrecy, ruthlessness, hard work, focuses on one’s success, cunningness, and looking for winnable conflicts.

We have never experienced peace during civilisation; we only have had times of supressed violence, which we call peace. Therefore, it’s hard for us to think of peace as anything but the absent of war, which still has the supressed conflicts for dominance, and that’s not peace because the conflicting tension within competition is still there.

What we need today is honesty; we already have the knowledge to ensure our survival and a good life for all. Knowing is of no use, unless we have the right equipment, or system to use that knowledge, for instance before people used the wheel they had the knowledge of it, but they didn’t have the material for the axle, they had to wait until iron axle were made. Today we have the knowledge to save ourselves but we don’t have the socioeconomic system to implement it.
When one considers our population is due to reach 9 billion by the middle of this century, with a degraded environment especially water resources, the options to maintain life for today’s young is limited. The only way we can survive is to attain a state of peace throughout the world. As pointed out that condition can only be achieved when we have rescinded our need to compete and renew relations that are fair and honest. It’s necessary to achieve that state of fairness, so that all people in a common endeavour worldwide are able to be adequately fed and housed, without destroying nature of its life.

A sustainable socioeconomic system can only be, at this stage, fair and honest, because of our overpopulation that will overwhelm the degrading resources. We will need to stabilised and then reduce our population to below half of what it will be. Not an impossible task, although it may never have been achieved voluntarily, but it’s a necessity now. People can and have achieved remarkable feat when there’s a clear need for action and if we have that common need to survive we will all survive cohesively, or we all perish competitively.

The knowledge in the world community is there that would enable us to survive. But our political and ‘economic’ leaders have more immediate concerns to acquire more power to maintain or raise their position in the system. Not realising it, in pursuit of that on a global scale will annihilate them, their family and their opponents. No one has a long-term interest in maintaining the status quo, in today’s terms it might mean even less than a few decades.

Capitalism’s controling agent is competition, which numbs honesty and that dominates all fields of life, resulting in gross unfairness, which is a twin of dishonesty. The twins are inseparable as are the twins of fairness and honesty; ‘fairness’ in capitalism is the right to exploit people, preferably legally.

The continuing increasing dishonesty sanction by the system is justified by our education. We have tertiary courses in public relation; their main job is the difficult task of convincing people to do what is against their interest. In conjunction with that is the government pursuit work, of deception, like spending on offensive military hardware and calling it defence.

Competition has a further important asset for the few billionaires, it sets the tone of society, which glorifies and envies winners and despise losers. But that is accepting a disparity in the allocation of all resources, which is the right to have more power than others, with a better life style, good health care, able to get better legal advice, and so on. Competition’s purpose is to create inequality of importance, which in capitalism are wealth and power, and that is unfair and is not only dishonest, but the competition justifies and glorifies the exploitation.

Shift-magazine.org

What is needed to get us out of our comfort zone and fight for our children’s future?

If you ask, let’s say, a seven year old, it’s all pretty clear. If it’s the way we live, consume and produce that causes climate change, why don’t we simply stop it and start doing things differently? And if there are millions of people too poor even to meet their basic needs, why don’t we tell the rich to share a bit of their overflow so that there is enough for all?

We may consider this cute and naïve, we may laugh and say, “Look, it’s not all that easy, there are too many complexities and interdependencies and lock-ins and path-dependencies. It’s OK, when you’re older you’ll understand. Our economy needs to grow for us to keep up the good life. It needs to grow to get more people out of poverty, to secure return on investments, and to create jobs in place of those that fell away due to rationalization. We cannot simply stop the machine for something abstract like climate change: this would lead to recession, social unrest and chaos. We have to keep up our economic system to secure social stability, pension schemes and state budgets”—as if social instability, unemployment and wars on resources were not already well on their way.

Questioning the underlying system logic

These are all robust arguments hardly ever questioned—following the logic of homo economicus that individual profit and competition are the best means to achieve the higher common good. But what if this system logic itself was the root cause of our environmental and social crises—climate change above all—and needed to be replaced by something new to secure our survival on this planet? What if we have constructed a whole system of theories, models, technologies and defence mechanisms just to deny the simple truth? What if the seven year old was right and we do need to change our lives in an unprecedented way, and concentrate all our efforts on the required systemic transformation in the face of climate change and the underlying crisis of civilization?

Mark Lynas and others made the case that questioning the paradigm of economic growth is kind of politically extreme, but what if it turned out that climate stability and growth are indeed incompatible and that such “extremity” is in fact required? That keeping up economic growth, “green” or otherwise, is not in line with the physical reality of the planet, regardless of what we might wish?

In the end, it all boils down to the question of decoupling economic growth from greenhouse-gas emissions (and the use of other natural resources in the case of other no less important planetary boundaries). However, despite the tremendous efforts that are being invested to convince us that energy efficiency, renewables and new technologies will do the trick, decoupling in absolute terms remains highly unlikely if not impossible in a growing economy.

The limits to growth are real

According to economist Tim Jackson, from 1990 to 2007 the global carbon intensity of technology decreased annually by an average of 0.7 %. At the same time, global population increased by 1.3 % while the average income increased by 1.4 %. These numbers reveal that the efficiency gains (relative decoupling) didn’t even make up for population growth and income increase, so the overall emissions actually went up.

In order to avoid dangerous climate change in the future, we would need to achieve an annual carbon intensity decrease of at least 7 %, a figure ten times greater than that achieved from 1990 to 2007. The relating scenario only accounts for a moderate population and income increase, and maintains the gap between developing and developed countries. If the developing countries were to catch up with industrialized living standards, which is the more likely trajectory, this would even require a 55 times lower carbon intensity by 2050. Is this realistic?

While a recent high-level report claims that climate action and economic growth can go hand in hand, it doesn’t even attempt to prove the probability of absolute decoupling—leaving its core message a mere assertion. The reason behind it: among the multitude of studies dealing with decoupling and the related rebound-effects, there is not one that could prove absolute decoupling as a realistic scenario considering the relevant facts and figures.

Standing up to vested interests

This leads us to the question of whose interests are actually at stake in case the growth fetish gets criticized by a larger public¨—which can also explain the tireless attempts to prevent this from happening by the military-industrial complex, the fossil fuel industry, the agroindustry, the aviation and automotive industry, to mention only a few (no, electric or driverless cars are not sustainable, despite what the industry tries to make us believe). Given the vast financial and political power of the global players in these and other sectors, it is no wonder that governments are usually putty in the hands of their interest groups. These play with our fears and assure us that their profitability is essential for keeping our jobs—knowing that politicians fear nothing more than rising unemployment rates.

And indeed, in the current system, this fear of losing one’s job often forces people to choose between a secure livelihood and ethical principles – and to continue to work in jobs that are obviously damaging for the environment. So if a global bottom-up climate movement is to succeed against these vested corporate interests, it has to push just as hard for alternative solidarity structures and job opportunities. In the end, it’s not the corporations that we need, but secure livelihoods—which can be provided in many different ways.

Facing our defence mechanisms

At the same time it is not enough to point fingers at others and blame “the system” or “the industry” or “the politicians” when our own interests are deeply intertwined with that of the economy we are living in. Aren’t most of us quite happy in our comfort zones enjoying all the superficial pleasures the globalized consumer culture can provide? It’s definitely not those who are less fortunate and have to struggle to make ends meet who are to blame. It’s the average and above average consumers in the Global North and the rich in the Global South who are gobbling up resources that the earth cannot sustain. It’s our Western consumer lifestyle that inherently depends on the exploitation of nature and other people, particularly women—be it in the form of cheap labour, environmental racism or direct deprivation – e.g. by destroying people’s livelihoods for our hunger for resources.

So if we want politicians and governments to act and take on the “Great Transition” towards a secure and liveable future as their utmost priority, we first have to give up our defence mechanisms and stop justifying our own role. We have to bring across that we are really serious about changing the economy and changing our lives, and that we won’t accept any excuse. Otherwise they can rely on us being too deeply attached to our cars, fancy holidays and long-haul flights, globalized supply chains and ever more electronic gadgets—even at the expense of the millions of deaths, increasing violence, wars on resources and ever stronger environmental disasters.

Shaping a global movement for change

If the movement gets its priorities right, the largest parts of the global population have much to gain. Even the rich and privileged might prefer the prospect of a materially simpler life in a social and economic environment that fosters wellbeing in a healthier sense than the current one. Luckily, there are already many ideas, proposals and concepts available to secure the good life for all while maintaining a healthy planet—in democratic and participative ways.

The widespread belief that the white male hypocrites from Silicon Valley and their likes will save us through technological innovations is yet another symptom of our collective denial. These will neither be ecologically sustainable, nor democratic; they will just tighten our dependence on increasingly complex technologies from large monopolist corporations. We tend to forget that the real driver behind such innovations is not change, but the attempt to keep up our business-as-usual capitalist economy and prevent it from collapse—thereby securing cash flow into the pockets of the usual suspects.

Now back to the seven year old, for whom the solutions are so simple, so apparent. Don’t you think it’s high time we listen to our children, get out of our comfort zone and do all we can to safeguard the Earth for them? Consume less, share more and stand up against fossil fuels, urban sprawl, destructive infrastructures and resource extractivism. And, above all, fight for an economy that can fulfil everyone’s basic needs within the natural boundaries of a healthy planet.

Christiane Kliemann is a German freelance journalist focusing on postgrowth, alternative economy and social change. A member of the organizing team of the Degrowth 2014 Conference, she has worked in communications at the UNFCCC secretariat and as an editor at German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Currently she is running the blog for the German degrowth web-portal and preparing to move to the eco-village Sieben Linden.

WSWS.org

The findings of a poll published yesterday by the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center, showing broad opposition in Europe to a NATO war with Russia, underscore the anti-democratic character of the US-led war drive against Russia over Ukraine.

The poll was formulated to elicit answers as favorable as possible to US and NATO policy, particularly in regard to a possible war with Russia. The poll questionnaire did not once raise that Russia and NATO both have nuclear weapons, or inquire about the respondents’ willingness to risk nuclear war. As a result, the poll vastly underestimates public opposition to war.

The main question on war was whether NATO member states should fight a defensive war against Russia, if Russia “got into a serious military conflict with one of its neighboring countries that is our NATO ally.” In such a situation, Article 5 of the NATO Charter on collective self-defense would require all NATO member states to declare war on Russia.

Despite having framed the question in a manner intended to elicit support for such a supposedly defensive war, the Pew poll found broad opposition among Europeans. Fifty-eight percent of Germans, 53 percent of the French population and 51 percent of Italians opposed fighting even a defensive war with Russia to protect a NATO member.

This is not, however, the character of the war that now threatens to erupt. NATO is not playing a defensive role in Ukraine, which is not a NATO member state. The Ukrainian crisis erupted after the US and the European powers backed a fascist-led putsch against a pro-Russian government in Kiev in February 2014, bringing to power an ultra-right regime that launched a civil war against pro-Russian areas of eastern Ukraine. With US and Russian missile forces on heightened alert and NATO land, air and naval forces engaged in continuous exercises on Russia’s borders, the world stands on the verge of a catastrophic war provoked by Washington and its European allies.

Popular sentiment emerged most clearly when the Pew poll inquired about initiatives NATO is threatening to pursue in Ukraine. Asked about NATO arming the Kiev regime against Russia, a policy being pushed by the Obama administration, majorities or pluralities opposed the measure in every European country surveyed except Poland, where 50 percent supported arming Kiev.

Fully 77 percent of Germans opposed NATO arming Kiev, versus only 19 percent who supported it. The poll found 65 percent opposition versus 22 percent support in Italy, 66 versus 25 percent in Spain, 59 versus 40 percent in France, and 45 versus 42 percent in Britain.

Opposition within Germany, where the government, the media and sections of academia have been waging a relentless propaganda campaign in support of militarism, was particularly strong. A mere 38 percent of Germans said Russia was a danger to NATO member states on its borders, and only 29 percent blamed Moscow for the violence in Ukraine.

These findings constitute a devastating indictment of last year’s Kiev putsch and the ensuing US-led war drive against Russia, which have been backed by governments across Europe. While workers are kept in the dark about the true dangers of a war that they do not want, NATO is pressing ahead with reckless policies overwhelmingly rejected by the European population.

The findings of the Pew poll among Ukrainians expose the claims of Washington and the European imperialist powers that they are supporting Ukraine against Russia in order to defend a nascent democratic regime threatened by Russian aggression. The Kiev regime is imposing brutal austerity measures demanded by the Western banks and using increasingly authoritarian and violent means to suppress internal opposition among Ukraine workers.

Kiev’s war against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, fought with the aid of the CIA and various fascistic militias, is being carried out in flagrant disregard of the wishes of the Ukrainian people. According to the Pew poll, more than twice as many Ukrainians want to settle the conflict with the separatists through negotiations (47 percent) than with force (23 percent).

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s policies on these issues are widely unpopular, with 57 percent of the population opposing both his handling of the eastern Ukraine conflict and his posture toward Russia.

The domestic policies of the Kiev regime are no less unpopular. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s disapproval rating is 60 percent.

With the Ukrainian currency in a state of collapse, waves of mass layoffs taking place, and the government hiking the prices of key utilities, the Pew poll shows 94 percent of the people viewing Ukraine’s economic situation as “bad.” Fifty-five percent of Ukrainians have concluded that the Kiev regime does not respect personal freedoms.

The Pew poll also interviewed Russian respondents, finding a surge in distrust towards NATO, seen as a threat by 81 percent of Russians, as well as general hostility towards Obama (86 percent negative) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (66 percent). While Putin’s opposition to NATO’s intervention in Ukraine has boosted his approval ratings to 88 percent, there is broad distrust of the oligarchic regime he leads, which emerged from the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. Some 69 percent of Russians and 34 percent of Ukrainians said in the poll that the dissolution of the USSR was bad for their country.
The results of the Pew poll underscore the disastrous political implications of the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, nearly a quarter century ago. Combined with the collapse and plundering of Soviet industry, the dissolution of the USSR geo-strategically crippled Russia, throwing open vast areas of the former Soviet Union to NATO’s reactionary intrigues. Above all, the emergence of a criminal oligarchy ruling Russia weakened the opposition that had existed in the international and particularly the European working class to imperialist threats against the USSR.

The preparation of the NATO powers for an all-out war with Russia that could incinerate the planet is colliding with deeply rooted anti-war sentiment in Europe, the United States and worldwide. The very fact that the Pew poll was commissioned is itself a sign of mounting concern in ruling circles internationally over mass opposition to war.

The ruling elites of the imperialist countries have made clear, however, that they intend to ignore popular sentiment and proceed with their campaign against Russia. The New York Times, in its report on the Pew poll, presented the mass opposition to war as a “challenge” to US and NATO war plans that needs to be overcome.

It cited former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, who called for continued propaganda in support of military action against Russia, saying that, “it will take a serious effort by the alliance to convince its public of the need to prepare for, deter, and, if necessary, respond to a Russian attack.”

The Times added that, “public opinion is not always decisive in shaping NATO policy.” It continued: “President Ronald Reagan managed to win sufficient European backing to deploy Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles on the [European] Continent despite a substantial peace movement.”

The Times’ reference to the US deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe during the 1980s is particularly significant. US officials are now discussing escalated missile deployments in Europe and the possibility of launching pre-emptive missile strikes against targets inside Russia.

Forget about the so-called “hiatus” in global warming. The planet’s average temperatures are notching up as swiftly now as they did 20 or 30 years ago.

A team of US researchers has looked again not just at the data for the last 60 years but at how it has been collected, and done the sums again. They conclude, in the journal Science, that the “estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature rise.”

But first, the story-so-far. Climate sceptics have repeatedly claimed that global warming has slowed or stopped. This was not the case: 13 of the hottest years ever recorded have all occurred in the last 14 years, and 2014 was the hottest of them all.

But when climate scientists looked at a graph of the rise of temperatures in the last 60 years, they saw – or thought they saw – a distinct drop in the rate of increase in global average temperatures in the last 15 years.

This apparent dip became the subject of a whole series of studies. Researchers had never expected the rise to follow a straight line – all sorts of natural climate cycles would naturally affect annual records – but the rate of increase was slower, and more sustained in its slowness, than anyone could explain, especially as there had been no drop in the greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming.

Data anomalies

Some proposed that the expected extra heat in the atmosphere had been drawn down into the great oceans and others that an unnoticed increase in volcanic activity had helped screen the sunlight and cool the atmosphere unexpectedly. Yet another group looked not at average temperature patterns but the change in the frequency of heat waves and saw a different kind of rise.

Yet another group wondered if the problem might be only apparent: more complete data from many more parts of the world might combine to tell a different story. Thomas Karl and colleagues at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in the US made this their starting point.

They looked again at how the data had been collected, and the gaps that might have appeared. Sea surface temperatures, for instance, were at different periods collected by bucket from a ship’s deck, by readings aboard surface drifting and moored buoys or by engine-intake thermometers in ships’ engine rooms, and there could be subtle differences not accounted for.

There were very few readings from the Arctic, yet the Arctic is by far the fastest-warming region of the planet, and the pattern of land-based temperature readings, too, repaid re-examination.

By the time the NOAA team had finished, the recalibrated figures told a different story. Between 1998 and 2012, the world warmed at the rate of 0.086°C per decade, more than twice the rate of 0.039°C per decade measured by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The new figure is much closer to the rate estimated for the decades 1950 to 1999, at 0.113°C per decade. And the new analysis lifts the rate of warming from 2000 to 2014 to 0.116°C per decade, which if anything is an acceleration, not a slowdown.

British climate scientists have welcomed the finding: it is however the finding of just one group and, like all such research, will be accepted more readily if it can be separately replicated.

“This study makes the important point that we need to look really carefully at data quality and issues of instrument change,” said Piers Forster, professor of climate change at the University of Leeds, UK.

”Yet there are several legitimate judgment calls made when combining datasets to make a global mean-time series. I still don’t think this study will be the last word on this complex subject.”

But Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, UK, called the study careful and persuasive, and said: “I think it shows clearly that the so-called ‘hiatus’ does not exist and that global warming has continued over the past few years at the same rate as in earlier years.”

Pope Francis reminds us that our relationship to the natural world is about love, not just goods and services

Who wants to see the living world destroyed? Who wants an end to birdsong, bees and coral reefs, the falcon’s stoop, the salmon’s leap? Who wants to see the soil stripped from the land, the sea rimed with rubbish?

No one. And yet it happens. Seven billion of us allow fossil fuel companies to push shut the narrow atmospheric door through which humanity stepped. We permit industrial farming to tear away the soil, banish trees from the hills, engineer another silent spring. We let the owners of grouse moors, 1% of the 1%, shoot and poison hen harriers, peregrines and eagles. We watch mutely as a small fleet of monster fishing ships trashes the oceans.

Why are the defenders of the living world so ineffective? It is partly, of course, that everyone is complicit; we have all been swept off our feet by the tide of hyperconsumption, our natural greed excited, corporate propaganda chiming with a will to believe that there is no cost. But perhaps environmentalism is also afflicted by a deeper failure: arising possibly from embarrassment or fear, a failure of emotional honesty.

I have asked meetings of green-minded people to raise their hands if they became defenders of nature because they were worried about the state of their bank accounts. Never has one hand appeared. Yet I see the same people base their appeal to others on the argument that they will lose money if we don’t protect the natural world.

Such claims are factual, but they are also dishonest: we pretend that this is what animates us, when in most cases it does not. The reality is that we care because we love. Nature appealed to our hearts, when we were children, long before it appealed to our heads, let alone our pockets. Yet we seem to believe we can persuade people to change their lives through the cold, mechanical power of reason, supported by statistics.

I see the encyclical by Pope Francis, which will be published on Thursday, as a potential turning point. He will argue that not only the physical survival of the poor, but also our spiritual welfare depends on the protection of the natural world; and in both respects he is right.

I don’t mean that a belief in God is the answer to our environmental crisis. Among Pope Francis’s opponents is the evangelical US-based Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has written to him arguing that we have a holy duty to keep burning fossil fuel, as “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork”. It also insists that exercising the dominion granted to humankind in Genesis means tilling “the whole Earth”, transforming it “from wilderness to garden and ultimately to garden city”.

There are similar tendencies within the Vatican. Cardinal George Pell, its head of finance, currently immersed in a scandal involving paedophile priests in Australia, is a prominent climate change denier. His lecture to the Global Warming Policy Foundation was the usual catalogue of zombie myths (discredited claims that keep resurfacing), nonsequiturs and outright garbage championing, for example, the groundless claim that undersea volcanoes could be responsible for global warming. There are plenty of senior Catholics seeking to undermine the pope’s defence of the living world, which could explain why a draft of his encyclical was leaked. What I mean is that Pope Francis, a man with whom I disagree profoundly on matters such as equal marriage and contraception, reminds us that the living world provides not only material goods and tangible services, but is also essential to other aspects of our wellbeing. And you don’t have to believe in God to endorse that view.

In his beautiful book The Moth Snowstorm, Michael McCarthy suggests that a capacity to love the natural world, rather than merely to exist within it, might be a uniquely human trait. When we are close to nature, we sometimes find ourselves, as Christians put it, surprised by joy: “A happiness with an overtone of something more, which we might term an elevated or, indeed, a spiritual quality.”

He believes we are wired to develop a rich emotional relationship with nature. A large body of research suggests that contact with the living world is essential to our psychological and physiological wellbeing. (A paper published this week, for example, claims that green spaces around city schools improve children’s mental performance.)

This does not mean that all people love nature; what it means, McCarthy proposes, is that there is a universal propensity to love it, which may be drowned out by the noise that assails our minds. As I’ve found while volunteering with the outdoor education charity Wide Horizons, this love can be provoked almost immediately, even among children who have never visited the countryside before. Nature, McCarthy argues, remains our home, “the true haven for our psyches”, and retains an astonishing capacity to bring peace to troubled minds.

Acknowledging our love for the living world does something that a library full of papers on sustainable development and ecosystem services cannot: it engages the imagination as well as the intellect. It inspires belief; and this is essential to the lasting success of any movement.

Is this a version of the religious conviction from which Pope Francis speaks? Or could his religion be a version of a much deeper and older love? Could a belief in God be a way of explaining and channelling the joy, the burst of love that nature sometimes inspires in us? Conversely, could the hyperconsumption that both religious and secular environmentalists lament be a response to ecological boredom: the void that a loss of contact with the natural world leaves in our psyches?

Of course, this doesn’t answer the whole problem. If the acknowledgement of love becomes the means by which we inspire environmentalism in others, how do we translate it into political change? But I believe it’s a better grounding for action than pretending that what really matters to us is the state of the economy. By being honest about our motivation we can inspire in others the passions that inspire us.

This column also appeared on the Guardian.

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at www.monbiot.com

Jesus has been described as the best known figure in history, and also the least known. If you mentioned the name “Jesus” and someone asked Jesus who, you might blink. Or laugh. Even people who don’t think Jesus was God mostly believe they know a fair bit about him. You might be surprised that some of your most basic assumptions about Jesus are probably wrong.

We have no record of anything that was written about Jesus by eyewitnesses or other contemporaries during the time he would have lived, or for decades thereafter. Nonetheless, based on archeological digs and artifacts, ancient texts and art, and even forensic science, we know a good deal about the time and culture in which the New Testament is set. This evidence points to some startling conclusions about who Jesus likely was—and wasn’t.

Married, not single. When an ancient papyrus scrap was found in 2012 referring to the wife of Jesus (most likely a forgery), some Catholics and Evangelicals were scandalized at the very thought. But unlike the Catholic Church, Jews have no tradition of celibacy among religious leaders. Ancient writers documented exceptions like the Apostle Paul or the Essene sect precisely because they violated the norm. In the Gospels, Jesus iscalled rabbi; and all great rabbis that we know of were married.  A rabbi being celibate would have been so unusual that some modern writers have argued that Jesus must have been gay. But a number of ancient texts, including the canonical New Testament, point to a special relationshipbetween Mary Magdalene and Jesus. For example, the non-canonical Gospel of Phillip says, “[Jesus] loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her [mouth].”

2. Cropped hair, not long.Jewish men at the time of Christ did not wear their hair long. A Roman triumphal arch of the time period depicts Jewish slaves with short hair. In the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he addresses male hair length. “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him?” (1 Corinthians 11:14 NRSV). During the 1960s, conservative Christians quoted this verse to express their disgust against the hippy movement and to label it anti-Christian.

3. Hung on a pole, not necessarily a cross.For centuries scholars have known that the Greek New Testament word “stauros,” which is translated into English as cross, can refer to a device of several shapes, commonly a single upright pole, “torture stake” or even tree. The Romans did not have a standard way of crucifying prisoners, and Josephus tells us that during the siege of Jerusalem, soldiers nailed or tied their victims in a variety of positions. Early Christians may have centered on the vertical pole with a crossbeam because it echoed the Egyptian ankh, a symbol of life, or the Sumerian symbol for Tammuz, or because it simply was more artistically and symbolically distinctive than the alternatives. Imagine millions of people wearing a golden pole on a chain around their necks.

4. Short, not tall. The typical Jewish man at the time of the Roman Empire would have been just over five feet tall, which makes this a best guess for the height of Jesus. That he is typically depicted taller derives from the mental challenge people have distinguishing physical stature from other kinds of stature. Great men are called “big men” and “larger than life.” In ancient times they often were assigned divine parentage and miraculous births, and the idea that Jesus was uniquely divine has created a strong pull over time to depict him as taller than is likely. A good illustration of this is the Shroud of Turin, which is just one of many such Jesus-shrouds that circulated during medieval times and which bears the image of a man closer to six feet in height.

5. Born in a house, not a stable. The miraculous birth story of Jesus is a late, maybe second-century addition to the Bible, and it contains many fascinating mythic elements and peculiarities. But the idea that Jesus was born in a stable was added to the Christmas story even later. In the original narrative, Joseph and Mary probably would have stayed with relatives, and the phrase “no room for them in the inn (gr: kataluma)” is better translated “no room for them in the upper room." Later storytellers did not understand that people of the time might bring animals into their ground floor, as in Swiss housebarns, and they assumed that the presence of a manger implied a stable.

6. Named Joshua, not Jesus. The name Joshua (in Hebrew Y'hoshuʿa meaning “deliverance” or “salvation”), was common among Jews in the Ancient Near East as it is today. Joshua and Jesus are the same name, and are translated differently in our modern Bible to distinguish Jesus from the Joshua of the Old Testament, who leads the Hebrew people to the Promised Land. In actuality, the relationship between the two figures is fascinating and important. Some scholars believe that the New Testament gospels are mostly historicized and updated retellings of the more ancient Joshua story, with episodes interwoven from stories of Elisha and Elijah and Moses. A modern parallel can be found in the way Hollywood writers have reworked Shakespearean tropes and plot elements into dozens of modern movies (though for a very different purpose).

8. Prophecies recalled, not foretold. Even people who aren’t too sure about the divinity of Jesus sometimes think that the way he fulfilled prophecies was a bit spooky, like the writings of Nostradamus. In reality, Scooby Doo could solve this one in a single episode with three pieces of information: First, Old Testament prophecies were well known to first-century Jews, and a messianic figure who wanted to fulfill some of these prophecies could simply do so. For example, in the book of Matthew, Jesus seeks a donkey to ride into Jerusalem “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet” (Matthew 21:4). Second, “gospels” are a genre of devotional literature rather than objective histories, which means that the authors had every reason to shape their stories around earlier predictions. Third, scholars now believe that some Bible texts once thought to be prophecies (for example in the Book of Revelation) actually relate to events that were current or past at the time of writing.

9. Some Jesus quotes not from Jesus; others uncertain. Lists of favorite Jesus sayings abound online. Some of the most popular are the Beatitudes (blessed are the meek, etc.) or the story of the woman caught in adultery (let he who is without sin cast the first stone) or the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which, we are told, sums up the Law and the Prophets).

Which words are actually from Jesus? This question has been debated fiercely by everyone from third-century Catholic Councils to the 20th-century Jesus Seminar. Even Thomas Jefferson weighed in, but much remains unclear. The New Testament Gospels were written long after Jesus would have died, and no technology existed with which to record his teachings in real time, unless he wrote them down himself, which he didn’t.

We can be confident that at least some of the wise and timeless words and catchy proverbs attributed to Jesus are actually from earlier or later thinkers. For example, the Golden Rule was articulated before the time of Christ by the Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who similarly said it was the “whole Torah.” By contrast, the much-loved story of the woman caught in adultery doesn’t appear in manuscripts until the fourth century. Attributing words (or whole texts) to a famous person was common in the Ancient Near East, because it gave those words extra weight. Small wonder then that so many genuinely valuable insights ended up, in one way or another, paired with the name of Jesus. 

The person of Jesus, if indeed there was such a  person, is shrouded in the fog of history leaving us only with a set of hunches and traditions that far too often are treated as knowledge. The “facts” I have listed here are largely trivial; it doesn’t really matter whether Jesus was tall or short, or how he cut his hair. But it does matter, tremendously, that “facts” people claim to know about how Jesus saw himself, and God and humanity are equally tenuous.

The teachings attributed to Jesus mix enduring spiritual and moral insights with irrelevancies and Judaica and bits of Iron Age culture, some of which are truly awful. That leaves each of us, from the privileged vantage of the 21st century, with both a right and a responsibility to consider the evidence and make our own best guesses about what is real and how we should then live. A good starting place might be a little more recognition that we don’t know nearly as much as we’d like to think, and a lot of what we know for sure is probably wrong.

Back in 2006, the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada, right-wing Conservative Stephen Harper warned that “You won’t recognize Canada when I’m through with it.” After nine grueling years, that’s already true in many ways. But now, Harper is going even further in his re-make of the country. Under new and pending legislation, Canada is moving rapidly towards the creation of a police state, with major curtailments of civil liberties. In recent weeks, the Harper Conservatives have introduced and/or passed several pieces of legislation that run roughshod over Canadians’ Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Constitutional rights, giving draconian powers to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

There’s Bill C-13, the highly unpopular online spying legislation, which received Royal Assent on Dec. 9, 2014. The Bill allows warrantless internet surveillance through the collection by CSIS of Canadians’ everyday internet use. The Bill contains broad new police powers, including several new warrants for surveillance, tracking and gathering of bank information. Bill C-13 has been vehemently opposed by more than 60 Canadian organizations. OpenMedia’s David Christopher says that “important parts of this legislation have already been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.” [1]

There’s Bill C-44, which expands the surveillance powers of CSIS globally, while granting anonymity protection to CSIS informants and allowing for new conditions under which Canadian citizenship can be revoked. This bill passed third reading on February 2 and is now with the Senate. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has called this bill “highly problematic.” [2]

There’s Bill C-639, introduced on Dec. 3, which impinges on the Constitutional right of assembly and would criminalize people exercising their democratic right to public protest. And there’s Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act 2015, introduced on Jan. 30, containing draconian measures that verge on the creation of a police state. These two bills are the focus in this article because they both refer to protection of “critical infrastructure.”

They are therefore crucial with regard to ongoing Canadian protests against tarsands export pipeline proposals: Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline (from Alberta to northern B.C.); Enbridge’s Line 9 reversal (from southern Ontario to Montreal); TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline (from Alberta to New Brunswick); and Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (from Alberta to southern B.C.).

Being In the Way

On December 3, Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Wai Young (Co-chair of the Canada-China Legislative Association) introduced Bill C-639, a private member’s bill to amend the Criminal Code.

The Bill creates a new criminal office for anyone who “destroys or damages any part of a critical infrastructure; renders any part of a critical infrastructure dangerous, useless, inoperative or ineffective; or obstructs, interrupts or interferes with the lawful use, enjoyment or operations of any part of a critical infrastructure.”[3] This amendment would criminalize peaceful and (currently) lawful protests if they interfere even temporarily with broadly defined “critical infrastructure.” The Bill imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of two to 10 years and fines of $500 to $3,000.

Bill C-639 defines “critical infrastructure” as “services relating to energy, telecommunications, finance, health care, food, water transportation, public safety, government and manufacturing, the disruption of which could produce serious adverse economic effects or endanger the health or safety of Canadians.” The bill received backing from Minister of Justice/Attorney General Peter MacKay, who said it would “help secure all facets of critical infrastructure.” [4]

Toronto lawyer Ed Prutschi told the National Post in December the fact that energy infrastructure was including in this definition has one obvious purpose: “It would have application for pipeline protests.” [5] He noted that the legislation doesn’t necessarily require any damage to have been done, just that a person be in the way – as many people were during a protest in Burnaby, B.C. late last year against Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain pipeline expansion. As the National Post noted, Wai Young is the MP for the Vancouver South political riding, which is adjacent to Burnaby Mountain, where protests occurred.

From November 19 to 27, at least 100 protesters were arrested for crossing a police line in a municipal conservation area on Burnaby Mountain where Kinder Morgan crews have been doing preliminary work – even before approval of the pipeline project – in preparation for tunneling.

During Question Period on Dec. 8, New Democratic Party (NDP) justice critic Francois Boivin, MP for Gatineau, Quebec, called Bill C-639 “scary” and said it “bans protests” and “has obvious constitutional problems. It defines critical infrastructure as being just about anything. In this country, people have a right to lawful protest and assembly. Legal experts are already raising concerns about the constitutionality of Bill C-639.” [6]

Borrowing Tactics from Dictators

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) considers Bill C-639 a direct attack on the Canadian Constitution and Charter rights, and says the Harper government is “borrowing tactics from dictatorial governments.” [7]

The BCCLA slammed Bill C-639 while its Executive Director Josh Paterson was in Bangkok, having been invited to a UN meeting. “We are at the United Nations to cry foul on Canada’s latest attempt to criminalize peaceful protest,” Paterson said in a news release of Dec. 15. “Now striking flight attendants and kids protesting pipelines on Burnaby Mountain could be considered criminals? Either of these lawful protests could count as a crime under this law if they interfere with something of economic value. That is simply ridiculous and it violates the fundamental freedoms of Canadians.”

The UN Special Rapporteur on the freedom on assembly and association is conducting a global investigation examining how the freedoms of peaceful assembly are being violated around the world to smooth the path for corporate resource development.

Paterson further stated, “We are meeting in Bangkok with representatives from non-democratic countries where protest is a serious crime. It is humiliated for Canada to be borrowing tactics from dictatorial governments.” He added, “Canada has not only broken with our own constitution in criminalizing protest, spying on First Nations, and denouncing community groups, it’s also breaking its international commitments to protect the freedom of expression and freedom of assembly of Canadians.”

RCMP Team

Justice Minister MacKay said in the Dec. 3 press release that Bill C-639 “is the product of extensive, cross-Canada consultation, consistent with our Government’s priority to create safer communities.” [8] But the bill is obviously based on a March 2011 report written by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team, which consulted primarily with private energy companies.

The document, recently obtained by Carleton University criminologist Jeff Monaghan, warned, “Environmental ideologically motivated individuals including some who are aligned with radical, criminal extremist ideology pose a clear and present criminal threat to Canada’s energy sector…The Canadian law enforcement and security intelligence community have noted a growing radicalized faction of environmentalists who advocate the use of criminal activity to promote the protection of the natural environment.” [9] This is the same RCMP Critical Infrastructure Intelligence team that spied on Quebec residents opposed to shale gas/fracking development, among others.

The RCMP report, and Wai Young’s proposed legislation – which she said she crafted at the urging of industry [10] – dovetail with the Canada-U.S. Beyond the Border Action Plan. That Plan is the result of perimeter security and economic integration talks launched by Canada and the U.S. in 2010. The protection of shared critical infrastructure is listed as a priority in security documents on the government’s Beyond the Border website.

The documents state: “Canada and the United States share a significant quantity of critical infrastructure assets and systems, including pipelines, the electric grid, and transportation systems. It is imperative that our countries work together to protect these assets. To effectively do this, our governments will require a close collaboration with the private sector, as they own much critical infrastructure in question. It makes sense to start with a pilot project, in this case New Brunswick-Maine, to learn how best to work together on each of the elements.” [11]

That cross-border pilot project policing effort has been delayed since July 2013 because the U.S. requested that its cross-border police officers be exempt from Canadian law. Coverage by Canadian Press of internal RCMP briefing notes regarding this “sovereignty issue” temporarily stymied the project. [12]

But on October 28, 2014, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Ottawa to express condolences for the loss of two Canadian soldiers killed in separate “lone wolf” attacks (deemed “terrorist”) in Canada. Kerry said the U.S. and Canada would “work quietly and carefully” to strengthen security between the two countries, “making certain that every possible stone is turned over, every possible policy is reviewed because our obligation is obviously to protect our citizens.” [13]

After Kerry’s October visit, the Harper government had apparently been waiting for the right time to introduce a “critical infrastructure protection bill.” That came during the Burnaby Mountain protests, leading to the tabling of Bill C-639.

Then came the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris on Jan. 7. Just weeks later, on Jan. 30, the Harper government introduced Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act 2015.

Bill C-51

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says this bill “broadens CSIS’s powers significantly” and “may criminalize legitimate speech.” [14] The bill authorizes CSIS to block Canadian websites, and it defines “terrorist propaganda” as “any writing, sign, visible representation or audio recording that advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general.” Because of the vagueness of the phrasing, the CCLA notes it could have a “potential chilling effect on academics and journalists and bloggers,” who could face up to five years in prison if their writing is judged to have somehow encouraged “terrorism.”

Bill C-51 vaguely defines “terrorism” as any “activity that undermines the security of Canada,” including “interference with critical infrastructure,” but also “interference with the capability of the Government of Canada in relation to…the economic or financial stability of Canada.”

C-51 exempts “lawful advocacy, protest, dissent and artistic expression” from being considered as threat to the security of Canada, but as a Globe & Mail editorial (Feb. 1) stated, “…how well do governments define those things in times of ‘great evil’?” [15]

The bill also lowers the threshold for “preventive arrests;” makes it easier to place people on no-fly lists; gives authorities the power to hold suspected “terrorists” without charge for seven days (instead of three); allows a judge to impose up to a year of house arrest on someone who has not been charged or convicted of any crime; and it allows CSIS agents to “disrupt” threats to Canadian security – a blatant extension of CSIS powers beyond intelligence-gathering and into policing.

Bill C-51 also allows people to be detained if they “may” have terrorist plans. As the BCCLA’s policy director Michael Vonn warned in a news release, “Criminalizing people’s words and thoughts is misguided and won’t make Canadians any safer.” [16] Vonn and others have said the bill is likely unconstitutional.
In Parliament on Feb. 2, Green Party leader Elizabeth May asked Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney if the new anti-terrorism Bill C-51 “will apply to nonviolent civil disobedience, such as that against pipelines?” Blaney did not directly answer the question, saying only that terrorism “is a criminal act and those who goes [sic] against the Criminal Code will meet the full force of the law.” May told MPs they “must not allow the Conservatives to turn CSIS into a secret police force.” She has written that Bill C-51 is not about terrorism, it’s “about creating a secret police. It’s the death of freedom.” 17]

Current Hearings

On March 10, the federal Public Safety Committee began hearings on Bill C-51, with dozens of witnesses scheduled to give expert testimony on the bill during nine meetings in March. The Harper government is hoping to pass the legislation before summer.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has just released (March 11) its “Six Things Protesters Need to Know about Bill C-51” – a useful warning for people across Canada. [18] Their analysis notes: “When you think of being secure, you likely think of being safe from physical danger. But Bill C-51 defines security as not only safeguarding public safety, but also preventing interference with various aspects of public life or ‘the economic or financial stability of Canada.’ With this definition, a separatist demonstration in Quebec that fails to get a proper permit, a peaceful logging blockade by First Nations, or environmentalists obstructing a pipeline route could all be seen as threats to national security.” Whether or not a group is deemed a national security threat “may hinge on whether their cause is politically popular or in line with the views of the government.”

Regarding freedom of expression, the BCCLA states: “It’s unclear even to experts exactly what kinds of speech and protest activity may be considered threats to national security if the bill passes; the average Canada has little hope of feeling confident that their legitimate political activity hasn’t inadvertently crossed the line. Bill C-51’s expansive language means many Canadians will likely choose not express themselves – even in completely legal ways – rather than risk prosecution. Legitimate speech will be chilled, and our democracy will be worse off for it.”

Regarding “preventative arrests and detention,” the BCCLA notes, “Innocent people could be arrested and detained on mere suspicion of future dangerousness.”

Now we know why the Harper government has been building all those new prisons.

The President says he’ll veto the Keystone XL pipeline. He should do more, and put an end to the project altogether. He has the authority. Oil from Alberta’s tar sands is the dirtiest in the world – causing not just serious environmental damage when it’s extracted but also when and if it leaks out along its route from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Please tell the White House to veto it permanently.

Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President Obama's transition advisory board. His latest book is "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." His homepage is www.robertreich.org.

Adding to the already lengthy list of reasons to be concerned about the disposal of oil industry wastewater in California, the Center for Biological Diversity says it has found dangerous levels of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals such as benzene and toluene in fracking flowback.

Flowback is a fluid that floats up to the surface of fracked wells that contains clays, dissolved metal ions and total dissolved solids (such as salt) in addition to chemical additives used in the fracking process.

As such, flowback is a component of oil industry wastewater, and one of the chief reasons why the wastewater must be disposed of in a very cautious manner.

In California, where the toxic and cancer-causing chemicals were found to be present in flowback by the CBD, oil industry wastewater is not, unfortunately, disposed of in a cautious manner.

The most common wastewater disposal method is to inject it underground. It was recently revealed that California regulators have allowed hundreds of injection wells to pump wastewater into aquifers protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. Regulators also permitted thousands more wells to inject fluids from “enhanced oil recovery” techniques like acidization and cyclic steam injection into protected aquifers.

Wastewater is also sometimes stored in pits, but again, California regulators have failed to enforce proper safeguards. Clean Water Action released a report last year detailing thethreat to California's air and water from the open, unlined pits used to store much of the oil industry's toxic wastewater. According to the report, at least 432 of these pits are currently in use in California, most of them operating with an expired permit or no permit at all.

“Cancer-causing chemicals are surfacing in fracking flowback fluid just as we learn that the California oil industry is disposing of wastewater in hundreds of illegal disposal wells and open pits,” said Hollin Kretzmann, the CBD lawyer who conducted the analysis. “Gov. Brown needs to shut down all the illegal wells immediately and ban fracking to fight this devastating threat to California’s water supply.”

It wasn’t just the chemicals Kretzmann found in fracking flowback that are a cause for concern, either. Laxe enforcement of reporting rules make it hard to determine the true extent of the problem, though the CBD still found enough to raise serious questions about the threats flowback fluid poses to public health:

• High chromium-6 levels: Chromium-6 was found in fracking flowback at levels up to 2,700 times the recommended level set by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

• Missing reports: At least 100 fracking flowback tests are missing from the reporting website managed by California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, in violation of state law.

• Missing benzene data: Only 329 of the 479 fracking fluid chemical tests on the state oil agency’s website measured for benzene.

*bull; Benzene common: Of those 329 chemical tests that measured for benzene, 323 detected benzene while only six did not.

• Dangerous toluene levels: Toluene, a toxin that can affect the central nervous system and harm developing fetuses, was found to exceed federal-mandated limits for drinking water 118 times.

In some cases, benzene levels in fracking flowback were over 1,500 times the level the federal government says is safe for drinking water. Both chromium-6 and benzene are known carcinogens.

California is the country’s third-largest oil producing state, with some 20% of its oil production coming from fracked wells, according to a recent study that also found that half of all new wells drilled in the past decade use fracking.

Mike Gaworecki is an activist, writer, and musician who lives in San Francisco. He is the online campaigner for RAN's Forests program. Find Mike on Twitter:@MikeG2001

"Nero fiddled while Rome burned." -- Unknown

I am a surfer and have been since 13 years of age. Being a surfer, you develop an innate sense of weather patterns and their impact on the sea. Cold fronts, warm fronts, low pressure systems, hurricanes, nor'easters, etc. The weather and how nature reacts to changing air patterns become part of your make-up as you seek out the waves. It's been a lifetime of learning and watching nature do its thing. I am a waterman with a love of science and data. Enter Antarctica.

Antarctica has been on my mind thanks to the folks at HBO's VICE ("The Definitive Guide to Enlightened Information" as they call themselves). Big chunks of that continent are falling into the sea. And the team at VICE have done a stellar job reporting the facts. The deniers can blow all the smoke they want, but as you watch this spectacle unfold, history, pictures, science, data and nature do not lie.

Antarctica is a beautiful and majestic continent. There is a purity about this land mass that you don't get anywhere else on the planet. It holds 90% of the world's ice and 70% of the world's fresh water. Antarctica is 1.5 times the land mass of the continental United States.

The entire continent is at risk, but the big changes that are taking place now are in West Antarctica (WA). The disruption in the ecosystem there is poised for acceleration in the months and years ahead—and it will be rapid. The effects will be felt across the planet. Just ask the folks in Bangladesh now. Theirs is one of the most low-lying countries on Earth.

Millions are currently being displaced from their coastal homes due to perpetual rising waters—a quiet and permanent tsunami taking over their lives; Venice, Italy, now under water 100 days each year; parts of Miami Beach now starting to experience consistent flooding on a regular basis (as a former resident I have seen it first hand); the people of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean quickly losing their small island nation to water. Shanghai, Amsterdam and Bangkok are among hundreds of low-lying cities that will likely start to experience consistent rising waters if they have not already.

We have been watching a version of WA collapse take place in Greenland over the years, and from the data that scientists have been able to pull, we are 60 years ahead of worst-case scenarios for ice loss there. Precedent has been set in Greenland as we are readied for the main catastrophic environmental event of our lifetime now unfolding in Antarctica.

Trust me, I very much want to be wrong on this scenario, but all the signs and science are there in alignment. In WA, adjacent to Pine Island Bay, a portion of the Pine Island Glacier the size of Singapore broke off and tumbled into the bay in 2013. Then in 2014 an American Geophysical Union report took things a few steps further showing that the West Antarctic ice sheet is actually melting away. At some point soon, West Antarctic trouble spots like Pine Island Glacier, Thwaites, Haynes, Pope, Smith and Koehler Glaciers are all going to be at risk to massive melting.

As this trend accelerates, the world as we know it will be re-mapped. A four-foot sea level rise will mean no more Florida Keys and no Miami Beach; the New York City subway system and parts of NYC under water.

The same alarm bells that were rung for Greenland are now being rung for Antarctica. The results will be exponentially worse. We are talking 70 percent of the planet's fresh water. Imagine being in Manhattan watching skyscrapers and apartment buildings collapsing around you every day. This is what scientists are witnessing in WA currently. Nary a word is reported. Hillary at Chipotle wins that prize last week.

So what exactly is being done to address this Antarctic crisis? President Obama feels the urgency: "This is the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last with the opportunity to do something about it." But it falls on deaf ears with the loyal opposition.

Worldwide, it is about what you think. There is a lot of chatter but not much action. World leaders are not equipped to deal with issues of this magnitude and they all seem to be in paralysis mode. The fringe right in the USA continues to deny it exists and plays political gamesmanship. God forbid the current crop of political presidential candidates think globally for five minutes and spend a little time and effort with the subject.

A helicopter ride with the teams studying and recording the changes taking place in the region would be worthy of someone with presidential aspirations—especially if land masses and large population segments are going to be displaced around the world. Across the board, it's political gamesmanship of the worst sort—both nationally and internationally. Media coverage and conversation is pathetic on the subject. So we watch and wait while the biggest issue of our time unfolds in a vacuum.

Non-scientific pundits financed by big oil and the Koch Brothers make unsubstantiated claims that Antarctic ice is at its highest levels ever. The sad thing is that they can't even distinguish between sea and land ice as they make their proclamations and what that difference means. Rigorous science and hard data are not part of their vernacular.

The team at VICE spent time in Antarctica with glaciologist Dr. Eric Rignot from University of California at Irvine. Here are some key points taken from their visit:

- Glacial retreat is not limited to just Antarctica. Southern Chile is also seeing glacial retreat that is not part of the natural cycle. In the last 10 to 20 years glaciers are retreating more than in the last century. It's like changing the speed limit on the freeway from 55 mph to 550 mph.

- What is happening in Southern Chile is a precursor to what is going to happen on the Antarctic peninsula. We are in for some big trouble and big-time sea level rise according to Dr. Rignot. Extreme weather is taking hold in Southern Chile, too. A rain event categorized as "14 years of rain in one day" took place last month.

- There are constant NASA flights over Antarctica to measure ice volume and thickness with highly sensitive optical instruments, lasers, ice penetrating radar and more for data collection and ice mapping so changes can be tracked over time. Results from this massive amount of data collection over the years show rapid ice loss. Since 1992 ice has been retreating rapidly along with surface elevation.

- The westerly wind patterns in Antarctica in the last 40 years are stronger than in the past thousand years. The winds are circulating faster. And this pushes the subsurface warm water closer to the glaciers and closer to Antarctica. The end result, you push more ocean heat toward the glaciers thus the glaciers will retreat faster and faster which then turns into sea level rise.

- The glacier retreat rate in WA over the last 10 years has tripled their melt rates; some of the swiftest glacier retreat compared to any ice melt in the world. A kilometer per year. We are too far along to stop the WA sea ice retreat. It is going to fall apart, no matter what.

- There will be a one meter sea level rise in West Antarctic trouble spots like Pine Island Glacier, Thwaites, Haynes, Pope, Smith and Koehler Glaciers. That is just a start. If these areas retreat as predicted, it will mean the rest of Western Antarctica will follow, which would translate to 3-5 meter sea level rise: roughly 6-15 feet. One meter would be a global catastrophic event. This is something humanity is not ready for on a global scale, and it's about to happen, says Dr. Rignot.

- Atmospheric temps have risen 3 degrees Celsius since the 1950s in West Antarctica. It is one of the fastest growing temp areas on the planet, according to the British Antarctic Survey.

Dr. Andrew Clark of the British Antarctic Survey, Palmer Station Antarctica, concurs:

- Where climate change may not be obvious to us in the U.S. and Britain yet, you can come to Antarctica and see the changes before your eyes.

- For generations to come there is no stopping this trend. It will continue.

- Everyone will be impacted, but especially low-lying countries and land masses near the sea.

All of this gives me pause (a long one) for thought as we begin to track the impact around the world of this impending sea level rise and other new and noteworthy world weather events.

In closing, no wonder the traditional news business is in big trouble. The lack of coverage and sense of urgency is woeful—misplaced priorities big time. If there was ever a business model that needed radical and deep disruption, it's news. I could go on and on about what ails the news business and some prescriptions for change, having been in the business my entire adult life, but I will save that for another post. Save to say, we need nightly reports from West Antarctic on the events taking place there. How do we make Antarctica sexy and TMZ-worthy?

AJ Hartnett is a writer, surfer, business development executive and health and wellness advocate. Follow him on Twitter @ajhartnett.

A Danger on Rails is a new short documentary by filmmaker and journalist Jon Bowermaster that examines the danger posed by crude oil trains. Coal-black and appropriately ominous looking, these trains carry highly flammable crude oil and have been an increasingly common—and worrisome—sight across the United States.

"I live in the Hudson Valley and see these trains daily; Albany is a major hub, and trains traveling south down the Hudson River toward mid-Atlantic refineries hug its shores," writes Bowermaster in a New York Times op-ed piece accompanying the video. "Every day on the East Coast, as many as 400,000 barrels of this explosive mixture travel through our backyards over shaky bridges, highways and overpasses."

"The transport of petroleum products up and down the river to the port of Albany is not new," said Roger Downs, conservation director at the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, in the film. "We've been doing that for the better part of a hundred years. What is new is that this is a crude product that isn't part of a local economic consumption pattern."

The oil comes from North Dakota, extracted from a section of the Bakken formation, a 200,000-square-mile rock formation that also underlies Montana and parts of Canada.

Bowermaster, a 30-year resident of the Hudson Valley, notes that Safety and Homeland Security officials have referred to these trains as potential terrorist weapons.

"Bakken crude is different from other crude oil," said Downs. "It has a flash point less than 74 degrees. It's shipped in these containers called DOT-111s, a containment unit meant for liquids, not necessarily hazardous materials."

Earlier this year, crude oil trains derailed and exploded in West Virginia and Ontario. In July 2013, 47 people were killed when a similar train derailed and exploded in Quebec.

"The Transportation Safety Board has said 85 percent of these cars should not be handling this sort of petroleum," said Paul Gallay, the president of Riverkeeper, a Hudson River environmental watchdog group, in the film. "One hundred and twenty cars on some of these trains, 30,000 gallons of fuel per car, a very volatile fuel. When it comes down to it, each of these train cars is like a rolling bomb."

Riverkeeper is calling on the federal government to take immediate action, including limiting the length and speed of crude oil trains, in order to protect communities and the environment before the next disaster occurs.

The group is also asking New York State citizens to urge Governor Cuomo and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to ban the use of inappropriate DOT-111 cars for transporting crude oil and open a public process for developing new rules and regulations governing oil transportation.

"The Department of Transportation has estimated that...there will be 15 major accidents in the United States this year alone," said Bowermaster. "I hope we will do our best to prevent them."

In February, President Obama said that the media "absolutely" overstates the risk of terrorism, while many more lives are claimed by climate change and epidemics. Mike Huckabee shot back, telling Fox News, "I assure you that a beheading is much worse than a sunburn."

Perhaps the GOP climate denier and presidential contender should take a trip to India, where a heat wave has claimed the lives of more than 1,800 people, making it the deadliest.

While climate deniers may disagree, the increase in extreme weather events around the world — and the deaths they cause — is linked to climate change. The India Meteorological Department (IMD), the nation's weather agency, analyzed long-term data from over 100 weather stations and confirmed that as global warming has taken effect, heat waves have become more frequent and more intense, increasing by a third over the past 50 years.

The IMD researchers assert that "the huge increase in the heat wave days during the last decade is mainly caused by the increase in the events associated with three El Niño years (2002, 2004 and 2009)." They say that the deaths in the country following El Niño years in 2003, 2005 and 2010 corroborate this trend.

A 2014 study led by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation found that climate change could double the frequency of super El Niño events. “Under greenhouse warming the eastern equatorial Pacific warms faster than the surrounding regions ... making it easier to have maximum SST (sea surface temperatures) in the eastern equatorial Pacific, and hence more occurrences of extreme El Nino events,” said the study's lead researcher Wenjun Cai.

In a paper written with scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, Raghu Murtugudde of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland asserts that global warming may account for bigger heat events around the world than El Niños. "An important factor about heat waves is that as you warm the temperatures, say due to global warming, the extremes tend to increase more in percentage," he said.

"On account of 0.8 degree warming during the past hundred years, one must expect more heat waves even without an El Niño. El Niño will increase the atmospheric temperature and hence add to the problems created by global warming," said J. Srinivasan, chairman of the Divecha Centre for Climate Change at the Indian Institute of Science.

Deadly tornadoes, floods

As India tries to cope with killer heat, tornadoes and flooding from epic downpours have killed 17 in Texas, 14 in northern Mexico and six in Oklahoma, with nine people missing. And while weather forecasters have been reluctant to connect these extreme weather events to climate change, scientific studies have made the link. A 2014 study by researchers at Florida State University found that changes in atmospheric heat and moisture brought on by global warming may be causing an increase in the frequency and severity of tornadoes in the U.S., while a recent Climate Central report found that the unprecedented amount of rainfall in Texas and Oklahoma "suggest[s] a possible climate change signal, where a warming atmosphere becomes more saturated with water vapor and capable of previously unimagined downpours."

RELATED: As Carbon Emissions Continue to Increase, So Will Extreme Downpours

With the drought broken by going to the other extreme, Texas has undergone what has been called "weather whiplash," with more than 90 percent of the state declared at risk for flash flooding. On Monday, Texas governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster in 24 counties.

Indeed, Texans are familiar with killer climate: With 883 fatalities reported between 1959 and 2014, the state leads the nation in the number of fatalities due to flash and river floods. Pennsylvania comes in second, with 254 flood-related fatalities.

Extreme weather events aren't the only way that climate change is taking lives. According to a 2014 World Health Organization (WHO) report, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050 — not just from heat stress (38,000), but also from malnutrition (95,000), malaria (60,000) and diarrhea (48,000). This is all due to the fact that climate change "affects the social and environmental determinants of health — clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter," say the report's authors.

The agency points out that each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850, with extreme high temperatures contributing directly to deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory disease. They give as an example the European heat wave during the summer of 2003 that claimed more than 70,000 excess deaths.

RELATED: Conservatives Go Berserk After Bill Nye Links Texas Floods to Climate Change

Jeremy Hess, an Emory University physician and epidemiologist who has studied the relationship between climate change and health, said that the WHO findings are "a significant step forward in the global estimation of projected disease burden associated with climate change." But was careful to note that the morbidity estimates "are almost certainly an underestimate," as a lack of data prevents getting a full picture of the relationship between climate and health.

A 2012 report by DARA International commissioned by 20 governments to study the human and economic costs of climate change arrived at higher estimates than WHO, linking 400,000 annual deaths worldwide to climate change, and projecting deaths to increase to over 600,000 per year by 2030. The number goes up when they considered the health effects of burning fossil fuels, separate from climate change-related effects.

Think of this as a little imperial folly update -- and here's the backstory.  In the years after invading Iraq and disbanding Saddam Hussein’s military, the U.S. sunk about $25 billion into “standing up” a new Iraqi army.  By June 2014, however, that army, filled with at least 50,000 “ghost soldiers,” was only standing in the imaginations of its generals and perhaps Washington.  When relatively small numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants swept into northern Iraq, it collapsed, abandoning four cities -- including Mosul, the country’s second largest -- and leaving behind enormous stores of U.S. weaponry, ranging from tanks and Humvees to artillery and rifles.  In essence, the U.S. was now standing up its future enemy in a style to which it was unaccustomed and, unlike the imploded Iraqi military, the forces of the Islamic State proved quite capable of using that weaponry without a foreign trainer or adviser in sight.

In response, the Obama administration dispatched thousands of new advisers and trainers and began shipping in piles of new weaponry to re-equip the Iraqi army.  It also filled Iraqi skies with U.S. planes armed with their own munitions to destroy, among other things, some of that captured U.S. weaponry.  Then it set to work standing up a smaller version of the Iraqi army.  Now, skip nearly a year ahead and on a somewhat lesser scale the whole process has just happened again.  Less than two weeks ago, Islamic State militants took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province.  Iraqi army units, including the elite American-trained Golden Division, broke and fled, leaving behind -- you’ll undoubtedly be shocked to hear -- yet another huge cache of weaponry and equipment, including tanks, more than 100 Humvees and other vehicles, artillery, and so on.

The Obama administration reacted in a thoroughly novel way: it immediately began shipping in new stocks of weaponry, starting with 1,000 antitank weapons, so that the reconstituted Iraqi military could take out future “massive suicide vehicle bombs” (some of which, assumedly, will be those captured vehicles from Ramadi).  Meanwhile, American planes began roaming the skies over that city, trying to destroy some of the equipment IS militants had captured.

Notice anything repetitive in all this -- other than another a bonanza for U.S. weapons makers?  Logically, it would prove less expensive for the Obama administration to simply arm the Islamic State directly before sending in the air strikes.  In any case, what a microcosm of U.S. imperial hubris and folly in the twenty-first century all this training and equipping of the Iraqi military has proved to be.  Start with the post-invasion decision of the Bush administration to totally disband Saddam’s army and instantly eject hundreds of thousands of unemployed Sunni military men and a full officer corps into the chaos of the “new” Iraq and you have an instant formula for creating a Sunni resistance movement.  Then, add in a little extra “training” at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison in Iraq, for key unemployed officers, and -- Voilà! -- you’ve helped set up the petri dish in which the leadership of the Islamic State movement will grow.  Multiply such stunning tactical finesse many times over globally and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, you have what might be called the folly of the “sole superpower” writ large. Tom

Delusionary Thinking in Washington 
The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower 
By Michael T. Klare

Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance?

This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”

Imperial Overstretch Hits Washington

Strategically, in the Cold War years, Washington’s power brokers assumed that there would always be two superpowers perpetually battling for world dominance.  In the wake of the utterly unexpected Soviet collapse, American strategists began to envision a world of just one, of a “sole superpower” (aka Rome on the Potomac). In line with this new outlook, the administration of George H.W. Bush soon adopted a long-range plan intended to preserve that status indefinitely. Known as the Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 1994-99, it declared: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”

H.W.’s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999. If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top goal would be “to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity -- given few nations in history -- to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America’s peaceful influence not just across the world, but across the years.”

For Bush, of course, “extending the peace” would turn out to mean invading Iraq and igniting a devastating regional conflagration that only continues to grow and spread to this day. Even after it began, he did not doubt -- nor (despite the reputed wisdom offered by hindsight) does he today -- that this was the price that had to be paid for the U.S. to retain its vaunted status as the world’s sole superpower.

The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed “imperial overstretch.” As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which “the sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country’s power to defend all of them simultaneously.”

Indeed, Washington finds itself in exactly that dilemma today. What’s curious, however, is just how quickly such overstretch engulfed a country that, barely a decade ago, was being hailed as the planet’s first “hyperpower,” a status even more exalted than superpower. But that was before George W.’s miscalculation in Iraq and other missteps left the U.S. to face a war-ravaged Middle East with an exhausted military and a depleted treasury. At the same time, major and regional powers like China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been building up their economic and military capabilities and, recognizing the weakness that accompanies imperial overstretch, are beginning to challenge U.S. dominance in many areas of the globe. The Obama administration has been trying, in one fashion or another, to respond in all of those areas -- among them Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the South China Sea -- but without, it turns out, the capacity to prevail in any of them.

Nonetheless, despite a range of setbacks, no one in Washington’s power elite -- Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders being the exceptions that prove the rule -- seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way. President Obama, who is clearly all too aware of the country’s strategic limitations, has been typical in his unwillingness to retreat from such a supremacist vision. “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation,” he told graduating cadets at West Point in May 2014. “That has been true for the century past and it will be true for the century to come.”

How, then, to reconcile the reality of superpower overreach and decline with an unbending commitment to global supremacy?

The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act.  It involves the constant juggling of America’s capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration.  Call it the Obama Doctrine.

After concluding, for instance, that China had taken advantage of U.S. entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan to advance its own strategic interests in Southeast Asia, Obama and his top advisers decided to downgrade the U.S. presence in the Middle East and free up resources for a more robust one in the western Pacific.  Announcing this shift in 2011 -- it would first be called a “pivot to Asia” and then a “rebalancing” there -- the president made no secret of the juggling act involved.

“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region,” he told members of the Australian Parliament that November.  “As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority.  As a result, reductions in U.S. defense spending will not -- I repeat, will not -- come at the expense of the Asia Pacific.”

Then, of course, the new Islamic State launched its offensive in Iraq in June 2014 and the American-trained army there collapsed with the loss of four northern cities. Videoed beheadings of American hostages followed, along with a looming threat to the U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad. Once again, President Obama found himself pivoting -- this time sending thousands of U.S. military advisers back to that country, putting American air power into its skies, and laying the groundwork for another major conflict there.

Meanwhile, Republican critics of the president, who claim he’s doing too little in a losing effort in Iraq (and Syria), have also taken him to task for not doing enough to implement the pivot to Asia. In reality, as his juggling act that satisfies no one continues in Iraq and the Pacific, he’s had a hard time finding the wherewithal to effectively confront Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the various militias fighting for power in fragmenting Libya, and so on.

The Party of Utter Denialism

Clearly, in the face of multiplying threats, juggling has not proven to be a viable strategy.  Sooner or later, the “balls” will simply go flying and the whole system will threaten to fall apart. But however risky juggling may prove, it is not nearly as dangerous as the other strategic response to superpower decline in Washington: utter denial.

For those who adhere to this outlook, it’s not America’s global stature that’s eroding, but its will -- that is, its willingness to talk and act tough. If Washington were simply to speak more loudly, so this argument goes, and brandish bigger sticks, all these challenges would simply melt away. Of course, such an approach can only work if you’re prepared to back up your threats with actual force, or “hard power,” as some like to call it.

Among the most vocal of those touting this line is Senator John McCain, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a persistent critic of President Obama. “For five years, Americans have been told that ‘the tide of war is receding,’ that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values,” he typically wrote in March 2014 in a New York Times op-ed. “This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative.” The only way to prevent aggressive behavior by Russia and other adversaries, he stated, is “to restore the credibility of the United States as a world leader.” This means, among other things, arming the Ukrainians and anti-Assad Syrians, bolstering the NATO presence in Eastern Europe, combating “the larger strategic challenge that Iran poses,” and playing a “more robust” role (think: more “boots” on more ground) in the war against ISIS.

Above all, of course, it means a willingness to employ military force. “When aggressive rulers or violent fanatics threaten our ideals, our interests, our allies, and us,” he declared last November, “what ultimately makes the difference… is the capability, credibility, and global reach of American hard power.”

A similar approach -- in some cases even more bellicose -- is being articulated by the bevy of Republican candidates now in the race for president, Rand Paul again excepted. At a recent “Freedom Summit” in the early primary state of South Carolina, the various contenders sought to out-hard-power each other. Florida Senator Marco Rubio was loudly cheered for promising to make the U.S. “the strongest military power in the world.” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker received a standing ovation for pledging to further escalate the war on international terrorists: “I want a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.” 

In this overheated environment, the 2016 presidential campaign is certain to be dominated by calls for increased military spending, a tougher stance toward Moscow and Beijing, and an expanded military presence in the Middle East. Whatever her personal views, Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic candidate, will be forced to demonstrate her backbone by embracing similar positions. In other words, whoever enters the Oval Office in January 2017 will be expected to wield a far bigger stick on a significantly less stable planet. As a result, despite the last decade and a half of interventionary disasters, we’re likely to see an even more interventionist foreign policy with an even greater impulse to use military force.

However initially gratifying such a stance is likely to prove for John McCain and the growing body of war hawks in Congress, it will undoubtedly prove disastrous in practice. Anyone who believes that the clock can now be turned back to 2002, when U.S. strength was at its zenith and the Iraq invasion had not yet depleted American wealth and vigor, is undoubtedly suffering from delusional thinking. China is far more powerful than it was 13 years ago, Russia has largely recovered from its post-Cold War slump, Iran has replaced the U.S. as the dominant foreign actor in Iraq, and other powers have acquired significantly greater freedom of action in an unsettled world. Under these circumstances, aggressive muscle-flexing in Washington is likely to result only in calamity or humiliation.

Time to Stop Pretending

Back, then, to our original question: What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of this predicament?

Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop pretending to be what it’s not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms. 

If strategic juggling and massive denial were not so embedded in the political life of this country’s “war capital,” this would not be an impossibly difficult strategy to pursue, as others have suggested. In 2010, for example, Christopher Layne of the George H.W. Bush School at Texas A&M argued in the American Conservative that the U.S. could no longer sustain its global superpower status and, “rather than having this adjustment forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis… should get ahead of the curve by shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion.” Layne and others have spelled out what this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.

But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower -- and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it’s already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mklare1.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2015 Michael T. Klare