Business, trade and global resources: Part II (Animation).

Vladimir Putin’s March 1^st, 2018 address to Russia’s Federal Assembly was not about Russia’s upcoming presidential elections, as many in the election-obsessed West suggest. Putin’s speech was about coercing America’s elites into, if not peace, at least into some form of sanity, given that they are currently completely detached from the geopolitical, military and economic realities of a newly emerging world. As it was the case with Georgia in 2008, the coercion was based on military power. The Pre-Shoigu Russian Army, for all its real and perceived shortcomings, disposed of the US-trained and partially equipped Georgian force in a matter of five days—the Russian Army’s technology, personnel and operational art was simply better. Obviously such a scenario is not possible between Russia and the United States; that is unless the American myth of technological superiority is blown out of the water.

American power elites, the majority of whom have never served a day in uniform nor ever attended serious military academic institutions and whose expertise on serious military-technological and geopolitical issues is limited to couple of seminars on nuclear weapons and, in the best case scenario, the efforts of the Congressional Research Service are simply not qualified to grasp the complexity, the nature and application of military force. They simply have no reference points. Yet, being a product of the American pop-military culture, also known as military porn and propaganda, these people—this collection of lawyers, political “scientists”, sociologists and journalists who dominate the American strategic kitchen which cooks non-stop delusional geopolitical and military doctrines, can understand one thing for sure—when their poor dears get a bulls-eye on their backs, or foreheads.

Putin’s message to the United States was extremely simple: he reminded the US about its condescending refusal to even consider Russia’s position on the ABM Treaty. As Jeffrey Lewis, in a surprising moment of sobriety for Foreign Policy magazine put it:

The real genesis of Russia’s new generation of bizarre nuclear weapons lies not in the most recent Nuclear Posture Review, but in the George W. Bush administration’s decision in 2001 to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the bipartisan failure by both the Bush and Obama administrations to engage meaningfully with the Russians over their concerns about American missile defenses. Putin said as much in his remarks. “During all these years since the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty,” Putin explained, “we have been working intensively on advanced equipment and arms, which allowed us to make a breakthrough in developing new models of strategic weapons.” Those technological breakthroughs are now here. Sadly, we’re never got the diplomatic ones we needed.

Putin’s message was clear: “You didn’t listen to us then, you will listen to us now”. After that he proceeded with what can only be described as a military-technological Pearl-Harbor meets Stalingrad. The strategic ramifications of the latest weapon systems Putin presented are immense. In fact, they are historic in nature. Of course, many American pundits, expectedly, dismissed that as bluster—it is expected from the US military “expert” community. Others were not as dismissive and some were, indeed, deeply shocked. The overall impression today, a day after Putin’s presentation, can be described in simple terms as such: the missile gap is real and, in fact, it is not a gap but a technological abyss. Paradoxically, this abyss is not where many do admit it—such as the RS-28 Sarmat ballistic missile, whose existence and approximate characteristics were more or less known for years. It is, undeniably, an impressive technological achievement of having a ballistic missile with not only practically unlimited range but also capable of trajectories which render any kind of Anti-Ballistic Defense useless. In the end, to be attacked from the South Pole, through South America, is not a contingency the US military is capable of facing. Probably not for very many years.

Nor is the Russian M=20+ hypersonic glider weapon system called Avangard, which is already in series production, an unexpected development—the United States has its own, albeit not successful yet, program for such types of weapons and those ideas were being floated in the US since the mid-2000s under the tutelage of the PGS (Prompt Global Strike). Yes, these are stunning technological achievements by Russia with Jeffrey Lewis’ term “bizarre” being a euphemism for “we don’t have anything comparable”, but it wasn’t even here where the real shock should be. Several of my articles on this resource have been focused precisely in the area where the United States was more than lagging—cruise missiles, all kinds of them. I predicted the American real military decline coming namely by this path many years ago, today it is patently clear that Russia holds an overwhelming military-technological advantage in cruise and aero-ballistic missiles and leads the US by decades in this crucial field.

While Western punditry was discussing all those exotic and, no doubt, stunning weapon systems designed for the delivery of nuclear weapons to any point on the globe with very high precision, many true professionals were gasping for the air when the Dagger (Kinzhal) was unveiled. This is a complete game changer geopolitically, strategically, operationally, tactically and psychologically. It was known for some time now that Russian Navy was already deploying a revolutionary M=8 capable 3M22 Zircon anti-shipping missile. As impressive and virtually uninterceptable by any air defenses the Zircon is, the Kinzhal is simply shocking in its capabilities. This, most likely based on the famed Iskander airframe, M=10+ capable, highly maneuverable, aero-ballistic missile with a range of 2000 kilometers, carried by MiG-31BMs, just rewrote the book on naval warfare. It made large surface fleets and combatants obsolete. No, you are not misreading it. No air-defense or anti-missile system in the world today (maybe with the exception of the upcoming S-500 specifically designed for the interception of hyper-sonic targets) is capable of doing anything about it, and, most likely, it will take decades to find the antidote. More specifically, no modern or perspective air-defense system deployed today by any NATO fleet can intercept even a single missile with such characteristics. A salvo of 5-6 such missiles guarantees the destruction of any Carrier Battle Group or any other surface group, for that matter–all this without use of nuclear munitions.

The usage of such a weapon, especially since we know now that it is deployed already in Russia’s Southern Military District is very simple–the most likely missile drop spot by MiG-31s will be in the international waters of the Black Sea, thus closing off the whole Eastern Mediterranean to any surface ship or group of ships. Russia can also close off the Persian Gulf completely. It also creates a massive no-go zone in the Pacific, where MiG-31BMs from Yelizovo in Kamchatka or Centralnaya Uglovaya Air Base in Primosrky Krai will be able to patrol vast distances over the ocean. It is, though, remarkable that the current platform for the Kinzhal is the MiG-31–arguably the best interceptor in history. Obviously, the MiG-31′s ability to reach very high supersonic speeds (well in excess of M=2) is a key factor in the launch. But no matter what the procedures for the launch of this terrifying weapon are, the immediate strategic consequences of Kinzhal’s operational deployment are as follows:

1. It finally moves aircraft carriers into the niche of pure power projection against weak and defenseless adversaries, and away from the remote sea zone of Russia, be it the Mediterranean, Pacific or North Atlantic. This also means a complete no-go zone for any of the 33 Aegis-equipped US Navy destroyers and cruisers which are crucial for American Ballistic Missile Defense;
2. It makes classic CBGs as a main strike force against a peer or near-peer completely obsolete and useless, it also makes any surface combat ship defenseless regardless of its air-defense or anti-missile capabilities. It completely annuls hundreds of billions of dollars investment into those platforms and weapons, which suddenly become nothing more than fat defenseless targets. The whole concept of Air-Sea Battle, aka Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC), which is a cornerstone of American global dominance becomes simply useless—this is a doctrinal and fiscal catastrophe.
3. Sea Control and Sea Denial change their nature and merge. Those who have such weapons, simply own vast spaces of the sea limited by the ranges of the Kinzhal and its carriers. It also removes completely any crucial surface support for submarines in the area, thus exposing them for Patrol/ASW aviation and surface ships. The effect is multiplicative and it is profound.

Russia has many of those carriers—the program of modernization of MiG-31s to BM was in full steam for some years now, with front line Air Force units seeing a considerable inflow of these aircraft. It is clear now why such modernization was undertaken–it made MiG-31BMs into launch platforms for the Kinzhal. As Marine Major General James L. Jones went on record in 1991, after the First Gulf War, “All it takes to panic a battlegroup is seeing somebody dropping a couple of 50-gallon drums into the water.” The Kinzhal effectively removes any non-suicidal surface force thousands of miles away from Russia’s shores and renders its capabilities irrelevant. In layman’s lingo that means only one thing—the US Navy’s whole surface component becomes a complete hollow force good only for parades and flag demonstration near and in the littorals of weak and underdeveloped nations. This can be done for a tiny fraction of the astronomical costs of US platforms and weapons.

It is very difficult at this stage to fully predict the political fallout of Putin’s speech in the US. What is easy to predict, however, is the use of the beaten to death cliché of asymmetry. The use of this cliché is wrong. What happened on March 1^st this year with the announcement and demonstration of new Russian weapons is not asymmetry, it was an acknowledgement of the final arrival of a completely new paradigm in warfare, military technology and, as a consequence in strategy and operational art. Old rules and wisdom have ceased to apply. The United Sates was not and is not prepared for this, despite many real professionals, including in the US itself, warning about the new unfolding military-technological paradigm and a complete American myopia and hubris in anything military related. As Colonel Daniel Davies was forced to admit:

However justified that pride might have been at the time, it quickly mutated into distasteful arrogance. Now, it is an outright danger to the nation. Perhaps nothing exemplifies this threat better than the Pentagon’s dysfunctional acquisition system.

It is prudent to predict today, against the background of an American approach to war that there will be no sensible technological American response to Russia in the foreseeable future. The United States simply has no resources, other than turning on the printing presses and completely bankrupting itself in the process, to counter. But here is the point, Russians know this and Putin’s speech was not about directly threatening the US which, for all intents and purposes, is simply defenseless against the plethora of Russia’s hyper-sonic weapons. Russia does not pursue the objective of destroying the United States. Russia’s actions are dictated by only one cause–to pull a gun on a drunk, rowdy, knife wielding bully in the bar and get him to pay attention to what others may have to say. In other words, Russia brought the gun to a knife fight and it seems that this is the only way to deal with the United States today.

If warnings and the demonstration of Russian military-technological superiority will have an effect, as was the Russian intent from the beginning, some sensible conversation on the new world order may start between key geopolitical players. The world cannot afford any more a pretentious, self-aggrandizing and hollow bully which knows not what it does and threatens the world’s stability and peace. American self-proclaimed hegemony is over where it really matters for any real and perceived hegemon—the military field. It was over for some time now, it just took Putin’s speech to demonstrate the good old Al Capone truism that one can get much further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. After all, Russia did try a kind word alone, it didn’t work and the United States has only itself to blame.

Anyone reading the scientific literature (or the progressive news outlets that truthfully report this literature) knows that homo sapiens sapiens is on the fast track to extinction, most likely some time between 2025 and 2040.

For a taste of the evidence in this regard focusing on the climate, see ‘Climate Collapse and Near Term Human Extinction’,‘What They Won’t Tell You About Climate Catastrophe’,‘Release of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns’and ‘7,000 underground [methane] gas bubbles poised to “explode” in Arctic’.

Unfortunately, of course, the climate is not the only imminent threat to human survival. With an insane leadership in the White House in the United States – see ‘Resisting Donald Trump’s Violence Strategically’ – we are faced with the prospect of nuclear war. And even if the climate and nuclear threats to our survival are removed, there is still a substantial range of environmental threats – including rainforest destruction, the ongoing dumping of Fukushima radiation into the Pacific Ocean, extensive contamination from military violence… – that need to be addressed too, given the synergistic impacts of these multiple and interrelated threats.

Can these extinction-threatening problems be effectively addressed?

Well the reality is that most (but not all) of them can be tackled effectively if we are courageous enough to make powerful personal and organizational decisions and then implement them. But we are not even close to doing that yet. And time is obviously running out fast.

Given the evidence, scientific and otherwise, documenting the cause and nature of many of these problems and what is required to fix them, why aren’t these strategies to address the problems implemented?

At the political and economic level, it is usually explained structurally – for example, as an outcome of capitalism, patriarchy and/or the states-system – or, more simply, as an outcome of the powerful vested interests that control governments and the corporate imperative to make profits despite exacerbating the current perilous state of the Earth’s biosphere and its many exploited populations (human and otherwise) by doing so.

But the reality is that these political and economic explanations mask the deeper psychological drivers that generate and maintain these dysfunctional structures and behaviours.

Let me explain why and how this happens using the climate catastrophe to illustrate the process.

While scientific concern about the increase in carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere had been raised more than a century ago – see ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ – it wasn’t until the 1980s that this concern started to gain significant traction in public awareness. And despite ongoing agitation by some scientists as well as climate and environment groups, corporate-funded climate deniers were able to stall widespread recognition of, and the start of serious official action on, the climate catastrophe for more than two more decades.

However, as the truth of the climate catastrophe was finally being accepted by most people and the climate deniers were finally forced into full-scale retreat on the issue of whether or not the climate catastrophe was, in fact, so serious that it threatened human extinction, the climate deniers implemented their back-up strategy: they used their corporate media to persuade people that action wasn’t necessary ‘until the end of the [21^st] century’ and to exaggerate the argument about the ‘acceptable’ increase above the pre-industrial norm –  2 degrees? 3 degrees? 1.5 degrees? – to obscure the truth that 0.5 degrees was, in fact, the climate science consensus back in 2007.

But, you might ask: ‘Why would anyone prefer to ignore the evidence, given the extinction-threatening nature of this problem?’

Or, to put the question more fully: ‘Why would anyone – whether an “ordinary” worker, academic, lawyer, doctor, businessperson, corporate executive, government leader or anyone else – prefer to live in delusion and believe the mainstream narrative about “the end of the century” (or 1.5 degrees) rather than simply consider the evidence and respond powerfully to it?’

And what is so unattractive about the truth that so many people run from it rather than embrace it?

Obviously, these questions go to the heart of the human (psychological) condition so let me explain why most humans now live in a delusional state whether in relation to the climate, environment issues generally, the ongoing wars and other military violence, the highly exploitative global economy or anything else.

People do not choose to live in delusion nor do they choose their delusion consciously. A delusion is generated bya person’s unconscious mind; that is, the part of their own mind of which the individual is normally unaware. So why does a person’s unconscious mind generate a delusion? What is the purpose of it?

A person’s unconscious mind generates a delusion when the individual is simply too terrified to contemplate and grapple with reality. Instead, the person unconsciously generates a delusion and then lives in accord with that delusion for the (obvious) reason that the delusion does not frighten them.

This unconscious delusional state is the fundamental outcome of the socialization, which I call ‘terrorization’, of the typical childduring their childhood.

Endlessly and violently coerced (by a variety of threatened and actual punishments) to obey the will of parents, teachers and religious figures in denial of their own self-will, while simultaneously denied the opportunity to feel the fear, anger, sadness and other feelings that this violence causes, the child has no choice but to suppress their awareness of how they feel and the reality that caused these feelings. As a result, this leaves virtually all children feeling terrified, full of self-hatred and powerless. For brief explanations of how this happens, see ‘Understanding Self-Hatred in World Affairs’ and ‘Why Are Most Human Beings So Powerless?’

However, and this point is important, each of these feelings is extraordinarily unpleasant to feel consciously and the child never gets the listening they need to focus on feeling them. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

As a result, these feelings are suppressed below conscious awareness and thisfear, self-hatred and powerlessnessbecome the primary but unconscious psychological drivers of their behaviour and, significantly, results in them participating mindlessly in the widespread ‘socially acceptable’ delusions generated by elites and endlessly promulgated through elite channels such as education systems, the corporate media and entertainment industries.

Hence, as a result of being terrorized during childhood, delusion is the most common state of human individuals, irrespective of their role in society. For a full explanation of why this happens, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

And, as one part of their delusional state, most people must engage in the denial of reality whenever reality (unconsciously) frightens them (or threatens to bring their unconscious self-hatred or powerlessness into their awareness). See ‘The Psychology of Denial’. This, of course, means that they are frightened to take action in response to reality but also deny it is even necessary.

So what can we do about all of this? Well, as always, I would tackle the problem at various levels.

If you are one of those rare people who prefers to research the evidence and to act intelligently and powerfully in response to the truth that emerges from this evidence, I encourage you to do so. One option you have if you find the evidence of near-term human extinction compelling in light of the lacklustre official responses so far, is to join those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

Obviously, tokenism on your part – such as rejecting plastic bags or collecting rubbish from public places – is not enough in the face of the profound changes needed.

Of course, if you are self-aware enough to know that you are inclined to avoid unpleasant realities and to take the action that this requires, then perhaps you could tackle this problem at its source by ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If you want intelligent,compassionate and powerful children who do not grow up living in delusion and denial, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’.

If you want to campaign on the climate, war, rainforest destruction or any other issue that brings us closer to extinction, consider developing a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to do so. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if you want to participate in the worldwide effort to end violence in all of its manifestations, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

In summary, the primary threat faced by humanity is not the synergistic multitude of complex social, political, economic and technological forces that are precipitating our rush to extinction.

The fundamental threat to our survival is our psychological incapacity (particularly because of our fear, self-hatred and powerlessness) to perceive reality and respond powerfully to it by formulating and implementing appropriate social, political, economic and technological measures that address our multifaceted crisis systematically.

Unless we include addressing this dysfunctional individual and collective psychological state in our strategy to avert human extinction, we will ultimately fail and extinction will indeed be our fate.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), British genius, the leading most scientist in all the spheres in contemporary time with focus on astrophysics has left the planet earth. A man with severe body debility, he contracted ALS, a form of motor neurone disease when he was about 21 years young person, continued with nerves of steel and became the epitome of strongest will power and the most relevant guide to people of the globe. He pioneered the science of space with new insights as proposed colonization of earth by the natural resource starved aliens; who in his opinion will move to this planet earth to survive as their resource deplete. He provided human beings new knowledge which was real and in his own words there is always danger of illusion of knowledge, not of the ignorance.

This illusion of knowledge is main driver of human existence about which he warned all of us. The man has established IPCC and has concluded Paris agreement on climate change, but the reality is that nothing substantial has been done in the field of climate change to contain its adverse impacts. Climate change is the   most potent negative force which is making this earth almost extinct,and the living ones with no hope for solution are worried.

Stephen Hawking is the greatest scientist of this age who warned about the impact of climate change. He clearly surmised with his research acumen that a day will arrive when planet earth will become like planet Venus which once used to be like planet earth but climate changes made the Venus uninhabitable. He concluded that emission of Green House Gases were major factor to destroy the habitable conditions in sister planet  Venus and today it is a planet with high temperature and High wind velocity where no life is possible, albeit it might have existed somewhere in past.

He warned that earth is to experience the same fate. He wrote  A Brief History of Time to un reveal the truths about time and inferred at one point that universe was governed by the fixed natural laws and none can violate it, not even the supreme power.

Truth is that men are in constant process of destroying the resource of the planet. It cannot be understood in any way as why human beings are so blind to the dangers which are about to come in the form extreme weather phenomenon? This is just loss of understanding about  the universe, the natural  laws, the climate and the real destiny of humanity. Stephen Hawking warned about all these things.

He was fierce critic of US policies on climate change. He criticized the US decision to leave the Paris Agreement which had brought a ray of hope that in near future the earth’s temperature could be reduced to 1.5⁰ to 2⁰ C. but US decision was serious blow to this effort. US being the biggest pollution creator laid the burden on developing countries and pushed the earth in the zone of extreme weather conditions and associated problems. Hawkins analyzed it in holistic manner and called US President’s decision as the most serious and wrong decision which this world had seen.

He is prophetic scientist who has predicted that the way climate change has come to play a decisive negative role in the lives of the people; it will become almost impossible in next 2 or 3 centuries to live on this planet. Human population will have to find other options to survive; as to move to some other planets where such extreme conditions do not exist.

Stephen Hawking ‘s death is therefore a grave loss as a person who talked without fear, with strong will power and was prophetic in sayings is not anymore amidst us but his knowledge and warnings are here to stay.

The time is to reflect back on his ideas on climate change and its impact on the human society and planet earth. The time is to reflect on several other concepts and theories which he gave. His sayings are important as no other individual in any other field has talked about climate change with so much analytical and scientific approach and who is also a prophetic scientist as he predicts the future. His research outputs are relevant to the present and coming   generations though human society is unaware about the dangers which loom large, about which he warned the leaders and decision makers.

The best tribute for him is only to propagate his scientific ideas to those who are unaware about these oracles. Among these the most important is to disseminate his scientific thoughts about the climate change.

Passing away of Stephen Hawking brings lots of responsibilities over all the inhabitants of this planet. His voices are gold and guidelines are with divine truths. These should be brought into main agenda of discussions and world leader need to follow his sayings, common person should also be aware about his ideas and live accordingly.

Dr. Vivek Kumar Srivastava is associated with CSJM University and CSSP, Kanpur. e mail-vpy1000@yahoo.co.in

 The current warming of Earth (Figure 1),manifest in the rise in extreme weather events (Figures 2 and 3), including collapse of polar ice sheets, melting of the Arctic Sea ice, penetration of snow storms into mid-latitudes, permafrost thaw and methane release, hurricanes and wildfires(Figure 4), manifestsa shift in state of the atmosphere-oceansystem, constituting an existential threat to humanity and much of nature.

As extreme temperatures, the rate of sea ice melting, the collapse of Greenland glaciers, the thawing of Siberian and Canadian permafrost and increased evaporation in the Arctic drive cold snow storms into Europe and North America, and as hurricanes, cyclones, heat waves and wild fires (Figure 4) affect tropical and semitropical parts of the globe, it is becoming clear Earth is entering a shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean system associated with destructive climate tipping points including hurricanes such as in the Caribbean, SE USA and the SW Pacific (Figure 5). With hundreds of Gigaton carbon stored in Arctic permafrost, itsthawing and methane release by analogy with geological methane-release and mass extinction events is becoming more likely(Figure 6).

Figure 6 (A). A crater on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. https://www.livescience.com/58436-are-methane-explosions-causing-siberia-craters.html; (B)Vulnerable carbon sinks. ( a ) Land: Permafrost – 600 GtC; High-latitude peatlands – 400 GtC; tropical peatlands – 100 GtC; vegetation subject to fire and/or deforestation – 650 GtC; ( b ) Oceans: Methane hydrates – 10,000 GtC; Solubility pump – 2700 GtC; Biological pump – 3300 GtC

It is reported that climate change will lead to the death of some 500,000 people a year due to food supplies by 2050[1]and hundreds of thousands of people due to extreme weather events.[2]

Developments in the atmosphere/ocean system reported by major climate research organizations(including NASA, NOAA, NSIDC, Hadley-Met, Tyndall, Potsdam, the World’s academies of science),and in Australia the CSIRO and BOM, include:

• A rise of atmospheric CO₂level to 408.35 ppm (February, 2018) at a rate of about 2 ppm/year and in previous years 3 ppm/year[4], rates unprecedented in the geological record since 56 million years ago [5], tracking across thestability threshold of the Antarctic ice sheet estimated variously at 450±50 ppm CO₂ [6].
• The rise in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and oceans is leading to an increase inextreme weather events relative to 1950-1960 (Figure 2) [7], including tropical storms, such as those in the Caribbean islands and SE USA (Figure 5), Tonga, Fiji,Vanuatu and the Philippines, with lives lost and damages estimated in the $billions [8].
• InAustralia the frequency of extreme weather events has been rising, where since 2001, the numberof extreme heat records has outnumbered extreme cool records by almost 3 to 1 for daytimemaximum temperatures, and almost 5 to 1 and more for night-time minimum temperatures [9].
• Impacts on a similar scale are taking place in the ocean, where the CO₂ rise is causing an increasein acidity from pH 8.2 to 8.1, predicted to decrease further to 7.8 by 2100, affecting coralreefs and the marine food chain [10].
• Ice sheets melt rates and sea level rise have been increasing [11] and the rate of sea level rise hasbeen accelerating, from ~1.7 mm/year over the last century to ~3.2 mm/year between 1993 and2010 [12] and to 3.9 mm/year [13] (Figure 7A), threatening low-lying islands, delta and lower river valleys,where billions of people live, compounded by changes to river flow regimes (Figure 7B).

The current rates of greenhouse gas level rise and temperature rise exceed those observed in the geological record (Figures 8 and 9).

Global warming, amplified by feedbacks from polar ice melt, methane release frompermafrost, and extensive fires, may become irreversible, including a possible collapse of the AtlanticMeridional Overturning Circulation [14] (Figure 10).

According to Professor James Hansen, NASA’s former chiefclimate scientist “Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanityknows. “[15] According to Professor Joachim Schellnhuber, Germany’s chief climate scientist “We’resimply talking about the very life support system of this planet” [16].

While the Paris Accord remains non-binding, governments world-wide are presiding over a large-scale demise of the planetaryecosystems, which threatens to leave large parts of the Earth uninhabitable [15, 16].

Tackling the root causes of an unfolding climate tragedy requires a wide range of methods, the main ones being (1) sharp reduction in carbon emissions, and (2) effort at draw-down of atmospheric CO₂, using methods such as sea weed plantations, soil biochar, soil re-silicification (applying basaltic rock dust), air-streaming through basalt and serpentine, sodium hydroxide pipe systems and so on.

Time is running out: There is no Planet B.

I would like to announce the publication of a new book entitled “The Devil’s Dynamo”. It is a collection of articles and book chapters that I have written about the way in which military-industrial complexes throughout the world drive and perpetuate the institution of war. A considerable amount of new material has also been added. The book can be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:

http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/devil.pdf

Why call a book about military-industrial complexes  “The Devil’s Dynamo”?

A military-industrial complex involves a circular flow of money. The money flows like the electrical current in a dynamo, driving a diabolical machine. Money from immensely rich corporate oligarchs buys the votes of politicians and the propaganda of the mainstream media. Numbed by the propaganda, citizens allow the politicians to vote for obscenely bloated military budgets, which further enrich the corporate oligarchs, and the circular flow continues.

The Devil’s Dynamo of today has lead to a modern version of colonialism and empire. It is therefore interesting to look at the first global era of colonialism: In the 18th and 19th centuries, the continually accelerating development of science and science-based industry began to affect the whole world. As the factories of Europe poured out cheap manufactured goods, a change took place in the patterns of world trade: Before the Industrial Revolution, trade routes to Asia had brought Asian spices, textiles and luxury goods to Europe. For example, cotton cloth and fine textiles, woven in India, were imported to England. With the invention of spinning and weaving machines, the trade was reversed. Cheap cotton cloth, manufactured in England, began to be sold in India, and the Indian textile industry withered, just as the hand-loom industry in England itself had done a century before.

As Europe became industrialized, European armaments allowed colonial expansion, until ultimately as much as 85% of the world’s land surface fell under the colonial domination of the industrialized nations. Colonialism can be thought of as an early example military-industrial complexes. At this early stage of  industrialism, we can already see wars conducted for the sake of resources. We can already see a circular flow of money from the profits of arms manufacturers to politicians and their newspaper supporters, and back to the arms manufacturers. We can already see the Devil’s Dynamo at work. Chapter 2 reviews the history of these events.

Industrial and colonial rivalry contributed to the outbreak of the First World War, to which the Second World War can be seen as a sequel. The Second World War was terrible enough to make world leaders resolve to end the institution of war once and for all, and the United Nations was set up for this purpose.  Article 2 of the UN Charter requires that “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

The Nuremberg principles, which were used in the trial of Nazi leaders after World War II, explicitly outlawed “Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).”

With the founding of the United Nations at the end of the Second World War, a system of international law was set up to replace the rule of military force. Law is a mechanism for equality. Under law, the weak and the powerful are in principle equal. The basic purpose of the United Nations is to make war illegal, and if war is illegal, the powerful and weak are on equal footing, much to the chagrin of the powerful. How can one can one construct or maintain an empire if war is not allowed? It is only natural that powerful nations should be opposed to international law, since it is a curb on their power. However, despite opposition, the United Nations was quite successful in ending the original era of colonialism, perhaps because of the balance of power between East and West during the Cold War. One by one, former colonies regained their independence. But it was not to last. The original era of colonialism was soon replaced by neocolonialism and by “The American Empire”.

The two world wars of the 20th Century involved a complete reordering of the  economies of the belligerent countries, and a dangerous modern phenomenon was created – the military-industrial complex.

In his farewell address (January 17, 1961) US President Dwight David Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the war-based economy that World War II had forced his nation to build: ...We have been compelled to create an armaments industry of vast proportions", Eisenhower said,…Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office in the federal government. …We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. … We must stand guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.”

This farsighted speech by Eisenhower deserves to be studied by everyone who is concerned about the future of human civilization and the biosphere. As the retiring president pointed out, the military-industrial complex is a threat both to peace and to democracy. It is not unique to the United States but exists in many countries. The world today spends roughly 1.7 trillion (i.e. 1.7 million million) US dollars each year on armaments. It is obvious that very many people make their living from war, and therefore it is correct to speak of war as a social, political and economic institution. The military-industrial complex is one of the main reasons why war persists, although everyone realizes that war is the cause of much of the suffering of humanity.

The military-industrial complex needs enemies. Without them it would wither. Thus at the end of the Second World War, this vast power complex was faced with a crisis, but it was saved by the discovery of a new enemy: communism. The United States emerged from the two global wars as the world’s dominant industrial power, taking over the position that Britain had held during the 19th century. The economies of its rivals had been destroyed by the two wars, but no fighting had taken place on American soil. Because of its unique position as the only large country whose economy was completely intact in 1945, the United States found itself suddenly thrust, almost unwillingly, into the center of the world’s political stage.

The new role as “leader of the free world” was accepted by the United States with a certain amount of nervousness. America’s previous attitude had been isolationism, a wish to be “free from the wars and quarrels of Europe”. After the Second World War, however, this was replaced by a much more active international role. Perhaps the new US interest in the rest of the world reflected the country’s powerful and rapidly growing industrial economy and its need for raw materials and markets (the classical motive for empires). Publicly, however, it was the threat of Communism that was presented to American voters as the justification for interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

Today, after the end of the Cold War, it has become necessary to find another respectable motivation that can be used to justify foreign intervention, and the “Crusade Against Communism” has now been replaced by the “War on Terror”.

Despite the fact that initiating a war is a violation of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles, the United States now maintains roughly 1000 military bases in 150 countries, According to Iraklis Tsavdaridis, Secretary of the World Peace Council, “The establishment of US bases should not of course be seen simply in terms of direct military ends. They are always used to promote the economic and political goals of US capitalism. For example, US corporations and the US government have been eager for some time to build a secure corridor for US controlled oil and natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea in Central Asia through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. This region has more than 6 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and almost 40 percent of its gas reserves. The war in Afghanistan and the creation of US military bases in Central Asia are viewed as a key opportunity to make such pipelines a reality.”

Since World War II, the United States has interfered either militarily or covertly in the internal affairs of very many countries. These include China, 1945-49; Italy, 1947-48; Greece, 1947-49; Philippines, 1946-53; South Korea, 1945-53; Albania, 1949-53; Germany, 1950s; Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1953-1990s; Middle East, 1956-58; Indonesia, 1957-58; British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64; Vietnam, 1950-73; Cambodia, 1955-73; The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65; Brazil, 1961-64; Dominican Republic, 1963-66; Cuba, 1959-present; Indonesia, 1965; Chile, 1964-73; Greece, 1964-74; East Timor, 1975-present; Nicaragua, 1978- 89; Grenada, 1979-84; Libya, 1981-89; Panama, 1989; Iraq, 1990-present; Afghanistan 1979-92; El Salvador, 1980-92; Haiti, 1987-94; Yugoslavia, 1999;’and Afghanistan, 2001-present. Of the interventions just mentioned, the Vietnam War, the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, and the invasions of of Iraq and Afghanistan were particularly terrible, resulting in many millions of dead, maimed or displaced people, most of them civilians.

When the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a Washington-based think tank called “Project for a New

American Century” maintained that a strategic moment had arrived: The United States was now the sole superpower, and it ought to use military force to dominate and reshape the rest of the world. Many PNAC members occupied key positions in the administration of George W. Bush. These included Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wulfowitz, Eliot Abrams, John Bolton and Richard Perle.

Today, the US government is taking actions that seem almost insane, risking a nuclear war with Russia and simultaneously alienating China. In the long run, such hubris cannot succeed. Overspending on war will lead to economic collapse.

As we start the 21st century and the new millennium, our scientific and technological civilization seems to be entering a period of crisis. Today, for the first time in history, science has given to humans the possibility of a life of comfort, free from hunger and cold, and free from the constant threat of infectious disease. At the same time, science has given us the power to destroy civilization through thermonuclear war, as well as the power to make our planet uninhabitable through pollution and overpopulation. The question of which of these alternatives we choose is a matter of life or death to ourselves and our children.

Science and technology have shown themselves to be double-edged, capable of doing great good or of producing great harm, depending on the way in which we use the enormous power over nature, which science has given to us. For this reason, ethical thought is needed now more than ever before. The wisdom of the world’s religions, the traditional wisdom of humankind, can help us as we try to insure that our overwhelming material progress will be beneficial rather than disastrous.

The crisis of civilization, which we face today, has been produced by the rapidity with which science and technology have developed. Our institutions and ideas adjust too slowly to the change. The great challenge which history has given to our generation is the task of building new international political structures, which will be in harmony with modern technology. At the same time, we must develop a new global ethic, which will replace our narrow loyalties by loyalty to humanity as a whole.

In the long run, because of the enormously destructive weapons, which have been produced through the misuse of science, the survival of civilization can only be insured if we are able to abolish the institution of war.

I hope that in addition to downloading and spreading the pdf file of “The Devil’s Dynamo”, readers will also spread the following link, where my other books and articles on global problems are available:

http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com. To know more about his works visit this link.
http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/

We are choking the planet in plastic. Everything from wasteful water bottles to grocery shopping bags are polluting our waterways, and endangering marine life and the natural environment. It’s fair to say that even the most casual news consumer has probably encountered a Facebook post, TV report, or radio segment about the garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean. 

But what’s less well-known is what is fueling this plastics binge: fracking. As the Guardian recently reported, in less than a decade, tens of billions of dollars have been invested in creating new manufacturing sites around the world to turn fossil fuels into resin pellets used to manufacture plastic products. The companies profiting off this surge in plastics are contributing to a growing climate crisis while generating mountains of plastic garbage.

One company behind this plastics surge is the U.K.-based chemical company Ineos. While not a household name like Shell or Exxon, Ineos is at the center of this growing plastics industry—but the damage caused by the company extends beyond the mounds of discarded waste littering beaches and waterways. The company’s 75 manufacturing facilities across 22 countries are responsible for chemical leaks, fires, explosions, and air and climate pollution. This record includes a 2008 chemical fire in Germany and air pollution in Scotland, where the company’s Grangemouth facilities were the country’s single largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2016.

And the Ineos business model also relies on polluting communities thousands of miles away in Pennsylvania and Ohio, where the fracking industry is scarring the landscape, polluting water, and threatening public health. The company uses the liquid gas found in the shale formations there to feed its chemical plants. To meet this demand, the company recently built a fleet of so-called “dragon ships” to carry volatile gas liquids across the Atlantic.

And Ineos wants to continue ramping up. After the first crossing of one of these liquid gas transport ships from the U.S. to the U.K., the chairman of Ineos called the event a “gamechanger” that could “spark a shale gas revolution,” according to a company news release.

Expanding this business will require new pipelines like the Mariner East 2, now under construction across Pennsylvania. The project belongs to Sunoco, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline that generated international opposition. There is a movement to stop the Mariner East, too, in places across the state where residents have lost their land to Sunoco through the companies use of eminent domain and are being told that they must allow the pipeline to be built near their schools, homes, and community centers.

Sunoco’s safety record was a concern before the drilling started; since 2010, the company has had a higher rate of oil pipeline spills than its competitors. And this record of spills continued once construction of the pipeline began. Dozens of drilling spills and accidents and several cases of tainted water supplies eventually forced the state government to shut down the construction at the beginning of this year. Pennsylvania environmental regulators deemed Sunoco’s “egregious and willful violations” of environmental laws serious enough to apply the brakes on a project that had been rushed through the regulatory process by drilling-friendly politicians of both major parties.

On February 8, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection allowed construction of the pipeline to resume, after issuing a $12.6 million civil penalty against Sunoco.

While plastic junk floating in the oceans gets the headlines, the truth is that the entire business model wreaks havoc on communities and the planet—from the fracking wells in Pennsylvania and the pipelines that carry the materials in the U.S., to the air pollution from petrochemical plants producing plastics in the U.K.

Pennsylvania was right to hit the pause button on this fracking-for-plastics pipeline, but if we’re to create a stable climate and a healthy planet for all, we need state legislators to stop construction altogether. And we need political leaders in Europe willing to stop fracking before it starts.

Communities around the globe are feeling the effects of climate change, from scorching heat waves and out-of-control wildfires to lengthy droughts, rising sea levels and hurricanes. But while we all share the same warming planet, the effects of climate change aren't experienced evenly across societies. Climate change poses a disproportionate threat to communities that already face multiple challenges, including economic disinvestment, higher rates of violence and exposure to other environmental hazards.

When individuals experience severe weather events, violence, displacement and other crises that prevent them from being able to meet their basic needs, they experience trauma, which can have significant and lasting impacts on health and wellbeing. Entire communities can experience trauma in much the same way. Exposure to adverse community experiences—such as violence, systemic racism, serial displacement and climate catastrophes—can result in high levels of trauma across the population and a breakdown of the very social networks that, under other circumstances, help communities survive and recover from traumatic experiences.

Community trauma and climate change converge in communities across the United States. On Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, the Hoh Indian Tribe has lost nearly one-third of their land due to rising sea levels. However, since the reservation is located in a federally designated, 100-year flood and tsunami risk zone, the tribe isn't eligible for federal assistance that would help the tribe relocate their homes and community to safer ground.

In New Orleans, post-Hurricane Katrina, public housing complexes that suffered minimal structural damage were closed and demolished, drastically reducing the supply of affordable housing in the city. These examples illustrate the need to protect communities in the first place, rather than simply responding to disasters after the fact.

Here’s what that can look like.

Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana: A narrow island that sits deep in the marshlands of southern Louisiana, the Isle de Jean Charles is home to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Native American tribe. This island is the epicenter of cultural traditions and social connection for its residents. Once a place of tremendous physical beauty, biodiversity and cultural importance, these tribal lands are now vanishing due to coastal erosion, lack of soil renewal, marshland damage by oil and gas companies and rising sea levels.

In the midst of this adversity, the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw took collective action to address the trauma of their disappearing homeland, and applied for and received federal funding to relocate further inland. Residents are working alongside the State of Louisiana Office of Community Development-Disaster Recovery Unit to design and develop a culturally appropriate site where they will be able to renew and preserve their cultural traditions and connections, be protected from future environmental hazards, and thrive.

Houston, Texas: When Hurricane Harvey made landfall along Texas’ Gulf Coast in August 2017, the storm delivered record rainfall and left behind widespread catastrophic damage. In addition to the damage to homes and businesses, the storm displaced individuals, families and communities throughout the region, contributing to trauma at an individual and community level.

Recognizing the widespread trauma in the hurricane’s wake, as well as high levels of community trauma in regions of the state that face other adverse community experiences, Mental Health America of Greater Houston, Prevention Institute and the City of Houston Health Department are mobilizing support for a trauma-informed community rebuilding policy in the Texas legislature. 

This policy would ask the state to identify, in partnership with community-based partners, the best ways to address and prevent trauma at a community level and provide support for communities across Texas, particularly those that live on the frontlines of climate change.

Too often, we wait to act until after disaster strikes. That leaves us with fewer options—we're left picking up the pieces, rather than anticipating, mitigating and preventing traumatic experiences. While repair, reconstruction and even relocation are essential elements of disaster response to ensure the immediate safety of community members, we need to identify ways to build community resilience before the storm.

Efforts that focus on preventing climate change, addressing the impacts of climate change, and supporting resilient communities are essential to reducing the unequal burden climate change places on vulnerable communities and ensuring that these communities are better equipped to handle other challenges before they have a chance to occur.

As more and more climate-ravaged communities are forced to relocate by droughts, floods and superstorms, the business of fortifying borders is booming. In his new book, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security, Todd Miller travels around the world reporting on the corporate border militarization cash grab, and the emerging movements for environmental justice and sustainability. The hi-tech militarized barriers between developed and undeveloped nations are increasing. Built to keep out refugees driven by economic and political need, these borders are now faced by those fleeing the ravages of climate change, author Todd Miller tells Truthout in this exclusive interview.

Mark Karlin: What is the relationship between the developed nation-state and migration due to climate change?

Todd Miller: There is no climate refugee status. So, in the eyes of the nation-state, a person migrating because of climate reasons is meaningless. For example, when I met three men in Tenosique, Mexico (near the Guatemala divide), they told me that they were headed north because "there was no rain." In the eyes of immigration officials -- whether they be in Mexico or the United States -- this would not matter. It would not matter that a mayor of a small town in Honduras called this very Central American drought "an unprecedented calamity." It would not matter that a million drought-inflicted people throughout the Central American "dry corridor" -- spreading from Guatemala to Nicaragua -- were on the verge of starvation. A "famine," as former US Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar described the situation in Guatemala, would not matter. Immigration agents would check your papers, and if you were not authorized to be in the country, you would be arrested, detained and expelled.

It wouldn't matter if you were displaced by a hurricane. It wouldn't matter if your coffee crop was destroyed by climate-induced fungus. To the immigration agents, it would not matter if the rising seas had washed through your house, nor if raging floods had coursed down the streets of your neighborhood. The mudslides would not matter. The heat waves would not matter. All that would matter would be the nation-state, its sovereignty and its "right" to control its territorial boundaries.

As a 2003 Pentagon-commissioned report called "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for the United States National Security" put it, "[US] Borders will be strengthened around the country to hold back unwanted starving immigrants from the Caribbean islands (an especially severe problem), Mexico, and South America." In 2010, the US government declared climate change a top national security threat. And through a number of policy documents, including the 2014 Quadrennial [Defense] Review, the US Department of Homeland Security [DHS] recognized climate change as a central threat and a "threat multiplier."

In other words, DHS fully understands that there will be displacement caused by climate change and knows that it has to prepare US borders for just that. As Thomas Smith, one of the authors of the DHS Quadrennial Review put it at a congressional hearing in Washington, DC, predicting the fate of the three men in the Tenosique train yard, "More frequent severe droughts and tropical storms, especially in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean could increase population movements, both legal and illegal, towards the US border." And what awaits a climate refugee attempting to enter the United States (and for that matter, many other parts of the world) is exactly what DHS has been doing since its founding in 2003: a world of walls and cages, imprisonment and expulsion.

MK: How much is climate change causing increased environmental migration?

TM: In many (and in a variety of) ways, climate change could cause or influence migration. It could be the drought I just discussed, since climate science predicts such dry spells to be longer and more frequent. It could be a Category 6 super hurricane like the 2013 Haiyan that eviscerated everything in its path after making landfall in the Philippines as the most powerful storm ever recorded in human history (now in second place, behind the 2015 Hurricane Patricia). The warmer ocean waters are fueling these high-powered typhoons, like Harvey, Irma and Maria that are also leaving huge marks of destruction in the United States and the Caribbean. As ice continues to melt in the Arctic, it could be the sea level rising and threatening to devour entire islands in the Pacific. It could be the surging floods that come with the super storms. It could be the salt water from such surges inundating fresh water supplies, and making irrigation of crops impossible. All of this could be behind a person choosing to move from where they are to someplace else.

Statistics from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center from 2008 and 2015 show that there [is] an average of 21.5 million people displaced per year due to climate change (26 million if you include environment generally). That number is larger than those uprooted by war. One person is displaced every second due to environmental reasons. This could mean that the person has simply moved inland, moved to a city or crossed an international border. In 2016, the United Nations reported that there were 64 million "persons of concern" across the world, a number that has tripled since 2005. That is not only a record number of refugees, it also strikingly correlates with areas of climate turmoil as vividly shown in a mapping project by journalist Jessica Benko.

Future predictions for people on the move due to climate displacement range from 250 million to 1 billion by 2050. Koko Warner, a lead researcher for the United Nations University (and author of some of the first studies empirically connecting climate change to migration), says what's to come with migration, although the precise numbers are in dispute, will be "staggering" and "pass any historic antecedent."

MK: In what ways are borders becoming militarized against international migration?

TM: The hardened, militarized border is a recent phenomenon. The very idea of walls of exclusion was even (in a way) condemned by US President Ronald Reagan, who famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" When the Berlin wall fell in 1989, there were 15 border walls in the world. Now there are 70 -- two-thirds constructed after 9/11. Never has the globe had so many militarized borders.

Since the early 1990s, the US border has had historic fortification and weaponization. US Border Patrol agents have gone from 4,000 to 21,000. The international boundary line has gone from flimsy chain-link fences to 650 miles of towering walls and barriers along the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border. And now it is high tech. There are night vision cameras, thermal energy cameras, cameras that can see seven miles away. There are radar systems. There are drones. There are armored vehicles. There are command and control centers. There are Forward Operating Bases and tethered aerostats. There are prisons incarcerating 34,000 or more at a time, and an apparatus that has the ability to expel 400,000 people per year from the United States. There is a theatre of a never-ending war, only poised to grow more and more. And it is into this border war zone, and other similar ones across the world, where the climate displaced are arriving.

In the United States, budgets for border and immigration enforcement have skyrocketed. They have gone from approximately $1.5 billion per year in the early 1990s (the Immigration and Naturalization Service budget) to $20 billion annual today (if you combine just Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement). On top of budgets like this in the United States, increasing border/immigration budgets in Europe, Israel and Australia (and many other countries across the globe), a massive homeland security/border/surveillance industry has emerged. Companies galore are cashing in on contracts, such as the Israeli monolith Elbit Systems that is in process of constructing 52 surveillance towers in southern Arizona. Elbit Systems, one of the primary technology integrators for the West Bank wall and surveillance apparatus, sold itself as having 10-plus years "securing" one of the "world's most challenging borders." Projections and forecasts into the future show constant if not unprecedented growth for this type of industry. One forecast shows the homeland security market almost doubling in 10 years to reach $546 billion by 2022. Newer projections now include "climate-related natural disasters," events that, according to prognosticators, are increasing at an impressive rate. Such private/public relationships are not only helping weaponize the world's borders against the displaced and uprooted, they are bringing to this boundary-building one of the strongest and sacrosanct motives of a capitalist system: profit.

MK: As far as capitalism, can you comment on the tragic irony of goods havingfreepassage between nation-states and not people?

TM: The end of the 20th century and 21st century will not only be known for closed, militarized borders between nation-states levied against the world's poor and marginalized. It will also be known as an era that has completely opened borders for the ruling and business classes of the world. While nation-states blockade people, and force unauthorized border crossings into deadly deserts and seas, at the same time, not only merchandise but entire corporate enterprises, such as mines, can freely cross borders with hardly an impediment. They have set up shop across Mexico, and in Central and Latin America in general. Such constant border crossings receive very little attention, although time and time again, operations have caused tremendous environmental damage in communities, including seizing and poisoning water sources.

Companies freely cross borders in search of natural resources and fossil fuels. One [Anglo-]French company called Perenco has been operating oil wells in the Laguna del Tigre National Park in Guatemala since 2001, while park boundaries simultaneously have been militarized to thwart displaced campesinos to "protect" the park for conservation reasons. Not only does cheap and heavily subsidized US corn flood and underprice the Mexican and Central American farmers -- the cradle for the cultivation of corn in the world -- and not only does cheap merchandise from factories get a free pass to cross borders, but so do the multinational corporations perpetuating the fossil fuel economy. They are not blockaded despite the criminal damage they are causing to the Earth's future generations.

MK: How does economic inequality and injustice play into the growing forced migration caused by global warming?

TM: Completely and thoroughly. For example, one of the root causes of migration from Mexico to the United States has been because of the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexico's story of devastated small farmers and factories paying pathetic, unlivable wages while wealth concentrates in a transnational corporate class, of course, can be found across the world. Also, the kind of migration, from the rural to the big cities, sometimes across international borders, has been a global story regardless of the now clear and fierce impacts of climate change. Sociologist Christian Parenti describes what we have now as the "catastrophic convergence." Whether it be the small farmer attempting to etch out a living in the scrambling seasons and inconsistent rainfall, or the migrant worker who has moved to one of the world's megacities about to be inundated [by] the rising seas -- the economically poor will be the first people hit with the storms and droughts of climate change. According to Parenti, these economic, political and ecological factors are not separate. They compound each other and can create potentially untenable situations across vast swaths of the Earth. People in the world's 48 most marginalized countries are five times more likely to die because [of] a climate catastrophe than the rest of the world.

Geographer Ruthie Wilson Gilmore defines racism as "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death." In this, the true "battle" around the climate is revealed going forward. The world's real borders are not only between nation-states, but rather between the rich and powerful and the rest of the world, along racial and class lines. The disproportionately white countries of the Global North, such as the United States and European Union, are the places that spend lavishly to militarize their borders, creating intense vulnerability for those making border crossings into these territories.

And thus, boisterous and powerful movements around immigration, racial, Native American and economic justice are just as important to confronting climate as environmental movements. The climate crisis has to be countered with this sort of totality. The good news is that all together, the world's vast social movements carry a people power that is much larger and stronger than the ruling classes. This bleak projection of climate change, displacement and militarized borders can be altered, but the need for the push is urgent.

MK: How does border military mobilization negatively impact climate change itself?

TM: I can think of three ways right off the bat about how border militarization mobilization negatively impacts climate change.

First, if people on the move will be a part of what will happen in this era of climate destabilization, hardened, militarized borders are hardly an answer. In fact, such borders already are creators of humanitarian crises, and if unchanged, will continue to do so in an even more intensified fashion -- whether by forcing people to risk their lives in Arizona deserts or on rickety boats in the Mediterranean Sea (to name but two examples that impact humankind's wellbeing).

Second, to mobilize vast fleets of vehicles and aircraft of the global border apparatus carries with it an enormous carbon footprint. Even with efforts to green operations and reduce emissions, US security forces (military and DHS) continue to be a top polluter and energy-consumer in the world. One example, to give a glimpse into this, as written by Lisa Savage in Counterpunch, in 2013 the Pentagon consumed 90,000,000 barrels of crude oil (according to its own study), 80 percent of the total fuel usage of the US federal government.

Lastly, such border militarization reinforces the notion that the climate crisis will be solved by individual nation-states, despite huge power differences and interests between them. As put by geographer Reece Jones in his book Violent Borders, "As long as the economic interests of individual states do not coincide with the larger environmental needs of the world, a meaningful agreement on climate change will not be reached." 

Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

As inequality and environmental degradation worsen, the search is on not only for alternative development models but also for alternatives to development itself. Leading post-development theorist Arturo Escobar, co-editor of  The Post-Development Dictionaryand author of  Design for the Pluriverse, discusses the fight for pluralism and justice in Latin America with Allen White, senior fellow at the Tellus Institute.

Allen White: Tell us about your personal journey. What inspired you to become a critic of mainstream development theory and a pioneer of a new paradigm?

Arturo Escobar: I grew up in Cali, Colombia, a city of a half million people, in the 1960s, in many ways a typical member of a generation seeking modernization and development, in the mainstream sense of the words. Both of my parents came from the countryside—my father from a very poor peasant family and my mother from a middle-class family in a small town. They migrated to Cali to improve their lives and secure opportunities for their children. We attended good elementary and high schools, which required substantial sacrifice on the part of my parents. Upon graduation, I attended Cali’s public university, Universidad del Valle (the only affordable option), where I majored in chemical engineering.

As I was nearing completion of my undergraduate degree (1975), I realized two things. First, I didn’t want to work as a chemical engineer because that probably meant working for a large, multinational company. Second, I was becoming very interested in questions of food and hunger. Through acquaintances in Colombia, and with knowledge obtained through study of UN documents about the hunger crisis of the early 1970s, I was awarded a fellowship to begin a Master’s Degree in international nutrition and food science at Cornell University in the late 1970s.

The program approached food as a scientific matter and malnutrition as a political matter, cultivating my interest in the political economy of hunger and malnutrition in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Upon completing my Master’s, I returned to Colombia to work for a year with the National Planning Department, then went to the University of California, Berkeley, for a PhD in Nutrition. At Berkeley, as everywhere else, discussions of nutrition and public health were framed within the conventional paradigm: the "third world" (still the prevailing category at the time) should pursue "development," as defined by the U.S. and other Western nations, to improve the health of their populations.

AW: You have argued that the conventional understanding of development in the Global North—individualism, competition, industrialism, market primacy—is at odds with the core tenets of alternative models in the Global South. Explain this tension.

AE: Beginning in my youth, I reacted adversely to the notion that Latin America (and what today we would have called the South) must follow the North’s development pathway, particularly that of the U.S. I became involved in the student movement as an undergraduate, a time when many young people were reading neo-Marxist Latin American dependency theory and searching for a Latin American identity through the work of authors such as Gabriel García Márquez. Writers from the North such as Herbert Marcuse and Jean-Paul Sartre, who were deeply critical of industrialized societies, were part of our education as well.

This exposure laid the groundwork for my resistance to the prevailing definition of modernization along the lines of the U.S. experience. I found myself at odds with the notion that capitalist industrialization was the only alternative. Over time, I connected with many colleagues who shared my radical critique of the dominant, capitalist development model. This led to publication of The Development Dictionary in 1992 and now, 25 years later, the forthcoming Post-Development Dictionary.

AW: What are the core attributes of the 'post-development' framework?

AE: Two key elements define the concept of post-development. The first questions the central premises of development, including economic growth and material progress. Post-development challenges the idea that all countries must develop along Western capitalist lines according to these dictates.

The second, which emerged in the mid-1990s, is that African, Asian and Latin American nations can and should put forward alternatives to development that incorporate non-Western concepts of what constitutes a thriving society. Those of us who subscribed to this view believed that other ways of theorizing—of liberating the imagination to enable other definitions of possible futures—were critical to changing the discourse in the Global South.

These debates continue. Why? Because seven decades after World War II, certain fundamentals have not changed. Global inequality remains severe, both between and within nations. Environmental devastation and human dislocation, driven by political as well as ecological factors, continues to worsen. These are symptoms of the failure of development, indicators that the intellectual and political post-development project remains an urgent task.

AW: Is there a danger in retaining the word 'development' in any form, even with the prefix 'post'?

Over the course of the last few decades, "development" has undergone multiple modifications, such as sustainable development, participatory development, development with gender equity, integrated rural development, and so forth. All these approaches stay within the conventional understanding of development: they don't constitute a radical departure from the prevailing paradigm.

So, how do we shift from development alternatives to alternatives to development? This requires a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of the development concept and an unbundling and redefining of its core assumptions. For example, conventional development locates the individual as the central agent and beneficiary of development. Gustavo Esteva, a radical Mexican critic of development close to the Zapatista movement, argues that the idea of the individual was the Trojan Horse by which Western nations infused their ideology of development—including private property, secularism, and anthropocentrism—into traditional, communitarian ways of being.

About a year ago, I attended a meeting in Bogotá with the Minister of the Environment about the Pacific Coast, a rainforest region rich in biodiversity and populated largely by black and indigenous peoples. For 30 years, research and strategies to "develop" the area have centered on large-scale development interventions, such as the expansion of oil palm plantations, mining, and large port development. Against this backdrop, poverty, inequality and violence have deepened. To say the problem facing the region—and other parts of Latin America—is lack of development is fundamentally flawed. At that meeting, I argued that we should dare to reverse the picture: to entertain the idea that the problem of this region, is not underdevelopment, but in fact, excessive development. Recognizing this opens possibilities for new thinking based on alternative notions of human and ecological well-being.

AW: One such alternative is Buen Vivir, which with its roots in indigenous cultures, has influenced social movements and politics in Latin America. What do you see as the essence of Buen Vivir?

AE: Buen Vivir, in a literal sense, means good life or good living. It stresses living in ways that promote the collective well-being of both humans and nature.

Eduardo Gudynas, Maristela Svampa, Alberto Acosta, and Pablo Solón are leading voices on Buen Vivir. The concept originated in the Andes, especially Ecuador and Bolivia, but also in Peru and Colombia. With a firm footing in the worldviews of indigenous peoples, Buen Vivir embraces the inseparability and interdependence of humans and nature. In the current development debates, Buen Vivir has informed critiques of the prevailing development model, confronting basic assumptions about progress, competition, consumerism, and materialism. It rejects anthropocentricism and critiques capitalist and socialist forms of development because both, albeit in different ways and to different degrees, are destructive of both humans and ecological systems. The ethos of Buen Vivir centers on fostering harmony between humans and nature, quality of life, and conviviality.

Buen Vivir manifests itself in diverse forms. It remains a dynamic, evolving concept rooted in the interdependence between human and non-human species while rejecting the separateness and anthropocentrism embedded in Western belief systems. Despite its superficial appropriation by governments in the region, it continues to be an important inspiration to struggle and debate in the arena of post-development.

AW: Some fear that Latin America is at a critical crossroads and that recent gains in democracy and social stability are at risk. Could this be a moment for the advancement of such alternatives to development—or their suppression?

AE: This is a very difficult question. The election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1998 marked the beginning of what has been called the "pink tide,” the emergence of the left-leaning governments of Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, and Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina, among others. It was a moment of hope. Finally, it seemed, Latin America would end its dependence on the US and global capitalism by redesigning its economies and societies. Indeed, for fifteen years, the region made significant progress toward economic justice and reduced inequality.

Other shifts, however, militated against such an alternative path. The Washington Consensus of the 1990s—the agenda of privatization, deregulation, and trade liberalization promoted by the US, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank—was replaced in the next decade by the “Commodities Consensus,” a focus on export-driven growth in the agricultural and extractive sectors embraced by governments ranging from neoliberal Colombia and Mexico to ostensibly progressive Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil. Then, as commodity prices declined, the drop in export earnings left fewer resources for sustaining popular social programs. One result of the situation was political instability. A second was the return after 2015 of right-wing and/or neoliberal regimes in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, as well as the current destabilization of Venezuela. Paradoxically, the increasing difficulty in maintaining the extractivist model has spurred a surge of authoritarianism in an effort to keep failed extractivist policies going, taking a toll on hard-won democratic reforms. In response, social movements have gained traction, in their defense of land and territory, food sovereignty, ecological preservation, and women’s rights, among other issues.

AW: Is there tension between grassroots movements focused on local concerns and global movements engaged with issues such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, and human trafficking, or are they compatible?

AE: In general, I see these issues as not only compatible, but inextricably linked to each other. Consider the case of the defense against incursion into indigenous territories, big dam construction, land grabbing, and the commodifiction of seeds and use of GMOs in agriculture. The link between local conditions and impacts, on the one hand, and global corporate and financial interests, on the other, is clear. In this sense, the raison d'être of many local movements are found in the larger, global relations in which neoliberal, extractivist forces that transcend national borders affect local communities. This dynamic has given rise to La Via Campesina, a large coalition of peasant movements representing more than 200 million peasants throughout Latin America. La Via Campesina reflects a new way of thinking about scale advocated by geographers such as Doreen Massey, a view that emphasizes horizontal rather than vertical linkages through networks among diverse places, thus transcending geographical boundaries to connect via shared narratives and beliefs.

However, putting such potential compatibilities into motion across movements critically depends on the activation and pursuit of three principles. First is the relocalization of many activities, with an eye toward devolving the production of food, energy, and other basic human needs to the most local level possible. Second is the recommunalization of social life. If we agree that excessive individualism is at the root of much social, cultural, and economic deprivation, we must start reconnecting with each other in alignment with our basic social propensities as communal and collective beings. Resisting the dominant ethos of separation and acting on the basis of radical interdependence instead would go a long way toward recommunalizing our societies, reweaving the fabric of life in ways that comport with the interdependencies of the modern world.

Third is the reinvigoration of collective decision-making and direct democracy. The corrosion of representative democracy through capture by the wealthy and privileged is a universal phenomenon enabled by the existing social and political order that inherently concentrates power. This is as true in the US as in Latin America, where governments increasingly fall under the control of plutocrats through campaign finance systems that incentivize corruption and policies that favor the privileged.

AW: You have put forward a 'Pluriversal' framework—'a world where many worlds fit'—to foster common ground in oppositional movements. What does such a framework entail?

AE: The Zapatistas years ago talked about a world in which many worlds fit, an antidote to the idea of a single civilized world built along hegemonic patriarchal Western capitalist lines. Such a Pluriverse is built on the concept of diversity within a whole Earth system, a multiplicity of worlds and peoples coexisting within the Planet. This is the first meaning of the Pluriverse. The Pluriverse also connotes life’s ceaselessness, always flowing, constantly changing owing to interdependence of all aspects of living systems. Akin to the works of Dutch painter M. C. Escher, the Pluriverse has no beginning or end but only constant ebbs and flows. This is the natural way. Human intervention that obstructs or destroys this self-organizing dynamic is the source of much suffering and instability. The concept of the Pluriverse pushes us to think in terms of many possible worlds as well as the circularity of life, a perpetual flow and “radical interdependency” of all living things.

The patriarchal capitalist world is built on domination; historically, its modus operandi precludes other forms of human organization. Should capitalism have the right to exist within the Pluriverse? In theory, yes, but only if it is constrained to become one among many coexisting systems. It must acknowledge the destruction it has foisted upon the planet and people. Of course, if it does, then it will cease to be capitalism as we know it.

AW: As you know, the Great Transition seeks to foster a global citizens' movement. What strategies might encourage individuals, organizations and movements in the South to participate in such a movement?

AE: Such participation is both plausible and necessary. Transition initiatives, in the sense of citizen action to create a new social paradigm, exist in both the Global North and the Global South. I have devoted considerable time to mapping such meta-movements and visions, which I refer to as Narratives of Transition. Some are well-known, such as those inspired by the work of Thomas Berry and Joanna Macy, who speak of transitions in the North such as the Great Work (towards a new Ecozoic Era) and the Great Turning (from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization). Another important transition narrative is the degrowth movement, and of course the GTI, and at a local scale, the Transition Town Initiative. In the South, we find analogs in the form of Buen Vivir, post-development, and civilizational transitions. Plans for connecting the conversations in the North and South are in process, including the First North-South Conference on Degrowth in Mexico City in September 2018.

For such collaboration to succeed, we must acknowledge the contrasts and tensions owing to widely varied geopolitical and cultural conditions, e.g., the North’s inclination to individualism vs. the South’s emphasis on the communal. This makes frontal challenges to capitalism more difficult in the North than in the South. And conversations about degrowth and voluntary simplicity in the relatively poor South can be difficult owing to the belief, including by some on the political Left, that traditional forms of growth are essential to raising the life prospects of millions.

In discussing a global citizens movement, terminology and definitions merit careful consideration. If the backdrop and inspiration is a planetary civilization, why not talk about a planetary movement? This may better communicate the idea that the movement is supranational and exists at scales from the local to the planetary.

Further, we should clarify that when we speak of global citizens, we refer to people across the range of diverse identities. In fact, we must ponder how the term “citizen” might apply to all people on Earth.

The term “peoples,” for example might be preferable to “citizens,” as it has special cachet in the Global South. “Citizen” in many countries in the South is a very fragile category amidst the tumultuous contemporary geopolitics, and it is commonly tied to the idea of the state. One might argue that it has little relevance to many places in the Global South, where even the right to have rights is at stake. Using a word that conveys a deeper communal identification would be preferable because language should reflect the movement we wish to catalyze and the world we seek to create.

This interview was originally published by the Great Transition Initiative in February 2018.

A day after 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries signed a historic regional treaty protecting nature defenders, a United Nations (UN) rapporteur proposed taking environmental rights to the global level.

In his report, Knox explained how an unhealthy environment impacts children especially, since they are still developing and have very little control over their surroundings. Pollution and other hazards kill more than 1.5 million children under five every year.

"There can be no doubt that environmental harm interferes with a host of children's rights, including their rights to life, health and development, food, housing, water and sanitation, play and recreation," he wrote.

Sebastien Duyck, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, endorsed Knox's recommendation. "Seventy years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the global recognition of this right and the provision of effective remedies are now a matter of utmost urgency for frontline communities exposed to climate–induced impacts, environmental defenders, and vulnerable groups exposed to toxic and hazardous substances," he said in a press release.

This report comes three months from the end of Knox's tenure in the position; it is not known who will replace him, though some have suggested actor and climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio, The Guardian reported.

As part of his report, Knox outlined 16 "Framework Principles on Human Rights and the Environment" that lay out states' duties under human rights law as they pertain to a healthy environment.

They include responsibilities relevant to nature defenders, such as No. 4, "States should provide a safe and enabling environment in which individuals, groups and organs of society that work on human rights or environmental issues can operate free from threats, harassment, intimidation and violence," and No. 9, "States should provide for and facilitate public participation in decision-making related to the environment and take the views of the public into account in the decision-making process."

No. 15 urges countries to "comply with their obligations to indigenous peoples," who are often on the frontline of environmental struggles. Nearly 40 percent of the environmental defenders murdered in 2016 were indigenous, Global Witness reported.

Some principles hold up a citizen's rights to know the truth about their environment: No. 6 calls for "education and public awareness on environmental matters" and No. 7 for "public access to environmental information."

The Trump administration, with its disregard for the concerns and well-being of the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters and its censoring of climate-change information on government websites, would not fair well judged by such a framework if it were adopted.

In a recent press release on its website, Greenpeace called for a reduction in meat, dairy, and egg consumption. A new report by the organization states that "global meat and dairy production and consumption must be cut in half by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change." The report also confirms what many health professionals have said for years: Eating meat and dairy raises various health risks, including risk of cancer, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Indeed, calling for such a reduction is vital to the fight against global warming, as animal agriculture is the number-one driver of climate change.

Why are meat, dairy and eggs so harmful to the environment? Every year we raise and kill at least 56 billion land animals for food worldwide. We feed enormous amounts of corn, soy, and wheat to each of them. Much of this animal feed is grown on deforested land whose precious rainforests and wildlife have been wiped out. These animals excrete untold amounts of feces, which pollute local waterways and accelerate climate change by emitting methane into the atmosphere. They must be transported to slaughter and their meat packaged and shipped. The process not only kills billions of animals and inflicts unspeakable cruelty but literally kills our planet.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the livestock sector is one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide pollution and the single largest source of methane and nitrous oxide. And according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, carbon dioxide emissions from raising farmed animals make up about 15 percent of global human-induced emissions.

Raising animals for food is also culpable for more than 90 percent of Amazon rainforest destruction and uses more than one-third of the earth’s landmass. More than 80,000 acres of tropical rainforest—and 135 animal, plant, and insect species—are lost to animal agriculture each day.

Animal agriculture also takes a devastating toll on wildlife through habitat loss and hunting. Because it uses such a massive amount of land, wild animals are pushed out of their natural environments or violently killed because they are viewed as a predatory threat to the meat and dairy industries.

The good news? By going vegan you not only help protect animals but cut your carbon footprint in half.

Climate change is real and animal agriculture is undoubtedly a leading contributor. If you’re serious about the environment, it’s time to take action. Don’t just say you care about the planet, prove it by leaving all animal products off your plate.

The preservation of the environment is a growing concern for people all over the world, with issues surrounding the loss of urban green spaces, rising pollution and the ongoing wellbeing of citizens now at the forefront of a global debate.

"The loss of urban green space in compact city environments during the densification of cities is now a major challenge," said researchers of a study by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. "The loss of urban green space is rarely matched by the addition of more green space, potentially damaging the social value of these areas for decades to come."

Yet, from New York to Singapore, the world's great cities are now placing heightened importance on new and existing green spaces with sustainable urban planning, with the hope of protecting their futures.

The first municipal parks were established in Europe in the late 1840s. Ever since, there has been an emphasis on preserving these important communal areas that, in most cases, are open to the public free of charge. For example, New York’s Central Park was established in 1857, and it has become an iconic landmark and tourist destination that attracts over 40 million visitors each year.

How does green space benefit us?

• Enhanced physical activity
• Reduced exposure to air pollution
• Reduced obesity
• Improved functioning of the immune system
• Reduced mortality

The governments of other, younger cities, such as sprawling Beijing and Tokyo, are now retroactively placing more emphasis on their urban planning and development—promoting proper use of precious urban green spaces, like those outlined by WHO, to benefit their citizens.

What is our green space worth?

That pollution is bad for our health will come as a surprise to no one. That pollution kills at least 9 million people every year might. This is 16 percent of all deaths worldwide: three times more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and 15 times more than all wars and other forms of violence. Air pollution alone is responsible for 6.5 million of these 9 million deaths. Nearly 92 percent of pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.

All this is according to the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, a recent report by dozens of public health and medical experts from around the world. This important report is sounding the alarm about an often neglected and ignored "silent emergency," or as author Rob Nixon calls it, "slow violence."

In one media article about the report, the Lancet's editor-in-chief and executive editor points to the structural economic forces of industrialization, urbanization and globalization as "drivers of pollution." Unfortunately, the report itself doesn't elaborate upon this crucial observation about root causes. In fact, when it moves from documentation of the pollution-health crisis to social-economic analysis, some of the report's conclusions go seriously awry, espousing debunked "ecological modernization theory" and reinforcing a tired Eurocentric framing that paints the industrialized West in familiar "enlightened" colors, while the "developing" countries are portrayed as "backward."

One of the commission's co-chairs and lead authors, Dr. Philip Landrigan, points out that since the U.S. Clean Air Act was introduced in 1970, levels of six major pollutants in the U.S. have fallen by 70 percent, even as GDP has risen by 250 percent. According to fellow author Richard Fuller, this sort of trend proves that countries can have "consistent economic growth with low pollution."

Coupled with the fact that about 92 percent of pollution-related deaths occur in developing countries, this would appear to validate one of the core doctrines of ecological modernization theory: decoupling, which posits that while pollution necessarily increases during the early stages of economic development, it ultimately plateaus once a certain level of wealth is achieved, whereupon it falls even as growth continues ever upward.

It is understandable why the commission might want to package its message in this way: it makes an economic case for addressing pollution that is palatable to policymakers increasingly ensconced within an economistic worldview, one that is increasingly blind to non-economic values (including, apparently, the value of life itself—one would have hoped 9 million deaths would be reason enough to take action against pollution).

The economic costs of pollution, along with the apparent happy coexistence of economic growth and pollution reduction, are marshaled to challenge "the argument that pollution control kills jobs and stifles the economy." This favorite bugbear of industry and big business is certainly spurious—forget about pollution control killing jobs; the absence of such control is killing millions of people every year.

But, as I showed in a previous article, much of the rich countries' pollution has been outsourced and offshored during the corporate globalization era. It is disingenuous at best to cite instances of local pollution reduction alongside increased economic growth in the rich world as evidence of decoupling when those reductions were made possible only because of much larger pollution increases elsewhere. 

A global perspective—where true costs cannot be fobbed off on the poor and colonized—is necessary for gaining a meaningful and accurate picture of the relationship between wealth, growth, development and environmental integrity and sustainability. Panning out to this broader global perspective shows that, in fact, GDP growth and pollution continue to be closely coupled. And because a large percentage of the pollution in poorer countries is a consequence of corporate globalization, so is a large percentage of pollution-caused deaths.

Choking—and dying—on globalization

China's export-oriented industrial spasm, powered largely by burning coal, has caused notoriously lethal air pollution, so much so that, according to one study, it contributes to the deaths of 1.6 million people per year (4,400 per day) or 17 percent of all deaths in the country. Another study puts the total at two-thirds of all deaths, and concluded that the severe air pollution has shortened life expectancy in China by more than two years on average, and by as much as 5.5 years in the north of the country.

Interestingly, some studies have actually calculated the number of globally dispersed premature deaths from transported air pollution and international trade. One such study found that deadly PM2.5 pollution (particulate matter of 2.5 micrometers or smaller) produced in China in 2007 was linked to more than 64,800 premature deaths in regions other than China, including more than 3,100 premature deaths in western Europe and the U.S. At the same time, despite manufacturing- and pollution-offshoring, about 19,000 premature deaths occur in the U.S. from domestically emitted pollution for the production of exports—3,000 of which are linked to items exported to China.

But this is far less than what the Chinese are suffering because of consumption in the West. According to the study, "consumption in western Europe and the USA is linked to more than 108,600 premature deaths in China." (Worldwide, pollution emitted for the production of goods and services consumed in the US alone caused 102,000 premature deaths; European consumption caused even more: 173,000 premature deaths.) Note that the above fails to take into account the costs of various other air pollution-related chronic illnesses.

And air pollution isn't the only harmful human cost of China's coal-driven industrial growth and export-orientation. According to Chinese government statistics, some 6,027 Chinese coal miners died in the course of work in 2004, though analysts point out that official estimates are usually highly conservative, and "the real number is probably higher." Since 2004, coal extraction has grown significantly in China.

Shipping

What about the transport of incomprehensible quantities of materials back and forth across the planet? Coal to China, commodities from China, waste back to China (the undisputed locus of global waste trade)—nearly all of it is done via oceanic shipping, which carries heavy ecological costs. The statistics on the scale and impact of the global shipping industry are arresting: A 2014 study found that ship traffic on the world's oceans has increased 300 percent over the past 20 years, with most of this increase occurring in the last 10 years.

According to one analysis, emissions from international shipping for 2012 were estimated to be 796 million tons of CO2 per year (or 90,868 tons per hour), more than the yearly emissions of the U.K., Canada or Brazil. (An earlier study put the amount of annual emissions from the world's merchant fleet at 1.12 billion tons of CO2.) Whatever the actual figure, shipping accounts for at least 3 to nearly 4.5 percent of global CO2 emissions.

Much worse, shipping contributes 18-30 percent of the world's total NOx and 9 percent of its sulfur oxide (SOx) pollution. A single giant container ship can emit the same amount as 50 million cars: "Just 15 of the world’s biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world’s 760m cars."

By 2015, greenhouse gas emissions from shipping were 70 percent higher than in 1990, and, left unchecked, were to grow by up to 250 percent by 2050. This would make shipping responsible for 17 percent of global emissions. According to the University College London’s Energy Institute—whose astonishing  may be one of the best visualizations of globalization available—China is the center of the shipping world; Shanghai alone moved 33 million units in 2012."

And this is only maritime shipping. Air freight is even more pollution-intensive: though much less merchandise and material are moved by air, some estimates are that the relatively minor 1 percent of the world's food traded by air may contribute upwards of 11 percent of CO2 emissions.

In sum, the toll of the global shipping industry makes the "death footprint" of globalization's air pollution even larger. A 2007 study conservatively estimated that just the PM (particulate matter) emissions of global shipping—estimated at 1.6 million metric tons—kill 60,000 people per year, which the authors expected to increase 40 percent by 2012.

Conclusions

To point out the harms of global pollution outsourcing is emphatically not to argue that U.S. corporations, for example, should simply return their outsourced production and pollution to the territorial U.S. This was the erstwhile Trumpian right-populist recipe. Under this ideology, the way to facilitate "insourcing" is not to insist on higher labor and environmental standards abroad, but to systematically dismantle the framework of laws in the U.S. (however weak many of them already are thanks to corporate-captured government agencies); that is, to bring the race to the bottom home. 

Whether generous tax cuts and other hand-outs will entice the outsourcers back remains to be seen: It's becoming evident that the Trump/Koch brothers enterprise is about both eviscerating domestic environmental and labor laws, and accelerating global transnational corporate pillage—the worst of all worlds.

An anti-corporate, degrowth, eco-localization stance is the unequivocal opposite. Firstly, it rejects the broader ends and means of the entire consumerist, throw-away project. Rather than merely bringing the disposable extractive economy back home, localization is about reconnecting cause and effect and overthrowing irresponsible and unethical environmental load displacement on the global poor. 

Localization is about re-orienting the entire economy towards sufficiency and simplicity of consumption, toward needs-based, ecologically-sustainable and regenerative production, and towards fair, dignified and democratic work and production. By definition, localization connotes less dependence on external resources and globalized production chains that are controlled by global corporations and are congenitally undemocratic. Putting power into workers' hands is to not have globally—outsourcing, hierarchically—owned and managed corporations, tout court.