Global Civilizational State dependable and trustworthy leadership to guard over and care for all life on Earth.

Prior to 1900 when the frontier was closed, America’s success was a multi-century long success based on the plunder of a pristine environment and abundant natural resources. Individuals and companies were capitalized simply by occupying the land and using the resources present.

As the population grew and resources were depleted, the per capita resource endowment declined.

America got a second wind from World War I, which devastated European powers and permitted the emergence of the US as a budding world power.  World War II finished off Europe and put economic and financial supremacy in Washington’s hands.  The US dollar seized the world reserve currency role from the British pound, enabling the US to pay its bills by printing money.  The world currency role of the dollar, more than nuclear weapons, has been the source of American power. Russia has equal or greater nuclear weapons power, but it is the dollar not the ruble that is the currency in which international payments are settled. 

The world currency role made the US the financial hegemon.  This power together with the IMF and  World Bank enabled the US to plunder foreign resources the way vanishing American resources had been plundered.  

We can conclude that plunder of natural resources and the ability to externalize much of the cost have been  major contributors right through the present day to the success of American capitalism.  Michael Hudson has described the plunder process in his many books and articles (for example, http://www.unz.com/mhudson/u-s-economic-warfare-and-likely-foreign-defenses/ ), as has John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Essentially, capitalism is a plunder mechanism that generates short-run profits by externalizing long-run costs.  It exhausts natural resources, including air, land, and water, for temporary profits while imposing most of its costs, such as pollution, on the environment.  An example is the destruction of the Amazon rain forest by loggers.  The world loses a massive carbon sink that stabilizes the global climate, and loggers gain short-run profits that are a tiny percentage of the long-run costs.

This destructive process is amplified by the inherently short-run time perspective of capitalist activity which seldom extends beyond the next quarter.  

US economic success was also a result of a strong consumer demand fed by rising real wages as technological advances in manufacturing raised the productivity of labor and consumer purchasing power. The middle class became dominant. When I was an economics student, Paul Samuelson taught us that American prosperity was based entirely on the large American consumer market and had nothing to do with foreign trade.  Indeed, foreign trade was a minor factor in American GDP.  America had such a large domestic consumer market that the US did not need foreign trade to enjoy economics of scale.

All of this changed with the rise of free market ideology and the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I was a student we were taught that boards of directors and corporate executives had responsibilities to their employees, their customers, their communities, and to their shareholders.  These responsibilities were all equally valid and needed to be kept in balance.

In response to liberals, who tried to impose more and more “social responsibilities” on corporations, free market economists responded with the argument that, in fact, corporations only have responsibilities to their owners. Rightly or wrongly, this reactive argument is blamed on Milton Friedman.  Conservative foundations set about teaching jurists and legislators that companies were only responsible to owners.  

Judges were taught that ownership is specific and cannot be abridged by government imposing obligations on the investments of owners for responsibilities that do not benefit the owners. This argument was used to terminate all responsibilities except to shareholders and left profit maximization as the corporate goal.

Thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed and China and India opened their economies to foreign capital, US corporations were free to desert their work forces and home towns and use cheaper labor abroad to produce the goods and services sold to Americans. This increased their profits and, thereby, executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains at the expense of the livelihoods of their former domestic work force and tax base of their local communities and states.  The external costs of the larger profits were born by their former employees and the impaired financial condition of states and localities. These costs greatly exceed the higher profits.

Generally speaking, economists assume away external costs.  Their mantra is that progress fixes everything.  But their measures of progress are deceptive.  Ecological economists, such as Herman Daly, have raised the issue whether, considering the neglect of external costs and the inaccurate way in which GDP is measured, announced increases in GDP exceed in value the cost of producing them.  It is entirely possible that GDP growth is simply an artifact of not counting all of the costs of production.  

As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the long history of American capitalism fed by plunder seems to be coming to an end simultaneously with the ability of the US central bank to protect existing financial wealth by creating ever more money with which to support stock, bond, and real estate prices.  The US has a long history of overthrowing reformist governments in Latin America that threatened American control over their resources.  Washington’s coups against democracy and self-determination succeeded until Venezuela.  Washington’s coup against Chavez was overturned by the Venezuelan people and military, and so far Washington’s attempt to overthrow Chavez’s successor, Maduro, has failed.

Washington’s attempt to overthrow the Syrian government was prevented by Russia, and most likely Russia and China will prevent Washington from overthrowing the government of Iran.  In Africa the Chinese are proving to be better business partners than the exploitative American corporations.  To continue feeding the empire with its heavy costs is becoming more difficult.

Washington’s policy of sanctions is making it even more difficult. To avoid the arbitrary and illegal sanctions, other countries are starting to abandon the US dollar as the currency of international transactions and arranging to settle their international accounts in their domestic currencies. China’s Silk Road encompasses Russia with much of Asia in a trade bloc independent of the Western financial system.  Other countries hoping to escape US control are turning to Russia and China to achieve sovereignty from Washington.  These developments will reduce the demand for dollars and impair US financial hegemony.  Alternatives to the World Bank will remove areas of the world from the reach of US plunder.

As plunderable resources diminish, American capitalism, which is heavily dependent on plunder, will have one foundation of its success removed.  As aggregate consumer demand collapses from the absence of growth in real income, absence of middle class jobs, and the extreme polarization of income and wealth in the US, another pillar of American capitalism disintegrates.  As business investment has also collapsed, as indicated by the use of corporate profits and borrowing to repurchase the corporations’ equity, thus decapitalizing the companies, total aggregate demand itself collapses. 

The absence of growth in aggregate demand will make the gap between high stock prices and dismal prospects for corporate profits too great to be bridged by the Federal Reserve flooding money into financial assets.  Without the ability to prop up financial asset prices with money creation, flight from dollar-denominated assets could bring down the US dollar.

What is left will be a ruin.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are

I have also explained that it is this dysfunctional psychological foundation that generated the behaviors, as well as the political, economic, legal and social institutions (such as capitalism), that are driving the multifaceted and existential crisis in which humanity now finds itself.

Moreover, on that basis, my own focus has significantly evolved from the research and nonviolent activism that occupied me for several decades to now include an ongoing effort to have this psychological dysfunctionality addressed as a central feature of our efforts to understand and transform dysfunctional political, economic, legal and social institutions as well as to understand and end war (including the threat of nuclear war), the environmental crisis (including the climate catastrophe) and all other ongoing conflicts that bedevil humanity.

You may believe that psychology is unimportant to your understanding of conflict or that it is the realm of specialists but, in fact, it is crucial to any deeper and complete understanding of the origin and unfolding of our crisis and it is far from complicated simply because any psychological dysfunctionality can be explained in straightforward language which is readily understood by most people. For a sample, try ‘The Disintegrated Mind: The Greatest Threat to Human Survival on Earth’.

But because only the rarest psychologist and psychiatrist understands human psychology – as I have explained in ‘Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry’ – most of the literature on psychology and psychiatry is virtually incomprehensible, not to mention inaccurate. This lack of understanding has four immediate and disastrous outcomes.

First, it leads to groups of psychological symptoms being linked together and then given an arbitrary label (so that the fields of psychology/psychiatry can sound as if they know what they are talking about while excluding those who do not comprehend their jargon).

Second, it provides cover for the pharmaceutical industry to profit massively from the manufacture and sale of drugs that theoretically suppress key symptoms of, rather than cure, the psychological dysfunction that has been ‘diagnosed’.

Third, it precludes accurate diagnosis and treatment of any dysfunction: obviously, if a problem is not understood it cannot be responded to powerfully so that the issue is resolved. (Of course, it is more profitable for practitioners and the pharmaceutical industry if any dysfunction is not resolved but simply requires ongoing – that is, endless – ‘therapy’/drugs.)

Fourth and most fundamentally of all, it limits the domain of what is considered psychological dysfunctionality to those with ‘identifiable’ mental illnesses. But psychological dysfunctionality goes well beyond those considered to have a mental illness and is simply an outcome of the fact that mental health, like physical health, has many dimensions that require appropriate attention for the human organism to function optimally.

So, beyond the many examples I have offered previously in the articles I cited above (and others not cited but also available on the ‘Feelings First’ website), I would now like to describe further common examples of psychological dysfunctionality that are impeding both activists and those they are trying to mobilize in the effort to save Earth’s biosphere and avert human extinction, particularly given the timeframe in which this must now happen. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

As a result of the ‘socialization’ (more accurately labeled ‘terrorization’) to which all children are subjected throughout their childhood and adolescence (which involves inflicting unending ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence on them during these periods) – see ‘Why Violence?’ – the typical young human being obediently (or, often enough, unconsciously) acquires the set of attitudes, beliefs and values (as well as the consequent behaviors) that are approved by the significant adults (and predominant institutions) in their life. These attitudes, beliefs and values, however, are often so deeply entrenched by the (unconscious) fear that holds them in place that they are never subjected to serious scrutiny by the individual: whether functional or otherwise, they are accepted without question and, over time, acquire the status of ‘incontrovertible fact’ (as the individual perceives them).

The most obvious (and highly negative) consequence of being terrorized into accepting the attitudes, beliefs and values of the significant adults (and predominant institutions) around them is that the capacities to analyze a problem or conflict (often including its roots in the nature of their society), to seek out relevant (and perhaps complex) evidence to understand the issues arising from it, to plan a strategy so that underlying drivers of the problem or conflict are addressed in depth and to then behave strategically (often in concert with others) to achieve this outcome are simply never developed beyond the most superficial levels (sufficient, say, for a socially approved career, whether trade or professional).

As a result, the typical human being is simply going through the routine of ‘growing up’ (which also critically involves being further terrorized into becoming a submissive citizen and worker/soldier at school for a decade or more: see ‘Do We Want School or Education?’), choosing post-secondary education and/or an approved job doing what someone else tells you, and then doing that job (or an equivalent) for decades (usually having a partner and children in the process and perhaps some hobby as well).

Fundamentally, humans are terrorized into taking on the ‘socially-constructed delusional identity’ that their society imposes on them and then calling it ‘me’. Their personal life journey is now so utterly obliterated from their awareness that the idea of seeking out their own unique destiny never even occurs to them. Of course, some people (in industrialized societies at least) are compensated for their sacrifice: wages, entertainment, travel and other trinkets. But, for most, these trinkets are given in sparing quantities and for many others around the world (in deliberately ‘underdeveloped’ countries), not at all.

Terrorized into believing that this is all that life has to offer, only the rarest individual aspires to more. Endless consumption of goods and services (no matter the quality, beauty or functionality) – see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ – at the expense of the Earth, becomes the reason for living. Because life itself no longer has meaning.

So here we are, a human population that is so devoid of self and planetary awareness that we are on the brink of precipitating our own extinction. Do you really believe that this is where we would be if we were all psychologically functional? Manipulated and controlled by an unaccountable global elite that is utterly insane – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – using its many agents, including governments, to easily deceive us into consuming ever more in pursuit of capitalism’s ‘God’ – endless economic growth (that is, corporate profit, power and privilege) – the bulk of the human population submissively unaware (except of the latest scandal or sports result) and most activists (who purport to be trying to do something about the perilous state of the world) incapable of thinking, planning and acting strategically to struggle for outcomes that are so desperately needed. See, for example, ‘Why Activists Fail’.

So what can we do?

Well, given that the enormous psychological dysfunctionality of most humans is the primary driver of our accelerating rush to extinction – again, see ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’ – I encourage you to seriously consider incorporating strategies to address this dysfunctionality into any effort you make to improve our world.

For most people, this will include starting with yourself. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

For virtually all adults, it will include reviewing your relationship with children and, ideally, making ‘My Promise to Children’. Critically, this will include learning the skill of nisteling. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

For those who feel psychologically capable, consider campaigning strategically to achieve the outcomes we need. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy or Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. The global elite is deeply entrenched – fighting its wars, exploiting people, destroying the biosphere, invading/occupying resource-rich countries – and not about to give way without a concerted effort by many of us campaigning strategically on several key fronts.

If you recognize the pervasiveness of the fear-driven violence in our world, consider joining the global network of people resisting it by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

But if you do nothing else while understanding the simple point that Earth’s biosphere cannot sustain a human population of this magnitude of whom more than half endlessly over-consume, then consider accelerated participation in the strategy outlined in‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

Or, if this feels too complicated, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children(see explanation above)
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, includingby minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not buy rainforest timber
8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

There is a great deal wrong with our world, which continues to get worse every day. And, as should be obvious from my argument above, if we as a species do not start to remove the (largely unconscious) fear that limits our minds and governs our behavior, we will continue contributing to this predicament rather than resolving it.

I am well aware that this point is not where the typical individual wants to start and that is assuming the point is even understood. After all, because most fear is unconscious, it is easy for people to fail to identify their own dysfunctional behavior (or to rationalize it by believing in the ‘importance’ of what they do).So while you may like to believe that we do not have to ‘start’ with this point, collectively speaking, we cannot ignore it either, if human survival is our aim.

The key issue is that for our strategy to mobilize people in this great struggle for survival to be effective, we must also be mobilizing parents, teachers, religious leaders and other adults to reconsider and profoundly revise their relationship with children. This is because every child who is not dysfunctionalized becomes a powerful agent for change. If we do not do this, we will continue to undermine the overall struggle, even if we precipitate some interim victories along the way.

My own preoccupation is ending violence, averting human extinction and building anew and sustainably our relationships with the Earth and each other. What about you?

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.

The NASA and the National Science Foundation supported study – “Characteristic disruptions of an excitable carbon cycle” – by an MIT scientist said:

“The great environmental disruptions of the geologic past remain enigmatic. Each one results in a temporary change in the oceans’ store of carbon. Although the causes remain controversial, these changes are typically interpreted as a proportionate response to an external input of carbon.”

The scientific research paper suggests instead that the magnitude of many disruptions is determined not by the strength of external stressors but rather by the carbon cycle’s intrinsic dynamics. Theory and observations indicate that characteristic disruptions are excited by carbon fluxes into the oceans that exceed a threshold.

Similar excitations follow influxes that are either intense and brief or weak and long-lived, as long as they exceed the threshold. Mass extinction events are associated with influxes well above the threshold.”

In the brain, when neurons fire off electrical signals to their neighbors, this happens through an “all-or-none” response. The signal only happens once conditions in the cell breach a certain threshold.

Now the researcher has observed a similar phenomenon in a completely different system: Earth’s carbon cycle.

Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics and co-director of the Lorenz Center in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, has found:

When the rate at which carbon dioxide enters the oceans pushes past a certain threshold – whether as the result of a sudden burst or a slow, steady influx – the Earth may respond with a runaway cascade of chemical feedbacks, leading to extreme ocean acidification that dramatically amplifies the effects of the original trigger.

This global reflex causes huge changes in the amount of carbon contained in the Earth’s oceans, and geologists can see evidence of these changes in layers of sediments preserved over hundreds of millions of years.

Rothman looked through these geologic records and observed that over the last 540 million years, the ocean’s store of carbon changed abruptly, and then recovered, dozens of times in a fashion similar to the abrupt nature of a neuron spike. This “excitation” of the carbon cycle occurred most dramatically near the time of four of the five great mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

Scientists have attributed various triggers to these events, and they have assumed that the changes in ocean carbon that followed were proportional to the initial trigger – for instance, the smaller the trigger, the smaller the environmental fallout.

But Rothman says that’s not the case. It didn’t matter what initially caused the events; for roughly half the disruptions in his database, once they were set in motion, the rate at which carbon increased was essentially the same. Their characteristic rate is likely a property of the carbon cycle itself – not the triggers, because different triggers would operate at different rates.

What does this all have to do with our modern-day climate? Today’s oceans are absorbing carbon about an order of magnitude faster than the worst case in the geologic record – the end-Permian extinction.

But humans have only been pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for hundreds of years, versus the tens of thousands of years or more that it took for volcanic eruptions or other disturbances to trigger the great environmental disruptions of the past. Might the modern increase of carbon be too brief to excite a major disruption?

According to Rothman, today we are “at the precipice of excitation,” and if it occurs, the resulting spike – as evidenced through ocean acidification, species die-offs, and more – is likely to be similar to past global catastrophes.

“Once we’re over the threshold, how we got there may not matter,” says Rothman, who has published his results this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Once you get over it, you’re dealing with how the Earth works, and it goes on its own ride.”

An earlier dire prediction

In 2017, Rothman made a dire prediction:

By the end of this century, the planet is likely to reach a critical threshold, based on the rapid rate at which humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. When we cross that threshold, we are likely to set in motion a freight train of consequences, potentially culminating in the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.

Rothman has since sought to better understand this prediction, and more generally, the way in which the carbon cycle responds once it’s pushed past a critical threshold.

In the new paper, he has developed a simple mathematical model to represent the carbon cycle in the Earth’s upper ocean and how it might behave when this threshold is crossed.

Scientists know that when carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves in seawater, it not only makes the oceans more acidic, but it also decreases the concentration of carbonate ions. When the carbonate ion concentration falls below a threshold, shells made of calcium carbonate dissolve. Organisms that make them fare poorly in such harsh conditions.

Shells, in addition to protecting marine life, provide a “ballast effect,” weighing organisms down and enabling them to sink to the ocean floor along with detrital organic carbon, effectively removing carbon dioxide from the upper ocean.

But in a world of increasing carbon dioxide, fewer calcifying organisms should mean less carbon dioxide is removed.

“It’s a positive feedback,” Rothman says. “More carbon dioxide leads to more carbon dioxide. The question from a mathematical point of view is, is such a feedback enough to render the system unstable?”

An inexorable rise

Rothman captured this positive feedback in his new model, which comprises two differential equations that describe interactions between the various chemical constituents in the upper ocean.

He then observed how the model responded as he pumped additional carbon dioxide into the system, at different rates and amounts.

He found that no matter the rate at which he added carbon dioxide to an already stable system, the carbon cycle in the upper ocean remained stable. In response to modest perturbations, the carbon cycle would go temporarily out of whack and experience a brief period of mild ocean acidification, but it would always return to its original state rather than oscillating into a new equilibrium.

When he introduced carbon dioxide at greater rates, he found that once the levels crossed a critical threshold, the carbon cycle reacted with a cascade of positive feedbacks that magnified the original trigger, causing the entire system to spike, in the form of severe ocean acidification.

The system did, eventually, return to equilibrium, after tens of thousands of years in today’s oceans – an indication that, despite a violent reaction, the carbon cycle will resume its steady state.

This pattern matches the geological record, Rothman found. The characteristic rate exhibited by half his database results from excitations above, but near, the threshold.

Environmental disruptions associated with mass extinction are outliers – they represent excitations well beyond the threshold. At least three of those cases may be related to sustained massive volcanism.

“When you go past a threshold, you get a free kick from the system responding by itself,” Rothman explains. “The system is on an inexorable rise. This is what excitability is, and how a neuron works too.”

Although carbon is entering the oceans today at an unprecedented rate, it is doing so over a geologically brief time.

Rothman’s model predicts that the two effects cancel: Faster rates bring us closer to the threshold, but shorter durations move us away.

Insofar as the threshold is concerned, the modern world is in roughly the same place it was during longer periods of massive volcanism.

In other words, if today’s human-induced emissions cross the threshold and continue beyond it, as Rothman predicts they soon will, the consequences may be just as severe as what the Earth experienced during its previous mass extinctions.

“It’s difficult to know how things will end up given what’s happening today,” Rothman says. “But we’re probably close to a critical threshold. Any spike would reach its maximum after about 10,000 years. Hopefully that would give us time to find a solution.”

— NOAA (@NOAA) August 15, 2019

Last month—the hottest July on record since temperature data was first recorded—broke the previous record set in July 2016.

July’s average global temperature represents a continuation of a pattern that began more than 30 years ago; last month was the 415th consecutive month when the world was warmer than average. Last month, NOAA reported that June 2019 was the hottest June on record.

The trend seen year-round over the past three decades has been coupled with a pattern observed over an even longer period of time; July 2019 was the 43rd July in a row with above-average temperatures.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) warned on Twitter that the trends scientists are observing represent a “new normal under climate change,” which won’t change unless the U.S. takes “bold action to confront the climate crisis.”

July was the hottest month in human history, surpassing a record set in July 2016.

2015 through 2018 have also been the four warmest years on record — the new normal under climate change.

The U.S. must take bold action to confront the climate crisis. https://t.co/jyhL7Nlcw3

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) August 14, 2019

Khanna is a staunch supporter of decisive climate action like the Green New Deal, which would replace the United States’ fossil fuel industry, one of the world’s biggest contributers to the climate crisis, with a renewable energy economy.

The high global temperatures last month were reflected in news stories about extreme heatwaves throughout Europe and wildfires in Greenland.

Climate justice protests against fossil fuel infrastructure, politicians and the media are also growing. An industry publication describes how activists are “driving pipeline rejections” reporting, “From large, interstate pipelines to small lines connecting towns and neighborhoods, anti-fossil fuel activists have proven highly successful at blocking, through regulations or lawsuits, new natural gas infrastructure in the Northeastern United States.”

Day 214 of blockade against the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Reports of Climate Chaos Increase

Several reports in recent weeks are expressing new concerns about the climate crisis.

An MIT study published this week found that we may be “at the precipice of excitation.” MIT researchers reported that when the rate at which carbon dioxide enters the oceans pushes past a certain critical threshold, it can trigger a reflex of severe ocean acidification that lasts for 10,000 years. The history of the earth shows that over the last 540 million years, this has coincided with four of the five great mass extinctions. Today’s oceans are absorbing carbon at an order of magnitude faster than the worst case in the geologic record, even though humans have only been extracting carbon for the last 100 years. This is likely to be similar to past global catastrophes potentially culminating in the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.

A June 20  report by the Center for Climate Integrity found that US coastal communities face more than $400 billion in costs over the next 20 years, much of it sooner, to defend themselves from inevitable sea-level rise.

Related to this, a study published May 20 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that coasts should plan for 6.5 feet of sea level rise by 2100. Ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland could cause far more sea-level rise than previously thought.

These reports are forcing the power structure to face the reality of the climate crisis.  Last month, Moody’s Analytics examined the economic impact of the failure to curb planet-warming emissions in “The Economic Implications of Climate Change.” Moody’s warns there will be a $69 trillion price tag by 2100 due to the far-reaching economic damage of the climate crisis. They warned: “There is no denying it: The longer we wait to take bold action to curb emissions, the higher the costs will be for all of us.”

These reports come at a time of increased climate-caused disasters.

• This year, wildfires have scorched more than 1.2 million acres in Alaska, making it one of the state’s three biggest fire years on record. Fires are spreading farther north into the Arctic, burning more intensely and starting earlier in the year as climate models have suggested. On July 4, Anchorage hit 90°F, breaking the city’s all-time record by 5 degrees. Alaska’s statewide average temperature was 7.9°F above average, according to NOAA’s latest National State of the Climate report. For the first time in the 95-year record, the year-long July-to-June average temperature for Alaska as a whole was above freezing.
• Around the world, global warming has clearly contributed to an increase in extreme firesfrom tropical rainforests to boreal evergreen forests, and they are often linked with heatwaves. Fires pose new threats to places that aren’t used to experiencing them, including temperate mid-latitude forests near regions with dense populations, as shown by unusual wildfires in places like Germany during last summer’s European heatwave and drought. There is rapid growth of unusually extreme fires burning across South America, Australia, and western North America like the extreme fires in California and Canada last year.
• As we write this article, Tropical Storm Barry, a tropical storm fueled by warm offshore waters, is creating downpours in Louisiana. The situation is the compounding of risks that scientists have been warning about due to climate change. Like Hurricane Florence in North Carolina last year and Hurricane Harvey, which sat over Houston for days in 2017, Barry is creating heavy rainfall and flooding on the coast and lower Mississippi Valley, according to the National Hurricane Center.
• A report released July 10 by the NOAA reports that sunny day flooding has doubled since 2000 in the United States. Floods interfered with traffic in northeast states, swamped septic systems in Florida and choked Delaware and Maryland coastal farms with saltwater over the past year. In 2018, the US tied the record for high tide flood days. The report predicted that annual flood records will be broken again next year and for years and decades to come due to sea-level rise.
• In Indian Country, according to the 2018 National Climate Assessment, weather on the Northern Great Plains has been getting more variable, erratic and destructive. In 2011, the Northern Plains faced a rash of wildfires and drought, followed in 2012, by severe flooding. Occasionally, these take the form of high-powered storms, like tornadoes that ravaged South Dakota reservations in 2016, or the ice storm of 2018, or the bomb cyclone of 2019. A bomb cyclone, last March occurred when an unseasonably hot column of air shot suddenly upward and collided with the frigid high atmosphere sending barometric pressure plummeting. In seconds, the sky erupted bringing devastating wind, storm, and flooding. Homes and ranches of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation were hit like a missile, more than 500 homes were left uninhabitable. Click here for information on how you can help.
• This week, Washington, D.C. experienced nearly a month’s worth of rain in an hour. According to a paper published in the journal Nature, these intense rains are a byproduct of man-made climate change.
• Last month was the hottest June on record globally. In Europe, there were record heat waves that sent Europe’s temperatures soaring to 114 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite these realities, there is inadequate action by most nations of the world especially the United States.  President Trump dismissed the need for climate action during the G20 summit in Japan saying he doesn’t want to take action to confront the emergency because such a move would threaten corporate profits. As experts have warned, if we do not confront the climate emergency now, we will pay much more later.

Climate Strike March in Cape Town, South Africa. Nasief Manie/AP

The Corporate Duopoly Seeks To Avoid a Climate Crisis too Big to Ignore

In the 2020 election cycle, the Democratic Party is resisting climate change as an issue even though fifteen of its presidential candidates, more than 50 of its member organizations in the states, and a slew of progressive organizations that make up its voting base, some armed with petitions bearing over 200,000 signatures, are calling for the DNC to hold a separate climate-focused debate. On June 10, the executive committee of the Democratic Party in Miami-Dade County—the U.S. metropolitan area considered most vulnerable to sea-level rise – voted unanimously to urge Democrats to devote one of the 12 Democratic presidential debates to the climate crisis.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez, who rejected a climate-focused debate, tried to explain the party’s opposition in a post on Medium, saying it would be impractical to hold a single-issue forum. His refusal led to hundreds of activists sitting in at the DNC headquarters, including sleeping overnight, before the first debate, demanding a debate on climate change.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a  resolution Tuesday asking Congress to declare that global warming is an emergency and demanding a massive mobilization of resources to protect the US economy, society and national security. They called for “a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive-scale to halt, reverse, mitigate, and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency and to restore the climate for future generations.”

This week billionaire, Tom Steyer, entered the 2020 race pledging to spend $100 million and focus his campaign on climate change. In his first television advertisement, he focused on the corruption of government and the economy and on climate. He said: “You look at climate change, that is people who are saying we’d rather make money than save the world.”

Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins has put forward an ecosocialist Green New Deal that not only transitions to a clean energy economy but remakes the economy and creates an economic bill of rights while cutting the military budget by 75 percent.

Activists demonstrate at home of FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur. Beyond Extreme Energy.

The Climate Justice Movement’s Power Is Growing

The movement is building power and impacting the direction of the US and the world, but the response by those supporting the status quo was shown in France last week when on the hottest day in French history climate protesters were brutally tear-gassed for demanding climate action.  This action, occurring in Paris where the Paris Climate Accord was reached, adds to the heightening of the conflict. The inadequate Paris agreement showed the movement must do more than rely on international agreements.

A longtime labor and climate activist, Jeremy Brecher, describes the climate movement entering a third phase. In the first phase, the man-made climate crisis was confirmed and the movement focused on international agreements and lobbying governments. The second phase arose when the Copenhagen agreement failed, leading to a protest movement against fossil fuel infrastructure, protests of fossil fuel corporations and against investors funding climate-destroying infrastructure.

The third phase centers around a global Green New Deal. It involves protests,  electoral demands, and challenging inaction of fossil fuel-funded politicians. He points to groups like Sunrise, Extinction Rebellion and the Student Strike for Climate as examples of this phase. It is a meta-movement that integrates, environmentalism, ecological restoration, social justice, racial equality, workers’ rights, restorative agriculture, and many other challenges to our unjust and unsustainable world order into a practical program.

Climate protests, which have been ongoing for a decade, are having victories. Recently, two major oil pipelines for carrying crude oil from Canada’s tar sands region were called into question as judges in Minnesota overturned a key approval for a proposed pipeline and Michigan’s attorney general threatened to shut down an aging pipeline under the Great Lakes. These were the latest setbacks for a series of five pipelines designed to transport tar sands that have either been canceled or delayed. The other projects include Energy East and Northern Gateway, both of which were canceled, and Trans Mountain expansion and Keystone XL pipelines, both of which are on hold.

On July 13, climate activists from Beyond Extreme Energy held a protest outside Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioner Cheryl LaFleur’s home in Massachusetts. They demanded that LaFleur vote “no” on all new fossil fuel infrastructure. Jordan Engel listed the 100 people responsible for killing the planet. Holding people accountable is becoming a reality in this new phase of climate activism.

People are connecting the issue of militarism with climate. In Maine, 22 people were arrested protesting spending on Navy ships urging “Fund Climate Solutions, Not Endless War.” The facts are in, the Pentagon is a top global climate polluter. Popular Resistance and other organizations are organizing the People’s Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet on September 22 and 23, while the UN High Commission meets, and encouraging people to participate in other actions that weekend, the Climate Strike and Puerto Rican Independence Day March. In our interview this Monday on Clearing the FOG, we speak with David Schwartzman, author of “The Earth is Not For Sale,” about ending Fossil Fuel Militarized Capitalism.

Extinction Rebellion brought the protest movement to the New York Times.  On June 24, 70 were arrested demanding the Times cover the climate crisis as a global emergency. During a sit-in on 8th Avenue they chanted “Report the urgency, this is a climate emergency!” On Monday, Extinction Rebellion DC demonstrated at the Capitol.

The movement continues to grow. More than 7,000 colleges and universitiesacross the globe declared a climate emergency on July 10 committing to mobilize on the crisis.  This month, more than 70 health organizations called for urgent action on “one of the greatest threats to health America has ever faced,” calling it the “cancer of climate change.” They cite storm and flood emergencies, chronic air pollution, the spread of diseases carried by insects, and heat-related illnesses. Extreme heat has been the leading cause of weather-related deaths.

Demonstration for adding climate crisis education to the medical school curriculum. Joe Brusky/flickr/cc

Movement Impact Is Noted

The movement is having an impact and industry and politicians know it. Long term campaigns to stop climate infrastructure, force banks and investors to divest from the fossil fuel industry and demand emergency climate policies are getting stronger.

At the beginning of July, after a meeting of OPEC in Vienna, their Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo said, “there is a growing mass mobilization of world opinion… against oil,” children “are asking us about their future because… they see their peers on the streets campaigning against this industry.” Barkindo added the “mobilization” was “beginning to… dictate policies and corporate decisions, including investment in the industry.”

In testimony to British lawmakers this week, famed scientist and environmental advocate Sir David Attenborough said, “We cannot be radical enough in dealing with the issues that face us at the moment. The question is: what is practically possible? How can we take the electorate with us in dealing with these things?” It is the job of the climate movement to push political systems to respond.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are directors of Popular Resistance

By 2050, hundreds of U.S. cities could experience an entire month each year with U.S. “heat index” temperatures above 100F (38C) if nothing is done to check emissions and the consequent climate crisis, said the study report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

In the U.S., the National Weather Service (NWS) heat index scale starts topping out above temperatures of 127F (52C), depending on the combination of temperature and humidity.

The report – “Killer Heat in the United States: Climate Choices and the Future of Dangerously Hot Days (2019)” – by Kristina Dahl, Erika Spanger-Siegfried, Rachel Licker, Astrid Caldas, John Abatzoglou, Nicholas Mailloux, Rachel Cleetus, Shana Udvardy, Juan Declet-Barreto and Pamela Worth provides a detailed view of how extreme heat incidents caused by dangerous combinations of temperature and humidity are likely to become more frequent and widespread in the U.S. over this century.

Few places would be unaffected by extreme heat conditions by 2050 and only a few mountainous regions would remain extreme heat refuges by the century’s end, said the report.

The report also describes the implications for everyday life in different regions of the U.S.

The report said:

“As extreme heat grips more of the country, growing numbers of people would be exposed to dangerous conditions (Figure 6 above). Based on 2010 population data, and assuming no changes in population size or distribution, the number of people in the United States exposed to an average of 30 or more days per year with a heat index above 105°F would increase roughly 100-fold, from just under 900,000 historically to more than 90 million — or roughly 30 percent of the population — in the no action scenario. … By midcentury, more than 6 mil-lion people — equivalent to roughly the entire population of Missouri — would experience such conditions.”

The scientists have analyzed where and how often in the contiguous U.S. the heat index — also known as the National Weather Service (NWS) “feels like” temperature — is expected to top 90°F, 100°F, or 105°F during future warm seasons (April through October).

While there is no single standard definition of “extreme heat,” the scientists have referred to any individual days with conditions that exceed these thresholds as extreme heat days.

They have analyzed the spread and frequency of heat conditions so extreme that the NWS formula cannot accurately calculate a corresponding heat index. The “feels like” temperatures in these cases are literally off the charts.

The scientists have conducted this analysis for three global climate scenarios associated with different levels of global heat-trapping emissions and future warming.

The report said:

“Historically, 29 of 481 U.S. urban areas have experienced 30 or more days with a heat index above 100°F. With no action to reduce heat-trapping emissions, that number would rise to 251 cities by midcentury and include places that have not historically experienced such frequent extreme heat, such as Cincinnati, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska; Peoria, Illinois; Sacramento, California; Washington, DC; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Nearly one-third of all urban areas — 152 out of 481 — would experience an average of 30 or more days per year with a heat index above 105°F, compared with just three historically.”

Cities’ unique land surface properties tend to make cities hotter than the surrounding areas. The phenomenon is known as the urban heat island effect. Cities contain relatively fewer shade-providing trees and an abundance of heat-retaining materials and surfaces, such as asphalt, cement, and pavement. The extra heat absorbed during the day is then re-radiated at night, keeping air temperatures in urban areas up to 22°F warmer than their surroundings. Moreover, nighttime air-conditioning releases additional heat into the city environment.

The study results show that “even by midcentury, cities throughout the country can expect frequent, intense heat to a degree that is historically unprecedented. These increases in urban heat will likely be compounded by … the urban heat island effect. … During heat waves, the urban heat island effect can be particularly harmful, as it reduces or eliminates the cooler hours when people can get physical and mental relief. Not surprisingly, violent crime often spikes in cities during heat waves. While this analysis only examined daily maximum heat index values, nighttime conditions — when the heat index is most likely to be at a minimum — are particularly important in determining the overall health impacts of an extreme heat event in cities.

Rapid action to limit the suffering

The report said:

“Steep, rapid emissions reductions that result in future warming of 2°C or less would result in roughly half as many days with a heat index above 105°F nationwide, and about 125 million fewer people would be exposed to a month or more of such conditions, compared with the no action scenario. If aggressive measures are taken to bring down global heat-trapping emissions, roughly 114 million people in the United States — the equivalent of the populations of California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia combined — would avoid exposure to the equivalent of a week or more of off-the-charts conditions.”

With both heat and population on the rise, the scientists expect many more people would be harmed. But some are more vulnerable to heat today and would be exceptionally so in an overheated future.

In the report, the scientists have outlined some of the implications for key overlapping segments of the U.S. population.

Outdoor workers

The report said:

By midcentury, “millions of outdoors workers already at elevated risk of heat stress including construction workers, farm workers, landscapers, military personnel, police officers, postal workers, road crews, and others would face greater challenges. Construction workers, who currently account for about one-third of occupational heat-related deaths and illnesses, may be at particular risk. For example, Texas and Florida, two states with some of the highest proportions of people employed in the construction sector, are poised to experience an additional month’s worth — or more — of days with a heat index above the worker-safety threshold of 90°F in an average year by midcentury. Similarly at risk are those employed in the agriculture, fishing, forestry, and hunting sectors, which account for about 20 percent of heat-related deaths and about 10 percent of heat-related illnesses reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). These workers will experience more risk even by midcentury. Much of this outdoor work, including agricultural work and roofing, requires being in direct sun, often for extended periods of time. Exposure to direct sun can raise heat index values by as much as 15°F. Within this sector, migrant farm workers face significant barriers to preventing heat-related illness. These workers often lack access to regular breaks, shade, medical services, health insurance, and training in prevention techniques. Despite clear risks, some agricultural business models make occupational heat-related injury and illness more likely by creating incentives for workers to push themselves beyond safe limits. For example, farm workers are often paid by the amount they harvest, which incentivizes them to skip breaks and overexert themselves. Heat-related illness is almost certainly underreported among migrant farm workers, as they are less likely to report their symptoms to supervisors and more likely to self-treat. One reason for the underreporting is that noncitizens or undocumented workers may fear punitive action upon reporting a workplace injury or illness and have little to no recourse.”

On the issue of labor capacity and productivity, the report said:

“Evidence suggests that, in addition to direct health impacts, increasingly extreme heat has already reduced global labor capacity, as it is more difficult to do the heavy work associated with industries such as agriculture and construction when it is extremely hot. Continued warming throughout the 21st century is projected to further reduce labor capacity and productivity. By the year 2100, estimates for the no action scenario suggest that lost labor hours would represent more than $170 billion in lost wages.”

People with low income or experiencing poverty

The report said:

“Even within a given setting, such as a city, vulnerability to heat is not equally distributed. Centuries of social discrimination and subsequent uneven opportunities for economic advancement have forced part of our population — disproportionately minorities and people experiencing poverty — into a state of heightened exposure and vulnerability to climate-related threats. U.S. residents who are not white, have low or fixed incomes, are homeless, and those in other historically disenfranchised groups are particularly at risk of heat-related illness and injury for a multitude of reasons, including lack of access to air-conditioning or transportation to cooling centers and residence in the hottest parts of cities.”

The report cited the 1995 Chicago heat wave that claimed the lives of more than 700 people, which is seen as not simply a natural disaster, but a societal one as well. The isolated, elderly African Americans suffered a disproportionate death toll because they were unable to flee overheated, non-air-conditioned apartments.

The report said:

“With one in three households in the United States already struggling to afford the cost of energy and few state-level policies banning utility disconnection during extreme heat events, the inability to pay for air-conditioning also raises the risk of heat-related illness for low-income people and families. Socioeconomic status is consistently identified as a factor in heightened heat health risk.”

The report recommended following actions [cited in brief]:

1. The federal government must invest in scientific research, data, tools, and public communication related to extreme heat risks and protective actions, including fully implementing the NWS Weather-Ready Nation Strategic Plan.
2. State and local governments will need to invest in developing localized heat adaptation plans and heat emergency response plans, especially in places that are unaccustomed to heat but will increasingly be at risk.
3. Federal and state governments should expand funding for programs to provide cooling assistance to low- and fixed-income households, especially for elderly people and those with medical conditions.
4. State utility regulators and legislators should require utilities to provide uninterrupted power service for residents, especially for elderly adults, sick people, and people with disabilities during periods of extreme heat.
5. Congress should direct OSHA to set health-protective national occupational heat standards for outdoor and indoor workers under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
6. Federal, state, and local authorities should set standards and provide incentives for utilities, businesses, and homes to increase reliance on renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, and microgrids.
7. The federal government should increase efficiency standards for refrigerators and air conditioners and implement regulations to phase out use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are powerful heat-trapping gases used in these appliances, as agreed under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
8. Utilities should implement flexible demand solutions that help shift demand away from times of peak energy consumption, such as that which might occur during extreme heat days.
9. Utilities should invest in increasing the resilience of the electricity system by protecting generation, transmission, and distribution systems from heat-related threats, such as droughts and wildfires.

The report said:

“If we are serious about keeping people safe in the long term from extreme heat, the most consequential thing the world’s wealthiest nations (including the United States) can do is make deep cuts in our heat-trapping emissions and continue to implement and strengthen the Paris climate agreement.”

The report’s other recommendations include:

1. An economywide price on carbon to help ensure that the costs of climate change are incorporated into our production and consumption decisions and encourage a shift away from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy options. Revenue from carbon-pricing policies can be used to support investments in energy efficiency, low-carbon technologies, adaptation, energy rebates for low-income families, and transition assistance for fossil fuel–dependent workers and communities.
2. A low-carbon electricity standard that helps drive more renewable and zero-carbon electricity generation and helps deliver significant public health and economic benefits.
3. Policies to cut transportation sector emissions, including increasing fuel economy and heat-trapping emissions standards for vehicles; increased investment in low-carbon public transportation systems, such as rail systems; replacing gas-powered public bus fleets with electric bus fleets; incentivizing deployment of more electric vehicles, including through investments in charging infrastructure; and research on highly efficient conventional vehicle technologies, batteries for electric vehicles, cleaner fuels and emerging transportation technologies.
4. Policies to cut emissions from the buildings and industrial sectors, including efficiency standards and electrification of heating, cooling, and industrial processes.
5. Policies to increase carbon storage in vegetation and soils, including through climate-friendly agricultural and forest management practices.
6. Investments in research, development, and deployment of new low-carbon energy technologies and practices.
7. Measures to cut emissions of methane, nitrous oxide, and other major non-CO2 heat-trapping emissions8. Policies to help least developed nations make a rapid transition to low-carbon economies and cope with the impacts of climate change

Extreme heat and human health

To show reactions of extreme-heat on human health, the report presented the following diagram:

During extreme heat events, the body’s cooling mechanisms become less effective. The symptoms shown here — ranging from minor annoyances to truly life-threatening issues — include both those that are indicative of heat-related illness and those that are signs of pre-existing conditions exacerbated by extreme heat. SOURCES: BASU ET AL. 2012; BECKER AND STEWARD 2011; CURRIERO ET AL. 2002; DONOGHUE ET AL. 1997; GARCÍA-TRABANINO ET AL. 2015; GLAZER 2005; LUBER AND MCGEEHIN 2008; LUGO-AMADOR, ROTHENHAUS, AND MOYER 2004; AND SEMEZA ET AL. 199

We are not there yet. But graffities are all over the walls signaling that we are moving quite rapidly in that direction. And Trump knows it and his handlers know it – which is why the onslaught of financial crime – sanctions – trade wars – foreign assets and reserves confiscations, or outright theft – all in the name of “Make America Great Again”, is accelerating exponentially and with impunity. What is surprising is that the Anglo-Saxon hegemons do not seem to understand that all the threats, sanctions, trade barriers, are provoking the contrary to what should contribute to American Greatness. Economic sanctions, in whatever form, are effective only as long as the world uses the US dollar for trading and as reserve currency.

Once the world gets sick and tired of the grotesque dictate of Washington and the sanction schemes for those who do no longer want to go along with the oppressive rules of the US, they will be eager to jump on another boat, or boats – abandoning the dollar and valuing their own currencies. Meaning trading with each other in their own currencies – and that outside of the US banking system which so far even controls trading in local currencies, as long as funds have to be transferred from one nation to another via SWIFT.

Many countries have also realized that the dollar is increasingly serving to manipulate the value of their economy. The US-dollar, a fiat currency, by its sheer money mass, may bend national economies up or down, depending in which direction the country is favored by the hegemon. Let’s put the absurdity of this phenomenon in perspective.

Today, the dollar is based not even on hot air and is worth less than the paper it is printed on. The US GDP is US$ 21.1 trillion in 2019 (World Bank estimate), with current debt of 22.0 trillion, or about 105% of GDP. The world GDP is projected for 2019 at US$ 88.1 trillion (World Bank). According to Forbes, about US$ 210 trillion are “unfunded liabilities” (net present value of future projected but unfunded obligations (75 years), mainly social security, Medicaid and accumulated interest on debt), a figure about 10 times the US GDP, or two and a half times the world’s economic output.

This figure keeps growing, as interest on debt is compounded, forming part of what would be called in business terms ‘debt service’ (interest and debt amortization), but is never ‘paid back’. In addition, there are about one to two quadrillion dollars (nobody knows the exact amount) of so-called derivatives floating around the globe. A derivative is a financial instrument which creates its value from the speculative difference of underlying assets, most commonly derived from such inter-banking and stock exchange oddities, like ‘futures’, ‘options’, ‘forwards’ and ‘swaps’.

This monstrous debt is partly owned in the form of treasury bonds as foreign exchange reserves by countries around the world. The bulk of it is owed by the US to itself – with no plans to ever “pay it back” – but rather create more money, more debt, with which to pay for the non-stop wars, weapon manufacturing and lie-propaganda to keep the populace quiet and in lockstep.

This amounts to a humongous worldwide dollar-based pyramid system. Imagine, this debt comes crashing down, for example because one or several big (Wall Street) banks are on the brink of bankruptcy, so, they claim their outstanding derivatives, paper gold (another banking absurdity) and other debt from smaller banks. It would generate a chain reaction that might bring down the whole dollar-dependent world economy. It would create an exponential “Lehman Brothers 2008” on global scale.

The world is increasingly aware of this real threat, an economy built on a house of cards – and countries want to get out of the trap, out of the fangs of the US-dollar. It’s not easy with all the dollar-denominated reserves and assets invested abroad, all over the globe. A solution may be gradually divesting them (US-dollar liquidity and investments) and moving into non-dollar dependent currencies, like the Chinese Yuan and the Russian Ruble, or a basket of eastern currencies that are delinked from the dollar and its international payment scheme, the SWIFT system. Beware of the Euro, it’s the foster child of the US-dollar!

There are increasingly blockchain technology alternatives available. China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela are already experimenting with government-controlled cryptocurrencies to build new payment and transfer systems outside the US-dollar domain to circumvent sanctions. India may or may not join this club – whenever the Modi Government decides which way to bend – east or west. The logic would suggest that India orients herself to the east, as India is a significant part of the huge Eurasian economic market and landmass.

India is already an active member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – an association of countries that are developing peaceful strategies for trade, monetary security and defense, comprising China, Russia, India, Pakistan, most Central Asian countries and with Iran waiting in the wings to become a full-fledged member. As such, SCO accounts for about half of the world population and a third of the world’s economic output. The east has no need for the west to survive. No wonder that western media hardly mention the SCO which means that the western average public at large has no clue what the SCO stands for, and who are its members.

Government-controlled and regulated blockchain technology may become key to counter US coercive financial power and to resist sanctions. Any country is welcome to join this new alliance of countries and new but fast-growing approach to alternative trading – and to finding back to national political and financial sovereignty.

In the same vein of dedollarization are Indian “barter banks”. They are, for example, trading Indian tea for Iranian oil. Such arrangements for goods to be exchanged against Iranian petrol are carried out through Indian “barter banks”, where currencies, i.e. Iranian rials and Indian rupees, are handled by the same bank. Exchange of goods is based on a list of highest monetary volume Indian trade items, against Iranian hydrocarbon products, for example, Iran’s large import of Indian tea. No monetary transaction takes place outside of India, therefore, US sanctions may be circumvented, since no US bank or US Treasury interference can stop the bilateral trade activities.

At this point, it might be appropriate to mention Facebook’s attempt to introduce a globe-spanning cryptocurrency, the Lira. Little is known on how exactly it will (or may) function, except that it would cater to billions of facebook members around the world. According to Facebook, there are 2.38 billion active members. Imagine, if only two thirds – about 1.6 billion – opened a Libra account with Facebook, the floodgate of libras around the world would be open. Libra is or would be a privately-owned cryptocurrency – and – coming from Facebook – could be destined to replace the dollar by the same people who are now abusing the world with the US-dollar. It may be projected as the antidote to government-controlled cryptocurrencies, thus, circumventing the impact of dedollarization. Beware of the Libra!

Despite US and EU sanctions, German investments in Russia are breaking a 10-year record in 2019, by German business pouring more than €1.7 billion into the Russian economy in the first three months of 2019. According to the Russian-German Chamber of Commerce, the volume of German companies’ investments in Russia is up by 33% – by € 400 million – since last year, when total investments reached € 3.2 billion, the largest since 2008. Despite sanctions which amounted to about € 1 billion combined for 140 German companies surveyed and registered with the Chamber of Commerce, and despite western anti-Russia pressure, Russia-German trade has increased by 8.4 percent and reached nearly € 62 billion in 2018.

In addition, notwithstanding US protests and threats with sanctions, Moscow and Berlin continue their Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project which is expected to be finished before the end of 2019. Not only is the proximity of Russian gas a natural and logical supply source for Germany and Europe, it will also bring Europe independence form the bullying sales methods of the United States. And payments will not be made in US dollars. In the long-run, the benefits of German-Russian business and economic relations will far outweigh the illegal US sanctions. Once this awareness has sunk in, there is nothing to stop Russian-German business associations to flourish, and to attract other EU-Russian business relations – all outside of the dollar-dominated banking and transfer system.

President Trump’s trade war with China will eventually also have a dedollarization effect, as China will seek – and already has acquired – other trading partners, mostly Asian, Asian-Pacific and European – with whom China will deal in other than dollar-denominated contracts and outside the SWIFT transfer system, for example using the Chinese International Payment System (CIPS) which, by the way, is open for international trade by any country across the globe.

This will not only circumvent punishing tariffs on China’s exports (and make US customers of Chinese goods furious, as their Chinese merchandise is no longer available at affordable prices, or no longer available at all), but this strategy will also enhance the Chinese Yuan on international markets and boost the Yuan even further as a reliable reserve currency – ever outranking the US-dollar. In fact, in the last 20 years, dollar-denominated assets in international reserve coffers have declined from more than 90% to below 60% and will rapidly decline further as Washington’s coercive financial policies prevail. Dollar reserves are rapidly replaced by reserves in Yuan and gold, and that even in such staunch supporters of the west as is Australia.

Washington also has launched a counter-productive financial war against Turkey, because Turkey is associating and creating friendly relations with Russia, Iran and China – and, foremost, because Turkey, a NATO stronghold, is purchasing the Russian S-400 cutting-edge air defense system – a new military alliance which the US cannot accept. As a result, the US is sabotaging the Turkish currency, the Lira which has lost 40% since January 2018.

Turkey will certainly do whatever it can to get out from under the boot of the US-dollar stranglehold and currency sanctions – and further ally itself with the East. This amounts to a double loss for the US. Turkey will most likely abandon all trading in US dollars and align her currency with, for example, the Chinese Yuan and the Russian ruble, and, to the detriment of the Atlantic alliance, Turkey may very likely exit NATO. Abandoning NATO will be a major disaster for the US, as Turkey is both strategically, as well as in terms of NATO military power one of the strongest – if not the strongest – nation of the 29 NATO members, outside of the US.

If Turkey exits NATO, the entire European NATO alliance will be shaken and questioned. Other countries, long wary of NATO and of storing NATO’s nuclear weapons on their soils, especially Italy and Germany, may also consider exiting NATO. In both Germany and Italy, a majority of the people is against NATO and especially against the Pentagon waging wars form their NATO bases in their territories in Germany in Italy.

To stem against this trend, the former German Defense Minister, Ursula von der Leyen, from the conservative German CDU party, is being groomed to become Jean-Claude Juncker’s successor as President of the European Commission. Mr. Juncker served since 2014. Ms. Von der Leyen was voted in tonight, 17 July, with a narrow margin of 9 votes. She is a staunch supporter of NATO. Her role is to keep NATO as an integral part of the EU. In fact, as it stands today, NATO is running the EU. This may change, once people stand up against NATO, against the US vassal, the EU Administration in Brussels, and claim their democratic rights as citizens of their nation states.

Europeans sense that these Pentagon initiated and ongoing wars and conflicts, supported by Washington’s European puppet allies, may escalate into a nuclear war, their countries’ NATO bases will be the first ones to be targeted, sinking Europe for the 3^rd time in 100 year into a world war. However, this one may be all-destructive nuclear – and nobody knows or is able to predict the damage and destruction of such a catastrophe, nor the time of recovery of Mother Earth from an atomic calamity.

So, let’s hope Turkey exits NATO. It would be giant step towards peace and a healthy answer to Washington’s blackmail and sabotage against Turkey’s currency. The US currency sanctions are, in the long run, a blessing. It gives Turkey a good argument to abandon the US dollar and gradually shift towards association with eastern moneys, mainly the Chinese Yuan, thereby putting another nail in the US-dollar’s coffin.

However, the hardest blow for Washington will be when Turkey exits NATO. Such a move will come sooner or later, notwithstanding Ms. Von der Leyen’s battle cries for NATO. The breaking up of NATO will annihilate the western power structure in Europe and throughout the world, where the US still maintains more than 800 military bases. On the other hand, the disbanding of NATO will increase the world’s security, especially in Europe – for all the consequences such an exit will bear. Exiting NATO and economically exiting the US-dollar orbit is a further step towards dedollarization, and a blow to US financial and military hegemony.

Finally, investments of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road, will be mostly made in Yuan and local currencies of the countries involved and incorporated in one or more of the several BRI land and maritime routes that eventually will span the globe. Some US-dollar investments may serve the People’s Bank of China, China’s Central Bank, as a dollar-divesting tool of China’s huge dollar reserves which currently stands at close to two trillion dollars.

The BRI promises to become the next economic revolution, a non-dollar economic development scheme, over the coming decades, maybe century, connecting peoples and countries – cultures, research and teaching without, however, forcing uniformity, but promoting cultural diversity and human equality – and all of it outside the dollar dynasty, breaking the nefarious dollar hegemony.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

But now? China’s tremendous leap forward, its excellent, humane social policies and determined people-oriented scientific research, as well as its march towards a so-called “ecological civilization” are well-documented, to the point that if anyone really wants to know, he or she has plenty of opportunities to learn the truth.

But it appears that very few want to learn. At least very few in the West.

China is seen negatively in almost all Western countries and their satellites.While surveys in places like Africa, where China intensively interacts with the people, helping them to break the chains of dependency on their neo-colonialist masters from Europe and North America, clearly indicate that it is admired and liked.

Last year (2018), a survey by the influential Pew Research Center (“Five Charts on Global Views of China”) established that China is viewed mostly positively in non-Western countries: 67% in Kenya where China is involved in substantial infrastructural and social projects, 61% in the most populous African nation – Nigeria, 70% in the Arab country of Tunisia, 53% in the Philippines, despite the fact that there, the West has been fueling a dispute over the islands in the South China Sea, and 65% in Russia, which is now the closest Chinese ally.

In the U.K., 49% of citizens see China positively, 48% in Australia, but only 39% in Germany and 38% in the United States.

But what is truly shocking, is the attitude of the West towards the leadership of China’s President – Xi Jinping – a determined thinker who is leading China towards true socialism with Chinese characteristics; almost eliminating extreme poverty (by the year 2020, there should be no pockets of misery left, anywhere on the territory of the PRC), and who is putting culture, a high quality of life, ecology and the general well being of the Chinese people above economic indicators.

Conservative, anti-Communist Poland leads the pack: only 9% Poles “have confidence” in the leadership of President Xi. 11% of Greeks, 14% of Italians and 15% of Spaniards. That says something about Europe, as even in Canada, the number is 42%, and in the United States – 39%.

Is it truly just ignorance?

When interviewed by various Chinese media outlets, I am often asked the same question: “Why are we constantly criticized in the West, while we try to play by the rules, and doing our best to improve the planet?”

The answer is obvious: “Precisely for that reason.”

*

Some 20 years ago, China and its socialist project, were still in the ‘unfinished stage’. There were big differences in standards of living, between the urban areas in the east, and the countryside. Transportation was inadequate. Pollution in the industrial cities was very, very bad. Tens of millions of people were trying to migrate from the countryside to the cities, in search of jobs and a better living, putting great strains on the social system of the nation.

Those who did not like China, had plenty of ‘ammunition’, when criticizing it then. The country was moving forward, but the task to make it prosperous, clean, and healthy, appeared to by Sisyphean.

What followed was an absolute miracle, unprecedented in human history. Only the Soviet Union before the WWII registered greater growth and improvement of the standards of living of its people, than China did in the two last decades.

Everything in China changed. Its cities became clean, green, ecological, full of public parks, exercise machines for adults and children. Urban centers are now overflowing with a first class public transportation (all ecological), with impressive museums, concert halls, excellent universities and medical centers. Subsidized super-high trains are connecting all major cities of the country. In Communist China, everything is planned by the government and by the Communist Party, and the private sector is there to serve the nation, not vice versa. It works. It works remarkably well. Citizens have much more say about how their country is governed, than those in the West.

Cities are clean, efficient, built for the people. No beggars and no slums. No misery. Things are getting better and better.

Foreigners who come to China for the first time are shocked: China looks much wealthier than the US or UK. Its streets, its airports, its metro systems, high-speed trains, theatres, sidewalks, parks,easily put those in New York of Paris to shame.

But, it is not rich. Far from it!China’s GDP per capita is still relatively low, but that is precisely what makes “socialism with Chinese characteristics” so impressive and superior to the Western capitalism fueled by imperialism. China does not need to haveaverage incomes of some $50,000+ per capita to prosper, to give its people an increasingly great life, to protect the environment, and to promote great culture.

Could it be, that this is precisely why the West is shaking in fear?

The West, where economic growth is everything, where people live in constant fear, instead of optimistic hope for the future. The West, where trillions of dollars and euros are wasted annually, so the elites can live in bizarre luxury and preside over irrational, unnecessary over-production and arms accumulation, which bring no well-being to the majority.

China and its central planning are offering a much better and logical system, for its citizens and for the world.

Most of its science is geared to the improvement of life on this planet, not for cold profits.

President Xi’s brainchild –BRI – is designed to lift up billions of people world-wide out of poverty, and to connect the world, instead of fragmenting it.

So why is President Xi so much disliked in Europe?

Could it be, that it is precisely because of the gigantic success of China?

*

Back to the previous point: 20 years ago, China had enormous social and environmental problems. The Westerners who did not like Communist Party of any type, would come and point fingers at things: “You see, Shanghai and Shenzhen are now prosperous, but look at other cities on the coast: see the contrast?”

Then the cities on the coast, all, began improving, planting parks, universities, metros, beautiful streets.

Criticism from the West continued: “Now leave the coast, go west, and you will see how unequal China is!”

Eventually, the west of China improved so much, that there was virtually no difference between the quality of life in the cities there, and on the coast.

“It is all so cynical,” the rant went on: “the difference between the cities and the countryside is so huge that peasants are forced to abandon their villages and seek jobs in the big cities.”

Under the leadership of President Xi, the entire countryside received an enormous overhaul. Transportation, medical services, educational facilities and job availability improved so much, that in 2018, for the first time in modern history, people began migrating back from the cities to the countryside.

Now what? What next? “Human rights?” Not much to trash, anymore, if one sees with eyes open.

But the better China becomes, the more it cares about its people, as well as people all over the world, the harder it gets attacked.

Not one “Wow!” from Western regime and its mainstream media. Not one “China is now leader of the world in ecology, social policies, science, and virtually everything public.”

Why?

The answer is obvious and unfortunately depressing: It is because the West does not want China and its president to succeed. Or if the succeed, it has to be hushed. The two systems are so different, that if China’s one is correct, the Western one is wrong.

And the West is not searching for a concept that is good for the world. It only wants its own concept to survive and dominate the planet. Full stop.

That is why China is so popular in the countries which want to save their people from misery, and to build new, better societies. That is why China is smeared and disliked, even hated, in the West and in a handful of countries outside the West, where Westerners and their descendants are both ruling and controlling the mass media (Argentina).

On a positive note, despite the determined and vicious propaganda being spread by Western and West-controlled mass media outlets, many more people have confidence in President Xi, than in the U.S. President Donald Trump, who inspires only 27% of the people all over the world.

*

[First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook]

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Four of his latest books are China and Ecological Civilization with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. His Patreon

To many others, scientists are good persons, doing incredible work, helping humanity. With latest findings on climate crisis, scientists are making the world aware: Get rid of the system creating the crisis.

Climate crisis is hurting all in the global South and North. Parts in the global North, to some extent, will pay more than parts in the South.

It’s impossible to find a single person who doesn’t love offspring. This love makes many parents, would-be-parents and prospective-parents concerned with this planet going to be a devastating place.

Climate crisis is doing the ruining job – a scene-inferno. The ominous rates are quickening; sometimes, faster than scientists calculated. Today, all know these scaring facts.

This makes many people question: What is waiting for our daughters and sons in the world they will be living? How much will they suffer? Eco-anxiety is occupying discussions with increasing rate.

Children are heavenly. Seeing them suffer is hellishly painful. Even, imagination of their suffering is a nightmare.

Hence, groups of persons are pondering whether to bring a child on the world with a collapsing ecosystem that makes life unbearable.

In the UK, BirthStrike, with its more than 330 members, has voluntarily made a resolve – they shall not have any children as long as political will to harness climate crisis continues to languish.

Blythe Pepino, a musician from the UK, was yearning to be a mother. But her motherhood dream faded away as she came across a 2018 UN report that warned: We have just 12 years to act to resist climate crisis.

Pepino organized the BirthStrike. A HuffPost report – “Women are sharing the devastating reason they’re deciding not to have children” – carries details.

The July 1, 2019 report by Laura Paddison informs: Pepino put her concerns on Facebook, and 50 persons expressed the same concern. They signed the declaration. BirthStrike was formed in 2018. Their aim: Spread the message about crumbling ecology, wake people up, get together.

It’s a form of protest. Many persons differ with the BirthStrike that aims to organize a support network and a movement. To the persons in disagreement, it’s surrendering of rights to a system devastating our planet.

How much it matters with whether it’s a protest or not? How much it matters whether it’s justified or not? It’s a painful expression of a group of mothers’ dream: A happy, peaceful life for our daughters and sons.

There’s Conceivable Future (CF). Its co-founders Meghan Kallman, a sociologist and city councilor, and Josephine Ferorelli, a writer, illustrator and yoga instructor, were concerned with climate crisis and having children.

CF’s effort: Inject some humanity into the debate on climate crisis.

CF brings persons without children, expecting parents or parents having children together to talk about the crisis through the lens of their parenthood hopes and fears.

The organization tries to send message: “… a dark situation we’re in.”

To Kallman, social movements turn successful when people understand its meaning for their own lives.

They film parents’ feelings – “testimonies”. Mei’s is one of the most recent.

Mei, a Chicago resident, turned anxious: The world she would be leaving to a potential child. She had long debates with her husband. Finally, they decided to go for it. Mei is expecting her first baby in August. But she remains deeply worried.

Other testimonies are of the agony of indecision. Meghan Hoskins from New Hampshire very much wants kids. But, she is “afraid that they will eventually have to live in a world where there is no fresh water and that is increasingly full of dangerous and toxic chemicals.”

None of these organizations is population control movement.

Londoner Lucie Brown, mother of two and a climate activist, says being a parent inspires her activism. “Maybe having children and experiencing that grief and fear for the future”, she told HuffPost, has motivated her “to find the power … to say actually we can — and we have to — change the systems that we’re living within.”

She said: “I don’t know in this moment [whether] I would have children if I was currently without children.”

Jessica Garrett, a science educator from Somerville, Massachusetts, said, “How could I do my first job as a parent: keep him safe and healthy?”

She said: “We could share our fears and grief and hopes for our children. And then we go out together and speak up.”

If she were deciding now, she said, she might not have had any children.

The system is destructing motherhood. Mothers fear the future – a burning Earth.

Yet, the system is operating!

However, hope shouldn’t be lost.

Despite mothers’ fear, Laura concludes: “I would still have children again. … there is hope in humanity. There has to be.”

Note: All information is from the cited report.

Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka.

DP World is partnering with the fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to create an all-year round maritime sea route from Europe to Asia through the Arctic.

“Time is money in business and the route could cut travel time substantially more than traditional trade arteries for cargo owners in the Far East wanting to connect with Europe, coupled with benefits to the Russian economy,” DP World chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem told the Arab News.

In partnering with DP World, RFID brings to the table Rosatom, Russia’s atomic energy agency, which operates nuclear-powered ships that could ply the route, and Norilsk Nickel, a mining and commodities company.

Dubai and Russia are betting that climate change, which has dramatically shrunk the Arctic ice sheet in the past two decades, has made possible what eluded Europeans for centuries: ensuring that the Northeast Passage linking the Northern Atlantic with the Pacific is accessible all year round even if rail remains faster than carrying cargo by ship.

The commercial and geopolitical implications of all year-round passage are significant.

Beyond challenging the status of the Suez Canal as the foremost link between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Artic route would grant Russia the one thing it has so far failed to achieve in its partnership with China: a key role in the transportation linkages between Europe and Asia that the People’s Republic is seeking to create with massive investment in its Belt and Road initiative.

That role would be bolstered by the fact that the Arctic route would cut the maritime journey from Northeast Asia from somewhere between 34 and 45 days through the Suez Canal to 23 days via the Northeast Passage.

“Because of global warming, there are some things happening that open some opportunities. Russia has this frozen coast all of the seasons. Now it’s opening up and it’s possible to navigate for nine months. When you have special ships, you can actually have 12 months navigation,” RFID CEO Kirill Dmitriev told the Saudi paper.

The partnership with Dubai gives a new laese on life to Russian aspirations to become a key node in Belt and Road linkages after Russia failed to persuade China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group (CREEC) to invest in converting the Trans-Siberian Railway into a high-speed link that would connect St. Petersburg with the Far East.

CREEC last year definitively dashed Russian hopes, declaring that the “the high-speed rail through Russia will never pay off.”

In a further setback, China simultaneously opted for an east-west road link through Kazakhstan after efforts to complete a Moscow-St. Petersburg highway as well as a ring road around the Russian capital and a Volga-Kazakhstan road stalled.

Frustrated with the lack of Chinese interest, state-run Russian Railways is itself investing heavily and reaching out to Japan to significantly increase freight traffic on the almost 9,300-kilometre-long trans-Siberian route.

The rail company aims to increase by a factor of 100 the number of containers transported from Japan to Europe from 3.000 last year to 300,000 and tonnage by 50 percent from less than 90 million to 180 million, according to Russian Railways first vice president Alexander Misharin.

Mr. Misharin told Nikkei that the investment, including US$745 million last year, involves laying double tracks, linking the railroad to seaports and automating the system.

Mr. Misharin was hoping to cooperate with Japan Railways Group to create a door-to-door cargo transportation system between Japan and Europe that would reduce transportation time to at most 19 days. He said the Russian rail company was looking at building logistics centres with Japanese trading firm Sojitz.

Upgrading the Trans-Siberian Railway would significantly bolster Russia’s geography as a key bridge in the emergence of Eurasia, the gradual integration of Europe and Asia that ultimately would erase the seemingly artificial division of one landmass into two continents.

It would also significantly facilitate linking the railway to the Belt and Road by making it financially feasible.

That is less far-fetched with China Railway International Group lending Russia US$6.2 billion for the construction of a 790-kilometre long Moscow-Kazan high speed rail line, envisioned as the first phase of a link between the Russian capital and Beijing that would cut travel between the two cities to two days.

To secure the loan, Russia agreed to use Chinese technology and construction equipment.

Russia has also expressed interest in linking its Trans-Siberian Railway to the Chinese-controlled Pakistani port of Gwadar, a Belt and Road crown jewel.

Russia is betting that the combination of the Northeast Passage and upgraded Trans-Siberian rail links would make its positioning as a transit hub significantly more attractive.

That is true even though the Northeast Passage is too shallow for giant box ships that traverse the Suez Canal and lacks the kind of ports capable of accommodating those vessels. The Passage is likely to see primarily smaller container ships.

One way or the other, DP World, expecting to operate ports that Russia plans to build along an Arctic route, would emerge a winner by expanding its global footprint. “We were always missing Russia. Russia is a link,” DP World’s Mr. Sulayem said.

Said Russian shipping giant Sovcomflot CEO Sergey Frank: “Trade is growing and there is space for everybody. If the cargo originates in the south part of China, it will go through the Suez. If it originates in Northern China, the NSR (Northern Sea Route) will be seriously considered. Cargo will always find the fastest way to move.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

Global mean warming / cooling rates over the last 2,000 years. In red are the periods (each across 51 years) in which the reconstructed temperatures increased. Global temperatures decreased in the periods in blue. The green line shows that the maximum expected warming rate without anthropogenic influence is just under 0.6 degrees per century. Climate models (dashed orange line) are able to simulate this natural upper limit very well. At more than 1.7 degrees per century, the current rate of warming is significantly higher than the expected natural rate of warming, and higher than values for every previous century. Instrumental measurements since 1850 (in black) confirm these figures. © University of Bern

The warm period known as the “Medieval Warm Period” in Europe and North America was not a global phenomenon; the warmest 50-year period between the years 700 and 1400 occurred at different times in different regions. © University of Bern

The cold period known as the “Little Ice Age” in Europe and North America was not a global phenomenon; the coldest 50-year period of the last millennium occurred at different times in different regions. © University of Bern

Modern global warming is a global phenomenon; the warmest 50-year period of the last 2000 years occurred on more than 98% of the earth’s surface in the 20th century. © University of Bern

In contrast to pre-industrial climate fluctuations, current, anthropogenic climate change is occurring across the whole world at the same time, finds new studies. Moreover, the speed of global warming is higher than it has been in at least 2,000 years.

Many people have a clear picture of the “Little Ice Age” (from approx. 1300 to 1850). It’s characterized by paintings showing people skating on Dutch canals and glaciers advancing far into the alpine valleys. That it was extraordinarily cool in Europe for several centuries is proven by a large number of temperature reconstructions using tree rings, for example, not just by historical paintings.

There are also similar reconstructions for North America. It was assumed that the “Little Ice Age” and the similarly famous “Medieval Warm Period” (approx. 700-1400) were global phenomena.

Now an international group of scientists led by Raphael Neukom of the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern is painting a very different picture of these alleged global climate fluctuations.

In a study, “No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era” by Raphael Neukom, Nathan Steiger, Juan José Gómez-Navarro, Jianghao Wang and Johannes P. Werner (Nature, 571, July 24, 2019), and in a supplementary publication, “Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era” (Nature Geoscience, 12, July 24, 2019),  the scientists show that there is no evidence that there were uniform warm and cold periods across the globe over the last 2,000 years.

Climate fluctuations in the past varied from region to region

The “No evidence for … Common Era” study said:

Earth’s climate history is often understood by breaking it down into constituent climatic epochs. Over the Common Era (the past 2,000 years) these epochs, such as the Little Ice Age, have been characterized as having occurred at the same time across extensive spatial scales. Although the rapid global warming seen in observations over the past 150 years does show nearly global coherence, the spatiotemporal coherence of climate epochs earlier in the Common Era has yet to be robustly tested. Here we use global palaeoclimate reconstructions for the past 2,000 years, and find no evidence for preindustrial globally coherent cold and warm epochs. In particular, we find that the coldest epoch of the last millennium — the putative Little Ice Age — is most likely to have experienced the coldest temperatures during the fifteenth century in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, during the seventeenth century in northwestern Europe and southeastern North America, and during the mid-nineteenth century over most of the remaining regions. Furthermore, the spatial coherence that does exist over the preindustrial Common Era is consistent with the spatial coherence of stochastic climatic variability. This lack of spatiotemporal coherence indicates that preindustrial forcing was not sufficient to produce globally synchronous extreme temperatures at multidecadal and centennial timescales. By contrast, we find that the warmest period of the past two millennia occurred during the twentieth century for more than 98 per cent of the globe. This provides strong evidence that anthropogenic global warming is not only unparalleled in terms of absolute temperatures⁵, but also unprecedented in spatial consistency within the context of the past 2,000 years.

The “Consistent multidecadal variability … over the Common Era” study said:

Multidecadal surface temperature changes may be forced by natural as well as anthropogenic factors, or arise unforced from the climate system. Distinguishing these factors is essential for estimating sensitivity to multiple climatic forcings and the amplitude of the unforced variability. Here we present 2,000-year-long global mean temperature reconstructions using seven different statistical methods that draw from a global collection of temperature-sensitive palaeoclimate records. Our reconstructions display synchronous multidecadal temperature fluctuations that are coherent with one another and with fully forced millennial model simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 across the Common Era. A substantial portion of pre-industrial (1300-1800 ce) variability at multidecadal timescales is attributed to volcanic aerosol forcing. Reconstructions and simulations qualitatively agree on the amplitude of the unforced global mean multidecadal temperature variability, thereby increasing confidence in future projections of climate change on these timescales. The largest warming trends at timescales of 20 years and longer occur during the second half of the twentieth century, highlighting the unusual character of the warming in recent decades.

“It’s true that during the Little Ice Age it was generally colder across the whole world,” explains Raphael Neukom, “but not everywhere at the same time. The peak periods of pre-industrial warm and cold periods occurred at different times in different places.”

According to the climate scientist from Bern, the now-debunked hypothesis of climate phases occurring at the same time across the globe came about because of an impression that is defined by the climate history of Europe and North America.

In the absence of data from other parts of the earth, this notion was applied to the whole planet, raising expectations that relatively cold or warm periods throughout the last 2,000 years were globally synchronous phenomena. But it has now been shown that this was not the case.

The authors of the study in Nature see the explanation for that as being that regional climates in pre-industrial times were primarily influenced by random fluctuations within the climate systems themselves.

External factors such as volcanic eruptions or solar activity were not intense enough to cause markedly warm or cold temperatures across the whole world for decades, or even centuries.

The researchers relied on a database from the international research consortium PAGES, which provides a comprehensive overview of climate data from the last 2,000 years, for their investigation of five pre-industrial climate epochs. In addition to tree rings, it also includes data from ice cores, lake sediments and corals.

To really put the results to the test, the scientists analyzed these data sets using six different statistical models – more than ever before. This allowed for the calculation of the probability of extremely warm or cold decades and centuries, and not just the calculation of absolute temperatures.

The result was that no globally coherent picture emerged during the periods being investigated.

“The minimum and maximum temperatures were different in different areas,” says Raphael Neukom. So thermal extremes across the world cannot be inferred from regional temperature phenomena like the oft-mentioned “Medieval Warm Period” in Europe and North America.

The current warm period is happening across the world for the first time

The results look very different for recent history. Both studies show that the warmest period of the last 2,000 years was most likely in the 20th century.

The scientists also show that this was the case for more than 98 percent of the surface of the earth. This shows – once again – that modern climate change cannot be explained by random fluctuations, but by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. What we didn’t know until now is that not only average global temperatures in the 20th century are higher than ever before in at least 2,000 years, but also that a warming period is now affecting the whole planet at the same time for the first time. And the speed of global warming has never been as high as it is today.

As one of the dozen or so Australian lead authors on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth assessment report, currently underway, I have a deep appreciation of the speed and severity of climate change unfolding across the planet. Last year I was also appointed as one of the scientific advisers to the Climate Council, Australia’s leading independent body providing expert advice to the public on climate science and policy. In short, I am in the confronting position of being one of the few Australians who sees the terrifying reality of the climate crisis.

Preparing for this talk I experienced something gut-wrenching. It was the realisation that there is now nowhere to hide from the terrible truth.

The last time this happened to me, I was visiting my father in hospital following emergency surgery for a massive brain haemorrhage. As he lay unconscious in intensive care, I examined his CT scan with one of the attending surgeons who gently explained that the dark patch covering nearly a quarter of the image of his brain was a pool of blood. Although they had done their best to drain the area and stem the bleeding, the catastrophic nature of the damage was undeniable. The brutality of the evidence was clear – the full weight of it sent my stomach into freefall.

The results coming out of the climate science community at the moment are, even for experts, similarly alarming.

One common metric used to investigate the effects of global warming is known as “equilibrium climate sensitivity”, defined as the full amount of global surface warming that will eventually occur in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations compared to pre-industrial times. It’s sometimes referred to as the holy grail of climate science because it helps quantify the specific risks posed to human society as the planet continues to warm.

We know that CO2 concentrations have risen from pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to approximately 410 ppm today, the highest recorded in at least three million years. Without major mitigation efforts, we are likely to reach 560 ppm by around 2060.

When the IPCC’s fifth assessment report was published in 2013, it estimated that such a doubling of CO2 was likely to produce warming within the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C as the Earth reaches a new equilibrium. However, preliminary estimates calculated from the latest global climate models (being used in the current IPCC assessment, due out in 2021) are far higher than with the previous generation of models. Early reports are predicting that a doubling of CO2 may in fact produce between 2.8 and 5.8°C of warming. Incredibly, at least eight of the latest models produced by leading research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France are showing climate sensitivity of 5°C or warmer.

When these results were first released at a climate modelling workshop in March this year, a flurry of panicked emails from my IPCC colleagues flooded my inbox. What if the models are right? Has the Earth already crossed some kind of tipping point? Are we experiencing abrupt climate change right now?

The model runs aren’t all available yet, but when many of the most advanced models in the world are independently reproducing the same disturbing results, it’s hard not to worry.

When the UN’s Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015, it defined a specific goal: to keep global warming to well below 2°C and as close as possible to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (defined as the climate conditions experienced during the 1850–1900 period). While admirable in intent, the agreement did not impose legally binding limits on signatory nations and contained no enforcement mechanisms. Instead, each country committed to publicly disclosed Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce emissions. In essence, it is up to each nation to act in the public interest.

Even achieving the most ambitious goal of 1.5°C will see the further destruction of between 70 and 90 per cent of reef-building corals compared to today, according to the IPCC’s “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C”, released last October. With 2°C of warming, a staggering 99 per cent of tropical coral reefs disappear. An entire component of the Earth’s biosphere – our planetary life support system – would be eliminated. The knock-on effects on the 25 per cent of all marine life that depends on coral reefs would be profound and immeasurable.

So how is the Paris Agreement actually panning out?

In 2017, we reached 1°C of warming above global pre-industrial conditions. According to the UN Environment Programme’s “Emissions Gap Report”, released in November 2018, current unconditional NDCs will see global average temperature rise by 2.9 to 3.4°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century.

To restrict warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the world needs to triple its current emission reduction pledges. If that’s not bad enough, to restrict global warming to 1.5°C, global ambition needs to increase fivefold.

Meanwhile, the Australian federal government has a target of reducing emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, which experts believe is more aligned with global warming of 3 to 4°C. Despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s claim that we will meet our Paris Agreement commitments “in a canter”, the UNEP report clearly identifies Australia as one of the G20 nations that will fall short of achieving its already inadequate NDCs by 2030.

Even with the 1°C of warming we’ve already experienced, 50 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef is dead. We are witnessing catastrophic ecosystem collapse of the largest living organism on the planet. As I share this horrifying information with audiences around the country, I often pause to allow people to try and really take that information in.

Increasingly after my speaking events, I catch myself unexpectedly weeping in my hotel room or on flights home. Every now and then, the reality of what the science is saying manages to thaw the emotionally frozen part of myself I need to maintain to do my job. In those moments, what surfaces is pure grief. It’s the only feeling that comes close to the pain I felt processing the severity of my dad’s brain injury. Being willing to acknowledge the arrival of the point of no return is an act of bravery.

But these days my grief is rapidly being superseded by rage. Volcanically explosive rage. Because in the very same IPCC report that outlines the details of the impending apocalypse, the climate science community clearly stated that limiting warming to 1.5°C is geophysically possible.

Past emissions alone are unlikely to raise global average temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC report states that any further warming beyond the 1°C already recorded would likely be less than 0.5°C over the next 20 to 30 years, if all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions were reduced to zero immediately. That is, if we act urgently, it is technically feasible to turn things around. The only thing missing is strong global policy.

Although the very foundation of human civilisation is at stake, the world is on track to seriously overshoot our UN targets. Worse still, global carbon emissions are still rising. In response, scientists are prioritising research on how the planet has responded during other warm periods in the Earth’s history.

The most comprehensive summary of conditions experienced during past warm periods in the Earth’s recent history was published in June 2018 in one of our leading journals, Nature Geoscience, by 59 leading experts from 17 countries. The report concluded that warming of between 1.5 and 2°C in the past was enough to see significant shifts in climate zones, and land and aquatic ecosystems “spatially reorganize”.

These changes triggered substantial long-term melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, unleashing 6 to 13 metres of global sea-level rise lasting thousands of years.

Examining the Earth’s climatic past tells us that even between 1.5 and 2°C of warming sees the world reconfigure in ways that people don’t yet appreciate. All bets are off between 3 and 4°C, where we are currently headed. Parts of Australia will become uninhabitable, as other areas of our country become increasingly ravaged by extreme weather events.

This year the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society’s annual conference was held in Darwin, where the infamous Cyclone Tracy struck on Christmas Day in 1974, virtually demolishing the entire city. More than 70 per cent of the city’s buildings, including 80 per cent of its houses, were destroyed. Seventy-one people were killed and most of the 48,000 residents made homeless. Conditions were so dire that around 36,000 people were evacuated, many by military aircraft. It was a disaster of monumental proportions.

As I collated this information for my presentation, it became clear to me that Cyclone Tracy is a warning. Without major action, we will see tropical cyclones drifting into areas on the southern edge of current cyclone zones, into places such as south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales, where infrastructure is not ready to cope with cyclonic conditions.

These areas currently house more than 3.6 million people; we simply aren’t prepared for what is upon us.

There is a very rational reason why Australian schoolkids are now taking to the streets – the immensity of what is at stake is truly staggering. Staying silent about this planetary emergency no longer feels like an option for me either. Given how disconnected policy is from scientific reality in this country, an urgent and pragmatic national conversation is now essential. Other-
wise, living on a destabilised planet is the terrible truth that we will all face.

As a climate scientist at this fraught point in our history, the most helpful thing I can offer is the same professionalism that the doctor displayed late that night in Dad’s intensive-care ward. A clear-eyed and compassionate look at the facts.

We still have time to try and avert the scale of the disaster, but we must respond as we would in an emergency. The question is, can we muster the best of our humanity in time?

Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer based at the Australian National University. She is the author of Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia.

You know, the resolution introduced this February in the House of Representatives by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Edward Markey (D-MA). Unsurprisingly, the proposal has been roundly attacked by the right. But it’s stirred up some controversy on the left as well. You might imagine that labor unions and environmental organizations would be wholeheartedly for a massive federal investment in good jobs and a just transition away from fossil fuels. But does organized labor actually support or oppose the Green New Deal? What about environmental organizations? If you’re not even sure how to answer such questions, you’re not alone.

That 14-page resolution calls for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era.” Its purpose: to reduce U.S. carbon emissions to net zero within a decade, while guaranteeing significant numbers of new jobs and social welfare to American workers. Read it and you’ll find that it actually attempts to overcome historical divisions between the American labor and environmental movements by linking a call for good jobs and worker protection to obvious and much-needed environmental goals.

In the process, the GND proposal goes impressively far beyond the modest goals of the Paris Climate Accords and other international agreements. It supports specific, enforceable targets for bringing climate change under control, while drawing clear connections between social, labor, and environmental rights. Acknowledging in blunt terms the urgency of making systemic change on a rapidly warming planet, it calls for the kind of national mobilization Americans haven’t experienced since the end of the Second World War. Described that way, it sounds like something both the labor and environmental movements would naturally support without a second thought. There is, however, both a history of mistrust and real disagreement over issues, which both movements are now grappling with. And the media is doing its part by exaggerating labor’s opposition to the proposal, while ignoring what environmental organizations have to say.

One Green New Deal controversy focuses on the future role of fossil fuels in that plan. A number of environmental organizations believe that such energy sources have no place in our future, that they need to stay in the ground, period. They cite climate science and the urgent need to move rapidly and drastically to eliminate carbon emissions as the basis for such a conclusion. As it happens, the Green New Deal avoids directly challenging the fossil-fuel industry. In fact, it doesn’t even use the term “fossil fuels.”

From another perspective, some unions hope that new technologies like carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) will make those fuels more efficient and far cleaner. If the addition of carbon to the atmosphere could be reduced significantly or offset in some fashion, while humanity still burned natural gas, oil, or even coal, they say, jobs in those sectors could be preserved. And the unions have other concerns as well. They tend, for instance, to look skeptically on the GND’s promises of a “just transition” for displaced fossil-fuel workers like coal miners, given the devastation that has fallen on workers and their communities when industries have shut down in the past. They also fear that, without accompanying trade protections, polluting industries will simply export their emissions rather than reduce them.

Being more of a statement of purpose than an elaborated plan, the Green New Deal is short on both detail and answers when it comes to such issues. The actual roadmap to achieving its goals, the proposal states, “must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses.” Both unions and environmental organizations are already mobilizing to make sure their voices are part of the process.

The right wing was quick to mockingly publicize the Green New Deal not just as thoroughly unrealistic but as utterly un-American. Under the circumstances, perhaps it’s not surprising that a recent poll found 69% of Republicans but only 36% of Democrats had heard “a lot” about it. Similarly, 80% of Republicans already “strongly opposed” it, while only 46% of Democrats strongly supported it. And 40% of those polled said that they had heard “mostly negative” things about it, while only 14% had heard “mostly positive” things. One reason for this disparity: Fox News has devoted more time to the topic than any other television news outlet. And President Trump naturally pitched in, tweeting that the GND would eliminate “Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military.” Such claims, however fantastical, have already spread widely. But even the mainstream media has tended to play up the negative.

Both right-wing and mainstream media outlets have promoted the idea that unions are in firm opposition to the Green New Deal, frequently exaggerating and distorting the nature of what opposition there is. As for the concerns of environmentalists, readers would largely have to follow radical online publications or search out the websites of green organizations.

The Media, the Labor Movement, and the Green New Deal

The Washington Examiner, Fox News, and other right-wing outlets have waxed gleeful every time representatives of organized labor, including Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, have critiqued or expressed reservations about the Green New Deal, a topic on which the rest of the mainstream media has also run stories. Labor’s position is, however, significantly more complicated than any of them have acknowledged.

In an hour-long interview at the Economic Club of Washington in April — reported in the Examiner under the headline “AFL-CIO Opposes Green New Deal” — Trumka actually devoted less than 30 seconds to responding to a question on the topic. Asked if he supported the GND, he replied “Not as currently written… We weren’t part of the process, and so the workers’ interest really wasn’t completely figured into it. So we would want a whole lot of changes made so that workers and our jobs are protected in the process.” Not exactly a wholesale rejection.

His brief reaction echoed a March letter from the AFL-CIO Energy Committee to Ocasio-Cortez and Markey signed by the presidents of the United Mine Workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Among other things, it protested the absence of a labor voice in drafting the proposal. It also focused on the potential loss of jobs, as well as the fact that the GND was “not rooted in an engineering-based approach” to climate change, reflecting union hopes that improved technologies might allow the U.S. to meet climate goals while still extracting and burning fossil fuels (and so preserving jobs in that sector of the economy).

Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso, a long-time ally of the coal, oil, and gas industries, a climate-change denier, and a reliably anti-union vote in Congress, first noted the existence of the letter in a tweet headlined: “The @AFLCIO, which represents 12.5 million workers & includes 55 labor unions, slams the #GreenNewDeal.” Both the right wing and the mainstream media largely agreed with his interpretation. The Washington Post, for instance, headlined its article “AFL-CIO Criticizes the Green New Deal,” while the Examiner called the federation the “latest opponent” of the resolution.

Two facts were, however, missing in action in this reporting. First, the members of the AFL-CIO Energy Committee come from only eight unions, most of them deeply dependent on the fossil-fuel industry. In that sense, it doesn’t represent the federation as a whole. Second, the letter itself was more nuanced than the media coverage suggested and even its signers were far from unanimous. True, one of them, Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union of North America, claimed to be unalterably opposed to the GND, saying it was “exactly how not to” address infrastructure and climate change. Linking them, he wrote, would cause “social and economic devastation.” In contrast, in an article ignored by the media and headlined “Labor Champions a Green New Deal,” another signer, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, suggested that the letter actually supported the GND.

The Energy Committee’s letter laid out its own vision of how to address the coming crisis through:

“[the] development and deployment of technologies like solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric, carbon capture and utilization, battery storage, and high speed rail that limit or eliminate carbon emissions. We know that the increase in natural gas production has lowered emissions in the power sector and provided a new source of construction and manufacturing jobs. We must invest in energy efficiency in the industrial and commercial sectors, retrofits and upgrades to schools and public buildings, and to make our communities safe and resilient. All of these investments must be paired with strong labor and procurement standards to grow family-sustaining, middle class union jobs.”

Much of this sounds like it’s aligned with the language of the GND, which also calls for increased efficiency, retrofits, upgrades, and labor guarantees. The differences may seem subtle, but are worth mentioning. The Energy Committee emphasizes investment in new carbon capture and storage technology, while the GND advocates only “proven low-tech solutions that increase soil carbon storage, such as land preservation and afforestation.” For obvious reasons, CCUS is the preferred path of the fossil-fuel industry itself: it’s an aspirational technology that will require massive federal investment in big energy and holds out the promise (however illusory) that fossil fuels can continue to be extracted and burned. Many environmental organizations arguethat its development is not just a gift to fossil-fuel companies, but a pie-in-the-sky distraction from the real work of ending the use of oil, coal, and natural gas.

The Energy Committee’s letter also advocated increasing the use of natural gas as part of a path to lowering carbon emissions — and it’s true that natural gas does emit less carbon than burning either coal or oil. In fact, until recently, the shift from coal- to natural-gas-fired power plants played a role in slightly lowering U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Still, natural gas is a fossil fuel, and the more we burn, the more we contribute to climate change. It in no way falls into the GND’s category of “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.” And keep in mind that, even during a decade of reductions, the United States still emitted far more greenhouse gases per capita than most other countries and, in the last two years, its carbon dioxide emissions have begun to rise again. Our per capita emissions are still way above those of, say, Europe or Japan. Shifting to a slightly cleaner fossil fuel while continuing to burn so much carbon does little to avert catastrophic climate change.

These disputes are real. Nevertheless, the right wing caricatured the AFL-CIO response to paint the GND as an outlandish, anti-worker proposal.

From the left, the environmental organization Friends of the Earth also caricatured the AFL-CIO stance, writing: “With the energy committee’s position, the AFL joins climate deniers like the Koch brothers, the Republican Party, and Big Oil. We encourage the AFL and other unions within it to rethink this position.” Such language only exacerbates any labor-environmental divide, while ignoring union concerns that workers in affected industries will be paying the true price for lowering carbon emissions.

Friends of the Earth could have focused instead on Richard Trumka’s wordsat the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit. The Federation, he insisted, does not question climate science.

“I learned something about science in the mine. When the boss told us to ignore the deadly hazards of the job… that sagging timber over our heads… that Black Lung cough… science told us the truth. And today, again, science tells us the truth: climate change threatens our workers, our jobs, and our economy.”

He then asked one question: “Does your plan for fighting climate change ask more from sick, retired coal miners than it does from you and your family? If it does, then you need to think again.”

Or as Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants and a strong Green New Deal supporter, put it:

“The skepticism really comes from a place of generally being opposed to something that they believe is going to be an attack on their jobs, their livelihoods, and their communities… We have to do things like show communities that have been hurt that we actually mean what we say when we say ‘leave no worker behind.’”

For the unions, an emphasis on trade is also critical from both an environmental and a labor perspective. United Steelworkers President Gerard elaborated:

“The USW has aggressively demanded that climate policies include strong trade measures to ensure American jobs in energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries are not decimated by U.S. corporations evading pollution-control regulations by shipping factories to countries that ignore pollution.”

Why Labor Hesitates: A Tangled History

While a skeptic could read Gerard’s stance on trade as no more than a narrow self-interest in preserving jobs in the face of a planetary crisis, it’s also a crucial issue purely from a climate-change perspective. In addition to the shift from coal to natural gas, another factor in the slight decline in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions until recently was deindustrialization and the outsourcing of industrial production to Mexico, China, or Vietnam, which represents a thoroughly illusory reduction in carbon emissions. The atmosphere, of course, doesn’t care whether a factory is located in the United States or China, since total global emissions are what’s warming our planet.

While the AFL-CIO leadership has been cautious about the Green New Deal proposal, some unions have enthusiastically hailed it, among them public and service sector ones. With its two million members, the Service Employees International Union, not currently affiliated with the AFL-CIO, signed onwholeheartedly at its convention in early June. The 50,000-strong Association of Flight Attendants soon seconded that position as its president, Sara Nelson, explained that, in her industry, “it’s not the solutions to climate change that kill jobs. Climate change itself is the job killer,” since extreme weather and increased turbulence are grounding more flights and making air travel more dangerous.

Maine’s state federation and a number of labor councils followed suit, as have quite a few union locals. While the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, for instance, has been reluctant to endorse the Green New Deal, at least one of its locals has signed on. “We’re all about green jobs,” declared Lou Antonellis, the business manager of local 103 in Boston. “We’ve been promoting green technology for a long time.” (For a fuller list of labor endorsements, click here.)

There is a context — think of it as a deeply tangled history — that lies behind the complexity of labor’s response to the Green New Deal. As a start, labor in the United States has rarely spoken with a unified voice. In addition, the union movement is now distinctly on the defensive. The unionized share of the labor force has fallen from a high of 35% in the 1950s to less than 11% today, thanks to a combination of deindustrialization, automation, cutbacks, attacks on the public sector, and a virulent corporate backlash against unions that began in the 1970s. Mass production powerhouses like the auto workers, steel workers, and miners — all in sectors in which a fossil-fuel-free future is challenging to imagine — have been hit the hardest, a situation that provides some context for their suspicions about climate-change proposals.

The weak position of organized labor in the United States also contributes to the AFL-CIO’s opposition to the notion that the planet’s biggest polluting states need to make the biggest reductions. As a result, its stance on international climate agreements lags well behind the international union movement. The AFL-CIO, for instance, opposed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol because it required greater reductions from the biggest polluters and, since then, has consistently supported the U.S. government position that wealthy countries should not be required to meet emissions reductions standards unless poor countries do, too.

Environmental Organizations and the Green New Deal

You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, but environmental organizations are also divided on the Green New Deal. Many of them feel the proposal is too weak. Its language, they say, still allows for fossil-fuel extraction, use, and export, and for the expansion of nuclear energy.

The GND, after all, aims not at zero carbon emissions, but at “net-zero.” In translation, that means carbon dioxide emissions could continue as long as some kind of offset system was implemented to compensate for them. Even as the AFL-CIO Energy Committee argues that net-zero goes too far, many environmental organizations critique the GND’s unwillingness to opt for “zero emissions.” In fact, even zero emissions raises red flags for some environmentalists, who point out that nuclear power, despite its non-renewable nature and devastating potential environmental consequences, remains a zero-emissions form of energy production. Instead, many environmental organizations advocate that we move to energy sources that are both 100% renewable and zero emissions.

Like the unions, such radical environmental organizations complained that they were left out of the discussion leading up to the Green New Deal proposal and had no chance to push for moving more quickly to 100% renewables and what they call “100% decarbonization.” While they, like the unions, call for a “just transition,” their focus tends to be on indigenous and other front-line communities affected by fossil-fuel extraction as well as workers in those industries. Unlike the labor critiques, this environmental position has gotten scant attention in the mainstream media.

Many of the 600 signers of a letter outlining the radical environmental critique of the GND were small, local or faith-based organizations. Some of the large mainstream environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund were conspicuously absent from the signatories. Others like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, 350.org, the Sunrise Movement, the Rainforest Action Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Amazon Watch did, however, sign on. So, notably, did the Labor Network for Sustainability, the most radical voice in the labor movement working in support of climate-change action.

The Indigenous Environmental Network wrote:

“We remain concerned that unless some changes are made to the resolution, the Green New Deal will leave incentives by industries and governments to continue causing harm to Indigenous communities. Furthermore, as our communities who live on the frontline of the climate crisis have been saying for generations, the most impactful and direct way to address the problem is to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We can no longer leave any options for the fossil fuel industry to determine the economic and energy future of this country. And until the Green New Deal can be explicit in this demand as well as closing the loop on harmful incentives, we cannot fully endorse the resolution.”

Other organizations like 350.org signed on to the Green New Deal despite reservations. Greenpeace lauded it, while cautioning that “the oil, gas, and coal industry will fight this tooth and nail while continuing to dump pollution into our atmosphere. In order to get us to the green future we want, federal legislation MUST also halt any major oil, gas, and coal expansion projects like pipelines and new drilling.”

The Future of the GND

Despite challenges from parts of both the labor and the environmental movements, which its sponsors had undoubtedly hoped would be among its strongest supporters, Markey and Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution has gone a remarkably long way toward putting a genuine discussion of what an effective and just climate policy might look like in the public arena for the first time. For grassroots environmental organizations, labor unions, nongovernmental outfits, Congress, and the media, as heat waves multiply, the Arctic burns, and extreme weather of every sort becomes everyday news, the question of what is to be done is finally emerging as a subject to contend with, even in the 2020 presidential election campaign. In policy discussions, the urgency of the climate crisis is being acknowledged for the first time and the question of how to radically lower carbon emissions while prioritizing social justice is coming to the fore. These are exactly the debates that are needed in this all-hands-on-deck moment when human civilization is itself, for the first time in our history, in question.

Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts and a TomDispatchregular. Her most recent book is Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

With all its scandals, especially when it came to priestly sexual abuse, I lost my faith in the Catholic Church. Indeed, I would later learn that there had been a predatory priest in my own parish when I was young, a grim man who made me uneasy at the time, though back then I couldn’t have told you why. As for those warbirds, like so many Americans, I thrilled to their roar at air shows, but never gave any real thought to the bombs they were dropping in Vietnam and elsewhere, to the lives they were ending, to the destruction they were causing. Nor, at that age, did I ever consider their enormous cost in dollars or just how much Americans collectively sacrificed to have “top cover,” whether of the warplane or godly kind.

There were good and devoted priests in my Catholic diocese. There were good and devoted public servants in the U.S. military. Admittedly, I never seriously considered the priesthood, but I did sign up for the Air Force, surprising myself by serving in it for 20 years. Still, both institutions were then, and remain, deeply flawed. Both seek, in a phrase the Air Force has long used, “global reach, global power.” Both remain hierarchies that regularly promote true believers to positions of authority. Both demand ultimate obedience. Both sweep their sins under the rug. Neither can pass an audit. Both are characterized by secrecy. Both seem remarkably immune to serious efforts at reform. And both, above all, know how to preserve their own power, even as they posture and proselytize about serving a higher one.

However, let me not focus here on the one “holy catholic and apostolic church,” words taken from the “profession of faith” I recited during Mass each week in my youth. I’d prefer to focus instead on that other American holy church, the U.S. military, with all its wars and weapons, its worshipers and wingmen, together with its vision of global dominance that just happens to include end-of-world scenarios as apocalyptic as those of any imaginable church of true believers. I’m referring, of course, to our country’s staggeringly large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, just now being updated — the term seems to be “modernized” — to the tune of something like $1.7 trillion over the decades to come.

A Profession of Twenty-First-Century All-American Faith

“Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value” is a telling phrase linked to Joe Biden. And in those same terms, there’s no question what the American government values most: its military, to the tune of almost $1.5 trillion over the next two years (although the real number may well exceed $2 trillion). Republicans and Democrats agree on little these days, except support for spending on that military, its weaponry, its wars to come, and related national security state outlays.

In that context, I’ve been wondering what kind of “profession of faith” we might have to recite, if there were the equivalent of Mass for what has increasingly become our military church. What would it look like? Whom and what would we say we believed in? As a lapsed Catholic with a lot of practice in my youth professing my faith in the Church, as well as a retired military officer and historian, I have a few ideas about what such a “profession” might look like:

• We believe in wars. We may no longer believe in formal declarations of war (not since December 1941 has Congress made one in our name), but that sure hasn’t stopped us from waging them. From Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan to Iraq, the Cold War to the War on Terror, and so many military interventions in between, including Grenada, Panama, and Somalia, Americans are always fighting somewhere as if we saw great utility in thumbing our noses at the Prince of Peace. (That’s Jesus Christ, if I remember my Catholic catechism correctly.)

• We believe in weaponry, the more expensive the better. The underperforming F-35 stealth fighter may cost $1.45 trillion over its lifetime. An updated nuclear triad (land-based missiles, nuclear submarines, and strategic bombers) may cost that already mentioned $1.7 trillion. New (and malfunctioning) aircraft carriers cost us more than $10 billion each. And all such weaponry requests get funded, with few questions asked, despite a history of their redundancy, ridiculously high price, regular cost overruns, and mediocre performance. Meanwhile, Americans squabble bitterly over a few hundred million dollars for the arts and humanities.

• We believe in weapons of mass destruction. We believe in them so strongly that we’re jealous of anyone nibbling at our near monopoly. As a result, we work overtime to ensure that infidels and atheists (that is, the Iranians and North Koreans, among others) don’t get them. In historical terms, no country has devoted more research or money to deadly nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry than the United States. In that sense, we’ve truly put our money where our mouths are (and where a devastating future might be).

• We believe with missionary zeal in our military and seek to establish our “faith” everywhere. Hence, our global network of perhaps 800 overseas military bases. We don’t hesitate to deploy our elite missionaries, our equivalent to the Jesuits, the Special Operations forces to more than 130 countries annually. Similarly, the foundation for what we like to call foreign assistance is often military training and foreign military sales. Our present supreme leader, Pope Trump I, boasts of military sales across the globe, most notably to the infidel Saudis. Even when Congress makes what, until recently, was the rarest of attempts to rein in this deadly trade in arms, Pope Trump vetoes it. His rationale: weapons and profits should rule all.

• We believe in our college of cardinals, otherwise known as America’s generals and admirals. We sometimes appoint them (or anoint them?) to the highest positions in the land. While Trump’s generals — Michael Flynn, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly — have fallen from grace at the White House, America’s generals and admirals continue to rule globally. They inhabit proconsul-like positions in sweeping geographical commandsthat (at least theoretically) cover the planet and similarly lead commands aimed at dominating the digital-computer realm and special operations. One of them will head a new force meant to dominate space through time eternal. A “strategic” command (the successor to the Strategic Air Command, or SAC, so memorably satirized in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove) continues to ensure that, at some future moment, the U.S. will be able to commit mass genocide by quite literally destroying the world with nuclear weapons. Indeed, Pope Trump recently boasted that he could end America’s Afghan War in a week, apparently through the mass nuclear genocide of (his figure) 10 million Afghans. Even as he then blandly dismissed the idea of wiping that country “off the face of the earth,” he openly reflected the more private megalomania of those military professionals funded by the rest of us to think about “the unthinkable.” In sum, everything is — theoretically at least — under the thumbs of our unelected college of cardinals. Their overblown term for it is “full-spectrum dominance,” which, in translation, means they grant themselves god-like powers over our lives and that of our planet (though the largely undefeated enemies in their various wars don’t seem to have acknowledged this reality).

• We believe that freedom comes through obedience. Those who break ranks from our militarized church and protest, like Chelsea Manning, are treated as heretics and literally tortured.

• We believe military spending brings wealth and jobs galore, even when it measurably doesn’t. Military production is both increasingly automated and increasingly outsourced, leading to far fewer good-paying American jobs compared to spending on education, infrastructure repairs of and improvements in roads, bridges, levees, and the like, or just about anything else for that matter.

• We believe, and our most senior leaders profess to believe, that our military represents the very best of us, that we have the “finest” one in human history.

• We believe in planning for a future marked by endless wars, whether against terrorism or “godless” states like China and Russia, which means our military church must be forever strengthened in the cause of winning ultimate victory.

• Finally, we believe our religion is the one true faith. (Just as I used to be taught that the Catholic Church was the one true church and that salvation outside it was unattainable.) More pacific “religions” are dismissed as weak, misguided, and exploitative. Consider, for example, the denunciation of NATO countries that refuse to spend more money on their militaries. Such a path to the future is heretical; therefore, they must be punished.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Keep in mind that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, or so I was taught as a boy anyway. One might say that the beginning of U.S. militarism is simply fear, whether of terrorists, immigrants, Muslims, Communists, or other enemies of the moment. If Americans continue to be wracked with such fears, they’ll undoubtedly continue to profess their faith in the military as our country’s noblest protectors, too.

Where does such a profession of faith in wars and weapons end? Is there even a terminus of any sort other than destruction?

Those of us who endured war games and hair-trigger nuclear alerts during the Cold War have long had apocalyptic fears of such endings in the back of our minds. Under Donald Trump, they’ve come back with a vengeance. Unlike many Christians, I don’t envision Christ returning to pick up the irradiated Elect after a nuclear version of Armageddon. But that, of course, is a true worst-case scenario. A more likely ending is a slow-motion collapse of America’s imperial empire and the church of the military that goes with it, the resulting chaos possibly leading to a Second Coming, not of Christ but of medieval levels of meanness and misery.

Or, maybe, just maybe, we might start anew by questioning our militarized profession of faith. We might begin to realize that our warrior-church isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We might begin to seek meaning and salvation not through wars and weaponry, not through generals and their admirers, not through impossible dreams of total dominance, but through compassion and a desire for global justice.

I confess that I long ago turned my back on the Catholic Church of my youth, but I haven’t turned my back on Christianity and the wisdom it can offer. For what does it profit a country if it gains the whole world yet loses its soul? (In our case, of course, it might be more appropriate to say: For what does it profit a country if it gains nothing from its wars and military mindset yet loses its soul?) The more we Americans profess our faith in warriors, weapons, and wars, the more we endanger our nation’s collective soul. There’s a reason, after all, that Jesus placed the peacemakers, not the warriors, among the children of God.

A TomDispatch regular, William Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), historian, and recovering Catholic. His personal blog is Bracing Views.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

What does it mean to be extremely online? It mostly is as straightforward as it sounds. Generally, activities such as spending too much time on the web, scrolling through social media feeds out of habit, checking email or notifications dozens of times a day, all are symptoms of the extremely online person. Particularly, too much smartphone use is a devastating problem.

There is also a more specific version, which both mainstream journalists and alternative media commentators employ on both the right and left: constantly posting every news update; sharing a gazillion times every day each and every version and opinion on a current event/post/tweet about the lead news stories of the day, whether it is something interesting about global warming or something as ignorant and banal as the president’s tweets; prognosticating about the presidential election a year and a half before it happens;  using dubious polls or statistics to bolster weak arguments; and basically reacting to every media spectacle with behavior including but not limited to juvenile tantrums, posturing, faux outrage, jaded cynicism, pompous virtue-signalling, ironic detachment, and narcissistic self-aggrandizement.

Quite a few alternative media commentators tend to replicate and mimic the 24/7 spectacle that is mainstream news. That is to say, many have internalized the messaging style; the hyper-fast response time to current events…generally speaking, the norms of mainstream commentary and thus bourgeois values are being internalized. The more time spent posting for an online following on social media, the stronger the pull of an affinity to a certain type of power. Digital hierarchies become hardened, and the bourgeoisification of the web intensifies. As we shall see below, even those who identify as anti-capitalist or socialist are not immune.

The types of online behaviors regarding political debate exhibited above may be the exception, but with the expansion of social media along with its hyper-stratified tendencies, it may soon become the norm.

What research has shown is that digital literacy creates a path towards more open attitudes towards digital technology, which can be called Technophilia (1). This research points towards entertainment as one of the key drivers in promoting positive emotions and behavior when using digital technology, which results in a positive feedback loop leading to more intense and rewarding use.

If you extrapolate from this a bit, I’d suggest that the top online influencers in various political schools of thought will be more predisposed towards promoting digital technology, simply because they are benefitting from it financially. We have a situation where the most popular commentators are economically tied to social media, but there are plenty of reasons to believe that their naïve optimism regarding the power of digital media will not stop there, but rather, the naivety extends to industrial society as a whole.

The social media environment creates a logic of its own, just as most modern technology does. One obvious materialist analogy is to the medical industry. As long as for-profit companies are allowed to dominate pharmaceutical and research endeavors, the logic of the system will mean that more people are made sick, anxious, depressed, etc., to make more money for corporations. With social media, the logic of its internal dynamics precludes nuanced, informed, lengthy public deliberation in favor of sound-bite quotes, sloganeering, and focusing on personalities, along with the most shallow forms of identity politicking. Its logic depends on divisive, sensational, hateful, and ultimately fascistic rhetoric dominating political discourse.

Since the scope of Technophilia broadens and intensifies with continued use of labor-saving devices made under exploitative conditions, it ultimately results in many self-proclaimed anti-capitalists falling under the sway of propaganda emanating from mainstream technological society, as we shall see below.

Class is never taken seriously in our society. In many rural areas around the USA broadband internet access is still out of reach, and is expensive for many poor urban Americans as well, creating a digital divide. Thus it is no wonder that the rich and middle-classes are more “open” towards the web and smart-phone use. They derive more pleasure from them in terms of entertainment, increased digital literacy, and monetary success. The flip side of being more open is being more immature and blind to dangers, however. In contrast the poor and working classes respond to the digital life-world with more skepticism, as the above study indicates.

My contention here is that this digital literacy creates a new form of “digital spectacle” for technophilic Westerners on both the political right and left, especially for the middle classes. The elite implicitly understand that in a society based on artificial scarcity, only a certain amount of online influencers can vie for position in digital media. The professional and managerial classes, and their children ensconced in privilege, all too easily fall under the sway of the competitive forces in online media as well.

The poor and working class understand that in regarding to digital media, they are getting crushed under the weight of start-up costs, social capital which is either unobtainable or sleazy to get, and various online fees and hurdles to make it in a new rigged game of digital society. The digital divide is becoming a chasm, because it too it based on market forces.

As alluded to above, election cycle mania, the fascination with polling data, as well as fixation of GDP, job growth, and many other factors which the mainstream media focuses on are now internalized across the political spectrum, included much of Western Left analysis. This isn’t to say that socialists overly reliant on statistics and polling are wrong; simply that it’s mostly ineffective, as the tone is technocratic, academic, and is filled with the jargon that turns off the average citizen, even some of what is written here. I am not immune, this is a self-criticism as well, as the lack of engagement and overly analytical framework extends throughout journalism and academia across the entire social body.

Most of this behavior has been internalized and learned from mainstream media, which creates a market and manufactured interest in nonsensical statistics and banal news trivia, as Neil Postman points out: “Statistics create an enormous amount of completely useless information, which compounds the always difficult task of location that which is useful to a culture. This is more than a case of ‘information-overload.’ It is a matter of information-trivia, which has the effect of placing all information on an equal level.” (2)

Once data becomes transmuted into a sort of holy substance, it is wielded by both the political Right and Left as a weapon: statistics back their cause and any deviation from the issue is irrational and illogical. This sets the table for false binaries and political polarization across the spectrum of political thought.

What being extremely online has done is given the very few big “influencers” in mainstream media as well as alternative spaces huge egos and warped their ability to think critically. This is most clearly seen in our “troll in chief”, Donald Trump. Time, space, and perception are distorted and it has led to a predictable and unimaginative online discourse.

When a post appears on social media, often if you know the contributor and some of the followers/friends, you can glean and predict what the reaction is going to be and who is going to say what. Depending on the news of the day, I can guestimate what the “takes” will be of my various friends and those I follow. I admit this can be sometimes comforting given the horrendous news we deal with daily. However, it also kind of implies that real people are reacting, thinking, and forming commentary algorithmically, as if our thoughts now mimic apps like Spotify and Pandora which play tracks from one’s favorite musicians; or at least similar artists which won’t offend the listener’s taste. How banal and horrifying all at once.

With podcasts or Youtube videos, as well as message boards, one can see political commentary forming a script, where individuals rattle off reels of their “greatest hits” of points, observations, and reflections, rather than engaging with the subject matter. No matter how hard we try, social media can never replicate oral traditions and real-life conversations. Dysfunction is baked into modern capitalist-based digital communication.

How being extremely online works to the advantage of the few at the expense of the many is easy to ascertain. We are told we are living in an “attention economy” and the extremely online predicate their behavior on this premise, even those who ostensibly identify as anti-capitalist. The extremely online mimic the 24/7 blather of mainstream media discourse, because nothing is too insignificant not to post, nothing too small not to get out in the lead as being “on top of” any given issue or current event. This is the sort of competitive striving absolutely essential to capitalism.

Outrage, shock, compassion, repulsion, empathy, and even “rational, objective” sober media analysis vie for our attention spans, and the extremely online prey upon those among their followers who due to loneliness, emotional issues, or escapism already spend too much time online, and are thus more vulnerable to screen addiction, sensationalist appeals, fear-mongering, gossip, consumer trends, etc.

Of course the mainstream outlets have been deeply complicit, as it suits their financial interests. As seen by the CNN executive during the 2016 election gloating that the insane coverage of Trump was horrible for the country, but good for their bottom line, or something to that effect.

As for the reaction time of news sources, and thus political commentary, it may strain one’s memory to recall, but only twenty years ago any major news stories that broke after the evening news broadcast did not appear until the next morning, nearly an eight to twelve hour delay.

Now, every media outlet is constantly bombarding us with every update and crisis in real time. The main reaction to this (notwithstanding the many sincere alternative media, community-level, and individual critiques) in the collective consciousness is shock and numbness, and it only compounds daily.

Now, many leftists tend to unconsciously mimic the same tendencies of mainstream media. This is done by copying the tactics of mainstream online influencers who use marketing, PR, and advertising firms to get ahead. This is done by pandering to the crowd and reacting to every Trump and establishment faux pas, whether Democrat or Republican. This is done by opportunistic virtue signaling and online activism viewed as a substitute for in person organizing. The virtual becomes more real than the real. Egos become more tied to the digital social environs, a derivative of a derivative.

Apparently the twisted logic is that if the extremely online use social media as a way for exposure and fame, it’s worth it. Social media becomes a tool, a means to an ends to uproot the system. The downside tends to be that we become instruments of social media itself, not a new phenomenon in Western Civilization.

Posting dozens of times a day on social media simply is not in anyone’s best interest. It is in the best interest of capital, however. Why else would one post 30, 50, a hundred times a day if not to create an attention economy around oneself, to gain digital “followers” whose gaze will be diverted from possibly more important issues closer and dearer to their hearts…as well as to one’s family and friends, one’s material reality and ability to help the vulnerable and those in need close to them.

What should be obvious is every moment spent online is time away from the natural world and thus a huge time-suck where we exist as zombified, trance-induced crazy people for more information, useless updates, more drivel-data and bits of trivialities that do not change a thing.

Being online means being on the grid and the computing power needed to keep our information superhighway running is increasing like a runaway train. Despite the relatively low cost of powering one’s individual smartphone and computer/laptop/tablet etc., the internet via server farms, cell towers, etc. uses approximately 10% of the world’s total electricity consumption and the total energy use for the web increases by about 20% each year. The rollout of harmful 5G technology and internet of things only will accelerate the technological dystopia we’re enmeshed in.

Regardless of what technophiles and delusional people want to think, modern industrial civilization is a fad. We are going to have to go through an extended period of degrowth and lowering our power consumption and that will have to include less internet use. Most especially, too much smartphone use must be addressed head-on. Smartphones need to go away, for good, and it’s not too hard to imagine a workable society without them. It existed twenty years ago.

This should be simple enough to understand, but again, chronic habitual internet use and social media creates a form of addiction which leads to denialism. For those that do partake in nuanced forms of online discussion, in message boards or even in comment sections, yet limit, self-reflect, and moderate your use, congratulations. This is not directed at you. This is written is response to the serial social media addicts. For those in this group, I’ll posit that one of the root reasons for this malady is that our addict-Left comrades unconsciously identify with the system.

This isn’t meant to sound callous, these people are suffering to different degrees, and I do empathize. Boredom, loneliness, and lack of in-person human connection are endemic to our culture and these factors shouldn’t be minimized when understanding addictive behavior.

Part of the problem is the speed of society now. It’s understandable, people want to keep up with events and chime in with their two cents. It’s a human reaction. Part of the problem is also that the people who have convinced themselves they are part of the solution remain part of the problem. Mainly, because they are unable or unwilling to critically examine the technophilic ideology at the heart of the capitalist-based internet.

The “Left-opinion makers”, as the Situationists were wont to call them, thus fall hopelessly further into the spectacle.

Caveat

Social media use is not a horrible thing in and of itself. Although much of its use tends to replicate competitive and hierarchical relations, there are alternative visions of what the web could be like. Internet and social media companies could have been, and should be now, directed through public funding and non-profit models decades ago to engage and educate working class people, to provide jobs and new opportunities, and to raise the consciousness of the public sphere. This could easily be done even within the confines of a social-democratic system.

What we have now is a web and social media landscape that is largely, but not completely irredeemable. Again, this does not mean one should completely ignore it, only that social media should be seen as a vessel to get people out of their homes and into the streets: like we saw in Tunisia, in Egypt and many other nations during the Arab Spring.

I don’t know if this metaphor is useful at all, but social media could be used as a sort of liberatory portals or gateways, networks to awaken the masses from their slumber, to take them out of the virtual and into the “natural” world. Web and social media technology can be used to “tune in” people to serious movement-building, to Marx, to environmental protests, to issues like climate change and nuclear war, through digital communication; but eventually there has to be a period when citizens step through to the other side and “drop out” to take the struggle onto the public squares. The thing is, many of those involved in just such struggles seem hopelessly “addicted” or too enamored with the power of internet technology itself, much like what has happened with the fetishization of the internal combustion engine, the printing press, the personal computer, and many other examples.

The Professional Bloviators

Sadly, quite a few self-professed anti-capitalist public intellectuals seem to be ensnared by bourgeois ideology today. Many rightly view our political and economic systems as hopelessly corrupt, yet still cling to the privilege, perks, and soapboxes offered by their academic positions (tied to student and faculty exploitation, which is either conveniently unmentioned or under-emphasized), viewing their own credentials as somehow a basis for a true and fair meritocracy, as if academia is somehow above the vagaries of blind chance, sheer luck, white privilege, and jockeying for power.

Any academic worth their salt should be either heavily insinuating, or outright stating to their students, that college is a huge waste of time and money, depending on how much “free speech” they can actually afford to say without getting canned. Universities function today as huge indoctrination camps to train the next generation of good “liberals” (or good Germans, it might be more appropriate to say) who will never question or threaten to overturn the system: the professional-managerial upper-middle class technocrats, financiers, doctors, lawyers, etc.

Thus, even some dissident academics manage to paint themselves into a corner with ineffectual arguments backing the college system, turf wars, theatrical posturing, lack of engagement with the working class, etc. This has all been said before, but again, it may be worth repeating. For instance, in 2011 in the US there were some “socialists” and “anarchists” supporting the US/UK/French bombing of Libya, and a few who equivocated and vacillated, citing the responsibility to protect civilians, parroting State Department propaganda. Oy vey.

The internet and social media has accelerated this trend, making things worse among the wider population, as even those with core anti-capitalist ideas fall into internecine bickering. This is peak aspersionary politics, or passive-aggressiveness if you prefer, which apes wider bourgeois culture. To recast Allen Ginsberg’s opening line of Howl for today, and I only mean this half-jokingly, we can think of something like: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by social media.” Some Left twitterati self-identify as being “extremely online”: brazenly, unashamedly, and unreflectively revealing the depths of their own screen addictions.

Aldous Huxley described the brain as a “reducing valve”, yet I’ve not heard a fully-encompassing phrase for the situation created by a digital milieu where web algorithms which reinforce harmful beliefs and behavior, prey on our addictions, amplify hatred, sow discord, polarize media and community; by devices that seize and sustain our attention long after we realize it no longer serves our interests; by neurotransmitter hijacking, empathy-deadening, critical-thinking atrophying smartphones and media built explicitly to mine us for money, use our thoughts/photos/creativity/etc. as free content while social media companies and those who advertise on the platforms make billions, and generally  to simultaneously distract, outrage, and numb us. “Limbic capitalism” (3) is the closest term I’ve come across, but perhaps the more brutal, if less artful phrase is more apt: mind control.

There is less and less nuance and space for radical dissent as many left-leaning alternative media and social media influencers close ranks and offer only very mild criticism of social democratic policies. Again, the striving is self-evident, is it not?

These are symptoms of unhealthy minds, formatted/manipulated/brainwashed to choose between false binaries no matter what contradictions follow from the starting premises of whatever topic is at hand. For instance, take the so-called socialist opportunists who offer very mild public criticism of the Green New Deal, or those who don’t mention the huge cuts in military spending needed to give the deal teeth, so as not to seem confrontational or radical, or perhaps to save what’s left of their perceived (yet, worthless) reputations. In other words, their take is, we don’t have time to build real socialism, let’s form a coalition with the new social democrats, as if that didn’t end in complete disaster over 100 years ago.

Paths Forward

Now, of course it’s true that reform can indeed broaden and deepen the prospects for revolution, and it is not an either/or proposition, as Rosa Luxembourg explained so well. Yet, we cannot let the crass opportunism and striving for attention on digital media to enact important reforms derail us from steeping workers, students, minorities, and women in the rich intellectual tradition woven by the anti-capitalist Left.

Right in the introduction to the Social Reform or Revolution, Luxemburg states: “The entire strength of the modern labor movement rests on theoretic knowledge.” Despite big advances in the last three years, clearly there is a need for the deep type of work involving the framework for constructing and advancing a truly emancipatory Green New Deal, as well as fighting for open borders, the abolition of prisons and police, and the military-industrial complex.

Anything less than a systematic and intersectional approach will do a huge disservice to the movement and will replicate the cloistered, privileged milieu which unduly benefits the extremely online and their techno-utopian backers.

Reform is welcome because it can lead to tolerance, and its eventual byproduct, solidarity. Solidarity is a radiating emotional, behavioral, and intellectual stance from which flow social bonding and necessary healing mechanisms for our culture. The main ideals of environmental, social, and economic justice revolve around solidarity. Which gives us space to breathe, and here I’m reminded of Eric Garner’s last words. The minorities and the poor in this country have been suffocating for centuries. With no mass base, even the good intentions of those in Congress, such as the “Squad” who advocate for redistributive measures, will be for naught.

If some of today’s US socialist “thought leaders” are so spineless to feign from even mentioning how the prospect of renewable energy corporations left in the hands of private control will end in utter disaster, or to simply pretend it won’t, there’s not much left to say to these people. Then there are US socialists who advocate insanely for nuclear power. Forget theoretical knowledge, this is basic common sense, nuclear energy is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. If there is intimidation by peers, or simply self-censorship, or to maintain a lifestyle by promoting such anti-life policies on the Left, well, it’s entirely understandable, predictable, and wretched. It’s also an abdication of responsibility: clearly these are bourgeois stances.

To sum up, pointing fingers at the ruling classes’ blatantly obvious sociopathic tendencies provides the convenient scapegoats and diversionary tactics from confronting the holes in many of our own thinking.

Back to theoretic knowledge for a minute. First, we have to take into account the anti-intellectual climate here in the US. One encounters quite a few semi-influential figures, especially on the right but increasingly in anti-capitalist outlets, which are quick to criticize French postmodernists, or the Frankfurt School, or various strains of thought which are deemed too obscure or weighty.

There’s no time for theory, is one of their complaints, because it is too time-consuming or turns off too many people. So whatever is too complicated for the gate-keeping digital left-liberal editors is thrown by the wayside, but it ain’t clear where this process is headed other than an even more dumbed-down society. What is clear is we are dealing with lightweights. It’s pretty paternalistic too, because the subtext seems to be that regular people are just too dumb to be introduced to “Theory” and serious academic work.

The other side to this is that many of the same people who are wonderful at explaining theory or offering political critique, many of the “the Left opinion makers”, have absolutely no environmental or ecological knowledge base. You wouldn’t trust them with a shovel; never mind on a factory floor, a communal farm, starting an activist movement or union, or organizing a cooperative. The materialism part of the equation never kicked in, it’s a function of middle-class squeamishness that needs to be squashed.

Another point I want to mention is the US and UK analytic preference for social critique and philosophical investigation, in contrast to the continental style. And I cannot emphasize enough that the dominant Anglophone trend is to turn socialism into an equation, a formula. Put another way, to offer models of governance and even to organize in the technocratic style. Not only that, but to uncritically accept a model for the future based on unrestrained use of technology, with very little understanding of environmental impacts,  conservation, or basic ecology in general.

We see this techno-fetishism in some of the ideas floating around such as “Fully Automated Luxury Communism”, notably Aaron Bastani’s recent work of the same title. Bastani is close to Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. And look who gives a plug for the book, Bhaskar Sunkara. And if you follow these connections down the rabbit hole you’ll see Sunkara’s most recent work gets a plug from Ezra Klein of Vox. So there are all these ties from UK socialists to US democratic socialists to elitist technocratic liberals. And what is in common is a shared naivety regarding technology.

Again, ideas around degrowth are never discussed by the automation admirers. It’s clearly a total dismissal of the idea to preserve their own affluence. Total energy use in the West will have to decrease immensely. The economy, which is inexorably tied to energy use, will have to contract. Nearly all large buildings will have to be retrofitted to remain cooler in the summer and warmer in winter using natural insulation methods. Many large office buildings, skyscrapers, malls, etc. will simply have to be abandoned because there is no way to heat/cool them even remotely efficiently. Modern agriculture will have to be dismantled and converted to decentralized permaculture community-worked gardens.

None of this is even mentioned by the automators. This is because their thinking, their ways of being online, have already started to slip into the manner of the automaton. Which many people acknowledged, where Brzezinski dispassionately saw it as an inevitability of modern life, and famously Marcuse saw it as a downright horror, in his One Dimensional Man.

The majority of the world can see through all of this talk of AI, robot, quantum computer, 5G drivel. Most people understand, even if they cannot quite communicate their ideas as coldly or eloquently as the technophiles, that the mind cannot be reduced to a mechanical device or a computer processor. As below, so above, society cannot be viewed or treated as a factory floor for renewable energy powered robots to bring us to some Jetsons or Star Trek lifestyle.

The opportunities for control and manipulation of minds have already grown at a frightening pace in the past fifty years. Even further automation would simply open up more avenues for alienation and exploitation. Here’s how. A pro-automation society would be more open to new hierarchies created by divides among the digitally literate, could empower the pharmaceutical companies to create dangerous new drugs to control moods and perception, could open up more geo-engineering of the planet, to more spying and tracking of individuals, and generally more of the full-spectrum digitization of our lives.

This isn’t to suggest that those among the extremely online don’t have any good ideas, or that the FALCers don’t either. It’s simply a reminder that some of these people are being very naïve in regard to the future of technology, some are materially benefitting from the current toxic social media environment and are therefore biased, and others do not realize the internal logic of the system which engenders some of the very barriers they wish to destroy. In most cases high technology acts as a drug, with an intelligence of its own, and once you’re on the ride you don’t control where you’re going to get off.

Notes:

1.) Ronit, Purian, “Technophilia: A New Model For Technology Adoption” (2011). UK Academy for Information Systems Conference Proceedings 2011. Paper 41.

2.) Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage Books, New York, 1992.

3.) Courtwright, David. “How ‘Limbic Capitalism’ Preys on our Addicted Brains” Quillette. www.quillette.com/2019/05/31/how-limbic-capitalism-preys-on-our-addicted-brains/. Date Accessed 14 Aug. 2019.

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. He is author of the ebook Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. His articles have appeared online at CounterPunch, Global Research, Countercurrents, Gods & Radicals, Dissident Voice, The Ecologist, and more. You can email him at wilhawes@gmail.com. Visit his website williamhawes.wordpress.com.

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For two years, members of my little Episcopal church joined other neighbors in a weekly evening vigil outside the Mission police station, demanding that the district attorney bring charges against the men who killed Amílcar. When the medical examiner’s office continued to drag its feet on releasing its report, we helped arrange for a private autopsy, which revealed what witnesses had already reported — that he had indeed been running away from those officers when they shot him. In the end, the San Francisco district attorney declined to prosecute the police for the killing, although the city did reach a financial settlement with his family back in Guatemala.

Still, this isn’t really an article about Amílcar, but about why he — like so many hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, Hondurans, and El Salvadorans in similar situations — was in the United States in the first place. It’s about what drove 225,570 of them to be apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in 2018 and 132,887 of them to be picked up at or near the border in a single month — May — of this year. As Dara Lind observed at Vox, “This isn’t a manufactured crisis, or a politically engineered one, as some Democrats and progressives have argued.”

It is indeed a real crisis, not something the Trump administration simply cooked up to justify building the president’s wall. But it is also absolutely a manufactured crisis, one that should be stamped with the label “made in the U.S.A.” thanks to decades of Washington’s interventions in Central American affairs. Its origins go back at least to 1954 when the CIA overthrew the elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz. In the 1960s, dictatorships would flourish in that country (and elsewhere in the region) with U.S. economic and military backing.

When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Central Americans began to rise up in response, Washington’s support for right-wing military regimes and death squads, in Honduras and El Salvador in particular, drove thousands of the inhabitants of those countries to migrate here, where their children were recruited into the very U.S. gangs now devastating their countries. In Guatemala, the U.S. supported successive regimes in genocidal wars on its indigenous Mayan majority. To top it off, climate change, which the United States has done the most of any nation to cause (and perhaps the least to forestall or mitigate), has made subsistence agriculture increasingly difficult to sustain in many parts of Central America.

U.S. Actions Have Central American Consequences

Scholars who study migration speak of two key explanations for why human beings leave their homes and migrate: “pull” and “push” factors. Pull factors would include the attractions of a new place, like economic and educational opportunities, religious and political liberties, and the presence there of family, friends, or community members from back home. Push factors driving people from their homes would include war; the drug trade; political, communal, or sexual violence; famine and drought; environmental degradation and climate change; and ordinary, soul-eating poverty.

International law mandates that some, but not all, push factors can confer “refugee” status on migrants, entitling them to seek asylum in other countries. This area of humanitarian law dates from the end of World War II, a time when millions of Europeans were displaced, forcing the world to adjust to huge flows of humanity. The 1951 Geneva Convention defines a refugee as anyone who has “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…”

Almost three-quarters of a century later, that legal definition still theoretically underlies U.S. policy toward refugees, but this country has always welcomed some refugees and not others. In the 1980s, for instance, Salvadorans fleeing U.S.-supported death squads had almost no hope of getting asylum here. On the other hand, people leaving the communist island of Cuba had only to put a foot on U.S. territory to receive almost automatic asylum.

Because of its origins in post-war Europe, asylum law has a blind spot when it comes to a number of forces now pushing people to leave their homes. It’s unfortunate that international law makes a distinction, for instance, between people who become refugees because of physical violence and those who do so because of economic violence. A well-founded fear of being shot, beaten, or raped may get you asylum. Actual starvation won’t.

Today, a number of push factors are driving Central Americans from their homes, especially (once again) in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Key among them are political corruption and repression, the power of the drug cartels, and climate change — all factors that, in significant ways, can be traced back to actions of the United States.

According to World Bank figures, in 2016 (the latest year available), El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world, 83 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Honduras took second place with 57 per 100,000, while tenth place went to Guatemala, with 27. Mexico wasn’t far behind with 19. (By comparison, with 5.3 per 100,000, the United States was far down the list.)

By any measure, the three Central American nations of what’s sometimes called “the Northern Triangle” are dangerous places to live. Here’s why.

Political repression and violent corruption: Honduras, for example, has long been one of Central America’s poorest and economically most unequal countries. In the 1980s, the United States supported a military-run government there that routinely “disappeared” and tortured its opponents, while the CIA used the country as a training ground for the Contras it backed,who were then fighting the Sandinistas across the border in Nicaragua (who had recently deposed their own U.S.-backed dictator).

By the turn of this century, however, things were changing in Honduras. In 2006, José Manuel Zelaya became president. Although he’d run on a conservative platform, he promptly launched a program of economic and political reforms. These included free public education, an increased minimum wage, low-interest loans for small farmers, the inclusion of domestic workers in the social security system, and a number of important environmental regulations.

In 2009, however, a military coup deposed Zelaya, installing Porfirio Lobo in his place. Four of the six officers who staged the coup were graduates of the U.S.’s notorious School of the Americas, where for decades Latin American military officers and police were trained in the ways of repression and torture.

Washington may not have initiated the coup, but within days Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had given it her seal of approval, supporting that power grab in defiance of the Organization of American States. Since then, murder rates have skyrocketed, while corruption and drug trafficking have flourished as the drug cartels and local governing bodies as well as the national government melded into a single countrywide nightmare. In a recent New York Times report, for instance, Sonia Nazario detailed what this has meant just for public transportation where anyone who operates a taxi or a bus must pay a daily tax (double on special days like Christmas) amounting to 30% to 40% of the driver’s income. But this isn’t a government tax. It goes to MS-13, the 18th Street gang (both of which arose in the United States), or sometimes both. The alternative, as Nazario reports, is death:

“Since 2010, more than 1,500 Hondurans working in transportation have been murdered — shot, strangled, cuffed to the steering wheel and burned alive while their buses are torched. If anyone on a bus route stops paying, gangs kill a driver — any driver — to send a message.”

The police, despite having all the facts, do next to no­thing. Violence and corruption have only become more intense under Honduras’s current president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who returned to office in what was probably a stolen election in 2017. Although the Organization of American States called for a redo, the Trump administration hastily recognizedHernández and life in Honduras continued on its murderous course.

The drug business: Along with coups and Coca-Cola, Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is another U.S. import to Central America. Although Donald Trump likes to cast most refugees as dark and dangerous gang members from south of the border, MS-13 had its roots in Los Angeles, California, among Salvadorans who had fled the U.S.-backed dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. When young people who grew up in Los Angeles returned to El Salvador at the end of that country’s civil war, MS-13 went with them. What had begun as a neighborhood street gang created to protect Salvadoran youth from other gangs in that city has now grown into a vast criminal enterprise of its own — as has the 18th Street gang, or Calle 18, which also came out of Los Angeles, following a similar path.

Without a major market for their product, drug cartels would have vastly less power. And we all know where that market lies: right here in the United States. Fifty years of this country’s “war on drugs” turn out to have providedthe perfect breeding ground for violent outlaw drug cartels, while filling our own jails and prisons with more inmates than any other country holds. Yet it has done next to nothing to stanch addiction in this country. These days, if they remain in their own lands, many young people in the Northern Triangle face a stark choice between joining a gang and death. Not surprisingly, some of them opt to risk the trip to the U.S. instead. Many could have stayed home if it weren’t for the drug market in this country.

Climate Change and Environmental Degradation: Even if there were no corrupt regimes, no government repression, and no drug wars, people would still be fleeing Central America because climate change has made their way of life impossible. As what the New York Times calls the biggest carbon polluter in history, the United States bears much of the responsibility for crop failures there. The Northern Triangle has long been subject to periods of drought and flooding as part of a natural alternation of the El Niño and La Niña phenomena in the Pacific Ocean. But climate change has prolonged and deepened those periods of drought, forcing many peasants to abandon their subsistence farms. Some in Guatemala are now facing not just economic hardship but actual starvation thanks to a heating planet.

All along a drought corridor that runs from Nicaragua through Guatemala, the problem is a simple lack of water. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani reports that, in El Salvador, many people now spend their days in search of enough water to keep their families alive. Even where (unsafe) river water is available, the price — in money or sex — extracted by the gangs for using it is often too high for most women to pay, so they are forced to rely on distant municipal taps (if they even exist). While El Salvadorans live with strict water rationing, the U.S.-based multinational Coca Cola remains immune to such rules. That company continues to take all the water it needs to produce and sell its fizzy concoction locally, while pouring foul-smelling effluvia into nearby rivers.

In Honduras, on the other hand, the problem is often too much water, as rising sea levels eat away at both its Atlantic and Pacific coasts, devouring poor people’s homes and small businesses in the process. Here, too, a human-fueled problem is exacerbated by greed in the form of shrimp farming, which decimates coastal mangrove trees that normally help to keep those lands from eroding. Shrimp, the most popular seafood in the United States, comes mostlyfrom Southeast Asia and — you guessed it — Central America. Whether it’s shrimp or drugs, the point is that U.S. desires continue to drive devastation in Central America.

As the Trump administration does everything it can to accelerate and deepen the climate crisis, Central Americans are literally dying from it. Under international law, however, if they head for the U.S. in an attempt to save their lives and livelihoods, they don’t qualify as refugees because they are fleeing not physical but economic violence and so are not eligible for asylum.

No Asylum for You

These days, even immigrants with a well-founded fear of persecution who perfectly fit the Geneva Convention’s definition of “refugee” may no longer get asylum here. The Trump administration doesn’t even want to offer them a chance to apply for it. The president has, of course, called such groups of migrants, traveling together for safety and solidarity, an “invasion” of “very bad people.” And his administration continues to take a variety of concrete steps to prevent non-white refugees of just about any sort from reaching U.S. territory to make such a claim.

His early efforts to deter asylum seekers involved the infamous family-separation policy, in which children who arrived at the border were taken from their parents in an effort to create the sort of publicity that would keep others from coming. An international outcry — and a federal court order — brought an official end to that policy in June 2018. At the time, the government was ordered to return such children to their parents.

As it happened, the Department of Homeland Security proved largely incapable of doing so, because quite often it hadn’t kept decent records of the parents’ names or locations. In response to an ACLU lawsuit listing 2,700 individual children living without their families in this country, the administration acknowledged that, in addition to named children, thousands more fell into that category, lost in what can only laughingly be called “the system.”

You might think that, if the goal were to keep people from leaving their homes in the first place, the Trump administration would do what it could to improve life in the Northern Triangle. If so, however, you would be wrong. Far from increasing humanitarian aid to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, the administration promptly slashed those funds, ensuring yet more misery and undoubtedly forcing yet more to flee Central America.

Its most recent ploy: to require refugees to apply for asylum in the first country they come to after leaving their own. Because Guatemala lies between Mexico and the rest of the Northern Triangle, that means Salvadorans and Hondurans will officially have to apply there first. President Trump even used the threat of new tariffs against Guatemalan goods to negotiate such an agreement with that country’s outgoing president Jimmy Morales to secretly designate his nation a “safe third country” where migrants could apply for asylum.

There is something more than a little ironic in this, given that the Guatemalan government can’t even offer its own people anything like safety. Significant numbers of them have, of course, been fleeing to Mexico and heading for the U.S. border. Trump’s solution to that problem has been to use the threat of tariffs to force Mexico to militarize its own border with Guatemala, in the process frustrating the new administration of president Andres Manuel López Obrador.

On August 1st, a federal judge in San Francisco issued an injunction against that “safe third country” policy, prohibiting its use for the time being. For now (at least theoretically), migrants from the Northern Triangle should still be able to apply for asylum in the U.S. The administration will certainly fight the injunction in the courts, while doing everything in its power to stop those immigrants in any way it can.

Meanwhile, it has come up with yet another way to prevent people from claiming asylum. Historically, family members of those persecuted in their own countries have been eligible to apply, too. At the end of July, Attorney General William Barr announced that “immigrants fearing persecution because of threats against their family members are no longer eligible for asylum.” This is particularly cruel because, to extort cooperation from their targets, drug gangs routinely make — and carry out — threats of rape and murder against family members.

A Real Crisis

There is indeed a real crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Hundreds of thousands of people like Amílcar are arriving there seeking refuge from dangers that were, to a significant degree, created by and are now being intensified by the United States. But Donald Trump would rather demonize desperate people than deploy the resources needed to attend to their claims in a timely way — or in any way at all.

It’s time to recognize that the American way of life — our cars and comforts, our shrimp and coffee, our ignorance about our government’s actions in our regional “backyard” — has created this crisis. It should be (but in the age of Trump won’t be) our responsibility to solve it.

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

The workers of the world are yet to unite to accomplish their over-a-century-long pending task of overcoming what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. They have yet to move on to the phase of “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels), by transforming human society from “a planetary community of production and consumption” (Albert Einstein) into a Universal Community of Scientific Beings – star-trekking beings. With the disappearance of classes from within liberated humanity, humans will leave behind their prehistory and enter into the realm of free history, as Marx envisaged.

Material abundance has been knocking at our door since about the beginning of the past century waiting for us to accept it and create a fulfilling life for the whole of humanity. What is still lacking is the working class’s will, unity, and action country-wise and worldwide. Their social consciousness remains crippled by glorification of power and success and all-pervading competition. This ongoing alienated cultural constitution, “crippling of the social consciousness of individuals” (Albert Einstein), has kept us arrested in a devastating “Escape from freedom” or “Fear of Freedom” (Erich Fromm). In the name of “freedom” what we are preoccupied with is “freedom from” (“negative freedom”) – bourgeois freedom – vulgar freedom – while what we need is to get hold of “freedom to” (“positive freedom”) – Socialist Freedom – real freedom – freedom to lead a peril-free harmonious and luminous humane life.

Progress in Science and Technology has given rise to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics which is making this freedom more and more viable nowadays.

Marx and Engels foresaw

As Marx and Engels foresaw in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto, “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.”

To understand this point let us take a brief detour into the essence of capital. Capital as “self-expanding value” (V = c+v+s, where V = Value, c = constant capital, v = variable capital and s = surplus value), constantly coerces its personified functionaries, the capitalists, to look for maximum profit by raising the rate of surplus value (exploitation), i.e., by raising “s/v”, which pushes up the organic composition of capital or “c/v”, which reciprocally (tendentiously though) reduces the rate of profit “s/(c+v)”.

The very process that had given rise to value and exchange-value asserts itself via alienation and competition. The law of competition for accumulation leads to a progressively higher organic composition of capital (OCC), i.e. “c/v”, or a continual increase in its constant constituent “c” compared to its variable one “v”, a continual relative decrease in its variable vis-à-vis constant; or, to put it in a different way, a progressively higher technical composition of capital, i.e. “c/(c + v)”,  a continual increase in its constant constituent “c” at the expense of the total social capital “(c + v)”, constantly raising the social productivity of labour. “The immediate result of this is that the rate of surplus value “s/v”, at the same, or even a rising, degree of labour exploitation, is represented by a constantly falling general rate of profit “s/(c + v)”.” (Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Moscow 1974, pp. 212-13) This leads the capitalists to go in for countervailing measures to reverse the tendency by unceasing technological advancement. It is inbuilt in the market system that the rates of profits globally tend to be equalized via an averaging process, giving rise to an average rate of profit. Without this the bigger and bigger the OCCs, the lower and lower would be their own individual rates of profits. But why should a firm go in for a higher OCC at all? The raison d’être is that this averaging means that they can go on accumulating by extracting a  portion of global profits over and above their own individual profits from the profits of the industries and agriculture having lower OCCs.

Marx’s long-term prediction

True, Marx and Engels didn’t live to see the precise future course of scientific and technological developments and their specific forms of manifestation (artificial intelligence – robotics) which would emerge from the hectic pursuit of profit. They were dealing mainly with capital’s fledging period. So in capital’s ascending phase when the productive forces were developing within the womb of an expanding capitalist mode and relations of production, they could only anticipate the forthcoming historical trends. Marx’s materialist conception of history had imbued him with penetrating insight and profound predictive power whereby he brilliantly foresaw the impending state of affairs with their far-reaching consequences to occur. As he observed in 1858:

“Invention then becomes a business, and the application of science to direct production itself becomes a prospect which determines and solicits it. But this is not the road along which machinery, by and large, arose, and even less the road on which it progresses in detail. This road is, rather, dissection [Analyse] – through the division of labour, which gradually transforms the workers‟ operations into more and more mechanical ones, so that at a certain point a mechanism can step into their places. … Thus, the specific mode of working here appears directly as becoming transferred from the worker to capital in the form of machine, and its own labour capacity devalued thereby. Hence the workers’ struggle against machinery. What was the living worker’s activity becomes the activity of the machine. … the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production. … Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself. (What holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination of human activities and the development of human intercourse.) No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing [Naturgegenstand] as the middle link between the object [Objekt] and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of production process instead of being its chief actor. … his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools. … As the basis on which large industry rests, the appropriation of alien labour time, ceases, with its development, to make up or to create wealth, so does direct labour as such cease to be the basis of production, since, in one respect, it is transformed into a supervisory and regulatory activity; but then also because the product ceases to be the product of isolated direct labour, and the combination of social activity appears, rather, as the producer. … just as the conquest of the forces of nature by social intellect is the precondition of the productive power of the means of labour as developed into the automatic process, on one side, so, on the other, is the labour of the individual in its direct presence posited as suspended individual, i.e. as social, labour. Thus the other basis of this mode of production falls away.” (Marx, Grundrisse, Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1981, pp. 704-709)

Horrific catastrophe – only 12 years to go?

Now that automation, artificial intelligence and robots are quite capable of performing almost all the world’s necessary and useful laborious work, humanity is on the brink of a forthcoming Leisure Society, Marx’s all-encompassing scientific society. Once we enter its knowledgeable domain, having emancipated mankind from their perilously degenerating slavery of capital, it will be indispensable for us to counter as far as we can the threat of extinction, especially in view of the catastrophic survival warning about having just 12 years in hand to deal with global warming, as reported on Monday 8 October 2018 by the Guardian, London: “We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN – Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, draught, floods and poverty, says IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. Overwhelmed by climate change? Here’s what you can do… The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of draught, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. … The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C. The half-degree difference could also prevent corals from being completely eradicated and ease pressure on the Arctic, according to the 1.5C study, which was launched after approval at a final plenary of all 195 countries in Incheon in South Korea that saw delegates hugging one another with some in tears.” – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warning-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report

As also cited by the Bengali language newspaper in Kolkata the Anandabazar > International on 9 October 2018 (http://www.anandabazar.com/international/we-may-just-12-years-away-from-the-unprecedented-danger-1.878290#.W8gRT7dReSw.watsapp)

Save Earth’s environment

First, we are required to reduce and reverse the currently devastating emission levels of the  greenhouse effect gases – Water vapor , Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous oxide (N2 O), Ozone (O3), Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Hydrofluorocarbons (incl. HCFCs and HFCs)  – in order to avoid the threatening trends of ongoing global overwarming. The hostile climate catastrophe has to be dealt with by discontinuing uses of fossil fuels – coal, petrol, diesel, kerosene etc. and substituting solar and other forms of renewable energy. We have also to get rid of the perilous plastic pollution. We have to discontinue the destruction of forests together with their flora and fauna by substituting all the various uses of timber logs with fibreglasses and conserving and restoring our lost forests to create an eco-friendly atmosphere which will absorb and retard the swollen carbon emissions. This done, we will overcome the hazards over our present homeland – the planet Earth; we will be free from the fear of our species going the same way as the dinosaurs of extinction from the Earth’s environment. Note that global warming to levels, even well above the IPCC’s threshold of a 1.5C addition to the current average global temperature, would threaten the human species with complete extinction. If high enough it would cause many millions of deaths but some humans would survive even if in very difficult conditions.

Circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances

Later, as necessity is the mother of invention, even if we remove the current threat from global over warming, circumstances – the exhaustion of the Sun – will eventually prompt us to realise that we need to get out of the periphery of Earth to explore for new homes elsewhere. As said Marx, “Circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.” Thus humans will have to make their circumstances anew once again. Just as our original hominid ancestors, after their emergence at c.300,000 to 200,000 years ago, driven by their survivalist exigencies had to migrate out of Africa into Eurasia and other lands, and eventually populate the whole of planet Earth, so, in view of our survivalist exigency, in order to shun extinction we will have to project a cosmic exodus as outer-space explorers in search of life-friendly environments  within stars with their planets, having to traverse the Universe to seek out suitable places for human habitations and build abodes away beyond the boundary of our planet Earth, transforming ourselves from a Planetary Community into a Universal Community.  Of course becoming star-trekking beings is a very long way off as it will be a few billions of years before the Sun begins to burn out. “Will the Sun Ever Burn Out? Yes, the sun will eventually burn out. But not for a long, long time. The sun has used up about half of its hydrogen fuel in the last 4.6 billion years, since its birth. It still has enough hydrogen to last about another 5 billion years.” (From space.com)  So this wouldn’t be a way-out from a more immediate threat from global overwarming. But that time will eventually inexorably come.

Binay Sarkar is a retired college teacher

Preamble

The inhabitants of planet Earth are in the process of destroying the habitability of their world through the perpetration of the largest mass extinction of species since 66 million years ago when a large asteroid impacted Earth and 55 million years since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) reaching +5 to +8°C.The late Holocene-Anthropocene climate change represents an unprecedented event, triggering a fast shift in climate zones and a series of extreme weather events,with consequences for much of nature and civilization. The changes are manifest where green forests are blackened by fire, draughts are turning grassy planes to brown semi-deserts, brilliant white snow and ice caps are melting into pale blue water and clear blue skies turn grey due to aerosols and jet contrails, most particularly in the northern hemisphere. Unless effective efforts are undertaken at CO₂ down-draw, the consequence would include demise of much of nature and a collapse of human civilization.

1. The scorched Earth

The transfer of hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon from the Earth crust, the residues of ancient biospheres, to the atmosphere and oceans, condemning the bulk of life through the most extreme shift in the composition of the atmosphere and ocean Earth has experienced since 55 million years ago, with changes taking place in front of our eyes. Since the industrial revolution, about 375 billion tonnes of carbon(or 1,374 billion tonnes CO₂) have been emitted by humans into the atmosphere. The consequences are everywhere, from mega-droughts, to heat waves, fires, storms and floods. With atmospheric CO₂-equivalent rising above 500 ppmand mean temperatures by more than 1.5^oC (Figure 1) look no further than the shift in climate zones, displayed for example on maps of the expanding wet tropical zones, drying sub-tropical latitudes and polar-ward migration of temperate climate zone. The ice sheets and sea ice are melting, huge fires overtake Siberia, the Sahara is shifting northward, large parts of southern Europe are suffering from draughts, heat waves and fires, the Kalahari Desert dunes are shiftingand much of southern Australia is affected by warming and draughts. This is hardly compensated by a minor increase in precipitation and greening such as at the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert and parts of northern Australia.

Induced by anthropogenic carbon emissions reaching 37.1 billion tonnes CO₂in 2018and their amplifying feedbacks from land and oceans, ranging from where the US produces 16.5 tonnes CO₂ per capita per year, to 35.5 tonnes CO₂ per capita per year from Saudi Arabia’s and 44 tons export per capita per yearfrom Australia. The inexorable link between these emissions and the unfolding disaster is hardly mentioned by mainstream political classes and the media.

Figure 1(A)Growth of CO₂-equivalent level and the annual greenhouse gas Index (AGGI^[1]). Measurements of CO₂ to the 1950s are from (Keeling et al., 1958) and air trapped in ice and snow above glaciers. Pre-1978 changes are based on ongoing measurements of all greenhouse gases. Equivalent CO₂ amounts (in ppm) are derived from the relationship between CO₂ concentrations and radiative forcing from alllong lived gases;(B)showing how much warmer each month of the GISTEMP data is than the annual global mean. For July (2019)temperatures rose by about +1.5^oC.

2. Migrating climate zones

As the globe warms, to date by a mean of near ~1.5 ^oC, or ~2.0^oCwhen the masking effects of sulphur dioxide and other aerosols are considered, and by a mean of ~2.3^oCin the polar regions, the expansion ofwarm tropical latitudesand the pole-wardmigration of subtropical and temperate climate zones(Figure 2) ensue in large scale draughts such as parts of inland Australia and southern Africa. A similar trend is taking place in the northern hemisphere where the Sahara desert is expanding northward, with consequent heat waves across the Mediterranean and Europe.

In southern Africa “Widespread shifts in climate regimesare projected, of which the southern and eastern expansion of the hot desert and hot steppe zones is most prominent.  From occupying 33.1 and 19.4 % of southern Africa under present-day climate, respectively, these regions are projected to occupy between 47.3 and 59.7 % (hot desert zone) and 24.9 and 29.9 % (hot steppe zone) of the region in a future world where the mean global temperature has increased by ~3°C.

Closely linked to the migration of climate zones is the southward drift of Antarctic- sourced cold moist fronts which sustain seasonal rain in south-west and southern Australia. A feedback loop has developed where deforestation and decline in vegetation in southern parts of the continent result in the rise of thermal plumes of dry air masses that deflect the western moist fronts further to the southeast.

Figure 2.Köppen-Geiger global Climate zones classification map

Since 1979 the planet’s tropics have been expanding pole-ward by 56 km to 111 km per decade in both hemispheres, leading one commentator to call this Earth’s bulging waistline. Future climate projections suggest this expansion is likely to continue, driven largely by human activities – most notably emissions of greenhouse gases and black carbon, as well as warming in the lower atmosphere and the oceans.”

An analysis of the origin of Australian draughts suggests, according to both observations and climate models, that at least part of this decline is associated with changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation, including shrinking polar ice and  a pole-ward movement of polar-originated westerly wind spirals, as well as increasing atmospheric surface pressure and droughts over parts of southern Australia (Figure 3). Simulations of future climate with this model suggest amplified winter drying over most parts of southern Australia in the coming decades in response to changes in radiative forcing. The drying is most pronounced over southwest Australia, with total reductions in austral autumn and winter precipitation of approximately 40% by the late twenty-first century. Thus rainfall in southwestern Australia has declined sharply from about 1965 onward, concomitant with the sharp rise of global temperatures.

Figure 3(A) Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) draught map, showing rainfall levels for the southern wet season from April 1 to July 31 in 2019; (B) NASA satellite image displaying asouthward deflection of Antarctic-sourced moist cold fronts from southern Australia, a result of (1) southward migration of climate zones; (2) increasing aridity of southern and southwestern Australia due to deforestation; (3) rising hot plumes from warming arid land..

3. Extreme weather events

The consequences of the migration of climate zones are compounded by changes in flow patterns of majorriver systems around the world, for example in southern an southeastern Asia, including the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra and Mekong river basins, the home and bread basket for more than a billion people. With warming, as snow cover declines in the mountainous source regions of rivers, river flows are enhanced, with ensuing floods, in particular during the Monsoon. For example, in 2010 approximately one-fifth of Pakistan’s total land area was affected by floods (Figure 4A), directly affecting about 20 million people, with a death toll close to 2,000. And about 700 people in cyclone Isai in Mozambique (Figure 4B, C).Such changes in climate and geography are enhanced once sea level rise increases from the scale of tens of centimeters, as at present, tometers, as predicted to take place later this and next century.

An increasing frequency and intensity of cyclones constitute an inevitable consequence of rising temperatures over warm low pressure cell tracks in tropical oceans, already affecting large populations in the Caribbean and west Pacific island chains, encroaching into continental coastal zones, China, southeast USA, southeast Africa, India, northern Australia, the Pacific islands. According to Sobel et al. (2016) “We thus expect tropical cyclone intensities to increase with warming, both on average and at the high end of the scale, so that the strongest future storms will exceed the strength of any in the past”. Likewise increasing temperatures, heat waves and droughts, compounded by deforestation over continents, constitute an inevitable consequence of heat waves and droughts. A prime exampleis the Siberian forest fires (Figure 5B), covering an area larger than Denmark and contributing significantly to climate change. Since the beginning of the year a total of 13.1 million hectares has burned.Total losses from natural catastrophes on 2018 stated as US$160 billion.

Figure 4(A)Pakistan flooding showing the 2010 Indus River spanning well over 10kilometers, completely filling the river valley and spilling over onto nearby land. Floodwaters have created a lake almost as wide as the swollen Indus that inundates Jhatpat; (B) Before-and-after satellite imagery of Mozambique showing massive flood described as an “inland ocean” up to 30 miles wide following the landfall of Tropical Cyclone Idai, 2019.

Figure 5(A) Global fire zones, NASA. The Earth data fire map accumulates the locations of fires detected by moderate-resolution imaging radiometer (MODIS) on board the Terra and Aqua satellites over a 10-day period. Each colored dot indicates a location where MODIS detected at least one fire during the compositing period. Color ranges from red where the fire count is low to yellow where number of fires is large; (B)An ecological catastrophe in Russia: wildfires have created over 4 million square km smoke lid over central northern Asia. Big Siberian cities are covered with toxic haze that had already reached Urals.

4. Shrinking Polar ice sheets

Last but not least, major changes in the Polar Regions are driving climate events in the rest of the globe. According to NOAAArctic surface air temperatures continued to warm at twice the rateof the rest of the globe, leading to major thaw at the fringes of the Arctic (Figure 6A) and a loss of 95 percent of its oldest ice over the past three decades. Arctic air temperatures during 2014-18since 1900 have exceeded all previous records and are driving broad changes in the environmental system both within the Arctic as well as through the weakeningof the jet stream which separates the Arctic from warmer climate zones. The recent freezing storms in North America represent penetration of cold air masses through an increasingly undulating jet stream barrier, as well as allowing warm air masses to move northward, further warming the Arctic and driving further ice melting (Figure 6B).

According to Rignot et al. (2011) in 2006 the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets experienced a combined mass loss of 475 ± 158 billion tons of ice per year. IPCC models of future climate change contain a number of departures from the paleoclimate evidence, including the major role of feedbacks from land and water, estimates of future ice melt, sea level rise rates, methane release rates, the role of fires in enhancing atmospheric CO₂, and the already observed onset of transient freeze events consequent on the flow of ice melt water into the oceans. Ice mass loss would raise sea level on the scale of meters and eventually tens of meters (Hansen et al. 2016). The development of large cold water pools south and east of Greenland (Rahmstorf et al. 2015) and at the fringe of West Antarctica, signify early stages in the development of a North Atlantic freeze, consistent with the decline in the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation (AMOC).As the Earth warms the increase in temperature contrasts across the globe, in particular between warming continental regions and cooling ocean regions, leads to storminess and extreme weather events, which need to be taken into account when planning adaptation measures, including preparation of coastal defenses, construction of channel and pipelines from heavy precipitation zones to draught zones.

Figure 6(A) Thawing at the fringes of Siberia and Canada. Scientists say 2019 could be another annushorribilis for the Arctic with record temperatures already registered in Greenland—a giant melting ice sheet that threatens to submerge the world’s coastal areas one day; (B) Weakening and increasing undulation of the polar vortex, allowing penetration of cold fronts southward and of warm air masses northward.

Figure 7(A) Surface air temperature (◦C) changein 2055–2060 relative to 1880–1920 according to. A1B model + modified forcings and ice melt to 1 meter sea level rise; (B)  Surface-air temperature change in 2096 relative to 1880–1920 according to IPCC model AIB adding Ice meltwith 10-year doubling of ice melt leading to +5 meters sea level rise;(C)Surface air temperature (◦C) relative to 1880–1920 for several scenarios taking added ice melt water into account(Hansen et al. 2016)

Postscript

None of the evidence and projections summarized above appears to form a priority consideration on the part of those in power—in parliaments, in corporations or among the wealthy elites and vested interests. Having to all intents and purposes given up on thehabitability of large parts of the Earthand on the survival of numerous species and future generations—their actionsand inactions constitutethe ultimatecrime against life on Earth

[1]TheAGGI index uses 1990 as a baseline year with a value of 1.  The index increased every year since 1979.

Andrew Glikson, Earth and Climate scientist

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It’s been some time since I wrote anything for RealClimate. In the interim there’s been a lot of important new work in the area of my primary research interest – Antarctica. Much of it is aimed at addressing the central question in Antarctic glaciology: How much ice is going to be lost from the West Antarctic ice sheet, and how soon? There’s been a nearly continuous stream of evidence supporting the view that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is in serious trouble – perhaps already undergoing the beginning of “collapse”, which John Mercer presaged more than four decades ago.

Yet showing that the ice sheet has changed doesn’t really address the question about what will happen in the future. To do that, we also need to answer another one: How much of the ice loss that has already happened is a response to anthropogenic climate change? A new paper in Nature Geoscience this week is one of the first to attempt an answer, and that is what has inspired me to get back to RealClimate blogging. Full disclosure: I’m a co-author on the paper.

In this post, I’d like to provide a bit of context for our new paper, and to emphasize some points about our findings that are generally going to be lost in popular accounts of our work.

The key finding is that we now have evidence that the increasing loss of ice from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a result of human activities — rising greenhouse gas concentrations in particular. Now, some may be surprised to learn that this wasn’t already known. But the argument that humans are responsible has rested largely on the grounds that there must be a connection. After all, why should melting have increased only in the late 20th century, precisely when the impacts of anthropogenic climate change were becoming more and more apparent? It seems an unlikely coincidence.

As Richard Alley* put it:

It has been hard to imagine that the ice sat around happily for millennia and then decided to retreat naturally just as humans started perturbing the system, but the evidence for forcing by natural variability was strong.

To be sure, there have been studies suggesting a discernible anthropogenic impact on Antarctic surface temperature, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula.  And it’s known that the depletion of stratospheric ozone and the rise in greenhouse gases has caused the circumpolar winds to increase in strength. But there has been little direct evidence that what’s happening to the ice sheet itself can be attributed to human-induced climate changes. Consequently, there has been no paper published that makes a strong claim about this. Indeed, a formal solicitation of expert views in 2013 showed that opinion was pretty much evenly divided on whether observed changes to the Antarctic ice sheet were simply part of the natural variability of the climate/ice-sheet system.  In stark contrast, agreement among those same experts was (and is) unanimous that Greenland is melting because of anthropogenic global warming.

Before getting into what is new in our paper, it’s worth starting with a bit of background on West Antarctica, and a review of the evidence for the role of natural variability. Since not everyone will want to read the play-by-play, I’ve put most of that in a separate post, here. I hope you’ll read it.

In short, glacier melt in West Antarctica has increased because more Circumpolar Deep Water (which is relatively warm) is getting from the ocean surrounding Antarctica onto the Antarctic continental shelf and reaching the floating ice shelves of the large outlet glaciers that drain the West Antarctic ice sheet into the ocean. As shown by Thoma et al. (2008) in a seminal modeling study in Geophysical Research Letters*, how much Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) gets onto the continental shelf is strongly influenced by the strength and direction of the winds at the shelf edge. Essentially, stronger westerlies (or simply weaker easterlies) tend to cause more CDW inflow, and hence, more glacial melt.

Because of the important role played by the winds, many have assumed that there must be a link between the melting glaciers and the ozone hole. But the greatest control on wind variability along the coast of West Antarctica is the state of the tropics. Just as El Niño event causes widespread climate anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere — such as increased rainfall in southern California — it also causes changes in the West Antarctic. Indeed, the Amundsen Sea, where the largest West Antarctic glaciers are, is one of the areas on the planet that is moststrongly dependent on the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (e.g. Lachlan-Cope and Connolley, 2006). In 2012, we published a paper showing that changes in the winds in this region in the last few decades, which correspond well with variations in the glaciers, are very well explained by changes in ENSO, and very poorly by changes in ozone. We also noted that because big ENSO events had occurred in the past, it was quite plausible that wind conditions not that different than those of today had also occurred in the past. Indeed, we have very good evidence from ice cores that climate conditions in West Antarctica in the 1940s were not very different than those in the 1990s.

It is clear from this work, and much other recent research, that ENSO plays a dominant role in determining the climate conditions in West Antarctica that are relevant to the ice sheet. And since there is little evidence for a long-term anthropogenic change in ENSO, this implies that natural variability in Amundsen Sea winds (driven by natural variability in ENSO) may be the primary driver of observed ice-sheet change in West Antarctica in the last few decades. This is what Richard Alley is referring when he says that the evidence for forcing by natural variability was strong, and it throws a lot of cold water (no pun intended) on the purported link with human activities. But that’s not very satisfying. It doesn’t answer the question of why glacier retreat is occuring now. This is where our new paper comes in.

The new work is led by Paul Holland of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), with help from Tom Bracegirdle, Adrian Jenkins (also of BAS), Pierre Dutrieux (now at LDEO) and myself. What we argue, in brief, is that although ENSO does indeed dominate the wind variability in the Amundsen Sea on timescales from interannual to multi-decadal, there is also a longer-term trend in the winds, on which the ENSO-related variability is superimposed.

The graph below (Figure 1) summarizes the key finding. What is shown are the winds in the key sector of the Amundsen Sea, centered on ~71°S and ~108°W, with observations in blue, and model results in black and gray. The model results are from an ensemble of simulations, referred to as the “tropical pacemaker” or “PACE” runs, of the CESM climate model. Details are given in Schneider and Deser (2017). Briefly, what has been done is to adjust an otherwise free-running climate model (forced by greenhouse gas emissions) so that it follows the actual history of sea surface temperature in the tropics, but is otherwise left uncontrained by data. We use these experiments as an estimate of how winds have varied over the last century in the Amundsen Sea, a) given what we know happened in the tropics and b) given what the climate model’s physics dictates about how conditions in the tropics affect the Amundsen Sea. Critically, there is nothing done to make the model match observations outside the tropics. Yet the results are in superb agreement with the observed Amundsen Sea winds. While we can never know exactly what happened prior to the advent of satellite observations in the late 1970s, the PACE ensemble provides a set of histories that is plausible, and compatible with modern data. This is probably the best current estimate of how winds have in fact varied in this region.

What Figure 1 suggests is that the winds in this region have varied between easterly and westerly from decade to decade, throughout the 20th century. This is the natural variability associated with ENSO, and is no surprise. But in addition, there is a long-term trend. When averaged over several decades, the winds can be seen to have shifted from mean easterly in the 1920s through 1980s, to mean westerly thereafter.

The trend in the winds is small, and easily lost within the variability of individual model ensemble members, but it is robust (it occurs in all the ensemble members) and statistically significant. Moreover, we know its cause (at least in the model experiments): radiative forcing. Although these experiments also include radiative forcing changes resulting from the ozone hole, it’s clear that the trend in the winds begins well before ozone depletion begins in 1970s. Thus, the key forcing is greenhouse gases.

These results show that variations in the winds that have occurred at the same time as we have been observing the glaciers retreat (i.e., since the 1970’s) are largely attributable to ENSO, as we had thought. But at the same time, the prevalance of strong westerlies in the Amundsen Sea has gradually increased throughout the 20th century. That is, although anomalous westerlies tend to occur most often during an El Niño, the long-term underlying trend means that the likelihood of strong westerlies in any given year is increasing, regardless of whether there is an El Niño or not. Thus, the radiatively-forced change (the trend) accentuates the effect of the natural variabilty (ENSO). As we wrote in the paper, the recent wind anomalies of the last few decades “…reflect Pacific variability that is not at all unusual…. However, when superimposed on the anthropogenic trend, this variability produces periods of absolute westerly winds that are sufficiently anomalous to account for much of the current ice loss.”

Now, a couple of caveats:

First of all, our finding are “simply” the result of looking at climate model simulations. We don’t know exactly what happened in the Amundsen Sea in the last century. On the other hand, Figure 1 looks very much like the data from ice cores from West Antarctica: variability that can be related to ENSO, superimposed upon a long-term trend. (See e.g. Schneider and Steig, 2008and Steig et al. 2013 for details.)

Second, we are assuming that the Amundsen Sea shelf-edge winds are indeed the most relevant aspect of the system to consider. Again, this is based on the body of work showing that the inflow of CDW onto the Amundsen Sea continental shelf is strongy controlled by these winds. But the physics linking wind variability and CDW inflow is complex, and not everyone agrees with our view on this. Indeed, it is most certainly an oversimplification. Furthermore, as many authors has emphasized, there are complex feedbacks and internal ice-sheet and glacier dynamics involved, and it’s not as if there is a one-to-one relationship between changing winds and glacier retreat. For an excellent discussion of this, see the paper by Christianson et al. (2018).

Third, even without the first two caveats, we are far from proving that the ongoing ice loss from Antarctica can be attributed to human-induced climate change. The challenge here is that the natural component of the wind variabilty is so large that actually detecting (with direct observations) the trend inferred from the model results is not likely to be possible for some time. As we say in the paper, “Decadal internal variability therefore dominates ice-sheet and ocean variability during the modern observational era (since 1979), and will continue to dominate observations for decades to come.” We are not likely to find the smoking gun any time soon.

That all said, our findings are supported by other experiments. It is not only CESM, which is the main focus of the paper, thats show a long-term trend in the winds. In fact, most climate models (i.e., “CMIP5” — see details in our paper) show the same thing. Also, we find that the better the agreement between a given model and observations, the stronger the trend. (Note that the wind speeds shown in the figure above are not anomalies. These are the actual modeled and observed wind speeds. As it happens, CESM has unusally low bias in comparison with observations.)

Finally, our findings provide an important opportunity to glimpse into the future. We examined additional results with CESM, from the so-called “Large Ensemble” (LENS) and “Medium Ensemble” (MENS) set of experiments. These are identical to those of the PACE set-up but without the constraint to follow the observed tropical sea surface temperature. The results are illustrated in Figure 2, below.

The ensemble mean trend in the LENS experiments is nearly identical to that of the PACE experiments, which further demonstrates that the trend is not part of the natural variability. Comparison between the LENS experiments, which uses the business-as-usual RCP 8.5 IPCC scenario for the future, and MENS, which uses RCP 4.5, shows that reducing greenhouse gases reduces the future trends.

This is a big deal! Although we humans have evidently caused a long-term increase in westerly winds along the Amundsen Sea coast (which is bad for the West Antarctic ice sheet), the future is not yet written (which is an opportunity). Lowering greenhouse gases to a more modest rate of increase might be enough to prevent further changes in those winds.

Of course, many glaciologists believe we have already passed the point of no return for West Antarctica. I personally think the jury is still out on that. But that’s a discussion for another time.

*The quote from Richard Alley is from a National Geographic article about our paper.

**Not all the most important papers are published in Nature or Science.

 Eric Steig is a climate scientist

Words and prior actions matter, especially when they come from a mendacious, blustering , bullying, murderous, racist  and jingoistic leader of an America  that has 7,300 nuclear warheads [1]  and indeed  used nuclear weapons  to kill 200,000 Japanese civilians  in the war criminal  atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 [2].  President Donald Trump in threatening “obliteration” of parts of Iran (2019): “The Iranian leadership doesn’t understand the words ‘nice’ or ‘compassion’, they never have. Sadly, the thing they do understand is strength and power, and the USA is by far the most powerful military force in the world, with $1.5tn invested over the last two years alone…  Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration” [3].

After Trump called off a US attack on Iran over the downing of an unmanned drone,  supposedly because it would have killed 150 people, Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif commented: “You were really worried about 150 people? How many people have you killed with a nuclear weapon? How many generations have you wiped out with these weapons? It is us who, because of our religious views, will never pursue a nuclear weapon” [3].

Words and track record matter, and Trump threatened to “totally destroy” nuclear-armed North Korea (2017): “The US has great strength and patience. If it is forced to defend ourselves or our allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea” [4]. This is not an idle threat from a mendacious American bully because in the 1950-1953 Korean War US  bombing killed 28% of the North Korean population [5].

Words matter,  and what Trump has been so obscenely adumbrating is an Iranian Genocide, an Iranian Holocaust, a Korean Genocide and a Korean Holocaust, noting that “holocaust” means deaths of a huge  number of people and “genocide” is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. War is the penultimate in racism and genocidal war is the ultimate in racism.

Decent people around the world legitimately fear the horrendous consequences of a full-blown US and US Alliance military  attack  on Iran. However 4 million Iranians  have already died from violence, 1 million, or from sanctions-imposed deprivation, 3 million, in a 4-decade US War on Iran. Further, while Iran leads the world in interdiction of opiate drugs from US-occupied Afghanistan, this flood of US-protected opiates has killed 33,000 Iranians and the 5.2 million people who have died worldwide  in a US-imposed  Opiate Holocaust inescapably linked to US restoration of  the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6%  of world market share in 2001 to 90% in 2007 [6]. One notes that the WW2 Jewish Holocaust was associated with 5-6 million Jews killed by the German Nazis through violence or imposed deprivation.

The background to this 4 decade US War on Iran goes back to the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire (to keep Russia away from “British” India, and the Indian Ocean) and the discovery of strategically vital oil in Iran in the 19th century.   The British and Russians continually and violently interfered in Iran,  culminating in British and Russian occupation of Iran in WW2. The US successfully destroyed  a democratic Iran in 1953 through sanctions, economic blockade and subversion that resulted in a US-backed coup,  replacement of democracy under Prime Minister Mossadegh (who had attempted nationalization of Anglo-Iranian oil) with installation of an authoritarian regime under the Shah and Anglo-American hegemony. The Islamic Revolution in 1979  replaced the US-backed Shah with a democracy-based theocracy. The removal of Anglo-American hegemony by the Iranian Revolution immediately initiated 40 years of US hostility, variously involving deadly sanctions  and deadly violence [1].

Set out below are details of (A) 1 million violent Iranian deaths, and (B)  3.1 million Iranian avoidable deaths from sanctions in the 4-decade  US War on Iran, (C) the opiate-related deaths of 33,000 Iranians (and 5.2 million people world-wide)  due to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world share in 2001 to 90% in 2007, (D) how  US surrogate Apartheid Israel has already re-commenced a hot US War on Iran by bombing Iranian facilities in Syria and Iraq, and (E) how a serial invader and nuclear-armed US Alliance threatens a peaceful, nuclear-weapons-free Iran.

(A). 1 million violent Iranian deaths in the 4-decade US War on Iran

The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War began with the US-backed Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980. It involved Iraqi use of US-suppled poison gas and ultimately killed about 1 million Iranians and 250,000-500,000 Iraqis [7]. Further violent Iranian deaths occurred with the US Navy downing of an Iranian passenger jet Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 with the deaths of 290 passengers  [8], and Apartheid Israeli bombing of Syrian Government-invited Iranian forces in Syria and now also in Iraq.  About 4,000 Iranian police have been killed in attempting to interdict deadly opiate smuggling from US-occupied Afghanistan [9].

While Iran leads the world in interdiction of deadly opiates [9], the US is the world’s greatest pusher of deadly opiates since the British Empire under Queen Victoria. However, as set out below, the 3 million Iranian avoidable  deaths from deprivation due to imposed sanctions vastly exceed the 1 million violent Iranian deaths in the 4 decade US War on Iran. Further,  33,000 Iranians  and 5.2 million people worldwide have died opiate drug-related deaths linked to the US-protected, world-dominating,  Afghan opium production in US-occupied Afghanistan since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people [10-13].

(B). 3.1 million avoidable Iranian deaths and 1.7 million Iranian under-5 infant deaths under sanctions in the 4-decade US War on Iran.

Whether a child dies avoidably from imposed deprivation from sanctions, or from  bashing, bullets or bombs, the death is just as final, and the perpetrator culpability  just the same. Avoidable death has various synonyms, namely avoidable mortality, excess death, excess mortality, premature death, untimely death, and  death that should not have happened. Avoidable mortality   from imposed deprivation can be readily estimated from UN Population Division demographic data [14] as the difference   between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics  (birth rate, proportion of children)  [2].

In the 4-decade period of the continuing US War on Iran (1979-2019)   the average Iranian population was 65.623 million.  In 1979-2019 the Iranian  average birth rate was 18.25 births per thousand of population per year and hence the average Iranian births per year =   18.25 births per thousand per year x 65,623 thousand = 1.198 million births per year. The Iranian births  (1979-2019) totalled 1.198 million births per year x 40 years = 47.920 million. In 1979-2019 the Iranian  average under-5 infant deaths were  34.5 deaths per thousand child births. Accordingly the Iranian under-5 infant deaths (1979-2019) =  34.5 deaths per thousand births x 47,920 thousand births = 1.653 million under-5 infant deaths (1979-2019).

For peaceful, reasonably well governed but impoverished, high birth rate  Developing Countries (minus China) the baseline mortality rate is about 4 deaths per thousand of population per year [2]. For Iran (1979-2019) the average death rate was 5.15 deaths per thousand per year and accordingly the average avoidable mortality rate was 1.15 avoidable  deaths per thousand of population per year. The Iranian avoidable mortality (1979-2019) was accordingly 1.15 avoidable deaths per thousand of population per year x 65,623 thousand people x 40  years = 3.019 million Iranian avoidable deaths from deprivation (1979-2019).

An alternative estimate  comes from applying the same analysis  to the whole of Developing Countries (minus China) (1979-2019) – average total population 3,636 million, an average of 27.9 births per thousand of population, 101.432 million  births (1979-2019), an average of 91.5 under-5 infant deaths per thousand births, 9.281 million under -5 infant deaths (1979-2019), an average of 8.8 deaths per thousand of population, an average of 4.8 avoidable deaths per thousand of population, and 17.451 million avoidable deaths (1979-2019). For this Developing Countries (minus China) cohort, the  ratio of avoidable deaths/under-5 infant deaths = 17.451 million/9.281 million = 1.88. Applying  this ratio to 1.653 million Iranian under-5 infant deaths  (1979-2019) yields 1.653 million x 1.88 = 3.108 million Iranian  avoidable deaths from deprivation (1979-2019).

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) , Iran accounts for 74% of the world’s opium seizures and 25% of the world’s heroin and morphine seizures. However Iran’s role as a world leader in the War on Drugs and in combating  opiate drugs from US-occupied Afghanistan  comes at a heavy price. Thus Iran has a 900 kilometer border with US-occupied Afghanistan  that produces about 90% of the world’s opium under US Alliance protection. Iran has spent about $700 million policing its borders against drug movement.  About 2.5 million Iranians are drug users with opium accounting for 67% of drug use. 4,000 Iranian police have been killed protecting Iran and the World from US-protected opiate smugglers [9-11]. The US Alliance restored the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007 [12, 15-18].

Global drug deaths totalled about 0.2 million in 2001 and about 0.6 million in 2019,  and accordingly  the average of annual drug deaths in this period was 0.4 million per year.  Assuming that 90% of these drug deaths were opioid-related,  that of these about 90% were due to opiates (such as opium and  heroin, as opposed to synthetic opioids such as  fentanyl and tramadol) and that of these 90% were linked to Afghan opium production , then the average global death rate linked to Occupied Afghanistan-derived opium would have been about 290,000 million deaths per year.

For religious reasons the Taliban banned alcohol, banned smoking for public servants, and in 2000 banned opium production. Thus one can estimate that by  September  2019 – 18 years after the  9-11 atrocity in which 3,000 were killed –  about 18 years x 290,000 deaths per year = 5.2 million people would have died linked to US restoration of  the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6%  of world market share in 2001 to 90% in 2007.

In terms of body count one can see that Presidents  George Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been the worst drug pushers in history since Great Britain’s  Queen Victoria who devastated China with imposed opium  from British-enslaved India in the 19th century (up to 100 million Chinese died in the Opium Wars and the Tai Ping rebellion [2], with the  Chinese GDP remaining almost  the same between 1820 and 1950 and dropping from 30% of world GDP in 1820 to a mere 5% in 1950 ) [19, 20].

The UNODC reports the annual drug-related deaths of 15-64 year olds in 2017 totalled 3,021 for Iran with opiates being the principal cause [11]. Applying a correction factor of 0.6 (to obtain average deaths in the last 2 decades) one can estimate that total 15-64 year old opioid drug-related deaths  in Iran as of September 2019 in the 18 years since 9-11would be 0.6 x 18 years x 3,021 deaths per year = 33,000 drug-related deaths for Iran (with US-protected opiates from Afghan being the principal cause) .

(D).  US surrogate Apartheid Israel has already re-commenced a hot US War on Iran by bombing Iranian facilities in Syria and Iraq.

Such is the extent of utterly vile, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist  (NAZI) warmongering against Iran that if you Google the phrases “US War on Iran” , “Bomb Iran” and “War on Iran” you get 1,100,000, 248,000 and 99,000 results, respectively.  The seizure of an Iranian oil tanker in the Mediterranean by the British and the tit-for-tat Iranian response can be seen as setting up a trigger for war. Indeed Trump claims to have launched an attack on Iran  but to have cancelled it on the basis that killing an estimated 150 Iranians for the Iranian downing of an unmanned US drone might be seen as somewhat excessive. The British have dispatched a warship to the Persian Gulf  and the Americans have asked craven US lackey Australia to join a huge anti-Iranian force.  Mainstream media speculate about whether or not the US will launch a devastating war against Iran. However as set out below, nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide, serial war criminal  and US surrogate, Apartheid Israel, has already re-commenced a hot US War on Iran by bombing Iranian facilities in Syria and Iraq.

Thus Australian ABC (Australia’s equivalent of the UK BBC) has recently reported on Apartheid Israeli attacks on Syria and Iraq as a war criminal US surrogate (August 2019): “In recent months the United States and Iran have appeared to be moving closer to a military confrontation. But while tensions simmer, could the US already be fighting Iran indirectly? Israel has admitted to striking hundreds of Iranian targets in Syria and defence experts say it has recently expanded operations to Iraq, with the blessing of the United States. While the US diplomatic and economic pressure plays out in public, an actual conflict is happening in the background” [21].

Sebastien Roblin (a US expert on peace, war, security and military matters who writes for “War is Boring”) has detailed recent Israeli air strikes on Syria and deficiencies in Syrian surface to air missile (SAM) defences (August 2019): “However, as has happened in over 200 other Israeli air strikes on targets in Syria, the defensive fire proved inadequate. The weapons struck three Syrian targets… However, the [SAM] S-300’s silence may reflect a new understanding reached between Putin and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who won reelection just a week prior to the strike. Apparently, the latter agreed to provide fifteen minutes of advance notice of strikes to Russian forces… The IAF has been using the tactic of saturating the attacked area with various kinds of missiles and bombs. It is not economical to use the S-300 against such an attack” [22].

The Baghdad Post has reported on Israeli bombing of Iranian facilities in  Iraq in June 2019 (August 2019): “Baghdad’s silence on Israeli raids against Iraqi soil raises eyebrows,” read the headline of an article by Iranian journalist Ali Mousavi Khalkhali published on the Iranian website Iran Front Page. His bewilderment was shared by around 80 members of Iraq’s parliament, who urged the government to condemn, or at least respond in some way, to the two strikes attributed to Israel last month – one on the Amirli base in Salahuddin province and one on the Abu Montazer al-Muhammadavi base in Diyala province, better known as Camp Ashraf… But Saudi and American diplomacy will have a very hard time severing Iraq from Iran, and not only because Iraq is so economically dependent on Tehran. Their shared Shiite faith, which nourishes a shared cultural infrastructure, coupled with Iraq’s fears of being taken over by Sunni Saudi Arabia and the deep anti-Americanism of large parts of the public, will all oblige the Iraqi government – most of whose ministers are Shiite, even if they don’t necessarily support Iran – to weigh its steps very cautiously. Ostensibly, the attacks on the missile stockpiles should make it clear to Iraq that if it doesn’t end Iran’s military penetration, it could well become the stage for an international war. But this heavy hint could boomerang if, due to domestic political pressure, Iraq instead decides to serve as Iran’s shield” [23].

(E). Serial invader, nuclear-armed US Alliance threatens a peaceful, nuclear-weapons-free Iran.

Unlike the serial invader US and its craven, serial invading  lackeys Australian  and Canada that date back a mere few centuries as entities based on invasion, colonization and genocide, Iran is an ancient country dating back thousands of years. Indeed inspection of the following succinct history of Iran up to the present  reveals that, border spats aside,  the last time Iranians  seriously invaded other countries was about 1500 years ago in the  3rd-7th centuries CE under Sasanian rule [24]:  4000BC, early settlements; 1800-800BC, occupied by the Aryan Medes and Persians; circa 1500BC, Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) and Zoroastrianism; 6th century BC, Cyrus the Great conquered the Medes; 525BC, Persian Empire from the Nile to the Indus; 331-330BC, conquered by Alexander the Great; 312-302BC Seleucid rule; 247BC-226AD, rule by Greek-speaking Parthians; 3rd-7th century, Sassanian rule; 641, Arab Muslim conquest; 7th-13th century, major cultural centre; 1258, destructive conquest by Mongols under Genghis Khan and his sons; subsequent rule by their successors e.g. Timur; 1501-1722, Safavid dynasty founded by Shah Ismail; Shi’ite dominance; 1587-1629, Shah Abbas; Portuguese defeated in the Persian Gulf; 1722, Russians seized Georgia, Baku and thence Central Asia; Afghan dominance; 1736, Afshar dynasty under Nadir Shah; 1794-1925, Qajar dynasty; Anglo-Russian “Great Game” over influence; Russian acquisition of Iranian Caucasus territories through war and the Treaties of Gulistan (1813) and Turkamanchai (1828); early 19th century, oil discovered; 1906, constitution and parliament; WW1, Iran neutral but Anglo-Russian involvements; 1921, USSR withdrew forces and recognized Iran sovereignty; coup by Reza Khan; 1925-1941, Reza Shah Pahlevi (Reza Khan), modernization, pro-Axis; 1941, Anglo-Russian occupation; installation of Shah’s son; 1941-1979, Mohammed Shah Pahlevi; 1946, withdrawal of USSR forces; 1949, constitution curtailed Shah; Prime Minister Mossadegh attempted nationalization of Anglo-Iranian oil; 1953, economic blockade and US-backed coup, thousands killed; US-backed authoritarian Shah régime; Anglo-American, French and Dutch oil interests dominant; 1978, martial law against Islamist opponents; 1979, Shah fled; Islamic theocracy under Ayatollah Khomeini; US hostage crisis and unsuccessful US military raid; 1980-1988, Iran-Iraq War initiated by US-backed Iraq invasion; 1.5 million dead (1980-1988 excess mortality 2.1 million); 1981, US hostages released, Irangate Contra arms deal scandal; 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 passenger jet shot down by US Navy-launched missile; 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini died and Ayatollah Khamenei succeeded; 1997, moderate Khatami elected president; 21st century, US hostility and threats over Iran nuclear program; 2004, conservative victory in elections; 2007, US-Israeli Stuxnet cyber weapon attack on Iranian nuclear industry centrifuges; 2011, Iranian forces invited in by Syria to oppose IS and US-backed jihadis; 2014, Iranian forces invited in by Iraq to oppose IS;  2015, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, (Iran nuclear deal) agreed between Iran and the US, UK,  Russia, France, China,  Germany and the EU; 2018, Trump unilaterally walks from the Iran nuclear deal, imposes more sanctions and threatens war; 2019, Apartheid Israel extends its bombing of Iranian targets in Syria to such targets in Iraq (pages 91-92  [2] ).

In stark contrast to a remarkably peaceful Iran, in the last millennium the English have invaded 193 countries, Australians 85, France 82, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25,  Apartheid Israel 12,  China 2 and Iran zero (0)[2, 24-30].

The upper  estimates of stored  nuclear weapons  are as follows: US (7,300), Russia (8,000), Apartheid Israel (400), France (300), UK (250), China (250), Pakistan (120), India (100), and North Korea (circa 10) [1]. Iran has zero (0) nuclear weapons, repeatedly declares that it does not want nuclear weapons,  insists on a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, and in 2016 voted with over 100 other UN countries (notably including US ally New Zealand) for a ban on nuclear weapons – in contrast,  nuclear terrorist countries  of the US Alliance, notably the  UK, US, and Apartheid Israel,   together with US lackey Canada, US lackey Australia and many US lackey European countries,  voted against the UN  nuclear weapons  ban [1].  In October 2017 the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) (initiated in Melbourne, Australia) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize [1].

It must be reiterated  that an Iran that does not possess and does not want to possess nuclear weapons is being threatened with substantial “obliteration” by a nuclear terrorist US which has surrounded Iran with numerous US military bases. Thus Robert Fantina in the American Herald Tribune (2018): “With the imminent defeat of United States-supported terrorist groups in Syria by the Syrian government, with assistance from Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, one might reasonably think that the U.S. would finally just go home… Let’s not forget that the U.S. has over 1,000 military bases around the world, with at least 45 of them surrounding Iran. One expects that Iran is concerned about the ability of the U.S. to move materiel into Syria, and rightly so. Forty-five military bases threaten Iran, while the Islamic Republic threatens no one, but does maintain its international commitments, including assisting its ally, Syria, in defeating foreign terrorists slaughtering innocent people on Syrian soil” [31].

A Zionist-subverted Trump threatens war at the bidding of nuclear terrorist and genocidally racist Apartheid Israel that may have 5  nuclear weapons-armed , German-supplied submarines off the coast of Iran [32],  is baying for war, has been bombing Syrian Government-invited Iranian forces fighting US Alliance- and Apartheid Israel-backed jihadis in Syria, and has recently commenced bombing Iraqi Government-invited Iranians in Iraq. A huge, nuclear-armed US naval fleet parades off the cost of Iran, and Trump threatens “obliteration”  while being praised by Mainstream media as being more “reasonable” than other  warmongering psychopaths  in his Administration.

A nuclear terrorist and US lackey Britain has deliberately provided a potential “trigger’ by illegally seizing an Iranian oil tanker in the Mediterranean.  A nuclear terrorist America is ready to commit nuclear mass murder and indeed used nuclear weapons  incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 [1, 2].   Apartheid Israel acquired nuclear weapons with French assistance by 1967 [33-35] and  indeed imprisoned its General Itzhak Yaakov for revealing the Israeli plan to detonate a nuclear weapon in Egypt if its 1967 attack on all of its neighbours did not proceed as planned [36].

Pro-Apartheid, US lackey Australia is second only to Trump America as a supporter of nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel, and is critical to US nuclear terrorism via the joint US-Australian Pine Gap electronic spying base in Central Australia, and by hosting nuclear-armed US warships. Australia played a key role in UK  nuclear terrorism by enabling the UK to test nuclear weapons  and missile  delivery systems. The Australian Broadcasting Commission (the ABC, Australia’s equivalent  of the mendacious UK BBC) has recently  described Iran as a “rogue state”,   and a recent ABC TV panel show involving Australian politicians and commentators blithely discussed the obscenity of Australian acquisition of nuclear weapons (the only fervent dissenter being Diana Sayed, a human rights lawyer) ,  with several US-echoing panellists variously describing Iran as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and a “rogue state” [38]. Nuclear terrorism-complicit  Australia has invaded 85 countries [27], currently targets illegal US drone strikes in 7 countries via the Pine Gap base,  opposes a ban on nuclear weapons,  has been involved in all US Asian wars since 1950 (atrocities in which 40 million Asians have died from violence or war-imposed deprivation [2]), and no doubt as a craven US lackey will accede to US requests to threaten and indeed attack Iran. In stark contrast, a  peace loving Iran has not invaded another country for about 1,500 years and has zero (0) nuclear weapons.

Summary and final comments.

The 4-decade US War on Iran has been associated with 1 million Iranian violent deaths in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. However 4 decades of  deprivation due to  imposed sanctions  has been associated with 1.7 million Iranian  under-5 infant deaths and 3.1 million Iranian avoidable deaths from deprivation. This well-documented carnage, an Iranian Genocide and an Iranian Holocaust,  is similar in  magnitude to the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed through violence or deprivation by the German Nazis) but is ignored by mendacious,  Orwellian and Neocon American  and Zionist Imperialist  (NAZI)-subverted  Mainstream media which praised Donald Trump for cancelling a huge  attack on Iran on the basis that it might kill 150 Iranians  in retaliation for the downing of an unmanned US drone.

While the English,  Australians and Americans have invaded 193, 85 and 72 countries, respectively, a peace loving Iran has not invaded any other country for about 1500 years.  Further, in the last 20 years Iran has been a world leader in the interdiction of deadly opiate drugs from US-occupied Afghanistan, with 4,000 Iranian police dying in the process. The Afghan Taliban banned alcohol, banned smoking for public servants, and after 2000 banned opium production. Since  the  9-11 atrocity in which 3,000 were killed, about 5.2 million people have died world-wide due to US restoration of  the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6%  of world market share in 2001 to 90% in 2007, this Opiate Holocaust carnage including 33,000 Iranians and also huge opioid-related deaths in US Alliance  Anglosphere countries  of the “5-Eyes Club”, to whit  748,000 Americans,  43,000 Canadians,  36,000 British, 20,000 Australians,  and 3,000 New Zealanders [6].

Only one Western political leader has proposed action on the US-imposed Opiate Holocaust, namely former Australian PM Kevin Rudd who,  while supporting the US War on Afghanistan, was unsuccessful in getting the US Alliance to support eradication of the Afghan opium poppy crop [39]. Unlike human beings, plants are sessile and cannot run away and hide [40].  The stupidity, ignorance and egregious greed – SIEG, as in the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute –  of the pro-war, “5-Eyes club” and US Alliance politicians  and populace means  resolute ignoring of the immense mass murder of their fellow citizens in the ongoing US-imposed Opiate Holocaust [6] and the key role of Iran in protecting the world from this  atrocity

With the US, UK,  Apartheid Israel and Apartheid Saudi Arabia building up to a renewed violent war on peaceful Iran,  one can only hope  that sanity prevails. Decent people throughout  the World  must endeavour to protect  a peaceful and non-nuclear-weapons Iran – and indeed Humanity as a whole – from further active and passive mass murder by the serial war criminal US Alliance countries through (a) informing everyone they can, and (b) urging and applying Boycotts, Divestment  and Sanctions (BDS) against all pro-war people, politicians, parties, corporations and countries of the genocidally war criminal US Alliance.

On almost any day, we read news of climate change events: heat waves, wild fires, melting glaciers, dying animals, floods, violent storms, rising seas.  And on the same day, also see news of increasing readiness for war: new weapons, military alliance meetings, threats and counter-threats, military maneuvers.

On June 12, the BBC reported that the temperature in Greenland was over 17 C (62 F). Normally, it is below freezing that time of year. BBC said an estimated 2 billion tons of ice melted that day.

Also on June 12, NATO hosted the “Noble Jump” military exercises in Poland, near Russia.  Over 2,000 German, Dutch, and Norwegian troops practiced rapid deployment for war against Russia. Russia does not have the resources or the rationale to attack Poland.

In fact, the month of June was the hottest month ever recorded for planet Earth.  According to Europe’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS), there were over 100 Arctic wild fires in June, releasing over 50 megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That is as much CO2 as 10 million cars emit in one year.

But the meeting of NATO’s defense ministers at the end of June was focused on Trump’s termination of the 1987 “Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty” and on the crisis caused by NATO member Turkey buying weapons from Russia.

On July 8, “Arctic News” reported temperatures in Alaska over 35 C (95 F). Satellite images showed more than 50 forest fires burning in Alaska. On that day, CO2 in the atmosphere over Alaska measured 561 ppm.

Also on July 8, Britain’s Prime Minister spoke at NATO’s Maritime Command Centre. She boasted of Royal Marines attacking an Iranian oil tanker in the Strait of Gibralter, of Britain’s Typhoon jets scrambling to follow Russian aircraft over international waters, and of the “Baltops” naval maneuvers with 50 surface ships, 2 submarines, 40 aircraft and over 8,000 troops from 18 nations practicing for war with Russia. She boasted of “continuing our investment in the future of warfare,”, of increasing Britain’s war budget by £1.8 billion, of 2 new aircraft carriers soon to be at sea, and a new class of submarines now under construction.

Two days later, on July 10, spreading Alaskan wild fires pushed atmospheric CO2 readings to 888 ppm. For comparison, global atmospheric CO2 in 1980 was less than 350 ppm.

That same day, “Military Times” headlined that the Pentagon is shifting $50 million in budget allocations to speed up development of hypersonic missiles.

Something is wrong, don’t you think?

On July 25, CAMS released satellite images showing over 100 forest fires in Siberia and Alaska.  CO2 levels over northeast Siberia were 1205 ppm.  Two days later, temperatures in Western Europe exceeded 40 C (104 F), breaking historical heat records in many cities.

The next day, the “Military Times” published the 10 best military pics for the week ending July 28.  Two of the 10 were photos of war planes flying over Alaska.

On July 31, Huffington Post reported the highest temperature ever recorded in Japan, 41 C (106 F) in Kumagaya, near Tokyo.  40 people died of heat-related causes.

The day before, on July 30, “Aviation Weekly” reported that Japan has begun procurement of 20 unmanned helicopters for its navy, as Japan prepares to fight China and North Korea over ownership of disputed rock idlands.

It should be obvious that the climate crisis is here, that it is accelerating, that it threaten us, that it is killing us.  It should be obvious that maximum international cooperation is needed to reduce and reverse climate heating if we are to prevent the collapse of modern civilization. But we are fixated on making alliances in order to wage more war. It is an historical habit, or maybe an addiction, that we seem unable to stop even if it kills us.

Here is a brief history of alliance wars (based on Wikipedia):

• In the Seven Years War (1756-1763), Team A (UK, Prussia, Portugal) beat Team B (France, Austria, Spain, Russia, Sweden).
• In the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), Team A (Russia, Austria, UK, Prussia, Saxony, Sweden) beat Team B (France, Spain, Denmark, Persia).
• In the Crimean War (1853-1856), Team A (Ottomans, France, UK, Sardinia) beat Team B (Russia, Greece, Bulgaria).
• In World War I (1914-1918), Team A (France, UK, Russia, Canada, Serbia, Belgium, Japan, Italy, USA, Romania, Portugal) beat Team B (Germany, Austria, Ottomans, Bulgaria).
• In World War II (1939-1944), Team A (France, USSR, UK, USA, China, Canada, Australia, NZ) beat Team B (Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan, Finland).
• In the Korean War (1950-1953), Team A (USA, UK, Canada, Turkey, Australia, NZ, Thailand Greece, France, Belgium, Netherlands) tied Team B (North Korea, China, USSR)
• In the Vietnam War (1955-1975), Team A (N. Vietnam, China, USSR, N. Korea) defeated Team B (France, USA, Australia, S. Korea, NZ, Thailand).
• In the Cold War (1946-1991), Team A (USA and its NATO allies) bankrupted Team B (Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies) .
• In the First Gulf War (1990-1991), Team A (USA, UK, France, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt plus 29 lesser allies) beat Team B (Iraq).
• In the Second Gulf War (2003), Team A (USA, UK, Australia, Poland, plus 37 nations in “Coalition of the Willing”) beat Team B (Iraq).
• In the Afghan War (2001-2019), Team A (Afghan Taliban) is beating Team B (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, plus 46 other allies).

Clearly, we have a long historical habit of making military alliances. Clearly, since the 1990s, our fixation on military alliances has lost all sense.  In the 1^st and 2^nd Gulf Wars, 40 allied nations overwhelmed 1 nation, twice, in 12 years.  But in the Afghan War, 50 allied nations are being defeated by 1.

In these recent wars, it is also the case that the enemy the alliance fights had earlier been trained and armed by alliance members themselves. This is true for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. That is crazy.

All during these last 3 decades of crazy wars of alliance, we have known that we must drastically curtail our use of fossil fuels and must build totally new energy, transportation, and housing infrastructures to be able to live in a sustainable way on a finite planet.  If we don’t, we die.  We knew this, but still could not break our habit of making military alliances to wage war.  We are wasting fiscal, material, manufacturing resources, wasting decades of precious time, wasting humans, on what?  Military alliances and wars. Those resources and people could be, should be, used to defeat climate heating and to build a sustainable civilization.

Floyd Rudmin, Professor Emeritus, Social & Community Psychology University of Tromsø, Norway