However, the results of the LODE and Re:LODE art project project show that the dangers of global heating, are compounded by the active interests of capitalists and the globalized system of capitalism.
Re:LODE Radio is launching 2020 Re-Vision to show through the methods of an art based dialogue, how this is, in fact, the actual situation. And, more importantly, how to change this state of affairs. The ongoing state change in the global climate requires a state change in the global economic and political system. It is a simple question: Capitalism or the human habitability of the planet?
One Month Later . . .
An artistic method, employed over the last 30 years, in an art practice that attempts to present the truth of things (especially in an information environment governed and shaped by the so-called "News Cycle"), is to look again at what was being reported 30 days previously. This method often results in re-provoking and re-searching process, leading to a "Wake Up Call".
The Observer art review of an exhibition - Eco-Visionaries Confronting a Planet in a State of Emergency - at the Royal Academy in London one month ago (01.12.19) by Rowan Moore is headlined: When the world is on fire, the last thing we need is hot air
The subheading runs: There is little urgency and plenty of chin-stroking from the artists in a show that claims to confront the climate emergency but offers few answers
"The dread term "virtue signalling", so often used to dismiss integrity and commitment is apposite here." he writes.
The Re:LODE project demands urgency.
Q. What is to be done?
A. FUCK Capitalism!
Capitalism is the stumbling block!
In order to create the necessary changes to the global economic system there needs to be a practical alternative.
The CCTV devices have been mounted on two tree trunks either side of the Grade I-listed monument. Meanwhile, a marble plaque that was severely damaged in the attacks, in January and February 2019, has been removed for restoration.
FAKE NEWS + HATRED!
A "Doctrine of HATE"?
The "vandalism" documented here, includes this "information":
MemoRIAL to bolSheviK HOLOCAUST 1917 - 1953
"66,000,000 DEAD".
There can be little doubt that connecting the history of Communism and the Soviet Union to sixty six million dead, as in this graffiti, is an attempt to tarnish the true value of the economic and political philosophy of Karl Marx. The use of the dates 1917 - 1953, functions to elide the first years of the Russian Revolution with the period of Stalin's dictatorship.
The economic policies of Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the period of the Russian Civil War, adopted the so-called policy of War communism, which entailed the breakup of the landed estates and the forcible seizure of agricultural surpluses. In the cities there were intense food shortages and a breakdown in the money system (at the time many Bolsheviks argued that ending money's role as a transmitter of "value" was a sign of the rapidly approaching communist epoch). Many city dwellers fled to the countryside – often to tend the land that the Bolshevik breakup of the landed estates had transferred to the peasants. Even small scale "capitalist" production was suppressed.
The Kronstadt rebellion signaled the growing unpopularity of War Communism in the countryside: in March 1921, at the end of the civil war, disillusioned sailors, primarily peasants who initially had been stalwart supporters of the Bolsheviks, revolted against the economic failures of the new regime. The Red Army, commanded by Trotsky, crossed the ice over the frozen Baltic Sea to quickly crush the rebellion, this sign of growing discontent forced the party to foster a broad alliance of the working class and peasantry (80% of the population), despite left factions of the party which favored a regime solely representative of the interests of the revolutionary proletariat.
As millions died of starvation, Communist officials were paralyzed by the Russian famine of 1921–22 because they could not blame it on the usual enemies. This severe famine in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic began early in the spring of 1921 and lasted through 1922.
This famine killed an estimated 5 million people, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions, and peasants resorted to cannibalism. The famine resulted from the combined effects of economic disturbance because of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, exacerbated by rail systems that could not distribute food efficiently.
One of Russia's intermittent droughts in 1921 aggravated the situation to a national catastrophe. In the summer of 1921, Vladimir Lenin, head of the new Soviet government, along with Maxim Gorky, appealed in an open letter to "all honest European and American people", to "give bread and medicine". In an open letter to all nations, dated 13 July 1921, Gorky described the crop failure which had brought his country to the brink of starvation. Herbert Hoover, who would later become the U.S. President, responded immediately, and negotiations with Russia took place at the Latvian capital, Riga. A European effort was led by the famous Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen through the International Committee for Russian Relief (ICRR). The Hunger was so severe that it was likely seed-grain would be eaten rather than sown. At one point relief agencies had to give food to railroad staff to get their supplies moved.
America was the first country to respond, with Hoover appointing Colonel William N. Haskell to direct the American Relief Administration (ARA) in Russia. Within a month, ships loaded with food were headed for Russia. The main contributor to the international relief effort would be the American Relief Administration (ARA), founded and directed by Hoover. Although it had agreed to provide food for a million people, mostly children, within a year it was feeding more than ten times that number daily.
The combined consequences of war, civil war and famine would have been responsible for at least five millions of deaths during this period.
Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. Some scholars assert that record-keeping of the executions of political prisoners and ethnic minorities are neither reliable nor complete, others contend archival materials contain irrefutable data far superior to sources utilized prior to 1991, such as statements from emigres and other informants.
Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher. After the USSR dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives also became available, containing official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953), around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag some 390,000 deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s – with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories. The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million persons in the famine of 1932–33 are sometimes, but not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.
Total number of of deaths of people by Stalinism, 1924—1953 (*excluding killings outside of Soviet borders):
The estimated total deaths of people as a result of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, according to this article, was between 5,780,000–8,101,000.
The excess mortality of 5 million, plus 8 million, does NOT add up to 66,000,000 deaths!
Q. Why is Karl Marx a hate figure for these vandals, vandals whose purpose is to mobilize hatred with false information? A. Because the Marxist analysis of the reality of capitalism is an existential threat to capitalism?
Q. Why is Marxism a real threat to the vested interests of a global capitalist system?
The answer to this question, like most questions, will be another question . . .
Q. How many deaths of people have occurred as a result of capitalism?
A. Watch this space . . .
Human agency and "natural disaster" . . .
Holodomor . . .
Passers-by and the corpse of a starved man on a street in Kharkiv, 1932
The word Holodomor literally translated from Ukrainian means "death by hunger", or "killing by hunger, killing by starvation". Sometimes the expression is translated into English as "murder by hunger or starvation".
Holodomor is a compound of the Ukrainian words holod meaning "hunger" and mor meaning "plague". The expression moryty holodom means "to inflict death by hunger". The Ukrainian verb moryty (морити) means "to poison somebody, drive to exhaustion or to torment somebody". The perfective form of the verb moryty is zamoryty – "kill or drive to death by hunger, exhausting work".
The word was used in print in the 1930s in Ukrainian diaspora publications in Czechoslovakia (as Haladamor), and by 1978 by Ukrainian immigrant organisations in the United States and Canada. However, in the Soviet Union – of which Ukraine was a constituent republic – references to the famine were controlled, even after de-Stalinization in 1956. Historians could speak only of 'food difficulties', and the use of the very word golod/holod (hunger, famine) was forbidden.
Discussion of the Holodomor became more open as part of Glasnost in the late 1980s. In Ukraine, the first official use of the word was a December 1987 speech by Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on the occasion of the republic's seventieth anniversary.
An early public usage in the Soviet Union was in February 1988, in a speech by Oleksiy Musiyenko, Deputy Secretary for ideological matters of the party organisation of the Kiev branch of the Union of Soviet Writers in Ukraine. The term may have first appeared in print in the Soviet Union on 18 July 1988, in his article on the topic.
"Holodomor" is now an entry in the modern, two-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language, published in 2004. The term is described as "artificial hunger, organised on a vast scale by a criminal regime against a country's population."
Soviet famine of 1932–33: Areas of most disastrous famine shaded black
This famine is also known as the Terror-Famine and Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, and sometimes referred to as the Great Famine or the Ukrainian Genocide of 1932–33. It was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country.
During the Holodomor, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.
Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly. According to higher estimates, up to 12 million ethnic Ukrainians were said to have perished as a result of the famine. A U.N. joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished. Research has since narrowed the estimates to between 3.3 and 7.5 million. According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kiev in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficits.
Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. However the western part of today's Ukraine where the independence movement was the strongest was not affected by the famine since it was then part of Poland.
Using Holodomor in reference to the famine emphasises its man-made aspects, arguing that actions such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs, and restriction of population movement confer intent, defining the famine as genocide; the loss of life has been compared to that of the Holocaust. The causes are still a subject of academic debate, and some historians dispute its characterization as a genocide.
The Ukraine is traversed by the LODEZoneline, as are some of the areas of bush fire related devastation in Australia, and reported in the news over the last weeks of 2019.
What new word shall be "coined" for the human agency responsible for global heating?
For the peoples of the Pacific Ocean an appropriate neologism needs to connect unfettered carbon emissions with rising sea levels and the obliteration of Pacific island cultures!
Scott Morrison has been accused of causing an extraordinary rift between Australia and Pacific countries by the prime minister of Fiji, who said the Australian prime minister’s insulting behaviour while at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu would push nations closer to China.
Kate Lyons in Funafuti, attending the Pacific Islands Forum for the Guardian, Australia, Sat 17 Aug 2019 had an exclusive interview with Bainimarama, Fiji's PM. She reports:
Bainimarama said Morrison’s approach to negotiating was heavy-handed, with the Australian prime minister trying to force all the other leaders to sign on to Australia’s views.
Bainimarama said Morrison’s approach to negotiating was heavy-handed, with the Australian prime minister trying to force all the other leaders to sign on to Australia’s views.
Vanuatu’s foreign minister, Ralph Regenvanu, told the Guardian that Australia had several “red lines” during negotiations that it refused to budge on, meaning Pacific leaders had to remove all references to coal, references to limiting warming to less than 1.5C and to setting out a plan for net zero emissions by 2050 from the forum communique and climate change statement that came out of the meeting.
“We had said ‘below 1.5 degrees’,” said Bainimarama, who presided over the UN’s leading climate change body, COP23, in 2017 and is a global leader in the fight against climate change. “That’s what was in our official drafts, but your prime minister didn’t want that because it means the Australians will have to come up with a lot of sacrifices. But we’re supposed to be here for the Pacific islands, not only for Australia.”
Bainimarama also commented on the deputy prime minister Michael McCormack’s comments that Pacific island nations affected by the climate crisis would continue to survive “because many of their workers come here to pick our fruit”, saying they were insulting and disrespectful.
Scott Morrison has signalled the Australian government will not increase its efforts to combat climate change despite an extended bushfire crisis and a record-breaking heatwave.
Morrison said there was “no argument” about the links “between broader issues of global climate change and weather events around the world” but it was “not a credible suggestion” to make a direct connection to any single fire event.
Global heating is leading to longer, hotter, drier summers which experts agree increases bushfires’ frequency and severity. But Morrison said it was “one of many factors”, listing others including backburning, vegetation management, building codes, carelessness, arson and lightning strikes.
On Saturday, McCormack said he “absolutely” agreed that “further action” to combat climate change is needed.
Morrison appeared to snuff out hope his government will improve its policies, which have caused Australia to be rated worst out of 57 countries for its handling of climate change by a group of thinktanks.
“I do not accept the suggestion that Australia is not carrying its weight,” he said.
Morrison claimed that McCormack was “making exactly the point I’m making” – citing existing commitments in the Paris agreement to decrease Australia’s emissions by 26% by 2030 – although he also suggested there may be room for “further refinement” before 2030.
Australia needs to cut emissions by 695m tonnes cumulatively across the next decade to meet its 2030 target. The Morrison government has said more than half of that cut, 367m tonnes, will come from accounting – using carryover credits from meeting earlier Kyoto targets – and not from practical emissions reduction.
The centrepiece of Australia’s policy is a $2.55bn fund to pay polluters to reduce emissions, after the Liberal-National government abolished Australia’s carbon price in 2014.
Asked about the use of carryover credits, Morrison replied that “people can expect my government to do what it promised to do, what it took to the last election”.
“I know there are some who tried to make political points and score points over these issues in the midst of these disasters and that is disappointing.”
The private companies that put forward the proposals, Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners in Queensland and the APA Group in Victoria, now have the go-ahead to continue with the projects if they can secure their own finance.
But on Monday, in the midst of Australia’s record-breaking heatwave and extended bushfire crisis, Morrison told Sydney radio 2GB the government was still considering coal-fired plants as part of its energy mix.
“You need the whole mix, there is no doubt about that,” Morrison said.
“Firstly, there is a proposal for coal still up in north Queensland which we are accepting a report on very, very soon, there are some others in New South Wales and we will see where that goes.
Two faces . . .
Adam Morton, Environment editor at The Guardian reported Mon 12 Aug 2019 that:
An Australian coalmine has nearly doubled its greenhouse gas emissions in two years without penalty under a Coalition climate policy that promised to put a limit on industrial pollution.
Mining company Anglo American was given the green light to increase emissions at its Moranbah North mine, in central Queensland, twice since 2016, according to documents released under freedom of information laws.
The pollution increase was approved under a scheme known as the “safeguard mechanism”, which promised to ensure cuts paid for by taxpayers through the government’s “direct action” emissions reduction fund were not just wiped out by rises elsewhere.
The documents show Anglo American was approved to increase its annual emissions from 1.3m tonnes to more than 2.3m tonnes a year. An equivalent cut in carbon pollution to offset that increase would have cost taxpayers $13.7m.
The Australian Conservation Foundation, which received the documents, said the failure to impose a hard pollution cap on big companies was the main reason national emissions were rising each year at odds with the government’s pledge at the Paris climate summit.
The documents show Anglo American exceeded its safeguard limit of 1.30m tonnes in 2016/17 and would have been required to buy carbon credits to make up the difference but applied to the Clean Energy Regulator, which administers the scheme, to have its baseline retrospectively set at 1.36m tonnes. The change was approved in January 2018.
In 2017/18, emissions from the site jumped to 2.33m tonnes, a 71% increase in a year. The company was granted a new baseline, confirmed in February this year, that allows it to emit 6.7m tonnes over the three years to June 2020.
An earlier analysis by consultants RepuTex found heavy industrial sites covered by the safeguard mechanism had, in total, been approved emissions limit increases of nearly a third.
Gavan McFadzean, the Conservation Foundation’s climate change and clean energy program manager, said the Anglo American case showed the government’s climate policies were failing. “For years, experts have warned the so-called safeguards are full of holes and the pollution increase without penalty at Moranbah North is evidence of this,” he said.
McFadzean said loopholes in the safeguard mechanism should be eradicated and emissions limits reduced over time, as recommended by government agency the Climate Change Authority.
“This is a bare minimum first step towards a comprehensive Australian climate change strategy that will bring down our pollution to zero by 2050,” he said.
The emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, did not directly address questions about the purpose of the safeguard mechanism. In a statement, he said the government was spending $3.5bn on a climate solutions package and had mapped out how it would deliver its Paris commitment. “We will meet our international obligations without wrecking our economy or offshoring jobs and industry,” he said.
When he says "our economy" he means something else. More profits for capitalist polluters.
This report prompted a lively Climate Change article by Katherine Murphy.
The Re:LODE project of 2017-18 included two questions relating to the creation, in 1992, of the LODEcargo in the area of Bordertown, South Australia, and close to the state border with the Australian State of Victoria. This location, and the creation of the LODE cargo, are documented in this video.
This question for Re:LODE2017 reflects on the impact upon agriculture of increasingly dry conditions for farming, resulting from climate change over recent decades.
This question addressed concerns over global heating and the increased risk of bushfires.
On 24 December it was reported that South Australia's Adelaide Hills wine industry had been devastated as bushfires swept through the region.
In
today's news cycle our attention is presented with this catastrophic
series of bush fires. And Guardian readers will have a view of the
challenges that humanity faces in a world where global average
temperatures are rising at their fastest rate.
The wider context . . .
But what is the context? What are the stories that people want to share, and what are the stories they want to tell?
Gippsland is where some of the most recent fires that have engulfed the Australian state of Victoria, and is traversed by the invisible LODE line. Gippsland is, therefore within the LODE Zone. One of the 22 original LODE cargoes originated along the LODE line, and was created and documented at Port Albert on the Gippsland coastal margins.
This was the news story that shaped another question for the Re:LODE2017 project.
This story - Offshore wind farm proposed for waters off Victoria's Gippsland - from ABC NEWS by Stephanie Corsetti (2 Jun 2017) is an example of a sustainable alternative form of energy production from natural resources to counter carbon emissions and, at the same time, provide a sustainable economic benefit to the local community.
The wind farm — which would be built 10–25 kilometres offshore in waters near Port Albert — would spread over 570 square kilometres in Commonwealth waters, and could provide 18 per cent of the state's energy.
Offshore Energy's managing director Andy Evans said the $8 billion project could reduce carbon emissions by about 10.5 million tonnes per year.
"The benefits of offshore wind, particularly off the coast of Gippsland, is it's a much more consistent and constant wind resource," he said.
"You don't have as many of the restrictions as you would have with other land-based wind resources."
Mr Evans said the wind farm would connect to the existing network and could supply power to 1.2 million homes.
He said the feasibility testing phase would take three years.
"Offshore wind projects have been developing rapidly, particularly in Europe, but also in the northern hemisphere," Mr Evans said.
"There are a number of offshore developers and certainly large infrastructure investors, particularly here and overseas, that are progressing these projects."
Hope for thousands of jobs
Preliminary planning and environmental studies show the plant could generate direct about 12,000 direct and indirect jobs, in a region that has been plagued by job losses since the Hazelwood power station shutdown.
Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester, who is the MP for Gippsland, has given early support, pending an environmental study.
"We have great natural resources in Gippsland — wind off the coast, coal timber. If there are ways to capture that and turn into energy that powers manufacturing sector, I am all for that," he said.
"But it's important the proponents work with the local community."
This opinion piece for the Guardian on Climate change by Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler (Tue 23 Apr 2019), makes the crucial point that climate change knows no borders, and that to succeed in averting an environmental disaster for human kind, a global response is required:
In times of crisis and catastrophe, children are often forced to grow up quickly. We are now witnessing this premature call to action on a planetary scale. As the adults in government accelerate their consumption of fossil fuels, children are leading the campaign against our species’ looming extinction. Our survival now depends on the prospects for a global movement to follow their lead and demand an International Green New Deal.
Several countries have proposed their own versions of a Green New Deal. Here in Europe, DiEM25 and our European Spring coalition are campaigning under the banner of a detailed Green New Deal agenda. In the UK, a new campaign is pushing similar legislation with MPs such as Caroline Lucas and Clive Lewis. And in the US, dogged activists in the Sunrise Movement are working with representatives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push their proposal to the front of the political agenda.
But these campaigns have largely remained siloed. Their advisers may exchange notes and ideas, but no strategy has emerged to coordinate these campaigns in a broader, global framework.
Unfortunately, climate change knows no borders. The US may be the second-largest polluter in the world, but it makes up less than 15% of global greenhouse emissions. Leading by example is simply not enough.
Instead, we need an International Green New Deal: a pragmatic plan to raise $8tn – 5% of global GDP – each year, coordinate its investment in the transition to renewable energy and commit to providing climate protections on the basis of countries’ needs, rather than their means.
Q. Where can we find a cool $8 trillion?
A. Well I am glad you asked.
Vox ran this article by Umair Irfan on May 17 2019 pointing out that the big carbon emitting industries of coal, oil, and natural gas, are subsidised each year to the tune of 6.4 per cent of global GDP:
The International Monetary Fund periodically assesses global subsidies for fossil fuels as part of its work on climate, and it found in a recent working paper that the fossil fuel industry got a whopping $5.2 trillion in subsidies in 2017. This amounts to 6.4 percent of the global gross domestic product.
As it happens The International Monetary Fund periodically assesses global subsidies for fossil fuels as part of its work on climate, and it found in a recent working paper that the fossil fuel industry got a whopping $5.2 trillion in subsidies in 2017. This amounts to 6.4 percent of the global gross domestic product.
Perhaps this is a place to start getting things done . . .?
And, while we are at it, let's regulate Bitcoin? Or, better still, abolish Bitcoin!
Q. So what is the problem with Bitcoin?
A. The problem with Bitcoin is Bitcoin mining. Like all things in this global capitalist economic system, its value relates only to the system itself? While Bitcoin mining produces as much carbon dioxide each year as a million transatlantic flights.
David Wallace-Wells in his book The Uninhabitable Earth makes an acute observation regarding Bitcoin.
He writes:
Five years ago, hardly anyone outside the darkest corners of the internet had even heard of Bitcoin; today mining it consumes more electricity than is generated by all the world's solar panels combined, which means that in just a few years we've assembled, out of distrust of one another and the nations behind "fiat currencies," a program to wipe out the gains of several long, hard generations of green energy innovation. It did not have to be that way. And a simple change to the algorithm could eliminate the Bitcoin footprint entirely. (Page 33.)
These Green New Dealers will not get an easy ride!
The Intercept's Ryan Grim and Briahna Gray reported (November 13 2018):
Protesters with the environmental group Sunrise marched on Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s office on Tuesday. The group, made up of young people pushing for urgent action on climate change, planned to send a clear message to party leadership just one week after Democrats regained control of the House.
Sunrise protesters in Pelosi’s office with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But this was no ordinary protest for the Sunrise activists, who typically stand on the opposite side of politicians. This time, they were joined by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is just weeks away from being sworn into office.
Members of the progressive political group Justice Democrats also joined the protest, which was attended by more than 150 people. “Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership must get serious about the climate and our economy,” said the group’s communications director, Waleed Shahid, in a statement. “Anything less is tantamount to denying the reality of climate change. The hopeful part is that we’re ushering in a new generation of leaders into the Democratic Party who understand the urgency and will help build a movement to create the political will for bold action.”
A recent United Nations report found that catastrophic effects of climate change, some of which are already upon us, could become widespread as early as 2040. To stave off the crisis, the globe’s economy would have to be put on the equivalent of a war footing, scientists involved with the study concluded.
The protesters, including Ocasio-Cortez, are calling on Pelosi to create and give teeth to a new select committee on climate change.
However, Nancy Pelosi has a track record on biofuels policy that makes it clear where some politicians stand on national issues, regardless of the international environmental consequences. This is covered in an outstanding piece of reporting by Abrahm Lustgarten in The New York Times Magazine (Nov. 20, 2018) and referenced in the "Some POLITICS" article (See below):
The article concludes with these paragraphs, and referencing Nancy Pelosi as a significant actor in the unleashing of global catastrophe:
This September, with late-season heat pounding Washington, Zenzi Suhadi cleared security at the Russell Senate Office Building, preparing to brief Senate aides about the impact that palm-oil development was having on Indonesia’s environment. I asked if he was nervous, and he said no. “These are just people. I don’t have to face any tigers.” He didn’t seem to be joking.
Suhadi wanted to tell the lawmakers the same thing he told them in two previous visits to Capitol Hill: that the palm trade, driven by American investment, is slowly killing his country. “It’s important for you to understand that all acts of deforestation in Indonesia start with a signature,” he said. “And more than a little of it starts right here.” He was not confident that he would be heard — the last time he visited Washington, lawmakers chewed up their time asking him about water buffalo in his village. But still he felt compelled to speak.
From Washington, Suhadi traveled to San Francisco to attend a climate march and address a group of hedge-fund investors. Just down the street, Michael Bloomberg implored strong immediate action on emissions reductions at the Global Climate Action Summit, one of the nation’s largest gatherings on climate goals. But the conference was light on substance when it came to the subject of forests. There was scarcely any mention of peatland at all.
When Nancy Pelosi took the stage, she looked back on the 2007 fuel-economy bill and biofuels mandate she shepherded into law. The initiative should be credited, she said, with “charting a new path to clean energy, reducing emissions, increasing the use of renewables.” She made no mention of Indonesia. When I asked her about the deforestation in an earlier email, her office wrote back defending the bill, citing the Union of Concerned Scientists and arguing that even with the Indonesian forest effect accounted for, biodiesels were cleaner than fossil fuels. “Bottom line,” the office responded, “the biofuels in your tank are better for the planet than 100 percent fossil fuels.”
Henry Waxman, of course, doesn’t agree. He said Congress was so focused on domestic climate policy that it failed to see the repercussions of those policies around the world — repercussions that now seem obvious. “We’ve created a situation that is so contrary to what we had hoped for,” he said. “We’re doing more harm to the environment. It was a mistake.”
The advanced cellulosic-biofuels program that once seemed so promising has been a failure. It never attracted the investment it needed, and the E.P.A. has allowed biodiesel to serve as a substitute in meeting the mandate. President Trump has wandered into the renewable-fuels-standard debate, too, and found himself caught in a thicket, at one moment poised to reform the fuel standard completely and the very next snagged by the interest of a powerful agriculture industry grown accustomed to its enormous benefit. The result is likely to be at least a near-term doubling down on American biofuels use, no matter the cost.
It may no longer be possible to slow the momentum behind Indonesia’s palm markets. Sitting in the lavish dining room of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Jakarta in July, over an awkward meal of mushroom consommé and blanched scallops, officials from Indonesia’s Palm Oil Development Fund made a case for their industry. I asked how important the American biofuels mandate has been, given that other countries buy more Indonesian palm oil than Americans do. The answer was unequivocal: It’s what got Indonesian palm off the ground. “The U.S. is not only a market,” said Ruddy Gobel, the chief political adviser to the director. “It also sets the global agenda.” Now, according to the Indonesian development officials, 80 million Indonesians depend economically on palm oil, and nearly half the industry consists of individual landowners like the people in Kotawaringin. “If you pull out biofuel, the whole system will collapse,” said Dono Boestami, the fund’s director.
From vandalism in Highgate Cemetery to Fox News . . .
This article by David Roberts at Vox (Apr 22, 2019) sets out the reality of resistance to the way the Green New Deal has been branded by the right and the extreme alternative right. This is a spectrum that runs from strong opposition to any type of new green deal, to an ideology of hate based on stoking people's deepest fears. The issues discussed in this article apply to media and politics in the United States, but U.S. media and social media set the U.S. national agenda in a global context.
One of the points in David Roberts argument is the way the right is extremely well organized to villify and demonize anyone brave enough to challenge the economic madness of actually existing power interests:
The story of the GND is the story of current US media and politics in miniature
Here’s a familiar story in US politics: Democrats (or the left, broadly) find something, a candidate or a policy proposal, that sparks grassroots excitement and enthusiasm. The enormous right-wing media machine immediately smells blood and targets the person or policy with relentless negative coverage, ensuring that the right-wing base views the person or policy as almost comically evil.
There is no parallel left-wing media machine to swing around in support of the person or policy. Democrats have no such machine, and they couldn’t get their shit together to be unified enough to run one if they had one. There is only the mainstream press, which the right has conned everyone into thinking is the “other side.”
Mainstream political journalists have a 24-hour primal howl in one ear and a bunch of infighting, sporadic fact-checking, and white papers in the other, so naturally coverage starts to trend negative.
Lo and behold, the person or policy has become “polarizing” and “divisive.” Right on cue, moderate Democrats recoil from the person or policy.
Thus the right is able to manipulate the media environment and browbeat the left into failing to support its own base, its most engaged and passionate members. Right-wing intensity is taken for granted; left-wing intensity faces furious opposition from the other party and disdainful scolding from half its own.
The GND is one such story, but it is not unique. For virtually every policy proposed in the poll, the most intense opposition is found among Fox viewers and Trump voters (categories that likely substantially overlap, though the latter is over twice as large). From renewable energy to carbon taxes, opposition among Fox viewers is around 10 percent higher than among Republicans generally.
The Green New Deal is Marxism . . .
Fox is doing the same thing to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the GND’s sponsor. It did the same thing to Barack Obama, the Affordable Care Act, the stimulus during the Great Recession, the Waxman-Markey climate bill, and everything Hillary Clinton ever did or said. It’s doing the same thing to Russia-Trump investigation special counsel Robert Mueller.
It will do the same thing to whoever or whatever Dems turn their gaze to next, whether it’s Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg or Medicare-for-all or a carbon tax. Any Democrat who thinks there’s some person appealing enough or policy incremental enough that it can escape Sauron’s Eye is fooling themselves.
She's stupid . . .
There is no parallel on the left, no integrated money/political/media machine to enforce message discipline, to bring everyone on the left swinging around in support of the GND (or anything else). Dems remain fractured, squabbling among themselves over who’s more moderate and grown up. The mainstream media remains terrified of criticism from the right in a way it never has been from the left.
So it is on climate policy, as it is on many other progressive priorities: The majority supports the idea, but the right has the ability to rally frenzied intensity against it at a moment’s notice. The left does not have the tools, will, or ability to rally commensurate intensity in support. (At least not yet.) So the same asymmetry of intensity is reflected in poll after poll, and in national politics generally.
Plenty of people in the broad center-left have their own issues with the GND and may not shed a tear if the right-wing media machine succeeds in making it radioactive. Perhaps they think a more “moderate” proposal, one that more perfectly reflects their policy preferences, will escape the same treatment, because of how sensible it is. Perhaps they think getting a small handful of Republican signatures will dissuade Sauron.
No Chance . . .
They will be wrong.
Sooner or later they will have to grapple with the fact that they are not in a good-faith fight that turns on evidence and persuasion. All that matters for the moment is power. Instead of debating how many carbon policies can fit on the head of a pin, they should be thinking about how to activate their diverse majority the same way the right activates its shrinking, homogenous minority.
Intensity is what matters in politics. Democrats and climate hawks need to figure out how to generate some. If not around the Green New Deal, then what?
Extreme weather events . . .
Today, in the same 24hr period, 37 cm of heavy rain has caused catastrophic flooding in the city of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia.
A motorcyclist rides through floodwater on Jl. S. Parman in West Jakarta on Wednesday.
Q. Are extreme weather events, such as these, the result of climate change and global warming?
A. Yes!
There is a chapter entitled Disasters No Longer Natural in David Wallace-Wells book The Uninhabitable Earth - A Story of the Future, in section II that he calls Elements of Chaos, looking at the way things are going when it comes to extreme weather events, and its going to go from bad to worse.
The Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra are traversed by the LODE Line too.
In 1992 a LODEcargo was created and documented in a hotel in Glodok, part of the older city centre of Jakarta, but which was once an "exo-city", a ghetto for ethnic Chinese, and separated from the Dutch colonial administrative city of Batavia.
The Information Wrap for the Javanese coastal town of Pangandaran references the environmental impact upon the Indonesian rainforest of big business interests, including the use of fire to clear the land for "productive" use.
In October 2017 Mongabay launched an in-depth series on corruption, palm oil and rainforests, that is called "Indonesia for Sale".
Scientist warns UN 2020 is 'year of truth'
This post is headlined 2020 "THE YEAR OF TRUTH", and takes this moment from the COP 25 Madrid Climate Change Conference to take up the challenge and make this year of 2020 the 'year of truth'.
At the COP 25: Madrid climate change conference 2019Fiona Harvey reports for the Guardian (Sun 8 Dec 2019):
UN climate talks failing to address urgency of crisis, says top scientist
COP25 in Madrid criticised for focusing on details instead of agreeing deep cuts to emissions
Fiona Harvey writes:
Urgent UN talks on tackling the climate emergency are still not addressing the true scale of the crisis, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has warned, as high-ranking ministers from governments around the world began to arrive in Madrid for the final days of negotiations.
Talks are focusing on some of the rules for implementing the 2015 Paris agreement, but the overriding issue of how fast the world needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions has received little official attention.
“We are at risk of getting so bogged down in incremental technicalities at these negotiations that we forget to see the forest for the trees,” said Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “There is a risk of disappointment in the UN process because of the inability to recognise that there is an emergency.”
In the next few days, environment and finance ministers from more than 190 governments will begin the “high-level segment” of the UN talks, which began on 2 December, and will finish on Friday. Over the weekend, negotiators produced the latest draft of a key text on carbon markets, which still does not have the consensus needed to pass.
The stately pace of negotiations was in stark contrast with the scenes outside the conference in Madrid, where on Friday evening more than 500,000 people marched through the Spanish capital led by the Swedish school striker Greta Thunberg. Protests continued through the weekend, with Extinction Rebellion and groups from across the world. On Monday, Thunberg and other youth activists will hold meetings with officials inside the conference.
Rockström said the UN conference must grapple urgently with reversing emissions of greenhouse gases, which are still on the rise despite repeated scientific warnings over three decades and multiple resolutions by governments to tackle the problem.
“We must bend the curve next year,” he told the Guardian, citing stark warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Next year is the year of truth. The year when we must move decisively to an economy that really starts to reduce investments in fossil fuels.”
Even the coal-fired power plants currently planned or in construction are enough to produce double the amount of carbon that can safely be put in the atmosphere for the next century, Rockström said.
The situation was so dire that governments should be starting to consider geoengineering technology, he said. Such projects could use a combination of natural and artificial means, from seeding clouds to erecting reflectors in space.
“Geoengineering has to be assessed, maybe even piloted already in case we need to deploy it,” he said. “It makes me very nervous. That is really playing with biological processes that might kick back in very unexpected ways. But I don’t think we should rule anything out – an emergency is an emergency.”
As the UN conference enters its final stages, the role of the UK is likely to come under much greater scrutiny. Britain will play host to next year’s conference at which world leaders must pledge much greater cuts in emissions than have yet been made, if the 2015 Paris accord is to succeed.
Claire O’Neill, the former Tory climate minister designated to lead next year’s conference, is in Madrid but cannot make official announcements because of the “purdah” rules surrounding political announcements in the run-up to the general election.
However, the UK’s plans were rated as “insufficient” in a key independent analysis called the Climate Action Tracker. Despite the government’s eye-catching commitment last summer to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 – one of the first major economies to make such a pledge – few measures are in place to keep pace with the target.
“There has been a dearth of new significant climate policies in recent years which, if left unaddressed, will leave the UK missing its medium and long-term targets,” concluded the analysis of global emissions-cutting plans.
That would damage the host nation’s credibility at next year’s crucial talks in Glasgow, campaigners said.
Dr Bill Hare, a climate scientist and the chief executive of Climate Analytics, which carried out the study, said it was clear which of the two biggest parties had the better plans on the issue before this week’s general election.
“While both major political parties have proposed further climate action, the Conservatives have not put sufficient proposals on the table to close this gap, whereas [our analysis shows] the Labour’s £250bn could easily close that gap and push on towards a 1.5C pathway,” Hare said.
The Guardian Environment correspondent Fiona Harvey's Q&A on: What is COP - and how will it help? is succinct and helpful:
For almost three decades, world governments have met every year to forge a global response to the climate emergency. Under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, every country on earth is treaty-bound to “avoid dangerous climate change”, and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally in an equitable way. COP stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC.
The main subject up for discussion in 2019 is a provision in the Paris agreement known as article 6, which allows for the use of a global market in carbon to help countries cut emissions and to fund measures that reduce emissions in developing countries.
The negotiations, which run until 13 December, will be led by environment ministers and civil servants, aided by UN officials. Nearly every country is expected to send a voting representative at the level of environment secretary or equivalent, and the big economies will have extensive delegations.
Each of the 196 nations on earth, bar a few failed states, is a signatory to the UNFCCC foundation treaty. The COPs, for all their flaws, are the only forum on the climate crisis in which the opinions and concerns of the poorest country carry equal weight to that of the biggest economies, such as the US and China. Agreement can only come by consensus, which gives COP decisions global authority.
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