Climate Memo Mondays #8
The Biden Administration’s Landmark Day in
the Fight for the Climate by Bill McKibben.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-biden-administrations-landmark-day-in-the-fight-for-the-climate
January 28, 2021
On January 27th, the
President announced a series of climate actions that may well mark the
beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era.
January 27th was the most remarkable day in the
history of America’s official response to the climate crisis, at least since
that June afternoon in 1988, when nasa’s James Hansen told a congressional committee that the planet
had begun to heat. On Wednesday, in the course of a few hours, the Biden Administration
took a series of coördinated actions that, considered together, may well mark
the official beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era.
The Biden Administration
temporarily paused the new leasing of federal lands and waters for fossil-fuel
production, while speeding up the process of permitting renewables. The
President pledged that the federal government would start buying electric cars
in volume. His order sets up or strengthens offices in the Justice Department,
the Energy Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency to focus on what
he called “environmental justice.” He announced that climate change would
become a national-security priority for the Pentagon. And all of this came
after his earlier pledges to rejoin the Paris climate accord and to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. There’s a
shock-and-awe feel to the barrage of actions, and that is the point: taken
together, they send a decisive signal about the end of one epoch and the
beginning of another. And that signal, most of all, is aimed at investors: fossil fuel, Biden is making
clear, is not a safe bet, or even a good bet, for making real money. Coal, oil,
and gas are the past, not the future. They’re the present, too, of course—but
you don’t make big-money bets on the present.
We may not get to that
future fast enough to stave off truly disastrous global warming—the natural
world made some announcements of its own this week, including the news that the
melt from glaciers and ice sheets is in line with the worst-case scenarios that
scientists have produced—and we won’t get to that safer future easily. The
fossil-fuel industry is already hitting back hard against the Biden
announcements, using the only argument it has left: jobs. But the
Administration’s team was prepared for the onslaught—Biden styled his
announcements as a job-creation scheme, predicting, for instance, that electric
cars would create a million new jobs for autoworkers. And his aides made clear
that they understood the need to cushion the blow in areas where oil, gas, and
coal jobs are disappearing. MORE . https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-biden-administrations-landmark-day-in-the-fight-for-the-climate Bill McKibben is a founder of the grassroots
climate campaign 350.org, author of many books, the latest ,Falter, and
a contributing writer to The New Yorker. He writes The Climate Crisis, The New Yorker’s
newsletter on the environment.
CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS in Chronological Order
Supporting the GND
1. 12-14-20
The Old Incrementalism and the Green NEW Deal.
Every Sunday the PBS program “Real Green”
appreciates praiseworthy projects for the planet. Today 12-13-20 the Solar Living Institute at
Hopland, CA received the spotlight. Its
founder and director, John Schaefer, has built a wonderful energy oasis. Not only do the solar collectors on the
buildings welcome the sun, but grapevines prohibit the sun where not
welcome. The building walls are built
from straw. There’s a windmill for all water needs, an edible landscape, and a
large operation to recycle vegetable oil into biodiesel. And the Institute promotes its work by online
education.
It is a
veritable showcase of the energy innovations my generation was discussing
during the 1970s and after.
Alas, during
the years since then, global temperatures have continued to rise. The “Real Green” program doesn’t mention
that.
Fortunately,
what’s called the Green New Deal intends
to bring these excellent oases into national programs following the model of
the New Deal. Only a large vision like
that can surmount the consequences of the catastrophe the rising temperatures
are already producing. Think scale.
“Real Green” today also presented
an onion farm where the skins and ends waste goes to cattle feed and to make
electricity. Good for business profit;
good for environment. But no mention of
the temperature—and increasing hurricanes and droughts, nor of cattle-driven deforestation.
Is “Real Green” brought to us by the
Republican or the Libertarian Party?
Next week: What
the New Deal Teaches Us About the Green New Deal
254 words
2. 12-21-20
CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS
Supporting the GND
From NEW DEAL to GREEN NEW DEAL
What the New Deal can teach us about winning a Green New Deal: Part I. (mronline.org 8-6-19, point cursor
onto first line).
The New Deal has recently become a
touchstone for many progressive efforts, illustrated by Bernie Sanders’ embrace
of its aims and accomplishments and the popularity of calls for a Green New Deal.
What the New Deal can teach us about winning a Green New Deal: Part
II—Movement building. Mronline.org (8-16-19)
The multifaceted crisis we face
today is significantly different from the crisis activists faced in the first
years of the Great Depression. But there is no question that, much like then,
we will need to build a powerful, mass-movement for change if we hope to
harness state power to advance a Green New Deal.
What the New Deal can teach us about winning a Green New Deal: Part III—the
First New Deal. Mronline.org (August 29-19).
If we hope to win a Green New Deal we will have to build a movement
that is not only powerful enough to push the federal government to take on new
responsibilities with new capacities, but also has the political maturity
required to appreciate the contested nature of state policy and the vision.
The Two GND House Resolutions, the GND under construction
Text
- H.Res.109 - 116th Congress (2019-2020):
www.congress.gov ›
bill › house-resolution › 109 › text Feb 7, 2019 Recognizing the duty of
the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.
H.Con.Res.52
- 116th Congress (2019-2020): Expressing the ...
www.congress.gov ›
bill › house-concurrent-resolution
Introduced in House (07/09/2019).
This concurrent resolution expresses the sense of Congress
that global warming has
resulted in a climate emergency .
284 words
3. 12-28-20
Climate Memo Mondays
Supporting the GND
WHAT IS THE GREEN NEW DEAL? (Main source: Chomsky and Pollin, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New
Deal.)
464 words
The UN assembled the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in
1990 to bring the world’s climate scientists together to study the rising
temperatures and other atmospheric changes occurring around the world. The Panel’s Sixth Assessment appeared in
2018. Their essential discovery is that
greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide) created by humans from burning oil,
coal, and natural gas were raising the average temperatures. The consequences have been increasingly
catastrophic: increased incidences of
heat extremes, heavier precipitation, droughts, sea level increases,
biodiversity losses, and negative impacts on health, livelihoods, food
security, water supply.
The world’s population and leaders recognized the danger and were taking
action. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement
was endorsed by 195 countries. However,
the fossil fuel companies (shareholders and their officers), imitating the
tobacco companies, purchased an intense propaganda campaign to question the
evidence and instill fear of losing jobs.
Donald Trump became the Climate-Denier-in-Chief and withdrew the US from
the Agreement.
In response in 2018, members of the House of Representatives, proposed two Resolutions concurrently with the
Senate:
H.Res.109 - 116th Congress (2019-2020), Feb. 7, 2019:
Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to
create a Green New Deal.
H.Con.Res.52 - 116th Congress (2019-2020), July 9, 2019: Expressing the
the sense of Congress that global
warming has resulted in a climate emergency.
These Resolutions stress two priorities:
replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and ensuring jobs for those
displaced in the transition.
1. Greenhouse gas emissions must
meet the targets set in 2018 by the IPCC—a 45 % reduction in emissions by 2030
and net zero by 2050. The goals could
be achieved by significantly improved energy efficiency and equally dramatic
increase in renewable energy, primarily wind and solar. Existing nuclear plants would be maintained
until renewables are established.
2. The rapid transition to a
carbon-free economy and climate stabilization must be fair. It must expand job opportunities for workers
in the fossil fuels industry and related vulnerable groups. The ultimate goal
is to raise the living standards for working people and the poor worldwide.
Enactment of these goals is imperative, if we are to avoid the
destruction of our existent civilization.
Even though temperatures continue to rise and the consequences to
worsen, we can meet the goals, at least technically and economically. But we must also galvanize the political will
to overcome the immense vested interests of the global fossil fuels industry.
The Green New Deal Resolutions
represent the long delayed, next step of bringing the scientific information to
Congress, where questions—can the “capitalists’ werewolf hunger for profits” solve
the crisis? what are the alternatives to
industrial agriculture? how do we reverse the long rise of inequality of the
past forty years?--can be transformed into legislation democratically.
TAKE ACTION
Your car’s rear bumper is read by
many people. Paste on your favorite
sticker.
Read a book on the GND. As an
introduction, read Greta Thunberg’s collection of speeches, about 100 short
pages.
4. 1-4-21
CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS
Why Doesn’t US Public Education Tell the Truth About Warming?
Harry Vandergriff,
when he was Superintendent of the Fayetteville Public Schools, wrote a letter
to the parents informing them of the dismissal of classes for Business
Education Day. The event was sponsored
by that great institution for critical thinking, the Public Schools/Chamber of
Commerce complex. “The purpose of
Business Education Day is to give the teaching staff of the schools a better
understanding of the business community.
They will visit with various business and industrial plants…and receive
information concerning the operation….This visit should increase the teachers’
knowledge of and concern for the various companies of this community and assist
them in the teaching of their students.”
I’d like to give
two citizens a crack at the public schools’ chumminess with the ruling economic
system (the early twentieth-century syntax can’t hurt but just might cause us
to pause and think).
First, Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America.
“The
place in men’s esteem once filled by church and state is now held by pecuniary
traffic, business enterprise. So that
the graver issues of academic policy which now tax the discretion of the
directive powers, reduce themselves, In the main, to a question between the
claims of science and scholarship on the one hand and those of business
principles and pecuniary gain on the other.”
Next Jack
London, writing about “the capitalistic bias of the universities and common
schools” in The Iron Heel.
“It was
a logical and crushing indictment of the whole system of education that
developed in the minds of the students only such ideas as were favorable to the
capitalistic regime, to the exclusion of all ideas that were inimical and
subversive.”
How do
Veblen and London relate to the climate calamity and the Green New Deal?
For the past
40 years we have witnessed the decline of the New Deal and the rise by 2016 of
the now far-right Republican Party to control the White House, Congress, and
the Supreme Court. What else has been
happening during this time as the direct result of the neo-liberal economic
system exalted by that Party? Military
spending has continued to increase while taxes have continued to decrease for
the wealthy. And the planet’s atmosphere has heated and absorbed moisture so much that
our civilization is imperiled, yet the temperature continues to rise.
TAKE ACTION
Be active politically.
Support candidates for office who meaningfully oppose the continued rise
in global temperature. Check out the Green New Deal.
417 words
5. 1-11-21
CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS by Dick Bennett
The
Leap
“The Leap Manifesto: A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth
and One Another” (full text at end of Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough or https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/ ).
On 12-10-20 PBS NOVA
promoted the US government’s renewal of its moon control program with its new
generation of larger rockets enabling a greatly expanded leap into space: “Rise of
the Rockets.” The first rocket will
circle the moon. The second will land a
rocketeer to establish a permanent claim.
Each shot will cost billions.
Each will expand the US empire, recently terrestrially exposed in The
United States of War by David Vine.
But there has been no national debate over that expenditure for that
purpose. There has been no comparison
of that goal with another Leap, this one a leap for humanity, all species, and
the planet.
In May 2015, people from
many walks of life and representing diverse institutions and movements met in
Toronto to “connect the crises” and “chart a holistic vision for the
future.” An example of the connections
urgently needing resistance were “the economic interests pushing hardest for
war” that are “the very same forces most responsible for warming the planet,”
the very same “corrosive values system that places profit above the well-being
of people and the planet,” the very same forces and values that have “seized
control of the White House” (No Is Not Enough 232).
The Conference concluded
with the signing of “The Leap Manifesto: A Call for a Canada Based on Caring
for the Earth and One Another.” Its
indictment of Canada applies even more forcefully to the USA and its “record on
climate change [that is] a crime against humanity’s future.” The crimes have produced a global emergency,
in response to which The Manifesto declares sixteen principles for “decisive action to prevent catastrophic
global warming. That means small steps
will no longer get us where we need to go” (269).
The US can spend a trillion
dollars to dominate outer space, but comparatively nothing “to prevent
catastrophic global warming.”
Action: The LEAP MANIFESTO resembles the GREEN NEW DEAL Resolutions. Demand
President-elect Biden declare a national emergency and create an Office of Climate Mobilization. (See essay by Varshini Prakash, “For a Green
New Decade,” The Nation (1-11/18-21).
Read the Congressional GND Resolution: House
Resolution 52, July 9, 2019, 116th Congress 1st Session.
https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/2151229136087998997
385
#6 Sent to blog, web site, and (Abel) social
media, various Facebook Pages and Groups:
394 WORDS
6. 1-18-21
Climate Memo Mondays
Varshini Prakash and Guido Girgenti. Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can.
Varshini
Prakash, About The Book, Publisher’s
Description
An urgent and definitive collection
of essays from leaders and experts championing the Green
New Deal—and a detailed playbook for how we can win it—including
contributions by leading activists and progressive writers like Varshini
Prakash, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Bill McKibben, Rev William Barber II, and more.
In October 2018, scientists warned that we have less than 12 years left to
transform our economy away from fossil fuels, or face catastrophic climate
change. At that moment, there was no plan in the US to decarbonize our economy
that fast. Less than two years later, every major Democratic presidential
candidate has embraced the vision of the Green New
Deal—a rapid, vast transformation of
our economy to avert climate catastrophe while securing economic and racial
justice for all.
What happened? A new generation of leaders confronted the political
establishment in Washington DC with a simple message: the climate crisis is
here, and the Green New Deal is our last,
best hope for a livable future. Now comes the hard part: turning that vision
into the law of the land.
In Winning a Green New Deal, leading youth activists, journalists, and
policymakers explain why we need a transformative agenda to avert climate
catastrophe, and how our movement can organize to win. Featuring essays by
Varshini Prakash, cofounder of Sunrise Movement; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Green New
Deal policy architect; Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist; Bill
McKibben, internationally renowned environmentalist; Mary Kay Henry, the
President of the Service Employees International Union, and others we’ll learn
why the climate crisis cannot be solved unless we also confront inequality and
racism, how movements can redefine what’s politically possible and overcome the
opposition of fossil fuel billionaires, and how a Green
New Deal will build a just and thriving economy for all of us.
For anyone looking to understand the movement for a Green
New Deal, and join the fight for a livable future, there is no resource
as clear and practical as Winning the Green
New Deal.
ACTION
Notice and tell
others of the two main themes of GND: 1) transforming our neoliberal economy to
avert climate catastrophe while 2).securing economic and racial justice for
all.
Tell others about this book, on sale at B&N.
Get
informed about the New Deal.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/01/climate-memo-mondays-1-18-21-winning.html
394
7.
1-25-21
Climate Memo Mondays
GRETA THUNBERG
My name is Greta
Thunberg, and I’m inviting you to be a part of the solution. 12-14-20
Five years ago, world
leaders signed the Paris Agreement, and they promised to keep the global
average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue 1.5
degrees to safeguard future living conditions. Since then, a lot has happened,
but the action needed is still nowhere in sight. The gap between what we need
to do and what is actually being done is widening by the minute. We are still
speeding in the wrong direction.
The five years following
the Paris Agreement have been the five hottest years ever recorded. And during
that time, the world has also emitted more than 200 gigatons of CO2.
Commitments are being made, distant hypothetical targets are being set, and big
speeches are being given. Yet when it comes to the immediate action we need, we
are still in a state of complete denial, as we waste our time creating new
loopholes with empty words and creative accounting.
If you read through the
current best available science, you realize that the climate and ecological
crisis cannot be solved without system change. That’s no longer an opinion;
that’s a fact. The climate crisis is only a part of a bigger sustainability
crisis. For too long we have been distancing ourselves from nature, mistreating
the planet, our only home, living as if there was no tomorrow. At the current
emission rate, our remaining CO2 budget for 1.5 degrees will be completely gone
within seven years, long before we will even have a chance to deliver on our
2030 or 2050 targets.
But I’m telling you,
there is hope, because the people have not yet been made aware. We cannot solve
a crisis without treating it as a crisis, nor can we treat something like a
crisis unless we understand the emergency. So let’s make this our main
priority. Let’s unite and spread awareness. Once we become aware, then we can
act. Then change will come. This is the solution. We are the hope. We, the
people.
AMY GOODMAN: Climate activist
Greta Thunberg, speaking in a video she released ahead of Saturday’s virtual
climate summit to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2015 Paris climate accord.
Greta turns 18 on January 3rd.
FROM
POPULATION CONNECTION
Film screening of 8
Billion Angels
Join us for our 2021 kick-off event! We’re
excited to announce we will be hosting a virtual film screening of 8 Billion Angels, a story exploring how rapid population is
contributing to global warming and exhausting our planet’s resources. Upon
registration, the film will be available to view at your leisure between January 28th and February 2nd. We will
wrap up the on-demand screening period with a LIVE panel discussion on February 2nd at 7pm ET/4pm PT. Links to
register for these events are provided below, we hope you’ll be able to attend!
On Demand Film Screening – Register HERE
LIVE Panel Discussion – Register HERE
8. (2-1-21) Climate Memo Mondays
The Biden Administration’s Landmark Day in
the Fight for the Climate by Bill McKibben.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-biden-administrations-landmark-day-in-the-fight-for-the-climate
January 28, 2021
On January 27th, the
President announced a series of climate actions that may well mark the
beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era.
January 27th was the most remarkable day in the
history of America’s official response to the climate crisis, at least since
that June afternoon in 1988, when nasa’s James Hansen told a congressional committee that the planet
had begun to heat. On Wednesday, in the course of a few hours, the Biden Administration
took a series of coördinated actions that, considered together, may well mark
the official beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era.
The Biden Administration
temporarily paused the new leasing of federal lands and waters for fossil-fuel
production, while speeding up the process of permitting renewables. The
President pledged that the federal government would start buying electric cars
in volume. His order sets up or strengthens offices in the Justice Department,
the Energy Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency to focus on what
he called “environmental justice.” He announced that climate change would
become a national-security priority for the Pentagon. And all of this came
after his earlier pledges to rejoin the Paris climate accord and to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. There’s a
shock-and-awe feel to the barrage of actions, and that is the point: taken
together, they send a decisive signal about the end of one epoch and the
beginning of another. And that signal, most of all, is aimed at investors: fossil fuel, Biden is making
clear, is not a safe bet, or even a good bet, for making real money. Coal, oil,
and gas are the past, not the future. They’re the present, too, of course—but
you don’t make big-money bets on the present.
We may not get to that
future fast enough to stave off truly disastrous global warming—the natural
world made some announcements of its own this week, including the news that the
melt from glaciers and ice sheets is in line with the worst-case scenarios that
scientists have produced—and we won’t get to that safer future easily. The
fossil-fuel industry is already hitting back hard against the Biden
announcements, using the only argument it has left: jobs. But the
Administration’s team was prepared for the onslaught—Biden styled his
announcements as a job-creation scheme, predicting, for instance, that electric
cars would create a million new jobs for autoworkers. And his aides made clear
that they understood the need to cushion the blow in areas where oil, gas, and
coal jobs are disappearing. MORE . https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-biden-administrations-landmark-day-in-the-fight-for-the-climate Bill McKibben is a founder of the grassroots
climate campaign 350.org, author of many books, the latest ,Falter, and
a contributing writer to The New Yorker. He writes The Climate Crisis, The New Yorker’s
newsletter on the environment.
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