OMNI
CLIMATE
JUSTICE NEWSLETTER #1 April 27,
2020
COMPILED BY
DICK BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY
What’s
at Stake: In confronting the climate calamity, the
leaders and the populace can either reproduce or worsen the existing gross economic
inequalities caused by capitalism, or they can struggle to end the injustice by
changing the way society is organized. It’s
our choice. The climate catastrophe is
our opportunity to create a distinctly more just
world.
“There is no global social unity in the face of
climate disaster. We risk a ‘climate apartheid’ scenario where the wealthy pay
to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the world is left
to suffer.” (2019 below).
“If we’re going to succeed in protecting the
planet and all of its inhabitants…we must commit to becoming public citizens. . . .” Jason Mark, Editor, Sierra
CONTENTS
2010
Paul
Collier, The Plundered Planet and The Bottom Billion
2013
Helping
Poor Nations and Communities
Amy
Goodman, US Not
Pascal,
US Promise
2014
From
Occupy to Climate Justice and Climate Democracy
Wen
Stephenson
2019-2020
2019
Ravages
of Rising Temperature against Justice
Elaine
McArdle, Indigenous People and Climate-Forced Displacement
New
Book from Beacon Press: Anthony Lewis on poor coastal communities
Climate
Apartheid
Climate
Emergency and Justice
Judt,
Senegal Climate Injustice
2020
Resistance
Green
New Deal for Climate Justice
Davidson,
Energy Use of Rich and Poor
Duplea,
From Covid-19 to Climate Justice and the GND
Higgins,
Covid-19 Anticipates Climate Catastrophe
Covid-19
Pandemic Turning Point to a Just World?
TEXTS
In chronological order
2010
--Collier, Paul. The
Plundered Planet:
Why We Must—And How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. 2010. "
I particularly enjoyed his description of environmental romanticism vs.
plundering profit motive, and how we must move to the center of those two poles
by basing our use of natural resources and ecosystem services on a truly ethical and sustainable framework. His
high-flying nations-at-a-glance perspective is valuable, as are his insights
into the workings, and failings, of governments and societies." (Gary K).
--Collier, Paul. The
Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest
Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. 2011. “Collier examines the economics, politics,
and ethics of natural resource use, in particular as these affect poor
nations.” The so-called "resource
curse" is analyzed, to understand the oft-repeated phenomenon of
extractive industries leaving resource-rich yet poor countries, resource-poor
and impoverished.” (Gary K) One of the four goals of Lester Brown’s Plan
B is “eradicating poverty.” (Dick)
2013
Amy Goodman, “Leaked Memo Reveals US Plan to Oppose
Helping Poor Nations Adapt to Climate Change. “
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! , RSN, NOV. 20, 2013
Goodman writes: "The
U.S. delegation is worried the talks in Warsaw will 'focus increasingly on
blame and liability" of the Us and
corporations.
READ MORE
TALK of HELPING
THE POOR NATIONS AT THE UN CLIMATE SUMMIT
“US: 24 hours to keep our promise to the planet”
November 21, 2013
|
3:46 PM (1 hour ago)
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|
|
|
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avaaz@avaaz.org
Dear friends across the US,
The most important global
talks of our time could collapse tomorrow unless the US keeps our promise to help the world’s poorest deal
with climate change disasters. Secretary
of State Kerry cares deeply about climate -- and our messages now could help
push him to act before the summit falls apart. Send Kerry an urgent message:
|
The
bottom could fall out of talks to save the planet in 24 hours unless we act to
save them.
Years ago, the US and our allies made a big promise to help the poorest countries deal with and decrease climate change. But now we are threatening to backtrack. If the US reneges on this pledge tomorrow, hope for a global deal could totally fall apart. But Secretary of State Kerry has made climate leadership the defining issue of his career. Let’s make sure he knows that it’s his call to make!
Send Kerry a message to make sure he knows we are watching and expecting him to act -- his office will get it right away, and the Avaaz team at the talks will give all our messages to his staff on the ground. Click here to send an urgent message:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/save_the_planet_deal_us/?bpBkhab&v=31448
In 2009, Secretary Clinton pledged to raise $100 Billion yearly to build a climate resilient world. But while some immediate cash came through, virtually no country has yet made new contributions to this bold plan. The financial crisis has made it very difficult to fulfill our promise to the poorest countries. But we are still giving billions to fossil fuel companies that are polluting our world and causing global warming. It is nuts! [And hugely criminal as they continue in 2020.]
The poorer countries are now demanding that the rich meet their original promises before they sign up to more commitments at talks in Warsaw. So far our government is saying they won’t give. But if we can get them to commit funds, other countries will follow. We have the power to keep everyone at the table to hammer out a crucial deal. . . .
Climate change is perhaps the largest, most complex global problem humanity has faced, and for all its scale, it's hard to find things we can do that even make a dent. It's easy to lose hope in the face of a challenge like that. But this is one of those times where we can make a real difference right now -- one that could save the process that can save the world. Let's not let it go without making our voices heard.
With hope,
Pascal, Iain, Alice, David, Maria Paz, Ricken, and the Avaaz team
SOURCES
U.S. serious on climate, John Kerry tells U.N. summit (Politico)
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/us-serious-on-climate-kerry-tells-un-summit-100023.html
Yeb Sano surfaces at UN climate talks and thanks supporters of fast (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/nov/19/yeb-sano-hunger-strike-un-...
Years ago, the US and our allies made a big promise to help the poorest countries deal with and decrease climate change. But now we are threatening to backtrack. If the US reneges on this pledge tomorrow, hope for a global deal could totally fall apart. But Secretary of State Kerry has made climate leadership the defining issue of his career. Let’s make sure he knows that it’s his call to make!
Send Kerry a message to make sure he knows we are watching and expecting him to act -- his office will get it right away, and the Avaaz team at the talks will give all our messages to his staff on the ground. Click here to send an urgent message:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/save_the_planet_deal_us/?bpBkhab&v=31448
In 2009, Secretary Clinton pledged to raise $100 Billion yearly to build a climate resilient world. But while some immediate cash came through, virtually no country has yet made new contributions to this bold plan. The financial crisis has made it very difficult to fulfill our promise to the poorest countries. But we are still giving billions to fossil fuel companies that are polluting our world and causing global warming. It is nuts! [And hugely criminal as they continue in 2020.]
The poorer countries are now demanding that the rich meet their original promises before they sign up to more commitments at talks in Warsaw. So far our government is saying they won’t give. But if we can get them to commit funds, other countries will follow. We have the power to keep everyone at the table to hammer out a crucial deal. . . .
Climate change is perhaps the largest, most complex global problem humanity has faced, and for all its scale, it's hard to find things we can do that even make a dent. It's easy to lose hope in the face of a challenge like that. But this is one of those times where we can make a real difference right now -- one that could save the process that can save the world. Let's not let it go without making our voices heard.
With hope,
Pascal, Iain, Alice, David, Maria Paz, Ricken, and the Avaaz team
SOURCES
U.S. serious on climate, John Kerry tells U.N. summit (Politico)
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/us-serious-on-climate-kerry-tells-un-summit-100023.html
Yeb Sano surfaces at UN climate talks and thanks supporters of fast (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/nov/19/yeb-sano-hunger-strike-un-...
2014
From Occupy to Climate Justice
There’s a growing effort to merge
economic-justice and climate activism. Call it climate democracy.
February 6, 2014 | This article appeared in the February 24, 2014 edition of
The Nation. [With the title: “The Climate
Democracy Project”—Dick]
What is
the Paris agreement?
It's a climate change
accord agreed by nearly 200 countries in December 2015, which came into force
on 4 November 2016. The agreement
commits world leaders to keeping global warming below 2C, seen as the threshold
for safety by scientists, and pursuing a tougher target of 1.5C. The
carbon emission curbs put forward by countries under Paris are not
legally-binding but the framework of the accord, which includes a mechanism for
periodically cranking those pledges up, is binding. The agreement also has a
long-term goal for net zero emissions which would effectively phase out fossil
fuels.
Trump
blocked US participation in the Paris accords and has prevented US funding to poor countries, despite wealthy countries having caused the bulk of
the warming while the poor countries suffer ed
the bulk of the consequences.
2019 and 2020 RAVAGES OF WARMING
2019
CLIMATE
REFUGEES
First Peoples’ Convening focuses
on climate-forced displacement. ELAINE
MCARDLE, 3/1/2019, uuwORLD, SPRING
2019
UU
Service Committee co-sponsors gathering on climate change’s impact on
Indigenous peoples.
First Peoples’ Convening focuses on climate-forced displacement
3/1/2019
UU World Magazine Spring 2019 ,
published by the Unitarian Universalist Association
Climate & Environmental Justice, Indigenous Rights
More than sixty indigenous
and First Peoples leaders and activists from around the world, including the
Pacific Islands, Bangladesh, Louisiana, Washington State, and Alaska, gathered
October 1–4, 2018, in Girdwood, Alaska, to share strategies for addressing the
effects of climate-forced displacement.
The First Peoples’ Convening on Climate-Forced Displacement was co-sponsored by
the Unitarian
Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) and the Climate Justice
Resilience Fund. A First Peoples’ and Indigenous Peoples’ Declaration was
released in early December to coincide with the 24th Conference of the
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
or COP24, held December 2–14 in Katowice, Poland.
The
UUSC, which advances human rights through grassroots collaborations, is putting
significant focus on the effects of climate change on indigenous and other
historically marginalized peoples, said UUSC President and CEO Mary Katherine
Morn…continued: https://www.uuworld.org/articles/first-peoples-convening
Andrew
S. Lewis.
THE DROWNING OF MONEY
ISLAND:
A Forgotten Community’s
Fight against the Rising Seas Forever Changing Coastal America. Beacon, 2019. [Beacon
is published by UUA.]
Publisher’s
summary:
Offers
a glimpse of the future of vanishing shorelines in America in the age of
climate change, where the wealthy
will be able to remain the longest while the poor will be forced to leave.
Journalist
Andrew Lewis chronicles the struggle of his New Jersey hometown to rebuild
their ravaged homes. [Bayshore] is also
contending with one of the fastest rates of sea level rise on the planet and
the aftereffects of one of the most destructive hurricanes in American history,
Superstorm Sandy. . . .[A]fter the hurricane, the community was decimated.
Today, homes and roads and memories are crumbling into the rising bay. . . .
The Drowning of Money
Island
is an intimate yet unbiased, lyrical yet investigative portrait of a rural
community ravaged by sea level rise and economic hardship, as well as the
increasingly divisive politics those factors have helped spawn. It invites us
to confront how climate
change is already intensifying preexisting inequality.
There
is no global social unity in the face of climate disaster. We risk a ‘climate
apartheid’ scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger, and
conflict while the rest of the world is left to
suffer.
ECONOMIC JUSTICE AND ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE: HOW ENSURE WE PROTECT HEALTH, WATER, AND JOBS
AS WE REDUCE CO2? HOW BUILD SUSTAINABLE
ENERGY WITHOUT CAUSING MORE HARDSHIP FOR THE POOR?
http://www.thenation.com/article/178242/occupy-climate-justice
‘Report the urgency! This is a climate emergency!’ mronline.org (6-27-19).
‘Report the urgency! This is a climate emergency!’ mronline.org (6-27-19).
“This is the biggest crisis in human history. What are we going
to tell our children when they ask us: why didn’t we do anything to stop it
while we still had time?” Source
·
The UN climate talks are coming to Britain. The climate justice
movement will be ready. Mronline.org (6-27-19)
This week it was announced that the 2020 United Nations climate
change conference–the so-called ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP)–is set to
take place in the UK. Source Postponed because of Covid-19.
Daniel
Judt . “In
Senegal, Climate Change Is Robbing Thousands of Their Homes.” The Nation (SEPTEMBER 24, 2019). No region has done less to contribute to
the climate crisis than Africa—or stands to lose more.
“To be honest, I’m worried,” says Daouda Gueye. “The future
is almost black. To be an optimist, you have to see what’s next. And right now
we can’t see anything. Everything is dark.” He shrugs. “We’re truly cornered.”
We are standing in a field just outside
Bargny, a bustling seaside town of 70,000 people some 30 kilometers southeast
of Dakar, Senegal’s capital. For decades, Bargny has suffered from severe
industrial pollution. The town hosts a hulking cement factory—one of the
largest in West Africa—that has flecked Bargny with toxic dust
since 1984. Over the past 10 years, two other threats have emerged.
A
mere 100 meters east of where Gueye and I stand, a new coal-fired power
plant—Senegal’s first, in operation since last fall—waffles in the afternoon
heat. Mounds of coal lie at the base of its three chutes, which slope up toward
the red-and-gray-striped chimney. The chimney’s thin shadow points, like a
stern finger, to the southeast, where rising sea levels and storm surges caused
by climate change exact a devastating toll.
Worse,
the two threats are linked. The power plant occupies the precise spot that was
once designated a site of relocation for those affected by the rising sea.
“People lost their homes because of coastal erosion,” Gueye explains. “We are
threatened by that. And then when they needed to move, the power plant took
that land.”
THE UN SECRETARY
GENERAL URGES PUBLIC PRESSURE TO ADDRESS THE CLIMATE ‘EMERGENCY’
Mark Hertsgaard
In
a sickening irony, Bargny is trapped between the causes and the effects of
climate change. Residents say their town is under siege. “It’s as though we’re
being compressed,” Gueye reiterates as we walk past the crumbling seaside
houses. “Seriously. There is a future in which Bargny will disappear.”
So
far, the town has refused to yield to that future. Gueye is one of the leaders
of RAPEN, a local activist organization that was formed when the Senegalese
government began construction on the power plant in 2014. For five years, RAPEN
has tried to hold off threats from both sides. “Our first goal is to protect us
from the sea,” Gueye announced in 2016. “Our second goal is to fight the coal
power plant.”
And yet amid Bargny’s
resistance—part and parcel of it, perhaps—there is an element of despair, a
hopelessness particular to our era of climate crisis. It’s a despair that runs
through Gueye’s words. The
future is almost black. We’re truly cornered.
[From 2015 to 2019]
This is the first article in a series about the idea of climate justice—a concept that has only recently come
into widespread use. In the landmark 2015
Paris Agreement, the word “justice”
appears once, buried in a nonbinding preamble that coyly notes the “importance
for some of the concept of ‘climate justice’”—in scare quotes, no less!—“when
taking action to address climate change.”
Four years later, a
huge rhetorical shift has occurred: The idea of justice is now at the forefront
of the climate debate. At the United Nations
Climate Change Conference in Poland last December, the official theme was a
“just transition” away from a carbon economy—a big change from Paris.
(Though that didn’t stop the Polish government from attempting to twist
“climate justice” into a defense of coal mines.)
At the UN Climate Action Summit in New York this September, we’ll likely hear a
fresh chorus of calls for a just transition, a just
economy, a just distribution of emissions, and so on. Justice is finally becoming an important term in
climate politics. We need to know what it means.
This
series tries to define climate justice from
the ground up: to ask what justice means for communities already confronting
the dual crises of failing climate politics
and runaway climate change. Bargny, a small town fighting both of those crises
at once, seemed a good place to start.
But
the activists and residents I met there steered me to a different question. To
understand what climate justice would mean
in a place like Bargny, they insisted, we
must first take the full measure of the injustice that needs resisting. And
they are right: Before we focus on climate justice, we need to grasp the nature
of climate injustice.
In
Bargny, the outward signs of that injustice—the rising sea, the power plant—are
unmistakable. What is less clear but more revealing, once grasped, is how the
injustices of climate change and climate politics are changing the way that the
residents of Bargny think about life on a fundamental level. We often hear
about how climate change creates climate refugees:
It forces people to search for a new space in the world. The residents of
Bargny are facing a different form of displacement, less visible but no less
pernicious. They are becoming homeless without
leaving home. End Part I. MORE
https://www.thenation.com/article/senegal-climate-injustice/
SUPPORT PROGRESSIVE JOURNALISM
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article, please give today to help fund The Nation’s work.
2020
Most
calls for a Green New Deal correctly
emphasize that it must include a meaningful commitment to climate justice. That is because
climate change—for reasons of racism and capitalist
profit-making—disproportionately punishes frontline communities, especially
communities of color and low-income.
ENORMOUS
DISPARITY OF ENERGY USE BETWEEN RICH AND POOR
The Rich
Are to Blame for the Climate Crisis, International Study Finds. Jordan
Davidson
Mar. 17,
2020 CLIMATE
The authors of the study
say the numbers show a need for policies that will curtail excess energy use,
such as flying. guvendemir / E+ /
Getty Images
A new international study has pinpointed an enormous
chasm in the amount of resources the rich use versus the poor — both
within their own countries and compared to an international population, according to a new study published in
the journal Nature Energy.
The researchers found that the wealthiest tenth of people use up
about 20 times
more overall energy than the bottom ten percent, no matter where they
are, according to the BBC. The greatest part of
the disparity is in transportation, where
the wealthiest tenth consume 187 times more fuel than the poorest ten percent.
The researchers from the University of Leeds parsed data from
the World Bank and the European Union to calculate the energy consumption of
residents in 86 different countries, both highly industrialized and developing
countries, according to the study. The researchers also looked at what
energy-intensive goods and services different income groups use and how the different
income groups spend their money.
The results showed a huge disparity in energy use as income
climbs. The study found that as income climbs, people spend more of their money
on energy-intensive goods, such as vacations or new cars or second homes that
require heating and cooling — all of which leads to increased
inequality in energy use, according to the study.
"There needs to be serious consideration to how to change the
vastly unequal distribution of global energy consumption to cope with the
dilemma of providing a decent life for everyone while, protecting climate and
ecosystems," Julia Steinberger, a professor at the University Of Leeds and
author on the paper, said in a University of Leeds statement.
The
data showed that the top ten percent not only used 187 times the energy for
transportation as the bottom ten percent, but the top ten percent actually used
more than half the energy used for transportation. Most of that energy use came
from fossil fuels, according to the University of Leeds.
When
it came to energy use for cooking and heating, the disparity was not as great,
but the wealthiest ten percent did use roughly one-third of the energy. That
most likely came from the size of their home, according to the BBC.
"This study tells relatively wealthy people like us what we
don't want to hear," Kevin Anderson, a professor from the Tyndall Centre
in Manchester, England who was not involved in the study, said to the BBC.
"The climate issue is framed by us high emitters – the politicians,
business people, journalists, academics. When we say there's no appetite for
higher taxes on flying, we mean we don't want to fly less. The same is true
about our cars and the size our homes. We have convinced ourselves that our
lives are normal, yet the numbers tell a very different story."
The authors of the study say the numbers show a need for
policies that will curtail excess energy use. It shows a need for improved
public transportation, higher taxes on bigger vehicles, and frequent flyer
penalties for people who take the most vacations, according to the BBC. MORE https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-the-rich-2645511851.html
UN Expert Warns of 'Climate Apartheid' - EcoWatch ›
New Climate Crisis Report: Invest $1.8 Trillion Now or Pay Heavier ... ›The U.S. Has More Climate Deniers Than Any Other Wealthy Nation ... ›Google Camp on Climate Crisis Attended by Rich and Famous in ... ›
Climate change: How rich people could help save the planet - CNN ›
New Climate Crisis Report: Invest $1.8 Trillion Now or Pay Heavier ... ›The U.S. Has More Climate Deniers Than Any Other Wealthy Nation ... ›Google Camp on Climate Crisis Attended by Rich and Famous in ... ›
Climate change: How rich people could help save the planet - CNN ›
FROM CORONAVIRUS TO GREEN NEW
DEAL AND CLIMATE JUSTICE
SAVING HUMANITY FROM CORONAVIRUS
AND CLIMATE CHANGE. By Mark Dunlea, Gelfny.org. March 30, 2020. Popular Resistance (3-31-20).
We are already being pounded
by extreme weather. The world’s science committee on climate, the IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), warns that we have 11 years left
to take unprecedented worldwide action to halt global greenhouse gas emissions.
Many scientists feel that the IPCC – constrained by fossil fuel based countries
like the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Brazil – is overly optimistic. An
increasing number of scientists raise the risk of the end of civilization as we
know it. Some warn about the possible extinction of the human species.
There is an opportunity in
every crisis and the deeper the crisis, the better the opportunity can be.
Throughout human history, the powerful have used such crisis to
enrich themselves and their friends while crushing public debate and their
opponents. [See Naomi Klein’s Shock
Doctrine. –D] We saw this in the present federal
economic stimulus package, which did far more to bail out large corporations
than average Americans. (For a contrasting approach, see this open letter to
Congress for a Green Stimulus.) EPA just announced it was suspending
enforcement of many environmental regulations. The plastic industry is using
the coronavirus to halt the effort to ban plastic bags, Styrofoam and other
single-use plastic.
Sheltering in place has
already disempowered many and sidelined critical social movements. Our voices
are increasingly absent in the media.
It is critical that the
covid-19 emergency response be extended to include a transition to a
carbon-free world. We need to set a timeline faster than most presently believe
is possible – closer to 2030 rather than 2050. We need to create a world based on the principles of sustainability,
while ensuring a good quality of life for everyone, not only in America but worldwide. It needs to include a living wage, a guaranteed minimum income,
universal single-payer health care, affordable housing, and quality education.
A Green New Deal as I have been calling for since 2010. It needs to redirect our
massively obscene military budget to invest in a humane world. MORE https://popularresistance.org/saving-humanity-from-coronavirus-and-climate-change/
Coronavirus: the need for a progressive
internationalist response.
Mronline.org (4-26-20).
This pandemic health crisis exposes the injustices of the
global economic order. It must be a turning point towards creating the systems,
structures and policies that can always protect those who are marginalised and
allow everyone to live with dignity. | more…
COVID19 PANDEMIC ANTICIPATES CLIMATE CATASTROPHE (CHAOS?), BUT
WILL THE POPULACE UNDERSTAND THE LESSON?
Out Of The Coronavirus Tragedy May Come Hope Of A More Just Society
Out Of The Coronavirus Tragedy May Come Hope Of A More Just Society
By Michael D. Higgins, SocialEurope.eu. The global
loss of life and disruption to our daily lives resulting from the coronavirus
pandemic is unprecedented in living memory. We have learned through tragedy
that we have a shared, globalised vulnerability common to all
humanity. We are learning how we, as a matter of urgency, must make changes to
improve resilience in a range of essential areas: employment, healthcare,
housing. We have been forced to recognise our dependence on our public-sector
frontline workers, and the state’s broader role in mitigating this crisis and
saving lives. -more-
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