OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #100, NOVEMBER 7, 2022

 

 CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #100, NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Accountability
Jeff Sparrow. Crimes Against Nature.
Jeffrey Sachs.  Inflation Reduction Act: Manchin,  Sinema, and Tea Party
     Republicans.   (Contrast Bernie’s and Elizabeth’s proposals.)
Sue Ann Martinson. “Ignoring How Militarism Fuels Climate Change Will Be the Death of Us.”
Climate Accountability Institute

ACCOUNTABILITY
Percentage of U.S. voters who view climate change as the most important problem facing the country: 1.   Harper’s Index.  The light of OMNI’s CMM that could dispel our climate ignorance that will destroy us is free.   Feel free to forward it to all your acquaintances and lists.  Send me entries.  Be the editor.

Jeff Sparrow.   Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating. Scribe,  2021. 
     Sparrow ends his book with a comparison with Percy Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy, “one of the greatest poems of resistance, at a time when industrial capitalism was still new.  In it, he condemns the men responsible for the Peterloo Massacre, an incident in which British cavalry charged protesters agitating for democratic reform in Manchester.
     He names, in particular, Robert Stewart (Lord Castlereagh), the Leader of the House of Commons…:
       I met Murder on the way--
       He had a mask like Castlereagh—
       Very smooth he looked, yet grim….
     As we have seen, many of the businesses most responsible for global warming proved decades ago to their own satisfaction that carbon dioxide could affect the climate in catastrophic ways—and yet they continued normal operations regardless.         “That’s murder—social murder—on a scale beyond anything Castlereagh could have imagined.  The smooth, grim people destroying our planet remain a tiny minority.   The American Climate Accountability Institute recently emphasized that some twenty-fossil-fuel companies can be linked directly to more than one-third of greenhouse-gas emissions in the modern era.
      Is it really beyond our capabilities to defeat this evil clique?   Shelley concludes The Mask of Anarchy by urging his readers to realise their power:
       Shake your chains to earth like dew,
        Which in sleep had fallen on you—
       Ye are many—they are few.
The words could not be more relevant today.”

 

Jeffrey Sachs.  “Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act: The hype and the Reality” [full  article at the link]  (From Sonny San Juan)  

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/19/opinions/inflation-reduction-act-falls-short-sachs/index.html   

The Democrats are celebrating the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act over unified Republican opposition, claiming that the legislation is a historic breakthrough. Sadly, it's not.   

1.  Despite its title, the new legislation will have essentially no effect on reducing inflation during the next few years.   

2.  Most of President Joe Biden's original social agenda was left out of the legislation.   

3.   Democrats once again sided with campaign donors and lobbyists over everyday voters.   

Biden's initial plan called for at least partly reversing the unjustified giveaway to the rich in former President Donald Trump's 2017 corporate tax cut. It also called for raising personal income taxes on the richest Americans and on ending some egregious tax loopholes. These tax objectives were abandoned when conservative Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona protected the rich rather than their own constituents. They went with the campaign contributions, not the voters… When former President Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1981, the federal debt was 24.6% of GDP. He sold the American people on the idea that they could have their social programs and tax cuts at the same time. Yet the real result has been a 40-year build-up of public debt. In 2021, the debt was 96.9% of GDP. According to the most recent projection of the Congressional Budget Office, the debt will grow to a staggering 185% of GDP in thirty years on the current tax and spending plans.   

4. The much-touted climate actions will deliver modest results despite the headline promises and bravado.   Here's a hint why: Sen. Manchin, owner of two coal companies and darling of the oil lobby, let the bill pass. He knows the truth that the Democrats won't admit. This bill will not come close to putting the US or the world on the path to energy decarbonization.    See https://www.jeffsachs.org/

Also read Notes from the Editors, Monthly Review (November 2022, 63-4), who evaluate Biden’s bill in the contexts of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 proposal of $16.3 trillion in public investment, and  Elizabeth Warren’s later $3 trillion plan, to avert climate calamity.; and “the U.S. military’s vast and increasing climate emissions … not included in [Biden’s] accounting of U.S. emissions,” and much more.

 

Sue Ann Martinson.  “Ignoring How Militarism Fuels Climate Change Will Be the Death of Us.”   ScheerPost.   TRANSCEND Media Service.
14 Jul 2022 – It’s time to acknowledge how failure to connect the dots between U.S. imperialism and the growing climate crisis threatens all life on this planet in more ways than one.  Read more...

Climate Accountability Institute - Devex

https://www.devex.com › organizations › climate-accou..

The Climate Accountability Institute engages in research and education on anthropogenic climate change, dangerous interference with the climate system, ...
Climate Accountability Institute - Security & Sustainability Guide https://securesustain.org › AbstractsA non-profit research and educational organization. Its research revolves around climate change and accountability, specifically the contribution of fossil ...