OMNI CLIMATE
MEMO MONDAYS, #183, JUNE 17, 2024.
RESISTANCE
Kevin
A. Young. Abolishing
Fossil Fuels.
Melba Newsome. The Harms of Auto Tires.
Greenpeace. Elect
Climate Champions.
Kevin A. Young.
Abolishing Fossil Fuels: Lessons from
Movements That Won. PM
Press, 2024. 264pp.
Overview Purchase the e-Book HERE
Publisher’s Description
Climate
destruction is a problem of political power.
We
have the resources for a green transition, but how can we neutralize the
influence of Exxon and Shell? Abolishing Fossil Fuels argues
that the climate movement has started to turn the tide against fossil fuels,
just too gradually. The movement’s partial victories show us how the
industry can be further undermined and eventually abolished. Activists have
been most successful when they’ve targeted the industry’s enablers: the
banks, insurers, and big investors that finance its operations, the companies
and universities that purchase fossil fuels, and the regulators and judges who
make life-and-death rulings about pipelines, power plants, and drilling sites.
This approach has jeopardized investor confidence in fossil fuels, leading the
industry to lash out in increasingly desperate ways. The fossil fuel
industry’s financial and legal enablers are also its Achilles heel.
The
most powerful movements in US history succeeded in similar ways. The book also
includes an in-depth analysis of four classic victories: the abolition of
slavery, battles for workers’ rights in the 1930s, Black freedom struggles of
the 1950s and 1960s, and the fight for clean air. Those movements inflicted
costs on economic elites through strikes, boycotts, and other mass disruption.
They forced some sectors of the ruling class to confront others, which
paved the way for victory. Electing and pressuring politicians was rarely the
movements’ primary focus. Rather, gains in the electoral and legislative realms
were usually the byproducts of great upsurges in the fields, factories, and
streets.
Those historic movements show that it’s very possible to
defeat capitalist sectors that may seem invulnerable. They also show us how it
can be done. They offer lessons for building a multiracial,
working-class climate movement that can win a global green transition that’s
both rapid and equitable.
Melba Newsome. “When the Rubber Meets the Road.” Sierra
Magazine. Summer 2024.
We are all probably familiar with the harms of auto CO2
emissions, but the harms of auto tires are only now
receiving serious attention. Car tires
on the road shed metallic particles, microplastics, and chemical compounds, the
heavier the vehicle the more the pollution.
Production and use of tires involve some 400 chemicals, their danger to
humans and animals only now being identified.
One chemical called 6PPD-quinone, used to make tires more durable, “has
a devastating effect on marine life.”
Newsome urges us to buy lighter cars, drive more slowly, carpool, use
public transportation, bike, walk. (She
says nothing about the significant changes in the auto culture necessary to
significantly reduce its harms; for example, a WWII scale transition from cars
to busses and trains.) We can do something. (See Art Hobson’s column “Support the transit tax: Automobile culture destroys cities.”
NWADG, 9 May 2023.) –Dick
6-9-24
Climate
champions get stuff done
Zach, Greenpeace USA
Votes <info@greenpeaceusavotes.org>
Sat,
Jun 8, 2024 
|
Did
you hear about the millions of acres of Arctic Alaska that are now
appropriately managed to protect the economy of rural communities, conserve
fish and wildlife habitat, and balance oil and gas extraction activities on
public lands? Well,
those environmental protections are because YOU Elected a Climate
Champion to the White House. Remember
last year’s Inflation Reduction Act? It authorized billions of dollars
in investments for renewable energy projects and good-paying, union jobs
necessary for a just transition off fossil fuels. That
bill, although not without its compromises, passed because YOU Elected
Climate Champions to the Senate. . . . In
solidarity, Zach
Norris, California Climate Director, Greenpeace USA Votes |
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