OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #199, OCTOBER 7, 2024.

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #199,  OCTOBER 7, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett.

Reform Capitalism: Public Citizen
Replace Capitalism:  Ecology

TEXTS

REFORMING CAPITALISM
Public Citizen’s Lawyer’s against Climate Change. 
     Recent numbers of Public Citizen News offer several articles on climate subjects.   The May/June 2024 number of Public Citizen News presents two articles:  One regarding efforts to decarbonize various industries, to create “green steel” for example; the other describing PC’s increasing moves beyond civil prosecution of corporate execs, to criminal.   
   The September/October number has four articles: “Fighting for a Just Transition, Not Another Colonialist Trap,” one half, you will remember, of the Green New Deal’s demand for an equitable energy transition.  (Stop Warming, Transition Justly!)  The transition is requiring a massive minerals-use reorientation that must not exploit workers globally.  “Fighting Joe Manchin’s Latest Dirty Deal”:  his sweeping energy-permitting deregulation bill packed with fossil fuel giveaways.  “Public Citizen Protest Blackrock Takeover of Minnesota Power,” on stopping one of the world’s larges asset management firms from acquiring Duluth, MN Energy utility.  And “Watchdogging Texas’ Environments Watchdog.”  The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is a reluctant regulator because it includes economic development as part of its mission.  Related are three articles on corporate/super-rich criminal behavior, corporate globalization, and rev. of a book on Wall St. titled The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government.  You guessed PC’s power:  10 full-time attorneys working for The People.  Thank you Ralph Nader for starting PC!

REPLACE GROWTH CAPITALISM 
Listen to the Ecologists!  Mronline.org (10-2-24)

Harry Magdoff .  MR (September 7, 2024).                                                                                                                                             

In this reprise from 1992, former MR editors Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy look toward the end of the recession again plaguing the United States, seeing this choice looming on the horizon: Will the progressive left attempt to reform capitalism, or replace it entirely?  Capital’s inexorable thirst for growth beyond natural limits, they write, means we must choose the latter—”if we care about the future of the human species…we had better listen to the ecologists.” | more…     Source