OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #111, January 23, 2023

 

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #111, January 23, 2023

Acting Against Climate Change
Solnit and Lutunatabua, eds.   Not Too Late: Changing the
  Climate Story from Despair to Possibility.  
Public Citizen: Controlling Anti-Social, Sociopathic Policies of Big Banks
Working for Responsible Companies
Climate and Capitalism Magazine: Ecosocialism or Barbarism

 Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua, eds.   Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility.  Haymarket  (April 4, 2023).   Publisher’s description. 

See all formats and editions   Audiobook  $0.00Free with your Audible trial   Paperback  $16.95   1 New from $16.95   Pre-order Price Guarantee. Details

An energizing case for hope about the climate, from Rebecca Solnit (“the voice of the resistance”—New York Times), climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment.

Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, anxious, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present—and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy.   These dispatches from the climate movement around the world feature the voices of organizers like Guam-based lawyer and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists like Dr. Jacquelyn Gill and Dr. Edward Carr; poets like Marshall Islands activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijner; and longtime organizers like The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz and Emergent Strategy author adrienne maree brown. Guided by Rebecca Solnit’s typical clear-eyed wisdom and enriched by illustrations, Not Too Late leads readers from discouragement to possibilities, from climate despair to climate hope.

Good news re: reining in the Big Banks Jan 17, 2023

Louise, we know the Big Banks like to talk about how they’re taking climate change seriously. But we also know they’re investing billions of dollars in companies that produce fossil fuels and contribute to the escalating climate crisis — they’ve invested at least $4,500,000,000 since 2015! So we’re thrilled to announce that a banking regulator — the Federal Reserve ("the Fed") — just proposed guidelines on how Big Banks should respond to the climate crisis. The guidelines tell the Big Banks to: 1.   Stop banks from greenwashing by making sure their internal strategies are actually consistent with their public-facing climate commitments;  2.   Avoid risk management strategies that disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities — people that are hurt worst and first by the escalating climate crisis; 3.  Prepare for the impacts of climate change at every level of business; 4.   Plan for what climate change could look like in the long term, and adjust projections as new data comes in; and 5.   Develop a clear understanding of how climate change could harm the financial system. So please, if you want to stop the Big Banks from harming the rest of us just to make a quick buck, speak up in support of strong climate guidelines for banks. Deanna (she/her), Public Citizen

Working For Socially Constructive Companies
"Many job seekers are now looking to work in companies aligned with climate goals. A 2021 Yale School of Management survey of 2,000 students across 29 business schools globally found that 51% would accept lower salaries to work for an environmentally responsible company.”       Oscar Boyd and Akshat Rathi, "Meet the Climate Quitters," Bloomberg

 

Ian Angus, ed.  Climate and Capitalism: Ecosocialism or Barbarism, Selected Readings
90% of world’s people to face combined extreme heat and drought, January 9, 2023
Practical nuclear fusion is still just hype, January 2, 2023
Ecosocialist Bookshelf: The Best of 2022, December 31, 2022
Degrowth and the end of capitalism, December 17, 2022
A great loss for ecosocialism:  John Molyneux, 1948-2022, December 12, 2022  https://climateandcapitalism.com/2022/12/12/a-great-loss-for-ecosocialism/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-great-loss-for-ecosocialism

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAY, #109, JANUARY 18, 2023

 

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAY, #109, JANUARY 18, 2023

#106 rejected US bellicose militarism.

#107 advocated empathy and stewardship.

#108 warned of nuclear holocaust.

All of these messages are finally appeals to block war, named in the UN Charter as the worst crime against humanity.   But some people must experience the terrible cruelty and destruction of war, either directly or by reading about or viewing them, before they will act.  That is why combat veterans are among the most persuasive opponents of war.   Dalton Trumbo attempted to provide that experience in his novel, Johnny Got His Gun

KNOWLEDGE OF WAR, ENDING WAR

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
[The thoughts are those of the horribly wounded, WWI quadruple amputee protagonist whose face was also destroyed.]
“He was the new messiah of the battlefields saying to people as I am so shall you be.   For he had seen the future he had tasted it and now he was living it.  He had seen the airplanes flying he had seen the skies of the future filled with them black with them and now he saw the horror beneath.  He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality.  He saw a world of dead fathers and crippled brothers and crazy screaming sons.  He saw a world of armless mothers clasping headless babies to their breasts trying to scream out their grief from throats that were cancerous with gas.  He saw starved cities black and cold and motionless and the only things in this whole dead terrible world that made a move or a sound were the airplanes that blackened the sky and far off against the horizon the thunder of the big guns and the puffs that rose from barren tortured earth from their shells exploded.” 
“He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like.  Already they were looking ahead they were fighting the future and somewhere in the future they saw war.  To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they would fight.  So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret.  They knew that if all the little people all the little guys saw the future they would begin to ask questions. They would ask questions and they would find answers and they would say to the guys who wanted them to fight they would say you lying thieving sons of bitches we won’t fight we won’t be dead we will live we are the world we are the future and we will not let you butcher us no matter what you say no matter what speeches you make no matter what slogans you write.”

“If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed if there are bullets to be fired if there are men to be killed they will not be us.  They will not be us the guys who grow wheat and turn it into food. . . .oh no it will not be us who die.  It will be you.  It will be you—you who urge us on to battle you who incite us against ourselves you who would have one cobble kill another cobbler you who would have one man who works kill another man who works you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live.  Remember this.  Remember this well you people who plan for war.  Remember this you patriots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans.  Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives.  We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel.”

   From Chris Hedges’ essay, “Reading Proust in War,” Chris Hedges Report (Nov. 20, 2022) on In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (7 vols.)

“Proust chronicles the poisonous effects of World War I on French society, embodied by the hostess Mme. Verdurin, who uses the war to elevate her social prestige while the suicidal tactics of French generals leads to six million casualties, including 1.4 million dead and 4.2 million wounded, along with numerous army mutinies. Generals and war ministers are celebrities. Artists are reviled or ignored, unless they produce wartime kitsch. Women adorn themselves in “rings or bracelets made out of fragments of exploded shells or copper bands from 75 millimeter ammunition.” The rich, bursting with patriotism, while sacrificing little, busy themselves with charities for the soldiers at the front, benefit performances and afternoon tea parties. Wartime clichés, amplified by the press, are mindlessly parroted by the public. “For the idiocy of the times caused people to pride themselves on using the expressions of the times,” Proust notes. The war eradicates the demarcation between civilians and the military. It degrades language and culture. It fuels a toxic nationalism. It ushers in the modern era of industrial war where nations turn their resources over to the military and, with it, outsized political and social power. The war, the backdrop of the final chapter, signals the end of La Belle Époque.”

 

DOOMSDAY CLOCK

Meet the woman who designed the Doomsday Clock  This article in the Bulletin's virtual Turn Back the Clock tour explains how the Doomsday Clock was born from the creative mind of artist Martyl Langsdorf. Read more.

 

 

OMNI: CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #110, January 16, 2023

 

CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #110, January 16, 2023
Andreas Malm.   Fighting in a World on Fire: The Next Generation's Guide to Protecting the Climate and Saving Our Future.   For young people. 
Laurence Delina. Strategies for Rapid Climate Mitigation: Wartime Mobilisation.

 

Andreas Malm.   Adapted by Jimmy Whipps With Llewyn Whipps.  Fighting in a World on Fire: The Next Generation's Guide to Protecting the Climate and Saving Our Future.    Verso, 2023.   Paperback  $17.95$12.5630% off  272 pages / February 7, 2023 / 9781804291252  Available for pre-order.   
Publisher's description

Bottom of Form

An argument for bold action to halt climate destruction, adapted for young people from Andreas Malm’s best-selling book.  Young people are inheriting a world of climate catastrophe. Young people are also one of the strongest forces leading movements for climate justice, and to halt the fossil fuel emissions that are making our Earth unlivable.

Laurence Delina. Strategies for Rapid Climate Mitigation: Wartime Mobilisation.  Routledge, 2016.  208.   Publisher's description
Delina shows how leaders could marshal their resources—money, labor, technology--and phase out fossil fuels at the speed required by a mobilisation comparable to that of  the Second World War.

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #108, JANUARY 11, 2023

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #108, JANUARY 11, 2023
Nuclear War
Doomsday Clock from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Art Hobson. Praise for How the West Brought War to Ukraine.
Subtitle of Book:  Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe. 
Benjamin Abelow.  Publishing success of his book. 

 

DOOMSDAY CLOCK Watch the 2023 Doomsday Clock announcement.  BAS (1-9-23).  Tune in January 24 at 10AM EST to hear what leading scientists have set the Doomsday Clock to for 2023. Read more.

 

Ukraine War Threatens Nuclear War
Benjamin Abelow.   How the West Brought War to Ukraine.
Please read this short book about the Ukraine War, praised by Art Hobson,12-22-22

[WWW reviewed this book in #104,  Dec. 14.  I got my copy from Barnes and Noble 1-2-23. Dick]

Dear Friends,

 I’m sending this out to a large group.  The following book

https://www.amazon.com/How-West-Brought-Ukraine-Understanding/dp/0991076702

 is well worth the short time required to read it.  In 8 brief chapters, the author brings home the major arguments against US foreign policy on Ukraine, and how NATO expansion inevitably led to the present situation.  The author agrees with most opinion that the invasion was a strategic and moral mistake, and explains how NATO pushed Putin into it.  The solution is a negotiated settlement as soon as possible.  Americans, in their current frenzy of superpatriotism and self-congratulation, need to read this or any number of well-informed books about this war.  The advantage of this one is that it’s brief and to the point.  It’s recommended by Chomsky, Mearsheimer, and many other advocates of an intelligent US foreign policy.    Peace – Art

 

Note on Abelow and Nuclear Risk:
His sub-title:  Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe.

Note from Abelow to Dick on popularity of his breakthrough book:
After coming out with the English edition, I hired a translator and then came out with a German edition. A Swiss news magazine (Die Weltwoche ["The World Week"]) approached me out of the blue and arranged to produce a special magazine-formatted edition of the German translation. That edition was shrink-wrapped with the magazine's weekly issue and distributed to the magazine's 40,000 regular subscribers and newsstand buyers. Then, another unexpected event: a Swiss businessman with no connection to either Russia or Ukraine who read that special edition arranged to have another 300,000 copies printed and sent by mail to households in the cantons of Zurich and Bern. Those are the two most important cantons financially and politically. Those 300,000 copies were mailed at the end of November.

 

Since then, I've signed translation contracts with publishers in Poland and Slovenia (the latter is being published by the publishing arm of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) and I have a (knock wood) soon-to-be-consummated offer from an Italian publisher.  A literary agency in France is looking for a French publisher, and an international book broker here in the States has queried sub-agents and publishers in 40 other countries; I'm waiting to hear what comes of that. 

 

If people want to learn more, or to find out where they can order the book, I encourage them to visit my website (www.benjaminabelow.com). If they want to see the special Swiss magazine edition, they can view and download it here (https://weltwoche.ch/wp-content/uploads/wewo2022_43_UKRA-1.pdf). It's worth a look even if you don't read German because it is illustrated with beautiful and evocative landscape paintings by the artist Archip Kuindschi (1841–1910), for whom a museum is named in Mariupol, Ukraine.

 

Finally, if anyone has ideas for mass distributions in the U.S., I encourage them to contact me and we can discuss it. With thanks -- Ben Abelow (b.abelow.2022@gmail.com).  [And we can purchase several copies to give to schools or friends.  –Dick]

OMNICLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #109, January 9, 2022

 

CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #109, January 9, 2022

UNFCCC Failure
Film of Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’
Martin Rees, If Science Is to Save Us

UNFCCC 30^TH Anniversary
The Editors .  Monthly Review (January 2023).  (Volume 74, Number 8).   buy this issue.   This month’s “Notes from the Editors” marks the 30-year anniversary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The abject failure of this framework to enact meaningful progress on the planetary crisis continued to be on full display in 2022, including at November’s COP27 in Egypt. | more…

 

THE LETTER: A MESSAGE FOR OUR EARTH Trailer

This film explores the story about the Pope’s call to care for our planet. In 2015, Pope Francis wrote Laudato Si’, a letter to every single person in the world, confronting the looming calamity of human impact on Earth and ourselves. It is one of the most ambitious and revolutionary papal statements in history, since it is directed not just to Catholics, but to everyone on the planet and outlines the most critical environmental and social issues that we collectively face.    Watch Full Length   
https://www.pbs.org/show/letter-message-our-earth/

 

NUCLEAR RISK

Martin Rees explains how science might save us.  BAS (12-22-22).   Renowned British cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees discusses his new book, If Science Is to Save Us, with Bulletin editor-in-chief John Mecklin. Read more.

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #107, JANUARY 4, 2023

 

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #107, JANUARY 4, 2023

Sandra Richter. Stewards of Eden.
Empathy.  Lubna and the Pebble, The Expanding Circle, The Price of Empire

 

Sandra Richter, Stewards of Eden.
SCOT MCKNIGHT.    “War and the Environment.”  JULY 7, 2020.
“The Bible speaks directly about war and the environment.

If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?

Think about the wisdom of this, and then think about the utter environmental terrorism (her words) of how we have treated war zones. We are looking at a short chapter in the wonderful book by Sandra Richter, Stewards of Eden.  The words of that scripture emerge from a worldview about divine creation, humans as stewards of creation, and our requirement to protect the earth’s sustainability.

The Neo-Assyrians destroyed trees in war. Pictures show this kind of siege warfare. Such actions crippled a people for a decade or more. . . .
What did we do in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and Cambodia? Richter looks at Operation Ranch Hand. We poured out “20 million gallons of chemical herbicides and defoliants mixed with jet fuel over one-quarter of South Vietnam and the bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia.”  25 million acres destroyed. This was Neo-Assyrian. . . .  Abuse of the land was prohibited in ancient Israel. Profoundly prescient.”
Scot McKnight, Jesus Creed Blog.
Sandra Richter is the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College. Richter earned her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern...  Read full bio

EMPATHY

What kind of individual--an expression of what kind of education and culture?-- is shielded from savagery, destruction of the land, genocide of all species?   Ryan Billingsley owns the children’s book stall at Evelyn Hills, where I bought the splendid refugee story about learning empathy, Lubna and the Pebble by Wendy Meddour, shelved in the Empathy section.  Peter Singer in The Expanding Circle discusses “The Rise of Empathy and the Regard for Human Life,” and contrasts narrow sentimentality with the need for a much larger circle of empathy. We accomplish such an enlargement with others by experiencing them and reading about them, about indifference and cruelty, about widening compassion, about becoming stewards, and moral, social, and political change.  Arkansas’ former Senator J. William Fulbright wrote often about empathy, a foundation of his Educational Exchange Program.  For example, empathy is discussed throughout The Price of Empire, particularly in chapter seven, “Seeing the World as Others See it.”  Had the two main US Parties (the War Party) listened to Fulbright the US would have accepted the 1954 Geneva Accords, negotiated with Ho, and avoided the racist slaughter of three million Vietnam innocents.  (A flawed leader, Fulbright at home was a racist. See Randall Woods’ biography of Fulbright.)  We know how to build a peaceful world, but will we have evolutionary time?

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #108, January 2, 2022

 

 CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #108, January 2, 2022

RESISTANCE
What’s at stake: We have two choices regarding the convergence of conventional wars, nuclear war, climate change, and pandemics: to abandon resistance and allow the worst to happen; or to make use of the opportunities that exist to preserve some of our civilization’s achievements.  I checked the last ten CMM, and at least 1 entry in each asserted one or more examples of resistance, and in some CMM all did.   We know what to do to reduce and even stop climate change (and wars and pandemics). 

 

ECOSOCIALISM
David Camfield.   Future on Fire: Capitalism and the Politics of Climate Change.   Foreword by Dharna Noor.   PM Press, 2022.  128.
Future on Fire argues that a just transition from fossil fuels and other drivers of climate change will not be delivered by businesspeople or politicians who support the status quo. Electing green left leaders will not be enough to overcome opposition from capitalists and state bureaucrats. Only the power of disruptive mass social movements has the potential to pressure governments to change, so supporters of climate justice should commit to building them. Confronting the question “What if warming above 2° becomes unavoidable?” and refusing to despair, David Camfield argues that even a ravaged planet is worth fighting for—and that ultimately the only solution to the ecological crisis created by capitalism is a transition to ecosocialism. 
Praise “At last, a book that can be shared with anyone awakening to the urgency of climate justice. In clear and accessible prose, Future on Fire shows us why we are in an ecological crisis—and what it will take to move beyond it. With meticulous care, David Camfield lays out sharp and compelling arguments for building mass movements that set their sights on ecosocialism. Spread the word!”

Bridgetown Agenda
Tina Gerhardt.  “The Climate Bill.”  The Nation (12.12-19,  2022).   The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has a plan to dismantle the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement establishing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  It would “suspend IMF debt payments for the poorest countries,” and “make $100 billion immediately available to those nations.”   Mottley’s proposed Bridgetown Agenda has “widespread support among countries in both the Global South and G7.”  Copy this info. to AR’s Senators.  Agitate.  Be trouble.