OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #195, SEPTEMBER 9, 2024.

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #195, SEPTEMBER 9, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett.

RESISTANCE

The Green New Deal.
Marian Starkey.  POPULATION CONNECTION.
 BIG WIRES ACT.  CCL.  Jan Schaper.
 Arkansas ACCL.  Ft. Smith Seminar.

The IDEA OF A GREEN NEW DEAL inspires the world. These two short books you might want to add to your library.

Stan Cox.  The Green New Deal.

Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin.  Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal.

 

POPULATION CONNECTION AVAILABLE TO ALL
Good morning, Dick,

 This excellent magazine is now live on our website! Please share and promote Population Connection content whenever you get the chance—no permission needed.    www.popconnect.org/magazine
 Thanks, again! Marian Starkey, MSc V- P for Communications, p: 202.974.7735, 2120 L St. NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC, 20037
PopC “educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth’s resources.”

           

 Since the BIG WIRES Act to deploy more solar and wind energy was introduced last year, CCL has been behind it as a great next step in the push for clean energy permitting reform.    A new paper out this week from the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research reveals exactly how great these policy changes really would be.

On the low end, the paper estimates that “BIG WIRES would save $330 million per year due to the lower energy costs associated with being able to deploy more solar and wind energy,” CCL Research Coordinator Dana Nuccitelli explains in a CCL Community post. If America steps up and makes a serious effort to deploy clean energy, the potential savings are even greater — $2.5 billion per year!

And when it comes to carbon pollution, the results are just as encouraging. “The paper estimates that BIG WIRES would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 73 million metric tons of CO2 per year compared to the status quo. That's a 5.5% reduction in our emissions,” Dana explains.

The study also confirms that the BIG WIRES Act would reduce power outages during extreme weather. Using models of Winter Storm Elliott in 2022, the authors “found that BIG WIRES would have reduced the number of homes that lost power in this storm from 4.7 million to 2.1 million – a 58% reduction in blackouts.”

Passing this legislation, Dana says, would be “an impressive win-win-win scenario!”

See Dana’s post about the study,

Registration is now open for the October 4th River Valley Green Energy and Education Seminar, which will be held at the UAFS Center for Economic Development in Fort Smith's Bakery District.  This full day, upbeat gathering will give you the latest on sustainability advancements, potential, and plans from the angle of the City of Fort Smith - a winner of the recently announced EPA Climate Pollution Reeducation Grants, statewide workforce development and business leaders, community groups, the University of Arkansas Fort Smith, local faith leaders and regional educators.

Jan Schaper, Administrator & Program Director

 

 

The Arkansas Citizens' Climate League, 2610 W Hackett Rd, Hackett, AR 72937

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #193, SEPTEMBER 4, 2024.

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #193, SEPTEMBER 4, 2024.   Compiled by Dick Bennett

Looking Back to Guide the Future

1978: War Resisters League members demonstrated simultaneously against nuclear weapons in Red Square, Moscow, and on the White House Lawn.  [I will be citing notable historical events like this one in the future, drawn from the War Resisters League Peace Calendars.  –D]

THE NAKBA AND US JEWISH DISSENT
Geoffrey Levin is an assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Prior to joining Emory's faculty, Levin was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for Jewish Studies after earning a PhD in Hebrew & Judaic Studies/History from New York University in 2019. His first book, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978, was published by Yale University Press, 2023. [Jewish dissent continues today, and I am glad to be a member of several Jewish anti-war organizations.  –Dick]

Monday, September 16^th, 2024 at 6pm Dr. Levin will be making a live video presentation with questions & answers at the Fayetteville Public Library (FPL) in the Walker Rm. He will be discussing Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978. . . .   “The Israeli government covertly meddled into American Jewish politics from the 1950s to 1970s, and they did so to quash Jewish criticisms of the 1948 Nakba — the mass dispossession and expulsions of Palestinians during Israel’s founding — and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.” Intercept News Service, March 3, 2024.   Hoping you can join us & please invite others.  Dr Susan Colvin & David Druding - co-founders of PIPE Edu Collective, NWA Palestine Israel Peace & Equality (P.I.P.E.) support community 8-19-24.

IMAGINING THE FUTURE

 

8-21-24 The 79th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 79) is fast approaching.     Beginning on September 24, global leaders, activists, and advocates of all ages will gather in New York for UNGA High-Level Week to discuss the state of our world — and debate how we can best move forward.  Now, more than ever, is the time to choose the future we want — for ourselves and our human family.      And this year, at the Summit of the Future, stakeholders across sectors, generations, and countries will take action and agree on what the future should look like.    Held in the days before High-Level Week, the first-of-its-kind Summit asks leaders to choose: breakdown or breakthrough.   Keep reading to learn how you can get involved.   For People. For Planet. For Our Common Future.  The 79th session of the UN General Assembly opens on September 10, 2024 in New York City       The 79th session of the UN General Assembly opens on September 10, 2024 in New York City. Photo: UN Foundation

 

FROM OUR EXPERTS...   What to Expect at UNGA 79: Our Experts Weigh In  UN Foundation experts share the issues they’re following at UNGA 79, and explain why this year’s gathering feels like an inflection point in the UN’s decades-long history. Read more >>   UNGA 79 Hub: Events, Updates, and Insights   UN Foundation has you covered when it comes to tracking events and staying up to date on all things UNGA 79. Explore the hub >>   Summit of the Future: What You Need to Know    The first-of-its-kind Summit takes place on September 22 and 23. With leaders set to adopt a Pact for the Future, the world is watching to see if the Summit will deliver the long-overdue upgrade the international system has been waiting for. Get the details >>    Global Goals Week: Get Involved    Held annually alongside UNGA, Global Goals Week brings together over 150 partners across civil society, business, academia, and the UN system with a shared commitment to accelerate action, awareness, and accountability for the Goals. Learn more >>

 

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From its beginning, OMNI was inspired by the UN Charter.  And OMNI  borrowed its mission statement from the Quakers.  “We seek a world free of war and the threat of war.   We seek a society with equity and justice for all....” The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is a national, nonpartisan Quaker organization that lobbies Congress for peace, justice, and environmental stewardship.  Its sister org.—the AFSC—has a similar mission statement.  “The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) promotes a world free of violence, inequality, and oppression.”   --Dick

 

CONNECTING THE PAST TO THE FUTURE TO ASSESS THE PRESENT

Joe Conason begins It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush with Sinclair Lewis’s sardonically titled, dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here (1935) that showed how fascism/nazism might happen in the US.  His dictator president, Buzz Windrip, posing as “an exponent of traditional values—liberty, democracy righteousness, godliness,” seizes an economic crisis to “arrogate more and more power to the White House.”  In It Can Happen Here (2007) Conason describes how George W. Bush and his administration had so diminished the US idea and institutions of democracy that the US was becoming the police state Lewis had feared, which prepared the way for its further perhaps terminal dismantling by Trump and his cronies.  (All summarized in his Introduction.) 

 

In The Last Independence Day: Secession, the author Ray Niblock imagines the hard right takeover of the state of Arkansas by a ruthless female governor named Landers, as part of a wider movement to split the US into two nations, one struggling to evolve democratically, the other embracing autocracy.   We experience the political process of dismantling the state institution by institution and the breakaway of Arkansas and preparations by other states to join it.   A follow-up seems planned: The Epilogue ends with the words “To be continued.”

And today I learned that Joe Conason this year published another book on the US right wing: The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and  Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (2024).  

 

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #194, SEPTEMBER 2, 2024.

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #194, SEPTEMBER 2, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett.

Wars and Climate: NATO v. Essential Climate Investment.
Caitlin Johnstone. And the Gaza War.  Critique of Democratic Party.
Overpopulation.  Garrett Hardin.  Living within Limits.
John Bellamy Foster.  The Dialectics of Ecology.

 

“The Earth Can’t Endure NATO’s Ambitions.”

Editor.  mronline.org (8-12-24).

NATO’s growing militarism doesn’t just risk widening war, but is deeply implicated in the mounting climate catastrophe, argues Nandita Lal.

Originally published: Counterfire  on August 8, 2024 by Nandita Lal (more by Counterfire)  |  (Posted Aug 11, 2024).   Imperialism, Inequality, Movements, StrategyGlobalNewswireNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

NATO’s expansionary military targets are deeply at odds with the need to scale down global emissions to avoid deepening the climate crisis. NATO’s goal of dedicating 2% of GDP to military spending is set to exacerbate climate breakdown by diverting billions of dollars away from essential climate investment and significantly increasing CO₂ emissions. . . .

In 2023 alone, NATO members collectively spent $1.26 trillion on their military, an increase of $126 billion on 2022. This staggering sum could have covered twelve years of the promised, and still not delivered, $100 billion annual climate finance to support low-and middle-income countries. Rich, polluting nations are now three years overdue on their commitment to mobilise this $100 billion annually. However, the reality is even grimmer. According to Oxfam’s Climate Finance Shadow Report 2023, while donors claimed to have mobilised $83.3 billion in 2020, the actual value is likely closer to $24.5 billion. The inflated figure includes projects with overstated climate objectives and loans cited at their face value, not accounting for the financial burden these loans place on already indebted countries.

Military expenditures directly contribute to environmental degradation through increased carbon emissions. NATO’s overall military spending in 2023 of $1.34 trillion produced an estimated 233 million metric tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (tCO2e). This is more than Colombia’s or Qatar’s annual GHG emissions. . . .MORE

Caitlin Johnstone.  “The Democratic Party Exists To Make Sure Good People Do Nothing.”  Aug 23, 2024.  [THIS ARTICLE WAS FORWARDED TO ME BY aBEL tOMLINSON.]

 

"The reason I criticize the Democrats so much can be explained in the aphorism “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The Democratic Party exists to ensure that good people will do nothing.

 

Gaza is such a perfect example of this. When Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promulgates the blatant lie that Kamala Harris is “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza,” the result is that people who trust AOC will relax and stop pushing for an end to the genocide. They’ve been told by the congresswoman who’s been marketed as standing as far to the left as anyone can reasonably be that the current administration can be trusted to take care of this thing, so all they need to do to save Gaza is vote for the vice president in November.

 

It isn’t necessary to impose such manipulations upon Republicans, who simply support Israel’s atrocities in Gaza because they believe Muslims should be exterminated and because Israel is going to fulfill a biblical prophecy that will bring back Jesus and send all the heathens to burn in hell. Such manipulations are only necessary to politically nullify the kinds of people who would otherwise see what’s happening in Gaza and move mountains to end this mass atrocity. . . .MORE 
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-democratic-party-exists-to-make

 

An Early Book on Population Growth Encountering Limited Resources.

Garrett Hardin.  Living within Limits:  Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos.  Oxford UP, 1995.   
Publisher’s description
A critique of traditional economic theories that ignore the basic ecological concept of limited resources.  A prominent biologist, ecological philosopher, and keen student of human population control, Hardin now offers the finest summation of his work to date, with an eloquent argument for accepting the limits of the earth's resources--and the hard choices we must make to live within them.
In Living Within Limits, Hardin focuses on the neglected problem of overpopulation, making a forceful case for dramatically changing the way we live in and manage our world. . . .Hardin points out the hard choices we must make and the solutions we have been afraid to consider. This book is an intellectual feast that enrages, disturbs, and challenges the reader at every page.

A Path to Sustainable Human Development.
John Bellamy Foster.  The Dialectics of Ecology: Socialism and Nature.  Monthly Review P, 2024.

Today the fate of the earth as a home for humanity is in question—and yet, contends John Bellamy Foster, the reunification of humanity and the earth remains possible if we are prepared to make revolutionary changes. As with his prior books, The Dialectics of Ecology is grounded in the contention that we are now faced with a concrete choice between ecological socialism and capitalist exterminism, and rooted in insights drawn from the classical historical materialist tradition. In this latest work, Foster explores the complex theoretical debates that have arisen historically with respect to the dialectics of nature and society. He then goes on to examine the current contradictions associated with the confrontation between capitalist extractivism and the financialization of nature, on the one hand, and the radical challenges to these represented by emergent visions of ecological civilization and planned degrowth, on the other.

The product of contemporary ecosocialist debates, The Dialectics of Ecology builds on earlier works by Foster, including Marx’s Ecology (2000) and The Return of Nature (2020), aimed at the development of a dialectical naturalism and the formation of a path to sustainable human development.