“In one of the more memorable moments of the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama explained why he rejected John McCain’s call to postpone their September debate in Oxford, Mississippi, during the negotiations on the first financial bailout package. “It’s going to be part of the president’s job,” Obama declared, “to be able to deal with more than one thing at once.””
“Something similar can be said about climate policy. A variety of proposals – for public investment, carbon pricing, regulatory standards – are cooking in Washington’s political stew. Sometimes the proponents of specific policies are tempted to oversell their merits, while dismissing other policies as unnecessary or even counterproductive. But if Congress and the Obama administration are going to get smart on climate change, part of their job is to deal with more than one policy at once…”
In an interview with Newsclick, Triple Crisis blogger Martin Khor looks back at the Copenhagen Climate Change conference and discusses opportunities that were missed and the way forward to take negotiations to a positive conclusion.
A serious campaign in favor of “de-growth” has been going on for some time and has made important contributions. This movement has opened new avenues for debate and analysis on technology, credit, education and other important areas. It’s an effort that needs support and attention, and we must applaud their initiators and promoters for their boldness and dedication.
De-growth is defined as “a reduction of production and consumption in physical terms through down-scaling and not only through efficiency improvements”. Kallis-Schneider-Martínez Alierexplain that de-growth is a smooth, voluntary and equitable downscaling of production and consumption that insures human wellbeing and ecological sustainability locally as well as globally on the short and long term. Thus, de-growth is not limited to a technological dimension.
As of Friday, July 2, Mr. Wulff became Germany’s new Federal President, the state’s highest office. The election electrified the German public even though the German President has little power and is chosen by the members of the German Parliament and representatives of each of the sixteen states rather than by public vote.
It has been a long time since the German public was as captivated as they were by Mr. Wulff’s opponent, Mr. Gauck. Despite the great enthusiasm for his candidacy, he was, at last, defeated by the conservative majority of electoral delegates. But one can learn a lot from Gauck’s one-month campaign: He was able to inspire people to become politically active. Broad-based activism is needed to transform society and achieve a socially and ecologically sustainable economy.
There is no doubt about it: people are changing the Earth’s climate. The evidencefor what scientists call “anthropogenic climate change” is overwhelming, notwithstanding the obfuscation efforts of the climate change denial industry kept on life-support with infusions of corporate money.
But to say that our emissions of greenhouse gases are causing climate change is not to say that every extra person automatically multiplies the problem. Nor does it imply that population control is the ultimate solution – a view espoused by some on the Malthusian fringe of the environmental movement.
It’s time to stop blaming BP – alone. At least four other oil companies hired the same firm to write their plans for handling spills in the Gulf of Mexico. They ended up with nearly identical plans, complete with thoughtful concern about impacts on walruses. The CEO of ExxonMobil called it “unfortunate” and “embarrassing” that the plan included walruses, which have not been present in the Gulf region for millions of years.
On the other hand, according to U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, the oil industry’s standard plan for Gulf spills never mentions hurricanes or tropical storms, which do appear in the region on an annual basis. This makes perfect sense under only one interpretation: the oil companies were certain that accidents never happen. If there are no oil spills, your spill response plan can talk about unicorns, and no one will be the wiser.
In the indigenous, western highlands of Guatemala, a rebellion is swelling against the forces of global capitalism. Well, at least against its palpable manifestation—an open pit gold and silver mine owned and operated by the Canadian company Goldcorp. The mine is seen as early warning of what could be a storm of foreign mining companies: the Guatemalan government has granted some 300 mining concessions, over 90% of them near indigenous communities. On June 18, some 12,000 indigenous people streamed into Huehuetenango to give a message to a visiting UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights: “No to mining, yes to life”.
Goldcorp inherited the Marlin mine when it acquired Glamis Gold back in 2006. Since then, Goldcorp has emerged as the industry’s “growth leader” . Its 2009 Annual Report boasts a five-year average return to shareholders of 21.2%–nearly double that of its “senior” competitors.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster has the familiar ingredients of deregulation, deception, and destruction that characterize the relations between governments and multinational corporations. It was a man-made disaster, like Chernobyl. And like the global financial crisis, it all started with the explosion of a bubble, this time of methane gas.
The Wages of Deregulation
In 2008 the Bush-Cheney duo lifted the executive order banning offshore drilling, and the House of Representatives agreed to let a 26-year-old moratorium on offshore drilling expire. Deregulation was moving full speed ahead.