Anarchist Communist Group (anarchistcommunism.org)

Virus: In the Body Politic

First issue of ACG theoretical magazine Virus: In The Body Politic. 56 pages with articles on : Beyond XR: The Limits of Extinction Rebellion; Capitalism, Land and Climate Change; The Yellow Vests: Where Now?; Anarchy, Punks, and Sweatshops; Organising To Win; Dossier 1919, with articles on Unrest in Britain, the 1919 Police Strike, the Seattle General Strike, the Winnipeg General Strike, and Soviets in Ireland; Anarchist Communism and the Struggle Against Oppression; What Is Fully Automated Luxury Communism; The Socialism of the Intellectuals: Jan Waclaw Machajski; plus book reviews.

VIRUS in the body politic – issue No 1

Print version available from the ACG for £4.50 (includes postage)

Print version all sold out. But click on link above for free downloadable version. 

Fight for the City!

A new pamphlet by London Anarchist Communist Group, Fight For The City.

Britain and other western countries have seen a massive increase in the cost of housing, increases in evictions and homelessness, whole council estates torn down and sold off to private developers, overcrowding in squalid accommodation, city centres privatised and transformed into sanitised shopping malls, business centres and tourist destinations, attacks on the poor – cuts in benefit, the bedroom tax, low wages, fewer green and open spaces and more sky scrapers, increased pollution, police violence, and increased surveillance.

This pamphlet covers all issues related to the city as a site of class struggle, housing, gentrification , social cleansing, privatisation of space, the general takeover of the city by corporate interests, crackdowns on social movements, demonstrations and fightbacks against all this.

44 pages A5 pamphlet

Available from the ACG for £3.00 (includes postage)

SOLD OUT! Download web version HERE

New pamphlet – the Politics of Division

August 18, 2021Danny La Rouge

The ACG presents its important new pamphlet on identity politics –

The Politics of Division: An engagement with
identity politics
A contribution to the debate

To be human is to negotiate a balance between individual identity and
collective action. We are each simultaneously individuals and social
animals. This pamphlet does not seek to negate identity. Identity is
important to our humanity, as well as being a major focus for oppression.
What it seeks to do, rather, is to place revolutionary politics in the
collective sphere. When anarchist-communists echo Kropotkin in saying
“What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!” we are
advancing a vision for a free society, the society we want to build.

In recent decades politics has moved a long way from expressing what it is
we want to achieve and has instead refocused on expressing who it is I am
and what I believe my heritage or essential characteristics to be, and this
is often an emotive and painful issue, especially where, as so often, there
has been a history of oppression and subjugation. While these are indeed
important enquiries and will of course inform each individual’s perspective
on what needs to change in our quest for a better society, this pamphlet
argues that to be effective revolutionary politics must be about that
shared future we seek to build. What makes each of us an anarchist
communist – or whatever vision it is you might hold – is that set of values
we will build the future upon.

This pamphlet is presented with respect for our many struggles and in
anger at our many experiences of oppression, determined that our
collective efforts will build a better future.

Cover price £3.

Ordered through social media/website/email below £2 plus 1.53 postage.

Can be ordered from our website: www.anarchistcommunism.org or
contact: londonacg@gmail.com

UK net zero delay has left room for sceptics’ attacks, says government climate adviser

Lord Deben says he is ‘pressing very hard’ to get details of strategy published as Cop26 approaches

Lord Deben said it was important to keep stressing that the overall cost of tackling climate change was ‘a relatively small amount and certainly perfectly doable’. Photograph: Richard Gardner/Rex/Shutterstock


Rowena Mason 

Deputy political editor

THE GUARDIAN
Mon 16 Aug 2021 

Boris Johnson’s delay in publishing the net zero emissions strategy has left a space for climate sceptics to “complain, attack and undermine” on cost grounds, and other countries could do with seeing more “proper leadership” from the UK before Cop26, the government’s independent climate adviser has said.

Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and chair of the climate change committee, said critics of the net zero policy had been vocal in the public debate because “it hasn’t been put into context by the government”

Johnson has stuck to Theresa May’s policy of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but the government has not yet published a roadmap of policies, a Treasury review of costs or some of its sectoral strategies.

These are now expected in September, just two months before the UN talks in Glasgow, after rows with the Treasury about how to spread the cost of changes, ranging from green boilers to decarbonising transport.

In an interview with the Guardian, Deben said the absence of detail had “given an open opportunity for people to make all sorts of statements without any response from the government”, which was why he was “pressing very hard to get this work out”.

He said Johnson should take credit for sticking to the net zero policy, and he praised the government’s preparations for the Cop26 summit under its climate envoy, Alok Sharma.

However, he said there had been a “fundamental problem” for Sharma to persuade developing countries to sign up to steep emissions cuts when the UK had cut the foreign aid budget. “It was a very serious mistake to cut back on overseas aid,” he said, which had made it “very much more difficult” for Sharma in his negotiations.

In relation to the net zero strategy, the peer said: “Other countries would be much more willing to recognise that this is proper leadership if they see a programme in detail, but we haven’t committed ourselves to that.”

The climate change committee’s sixth carbon budget analysis found that the future cost savings from no longer having to buy oil and gas will almost offset the £50bn-a-year investment needed in low-carbon power, transport and home heating across the next three decades. It predicts that after investing in net zero policies, the UK’s GNP would be only around four months behind where it would otherwise have been.

However, the projected costs of net zero have come in for criticism in recent weeks, with the backbench Tory MP Craig Mackinlay forming a group to challenge the price tag. Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister and prominent Tory, has become a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climate science sceptic outfit run by the former chancellor Nigel Lawson.

Deben said it was important for the government to keep stressing that the overall cost of tackling climate change was “a relatively small amount and certainly perfectly doable”.

Asked whether the Treasury was blocking policies on cost grounds, with the Office for Budget Responsibility suggesting the overall cost could be £1.4tn over 30 years, Deben said he believed that Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, was “thinking very seriously about this” and that he had to “keep some reasonable control over public expenditure”.

He said it was right for the Treasury to be looking at how the cost is “fairly and reasonably spread across society”, highlighting the unfairness of the costs of renewables having all gone on to electricity bills in the past.

But Deben said it was an issue that the government’s overall work on net zero had not yet appeared, although he acknowledged that it was a complex thing to work out.

“The problem is that because that is very late, because it was supposed to be done very much earlier, of course it’s given every opportunity for everybody who wants to complain, to attack, to undermine what has to be done and to make a great fuss about the various costs.”

He added: “Boris Johnson has done some remarkable things in the sense that he has clearly signed up to the toughest targets of any country in the world. But the problem for this government is that having done that, we still haven’t seen the delivery programme.”

Deben singled out the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for criticism for not coming up with an adaptation plan, and the Department for Education for not talking enough about skills and training for green jobs.

He said it was important to acknowledge that the world was “much further forward today than either you or I would have thought 10 years ago” in the effort to deal with the climate emergency, and it was important to stress that it was possible to prevent the worst scenarios.

“If we get this right then we can win the battle,” he said.

 

WE CAN SLASH CARBON EMISSIONS BY 90 PERCENT BY 2035. BUT GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES FOR ANIMAL AGRICULTURE MUST END FIRST. 

A new report by RethinkX says we need to remove barriers that favor carbon-intensive industries, like government subsidies for animal agriculture, so that disruptive technology can take over and reduce carbon emissions.

by NICOLE AXWORTHY

AUGUST 18, 2021

    

Replacing carbon-intensive industries such as animal agriculture with clean disruptive technologies will enable the world to reduce carbon emissions by 90 percent within the next 15 years, according to a new report by independent think tank RethinkX. The report, called “Rethinking Climate Change,” suggests that three major industries—energy, transportation, and food—can directly eliminate more than 90 percent of net greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and even go beyond net-zero after 2040. 

The answer, according to the report, is to disrupt meat, dairy, and other animal products with precision fermentation (PF) and cellular agriculture (CA). These disruptive technologies allow the food industry to create proteins that are higher quality, safer, better for the environment, and available in a wider variety than the animal-derived products they will replace. PF uses microbial hosts such as yeast to produce specific functional ingredients, including proteins and fats. Cellular agriculture uses a small amount of animal cells to grow meat in a lab setting. 

“As the most inefficient and economically vulnerable part of the industrial food system, cow products will be the first to feel the full force of the food disruption,” the report states. “By 2030, the number of cows in the United States will have fallen by 50 percent, and the cattle farming industry will be all but bankrupt. All other commercial livestock industries worldwide will quickly follow the same fate, as will commercial fisheries and aquaculture.” By then, the report predicts that protein made with precision fermentation will be 100 times more land efficient, up to 25 times more feedstock efficient, 20 times more time-efficient, 10 times more water-efficient, and will produce far less waste.

Replacing animal agriculture to slash carbon emissions

Technologies to replace animal agriculture, including PF and CA, are already underway. Startups such as New Culture and Perfect Day are using PF technologies to replace the proteins in cow’s milk to make the base for animal-free milk, cheese, and ice cream. Similarly, companies such as Eat Just, Aleph Farms, and Cultured Decadence are using CA technologies to replace animal proteins such as chicken, beef, and lobster. “Product after product that we extract from animals will be replaced by superior, cheaper, cleaner, and tastier alternatives, triggering a death spiral of increasing prices, decreasing demand, and reversing economies of scale for the livestock and seafood industries,” the report states.

Similarly, the report suggests that the energy and transportation sectors must follow the same fate. In the energy sector, coal, oil, and gas must be replaced with disruptive technologies such as solar, wind, and batteries. In the transportation industry, autonomous electric vehicles providing transportation-as-a-service must disrupt internal combustion engines and private vehicle ownership. 

Removing barriers to progress

Using cost curves, the report shows how the disruptive technologies are rapidly becoming cheaper than the carbon-intensive industries in these sectors, and thus represent an overwhelming competitive threat to their economic viability. While the disruptions will ultimately be driven by the economy, crucial decisions at government, investor, and business levels can either accelerate or delay the disruptions, with major ramifications for whether the world avoids dangerous climate change.

The report also suggests that the bulk of emissions reductions can be achieved largely by removing barriers that favor current industry incumbents. This includes removing livestock farming subsidies in the food sector, ending vertically integrated utility monopolies in the energy sector, and eradicating regulatory hurdles to electric and autonomous vehicles.

According to the Agriculture Fairness Alliance, in 2020 the US government spent more than $50 billion on agricultural subsidies and bailouts, the majority of which favored the meat and dairy industries. 

“We can either accelerate the energy, transportation, and food disruptions and solve the climate crisis by ushering a new era of clean prosperity, or we can waste decades and trillions of dollars propping up the incumbent system,” RethinkX co-founder Tony Seba said in a statement. “The stakes for the planet and society are enormous. It is up to us to decide whether or not we deploy and scale these technologies rapidly enough to avoid dangerous climate change.”

 

COVID cluster continues to grow at Trans Mountain site near Valemount

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Despite the increase in cases, Northern Health says it is not declaring an outbreak

Kate Partridge · CBC News · Posted: Aug 19, 2021 

Trans Mountain says it is taking additional measures to contain the spread, including more rapid testing, reinstating mask mandates for those in close contact and implementing increased sanitation procedures.  (CBC)

The number of lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 at a Trans Mountain pipeline worksite has jumped to 30 from 16 earlier in the week.

Of those, Northern Health says 26 are active at this time. Trans Mountain says about 40 close contacts of those infected are in isolation.

The health agency says it is not declaring an outbreak, which is reserved for situations where extraordinary containment measures are required.

Unlike the situation at Site C where a new outbreak was declared on Aug. 16, it says the majority of the infections at Trans Mountain do not appear to have been from onsite transmission. 

Trans Mountain says it is implementing additional measures to manage the COVID cluster, including more rapid testing, reinstating mask mandates for those in close contact and implementing increased sanitation procedures.

Public health investigations are ongoing, according to Northern Health, which said it was unable to comment at this time on whether the nearby community of Valemount, B.C., has been impacted.

Trans Mountain says it is working with its contractors and Northern Health to gather information on how many workers are vaccinated.   

 

Effect of 'eddy killing' in oceans is no longer a matter of guesswork

by Bob Marcotte, University of Rochester

This map from satellite data by PhD student Shikhar Rai shows, in blue, areas of the oceans where “eddy killing” results in net loss of kinetic energy. The areas in black depict land masses and oceanic regions with seasonal or permanent ice coverage. Credit: Hussein Aluie

Ocean currents, propelled by kinetic energy from the wind, are the great moderators of our climate. By transferring heat from the equator to polar regions, they help make our planet habitable.

And yet, the large-scale models used by scientists to study this complex system fail to accurately account for the impact of wind on the ocean's most energetic components: Swirling, mesoscale eddies. These circular currents of water 50 to 500 kilometers in size are critical to determining the trajectory of larger ocean currents like the Gulf Stream.

In a paper in Science Advances, researchers from the University of Rochester and Los Alamos National Laboratory document for the first time how the wind, which propels larger currents, has the opposite effect on eddies less than 260 kilometers in size—resulting in a phenomenon called "eddy killing."

They also provide the first direct measurement of the overall impact of this eddy killing: A continual loss of 50 gigawatts of kinetic energy—equivalent to the detonation of a Hiroshima nuclear bomb every 20 minutes, year-round.

Better analysis with satellite observations

"For the first time we are able to unravel eddy killing by direct measurement from satellite observations, with minimal assumptions," says corresponding author Hussein Aluie, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Rochester.

The team—which also includes Shikhar Rai, a Ph.D. student in Aluie's Turbulence and Complex Flow Group, and Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists Matthew Hecht and Matthew Maltrud—applied a coarse-graining approach to satellite imagery. Doing so allowed them to separate the complex, multiscale structures of ocean currents and eddies embedded within each other.

This method provides a more detailed spatial analysis than is possible with the ones used by most oceanographers, which concentrate on temporal fluctuations, Aluie says. Those methods either fail to account for the impact of eddy killing or provide wildly varying estimates. "The numbers have been all over the place," Aluie says.

Aluie praised Rai, a fifth-year Ph.D. student, for doing "all the heavy lifting" for the paper. "There were many technical issues, but he persevered and was able to figure them out," Aluie says. "He's got a lot of promise and talent."

Eddies are circular currents of water (shown here as green and light blue swirling patterns of phytoplankton blooms) that play an important role in determining the ocean’s currents, heat flow, salt concentrations, and upwelling of nutrients and organisms. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Ocean Color

New method could turn the tide for studies of ocean currents

Scientists have known about eddy killing since the late 1980s from idealized models, Aluie says.

The basic concept is fairly simple to visualize. An eddy is like a circle rotating either clockwise or counterclockwise. Any wind flowing over the eddy, however, will be moving in only one direction, "helping" the half of the circle moving at least partly in the same direction, while impeding the other half.

Imagine riding a bicycle alongside a car going in the same direction—much like the wind flowing over the part of the eddy moving in the same direction. The difference in velocity is proportionately much less than occurs when you bike past a car moving in the opposite direction, much like the wind pushing against the other side of the eddy. That difference in proportional velocity accounts for the net "killing" effect on the eddy, resulting in the wind extracting energy.

"On the one hand the wind is making the ocean move, and yet it is killing the part of it that is the most energetic. So, it is counterintuitive and something that had not been directly measured before because people were using the wrong tools," Aluie says.

A better tool is important because many questions remain about other factors that may influence eddy killing, and about the importance of eddies in other aspects of the ocean's currents, heat flow, salt concentrations, and upwelling of nutrients and marine organisms, he says.

The method demonstrated in this paper will hopefully be adapted by oceanographers to "unravel" these mysteries as well, Aluie says.Proposed set of conservation laws find order in the chaos of turbulence

More information: Shikhar Rai et al, Scale of oceanic eddy killing by wind from global satellite observations, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf4920

Journal information: Science Advances 

Provided by University of Rochester 

ONLY A SOCIALIST TECHNATE CAN SOLVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Hydropower Withers in Drought, Boosting Fossil-Fuel Generation

The irony reveals the need for a greater mix of renewable energy sources

By Corbin Hiar, E&E News on August 19, 2021

Low water levels are visible at Lake Oroville on July 22, 2021 in Oroville, California.

 Credit: Justin Sullivan Getty Images

A drought worsened by climate change has caused hydropower supplies in California to reach their second-lowest level since 2001, leading electricity prices in the state to soar 150% in three months' time.

Yet some of the biggest beneficiaries of the price surge, according to a credit ratings agency report yesterday, are fossil fuel-fired power producers whose emissions only exacerbate global warming.

California's predicament — in which emissions-free hydropower is replaced by planet-warming power from natural gas plants — underscores the need to rapidly decarbonize the electric grid, according to sustainability experts.

"That way, if we do have challenges with generation from one renewables sector, we'll be able to make up for it with renewables from another," said Kristen Averyt, a research professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who's focused on climate resilience efforts.

In May, monthly power prices in California were under $30 per megawatt-hour, Moody's Investors Service said in the report. By July, they'd topped $80 per MWh — their highest level since at least 2016.

"High power prices are credit positive for non-hydro-dependent power generators that sell into the California power market," the report said.

Moody's highlighted three power producers set to profit from the state's drought-driven decline in hydropower: Calpine Corp., Vistra Corp. and Generation Bridge LLC.

Houston-based Calpine has 35 power plants in California with a generation capacity of 6,425 megawatts, according to company data. Of that generating capacity, 88% is powered by fossil fuels.
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Vistra, another Texas company, is even more dependent on fossil fuels. The Carbon Tracker Initiative, a clean energy think tank, estimates that 90% of its fleetwide power capacity is from natural gas and coal plants.

Generation Bridge, meanwhile, is a holding company composed entirely of gas- and oil-fired peaking plants, according to a Moody's report from earlier this month.

In California, Generation Bridge has two gas-fired peakers that can produce 773 MW when power demand in the state is at its highest. The holding company is owned by a fund of ArcLight Capital Partners LLC, a Boston-based private equity firm.

Sourcing power from those companies may help California keep on the lights in the short term, but it's harmful to the nation's long-term climate goals, Averyt said.

"The last thing we want to be doing right now is increase our emissions," she said.

Calpine, Vistra and ArcLight did not respond to requests for comment.

Hydropower historically has provided about 15% of California's electricity. But a decadeslong drought has caused production from the sector to plummet.

Earlier this month, low water levels at the Oroville Dam forced the state to shut down the Edward Hyatt Power Plant, one of its largest hydro facilities (Greenwire, Aug. 6).

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2021. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

 

Halifax police ‘unprofessional’ for housing protest approach, N.S. NDP leader says

By Aya Al-Hakim  Global News

Posted August 19, 2021 

In the midst of the removal of tents and shelters and the clash between protesters and

 police in downtown Halifax, only a few politicians showed up on scene. One of them was 

NSNDP leader Gary Burrill who joined Global News Morning to talk about what happened.

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Nova Scotia NDP Leader Gary Burrill said Halifax Regional Police and the city took a very “unprofessional approach to crowd control” Wednesday after a large group of people protested against the forcible removal of an encampment being used by people without homes.

Burrill, along with NDP MLAs Susie Hansen of Halifax Needham and Lisa Lachance of Halifax Citadel-Sable Island, joined the crowd at the park near the old Spring Garden Road Memorial Library that morning.

Police were beginning to dismantle tents and temporary shelters and telling occupants to immediately vacate the area, but they were met with anger from a large group of people.

READ MORE: Halifax police pepper spray crowd during protests over torn-down shelters

This led to the arrest of several protestors who had formed a protective wall in front of the crisis shelters.

“I felt, as did Lisa and Susie when we got there, that this was a potentially volatile and dangerous situation. We had this major, heavy police presence,” said Burrill to Global News Morning on Thursday.

He said he immediately called Mayor Mike Savage and told him that what the city needed to do was “stand down the police presence and whatever policy objective they had that day, they could not accomplish them without risking the safety of people.”

However, Halifax Regional Police did not stand down.

2:07Protestors confronted Halifax police trying to evict people

Protestors confronted Halifax police trying to evict people

Police officers eventually forcibly moved the wall of people, and could be heard telling them that contractors had been ordered to remove the shelters.

The number of arrests appeared to be higher than 10.

The scene became increasingly chaotic in the afternoon and police officers could be seen using pepper spray on people.

“I thought this was an operationally unprofessional decision and very poor judgment on the part of police,” Burrill said.

In a release late Wednesday, police said that the operation followed an “extensive effort” over the last few months focused on “education, awareness and engagement.” The statement also said the encampments were in violation of existing laws and regulations.

READ MORE: Unhoused man living in woods says crisis shelters needed throughout HRM

“Following an extensive and progressive effort, actions were taken today in the interest of public safety and safety of the occupants of these dwellings,” the release said Wednesday.

However, the statement did not address the amount of force used by police nor the officers’ use of pepper spray. It also did not indicate how tearing down the shelters protected the safety of the occupants.

“I am offended that in a time when we need the government’s focus and energy on providing affordable housing, what we have is the government’s focus and energy on providing an oversized demonstration of the force of police. That’s not what we need,” Burrill said.

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