As Biden Tours Ida Damage, Protesters Demand End to Fossil Fuels

"It's time President Biden doubled down on his campaign commitments to end our reliance on fossil fuels by stopping the leasing of public lands for fossil fuel extraction and halting the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure projects."


Climate campaigners demanded an end to fossil fuels as President Joe Biden visited communities in New York and New Jersey hit by the remnants of Hurricane Ida on September 7, 2021. (Photo: Alex Beauchamp/Food & Water Watch)

JESSICA CORBETT

September 7, 2021

When President Joe Biden on Tuesday toured communities in New York and New Jersey devastated by the remnants of Hurricane Ida last week, he was greeted by protesters pointing to the deadly storm as just the latest proof of the need to immediately phase out fossil fuels.

"Fossil fuels are destroying our climate with direct impacts in our own backyard," said Food & Water Watch Northeast region director Alex Beauchamp in a statement. "It's time President Biden doubled down on his campaign commitments to end our reliance on fossil fuels by stopping the leasing of public lands for fossil fuel extraction and halting the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure projects."

Despite Biden's promises to ban new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, his administration has resumed lease sales, in compliance with a federal court order—eliciting intense criticism from climate campaigners who argue that the world can't afford any more fossil fuel extraction. "No fossil fuels!" demonstrators chanted Tuesday. "Biden, keep your promise!"

The activists in New York and New Jersey also called for action by the states' Democratic governors, Kathy Hochul and Phil Murphy.

Hochul "must do her part to end the fossil fuel projects like the NRG Astoria plant moving forward mere blocks from Biden's visit today, to ensure New York doesn't bring any more disastrous fossil fuel projects onto the grid," said Beauchamp. "The fossil fuel age is over—our leaders must commit real action to moving us into an era of clean energy."

Tuesday's demonstrations included members of Food & Water Watch, New York Communities for Change, and other organizations.


Some demonstrators drew attention to a specific project that Biden has been blasted for not blocking: Enbridge's Line 3 tar sands pipeline.

Several progressive congresswomen joined Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in Minnesota over the weekend to meet with Indigenous water protectors leading the fight against Line 3. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) had planned to join in before her district was hit by Ida.

In the wake of destructive flooding across the Northeast, Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly linked Ida to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

The president on Tuesday acknowledged Ida in the context of the climate emergency when appearing with New Jersey officials, according to NPR.

"For decades, scientists have warned that extreme weather would be more extreme and climate change was here. And we're living through it now," he said. "We don't have any more time."

"Every part of the country is getting hit by extreme weather. And we're now living in real time what the country's going to look like," Biden added. "We can't turn it back very much, but we can prevent it from getting worse."

As part of Democrats' efforts to advance climate policy and Biden's Build Back Better agenda, federal lawmakers are working to pass a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package—but with an evenly divided Senate, every member of the party, including right-wingers like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), will need to support the final measure in the upper chamber.

Democrats' control of the House is also narrow, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Tuesday that "there is no flexibility" on the price tag for the climate and social spending plan because she cares "about delivering on these benefits."

As The Guardian reported Tuesday, Biden will have to "referee" Democrats who disagree over the size and scope of the reconciliation package, which party leaders are aiming to pass this month.

According to Ellen Sciales, communications director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, "President Biden's visit to the site of climate disasters today makes clear that he wants to be the Climate President, but now we must ask—is he willing to let Joe Manchin stand in the way of his legacy?"

"The Build Back Better agenda he's proposed is the bare minimum of what is needed for history to judge this presidency in any sort of positive light," she said. "Biden must do everything in his power—from using his bully pulpit to moving members of his party—to pass at least a $3.5 trillion dollar reconciliation package. He can begin to stop this endless suffering, if he chooses to."

Sciales, whose family home flooded because of Ida last week, also warned that "if Biden does not deliver on at least a $3.5 trillion investment through budget reconciliation, while he has a potentially fleeting Democratic majority, future generations will ask why he didn't do more when we still had the chance."

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Gulf Drilling Condemned as Hundreds of Hurricane-Related Spills Investigated

"This is the petrochemical industry's responsibility, so it should foot the bill for a total cleanup—not the taxpayer."


President Joe Biden, aboard the Marine One helicopter, inspects the damage from Hurricane Ida on an aerial tour of communities in Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, September 3, 2021. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/pool/AFP via Getty Images)


ANDREA GERMANOS

September 7, 2021


The fossil fuel industry's role in environmental destruction is under renewed fire this week after the U.S. Coast Guard announced reports of nearly 350 oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

"350 spills," the Louisiana Bucket Brigade tweeted Tuesday. "This is the petrochemical industry's responsibility, so it should foot the bill for a total cleanup—not the taxpayer."

"Every pipeline in the Gulf—and those across our bayous, backyards, and neighborhoods—must be decommissioned at the first opportunity," the group said.

Ida made landfall on Aug. 29 as a Category 4 storm and brought catastrophic devastation to Louisiana, where over 400,000 homes and businesses are still without power. The storm wreaked havoc in other states along its path as well, including New Jersey and New York, which faced deadly flooding.

"350 spills. This is the petrochemical industry's responsibility, so it should foot the bill for a total cleanup—not the taxpayer."
- Louisiana Bucket Brigade

The storm also impacted the Gulf Coast's oil and gas industry, with about 88% of the region's offshore oil production shuttered, and over 100 offshore oil production platforms still without crew, Reuters reported Monday. Coast Guard crews are flying over the area looking for potential spills.

Advocacy group Environment America noted in a press statement last week that "oil spills over the past couple of decades have been unfortunate byproducts of building large oil rigs in hurricane-prone areas—especially as climate change increasingly fuels more powerful hurricanes."

The possibility of such impacts after Ida was given weight last week with aerial imagery from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Associated Press showing what appeared to be a miles-long slick near an offshore rig, though that leak now appears to be no longer active. But further cause for concern remains.

According to NOLA.com:


The Coast Guard's National Response Center and the [Louisiana] state Department of Environmental Quality have received dozens of reports of potential spills and sheens, in addition to reports of upsets at refineries and petrochemical plants that have resulted in air emissions.

The response center's public listing of its reports is only updated weekly, on Mondays. Its Monday morning update, listed 250 incidents reported between August 29, the day Ida hit, and Sept. 5 in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. In its Monday news release, the Coast Guard said it was "prioritizing nearly 350 reported incidents for further investigation by state, local and federal authorities in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida," and in response to a query said all were in Louisiana.

Sharing NOLA.com's reporting, marine science professor Don Boesch described the reported oil spills as "kind of like a hellish dystopia. Fossil fuels responsible for an overheated Gulf oozing out of the ground after the hurricane, like that carbon wants to be free."

In a May report, the Government Accountability Office said the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) "does not have a robust process to address the environmental and safety risks posed by leaving decommissioned pipelines in place on the seafloor due to the cumulative effects of oversight gaps before, during, and after the decommissioning process."

Since the 1960s, the report added, regulators have let the offshore industry leave 97% of no-longer-in-use pipelines on the Gulf seafloor, an amount spanning roughly 18,000 miles. What's more, BSEE fails to "ensure that operators meet decommissioning standards, such as cleaning pipelines," the report found.

Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said at the time that the GAO report was evidence of "how corporations profit from polluting our water and air, leaving the rest of us to pay the price," and stressed the need for "a just transition away from offshore drilling in the Gulf that includes removing dangerous old pipelines and restoring public and environmental health."

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WORKERS CAPITAL AT WORK

As California Burns, Teacher Pension Postpones Divestment

CalSTRS, instead, adopts 2050 net-zero pledge.


The CalSTRS Board vote to continue investing in fossil fuels also came days after the California Democratic Party reaffirmed a 2015 resolution calling on the state’s pension funds to divest from fossil fuels. (Photo: Marcy Winograd)


MARCY WINOGRAD

September 7, 2021


As the climate crisis sent thousands fleeing wildfires in Northern California, CalSTRS, the nation's second largest public pension fund, postponed full divestment from fossil fuels for nearly 30 years.

Over objections from CTADivest, organizers within the powerhouse California Teachers Association, the retirement fund's investment committee voted unanimously September 1, 2021,to support a staff recommendation to adopt a net-zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) portfolio by 2050 or sooner. This translates into continued "engagement" or investment in Big Oil until the date the Paris Agreement set for countries to reach net-zero carbon emissions.


"If the second largest public pension fund in the U.S. votes to divest, joining the New York State Pension fund, the action will make international headlines and add untold energy to the fight to stop not just Exxon's plans in Guyana, but the drilling for fossil fuels around the world."

What is net-zero anyway? It's the point at which GHG's released by humans are "counterbalanced," in CalSTRS' words, by removing GHG's from the atmosphere, though no one is clear on how to remove these earth-warming gases through carbon capture and storage (CCS) or if it's even possible to inject them back into the ground without burning more fuels, poisoning drinking water or triggering earthquakes.

The CalSTRS vote came two months ahead of the next UN climate conference in Scotland, where the COP26 Coalition, made up of 350.org, CODEPNK and others, is expected to turn out thousands of protesters to demand the world's nations run, not walk, toward divestment from fossil fuels, as well as militarism, a key driver of the climate crisis.

The CalSTRS Board vote to continue investing in fossil fuels also came days after the California Democratic Party reaffirmed a 2015 resolution calling on the state's pension funds to divest from fossil fuels.

So as Hurricane Ida barreled across Louisiana, knocking out power to a million people sweltering in 100 degree heat, floods engulfed New York City streets and tornadoes tore through the NorthEast, a pension fund with a $310 billion portfolio, an estimated $6 billion in a decade-long underperforming oil sector and another $16 billion in fossil fuel delivery systems, rejected the call for full and swift divestment from a deadly industry causing havoc across the globe.

Outrage over the slow-walk to 2050 was voiced by retired teachers, such as this writer, who belong to CTADivest and are asking their union colleagues, other CTA members, to sign a petition urging the California Teachers Association to support divestment. Pro-divestment teachers stressed not only social justice arguments but fiscal as well, pointing out that Exxon lost $22 billion in 2020, sending its stock tumbling 13%.

CTA Divest was launched by three CTA middle school teachers. Mark Norberg of Burbank Unified, Shelly Ehrke of Santa Monica-Malibu Unified and Park Guthrie of the Harmony Union School District in Sonoma County were inspired to organize a broader dialogue on CalSTRS fossil fuel divestment to address unfounded fears divestment would devalue retirement pensions.

The goal of CTA Divest is to pass a new business item (NBI) at an upcoming meeting of the nearly 800-member CTA governing body, CTA State Council, "compelling CalSTRS to implement a thoughtful and phased withdrawal from fossil fuels."

Years ago, CTA State Council voted down a divestment NBI.

Ehrke, a 26 year teacher and elected member of the CTA State Council, is hopeful teachers will come around. "When we present CTA members with data and studies showing divestment has not negatively affected portfolios and could, in fact, strengthen our fund, they are more likely to want CalSTRS to divest. The risk that the fossil fuel industry could quickly become untenable and leave our fund with stranded assets has also opened a lot of eyes."

Before CTADivest was formally launched, momentum for divestment was already building among local CTA chapters and state council caucuses. The Badass Teachers Caucus voted to host a divestment forum as part of a CTA State Council weekend; a move that led to the formation of CTA Divest. CTA locals, such as United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), the Oakland Education Association (OEA), and the Santa Monica-Malibu CTA (SMMCTA) all passed resolutions calling on CalSTRS to divest. SMMCTA may not be as big and influential as the others, but it is the local chapter of CalSTRS Board Chair Harry Keiley, an advocate of continued investment in fossil fuels.

To describe CTA as a cousin to CalSTRS would be to underplay a near marital relationship between the world's largest teacher pension fund and a teachers' union with 1300 chapters stretching from Ukiah to Coronado. CTA, the engine behind the establishment and protection of public education in California, plays an instrumental role in electing members to the CalSTRS Board, which can hire or fire Chief Investment Officer Chris Ailman, a staunch divestment foe who for years has pushed the "engagement" approach.

In a 2020 interview with CNBC, Ailman admitted shareholder engagement with Big Oil has been a failure, but still insisted a seat at the table can change the extractive business model of oil companies complicit in climate change denial. "Why not just sell your stock?" asks the news anchor. Ailman responds, "The problem is that just turns our back on the problem. They use other people's money and keep on going."

Ah, but what if institutional investors read the writing on the wall and refused to invest in energy stocks dropping in value?

What if no one came to the ecocide party?

In addition to starving the fossil fuel industry of funds for new oil drilling, CTADivest organizer Guthrie, a co-founder of Schools for Climate Action says, "Divestment aims to undermine the political power of the oil industry so that we can enact regulations to rapidly curb fossil fuel emissions."

In contrast, State Controller Betty Yee called CalSTRS' commitment to net-zero by 2050 "ambitious," prefacing her praise with concerns about precipitous divestment. "The world doesn't change tomorrow if CalSTRS divests."

Under the approved plan, CalSTRS staff will by September, 2022, report on the individual GHG emissions of both public and private companies in its portfolio "to establish a baseline for interim emissions reduction goals to 2050." No dates are spelled out for reductions or interim divestment and staff is only required to report back to the Board once a year for the next decades on progress toward the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Who's in a hurry to divest from fossil fuels? Not CalSTRS.

Determining the emissions of companies in its portfolio, however, could be an ambitious task, particularly if CalSTRS factors in the emissions of military contractors who profit off weapons sales to the Pentagon, the world's single biggest institutional emitter of GHG's. According to CalSTRS' stock report, the pension fund has $189 million in Raytheon, $176-million in Lockheed Martin and $123 million in Northrop Grumman, three of the top five military contractors.

Speaking at the September CalSTRS meeting as the public face of CalSTRS legal counsel, Tiffany Reeves of Rinehart Boerner Law, said of the slow walk to 2050, "The purpose of this is all about what's in the beneficiaries' interests."

Divestment would be in the beneficiaries' interest since the oil industry has been underperforming the stock market the last ten years, with an average annual rate of return of 2.8%, far below CalSTRS's expectation for a 7% return to meet its pension obligations, even further below the stock market's decade average rate of return of 13.6%.

Calling on CalSTRS to divest its $103 million in Enbridge stock, Oakland resident and CalSTRS beneficiary Joan Lohman implored the Board to meet with indigenous water protectors fighting the expansion of Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline, which threatens to contaminate indigenous land and water in northern Minnesota. Lohman said she was raising her voice on behalf of 800 water protectors arrested by Enbridge-paid police using torture tactics, such as a head lock that Loman said left one protester with a dislocated jaw and a diagnosis of Bell's palsy.

The Board vote essentially rejecting immediate calls for divestment from Enbridge and other fossil fuel-related companies could further motivate social justice teachers who want to see their students survive the next threatened extinction. Although CTA's institutional leaders commented in support of CalSTRS' 2050 net zero pledge, they also expressed a sense of urgency.

"We urge the Board and staff of CalSTRS to act swiftly and aspire to achieve these goals well in advance of the benchmark date of 2050 because our future and our environment require it," MaryKay Scheid, Vice Chair of the California Teachers Association (CTA) Retirement Committee, told the Board during public comments.

Dana Dillon, former CalSTRS Board president and now vice chair of the CTA Retirement Committee also asked the Board to transition to net-zero carbon emissions sooner rather than later.

For now, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Phillips 66, BP, Occidental Petroleum and other climate behemoths like Energy Transfer and Enbridge, both notorious for the Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines threatening indigenous land, can rest easy knowing CalSTRS will not follow the lead of the $226 billion State of New York pension fund, which during the next five years will divest from its fossil fuel holdings—a decision reached after eight years of street heat from climate activists.

CalSTRS' opponents of divestment congratulate themselves on using their stock proxies to elect three dissidents to the 12-member Exxon board, but that board is still dominated by management, specifically Darren W. Woods, Exxon's chair and chief executive, who promotes carbon capture, a gamble at best, an industry public relations ploy at worst, to suck carbon out of the air and bury it underground somewhere so oil companies can continue to drill, drill, drill.

CalSTRS' shareholder engagement has yet to stop Exxon from embarking on its largest oil drilling project ever. Exxon's deep water drilling operation off the coast of Guyana threatens to turn a carbon sink into a "carbon bomb," producing 800,000 barrels of oil a day, equivalent to fifteen new coal plants, to pollute the rainforest and flare greenhouse gas emissions.

CTADivest organizer Norberg is optimistic California teachers can influence their pension fund to divest, an action he predicts will constrain Exxon. "If the second largest public pension fund in the U.S. votes to divest, joining the New York State Pension fund, the action will make international headlines and add untold energy to the fight to stop not just Exxon's plans in Guyana, but the drilling for fossil fuels around the world."

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MARCY WINOGRAD of Progressive Democrats of America served as a 2020 DNC Delegate for Bernie Sanders and co-founded the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party. Coordinator of CODEPINKCONGRESS, Marcy spearheads Capitol Hill calling parties to mobilize co-sponsors and votes for peace and foreign policy legislation.

Imagine Spending $8 Trillion to Rebuild a Society Instead of Destroying One

Post-Afghanistan, nation (un)building comes home.


An Afghan security personnel inspects the site a day after a car bomb explosion in Kabul on August 4, 2021. 

(Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)

TOM ENGELHARDT

September 7, 2021 by TomDispatch

They weren't kidding when they called Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires." Indeed, that cemetery has just taken another imperial body. And it wasn't pretty, was it? Not that anyone should be surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is.

In fact, the shock and awe(fulness) in Kabul and Washington over these last weeks shouldn't have been surprising, given our history. After all, we were the ones who prepared the ground and dug the grave for the previous interment in that very cemetery.


Count on this, though: the politicians of the great power that hasn't won a significant war since 1945 will agree on one thing—that the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex deserve yet more funding (no matter what else doesn't).

That, of course, took place between 1979 and 1989 when Washington had no hesitation about using the most extreme Islamists—arming, funding, training, and advising them—to ensure that one more imperial carcass, that of the Soviet Union, would be buried there. When, on February 15, 1989, the Red Army finally left Afghanistan, crossing the Friendship Bridge into Uzbekistan, Soviet commander General Boris Gromov, the last man out, said, "That's it. Not one Soviet soldier or officer is behind my back." It was his way of saying so long, farewell, good riddance to the endless war that the leader of the Soviet Union had by then taken to calling "the bleeding wound." Yet, in its own strange fashion, that "graveyard" would come home with them. After all, they returned to a bankrupt land, sucked dry by that failed war against those American- and Saudi-backed Islamist extremists.

Two years later, the Soviet Union would implode, leaving just one truly great power on Planet Earth—along with, of course, those very extremists Washington had built into a USSR-destroying force. Only a decade later, in response to an "air force" manned by 19 mostly Saudi hijackers dispatched by Osama bin Laden, a rich Saudi prince who had been part of our anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan, the world's "sole superpower" would head directly for that graveyard (as bin Laden desired).

Despite the American experience in Vietnam during the previous century—the Afghan effort of the 1980s was meant to give the USSR its own "Vietnam"—key Bush administration officials were so sure of themselves that, as the New York Times recently reported, they wouldn't even consider letting the leaders of the Taliban negotiate a surrender once our invasion began. On September 11, 2001, in the ruins of the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had already given an aide these instructions, referring not just to Bin Laden but Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein: "Go massive. Sweep it up, all up. Things related and not." Now, he insisted, "The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders." (Of course, had you read war reporter Anand Gopal's 2014 book, No Good Men Among the Living, you would have long known just how fruitlessly Taliban leaders tried to surrender to a power intent on war and nothing but war.)

Allow a surrender and have everything grind to a disappointing halt? Not a chance, not when the Afghan War was the beginning of what was to be an American triumph of global proportions. After all, the future invasion of Iraq and the domination of the oil-rich Greater Middle East by the one and only power on the planet were already on the agenda. How could the leaders of such a confident land with a military funded at levels the next most powerful countries combined couldn't match have imagined its own 2021 version of surrender?

And yet, once again, 20 years later, Afghanistan has quite visibly and horrifyingly become a graveyard of empire (as well, of course, as a graveyard for Afghans). Perhaps it's only fitting that the secretary of defense who refused the surrender of the enemy in 2001 was recently buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full honors. In fact, the present secretary of defense and the head of the joint chiefs of staff both reportedly "knelt before Mr. Rumsfeld's widow, Joyce, who was in a wheelchair, and presented her with the flag from her husband's coffin."

Meanwhile, Joe Biden was the third president since George W. Bush and crew launched this country's forever wars to find himself floundering haplessly in that same graveyard of empires. If the Soviet example didn't come to mind, it should have as Democrats and Republicans, President Biden and former President Trump flailed at each other over their supposedly deep feelings for the poor Afghans being left behind, while this country withdrew its troops from Kabul airport in a land where "rest in peace" has long had no meaning.

America's True Infrastructure Spending

Here's the thing, though: don't assume that Afghanistan is the only imperial graveyard around or that the U.S. can simply withdraw, however ineptly, chaotically, and bloodily, leaving that country to history—and the Taliban. Put another way, even though events in Kabul and its surroundings took over the mainstream news recently, the Soviet example should remind us that, when it comes to empires, imperial graveyards are hardly restricted to Afghanistan.

In fact, it might be worth taking a step back to look at the big picture. For decades, the U.S. has been involved in a global project that's come to be called "nation building," even if, from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to Afghanistan and Iraq, it often seemed an endless exercise in nation (un)building. An imperial power of the first order, the United States long ago largely rejected the idea of straightforward colonies. In the years of the Cold War and then of the war on terror, its leaders were instead remarkably focused on setting up an unparalleled empire of military bases and garrisons on a global scale. This and the wars that went with it have been the unsettling American imperial project since World War II.

And that unsettling should be taken quite literally. Even before recent events in Afghanistan, Brown University's invaluable Costs of War Project estimated that this country's conflicts of the last two decades across the Greater Middle East and Africa had displaced at least 38 million people, which should be considered nation (un)building of the first order.

Since the Cold War began, Washington has engaged in an endless series of interventions around the planet from Iran to the Congo, Chile to Guatemala, as well as in conflicts, large and small. Now, with Joe Biden having withdrawn from America's disastrous Afghan War, you might wonder whether it's all finally coming to an end, even if the U.S. still insists on maintaining 750 sizeable military bases globally.

Count on this, though: the politicians of the great power that hasn't won a significant war since 1945 will agree on one thing—that the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex deserve yet more funding (no matter what else doesn't). In truth, those institutions have been the major recipients of actual infrastructure spending over much of what might still be thought of as the American century. They've been the true winners in this society, along with the billionaires who, even in the midst of a grotesque pandemic, raked in profits in a historic fashion. In the process, those tycoons created possibly the largest inequality gap on the planet, one that could destabilize a democracy even if nothing else were going on. The losers? Don't even get me started.

Or think of it this way: yes, in August 2021, it was Kabul, not Washington, D.C., that fell to the enemy, but the nation (un)building project in which this country has been involved over these last decades hasn't remained thousands of miles away. Only half-noticed here, it's been coming home, big time. Donald Trump's rise to the presidency, amid election promises to end America's "endless wars," should really be seen as part of that war-induced (un)building project at home. In his own strange fashion, The Donald was Kabul before its time and his rise to power unimaginable without those distant conflicts and the spending that went with them, all of which, however unnoticed, unsettled significant parts of this society.

Climate War in a Graveyard of Empires?

You can tell a lot about a country if you know where its politicians unanimously agree to invest taxpayer dollars.

At this very moment, the U.S. is in a series of crises, none worse than the heat, fire, and flood "season" that's hit not just the megadrought-ridden West, or inundated Tennessee, or hurricane-whacked Louisiana, or the tropical-storm-tossed Northeast, but the whole country. Unbearable warmth, humidity, fires, smoke, storms, and power outages, that's us. Fortunately, as always, Congress stands in remarkable unanimity when it comes to investing money where it truly matters.

And no, you knew perfectly well that I wasn't referring to the creation of a green-energy economy. In fact, Republicans wouldn't hear of it and the Biden administration, while officially backing the idea, has already issued more than 2,000 permits to fossil-fuel companies for new drilling and fracking on federal lands. In August, the president even called on OPEC—the Saudis, in particular—to produce significantly more oil to halt a further rise in gas prices at the pump.

As America's eternally losing generals come home from Kabul, what I actually had in mind was the one thing just about everyone in Washington seems to agree on: funding the military-industrial complex beyond their wildest dreams. Congress has recently spent months trying to pass a bill that would, over a number of years, invest an extra $550 billion in this country's badly tattered infrastructure, but never needs time like that to pass Pentagon and other national security budgets that, for years now, have added up to well over a trillion dollars annually.

In another world, with the Afghan War ending and U.S. forces (at least theoretically) coming home, it might seem logical to radically cut back on the money invested in the military-industrial complex and its ever more expensive weaponry. In another American world on an increasingly endangered planet, significantly scaling back American forces in every way and investing our tax dollars in a very different kind of "defense" would seem logical indeed. And yet, as of this moment, as Greg Jaffe writes at the Washington Post, the Pentagon continues to suck up "a larger share of discretionary spending than any other government agency."

Fortunately for those who want to keep funding the U.S. military in the usual fashion, there's a new enemy out there with which to replace the Taliban, one that the Biden foreign-policy team and a "pivoting" military is already remarkably eager to confront: China.

At least when the latest infrastructure money is spent, if that compromise bill ever really makes it through a Congress that can't tie its own shoelaces, something will be accomplished. Bridges and roads will be repaired, new electric-vehicle-charging stations set up, and so on. When, however, the Pentagon spends the money just about everyone in Washington agrees it should have, we're guaranteed yet more weaponry this country doesn't need, poorly produced for thoroughly exorbitant sums, if not more failed wars as well.

I mean, just think about what the American taxpayer "invested" in the losing wars of this century. According to Brown University's Costs of War Project, $2.313 trillion went into that disastrous Afghan War alone and at least $6.4 trillion by 2020 into the full-scale war on terror. And that doesn't even include the estimated future costs of caring for American veterans of those conflicts. In the end, the total may prove to be in the $8 trillion range. Hey, at least $88 billion just went into supplying and training the Afghan military, most of which didn't even exist by August 2021 and the rest of which melted away when the Taliban advanced.

Just imagine for a minute where we might really be today if Congress had spent close to $8 trillion rebuilding this society, rather than (un)building and wrecking distant ones.

Rest assured, this is not the country that ended World War II in triumph or even the one that outlasted the Soviet Union and whose politicians then declared it the most exceptional, indispensable nation ever. This is a land that's crumbling before our eyes, being (un)built month by month, year by year. Its political system is on the verge of dissolving into who knows what amid a raft of voter suppression laws, wild claims about the most recent presidential election, an assault on the Capitol itself, and conspiracy theories galore. Its political parties seem ever more hostile, disturbed, and disparate. Its economy is a gem of inequality, its infrastructure crumbling, its society seemingly coming apart at the seams.

And on a planet that could be turning into a genuine graveyard of empires (and of so much else), keep in mind that, if you're losing your war with climate change, you can't withdraw from it. You can't declare defeat and go home. You're already home in the increasingly dysfunctional, increasingly (un)built U.S. of A.

© 2021 TomDispatch.com

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His books include: "A Nation Unmade by War" (2018, Dispatch Books), "Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World" (2014, with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald), "Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050"(co-authored with Nick Turse), "The United States of Fear" (2011), "The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's" (2010), "The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond" (2007), as well as of a novel, "The Last Days of Publishing" (2005).

MUTUAL AID, SELF RELIANCE, SOLIDARITE

Haitians Helping Haitians After Latest Quake

Centering Haitian people as the true heroes in their own recovery is a first step in rewriting the disaster narrative, and an act of solidarity that makes the future of Haiti look different and brighter.

Les Irois, Haiti in October 2016. (Photo: K. Jessica Hsu)



K. JESSICA HSU, MARK SCHULLER

September 7, 2021


January 9, 2010, the day before the massive earthquake hit Haiti, Dahline was washing clothes by the river at the far end of the island in a town called Abricots. Her face bore the scars of various epileptic seizures she had suffered. On her right forearm was a deep bluish scar from when she fell into an open fire while cooking. Another on her forehead, when she had fallen during a bout in the latrine. That day, Dahline suffered another seizure. She fell in the river and without a sound, she drowned.

It is commonly known that epileptic incidences have a high correlation to chronic malnutrition. She was not the only one who suffered from these bouts in Abricots. Dahline's life and death, like so many others andeyò, literally "outside," in the provinces, was never acknowledged. What was considered "normal" never should have been; it was a crisis that preceded the current disaster. Dahline was another casualty of the norm in Haiti machinated by a postcolonial State in service to foreign powers still trying to accumulate wealth and maintain resources through exploitation and neglect of the majority of its population, especially those in or once living in the countryside.


Understanding—and supporting—Haitian people as first responders helps Haitian solutions materialize, moving beyond charity and toward solidarity.

In the days that followed the 2010 earthquake, Abricots' population increased by 8,314 people (about a 25% increase) seeking safe havens with their family and friends from the earthquake. Family members opened their homes and whatever resources they had to support each other. One lakou (traditional family compound) grew from 5 to 41 people. Although the growth of many lakou was not quite as dramatic, resources were stretched thin as those fleeing Port-au-Prince were welcomed, affectionately called names like dekonm (rubble), reskape (rescue), and even depòte (deported). Nationwide, 630,000 people left Port-au-Prince to the different areas of the countryside.

As we write this, it has been just over two weeks since the two earthquakes devastated the southern peninsula of Haiti. The damage is still being assessed, and the death toll is still rising. Foreign aid is trickling in, and both international institutions/groups and Haitian groups coming from Port-au-Prince and the diaspora are distributing humanitarian aid. The distributions have been focused in more visible areas such as main cities, and tent cities are beginning to cluster main roads. Although there is an effort to reach remote areas, many still have yet to see external aid. Photographers and videographers are being hired to take photos so organizations can raise funds contributing to disaster porn and poverty pimping, while the subjects of the photos frequently feel increasingly vulnerable and exploited.

In addition to the devastation, the diminishing coverage is dominated by images of foreign agencies distributing aid. These images continue to negate what Haitians do for Haitians collectively everyday maneuvering a system that continues to marginalize them; in a country which lives by proverbs such as vwazin se fanmiw (neighbors are family), yon sel dwèt pa manje kalalou a (literally translated as you cannot eat okra/gumbo with one finger, meaning collectively things are possible).

The media attention notwithstanding, similar to previous disasters, the first responders are not foreign NGOs. They are neighbors, family, friends, fellow churchgoers, and grassroots organizations. Haitian writers and analysts like Michèle Montas, Evelyne Trouillot, and Yanick Lahens documented the outpouring of local solidarity following the 2010 earthquake. Chenet Jean-Baptiste, director of Haitian development NGO ITECA, argued that rural families provided enormous material aid to their Port-au-Prince members, housing and feeding them from reserves that could have otherwise gone to next year's planting season. Neither international NGOs that received billions in aid nor the Haitian government compensated or supported rural communities for this life-saving assistance. This would have improved the economies of these rural communities, rather than depleting them and increasing their vulnerabilities when Hurricane Matthew hit in 2016, and now these earthquakes. Only one percent of federal funds make it outside the West department housing the capital metropolitan area.

Other forms of solidarity Hsu witnessed in 2016 as part of a rights delegation that travelled to Les Irois were family and friends returning from big cities, providing for the exact needs of their families and friends, and even building temporary shelters frequently with shaved pieces of wood interwoven and a pay (thatched) roof, known as kay klis, which took generally 3-4 solid days to assemble.

People shared machetes that were not lost in the wind and rain to clean the centers of town, the roads, and each other's homes. Family members in the bouk (center of town) checked on family members who were further inland, or vice-versa, to see how the other fared and how they could mutually support each other in the difficult days, weeks, and months to come.

In the town of Abricots, the Association of Youth Volunteers of Abricots (AJVPA) collaborated with the mayor's office and Fondation Paradis des Indiens (FPDI) on an assessment that included needs and resources of the entire commune (Photo below). The representatives of each local institution were trained and went door to door as the rain continued flooding and swelling the rivers in the weeks that followed the Category 4 Hurricane. Two dedicated volunteer researchers nearly lost their lives when trying to cross the swollen rivers, only to be saved by grabbing a felled coconut tree that straddled the river.


As we write, trained local doctors are forming their own mobile clinics to reach remote areas that have been affected by the earthquakes treating both earthquake injuries and preexisting maladies, like Dahline's epilepsy. Friends are bringing refilled gallons of potable water to areas that have difficulty with resources and access to purchase. For the first few days, the water sources were contaminated. Family and friends who were more affected in Jeremie are returning for safer shelter to their less affected hometowns, such as Abricots. Households are increasing again without any external support or aid. Family and friends from Port-au-Prince are bringing in needed items such as tarps, tents and food to their families in affected areas and then returning to Port-au-Prince to work, so that the money they earn can help their families rebuild.

This story of local communities taking the lead is not unique to Abricots, as Les Cayes-based journalist Jean Claudy Aristil covered for Radyo Ayiti Egalite, and the Haitian Times reported for the Nippes province.

Friends with lam veritab (breadfruit) send some to family and friends with less access to food to make the local favorite tonmtonm (reminiscent of West African foufou). It is also avocado season and therefore, they are plentiful and nutritious. These are among the local resources that already exist in addition to ideas, skills, experience, and the relationships and desire for self-determination in rebuilding their lives and communities.

Absolutely, the situation remains quite urgent with homes destroyed and people badly injured. Individuals and communities do require external support, but this support should take inspiration from the leadership of people from their respective communities. Although the damage is extensive, many gardens and trees still have food and have been unaffected, water sources have cleared, but limited access to potable water pre-existed the earthquake. These are all factors that should be taken into consideration and aid should support the horizontal ways of mutual aid given in solidarity like Haitians provide for one another.

Haiti's countryside is a collective culture. Each time we isolate individuals from their societal structures, we play a role in creating competition within these communities. Also, it must be understood that Haitians are not solely victims of the earthquake, but first responders not just after a natural catastrophe, but everyday.

Understanding—and supporting—Haitian people as first responders helps Haitian solutions materialize, moving beyond charity and toward solidarity.

Centering Haitian people as the true heroes in their own recovery is a first step in rewriting the disaster narrative, and an act of solidarity that makes the future of Haiti look different and brighter.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

K. JESSICA HSU is an Anthropologist and solidarity activist who has spent most of her last 15 years working with communities in rural Haiti looking at issues of labor, agriculture, gender and community development. She is currently based in Port-au-Prince working with various Haitian civil society organizations as International Advocacy and Communications Officer and is Secretary of the Lambi Fund of Haiti.

MARK SCHULLER  is Professor of Anthropology and Nonprofit and NGO Studies at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. Schuller’s research on NGOs, globalization, disasters, and gender in Haiti has been published in over forty peer-reviewed chapters and articles. He authored or coedited eight books, including Humanity’s Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe, and co-directed/ co-produced the documentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (2009). Recipient of the Margaret Mead Award and the Anthropology in Media Award, he is active in several solidarity efforts. He is president of the Haitian Studies Association.

 

Our exclusive interview with Buffalo socialist India Walton.

India Walton is a Democratic Socialists of America–endorsed candidate for mayor of Buffalo. Her campaign staged a major upset to defeat four-term incumbent Byron Brown in the Democratic primary in June. Democrats have occupied the Buffalo mayor’s office since 1966, and winning the Democratic primary is usually enough to secure victory in the general election. But after losing the Democratic primary, Brown has gotten back on the ballot under a newly created “Buffalo Party.” Despite the Erie County Board of Elections dismissing the new ballot line — which missed the filing deadline by several months — as invalid, District Judge John Sinatra (brother of Brown supporter Nick Sinatra) has filed an injunction to allow Brown onto the ballot. Yesterday, Walton’s campaign filed a notice of appeal, asking the US Court of Appeals to review Judge Sinatra’s ruling. In an interview, Walton spoke to Jacobin’s Hadas Thier about Brown’s attempt to circumvent democracy, and what’s at stake for Buffalo.

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Indigenous resistance instrumental in stopping high-profile fossil fuel projects, says report

Indigenous peoples in North America have helped block tar sands mines, oil pipelines, and LNG export terminals. Their successes against the fossil fuel industry have kept enormous volumes of carbon pollution out of the atmosphere.

By

 Nick Cunningham

 -

September 9, 2021

SOURCEDesmog Blog

Treaty People Walk for Water demonstration at Minnesota Capitol, August 25, 2021. Credit: Peg Hunter (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The efforts of Indigenous peoples in North America have helped block or delay a long list of major fossil fuel projects over the past decade, successfully leading to the avoidance of a massive amount of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report.

“The numbers don’t lie. Indigenous peoples have long led the fight to protect Mother Earth and the only way forward is to center Indigenous knowledge and keep fossil fuels in the ground,” Dallas Goldtooth, a Keep It In The Ground organizer for Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), said in a statement. The report was coauthored by IEN and Oil Change International, a research and advocacy organization focused on transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Indigenous resistance has been key in blocking at least eight major projects, including the Keystone XL pipeline, the C$20 billion Teck Frontier tar sands mine in Alberta, the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Oregon, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to name a few. Taken together, those delayed and canceled projects would have been responsible for nearly 800 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, or about 12 percent of the total emissions of the U.S. and Canada in 2019.

Another half-dozen projects are currently contested, including the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia, and the Rio Grande LNG project in Texas, for example. These projects represent another 12 percent of total U.S. and Canadian emissions, which, if opponents have their way, would bring the total carbon pollution avoided due to Indigenous resistance to 1.6 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent. That’s roughly equal to the pollution from 400 new coal-fired power plants or 345 million passenger vehicles.

As the report notes, this is likely an underestimate because it only includes 17 of the largest and most iconic fossil fuel projects in recent years.

Oceti Sakowin Camp, protest against Dakota Access pipeline. November, 2016. Credit: Becker1999. (CC BY 2.0)

“Indigenous peoples continue to exert social and moral authority to protect their homelands from oil and gas development,” the report stated. “Coupling these expressions with the legal authority of Indigenous Rights, frontline communities, and Tribal Nations have made tangible progress stemming fossil fuel expansion.”

Over the past decade, Indigenous lands in the U.S. and Canada have been targeted by dozens of large-scale fossil fuel projects, as the aggressive expansion of fracking and tar sands extraction subsequently led to a pipeline buildout across the continent.

“I spend a lot of my life fighting stupid projects. It’s like one unbelievably bad idea after another,” Winona LaDuke, program director of the Honor the Earth, an Indigenous environmental organization, told DeSmog. Over many years she has fought to protect both the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, where she lives, and other Native American communities from a slew of dirty projects, including coal mines, coal-fired power plants, incinerators and nuclear waste facilities. LaDuke is currently one of the most prominent leaders in the fight against the Line 3 pipeline in northern Minnesota.

“We don’t have another place to go. This is where we live,” she said.

Fossil fuel projects on Native lands often violate the principles of Free, Prior, and Informed consent, a concept that not only necessitates consultation with Indigenous peoples regarding projects on their territory, but requires their consent. That principle lies at the heart of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), a global resolution adopted by 144 nations in 2007.

Only four countries opposed the declaration: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.

Years later, all four holdouts changed their position and announced their support for UNDRIP, but the support has been mostly rhetorical, lacking the force of law at the national level. Decision-making for large fossil fuel projects on Indigenous lands still often takes the form of merely consultation, a check-the-box procedure that governments impose on Indigenous communities rather than conducting a process that would require their affirmative consent before moving forward.

“Free, Prior, and Informed Consent constitutes a much more rigorous standard than consultation, and it is a bare minimum standard needed to uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples,” the IEN report noted.

More recently, Canada moved to codify UNDRIP in June 2021, but it remains to be seen how it is applied to extractive industries on Indigenous lands.

One of the most infamous examples of the disconnect between professed support for UNDRIP and how decisions are made in practice is the Dakota Access pipeline, which crossed treaty territories of the Oceti Sakowin people. In 2015, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe passed a resolution opposing the pipeline project due to the oil pipeline’s threat to water, treaty rights, and sacred cultural sites, including areas in what is now North Dakota. A broader resistance movement gained further momentum a year later.

Oceti Sakowin Camp, November, 2016. Credit: Lucas Zhao. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Despite Indigenous opposition, the U.S. government approved the project in July 2016, and state police in North Dakota and private security contracts hired by the pipeline’s owner, Energy Transfer Partners, violently suppressed water protectors opposing the project in the months that followed.

“The tribe was denied access to information and excluded from consultations at the planning stage of the project and environmental assessments failed to disclose the presence and proximity of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation,” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, said in 2016 when she called on the U.S. to halt construction of the pipeline.

As DeSmog previously reported, Energy Transfer’s decision to plow ahead with the project despite concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe cost the company billions of dollars.

According to the recent IEN report, “what happened in Standing Rock should not be seen as an anomalous incident, but rather a disturbing commonality across Indigenous resistance efforts worldwide.”

It is important to note that the poor treatment of Indigenous peoples has occurred under governments from across the political spectrum, including both Conservative and Liberal governments in Canada, and Republican and Democratic administrations in the United States.

For example, the construction of the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota continues under the Biden administration, which has said very little about the project despite loud and repeated protest by Anishinaabe peoples and their allies.

Aitkin County, MN, December 2020. Credit: Lorie Shaull. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

On August 25, 2021, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) sent a letter to the U.S. government regarding the violations of human rights of the Anishinaabe. The letter notes the allegations that the permit approval of Line 3 “has been conducted without adequate consultation with and without obtaining free, prior and informed consent,” and also that the pipeline presents threats to lands, food, and sacred sites of Indigenous peoples. CERD requested information and a response from the U.S. government.

“It’s like a bunch of old cronies up here acting like they own the world,” LaDuke told DeSmog, referring to both Enbridge, the pipeline’s owner, and state officials. “And there’s a bunch of us saying ‘no you don’t.’ And we’re going to keep fighting you guys.”

Both the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have argued that a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels is necessary to avoid catastrophic warming of global temperatures. New fossil fuel projects should therefore be off the table.

The IEN report argues that Indigenous resistance not only goes hand-in-hand with climate action, but it has been an effective strategy of blunting the fossil fuel onslaught. “Indigenous resistance to carbon is both an opportunity and an offering — now is the time to codify the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, to safeguard both the climate and Indigenous Rights,” the report said.

For Winona LaDuke, there are obvious lessons to be learned from the victories against major oil, gas, and coal projects. “One, we are pretty resilient. Two, support us,” she said, referring to funders and other allies in the climate fight. “We’ve got one percent of the resources of the big NGOs, and we’ve got people all over.”

On September 3, several progressive members of Congress, including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Cori Bush (D-MO), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), traveled to northern Minnesota to call on the Biden administration to shut down construction of the Line 3 pipeline.

A day later, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was headlining a public event for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (a state-level affiliate of the Democratic Party), where he was interrupted by activists opposing Line 3. Flustered, he tried to tamp down the outburst, but ultimately ended the event and left in a motorcade while protestors chanted: “Governor Walz, you can’t hide. Line 3 is genocide!”

On September 7, President Joe Biden visited New York to highlight the destructive damage of the recent floods that ravaged the northeast, where he drew connections to the climate crisis. “They all tell us this is code red,” Biden said. “The nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”

While President Biden spoke passionately about the climate crisis in New York, his administration has been silent on Line 3, allowing construction to proceed. Enbridge has said that it is in the final stages of construction and oil could soon be flowing through the pipeline.

But when asked if she feels hopeful, LaDuke quickly responded: “Oh my God. I have all kinds of hope.” She pointed to the convergence of recent racial justice movements, growing climate concerns, and strengthening Indigenous movements.

Winona LaDuke at Minnesota Capitol, August 25, 2021. Credit: Peg Hunter. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

LaDuke also sees the oil industry in its own state of crisis, citing the array of major oil companies that have abandoned the Canadian tar sands amid financial troubles and an increasingly bleak future as the world moves on from fossil fuels. Canada’s tar sands are some of the dirtiest forms of oil production on the planet. ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips have sold off assets in Alberta and reduced their presence in the country. Insurance companies, pension funds, private equity, and major lenders have also cut off financial support for Canada’s tar sands.

“Line 3 is the most expensive tar sands pipeline in history. And the last. Nobody’s going to build another tar sands pipeline. It’s the end of the party,” she said. “The new Green revolution is here and the Tribes are pushing it. It’s just the damn state [of Minnesota] that is so backward. And the Feds.”

She added: “My experience in fighting these guys … the longer you fight them, the better chance you have. So, I’m still in. We’re all in. None of us are backing down.”

Nick Cunningham

Nick Cunningham is an independent journalist covering the oil and gas industry, climate change and international politics. He has been featured in Oilprice.com, The Fuse, YaleE360 and NACLA.