LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Watchdogs Say If Clarence Thomas Won't Resign, 'Congress Must Move to Impeach'

Fresh calls for the Supreme Court justice's removal came amid "damning" new evidence of his wife's involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sits with his wife and right-wing activist Virginia Thomas at a Heritage Foundation event on October 21, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

COMMON DREAMS

March 25, 2022

Calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign—or face impeachment proceedings—mounted late Thursday after text messages revealed that his wife urged former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to aggressively pursue efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

The Washington Post and CBS News obtained dozens of texts that Ginni Thomas, a long-time far-right activist who attended the January 6 rally that preceded the Capitol assault, sent to Meadows in the wake of Trump's election loss, which she characterized as fraudulent while her husband was hearing election-related cases.

"Clarence Thomas must immediately resign from his seat on the Supreme Court."

"Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down," Thomas wrote in a November 19 message to Meadows, echoing a slogan that served as a rallying cry for pro-Trump groups.

All but one of the texts between Thomas and Meadows, most of which were written by Thomas, were sent between November 4 and November 24, 2020. One text was sent on January 10, 2021 in the wake of the Capitol insurrection.

Justice Thomas, who is currently hospitalized with an infection, has thus far declined to recuse himself from Supreme Court cases in which his wife's right-wing activism could pose a conflict of interest.

Thomas was the only justice to publicly argue that the high court should have granted former President Donald Trump's motion to block the National Archives from handing White House documents over to a congressional panel investigating the January 6 attack. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected Trump's request.

Sarah Lipton-Lubet, executive director of the Take Back the Court Action Fund, said in a statement Thursday night that "if one thing is clear" from the newly revealed text messages, "it's that there's much more to the story of Ginni Thomas' participation in the January 6 attack that the House Select Committee and the American public deserve to know."

"Given that Justice Thomas has already made known he won't recuse himself from cases related to his wife's right-wing activism, and the damning evidence of his wife's involvement in this attack on our democracy, Thomas is clearly unfit to serve on the nation's highest court," said Lipton-Lubet. "Clarence Thomas must immediately resign from his seat on the Supreme Court."

"If he refuses, Congress must move to impeach him," she added. "The integrity of the court, our judicial system, and our democracy as a whole depends on it."

At least one member of Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), echoed the call for Thomas' impeachment. The House can impeach a Supreme Court justice with a simple-majority vote, but a two-thirds majority is required in the Senate for conviction and removal.

At the very least, the new revelations demonstrate why Thomas "must recuse from any Supreme Court cases or petitions related to the January 6 Committee or efforts to overturn the election," argued Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonpartisan advocacy group Fix the Court.

"Democrats should be loudly drawing attention to the fact that the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice supported Trump's coup attempt."

"Ginni's direct participation in this odious anti-democracy work, coupled with the new reporting that seems to indicate she may have spoken to Justice Thomas about it, leads to the conclusion that the justice's continued participation in cases related to these efforts would only further tarnish the court's already fading public reputation," Roth said.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer reported in January that Ginni Thomas has in recent years aligned herself "with many activists who have brought issues in front of" the Supreme Court.

"She has been one of the directors of CNP Action, a dark-money wing of the conservative pressure group the Council for National Policy," Mayer noted. "CNP Action, behind closed doors, connects wealthy donors with some of the most radical right-wing figures in America. Ginni Thomas has also been on the advisory board of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump student group, whose founder, Charlie Kirk, boasted of sending busloads of protesters to Washington on January 6th."

Mayer also observed that Ginni Thomas received payments from the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a right-wing anti-Muslim think tank. Despite disclosure requirements, Justice Thomas failed to report his wife's income from CSP in 2017 and 2018.

In an op-ed published before the text messages between Ginni Thomas and Meadows surfaced, MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan cited Mayer's reporting to argue that "Democrats should be loudly drawing attention to the fact that the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice supported Trump's coup attempt."

"There is a clear value in holding impeachment hearings to draw attention to Thomas and his wife and their inappropriate behavior, especially as an increasingly partisan, conservative-majority court guts voting and reproductive rights," Hasan wrote. "What would Republicans be doing if they had held a House majority and, say, Justice Sonia Sotomayor's spouse had supported attempts to block a duly elected GOP president from taking office and she refused to recuse herself from related cases?"

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Progressives Revive Push for Medicare for All at House Hearing

"Congress must implement a system that prioritizes people over profits, humanity over greed, and compassion over exploitation," Rep. Cori Bush argued in support of universal healthcare legislation.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) co-chaired the March 29, 2022 House Oversight Committee hearing on the Medicare for All Act of 2021. (Photo: Lynese Wallace/Twitter)

BRETT WILKINS

COMMON DREAMS

March 29, 2022

Progressive U.S. lawmakers, public health advocates, and universal healthcare campaigners testified Tuesday at the first congressional hearing on Medicare for All legislation since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"We need Medicare for All now and we will not stop fighting until we have it."

Supporters of the Medicare for All Act of 2021—introduced last March by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.)—shared stories of personal healthcare hardship as well as harrowing accounts of avoidable suffering endured by others who lack access to health coverage.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who co-chaired the House Oversight Committee hearing, said that "Americans deserve a healthcare system that guarantees health and medical services to all. Congress must implement a system that prioritizes people over profits, humanity over greed, and compassion over exploitation."

Bush, a former Black Lives Matter organizer, continued:

The systemic racism perpetuating health inequities cannot be overstated—Black women are three to four times more likely to die during childbirth. We are more likely to have rates of asthma and cancer from generations living next to pollution centers. We are more likely to have foregone routine screenings and medical appointments for a real fear of having our pain dismissed.

"That's why my colleagues and I are coming through in force for our first Medicare for All hearing since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic," she added. "This policy will save lives, I want to make that clear. I hope this hearing will be one more step forward in our commitment to ensuring everyone in this country, and particularly our Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, have the medical care they need to thrive."

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) noted that the Covid-19 pandemic "exposed just how broken the healthcare system is in our country."

"Millions of people across the country know that passing Medicare for All is long overdue," she added. "In the richest country, our residents should not face financial ruin, continue to be sick, or even die, because they lack adequate coverage and care. We need Medicare for All now and we will not stop fighting until we have it. This hearing ignites the reality that we must act now."

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) argued that "universal health coverage is not optional, it's urgent."

"Private health insurance is a crushing tax on working families and businesses," he added. "Medicare for All would save an estimated 68,000 lives a year while reducing U.S. healthcare spending by billions of dollars. It's good policy and the right thing to do."

Although not present at Tuesday's hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who made universal healthcare a pillar of his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns—acknowledged in an email to supporters that "passing Medicare for All won't be easy."

"We are taking on the incredible wealth and power of the insurance companies, the drug companies, and an entire industry which puts profits before the well-being of the American people," the democratic socialist said. "We are taking on an army of well-paid lobbyists and the politicians who receive their campaign contributions from the healthcare industry."

"We can win this struggle if we engage people in the political process in an unprecedented way."

"But we can win this struggle if we engage people in the political process in an unprecedented way," Sanders asserted.

Public health providers and advocates joined lawmakers in making the case for Medicare for All at Tuesday's hearing.

Ady Barkan, an attorney and activist who suffers from the neurodegenerative illness ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, called the U.S. for-profit healthcare system a "moral abomination."

"Right now, around 30 million people in this country are uninsured, and even more get necessary care denied every year by their insurance companies," he told the hearing. "We're the richest nation in the history of the world, and yet Americans regularly go bankrupt from their medical bills and cut their pills in half because they can't afford the cost of prescription drugs."

"It reveals much about our country that we see spikes in cancer diagnoses in Americans age 65 when they become eligible for Medicare," Barkan continued. "Too many go far too long without care because they cannot afford it. By securing Medicare for All, we can save thousands of lives and free mourning families from the lingering pain of asking themselves, what if we had caught this sooner?"

Dr. Uché Blackstock, an emergency room physician and founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, called the hearing "a key step toward addressing racial health inequities in our country."

"This pandemic should have been a wake-up call to help us understand the urgency of identifying a path toward making universal healthcare a reality," she said. "I have had a front-row seat to the tragic loss of Black and Brown life from Covid-19 and racism."

Blackstock lamented that in the "separate and unequal" U.S. healthcare system, Covid-19 patients are "divided based on insurance and race."

"This is the definition of systemic racism," she asserted. "People who look like me are living this every day... Now is the time for us to protect our most vulnerable and underserved communities and identify a pathway to ensuring universal healthcare for all Americans."

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SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SANCTIONS

I'm an Iraqi and I Remember Madeleine Albright for Who She Truly Was

I remember the sanctions era in Iraq very well. And when the former U.S. secretary of state said the death of 500,000 children in the country "was worth it," I remember that too.

Former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright (1937-2022) speaking during an event at Georgetown University in 2005. (Photo: Yakusha/flickr/cc)

AHMED TWAIJ

March 27, 2022

by Al-Jazeera English

Often, after the demise of political figures, their troubling histories are whitewashed in the name of respecting their memories and the feelings of their families. The passing of former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Wednesday has been no exception.

Western media responded to the news of her death with a plethora of obituaries eulogizing her achievements. Countless statements have been released, by governments, institutions and public figures, celebrating the “trailblazing” politician for being the first woman to hold the office of Secretary of State and for receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Former President Bill Clinton, under whom Albright served as America’s top diplomat, referred to her as “a passionate force for freedom, democracy, and human rights”. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, proclaimed she “was always a force for goodness, grace, and decency – and for freedom”.

Before you write or repost articles about Albright and how wonderful it is to see women pushing boundaries and breaking glass ceilings in politics, take a minute to learn what she chose to do with the power she had—how she supported the devastation and suffering of my people.

For me as an Iraqi, however, the memory of Albright will forever be tainted by the stringent sanctions she helped place on my country at a time when it was already devastated by years of war. Millions of innocent Iraqis suffered terribly and hundreds of thousands died because of the sanctions which, in the end, achieved almost none of Washington’s policy objectives. As we remember Albright’s life and achievements, we must also remember those innocent Iraqi lives lost because of her policy decisions.

The most prominent memory of Albright that I have in my mind is from an interview she gave to CBS 60 Minutes in 1996.

In that now-iconic interview, veteran journalist Lesley Stahl questioned Albright—then the US ambassador to the United Nations—on the catastrophic effect the rigorous US sanctions imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had on the Iraqi population.

“We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” asked Stahl, “And, you know, is the price worth it?”

“I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

With this response, Albright showed that she sees innocent Iraqi children as nothing more than disposable fodder in a conflict between the US administration and the Iraqi leadership.

She demonstrated, with no room left for any doubt, that she had no humanity—that she cannot and shall never be described as “a force for goodness, grace, and decency”.

I remember sanctions era Iraq very well. It was almost impossible to maintain contact with family members and friends in the country, as telephone services remained very limited. When I visited Iraq, to my shock I saw even the most basic products – like milk – could not be found in local markets. The people were hungry and hopeless.

Indeed, the US imposed sanctions on Iraq to punish Saddam Hussein’s regime, but it was innocent civilians, not the regime officials who suffered. The sanctions pushed the already struggling masses into deeper poverty, but only marginally affected the rich, widening the wealth gap in the country. As poor Iraqis struggled to put food on their tables, President Hussein and his inner circle maintained their lavish lifestyles. Despite crippling sanctions, the president managed to build 80 to 100 luxury palaces during his tenure.

By 2003, it is estimated that nearly 1.5 million Iraqis, primarily children, had died as a direct consequence of sanctions.

And this devastating toll was hardly surprising, or unexpected.

The sanctions, implemented in August 1990 by the UN Security Council Resolution 661, included a total financial and trade embargo. Not only was Iraq barred from exporting oil (its main income source) on the world market for several years, but it was also prevented from importing products from abroad.

This ban included healthcare equipment and medications, which translated into immeasurable suffering for common Iraqis, but placed no immediate pressure on Hussein’s regime.

“Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Sanctions Committee at the UN],” explained Professor Karol Sikora, then chief of the cancer programme of the World Health Organization, in a 1999 article published in the British Medical Journal. “There seems to be a rather ludicrous notion that such agents could be converted into chemical or other weapons.”

According to UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, the death rate of children below five crossed 4,000 a month due to the lack of food and basic medications caused by the sanctions – that is up to 200 babies and toddlers dying avoidable deaths a day.

Several UN officials resigned over the years in protest at this disastrous, ineffective and murderous sanctions policy, but Albright, the “passionate force for freedom, democracy and human rights”, thought it was all “worth it”.

To make matters worse, 13 years after the sanctions were first implemented to pressure the Iraqi regime, the US opted to invade the oil-rich country anyway under the pretense that Hussein managed to amass weapons of mass destruction despite the embargo. The years of suffering were for nothing – the sanctions had achieved nothing other than devastating millions of Iraqis who had no say over the actions of those ruling over them.

So, before you write or repost articles about Albright and how wonderful it is to see women pushing boundaries and breaking glass ceilings in politics, take a minute to learn what she chose to do with the power she had—how she supported the devastation and suffering of my people.

Today, with sanctions imposed on Venezuela still causing thousands of deaths among the country’s poorest, and demands for more stringent sanctions on Russia getting louder, we cannot afford to whitewash Albright’s mistakes.

AHMED TWAIJ is a freelance journalist and filmmaker focusing mainly on US politics, social justice and the Middle East.

IT'S NOT HI$😡

Afghanistan Facing 'Total Collapse' as Biden Refuses to Release Central Bank Assets

"If the Afghan economy is not resuscitated, the severity of the current humanitarian crisis will only deepen, with dire consequences for life and limb of ordinary Afghans," warned one aid group.

Children ride on a merry-go-round at the Gol Ghandi Park in Charikar of Parwan province in Afghanistan on March 25, 2022. (Photo: Ahmad Sahel Arman/AFP via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

COMMON DREAMS

March 30, 2022

An international aid group warned Wednesday that Afghanistan is on the brink of complete collapse as the Biden administration and European governments refuse to release the war-torn nation's central bank reserves, depriving the economy of critical funds as millions face poverty and starvation.

In a statement ahead of an international donor conference for Afghanistan, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said the country "is now the world's largest-ever humanitarian appeal, requiring a staggering US$4.47 billion in humanitarian aid—quadruple the needs at the start of 2021 and more than is required for either Syria or Yemen."

"With each week that goes by, more Afghans are forced to resort to the unimaginable to survive."

Since the Taliban retook power last August following two decades of U.S.-led warfare, IRC noted, "the speed of Afghanistan's economic collapse has been unprecedented." Following the withdrawal of American troops, the Biden administration froze billions of dollars in Afghan central bank assets held in the U.S. despite warnings that the move would push the country closer to full-scale economic ruin.

Last month, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order aiming to permanently seize Afghanistan's assets and split them between the families of 9/11 victims and an ill-defined "trust fund" for Afghans. Blocked from accessing its own reserves, Kabul has struggled to afford even the import taxes on containers of badly needed food.

Moreover, the Biden administration has left in place crippling economic sanctions that could kill more civilians than 20 years of war, according to one analyst.

European governments and international institutions also took punitive steps following the Taliban's return to power, suspending financing for projects in Afghanistan and leaving humanitarian groups on the ground without the resources needed to help the growing number of sick and malnourished Afghans.

"Afghans that could support themselves and their families six months ago are now entirely dependent on aid," IRC said Wednesday. "With each week that goes by, more Afghans are forced to resort to the unimaginable to survive: since August, the number of Afghans resorting to negative coping capacities has risen sixfold, such as selling young daughters into marriage, pulling children out of school to work, selling organs, skipping meals, or taking on high levels of debt."

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Afghans desperate for cash to feed their families are turning to "backbreaking work" in the notoriously dangerous mines of northern Afghanistan. Some toiling in the mines are as young as 10 years old, according to the newspaper.

UNICEF recently warned that more than a million Afghan children will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition this year and 13 million kids in total will need humanitarian assistance.

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David Miliband, IRC's president and CEO, said Wednesday that the actions of the international community have pushed Afghanistan toward "total collapse."

"We are risking the future of an entire generation that now lacks both adequate nutrition and a proper education."

"If the Afghan economy is not resuscitated, the severity of the current humanitarian crisis will only deepen, with dire consequences for life and limb of ordinary Afghans," said Miliband. "Further economic distress will only mean greater displacement, greater insecurity, and greater misery."

Miliband urged countries and humanitarian groups participating in Thursday's donor conference to ramp up aid to Afghanistan, but stressed that such charity work "only addresses the symptoms rather than the drivers of a failing economy."

"Afghanistan urgently requires a roadmap for international engagement to address the economic crisis, including benchmarks for the release of frozen Afghan assets to the central bank," Miliband argued. "In the immediate term, this will require donors and financial institutions to help rebuild the capacity of the central bank to operate independently, adhere to international banking standards, and manage the Afghan economy."

"The urgent work to stave off famine and preventable deaths in the coming weeks and months should not crowd out the important work to halt the trajectory of this crisis and stabilize the economy," he continued. "Until these measures are taken, Afghan civilians will continue to pay for the transgressions of others with their own lives and suffering."

Welthungerhilfe, a Germany-based humanitarian nonprofit, voiced similar fears on Tuesday, pointing out that 95% of the Afghan population "no longer has adequate nutrition"—a crisis exacerbated by Russia's war on Ukraine, which has pushed up commodity prices and intensified supply chain disruptions.

"Afghanistan is in free fall," said Thomas ten Boer, Welthungerhilfe's director in Kabul. "The sanctions are crushing the economy and preventing money from entering the country. Agricultural production will continue to plummet because farmers cannot purchase seeds or fertilizer due to drastic price hikes."

"We are risking the future of an entire generation that now lacks both adequate nutrition and a proper education," he added.

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The United States is exceptional

But not in the ways any of us should want.

Aviva Chomsky

March 26, 2022

SOURCETomDispatch

Three years after the end of World War II, diplomat George Kennan outlined the challenges the country faced this way:

“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.”

That, in a nutshell, was the postwar version of U.S. exceptionalism and Washington was then planning to manage the world in such a way as to maintain that remarkably grotesque disparity. The only obstacle Kennan saw was poor people demanding a share of the wealth.

Today, as humanity confronts a looming climate catastrophe, what’s needed is a new political-economic project. Its aim would be to replace such exceptionalism and the hoarding of the earth’s resources with what’s been called “a good life for all within planetary boundaries.”

Back in 1948, few if any here were thinking about the environmental effects of the over-consumption of available resources. Yet even then, however unknown, this country’s growing wealth had a dark underside: the slow-brewing crisis of climate change. Wealth all too literally meant the intensified extraction of resources and the production of goods. As it happened, fossil fuels (and the greenhouse gases that went with their burning) were essential to every step in the process.

Today, the situation has shifted — at least a bit. With approximately 4% of the world’s population, the United States still holds about 30% of its wealth, while its commitment to over-consumption and maintaining global dominance remains remarkably unshaken. To grasp that, all you have to do is consider the Biden White House’s recent Indo-Pacific Strategy policy brief, which begins in this telling way: “The United States is an Indo-Pacific power.” Indeed.

In 2022, the relationship between wealth, emissions, and climate catastrophe has become ever clearer. In the crucial years between 1990 and 2015, the global economy expanded from $47 trillion to $108 trillion. During that same period, global annual greenhouse-gas emissions grew by more than 60%. Mind you, 1990 was the year in which atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) first surpassed what many scientists believed was the level of safety — 350 parts per million, or ppm. Yet in the 32 years since then, more CO2 and other greenhouse gases have been emitted into the atmosphere than in all of history prior to that date, as atmospheric CO2 careened past 400 ppm in 2016 with 420 ppm now fast approaching.

Inequality and emissions

Growing global wealth is closely associated with growing emissions. But the wealth and responsibility for those emissions are not shared equally among the planet’s population. On an individual level, the wealthiest people on Earth consume — and emit — far more than their poorer counterparts. The richest 10% of the world’s population, or about 630 million people, were responsible for more than half of the increase in greenhouse-gas emissions over the last quarter-century. On a national level, rich countries are, of course, home to far more people with high levels of consumption, which means that the larger and wealthier the country, the greater its emissions.

In terms of per capita income, the United States ranks 13th in the world. But the countries above it on the list are mostly tiny, including some of the Persian Gulf states, Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Switzerland. So, despite their high per-capita emissions, their overall contribution isn’t that big. As the third largest country on this planet, our soaring per-capita emissions have, on the other hand, had a devastating effect.

With a population of around 330 million, the United States today has less than a quarter of either China’s population of more than 1.4 billion or India’s, which is just under that figure. Four other countries — Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan — fall into the population range of 200 to 300 million, but their per-capita gross domestic products (GDPs) and their per-capita emissions are far below ours. In fact, the total U.S. GDP of more than $19 trillion far exceeds that of any other country, followed by China at $12 trillion and Japan at $5 trillion.

In sum, the United States is exceptional when it comes to both its size and wealth. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn then that, until 2006, it was also by far the world’s top CO2 emitter. After that, it was surpassed by a fast-developing China (though that country’s per capita emissions remain less than half of ours) and no other country’s greenhouse gas emissions come close to either of those two.

To fully understand different countries’ responsibility, it’s necessary to go past yearly numbers and look at how much they’ve emitted over time, since the greenhouse gases we put in the atmosphere don’t disappear at the end of the year. Here again, one country stands out above all the others: the United States, whose cumulative emissions reached 416 billion tons by the end of 2020. China’s, which didn’t start rising rapidly until the 1980s, reached 235 billion tons in that year, while India trailed at 54 billion.

Having first hit 20 billion tons in 1910, U.S. cumulative emissions have only shot up ever since, while China’s didn’t hit that 20 billion mark until 1979. So the U.S. got a big head start and, cumulatively speaking, is still way ahead when it comes to taking down this planet.

The U.S. Climate Action Network (USCAN) argues that excessive emitters like the United States have already used up far more than their “fair share” of this planet’s carbon budget and so, in fact, owe a huge carbon debt to the rest of the world to make up for their outsized contribution to the problem of climate change over the past two centuries. Unfortunately, the 2015 Paris Agreement’s voluntary, non-enforceable, and nationally determined limits on emissions functionally let rich countries continue on their damaging ways.

In fact, nations should be held responsible for repaying their carbon debt. The world’s poorest people, who have contributed practically nothing to the problem, deserve access to a portion of the remaining budget and to the sort of aid that would enable them to develop alternative forms of energy to meet their basic needs.

Under the fair-share proposal, it’s not enough for the United States just to stop adding emissions. This country needs to repay the climate debt it’s already incurred. USCAN calculates that to pay back its fair share the United States must cut its emissions by 70% by 2030, while contributing the cash equivalent of another 125% of its current emissions every year through technical and financial support to energy-poor nations.

Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal proposal adopted the concept of the “fair share.” True leadership in the global climate fight, Sanders has argued, means recognizing that “the United States has for over a century spewed carbon pollution emissions into the atmosphere in order to gain economic standing in the world. Therefore, we have an outsized obligation to help less industrialized nations meet their targets while improving quality of life.”

On this subject, however, his voice and others like it sadly remain far outside the all-too-right-wing mainstream. (And if you doubt that, just check Joe Manchin’s recent voting record.)

Are we making progress thanks to new technologies?

In 2018, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report on our chances of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade — the goal that the countries involved in the Paris Agreement, including the United States, accepted as their baseline for action. It concluded that, to have a 50% chance of staying below that temperature increase, our future collective emissions couldn’t exceed 480 gigatons (or 480 billion tons). That, in other words, was humanity’s remaining carbon budget.

Unfortunately, as of 2018, global emissions were exceeding 40 gigatons a year, which meant that even if they were flattened almost immediately (not exactly a likelihood), we would use up that budget in a mere dozen years or so. Worse yet, despite a COVID-induced decline in 2020, global emissions actually rebounded sharply in 2021.

Most scenarios for emission reductions, including those proposed by the IPCC, rely optimistically on new technologies to enable us to get there without making substantive changes in the global economy or in the excessive consumption of the world’s richest people and countries. Such technological advances, it’s hoped, would allow us to produce as much, or possibly more energy from renewable sources and even possibly begin removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, there’s little evidence to support the likelihood of such progress, especially in the time we have left. No matter how much new technology we develop, there seems to be no completely “clean” form of energy. All of them — nuclear, wind, solar, hydro power, geothermal, biomass, and perhaps others still to be developed — rely on massive industrial operations to extract finite resources from the earth; factories to process them; facilities to create, store, and transmit energy; and, in the end, some form of waste (think batteries, solar panels, old electric cars, and so on). Every form of energy will have multiple dangerous environmental impacts. Meanwhile, as the use of alternative forms of energy production increases worldwide, it hasn’t yet reduced fossil-fuel use. Instead, it’s just added to our growing energy consumption.

It’s true that the world’s wealthiest countries have achieved some gains in decoupling economic growth from rising emissions. But much of this relatively minor decoupling is attributable to a shift from the use of coal to natural gas, along with the outsourcing of particularly dirty industries. Decoupling has, as yet, made no dent in global greenhouse gas emissions and seems unlikely to accelerate or even continue at a meaningful enough pace after these first and easiest steps have been taken. So almost all climate modeling, like that of the IPCC, suggests that new technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere will also be needed to counter rising emissions.

But negative emissions technologies are largely aspirational at this point. Instead of counting on what still to a significant extent remain technological fantasies, while the wealthy continue their profligacy, it’s time to shift our thinking more radically and focus, as I do in my new book Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice, on how to reduce extraction, production, and consumption in far more socially just ways, so that we can indeed begin to live within our planet’s means. Call it “post-growth” or “de-growth” thinking.

Make no mistake: we can’t live without energy and we desperately do need to turn to alternatives to fossil fuels. But alternative energies are only going to be truly viable if we can also greatly reduce our energy needs, which means re-configuring the global economy. If energy is a scarce and precious resource, then ways must be found to prioritize its use to meet the urgent needs of the world’s poor, rather than endlessly expanding the luxuries of the wealthiest among us. And that’s precisely what de-growth thinking is all about: scaling back the mindless pursuit of production, consumption, and profit in favor of “human well-being and ecological stability.”

Abandoning exceptionalism

In April 2021, President Biden made a dramatic announcement, setting a new goal for U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions — to reduce them 50% from 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. Sounds pretty good, right?

But given that this country’s CO2 emissions had hit a high of 6.13 billion tons in 2005, that means by 2030 we’d still be emitting three billion tons of CO2 a year. Even if we could reach net-zero by 2050, our country alone would, by then, have used up one quarter of the entire remaining carbon budget for the planet. And right now, given the state of the American political system, there’s neither a genuine plan nor an obvious way to reach Biden’s goal. If we stay on our current path — and don’t count on that if the Republicans take Congress in 2022 and the White House again in 2024 — we would barely achieve a 30% reduction by 2030.

At this point, there’s no guarantee we’ll stay on that path, no matter the political party in power. After all, consider just this:

In 2010, about half of the new vehicles sold in the United States were cars and half were SUVs or trucks. By 2021, close to 80% were SUVs or trucks.
In 2020, more than 900,000 new houses were built in this country, their median size, 2,261 square feet. Most of them had four or more bedrooms and 870,000 had central air conditioning.
President Biden’s infrastructure bill, signed in November 2021, included $763 billion for new highways.

And let’s not even talk about the military-industrial-congressional complex and war. After all, the Department of Defense is the single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and emitter of CO2 in the world. Between its worldwide bases, promotion of the arms industry, and ongoing global wars, our military alone produces annual emissions greater than those of wealthy countries like Sweden and Denmark.

Meanwhile, in the run-up to the climate-change meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, in the fall of 2021, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry insisted repeatedly that the United States must work to bring China on board. Joe Biden too kept his attention focused on China. And indeed, given its greenhouse gas emissions and still-expanding use of coal, China does have a big role to play. But to the rest of the world, such an insistence on diverting attention from our own role in the climate crisis rings hollow indeed.

A 2021 study shows that almost all of the world’s remaining coal, not to speak of most of its gas and oil reserves, will need to stay in the ground if global warming is to be kept below 1.5 degrees centigrade. Back in 2018, another study found that even to meet a 2-degree centigrade goal, which it’s now all too clear would be catastrophic in climate-change terms, humanity would have to halt all new fossil-fuel-based infrastructure and immediately start decommissioning fossil-fuel-burning plants. Instead, such new facilities continue to be built in a relentless fashion globally. Unless the United States, which bears by far the greatest responsibility for our climate emergency, is ready to radically change course, how can it demand that others do so?

But to change course would mean to abandon exceptionalism.

Degrowth scholars argue that, rather than risking all of our futures on as-yet-unproven technologies in order to cling to economic growth, we should seek social and political solutions that would involve redistributing the planet’s wealth, its scarce resources, and its carbon budget in ways that prioritize basic needs and social wellbeing globally.

That, however, would require the United States to acknowledge the dark side of its exceptionalism and agree to relinquish it, something that, in March 2022, still seems highly unlikely.

Why conservative parts of the U.S. are so angry

Republican America is poorer, more violent, and less healthy than Democratic America. But Republicans’ blame is misplaced.

Mike Males

March 25, 2022

SOURCEYes! Magazine

Mike-Males_1400x840 — Image Credit: Mike Males

Decades of political decisions and policies have created a massive and growing chasm between the economic and social disaster unfolding in small-town and rural parts of the United States, and the prosperity and safety of cities and suburbs. Many of those successful urban and suburban areas have reaped the rewards of electing largely moderate, competent Democratic leaders. Meanwhile, rural areas have elected Republicans drawn from a party that is increasingly incompetent, corrupt, and willing to engage in outright racism to win elections.

This disparity may affirm progressive ideas about successful and inclusive governance, but it also holds grave implications for the country as a whole.

Anger is roiling in Republican America, along with conspiratorial fabrications about who to blame for their condition. A harbinger of this trend is Antlers, Oklahoma, where I grew up: a once-thriving town in the southeastern part of the state, bordering the lush Ouachita foothills of dense forests, abundant agriculture, and lucrative tourism resources. The town rebuilt after a devastating 1945 tornado, but it has not weathered 21st century politics.

Racially and politically, Antlers is typical of much of rural Oklahoma, a state forged from the 19th century territory set aside for Native American tribes forcibly removed from other parts of the United States. Antlers is now 75% White and 22% Native American or mixed race, but with very few Latino, Asian, or Black residents. In 2020, Antlers and its county, Pushmataha—which supported former President Bill Clinton in 1996 and even Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan in 1980—voted for Republicans, 85% to the Democrats’ 14%, up from an 80% share for Republicans in 2016, 54% in 2000, and 34% in 1996.

Antlers’ social statistics are beyond alarming. Nearly one-third of its residents live in poverty. The median household income, $25,223, is less than half Oklahoma’s $55,557, which in turn is well below the national median of $74,099 in January 2022.

The best-off ethnic group in Antlers is Native Americans (median household income, $35,700; 48% with education beyond high school; 25% living in poverty). That’s still well below the national median, but the conditions of the White population are dismal: a median household income of $24,800, only 41% with any post-high school education, and 30% living in poverty.

In a growing nationwide trend, the median household incomes of people of color, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, now exceed those of White people in nearly 200 of the 1,500 Republican-trifecta counties—those in which the party controls the governor’s office and both legislative chambers of state government (see Figure 1). This is a visible factor that has fueled Trump voters’ complaints alleging White people’s diminished status.

Figure 1; Infographic by Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz

In the most telling statistics, White people in Antlers are nearly twice as likely to die by guns as Native Americans (see Figure 2). Compared with Whites nationally, Antlers Whites suffer excessive death rates from drugs and alcohol (1.3 times the national average), suicide (1.5 times), all violent deaths (1.8 times), homicide (2.5 times), and gunfire (2.6 times).

Figure 2; Infographic by Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz

The numbers on paper look bad enough. Seeing them on the ground is a new kind of scary. When I was growing up in Antlers 60 years ago and visited it 20 years ago, my family’s old block consisted of well-kept middle-class homes fronting yards for chickens and horses. On my latest visit in January 2022, I found the houses all boarded up or blowing open in the wind (see photo at top). There are hundreds of abandoned dwellings with collapsing roofs and walls and junk-filled empty lots alongside barely intact, yet still occupied, houses.

Antlers is not all devastation, however. It sports a gleaming Choctaw-built travel center financed by casino revenues, which are also invested in local Native Americans’ well-being. And there are some thriving neighborhoods, including a ritzy mansion suburb uphill from town. Antlers’ 2,300 residents can avail three liquor stores and seven new marijuana dispensaries.

A widening social and economic chasm

Across America, the partisan gap in gross domestic product per capita is also huge and growing: $77,900 in Democratic-voting areas, compared with $46,600 in Republican-voting areas. Antlers and Pushmataha County are hardly alone: 444 Republican counties have a GDP per capita of under $30,000, and 10 times as many people live in those counties than in the seven similarly low-GDP Democratic counties. Whites in about 40% of all Republican counties lost income over the past two decades. And Trump’s administration was no help to his base. During his presidency, the overall Democrat–Republican GDP per capita gap widened by another $1,800.

This is not simply an urban–rural divide. For the largest urbanized states, the three with Democratic control of all branches of government (California, New York, and Illinois) had GDPs per capita vastly higher than the three biggest Republican-controlled states (Texas, Florida, and Ohio).

The right-wing canard that hardworking White people subsidize welfare-grubbing cities is backward. Democrat-voting counties, with 60% of America’s population, generate 67% of the nation’s personal income, 70% of the nation’s GDP, 71% of federal taxes, 73% of charitable contributions, and 75% of state and local taxes.

Mirroring Antlers, White Republican America also suffers violent death rates, including from suicide, homicide, firearms, and drunken driving crashes, far higher than Whites in Democratic America and higher than non-White people everywhere. To top it off, Republican-governed Americans are substantially more likely to die from COVID-19. As the death gap between Republican and Democratic areas widens over time, the life expectancy for Whites in Republican-voting areas (77.6 years) is now three years shorter than that of Whites in Democratic areas (80.6 years), shorter than those of Asians and Latino people everywhere, and only a few months longer than Black and Native Americans in Democratic areas.

Misplaced blame

Surveys and studies consistently find Trump’s generally older, White supporters enraged at “loss of status” and in fear of being “replaced” by non-White people. That White people are falling behind across key economic, health, and safety indexes is not due to victimization by immigrants and liberal conspiracies, however, but to victimization by other Whites and self-inflicted alcoholism, drug overdose, and suicide.

Is the solution to undividing America massive federal programs to improve Republican America’s struggling economies and troubled social conditions, then? Aside from the problem that Republican members of congress (and two recalcitrant Democrats) have sabotaged beneficial initiatives, former President Barack Obama already tried that. From 2010 to 2016, the Obama administration’s economic recovery measures fostered millions of new jobs and thousands of dollars in real median income growth for Whites in urban and most rural areas alike, reversing the recession under Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.

Yet, despite these gains, White voters vehemently rejected Democrats in successive elections. Today, Trump’s base voters are electing candidates who share their racial resentment and imagined victimization, not those who actually are advancing their safety and economic well-being.

Despite the superficial resemblance of the crumbling neighborhoods, junk-filled lots, and widespread poverty of Antlers and conditions in a devastated city of color like Camden, New Jersey, the origins of their devastations are very different. Camden is the product of systemic racism and industrial abandonment inflicted on poor, primarily non-White residents powerless to prevent their exploitation. Antlers is the predictable endgame of White majorities who had better options instead empowering incompetent, corrupt demagogues (segregationist Democrats in the past; nihilist Republicans today) who flatter White claims to racial and religious privilege while awarding largesse to rapacious outsiders.

Poverty in cities and on reservations requires mainly the sustained political will to work with populations who welcome the effort. In stark contrast, fixing rural White poverty against the angry, anti-democratic recalcitrance of most Whites themselves requires an entirely new political thinking we have yet to imagine