Why news of population decline and economic slowdown isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Humanity faces an imminent survival dilemma

Richard Heinberg / March 2, 2023 /
https://canadiandimension.com/


On January 17, 2023, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced that the country’s population fell in 2022 by 850,000 people from 2021, which was the first population decline witnessed by the country in six decades. This has mostly resulted from low birth rates stemming from the imposition of China’s one-child policy from 1980 to 2015, as well as from voluntary family decisions, rather than deaths from COVID-19.

On the same day, the NBS reported that China’s GDP grew by only three percent in 2022, which is less than half the previous year’s 8.1 percent expansion pace.

International news outlets greeted these bombshells with worry bordering on horror. Time noted that “[e]xperts are alarmed” by these trends; the Wall Street Journal said the slowdown was “disappointing” and posed a “major future challenge” for China and the rest of the world—language often reserved for articles on climate change. Hardly any major news coverage explored why China’s lagging economy and shrinking population might actually be good things.

Yes, the reversal of China’s growth trends may eventually have real and unfortunate impacts on Chinese families. But much if not all of that harm can be averted with appropriate policies. Moreover, for anyone aware of environmental limits, China’s economic deceleration and population decrease are actually welcome developments.

Humanity faces an imminent survival dilemma. Not only are we destabilizing the climate with carbon dioxide released from our burning of fossil fuels, but we are also taking habitat away from other species, to the point where wild animal (including some insect) populations have declined by about 70 percent in the past 50 years. Further, humanity is depleting natural resources, ranging from mineral ores to forests, while polluting ecosystems with plastics and toxic chemicals in ever-burgeoning quantities. According to the World Bank, “Global waste is expected to increase to 3.4 billion tons by 2050.”

In 2015, scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Center calculated that, of nine critical global ecological thresholds that define “the safe operating limits of our planet,” humanity has already crossed “at least four.” A related effort by the Global Footprint Network, which tracks our “ecological footprint” (how much of Earth’s biological regenerative capacity is being used by human society), currently shows humanity consuming resources “as if we lived on 1.75 Earths”—which can only be sustained temporarily and will, in effect, result in robbing future generations of a fair chance at survival. As the human population grows (for decades we’ve been adding a billion people every 12 years), we use more land and resources. As the economy expands (it’s doubling in size every 25 years), we use more energy and therefore make it harder to reduce carbon emissions.

It hasn’t always been this way. Humanity’s addiction to rapid growth started in the 20th century as a result of having access to enormous amounts of cheap fossil fuel energy. Abundant energy enabled more resource extraction, more manufacturing, and more food production. Once the economic growth engine revved up, industrialists, economists, and politicians decided it was an unmitigated marvel, they attributed the growth to human ingenuity rather than fossil fuels, and restructured the global economy to depend on industrial expansion continuing forever.

This was a foolish thing to do since nothing can increase endlessly on a finite planet. Ecologists have warned since the 1960s that a reckoning is in store sooner or later. The only way to avoid it is to voluntarily and deliberately reduce growth—reversing it in some instances—and aim for what pioneer ecological economist Herman Daly called a “steady state economy” that helps maximize the benefit to humanity without depleting and polluting nature.

For decades, China’s economy has grown more rapidly than that of nearly any other country. And since China was the world’s most populous nation until 2022, this breathtaking growth has had an outsized impact. China has become the top greenhouse gas emitter and the foremost devourer of natural resources on the planet. It burns more than half of the world’s coal supply each year and is busy building even more coal-fired power plants.

But China isn’t polluting out of a lack of concern for the environmental damage caused by its actions; its coal burning is part of an economic strategy in which the US and other wealthy nations have been complicit. The flourishing of Chinese manufacturing resulted from a grand bargain struck by multinational corporations, in which American consumers got cheaper products (thanks to China’s inexpensive energy and massive low-wage labor pool), US corporations got higher profits, and the Chinese people got more economic opportunities than they had enjoyed previously—opportunities for which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could take credit. Everybody seemed to win, except the planet and its nonhuman creatures.

But coal is not endless, nor are raw materials required for manufacturing, nor is new farmland to feed an expanding population. Therefore, the growth of offshored production, and a Chinese economy based on it, can’t go on forever. In fact, the longer such growth continues, the deeper the hole that humanity is digging for itself. Yes, we can make our consumption marginally “greener” by recycling more and building more solar panels and wind turbines. But the math tells us that any serious effort to return society to a balanced relationship with nature must eventually require less overall consumption by fewer consumers. Seen in that light, China’s slowdown both in terms of economy and population looks like an event worth celebrating. So, why the hand-wringing?

In the view of conventional economists, fewer workers and consumers mean more anemic economic output. And for growth-oriented economic theory, that’s a catastrophe. But it needn’t be. Why not reorganize the economy around human happiness and the protection of nature, as opposed to the endless expansion of resource extraction, production, consumption, pollution, and human numbers?

China’s slowdown presents the country and the world with a chance to manage a decline that must inevitably come, sooner or later. It’s a chance to identify and seize opportunities while minimizing the pain entailed in a major directional change.

With fewer people, it should be easier to ensure that everybody in China has housing and access to basic necessities. At last, officials can ease up on building new cities, highways, and shopping malls. New construction can focus on replacing fuel-guzzling technologies with more efficient renewable energy replacements. China could even stop manufacturing throwaway consumer gadgets and start making long-lasting products designed for the dawning era of eco-restoration and regeneration.

A soft landing is possible: Several smaller countries have declining population levels, including Croatia, Japan, Portugal, Poland, South Korea, and Lithuania. Each of these nations is seeing stable or rising wages and historic lows in unemployment.

True, the transition to the post-growth era won’t be easy for the CCP or the Chinese people if income and wages level off or worsen, and if a declining tax base can’t sustain an aging population. The Chinese people have tacitly accepted an authoritarian regime with great restrictions on personal freedoms in exchange for promises of material betterment. If those promises fail, political instability could follow, possibly leading to widespread hardship and loss of life. To avert that catastrophe, the CCP will have to rethink its entire economic and political strategy.

Globally, in the shift to a post-growth economy, the financial sector will face the biggest risks. Vast tranches of debt that have been incurred during the past few decades are, in effect, bets that the economy will continue to expand. If the number of workers and consumers shrinks, then our global financial house of cards could come tumbling down.

But why have we put the fate of humanity in the hands of gamblers? A major retooling of our financial system is long overdue. The deleveraging of the global economy could be accomplished largely by reducing the assets of the world’s multimillionaire and billionaire classes. There might be side benefits from doing so: Economic inequality is warping our politics and making many people jealous, resentful, and unhappy.

Sure, the end of economic expansion and population growth is a challenging prospect. But it’s not nearly as daunting as the crisis we are setting up for ourselves if we continue to destroy nature through wasteful consumption and pollution. China’s slowdown is a welcome opportunity for global leaders and policymakers to get our priorities straight and set ourselves on a path of sustainable happiness and wellbeing.

Richard Heinberg is a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and the author of Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

BC’s logging industry is using mill closures as a political tool in its fight against regulation

Closure announcements are a core component of a political strategy designed to influence the government’s future decisions

Nick Gottlieb / March 3, 2023 

https://canadiandimension.com/

Timber harvesting in British Columbia. Photo from iStock.

Two narratives about BC’s disappearing forests and logging industry have made national news over the last few months. On the one hand, headlines report that the province’s NDP government, under the new leadership of David Eby, is finally getting serious about protecting old growth. On the other, we read that the industry is on the verge of collapse as sawmills shut down in rural, industry-dependent parts of the province—due primarily to a lack of available wood.

The latter of these stories has some truth to it: BC’s “fibre supply” in indeed shrinking for a number of reasons, including both the century-long mismanagement of the province’s forests and the more recent short-sighted response to the mountain pine beetle epidemic.

But the coincident timing of the announcements—the mill closures and the government’s plans to improve the sustainability of BC’s logging industry (what activists call “talk and log”)—suggests that logging companies aren’t just responding to market conditions. They’re sacrificing workers and communities as a political threat designed to scare the government out of implementing any meaningful new regulations.

It’s helpful to look at what the industry is telling us here.

In investor materials, Canfor, West Fraser, and other major operators in BC all identify potential regulation as a risk that could limit fibre supply in the future. Canfor’s annual reports consistently raise the spectre of Indigenous sovereignty as a threat, highlighting BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and recent legal decisions like Yahey v. British Columbia, the cumulative effects case that the Blueberry River First Nation fought and won. They also cite former Premier John Horgan’s old growth deferral plan (which has yet to be fully implemented) as a potential hit to future fibre availability.

But what’s key is they identify these as risks and uncertainties, not already existing problems. This is important for two reasons. First, it means that regardless of what is claimed by industry representatives, escalating environmental regulation is not the driving factor behind the mill closures. And second, it means that these companies recognize that future access to timber depends on a politically mediated open question: whether the government will actually implement regulations that significantly limit their operations.

Which brings us to why the industry is announcing so many closures just a year removed from posting record profits. The announcements are a core component of a political strategy designed to influence the government’s future decisions. Of course, one should recognize that falling lumber prices, driven mostly by rising interest rates and the impact that is having on new construction in North America and Asia, is a major economic headwind facing most logging companies. Expected reductions in annual allowable cut in the wake of the mountain pine beetle-induced logging frenzy is another.

But the fact that we are seeing this flurry of closure announcements at the same time as a new premier is announcing his intent to pursue forest policy changes is no coincidence. The industry is sending signals precisely because these stacked closure announcements, in aggregate, make a national news story that can easily be cast as a direct result of the NDP government’s intent to pursue policy reforms that will impact logging.

These announcements also stand on their own as effective tools for getting the media to uncritically repeat corporate propaganda, spreading the message that government overreach is driving mill closures. And they serve as a shot across the bow aimed at the BC NDP itself: Horgan himself once said that the industry had leveraged “capital strikes” against past NDP governments. Shuttered mills act as a warning about what industry could do if the province seriously pursues new regulation.

While the companies themselves generate buzz through synchronized closure announcements, industry trade associations are pursuing complementary media strategies. In the latest issue of Truck Logger BC, published quarterly by the BC Truck Loggers Association, an industry executive said, “We need an ongoing stream of stories about how we care for the forests and the timber harvesting land base.” According to the article’s author, “industry leaders” agree, and are “unanimous in their commitment to funding efforts to invest in the kind of marketing activities needed to shift the narrative.”

Industry ads are everywhere, often using the relatively new “sponsored content” model where advertising content is dressed up as reporting and published alongside real journalism with only a small label distinguishing it. And industry friendly columnists like Vaughn Palmer—employed by industry friendly corporations like Postmedia—are writing articles explicitly connecting Eby’s NDP government with the mill closures.

Conservationists and progressive media are failing to meet this head-on, and as a result, are ceding ground to the industry’s preferred narrative. Most responses have focused—not wrongly, I should say—on the ecologically and economically unsustainable nature of BC’s forestry policies over the last century. That’s an important part of the story, but it’s not the whole story, and we need to bring attention to this blatant exercise of corporate power.

The industry knows it’s “running out of trees,” as Ben Parfitt put it in The Tyee. That reality can’t be changed, not even by stripping away what little protection our forests do have. But at the same time, companies are trying to maximize profits by squeezing the remaining value out of the region’s failing ecosystems—exerting political power through synchronized mill closures, media campaigns, lobbying, and regulatory capture.

Is it important to highlight how BC’s forest policy (and logging industry) created the situation that is now playing out? Absolutely. But doing so without also identifying how industry is taking advantage of economic turbulence to lobby against new regulations allows them to proceed unchallenged—right up until the last tree is cut.

Nick Gottlieb is a climate writer based in northern BC and the author of the newsletter Sacred Headwaters. His work focuses on understanding the power dynamics driving today’s interrelated crises and exploring how they can be overcome. Follow him on Twitter @ngottliebphoto.

State-sanctioned violence in Peru and the role of Canadian mining

Canadian firms benefit from state-sanctioned police protection and impunity at the expense of human rights and the environment

Kirsten Francescone / March 4, 2023 / 

https://canadiandimension.com/

Protests against the Tía María copper mining project in Islay, Arequipa Region, Peru. Photo by Diario Correo.


On January 18, 2023, as thousands of Peruvians were taking to the streets in Lima to denounce the spiralling political crisis in the country, Canadian Ambassador Louis Marcotte was meeting with the Peruvian Minister of Energy and Mines. Protests have been ongoing since December when populist President Pedro Castillo was deposed from office by congressional vote, a move which was almost immediately condemned by Castillo’s base. Demonstrators have been met with widespread arrests and brutal violence. According to Yves Engler, since former Vice President Dina Boluarte assumed power (a move which the Canadian government endorsed) the Canadian mission has met with numerous top-level Peruvian officials in unprecedented fashion.

Since Boluarte assumed the presidency mobilizations have exploded across the country. Although they differ in their diversity of demands, they coincide along four main points: a call for new general elections for 2023, the closure of congress, Boluarte’s resignation, and the calling of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. But these immediate political demands have historical roots. As one collection of Peruvian NGOs stated, the mass movement of Peruvians from the south and peripheral regions is born out of a sense of indignation at a political and economic system which is highly racist and discriminatory. In Puno, the epicentre of protests and extreme police repression, delegations of rural community members travelled to Lima to demand political reforms and solutions to the toxic environmental liabilities which have contaminated their water sources with heavy metals and led to dangerously high toxins (many of which are present in children). With few exceptions, these communities have had their waterways affected by mining and industrial activity.

Ambassador Marcotte tweeted several photos from the meeting, using the occasion to promote mining as a benefit for communities and to express Canadian support for the upcoming Peruvian delegation who will attend the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) annual conference in Toronto from March 5 to 8. Each year, the world’s largest mining convention draws tens of thousands of industry experts, company officials, and government representatives to talk industry trends and promote an expansion of mining—with little concern for the consent of those most affected, including in Peru.

At the time of the meeting, Lima was gridlocked with demonstrations calling for new elections and a constituent assembly. Only days prior, 17 people were killed by police in the cities of Juliaca and Puno. And in the days following the meeting, the oldest university in the country, San Marcos, was invaded by armoured tanks. Hundreds of students and rural protestors were detained, strip searched, assaulted and deprived of their rights. Fifty-nine people have reportedly been killed during the last few months—the overwhelming majority of them civilians from rural and periurban Indigenous and mestizo backgrounds—at the hands of an unbridled police force. It’s unlikely the ambassador could have moved around the city without observing repression and police violence.

For years, MiningWatch Canada and the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP), alongside organizations including Red Muqui, Cooperacción, Derechos Humanos Sin Fronteras-Cusco and Derechos Humanos y Medio Ambiente DHUMA, have documented the many harms caused by industrial large-scale Canadian mining to rural communities, as well as the associated police violence that often accompanies the imposition of these projects. While the current protests in Peru are not explicitly about resource extraction, calls for a new constitution to address the systematic and often violent exclusion of Indigenous, peasant and rural peoples from the political economic system, as well as the legacies of land dispossession and contamination, are indeed linked to centuries of extractivism. The ambassador’s tweet has to be taken within a context of centuries of colonial and decades of post-colonial violence against rural peoples at the behest of resource extraction.

The Canadian embassy could have used the moment to publicly denounce police violence and insist the rights of Peruvian protestors be protected. Instead, Ambassador Marcotte chose to promote more Canadian mining investment in the country and plug PDAC 2023—where a session dubbed “Peru Day” promises to discuss “opportunities in the context of enhancing the virtues of the Peruvian mining industry and overcoming the flaws that have slowed down its dynamism in recent years.” Canada’s priorities in Peru could not be more clear.


Canadian Ambassador to Peru and Bolivia, Louis Marcotte, left, with Óscar Vera, Minister of Energy and Mines of Peru. 

Photo courtesy Ministry of Energy and Mines of Peru/Twitter.


The economic importance of Canadian mining in Peru

According to the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines, Canada was the third most important investor in mine construction in 2021. Canadian companies invested over $8 billion in 10 projects, representing 15 percent of total investment in mine construction in the country. Canadian companies were the second most important player when it came to exploration (unsurprising, given Canadian companies typically focus on prospecting and exploration) representing 28 percent of the total investment in exploration, with $165 million spent on 21 projects.

Canadian companies are also operating mines in Peru. Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals operates the Constancia mine; Vancouver’s Pan American Silver operates the Shahuindo and La Arena mines; and Teck Resources’, also headquartered in Vancouver, operates the Antamina mine, with a 22.5 percent ownership stake in the project. Antamina is Peru’s largest mine, ranking among the top 10 producing mines in the world in terms of volume, and is the single most important producer of copper, silver, and zinc in the country. In 2021, the mine generated over $6 billion in revenue and nearly $3.7 billion in gross profits.

Canada also ranks high in terms of importing Peruvian metals and minerals. Of the total value of Peruvian mineral exports in 2021, Canada was the third most important global importer after China and India—coming in at 6.5 percent of total exports. This importance becomes even clearer when considering gold, as Canada was the second largest importer of Peruvian gold. Canadian imports represented over $3 billion in 2021, just shy of two percent of Peru’s GDP for the same year.

When it comes to making statements about egregious human rights violations in the country, however, Canada’s position has been lukewarm. Canada signed the most recent OAS statement on the political crisis in Peru—a watered-down declaration which assigns blame, and thus responsibility, to both protestors and the government of Peru as if they were equal players. The Canadian government continues to parrot this position, even as almost all the victims over the past several months have been civilians killed by an indiscriminate use of police violence—by the same national police force that has signed contracts to provide security to Canadian mining companies.
Private contracts with police

When Canadian mining companies are embroiled in a conflict with local communities outside of Peru, they often depend on henchmen or paramilitary forces to repress dissent. In Peru, companies benefit from state-sanctioned police protection and impunity. Companies can sign service contracts directly with the National Peruvian Police, and off-duty police officers are permitted to work for private security companies while using state property, such as weapons, uniforms and ammunition. Police are guaranteed immunity from criminal prosecution in the event that they fatally injure a protestor. They have the authority to use live ammunition and shoot to kill. And they’ve used it.

Mining companies also benefit from unfettered securitization of their assets. According to local sources, Hudbay’s Constancia mine and MMG’s Las Bambas operations have been fortified under the pretense of “preventing attacks on the mine camps”—effectively state-provided protection that serves to solidify the dominance of these companies in the regions where they operate.

Violence isn’t only used against rural peoples at blockades or during massive marches; it’s a daily occurrence which, according to several international and Peruvian non-governmental organizations, threatens the safety of human rights and environmental defenders and prevents them from exercising their rights. As one report notes, the “existence of these [security] contracts [with the police] creates a hostile scenario that puts human rights at risk.” As the Cusco-based organization Derechos Humanos Sin Fronteras has demonstrated through several environmental and social impact studies related to Hudbay’s Constancia mine, these contracts not only permit explicit state violence, they also form the backdrop of racialized and class-based intimidation and threats against community leaders to prevent them from speaking out against these contracts in the first place.

Promoting Canadian mining at PDAC

During the 2022 PDAC conference, the Peruvian Episcopal Commission for Social Action (CEAS) wrote an open letter to the conference delegates expressing that, contrary to the promises made by Ambassador Marcotte and others, mining has “not brought the promised improvement in quality of life” for most communities in the mining areas. On the contrary, she wrote, “it has resulted in corruption and environmental contamination and has infringed on people’s rights to life and health, leaving behind social conflict, disease and even death.”

These harms are not minimal: contamination of agricultural lands and waterways around Pan American Silver’s Quiruvilca mine and the criminalization of community leaders and land dispossession due to environmental contamination at Shahuindo; violation of Indigenous self-determination and the right to a clean environment around Plateau Energy’s proposed lithium and uranium mine, sitting atop the region’s most important tropical glacier; undercutting of economic benefits for communities most affected by mining operations, and more.

Yet the Canadian embassy in Peru has a track record of ignoring the concerns of human rights and environmental defenders affected by Canadian mining projects in the country—even ignoring the concerns of Canadian citizen Jennifer Moore who was detained in 2017 by Peruvian police while screening a documentary film with Quechua communities affected by Hudbay’s Constancia mine. Moore, who was subsequently banned from re-entering the country and labelled a threat to national security, is the focus of a recent report by the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP) on the role of Canadian embassies in prioritizing the interests of Canadian mining companies at the expense of their own policies and commitments regarding the protection of human rights defenders.

The Canadian embassy in Peru will no doubt continue to work alongside the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines to promote more Canadian mining investment in the country. But it should be made clear: when the embassy chooses to promote mining in Peru during PDAC, it is doing so knowing the reality of what these activities mean for people who are facing ongoing threats, intimidation, and explicit state-sponsored violence.

Dr. Kirsten Francescone is an assistant professor in International Development Studies at Trent University and former Latin America Program Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada.

Hugo Chávez’s vision of a communal future will inspire generations

The legendary Venezuelan leader died 10 years ago today

Owen Schalk / March 5, 2023 

https://canadiandimension.com/

Hugo Chávez in uniform, 2010. 

March 5, 2023 marks the ten-yar anniversary of the death of legendary Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Only four days earlier, the Biden administration had renewed an executive order, issued by Barack Obama and continued under Donald Trump, labelling Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

While ten years without Chávez has brought innumerable challenges to Venezuela (many of which still persist) it is evident that even without the singularly charismatic persona of El Comandante at the helm, the future envisioned by the Bolivarian Revolution—one of socialism, anti-imperialism, and communal production—remains a tremendous threat to US hegemony in the hemisphere.

Revolutionary, educator, president

Hugo Chávez was a deeply impressive leader whose political adroitness, mediatic skill, and commitment to radical new visions of democracy have not been equalled in the hemisphere since he assumed the presidency in 1999. Not since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 had a Latin American head of state combined the qualities of president, revolutionary, and popular educator so seamlessly—a uniqueness that most Venezuelans admired, as evidenced by the vote shares in every presidential election he contested (he won 56 percent of votes in 1998, 60 percent in 2000, 63 percent in 2006, and 55 percent in 2012).

In his widely viewed Aló Presidente broadcasts, Chávez worked to educate the population about democracy, communes, socialism, and more. Asserting that “it is impossible to have a revolution without revolutionary theory,” Chávez inaugurated a new series in 2009 called Aló Presidente Teórico in which he hosted discussions on socialist transition, guiding the broadcasts using wide-ranging references including Simón Bolívar, Karl Marx, István Mészáros, and José Carlos Mariátegui.

Unsurprisingly, Chávez was a lightning rod for the hatred of Venezuela’s traditional ruling class. A man from a poor family and an Indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan background, his enormous popularity provoked an existential crisis of sorts in the Venezuelan oligarchy that continues to this day. They demeaned him, degraded his supporters, and fear-mongered about his supposedly dictatorial aspirations. Often their attacks were overtly racist.

In 2005, Chávez stated, “Racism is very characteristic of imperialism and capitalism. Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth and curly hair. And I’m so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it is African.”

Officials in Washington shared the Venezuelan opposition’s hatred for Chávez. Their anti-socialist alliance culminated in a failed coup d’état by the Venezuelan oligarchy in April 2002. The coup was supported by the George W. Bush administration.

During their two days in power, the right-wing opposition acted with the flagrant aversion to democracy of which they constantly accused Chávez, dissolving the National Assembly and Supreme Court, dismissing Chávez appointees, suspending all governors and mayors elected during Chávez’s time in power, and voiding the 1999 constitution, which was approved by popular referendum with 72 percent support.

Fortunately for Venezuelan democracy, supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution took to the streets in such force that the military returned Chávez to the presidency. Population mobilization would also be key in opposing the 2002-2003 opposition oil lockout and the failed 2004 recall referendum against Chávez.

The Bolivarian Revolution endures

With Chávez gone and a terrible economic crisis roiling Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution under Nicolás Maduro continued to triumph in most major elections, with Maduro winning the presidential vote in 2013 and 2018, despite the opposition’s victory in 2015 parliamentary elections.

The Bolivarian Revolution continued to triumph even as left-wing political projects across Latin America fell one by one to a resurgent right. Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was removed in a military coup backed by the US and Canada in 2009. Embittered elites in Paraguay used a conflict over peasant land rights to remove President Fernando Lugo in 2012. Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff fell to a US-backed lawfare campaign in 2016. The Bolivian right-wing led a coup against Evo Morales after he won the 2019 presidential election, leading to one year of dictatorial right-wing rule characterized by massacres of pro-Evo protestors and the persecution of MAS supporters.

Despite some significant gains including the overturning of Bolivia’s right-wing coup in 2020 and the victory of Lula da Silva in Brazil’s 2022 election, the Latin American left remains on its back foot. In Argentina, the popular left-leaning politician Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has faced a lawfare campaign aimed at preventing her from running for president, an election she would likely win. Former Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa remains locked out of his country’s politics by the governing conservatives (although local elections bode well for the future prospects of the left in Ecuador). And the elected president of Peru, the socialist-oriented Pedro Castillo, was recently deposed by congress in what most Peruvians recognize as a coup.

But through all this regional turbulence, plus the growing strength of opposition attacks during Maduro’s tenure, the Bolivarian Revolution persists in Venezuela. Why? Venezuelan journalist Clodovaldo Hernández identifies several important reasons:By prioritizing the passage of a new, participatory constitution in 1999, Chávez was quickly able to sideline the Venezuelan right and place more power in the hands of the population, “allow[ing] the Bolivarian Revolution to armour itself against the typical conspiracies of the recently displaced elites.”

The revolution’s progressive policies, including in the areas of literacy, housing, health care, and land reform, have led to a large degree of popular support, even in the midst of economic crisis. “Without this popular support,” Hernández writes, “the imperialist forces and the domestic right wing would have long ago achieved their goal of destroying the Venezuelan revolutionary process.”

The strength of Chávez’s leadership and his national prestige as an individual.

Chávez reworked Venezuela’s military doctrine and reformed the armed forces to reduce the influence of the United States through its training facilities like the notorious School of the Americas. This “civic-military alliance” foreclosed the possibility of another coup.

The revolution recognized the importance of the domestic media war and encouraged the organization of popular media as a way to break the information stranglehold of large news companies, which were uniformly against Chávez.

Despite having “almost unanimous support from the conglomerate of global capitalism,” the Venezuelan opposition remains a clumsy and schismatic coalition that has proven unable to fundamentally challenge the revolution.


A billboard of Hugo Chávez’s eyes and signature in Guarenas, Venezuela.

 Photo by Wilfredor/Wikimedia Commons.


“Not a one-man show”

When examining the successes of the Bolivarian Revolution, and potential explanations for its endurance, one topic we must take seriously is Chávez’s commitment to a communal future. The Venezuelan communes, often ignored in North American media coverage, represent the backbone of the revolutionary process and one of the most militant, organized, and politically conscious socialist assemblages in the Western Hemisphere.

Chávez himself described communes as “the space from which we give birth to socialism” and the cellular tissue of the Bolivarian Revolution. However, the movement toward local autonomy and worker self-management had been developing for decades before Chávez.

Since at least the 1980s, the traditional political parties in Venezuela had been discredited, and when the state dispatched security forces to massacre hundreds (possibly thousands) of protestors during the Caracazo, the liberal model of representative democracy revealed itself as the velvet glove around the iron fist of capitalism.

The “rejection of the logic of representation,” as Dario Azzellini calls it in Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below, caused the goals of the popular movements to crystallize into “self-determination, self-management, and constituent power,” as well as “direct democracy, expressed in the [1999] Constitution as ‘participatory and protagonistic democracy.’” By aligning himself with these pre-existing forces and empowering them through his progressive reforms, Chávez was able to earn the revolution a key ally against the opposition’s assaults.

Due to the often fraught alliance between the state and these grassroots organizations, the Bolivarian Revolution has never been a process dictated by centralized authority. Azzellini characterizes the socialist transition in Venezuela as one of “two-track construction”:
We are speaking of a new way, unheard of in previous struggles and strategies for social transformation, that combines concepts ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ to pursue an anti-imperialist politics of national sovereignty. In this process, the state and its institutions are strengthened, and follow a strategy of active regulation of economic process in a mixed (capitalist) economy. On the other hand, according to the declared normative orientation, movements must assume the central role in the process of change and must have autonomy.

Azzellini adds that the persistence of the Bolivarian Revolution since 2013 proves that it is “a solid transformation project and not a one-man show based on populism.” Rather, it embodies a dynamic alliance (and occasional opposition) between multiple forces, the primary ones being the Chavistas in the state and the comuneros outside of it.

Towards a communal state

Of central importance to the ongoing revolutionary process is the idea of the communal state. The Organic Law of Communes, passed by the National Assembly in 2006, defines the communal state as a “form of social political organization… in which power is exercised directly by the pueblo, by means of communal self-governments with an economic model of social property and endogenous and sustainable development.” The commune is defined as “the basic structural cell of the communal state.”

The theorization of a communal state has a long history in Venezuela. As George Ciccariello-Maher points out in Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela:
It was no coincidence that those who fought against colonial rule and slavery from the very beginning often did so by building communal societies beyond Spanish control, from indigenous communities to the cumbe communities founded by runaway slaves. It is likewise no coincidence that those who today draw upon their inspiration continue to pioneer new forms of communal living and collective production that are compatible with older traditions, showing the ways that this new communal culture—by emphasizing local sustainability over consumerism—is also deeply anticolonial.


When Chávez described the importance of communes in 2007, one of the influences he borrowed from was Simón Rodríguez, an influential teacher of national hero Simón Bolívar. Rodríguez, who lived from 1769 to 1854, “urged the destruction of the existing religious and military powers dominating Venezuela” and the creation of a “toparchy,” or a form of “decentralized local rule” comprised of “small, self-governing units.”

Reinaldo Iturizza, the former Minister of Communes and a strong champion of the communal state, has described Venezuela’s transition to socialism as “toparchic,” indicating the influence of Rodríguez’s thought on communal politics today.

Kléber Ramírez was another influence on the notion of the communal state. Ramírez worked with Chávez during the planning of the failed 1992 coup against neoliberal President Carlos Andrés Pérez. His role was to draft the political documents that would form the basis of the new government if the coup succeeded. In this position, he emphasized the importance of constructing a “commoner state” in Venezuela, which would mean a “broadening of democracy in which the communities will assume the fundamental powers of the state.”

Ramírez described the commoner state as a “government of popular insurgency,” stressing the dialectical relationship between the state and the movements, between those “above” and those “below,” in transforming bourgeois rule into the rule of communality. Needless to say, Ramírez’s idea of the commoner state bears a striking resemblance to the two-track character of the communal state put forward by the Chávez government from 2006 onward.

Chávez lives

As Vijay Prashad wrote in a recent Tricontinental Institute newsletter, Chávez is still very present in Venezuela. His images are ubiquitous in barrios, poor neighbourhoods, and the communes that were the central tenet of his political philosophy.

“[T]he legacy of Chávez was not in his own life,” writes Prashad, “but in the difficult work of building socialism.”

While Chávez’s idea of the communal state was deeply rooted in Venezuelan history, it is certainly a theory that is applicable to life elsewhere. In North America, examples of communal living abound in the cultures of Indigenous peoples, the Métis, and some settler groups.

For many, modern life in Canada and the US may feel socially atomized, thoughtlessly technologized, and politically hopeless. But these ideas of communality can be reclaimed, expanded, knitted into global struggles. In this process, the Venezuelan vision of a communal future is one of many guides.

Even though Hugo Chávez is in his grave, he remains a revolutionary thinker and a popular educator. In his speeches, his writings, and his theories of popular empowerment, Chávez lives.

Owen Schalk is a writer based in Winnipeg. He is primarily interested in applying theories of imperialism, neocolonialism, and underdevelopment to global capitalism and Canada’s role therein. Visit his website at www.owenschalk.com.

E-bike lithium battery investigated as cause of 5-alarm Bronx blaze, fire department says

By Artemis Moshtaghian and Isa Kaufman-Geballe, CNN
 Sun March 5, 2023

The fire blazes in the Bronx on Sunday.FDNY/Twitter
CNN —

At least seven people have been injured in a five-alarm fire in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City thought to have been caused by a lithium-ion battery, according to fire officials.

A civilian and an emergency services worker were seriously injured, and five firefighters received minor injuries, the New York Fire Department told CNN Sunday.

Almost 200 firefighters have been fighting the fire, which started in the roof of the rear part of a single-level commercial building on Grand Concourse and 181st Street, according to the New York Police Department.

FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh told reporters at the scene Sunday the cause of the fire was a lithium-ion battery, which powered a scooter.

Lithium-ion battery sparks apartment building fire

“In all of these fires, these lithium-ion fires, it is not a slow burn there’s not a small amount of fire, it literally explodes,” Kavanagh said. “It’s a tremendous volume of fire as soon as it happens, and it’s very difficult to extinguish and so it’s particularly dangerous.”

Kavanagh said firefighters arrived at the fire around 10.41 a.m., under four minutes after the first call. All seven of those injured in the blaze are considered stable, she said.

“We have been able to not have a loss of life today, but there is extraordinary damage. This entire building behind me is completely destroyed,” Kavanagh said. “The roof is caved in, there’s nothing left, and it is all because of this one single bike.”

The commissioner said more investigation needed into why the bike burst into flames. She said it may have been using an illegal battery.

The scooter was parked inside the rear part of a grocery store. Officials said it’s not yet known who owns the bike.

The worst fires in New York City history have something in common: Immigrant victims

The fire department tweeted video of the fire igniting. The footage appears to be taken from a security camera and shows someone responding to the blaze and shifting the scooter before the flames intensified.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams told Sunday’s news conference: “Our real push is to inform the public that something as simple and seen as recreational can be extremely dangerous and can take the lives of innocent people. This is a real problem we are having in the city.”

Adams added, “A simple battery operated scooter like this, people are leaving in their homes, they’re leaving in their place of businesses, they’re leaving in their restaurants, they leave it parked for the most part in places that really they should not be parked in.”

“The video is chilling, when you see how fast this fire started and spread, it’s just really going to give you a point of pause,” Adams said. He advised the public to only use legal lithium-ion batteries and to not place lithium-ion battery devices inside the home.

Fire officials said the blaze has been mostly extinguished but “pockets of fire” remain. Firefighters will stay on site through the night to make sure the fire doesn’t escalate.

On Friday, Kavanagh said there had been more than 400 fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in New York City in the past four years.

In an opinion piece for a local website, Kavanagh said: “These fires start quickly, grow rapidly, offer little time to escape, consume everything in their path, and are very difficult to extinguish.”

CNN’s Susannah Cullinane contributed to this report.

Let's Be Clear: Social Security Is Not Adding a Penny to US Debt

All those charts and narratives ascribing Social Security the top spender of federal monies—and, thereby, implying the prime cause of the U.S. debt—need debunking.


A woman walks into a Social Security office in Houston, Texas on July 13, 2022.
(Photo by Mark Felix for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

FREDERIC H. DECKER
Mar 05, 2023

Common Dreams

The narrative that Social Security eats up government revenue, driving the federal debt upward, is deeply entrenched in the Republican Party’s psyche. Former-Vice President Mike Pence insinuated such February during a private meeting with business leaders when promoting the age-old Republican wish to privatize Social Security. So maybe Social Security won’t be off the table, as GOP leaders earlier promised, as the current debate over the debt ceiling unfolds.

The public has favored shoring up Social Security with more taxes. But, also, concern over federal deficits has increased among both Republican-leaners and Democratic-leaners. Concern over deficits translates into concern over the debt. Consequently, debunking the myth Social Security feeds the debt seems an inherent requirement in gaining support for progressive proposals to reform Social Security. That, in addition to outlining how cutting benefits unduly inflicts harm within the aging population.

Now consider all those misleading charts. Those charts showing Social Security the top spender of federal monies surely don’t help foster favorable public opinion or keep the GOP benefit-cutting hatchet in the sheath. Nor do stories like that February 9 on PBS Newshour when a segment on Medicare and Social Security closed with this on the screen: "Almost a third of federal spending this fiscal year is expected to go toward Medicare and Social Security." PBS Newshour (which I support and watch regularly) is not alone, of course; the spending attributed to Social Security and other social programs is a recurrent theme during this debt-ceiling news cycle. Even the Treasury Department on one website has, at the time of this writing, a bar chart with Social Security the top bar consuming 19 percent of all spending.

Busting the debt myth can start with a report from the Government Accountability Office where stated how for years the Social Security program “built up reserves” from revenue collected that “were invested in federal government securities, reducing the amount that must be borrowed from the public,” including from other countries, to cover federal deficits. (By law surplus funds in Social Security have to be invested in government securities.)

Surpluses were possible, of course, given Social Security is largely funded by its separate payroll tax. Not totally by general revenue as likely some surmise, or haven’t considered questioning, from those typical charts on federal spending.

And, relatedly, not enough is made of this fact: Today, Social Security (formally, the “Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance [OASI] Trust Fund”) actually owns more U.S. debt, $2.7 trillion in Treasury securities, than the top two foreign governments, Japan with securities valuing $1.1 trillion and China with under $1 trillion.

It is true Social Security’s dedicated revenue in 2021 was not alone sufficient to cover benefits paid, as detailed in a recent report by the Social Security Board of Trustees. Although, it was sufficient in the preceding year with additional securities purchased then. But in 2021, the government had to reconcile payment for OASI-owned federal securities cashed in to cover that year’s shortfall. Put differently, installment payments on the loan from Social Security came due. This, admittedly, entailed some additional spending of general revenue. But not in sums making the program a major debt maker, particularly not relative to the deficit amounts caused by tax cuts during the Trump administration.

As outlined in the Trustees’ report (Table II.B1, page 7), $838.2 billion from Social Security’s separate payroll tax covered 84 percent of the $1,001.9 billion in operational costs during 2021. The other revenue sources were the routine interest paid on securities owned, the income tax on Social Security benefits, and $59.1 billion collected from the liquidation of some securities—a liquidation representing a small percent of the 2021 deficit. Granted, the deficit grew in 2021 to nearly $3,000 billion partly from Covid spending, but even if using for illustrative purposes the 2019 deficit amount of around $1,000 billion, the $59.1 billion would only have represented 6 percent of that deficit.

Shortfalls are now predicted to happen regularly each year whereby reserves (that is, owned securities) in the OASI trust likely will be depleted by 2034 if no reforms. Then only an estimated 77 percent of benefits due would be payable. But annual payments on securities cashed in isn’t á priori a dominant driver of deficits and debt, as the preceding paragraph reveals.

Aside from erroneously blaming Social Security for deficits swelling the debt, there is also a related and persistent argument that cutting benefits via raising the retirement age to 70 is necessary to control expenditures given the increasing life expectancy over the decades. But issues around life expectancy, ironically, actually contribute to disproportionate harm incurred by raising the retirement age again. Yes again, since a 1983 law increased the age from 65 to eventually 67.

Research has shown those of lesser means have experienced smaller improvements in mortality over the years. Conceivably, as life expectancy declined during the Covid-19 pandemic, this discrepancy was magnified. In any case, what is known according to the Congressional Research Service is raising the retirement age to reduce costs “would [because of their lower overall life expectancy] affect low earners disproportionately (i.e., reductions in their lifetime Social Security benefits would be considerably larger than for high earners).” By the way, privatization of Social Security would also disproportionately harm the well-being in retirement years of those with lesser means.

Research by the Social Security Administration also revealed that a sizable portion of those retiring before the full retirement age had health problems impairing the ability to work. And these early retirees more likely worked in physically demanding blue-collar occupations. This and other studies led the Congressional Research Service to observe that “early retirees who have work-related health impairment…would be disadvantaged” by an increased retirement age, which worth noting they also were by the earlier increase legislated in 1983.

Cutting benefits, in general, subverts the intended purpose of Social Security. And justification for cutting benefits is partly based upon the faulty claim Social Security continually increases the debt, ignoring most expenditures on the program do not entail general revenue. If only charts on federal spending demarcated expenditures on programs by revenue type. The one on general revenue only would show a percentage attributed to Social Security considerably less than advertised in the all-inclusive charts today.Essentially, the Social Security program has not contributed in any markedly way to the totality of deficits and associated debt. Rather, paradoxically, the program has historically loaned the government monies to cover the debt and, thereby, help pay for other federal programs. So, don’t blame Social Security for the sum of existing debt today accumulated over the years.

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

FREDERIC H. DECKER is a Maryland-based sociologist and, today, an active writer with commentary appearing across local newspapers nationally. He earned his Ph.D. at Florida State University.

RIGHT WING HAIR ON FIRE

‘I Understand Your Passion’: Painfully Awkward Moment Ensues After MSNBC Guest Calls CPAC a ‘Gathering of Sexual Predators’

By Caleb HoweMar 5th, 2023, MEDIAITE

Lindy Li, a DNC national finance committee member, had MSNBC anchor Yasmin Vossoughian momentarily nonplussed on Saturday’s Yasmin Vossoughian Reports when she described CPAC as a “gathering of sexual predators” and Donald Trump as a “serial rapist.”

In the segment, Vossoughian spoke with Li and MSNBC political analyst Susan Del Percio about CPAC, 2024 GOP hopefuls, and what “woke” means.

After attacking Nikki Haley as “cringeworthy” and a “total sell-out,” Li responded to the discussion about how “woke” is being defined.

“Let’s be clear what anti-woke means. It’s anti-Black,” she said. “And I think people are very reluctant to say it, but I don’t mince any words, and that’s the truth. That’s their way of, you know, sounding the dog whistle without being extremely explicit.”

Li then gave her summary of the annual event put on by the ACU.

“Let’s also not ignore the fact that CPAC has become a gathering of sexual predators. Let’s be honest,” Li said. She went on to bring up accusations against organizer Matt Schlapp and Rep. Jim Jordan, and the investigation into Matt Gaetz. She called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene an “adulteress” and said Rep. Lauren Boebert “brags about carrying a Glock.”

Speaking about Saturday’s keynote at CPAC, Li said “and then tonight, we have Trump, a serial rapist.”

“This is the party that claims to be the party of Christian family values, And I had nothing to say or do but laugh at that,” she concluded.

About four and a half seconds of awkward silence then preceded some stammering by Vossoughian before she tried to offer a walk-back on the characterizations.

“I, I just — I just want to be clear here, though, you know, that – it’s important to put out there, we, we understand the accusations that have been made against, of course, the former president, Lindy. And of course, I understand your passion in this topic as well. But I want to be clear, of course, that that — none of that has actually rung true as of yet. Just, they’ve all been accusations so far,” Vossoughian managed to say before thanking her guests and ending the segment.

Del Percio, a former advisor to Democrat Andrew Cuomo, did not comment.

The show’s Twitter account did highlight Lindy Li’s appearance on Saturday, but for whatever reason chose a different clip to highlight.

6 scholars explain what a real climate solution is

 2 SLIDES
Researchers say protecting mangroves that soak up carbon is a great climate solution. But they caution against programs that slap carbon offsets onto it as those offsets can be hard to verify.

CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES


BY
Julia Simon
MAR 05, 2023 NPR

Scientists say there's a lot we can still do to slow the speed of climate change. But when it comes to "climate solutions", some are real, and some aren't, says Naomi Oreskes, historian of science at Harvard University. "This space has become really muddied," she says.

So how does someone figure out what's legit? We asked six climate scholars for the questions they ask themselves whenever they come across something claiming to be a climate solution.

A big climate solution is an obvious one

It may sound basic, but one big way to address climate change is to reduce the main human activity that caused it in the first place: burning fossil fuels.

Scientists say that means ultimately transitioning away from oil, coal and gas and becoming more energy efficient. We already have a lot of the technology we need to make this transition, like solar, wind, and batteries, Oreskes says.


"What we need to do right now is to mobilize the technologies that already exist, that work and are cost competitive, and that essentially means renewable energy and storage," she says.

Think about who's selling you the solution

It's important to think about both who's selling you the climate solution and what they say the problem is, says Melissa Aronczyk, professor of media at Rutgers University.

"People like to come up with solutions, but to do that, they usually have to interpret the problem in a way that works for them," she says.

Oreskes says pay attention when you see a "climate solution" that means increasing the use of fossil fuels. She says an example is natural gas, which has been sold as a "bridge fuel" from coal to renewable energy. But natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and its production, transport and use release methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.

"I think we need to start by looking at what happens when the fossil fuel industry comes up with solutions, because here is the greatest potential for conflict of interest," Aronczyk says.

A solution may sound promising, but is it available and scalable now?

Sometimes you'll hear about new promising technology like carbon capture, which vacuums carbon dioxide out of the air and stores it underground, says David Ho, a professor of oceanography at University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Ho researches climate solutions and he says ask yourself: is this technology available, affordable, or scalable now?

"I think people who don't work in this space think we have all these technologies that are ready to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, for instance. And we're not there," Ho says

If it's adding emissions, it's not a climate solution

These days all kinds of companies, from airlines to wedding dress companies, might offer to let you buy "carbon offsets" along with your purchase. That offset money could do something like build a new wind farm or plant trees that would - in theory - soak up and store the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions of taking a flight or making a new dress.

But there are often problems with regulation and verification of offsets, says Roberto Schaeffer, a professor of energy economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. "It's very dangerous, very dangerous indeed," he says.

He says with offsets from forests, it's hard to verify if the trees are really being protected, that those trees won't get cut down or burned in a wildfire.

"You cannot guarantee, 'Okay, you're gonna offset your dress by planting a tree.' You have no guarantee that in three years time that tree is gonna be there," he says.

If you make emissions thinking you're offsetting them, and the offset doesn't work, that's doubling the emissions, says Adrienne Buller, a climate finance researcher and director of research at Common Wealth, a think tank in the United Kingdom, "It's sort of like doubly bad."

If a solution sounds too easy, be skeptical

Many things sold as carbon offsets - like restoring or protecting forests - are, on their own, great climate solutions, Buller says. "We need things like trees," she says, "To draw carbon out of the atmosphere."

The problem is when carbon markets sell the idea that you can continue emitting as usual and everything will be fine if you just buy an offset, Buller says. "It's kind of a solution that implies that we don't have to do that much hard work. We can just kind of do some minor tweaks to the way that we currently do things," she says.

Schaeffer says there is a lot of hard work in our future to get off of fossil fuels and onto clean energy sources. "So people have to realize there is a price to pay here. No free lunch."

It's not all about business. Governments must play a role in solutions, too

We often think of businesses working on climate solutions on their own, but that's often not the case, says Oreskes. Government often plays a big role in funding and research support for new climate technology, says June Sekera, a visiting scholar at The New School who studies public policy and climate.

And governments will also have to play a big role in regulating emissions, says Schaeffer, who has been working with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for 25 years.

That's why all the scholars NPR spoke with for this story say one big climate solution is to vote.

Schaeffer points to the recent election in Brazil, where climate change was a big campaign issue for candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula won, and has promised to address deforestation, a big source of Brazil's emissions.

There's no one solution to climate change - and no one can do it alone

Aronczyk wants to make one thing clear: there is no one solution to climate change.

"We're human beings. We encounter a problem, we wanna solve that problem," Aronczyk says, "But just as there is no one way to describe climate change, there's no one way to offer a solution."

Climate solutions will take different forms, Sekera says. Some solutions may slow climate change, some may offer us ways to adapt.

The key thing, Aronczyk says, is that climate solutions will involve governments, businesses, and individuals. She says: "It is an all hands on deck kind of a situation."

 [Copyright 2023 NPR]