Tuesday, May 21, 2024

The last time oligarchs tried to take over America it led to civil war

Thom Hartmann
May 19, 2024 6:17AM ET

A man hiding money in his suit (Shutterstock.com)

The headline in this week’s Fortune reads:“Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warns U.S. is ‘on the brink’ and estimates a more than 1 in 3 chance of civil war”

Billionaires and civil war? A billionaire-funded Supreme Court Justice flew the American flag upside down outside his house after January 6th in apparent support of Donald Trump‘s attempt to overthrow our government.

READ: How the Big Lie is meant to finish off America

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Americans for Tax Fairness reports that 50 billionaire families have, at this early stage, already injected almost a billion dollars into our political system — the overwhelming majority of it going to Republicans and in support of Donald Trump — in an effort to maintain enough control of our political system that their taxes won’t go up. And that total is just what’s reported: it doesn’t count the billions in unknowable dark money that’s sloshing around the system thanks to Citizens United.

Back in the day, the late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis warned us:

“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

The number one movie in America last month was Civil War. Rightwing militias are on the march. More than half of Republicans say they are “expecting” a civil war.

How did we get here? And what does oligarchy have to do with civil war?

The clear result of five corrupt Republicans on the 1978 and 2010 Supreme Courts legalizing political bribery of politicians (and Supreme Court justices) by both corporations and the morbidly rich is that America is now well past the halfway mark of a fatal-to-democracy slide into oligarchy and the strongman autocracy typically associated with it. And the conflict that can follow that.

You can see the consequence in any contemporary survey. The majority of people want things — gun control, a strengthened social safety net, a cleaner and safer environment, quality, free education, higher taxes on the rich — that Congress refuses to do anything about because it is in thrall to great wealth.

As President Jimmy Carter told me eight years ago:

“It [Citizens United] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. … So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”

For example, just last week, Donald Trump solicited a $1 billion bribe from a group of fossil fuel executives in exchange for undoing all of President Biden’s climate regulations.

In a testament to how today’s form of transactional oligarchy has become normalized in America, the only national news organization that reported this shocking story was MSNBC; every other news outlet thought it was entirely normal for an American politician to have their hand out in exchange for legislative or policy changes. As Media Matters reported this week:

“CNN, Fox News Channel; ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press” all completely ignored the story.


What we are watching is the final stage of the 40-year neoliberal transition of our nation from a forward-looking and still-evolving democratic republic into a white supremacist ethnostate ruled by a small group of fascist oligarchs.

Some years ago, Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore (before he was Trump’s advisor) was a guest on my radio/TV program. I asked him, “Which is more important, democracy or capitalism?“

Without hesitation, Moore answered, “Capitalism.” He went on to imply this was how the Founders wanted things. After all, as George Orwell said:


“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

That philosophy and a phony American history have held the Republican Party in its thrall for the past 40+ years and have brought America to this moment of great crisis and danger.

It has transformed America from a democracy into a late-stage oligarchy, and the point of no return is now visible. Which presents a true crisis for America, because oligarchy is almost always merely a transitional phase in the evolution to full-blown tyranny and/or fascism, and often civil war.


Oligarchies are inherently unstable forms of government because they transfer resources and power from working people to the oligarchs. Average people, seeing that they’re constantly falling behind and can’t do anything about it, first become cynical and disengage, and, when things get bad enough, they try to revolt.

That “revolution” can either lead to the oligarchy failing and the nation flipping back to democracy, as happened here in the 1860s and the 1930s, or it can flip into full-blown strong-man tyranny, as happened recently in Hungary, Turkey, and Russia, and nearly happened here on January 6th.

Oligarchies usually become police states, where any average person who dares seriously challenge the ruling oligarchs is squashed like a bug either legally or financially; the oligarchs themselves are immune from prosecution and get to keep their billions regardless of how many people’s lives are ruined or die because of their crimes.


Oligarchic governments almost always do a few predictable things, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy:

— They change monopoly laws and regulations so their rich buddies can take control of most of the nation’s businesses and media.

— They stack the courts and regulatory agencies with oligarch-friendly ideologues or outright corrupt toadies, while eliminating regulatory protections for average citizens.


— They cut taxes on the rich and drive wages low on working people while criminalizing and cracking down on dissent, particularly if it involves any sort of direct action or property damage.

— They distract voters from their own looting by demonizing minorities and encouraging racism, religious/gender conflict, and regionalism.

— They reinvent history to argue that the country was “always an oligarchy and that’s the way the nation’s founders wanted it. It’s what works best.”


— They actively suppress the vote among people inclined to oppose them (typically minorities and the young), or outright rig the vote to insure their own victory.

— And they transform their nations into police states, heavily criminalizing demonstrations, nonviolent resistance, or “direct action” while radicalizing and encouraging rightwing vigilante “militias” to put down the inevitable pro-democracy rebellions as people realize what’s happening.

To the end of cementing their own oligarchy here, the billionaires who own the GOP are now actively promoting the same sort of revisionist history the Confederacy did, claiming that the Founders were all rich guys who hated taxes, wanted rich men to rule America, and wrote the Constitution to make that happen. It was a story popular in the South leading up to the Civil War, now part of the “Lost Cause” mythology.

To that end, they’re purging our schools and colleges of books and history courses; professors and teachers who don’t toe their line that America was designed from its founding to be an oligarchy are being fired as you read these words. In this, they’re promoting — for their own benefit — a dangerous lie.

A lie that rationalizes oligarchy.

While there were some in America among the Founders and Framers who had amassed great land holdings and what was perceived then as a patrician lifestyle, Pulitzer Prize winning author Bernard Bailyn suggests in his brilliant 2003 book To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders that they couldn’t hold a candle, in terms of wealth, to the true aristocrats of England.

With page after page of photographs and old paintings of the homes of the Founders and Framers, Bailyn shows that none of those who created this nation were rich by European standards. After an artful and thoughtful comparison of American and British estates, Bailyn concludes bluntly:

“There is no possible correspondence, no remote connection, between these provincial dwellings and the magnificent showplaces of the English nobility...”

Showing and describing to his readers the mansions of the families of power in 18th century Europe, Bailyn writes:

“There is nothing in the American World to compare with this.”

While the Founders and Framers had achieved a level of literacy, creativity, and a depth of thinking that rivaled that of any European states or eras, nonetheless, Bailyn notes:

“The Founders were provincials, alive to the values of a greater world, but not, they knew, of it – comfortable in a lesser world but aware of its limitations.”

As Kevin Phillips describes in his masterpiece book Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich:

“George Washington, one of the richest Americans, was no more than a wealthy squire in British terms.”

Phillips documents that it wasn’t until the 1790’s — a generation after the War of Independence — that the first American accumulated a fortune that would be worth one million of today’s dollars. The Founders and Framers were, at best, what today would be called the upper-middle-class in terms of lifestyle, assets, and disposable income.

In 1958, one of America’s great professors of history, Forrest McDonald, published an extraordinary book debunking Charles Beard’s 1913 hypothesis that the Constitution was created exclusively of, by, and for rich white men. McDonald’s book, titled We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution, bluntly states:

“Economic interpretation of the Constitution does not work.”

Over the course of more than 400 meticulously researched pages, McDonald goes back to original historical records and reveals who was promoting and who was opposing the new Constitution, and why. So far as I can tell, he is the first and only historian to do this type of original-source research, and his conclusions are startling.

McDonald notes that a quarter of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had voted in their own state legislatures for laws that would have helped debtors and the poor and thus harmed the interests of the rich.

“These [debt relief laws] were the very kinds of laws which, according to Beard’s hypothesis, the delegates had convened to prevent,” says McDonald. He adds: “Another fourth of the delegates had important economic interests that were adversely affected, directly and immediately, by the Constitution they helped write.”

While Beard theorizes that the Framers were largely drawn from the class of wealthy bankers and businessmen, McDonald shows that wasn’t true at all:

“The most common and by far the most important property holdings of the delegates were not, as Beard has asserted, mercantile, manufacturing, and public security investments, but agricultural property.”

Most were farmers or plantation owners and, as noted earlier, owning a lot of land did not always make one rich in those days, particularly compared to the bankers and mercantilists of New York and Boston.

“Finally,” McDonald concludes, “it is abundantly evident that the delegates, once inside the convention, behaved as anything but a consolidated economic group.”

After dissecting the means and motivations of the Framers who wrote the Constitution, McDonald goes into an exhaustive and detailed state-by-state analysis of the constitutional ratifying conventions that finally brought the U.S. Constitution into law.

For example, in the state of Delaware, which voted for ratification:

“[A]lmost 77 percent of the delegates were farmers, more than two-thirds of them small farmers with incomes ranging from 75 cents to $5.00 a week. Slightly more than 23 percent of the delegates were professional men – doctors, judges, and lawyers. None of the delegates was a merchant, manufacturer, banker, or speculator in western lands.”

In other states, similar numbers showed up. Of the New Jersey delegates supporting ratification, 64.1 percent were small farmers. In Maryland, “the opponents of ratification included from three to six times as large a proportion of merchants, lawyers, and investors in shipping, confiscated estates, and manufacturing as did the [poorer] delegates who favored ratification.”

In South Carolina it was those in economic distress who carried the day: “No fewer than 82 percent of the debtors and borrowers of paper money in the convention voted for ratification.” In New Hampshire, “of the known farmers in the convention 68.7 percent favored ratification.”

But did farmers support the Constitution because they were slave owners or the wealthiest of the landowners, as Charles Beard had guessed back in 1913?

McDonald shows that this certainly wasn’t the case in northern states like New Hampshire or New Jersey, which were not slave states.

But what about Virginia and North Carolina, the two largest slave-holding states, asks McDonald rhetorically. Were their plantation owners favoring the Constitution because it protected their economic and slave-holding interests?

“The opposite is true,” writes McDonald. “In both states the wealthy planters – those with personality interests [enslaved people] as well as those without personality interests – were divided approximately equally on the issue of ratification. In North Carolina small farmers and debtors were likewise equally divided, and in Virginia the great mass of the small farmers and a large majority of the debtors favored ratification.”

After dissecting the results of the ratification votes state by state — the first author in history to do so, as far as I can determine — McDonald sums up:

“Beard’s thesis — that the line of cleavage as regards the Constitution was between substantial personality interests [wealth and slave ownership] on the one hand and small farming and debtor interests on the other — is entirely incompatible with the facts.”

Here we find the explanation for James Madison sealing his notes on the Constitutional Convention until every man who participated was dead (they were finally published more than 50 years later in 1840). He and many others at the convention were essentially betraying their own economic class in favor of democracy. Something today’s wealthy Americans apparently can’t imagine doing.

No matter how hard Republicans try to reinvent the Founders and Framers of this nation in the image of their libertarian billionaire patrons, and no matter how imperfect and even brutal their time was, the simple reality is that in 1770’s America this nation’s Founders undertook American history’s first truly great progressive experiment.

And they all put their lives on the line to do it: when they signed their names on the Declaration, a death warrant was issued against each one of them by the largest and most powerful empire in the world.

And then, four generations later, we backslid.

The only other time in American history when an entire region of America was converted from a democracy into an oligarchy was the 1830-1860 era in the South. It’s why Republicans are so fond of the Confederate flag and Civil War memorial monuments.

The invention of the Cotton Gin made a few hundred families of southern planters richer than Midas; they seized political control of the region and then destroyed democracy in those states. Even white men who dared stand up to them were imprisoned or lynched, ballot boxes were stuffed, and social mobility came to a standstill.

By the 1840s, the South had become a full-blown police state, much like Trump and his acolytes would like America to become in the near future.

Offended and worried by the democratic example of the Northern states, the Confederacy declared war on the United States itself with the goal of ending democracy in America altogether. Almost 700,000 people died defending our form of government.

And now, for a second time in American history, we’re confronted with a near-complete takeover of about half of our nation by America’s oligarchs.

And with it has come not just the threat of political violence, but the reality, from the death of Heather Heyer to the George Floyd protests to January 6th and the assault on Paul Pelosi.

All driven by oligarchs determined to pit us against each other so we won’t recognize how they’re robbing us blind.

Unless and until our tax laws are changed and the Supreme Court’s legalization of political bribery is reversed, we’ll continue this disintegrative slide into fascism and the danger of domestic armed conflict.

This fall we’ll have the opportunity to elect politicians who actively oppose oligarchy and fascism while embracing the true spirit of American egalitarianism.

President Biden is the first president in 80 years to consequentially raise taxes on both rich people and corporations. That political bravery has brought him powerful enemies: this fall’s election will be hard fought.

Make sure everybody you know is registered to vote, and if you live in a Republican-controlled state double-check your voter registration every month at vote.org.

America’s future — and the integrity of our history — depend on it.

NOW READ: The Supreme Court's wealth-driven corruption crisis

THE NEW KNOW NOTHINGS

Republican calls for economic ‘shut down’ while accusing Biden of Marxist agenda


David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
May 21, 2024

Victoria Spartz (Photo via AFP)

U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) is calling on Congress to "shut down" the U.S. economy over the southern border, while accusing President Joe Biden of Marxist policies and denouncing his border legislation that Donald Trump ordered killed months ago.

Congresswoman Spartz on Tuesday spoke to Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo in a rambling interview on the Senate bipartisan border bill that Donald Trump ordered killed. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is one again trying to pass it.

Rep. Spartz said, "we need to get them back, you know, to really put pressure to control the border. So I just don't see anything else left there because no one wants to shut down the economy, unfortunately. We should really for such a serious issue, but Republicans are not gonna do it. And, and you know, and we're not just going to let Democrats have messagings bill with lots of loopholes. There are way more loopholes in that bill than people even realized."

The economy is a top issue for 2024 presidential election voters.

READ MORE: ‘Not an Accident’: Trump’s ‘Unified Reich’ Video Alarms Historians and Fascism Experts

After calling to shut down the economy, which economists for months have shown is doing extremely well, she then falsely accused President Joe Biden of socialism and enacting "socialist policies by Karl Marx."

"I think we need to have a serious discussion what really Bidenomics is and how it resembles socialist policies by Karl Marx where it's not just, you know, Biden administration had failed policy in a lot of fronts with its supply chain, whether we're dealing with energy, but also they've been subsidizing corporations very close to the government in trying to control financial markets, in order in essence control the means of production and financial markets. That's what socialism really is."

The Biden administration fixed the supply chain crisis created during the Trump administration, improved the supply chain, and continues to massively invest in it.

"And now they are trying to use you know, the government power to pick losers and winners and you know, this, winners are going to be people who can pay, give campaign contribution to Biden's reelection campaign, and losers are going to be all of us. And this is a serious discussion we need to have because this level of spending and subsidy cannot continue, it's destructive and inflation is going to destroy the middle class and people low income."

Donald Trump recently asked top oil and gas executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign in exchange for lower taxes and a rollback of President Biden's climate and environmental protections

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Mar-a-Lago hires 136 new foreign workers as Trump seeks immigration crackdown

Travis Gettys
May 21, 2024 

Mar-a-Lago hired more than 100 foreign workers last year as Donald Trump promises to restrict immigration and round up undocumented migrants for deportation.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee's businesses have long relied on foreign workers, and last year Mar-a-Lago asked the Department of Labor for authorization to hire a total of 136 foreign workers for seasonal work, and all but one request was accepted, reported Newsweek.

The Labor Department showed requests for 53 waiters and waitresses, seven hotel desk clerks, 17 housekeeping cleaners, five first-line supervisors of food preparation and serving workers, 24 cooks and five bartenders.

These workers were requested on F-2B visas that apply to workers in nonagricultural positions and require employers to show there aren't enough American workers who are willing and able to do that temporary work, and they must also prove the workers won't adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similar U.S. employees.

The number of foreign workers increased at Trump-owned businesses last year, according to Forbes, which reported that the former president's businesses hired 170 foreign workers in 2023 and at least 1,670 temporary foreign workers since 2008.

The former president's administration limited some employment-based visas in June 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the H-2B visas enjoyed by Mar-a-Lago.

Trump's biggest campaign promise would cause 'economic disaster': analysis

Travis Gettys
May 21, 2024 

Donald Trump's promised crackdown on immigration could inflict mass misery and economic calamity, according to a new analysis.

The former president's radical plans for a potential second term in office include barring entry from select Muslim-majority nations, denying all asylum claims and rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants for deportation, and economic analyst Robert Shapiro warned in a new Washington Monthly column that these policies would set off an "economic disaster."

"By any measure, a policy that eliminated 4.5 percent of the current workforce, including large numbers of college and high school graduates, would set off serious economic tremors," Shapiro wrote.

"Using Okun’s Law on the relationship between rising unemployment and GDP, a 4.5 percent drop in employment is associated with depressing GDP growth by more than 9 percentage points. This estimate also includes the impact on other jobs. A recent study of much more modest programs to deport immigrants found clear evidence that they cost other American jobs. By one calculation, deporting 1 million immigrants would lead to 88,000 additional employment losses by other Americans, suggesting that Trump’s program could cost up to 968,000 Americans their jobs on top of the 7.1 million jobs held by immigrants up for deportation."

Contrary to popular misconception, only 4 percent of undocumented immigrants work in agriculture, while nearly a third of them work in the construction or hospitality industries and 14 percent of working unauthorized immigrants provide professional, scientific, technical or administrative services.

"Doing the math, we find that a mass deportation program could depress national wage and salary income by $317.2 billion or 2.7 percent of labor income in 2023," Shapiro wrote. "This would be a much larger percentage loss than during the 1980, 1991, and 2002 recessions. It also would be more than half the 5 percent decline in 2009 at the height of the Great Recession. By these measures, too, a severe recession would likely accompany Trump’s draconian program."

Mass deportation could potentially revive inflation, which happened when companies had to replace large numbers of workers after COVID-19 crested, and businesses would either have to pay more in overtime and recruitment or accept lower productivity, which all leads to higher prices for consumers.

"Mass deportations would involve enormous costs for taxpayers," Shapiro wrote. "One study found that apprehending, detaining, transporting, processing, and finally deporting unauthorized immigrants in 2015 cost the government an average of $18,214 per deportee or $24,094 in current dollars. Using the latest DHS estimates, the taxpayer costs to deport 11 million people would come to $265 billion—without including their American children or the costs to build and maintain large detention camps. For perspective, $265 billion is equivalent to 11 percent of all projected income tax revenues in 2024 and 30 percent of the Pentagon’s 2024 budget."

"Now, Trump seems determined to set new records for deportations," he added, "regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the economy."

Trump set to attend Big Oil fundraiser following quid pro quo offer



Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump will reportedly attend a fundraising luncheon organized by leading oil and gas executives in Houston on Wednesday, following a controversial offer he made to the industry to roll back environmental regulations in return for $1 billion in campaign donations—with two companies associated with both events.

At his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, Trump told a group of roughly two dozen oil and gas executives that $1 billion would be a "deal" for them, given how much money they would make in reduced taxes and regulations if he is elected, TheWashington Post first reported.

Top executives at Continental Resources and Occidental Petroleum, two of the companies with representatives reportedly present when the offer was made, are among the organizers of Wednesday's luncheon, according to The New York Times. Harold Hamm, the executive chairman and founder of Continental Resources and one of the luncheon's organizers, has been a longtime supporter of Trump; he spoke at the 2016 Republican convention.

Trump's campaign has raised about $7.3 million from the oil and gas industry in the 2024 election cycle, most of it since January, while President Joe Biden has taken in just $186,000, according to OpenSecrets data reported by the Times. These figures don't include money given to super PACs.

The industry has grown less supportive of Biden since his administration paused liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits to certain countries in January, a move that was hailed by environmental campaigners.

"This LNG pause is a huge deal for climate and environmental justice," Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), told the Times this week.

"Big Oil gave $6.4 million to Trump's 2024 campaign in just the first three months of 2024 alone," LCV said on social media Monday. "Make no mistake: Trump and his Big Oil friends are an existential threat to our communities, planet, and future."

The pause could affect the monumental profits of the oil and gas industry. Following the fracking boom of the last two decades, the U.S. has become the world's leading exporter of LNG. Qatar, the second-largest exporter, announced plans to increase production following the U.S. pause.

During the Trump presidency, LNG exports boomed and the tax cuts that he signed disproportionately benefited the industry. Trump presumably sought to capitalize on this history in making the quid pro quo offer, which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) characterized as a case of "open corruption."

The quid pro quo offer was underreported by cable news, according to an analysis by Media Matters for America, but has been the subject of a congressional probe. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, sent letters to eight oil and gas firms reportedly present for the Mar-a-Lago offer and the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby group, requesting information about their financial arrangements with Trump. He expressed concern that they may have "accepted or facilitated Mr. Trump's explicit corrupt bargain."


The oil and gas industry stands to make $110 billion from tax breaks alone if Trump is elected, according to an analysis by Friends of the Earth Action released last week.

While Trump's quid pro quo offer was direct and nakedly transactional in a way that may be new, his party has long-standing oil industry ties.

"Maybe some of these Big Oil CEOs preferred a different candidate in the primary, but it was clear that they were always going to support the Republican nominee," LCV's Sittenfield said. "They are all about continuing to pad their already enormous profits at the expense of our climate."


Inside Donald Trump’s billion-dollar Big Oil heist
Sabrina Haake
May 19, 2024 

Then-President Donald Trump speaks to city officials and employees of Double Eagle Energy on the site of an active oil rig on July 29, 2020 in Midland, Texas. 
(Photo by Montinique Monroe/Getty Images


As soon as fossil-fuel financed Donald Trump was sworn into office, he got busy destroying the nation’s climate progress.

In June 2017, Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, shamefully walking away from a global commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — the only signatory country to do so.

Among Trump’s other early steps to halt climate progress: Scott Pruitt, his Environmental Protection Agency director, scrubbed climate science information off the agency’s website. Pruitt, who resigned under an unethical cloud of scandal the following year, “cleansed” (read: removed) federal data about fossil fuels and carbon emissions from web pages that had been educating the public since the late 1990s.

Going into the 2024 election, Trump is warring with climate science again. Even as global temperatures hover at a precarious tipping point endangering habitability, Trump has solicited a billion-dollar contribution from fossil fuel execs in exchange for letting the planet burn baby burn.

Trump’s lowly $1 billion price tag

At a shockingly under-reported event in April, the presumptive Republican nominee invited fossil fuel representatives to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago where he served up a foul tasting entrée of quid pro quo.

More than 20 oil executives from Chevron, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum and other fossil fuel concerns attended.

Over a steak dinner, Trump offered attendees $110 billion in tax breaks and said he’d reverse Biden’s environmental protections. Trump also pledged to scrap President Joe Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy and other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry, including legal barriers to drilling and the Biden administration’s rules designed to cut car pollution.

The catch: the oil barons must agree to donate a billion dollars to Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump said it was a good “deal.” Ponying up $1 billion to get Trump re-elected would be advantageous for Big Oil, he promised, because the value of the tax and regulation cuts he’d give them in return would far exceed that amount, including new offshore drilling and speedier permits.

Forbes reported that during an Arizona campaign rally in 2020, Trump similarly suggested that he could offer ExxonMobil permits in exchange for a $25 million campaign contribution. Appalling and galling though it was, last month’s Mar-a-Lago Big Oil fete wasn’t the first time Trump’s open corruption jeopardized a livable planet.

Dr. Evil would have been proud.

Trump advances Big Oil’s disinformation campaign


Climate disinformation from the fossil fuel lobby is legion, and it has gone on for decades.

American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers has undertaken an extremely well-financed campaign against Biden’s EPA tailpipe rules, misleading consumers and voters by calling the rules a “ban” on “gas cars.” The lobby has purchased ads in battleground states to lie to voters about Biden’s efforts to increase the manufacture of EVs, claiming that increasing EV production and adopting the charging station infrastructure to support them will restrict consumer choice.

Their disinformation efforts are obscene because their profits are obscene.

Last year, ExxonMobil and Chevron reported their biggest annual profits in a decade. Three of the largest oil and gas producers reported combined profits of $85.6 billion in 2023. ExxonMobil reported $36 billion, while Chevron reported $21.4 billion. Shell’s reported profits were down from 2022 but still reflected the second-largest profits in a decade.


Then-President Donald Trump speaks to 5,000 contractors at the Shell Chemicals Petrochemical Complex on Aug. 13, 2019, in Monaca, Pa. President Donald Trump delivered a speech on the economy, and focused on manufacturing and energy sector jobs. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the oil industry also received hundreds of billions of dollars in new financial incentives to expand carbon-reducing technologies. Given that larger fossil fuel companies have already diversified into renewables, one would think they would lead the discussion on what an appropriate energy mix looks like, instead of falsely lambasting Democrats’ transition efforts.

The rub, it’s clear, is timing and greed. They want the U.S. to rely primarily on fossil fuels for several more decades, but by then, scientists warn, the transition will be too late.
Democrats investigate

Politico reported last week that oil executives are licking their chops, eagerly drafting industry-friendly executive orders Trump would sign as soon as he returns to office.

Democrats say not so fast.

After the Washington Post reported that Trump had offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions, Democrats on the House oversight committee sent letters to nine oil executives asking about the Mar-a-Lago meeting.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote in the committee’s letter that, “Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said that “Trump’s offer of a blatant quid pro quo to oil executives is practically an invitation to ask questions about Big Oil’s political corruption and manipulation.”

The Houston Chronicle says Democrats are pearl clutching. While it is true that Democrats promise donors they will try to protect abortion access, there’s a vast moral and legal chasm between vowing to protect a fundamental human right — healthcare — and vowing to destroy a fundamental human right — breathable air.

A tale of two countries

Whether or not voters understand it, the climate contrast between Biden and Trump couldn’t be more dramatic.

Biden refers to global warming as an “existential threat” and has engaged in over 300 actions aimed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, reduce air pollution, restrict toxic chemicals and preserve public lands and waters. Biden’s administration has taken more action to combat climate change than any other administration in U.S. history. The Inflation Reduction Act led to record investment in solar, wind and increased EV sales.

Although these policies will take years to deliver climate results, by one early assessment, they have already resulted in a 3 percent cut in energy emissions.


President Joe Biden points to a wind turbine size comparison chart during a meeting about the Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership in the Roosevelt Room of the White House June 23, 2022, in Washington, D,C. The White House is partnering with 11 East coast governors to launch a new Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership to boost the offshore wind industry. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Trump, amplifying Big Oil’s decades-long disinformation campaign in exchange for money, has called climate change a “hoax.” At his New Jersey rally last week, Trump vowed to stop offshore wind “on day one.”

He has claimed without evidence that wind energy causes cancer, and that he knows “windmills very much,” because he has “studied it better than anybody I know.” Demonstrating the principles of Darwinism, Trump eliminated more than 125 environmental rules and policies during his time in office and is now promising more destruction.

In November, we will elect the president we deserve. Whether Trump or Biden is elected, both men are elderly. That means they will be gone long before the worst environmental disasters arrive.

The choice is before us. One of these candidates promises his grandchildren will eat from a golden plate. The other promises there will be something on the plate.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake, is free.
Dan Patrick shouts down journalist at trial: 'Donald Trump is not the ruling class!'

THEY WOULDN'T HAVE HIM
HE IS THE GRIFTER CLASS

David Edwards
May 21, 2024 

Real America's Voice/screen grab

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) showed up at Donald Trump's hush money trial in New York on Tuesday and shouted down a journalist who suggested the former president was part of the "ruling class."

After the prosecution and defense rested their cases, a group of Trump surrogates, including elected officials, spoke outside the courthouse.

"When a friend is in trouble, friends have his back," Patrick said. "The way he has been treated, you would see in Russia, you would see in China, you would see in North Korea, you would see in every little tin pot dictatorship across the world."

"If the courts in New York come after any of you because of something you said, because you said something the ruling class didn't like, and that's what all these other countries are about," he continued. "They want to be sure that anyone that speaks up against the ruling class disappears."

"They want to take him off the main stage because they know he is their biggest danger to take on the ruling class."

"Isn't Donald Trump part of the ruling class?" one nearby journalist asked.

Patrick quickly fired back: 'Now, no, you know what? Donald Trump is not the ruling class. Donald Trump is for every New Yorker. He's for every Texan, every, every state."

"Donald Trump has put his whole life on the line, his whole life on the line for the American people," he added.

Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka lashed out at the journalist.

"Would a member of the ruling class be facing 730 years in prison?" he asked. "What a pathetic question, 730 years in prison, and he's a member of the elite. That's pathetic. You're not a journalist."

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.




ICC’s Khan: ‘No nonsense’ lawyer under fire from all sides


AFP
May 21, 2024


Khan has shown he is unafraid to take on controversy - Copyright AFP JACK GUEZ
Richard CARTER, Julie CAPELLE

When Karim Khan was sworn in as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, he said the court should be judged by its acts — “the proof of the pudding should be in the eating.”

And by seeking arrest warrants for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Hamas figures, Khan has shown he is not afraid to take on the world’s most controversial cases.

The application followed an arrest warrant issued last year for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, which promptly slapped arrest warrants on Khan himself.

But then the 54-year-old Briton has faced down controversy throughout a career that has included stints defending Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor against allegations of war crimes in Sierra Leone.

Other high-profile clients have included Kenya’s President William Ruto in a crimes-against-humanity case at the ICC that was eventually dropped, and the son of late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Seif al-Islam.

Asked about “crossing the floor” — working as both prosecutor and defence — Khan told specialist publication OpinioJuris that it helps lawyers stay “grounded.”

It also prevents “corrosive traits such as thinking that defence counsel is the devil incarnate or that as a prosecutor you are doing ‘God’s work’,” he said.

Criticised initially for not acting fast enough to prevent atrocities in Gaza, Khan touched off a firestorm when applying for arrest warrants on Monday.

Netanyahu called it a “moral outrage of historic proportions”, fellow accused Defence Minister Yoav Gallant lashed it as “despicable.” For US President Joe Biden, it was “outrageous.”

Even before Khan’s application, senior US Republicans penned a letter threatening to bar him and his family from the United States, ending ominously “you have been warned.”

But Khan has held firm, telling CNN: “We are not going to be swayed by the different types of threats, some of which are public and some of which may be not.”

“This is not a witch hunt. This is not some kind of emotional reaction to noise… It’s a forensic process that is expected of us as international prosecutors.”



– ‘Guilty as charged’ –



Born in Scotland, Khan was educated at the private Silcoates School in northern England, before studying undergraduate law at King’s College, London.

His father was Pakistani, his mother British and he is a member of the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim sect, sometimes sprinkling his speeches with “inshallah” (God Willing).

Called to the bar in 1992, he went on to cut his teeth in international law at the former Yugoslav and Rwandan war crimes courts from 1997 to 2000.

He later represented survivors and relatives of victims of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia at its UN-backed court in the late 2000s.

His other roles have included a stint at The Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, set up to bring to justice the killers of Lebanese ex-PM Rafic Hariri in 2005.

More recently, he headed the UN special probe into Islamic State group crimes and called for trials like those at Nuremberg of Nazi leaders.

Initially absent from a list of candidates for the top ICC prosecutor job, Khan was added reportedly at the insistence of the Kenyan government.

The ICC selection panel described him as a “charismatic and articulate communicator who is well aware of his achievements.”

“I don’t think it was a compliment,” Khan quipped to OpinioJuris.

“I did apply because I thought I could do the role. If the Search Committee thought this was arrogance, then I’m guilty as charged,” he said.

In his speeches, he is forthright with a strong command of oratory, sprinkled with dashes of British humour.

“From what I’ve observed, Karim Khan seems like a no-nonsense lawyer, which I quite respect,” Melanie O’Brien, visiting professor in international law at the University of Minnesota, told AFP.

An ICC prosecutor “has to have a certain fortitude because you know that you are going to be up against people who don’t agree with you and don’t agree with the court generally,” she added.

Driving Khan appears to be a thirst to deliver justice for all, regardless of outside influence.

“It’s very dangerous to succumb to popular demand — it’s very important to follow the evidence,” he told AFP in a 2022 interview.

And the stakes, he believes, could hardly be higher.

“If we don’t apply the law equally, we’re going to disintegrate as a species,” he told CNN.

Court rules UK government anti-protest powers unlawful


By AFP
May 21, 2024

Judges ruled that the UK government acted unlawfully by amending laws for police to deal with protesters - Copyright AFP SERGEY BOBOK

The UK government acted unlawfully by changing legislation to give police tougher powers to clamp down on street protests, judges ruled on Tuesday.

Civil liberties group Liberty brought a legal challenge to the amendments, which campaigners said gave police “almost unlimited” powers to restrict protests.

The changes were pushed through when outspoken right-winger Suella Braverman was home secretary. She had repeatedly promised to crack down on protesters using so-called “guerilla tactics”.

That followed action, particularly by environmental groups such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, in which demonstrators glued or attached themselves to roads and buildings.

Liberty’s challenge centred on powers conferred by parliament to the home secretary to amend existing laws about when police could intervene during protests to prevent “serious” wider disruption.

Two judges ruled that lawmakers had not intended to lower the threshold for police action against protesters. But the amendments allowed police to target anything considered a “more than minor” disturbance.

The government only consulted law enforcement agencies before enacting the changes, the High Court ruling added.

“For the procedure to be fair and balanced, government needed at least to obtain the views of those who might be adversely affected by the proposed measures,” the judges added.

Liberty called the judgment “a victory for democracy” and said it “sets down an important marker that the government cannot just do what it wants”.

Braverman, who was sacked for comments on immigration, initially tried to give police greater powers via a parliamentary vote on a new public order act.

Lawmakers rejected those proposals, and a few months later she used secondary legislation, which allows a minister to amend an existing law, to secure the powers “through the back door”, Liberty said.

The government has indicated that it will appeal the ruling, which came as its adviser on political violence on Tuesday recommended sweeping measures to curb protests.

In a report, former Labour party MP John Woodcock proposed making organisers pay towards the policing of demonstrations and making it easier for members of the public to claim damages against activist groups that cause disruption.

He also recommended a blanket ban on face coverings at protests and buffer zones around MPs’ constituency offices so demonstrations cannot be held there.

Current Home Secretary James Cleverly said in a written statement to parliament that he would carefully consider the proposals, including “amending the threshold to prevent protests from going ahead”.

Protests have become a hot political issue in Britain with right-wing MPs regularly criticising massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak intends to put security and combating perceived extremism at the heart of his Conservative party’s general election campaign later this year.

Demise of rangelands ‘severely underestimated’: report



AFP
May 21, 2024

Rangelands like deserts, tundra and savanna are in much greater peril than previously thought - Copyright SAUDI PRESS AGENCY/AFP -
Nick Perry

From camel drivers in the Sahara to nomads on the Mongolian steppe, traditional herders the world over rely on earth’s wildest open spaces to support an ancient way of life.

But the expansive plains, tundra and savanna they inhabit are in much greater peril than previously thought, researchers said Tuesday in a major reassessment of the health of these crucial environments.

As much as half of all rangelands — encompassing some of nature’s most striking vistas from the Arctic to the tropics, deserts and mountains — are believed to be degraded, the report said.

Mostly natural grasslands used by livestock and wild animals to graze, they also include scrubland, mountain plateaus, deserts and wetlands.

Climate change, urban expansion, population growth and the conversion of land for farming was fuelling their destruction, said the report by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Rangelands were grossly undervalued and their “silent demise” had passed mostly unnoticed despite what was at stake, said UNCCD executive secretary Ibrahim Thiaw.

“We as humanity have to pay attention to this,” he told AFP.

The “persistent loss and deterioration” of rangelands would be felt beyond the pastoralist communities who have adapted to life in these environments over centuries, the report said.



– Climate ally –



Healthy rangelands are an asset in the fight against global warming, locking away carbon in soil and spurring the growth of vegetation that pulls planet-heating CO2 from the atmosphere.

Traditional farming customs — such as rotating grazing areas and conserving scarce resources in difficult times — improved soil health and its capacity to store carbon, the report’s lead author Pedro Maria Herrera Calvo told AFP.

Poor policy, neglect and large-scale rangeland mismanagement had eroded soils, releasing carbon rather than storing it, and stripped the earth of the nutrients needed to support plant and animal life.

Rangelands are biodiversity hotspots, providing habitats for Africa’s most iconic wildlife, and pasture for one billion grazing animals, the report said.

They account for one-sixth of the world’s food production, it added, and underpin many national economies.

They are also a cultural bedrock for half a billion pastoralist people in more than 100 countries, mostly poor and marginalised communities such as the Bedouin, Fulani and Saami.

A quarter of the world’s languages are spoken among pastoral groups who call these places home.

“It is part of our heritage,” said Thiaw. “Losing it would mean not only losing ecosystems and losing the economy, but losing our own culture.”



– ‘Voiceless and powerless’ –



Yet they are barely studied, said Calvo. Rosier outlooks did not reflect reality, and this reassessment by dozens of experts was long overdue, he added.

“We feel that the actual data estimating rangelands degradation around 25 percent is severely underestimated,” he said. “We think that almost 35 -– even 50 percent –- of rangelands are already degraded.”

Rangelands cover 80 million square kilometres — more than half the land surface of earth. Protecting them would require policy that better supports the pastoralists who understand them best, the report said.

Instead of having a seat at the table however, nomadic communities were “voiceless and powerless”, the report said.

Ignoring their wisdom in sustainably managing these complex environments — or, worse still, forcing them off the land — would only condemn these wild places and their custodians to an even bleaker future, Thiaw argued.

“It is important for this to be taken much more seriously.”

‘Silent demise’ of vast rangelands threatens climate, food, wellbeing of billions: UN Convention to Combat Desertification



Rangelands cover 54% of all land; as much as 50% are degraded, imperilling 1/6th of humanity’s food supply, 1/3rd of Earth’s carbon reservoir; UNCCD report points way to restore, better manage rangelands, urges protection of pastoralism




UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION (UNCCD)

Cover of the new UN CCD report 

IMAGE: 

DEGRADATION OF EARTH’S EXTENSIVE, OFTEN IMMENSE NATURAL PASTURES AND OTHER RANGELANDS DUE TO OVERUSE, MISUSE, CLIMATE CHANGE AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS POSES A SEVERE THREAT TO HUMANITY’S FOOD SUPPLY AND THE WELLBEING OR SURVIVAL OF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE, THE UN WARNS IN A STARK NEW REPORT.

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CREDIT: UNCCD




Bonn/Ulaanbaatar – Degradation of Earth’s extensive, often immense natural pastures and other rangelands due to overuse, misuse, climate change and biodiversity loss poses a severe threat to humanity’s food supply and the wellbeing or survival of billions of people, the UN warns in a stark report today.

Authors of the Global Land Outlook Thematic Report on Rangelands and Pastoralists, launched May 21 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (and available post-embargo at www.unccd.int), say up to 50% of rangelands are degraded.

Symptoms of the problem include diminished soil fertility and nutrients, erosion, salinization, alkalinization, and soil compaction inhibiting plant growth, all of which contribute to drought, precipitation fluctuations, and biodiversity loss both above and below the ground.

The problem is driven largely by converting pastures to cropland and other land use changes due to population growth and urban expansion, rapidly rising food, fibre and fuel demands, excessive grazing, abandonment (end of maintenance by pastoralists), and policies that incentivise overexploitation.

What are rangelands?

The rangelands category of Earth’s land cover consists mostly of the natural grasslands used by livestock and wild animals to graze and forage. 

They also include savannas, shrublands, wetlands, tundra and deserts.  

Altogether, these lands constitute 54% of Earth’s land cover, account for one sixth of global food production and represent nearly one third of the planet’s carbon reservoir.

“When we cut down a forest, when we see a 100-year-old tree fall, it rightly evokes an emotional response in many of us. The conversion of ancient rangelands, on the other hand, happens in ‘silence’ and generates little public reaction,” says UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw. 

“Sadly, these expansive landscapes and the pastoralists and livestock breeders who depend on them, are usually under-appreciated,” Mr. Thiaw adds. “Despite numbering an estimated half a billion individuals worldwide, pastoralist communities are frequently overlooked, lack a voice in policy-making that directly affects their livelihoods, are marginalised, and are even often seen as outsiders in their own lands.”

Mongolia Environment Minister H.E. Bat-Erdene Bat-Ulzii says: “As custodian of the largest grasslands in Eurasia, Mongolia has always been cautious in transforming rangelands. Mongolian traditions are built on the appreciation of resource limits, which defined mobility as a strategy, established shared responsibilities over the land, and set limits in consumption. We hope this report helps focus attention on rangelands and their many enormous values – cultural, environmental, and economic –  which cannot be overstated. If these rangelands cannot support these massive numbers of people, what alternatives can they turn to?”

Mongolia will host the 17th UNCCD Conference of the Parties meeting in 2026, the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP), declared by the United Nations General Assembly on Mongolia’s initiative.

Two billion people – small-scale herders, ranchers and farmers, often poor and marginalised – depend on healthy rangelands worldwide. 

Indeed, in many West African states, livestock production employs 80% of the population. In Central Asia and Mongolia 60% of the land area is used as grazing rangelands, with livestock herding supporting nearly one third of the region’s population.

Ironically, the report underlines, efforts to increase food security and productivity by converting rangelands to crop production in mostly arid regions have resulted in degraded land and lowered agricultural yields.

The report calls out “weak and ineffective governance,” “poorly implemented policies and regulations,” and “the lack of investment in rangeland communities and sustainable production models” for undermining rangelands.

An innovative approach

The new report’s 60+ expert contributors from over 40 countries agree that past estimates of degraded rangeland worldwide – roughly 25% – “significantly underestimates the actual loss of rangeland health and productivity” and could be as much as 50%. 

Rangelands are often poorly understood and a lack of reliable data undermines the sustainable management of their immense value in food provisioning and climate regulation, the report warns.

The report details an innovative conceptual approach that would enable policy-makers to stabilise, restore and manage rangelands.  

The new approach is backed by experience detailed in case studies from nearly every world region, drawing important lessons from successes and missteps of rangeland management.

A core recommendation: protect pastoralism, a mobile way of life dating back millennia centred on the pasture-based production of sheep, goats, cattle, horses, camels, yaks, llamas or other domesticated herbivores, along with semi-domesticated species such as bison and reindeer.  

Says Mr. Thiaw: “From the tropics to the Arctic, pastoralism is a desirable default and often the most sustainable option that should be incorporated into rangeland use planning.”

The economic engine of many countries 

Rangelands are an important economic engine in many countries and define cultures. Home to one quarter of the world’s languages, they also host numerous World Heritage Sites and have shaped the value systems, customs and identities of pastoralists for thousands of years. 

The report includes detailed analyses of individual countries and regions.

For example, livestock production accounts for 19% of Ethiopia’s GDP, and 4% of India’s. 

Brazil – with over 250 million cattle -- produces 16% of the world’s beef, valued at $7.6 billion in 2019.

In Europe, many rangelands have given way to urbanization, afforestation and renewable energy production. 

In the United States, large tracts of grassland have been converted to crops, while some Canadian grasslands have been left fragile by large-scale mining and infrastructure projects.  There are also positive developments noted, such as growing efforts in both countries to reintroduce bison – an animal of great cultural importance to indigenous peoples – to promote rangeland health and food security. 


Rangelands cover 54% of all land on Earth 

World areas most acutely affected by rangelands degradation, ranked in descending order:

Central Asia, China, Mongolia

The replacement of government management and oversight with privatization and agricultural industrialization left herders abandoned and dependent on insufficient natural resources causing widespread degradation.

The gradual restoration of traditional and community-based pastoralism is leading to critical advances in sustainable rangeland management.”

North Africa and Near East

The impact of climate change in one of the world’s driest regions is pushing pastoralists into poverty and degrading the rangelands on which they rely.

Updated traditional institutions, such as Agdals – reservoirs of fodder used to feed animals in periods of critical need and allowing for the regeneration of natural resources – and incipient supportive policies are improving the way rangelands are managed.

Sahel and West Africa

Conflict, power balance and border issues have interrupted livestock mobility leading to rangelands degradation.

Unified policies, recognition of pastoralists’ rights and cross-border agreements are reestablishing mobility for animal herders, crucial for landscape restoration. 

South America

Climatic change, deforestation linked to industrialised agriculture and extractive activities, and land use conversion are South America’s main drivers of rangeland degradation.

Multifunctionality and diversity of pastoralist systems hold the key for restoring some of the most interesting rangelands in the world, including the Pampa, the Cerrado and Caatinga savannahs, and the Puno Andean systems.

East Africa

Migration and forced displacement caused by competing uses of land (such as hunting, tourism, etc), are evicting pastoralists from their traditional lands, causing unanticipated degradation consequences.

Women-led initiatives and improved land rights are securing pastoralists’ livelihoods, protecting biodiversity, and safeguarding the ecosystem services provided by rangelands.

North America

The degradation of ancient grasslands and dry rangelands threatens the biodiversity of iconic North American ecosystems such as the tall-grass prairies or the southern deserts.

The incorporation of indigenous people to rangeland governance is a clear step to help recover these historic landscapes.

Europe

Policies favouring industrial farming over pastoralism and misguided incentives are causing rangelands and other open ecosystems to be abandoned and degraded.

Political and economic support, including legal recognition and differentiation, can turn the tide and help address critical environmental crises such as the rising frequency and intensity of wildfires and climate change.

South Africa and Australia

Afforestation, mining, and the conversion of rangelands to other uses are causing the degradation and loss of rangelands.

The co-creation of knowledge by producers and researchers, and respect for and use of traditional wisdom held by indigenous communities, open new paths for restoring and protecting rangelands. 

Paradigm shift

Halting the deterioration requires a paradigm shift in management at every level – from grassroots to global, the report concludes. 

Pedro Maria Herrera Calvo, the report’s lead author, says: “The meaningful participation of all stakeholders is key to responsible rangeland governance, which fosters collective action, improves access to land and integrates traditional knowledge and practical skills”. 

Achieving “land degradation neutrality” (Sustainable Development Goal 15.3) – balancing the amount and quality of healthy land to support ecosystem services and food security – also requires cross-border cooperation.  

Pastoralists with generations of experience in achieving life in balance with these ecosystems should help inform this process at every step, from planning to decision-making to governance, the report says.  

Solutions must be tailored to the characteristics and dynamics of rangelands, which vary widely from arid to sub-humid environments, as seen in West Africa, India or South America.

The report notes that traditional assessment methods often undervalue the real economic contribution of rangelands and pastoralism, highlighting the need for the innovative approach recommended. 

Among key recommendations: 

  • Integrated climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies with sustainable rangeland management plans to increase carbon sequestration and storage while boosting the resilience of pastoralist and rangeland communities
  • Avoid or reduce rangeland conversion and other land use changes that diminish the diversity and multifunctionality of rangelands, especially on indigenous and communal lands
  • Design and adopt rangeland conservation measures, within and outside protected areas, that support biodiversity above and below ground while boosting the health, productivity, and resilience of extensive livestock production systems
  • Adopt and support pastoralism-based strategies and practices that help mitigate harms to rangeland health, such as climate change, overgrazing, soil erosion, invasive species, drought, and wildfires
  • Promote supportive policies, full people’s participation and flexible management and governance systems to boost the services that rangelands and pastoralists provide  to the whole society.

Additional key figures

  • 80 million sq. km: Area of the world’s terrestrial surface covered by rangelands (over 54%)
  • 9.5 million sq. km: Protected rangelands worldwide (12%)
  • 67 million sq. km (45% of Earth’s terrestrial surface): Rangelands’ area devoted to livestock production systems (84% of rangelands), almost half of which are in drylands.  Livestock provide food security and generate income for the majority of the 1.2 billion people in developing countries living under the poverty threshold
  • 1 billion: animals across more than 100 countries maintained by pastoralists, supporting 200 million households while providing about 10% of world meat supply, as well as dairy, wool and leather products 
  • 33%: global biodiversity hotspots found in rangelands
  • 24%: proportion of world languages found in rangelands
  • 5,000 years ago: When pastoralism first emerged as a land-use system in sub-Saharan Africa 

REGIONAL FACTS & FIGURES

  • Over 25% and 10%: Supply of world beef and milk, respectively, provided by Latin America’s cattle industry
  • Over 25%: GDP of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad attributed to livestock production
  • Over 50%: land in the Middle East and North Africa regions deemed degraded (25% of arable land)
  • 60%: area of Central Asia and Mongolia used as grazing rangelands, with livestock herding supporting nearly one third of the region’s population
  • 40%: area of China covered by pastoral lands. (Notably, the country’s livestock population tripled between 1980 and 2010 to 441 million livestock units)
  • 308 million hectares: area of the contiguous United States covered by rangelands, 31% of the country’s total land area, with ~55% of rangelands privately owned

Comments

“Imbalance between the supply of and demand for animal forage lands leads to overgrazing, invasive species, and the increased risk of drought and wildfires – all of which accelerate desertification and land degradation trends around the world.”

“We must translate our shared aspirations into concrete actions - stopping indiscriminate conversion of rangelands into unsuitable land uses, advocating for policies that support sustainable land management, investing in research that enhances our understanding of rangelands and pastoralism, empowering pastoralist communities to preserve their sustainable practices while also gaining tools to thrive in a changing world, and supporting all stakeholders, especially pastoralists, to implement measures that effectively thwart further degradation and preserve our land, our communities, and our cultures.”

Maryam Niamir-Fuller, Co-Chair, International Support Group for the UN’s International Year for Rangelands and Pastoralists – 2026

For the sake of future generations and economic stability, we need to improve awareness of and safeguard the immense value of rangelands. Due to their dynamic nature, predicting the consequences of rangelands degradation on economics, ecology, and societies is challenging. Managers require authoritative insights into the response of rangelands to different disturbances and management approaches, including policy tools that better capture the broad social importance of rangelands.

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO and Chairperson, Global Environment Facility 

“More than half of the world’s land mass is rangeland – and yet these landscapes and the people who inhabit and manage them have been largely neglected. They are a main source of food and feed for humanity, and yet they are also the world economy’s dumping ground.  It is time to shift perspective – from ‘a rangeland problem’ to ‘a sustainable rangeland solution’.

UN International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists (IYRP) Working Group

“Pastoralists produce food in the world’s harshest environments, and pastoral production supports the livelihoods of rural populations on almost half of the world’s land. They have traditionally suffered from poor understanding, marginalization, and exclusion from dialogue. We need to bring together pastoralists and the main actors working with them to join forces and create the synergies for dialogue and pastoralist development

UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)

 

“To have any chance of meeting global biodiversity, climate and food security goals, we simply cannot afford to lose any more of our rangelands, grasslands and savannahs. Our planet suffers from their ongoing conversion, as do the pastoralists who depend on them for their livelihoods, and all those who rely on them for food, water and other vital ecosystem services. The Global Land Outlook reinforces that too little political attention or finance is invested in protecting and restoring these critical ecosystems. National and sub-national authorities must take place-based action to safeguard and improve the health and productivity of rangelands, grasslands and savannahs – to benefit people and planet.”

Joao Campari, Global Food Practice Leader, World Wildlife Fund

* * * * * 

About UNCCD

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is an international agreement on good land stewardship. It helps people, communities and countries create wealth, grow economies and secure enough food, clean water and energy by ensuring land users an enabling environment for sustainable land management. Through partnerships, the Convention’s 197 parties set up robust systems to manage drought promptly and effectively. Good land stewardship based on sound policy and science helps integrate and accelerate achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, builds resilience to climate change and prevents biodiversity loss. 

https://unccd.int 

About the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists

On the initiative of Mongolia, the United Nations General Assembly has designated 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP 2026) to enhance rangeland management and the lives of pastoralists. With this declaration, UN Member States are called upon to invest in sustainable rangeland management, to restore degraded lands, to improve market access by pastoralists, to enhance livestock extension services, and to fill knowledge gaps on rangelands and pastoralism. The IYRP 2026 will coincide with the UNCCD COP17 to be hosted by Mongolia.

https://iyrp.info