Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which brings into sharp relief the failures of the US health system, Donald Trump has decided to cut funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO)

Thursday 16 April 2020

Trump accused the WHO of being in China’s pocket and of having accepted falsified figures from Beijing, though the biggest donor to the WHO is the US, and not China, as one sometimes hears. The scale of the human tragedy we are living through deserves better than a cold war over health that will deprive the WHO of essential means to act. Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, has called Trump’s decision ‘a crime against humanity’. That said, in-depth reform of the WHO’s funding and the way programs are developed is essential. Back in 2013, Dominique Kerouedan pointed out the influence of states, laboratories and private foundations on the WHO, and how this affects treatment.

What comes after the millennium goals aren’t reached?
No development without better health

Even though the UN’s millennium development targets won’t be reached by 2015, new goals are being set, especially in health. They may not be the right ones

by Dominique Kerouedan


Back in 2000 the 193 member states of the United Nations and 23 international organisations set eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — minimum levels of progress to be achieved by 2015 in reducing poverty, hunger and inequality, and improving access to healthcare, safe drinking water and education (see Health targets).


Gro Harlem Brundtland, then director of the World Health Organisation, identified funding as a key priority and chose Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to head the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, responsible for promoting investment with a view to achieving the health goals at an early date (1).


Global funding for developing countries from public-private partnerships, especially vaccine and drug manufacturers, quadrupled between 2000 and 2007; between 2001 and 2010 it tripled, reaching $28.2bn in 2010. Most of the money came from US-based public and private funds. (The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed nearly $900m in 2012.) Global development aid rose by 61% during this time, reaching $148.4bn in 2010.









Africa is estimated to have received 56% of all funding in 2010 (2), but 2015 is fast approaching and for sub-Saharan Africa the MDGs are still far out of reach. A shortage of funds is not enough to explain this slow progress: other, less visible, factors have played an important role. Studies (3) show that the allocation of global aid is based not only on epidemiological, population or burden of disease criteria, but also on commercial interests and historic and geopolitical relationships. Those involved in drawing up new goals for after 2015 would do well to take these factors into account.
19th-century century concerns


The first international conferences on health, in the 19th century, were motivated less by a desire to prevent the spread of plague, cholera and yellow fever than by the need to minimise quarantine measures, which were impeding trade. Tensions between medicine, health, commercial interests and political power remain inherent to global public health: the problem of ensuring that the poor have access to medicines within the framework of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is a good example.


The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and its partners, assume that the strategies for combatting these three diseases are pertinent to every country and that only the money is missing. To understand this finance-led view of health issues and the limits of its effectiveness, it is necessary to return to the context in which the fund was established. In 1996 President Bill Clinton called for a strategy focused on infectious diseases, less from altruism than for reasons of national security; the US government was concerned about disease propagation, its economic consequences, delays in the development of new drugs, resistance to antibiotics, population mobility, the growth of megapolises and the weakness of health systems in poor countries.


In 1997 the Institute of Medicine, the leading scientific authority in the US, published a report that first used the expression “global health”, and said it was of vital interest to the US: “The world’s nations — the United States included — now have too much in common to consider health as merely a national issue. Instead, a new concept of global health is required to deal with health problems that transcend national boundaries, that may be influenced by circumstances or experiences in other countries, and that are best addressed by cooperative actions and solutions” (4). At the same time AIDS was spreading rapidly in southern Africa, and a South African defence ministry report on the high rate of HIV infection among the armed forces of many African countries caused alarm: very soon national defence capabilities would not be enough to deal with internal or external conflict. According to the International Crisis Group, many countries would “soon be unable to participate in peacekeeping operations” (5).


Between 1999 and 2008 the National Intelligence Council, the US intelligence community’s centre for long-term strategic analysis, published six reports on global health. These defined disease as a “non-traditional” threat to the security of the US, which has military bases around the world. This threat even reached the UN. For the first time in its history, the Security Council’s agenda in January 2000 included a topic not linked to a direct risk of conflict: the impact of AIDS on peace and security in Africa. The US delegation chaired the discussions, which produced a number of resolutions. Article 90 of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2001 called for the urgent establishment of a global HIV/AIDS and health fund to finance a response to the epidemic based on an integrated approach to prevention, care, support and treatment, and to help governments combat HIV/AIDS, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.


Kofi Annan’s mobilisation of the G8 resulted in the establishment of the Global Fund, but this is far from being the “AIDS and health” fund called for by the UN: its mandate covers only AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Restoring US leadership


US national security policy is driven by fears of communism, terrorism and disease, and the US does not hesitate to use the UN Security Council to defend its position on global health issues. After the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barack Obama is steering his country towards struggles other than external conflicts. The aim is to restore US leadership abroad, and deal with the control of epidemics, as mentioned in the National Security Strategy in 2010. In July 2012 the US government announced the establishment of an Office of Global Health Diplomacy within the State Department: “We have made a collective recommendation to ... shift our focus from leadership within the US Government to global leadership by the US Government.” According to international relations historian Georges-Henri Soutou, “The US has understood that real power today means being able to operate in both spheres — international and transnational” (6).


Analysis of health policy in recent decades reveals that global health is seen variously as an economic investment, a tool for security and an element of foreign policy. (Charity and public health complete the picture according to David Stuckler and Martin McKee (7).) Security demands quick action, a short-term approach and the control of contagious diseases, rather than the holistic and systematic long-term approach required to strengthen institutional capabilities. This threatens the survival of initiatives in which money has been invested for almost 15 years.


So no matter how much the Global Fund and the US government allocate under the president’s emergency programme for AIDS relief (8), the actual results are disappointing because so little account has been taken of the need for prevention, or of demographic, urban, social, economic and conflict factors, or of national characteristics of disease propagation.


Thirty years into the HIV/AIDS pandemic, little funding is being allocated to local, epidemiological, anthropological and economic research to help decision-making. For every two people treated, five new cases of HIV infection are reported. Despite the many conflicts in Africa, the role of rape in the spread of the virus among women has not been examined. The world is shocked by the embezzlement of Global Fund monies, but ignores the failure of governments to analyse the effectiveness of the strategies adopted in their own countries. The financial choices (influenced by lobbyists) favour cure, to the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry, rather than prevention of the spread of HIV.
Who is accountable?


The growing number of entities in development aid has led to conflicts between decision-makers and partners, and a blurring of responsibilities: who should be accountable for the use of funds allocated through global partnerships or through new mechanisms. Financial issues are the responsibility of the Global Fund’s board, rather than its executive secretariat. Technical and strategic issues are supposed to be handled by individual countries and their partners (UNAIDS, Unicef and the WHO). Where UN agencies have given technical support to member states, have they guided them towards a strategy that heeds national characteristics? If not, then it’s time they did.


Africa (and the EU, including France) face unparalleled challenges. Africa’s population is set to double by 2050, from one billion to two billion, 20% of the global population. The economist François Bourguignon claims poverty, strictly defined, will be an exclusively African problem by 2040 or 2050 (9).


Africa is undergoing major demographic and epidemiological change, with rapid urbanisation and the as yet unquantified spread of chronic diseases — cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory disease, mental illness, diseases linked to environmental pollution. These, diagnosed late or not at all and spreading like pandemics, together with more road accidents, add to the burden on healthcare workers, already in very short supply. Economic and social inequalities are creating health inequalities. Health insurance and social protection systems are being put in place too slowly, and unevenly. Universal health coverage would help the poor if it were part of a policy based on national priorities, especially prevention.


Given their historic links and centuries of political, economic and commercial interaction with sub-Saharan Africa, European countries have important contributions to make on the political front, as well as in terms of expertise and funding, and these should not be obscured by US priorities. The situation in central and western francophone Africa calls for large-scale, long-term action.


In equating the MDGs with sustainable development goals for after 2015, we risk focusing only on shared global issues, and neglecting fragile states and the most vulnerable people. The priorities are education for girls, maternal health, unknown tropical diseases and the development of institutional capability to formulate and implement complex policies.


The Indian economist Amartya Sen said: “Those who ask if better health is useful for development are missing the point: health and development are inseparable. You don’t need ... to try to prove that good health stimulates economic growth.” Long-term health for everyone on the planet should be the goal, not just the funding mechanisms that would allow universal health coverage, currently being presented as a sustainable development goal.



Health targets


UN Millennium Development Goals relating to health, to be achieved by 2015:


Goal 4: to reduce mortality among children under 5 by two thirds


Goal 5: to improve maternal health and reduce maternal mortality by three quarters


Goal 6: to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases


Goal 8, target E: in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, to provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
Africa’s 2010 figures
76% of deaths in Africa are from infectious diseases, maternal and neonatal illnesses and nutritional disorders.
Africa accounts for 70% of deaths from HIV/AIDS worldwide.
Africa accounts for 75% of new HIV cases worldwide — of which the majority are among young people, girls and women (60% of all cases).
75% of HIV-positive young people aged 15-24 in Africa are girls. HIV/AIDS is more common in cities, where promiscuity-linked diseases (such as tuberculosis) spread with urbanisation.
Condom use is still infrequent (less than 20% in high-prevalence countries).
75% of HIV-positive men in four high-prevalence African countries admit recently having unprotected sex.
According to a study conducted in Abidjan with the support of Unicef, HIV/AIDS is more prevalent among the best-informed, best-educated and richest young people.
75% of Africans aged 15-44 do not know their HIV status. Among those aged 15-24, only 10% of boys and 15% of girls have taken an HIV test.
Only 25% of eligible patients in central and western Africa take antiretroviral treatments. (20% of HIV-positive pregnant women take them for their own sake, 33% of them to prevent the transmission of the virus to their child.)
Africa accounts for 50% of deaths among pregnant women and deaths due to complications arising from abortion procedures worldwide. Africa has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy (girls aged 15-18) worldwide. 97% of abortions in Africa are carried out under poor conditions.
Africa accounts for 91% of deaths from malaria worldwide (including 87% of deaths among children under 5, according to the World Health Organisation).
Africa is short of healthcare workers: Africa accounts for 25% of the global shortfall, and has only 3% of all healthcare workers worldwide.


Sources: MDG Africa and Global reports; Measuredhs.com; “Financing Global Health 2012: the end of the Golden Age?”, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle, February 2012


Dominique Kerouedan


Savoirs Contre Pauvreté chair at the Collège de France and author of Géopolitique de la Santé Mondiale (The Geopolitics of World Health), Fayard, Paris, 2013. She also edited Santé Internationale: les Enjeux de Santé au Sud, (International Health: the Health Issues Facing the South), Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 2011


Translated by Charles Goulden

Are we headed for a strategy of shock?

Do it now. Right away

What happens next? Will the world be saved, but only for the rich few, as in 2008; and will digitisation and surveillance become the new order?

by Serge Halimi 

Bernhard Lang · Getty

When this tragedy is over, will everything just go back to the way it was? For 30 years each new crisis has raised unreasonable hopes that the world would return to reason, come to its senses, end the madness. We have dreamed of containing, then reversing, a sociopolitical dynamic whose deadlocks and dangers were finally understood (1). We hoped that the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 would end runaway privatisation, and that the financial crises of 1997 and 2007-08 would halt happy globalisation. They didn’t.

The 9/11 attacks led to criticism of US hubris and distraught questions like ‘Why do they hate us?’ Those didn’t last either. Even when they are heading in the right direction, ideas alone are never enough to get things done. That needs people. But it’s best not to rely on the politicians who were responsible for the disaster in the first place, even if those pyromaniacs are skilled at making sacrifices for the greater good and pretending they have changed, especially when their lives are at risk, as are ours today.

Most of us have never experienced a war, a military coup or a curfew first-hand. At the end of March, nearly three billion people across the world were under lockdown, many in extremely trying conditions; most were not writers watching the camellias bloom in the garden of their country house. Whatever happens in the next few weeks, Covid-19 will be our first experience of a global threat — not something you forget quickly. Even our current political leaders will have to take some account of that (see The unequal cost of coronavirus, in this issue).

The crisis will make knowing whether it is still possible to exist without the Internet either more pressing, or totally irrelevant

And so they are doing. The European Union has suspended its budget rules; France’s president Emmanuel Macron has postponed a pensions reform that would have penalised hospital staff; the US Congress has voted to send most Americans a cheque for $1,200. But, after 2008, neoliberals accepted a spectacular increase in debt, fiscal stimulus measures, the nationalisation of banks and a partial reintroduction of capital controls, all to save their economic system. Austerity then allowed them to take back everything they had given away during the general panic, and even achieve some ‘advances’: employees would now work harder and longer, under more precarious conditions; ‘investors’ and rentiers would pay less tax. The Greeks paid the heaviest price, as their public hospitals, short of funds and drugs, saw the return of diseases everyone thought eradicated.

A good day to bury stuff

What seems to be the road to a total rethink may in fact lead to a ‘strategy of shock’. In the hour after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, a special advisor to a British government minister circulated a memo saying, ‘It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.’ She might not have been thinking of the ongoing restrictions that would be imposed on public freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism, let alone the war in Iraq and the disasters that Anglo-American enterprise would bring. Twenty years on, you don’t have to be a poet or a prophet to imagine the shock strategy that is on its way.

Besides the ‘stay at home’ and social distancing directives, all our social interactions may be turned upside-down by the rapidly advancing digitisation of society. The crisis will make knowing whether it is still possible to exist without the Internet either more pressing, or totally irrelevant (2). In France, everyone must already carry their ID at all times; very soon, a mobile phone will be not just useful but a requirement for monitoring purposes. Since banknotes and coins are potential transmitters of infection, credit and debit cards are now guardians of public health; they will also make it possible to list, log and archive every purchase. The decline of the inalienable right to anonymity (if no laws are broken), as seen in China’s ‘social credit’, or surveillance capitalism, is becoming part of our consciousness and our lives. Our only reaction is naïve astonishment.

Even before Covid-19, it was already impossible to catch a train in France without providing your personal details. To access a bank account online, you had to let the bank have your mobile phone number. If you went for a walk, you were sure to be caught on CCTV. The health crisis has moved things on. In Paris, drones monitor areas closed to the public. In South Korea, sensors alert the authorities if someone has a temperature that makes them a danger to the community. In Poland, people in self-isolation must have an app on their phone to confirm they are at home, or put up with unannounced police visits (3). The public widely supports surveillance measures in a time of crisis, but the measures always survive the crisis.

This crisis may turn out to be a dress rehearsal for sweeping aside the last resistance to digital capitalism, and the coming of a society without human contact

The coming economic revolution will contribute to a world where freedom is further restricted. Millions of food shops, cafés, cinemas and bookshops have closed to prevent infection. They cannot do home delivery, and are not lucky enough to sell digital products. How many will reopen when the crisis is over, and what state will they be in? The outlook is better for distribution giants like Amazon, which is hiring hundreds of thousands of delivery drivers and warehouse staff, and Walmart, hiring another 150,000 ‘associates’. Who better understands our tastes and choices? This crisis may turn out to be a dress rehearsal for sweeping aside the last resistance to digital capitalism, and the coming of a society without human contact (4).

Unless protests, actions, political parties, peoples and states change the script. Many say ‘Politics doesn’t concern me’, until the day they realise it is political choices that force doctors to decide which patients live or die. That day has come. It is worse in central Europe, the Balkans and Africa, whose medical professionals have for years moved to safer countries where they are better paid; the situation there too is a result of political choices. We probably understand this better today: staying at home also makes us stop and think. And want to take action. Right away.

Everyone understands the costs

Contrary to Macron’s suggestion, it is no longer a matter of ‘re-examin[ing] the development model our world has followed’. We already know it needs changing. Right away. And since ‘delegating our protection to others is folly’, let us end strategic dependencies that exist only to preserve ‘free and undistorted competition’. Macron has said that France must make a break, but he will never make the crucial one. We should not just provisionally suspend, but condemn outright the European treaties and free trade agreements that have sacrificed national sovereignty and made competition the supreme objective. Right away.

Everyone now understands the cost of delegating the provision of millions of face masks and pharmaceuticals, which hospital patients and staff, and distribution and supermarket workers, depend on for their lives, to supply chains that stretch around the world and operate on zero inventory. Everyone understands the cost to the planet of deforestation, offshoring, waste accumulation and mass travel. Paris welcomes 38 million tourists a year, more than 17 times its population, and boasts of it.

Protectionism, environmentalism, social justice and public health have come together. They are key elements of an anticapitalist political coalition that is powerful enough to impose a programme of breaks. Right away.

Serge Halimi

Serge Halimi is president and director of Le Monde diplomatique.

Translated by Charles Goulden

On the Love and Rage of Extinction Rebellion  

Extinction Rebellion (XR) erupted in 2018 in the UK. It denounces the political inertia and obfuscation of “truth” that permeate climate change debates. Since then, XR has spread like wildfire and now gathers thousands of activists worldwide. Louise Knops explores how the movement channels affect at a pivotal moment in which climate has become a concern for everyone, not just activists and academia. Looking forward, she asks how we can move from insurrection to renewal.

XR has been the subject of both praise and criticism. It has been acclaimed for the radicalism of its practices and has made civil disobedience attractive to sections of the population that had never taken part in collective action. Together with other movements such as Fridays for Future, it has helped turn climate change into an unescapable issue. At the same time, XR has been criticised for not being “political” enough in its discourse, by appealing predominantly to “the white and wealthy”, and not engaging with the inequalities tied to climate change. Its proposals have (so far) often remained “awfully vague”.

There is some truth to all of that.

However, the first year of Extinction Rebellion succeeded in pushing the discussion “beyond politics”. From the traditional realm of parties, politicians, elections, and governments, it has entered a more visceral domain of politics concerned with the perpetuation of humans as a species. Humans have always raised existential questions about human life, existence, and its place among other creatures. The great acceleration of Western modernity covered up some of these questions under layers of “progress”, “growth”, and tales of human superiority. XR’s rage marks their return in an unmistakable way: it is the rebellion of modernity against its deadly trajectory.

Critics will argue that this existential turn comes at a price. Discussing human survival in absolute terms distracts from the debate about exactly how to organise this survival, in co-existence with the other humans and nonhumans around us. It does not address the very politics of extinction: priorities, plans, and a distribution of responsibility. Nevertheless, XR has the merit of doing at least that: inviting people to connect with the idea of human life, human extinction, to better understand it, and ultimately move beyond it. XR transformed the climate discussion into a matter of life and death by focusing on one particular part of human existence: affect.

Affect as driver of human existence

Affect is often reduced to a psychological phenomenon or a feeling experienced in response to a stimulus. But affect goes beyond emotion. It is, in fact, the very driver of our existence. Affect provides impetus for change and pushes people to take action.^[1] Emotions and affects have tremendous mobilising potential. Indignation, to name just one example, is the affect that gets us fired up. It acts as the “raw material for revolt” in all kinds of political and social revolutions.^[2]

Political ecology has always been pervaded with affect. Ecologists and environmentalists have long expressed both their love for “nature” and their rage in the face of environmental destruction. In 1962, in Silent Spring, Rachel Carson wrote about her deep love for the beauty of nature.^[3] In the 1970s, Arne Naess developed the distinction between shallow and “deep” ecology, a movement that has been summed up as a non-anthropocentric philosophy of care and compassion.^[4] In 1990, Christopher Manes wrote a book called Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization.^[5] More recently, the concept of “solastalgia” has been developed to describe our emotional state of distress in the face of environmental destruction. The examples are plentiful. 

What has changed is the resonance of this affective repertoire, on climate change specifically, within the rest of society.

XR is no exception to this tradition and in its discourse affect is everywhere. All official XR communication, from social media posts to newsletters, signs off “With love and rage”. The sharing of fear but also of hope and joy dominate the speeches and demonstrations of rebellion. As recently pointed out by XR co-founder Roger Hallam (speaking in a personal capacity) at the World Web Forum in January 2020: “it is no longer time for charts, it is time for emotions; it is time for courage.” But affect is also embodied in the practices and actions of the movement: the staging of funerals and die-ins taps into feelings of grief, its horizontal and grassroots structure creates communities of compassion, its protest actions are filled with euphoria and exhilaration. And through the blocking, the marching, the sitting, the hunger striking, XR is also bringing an existential materiality back into the picture: the body. It is literally putting bodies on the line to express a collective cry of resistance against extinction. Hence, XR does not just raise existential questions through “apocalyptic” rhetoric or, by some critical accounts, an exaggerated sense of urgency. It does so by appealing to people’s affective side, by speaking and performing “love and rage”.

But what has changed with Extinction Rebellion is not the role played by affect per se. After all, civil disobedience and many of XR’s rhetoric and tactics can be traced back to earlier social movements. What has changed is the resonance of this affective repertoire, on climate change specifically, within the rest of society. People are increasingly susceptible to being affected by climate change. Indeed, the success of XR, and other contemporary movements, shows that our ability to be “affected”, moved into action, by climate change has reached a broader scale.

An affective bifurcation?

For decades, climate change was confined to the worlds of academia and activism. Today, inaction in the face of climate change has become an explicit matter of indignation for millions worldwide, as the latest international protests have shown. 6 million people took to the streets in September 2019. The absence of policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change may have been tolerated yesterday, but, for increasing parts of the population, it is no longer.

But what exactly happened that might explain this recent “affective” bifurcation? From relative indifference to resistance and rebellion?

Has it been the simultaneous occurrence of different climate-change related disasters across the world, from heatwaves and floods to droughts and fires? The environmental awakening of a new generation? The explicitness of climate denial at the highest level, as seen in the election of Donald Trump and his withdrawal from the Paris agreement, and a subsequent reaction? The power of “affecting” images on climate change shared on an unprecedented scale? A deeper sense of disconnection with our current modes of existence and organisation?

In many people’s minds, the belief that “the end of the month” and “the end of the world” work against each other is still legitimate.

This is an important question. It is important because this affective bifurcation, the “love” and “rage” advocated by XR, still needs to emerge on a broader scale, both geographically and from a temporality point of view. The rebellion needs to include communities from the global South, all parts of the working class and the working poor, the most precarious populations, the most affected by climate change, and even the sceptical, conservative voter. It also, crucially, needs to prove its longevity; the uprising of rebels worldwide needs to yield long-term and transformative changes in our modes of existence and co-existence. The rebellion needs to be turned into a concrete plan, with options for solutions and difficult decisions.

The move from insurrection to profound renewal will not be easy. After over a year of intense mobilisations, one is forced to recognise that fundamental cleavages have not been bridged yet and that resistance is operating in opposite directions. In many people’s minds, the belief that the struggle for social and economic justice does not go well with ecological consciousness, and that “the end of the month” and “the end of the world” work against each other, is still legitimate. To find a contemporary example of this reality, one just need look to the streets: the gilets jaunes do not protest on the same days as the climate activists, with the same people, under the same banners.^[6] There is no overwhelming feeling that “we are all in this together”. This observation need not be a reason for despair, however. Quite the contrary. The fact that these cycles of protest – the gilets jaunes and the climate movements – are taking place at the same time should provide reason to believe that a new story can be written. By those taking the streets, but also by all the others who are observing, supporting, and analysing what is going on, and those inside political institutions.

Coming down to earth

Ultimately, love and rage need an outcome. They need to be channeled into a story, or multiple stories, that make sense; perhaps all the way “down to earth”. This is the proposal recently suggested by French philosopher Bruno Latour in an essay that unpacks “politics in the new climatic regime”.

What does this mean?

Nobody knows exactly. But many have great ideas. Stories of “worlding” (Donna Haraway) that would replace the ideals of “globalising”. Stories where we look at the earth differently, from inside, rather from “the big outside”, and where we embrace it as a complex system in which we are just one part among a multitude of others. ^[7] Translating these ideas into the way we re-design our modes of existence requires opening our minds and letting go of some of our convictions. As Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, it calls for thinking on “very large and small scales at once, including scales that defy the usual measures of time that inform human affairs”, as climate change has created contradictory stories between “our divided human lives and societies, and the story of our collective life as a species”. It will require throwing away things that have been taken for granted for centuries. That the world, for example, operates in neat categories: that humans and nature are separate, that the “objective” is more valuable than the “subjective”, or that rationality is always preferable to affectivity, to name just a few. It will probably require letting go of our vision of “the individual”.

This attempt to think “inside the globe” whilst simultaneously responding to the climate emergency will require huge amounts of creativity.

XR, whether consciously or not, invites us in that direction. On an explicit level, it does so by continuously speaking the language of existence and extinction, reminding us of the competing temporalities at play in the new climatic regime and our vulnerability as a species. It reminds us that, in the Anthropocene, the distinction between humans and nature has become scientifically irrelevant, as traces of human activity can be found everywhere: from the composition of the atmosphere, to the cells of our own bodies. And it does so, not just by displaying charts and quoting figures, but also by tapping into the affective connections that tie us to the terrestrial beings around us. Lastly, by celebrating both the power of sciences and the power of love, it suggests that these two repertoires might not compete, but rather complement each other. From this perspective, XR is not just another, albeit radical, contentious actor. It also opens a space to question deep-rooted beliefs that have structured centuries of Western thought and imagination.

Admittedly, discussing these theoretical questions seems somewhat out of touch with the urgency and immediacy of solutions that are required here and now. We still need to do something, act with what is at hand today, however imperfect it might be. It is this challenge – this attempt to think “inside the globe” rather than “outside the box” – whilst simultaneously responding to the climate emergency, that will require huge amounts of creativity. This seems all the more urgent as love and rage already dominate geopolitics today, but in fundamentally different directions: there is love towards one’s people but hate towards others; there is longing for a derelict past (as seen in Brexit) and rage against “the establishment”.

Love and rage have always set us in motion, for better and for worse. XR invites us to channel them in one direction, despite its vagueness and imperfections. The next step is to populate this journey with concrete stories and actions, to go beyond our fear of extinction.

^[1] Frédéric Lordon (2016). Les affects de la politique. Paris: Le Seuil.

^[2] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge, Massachusetts: the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

^[3] Rachel Carson (1962). Silent Spring. New-York: Houghton Mifflin.

^[4] Eccy de Jong (2016). Spinoza and Deep Ecology: Challenging traditional approaches to Environmentalism. Abingdon: Routledge.

^[5] Christopher Manes (1990). Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilisation, Little, Brown & Company.

^[6] They have done on some occasions but these have remained rather marginal compared to the scale of the mobilisation of the respective movements.

^[7] Such as proposed in the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock.

GREEN TRANSITION

Fossil Fascism and the Lessons for the Greens
In this interview, professor of human ecology Andreas Malm takes his reflections on fossil capitalism a step further to make a direct connection between the Green surge recently witnessed in some European countries and the electoral victories of far-right populist forces. For him, Greens must use this opportunity to push their fight for climate justice side-by-side with movements on the street.

In his renowned book Fossil Capital (Verso, 2016), Andreas Malm provided an analysis of climate change that connects the reality of fossil-fuelled economies to the structure and ideology of capitalism. According to his argument, steam power was attractive in 19th-century England because it offered better control over labour than previously more widespread water mills did. Malm shows how the triumph of coal-fired engines ever since has hampered the spread of renewable energy. Contesting the concept of the “Anthropocene”, rather than humankind as a whole, he highlights the destructive force of capitalist commodity production, driven by the interests of a minority of financiers and industrialists. His work has been praised by voices such as Naomi Klein and has inspired climate justice movements such as Germany’s Ende Gelände.

Green European Journal: What are the most important lessons of Fossil Capital?
Andreas Malm: I have to acknowledge that there is a gap between the historical analysis outlined in my book and the strategic orientation of both the climate movement and policymakers. Fossil Capital studies the historical moment when British capitalists shifted away from waterpower towards steam power, and since I was interested in the historical process, the book itself is almost entirely focused on the demand side: it looks at the manufacturers who demanded coal rather than those who supplied it to them. Today’s climate movement has, for very good reason, focused on the supply side: it targets capital that profits from the production of fossil fuels, and it has also begun to target fossil capital in a broader sense – for instance in recent mobilisations against the auto industry.

I am trying to compensate somewhat for the lack of supply focus in my more recent work (such as that with the Zetkin Collective, a group of scholars, activists and students at Lund University working on the political ecology of the far right), by trying to understand “primitive fossil capital” – by which I mean the fossil fuel industry: suppliers of coal, oil and gas. The links between these industries and far-right forces are very close, as can be seen in Poland, Norway, Brazil, the US, and in many other countries too.

What is the role of fossil fuels in far-right thinking?
As a historian and a history nerd, I am obsessed with the ways classical Fascists thought about fossil fuels and their technology. Just think of the most well-known cases: the Italian futurist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was one of the key ideologists of Italian Fascism and a major source of inspiration for Benito Mussolini. His work was about the admiration for the car, the aeroplane, and the combustion engine. He was obsessed with speed and the burning of materials. You can find similarities in the thinking of German proto-Fascists as well, for example in the work of Ernst Jünger.


In Italy, Germany, and many other countries, far-right forces position themselves as the shock troops of fossil capital.

Both the Italian Fascist and the German Nazi governments were extremely supportive of those technologies and presided over major technical breakthroughs. For instance, the first highways exclusively devoted to car traffic were built in Italy in the very first years of the Mussolini regime. The highway or the expressway – a road only for cars – is basically a fascist concept. One of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power was to scrap all speed limits on the highway. But neither of these two fossil-fuel-obsessed countries – neither Italy nor Germany – had any oil reserves, which had a great influence on their geopolitical thinking.

How well known is this aspect of Fascism?
Both of these regimes have been exhaustively researched, but it is only now, in times of the climate crisis, that the fossil dimension of these regimes becomes visible. When people think of the relationship between Nazism and ecology, immediately they think about blood and soil, romanticism and the “völkisch” agenda, because this aspect has been in the spotlight. From an ecological point of view, however, it has been far more important to see the Fascist drive to develop fossil-fuel technologies and infrastructure as fast as possible.

This knowledge becomes particularly interesting when you see what the far right is doing right now. In Italy, Germany, and many other countries, far-right forces position themselves as the shock troops of fossil capital and are the ones fighting most aggressively to continue business as usual.

Many Conservatives and far-right populists claim that caring for the environment is a conservative value that they are well suited to uphold. Is this claim compatible with their stance on fossil fuels?

The far right has always been proficient in inconsistency. Hitler and other Nazis could say one day that they are all in favour of the German worker and the next that they are going to smash all trade unions and reinstate discipline in workplaces. Contradictory messages have always been part of the appeal of the far right and allow them to unite disparate groups in a nationalist project. Nationalism is by definition a political project that seeks to transcend things like class divisions. To bring people from different classes together, you have to say contradictory things, which makes it hard to keep all your promises.

Does that still hold today?
Yes, but when it comes to the environment, the far right today in Europe and beyond mainly supports maximum resource extraction and fossil fuel production and consumption. That is the general line. Under Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency in Brazil or the Donald Trump administration in the US, it is the only line.

Of course, there is also the green nationalist minority current with some parties, activists, and a group of skilled environmentalists that recognises the ecological crisis and its magnitude. They claim that they see the climate breaking down and that the solution is a mix of a national, conservative love for nature, the closing of borders, and a move towards national autarky. This position has become hegemonic on the French far right, for example.


Although there are some well-founded reasons for optimism, the tenacity of denial should not be underestimated. Many people wish to believe that this crisis does not exist.

But so far, this kind of green nationalism has never translated into any actual policies that would address the climate crisis at its roots. Let us take Germany: a party that takes climate change seriously would have to propose the immediate closure of mines and the almost complete dismantling of the car industry. I do not see any nationalists that are even hypothetically capable of coming up with such a political position, because it would force them to clash with various significant capitalist interests. It would also be very hard for them to sell this point of view to their constituencies, which tend to be people that are fond of their cars and support coal miners. [read more on the AfD and the carbon divide] This makes it very difficult for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to move away from climate denialism – even if it faces some internal criticism for it.

Moreover, even if the AfD were to move away from climate denialism and switch to green nationalism at some point – which is to some extent consistent with the faction represented by Björn Höcke – that would not have the potential to drive meaningful measures for mitigating climate change. This kind of green nationalism often blames immigrants for the climate crisis – something the French far-right party Rassemblement National (National Rally) is known for – could potentially have appeal to some voters, but the arguments behind it are just as poor as those for climate denial, and can be easily disproven. [read more on climate nationalism] All in all, it’s clear that the far right does not have a credible answer to the climate crisis whether it recognises it or not.

The rise of populism coincides with a Green surge in Europe. Are these two phenomena connected?

In Europe today, people are choosing between two main narratives: one group says that our way of life is endangered by Muslim immigrants and refugees, while the other one says that our lives are in danger of becoming miserable – or potentially coming to an end – because of global warming. This is the political choice that divides the landscape in Europe, and with mass mobilisations like Fridays for Future some countries have seen a serious weakening of the far right. In the Swiss federal elections in October 2019, the Greens surged (the Swiss Greens and the Green Liberals got 21 per cent all together), while the far right (although it is still the strongest force) lost a significant share of its voters. That trend is driven by the fact that people are concerned about the climate crisis, and the far right has no credible answer to it.

But, although there are some well-founded reasons for optimism, the tenacity of denial should not be underestimated. Many people wish to believe that this crisis does not exist. 10 or 15 years ago, no one expected that there would be a surge in electoral support for parties that explicitly deny climate change in Europe. Average temperatures have increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, climate disasters happen every week around the world, and, still, the climate-denialist Vox party managed to become the third largest party in the November elections in Spain. This is fundamentally irrational, and it cautions us against anticipating that Europeans will behave rationally in the next few years.

What would be your suggestion to the Greens? What should they do in this situation?
Greens across Europe should ally themselves as closely as they can to climate movements outside of Parliament – and start thinking about how they can live up to the expectations from the streets, and the ways to convert popular pressure into actual legislation. This is a great challenge because we are up against some extremely strong forces that have to be defeated very quickly, in face of an immediate threat. That can never happen only by strictly parliamentary activities and electoral support. The balance of forces in society will have to be shifted so dramatically that it requires considerable social muscle to achieve that.

The example of the Swedish Greens illustrates that quite well. In 2014, one of their main campaign promises was to accept more asylum seekers and shut down the Swedish state-owned energy company Vattenfall’s lignite mines in Germany. But once they got into government, they made a deal with their major coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, not to close down the mines as they had promised. Instead, they were sold to the Czech company EPH that wanted to start a lignite renaissance in Central Europe. The promise about refugees was also broken when the borders were closed in 2015. So that is an example of how poorly the Greens can perform in power.


Greens across Europe should ally themselves as closely as they can to climate movements outside of Parliament.
There was, another, very different case recently when a company called Swedegas wanted to construct a series of liquid natural gas terminals in Gothenburg. Many Ende-Gelände-type civil disobedience actions followed, and the Minister of Environment, the Green Party’s Isabella Lövin, announced that the government will not grant Swedegas the licence to construct these terminals. She explicitly said that this decision was due to all the recent mobilisations.

My conclusion would be that, back in 2014-2016, the Greens’ connections to the movement were not close enough and nor was the dynamic in the streets strong enough to allow them to push their case in their negotiations with the Social Democrats. This time, however, the Social Democrats had to give in.

The lesson here for the Greens – not just in Sweden, but across Europe – should be that if we want to make progress, we need to make sure that there are strong social movements outside of Parliament and that the political representatives of the Greens are on good terms with them.

For a review of Fossil Capital, as well as other important works of green thinking from the last few years, see the book review section of our lates

ON WORKERS MEMORIAL DAY

‘No consequences for negligence that kills’: McConnell wants corporate immunity from Covid-19 lawsuits

April 28, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams


“This is one of the most appalling things I’ve heard in the context of this crisis.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is demanding that Congress use the next Covid-19 stimulus bill to shield corporations from legal responsibility for workers who contract the novel coronavirus on the job, throwing his support behind a proposal pushed in recent weeks by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing organizations.

The Kentucky Republican said in a statement Monday that companies could be hit with “years of endless lawsuits” if Congress doesn’t provide employers with liability protections as states begin reopening their economies.
“The idea companies can be held accountable is absolutely crucial to protecting workers.”
—Debbie Berkowitz, National Employment Law Project“McConnell wants to immunize companies from liability when they make their workers go back to work, and those workers inevitably get sick,”tweeted The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer.

In a Monday interview on Fox News Radio on the heels of his statement, McConnell said he considers liability protections for companies a non-negotiable demand for the next coronavirus stimulus legislation. Progressives are calling for a package that provides more protections for frontline workers and the unemployed.

“That’s going to be my red line,” McConnell said. “Trial lawyers are sharpening their pencils to come after healthcare providers and businesses, arguing that somehow the decision they made with regard to reopening adversely affected the health of someone else.”

Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, tweeted that McConnell is arguing that companies “should have the right to be negligent, and suffer no consequences for negligence that kills their staff.”

“At the present moment, do we want to tweak incentives to make employers more negligent, or less negligent?” Wolfers asked.

Here’s the argument: Tort law makes employers liable for being negligent with the lives of their workers and customers. McConnell is arguing that they should have the right to be negligent, and suffer no consequences for negligence that kills their staff. https://t.co/tX3eDTjnRP— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) April 27, 2020

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) called McConnell’s demand for corporate immunity “subterfuge” in an interview on MSNBC Tuesday morning, but did not rule out the proposal as part of a broader relief package.

Drew Hammill, deputy chief of staff for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), toldPolitico that “the House has no interest in diminishing protections for employees and customers.”

McConnell’s comments came a week after President Donald Trump said the White House is looking for ways to protect companies from legal action by workers who are infected with Covid-19 on the job.

“We are trying to take liability away from these companies,” Trump told reporters during a Coronavirus Task Force briefing last Monday. “We just don’t want that because we want the companies to open and to open strong.”

The Washington Post reported last week that the Trump administration is exploring the possibility of issuing through executive action “a liability waiver that would clear businesses of legal responsibility from employees who contract the coronavirus on the job.”

“In recent days, the White House has considered whether the liability waiver should apply to employees, too, for instance to include a waiter who fears being sued by a customer,” the Post reported. “This idea would require congressional approval, and its fate among Democrats is unclear.”

Debbie Berkowitz, director of the worker safety and health program at the National Employment Law Project, called the proposal of a liability waiver for corporations “horrible.”

“The idea companies can be held accountable is absolutely crucial to protecting workers,” Berkowitz told the Post. The possibility of a liability waiver, she said, “is one of the most appalling things I’ve heard in the context of this crisis.”

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Covid-19: a shock to the system

Naomi Klein first identified what she called 'the shock doctrine' - the exploitation of disasters to further neoliberal policy - in 2007. The same year the global banking system collapsed, and Klein's thesis was demonstrated as politicians bailed out the banks at the expense of the taxpayer, then instituted years of punishing austerity. But neoliberal politicians do not always require a financial crisis or a 9/11 to impose their policies; moreover, some moments of acute crisis, like the end of the second world war, have led societies to reassess their values and prioritise the welfare of their citizens.
The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates the lasting consequences of cutbacks, privatisation and globalisation on healthcare. Political decisions have been central in shaping this tragedy — from the destruction of animal habitats, to the asymmetric funding of medical research, to the management of the crisis itself. They will also determine the world into which we emerge after the worst is over.

In this ebook :

• Sonia Shah, 'The microbes, the animals and us'
• Théo Bourgeron, 'UK risked all on virus experiment'
• Quentin Ravelli, 'Putting profits before healthcare'
• Renaud Lambert & Pierre Rimbert, 'The unequal cost of coronavirus'
• Serge Halimi, 'Do it now. Right away'

Taking Sides is a series of ebooks published by Le Monde diplomatique. In each ebook, we are releasing the most significant articles from our English-language archive since 1996, on a topic that merits your attention.

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Covid-19: a shock to the system

Trump dodges responsibility after calls to poison controls climb

Trump "can't imagine" why there'd be an increase in Americans misusing disinfectants. Is it really that complicated?

Disinfectant products on a store shelf. (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Jeff Greenberg / Universal Image via Getty Images


April 28, 2020 By Steve Benen

Donald Trump has made a variety of memorable comments since the coronavirus crisis began, but one of the president's more unfortunate quotes came in early March. At a White House press briefing, NBC News' Kristen Welker asked him whether he should take responsibility for the failure to disseminate larger quantities of tests earlier. "I don't take responsibility at all," Trump replied.

Yesterday, we saw a similar display.



President Donald Trump said he takes no responsibility for a spike in cases of people misusing disinfectants after he wondered aloud last week about possibly injecting them as a treatment for coronavirus. When asked Monday about the increase of people in some states ingesting disinfectants Trump answered: "I can't imagine why."

Pressed further on whether he takes any responsibility for those harmed by misuse of cleaning products, the president replied, "No, I don't."


The fact that Trump is preemptively dodging culpability isn't exactly surprising. On the contrary, it's one of his standard moves. But what struck me as notable was the president twice saying he "can't imagine why" there'd be a sudden increase in poison-control problems.

As it happens, I can imagine why. On Thursday afternoon, the president of the United States told a national television audience that disinfectants are effective in "knocking out" the virus "in a minute." He proceeded to wonder aloud whether there's "a way we can do something like that by injection inside -- or almost a cleaning."

It wasn't long before Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said her state had "seen an increase in numbers of people calling poison control." Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said something similar.
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State health officials in Illinois said over the weekend that there'd been "a significant increase in calls" to the state's poison-control center, and New York's health department acknowledged a related increase.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported yesterday that Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Lee Norman said poison control officials in his state saw "a 40% increase in the ingestion of toxic chemicals following remarks made by President Donald Trump." Norman added that one Kansan over the weekend drank a disinfectant product "because of the advice that he had received."

It's against this backdrop that Trump "can't imagine" why there'd be an increase in Americans misusing disinfectants. Perhaps the president's imagination is as troubled as his understanding of science?