Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
December 9, 2019
Hello All – The nations of the world (minus the USA) will meet in Spain next week to discuss our climate crisis and what can be done. As President Trump will withdraw the USA from the Paris Climate Agreement (2015) on January 1st, it is unlikely that our news media will give the climate summit much airtime. But our climate situation remains desperate, as the Earth's temperature inches up, carbon emissions are high and remain steady, rightwing climate deniers are gaining power in the world, and the fossil fuel industries are holding their own, despite the growing grass-roots environmental movements.
Here are some notes on three developments that will have a great bearing on whether we can save ourselves from climate disaster. To keep up with what's happening at COP25, the best news coverage available will be via Democracy Now!, which will be broadcasting live from Spain all this week.
Fossil Fuel Subsidies
At a time when we desperately need to cut back on burning coal, gas, and oil, the United States, and the governments of many other countries, subsidize their fossil fuel industries. Without these subsidies the fossil fuel industries would struggle to survive. The United States, for example, helps out with about $20 billion each year; globally, the figure is about $500 billion.
And these are only the direct subsidies. If our coal companies were required to meet modern pollution standards, 98 percent could be unprofitable. For all US industries, allowing them not to pay for the costs of pollution and cleaning up their mess adds $200 billion per year (and $1.3 trillion globally) to the taxpayer help the fossil fuel industries get from our governments.
In addition to lining the pockets of investors, the subsidies make the cost of gas, oil, and coal lower, thus making it harder for renewable energies (wind and solar) to attract customers. In this way, state subsidies lock us into using fossil fuels.
Sharing the Costs of Fixing This
Since the start (1992) of world climate negotiations, governments have debated the question of "Who should pay?' Less-developed countries point out that the United States, Europe, and Russia have been polluting for centuries, and have caused the climate crisis we have now. If saving the planet meant less economic development and using renewable energy, the more developed countries should provide some financial help to less-developed countries to share the burden of transition. In 1992, a Green Climate Fund was created to address this problem: richer countries would contribute, and poorer countries would receive subsidies.
The (so far) failure of this project involves ethical as well as practical issues. Should India and China, for example, delay raising the standard of living of their people to a moderate (not dirt poor) level, in order to not use coal and other fossil fuels? These (and similar) countries did not cause our climate crisis; indeed, even today, the per capita annual carbon emissions in India and China are 1.9 and 5 metric tons annually, while the capita emissions from the United States are 16.1 metric tons. How can we find a just solution to the dilemma of raising the standard of living of the world's poor, while preventing a crisis of over-heating our common world?
Grassroots Mobilizations
Please read the article by Brian Tokar linked just below. It includes an excellent summary of COP25 expectations and summaries of the many reports about our climate crisis that will inform the delegates, while also pointing to the Other Superpower in the room, the world's grassroots climate movements. He writes: "The most promising responses to the climate crisis are not being handed down by UN agencies or national governments, but rather emerge from the grassroots, popular efforts to resist continued fossil fuel development and other forms of accelerated resource extraction, and also to build local alternatives that can help inspire and facilitate like-minded efforts around the world. More than 2500 cities around the world have submitted plans to the UN to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, frequently in defiance of their national governments' far more cautious proposals, and well over 9000 municipalities have joined a Global Covenant of Mayors to reinforce their commitments to climate action. As US cities and towns have defied the Trump administration by declaring themselves as sanctuaries for refugees and immigrants, many are also advancing the most meaningful climate responses."
Some Useful/Interesting Reading about Our Climate Crisis
Climate Talks in Madrid: What will it take to prevent climate collapse?
By Brian Tokar, ZNet [December 6, 2019]
---- The two-week marathon of the annual UN climate conference is underway in Madrid, and the world's expectations have perhaps never been lower. The Amazon is burning and unprecedented storms are raging worldwide, but the world's climate diplomats are still mostly talking business-as-usual. Never mind that this year's 25th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Climate Convention (UNFCCC) almost didn't happen, after it was disinvited by the fascistic Bolsonaro regime in Brazil and almost derailed again by the recent upheaval in the streets of Santiago, Chile, where it had been rescheduled to occur. And Trump's effort to withdraw US participation is not the most serious problem. The main obstacles have much more to do with how emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other climate-destabilizing gases are increasing again after appearing to plateau for a couple of years. [Read More]
---- The two-week marathon of the annual UN climate conference is underway in Madrid, and the world's expectations have perhaps never been lower. The Amazon is burning and unprecedented storms are raging worldwide, but the world's climate diplomats are still mostly talking business-as-usual. Never mind that this year's 25th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Climate Convention (UNFCCC) almost didn't happen, after it was disinvited by the fascistic Bolsonaro regime in Brazil and almost derailed again by the recent upheaval in the streets of Santiago, Chile, where it had been rescheduled to occur. And Trump's effort to withdraw US participation is not the most serious problem. The main obstacles have much more to do with how emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other climate-destabilizing gases are increasing again after appearing to plateau for a couple of years. [Read More]
Savoring What Remains: Taking in a Climate-Changed World
By Dahr Jamail, Tom Dispatch [December 8, 2019]
By Dahr Jamail, Tom Dispatch [December 8, 2019]
---- Recently, I was in Homer, Alaska, to talk about my book The End of Ice. Seconds after I had thanked those who brought me to the small University of Alaska campus there, overwhelmed with some mix of sadness, love, and grief about my adopted state -- and the planet generally -- I wept. I tried to speak but could only apologize and take a few moments to collect myself. … It's no secret that vast numbers of climate scientists are now grieving for the planet and humanity's future, with some even describing their symptoms as a climate-change version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. … Listening to him describe the climate convulsions wracking his home state recently, I couldn't help but think of interviews I had done with family members in Iraq who had lost loved ones to U.S. military attacks. People with PTSD — and I know this from my own personal experience with it — tend to repetitively tell stories about the trauma they've experienced. It's our way of trying to process it. [Read More]
News Notes
War is good business. A new report from the Swedish think tank SIPRI ("Weapons boom shows no signs of slowing") says that the 100 biggest weapons makers last year had $420 billion in sales, up 5 percent over the previous year and up 47 percent since 9/11. The USA led the way, with the five biggest arms makers (Lockheed, Raytheon, etc.) have total sales of about $150 billion, or 35 percent of the world's total sales last year. [Link].
Anthony Swofford, the author of the Persian Gulf-war memoir Jarhead, has an insightful essay in the MIT Technology Review called "Drones and robots won't make war easier—they'll make it worse." "It is that this reliance on technological cool," he writes, "the assumption that it lessens or alters the lethality of war, allows zero accountability for how, when, and why we fight. … When we believe the lie that war can be totally wired and digitized, that it can be a Wi-Fi effort waged from unmanned or barely manned fighting apparatus, or that an exoskeleton will help an infantryman fight longer, better, faster, and keep him safe, no one will be held responsible for saying yes to war." [Read More]
The Trump administration has changed the rules about who can get food stamps, with the results that 688,000 will lose their benefits soon, and millions more may be cut in the near future. Read more here.
Is President Trump sending 14,000 new troops to the Middle East? Is the USA planning a new confrontation with Iran from its bases in Iraq? All is confusion in the mainstream media and probably in the White House. Check out two good articles by Juan Cole and Gareth Porter for some clarifying analysis.
On November 18th Secretary of State Pompeo announced that the US government was abandoning a 1978 State Department legal opinion that determined that settlement expansion in the occupied territories of the [Israel/Palestine] West Bank was in violation of international law. Ten days ago, over 100 Democratic members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to President Trump strongly criticizing this step. Sadly, Westchester's Reps Lowey and Engel did not sign this letter, nor did a majority of the House Democrats. For some background on the settlements, Trump's policy, and the divisions among Democrats on the Israel/Palestine issue, go here.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our rallies are usually about war or the climate crisis, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We (usually) meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. And if you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
Your Rewards for reading our newsletter this week include a wonderful short history about "How Turkish Muslims at Atlantic Records Marketed Motown, Jazz, Black Music to America" [Link] Yes, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, Arethea Franklin and many more giants of music found a home at Muslim-owned Atlantic. For an equally wonderful short video, "25 Years: A History of Atlantic Records," go here.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS
Trump Was Right Before He Was Wrong: NATO Should Be Obsolete
By Medea Benjamin, Code Pink [December 9, 2019]
---- The three smartest words that Donald Trump uttered during his presidential campaign are "NATO is obsolete." … Rather than being a strong alliance with a clear purpose, this 70-year-old organization that is meeting in London on December 4 is a stale military holdover from the Cold War days that should have gracefully retired many years ago. … In an age where people around the world want to avoid war and to focus instead on the climate chaos that threatens future life on earth, NATO is an anachronism. It now accounts for about three-quarters of military spending and weapons dealing around the globe. Instead of preventing war, it promotes militarism, exacerbates global tensions and makes war more likely. This Cold War relic shouldn't be reconfigured to maintain US domination in Europe, or to mobilize against Russia or China, or to launch new wars in space. It should not be expanded, but disbanded. Seventy years of militarism is more than enough. [Read More]
Trump's Legacy Is Being Written Right Now [Impeachment … for what?]
By
---- For House Democrats, there is a powerful temptation to narrow the grounds for impeachment. By adhering to a simple narrative about President Trump's criminal actions in relation to Ukraine, they hope it will be easier to mobilize public support than if they levied a more complex set of charges. In the impeachment of Richard Nixon, the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee faced a similar choice … For Nixon's impeachment, there was actually a fourth article of impeachment. It encompassed more serious offenses and incited intense debate among the members. Introduced by Representative John Conyers of Michigan, it charged the president with "the submission to the Congress of false and misleading statements concerning the existence, scope and nature of American bombing operations in Cambodia in derogation of the power of Congress to declare war, to make appropriations and to raise and support armies." … In introducing Article IV, Mr. Conyers and other liberal colleagues were trying to show how the crimes of Watergate were directly tied to the excesses of the Vietnam War. Yet it was partly for this reason that the committee chairman, Peter Rodino, wanted to scrap the item. In his assessment, too tight a link between the process of impeachment and the Vietnam War would be needlessly divisive at a time when he was seeking consensus and bipartisanship. [Read More]
The Effects and Consequences of Congress' Endless Permissions for War
By Matthew Hoh, Antiwar.com [December 9, 2019]
---- For the first time in decades, passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has been delayed due to disagreements between Democrats and Republicans. … This delay in passage of a reconciled NDAA between the two houses of Congress, however offers an opportunity, because buried within the NDAA are possibilities to repeal the pieces of legislation that have brought mass human, financial and moral consequences to the US, have wrecked entire nations and societies abroad, and have made the United States less safe…. With the NDAA stalled in conference committee an opportunity now exists for members of Congress to hear from their constituents that the wars must come to an end. While revoking the AUMFs would by no means wave a magic wand that would end the bloodshed, it would be a crucial first step in forcing the Trump administration, and subsequent administrations, to return to Congress for approval to start another war or to even continue with those wars that are now well into their second decade. [Read More]
From Now On, Every Palestinian Is an anti-Semite
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [December 8, 2019]
---- The plague is spreading. Under cover of the (just) war against anti-Semitism, Europe and the United States silence every voice daring to criticize Israel. Under cover of this war, they are undermining their freedom of speech. Incredibly, this new phenomenon is not triggering any protest, as one would expect. Laws labeling anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and the anti-occupation movement as anti-Semitic, are passed with overwhelming majorities. Now they are playing into the hands of Israel and the Jewish establishment, but they are liable to ignite anti-Semitism when questions arise about the extent of their meddling. Last week, the phenomenon hit France, cradle of the revolution. The French National Assembly passed by a sweeping majority a bill that adopts the definition of anti-Semitism issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Liberty? Equality? Fraternity? Not when it involves Israel. Here, these values are rendered mute. [Read More]
---- At first he was just losing weight, he felt only a little ill, Max said to Ellen, and he didn't call for an appointment with his doctor, according to Greg, because he was managing to keep on working at more or less the same rhythm, but he did stop smoking, Tanya pointed out, which suggests he was frightened, but also that he wanted, even more than he knew, to be healthy, or healthier, or maybe just to gain back a few pounds, said Orson …. [Read More]
How the Battle of Seattle Made the Truth About Globalization True
By Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus [December 4, 2019]
---- The Battle of Seattle in late November 1999 is, for me, memorable in many ways. … But for me the main takeaway from Seattle was that it takes action to make the truth true. In the decade prior to Seattle, there were a lot of studies, including United Nations reports, that questioned the claim that globalization and free market policies were leading to sustained growth and prosperity. Instead, the data showed that globalization and pro-market policies were promoting more inequality and more poverty and consolidating economic stagnation, especially in the Global South. However, these figures remained "factoids" rather than "facts" in the eyes of academics, the press, and policymakers, who dutifully repeated the neoliberal mantra that economic liberalization promoted growth and prosperity. … Then we had Seattle. It was not just a World Trade Organization ministerial that collapsed, but also a creed that had been widely believed to be true. After Seattle, the press began to talk about the "dark side of globalization" — about the inequalities and poverty being created by globalization. [Read More]
