Chris Hedges's Blog, page 305
March 17, 2019
Lawmaker Who Compared Green New Deal to Genocide Rakes in Oil Money
The lawmaker who compared the Green New Deal to genocide last week has taken major campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies. Rob Bishop, a Republican congressman from Utah, expressed his opposition rather cryptically after a news conference in which Republican lawmakers called for hearings on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s plan to address climate change.
“For many people who live in the West, but also in rural and urban areas, the ideas behind the Green New Deal are tantamount to genocide,” Bishop said. When a reporter asked him to elaborate, he said: “I’m an ethnic. I’m a Westerner,” and also: “Killing would be positive if you implement everything the Green New Deal actually wants to.”
The oil and gas industry has been Bishop’s top source of campaign cash throughout his career, accounting for $500,000 in donations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has taken significant campaign contributions from oil and gas industry giants like BP, Anadarko, Halliburton and Chevron, according to campaign finance data from the political research organization MapLight.
The Green New Deal resolution seeks to get rid of carbon emissions and pollution while investing in high-paying jobs and strengthening labor laws. The legislation proposes a completely renewable energy system and clean transportation infrastructure to fight against the clock when it comes to climate change. It has nothing to do with targeted violence against an ethnic or religious group.
The American Petroleum Institute, whose informational materials on climate change describe “the many benefits that oil and natural gas provide our nation,” $2,500 through its political action committee in 2017. From 2008 to 2017, API spent $663 million on public relations as they spread doubt about climate change.
API’s chief executive, Mike Sommers, seems to be in denial as well. “While politicians haven’t been able to figure out a strategy on climate change, this industry has stepped up to the plate,” he said Friday. The industry groups Independent Petroleum Association of America and Petroleum Marketers Association of America also gave to Bishop.
Pacific Gas & Electric’s PAC gave Bishop $3,500 during the last election cycle. The California electric utility was blamed for a series of devastating wildfires in Northern California during the same period. The company said in a regulatory filing that it was “probable” their equipment started a fire in Butte County last year that killed 86 people and destroyed more than 18,000 structures.
The coal industry also has given support to Bishop. In 2017, the National Mining Association’s CEO and two PACs $5,000, while coal company Cloud Peak Energy’s employee PAC $1,500. Both organizations lobbied against an excise tax that would go to the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, a vital but underfunded program for people living with illness or disability due to prolonged exposure to coal dust.
“Efforts to increase taxes on the coal industry were misguided, especially now, when industry is working to stabilize after years of decline,” said Conor Bernstein, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, which held its 2017 board of directors meeting at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Some companies that gave to Bishop, such as BP, are in the growing renewable energy business and could actually stand to benefit from the Green New Deal. Bishop does not seem to grasp this nuance. “My comments were obviously not meant literally, and should not detract from the fact that the so-called Green New Deal is born of attitudes that show no respect for the lives and livelihoods of the American people,” he said in a statement.
Activists to Trump: ‘Hands Off Venezuela’
Denouncing the “strangling” of the Venezuelan economy via sanctions and demanding the Trump administration allow the South American country to determine its own fate, pro-democracy protesters marched through Washington, D.C. on Saturday to demand, “Hands Off Venezuela!”
The demonstration came seven weeks after the Trump administration recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president, rebuking President Nicolas Maduro, who won re-election last May.
U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company followed, on top of the $30 million per day earlier U.S. sanctions have cost the country.
Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin was among the prominent anti-war advocates who spoke at a rally on Capitol Hill before hundreds of protesters from all over the country began their march through the streets.
Benjamin rejected the administration’s claims that the “economic war” it has declared on Venezuela and the $20 million in so-called “humanitarian aid” it sent last month were gestures based in concern for the Venezuelan people.
“There is nobody in that White House or in this administration that cares at all for the Venezuelan people,” Benjamin told the crowd. “That has been made so clear by the sanctions that they have introduced that are designed precisely to strangle the economy and designed to make life miserable for the Venezuelan people.”
.@medeabenjamin “We are absolutely opposed to economic sanctions in Venezuela” at the #HandsOffVenezuela rally. pic.twitter.com/onD127aWXa
— Julia Rapp (@juliaerapp) March 16, 2019
The latest sanctions have been linked to the days-long blackout that recently affected much of Venezuela.
The corporate media’s complicity in promoting President Donald Trump’s agenda in Venezuela and its neglect of Americans who have spoken out forcefully against potential regime change there, was among the targets of the demonstration.
“CNN! New York Times! The people of the world say no more lies!” chanted protesters.
“.@CNN, @nytimes: the people of the world say no more lies!” #HandsOffVenezuela pic.twitter.com/zqcabaSsmd
— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) March 16, 2019
Putting out this #HandsOffVenezuela footage just in case CNN or MSNBC skips it to show Michael Cohen walking out of a car for the 8547th time pic.twitter.com/WsA4JkTTd7
— ChuckModi (@ChuckModi1) March 16, 2019
Brian Becker of the ANSWER Coalition also spoke, warning that the U.S. must end its efforts to decide for the Venezuelan people who their rightful leader should be.
“The U.S. government, whether it’s Trump or the equally imperialist Democrats, have no right, no capacity, no competence to tell the people of Venezuela who their president is or what their government should look like,” said Becker. “Only Venezuela can determine the destiny of Venezuela.”
National coordinator of the @answercoalition @BrianBeckerDC says “Only Venezuela can determine its destiny” at the #HandsOffVenezuela rally pic.twitter.com/cHnFXjfm36
— Julia Rapp (@juliaerapp) March 16, 2019
Author and activist Eugene Puryear doubled down on rejecting the Trump administration’s claims that it’s concerned with the well-being of the Venezuelans, noting that numerous humanitarian crises are taking place in the U.S. every day.
“All over downtown Washington, any day of the week, there are people eating out of garbage cans, begging for change, doing whatever they can just to survive,” he told the crowd. “So when they say they care about humanitarian aid, where’s the humanitarian aid for the thousands of homeless people in the D.C. region? … They say money is more important than people and they want you to think that they’re in Venezuela for some sort of humanitarian reason. It’s a complete and total lie.”
Listen to @EugenePuryear explain to the DC streets why we can’t believe the Trump Administration when it claims to be acting out of concern for the people of Venezuela. No more war, no more lies! #HandsOffVenezuela pic.twitter.com/B7sLMTe2Tr
— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) March 16, 2019
#USA #HandsOffVenezuela #LosPueblosConVenezuela Right now in Washington DC in front of the White House hundreds of people are congregated to denounce US imperialism and to show their support and solidarity with the Venezuelan people and their president Nicolás Maduro! pic.twitter.com/iWJuge3Qf6
— Asamblea Internacional de los Pueblos (@asambleapueblos) March 16, 2019
A sizeable #HandsOffVenezuela march heading eastbound on Penn. Ave past the Trump Hotel DC.
— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) March 16, 2019
“Maduro si, Guaido/Trump no!” pic.twitter.com/rrkOnuN1fK
As Americans spoke out in Washington, Guaido announced he was planning a national tour around Venezuela to mobilize his supporters before officially “reclaiming” power. Earlier this week, he indicated he may be open to calling for U.S. military action.
In Washington, some protesters carried signs with messages imploring the U.S. government not to go down the same path as the Bush administration in Iraq—and calling on Americans to speak out against U.S. meddling and potential military action in Venezuela.
“Remember Iraq”
— ChuckModi (@ChuckModi1) March 16, 2019
It really wasn’t that long ago.#HandsOffVenezuela DC March #HandsOffVenezuelaTrump pic.twitter.com/bYHlbcm0Qe
Serbia President Vows to Defend Law and Order Amid Protests
BELGRADE, Serbia—Serbia’s president pledged Sunday to defend the country’s law and order a day after opposition supporters stormed the national TV station, protesting what they called his autocratic rule and biased grip on the country’s media.
The opposition clashes with police on Saturday and Sunday in Belgrade, the capital, were the first major incidents after months of peaceful protests against populist President Aleksandar Vucic. The demonstrators are demanding his resignation, fair elections and a free media.
As Vucic held a news conference Sunday in the presidency building in downtown Belgrade, thousands of opposition supporters gathered in front demanding his resignation and trapping him in the building for a few hours.
Skirmishes with riot police were reported, including officers firing tear gas against the protesters who sought to form a human chain around the presidency to prevent Vucic from leaving the building.
The pro-government Pink TV showed a photo of Vucic playing chess with the interior minister apparently inside the presidency. Vucic posted a video message on Instagram, saying “I’m here and I won’t move from a place they want to occupy.”
Later, he was seen leaving the building as most of the protesters dispersed from the scene.
“They (protesters) have no power, can do nothing … as you can see, they have no courage, no courage for anything,” Vucic said as he got into his car. “Nothing will come of it, nothing.”
Police said they were attacked and arrested several demonstrators. The interior minister said the protest leaders must be “processed” as soon as possible.
The crowd, however, chanted “He is finished!” at Vucic, which was the slogan of the October 2000 uprising that led to the ouster of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, architect of the country’s bloody wars with its neighbors during the early 1990s.
During his televised address, Vucic repeatedly branded opposition leaders as “fascists, hooligans and thieves.”
“There will be no more violence,” Vucic said. “Serbia is a democratic country, a country of law and order and Serbia will know how to respond.”
Vucic tried to downplay the protesters’ numbers, insisting that only about 1,000 people had gathered, saying “they think they have the right, 1,000 of them, to determine the fate of the country.”
He has also claimed support from outside the capital, saying people are ready to come to Belgrade to defend him.
Serbian riot police on Saturday night removed hundreds of people, including opposition leaders, who stormed the state-run TV headquarters in Belgrade to denounce the broadcaster, whose reporting they consider highly biased.
Serbia’s weekly anti-government protests began after thugs beat up an opposition politician in November. A former extreme nationalist, Vucic now says he wants to lead Serbia into the European Union.
___
Jovana Gec contributed to this report.
Sanders’ Staff Becomes First Presidential Campaign to Formally Unionize
Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Saturday that his support for his 2020 campaign staff’s decision to unionize demonstrated his commitment to fighting for workers’ rights. Sanders’ Friday announcement made his presidential campaign the first in history to recognize a unionized workforce.
The progressive senator has been a vocal supporter of the Fight for $15 movement; teachers in cities across the country who have staged walkouts to demand fair pay; and other labor campaigns. His support for a unionized campaign staff was presented as an extension of that work as well as a signal of the policies he will promote should he win the presidency.
“We cannot just support unions with words, we must back it up with actions,” Sanders said. “On this campaign and when we are in the White House, we are going to make it easier for people to join unions, not harder.”
I’m proud that our campaign is the first presidential campaign to unionize.
We cannot just support unions with words, we must back it up with actions. On this campaign and when we are in the White House, we are going make it easier for people to join unions, not harder. https://t.co/JNv3dpss6D
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 15, 2019
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 will represent the campaign staffers, according to CNN. Currently 44 staff members are eligible to join the union, but organizers say about 1,000 people working in Washington, Vermont, and across the country could eventually be represented by the bargaining unit.
“We expect [unionizing] will mean pay parity and transparency on the campaign, with no gender bias or harassment, and equal treatment for every worker,” Mark P. Federici, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, said in a statement on Friday.
“I hope this breakthrough serves as a model for other presidential campaigns, as well as party committees and candidates for other offices,” Federici added. “When candidates who claim to support the labor movement practice what they preach, that sends a powerful message that, if elected, they will deliver on their promises to strengthen union rights and level the playing field between workers and employers.”
“It’s really beautiful to have such solidarity with folks from all different backgrounds and job roles,” said Julia Griffin, a communications staffer. “When workers organize we all benefit, and I can’t wait to see how the campaign benefits from this as well.”
In recent weeks, Sanders has taken steps to address reports of pay inequality, discrimination, and harassment on his 2016 campaign.
On social media, supporters praised the senator for becoming the first 2020 candidate to formally recognize a unionized staff—following in the footsteps of progressive candidates like Cynthia Nixon, who ran for governor of New York last year; Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who became the first sitting member of Congress whose staff was represented by a union.
Some political observers also noted that other Democratic candidates may now feel increased pressure to endorse the unionization of their own staff members.
Campaign workers have been organizing unions for local workers, increasingly. However, this will be the first Presidential campaign ever to have a unionized staff.
Game changing history is made with Bernie, folks! #Bernie2020 https://t.co/vWFKTAYWFv
— CC NV for Bernie (@CCNV4Bernie2016) March 16, 2019
Wow: The Bernie Sanders campaign becomes the first presidential campaign in history to unionize, per campaign.
That’s a pretty big challenge to all the other campaigns.
— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) March 15, 2019
This is a really great move forward. Campaign staff are overworked and underpaid. Interns are used as free labor. Kudos to the Sanders team. https://t.co/RZlwCOFzjb
— Blake Kitterman (@blake_kitterman) March 15, 2019
Mourners Pay Tribute to New Zealand Victims, Await Burials
Hundreds of flowers were piled up amid candles, balloons and notes of grief and love outside the Al Noor mosque. As a light rain fell, people clutched each other and wept quietly.
“We wish we knew your name to write upon your heart. We wish we knew your favorite song, what makes you smile, what makes you cry,” read one of the tributes, which contained cut-out paper hearts under a nearby tree. “We made a heart for you. 50 hearts for 50 lives.”
Two days after Friday’s attack, New Zealand’s deadliest shooting in modern history, relatives were still waiting for authorities to release the bodies. Islamic law calls for bodies to be cleansed and buried as soon as possible after death, usually within 24 hours.
Supporters arrived from across the country to help with the burials in Christchurch and authorities sent in backhoes to dig graves in a site that was newly fenced off and blocked from view with white netting.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said authorities hoped to release all the bodies by Wednesday, and Police Commissioner Mike Bush said authorities were working with pathologists and coroners to complete the task as soon as they could.
“We have to be absolutely clear on the cause of death and confirm their identity before that can happen,” Bush said. “But we are so aware of the cultural and religious needs. So we are doing that as quickly and as sensitively as possible.”
Police said they had released a preliminary list of the victims to families, which has helped give closure to some who were waiting for any news.
The suspect in the shootings, 28-year-old white supremacist Brenton Harrison Tarrant, appeared in court Saturday amid strict security, shackled and wearing all-white prison garb, and showed no emotion when the judge read one murder charge and said more would likely follow.
Tarrant had posted a jumbled 74-page anti-immigrant manifesto online before the attacks and apparently used a helmet-mounted camera to broadcast live video of the slaughter.
Ardern said the gunman had sent the manifesto to her office email about nine minutes before the attacks, although she hadn’t gotten the email directly herself. She said her office was one of about 30 recipients and had forwarded the email to parliamentary security within a couple of minutes of receiving it.
Bush said at a news conference that another body had been found at Al Noor mosque as they finished removing the victims, bringing the number of people killed there to 42. Another seven people were killed at Linwood mosque and one more person died later at Christchurch Hospital.
Thirty-four wounded remained at the hospital, where officials said 12 were in critical condition. A 4-year-old girl at a children’s hospital in Auckland was also listed as critical.
Dozens of Muslim supporters gathered at a center set up for victims, families and friends across the road from the hospital, where many had flown in from around New Zealand to offer support. About two dozen men received instructions on their duties Sunday, which included Muslim burial customs.
Abdul Hakim, 56, of Auckland, was among many who had flown in to help.
“As soon as people die, we must bury them as soon as possible,” Hakim said. “We are all here to help them in washing the body, putting them in the grave.”
Javed Dadabhai, who flew from Auckland after learning about the death of his 35-year-old cousin, Junaid Mortara, said the Muslim community was being patient.
“The family understands that it’s a crime scene. It’s going to be a criminal charge against the guy who’s done this, so they need to be pretty thorough,” he said.
Still, it was hard, he said, because the grieving process wouldn’t really begin until he could bury his cousin.
People across the country were still trying to come to terms with the massacre that Ardern described as “one of New Zealand’s darkest days.”
At the Vatican, Pope Francis offered prayers for “our Muslim brothers” killed in the attack. At his traditional Sunday prayer, Francis renewed “an invitation to unite in prayer and gestures of peace to oppose hatred and violence.”
The gunman livestreamed 17 minutes of the rampage at the Al Noor mosque, where he sprayed worshippers with bullets. Facebook, Twitter and Google scrambled to take down the video, which was widely available on social media for hours after the bloodbath.
The second attack took place at the Linwood mosque about 5 kilometers (3 miles) away.
Ardern has said Tarrant was a licensed gun owner who legally bought the five guns he used.
At a news conference, the prime minister reiterated her promise that there will be changes to the country’s gun laws. She said her Cabinet will discuss the policy details Monday.
Arden used some of her strongest language yet about gun control, saying that laws need to change and “they will change.”
Neighboring Australia has virtually banned semi-automatic rifles from private ownership since a lone gunman killed 35 people with assault rifles in 1996.
Before Friday’s attack, New Zealand’s deadliest shooting in modern history took place in 1990 in the small town of Aramoana, where a gunman killed 13 people following a dispute with a neighbor.
___
Associated Press writers Kristen Gelineau and Stephen Wright in Christchurch, and Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed.
Rupert Murdoch Is a Relentless Purveyor of Islamophobia
World-straddling press lord Rupert Murdoch’s media is under pressure in the wake of the massacre of 50 worshipers by a white supremacist terrorist at a Christchurch mosque. Murdoch’s Fox News is known for pushing white nationalist themes and for demonizing Muslims, and his Sky News Australia is not very different.
Sky News Australia kept looping the video made by the alleged mass murderer and terrorist during the mosque attack. New Zealand authorities had discouraged people from playing the tape, which the white supremacist had connived at in order to spread his hate. Not sensationalizing these mass shooters is best practice in law enforcement and mass media. The focus should be on their victims. But Murdoch’s Sky News Australia disregarded these requests and so was suspended from the airwaves by the independent Sky News New Zealand.
Over in the US, far right propagandist Jeanine Pirro did not do her show on Saturday. Last week, she launched a virulent hate campaign against congresswoman Ilhan Omar, accusing her of betraying the US constitution by wearing a headscarf. Actually, the US constitution guarantees freedom to practice one’s religion. Pirro’s hateful remarks questioning Omar’s patriotism merely for practicing her Somali version of Islam might have passed without too much comment over at steadfastly Islamophobic Fox. But the shooting to death of 50 innocent Muslims over exactly the same issues on which Pirro had gone after Omar cast Pirro’s comments in a new and dangerous light.
What is common between Sky News Australia and Fox is their ownership, which is vested in the Australia-born Rupert Murdoch. Anti-Trust statutes and the FCC ought to have made it impossible for one man to own so much of the US and British press. But Murdoch kept plugging away, and he came to own both the London Times and the Wall Street Journal, not to mention Fox cable news and a whole host of others.
Murdoch’s channel can pull Pirro, but that is just a personnel shift. The real problem is the editorial line, which is just hate.
Fox is a relentless purveyor of Islamophobia, and if it goes on this way it will get people killed.
Our Kids Know We’re Failing Them on Climate Change
Kids are taking over the streets in other countries, rallying and chanting and refusing to go to school one day a week.
Young people across the world are striking to draw attention to the ravages of climate change. They are demanding — with their bodies and their voices — that the catastrophe each of them will inherit be a priority for the grown-ups around them. They are insisting that we adults make some sacrifices to keep their planet from becoming uninhabitable.
“We are the voiceless future of humanity… We will not accept a life in fear and devastation. We have the right to live our dreams and hopes.” You know who said that? A teenager. Actually, lots of them, since it’s part of a letter, a call to action, from the organizers of Fridays for a Future. I’m hearing them loud and clear and it’s driving me crazy!
The map of activities that those teenagers planned for their March 15 global day of action represented a mind-popping collection of locations, including Tromso, Norway; Port Louis, Mauritius; Diliman, the Philippines; Osorno, Chile; Whitehorse, Canada; Bamako, Mali; and Tehran, Iran. You don’t have to be a cartographer to notice that there were way more actions planned around the world than in Donald Trump’s United States.
This clarion call comes from teenagers, the crew we characterize here in America as eye-rolling creatures suspended in a helpless state of consumerism, hyper-sexualization, and crushing academic pressure. Of course, there are kids in the streets (and sitting in at congressional offices) for climate change (and for a host of other issues) here, too, but, there are far more doing nothing but playing Fortnite on their phones or tablets and uploading DIY lip-balm videos on YouTube.
Seventy-three percent of Americans now acknowledge the reality of human-caused climate change — by far the biggest number since the question was first asked in 2008 — but too few want to pay to make it go away. Asked if they’d spend even $10 a month to address the crisis, 72% of Americans took a hard pass, 57% of them opting for $1 a month instead. Set that against the cost of your favorite large iced latte with a shot of caramel, a Netflix subscription, or the Uber ride you summoned when you could have walked.
If global warming continues at current rates, however, Solomon Hsiang, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues found that it would impact our economy in a huge way. It would shave “3 to 6 percentage points off of the country’s gross domestic product by century’s end — the warmer it gets, the bigger the hit to the economy.” The Trump administration’s own report assessing the risks of climate change found that global warming “is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century… With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century — more than the current gross domestic product of many U.S. states.”
Time for another latte, folks, because this is our problem, whether we’re facing it or not.
How Do We Parent Generation Hot?
I’m almost 45. My kids, Seamus and Madeline, are 5 and 6; my stepdaughter Rosena is 12. They are part of what journalist Mark Hertsgaard calls Generation Hot, “some two billion young people, all of whom have grown up under global warming and are fated to spend the rest of their lives confronting its mounting impacts.”
On a good day, I quip that “I’m halfway to 90.” On a bad day, I can’t imagine what the world will look like in 2064, for me or them.
I was named for my paternal grandmother, Frida. Born in 1886 in the Black Forest of Germany, she emigrated here with her family when she was very young, grew up in Minnesota, and married my grandfather in June 1911. I was married exactly a century later. I wear her wedding ring, a battered little gold band that connects me to a woman who died before I turned two. The world she bore six sons into wasn’t an easy one. She spent a lot of her time washing laundry, mending clothes, tending crops, caring for animals, preparing food, and raising children, a life I can romanticize the heck out of in the right mood.
Had she been able to leave her small world and travel into my future, so much of my daily life would undoubtedly be a marvel, a mystery, or a concern to her. I suspect, for example, that the hours I sit in front of this computer wouldn’t even look like work to Grandma Frida.
And if I could fast-forward 45 years into the future, what would I see? On the marvels and mysteries, I haven’t a clue, but I do know one thing: I would certainly see an extreme version of today when it comes to climate change. In other words, the indiscriminate damage from extreme weather, hitting vulnerable populations particularly hard, will only have intensified dramatically. After all, 2018, the wettest year in America in 35 years, saw 14 weather catastrophes, each of which cost a billion or more dollars. It was also the fourth-hottest year on record for the planet as a whole (the other three being the previous three years), according to data tracked by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reporto only predicts more and far worse of what we have already been seeing: droughts, floods, rising sea levels and heat indices, increasingly fierce wildfires, more food shortages and famines to come, and ever larger populations on the move as people flee the weather and the destruction, look for food and shelter, and try to escape the manmade conflicts fueled by such events.
Worries for the World
That’s Rosena’s future I’m writing about, and Seamus’s and Madeline’s, too. I’ve been making a concerted effort as a parent of small children and an almost-teenager, as a citizen of the United States, and as an environmentalist (or at least someone who would like to wear that mantle) to face my own denial reflex on climate change. Until now, thanks in part to my own parents, I’ve spent most of my life worrying about nuclear weapons destroying the planet. So maybe it’s just a matter of layering one world-destroying phenomenon on another.
The strange thing is that I find it easier to think about nuclear war than climate change. After all, when it comes to those nukes, either the button gets pushed or it doesn’t. A finite number of nuclear warheads exist on this planet and they could be dismantled one by one in a relatively short period of time if policymakers chose to do so. The genie could potentially be put back in the bottle. Climate change is another matter.
Oh, and talking to my kids about it? That’s a terrifying thought. They’re already deeply afraid of volcanoes for no reason whatsoever. Going to Chicago for a wedding? First question: “Are there volcanoes there?” A weekend trip to New York: “Wait, mom, volcanoes in New York? No, right?” Now, imagine introducing them to the human-made, carbonized version of volcanoes that will actually impact their future.
I’d rather not, but I’m thinking I must. That, I suppose, is the work of parenting in 2019.
Rosena has a few months more before she becomes a teenager and there is not (yet) a lot of eye-rolling in our household. Thankfully, she remains more kid than adult wannabe on the cusp of womanhood. But the climate-change kids have me thinking harder about her and the fate of her earth. I’m thinking she should know more than she does about the mess the baby boomers got her into.
But who or what is really to blame for all of this, anyway? The Industrial Revolution? The war machine? Big Oil? When you’re talking about a staggering 1.5 to 2 (or even 4) degree Celsius increase in global temperatures, I suppose there’s bound to be plenty of blame to spread around.
My husband and I bug Rosena for taking long showers and for her urge to turn on every light in the house. We make her walk to and from school and try to walk as a family as much as possible. We point out how much of what she loves to buy is packaged in non-recyclable, landfill-clogging insta-garbage. We joke that slime is the cause of icebergs melting, bee colony collapse, and every other ill in the world, but we haven’t yet started harping on global warming, greenhouse gases, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events.
For a while, I hesitated, not wanting to worry her pointlessly. But there is a point to worrying! As I’ve watched the next generation pour into the streets, I’ve been rethinking things. I’ve started to feel that our family needs to be learning all of this together. It needs to be united in the fight against climate change and in the preparations for a very different future, for Rosena’s future.
Is It Time to Panic Yet?
After my own version of a survey of the recent literature, here’s what I know: we’re screwed.
David Wallace-Wells, a legit climate Cassandra, is tired of public intellectuals and scientists candy-coating the bleakness of the future that awaits us unless everything changes fast. So, in a new book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, he looks at the worst case scenarios and says it’s time to PANIC! A fellow at the New America Foundation, he recently told Rachel Martin of NPR’s Morning Edition:
“When I talk about being optimistic, I’m talking about a range that starts at a death toll of 150 million people and extends to a world 4 degrees warmer where we would have, eventually, hundreds of feet of sea level rise, horrible impacts on agriculture and public health beyond our comprehension. Now, a lot of people would want to just sort of recoil from even that best-case scenario.”
Where do you go from that version of “best case”? Is there such a thing as productive panic? David Wallace-Wells still thinks so.
Climate change certainly makes me consider my occasional hamburger, or retail therapy at T.J. Maxx, or my low-key Amazon Smile addiction — it can’t be bad if it’s for a good cause, right? — where things I “needish” are wrapped in countless layers of the paper and plastics that contribute to those dead seas of plastic junk that now clog our oceans. At this point, human activity reportedly consumes 1.7 Earths’ worth of materials annually. As the Global Footprint Network points out:
“This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year. We use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting forests, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can sequester.”
But the personal stuff — not driving, eating meat, or buying plastic crap — won’t, of course, do the trick. Collective action is needed. Frida Berrigan becoming a vegan won’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45%.To get there, we need a whole new set of relationships, as well as rules and regulations. We need to live collectively, not just individually, as if the planet matters. We need, as Guardian columnist George Monbiot has put it, “a complete revision of our relationship with the living planet.”
Look for Action
Turning toward this catastrophe is hard work. Here’s just a sampling of the titles of recent books about climate change: The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption; Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change; Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity; The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable; and This Is the Way the World Ends: How Droughts and Die-offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes Are Converging on America.
You get the idea. No wonder I struggle with what to do with all this information, this mixture of artful alarmism and sober grappling with the facts on the ground. I’m sure Greta Thunberg would be impatient with my waffling and indecision, my fervent wish that this would all just go away. She was 15 years old when she sat down outside the Swedish parliament and “school striked for the climate.” She was inspired by the young people of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who began organizing a true gun control movement after 17 of their schoolmates and staff were killed by a mass shooter. She was motivated by her understanding of the existential threat posed by a warming world, driven to action by her observation that none of the adults with the power to change the rules were doing anything. That includes me, doesn’t it?
They — we — were failing, she concluded. Why, she wondered, wasn’t it illegal to burn carbons? Why wasn’t it forbidden to trash the planet? Greta, who has a young person’s passion and absolutism, is also diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, which, as she told a crowd at a TED Talk, makes her see the world in black and white. “There are no grey areas when it comes to survival,” she noted, her voice dry and lightly accented. She ended that TED Talk by saying, “We do need hope. Of course we do. But one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So, instead of looking for hope, look for action.”
So she acted and the school strikes for climate change she launched soon spread across the world. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal could be considered one answer to Greta’s call for action. Along with the venerable Senator Ed Markey, Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman representative and youngest woman ever elected to Congress, is proposing that Green New Deal “to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers; to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; [and] to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century.”
And I’m all for it. Every single word, even the ones that are being denounced as too expensive, unrealistic, challenging, and anti-corporate. And I’m even more for the new conversation this wave of climate concern is catalyzing. One of these days, we might even have an actual national debate about what it will take to arrest the increases in global temperature that could lead to the demise not of the planet itself, but possibly of human civilization.
Everything Is… (Not) Fine
The fact that many of us still look at the possible cataclysm to come through a distracting everything-is-fine vision of America makes that conversation all the harder. Here in Connecticut, for instance, gas is still only $2.39 a gallon, the local Stop and Shop has three-for-one pints of blueberries from Peru or Chile on offer, and on a recent wintry Friday it was almost 50 degrees.
It can be hard to tap into one’s sense of urgency living here in the northeast. And yet we are not immune. Our library hosted an event on city trees at the end of January and I learned that New London’s six square urban miles had lost more than 1,000 trees in the last 10 years. They’ve been cut down after storm damage, removed for new sidewalks, died of old age and of the hard life of a tree living at the street’s edge. A college senior who had counted all the city’s trees and assessed their health told us about how they filter pollutants while offering shade. My community is organizing to get those trees back (and plant even more of them), but we’ll probably fall a few short of the 1.2 trillion new trees that one recent study suggests would be needed to cancel a decade of carbon dioxide emissions.
Like all the other homeowners in New London, I now find a $15 stormwater surcharge on the water bill that arrives every quarter. It’s not quite the $10 a month climate change tax Americans were polled on, but it is related to a warming world and it’s hitting some of my neighbors pretty hard. Our community, after all, is bordered on three sides by water and (like increasing numbers of American communities) our water infrastructure is antiquated. It gets overwhelmed by even a modest downpour. We’re not talking about Miami-level sunny-day flooding, but we could get there and, if so, it will probably take a lot more than $60 a year to keep us reasonably safe.
Southeastern Connecticut isn’t on the front lines of climate change. Ours are still third- or fourth-level problems related to a warming, more resource-pinched world. Our community probably won’t be uninhabitable in the next generation. Our home is likely to withstand the next round of mega-storms. Still, we are all beginning to pay for climate change, even if the costs and consequences have yet to fully register. Taken individually in New London (if not Puerto Rico or Houston), it’s been a matter of minor inconveniences and background noise, little more than so many phantom twinges.
Still, I have no doubt that we’re in trouble. Trouble deep. And I’m not going to lie to my kids. I’m not going to deny that I’m terrified about their future. I’m not going to fail as an adult. I still have work to do. I can still do my small part to help the school strikers and the members of Generation Hot who have identified the “right to live our dreams and hopes” as a right worth defending. I’m not going to fail as a parent. I’m already listening to the school strikers, many just a few years older than Rosena. I’m going to heed their leadership. I plan to join them, to learn and listen, to do my best to share my still unarticulatable fears and, with my children, to face this future together.
March 16, 2019
Lawyer: U.S. Navy Veteran Held in Iran Sentenced to 10 Years
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—A U.S. Navy veteran from California has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran, his lawyer said Saturday, becoming the first American known to be imprisoned there since President Donald Trump took office.
Though the case against Michael R. White remains unclear, it comes as Trump has taken a hard-line approach to Iran by pulling the U.S. out of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Iran, which in the past has used its detention of Westerners and dual nationals as leverage in negotiations, has yet to report on White’s sentence in state-controlled media. Its mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Obviously the concern is that the Iranians are using this as a tool against the United States, given the other individuals who are in custody,” Washington-based lawyer Mark Zaid told The Associated Press.
White’s arrest was first reported by IranWire, an online news service run by Iranian expatriates, which interviewed a former Iranian prisoner who said he met White at Vakilabad Prison in the northeastern city of Mashhad in October.
In the time since, White has been convicted of insulting Iran’s supreme leader and posting private information online, Zaid said. He said the information surrounding the case remained vague. He learned of the sentence from the State Department, which in turn learned of it from the Swiss government, which looks after American interests in Iran.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday. The New York Times first reported White’s 10-year sentence.
White’s mother, Joanne White, had told the Times that her son, who lives in Imperial Beach, California, went to Iran to see a woman she described as his girlfriend and had booked a July 27 flight back home to San Diego via the United Arab Emirates. She filed a missing person report with the State Department after he did not board the flight. She added that he had been undergoing treatment for a neck tumor and has asthma.
White worked as a cook in the U.S. Navy and left the service about a decade ago.
Zaid said Saturday that White apparently traveled to Mashhad without informing the woman in advance. It remains difficult for Americans to get visas to Iran, 40 years after the Islamic Revolution and the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.
“That’s certainly our concern, that’s he’s being used as a pawn,” Zaid said. “But we’re more in a confused state than an aware state.”
Other Americans are known to be held in Iran.
Iranian-American Siamak Namazi and his octogenarian father Baquer, a former UNICEF representative who served as governor of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province under the U.S.-backed shah, are both serving 10-year sentences on espionage charges. Iranian-American art dealer Karan Vafadari and his Iranian wife, Afarin Neyssari, received 27-year and 16-year prison sentences, respectively. Chinese-American graduate student Xiyue Wang was sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly “infiltrating” the country while doing doctoral research on Iran’s Qajar dynasty.
Iranian-American Robin Shahini was released on bail in 2017 after staging a hunger strike while serving an 18-year prison sentence for “collaboration with a hostile government.” Shahini has since return to America and is now suing Iran in U.S. federal court.
Also in an Iranian prison is Nizar Zakka, a U.S. permanent resident from Lebanon who advocated for internet freedom and has done work for the U.S. government. He was sentenced to 10 years on espionage-related charges.
Former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished in Iran in 2007 while on an unauthorized CIA mission, remains missing. Iran says that Levinson is not in the country and that it has no further information about him, though his family holds Tehran responsible for his disappearance.
Levees Breached in Midwest as Record Flooding Turns Deadly
OMAHA, Neb.—Authorities were using boats and large vehicles on Saturday to rescue and evacuate residents in parts of the Midwest where a recent deluge of rainwater and snowmelt poured over frozen ground, overwhelming creeks and rivers and killing at least one person.
Rescue efforts in eastern Nebraska were hampered by reports of levee breaches and washouts of bridges and roads, including part of Nebraska Highway 92, leading in and out of southwest Omaha. Authorities confirmed that a bridge on that highway that crosses the Elkhorn River had been washed out Saturday. In Fremont, west of Omaha, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office issued a mandatory evacuation for some residents after floodwaters broke through a levee along the Platte River. And in Mills County, Iowa, authorities ordered people in some rural areas to evacuate after the Missouri River overtopped levees.
The flooding followed days of snow and rain—record-setting in some places—that swept through the West and Midwest. The deluge pushed some waterways, including the Missouri River, to record levels in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota. The flooding was the worst in nearly a decade in places.
The family of farmer James Wilke, 50, of Columbus, Nebraska, said he was killed Thursday when a bridge collapsed as he was using his tractor to try to reach stranded motorists on Thursday. His body was found downstream, his cousin Paul Wilke told the Columbus Telegram. Gass Haney Funeral Home confirmed James Wilke’s death.
At least two other people were missing in floodwaters in Nebraska. Officials said a Norfolk man was seen on top of his flooded car late Thursday before being swept away in the water and another man was swept away by waters when a dam collapsed on the Niobrara River.
Officials in Sarpy County, south of Omaha, said Saturday that power may be shut off to communities along the Missouri, Platte and Elkhorn rivers for safety reasons. They warned those who choose to ignore calls to evacuate that rescues would be attempted only during daylight hours. Some cities and towns, such as North Bend on the banks of the Platte River, were submerged. Others, such as Waterloo and Fremont, were surrounded by floodwaters, stranding residents in virtual islands with no access in or out.
“There is no way out of here unless you’ve got a helicopter — or a boat,” the Rev. Mike Bitter, pastor of Christian Church of Waterloo, told the Omaha World-Herald.
Officials in western Iowa and eastern Nebraska were urging people not to drive unless necessary. In Iowa, a section of northbound Interstate 29 that runs parallel to the Missouri River was closed due to flooding. Authorities were rerouting motorists at Kansas City, Missouri, using a detour that took people almost 140 miles (225 kilometers) out of the way.
Farther east, the Mississippi River saw moderate flooding in Illinois from Rock Island south to Gladstone. Meteorologist Brian Pierce with the National Weather Service’s Quad Cities office in Davenport, Iowa, said flooding on the Mississippi could get worse a few weeks as more snow melts in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
“What we’re having now is the dress rehearsal for the main event that’s going to happen in early April,” he said of the flooding on the Mississippi.
Rising waters along the Pecatonica and Rock rivers flooded some homes in the northern Illinois cities of Freeport, Rockford and Machesney Park. The National Weather Service said record crests were possible along the rivers, with water levels forecast to continue to rise over the next several days and remain above flood stage through most of the weekend.
Freeport resident Mary Martin told the (Freeport) Journal-Standard that she went to the store to get milk and bread when she saw floodwaters were rising Friday.
“Within an hour of going to the store, I could not get back in. That’s how fast the water was coming up,” Martin said.
___
Associated Press reporter Caryn Rousseau contributed from Chicago.
Elite Restaurant Torched, Luxury Shops Smashed in Paris Riots
PARIS—French yellow vest protesters set life-threatening fires, smashed up luxury stores and clashed with police Saturday in the 18th straight weekend of demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron. Large plumes of smoke rose above the rioting on Paris’ landmark Champs-Elysees avenue, and a mother and her child were just barely saved from a building blaze.
The resurgent violence came as protesters are seeking to breathe new life into a movement that seemed to be fizzling, and get attention from French leaders and media whom they see as underplaying their economic justice cause and favoring the elite.
Paris police appeared to be caught off guard by the speed and severity of the unrest. French police tried to contain the demonstrators with repeated volleys of tear gas and water cannon, with limited success.
Cobblestones flew in the air and smoke from fires set by protesters mingled with clouds of tear gas sprayed by police, as tensions continued for hours along the Champs-Elysees.
One perilous fire targeted a bank on the ground floor of a seven-story residential building. As firetrucks rushed over, a mother and her child were rescued as the fire threatened to engulf their floor, Paris’ fire service told The Associated Press. Eleven people in the building, including two firefighters, sustained light injuries, as other residents were evacuated.
Protest organizers had hoped to make a splash Saturday, which marks the 4-month anniversary of yellow vest movement that started Nov. 17. It also marks the end of a two-month national debate that Macron organized to respond to protesters’ concerns about sinking living standards, stagnant wages and high unemployment.
The violence started minutes after the protesters gathered Saturday, when they threw smoke bombs and other objects at officers along the famed Champs-Elysees — scene of repeated past rioting — and started pounding on the windows of a police van, prompting riot police to retreat.
Simultaneous fires were also put out from two burning newspaper kiosks, which sent black smoke high into the sky. Several protesters posed for a photo in front of one charred kiosk.
Demonstrators also targeted symbols of the luxury industry, as shops including brands Hugo Boss and Lacoste were smashed up and pillaged, and mannequins thrown out of the broken windows. A posh eatery called Fouquet’s, which is associated with politicians and celebrities, was vandalized and set on fire. A vehicle burned outside the luxury boutique Kenzo, one of many blazes on and around the Champs-Elysees.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on French television that an estimated 10,000 yellow vest protesters were in Paris and another 4,500 protesters were demonstrating around France. He also said the crowd included 1,500 “ultraviolent ones who are there to smash things up.”
Still, the numbers paled beside the 30,000 people estimated to be taking part in a separate climate march that was weaving through Paris at the same time, according to Castaner.
And the number of yellow vest protesters remains smaller than early in the movement, when it drew masses to the streets nationwide and polls showed a majority of French people supporting their cause. Since then, repeated rioting by the protesters and economic concessions by Macron have diminished public support for the yellow vest cause.
Paris police told The Associated Press that 109 people were arrested in Paris on Saturday.
Yellow vest groups representing teachers, unemployed people and labor unions were among those that organized dozens of rallies and marches.
Protesters dismiss Macron’s national debate on the economy as empty words and a campaign ploy to gain support for the European Parliament elections in May. Protesters are angry over high taxes and Macron policies seen as coddling business.
Many protesters, particularly those on the political extremes, see the national debate as a failure.
“As long as we don’t get any results, we will continue (to protest) for all we asked for: pay rises, pensions, purchasing power, food waste. Everything,” said Martine Sous, a protester from the Eure region west of Paris.
While the rioters drew most attention Saturday, most of the protesters remain peaceful.
“We are pacifists,” Sous insisted.
___
Chris den Hond, Milos Krivokapic, Catherine Gaschka and Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed.
Chris Hedges's Blog
- Chris Hedges's profile
- 1897 followers
