Oct 11, 2023

 Introduction

The scientifically and empirically derived facts documenting the large role played by the extraction, processing and wide use of fossil fuels in the warming of the planet has been known for generations. Humanity is now in an unprecedented global warming crisis. It is affecting some parts of the U.S. and world more than others, but, not too long from now and in the absence of sufficient ameliorating responses, it will harmfully impact all aspects of life – people, societies, economies, agriculture, oceans, and virtually everything. Scott Dance captures this dire situation, writing “the earth is at its hottest in thousands of years” (https://washingtpost.com/weather/2023/07/08/earth-hottest-years-thousands-climate).

 The big oil corporations have known this since at least the 1970s. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway analyze the corporate cover-up in their book, Merchants of Doubt, and James Hoggan does so in his book, Climate Cover-Up. The oil and gas corporations knew, but did everything to cover up this evidence and to use their stupendous political clout to support the ongoing investment in oil and gas along with major subsidies from the government.

 Fossil fuel emissions are not the only cause of global warming, but they are the principal cause. Jake Johnson points out that “fossil fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022 (https://commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuels-global-energy-consumption).  

In  a recent article, Scott Dance reports that the planet’s temperature in September 2023 surged far above previous records…even further than what scientists said seemed like astonishing increases in July and August (https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/10/03/september-global-temperature-record-climate).

 According to Dance, “September’s temperature estimates come from models in which scientists use temperature data from around the world to calculate average global warmth. Such analyses have become a reliable complement to assessments that NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conduct each month, but with more lag time for data review and processing.

“Temperature data derived from weather satellites also showed it was the warmest September on record, by far.”

This post refers to evidence on the fossil-fuel caused climate crisis, its effects, the counterproductive role of the Republican Party, and actions and proposals by some in the Democrat Party. The present situation poses an existential threat to Americans and people around the planet. It requires massive changes in American society and governments and people everywhere. Though the responsibility for reducing the use of fossil fuels lies mostly with the big greenhouse gas emitters, including the US, China, the European Union, and Russia.

 In his new book, Our Fragile Moment, climate scientist Michael Mann points out that “only our elected policymakers…are in a position to do that,” that is, phase out the production and consumption of fossil fuels. He adds: “In the United States, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, is largely beholden to the fossil fuel industry. And it has acted that way,” that is, it promotes a policy aimed at maximizing fossil fuel production and consumption (pp. 234-235).

 This is not the popular American view. According to research on American attitudes toward “climate change,” a majority of Americans believe that there is a climate crisis and that government needs to ramp up its efforts to move away from fossil fuels toward renewables (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change).

“Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the country should prioritize developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas, according to a survey conducted in June 2023.”

 Getting hotter

Juan Cole, “the Richard P.Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of many books, refers to evidence that documents the connection between fossil fuel usage and the climate crisis (https://juancole.com/2023/10/frankensteins-emergency-dangerous.html).

 “The data from scientific institutions around the world is pouring in here in the beginning of October, regarding September, 2023, and the consensus is that it was freakishly hot, unprecedentedly torrid, off-the-charts sweltering. It was the Frankenstein’s monster of months.

 “Much of the extra heat came from human-caused climate change, from our spewing the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to the tune of 40 billion tons a year, by burning coal, fossil gas and gasoline. In addition, this is an El Nino year, when the tides in the South Pacific work in such a way as to heat the world up. And, there seem to have been an unusual number of high pressure systems, affecting Japan, German, the US southwest, and Mexico. These may be caused by a weakened and wobbly jet stream, a result of human-caused climate change.”

Republicans deny and/or dismiss the problem

Ella Nilsen considers “why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US (https://cnn.com/2023/07/30/politics/republicans-climate-solutions-heat-wave/index.html). She writes that “the GOP is stuck in a climate bind – and likely will be for the next four years, in large part because they’re still living in the shadow of former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.”

Nilsen continues. “Even as more Republican politicians are joining the consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has driven the party to the right on climate and extreme weather. Trump has called the extremely settled science of climate change a ‘hoax’ and more recently suggested that the impacts of it ‘may affect us in 300 years.’” In other words, don’t worry about it.

Most climate scientists this week reported that this summer’s unrelenting heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” were itnot for the planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels. The scientistsalso point out that “the planet’s temperature is hotter now than it has been in around 120,000 years.”

 Republicanswant to maximize the use of oil, gas, and coal

 Inan article published in the New York Times, Lisa Friedman considers a Republican “climate strategy” for 2024 called “Project 2025” (https://nytimes.com/2023/08/04/climate/republicans-climate-project2025.html).

 “Project 2025, a conservative ‘battle plan’ for the next Republican president, would stop attempts to cut the pollution that is heating the planet and encourage more emissions.

 “During a summer of scorching heat that has broken records and forced Americans to confront the reality of climate change, conservatives are laying the groundwork for a future Republican administration that would dismantle efforts to slow global warming.

 “The move is part of a sweeping strategy dubbed Project 2025 that Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank organizing the effort, has called a ‘battle plan’ for the first 180 days of a future Republican presidency.

“The plan calls for shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels — the burning of which is the chief cause of planetary warming.

 “The New York Times asked the leading Republican presidential candidates whether they support the Project 2025 strategy but none of the campaigns responded. Still, several of the architects are veterans of the Trump administration, and their recommendations match positions held by former President Donald J. Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.

 “The $22 million project also includes personnel lists and a transition strategy in the event a Republican wins the 2024 election. The nearly 1,000-page plan, which would reshape the executive branch to place more power into the president’s hands, outlines changes for nearly every agency across the government.

 “The Heritage Foundation worked on the plan with dozens of conservative groups ranging from the Heartland Institute, which has denied climate science, to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says “climate change does not endanger the survival of civilization or the habitability of the planet.”

 “Mr. Dans said the Heritage Foundation delivered the blueprint to every Republican presidential hopeful. While polls have found that young Republicans are worried about global warming, Mr. Dans said the feedback he has received confirms the blueprint reflects where the majority of party leaders stand.”

 Fossil fuel use continues to increase

 Catherine Rampell challenges a Republican view that the problem is that there is a ‘war on American energy and, contrariwise, reports on evidence that oil production is near record highs (https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/biden-fossil-fuels-republicans-energy-war-record.”

 Rampell writes: “For years, Republicans have claimed that Democrats have waged a ‘war’ on fossil fuels.” She continues: “This narrative has featured prominently in Republican presidential debates and in front-runner Donald Trump’s remarks about striking autoworkers, among other settings. Apparently (at least according to Republicans), Democrats such as President Biden have used every tool at their  disposal to squelch fossil fuel production and consumption.”

 The evidence belies such claims. “After plummeting early in the pandemic,” according to Rampell, “U.S. crude oil production has been climbing and is now back near record highs. That’s according to data released Friday [Sept. 29, 2023] by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The agency also projects that oil production will hit new all-time highs next year.”

“If‘energy independence’ means exporting more than you import, we’ve achieved it in spades. The United States has been exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imports for 22 straight months now, far longer than was the case under Trump.”

Rampell concludes: “If this is what waging war on fossil fuels looks like, Democrats apparently aren’t very good at it. But in reality, of course, the war on fossil fuels is a pure political invention. Biden and other Democrats are hewing much more closely to the Republican pro-fossil-fuel agenda than either side would like to admit — at exactly the moment we need to push toward the future.”

The human consequences – examples

Millions of children around the planet have been affected by “climate change”

Julia Conley provides one mind-numbing example. 43 million children have been forced from their homes due to climate change over the last six years  (https://commondreams.org/news/children-displaced-climate). The article was published on Oct. 6, 2023.

“The U.N.’s children’s welfare agency released a new report Friday [Oct 6, 2023] making the case for prioritizing the protection of children from fossil fuel-driven climate disasters—with more than 43 million children across the globe internally displaced in a six-year period due to drought, flooding, wildfires, and other extreme events.

In the report Children Displaced in a Changing Climate, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) details how 95% of child displacements in 44 countries from 2016-21 were due to flooding and storms, with 40.9 million children forced from their homes in countries including Guatemala, South Sudan, and Somalia.

People often go unidentified or unfound after climate-related catastrophes

Matthew Wolfe and Malcolm Araos report in the New York Times on Oct 2, 2023 that “Climate Change Is Forcing Families Into a New Kind of Indefinite Hell” (https://nytimes.com/opinion/missing-climate-change-weather-dead.html).

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Dr. Wolfe is a national fellow at New America. Dr. Araos is a postdoctoral fellow at the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah.

They refer first to the August wildfire that roared through the town of Lahaina in Hawaii. It “burned so hot that some of the dead were effectively cremated, their bones combusting to unidentifiable ash. Other bodies may have been lost in the Pacific Ocean, into which many of those fleeing the inferno were forced to plunge.”

Their point is that many people go missing in the aftermath of such calamities and this is a particular problem for low-income countries.

“For families of the missing, disappearance is a special kind of indefinite hell. In a wealthy country like the United States, victims of disaster tend to be quickly tallied and searched for. But poorer nations, which are already more vulnerable to the damage wrought by climate change, often don’t have the resources to follow through. We need to fund measures for these countries that both prevent disappearances through emergency preparedness and also resolve them by promptly identifying bodies. The nations responsible for the most climate pollution have a moral responsibility to help families left in limbo.”

Wolfe and Araos continue. “In addition to intensifying disasters, climate change is also leading to disappearances through migration and conflict. Some years ago, one of us, Dr. Wolfe, visited refugee camps on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios to learn more about migrants who had disappeared while trying to reach Europe. Malnutrition, hunger and famine linked to new climate conditions have pushed more Africans to undertake the perilous journey across the Mediterranean and more Latin Americans to travel through Central America and into Mexico. Tens of thousands have disappeared. Rising temperatures have also made these passages more lethal as migrants die of heat exhaustion while trekking across deserts and asphyxiate inside metal shipping containers.

“What was most striking on Lesbos and Chios was both the sheer number of people who seemed to be missing and the loneliness of their relatives’ investigations. There was no government agency their families could turn to for the help they needed, no nation willing to invest resources in searching for someone who had disappeared while crossing borders.

 “Without a body to bury and visit, a loved one’s death, however likely, remains uncertain. This form of ambiguou loss makesgrieving difficult if not impossible, forestalling funerals and pushing many kin of missing persons into a potentially endless search. More practically, such absences can deprive surviving  relatives of a breadwinner while also creating legal difficulties in receiving a declaration of death. Even if a person is declared dead, the wound of disappearance frequently remains unhealed. Years later, against ever thinning odds, families of the missing are still seeking some proof of their loved one’s life or death.”

The United Nations Plan

 Fiona Harvey, Environmental editor at The Guardian, reports on a UN report that urges the global end to fossil fuel exploration by 2030 and funds to support poor countries meanwhile (https://theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/05/un-report-urges-end-to-fossil-fuel-exploration-by-2030).    

 End fossil fuel exploration globally by 2030 and increase assistance for poor countries in the energy transition

 Harvey writes: “Fossil fuel exploration should cease globally by 2030 and funding to rescue poor countries from the impacts of the climate crisis should reach $200bn (£165bn) to $400bn a year by the same date, according to proposals in a UN report before the next climate summit.”

 Rich countries need to meet their commitments

 “Countries were still ‘way off track’ to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the report found, and much more action would be needed to make it possible to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

“The UN’s synthesisreport on the global stocktake, published on Wednesday, will form the basis for discussions at the Cop28 conference in Dubai, which begins at the end of November. The global stocktake is a process mandated under the Paris agreement, intended to check every five years on countries’ progress on meeting their emissions-cutting goals. 

Greenhousegas emissions must peak by 2025

 “Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said the report offered a range of actions for governments to consider. “[These are] clear targets which provide a north star for the action that is required by countries,” he said.

“Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising but there is broad agreement they must peak by 2025 at the latest if there is to be a chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C.”

Low-income countries need support

William Ruto, Moussa Faki Mahamat, Akinwumi Adesina and Patrick Verkooijen are reported to ask for increased foreign  support to make the energy transition away from fossil fuels feasible in Africa, specifically pausing debt repayments  (https://nytimes.com/2023/10/08/opinion/climate-change-africa-debt.html).

 Mr. Ruto is the president of the Republic of Kenya. Mr. Faki is the chairman of the African Union Commission. Dr. Adesina is the president of the African Development Bank Group. Dr. Verkooijen is the chief executive of the Global Center on Adaptation.

Ruto and his colleagues point out, “When poor countries are forced to default on their foreign debt, as Ghana and Zambia have done,they pay a heavy price. Cut off from credit of any kind, spending on health, education and dealing with the damaging effects of climate change comes to a juddering halt.

 “Countries in the West often plead with us to invest in the kind of ambitious resilience projects we need to survive in a warming world. But in Africa, we can’t fix the climate issue unless we fix the debt issue. Of the 52 low- and middle-income countries that have defaulted on their debts or have come close to it in the last three years, 23 are in Africa. The continent’s debt burden is skyrocketing as a result of factors beyond its control: the aftershocks of the pandemic, rising fuel and food prices, higher interest rates and climate catastrophes that weaken our economies and sap our ability to repay creditors.

“To put this figure into context, Africa is now paying more in debt service than the estimated $50 billion a year the Global Center on Adaptation says it needs to invest in climate resilience. These investments are not nice-to-haves — they are vital for building roads, bridges and dams that can withstand torrential rains and floods. Failure to do so is to invite catastrophe, as the recent floods in Libya so tragically attest.

 “But instead of receiving funds to address the climate crisis, Africa is borrowing at a cost up to eight times higher than the rich world to rebuild after climate catastrophes. This is why Africa urgently needs a pause in debt repayments so that it can prepare for a world of ever greater climate extremes. The Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Marrakesh, Morocco, that begin Monday are a good place to start.”

A  Democratic proposal

U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) and Nanette Barragan (CA-44) have reintroduced legislation on Sept. 20, 2023, to end fossil fuel expansion, dubbed The Future Generations Protection Act of 2023 (https://schakowsky-house-gov/media/press-releases/schakowsky-barragan-reintroduce-legislation-end-fossil-fuel-expansion).

 “This bill would help ensure a rapid shift away from fossil fuel to clean renewable energy. It has 20 co-sponsors so far. “Not only will this legislation ban greenhouse gas emissions from all new power plants, end hydraulic fracking, and ban crude oil and natural gas exports, but, most importantly, it will make our planet more habitable for future generations,” said Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. “The science is clear: we are rapidly running out of time to prevent the worst effects of climate change. The summer of 2023 was the hottest ever on record. Our children should not be forced to suffer the consequences of our lack of action. The time to act is now and with the passage of this bill, we can make a lasting impact.”

 “I’m proud to join Rep. Schakowsky in reintroducing the Future Generations Protection Act, which recognizes that increasing our dependence on fossil fuels is incompatible with a habitable planet, now and for the future,” said Congresswoman Nanette Barragán.”Communities of color are hit first and worst by the climate crisis. This year we have experienced record wildfires, extreme drought, heat waves, and stronger storms. As Democrats in Congress and President Biden work to make record investments in clean energy to reduce pollution and create millions of green jobs, we need to reduce fossil fuel infrastructure – not expand it and work against the progress we’re poised to make.”

 “The Future Generations Protection Act would:

 Ban greenhouse gas emissions from all new power plants.

Stop hydraulic fracking.

Ban crude oil and natural gas exports.

Prohibit the Federal Energy Resources Commission from approving new liquified natural gas terminal siting or construction, unless doing so would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Concluding thoughts

The high gas prices and their economic effects of recent months reveal how dependent the society continues to be on gas and oil, despite the science, despite public awareness, despite some state and local initiatives (e.g., David Miller, Solved: How the World’s Great Cities are Fixing the Climate Crisis), and despite falling prices for solar and wind energy.

 The

solutions to the problem require major changes in the economy and in the life  styles of Americans, in transportation, in housing, in diet, and more. Many Americans support relevant changes to reduce global warming in the abstract, but also want to continue their present life styles and consumption. The challenge is reflected in the sales of goods producing sectors of the economy, particularly in the tens of  millions of gas-guzzling cars and light trucks on the road, how most homes and offices continue to be heated and cooled by fossil-fuel generated energy, and so on. In the final analysis, the current concerns about rising gasoline prices and the political fallout exemplify, understandably, how immediate personal financial considerations seem to overshadow or at least weaken environmental concerns. But even more important, an energy transition way from fossil fuels is blocked by the Republican Party and a right-wing rigged electoral system, along with the big oil and auto corporations and their allies.

 

Bob Sheak, Sept 24, 2023

Introduction

The UAW strike against the three big automakers is primarily about the goal of winning fair treatment for union workers in some auto plants and, if successful, to encourage other workers and unions to follow their example. Now, after over a week of the strike and ongoing negotiations, the union has expanded the strike against the big automakers.

The issue of cars and trucks and global warming

Aside from fairness, there is the issue of the large harmful environmental impacts of cars and light trucks on carbon emissions, a major source of global warming. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has this to say about it (https://epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate-change/carbon-pollution-transportation).

“Burning fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. The buildup of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases like methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to warm, resulting in changes to the climate we are already starting to see today.

​

“Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation account for about 29 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making it the largest contributor of U.S. GHG emissions. Between 1990 and 2021, GHG emissions in the transportation sector increased more in absolute terms than any other sector.”

The UAW recognizes the importance of this issue. The big auto producers are gearing up to produce more electric cars that require less labor input than cars using internal combustion engines. The big automakers are considering this because they see potential profits in this growing – but still small – sector of the auto industry.

As we’ll see, however, the environmental issue is only one of many issues and perhaps not the most pressing one from the workers’ standpoint. Union workers want opportunities to produce electric cars, but, if the strike is resolved, they will go back to producing cars, most of which for years to come will still use carbon generating internal combustion engines.

According to Statista, “In the first quarter of 2023, there were around 286 million vehicles operating on roads throughout the United States. Almost 38.4 million used vehicles changed owners in the U.S. between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, while new registrations of vehicles came to about 13.9 million units during that period.” In 2022, according to Wikipedia, electric and hybrid cars represented just 1.3 percent of cars in use (https://en-wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_cars_ise_by_country). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the sale of electric vehicles will increase in coming years (https://bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-12/charging-into-the-future-the-transition-to-electric-vehicles.htm), though still representing a minority of all vehicles on the road.

“Although forecasts for the rate of EV adoption over the next decade vary widely given rapid changes in both government policies and the auto manufacturing industry in recent years—many forecasts expect a strong acceleration in EV adoption. S&P Global Mobility forecasts electric vehicle sales in the United States could reach 40 percent of total passenger car sales by 2030, and more optimistic projections foresee electric vehicle sales surpassing 50 percent by 2030.^” Note these figures are about “new” sales, not about the cars and trucks already in use.

In sum

Like most American workers, UAW workers want a fair wage, reasonable working conditions, health and pension benefits, and contracts that achieve such goals. Their demands are considered in the next section of this text. If they are successful, the UAW strike may encourage other workers across the economy to strive for unionization.

It is clear, however, that the immense and rising problem of carbon emissions will be decided or not decided by the people elected to federal and state governments and, in some instances, by a conservative Supreme Court. There is little doubt that the fossil fuel industries will do their best to slow down any transition away from oil and gas. And the Republican Party continues to have a largely climate-denying or -dismissive political agenda. Climate scientist Michael E. Mann has analyzed and debunked the opposition’s climate-denying claims in his books, including “The New Climate War” (publ. 2021) and his new book, “Our Fragile Moment” (publ. Sept 2023). John Grant’s book, “Denying Science,” is also informative.

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Why is the UAW on strike?

Ann Marie Lee identifies the UAW’s demands in their negotiations with the big three automakers (https://cbsnews.com/news/uaw-demands-2023-strike-why-contract-negotiations).

“As the United Auto Workers enters day four of its strike [Sept. 15-19, 2023] against Detroit’s Big Three, the stakes are getting higher for automakers Ford, General Motors and Stellantis [the parent of Jeep and Ram]. UAW President Shawn Fain has threatened to target more factories for work stoppages if ‘serious progress’ toward an agreement isn’t reached by Friday at noon.” Here’s what the union wants.

#1 – Pay increases and cost of living adjustments – The UAW is asking automakers for a 36% pay increase across a four-year contract. For now, however, the sides remain far apart on a wage hike. The union also want the Big Three automakers to “reinstate annual cost of living adjustments, arguing that inflation is eating away worker paychecks. For decades, the Detroit automakers offered a COLA, but stopped after GM and Chryslers went bankrupt following the 2008 financial crisis.” Without the adjustments for inflation, “autoworkers have seen their average wages fall 19.3% since 2008, according to Adam Hersh, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.”

#2 – End of wage tiers

The UAW wants the Big Three to scrap its two-tiered wage structure. “Under that system, top-tier workers — meaning anyone who joined the company in 2007 or earlier — earn an average of roughly $33 an hour. But those hired after 2007 are classified as lower tier and earn far less — up to about $17 an hour.” Additionally,

lower-tier employees “aren’t eligible for defined benefit pensions, and their health benefits are less generous. The UAW says that paying employees half as much for doing the same work amounts is unfair.”

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Lauren Kaori Gurley highlights this problem of unequal wages and benefits by comparing two striking UAW workers, one in the higher tier and the other in the lower tier (https://washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/20/uaw-strike-ford-autoworkers-wages).

“The tiered wage system came about as a concession the union made to automakers to save autoworkers’ jobs during the height of the financial crisis [of 2007-2008], when the automakers were teetering on the edge of solvency and eventually received government bailout loans of nearly $80 billion. To keep the companies afloat, the autoworkers’ union conceded to lowering wages and reducing benefits for all workers hired after 2007.” There are three tiers.

Higher tier

Gurley describes the situation of Steven Summers, 60, who has worked in quality control in the same Ford factory for 24 years. He is an example of a top tier worker.

“After 24 years on the job, Summers makes $32 an hour. He and his wife, a former autoworker, own a four-bedroom house with a pool in a suburb of Detroit. They raised four daughters and a grandchild on their wages, vacationing in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and signing up for softball leagues. His family isn’t rich, Summers says, but ‘we’re doing all right.’”

Lower tier

Gurley and her colleagues at the Washington Post interviewed eight striking Ford assembly line workers who are in the lower tier of the workforce and found “they must work second jobs to make ends meet. They stock shelves at Dollar Tree, sort packages in Amazon warehouses, wax eyebrows professionally, sell discounted jewelry and deliver food on Uber Eats.” Markeis Womack, 31, installs “visors and glove boxes on Broncos and Rangers for about eight hours a day on the assembly line at the Ford plant in Wayne, starting at 6 a.m. After, he cleaned offices, churches and day cares on a 10-hour shift working as a janitor. His work day ended at 4 a.m., because his Ford job didn’t pay enough to make ends meet. Womack, the father of two young kids, makes $20.69 an hour at Ford and said he can only dream of ‘stability and owning a house.’”

Gurley continues. “It can take close to a decade for lower-tiered workers’ pay to catch up to those hired before 2007. At Ford, new hires now start full time at $18.04 an hour.

At the same time, there are other discrepancies stemming from the tier system. According to Gurley’s reporting, even when lower-tier workers reach  the top of the pay scale, they “get worse health-care benefits and no company-financed health care in retirement or pension, compared with legacy [top tier] employees. Lower-tiered workers do receive 401(k) retirement accounts with a company contribution equaling 6.4 percent of workers’ wages. The union is asking the companies to offer the top-tier health-care benefits to all workers, reinstitute defined-benefit pensions that workers previously received and pay all the health-care costs for retirees.”

A third tier: temps

“Often, new hires at the Big Three automakers start as ‘temps,’ or temporary workers making about $16 an hour, depending on the company, without profit-sharing, bonuses or pensions. Temps are essentially on a worse, third tier. Automakers have long used them to keep labor costs down, particularly when they are meeting temporary surges of demand, but workers complain that they are left in temp status for too long.” The union wants “all new hires [to] get paid at the top rate after 90 days — scrapping tiered wages.”

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#3 – Defined benefit pension plans for all

Ann Marie Lee reports that the majority of UAW members “do not get a pension nowadays.” This is a demand that the union is unlikely to win. Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Buffalo, believes the union will ultimately lose its battle for the return of pensions.” Wheaton points out that “[a]lmost no one in any industry is adding those today.”

#4 – Four-day workweek and more time off

Along with substantial pay raises, more paid time off and pension benefits, one of the changes UAW leaders have been bargaining for is a four-day workweek, working 32 hours for 40 hours of pay, and more time off “to spend with family.”

UAW president Fain is quoted by Lee. “Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet. That’s not living. It’s barely surviving and it needs to stop,”

#5 – Right to strike, family protection

 Lee writes, the union is also asking for the right to strike over plant closings.

“The Big Three have closed 65 plants over the last 20 years,” according to the UAW’s website. “That’s devastated our hometowns. We must have the right to defend our communities.” The union also wants a “working family protection program” that pays UAW to do community service work if the companies shut down a facility.” In addition, the union wants to “be allowed to represent workers at 10 electric vehicle battery factories, most of which are being built by joint ventures between automakers and South Korean battery makers. The union wants those plants to receive top UAW wages. In part that’s because workers who now make components for internal combustion engines will need a place to work as the industry transitions to EVs.

#6 – Retiree health care 

“In addition to a return of traditional pension payment plans and significantly higher pay for retired workers, the union is seeking health care for all retired UAW members. Workers hired before 2007 still have those benefits. But those hired since – a majority of hourly workers – do not.”

#7 – Limited use of temporary workers 

According to Lee, the union is “also demanding that the automakers limit their use temporary workers, who under the tiered-wage system receive the least pay and no benefits.” 

#8 – They can afford it

Fain himself has acknowledged that the union’s demands are “audacious.” But he contends that the automakers can afford to raise workers’ pay significantly.

“Over the past decade, the Detroit Three have emerged as robust profit-makers. They’ve collectively posted net income of $164 billion, $20 billion of it this year. The CEOs of all three major automakers earn multiple millions in annual compensation

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What is the UAW strike strategy?

Andrea Hsu reports on what is involved in the UAW strike strategy (https://npr.org/2023/09/19/1200198072/uaw-strikes-strategy-fair-labor-big-3-detroit#). The strategy is one of “limited, targeted strikes at all three American auto companies,” in plants in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio. If the contract negotiations have not been resolved by Friday, September 22nd [and they were not], UAW President Shawn Fain said that “more locals will be called on to stand up and join the strike,” he announced in a video posted to Facebook Monday night [Sept. 18], while not revealing which plants or how many would be called on next.

After the first week, 13,000 auto workers were already on strike. This is only a fraction of the 146,000 workers employed by the struck auto corporations, ‘but the threat of growing the strike has added pressure and kept the companies guessing.’ Fain told NPR. He also said that “if the company doesn’t respect the demands of our workers, then we will escalate action.” 

Hsu continues. “Labor historians see the deployment of this new strategy as a reflection of newfound militancy at the UAW under Fain’s leadership, but also some sharp and strategic thinking about how to put pressure on companies while maintaining flexibility and limiting fallout.

“‘It’s not the goal of the UAW to bring down Ford, GM and Chrysler,’ says Erik Loomis, professor of history at the University of Rhode Island and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes. ‘That’s not the point. The point is to get a fair deal out of them.’”

“While it’s too early to say whether the strategy will work, Loomis says momentum appears to be on the side of the union, with companies having to guess which part of their supply chain might be hit next.”

Already, however, “there have been ripple effects impacting non-striking workers. On Friday, Ford put 600 workers on temporary layoff, because they need to use materials that need to be coated by the paint department, which is on strike.

“GM has warned it will lay off 2,000 workers at a plant in Kansas early this week because it lacks components supplied by GM’s Wentzville, Mo., plant, which is on strike.

“The UAW said it will provide those workers who are laid off in response to the strikes the same pay as striking workers — $500 a week. For most auto workers on the production line, that represents well under half their weekly earnings.

“So as not to burn through its $825 million strike fund too quickly, Loomis says it’s entirely possible the union will eventually send some striking workers back to their jobs while bringing others out.”

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U.A.W. Widens Strikes at G.M. and Stellantis, but Cites Progress in Ford Talks

The UAW has moved ahead on its strike strategy, according to a report by Neal E. Boudette (https://nytimes.com/2023/09/22/business/uaw-strike-general-motors-stellantis.html). Boudette writes as follows.

The United Automobile Workers union on Friday significantly raised the pressure on General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Jeep and Ram, by expanding its strike against the companies to include all the spare parts distribution centers of the two companies.

“Shawn Fain, the union’s president, said Friday that workers at 38 distribution centers, which provide parts to dealerships for repairs, at the two companies would walk off the job at noon. He said talks with two companies had not progressed significantly, contrasting them with Ford Motor, which he said had done more to meet the union’s demands.

“‘We will shut down parts distribution centers until those two companies come to their senses and come to the bargaining table,’ Mr. Fain said.

“The affected locations include 18 G.M. distribution centers that employ a total of 3,475 workers, and 20 Stellantis centers with 2,150 U.A.W. members, according to the union. The move brings the total number of striking U.A.W. workers to more than 18,000.”

“The union said it was not striking more facilities at Ford because of the gains it had achieved in talks with that company, including on cost-of-living adjustments, the right to strike if the company decides to close plants and two years of pay and health care benefits for workers who are laid off indefinitely.

“‘To be clear, we are not done at Ford,’ he [Fain] said. ‘We have serious issues to work through, but we do want to recognize that Ford is serious about reaching a deal.’”

“The expansion of the stoppage heightens the stakes for both sides, and could force other plants owned by the automakers and their suppliers to halt production.

The union is paying striking workers $500 per week each from its $825 million strike fund, while the manufacturers are faced with losing tens of millions of dollars in revenue every day that the affected plants remain idled.”

Boudette quotes Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations at Michigan State University, who “said the U.A.W.’s strategy of limiting strikes to certain locations eases the cost of supporting workers from its strike fund, but hurts the manufacturers because those plants make some of their most profitable vehicles.

“‘The question is, can the union maintain solidarity and keep everyone together if this continues for several more weeks,’ he said.”

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Strike Is a High-Stakes Gamble for Autoworkers and the Labor Movement

Noam Scheiber, a Chicago-based reporter who covers workers and the workplace, considers the goals and risks of the UAW strike

(https://nytimes.com/2023/09/19/business/economy/strike-autoworkers-labor.html). “Experts on unions and the industry said the U.A.W. strike could accelerate a wave of worker actions, or stifle labor’s recent momentum.”

Overall Union membership has been declining for decades

The fact is that presently very few workers are represented by unions, especially in the private-sector according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (https://bls.gov/news-release/union2.nr0.htm). In the labor force overall, those employed in fulltime or part-time jobs or actively looking for paid work, just 10.1 percent of nonsupervisory wage and salary workers were represented by unions. The unionization rate is lower in the private-sector of the economy and higher in the public sector. The BLS report documents this fact, noting that the union membership rate of public-sector workers was 33.1 percent in 2022, “more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (6.0 percent).” The 2022 unionization rate (10.1 percent) is the lowest on record. In 1983, the first year where comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.”

There are many causes for low and declining union membership. They are analyzed in numerous books and articles. One of the best is historian Nelson Lichtenstein’s 2002 book State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. He noted that “90 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States are employed under at-will doctrines,” which allows employers to fire workers whenever they want and without explanation. This is as true in 2023 as it was in 2002. The overall causes of the decline of private-sector nonsupervisory workers include the following.

• the anti-union efforts of the Republican Party
• an economy dominated by large profit-first corporations and their allies,
• support for anti-union legislation by rich and powerful organizations
• weak government regulations and enforcement
• right-wing voters who oppose government regulation and taxes
• corporate investment in the global South to take advantage of cheap labor, lax regulations, and low taxes
• divisions among workers along racial, gender, and religious grounds

In this context, it takes a committed union leadership supported by a majority of union members to strike and challenge corporate power.

Some recent union successes

Scheiber says there is some reason to be optimistic. Some labor unions have enjoyed something of a renaissance since the beginning of the pandemic through strikes and the threats of strikes. “They have made inroads into previously nonunion companies like Starbucks and Amazon, and won unusually strong contracts for hundreds of thousands of workers. Last year, public approval for unions reached its highest level since the Lyndon Johnson presidency.” Some disputes were resolved before threatened strike action was taken. Strikes by railroad workers and UPS employees, which had the potential to rattle the U.S. economy, were averted at the last minute.” Some strikes are less than national in scope. The strikes by writers and actors are concentrated in Southern California and, at this time, are unresolved.

The wider “class” implications

Scheiber cites the UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, who has portrayed the strike as a “broader struggle pitting ordinary workers against corporate titans.” Scheiber refers to a recent video appearance by Fain, in which he said this: “It’s a battle of the working class against the rich, the haves versus the have-nots, the billionaire class against everybody else.” The “class” reference “appears to be resonating with his members.” Scheiber writes: “Even Mr. Fain’s habit of framing the fight in broad class terms may prove to be a strategic advantage. A recent Gallup poll found that 75 percent of the public backed the autoworkers in the showdown, compared with 19 percent who were more sympathetic to the companies.”

The risks associated with the strike

But Scheiber also identifies potential “pitfalls,” “A prolonged strike could undermine the three established U.S. automakers – and send the politically crucial Midwest into recession. If the union is seen as overreaching, or if it settles for a weak deal after a costly stoppage, public support could sour.”

There are potential negative impacts of the strike as well. One, “the strike could inflict collateral damage that creates frustration and hardship among tens of thousands of nonunion workers and their communities.” Two, small and medium-sized manufacturers across the country that make up the automotive sector’s integrated supply chain will probably feel the brunt of this work stoppage, whether they are a union shop or not. Three, the union demands “could discourage businesses from investing in the United States or render them uncompetitive with foreign rivals.” Four, “Gene Bruskin, a longtime union official who helped workers at a Smithfield meat-processing plant in North Carolina achieve, in 2008, one of the biggest organizing victories in decades, said he strongly favored the strike and how Mr. Fain and the union are seeking to rally the working class. But he also said “a long strike could disillusion workers if the union came up short on key demands.” He gives the example of the need for the union to change the two-tier system of employment in the big auto plants, a system in which newer workers are paid far less than veteran workers who perform similar jobs.” Five, the auto companies could shift more production to Mexico, “where they already have a significant presence.” Six, they could accelerate the introduction of labor-saving automation. Seven, the big auto corporations could locate “new plants in lightly unionized Southern states.” For example, “The Detroit automakers have created joint ventures with foreign battery makers outside the reach of the U.A.W.’s national contracts and have sought to locate some of those plants in states like Tennessee and Kentucky. The union is seeking to bring workers at those plants up to the same pay and labor standards that direct employees of the Big Three enjoy, but it has not succeeded so far.”

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The battle over Electric Vehicles in the strike 

On April 12, 2023, the UAW issued a statement on new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (https://uaw.org/uaw-statement-new-emissions-rules-proposed-environmental-protection-agency). Here’s the statement.

“The United Auto Workers supports the transition to a clean auto industry and has been a proud leader in the fight against climate change. We will carefully review the EPA’s proposals and look forward to working with the Biden Administration in pursuit of standards that are good for workers and the environment. A transition to electric vehicles will not succeed without economic justice for the workers who make the auto industry run.

“There is no good reason why electric vehicle manufacturing can’t be the gateway to the middle class that auto jobs have been for generations of union autoworkers. But the early signs of this industry are worrying, prioritizing corporate greed over economic justice. Forcing workers to decide between good jobs and green jobs is a false choice. We can and must achieve both.

“People who build cars for a living don’t do it because we’re passionate about combustion engines or electric vehicles. We do it because we’re passionate about our families and our communities. We can have both economic and climate justice—and that starts by ensuring that the electric vehicle industry is entirely unionized. We look forward to working with the Biden Administration to hold the auto industry accountable to that mission.”

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More on the role of electric cars in the UAW strike

Jack Ewing, who writes about business from New York, focusing on the auto industry and the transition to electric cars, contends that the issue of electric vehicles is “central” to the strike

(https://nytimes.com/2023/09/16/business/electric-vehicles-uaw-gm-ford-stellantic.html). He writes:

“Carmakers are anxious to keep costs down as they ramp up electric vehicle manufacturing, while striking workers want to preserve jobs as the industry shifts to batteries, ‘a once-in-a-century technological upheaval that poses huge risks for both the companies and the union.’”

Ewing continues.

“The strike has come as the traditional automakers invest billions to develop electric vehicles while still making most of their money from gasoline-driven cars. The negotiations will determine the balance of power between workers and management, possibly for years to come. That makes the strike as much a struggle for the industry’s future as it is about wages, benefits and working conditions.

“The established carmakers — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — are trying to defend their profits and their place in the market in the face of stiff competition from Tesla and foreign automakers. Some executives and analysts have characterized what is happening in the industry as the biggest technological transformation since Henry Ford’s moving assembly line started up at the beginning of the 20th century.”

Ewing emphasizes that strike negotiations “are about more than pay. Workers are trying to defend jobs as manufacturing shifts from internal combustion engines to batteries. Because they have fewer parts, electric cars can be made with fewer workers than gasoline vehicles. A favorable outcome for the U.A.W. would also give the union a strong calling card if, as some expect, it then tries to organize employees at Tesla and other nonunion carmakers like Hyundai, which is planning to manufacture electric vehicles at a massive new factory in Georgia.”

“Under pressure from government officials and changing consumer demand, Ford, G.M. and Stellantis are investing billions to retool their sprawling operations to build electric vehicles, which are critical to addressing climate change. But they are making little if any profit on those vehicles while Tesla, which dominates electric car sales, is profitable and growing fast.

“Ford said in July, as reported by Ewing, “that its electric vehicle business would lose $4.5 billion this year.

“If the union got all the increases in pay, pensions and other benefits it is seeking, the company said, its workers’ total compensation would be twice as much as Tesla’s employees.”

“‘Union demands would force Ford to scrap its investments in electric vehicles,’ Jim Farley, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview on Friday. ‘We want to actually have a conversation about a sustainable future, he said, ‘not one that forces us to choose between going out of business and rewarding our workers.’”

“For workers, the biggest concern is that electric vehicles have far fewer parts than gasoline models and will render many jobs obsolete. Plants that make mufflers, catalytic converters, fuel injectors and other components that electric cars don’t need will have to be overhauled or shut down.

“Many new battery and electric vehicle factories are springing up and could employ workers from the plants that have shut down. But automakers are building most aggressively in the South where labor laws are tilted against union organizers, rather than in the Midwest, where the U.A.W. has more clout. One of the union’s demands is that workers in the new factories be covered by the automakers’ national labor contracts — a demand that the automakers have said they can’t meet because those plants are owned by joint ventures. The union also wants to regain the right to strike to block plant shutdowns.”

The big U.S. automakers are not making much progress in manufacturing electric vehicles.

“The three companies are already struggling to get their electric vehicle business going. A new G.M. battery factory in Ohio has been slow to produce batteries, delaying electric versions of the Chevrolet Silverado pickup and other vehicles. Ford this year had to suspend production of its electric F-150 Lightning in February after a battery caught fire in one of the pickups that was parked near the factory for a quality check. And Stellantis won’t even begin selling any fully electric vehicles in the United States until next year.”

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Concluding thoughts

The UAW is striking for reasonable and far-sighted goals. They hope to have some influence in negotiations with the big automakers about their position on what kind of cars and trucks are manufactured, and where and by whom they are produced, along, with a host of demands that would improve wages, working conditions, job security, benefits, the right to strike, retiree pensions.

If the UAW wins some of its key demands, it may well encourage other unions to challenge management’s often anti-worker policies. However this unfolds, it will be years before cars and trucks powered by internal combustion engines are eliminated or even significantly reduced from the U.S. transportation system. Still, the UAW has helped to bring additional pubic attention to the issues. And it is engaged in a strike that could improve the wages and many other conditions of work for present and future autoworkers and perhaps eventually workers in other industries.

Bob Sheak, Sept 15, 2023

Introduction

This post includes sections on (1) how more and more places across the earth are experiencing unprecedented high and rising temperature reducing their habitableness; (2) a review of the evidence documenting warming; (3) the effects of global warming on people, communities, and everyone; and (4) what may be done to curtail global warming.

I draw significantly in the first sections of this post on the analysis by Jake Bittle in his book, The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration (publ. 2023) as well as other sources

Getting hotter in more and more places

“The largest driver of voluntary migration in the coming decades” will be heat, according to Bittle’s research. “Even with drastic action on emissions, temperatures almost everywhere on Earth will continue to rise over the coming century, creating profound changes in seasonal climates on every continent. These changes will be most drastic in polar regions, which are warming several times faster than the global average – permafrost melt in Canada and Alaska has already caused massive land collapses, and heat wave in Siberia during the summer of 2021 caused wildfires on land that was once too cold to burn” (p. 267).

Bittle continues. “Even in temperate regions, the changes will be tangible. The moderate temperature zone that scientists call ‘human climate niche,’ which in the United States now stretches from South Dakota to the Sunbelt, will shift northward so that by 2070 its northern edge reaches into Canada and its southern edge around Kentucky. The areas below that niche will get hotter with every passing year, and as time goes on, they will start to seem more dangerous and less attractive.” The Sweltering South will get even hotter, the temperate parts of the country will no longer feel as temperate, and the frigid reaches of the North will feel a bit more hospitable. Those changes might not feel like much from year to year, but over the decades they will add up.”

The rising temperatures will be a major factor in where people live, along with the personal resources and/or benefits from government housing programs. If they have the means or government support, they will have adaptive options. Otherwise, they will be stuck in place or only able to move to places that will soon be affected by rising levels of heat. Meanwhile, the rising temperatures in the U.S. and globally will force people with options to move whether they want to or not. Without resources or government support, many will remain in increasingly intolerably and lethally hot environments at home, on the job, virtually everywhere in a given area or region.  

Various indications that the earth is becoming increasingly hot

#1 – Global average temperatures are breaking records

Scott Dance, a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment, reports on scientific findings that “the earth is its hottest in thousands of years” and how we know this (https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/08/earth-hottest-years-thousands-climate). Droughts at lasting longer

“Observations from both satellites and the Earth’s surface are indisputable — the planet has warmed rapidly over the past 44 years. As far back as 1850, data from weather stations all over the globe make clear the Earth’s average temperature has been rising.

“In recent days, as the Earth has reached its highest average temperatures in recorded history, scientists have made a bolder claim: It may well be warmer than any time in the last 125,000 years.”

#2 – Droughts are affecting more parts of the planet. According to Michael T. Klare, “The drought afflicting the American West has now persisted for more than two decades, leading scientists to label it a ‘megadrought’ exceeding all recorded regional dry spells in breadth and severity. As of August 2021, 99 percent of the United States west of the Rockies was in drought, something for which there is no modern precedent. The recent record heat waves in the region have only emphasized this grim reality.” The effects are worldwide.”

#3 – Michael Klare also points out that the use of fossil fuels continues to increase.

“…the climate crisis is also reflected in “the refusal to alter agricultural and industrial methods of production which only aggravate or—in the case of fossil-fuel consumption—simply cause the crisis, is growing ever more obvious. At the top of any list would be a continuing reliance on oil, coal, and natural gas, the leading sources of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) now overheating our atmosphere and oceans. Despite all the scientific evidence linking fossil-fuel combustion to global warming and the promises of governing elites to reduce the consumption of those fuels—for example, under the Paris Agreement of 2015—their use continues to grow.”

#4 – Klare: “today’s powerful elites are choosing to perpetuate practices known to accelerate climate change and global devastation. Among the most egregious, the decision of top executives of the ExxonMobil Corporation—the world’s largest and wealthiest privately-owned oil company—to continue pumping oil and gas for endless decades after their scientists warned them about the risks of global warming and affirmed that Exxon’s operations would only amplify them.”

#5 – Klare: “The fires in Canada: As of August 2, months after they first erupted into flame, there were still 225 major uncontrolled wildfires and another 430 under some degree of control but still burning across the country. At one point, the figure was more than 1,000 fires! To date, they have burned some 32.4 million acres of Canadian woodland, or 50,625 square miles—an area the size of the state of Alabama.”

#6 – Julia Conley reports on August 4 2023 on scientists being alarmed “over the unprecedented ocean heat,” particularly since “policymakers in the top fossil fuel emissions-producing countries show no sign of ending planet-heating oil and gas extraction” (https://commondreams.org/news/ocean-temperaturews-breaks-record). Here’s one of her facts.

“The European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus Climate Change Service, reported this week that the average daily global ocean surface temperature across the planet reached 20.96°C (69.7°F), breaking the record of 20.95°C that was previously set in 2016.”

#7 – A Critical ocean current system closer to collapse

Brett Wilkins, staff writers for Common Dreams, reports on a study warning that we are closer than previously thought to a collapse of a critical ocean current system (https://commondreams.org/news/amoc-current-collapse).

“The system of Atlantic Ocean currents that drive warm water from the tropics toward Europe is at risk of collapsing in the coming decades, an analysis of 150 years of temperature data published Tuesday concluded.”

#8 – Chris Mooney reports “Scientists working in one of the world’s fastest-warming places [the Arctic] found that rapidly retreating glaciers are triggering the release into the atmosphere of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes global temperatures to rise (https://washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/06/arctic-glacier-melt-methane-global-temperatures)/

#9 – Forests are going from being “sinks” to “emitters”

David Wallace-Wells, author and journalist, considers this shocking reality (https://nytimes.com/2023/09/06/opinion/columnists/forest-fires-climate-change.html). Here’s some of what he writes.

“The Canadian wildfires have this year burned a land area larger than 104 of the world’s 195 countries. The carbon dioxide released by them so far is estimated to be nearly 1.5 billion tons — more than twice as much as Canada releases through transportation, electricity generation, heavy industry, construction and agriculture combined. In fact, it is more than the total emissions of more than 100 of the world’s countries — also combined.

“But what is perhaps most striking about this year’s fires is that despite their scale, they are merely a continuation of a dangerous trend: Every year since 2001, Canada’s forests have emitted more carbon than they’ve absorbed. That is the central finding of a distressing analysis published last month by Barry Saxifrage in Canada’s National Observer, ominously headlined “Our forests have reached a tipping point.”

“In fact, Saxifrage suggests, the tipping point was passed two decades ago, when the country’s vast boreal forests, long a reliable ‘sink’ for carbon, became instead a carbon ‘source.’ In the 2000s, the effect was relatively small. But so far in the 2020s, Canada’s forests have raised the country’s total emissions by 50 percent.”

#10 – The number of climate disasters is increasing

The following research findings come from the National Centers for Invironmental Information (https://ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions).

“The U.S. has sustained 371 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2023). The total cost of these 371 events exceeds $2.615 trillion.

2010s (2010-2019)

“In 2023 (as of September 11), there have been 23 confirmed weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each to affect United States. These events included 2 flooding events, 18 severe storm events, 1 tropical cyclone event, 1 wildfire event, and 1 winter storm event. Overall, these events resulted in the deaths of 253 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted. The 1980–2022 annual average is 8.1 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2018–2022) is 18.0 events (CPI-adjusted).”

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What to expect as global warming intensifies and expands

#1 – Inland cities will suffer

Bittle points out, “Many of the places that will be hit hardest by this overall temperature increase are inland cities. “This is largely owing to a phenomenon known as the heat island effect: materials like asphalt, concrete, and metal trap heat as it pours down during the day, and at night these same materials release the stored-up heat back into the air, robbing residents of the cool reprieve that comes after sundown in rural areas. At the same time, many urban neighborhoods lack trees and foliage that soak up humidity and provide crucial shade cover” (p. 268).

#2 – Communities with fewer resources will suffer

Bittle continues: “…the burden of his temperature shift will fall hardest on those with fewest resources. Research has shown that the wealthiest neighborhoods in any given city tend to be the ones with the least exposure to extreme heat, thanks to lush tree cover and access to public parks. Wealthier households are also much more likely to have air-conditioning, which during hot spells can mean the difference between life and death.” (pp. 268-269)

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Some states withhold cooling aid for the poor as heat gets deadlier

Thomas Frank reports on states that are withholding cooling aid for the poor as heat gets deadlier (https://politico.com/news/2023/09/06/states-withhold-cooling-aid-for-the-poor-as-heat-gets-deadlier-p-00111977).

“Many states refuse to use money from a federal program to help low-income people pay for cooling bills or repairs.

“More than 30 million low-income households that are eligible for federal funding to defray the cost of air conditioning have not received any money from a government program that was created to protect vulnerable people from dangerous temperatures, an E&E News analysis shows.

“The dearth of cooling assistance going to households nationwide reflects shortcomings in U.S. and state policies to address the dangers of extreme heat as it kills more Americans than other weather-related disasters, according to some experts. It comes during a summer of unmatched climate catastrophes, including the hottest month on record.

“The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, distributes roughly $4 billion a year to states to help residents pay for air conditioning and heating and equipment repairs.

“But in 16 states, including some with significant heat risk, not a single household received money to pay cooling costs from 2001 through 2021, according to E&E News’ analysis of federal records. The program, run by the Department of Health and Human Services, has focused instead on providing heating assistance. Every state helps eligible residents pay their winter heating bills, compared to just 24 states that paid for air conditioning costs in 2021.

“‘The programs haven’t caught up with the change in climate,’ said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. ‘We’re now at a period where not only are we having expensive winters, but we’re also having record-breaking heat.’

“The result is a dramatic imbalance between cold- and hot-weather assistance as global temperatures soar because of greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and industrial facilities. An average of 5.3 million U.S. households a year got heating assistance from 2001 through 2021. The average number of households getting cooling assistance was 635,000.”

The Biden administration urges changes

“In July 2022, the Biden administration took the unusual step of urging states to use LIHEAP for cooling. An HHS memo warned about the lethality of extreme heat and listed ways LIHEAP money could protect people.

“We’ve heard more about the need for cooling from the Biden administration than we have from past administrations,” said Meltzer of the utility affordability coalition. Katrina Metzler is the executive director of the National Energy and Utility Affordability Coalition. She ran Ohio’s LIHEAP-funded weatherization program from 2009 to 2016, said state officials face a dilemma if they set aside LIHEAP money for summer cooling in October.”

“Former President Donald Trump proposed eliminating LIHEAP each year he was in office. Congress rejected the idea and funded the program every year at normal amounts.”

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#3 – Demand for air-conditioning will go up —

As temperatures rise, demand for air-conditioning will go up as will the prices for air conditioning. In a growing number of situations, electric bill will become “unaffordable for many low-income families.” (p. 269).

#4 – Industries will be negatively affected. Bittle writes that from agriculture to livestock to energy to tourism, business and corporate investments will migrate to avoid the heat (p. 270). For example, “According to one estimate, average annual yields for corn and soybeans in the South could fall as much 20 percent over the next decade, leading to losses of more than half a trillion dollars” (p. 271)

#5 – Threats to people working outdoors

“More than fifteen million workers in the United States have jobs [in agriculture, mining, and construction] that,” Bittle points out, “require them to spend some amount of time outside, and many of them are migrant laborers….”

Migrant workers “clean up climate disasters.

Migrant workers who come from countries undergoing high levels of heat are being used in the U.S. to “clean up climate disasters.” On Democracy Now, host Amy Goodman provides an overview of a program focused on forced immigrant labor ((https://democracynow.org/2023/9/4/the-great_escape_saket_soni).

“As extreme weather disasters intensify, the workers who are hired by corporations to clean up after hurricanes, floods, blizzards and wildfires are increasingly on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

“For Labor Day 2023, we,” Goodman and the Democracy Now staff, devoted part of the program to an interview with author and organizer Saket Soni. His book, The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America, focuses on hundreds of Indian workers who were brought to the United States with false promises and subjected to grueling working conditions at a shipyard in Mississippi. When one of those workers called Soni in 2006 for help, it set off an extraordinary chain of events that led to their escape from the work camp and eventually focused national attention on the plight of the workers.

“As disasters have grown, this workforce has grown. And these workers do all this without legal protections, without legal status,” says Soni, the director of Resilience Force, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrant workers who help rebuild communities after climate disasters.”

Migrant children work brutal jobs

Hannah Dreier reports on the exploitation of children (https://nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html).

“Arriving in record numbers, they’re ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom.

Hannah Dreier traveled to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia for this story and spoke to more than 100 migrant child workers in 20 states. hannah.dreier@nytimes @hannahdreier

Examples

Cristian works a construction job instead of going to school. He is 14.

Carolina packages Cheerios at night in a factory. She is 15.

Wander starts looking for day-labor jobs before sunrise. He is 13.

It was almost midnight in Grand Rapids, Mich., but inside the factory everything was bright. A conveyor belt carried bags of Cheerios past a cluster of young workers. One was 15-year-old Carolina Yoc, who came to the United States on her own last year to live with a relative she had never met.

“About every 10 seconds, she stuffed a sealed plastic bag of cereal into a passing yellow carton. It could be dangerous work, with fast-moving pulleys and gears that had torn off fingers and ripped open a woman’s scalp.

“The factory was full of underage workers like Carolina, who had crossed the Southern border by themselves and were now spending late hours bent over hazardous machinery, in violation of child labor laws. At nearby plants, other children were tending giant ovens to make Chewy and Nature Valley granola bars and packing bags of Lucky Charms and Cheetos — all of them working for the processing giant Hearthside Food Solutions, which would ship these products around the country.”

“These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century.

“Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.

“Largely from Central America, the children are driven by economic desperation that was worsened by the pandemic. This labor force has been slowly growing for almost a decade, but it has exploded since 2021, while the systems meant to protect children have broken down.

“The Times spoke with more than 100 migrant child workers in 20 states who described jobs that were grinding them into exhaustion, and fears that they had become trapped in circumstances they never could have imagined. The Times examination also drew on court and inspection records and interviews with hundreds of lawyers, social workers, educators and law enforcement officials.”

“The number of unaccompanied minors entering the United States climbed to a high of 130,000 last year — three times what it was five years earlier — and this summer is expected to bring another wave.

“These are not children who have stolen into the country undetected. The federal government knows they are in the United States, and the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for ensuring sponsors will support them and protect them from trafficking or exploitation.

“But as more and more children have arrived, the Biden White House has ramped up demands on staffers to move the children quickly out of shelters and release them to adults. Caseworkers say they rush through vetting sponsors.

“While H.H.S. checks on all minors by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors, data obtained by The Times showed that over the last two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children. Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children.

“Far from home, many of these children are under intense pressure to earn money. They send cash back to their families while often being in debt to their sponsors for smuggling fees, rent and living expenses.”

“In interviews with more than 60 caseworkers, most independently estimated that about two-thirds of all unaccompanied migrant children ended up working full time.”

#6 – Increase in number of refugees

Bittle writes:

“With no other options, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Central America made the thousand-mile trek north to the United States….” “Climate change is not the only reason that refugees are fleeing these countries for the United States, but a succession of droughts and devastating storms has pushed far more of them northward than would have moved otherwise” (p. 277).

In Europe, an “influx of a million refugees to the continent in 2015 set off a chain of events that fractured the EU, leading to the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the bloc and the rise of far-right parties in several countries

#7 -The problem of global warming is particularly severe in Asia

Bill McKibben, author and activist, writes on new data that substantiates this point that fossil fuel emissions are lethal, particularly on Asians (https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/fossil-fuel-kills-asians-in-particular).

“When we talk about ‘humanity,’ we are, statistically, mostly talking about Asia—just under 60% of our sisters and brothers live there. But they don’t live anywhere near as long as they should.

“New data last week from University of Chicago researchers showed that across South Asia, air pollution—mostly from burning fossil fuels—is robbing people of five years of life on average. Five years! If you live in Delhi, the most polluted big city on the planet, that number is an unimaginable 11.9 years. If you would have lived to 70, you died at 58. Thank about that. Across the region, “particulate pollution levels are currently more than 50 percent higher than at the start of the century and now overshadow” other health risks. Every breath that people take is killing them, every hour of every day.

“Bottom of Form

But those other health risks are also rising fast,” according to McKibben, “spurred on by the climate disasters that also come with burning fossil fuel. A remarkable report in today’s Washington Post (which has been doing a lot of remarkable climate coverage lately) was headlined. Climate-linked ills threaten humanity, and for a while was the lead story in the paper. It looked at Pakistan, home to last year’s record-breaking flood and a series of devastating heatwaves, and found almost unimaginable levels of misery.”

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#8 – In Africa

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports on how “the Central African Republic to Somalia and Sudan, fragile states suffer more from floods, droughts, storms and other climate-related shocks than other countries, when they have contributed the least to climate change (https://imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/30/africas-fragile-states-are-greatest-climate-casualties). The report continues: “Each year, three times more people are affected by natural disasters in fragile states than in other countries. Disasters in fragile states displace more than twice the share of the population in other countries.

“And temperatures in fragile states are already higher than in other countries because of their geographical location. By 2040, fragile states could face 61 days a year of temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius on average—four times more than other countries. Extreme heat, along with the more frequent extreme weather events that come with it, will endanger human health and hurt productivity and jobs in key sectors such as agriculture and construction.”

#9 – In Europe

Ally Wybrew reports on the torrential rain, flash floods and raging wildfires that have devastated Europe this summer (https://euronews.com/green/2023/08/08/torrential-rain-flash-floods-and-raging-wilefires-europes-extreme-summer). Here are Wybrew’s main points.

“Few European countries have escaped the extreme weather spreading throughout the continent. Wildfires have raged across much of Western Europe and the Mediterranean, while flooding and rainstorms have plagued central European countries including Croatia, Austria and the Czech Republic.

“A combination of climate change and the global weather phenomenon El Niño are believed to be contributing to the extreme weather events.

“El Niño occurs when ocean waters become much warmer than usual. According to the WMO, it’s very likely to continue at this strength or higher until the end of 2023.”

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What to do?

Jake Bittle offers ideas on how to help individuals and households on the domestic front. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible and “ramp up our investment in post-disaster aid and climate adaptation.” Give more money to FEMA’s disaster-relief unit. Invest “in more and better funded home buyouts.” Provide “more generous moving stipends to those who relocate without the benefit of an insurance payout” (p. 280).

Such assistance may help some people to escape or adapt, at least temporarily, to the current heating of the planet from fossil fuels and the dire effects on the oceans and more and more of the earth’s land and forests. But the future looks grim in the absence of effective international efforts to reduce carbon emissions and the emissions from other greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, however, there are things people and groups can do.

Collective actions

Julia Conley reports on actions scheduled around the world for Sept. 15-17 to end fossil fuels (https://commondreams.org/news/400-actions-march-climate). There were 400 “actions, marches, rallies, and other events have already been registered around the world. The article was published on Sept. 11, 2023.

“More than 780 organizations have endorsed the day of action—up from 500 less than a week ago—and millions of participants are expected to rally from Cape Town, South Africa to Manila, Philippines and Lahore, Pakistan, as well as in dozens of cities and towns across the United States, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in history.

“The protests are scheduled just before the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, taking place on September 20 in New York, where groups including the NAACP, Sierra Club, and Sunrise Movement are supporting the March to End Fossil Fuels on September 17.

“More than 10,000 people are expected to march in New York to demand that U.S. President Joe Biden end federal approvals for new fossil fuel projects like the Willow drilling project in Alaska and phase out oil and gas drilling in federal lands and waters; declare a climate emergency to unlock resources to accelerate the transition to renewable energy; and provide a just transition that creates millions of green jobs while supporting people who have worked in the fossil fuel industry.”

Recommended individual actions

The United Nations offers the following list of “actions for a healthy planet” (https://un/org/en/actnow/ten-actions). It notes first that the U.S. is a leading source of the accelerating global warming – and much of what it recommends applies to households with resources who tend to be the largest sources of greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gas emissions per person vary greatly among countries. In the United States of America, emissions in 2020 (the latest available data) were 14.6 tons of CO2-equivalent per person – more than double the global average of 6.3 tons, and six times the 2.4 tons per person in India. Here are some actions for how individuals, particularly those with resources, can reduce their impact on the environment. It has particular relevance for the U.S.

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Save energy at home

Much of our electricity and heat are powered by coal, oil and gas. Use less energy by reducing your heating and cooling use, switching to LED light bulbs and energy-efficient electric appliances, washing your laundry with cold water, or hanging things to dry instead of using a dryer. Improving your home’s energy efficiency, through better insulation for instance, or replacing your oil or gas furnace with an electric heat pump can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 900 kilograms of CO2e per year.

Change your home’s source of energy

Ask your utility company if your home energy comes from oil, coal or gas. If possible, see if you can switch to renewable sources such as wind or solar. Or install solar panels on your roof to generate energy for your home. Switching your home from oil, gas or coal-powered energy to renewable sources of energy, such as wind or solar, can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 1.5 tons of CO2e per year. 

Walk, bike or take public transport

The world’s roadways are clogged with vehicles, most of them burning diesel or gasoline. Walking or riding a bike instead of driving will reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and help your health and fitness. For longer distances, consider taking a train or bus. And carpool whenever possible. Living car-free can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 2 tons of CO2e per year compared to a lifestyle using a car. 

Switch to an electric vehicle

If you plan to buy a car, consider going electric, with more and cheaper models coming on the market. In many countries, electric cars help reduce air pollution and cause significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions than gas or diesel-powered vehicles. But many electric cars still run on electricity produced from fossil fuels, and the batteries and engines require rare minerals which often come with high environmental and social costs. Switching from a gasoline or diesel-powered car to an electric vehicle can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 2 tons of CO2e per year. A hybrid vehicle can save you up to 700 kilograms of CO2e per year.

Consider your travel

Airplanes burn large amounts of fossil fuels, producing significant greenhouse gas emissions. That makes taking fewer flights one of the fastest ways to reduce your environmental impact. When you can, meet virtually, take a train, or skip that long-distance trip altogether. Taking one less long-haul return flight can reduce your carbon footprint by up to almost 2 tons of CO2e. 

Reduce, reuse, repair and recycle

Electronics, clothes, plastics and other items we buy cause carbon emissions at each point in production, from the extraction of raw materials to manufacturing and transporting goods to market. To protect the climate, buy fewer things, shop second-hand, and repair what you can. Plastics alone generated 1.8 billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 – 3.4 per cent of the global total. Less than 10 per cent is recycled, and once plastic is discarded, it can linger for hundreds of years. Buying fewer new clothes – and other consumer goods – can also reduce your carbon footprint. Every kilogram of textiles produced generates about 17 kilograms of CO2e.

Eat more vegetables

Eating more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and less meat and dairy, can significantly lower your environmental impact. Producing plant-based foods generally results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires less energy, land, and water. Shifting from a mixed to a vegetarian diet can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 500 kilograms of CO2e per year (or up to 900 kilograms for a vegan diet). 

Throw away less food

When you throw food away, you’re also wasting the resources and energy that were used to grow, produce, package, and transport it. And when food rots in a landfill, it produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. So purchase only what you need, use what you buy and compost any leftovers. Cutting your food waste can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 300 kilograms of CO2e per year.

Plant native species

If you have a garden or even just a plant or two outside your home, check for native species. Use a plant identification app to help. And then think about replacing non-natives, especially any considered invasive. Plants, animals and insects depend on each other. Most insects will not eat non-native plants, which means birds and other species lose a food source. Biodiversity suffers. Even a single tree or shrub can offer a refuge – just remember to skip insecticides and other chemicals.

Clean up your environment

Humans, animals and plants all suffer from land and water contaminated by improperly discarded garbage. Use what you need, and when you have to throw something out, dispose of it properly. Educate others to do the same, and participate in local clean-ups of parks, rivers, beaches and beyond. Every year, people throw out 2 billion tons of trash. About a third causes environment harms, from choking water supplies to poisoning soil.

Make your money count

Everything we spend money on affects the planet. You have the power to choose which goods and services you support. To reduce your environmental impact, choose products from companies who use resources responsibly and are committed to cutting their gas emissions and waste. If you have money that is being invested for you, through a pension fund for instance, it may be supporting fossil fuels or deforestation. Making sure your savings are invested in environmentally sustainable businesses can greatly reduce your carbon footprint.

Speak up

Speak up and get others to join in taking action. It’s one of the quickest and most effective ways to make a difference. Talk to your neighbors, colleagues, friends, and family. Let business owners know you support bold changes – from plastics-free products and packaging to zero-emissions vehicles. Appeal to local and world leaders to act now. Climate action is a task for all of us. And it concerns all of us. No one can do it all alone – but we can do it together.

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Bob Sheak, September 1, 2023

Introduction

This post reviews evidence on global warming and how the Republican Party and its right-wing allies severely exacerbate the problem by promoting fossil fuel production and consumption. The problem of global warming is growing and heating the planet to levels unknown for thousands of years. There is resistance to such extremist policies, but it has yet to curtail, let alone reverse, the problem.

Life on Earth is at stake from the rising heat

Thom Hartman offers these astounding facts on the “existential threat to life on Earth” from human activities, particularly from the heat generated by fossil fuel emissions, which are responsible for 80% of all greenhouse gas emissions.  

“Right now we humans are adding heat to the atmosphere (because of higher levels of greenhouse gasses) at a rate identical to 345,600 Hiroshima bombs going off in our atmosphere every day: four nuclear bombs per second, every second, minute, and hour of every day” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/2024-gop-victory-threat).

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How we know the Earth is at its hottest in thousands of years.

Scott Dance, a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment, reports on scientific findings that “the earth is its hottest in thousands of years” and how we know this (https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/08/earth-hottest-years-thousands-climate).

“Observations from both satellites and the Earth’s surface are indisputable — the planet has warmed rapidly over the past 44 years. As far back as 1850, data from weather stations all over the globe make clear the Earth’s average temperature has been rising.

“In recent days, as the Earth has reached its highest average temperatures in recorded history, scientists have made a bolder claim: It may well be warmer than any time in the last 125,000 years.”

“… the observations are enough to make paleoclimatologists, who study the Earth’s climate history, confident that the current decade of warming is exceptional relative to any period since before the last ice age, about 125,000 years ago.”

“Records from the most recent decades are, of course, the most detailed. Data from the 1800s is slightly less rich, and slightly less precise, but still thorough. For a period going back about 2,000 years, scientists and historians have used artifacts and geologic observations to piece together climate patterns and extreme events on a scale from decades to single years.”

“If any a single day in the past 100,000 or 125,000 years could have been as hot as the Earth this week, scientists said it could only have occurred about 6,000 years ago. At that time, the planet had warmed with the end of the last ice age, and a period of global cooling began that would continue until the Industrial Revolution.

“During the stretch 6,000 years ago, the warmth was largely the result of fluctuations in Earth’s orbit, which is elliptical rather than circular. While nowadays Earth gets closest to the sun in early January each year, at that time it happened around this time of year, during the Northern Hemisphere summer. That had an overall planetary warming effect because the Northern Hemisphere contains more land than the Southern Hemisphere, and land heats up quicker than oceans.”

Human activities now the cause

“Unlike any previous warm period, this one was caused by people.””

“I’m pretty damn certain it’s the warmest day in the last 2,023 years,” said Thorne, who was a coordinating lead author of a chapter exploring long-term changes to Earth’s climate in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment.

“That assessment states with “medium confidence” that temperatures from 2011-2020 exceed those of any multi-century period of warmth over the past 125,000 years.

“Further, there is no evidence anywhere in scientists’ understanding of Earth’s history of warming that occurred nearly as rapidly as the ongoing spike in temperatures, caused by the burning of fossil fuels and emissions of greenhouse gases.”

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The heat index reached 152 degrees in the Middle East — near the limit for human survival – but rising heat and humidity is rampant

In another article by Scott Dance, he reports on the dire situation in the Middle East, the hottest place in a planet that is heating up and as an example of what is to come everywhere

(https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/18/extreme-heat-record-limits-human-survival). He gives the following examples.

“In recent days, China set an all-time high of nearly 126 degrees Fahrenheit, while Death Valley hit 128 degrees, two shy of the highest reliably measured temperature on Earth. Phoenix was expected to observe a record-breaking 19th consecutive day at or above 110 degrees Tuesday. And in the Middle East, the heat index reached 152 degrees, nearing — or surpassing — levels thought to be the most intense the human body can withstand.

“Such conditions are more than enough to overwhelm the body’s ability to regulate its internal temperature, experts said, and offer a glimpse of dangers only expected to become more prevalent as global warming increases extremes in heat and humidity.

“‘We know these extreme temperatures are killing people right now,’ said Cascade Tuholske, an assistant professor at Montana State University.

“The human body is remarkably resilient to heat, but the combination of heat and humidity (called the “wet bulb temperature”) can make it harder — or impossible — to cool down.”

“Research has shown the human body loses its ability to cool itself via sweating at 95 degrees (35 degrees Celsius) on a scale known as the wet bulb global temperature, which factors in a combination of temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover. Unlike the heat index, which rises above the air temperature based on humidity, the wet bulb globe temperature is not designed to be interpreted as a measure of how hot it feels outside.

“On Sunday at the Persian Gulf International Airport in Iran, air temperatures exceeded 100 degrees, and the air was nearly saturated with humidity. That translated to a wet bulb temperature of 92.7 degrees (33.7 degrees Celsius), according to data and a wet bulb conversion calculator from the National Weather Service.

“The heat and humidity were so intense, they translated to a heat index value that was literally off the charts. The heat index is designed to max out at about 136 degrees, but on Sunday it surpassed 150 degrees on the Persian Gulf.

“Well beyond the Middle East, wet bulb temperatures were approaching dangerous levels. Across the southwestern and southeastern United States, wet bulb temperatures hovered in the upper 80s to around 90 degrees on Monday, according to Weather Service data.

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We Are Witnessing the First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse

Michael T. Klare, professor emeritus of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C., composes an in-depth article on this ominous subject  (https://thenation.com/article/environment/civilization-collapse-climate-change). The article was published in The Nation magazine on August 22, 2023.

He reflects on geographer Jared Diamond’s 2005 bestseller, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Diamond focused on “past civilizations that confronted severe climate shocks, either adapting and surviving or failing to adapt and disintegrating, including “the Puebloan culture of Chaco Canyon, N.M., the ancient Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica, and the Viking settlers of Greenland. Such societies, having achieved great success, imploded when their governing elites failed to adopt new survival mechanisms to face radically changing climate conditions.” Before they collapsed, they “supported large, sophisticated populations.”

What happened?

Klare refers to Diamond’s explanation. Diamond “identified three key indicators or precursors of imminent dissolution: a persistent pattern of environmental change for the worse like long-lasting droughts; signs that existing modes of agriculture or industrial production were aggravating the crisis; and an elite failure to abandon harmful practices and adopt new means of production. At some point, a critical threshold is crossed and collapse invariably follows.”

Today, on a planetary basis, “it’s hard to avoid indications that all three of those thresholds are being crossed.”

First, on a planetary basis, “the environmental impacts of climate change are now unavoidable and worsening by the year. To take just one among innumerable global examples, the drought afflicting the American West has now persisted for more than two decades, leading scientists to label it a ‘megadrought’ exceeding all recorded regional dry spells in breadth and severity. As of August 2021, 99 percent of the United States west of the Rockies was in drought, something for which there is no modern precedent. The recent record heat waves in the region have only emphasized this grim reality.” The effects are worldwide.

Second, the climate crisis is also reflected in “the refusal to alter agricultural and industrial methods of production which only aggravate or—in the case of fossil-fuel consumption—simply cause the crisis, is growing ever more obvious. At the top of any list would be a continuing reliance on oil, coal, and natural gas, the leading sources of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) now overheating our atmosphere and oceans. Despite all the scientific evidence linking fossil-fuel combustion to global warming and the promises of governing elites to reduce the consumption of those fuels—for example, under the Paris Agreement of 2015—their use continues to grow.”

Fossil fuel consumption will continue to increase according to a 2022 report by the International Energy Agency

“global oil consumption, given current government policies, will rise from 94 million barrels per day in 2021 to an estimated 102 million barrels by 2030 and then remain at or near that level until 2050. Coal consumption, though expected to decline after 2030, is still rising in some areas of the world. The demand for natural gas (only recently found to be dirtier than previously imagined) is projected to exceed 2020 levels in 2050.”

Emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are increasing

“The same 2022 IEA report indicates that energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide—the leading component of greenhouse gases—will climb from 19.5 billion metric tons in 2020 to an estimated 21.6 billion tons in 2030 and remain at about that level until 2050. Emissions of methane, another leading GHG component, will continue to rise, thanks to the increased production of natural gas.”

Planetary temperatures have risen to a catastrophic level

“Not surprisingly, climate experts now predict that average world temperatures will soon surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level—the maximum amount they believe the planet can absorb without experiencing irreversible, catastrophic consequences, including the dying out of the Amazon and the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (with an accompanying rise in sea levels of one meter or more).

Third, “today’s powerful elites are choosing to perpetuate practices known to accelerate climate change and global devastation. Among the most egregious, the decision of top executives of the ExxonMobil Corporation—the world’s largest and wealthiest privately-owned oil company—to continue pumping oil and gas for endless decades after their scientists warned them about the risks of global warming and affirmed that Exxon’s operations would only amplify them. As early as the 1970s, Exxon’s scientists predicted that the firm’s fossil-fuel products could lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” Yet, as has been well documented, Exxon officials responded by investing company funds in casting doubt on climate change research, even financing think tanks focused on climate denialism. Had they instead broadcast their scientists’ findings and worked to speed the transition to alternative fuels, the world would be in a far less precarious position today.”

The Apocalyptic Summer of ’23

“July 2023 has already been declared the hottest month ever recorded,” Klare writes, “and the entire year is also likely to go down as the hottest ever. Unusually high temperatures globally are responsible for a host of heat-related deaths across the planet. For many of us, the relentless baking will be remembered as the most distinctive feature of the summer of ’23. But other climate impacts offer their own intimations of an approaching Jared Diamond-style collapse.” Klare points to “two ongoing events fit that category in a striking fashion.

One, “The fires in Canada: As of August 2, months after they first erupted into flame, there were still 225 major uncontrolled wildfires and another 430 under some degree of control but still burning across the country. At one point, the figure was more than 1,000 fires! To date, they have burned some 32.4 million acres of Canadian woodland, or 50,625 square miles—an area the size of the state of Alabama. Such staggering fires, largely attributed to the effects of climate change, have destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures, while sending particle-laden smoke across Canadian and American cities—at one point turning New York’s skies orange. In the process, record amounts of carbon dioxide were dispatched into the atmosphere, only increasing the pace of global warming and its destructive impacts.” The Canadian government appears to be helpless to deal with it.”

Two, “The American West’s megadrought has been accompanied by another indicator of abiding environmental change: the steady decline in the volume of the Colorado River, the region’s most important source of water. The Colorado River Basin supplies drinking water to more than 40 million people in the United States and, according to economists at the University of Arizona, it’s crucial to $1.4 trillion of the US economy. All of that is now at severe risk due to increased temperatures and diminished precipitation. The volume of the Colorado is almost 20 percent below what it was when this century began and, as global temperatures continue to rise, that decline is likely to worsen.

Groundwater depletion

The scarce water problem grows and extends to many states in the U.S. A team of journalists at the New York Times have undertaken a ground-breaking study of the increasing depletion of groundwater (https://nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groundwater-dying-climate-change.html).

Entering a New World Beyond Imagining

“It’s true,” Klare points out, “that much has been accomplished in the intervening years. The percentage of electricity provided by renewable sources globally has, for example, risen significantly and the cost of those sources has fallen dramatically. Many nations have also taken significant steps to reduce carbon emissions. Still, global elites continue to pursue strategies that will only amplify climate change, ensuring that, in the years to come, humanity will slide ever closer to worldwide collapse.

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Unprecedented high ocean temperatures

Julia Conley reports on August 4 2023 on scientists being alarmed “over the unprecedented ocean heat,” particularly since “policymakers in the top fossil fuel emissions-producing countries show no sign of ending planet-heating oil and gas extraction”

(https://commondreams.org/news/ocean-temperaturews-breaks-record). Here’s some of what she reports.

“The European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus Climate Change Service, reported this week that the average daily global ocean surface temperature across the planet reached 20.96°C (69.7°F), breaking the record of 20.95°C that was previously set in 2016.

“The record set in 2016 was reported during an El Niño event, a naturally occurring phenomenon which causes warm water to rise to the surface off the western coast of South America. The weather pattern was at its strongest when the high ocean temperature was recorded that year.

“El Niño is forming this year as well, but has not yet reached its strongest point—suggesting new records for ocean heat will be set in the coming months and potentially wreak havoc in the world’s marine ecosystems.”

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told the BBC that March is typically when the oceans are at their hottest.

“The fact that we’ve seen the record now makes me nervous about how much warmer the ocean may get between now and next March,” she told the outlet.

The warming oceans are part of a feedback loop that’s developed as fossil fuel emissions have increasingly trapped heat in the atmosphere.

“Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are warming the oceans, leaving them less able to absorb the emissions and contributing to intensifying weather patterns.

“‘Warmer sea surface temperatures lead to a warmer atmosphere and more evaporation, and both of these lead to more moisture in the atmosphere which can also lead to more intense rainfall events,’ Burgess told ‘Today’ on BBC Radio 4.”

According to Burgess, “And warmer sea surface temperatures may also lead to more energy being available for hurricanes.”

“The warming ocean could have cascading effects on the world’s ecosystems and economies, reducing fish stocks as marine species migrate to find cooler waters.”

“Certain parts of the world’s oceans provoked particular alarm among scientists in recent days, with water off the coast of Florida hitting 38.44°C—over 101°F—last week [late July, 2023].

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the BBC that ocean temperatures in that area typically hover between 23°C and 31°C at this time of year.

“Since scientists first began measuring ocean temperatures using satellites and research buoys about four decades ago, the global average sea surface temperature has gone up by roughly 0.6°C [or 42.8 Fahrenheit].

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Critical ocean current system closer to collapse

Brett Wilkins, staff writers for Common Dreams, reports on a study warning that we are closer than previously thought to a collapse of a critical ocean current system (https://commondreams.org/news/amoc-current-collapse).

“The system of Atlantic Ocean currents that drive warm water from the tropics toward Europe is at risk of collapsing in the coming decades, an analysis of 150 years of temperature data published Tuesday concluded.

“‘The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region,’ states the study, which was published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.”

“Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate action group 350.org, tweeted that ‘Gulf Stream collapse used to be viewed as a far-off and remote possibility… Less so now.’

“Meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus called the study’s findings “incredibly worrying.”

“The new study adds to a growing body of evidence that this crucial ocean system is in peril. Since 2004, observations from a network of ocean buoys [have shown] the AMOC getting weaker—though the limited time frame of that data set makes it hard to establish a trend. Scientists have also analyzed multiple “proxy” indicators of the current’s strength, including microscopic organisms and tiny sediments from the seafloor, to show the system is in its weakest state in more than 1,000 years.

“For thousands of years, the Gulf Stream has carried warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico northward along the eastern North American seaboard and across the Atlantic to Europe. As human-caused global heating melts the Greenland ice sheet, massive quantities of fresh water are released into the North Atlantic, cooling the AMOC—which delivers the bulk of the Gulf Stream’s heat—toward a ‘tipping point’ that could stop the current in its tracks.” This would severely disrupt the rains that billions of people depend on “for food in India, South America, and West Africa. It would increase storms and drop temperatures in Europe, and lead to a rising sea level on the eastern coast of North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.”

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Arctic glaciers and methane

Chris Mooney reports “Scientists working in one of the world’s fastest-warming places [the Arctic] found that rapidly retreating glaciers are triggering the release into the atmosphere of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes global temperatures to rise (https://washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/06/arctic-glacier-melt-methane-global-temperatures

“The releases,” he continues, “are triggered as glaciers across the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, rapidly retreat and leave behind newly exposed land, scientists said. If the phenomenon is found to be more widespread across the Arctic — where temperatures are quickly rising and glaciers melting — the emissions could have global implications.”

“As the Svalbard glaciers move and land is left behind, groundwater beneath the Earth seeps upward and forms springs. In 122 out of 123 of them, the scientists found, the water is filled with apparently ancient methane gas at very high concentrations that bubble upward under pressure. The amount of emissions these springs are emitting are not well-quantified.”

“This is a feedback loop that’s caused by climate change,” said Gabrielle Kleber, the study’s lead author and a scientist based at the University of Cambridge and the University Center in Svalbard. “Glaciers are retreating due to climate warming, and they are leaving these exposed forefields behind, which are encouraging methane gas to be released.”

“The study was published on Thursday in Nature Geoscience by Kleber, Hodson and colleagues based at universities in Norway, Canada and the United Kingdom. The scientists studied 78 Svalbard glaciers that are based on land and several additional glaciers that stretch all the way into the ocean.”

“Most concerning is the apparent age of the methane — the fact that it appears to be ancient suggests it could be coming from very large underground reservoirs with the potential to unleash a lot of gas. The researchers found that the most intense gas flows occurred in regions with underground shale layers that are millions of years old.”

“This implies that the gas has been sequestered for long periods in ancient deposits of fossil fuels, principally natural gas and coal — but that something has recently removed what scientists call a ‘cryospheric cap,’ once provided by glaciers or permafrost. It kept a lid on the methane, and its removal allowed the once stable gas to escape upward. Svalbard is widely known to be rich in fossil fuels — the largest settlement, Longyearbyen, was originally established as a coal-mining town.

“The real fear is not what is happening in Svalbard, but rather, what it would mean if the phenomenon is more widespread — or, if it is poised to worsen due to further glacial retreat. Kleber notes, for instance, that glaciers that currently spill into the ocean are also retreating, in many cases backing up onto land and thus once again exposing land surfaces that could have methane beneath them.”

“In a 2012 study, Walter Anthony and a team of scientists estimated that 2 million tons per year of ancient methane gas, stored deep beneath the earth, could be seeping into the air across the Arctic as permafrost thaws, new lakes form and other changes provide new paths for it to reach the atmosphere. Based on the new study, Walter Anthony now says that figure could be ‘much larger.’”

“In one case, Walter Anthony documented a bubbling lake in Alaska that was also emitting ancient, geologic methane at the alarming rate of nearly 11 tons of gas per day.

“The latest study ‘is important because it shows how ubiquitous [methane] seeps, of various origins, are in the environment of retreating glaciers,’ Walter Anthony said in an email. ‘Similar methane rich seeps have been found in Alaska and Greenland along margins of glaciers and the ice sheet.’”

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The Republican Party is a party of climate deniers and evaders

Their plan

Kristoffer Tigue, a New York City-based reporter for Inside Climate News, where he covers environmental justice issues, reports on “the right-wing plan to undo any progress on the climate crisis” (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01082023/far-right-battle-plan-to-undo-climate-progress-trump-win-2024). The article was published on August 1, 2023.

Tigue writes that the 920-page plan is called Project 2025. The extremist Heritage Foundation is “leading the initiative,” though it is authored or supported by more than “350 right-wing hardliners.” If realized, it “would gut environmental spending, stymie clean energy development and fundamentally shift how federal agencies regulate U.S. industries.” It would “block wind and solar power from being added to the electrical grid; gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency; eliminate the Department of Energy’s renewable energy offices; prohibit states from adopting California’s tailpipe pollution standards, transfer many federal environmental regulatory duties to Republican state officials; and generally prop up the fossil fuel industry.”

“…the plan compiles a list of as many as 20,000 like-minded conservatives who could serve in the next administration to carry out the kind of deregulatory overhaul that became a hallmark of the Trump administration.”

“The proposal would be especially damaging for the EPA, the nation’s top environmental and health regulatory agency and one of the most important tools a president has to address climate change. It would eliminate the EPA’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, drastically slash the agency’s budget and terminate new hires in what the plan’s authors refer to as ‘low-value programs.’ The plan would also revive the so-called ‘secret science’ rule, a controversial proposal by the Trump administration that would have severely limited how the EPA can use scientific studies in its policy making.”

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Climate denial and the GOP presidential candidate debate

John Nichols, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and prolific author, identifies the “scariest lie” by GOP presidential candidates at the Party’s Convention held in Milwaukee on August 23, 2023

(https://thenation.com/article/politics/gop-debate-recap-climate-change). The article was published on August 24, 2023.

The debate confirmed two things: “that climate denial is thriving in the GOP, and that these candidates will do absolutely nothing to save the planet.”

“The eight Republicans who will not be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024 held their first debate on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, where they asked a crowd of 4,000 partisans to suspend disbelief regarding their own prospects, the reality of what has become of their party, and—on a day when Milwaukee’s heat index soared to 114 degrees—the climate crisis that, for the most part, Republicans continue to deny.”

“With devastating wildfires leaving hundreds dead in Hawaii, tropical storms and unprecedented flooding in California, and a massive ‘heat dome’ hovering over middle America and producing record temperatures, the big question going into the debate was whether the candidates for the nomination of the party of climate denial would even mention the crisis. If it was left to the contenders, they almost certainly would have neglected the issue. MacCallum and Baier featured a question from a college-age conservative about whether the contenders could respond to the concerns of young voters regarding climate change. Then the Republicans who would be president revealed themselves—and their party—as the problem rather than the solution.

“Things heated up when MacCallum asked, “Do you believe in human behavior causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do.” No one did.

“Even when they were finally forced to address the issue, the supposed ‘adults in the room’ got it wrong. While she grudgingly admitted that climate change might be ‘real,’ Haley refused to focus on what the United States can do about it. Instead, the former UN ambassador avoided any mention of the fossil fuel industry and deflected to a talking point about “telling China and India they have to lower their emissions.”

“Indeed, while Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election may be the issue of the moment, the debate reminded Americans that the original Big Lie of Republican politics was, is, and by all available evidence will continue to be climate denial.

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The GOP’s Environmental Appropriations Bill Is a Major Giveaway to the Fossil Fuel Industry

Josh Axelrod and Valerie Cleland report on House Republicans advancing a bill to “hand over our public lands and water to Big Oil” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/house-appropriations-bill). Josh Axelrod is a senior advocate for the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Valerie Cleland is a senior ocean advocate with the Nature Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Cleland advocates for policies that protect and restore our oceans. The article was published on July 18, 2023

They write: “In their latest legislative attack on our climate, the Republican majority in the House has written a bill that is so detrimental to our environment and communities, it may rank as the worst appropriations bill in decades.

“For both our shared public lands and oceans, the bill carves out giveaways for the fossil fuel industry that go against not only our climate goals but also common sense. Instead of recognizing that federally managed lands and oceans host a myriad of uses and industries and contribute in countless ways to the national economy, the House majority seems to view them as having one purpose: unabated production of oil, gas, and coal.

“The Republican majority’s latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil, this bill strips away the Department of Interior’s land and ocean management discretion. In doing so, it tips the scales toward congressional control of the oil and gas leasing process, dictates the number of lease sales the administration must offer, and overrides any commonsense considerations as to which areas should or should not be leased.”

“For offshore ocean areas, House Republicans have proposed:

“A new mandate that each five-year leasing program include at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico every year” and two lease sales in Alaska. “This requirement has the effect of removing authority from the agency to decide the amount of lease sales needed to ‘best meet our national energy needs,’ a requirement of existing law.

“Additional requirements to offer all un-leased areas that aren’t strictly off limits—regardless of impacts to endangered species, sensitive habitats, vulnerable ecosystems, or other conflicts—further restricting the discretion of the agency to decide which areas to include in a lease sale.

“For onshore federal public lands, House Republicans have proposed:

“A mandated leasing system that requires the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to hold four leases per year in each of nine specified states.

“Elimination of the BLM’s discretion to apply any meaningful ecosystem or environment-related screens over what lands are eligible and available for oil and gas leasing, instead requiring that all lands deemed available under applicable resource management plans be immediately eligible for nomination.

“A requirement that BLM honor all industry nominations for leasing, regardless of prudent considerations like conflicts with sensitive or endangered species, potential for development, or any other rational screen that might help mitigate environmental and other harms to shared public lands.

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The wealthy are disproportionately responsible for greenhouse gas emissions

Brett Wilkins reports on a study that finds “the Wealthiest 10% of US Households [are] Responsible for 40% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions” (https://commondreams.org/news/greenhouse-gas-emissions).

The study was published in Plos Climate. The study, led by University of Massachusetts, Amherst sustainability scientist Jared Starr—”analyzed 30 years of U.S. household income data and the greenhouse gas emissions generated in creating that income.

“‘We find significant and growing emissions inequality that cuts across economic and racial lines,’ the paper notes. ‘In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households.

“‘Among the highest-earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15-17% of national emissions), investment holdings account for 38-43% of their emissions,’ the publication continues. ‘Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution,’ that is, income from undistributed interest and profits on shareholder’s stocks and bonds.”

“The study’s findings are consistent with research published in 2021 by the Institute for European Environmental Policy and the Stockholm Environment Institute that estimated the wealthiest 1% of humanity was on track to produce 16% of all global CO2 emissions by 2030. Additionally, a 2022 Oxfam report found that a single billionaire produces a million times more carbon emissions than the average person.”

“The study asserts that ‘results suggest an alternative income or shareholder-based carbon tax, focused on investments, may have equity advantages over traditional consumer-facing cap-and-trade or carbon tax options and be a useful policy tool to encourage decarbonization while raising revenue for climate finance.’

“Lucas Chancel, a French economist who was not part of the study, told the Post that “all Americans contribute to climate change, but clearly not in the same way.”

“Without policies such as regulations or taxes on very polluting investments,” he stressed, “it’s unlikely that wealthy individuals making a lot of money from fossil fuel investments will stop investing in them.”

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Compounding the problem

Trillions in fossil fuel subsidies

Jake Johnson writes on August 23, 2023 on how “G20 Nations Dished Out at Least $1 Trillion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies in 2022”

(https://commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuel-subsidies).

“An analysis released this week by the International Institute for Sustainable Development shows that G20 countries spent at least $1 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, running afoul of recent pledges to curb financial support for the sector most responsible for the global climate emergency.”

A report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)  “estimates that G20 governments provided a record $1.4 trillion in support for fossil fuels last year, including subsidies and loans from public financial institutions.”

“This support perpetuates the world’s reliance on fossil fuels” and “also severely limits the possibilities of achieving climate objectives set by the Paris Agreement by incentivizing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while undermining the cost-competitiveness of clean energy,” they added. “G20 governments need to shift their financial resources away from fossil fuels to instead provide targeted, sustainable support for social protection and the scaling-up of clean energy.”

The researchers point out that “these subsidies are problematic because they influence larger private investment flows, lock in higher fossil fuel production and emissions, and take up scarce fiscal resources that are needed to catalyze investments in clean energy transition solutions.”

“The analysis calls on G20 nations to establish a firm deadline for completely eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, which disproportionately benefit wealthy households that contribute far more to the climate crisis than lower-income households.

“At the 2021 COP26 summit in Glasgow, 197 countries agreed to phase out ‘inefficient’ fossil fuel subsidies—but they did not agree on a timeframe for action, nor did they clearly define ‘inefficient.’

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Concluding thoughts

Fossil fuel uses and emissions continue to rise and to spur higher temperatures and an array of catastrophic effects in the U.S. and worldwide. The U.S. government continues to subsidize fossil fuel production and consumption. The Republican Party, still led by Trump, supports harmful policies that use ever more fossil fuels and, with control of the U.S. House of Representative, are able now to block or subvert climate initiatives by the Democrats. The big oil and gas companies have no serious plans to curb emissions. (https://commondreams.org/news/oil-companies-emissions). At the same time, many people and communities remain mostly dependent on gasoline for their vehicles and transportation, on natural gas for heating and cooling their homes and office buildings, and on the jobs linked to or dependent fossil fuels. While the use of renewable energy sources is increasing, they still face obstacles reflected in the lack of adequate batteries and limited access to the energy grid.

Robert C. Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer, calls for the need to increase funding on “clean energy”  (https://commondreams.org/opinion/one-world-solve-climate). The article was published on July 21, 2023. He writes,

“The New York Times’ Brad Plumer, for instance, writing about a report recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, noted:

“Governments and companies would need to invest three to six times the roughly $600 billion they now spend annually on encouraging clean energy in order to hold global warming at 1.5 or 2°C, the report says. While there is currently enough global capital to do so, much of it is difficult for developing countries to acquire.”

On Democracy Now’s August 31, 2023, program, climate activist and scientist Peter Kalmus calls for Biden to declare a climate emergency in order to unleash the government’s ability to transition away from fossil fuels (https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/31/peter_kalmus_climate).

Bob Sheak, August 15, 2023

The film “Oppenheimer” focuses on the role played by the brilliant physicist, Julies Robert Oppenheimer, in the creation of the first atomic and plutonium bombs. It suggests that he was at the center of organizing the scientific and technical work on the first bombs. Then after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, he became tormented by the destructive power of the bombs and advocated futilely for international control of these weapons. He lost his security clearance as a result of this position and lived on in relative obscurity without any influence on policy. However, the U.S. remained committed to nuclear weapons, to a first-use policy, helped to precipitate the Cold War, and all this continues to this day.

Here is a summary of what occurred in what became known as the Manhattan Project from the Wikipedia public encyclopedia (https://wikipedia.org/Manhattan_Project).

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“The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with support from the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. The Army component was designated the Manhattan District, as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the name gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. The project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $24 billion in 2021).^[1] Over 90 percent of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10 percent for development and production of the weapons. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

“The project led to the development of two types of atomic bombs, both developed concurrently, during the war: a relatively simple gun-type fission weapon and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon. The Thin Man gun-type design proved impractical to use with plutonium, so a simpler gun-type design called Little Boy was developed that used uranium-235. Three methods were employed for uranium enrichment: electromagnetic, gaseous and thermal. In parallel with the work on uranium was an effort to produce plutonium. After the feasibility of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, was demonstrated in 1942 at the Metallurgical Laboratory in the University of Chicago, the project designed the X-10 Graphite Reactor and the production reactors at the Hanford Site, in which uranium was irradiated and transmuted into plutonium. The Fat Man plutonium implosion-type weapon was developed in a concerted design and development effort by the Los Alamos Laboratory.

The project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear weapon project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents, and rounded up German scientists. Despite the Manhattan Project’s tight security, Soviet atomic spies successfully penetrated the program.

The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb during the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexico’s Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on 16 July 1945. Little Boy and Fat Man bombs were used a month later in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, with Manhattan Project personnel serving as bomb assembly technicians and weaponeers on the attack aircraft. In the immediate postwar years, the Manhattan Project conducted weapons testing at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads, developed new weapons, promoted the development of the network of national laboratories, supported medical research into radiology and laid the foundations for the nuclear navy. It maintained control over American atomic weapons research and production until the formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947.”

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The German bomb creation goes nowhere

The Manhattan project was launched out of fear that the German military was on the cusp of building an atomic bomb that would enable the German military to turn the war in their favor. As it turns out, Germany abandoned the project in the autumn of 1942.

And the German army surrendered to allied forces after losing ground to the Russians and after British and US ground forces had moved toward Germany and carpet bombed major German cities. The U.S. then turned its attention to the war against Japan. By 1945, US bombers had already extensively carpet-bombed Japanese cities.

Japan becomes the target for the new bombs

The concern of the Truman administration and military leaders was that Japan would not surrender and that it would potentially take tens of thousands of US soldiers to conquer the island nation, causing massive injury and death to US forces. This is a controversial point. In this interpretation, the bombs were dropped to save American lives. Subsequent research and books on the issue document that the Japanese were ready to surrender provided that the Japanese Emperor was allowed to continue without any change in his role. The U.S. commanders insisted on obtaining an unconditional surrender. At the same time, some research on the issue suggests that the U.S. used the bombs to deter the Russian army from invading and occupying parts of northern Japan and to assert US nuclear supremacy. Ward Wilson delves into this still unresolved controversy (https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-Japan-stalin-did).

The genie is out of the bottle

The Russians exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949. Here’s an account from History site(https://history.com/this-day-in-history/soveits-explode-atomic-bomb).

“At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name ‘First Lightning.’” “The atomic explosion, which at 20 kilotons was roughly equal to ‘Trinity….’

“On September 3, a U.S. spy plane flying off the coast of Siberia picked up the first evidence of radioactivity from the explosion. Later that month, President Harry S. Truman announced to the American people that the Soviets too had the bomb. Three months later, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who had helped the United States build its first atomic bombs, was arrested for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. While stationed at U.S. atomic development headquarters during World War II, Fuchs had given the Soviets precise information about the U.S. atomic program, including a blueprint of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb later dropped on Japan, and everything the Los Alamos scientists knew about the hypothesized hydrogen bomb. The revelations of Fuchs’ espionage, coupled with the loss of U.S. atomic supremacy, led President Truman to order development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

“On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated “Mike,” the world’s first hydrogen bomb, on the Elugelab Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear device instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a crater more than a mile wide. Three years later, on November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of the so-called ‘superbomb,’ and the world lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.”

Other countries develop the bomb

The Arms Control Association provides information on the spread of nuclear weapons by country

(https://armscontrol.org/factssheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat). The contacts at the Association for this article are Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy, (202) 463-8270 x102; Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director, (202) 463-8270 x1070. Here’s some of what they have researched.

“At the dawn of the nuclear age, the United States hoped to maintain a monopoly on its new weapon, but the secrets and the technology for building the atomic bomb soon spread. The United States conducted its first nuclear test explosion in July 1945 and dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945. Just four years later, the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test explosion. The United Kingdom (1952), France (1960), and China (1964) followed. Seeking to prevent the nuclear weapon ranks from expanding further, the United States and other like-minded countries negotiated the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996.

“India, Israel, and Pakistan never signed the NPT and possess nuclear arsenals. Iraq initiated a secret nuclear program under Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. North Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT in January 2003 and has successfully tested advanced nuclear devices since that time. Iran and Libya have pursued secret nuclear activities in violation of the treaty’s terms, and Syria is suspected of having done the same. Still, nuclear nonproliferation successes outnumber failures, and dire decades-old forecasts that the world would soon be home to dozens of nuclear-armed states have not come to pass.”

“Today, the United States deploys 1,419 and Russia deploys 1,549 strategic warheads on several hundred bombers and missiles, and are modernizing their nuclear delivery systems. Warheads are counted using the provisions of the New START agreement, which was extended for 5 years in January 2021. Russia suspended its participation in the treaty on Feb. 21, 2023; in response, the United States instituted countermeasures limiting information sharing and inspections.

“However, both the U.S. and Russia have committed to the treaty’s central limits on strategic force deployments until 2026.

“New START caps each country at 1,550 strategic deployed warheads and attributes one deployed warhead per deployed heavy bomber, no matter how many warheads each bomber carries. Warheads on deployed ICBMs and SLBMs are counted by the number of re-entry vehicles on the missile. Each re-entry vehicle can carry one warhead.

“The United States, Russia, and China also possess smaller numbers of non-strategic (or tactical) nuclear warheads, which are shorter-range, lower-yield weapons that are not subject to any treaty limits.

“China, India, and Pakistan are all pursuing new ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and sea-based nuclear delivery systems. North Korea continues its nuclear pursuits in violation of its earlier denuclearization pledges.”

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Where the film falls short

#1 – Says little about the effects of the bomb on Japanese civilians and the horrific death and injuries they suffered

Hiroshima

Here’s some of what we learn from the Texas A&M University’s “Narratives of World War II in the Pacific” (https://tamucc.edu/library/exhibits/s/hist4350/page/the-aftermath-of-the-atomic-bomb). The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.        

“Citizens were unaware of their fate and were going on about their days. Men, women, and children all fell victim to the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. The bombing of Hiroshima caused the deaths of thousands of citizens instantly and more to the nuclear fallout and the lack of infrastructure which would lead to the deaths of many more Japanese civilians due to the devastating destruction by the atomic bomb.”

“The United States main goal for the Atomic Bomb was for it to be used on military targets only and minimize civilian casualties as much as possible. Hiroshima was used by the Japanese Army as a staging area but was also a large city with a population of roughly 410,000 people. Hiroshima was selected for the first bomb to be dropped and to be observed for future bombs that could be used in the future.

“August 6^th, 1945 was a typical morning for Hiroshima. The city was flourishing with activity of people going to work, children playing, and businesses opening. The warning signs began around 7A.M. with air raid sirens which was a common occurrence for the people of Japan and most ignored it. Around 8:14 A.M. however, is when Hiroshima changed forever.”

“Once the initial explosion took place, it is estimated that 60,000 to 80,000 people died instantly due to the extreme heat of the bomb, leaving just shadows of where they once were. Fires broke out and spread rapidly while people were trying to find loved ones as well as figure out what exactly had happened.^[2] The lack of people physically able to fight the fire and the weather increased the fires and the whole city became a blazing fireball all from a single bomb. Not only were people instantly vaporized, the people who did survive the initial blast, succumbed to radiation sickness and would later die a painful slow death. Sometimes symptoms did not reveal themselves until weeks or even years after being exposed to such high levels of radiation.” Over time, at least 60,000 more people died of radiation sickness.

 Nagasaki

Shampa Biswas writes on the bombing of Nakasaki   (https://thebulletin.org/2023/08/what-can-we-learn-from-oppenheimer-about-the-blind-spots-in-nuclear-storytelling).

“Fat Man laid a city [of Nakasaki] to waste, quickly killing between 60,000-80,000 people, the death toll eventually rising to over 130,000. Nagasaki is now the site of an elaborate Peace Memorial whose central story is the victimhood of Japan. It is a deeply moving story, but one told through a nation-making lens, with barely a nod to Japan’s own war crimes or its uneven redressal of the claims of first- and second-generation hibakusha, the surviving victims of the bombing.

“The Nagasaki museum tells its heart-breaking story through photographs and objects: dented household pots, ripped clothing, bones of a human hand stuck to a piece of metal, a replica of the destroyed ruins of the Urakami cathedral at Ground Zero, pictures of scarred and dead bodies and a city leveled flat. It is a story that makes you weep for a devastated past and hope for a more peaceful future.”

Biswis admonishes us.

“We will be well served if Oppenheimer instigates a much-needed public conversation about the dangers of nuclear weapons. We will be better served if the stories we tell about those dangers include the full breadth of nuclear harms and attend to those made most vulnerable by nuclear weapons production, testing, and use.”

A message of concern about nuclear weapons from the UN Secretary General

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gives the world a message on the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki at the Nagasaki Peace Memorial

(https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm21901.doc.htm). Here’s some of what he said.

“This ceremony is an opportunity to remember a moment of unmatched horror for humanity — the use of atomic weapons on Nagasaki 78 years ago.

“The United Nations will continue working with global leaders to strengthen the global disarmament and non-proliferation regime — including through the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  I have pledged to do everything in my power to ensure that the voices and testimonies of the hibakusha continue to be heard.”

“It is in their name — and in memory of what happened here in 1945 — that the Secretary-General has declared that the elimination of nuclear weapons is the United Nations’ highest disarmament priority.  We must never again allow such devastation to occur.

“Despite the terrible lessons of 1945, humanity now confronts a new arms race.  Nuclear weapons are being used as tools of coercion.  Weapons systems are being upgraded, and placed at the centre of national security strategies, making these devices of death faster, more accurate and stealthier.

“All this, at a moment when division and mistrust are pulling countries and regions apart.  The risk of nuclear catastrophe is now at its highest level since the cold war.

In the face of these threats, the global community must speak as one.  Any use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.  We will not sit idly by as nuclear-armed States race to create even more dangerous weapons.

“That’s why disarmament is at the heart of the recently launched Policy Brief on a New Agenda for Peace.  The Agenda calls on Member States to urgently recommit to pursuing a world free of nuclear weapons, and to reinforce the global norms against their use and proliferation.  Pending their total elimination, States possessing nuclear weapons must commit to never use them.  The only way to eliminate the nuclear risk is to eliminate nuclear weapons.”

#2 – Says nothing about the effects of the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico on nearby residents and how radiation spread across the U.S.

Lesley M.M. Blume, a journalist, historian, and a New York Times bestselling author, most recently of Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World, reports on research on the effects of the Trinity atom bomb test on communities in the New Mexico desert, across the country, and even across national borders (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/20/science/trinity-nuclear-test-atomic-bomb-oppenheimer).

“On July 16, when the plutonium-implosion device was set off atop a hundred-foot metal tower in a test code-named ‘Trinity,’ the resultant blast was much stronger than anticipated. The irradiated mushroom cloud also went many times higher into the atmosphere than expected: some 50,000 to 70,000 feet. Where it would ultimately go was anyone’s guess.

“A new study, released on Thursday [July 13, 2023] ahead of submission to a scientific journal for peer review, shows that the cloud and its fallout went farther than anyone in the Manhattan Project had imagined in 1945. Using state-of-the-art modeling software and recently uncovered historical weather data, the study’s authors say that radioactive fallout from the Trinity test reached 46 states, Canada and Mexico within 10 days of detonation.”

“The drift of the Trinity cloud was monitored by Manhattan Project physicists and doctors, but they underestimated its reach.

“They were aware that there were radioactive hazards, but they were thinking about acute risk in the areas around the immediate detonation site,” Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said. They had little understanding, he said, about how the radioactive materials could embed in ecosystems, near and far. ‘They were not really thinking about effects of low doses on large populations, which is exactly what the fallout problem is.’”

“Determined to fill in the gaps, the team started the study about 18 months ago. Dr. Philippe has extensive background in modeling fallout and was an author of a similar project in 2021 that documented the effects from French nuclear tests.

“A breakthrough came in March, when Ms. Alzner and Megan Smith, another co-founder of shift7 and a former United States chief technology officer in the Obama administration, contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There, Gilbert P. Compo, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado and the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, told the team that the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts had only a week earlier released historical data that charted weather patterns extending 30,000 feet or higher above Earth’s surface.”

“Using the new data and software built by NOAA, Dr. Philippe then reanalyzed Trinity’s fallout. And while the study’s authors acknowledge limitations and uncertainties within their calculations, they maintain that ‘our estimates likely remain conservatively low.’”

“The results show that New Mexico was heavily affected by Trinity’s fallout. Computations by Dr. Philippe and his colleagues show the cloud’s trajectory primarily spreading up over northeast New Mexico and a part of the cloud circling to the south and west of ground zero over the next few days. The researchers wrote that there are “locations in New Mexico where radionuclide deposition reached levels on par with Nevada.”

“Census data from 1940 shows that as many as 500,000 people were living within a 150-mile radius of the test site. Some families lived as close as 12 miles away, according to the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. Yet no civilians were warned about the test ahead of time, and they weren’t evacuated before or after the test.”

“The study also documents significant deposition in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and Idaho, as well as dozens of federally-recognized tribal lands, potentially strengthening the case for people seeking government compensation.

#3 – There were many subsequent above-ground as well as underground tests. The effects?

Lesley M. M. Blume also reports on evidence on the many bomb tests that the U.S. government exploded in the years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing (https://nationalgeographic.com/history/article/us-nuclear-testing-devastating-legacy-lingers-30-years-later). Here’s some of what she reports.

“The United States conducted 1,054 atomic tests—costing more than $100 billion and taking an incalculable toll on humans and the environment.

Citizens in the area of the Trinity bomb test were misled or left uninformed

“None of those living near the Trinity site were warned or evacuated before or after the blast. It had been selected in part for its supposed remoteness from human settlement, but census data from 1940 show that nearly half a million people in New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico lived within 150 miles of ground zero. (Privately acknowledging the “very serious hazard” posed by the blast, the Manhattan Project’s chief medical officer advised that future tests should likely only be conducted where no one lived within a 150-mile radius.) To calm nerves, officials told people that a nearby ammunition dump had exploded. Many learned the truth about the blast only years later, and Trinity test survivors are not among the downwinders eligible for government compensation.”

“Blume points out, “Officials assured those living around the site that the detonations were ‘relatively small in explosive power,’ but some blasts were enormous: Hood was a 74-kiloton bomb exploded in 1957 as part of a larger military exercise in a nearby field involving 2,200 U.S. Marines. In 1962, the 104-kiloton Sedan test—seven times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb—displaced more than 12 million tons of earth and left a hole 1,280 feet wide and 320 feet deep. It has the distinction of being the largest manmade crater in the U.S., and the Nevada Test Site’s Yucca Flat testing region remains the most cratered landscape on the planet, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.”

The testing

Blume writes: “Formerly an iron mining and agricultural community, Cedar City stands about 175 miles east of the Nevada Test Site, where the United States conducted more than 900 nuclear tests from 1951 through 1992. Others were held across the country, including in Colorado, Alaska, and Mississippi. Tests of the U.S.’s biggest nuclear megaweapons were reserved for sites in the Pacific, including one device in the Marshall Islands a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.”

The last test carried out

“The U.S. carried out its last atom/nuclear weapons test on September 23, 1992, with the detonation in Nevada of an approximately 20-kiloton device codenamed Divider. (A kiloton is equivalent to a thousand tons of TNT; the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons.) Just over a week later, on October 2, President George H. W. Bush signed a moratorium on further testing, which has been honored to this day.”

The record of atomic bomb testing in the U.S.

Blume continues. Before the 1992 testing moratorium, the U.S. government tested nearly a thousand nuclear bombs above and below ground in four states, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Mississippi. Tests were also carried out in Alaska. Nevada was the central domestic site. The military “conducted 928 tests over 41 years at the Nevada Test Site.”

“For people living the vicinity of the Trinity test and subsequent testing, the people are sometimes known as “downwinders,” or “people exposed or likely exposed to radioactive fallout during tests.” They “say that the specter of a possible return to testing someday haunts them. In 2020, when the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was considering resuming nuclear testing, following unsubstantiated assertions by administration officials that China and Russia were testing low-yield nuclear devices, many in Nevada and Utah decried the decision.

“Joe Biden, then a presidential candidate, called the notion “reckless” and “dangerous.” 

A moratorium and the end of atomic/nuclear bomb testing

“In 1958, the United States instituted a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear tests. On October 31, 1958, the United States entered into a unilateral testing moratorium announced by President Eisenhower with the understanding that the former Soviet Union also would refrain from conducting tests (https://acq,osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/NMHB2020rev/chapters/chapter14.html). The Soviet Union resumed testing in September 1961, with a series of the largest number of tests ever conducted.

“On September 15, 1961, the United States resumed testing at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) on a year-round basis and conducted an average of approximately 27 tests per year over the next three decades. These included 24 joint tests with the United Kingdom;¹ 35 tests for peaceful purposes as part of the Plowshare program;² seven to increase the capability to detect, identify, and locate nuclear tests as part of the Vela Uniform³ program; four to study nuclear material dispersal in possible accident scenarios; and post-fielding tests of specific weapons. By 1992, as noted above, the United States had conducted a total of 1,054 nuclear tests. In 1992, Congress passed legislation that prohibited the United States from conducting an underground nuclear test and led to the current policy restriction on nuclear explosive testing.”

“Conceding at last the consequences to humans of aboveground testing, Congress in 1990 passed the first iteration of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for ‘downwinders’ in designated geographic areas suffering as the result of possible exposure to fallout from leukemia, multiple myeloma, lymphomas, or one or more of 16 different cancers.

“The act, updated in 2000 and extended earlier this year, has distributed more than $2 billion to downwinders and workers at nuclear sites. Previously ineligible downwinders—including those affected by the Trinity test—are campaigning urgently for inclusion. Claudia Peterson is among those who say the act’s recognition and compensation are insufficient for covering medical costs—and paltry compared to nuclear weapons budgets. “No amount of money can compensate for watching a child die,” she says.”

Testing in Pacific Ocean islands in the first decades after Trinity

According to a PBS report, “On March 1, 1954 the United States tested an H-bomb design on Bikini Atoll that unexpectedly turned out to be the largest U.S. nuclear test ever exploded (https://pbs.org/wgnb/americal-experience/features/bomb-us-tests). Named “Bravo,” it “yielded 15 megatons — making it more than a thousand times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

“The blast gouged a crater about a mile wide in the reef. Within seconds the fireball was nearly three miles in diameter. The illumination from the blast was visible for almost one minute on Rongerik, an island 135 miles east of the burst. It trapped personnel in experiment bunkers and engulfed the 7,500 foot diagnostic pipe array. Physicist Marshall Rosenbluth was on a ship about 30 miles away. He remembers that the fireball, “just kept rising and rising, and spreading… It looked to me like what you might imagine a diseased brain, or a brain of some mad man would look like on the surface… And the air started getting filled with this gray stuff, which I guess was somewhat radioactive coral.” 

“An hour-and-a-half later a similar gritty, snow-like substance began raining down on a Japanese fishing vessel called the Lucky Dragon that was about 80 miles east of Bikini. The 23 fishermen aboard had no idea the ash was fallout from a hydrogen bomb test. When they returned to port two weeks later they were all suffering severe radiation sickness. The radio operator later died. One Tokyo newspaper headline demanded that the U.S. authorities “Tell us the truth about the ashes of death.” 

“Marshall Islanders were also exposed to the fallout. One islander on Rongelap about 100 miles east of Bikini remembers hearing, ‘a loud explosion and within minutes the ground began to shake. A few hours later the radioactive fallout began to drop on the people, into the drinking water, and on the food. The children played in the colorful ash-like powder. They did not know what it was.’” 

The financial cost

Blume quotes an expert. “The testing program easily cost taxpayers more than $100 billion in fiscal 2023 dollars, according to Stephen Schwartz, nonresident senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Total spending on U.S. nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs ‘now exceeds $10 trillion and counting,’ he says.

“The human costs, however, are incalculable.”

The danger of a new Cold War

“Experts advise,” Blume writes, “that if a U.S. administration does resume testing, it would risk setting off a new nuclear arms race—as the very first atomic test, in New Mexico, did 77 years ago. During its Cold War nuclear race with the Soviets, the U.S. detonated 1,149 nuclear devices in 1,054 tests—more than those by all seven of the other nuclear-testing nations combined, including the Soviet Union, which conducted more than 700 tests.

“In the U.S.’s bid for nuclear supremacy, populations in the vicinity of test sites became collateral damage from radioactive fallout. Officials in charge of the tests also courted environmental and geological catastrophes, including possible earthquakes, tidal waves, dam breaks, and more.”

Blume continues. “Tests of the U.S.’s biggest thermonuclear bombs—hugely powerful weapons also known as hydrogen bombs or H-bombs—were reserved for the Pacific Proving Grounds, located largely in the Marshall Islands, some 2,400 miles west of Hawaii. The first U.S. H-bomb—codenamed Ivy Mike, with an explosive payload of 10.4 megatons, nearly 700 times that of the Hiroshima bomb—was detonated in 1952. It vaporized the small island of Elugelab, leaving a crater more than a mile long and 164 feet deep.

“Then came Castle Bravo, in 1954, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb exploded at Bikini Atoll. A bomb that size detonated over New York City would cause up to five million deaths and create a fireball nearly two miles wide, according to NukeMap. (In 1961, the Soviets detonated their largest thermonuclear weapon, the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, which had “roughly 10 times the total explosive power unleashed in all of World War II, including both the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” according to nuclear expert Sara Kutchesfahani.)

“‘These multimegaton weapons [were] very dirty in terms of their fallout content,’ Wellerstein says, as quoted by Blume. Clouds from Ivy Mike and Castle Bravo were closely monitored, he adds, ‘and they went around the entire world over the course of a week or so.’ Contamination spread over roughly 7,000 square miles—’the worst radiological disaster in U.S. history,’ according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.”

#4 – Nuclear accidents

There is now a long history of accidents at nuclear weapons’ launching missile sites, both in the US and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), that came within minutes of starting a nuclear war. This history is painstakingly documented by Eric Schlosser in his book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, and in an article for The New Yorker, titled “World War Three, by Mistake (Dec 23, 2016). You can find the article at: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake.

Schlosser’s main argument is that “harsh political rhetoric, combined with the vulnerability of the nuclear command-and-control system, has made the risk of global catastrophe greater than ever.” He concludes his long article with the following ominous words.

“My greatest concern is the lack of public awareness about this existential threat, the absence of a vigorous public debate about the nuclear-war plans of Russia and the United States, the silent consent to the roughly fifteen thousand nuclear weapons in the world. These machines have been carefully and ingeniously designed to kill us. Complacency increases the odds that, someday, they will. The ‘Titanic Effect’ is a term used by software designers to explain how things can quietly go wrong in a complex technological system: the safer you assume the system to be, the more dangerous it is becoming.”

Fred Pearce devotes an entire book to how accidents, mis-judgements, out-right lies have almost triggered nuclear war. See his book Fallout: Disasters, Lies, and The Legacy of the Nuclear Age. In his book, The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg writes: “every president from Truman to Clinton has felt compelled at some point in time in office – usually in great secrecy – to threaten and/or discuss with the Joint Chiefs of Staff plans and preparation for possible imminent US initiation of tactical or strategic nuclear warfare, in the midst of an ongoing non-nuclear conflict or crisis” (pp .319-322). There were also such instances during the Bush Jr administration and, much more blatantly under Trump, who have talked about bombing North Korea and Afghanistan with nuclear weapons (see Mark Green and Ralph Nader’s book, Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t, the chapter on “War and Peace”).

#5 – Nuclear Winter

No nation, no people, can survive an even limited, regional nuclear war with warheads in the present nuclear arsenals. Even a first-use attack by, say, the US to destroy the nuclear-launching capacity of, say Russia, would produce a worldwide catastrophe. The smoke from nuclear bomb blasts would rise into the atmosphere and remain there for an extended period, enough to cripple food production around the world. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter.)

There are no winners in nuclear war. However, the “doctors strange loves” in the Pentagon are busy at designing smaller nuclear weapons that may not themselves produce a nuclear winter. If ever they are exploded, once they are used, they are likely to lead to more bombs being deployed.

#6 – The situation would be horrendous for people and communities in the wake of a nuclear war

Robert Jacobs describes some of the chaos and hardship that would prevail after nuclear war had commenced (https://truth-out.org/news/item/3290-we-cannot-survive-a-nuclear-apocalpse-by-ducking-and-covering).

Jacobs offers this graphic example: “After a nuclear attack, the suggestion that one [a survivor] can go somewhere and find clean water is ridiculous. Or that one could take their contaminated clothes off and simply find uncontaminated clothes nearby. Or that washing your hair one time will remove the systemic dangers of being in a radiologically contaminated environment, and your hair would not simply reabsorb some of that radiation. Or that shampoo would be contaminated, etc.” Jacobs refers to a study by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) which concluded that the radiation produced by a hydrogen bomb “detonated over Washington DC would have the following effects: “not only would everyone in Washington DC be dead from the blast and heat of the weapons, but everyone in Baltimore, Philadelphia and half the population of New York City would soon die of radiation sickness if they did not immediately evacuate.”

#7 – U.S. stays committed to a “first use” policy

Daniel Ellsberg makes this point in his book, The Doomsday Machine.

“Preparation for preemption or for carrying out threats of first use or first strike remains the essence of the ‘modernization’ program for strategic weapons for the last seventy years – prospectively being extended by Presidents Obama and Trump to one hundred years – that has continuously benefited our military-industrial-complex” (p. 324)….“The felt political need to profess, at least, to believe that the ability to make and carry out nuclear threats is essential to US national security and to our leadership in our alliances is why every single president has refused to make a formal ‘no-first-use’ (NFU) commitment” (p. 324)

“…the United States has tenaciously resisted the pleas of most other nations in the world to make an NFU pledge as an essential basis for stopping proliferation, including at the Nonproliferation Treaty Extension Conference in 1995 and the Review Conference since 2000. Moreover, the United States has demanded that NATO continue to legitimize first-use threat by basing its own strategy on them, even after the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had dissolved (and most of the former Pact members had joined NATO. Yet this stubborn stance – along with actual threats of possible US nuclear first use in more recent confrontations with Iraq, North Korea, and Iran – virtually precludes effective leadership by the United States (and perhaps anyone else) in delegitimizing and averting further proliferation and even imitation of US use of nuclear weapons” (324-325)

“UN Resolution 36/100, the Declaration on the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe… was adopted on December 9, 1981, in the wake of Reagan’s endorsement of the Carter Doctrine – openly extending US first-use threats to the Persian Gulf – which this resolution directly contradicted and implicitly condemned. It declares in its preamble: ‘Any doctrine allowing the first use of nuclear weapons and any actions pushing the world toward a catastrophe are incompatible with human moral standards and the lofty ideals of the UN.” 

Eighty-two nations voted in favor of it, 41 abstained (under pressure from US), 19 opposed it (including the US, Israel and most NATO member nations) (p. 325)”

Concluding thoughts

In a rational world based on verifiable, scientifically based evidence, the world leaders would be not only taking “practical” steps to reduce the chances of nuclear war but making efforts to ban nuclear weapons altogether. This is not so far-fetched. On July 7, 2017, “some 130 countries” at the United Nations successfully negotiated a treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons and, according to a report by Kennette Benedict for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “agreed to make the developing, testing, manufacturing, possessing, or stockpiling of nuclear weapons by any state illegal” (https://thebulletin.org/prohibition-nuclear-weapons-treaty-10936). If we are lucky and rational, the U.S. would join the international movement to phase out nuclear weapons.

Bob Sheak, August 7, 2023

The Climate Crisis

We are in an unprecedented global warming crisis. It is affecting some parts of the U.S. and world more than others, but, not too long from now in the absence of sufficient responses, it will harmfully impact all aspects of life – people, societies, economies, agriculture, oceans, and virtually everything. Scott Dance captures this dire situation, writing “the earth is at its hottest in thousands of years” (https://washingtpost.com/weather/2023/07/08/earth-hottest-years-thousands-climate). Dance continues:

“Observations from both satellites and the Earth’s surface are indisputable — the planet has warmed rapidly over the past 44 years. As far back as 1850, data from weather stations all over the globe make clear the Earth’s average temperature has been rising.

“In recent days, as the Earth has reached its highest average temperatures in recorded history, scientists have made a bolder claim: It may well be warmer than any time in the last 125,000 years.”

If the carbon emissions from fossil fuels are not greatly reduced, the future of life on earth is threatened. In the meantime, there will be extensive damage to societies and ecosystems.  

Fossil fuels at the center of the climate crisis

Fossil fuel emissions are not the only cause of global warming, but they are the principal cause. Jake Johnson points out that “fossil fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022 (https://commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuels-global-energy-consumption).

“Data published Monday shows that fossil fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022, another indication that the global transition away from planet-warming sources is moving far too slowly as rich nations continue burning oil, gas, and coal at an unsustainable pace.”

Johnson continues.

“Juliet Davenport, president of the Energy Institute, said in a statement that ‘2022 saw some of the worst ever impacts of climate change—the devastating floods affecting millions in Pakistan, the record heat events across Europe and North America—yet we have to look hard for positive news on the energy transition in this new data.’

“‘Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,’ said Davenport. ‘We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.’”

 “Meanwhile, according to the new Energy Institute data, oil consumption continued to increase in 2022—up 2.9 million barrels per day compared to last year—and global coal use rose to its highest level since 2014.”

Johnson does see some bright spots in the growth in new wind and solar capacity, reaching 12% of power generation in 2022.

Fossil fuel consumption in U.S.

The University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems provides the following figures (https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/us-renewable-energy-factsheet).

“About 79% of the nation’s energy comes from fossil fuels, 8.4% from nuclear, and 12.5% from renewable sources. In 2019, renewables surpassed coal in the amount of energy provided to the U.S. and continued this trend in 2021. Wind and solar are the fastest growing renewable sources, but contribute just 5% of total energy used in the U.S.”

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More evidence

Jeff Goodell, the author of the book “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” gives us a glimpse of the future” under a rapidly warming planet with the example of how Texas and other places are now being affected  (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/08/opinion/heat-texas-climate.html). He writes:

“…in mid-June…a heat dome settled over the entire Southwest as well as Mexico, breaking temperature records and turning asphalt to mush. I [Goodell] had recently moved to Austin, Texas. Yes, Texas is a hot place. But this was different. We’re talking about a heat index — the combination of temperature and humidity — as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Events disturbingly similar to what I had reported on in other places several years earlier were playing out in real time around me, like hikers dying of heatstroke and thousands of dead fish washing up on Gulf Coast beaches (hotter water contains less oxygen, making it difficult for fish to breathe). The red-faced desperation on the faces of homeless people living beneath an overpass near me was spookily evocative of the red-faced desperation I’d seen on the faces of people in India and Pakistan.”

Goodell continues.

“You can argue that Texas has done this to itself. The planet is getting hotter because of the burning of fossil fuels. This is a simple truth, as clear as the moon in the night sky. No state has profited more from fossil fuels than Texas. Revenues from oil and gas production have long been central to the Texas economy and are at least partly responsible for the more than $32 billion projected surplus in the state’s 2024-25 budget. And Texas is also responsible for emitting more than 600 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year, more than twice as much as any other state.”

Affecting everywhere

“But living under the Texas heat dome has reinforced my view [Goodell’s] that we have to be cleareyed about the scope and scale of what we are facing. The extreme heat that is cooking many parts of the world this summer is not a freakish event — it is another step into our burning future. The wildfires in Canada, the orange Blade Runner skies on the East Coast, the hot ocean, the rapidly melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica and the Himalayas, the high price of food, the spread of vector-borne diseases in unexpected places — it is all connected, and it is all driven by rising heat.”

Will there be meaningful action?

“We need to start seeing hot days as more than an invitation to go to the beach or hang out at the lake. Extreme heat is the engine of planetary chaos. We ignore it at our peril. Because if there is one thing we should understand about the risks of extreme heat, it is this: All living things, from humans to hummingbirds, share one simple fate. If the temperature they’re used to — what scientists sometimes call their Goldilocks Zone — rises too far, too fast, they die.”

—————-

The current situation

There has been too little constructive change while the problem of global warming steadily increases. The time for mitigating, adapting to, or reversing this dire existential problem is running out. Here’s some of the evidence highlighting the obstacles to reducing the problem.

#1 – We have long known that fossil fuel emissions are the principal cause of global warming

Bill McKibben, the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org, has long warned us of the unfolding climate crisis (https://commondreams.org/opinion/i-told-you-so-on-climate-emergency).

“I [McKibben] wrote the first book on what we now call the climate crisis way back in 1989, and it feels like I’ve spent the subsequent three-and-a-half decades warning that eventually we’d get to this particular July: the hottest day and week and month on record. And long before records too: It seems almost certain that this is the hottest weather on our planet in 125,000 years; Jim Hansen made a quite reasonable case Friday that it is already or soon will be hotter than it’s been for a million years, which is to say before the evolution of homo sapiens.”

McKibben continues.

“And here’s The Washington Post today, reporting on the heat in Phoenix, which will soon break its record of 18 straight days of heat above 110°F. (The average temperature forecast for all next week, across all 24 hours, is 104.6°F, which would crush the city’s previous warmest week on record, which had an average temperature of 102.9°F.) What happens when it gets that hot? People get savage burns when they walk a few barefoot steps across a patio, or let a seatbelt buckle touch bare skin. They scald themselves with water that’s been sitting in a garden hose soaking up the sun.”

“The current horrors are not a reason to stop working. We know from a recent study that every 10th of a degree in temperature rise that we prevent keeps 140 million of our brothers and sisters in habitable zones on this planet. And nothing has changed my basic conviction about the key: We need to keep building huge movements to finally break the political power of the fossil fuel industry and force the emergency conversion to clean energy. When we’ve made progress—the Paris accords, say, or the Inflation Reduction Act—mass mobilizing is how we’ve done it; we have to give good politicians the room they need, we have to give bad politicians the boot, and we have to hold corporations accountable for killing us and our world. We have to keep on changing the zeitgeist.”

————

#2a – Fossil fuel companies spent decades lying about the unfolding climate crisis

They knew

Nicholas Kusnetz, a reporter for Inside Climate News and winner of numerous awards for his work, reports on how big oil companies like ExxonMobil knew for many decades before scientists reported on it that burning fossil fuels produced climate-heating emissions (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12012023/exxon-doubt-climate-science). He writes:

“For climate activists, the term ‘Exxon Knew’ has settled deeply into the lexicon of climate accountability, shorthand for the contradiction between the oil giant’s long campaign to publicly question climate science and its internal understanding that the science was sound.” 

New research confirms they knew and lied about it

“Now, new academic research lends statistical rigor to this concept by showing that the company’s own climate projections, dating back decades, consistently predicted the warming that was to come primarily from burning fossil fuels.

“The peer-reviewed paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, analyzed all known climate predictions produced or reported by scientists at ExxonMobil and its predecessor from 1977-2003, and found that they were ‘at least as skillful’ as those by independent experts (Exxon merged with Mobil in 1999). Like those independent models, most of Exxon’s proved to be accurate.

“They didn’t just vaguely know something about global warming decades ago, they literally knew as much as independent academic scientists did,” said Geoffrey Supran, the paper’s lead author, who recently left a research position at Harvard University to become an associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science. ‘We now have this airtight, unimpeachable evidence that Exxon accurately predicted global warming years before it turned around and publicly attacked climate science.’

Top of Form

“Bottom of Form

This core understanding—that Exxon executives knew climate change was real, but publicly cast doubt on the science anyway—was first revealed in a 2015 investigation by Inside Climate News and has since been supported by reporting and research by other news organizations, activists and academics.” 

The accumulating evidence documents Exxon’s culpability  

“The new article is the latest in a series by Supran and Naomi Oreskes, a co-author and professor of the history of science at Harvard, about Exxon’s messaging on climate change. In 2017, Supran and Oreskes published a peer-reviewed article that applied quantitative analysis to Exxon documents, statements and peer-reviewed papers from the late 1970s into the 2000s. The work concluded that while internal documents largely acknowledged that global warming was caused by humans, public-facing statements from the same period instead stressed doubt and uncertainties about the science.

“In 2021, the researchers published an article showing that Exxon’s public statements began to shift in the 2000s away from directly questioning the science and towards more subtle messaging on climate change that minimized the severity of climate impacts and transferred responsibility for action to consumers.

“The article published Thursday, like those before it, drew on internal corporate documents, including some first published by Inside Climate News, and peer-reviewed papers. This time, however, Supran and Oreskes worked with Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, to analyze all the climate projections included in those documents.

“The researchers found that company scientists predicted overall warming with a degree of certainty that left no doubt that the burning of fossil fuel was warming the planet. They also accurately predicted that human-induced warming would be detectable by 2000, a fact confirmed that year by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Despite the evidence, Exxon and its allies “want the public to think the scientific findings on the unfolding climate crisis is ‘uncertain.’ Kusnetz points out, ‘As late as 2013, the article notes, then-chief executive Rex Tillerson said ‘the facts remain there are uncertainties around the climate… what the principal drivers of climate change are.’” 

—————

#2b – Exxon and other big oil companies must be investigated and held accountable by the Department of Justice, according to some Senate Democrats, as reported by Sharon Zhang on July 31, 2023 (https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-warren-doj-must-sue-big-oil-for-decades-of-lies-on-climate-crisis).

“A group of senators is urging the Department of Justice to file lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry over its decades-long campaign to deny its impact on the climate crisis on the last day of what scientists predict will be the hottest month on Earth on record.

“On Monday [July 1, 2023], Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) told Attorney General Merrick Garland that it is clear that the fossil fuel industry has for years broken a wide variety of laws in perpetuating climate denial, and that the DOJ must hold the industry accountable.

“‘The actions of ExxonMobil, Shell, and potentially other fossil fuel companies represent a clear violation of federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and potentially other laws,’ the lawmakers wrote in a letter.

“Since at least the 1970s, fossil fuel giants like Exxon have known that a dependence on fossil fuels would lead to climate catastrophe, with company scientists predicting with surprising accuracy how much their products would warm and destabilize the planet. Rather than heeding these warnings, the corporations worked in tandem to bury this research, and, borrowing from Big Tobacco’s strategy of lying about lung cancer, have spent decades sowing climate denial in order to enrich themselves and their shareholders.

“The lawmakers say that these companies should, at long last, be held responsible for their lies. They cite research on the climate crisis that Shell, Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute were aware of, but chose to discredit.

“While many states and climate advocates have brought lawsuits seeking to expose the industry’s lies or mandate an end to fossil fuels, the DOJ has not itself brought a lawsuit against the industry, though it did file a legal brief in support of a Colorado climate lawsuit earlier this year.”

Zhang continues.

On July 31, Sanders said “it is time to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. It is time for the DOJ to join the fight. The future of our planet depends on it.’”

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#3 – Republican climate plan is “a manual for destroying the planet,” as reported on July 18, 2023, by Jake Johnson, a staff writer for Common Dreams.

(https://commondreams.org/news/gop-climate-bill).  Here’s some of what Johnson reports.

“While Americans take refuge from record-setting extreme heat and suffer from wildfire smoke, the House majority proposes slashing environmental funding to the lowest level in 30 years.”

“Legislation that the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee is set to mark up on Wednesday would take an axe to U.S. climate spending, cutting the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by a staggering 39% while promoting fossil fuel development as huge swaths of the planet face devastating heatwaves.

“Kyle Jones, director of federal affairs with the Center for Policy Advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement Tuesday that the Republican bill is ‘historically bad… the worst of its kind we’ve ever seen.’

Jones went on to say that the legislation—one of a dozen appropriations bills currently moving through the House—’reads like a ‘how-to’ manual for destroying the planet.’”

“Made public last week amid record-shattering heat and other extreme weather across the U.S., the GOP’s Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies funding bill calls for $4 billion in total cuts to the EPA budget—slashing the agency’s clean water funds, emissions-reduction grants, and other programs.

“The bill would also cut the Interior Department’s budget by $721 million, remove the Gray Wolf from the list of endangered and threatened wildlife, and prevent the EPA from considering the social cost of carbon in any regulatory action.

“Meanwhile, the Republican legislation aims to bolster the industry fueling climate chaos by requiring the Interior Department to hold at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales in both the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska each year.

“‘The bill includes an exhaustive list of anti-environment riders that seek to derail any effort to combat climate change and undermine clean water and clean air protections,’ Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the top Democrat on the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, said during a hearing on the measure last week.”

Republicans “give an open invitation to exploitative oil, gas, and mineral leasing by blocking environmental regulations and even overriding judicial review,” Pingree added. “At the same time, the bill suppresses clean energy production.”

“The NRDC’s Josh Axelrod and Valerie Cleland wrote in a blog post that the legislation marks ‘the Republican majority’s latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil.’”

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#4 – Rising temperatures are causing productivity to fall

Coral Davenport reports on evidence on how the unprecedent warming is “costing the US economy billions in lost productivity” (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/31/climate/heat-labor-productivity-climate.html).

Here are some of her examples.

“From meatpackers to home health aides, workers are struggling in sweltering temperatures and productivity is taking a hit.

“Top of Form

Bottom of Form

As much of the United States swelters under record heat, Amazon drivers and warehouse workers have gone on strike in part to protest working conditions that can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“On triple-digit days in Orlando, utility crews are postponing checks for gas leaks, since digging outdoors dressed in heavy safety gear could endanger their lives. Even in Michigan, on the nation’s northern border, construction crews are working shortened days because of heat.

Rising temperatures will continue going up

“Now that climate change has raised the Earth’s temperatures to the highest levels in recorded history, with projections showing that they will only climb further, new research shows the impact of heat on workers is spreading across the economy and lowering productivity.

“Extreme heat is regularly affecting workers beyond expected industries like agriculture and construction. Sizzling temperatures are causing problems for those who work in factories, warehouses and restaurants and also for employees of airlines and telecommunications firms, delivery services and energy companies. Even home health aides are running into trouble.”

“A study published in June on the effects of temperature on productivity concludes that while extreme heat harms agriculture, its impact is greater on industrial and other sectors of the economy, in part because they are more labor-intensive. It finds that heat increases absenteeism and reduces work hours, and concludes that as the planet continues to warm, those losses will increase.

“The cost is high. In 2021, more than 2.5 billion hours of labor in the U.S. agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service sectors were lost to heat exposure, according to data compiled by The Lancet. Another report found that in 2020, the loss of labor as a result of heat exposure cost the economy about $100 billion, a figure projected to grow to $500 billion annually by 2050.”

No national standards for protection against hot workplaces

“Still, there are no national regulations to protect workers from extreme heat. In 2021, the Biden administration announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would propose the first rule designed to protect workers from heat exposure. But two years later, the agency still has not released a draft of the proposed regulation.

“Seven states have some form of labor protections dealing with heat, but there has been a push to roll them back in some places. In June, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed a law that eliminated rules set by municipalities that mandated water breaks for construction workers, even though Texas leads all states in terms of lost productivity linked to heat, according to an analysis of federal data conducted by Vivid Economics.

Business opposes a national standard

“Business groups are opposed to a national standard, saying it would be too expensive because it would likely require rest, water and shade breaks and possibly the installation of air-conditioning.”

“‘OSHA should take care not to impose further regulatory burdens that make it more difficult for small businesses to grow their businesses and create jobs,’ wrote David S. Addington, vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business, in response to OSHA’s plan to write a regulation.”

An example of the conditions in slaughterhouses

“The National Beef slaughterhouse in Dodge City, Kan., where temperatures are expected to hover above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the next week, is cooled by fans, not air-conditioning.

“Workers wear heavy protective aprons and helmets and use water vats and hoses heated to 180 degrees to sanitize their equipment. It’s always been hot work.

But this year is different, said one worker, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. The heat inside the slaughterhouse is intense, drenching employees in sweat and making it hard to get through a shift, the worker said.

The risk of food contamination

National Beef did not respond to emails or telephone calls [from Davenport] requesting comment.

“Martin Rosas, a union representative for meatpacking and food processing workers in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, said sweltering conditions present a risk for food contamination. After workers skin a hide, they need to ensure that debris doesn’t get on the meat or carcass. ‘But when it’s extremely hot, and their safety glasses fog up, their vision is impaired and they are exhausted, they can’t even see what they’re doing,’ Mr. Rosas said.”

Difficult to breathe

Warehouse workers across the country are also feeling the heat. Sersie Cobb, a forklift driver who stocks boxes of pasta in a warehouse in Columbia, S.C., said the stifling heat can make it difficult to breathe. ‘Sometimes I get dizzy and start seeing dots,’ Mr. Cobb said. ‘My vision starts to go black. I stop work immediately when that happens. Two times this summer I’ve had heart palpitations from the heat, and left work early to go to the E.R.’”

“Many factories were built decades ago for a different climate and are not air-conditioned. A study on the effects of extreme temperatures on the productivity of auto plants in the United States found that a week with six or more days of heat exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit cuts production by an average of 8 percent.

Some companies are installing air conditioning

In Tulsa, Okla., Navistar is installing a $19 million air-conditioning system at its IC Bus factory, which produces many of America’s school buses. Temperatures on the floor can reach 99 degrees F. Currently, the plant is only cooled by overhead fans that swirl high above the assembly line.

Shane Anderson, the company’s interim manager, said air-conditioning is expected to cost about $183 per hour, or between $275,000 and $500,000 per year — but the company believes it will boost worker productivity.”

“‘The truth is that the changes required probably will be very costly, and they will get passed on to employers and consumers,’ said David Michaels, who served as assistant secretary of labor at OSHA during the Obama administration and is now a professor at the George Washington School of Public Health.

“But if we don’t want these workers to get killed we will have to pay that cost.”

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#5 – Fossil fuel companies register record profits

Jake Johnson reports on August 1, 2023, on the “hideous” $2.6 billion profits of Oil Giant BP Common Dreams (https://commondreams.org/news/bp-profit).

The London-based oil giant BP reported second-quarter profits of $2.6 billion on Tuesday and announced a 10% dividend raise for shareholders on the heels of what was likely the hottest month on record—a grim milestone that scientists say was made possible by the burning of fossil fuels.”

“While BP’s profits for the second quarter of 2023 were far lower than the massive $8.5 billion it logged during the same period last year—a drop caused by falling global oil prices—the company has still raked in $7.6 billion in profits so far this year. The company has paid out those profits to investors in the form of share buybacks and dividends.”

Other big oil companies also rack in huge profits

“BP’s earnings report comes after its rival, Shell, posted $5.1 billion in second-quarter profits last week and announced a dividend boost of 15% amid a deadly global heatwave.”

Plans to increase use of fossil fuels

“Like Shell and other oil giants, BP recently walked back some of its stated emission-reduction targets and announced plans to produce more fossil fuels than previously expected. Earlier this year, BP said it intends to cut fossil fuel production by 25% below 2019 levels by decade’s end instead of its previous goal of 40%.

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#6 – If Trump wins the presidency in 2024 and Republicans control one or both houses of the U.S. Congress, there will be a host of policies and programs to encourage the use of fossil fuels.

Kristoffer Tigue reports on the “Battle Plan” of the “far right” to “undo climate progress” (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01082023/far-right-battle-plan-to-undo-climate-progress-trump-win-2024).

“The proposal, called Project 2025, would gut environmental spending, stymie clean energy development and fundamentally shift how federal agencies regulate U.S. industries.”

“The 920-page proposal, if implemented, would not only undo any progress the Biden administration has made to reduce emissions and fund clean energy development and other climate-related efforts, but it would make it far more difficult for a future administration to pursue any policy that seeks to address global warming at all, according to a report last week by POLITICO. The plan would even make it challenging for federal agencies to carry out common environmental protections that have been practiced in the country for more than 50 years.

“Called Project 2025 and written by more than 350 right-wing hardliners—including former Trump staffers—the plan would block wind and solar power from being added to the electrical grid; gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency; eliminate the Department of Energy’s renewable energy offices; prohibit states from adopting California’s tailpipe pollution standards, transfer many federal environmental regulatory duties to Republican state officials; and generally prop up the fossil fuel industry.

“‘Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. We are writing a battle plan and we are marshaling our forces,’ Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, which is leading the initiative, told POLITICO. ‘Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power day one and deconstruct the administrative state.’

“The plan compiles a list of as many as 20,000 like-minded conservatives who could serve in the next administration to carry out the kind of deregulatory overhaul that became a hallmark of the Trump administration.”

“In fact, Project 2025 is part of a larger plan by Trump and his far-right allies to greatly expand the president’s authority over every part of the federal government. Their goals include ending the post-Watergate practice of shielding the Department of Justice from White House political influence; putting independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust laws and consumer protection rules, under direct presidential control; and reviving the practice of refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like—a tactic lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.”

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#7 – A trillion trees?

Maxine Joselow reports on the Republican plan to plant a trillion trees, as a proposed method for dealing with the climate crisis, while simultaneously encouraging more fossil fuel production and usage (https://washingtonpost.com/climate-enviornment/2023/08/02/trillion-trees-republicans-climate).

“The plan has some prominent backers. Then-President Donald Trump announced in 2020 that the United States would join a global initiative to plant a trillion trees, despite his antagonism toward climate science. The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee has introduced legislation to plant a trillion trees as ‘a comprehensive, practical solution to the climate issues we’re facing today.’

Scientists are skeptical

“But in recent years, climate scientists have grown more skeptical about relying on tree-planting programs. They have warned that heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by the end of this century unless humanity swiftly phases out the burning of oil, gas and coal.

The tree-planting plan would at best have only minimal effect

Joselow writes,

“Now, new research finds that planting a trillion trees would have a minimal effect on halting global warming, partly because of the long lag time for trees to reach maturity and absorb large amounts of carbon. The analysis by John Sterman, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Andrew P. Jones, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Interactive, found that planting a trillion trees would only prevent 0.15 degrees Celsius (0.27 Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100.

“‘Trees are great. I personally love to be out in the forests as much as I possibly can,’ Sterman said. ‘But the reality is very simple: You can plant a trillion trees, and even if they all survived, which wouldn’t happen, it just wouldn’t make that much difference to the climate.’

“The analysis relied on a global climate simulator called En-ROADS, developed by Climate Interactive and the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative. It also found that planting a trillion trees would only sequester 6 percent of the carbon dioxide that the world needs to avoid emitting by 2050 to meet the goal of the Paris climate accord: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

“‘Planting a trillion trees is not a serious solution to the climate crisis,’ Jones said. ‘It is too little, too late.’

“Trees do store vast amounts of carbon dioxide in their trunks, branches and roots. But old-growth forests sequester much more carbon than younger forests, and it usually takes 20 to 30 years for trees to reach full maturity. That means a tree planted today would do little to reduce emissions over the next crucial decades.

Trees are also especially vulnerable to drought, wildfires and pests, all of which are becoming more common as the world warms. In Montana, where the average temperature has increased by nearly 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950, a mountain pine beetle infestation has damaged or killed hundreds of thousands of acres of forests.

Would require an enormous amount of the land

Joselow elaborates: “The researchers also highlighted that planting a trillion trees would require an enormous amount of land — 900 million hectares, or nearly three times the size of India. It would be nearly impossible to acquire that much land without disturbing grasslands or farmland, which already store carbon. Although producing renewable energy is also land-intensive, avoiding the same amount of carbon emissions by building more wind and solar farms would require only 15 million hectares by 2050, the authors found.”

Democrats willing to go along with targeted tree planting

“Although many Democrats favor a rapid transition to renewable energy, they also support a targeted approach to planting trees. The bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021 authorizes the U.S. Forest Service to plant more than a billion trees in national forests over the next decade. President Biden’s landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, also provides more than $1 billion to increase access to trees in urban neighborhoods experiencing the “heat island effect,” in which heat reflects off surfaces such as concrete and asphalt.”

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Concluding thoughts

The Republican Party and other far right forces in the U.S. continue to oppose any meaningful regulation of fossil fuel emissions, such as having government put a price on the sources of such emissions, vastly increasing support for less environmentally-destructive alternatives, such as, solar, wind, and geothermal energy, reducing dependence on gas-driven cars, busses, and trucks, and stopping the export of natural gas.

If Republicans are victorious in the 2024 elections, U.S. energy policy will be dictated by the big fossil fuel companies. Thom Hartmann sums it up in an August 3, 2023, article: “A 2024 GOP Victory Is an Existential Threat to Life on Earth” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/2024-gop-victory-threat).

Even if Trump is not the candidate, Hartmann contends, “Republican primary voters will demand a candidate with the same affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin and other dictators; the same disdain for racial, religious, and gender minorities; the same abusive attitude toward women and girls; the same faux embrace of Confederate and hillbilly values and hatred of city-dwellers and college graduates; the same cavalier attitude toward guns and fossil fuels.”

“Scientists tell us we may have as few as five years, and certainly not more than 20, to end our use of fossil fuels and fully transition to clean renewables. Even within the five-year window it’s technically feasible, but if Trump or another MAGA Republican is elected, civilization-ending weather and the death of much of humanity is virtually assured.”

A hopeful option

C.J. Polychroniou offers a hopeful option, proposing A Global Green New Deal as the best way to save the planet (https://commondreams.org/opinion/global-green-new-deal). It will require “radical collective social and political action.”

“What is urgently needed is building long-term progressive power around a vision of left-wing politics that is energized by the pressing need to tackle the climate crisis by radically accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels while at the same time pushing for a structural transformation of present-day economies. In other words, a political platform that embraces a sound climate stabilization plan which ensures a just transition, creates a plethora of new jobs, reduces inequality, and promotes sustainable growth.

Polychroniou sees some progress

“…the movement for the Green New Deal is growing and is making a positive impact on several fronts. Several states and over 100 cities in the United States have committed to 100% clean energy. The Inflation Reduction Act may not qualify as a GND [Green New Deal], but it is still a historical piece of legislation, especially given the existing political climate in the country.”

Need to do more

“Still, one might say that what we really need in order to save the planet is a comprehensive GND, formulated as a worldwide program. But we do have such a blueprint in place, courtesy of the American economist Robert Pollin, and fully endorsed by the world’s greatest intellectual alive, namely Noam Chomsky.”

Check out these books for in-depth analyses of what a global green deal would entail.

Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal

Robert Pollin, Greening the Global Economy

Stan Cox, The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can

Bob Sheak, July 27, 2023

Introduction

This post continues my criticisms of Trump and his allies. Here, I compile evidence supporting the view that they want to undermine the political processes of the country in ways that will end any hope of strengthening liberal and progressive democracy and replace it with anti-democratic, autocratic (authoritarian, fascist) alternative. If they should succeed in the 2024 elections, America’s democracy will be eviscerated. Meanwhile, they will do their best to keep Biden and Congressional Democrats from winning legislatively, distract and frighten people with “cultural wars,” and disparage opponents.

Trump and his allies plan for an imperial presidency

Journalist Jeet Heer, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of a weekly Nation podcast, considers why a second Trump presidency would increase the chances that democracy would be replaced by an autocratic “unitary executive” or imperial presidency (https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-unitary-executive).

“According to the unified executive theory in its unvarnished form, the whole federal government serves at the command of the president, with neither Congress nor the courts having the right to check the president’s orders.”

Heer reports that in his first term as president, Trump’s authoritarian aspirations were tempered by inexperience and incompetence.” Now, however, there is “alarming evidence that Trump, and more importantly his GOP allies, have learned from his mistakes. If he gets a second term, one of his major goals will be to purge the people that stopped him from ruling like an autocrat the last time.”

Heer continues. While Trump’s first presidential term produced an unusually chaotic administration, with a rapid turnover in staff, a rush of badly designed executive orders that even Republican judges swatted down, and an inability to push through even a bare-bones agenda in Congress. Almost immediately, Trump’s willful rejection of rules got him entangled in political scandals, leading to the Mueller investigation and, by the end of his presidency, two impeachments.” Now he is facing indictments on a growing number of his actions.

Legislatively, Trump was unable “to repeal Obamacare, unable to overhaul the federal tax system, or unable to balance the budget. But Heer reminds us, he did help to achieve “a 6-3 supermajority in the Supreme Court as well as more than 200 federal judges.”

Along the way, “Trump forged a lasting alliance with the Federalist Society, one that has created a Supreme Court that gave the right major victories on abortion and affirmative action and rolled back LGBTQ rights. Further, in certain fields, Trump found advisers who were in fact able to execute his agenda: Stephen Miller undeniably made immigration policy much more cruel, something that the Biden administration has not fully undone. These victories solidified Trump’s status as the leader of GOP, remaking the party into a personality cult in which most Republican lawmakers publicly supported him even after his clownish coup attempt on January 6, 2021.”

Trump continues to have the support of his vast electoral base, including a large percentage of Republicans. The anti-democratic plan “is being developed by institutions and figures who have worked with Trump before, notably the Heritage Foundation and former White House personnel chief John McEntee.” The broad goal “is ‘to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition….” There would be only limited congressional and judicial checks, if any.

Trump’s potentially unchecked power will have massive impacts

“Currently,” Heer points out, “a president can make roughly 4,000 political appointments. In his second term, Trump’s plan would change the rules defining appointments to expand that number to 50,000. This would allow Trump to sweep the bureaucracy of anyone who opposes him. A new Trump White House would also revive the practice of impounding funds, giving the presidency complete discretion over the money allocated by Congress. A new imperial presidency would also assert presidential control over hitherto independent agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Controlling these powerful agencies, Trump could use the power of the state to reward corporate friends (say by approving licenses for TV stations) and punish political enemies (pursuing antitrust action against those who defy him).”

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Going after the Justice Department

Sasha Abramsky, a freelance journalist and a part-time lecturer at the University of California at Davis, delves into Trump’s and his GOP acolytes’ unfolding plan by focusing on how they want to end the independence of the Justice Department and other executive-branch agencies (https://truthout.org/articles/trump-attacks-on-the-legal-system-are-a-preview-of-how-he-plans-to-govern). The article was published on July 24, 2023. Abramsky provides some context.

“As Donald Trump’s legal perils mount and with a trial date now set for his mishandling of classified documents, the disgraced ex-president — and many of his GOP acolytes — are launching a full-court campaign against the independence of the Justice Department. They are hoping to turn the department into a scapegoat to cushion Trump in the public eye from the impact of prosecution, and also, ultimately, to turn it into a pliant tool of Trump and his henchmen so as to wage a relentless revenge war against his critics.

“Trump and his advisers frame this as simply restoring integrity to a department that he has convinced his followers is engaged in a ‘witch hunt’ against him. Their argument doesn’t carry water,” Abramsky contends. “In reality, the special counsel in charge of these investigations, Jack Smith, operates at a distance from Attorney General Merrick Garland, does not liaise and plot strategy with President Joe Biden and his team, and the indictments have been handed down not by political apparatchiks but by the ordinary people empaneled onto grand juries — the bedrock institution of the U.S. criminal legal system. Trump is facing not a show trial but a series of state and federal court proceedings in which, since he has pleaded not guilty, he will go to trial and be judged by juries of his peers.”

Hitler-like ambitions?

“In a series of extraordinary speeches earlier this year, Trump told his supporters that he would be their ‘justice’ and their ‘retribution.’” Political scholars call

“this sort of coordinated power grab ‘autocratic capture.’ In practice, it means bending crucial institutions and governing systems to meet the personal whim of one person: the president. This is how countries such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, and, to a degree, Narendra Modi’s India function; it is, in short, how democracies die, with loyalty to a constitution replaced by fealty to an individual. In German, the phrase for such a personalized loyalty test is the Führerprinzip, a central component of Hitler’s governing methodology. It is a vision of governance that in 1930s Germany led to the jackboot and the concentration camp. There’s no indication that under a vengeful Trump 90 years later it would be anything more benign. Such a program is, in brief, entirely incompatible with the notion of political pluralism and constitutional governance.

In plain view, Trump and the plethora of GOP candidates who need his base in order to win are crafting a program for autocratic capture.”

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More on the “plan”

New York Times political reporters Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman, provide further details on the autocratic/authoritarian designs of Trump and his Republican allies (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html).

“Donald J. Trump and his associates are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.” They want

“to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.”

Here is some of what Trump hopes to achieve.

#1 – “Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

#2 – “He wants to revive the practice of ‘impounding’ funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

#3 – “He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda.

#4 – “And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

“Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election.”

Russell T. Vought ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

“John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.”

The Heritage Foundation in the lead

“The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.”

Their legal “theory”

“The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them.”

Hoping to eliminate or subdue the “independent agencies” in the Executive Branch

The New  York Times  journalists elaborate.

Why independent?

“Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)”

Taking away that “independence”

“Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them ‘under presidential authority.’”

Impounding funds already authorized by Congress

“On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.”

Firing civil service employees at will with the implementation of “Schedule F”

“Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

“The former president views the civil service as a den of ‘deep staters’ who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, ‘Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,’ that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

“Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.”

“‘We will demolish the deep state,’ Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. ‘We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.’”

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Example of ongoing Efforts by the Right to subvert the federal government

#1 – Add poison pills to proposed legislation

Brett Wilkins, a staff writer for Common Dreams, reports on GOP’s adding “200 poison pills to House spending bills” (https://commondreams.org/news/republican-poison-pills). He writes,

“A coalition of advocacy groups on Monday sounded the alarm on the more than 200 so-called ‘poison pill’ riders attached by Republican U.S. lawmakers to House spending bills in recent weeks in a bid to block funding for a dizzying range of progressive policies and programs.” This evidence comes from the Clean Budget Coalition, “which is made up of nearly 260 advocacy groups.”

“‘Prior to the July 4th recess, it took two months for House Republican appropriators to add more than 100 new poison pills to draft spending bills marked up in committee,’ the coalition noted. ‘In the past week alone, the previous total has doubled to more than 217.’”

Examples

“‘Most of these measures are special favors for big corporations and ideological extremists that have nothing to do with funding our government and could not become law on their own merits,’ the groups added. ‘Some of them attack women’s health, some fuel political corruption, some harm our environment, and much more.’

Some of the riders tracked by the Clean Budget Coalition include measures to block proposed transportation safety rules and prohibit funding for the World Health Organization, climate mitigation, gender equality programs, and critical race theory education. Other riders target gas stove bans, funding for high-speed rail, pesticide warning labeling, wildlife protection, reproductive healthcare, and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

Wilkins quotes Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and co-chair of the Clean Budget Coalition.

“We cannot allow policy that harms regular people, threatens our rights, hurts the environment, and does any number of other terrible things to ride along with the appropriations package. We must put out this five-alarm fire by rejecting the inclusion of poison pills.”

In response, “the Clean Budget Coalition is calling on lawmakers to ‘pass clean spending bills’ by removing all poison pill riders and opposing passage of ‘any legislation that includes these unpopular and controversial special favors for big corporations and ideological extremists.’”

“David Shadburn, senior government affairs advocate at the League of Conservation Voters—a Clean Budget Coalition member—said earlier this month that ‘House Republicans continue using the same tired playbook: They’re hijacking must-pass bills with harmful poison pill riders that neither the public nor Congress support but benefit their polluter donors.’

“‘Just as Republican leaders held the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to make it easier to pollute, now they are proposing riders to greenlight pipelines, block clean air and water regulations, stall clean energy deployment, and prohibit the federal government from addressing long-standing inequities.’”

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#2 – Playing down the climate crisis

One of the tragic hallmarks of Trump and the Republicans is that they want an “energy” policy that maximizes the use of fossil fuels, the principal sources of the climate crisis and the terrible heat wave engulfing parts of the U.S. and world. Eve Ottenberg reports on the “climate denialists” who minimize or sideline policies that would address this growing existential-level problem (https://counterpunch.org/2023/07/21/as-earth-sizzles-climate-denialists-rearrange-deck-chairs). Right-wingers argue that humans are too puny an environmental and global force to heat up the planet or generate untold numbers of climate-related catastrophes. But the facts belie their arguments.

Human activity has changed the planet’s axis.

On this point, Ottenberg writes that it appears that ‘around the start of this century, the earth’s centerline moved, the New York Times reported June 28, and ‘earth’s spin started going off kilter.’ The cause? It’s twofold. First, polar ice sheet and mountain glaciers melting ‘changed the way mass was distributed around the planet enough to influence its spin.’ Second: ‘Colossal quantities of water pumped out of the ground for crops and households.’”

Groundwater depletion

Between 1960 and 2000, ground water depletion “more than doubled, to about 75 trillion gallons a year.” That’s a lot of groundwater. It’s no wonder it shifted earth’s axis. “Variations in Earth’s gravity have revealed the staggering extent to which groundwater supplies have declined in particular regions, including India and the Central Valley of California.” At this rate, expensive ocean desalinization plants may well be the wave of the future. And, as the article notes, human activity and the global climate, which melt mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets, also shift the earth’s mass and hence its axis. So does impounding water behind dams.”

Temperatures soar on land

“That first week in July reached ‘the hottest global average since scientists began recording such data in 1979,’ Truthout reported on the fifth. ‘The global temperature was bumped up by a heat wave blistering across the U.S. with an estimated 57 million people exposed to dangerous heat…with at least 14 heat related deaths across Louisiana and Texas as of last week and at least 112 deaths in Mexico…In June, a heat wave in India killed at least 96 people, and record heat is gripping swaths of China, northern Africa and the Antarctic.’

“Meanwhile,” Ottenberg continues, “on July 10, Miami hit a 109-degree heat index. It was the thirtieth consecutive day with a 100 degree plus heat index, while ‘nearly 50 million Americans are set to face triple-digit temperatures this week,’ according to the Washington Post July 10. ‘Heat advisories are in effect in Florida, Texas and New Mexico, while excessive heat watches and warnings blanket much of Arizona, Southern California and Nevada.’ Temperatures were predicted to soar to 117 degrees in Phoenix. Ditto in Las Vegas, the weekend of July 15. As much of the nation sizzled, freak floods drowned New England and New York state. By July 16 the heat wave stretching from Florida to Oregon and covering everything in between had peaked, but that doesn’t mean things cooled down dramatically. And lest anyone wonder about the dangers of this extreme calefaction – in 2022 over 61,000 people died from record-smashing heat.

The oceans heat up

“On July 10 Colin McCarthy, an expert on extreme weather, tweeted: ‘A severe marine heatwave has emerged off the coast of Florida, as water temperatures have soared into the 90s. Multiple buoys in Everglades National Park are reporting water temperatures as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit.’ Worse is predicted for the planet’s oceans in August. That’s too hot. Such heat endangers marine wildlife and their ecosystems.

“It also means the ocean has difficulty acting as a heat sponge, which is, uh, a real problem. The oceans absorbed excess heat produced by us denizens of the capitalist west as we burned oil, coal and gas. Now, oceans begin to lose that capacity, and that spells trouble.

The release of methane in the Arctic

“To make matters worse, as the Washington Post headlined July 6, ‘Reeling Arctic glaciers are leaving bubbling methane in their wake.’ This is called a feedback loop, exacerbated by the albedo effect, which means in the absence of snow and ice, earth absorbs, rather than reflects back, more heat. As for the feedback loop, methane is the guilty party, being 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Melting glaciers, polar ice caps and frozen tundra all release methane, lots of it, which in turn warms the atmosphere even more, causing more melt and more heat.”

Scientists have long recognized the problem of “climate change”

“The problem is known. It has been known for generations, to scientists and to the oil, gas and coal companies who researched and then concealed the lethal effects of their product. Simply put, our social and political economy, structured around burning fossil fuels, heats the earth. The chief culprits in this profligate burning are wealthy countries and their massive organizations like the American military. Small, poor countries have small carbon footprints. This deadly pollution cannot be blamed on them or their so-called excessive birth-rate.”

A Way Out

Ottenberg points to “solutions that maybe even plutocracy could accept,” though there is little evidence of this. “Like solar panels on every building in the world and massive investment in wind power. Also, we could speed up the switch to electric vehicles. Promoting sustainable, organic, peasant farming to replace industrial, pesticide-dependent agriculture would help too. That’s just a start, because there’s lots more.”

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#3 – A counterproductive public land leasing policy

Josh Axelrod and Valerie Cleland report on a GOP environmental appropriations bill that “is a major giveaway to the Fossil Fuel Industry (https://commondreams.org/opinion/house-appropriations-bill).

Josh Axelrod is a senior advocate for the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Valerie Cleland is a senior ocean advocate with the Nature Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Cleland advocates for policies that protect and restore our oceans.

They argue that, in their latest attack on the climate, “the Republican majority in the House has written a bill that is so detrimental to our environment and communities, it may rank as the worst appropriations bill in decades.” Why?

“Instead of recognizing that federally managed lands and oceans host a myriad of uses and industries and contribute in countless ways to the national economy, the House majority seems to view them as having one purpose: unabated production of oil, gas, and coal.”

According to the report, “The Republican majority’s latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil, this bill strips away the Department of Interior’s land and ocean management discretion. In doing so, it tips the scales toward congressional control of the oil and gas leasing process, dictates the number of lease sales the administration must offer, and overrides any commonsense considerations as to which areas should or should not be leased.”

For example, House Republicans propose this: “A new mandate that each five-year leasing program include at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico every year. This requirement has the effect of removing authority from the agency [the Bureau of Land Management, BLM] to decide the amount of lease sales needed to ‘best meet our national energy needs,’ a requirement of existing law.” Additionally,

“…requirements to offer all un-leased areas that aren’t strictly off limits—regardless of impacts to endangered species, sensitive habitats, vulnerable ecosystems, or other conflicts—further restricting the discretion of the agency to decide which areas to include in a lease sale.”

Biden’s ambivalent policy on leasing

Coral Davenport considers the Biden administration’s policy on drilling on federal lands (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/20/climate/biden-drilling-federal-lands.html).

She points out that “royalty rates paid by oil, gas and coal companies for the right to drill and mine on land owned by the public have not changed since 1920.” On July 20, 2023, the administrationTop of FormBottom of Form “proposed a rule that would raise the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to pull oil, gas and coal from public lands for the first time since 1920, while increasing more than tenfold the cost of the bonds that companies must pay before they start drilling.

“The Interior Department estimated that the new rule, which would also raise various other rates and fees for drilling on public lands, would increase costs for fossil fuel companies by about $1.8 billion between now and 2031. After that, rates could increase again.

“About half of that money would go to states, approximately a third would be used to fund water projects in the West, and the rest would be split between the Treasury Department and Interior.

“Interior officials characterize the changes as part of a broader shift at the federal agency as it seeks to address climate change by expanding renewable energy on public land and in federal waters while making it more expensive for private companies to drill on public lands.”

“Some of the changes were mandated by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which directs the Interior Department to increase the royalty rates paid by companies that drill on public lands to 16.67 percent from 12.5 percent, and to increase the minimum bid at auctions for drilling leases to $10 per acre from $2 per acre, among other provisions. The 12.5 percent royalty rates have been in place since 1920.

“The law also orders the agency to set a minimum rental rate of $3 per acre on public drilling leases in the first two years after a lease is issued, rising to $15 per acre after 10 years, and to establish a new fee of $5 per acre for companies to formally register their interest in leasing public land for drilling.

“But the Interior Department’s new rule would go even further than Congress required: It would dramatically raise the cost of the bonds that companies must guarantee to pay to the federal government before drilling on public lands, which has not increased since 1960. The department wants to use those funds to remediate damage left by abandoned uncapped oil and gas wells, so that the cost is borne by companies rather than taxpayers.

“The new rule proposes to increase the minimum bond paid upon purchasing an individual drilling lease to $150,000 from $10,000. The cost of a bond required upon purchasing a drilling lease on multiple public lands in a state would rise from $500,000 from $25,000. The changes would eliminate an existing national bond under which companies can pay $150,000 as insurance against damaged, abandoned wells anywhere in the country.”

Falling short

“As a candidate, Mr. Biden promised ‘no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.’

“But since Mr. Biden took office, his administration has continued to sell leases to drill, compelled by federal court decisions. The Biden administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling in its first two years (over 6,900 permits) than the Trump administration did in the same period (6,172 permits). Major oil and gas companies saw record profits in 2022.”

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#4 – Threatening to shutdown the government

Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes report how Republicans in the U.S. House are gearing up to have a government shutdown if their demands are not met https://politico.com/news/2023/07/24/republicans-budget-funding-shutdown-00107611

“Looming just a few months away, on Sept. 30, is a potential government shutdown.

“Across the Capitol, senators are waiting to see how the House drama plays out — with their bipartisan funding talks running behind McCarthy’s go-it-alone strategy.”

One question is whether Speaker McCarthy can unify his caucus. For him, one of the biggest hurdle in the funding debate is a bloc of House Freedom Caucus members who want even deeper reductions to the spending bills….”  .

“Teeing up partisan spending bills this summer will also challenge nearly every House Republican to vote for controversial social policies like denying abortion access to veterans, stripping funding from organizations that serve LGBTQ people and barring young immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from filling federal government jobs.”

“To avoid a shutdown, House and Senate leaders will have to band together to extend current funding levels to a later date, while wrestling with additional needs like a rapidly dwindling pot of federal disaster aid and the polarizing issue of more aid to Ukraine.”

“When lawmakers return to session in September, the House’s top Democratic appropriator predicted ‘chaos’ in the race to fund the government before Oct. 1.

“At worst, the trajectory is to shut the government down,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said. “And there are some who think that’s OK.”

DeLauro added that House GOP leaders are bending “to a small group of people who don’t vote for” spending bills anyway.”

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Will the right-wing plan come to pass?

Jim Jones argues that the “GOP is rushing headlong into huge election losses in 2024” with Trump as its presidential candidate (https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4114318-the-gop-is-rushing-headlong-into-huge-election-losses-in-2024). It appears now that there are no viable opponents in the Republican Party to overtake Trump’s popularity or to reverse his political prospects.  

“There are other presidential candidates. But the ‘main problem for most of the party’s presidential contenders is sheer cowardice. Other than former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Trump’s top-tier opponents cannot muster the courage to take him on, to make the case that he is a clear and present danger to American democracy, as well as the future of the Republican Party. They merely tiptoe around Trump, while making throw-away comments about the ‘weaponization of government.’ Such comments trivialize Trump’s criminal conduct, strengthening his grip on the GOP base.”

Despite this, Jones contends that Trump “can’t and won’t win another term. He is wrong on the issues, he has no vision for a second term other than trying to establish an autocracy, and he will likely be convicted in one or more of the criminal cases that are currently in the works. The majority of American voters are still swayed by important issues, and Trump is wrong on most of them. Abortion extremism and gun safety will be major issues in 2024. Neither issue favors Trump and down-ballot Republicans.”  

Abortion

“Abortion is particularly tricky for Republicans because they have doubled down on tighter restrictions, even though a majority of Americans disfavor that position. Trump has equivocated on abortion, claiming credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade but cautioning Republicans against supporting further restrictions.” 

The unfolding climate crisis

“In past years, Republican climate deniers were able to convince enough voters that global warming was not a looming disaster. They pointed to snowstorms as proof that climate scientists were wrong — a bona fide snow job. With the catastrophic weather that has been wreaking death and destruction across the U.S. and around the globe this year, that will no longer work to assuage the electorate.” 

“Tornadoes have become more widespread across the country and more destructive. Biblical downpours have ravaged Texas, California, Vermont and a host of other states. Historically high temperatures are plaguing a great portion of the country. This issue will likely have a major influence on the 2024 elections because the heat next year, as one scientist predicted, ‘will probably leap to a whole new level.’ If that turns out to be the case, voter demand to combat global warming will also leap to a whole new level.” 

Jones offers this conclusion: “Republicans will lose the presidency by a wide margin, whoever the party’s candidate might be, the Democrats will end up with a House majority of at least 20 members and the Senate majority could go either way by one or two members.” 

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Concluding thoughts

Democracy in the United States is being threatened by a far-right Trump and Republican Party. The Republicans want a society in which there is a strongman leader and have been steadfast in their support of Trump, the Republican Party, and seemingly content to be driven by hateful cultural issues that reflect the worst aspects of America’s history and society.

With Trump, they want revenge against their Democratic opponents, appear little interested in supporting democratic institutions, are willing to live with political chaos as long as they or their leaders have political power, and dismiss or reject policy proposals that address real important issues such as the climate crisis, corporate power, poverty, civility in public discourse. They live in a post-truth world. They have no regard for the common good or the civic norms of fairness.

Despite all this, dedicated and informed citizens led by democratic leaders can give us a less divided and more honest political system.

Bob Sheak, July 16, 2023

 There are well-known intense partisan divisions between the two major political parties in the United States. This is true generally across the board. In this post, the focus is on the political differences in policies over the rights of workers and employees.

Republicans

The Republican Party supports domestic policies that favor limited government spending (except for bipartisan military spending), deregulation, the enhancement of corporate power, low taxes, the privatization of any public asset or function that has potential profits, opposition to unions, and a stigmatizing and inadequate safety net that would leave workers with no viable option outside of paid work, regardless of how low the pay, the absence of benefits, the existence of unsafe workplace conditions, little or no protection against employer shutdowns, striker replacements, or discrimination.

 Democrats

Unlike the Republicans, progressive and sometimes other Democrats have advanced policies that benefit workers, including support of unions, the creation of an effective National Labor Relations Board and other regulatory agencies (e.g. occupational safety), a high minimum wage, wage subsidies, a relatively strong social-safety net without work requirements, a progressive tax system, and anti-discrimination, civil rights policies.

If these Democratic goals were ever realized, the economy would be less exploitative and more equal than it is. Under such reforms, corporate executives and boards would have to take into account the interests of workers/employees more than they have, while government would take on greater responsibility to ensure security and opportunities for American workers.

Some Democrats veer right

 Not all Democrats or Democratic Presidents have supported a pro-worker agenda. Jon Shelton describes the neo-liberal aspects Bill Clinton’s agenda in his book, The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy.

“…for those in the vast group of Americans in the bottom two-thirds of the economic distribution, the policies of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council] championed by Clinton facilitated the flight of blue-collar jobs [an effect of NAFTA] and made it more difficult to access the safety net. And they replaced these jobs and social supports with false promises. Further, the 1994 Crime Bill, touted by Clinton and other Democrats like Delaware Senator Joe Biden, which stiffened penalties on a series of infractions, provided funding for new prison construction and institutionalized inequitable penalties for crack cocaine” (p.163).

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Workers’ rights

 Ideally

 At its best, a policy of workers’ rights would build on Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights.” Shelton describes the substance of this historic speech (pp. 1-2).

 “In his State of the Union address on January 11, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights. While the original Bill of Rights appended to the Constitution in 1791 promised a core set of civil liberties, Roosevelt’s proposal offered the guarantee of economic freedoms to all Americans.” The proposal included, for example, “The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation,” the “right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation,” as well as rights to a “decent home” and “adequate medical care,” “protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment,” and a “good education.” 

One implication of Roosevelt’s speech was that government would play a big role in the economy, making up for the short-comings of the private sector and, when necessary, including job creation in “public” sector jobs.

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Biden and the Democrats have supported legislation to improve opportunities for workers.

 Here are sections of my post of Nov. 2, 2021, titled “Disjunctions in Labor Markets: Capital versus Workers that identifies policies of the Democrats and Biden administration (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/1235).

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 Executive orders

 Nelson Lichtenstein is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. He reports on how on Friday, July 9, 2021, “President Biden signed a sweeping executive order intended to curb corporate dominance, enhance business competition and give consumers and workers more choices and power. The order features 72 initiatives ranging widely in subject matter — net neutrality and cheaper hearing aids, more scrutiny of Big Tech and a crackdown on the high fees charged by ocean shippers” (https://nytimes.com/2021/07/13/opinion/biden-executive-order-antitrust.html).

The executive order also features a return to the “antitrust traditions” of the Roosevelt presidencies early in the last century.” This is a tradition, Lichtenstein contends, “that has animated social and economic reform almost since the nation’s founding. This tradition worries less about technocratic questions such as whether concentrations of corporate power will lead to lower consumer prices and more about broader social and political concerns about the destructive effects that big business can have on our nation.”

Lichtenstein emphasizes that “the most progressive part of the executive order is its denunciation of the way in which big corporations suppress wages. They do this both by monopolizing their labor market — think of the wage-setting pressures exerted by Walmart in a small town — and by forcing millions of their employees to sign noncompete agreements that prevent them from taking a better job in the same occupation or industry.” He quotes Biden. “If your employer wants to keep you, he or she should have to make it worth your while to stay. That’s the kind of competition that leads to better wages and greater dignity of work.”

Biden introduces pro-union, pro-worker legislation

 Proposed legislation

At a presidential press briefing on March 9, 2021, President Biden introduced the “Protecting the Right to Organize” (PRO) Act of 2021, strongly encouraging the House to take up and pass the legislation and stating that it would be a major step, if and when approved, “in dramatically enhancing the power of workers to organize and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions” (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases-2021/03/09/statement-by-the-president-joe-biden-on-the-house-taking-up-the-pro-act). You can access the full proposal at https://joebiden.com/empowerworkers.

Biden believes that the conditions and prospects of ordinary workers starts with rebuilding unions. He states: “The middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class. Unions give workers a stronger voice to increase wages, improve the quality of jobs and protect job security, protect against racial and all other forms of discrimination and sexual harassment, and protect workers’ health, safety, and benefits in the workplace. Unions lift up workers, both union and non-union.  They are critical to strengthening our economic competitiveness.”

And there are almost “60 million Americans [who] would join a union if they get a chance, but too many employers and states prevent them from doing so through anti-union attacks.” There is the precedent of strong action by the federal government in support of unionization, that is, the National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935 despite unified business opposition. The president pointed out that the NLRA “said that we should encourage unions. The PRO Act would take critical steps to help restore this intent.”

U.S. House of Representatives passes Pro Act

 Don Gonyea reports on NPR that on March 13, 2021, House Democrats approved the Pro Act by a 224-206 vote, “with five Republicans joining Democrats in favor of it.” Union leaders supported it (https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975259434/house-democrats-pass-bill-that-would-protect-worker-organizing-efforts).

 Gonyea lists five provisions of the Pro Act.

 “1. So-called right-to-work laws in more than two dozen states allow workers in union-represented workplaces to opt out of the union, and not pay union dues. At the same time, such workers are still covered under the wage and benefits provisions of the union contract. The PRO Act would allow unions to override such laws and collect dues from those who opt out, in order to cover the cost of collective bargaining and administration of the contract.

 “2. Employer interference and influence in union elections would be forbidden. Company-sponsored meetings — with mandatory attendance — are often used to lobby against a union organizing drive. Such meetings would be illegal. Additionally, employees would be able to cast a ballot in union organizing elections at a location away from company property.

 “3. Often, even successful union organizing drives fail to result in an agreement on a first contract between labor and management. The PRO Act would remedy that by allowing newly certified unions to seek arbitration and mediation to settle such impasses in negotiations.

 “4. The law would prevent an employer from using its employee’s immigration status against them when determining the terms of their employment.

 “5. It would establish monetary penalties for companies and executives that violate workers’ rights. Corporate directors and other officers of the company could also be held liable.”

 In an interview with Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, described the Pro Act as a potential “game changer,” saying it would a major step in correcting the “wages and wealth inequality, opportunity and inequality of power.”

 Gabby Berenbaum cited a poll that found a majority of voters supporting the legislation (https://www.vox.com/2021/6/16/22535274/poll-pro-act-unioniization-majority-bipartisan). She writes: “The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act seems unlikely to succeed in the Senate due to a lack of Republican support — but it has the support of the majority of likely voters, according to a new poll from Vox and Data for Progress.” But there is a partisan divide among likely voters. The survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted June 4 to 6 — “found 40 percent of Republicans support the PRO Act, along with 74 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents. Overall, the poll found the bill has the support of 59 percent of likely voters.”

 However, Republicans in the Senate threatening a filibuster and powerful business lobbying groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and The National Retail Federation kept the Pro Act from moving forward in the Senate.

 

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 An impasse

 Biden’s agenda on workers’ rights is at a legislative impasse. The same is true for his two infrastructure bills and other initiatives. The obstacles are corporate and business opposition, the ability of Republicans in the U.S. Senate to obstruct legislative initiatives by using the filibuster, the insistence of a couple Democratic Senators who have so far refused to support an end of the filibuster. It doesn’t matter much what the public thinks. Jumping to the present (July 2023), Republicans gained control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections and made it more difficult to pass progressive or any Democratic legislation.

Beyond the Pro Act

 While the Pro Act, if ever passed, would strengthen the positions of unionized workers and make it easier for workers to create unions. That’s all good. But there is much that the legislation doesn’t do.

So, as of now, the majority of workers will continue to be non-unionized, others will have little choice but to take “bad” jobs, while some will continue to subsist outside of the labor force on inadequate government social/welfare programs, on support from relatives, or being desperately poor. In the absence of the Pro Act, unionized workers will continue to be at a severe disadvantage vis a vis employers. In this eventuality, anti-democratic, right-wing political forces will be further empowered and the society will be that much closer to some type of fascism.

 —————- Unions like what Biden is doing

 Jessica Corbett reports on June 16, 2023, on the “unprecedented show of solidarity” of major unions for Biden and his 2024 presidential run (https://commondreams.org/news/unions-endorse-biden-2024).

“On the eve of a Philadelphia rally hosted by labor leaders, the AFL-CIO and 17 unions on Friday endorsed Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for reelection in 2024.

“During the 2020 campaign and since taking office, Biden has pledged ‘to be the most pro-unio President leading the most pro-union administration in American history.’ He has won praise for various appointments—including Julie Su for labor secretary, which still lacks U.S. Senate approval—and actions to improve the lives of exploited workers.

“Although Biden also has at times angered organized labor—particularly in December when he signed a congressional resolution preventing a nationwide rail strike as industry workers were fighting for paid sick leave—AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler still stressed Friday that ‘there’s absolutely no question that Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in our lifetimes.’

“From bringing manufacturing jobs home to America to protecting our pensions and making historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and education, we’ve never seen a president work so tirelessly to rebuild our economy from the bottom up and middle out,” Shuler said. “We’ve never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers’ fundamental right to join a union.”

“‘Now, it’s time to finish the job,’ she declared. ‘The largest labor mobilization in history begins today, supercharged by the excitement and enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands of union volunteers who will work tirelessly to reelect a president they know has our backs and will always fight for us.’

“Coming nearly 17 months before the 2024 election, Friday’s announcement is the earliest presidential endorsement in history for the general board of the AFL-CIO—which represents 60 unions and more than 12.5 million workers.”

“‘Joe Biden ran for president four years ago because he knows the way to grow the economy is to grow the middle class, and that starts with strong unions and labor representation,’ she continued. ‘With the early support from the labor movement, our campaign can tap into organized labor’s incomparable organizing abilities, which allows us to reach deep into communities and talk to voters about the tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs created by President Biden’s first-term agenda.’”

“Along with the AFL-CIO, unions individually endorsing the Biden-Harris campaign include the Actors’ Equity Association; American Federation of Government Employees; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); American Federation of Teachers (AFT); Communications Workers of America; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; International Union of Operating Engineers; International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers; Laborers’ International Union of North America; and National Nurses United (NNU).

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Where Republicans have been wrong

 Contrary to what Republican critics of Biden’s policies assert, the Biden/Democratic economic policies have not produced a recession or inflation or caused workers to leave the job market in favor of government assistance.

#1- No recession

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman documents how the Federal Reserve and Republican critics wrongly predicted an economic recession stemming from high employment levels. There is no recession, at least not as of July 2023 (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/11/opinion/us-recession-yield-curve.html). Here’s some of what Krugman writes.

“By late 2022, members of the Federal Reserve committee that sets monetary policy were predicting an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent by late 2023; private forecasters were predicting 4.4 percent. Either of these forecasts would have implied at least a mild recession.

“To be fair, we don’t know for sure that these predictions will be falsified. But with unemployment in June just 3.6 percent, the same as it was a year ago, and job growth still chugging away, the economy would have to fall off a steep cliff very soon to make them right, and there’s little hint in the data of that happening.”

“Indeed, the Fed has, once again, raised rates sharply to fight inflation. But events since then have failed to follow the script in two distinct ways

“First, those rate hikes have so far failed to produce a recession. Instead, the economy has been remarkably resilient. Mortgage interest rates — arguably the most important place where the rubber of monetary policy meets the road — have soared over the past year and a half:

“Yet unemployment hasn’t meaningfully gone up at all, which isn’t what most economists, myself included, would have predicted. Why not?

“Part of the answer may be that housing demand surged in 2021-22, largely as a result of the rise in remote work, and that this increase in demand has muted the usual negative impact of higher rates. This is especially true for multifamily housing, where high rents have given developers an incentive to keep building despite higher borrowing costs.

“Anotherpart of the answer may be that the Biden administration’s industrial policies — in effect, subsidies for semiconductors and green energy — have led to a boom in nonresidential investment, especially manufacturing.”

 #2 – Low inflation

Despite concerns that inflation would rise, the economy cooled sharply in June, according to a report by Jeanna Smialek (https://nytimes.com/live/2023/07/12/business/cpi-inflation-fed).

“The Consumer Price Index climbed 3 percent in the year through June, less than the 4 percent increase in the year through May and just a third of its roughly 9 percent peak last summer.”

#3 – The strong economy has not made workers “lazy”

Paul Krugman addresses this issue and rebuts the right-wing belief that workers will avoid work if they have alternatives in the form of government unemployment and other government assistance (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/10/opinion/socialism-workers-plarticipation-labor-market.html).

 Hecites Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot, who argues, “‘Socialism,’ he opined, has destroyed the work ethic: ‘Nobody works. Nobody gives a damn. ‘Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work — I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid.’”

Marcus is hardly alone in espousing such views. Krugman writes:

 “Without question, rich men are constantly saying similar things at country clubs across America. More important, conservative politicians are obsessed with the idea that government aid is making Americans lazy, which is why they keep trying to impose work requirements on programs such as Medicaid and food stamps despite overwhelming evidence that such requirements don’t promote work — but do create red-tape barriers that deny help to people who really need it.”

 “Given the opportunities created by a full-employment economy — arguably the first truly full-employment economy we’ve had in almost a quarter century — Americans are, in fact, willing to work. Indeed, they’re more willing to work than almost anyone, even optimists, had imagined. And the robustness of the American work ethic has huge implications for policy.”

“One way to look past demographic changes is to focus on labor force participation by Americans in their prime working years, which is higher now than it has been for 20 years. Bobby Kogan of the Center for American Progress reports that if youadjust for age and sex, overall U.S. employment is now at its highest level in history — again, despite the lingering effects of the pandemic.”

 Krugman asks where the additional workers coming from? “One answer,” he points out, “is that in a tight labor market, employers are more willing to look at marginalized groups, many of whose members turn out to be perfectly capable of productive employment. We have, for example, seen a stunning rise in employment among Americans with disabilities.” Two, there ha been “a surge in foreign-born workers, who “tend to be both working-age and highly motivated.”

 Krugman continues.

 “And while the hot economy may have temporarily boosted inflation, it also put Americans to work — not just those who lost jobs during the pandemic and its aftermath but also some who previously were unable to get a foot in the door. (It also produced especially big gains for low-paid workers.)

If we manage to avoid a severe recession, many of these job gains will probably persist.”

 These facts challenge what “grumpy rich men may say, [namely that] Americans haven’t become lazy. On the contrary, they’re willing, even eager, to take jobs if they’re available. And while economic policy in recent years has been far from perfect, one thing it did do — to the nation’s great benefit — was give work a chance.”

 #4 – Republican opposition to unions and collective bargaining lacks a factual basis

 In a post sent out on November 2, 2021, I quoted Robert Reich on this issue. (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/1235). Reich challenges “five big lies spread by wealthy corporations and their enablers intended to stop workers from organizing and to protect their own bottom-lines” (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-5-biggest-corporate-lies-about-unions).

 “Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.

 “Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.

 “Lie #3: Laborunions are as powerful as big business. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

 “Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.

 “Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, womenwho were  in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. AndAfrican-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.”

—————–

 Concluding thoughts

If Trump and the right-wing forces that support him prevail in 2024, we can expect that an increasing proportion of the US population will find themselves economically insecure, marginalized, and/or poor. They will continue to be without union representation, and burdened with inadequate employment options, with jobs that pay low wages, provide no benefits or affordable benefits (e.g., health insurance; pensions), and provide little or no job security.

 

 

 

Bob Sheak, July 1, 2023

Introduction

This post continues the critique of right-wing forces in the U.S., focusing on Trump’s and Republicans’ anti-democratic record, their condemnations of and efforts to delegitimize their Democratic opponents and hope to create a one-party-dominated state. One particularly important example is how they obscure and confuse the public on the unfolding climate crisis. Their rejection or dismissal of the scientifically-established evidence on the increasing climate crisis and its myriad harmful effects is an example of how Trump, the Republican Party and their supporters deny or misconstrue the facts in their quest for total power.

Part 1: Right-wing extremism – attacking Democrats

I considered the reactions by Trump and the Republican Party to Trump’s indictment in my last post, titled “Trump and Republican Party support attacks, even violence, against Biden and all opponents” (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/3093), and, before that, on June 8, a post on the climate crisis titled “The planet is getting hotter” (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/3075).

As we know from media coverage, the indictment of Trump is for unlawfully keeping classified government documents after he left the White House and then misleading the FBI on this situation. Trump’s response to the indictment has been to encourage resistance, if not violence, against Democrats’ who, he claims, have “weaponized” the state.” Meanwhile, Trump hopes to see his fund-raising soar, as he expects his cult-fawning base and rich and powerful benefactors to come to his assistance in paying his mounting legal bills and in joining him in the subversion of the rule of law.

The money rolls in

Alexandra Marquez reports on NBC News, June 14, 2023, on Trump’s fund-raising after the indictment and suggests his support has not diminished

(https://nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/trump-announces-raising-6-million-federal-indictment=-news-rcna89385). She writes:

“Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign said Wednesday that it has raised $6.6 million since news of his federal indictment broke, including more than $4.5 million online.

“In an announcement, the campaign said an additional $2.1 million came in at a pre-planned fundraiser Tuesday night at Trump’s Bedminster golf course in New Jersey.

“Altogether, that’s a bit more than half of the $12 million Trump’s campaign previously announced raising in the six days following the news in late March that he had been indicted in New York City.” 

————-

Trump, the Republican “leader”

Indeed, with all his legal problems, Trump still leads by a wide margin in polls against other Republican presidential candidates (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/national), while, unsurprisingly, his unfavorability rating in national polls remains “negative” (55.4 % negative to 38.9%)

(https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump).  

Trump’s record of disregarding the law

A Long History

His supporters are seemingly indifferent to Trump’s long history of illegal behavior. Wikipedia offers a summary of this history.

“From the 1980s until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in U.S. federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and over 100 business tax disputes.^[1] He has also been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault,^[2][3] with one accusation resulting in Trump being held civilly libel” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_affairs_of_Donald_trump). David Cay Johnston documents how not only Trump but also his family have financially benefited from the time Trump spent in the White House (The Big Cheat).

Recent cases against Trump

Nia Prater reviews the recent and pending legal cases against Trump (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/what-are-the-legal-cases-against-donald-trump). Here’s Prater’s summary.

“In Georgia, he is being investigated for his attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results while he was president. In Washington, D.C., a Justice Department special counsel is running a fast-moving probe into both his handling of classified documents and his conduct around the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Then there are the civil case against him by E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation, and Attorney General Letitia James’s fraud case against Trump and three of his children.”

Why does Trump still have a massive following?

I’ve addressed this question numerous times. Here’s a relevant paragraph from a post titled “Plutocracy v Democracy: A showdown of existential significance’

(https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/697). It was distributed on August 23, 2020.

Trump and the Republican Party have done their best to subvert our democracy, obstruct Democratic legislative initiatives in the US Senate [now House], advance a neoliberal agenda designed to benefit the mega-corporations and the rich, and also rallied an electoral base of right-wing and extreme groups that includes fundamentalist evangelicals, gun rights absolutists, anti-immigration advocates, white supremacists and racists, those who distrust the federal government, and those who espouse a variety of conspiracy theories. (E.g., see Thomas B. Edsall’s article for an in-depth analysis of what the research of experts indicates about the ties between Trump and his base and why they accept his “lies” at: https://nytimes.com/2023/06/28/opinion/donald-trump-presidency-lies.html.)

Trump diverts some of the donations of his supporters of pay his legal fees

Rich Hasen offers some evidence of this opportunistic diversion of donations in an article published on June 25, 2023

(https://electionlawblog.org/?p=137066). Here’s some of what Hasen reports.

“Facing multiple intensifying investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has quietly begun diverting more of the money he is raising away from his 2024 presidential campaign and into a political action committee that he has used to pay his personal legal fees.

“The change, which went unannounced except in the fine print of his online disclosures, raises fresh questions about how Mr. Trump is paying for his mounting legal bills — which could run into millions of dollars — as he prepares for at least two criminal trials, and whether his PAC, Save America, is facing a financial crunch.

“When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America.

“But internet archival records show that sometime in February or March, he adjusted that split. Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations, and 10 percent goes to Save America.

“The effect of that change is potentially substantial: Based on fund-raising figures announced by his campaign, the fine-print maneuver may already have diverted at least $1.5 million to Save America.

“And the existence of the group has allowed Mr. Trump to have his small donors pay for his legal expenses, rather than paying for them himself….”

————

Trump ups his attacks on Democrats

Donald Trump Says His Enemies (e.g., Democrats) Are ‘Communists’ 

Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, analyzes how Trump is reviving the branding of opponents as “Communists” to frighten voters and to advance his quest for presidential power and in response to his indictment (https://politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/22/donald-trump-red-scare-communishm-00102990). Sarat starts his analysis as follows.

“More than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump seems determined to resurrect red baiting as a political tactic. Calling his political opponents communists has become a regular feature of Trump’s attacks on the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, and the likes of George Soros.

“Using this tactic, Trump hopes that a single word can discredit their political views. He wants his followers to fear what the people and institutions he calls communist will do to those who don’t share their world view — including to the former president himself.

Trump’s anti-communist rhetoric goes back years to his first appearance as a national political candidate in 2015. Sarat writes:

“Trump’s effort to brand his political opponents and those who now would hold him to account for his alleged criminal conduct as communists has been a through line of his rhetoric since he became a major political figure in 2015. In October of that year, he called Sen. Bernie Sanders, then a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, ‘a socialist-slash-communist … He’s going to tax you people at 90 percent; he’s going to take everything!’”

Such rhetoric has continued.

“Trump continued his red baiting throughout his term in the White House. In September 2019, he used an address to the United Nations General Assembly to expand on his anti-communist crusade. ‘Socialism and communism,’ Trump said, ‘are not about justice. They are not about equality. They are not about lifting up the poor. They are certainly not about the good of the country. Socialism and communism are about one thing only — power for the ruling class.’

‘America,’ Trump promised, ‘will never be a socialist country.’”

For example:

“During his 2020 reelection campaign he told a rally of supporters in Vandalia, Ohio, ‘The choice in November is going to be very simple. There’s never been a time when there’s been such a difference. One is probably communism. I don’t know. They keep saying socialism. I think they’ve gone over that one. That one’s passed already.’

It has some effects.

“Three years later,” Sarat point out, “reviving the Red Scare also is part of Trump’s 2024 electoral strategy. It works for at least three reasons.

“First, it is designed to appeal to older voters who remember the days when the phrase ‘Better Dead Than Red’ signaled solidarity among white people in this country against a common enemy. Polls show that only 3 percent of people in their 70s and older have a favorable view of communism as opposed to 28 percent among Gen Z.

“Second, it stirs up fears of China, today’s most prominent and powerful communist nation.

“Finally, this language has special meaning in South Florida, where the former president is under federal indictment. It’s no accident that Trump reacted to his arraignment in the classified documents case on June 13 by waving the bloody flag of communism and describing the threat it allegedly poses.

If they [e.g., Democrats; federal and state courts] succeed in advancing their political power, Trump said they “‘won’t stop with me.” “They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates.”

It’s rhetoric that undemocratic leaders have used before. According to Sarat,

“Whatever his motivations, Trump’s kind of red baiting has a long lineage. It is right out of the playbook of authoritarians and tyrants from the early 20th century. It was instrumental in the rise of fascist leaders in mid-century Germany and Italy.”

Trump’s revival of the Red Scare also draws on an American tradition that fueled the notorious Palmer Raids in 1919 and 1920, when the Justice Department arrested and deported anarchists, communists, and radical leftists. The raids, sparked by social unrest following the First World War, were the climax of that era’s own Red Scare.

Making it up

“Trump is “hallucinating” a communist threat where there is none, according to the Guardian columnist Richard Seymour, quoted by Sarat.

 ‘Seymour gets it right when he suggests that for a would-be authoritarian like Trump, communism signals a ‘single, treasonous, diabolical enemy.’ ‘Rather like a racial stereotype,’ Seymour writes, “‘communism’ figuratively presents systemic crisis as … a demonic plot … Those labelled ‘communists’ are thus blamed not just for the reforms they demand, but for all the crises that call for reform.”

————-

Trump promises payback for his indictment over illegal possession of government documents prosecution follows years of attacking democratic traditions

Nicholas Riccardi and Gary Fields report for ABC News, June 16 2023, on Trump’s quest for revenge against political opponents in wake of his federal indictment

https://abscnews.com/US/wireStory/trumps-promise-payback-prosecution-years-attacking-democratic-traditions-100132666

“Donald Trump’s attacks on the justice system after his indictment on federal charges this week are the latest step in a now eight-year campaign by the former president and his allies against the traditions and institutions that have helped maintain American democracy.”

Revenge

“Trump upped the level of his claims and threats as he faces the potential of years in prison if convicted on 37 charges of obstruction, illegal retention of defense information and other violations. Hours after pleading not guilty, Trump claimed he is being targeted by the special prosecutor, who is nonpartisan, for political reasons and vowed to retaliate against President Joe Biden if he is elected president in 2024.

“‘There was an unwritten rule’ to not prosecute former presidents and political rivals, Trump told supporters in a speech at his golf club in New Jersey. ‘I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family.’”

“‘If he did that, it’d be an authoritarian system, the end of a system of laws rather than of one man,’ said Lindsay Chervinsky, a presidential historian.

A “victim”?

“Trump has long complained about being unfairly treated by the legal system, from contending that the judge in a lawsuit against his for-profit university was biased against him to targeting the FBI over its probe of Russian interference in his 2016 win. He even vowed retribution in that case, assigning a special prosecutor to review how the investigation into his campaign’s possible coordination with Russia was handled, which led to only one conviction.”

No one should be above the law

“The indictment came,” Riccardi and Fields write, “from a grand jury in Trump’s adopted state of Florida after an investigation led by a special counsel, Jack Smith, who is independent of political appointees in the Biden administration and has previously prosecuted Democrats as well as Republicans. Speaking after the indictment was made public, Smith stressed that investigations such as the one into the documents follow the facts and the law.

“‘We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,’ he said.

Many experts, of all political persuasions, said the charges against Trump stem from the proper functioning of the legal system, rather than a political vendetta.”

“‘There is not an attorney general of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president,’ Michael Luttig, a former federal judge who was a conservative favorite for a Supreme Court post, wrote on Twitter.

According to the indictment, Trump held onto classified documents after leaving the White House, admitted on tape that they were classified and that he no longer had the presidential power to declassify them, then refused to return the records when the government demanded them back.”

————–

Trump’s plan to take control of the Justice Department

Robert Reich explains in an article distributed online on June 19, 2023 Trump’s plan to turn the Justice Department into his personal vendetta machine (https://robertreich.substack.com/p/new-things-to-turn-the-justice). Here’s some of analysis.

“Last week [3rd week in June, 2023] Trump said that if reelected, he’d appoint a ‘real special prosecutor’ to ‘go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.’”

“In other words,” Reich continues, “if Trump is reelected, you can kiss nonpartisan criminal justice goodbye.” Trump views “the Justice Department as an extension of his own will — even claiming, ‘I have an absolute right to do what I want to with the Justice Department.’”

The former president has a record of interfering in the Department and gives these examples.

“Trump interfered in the department’s prosecutions of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating possible collusion between Russia and Trump associates, and demanded that the department reopen a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton.”

Reich continues.

“Now, Trump threatens that if reelected he’ll turn the Justice Department into his own personal vendetta machine. If there weren’t already enough reason to fear a second Trump presidency, this would be it.” Meanwhile, such rants have affected “public trust.”

————–

House GOP promotes Jan. 6 insurrectionists as heroes

Jordain Carney and Kyle Cheney consider some of the evidence (https://politico.com/news/2023/06/18/house-gop-jan-6-extremism-00101259). They write,

“House Republicans don’t want to talk about Jan. 6. They also can’t stop talking about it.

“At times, GOP lawmakers insist they’re uninterested in relitigating an attack that is political poison for the party outside of deep-red areas. But at other times, some Republicans have stoked narratives that falsely pin blame for the attack on police, Democrats or far-left agitators — or downplay the violence at the Capitol. The latter approach has seen a noticeable uptick of late.

“And it’s not just far-right conservatives who fall in that group — some House GOP leaders and key committee chiefs have shown they’re willing to flirt with the fringe without an outright embrace. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has shared security video of that day with far-right media figures who have minimized or fed inaccurate portrayals of the attack.”

“Notably, no committee chairs or party leaders participated in the biggest platform House Republicans have given Jan. 6 defendants so far: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), joined by a handful of others from the conference’s right flank, hosted an event last week with former Trump acting assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark, people charged in relation to Jan. 6, defendants’ family members and allies.

“The event featured a veritable kitchen sink of conspiracy theories as well as rehashed false claims, including that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ and that the Jan. 6 committee ‘doctored’ video.”

“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that probing the Justice Department’s handling of Jan. 6 prosecutions should be one of the ‘top priorities’ for a Judiciary sub-panel tasked with investigating GOP claims of bias against conservatives within the federal government.

“She introduced impeachment articles against the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who has taken the lead on prosecuting members of the mob. Meanwhile, Gaetz introduced a resolution to censure Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who led the now-closed riot select committee. Both efforts have a single-digit number of cosponsors at the moment.

“Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) did recently release a wider report that accused the FBI of artificially conflating the number of Jan. 6-related investigations. The report and a subsequent hearing also included testimony from whistleblowers who lost their security clearances due to improper actions related to Jan. 6.”

————

Part 2: – Obscuring and/or denying real problems

Here I focus on “climate crisis” in the U.S. This is an example of how Trump and the Republican Party exacerbate and muddle a deadly serious problem facing the United States and all nations.

I have addressed the growing problem of the climate crisis in earlier posts, on, for example, Feb. 1, 2023 (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/2705)

and recently on June 8, 2023 (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/3075).

The evidence of this dire, existential-threatening problem continues unabated, while Trump and the Republican Party continue to give overwhelming support for any policy that boosts the use of fossil fuels and simultaneously sidelines proposals to advance solar or wind power. Ian Angus’s book, facing the anthropocene: fossil capitalism and the crisis of the earth system, is worth reading on these interrelated topics. So is Bill McKibben’s book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Eve Darian-Smith’s Global- Burning: Rising AntiDemocracy and the Climate Crisis is full of relevant evidence.

———–

The Climate Crisis

The most significant sources of rising temperatures and the climate crisis are fossil fuels. Jake Johnson reports that new data indicate that fossil Fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022 (https://commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuels-global-energy-consumption). Here’s what he writes.

“Data published Monday [by the Energy Institute] show that fossil fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022, another indication that the global transition away from planet-warming sources is moving far too slowly as rich nations continue burning oil, gas, and coal at an unsustainable pace.

“Juliet Davenport, president of the Energy Institute, said in a statement that ‘2022 saw some of the worst ever impacts of climate change—the devastating floods affecting millions in Pakistan, the record heat events across Europe and North America—yet we have to look hard for positive news on the energy transition in this new data.’”

“‘Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,’ said Davenport. ‘We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.’” Wind and solar energy account for 12% of power generation.

——————

Oceans continue to warm

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Delger Erdenesanaa reports that “ocean warmth set a record for May”

(https://nytimes.com/2023/06/15/climate/oceans-global-warming.html).

“Temperatures are already breaking records this year: Last month was the warmest May for the world’s oceans since record-keeping began in 1850, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

“The average ocean temperature throughout May was 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.85 degree Celsius, higher than normal for the month.

“For the planet as a whole May was the third warmest on record, the agency said on Thursday in its monthly climate update. North and South America had their warmest Mays on record.

“In the United States, rising temperatures hit Washington State and northern Idaho especially hard. Two cities in Washington, Bellingham and Spokane, as well as smaller communities in the region, set records for their warmest Mays.

Warmer oceans “harm ocean life and feed wildfires.”

“Warmer water tends to hold less oxygen, and large-scale fish die-offs may happen earlier in the year as the climate continues to warm. Last week, thousands of dead fish washed up on Texas beaches from unusually warm waters and lack of oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico. Across the ocean, higher temperatures contribute to coral reefs dying. The ocean also expands as it warms, raising sea levels even further on top of the added water from melting ice sheets.”

Global warming and wildfires

“Last month’s unusual heat contributed to Canada’s spate of wildfires,” according to Erdenesanaa. “As wildfire smoke spread, air quality in western Canada and the northern Great Plains in the United States deteriorated significantly. More recently, the wildfire smoke reached cities in the Northeast and Midwest, causing Air Quality Index readings to skyrocket across much of the country.”

“With climate change and global warming, it’s been an interesting start to the season,” said Rocky Bilotta, a climatologist at NOAA, during a call with reporters.

“Last week, the agency [NOAA] declared that the global ocean and atmosphere had officially entered the climate pattern known as El Niño, which occurs naturally when the surface of the Pacific Ocean becomes warmer than usual. The phenomenon generally leads to warmer temperatures globally, but Mr. Bilotta said that El Niño would most likely influence temperatures later this year and next year.

It’s hard to pinpoint a single cause for May’s heat, he said, but as the climate warms overall, increasingly hot temperatures and records are to be expected worldwide, both in the ocean and on land.

“Most of the United States can expect an unusually hot summer, with elevated drought and wildfire risks, according to NOAA. South Texas and much of New England are in for an especially hot July. On hotter days, plants lose more water to the atmosphere and dry out, worsening the effects of droughts and providing more fuel for wildfires.

“Warmer temperatures can also lead to more evaporation from the ocean and other bodies of water. More water vapor in the atmosphere can then lead to heavier rain and snowfall, and fuel tropical storms.

“For the next month, the northern Great Plains, the Mid-Atlantic region and the western Gulf Coast can expect more rain than usual, the agency forecast. Over the entire summer, the middle of the country can expect more rain while the Pacific Northwest, parts of the Southwest, the Great Lakes region and parts of the Mid-Atlantic should prepare for drought.

Longer term, El Niño conditions will almost certainly last at least until spring 2024, and could contribute to worse winter storms in the southern United States.

—————-

The North Atlantic is hotter than usual

Dan Stillman also reports on how the North Atlantic is getting hotter; indeed, hotter than it has been in 170 years (https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/06/23/ocean-heatwave-northatlantic-uk-climate). The “warm waters could pose a deadly threat to marine life and impact summer weather in the U.K. and Europe.” Stillman continues.

“The ocean waters surrounding the United Kingdom and much of Europe are baking in an unprecedented marine heat wave that scientists say is being intensified by human-caused climate change. Scientists are astounded not only by how much the waters have warmed during the past month but also how early in the year the heat wave is occurring. The warm waters are a threat to marine life and could worsen heat waves over land this summer, they say.

“Sea surface temperatures are running as high as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, the warmest in more than 170 years, and are more typical of August and September when the waters are usually at their warmest. The event has registered as a Category 4 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine heat wave scale with localized areas reaching Category 5, the two highest categories on the scale.

“NOAA defines a marine heat wave as a period with persistent and unusually warm ocean temperatures, ‘which can have significant impacts on marine life as well as coastal communities and economies.’ The agency describes Category 4 as ‘extreme’ and Category 5 as ‘beyond extreme.’”

—————

Texas Cities Are Setting Temperature Records in Unremitting Heat Wave

The immediacy of the climate crisis is reflected in the extraordinary hot weather now occurring in Texas. Dylan Baddour reports on this situation in an article published by Inside Climate News on June 21, 2023 (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20162023/texas-heat-wave-record-climate-change). Here’s some of what Baddour  writes.

“Readings in Laredo, Del Rio, San Angelo and Junction were the highest ever recorded, while Corpus Christi logged an all-time-high heat index of 125 degrees. Forecasters warn that no relief is in sight this month.” These data come from the National Weather Service, which also issued “excessive heat warnings and heat advisories that affect more than 40 million people.”

“The duration of the heat wave is straining utility infrastructure and drawing attention to the need for heat mitigation strategies for vulnerable populations. Sommerville said the extreme heat was expected to continue ‘for the foreseeable future, for at least the next couple of weeks.’”

Top of Form

“Temperatures in Del Rio, on the Rio Grande, hit 113 on Tuesday, exceeding the previous record of 112 measured in July 2020 and June 1988, while San Angelo posted a record 114 degrees, toppling the previous high of 111 set in 1960.” 

———–

Republicans oppose Biden from declaring a “national emergency”

Despite the high temperatures and polluted air affecting people across the United States, Republicans in both the U.S. Senate and House take action to prevent President Biden from declaring a national emergency, according to a report by Jake Johnson (https://commondreams.org/news/gop-bill-climate-emergency).

“Senate Republicans introduced legislation earlier this week that would prohibit President Joe Biden from declaring a national climate emergency as millions across the U.S. shelter indoors to escape scorching heat and toxic pollution from Canadian wildfires, which have been fueled by runaway warming.

“Led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)—a fossil fuel industry ally and the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee—the GOP bill would “prohibit the president from using the three primary statutory authorities available (the National Emergencies Act, the Stafford Act, and section 319 of the Public Health Service Act) to declare a national emergency solely on the basis of climate change,” according to a summary released by the Republican senator’s office.

“Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), another friend of the oil and gas industry, is leading companion legislation in the House.

————-

Part 3 – Two examples of what can be done to address the climate crisis

Increase support for renewable energy

The effects of the heatwave in Texas could be worse, according to an article by Julia Conley published in Common Dreams on June 24, 2023

(https://commondreams.org/news/solar-power-texas-heat). She writes,

“A sweltering heatwave has gripped Texas over the last two weeks, pushing temperatures to 115°F in parts of the state—but its status as a new leader in the development of solar power has reportedly protected many in the state from a catastrophic loss of power.”

“But this month, reported The New York Times on Friday, ‘the lights and air conditioning have stayed on across the state,’ and analysts have linked the continuation of power to Texas’s doubling of the amount of solar energy it’s generated since early 2022.

“While Texas has built its reputation in recent decades as a center of oil and gas production in the U.S., ‘solar is producing 15% of total energy right now,’ University of Texas research scientist Joshua Rhodes told the Times. The state now leads the nation in renewable energy, with 17 gigawatts of solar power operational this year.”

————-

Political action in Virginia makes a positive difference

Madeline Ostrander reports on the example of “down-ballot race” in Virginia and how pro-environmental candidates are doing well in these contests (https://thenation.com/article/politics/virginia-elections-climate-change). This is an example of what can be accomplished to address the climate crisis. Here’s some of what she reports.

“For decades, across the US, groups like the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club have jumped into state and local politics—endorsing candidates and supporting campaigns on issues like conservation or pollution cleanup. But only recently have environmentalists given significant attention to the role that states and local governments can play in climate change. “You’re going to get a national climate bill out of Congress every 10 years, maybe,” says Qua. “What are you going to do the rest of that time?” Since its founding in 2016, Lead Locally [A Virginia environmental group] has supported nearly 400 candidates willing to take on local and state climate issues. The scrappy, small-staffed organization always partners with regional and local groups and campaigns—and often leaps into lower-profile races, including primaries—to back candidates who have especially ambitious climate platforms.”

Twenty of the 25 candidates supported by a pro-environment political group won their primaries.

—————

Concluding thoughts

The United States is on the edge of losing its already tenuous democracy to a power-hungry Republican Party still led by Trump. They lie, conspire, support twofold agenda, one supporting rich and powerful benefactors (e.g., lower taxes) and the other expressing support for a host of right-wing groups and ideologies.

At times, they explicitly want their supporters to know that their “leaders” will seek revenge and extreme institutional changes, and that, if elected president in 2024, they believe Trump is the man to accomplish all this. They want right-wing Republicans to control all pillars of power at all levels of the society. And, as emphasized in this post, they have little or no tolerance for creating an energy system that is sustainable, dismiss verifiable evidence whenever it conflicts with their views, and seem content to see Trump or some other aspiring autocrats control the country.

How can such a future be avoided?

American citizens must support Democratic candidates who want to preserve and strengthen democracy and support policies that address real problems. There is a role for the Democratic Party at all levels, for democratically-based groups and citizens to participate in electoral politics, for fighting against voter suppression and preserving the rule of law in candidate selection, for combatting the lies and disinformation of the Republicans, and for keeping abreast of important issues. Certainly, it is important to educate people about the seriousness of the climate crisis and to urge them to support the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels.

Martin Wolf emphasizes the importance of “citizenship” in these processes. He writes: “It is by thinking and acting as citizens that a democratic political community survives and thrives.” Such citizenship “must have three aspects: concern for the ability of fellow citizens to have a fulfilled life; the desire to create an economy that allows citizens to flourish in this way; and, above all, loyalty to democratic political and legal institutions and the values of open debate and mutual tolerance that underpin them” (p. 380).

David Pepper has written a book of instructions on “Saving Democracy,” the title of the book. It is an in-depth “manual for every American” and what they can do to strengthen democratic institutions, while organizing with others to support democratically-oriented groups, individuals, and candidates. He says that the struggle for democracy is a long one and requires information, research, and activism at all levels of the political system. A tall order. But so much is at stake.

Bob Sheak, June 18, 2023

Introduction

The focus here is on the indictment of Trump for keeping classified government documents and his unlawful attempts to avoid handing them over to the FBI and grand jury investigations, and how the former president and the GOP are encouraging resistance, if not violence, against the alleged Democrats’ “weaponization of the state.” Meanwhile, Trump hopes to see his fund-raising soar, as he expects his cult-like base and rich and powerful benefactors come to his assistance. In the deeply divided electorate, reasonable and civil government – at all levels – becomes difficult to achieve.

——————-

The indictment

Charlie Savage offers an abbreviated version of the full text of the 49-page indictment, with annotations and a link the full indictment, at:

https://nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/09/us/trump-indictment-document-annotated.html. He writes:

“The Justice Department on Friday unveiled an indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with 37 criminal counts. They relate to Mr. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents after he left office and his refusal to return them, even after being subpoenaed for all remaining records in his possession that were marked as classified.

31 counts

Related to withholding national defense information

One count against Mr. Trump for each document he was alleged to have kept in his possession.

5 counts

Related to concealing possession of classified documents

Among them are counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice and withholding documents and records, levied against both Mr. Trump and an aide, Walt Nauta.

2 counts

False statements

Related to statements to the F.B.I. by Mr. Trump and an aide, Walt Nauta.

————

Jessica Corbett provides an analysis of the indictment and its implications (https://commondreams.org/news/trump-indictment-unsealed-mar-a-lago-documents). She makes the following key points.

One, the indictment against Trump was unsealed and made available to the public on June 9 by Special Council Jack Smith. She quotes Smith.

“‘Today an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice,’ said Smith, who was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in November, after the twice-impeached former president announced he is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“‘This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged,’ he continued. ‘Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk.’”

“‘We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone,’ Smith added. ‘It’s very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. To that end, my office will seek a speedy trial in this matter, consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.’”

Two, Trump kept classified government documents after leaving the White House.

“The indictment explains that after leaving office in January 2021 ‘Trump caused scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported’ to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, where FBI agents executed a search warrant last August. Even though ‘Trump was not authorized to possess or retain those classified documents,’ the document adds, he stored them throughout the club, ‘including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.’

“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.

Three, Trump is accused of showing some of the information to people who lacked a security clearance.

“The indictment accuses Trump of showing classified materials to people who lacked security clearance to see them at least twice at his golf club in New Jersey.”

“The first time was in July 2021, during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff.

“The former president ‘showed and described a ‘plan of attack’ that Trump said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official,’ according to the document. ‘Trump told the individuals that the plan was ‘highly confidential’ and ‘secret.’ Trump also said, ‘As president I could have declassified it,’ and, ‘Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.'”

“Then, in August or September 2021, Trump allegedly showed a representative of his political action committee ‘a classified map related to a military operation,’ told the unnamed individual that he should not be doing so, and said not to get too close.”

Four, Trump is accused of obstructing a criminal investigation

“After the FBI launched a criminal investigation in March 2022, which led to a grand jury issuing a subpoena for all records with classification markings in mid-May, ‘Trump endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal his continued retention of classified documents,’ the document details.

It goes on to share some comments Trump supposedly made to his attorneys in late May 2022, when the lawyers said they needed to search for materials to comply with the subpoena:

“I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes.”

“Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

“Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?”

————-

Trump’s reactions to the indictment

A team of New York Times journalists, including Shayna Jacobs,David Ovalle, Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein, report on Trump’s reactions (https://nytimes.com/national-security/2023/06/13/trump-court-miami-indictment).

They write: “Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal charges that he broke the law dozens of times by keeping and hiding top-secret documents in his Florida home — the first hearing in a historic court case that could alter the country’s political and legal landscape.” U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman, who presided over the arraignment, ruled that “Trump should not speak to [co-defendant Walt] Nauta or witnesses about the facts of the case. As to which Trump employees might be affected by the restriction, the judge instructed the prosecution team to provide a list.”

Attacking the special council

Just before the arraignment, Trump publicly “attacked special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation, in the hours before his court appearance, calling the veteran prosecutor a ‘thug and a “lunatic” in social media posts.”

Viewing it as a fund-raising opportunity

Even during his arraignment, Trump’s legal strategy continued to be primarily political: A fundraising email from his campaign landed while he was inside the courthouse, vowing he would never drop out of the 2024 race. “They can indict me, they can arrest me, but I know … that I am an innocent man,” Trump wrote in the appeal for money. And he tried as much as possible to turn the potential humiliation of a criminal court date into a publicity tour, staging a surprise campaign stop in Miami at a popular Cuban restaurant and scheduling an evening speech in New Jersey, where he again claimed that the documents were his.”

Projecting strength

In an article for the Washington Post, Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey report on how Trump greeted the arraignment with showmanship in his bid to upstage charges (https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/14/donald-trump-arraignment-day-speedy).

“Former president Donald Trump faced down the most serious threat to his personal liberty and political future like just another day on the campaign trail — waving to fans, giving a thumbs up, swinging by a storied eatery, soliciting donations and planning a spirited speech to supporters at one of his properties.”

“‘He’s scared s—less,’ said John Kelly, his former chief of staff. ‘This is the way he compensates for that. He gives people the appearance he doesn’t care by doing this. For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable. Up until this point in his life, it’s like, I’m not going to pay you; take me to court. He’s never been held accountable before.’”

Arnsdorf and Dawsey continue.

Trump has wanted to show, according to his advisers, that he is ready to fight — instead of looking downtrodden and glum — as he appeared in court Tuesday.”

“It’s fine,” Trump said when asked about his mood in a right-wing radio interview on the eve of his arraignment.

“You sound like you’re in great spirits,” the host, Howie Carr, concluded.

“I am,” Trump said. “I’m just fighting for the country.”

Trump returned to his golf club, the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday following the court appearance in Miami and that night made a speech “in front of Republican donors, party officials, past and present advisers and politicians.”

Trump walked through the doors miming wonder at the adulation that poured over him and mouthing “thank you” as the crowd chanted his name.” “The speech took a dark turn, however, as Trump attacked Biden and special counsel Jack Smith in vicious terms and portrayed his arrest as a political persecution like in repressive regimes.”

Arnsdorf and Dawsey quote from Trump’s speech.

“If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me. They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates….“I am the only one that can save this nation.”

The audience included Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), longtime New York GOP chairman Ed Cox, former White House aides Kash Patel and Sebastian Gorka, election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, televangelist Robert Jeffress, former Senate candidate Bernie Moreno of Ohio, former Senate candidate Leora Levy of Connecticut, former Nevada secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant and potential Senate candidate Jeffrey Gunter of Nevada.

Being “delusional”

Chris Lehmann, the D.C. Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler, considers that Trump is being delusional, lying to himself, in his responses to the then pending indictment and other cases. It’s a chronic condition (https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-indictment-classified-documents). Here’s some of what Lehmann writes.

“For all the genuine alarm, and legal agita, over the Mar-a-Lago case’s national security implications, we are left reckoning with something broader and uglier at the heart of all of Trump’s power-mongering: a wholly personalized model of presidential authority that overtly sacrifices constitutional government at the maximum leader’s whim, inconvenience, or tantrum. The theory behind all the many Trump prosecutions is that, at this late stage of democratic decay, the law will serve as the system’s 11th-hour savior. But the law won’t stop Donald Trump from lying to himself—and seems unlikely to rescue a political and media order that keeps mistaking Trump’s nihilistic delusions for reasoned policy disagreement.”

Inappropriate reference to The Presidential Records Act

Stefan Beckett and Melissa Quinn consider what the Presidential Records Act means and how Trump gets it wrong (https://cbsnews.com/news/trump-presidential-records-act-indictment-arraignment). The article was published on June 13, 2023.

“Since the indictment charging him with 37 federal felony counts was unsealed last week, former President Donald Trump and some of his allies have repeatedly mischaracterized a law known as the Presidential Records Act, according to legal experts and the federal agency charged with preserving White House records.

“‘Under the Presidential Records Act, I’m allowed to do all this,” he wrote on Truth Social after the indictment was revealed, referring to his decision to retain dozens of boxes of documents and other material from his time in the White House. He repeated that claim in a speech in Georgia over the weekend, calling the charges a /fake indictment.’ 

“Former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore also misconstrued the law last week, telling CNN that outgoing presidents are ‘supposed to take the next two years after they leave office to go through all these documents to figure out what’s personal and what’s presidential.’

“Those assertions prompted a public rebuke from the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA. The agency released a statement detailing how presidential records are meant to be handled.

“‘The PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to [NARA] at the end of their administrations,’ the Archives said. 

NARA also refuted Parlatore’s assertion, saying that there is ‘no history, practice, or provision in law for presidents to take official records with them when they leave office to sort through, such as for a two-year period as described in some reports.’”

“Trump is not charged with violating the Presidential Records Act, which has no enforcement mechanism. But his repeated invocation of the law has renewed questions about what it says and how it applies to government documents.”

“Enacted in 1978, four years after President Richard Nixon’s resignation, the Presidential Records Act established that presidential records belong to the U.S. government, not the president personally, and must be preserved.”

“Records that must be preserved include documents relating to certain political activities and information relating to the president’s duties, including emails, text messages and phone records. Excluded from the act’s requirements for preservation are a president’s personal records, or documents of a ‘purely private or nonpublic character.’” 

“‘After his presidency, TRUMP was not authorized to possess or retain classified documents,’ the indictment said.

“Prosecutors are not relying on the PRA to bring charges against Trump. He is instead charged with retaining national defense information under a different law known as the Espionage Act, a 1917 statute that has been used to prosecute other high-profile cases related to the retention or dissemination of classified information. 

Going after Biden

In Legal Peril, Trump Tries to Shift the Spotlight to Biden

Michael D. Shear, a veteran White House correspondent, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and co-author of “The Border Wars,” reports on Trumps attempts to “shift the spotlight to Biden” (https://nytimes.com/2023/06/14/us/politics/trump-indictment-biden.html). Shear writes:

Under indictment and enraged, former President Donald J. Trump — with the help of Republican allies, social media supporters and Fox News — is lashing out at his successor in the hopes of undermining the charges against him.

“‘A corrupt sitting president!’ Mr. Trump blared on Tuesday night after being arrested and pleading not guilty in Miami. ‘The Biden administration has turned us into a banana republic,’ one of his longtime advisers wrote in a fund-raising email. ‘Wannabe dictator,’ read a chyron on Fox News, accusing Mr. Biden of having his political rival arrested.

“The accusations against Mr. Biden are being presented without any evidence that they are true, and Mr. Trump’s claims of an unfair prosecution came even after Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel specifically to insulate the inquiries from political considerations.

“But that hardly seems to be the point for Mr. Trump and his allies as they make a concerted effort to smear Mr. Biden and erode confidence in the legal system. Just hours after his arraignment, Mr. Trump promised payback if he wins the White House in 2024.

“‘I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,’ Mr. Trump said during remarks at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

“On Twitter, the former president’s followers used words like ‘traitor,’ disgrace,’ ‘corrupt’ and ‘biggest liar’ to describe the current president. And while Fox News said on Wednesday that the ‘wannabe dictator’ headline was ‘taken down immediately’ and addressed, the network counts Mr. Trump’s many followers as loyal viewers.”

(Also check out the article by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Habberman, “The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After Biden’” (https://nytimes.com/2023/06/15/us/politics/trump-indictment-justice-department.html).

———–

Right-wing violence being encouraged?

There is evidence.

#1 – Violent rhetoric

Journalists at the New York Times, including Michael S. Schmidt, Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Adam Glodman, do find evidence (https://nytimes.com/2023/06/10/us/politics/trump-supporter-violent-rhetoric.html).

“The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action.”

As one example, they quote Kari Lake, the Republican former candidate for governor of Arizona, who has issued a call to Trump supporters to be ready for armed warfare.

“In Georgia, at the Republican state convention, Kari Lake, who refused to concede the Arizona election for governor in 2022 and who is an ardent defender of Mr. Trump, emphasized that many of Mr. Trump’s supporters owned guns.

“‘I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one is for you,’ Ms. Lake said. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”

“In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.

“The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him.

“Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be ‘wild.’”

“‘So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,’ said Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who has studied the ties between extremist rhetoric and violence. ‘Until that happens, there’s little deterrent to using this type of language.’”

On Saturday [June 10, 2023], in his first public remarks since the latest indictment on seven charges related to the retention of classified documents and efforts to obstruct justice, Mr. Trump attacked those investigating him as engaged in ‘demented persecution.’”

According to Schmidt et. al., “security experts said that the rhetoric and the threats from it were unlikely to subside and would likely become more pronounced as the case moves forward and the 2024 election nears.”

“‘Rhetoric like this has consequences,’ said Timothy J. Heaphy, the lead investigator for the select House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in the White House after his presidency. ‘People who we interviewed for the Jan. 6 investigation said they came to the Capitol because politicians and the president told them to be there. Politicians think that when they say things it’s just rhetoric, but people listen to it and take it seriously. In this climate politicians need to realize this and be more responsible.’”

#2 – Millions of Americans think violence is justifiedTop of Form

Bottom of Form

Kenny Stancil reports that “12 Million US Adults Think Violence Is Justified to Put Trump Back in White House” (https://commondreams.org/news/12-million-us-adults-think-violence-justified-to-restore-trump-presidency). The article was published on June 9, 2023.

“More than two years after the deadly January 6 insurrection, 12 million people in the United States, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe the use of violence is justified to restore former President Donald Trump to power, The Guardian reported Friday.” Stancil continues.

“In the two and a half years since Trump’s bid to overturn his 2020 loss fell short, Republican state lawmakers have launched a full-fledged assault on the franchise, enacting dozens of voter suppression and election subversion laws meant to increase their control over electoral outcomes. Due to obstruction from Republicans and corporate Democrats, Congress has failed to pass federal voting rights protections and other safeguards designed to prevent another coup attempt ahead of November 2024.

“‘We’re heading into an extremely tumultuous election season,’ Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor and CPOST director, told The Guardian. ‘What’s happening in the United States is political violence is going from the fringe to the mainstream.’”

“Several right-wing candidates who echoed Trump’s relentless lies about President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory lost in last year’s midterms. But more than 210 others—including at least two who participated in the January 6 rally that escalated into an attack on the U.S. Capitol—won congressional seats and races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, underscoring the extent to which election denialism is now entrenched in the GOP and jeopardizes U.S. democracy for the foreseeable future.

The CPOST survey conducted in April found that 20% of U.S. adults still believe “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president,” down only slightly from the 26% who said so in 2021.

“According to the newspaper, Pape compared ‘sentiments about political violence’ to ‘the kindling for a wildfire.’ While “many were unaware that the events on January 6 would turn violent, research shows that public support for violence was widespread, so the attacks themselves should not have come as a surprise.”

“‘Once you have support for violence in the mainstream, those are the raw ingredients or the raw combustible material and then speeches, typically by politicians, can set them off,’ said Pape. ‘Or if they get going, speeches can encourage them to go further.’”

“The research center’s most recent survey found that ‘almost 14%—a minority of Americans, but still a significant number—believe the use of force is justified to ‘achieve political goals that I support,’ the newspaper reported. ‘More specifically, 12.4% believe it’s justified to restore the federal right to abortion, 8.4% believe it’s justified to ensure members of Congress and other government officials do the right thing, 6.3% think it’s justified to preserve the rights of white Americans, and 6.1% believe it’s justified to prevent the prosecution of Trump.”

“‘There’s a tremendous amount of opposition to political violence in the United States,’ Pape remarked, ‘but it is not mobilized.’”

#3 – Building the infrastructure for violence

Thom Hartmann, a talk-show host and prolific author, considers how the GOP is building mini-fascist laboratories in Red States nationwide (https://commondreams.org/opinion/the-gop-is-building-mini-fascist-laboratories-in-red-states-nationwide). They are doing this “by asserting control over elections, purging tens of millions of voters off the rolls, destroying public schools, and arresting Black voters and parading them before cameras in shackles.” And it getting worse.

“This is the great danger at the state level for both American political parties as the GOP sinks deeper and deeper into its mire of regionalism, violence, racism, homophobia, misogyny, gun deaths, pollution, and victimhood, led by corrupt politicians like Trump, DeSantis, Kemp, and Abbott.”

“Generally, Red states are committed to making it difficult for all but middle-aged white people to vote (and trying to block the vote of college students); Blue states welcome the participation of as broad a cross-section of society as possible.

“Red states embrace guns, book and abortion bans, and pollution; Blue states are leading the way into pluralism, a clean energy future, and rebuilding their schools and infrastructure.

“The contrast is startling: a child living in Mississippi is fully ten times more likely to be killed with a gun than a child living in Massachusetts.

“Everybody in Oregon votes by mail and has for more than a quarter-century; Texas Republicans just made it extremely difficult for people in Houston to do the same, so they could force citizens in that very Blue city to take time off from work and stand in line for hours.

“A woman in California can get an abortion any time within the constraints of Roe v Wade; a woman or her family in Texas can get stalked, hit with $10,000 lawsuits, and even go to prison if she tries to do the same.

“Minnesota is joining 18 other states to become sanctuaries for trans people; being publicly trans in Florida can get you imprisoned or even killed.

“The differences between Red and Blue states are increasingly stark, and growing month-by-month as Red states pass more and more laws to regulate every intimate detail of people’s private lives.”

“Donald Trump and the fascists he has empowered are the main force leading the GOP into this doom spiral, with considerable help from billionaire-owned rightwing media. But this is not the first time this has happened in American history.”

Hartmann continues: “Republicans fall all over themselves in a mad rush to deliver more tax cuts to their billionaire owners, more pollution from the industries that fund their campaigns, more voting restrictions in parts of the states they control with large Black populations, and more guns to their citizens.

“Yesterday, The Washington Post noted, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) introduced legislation that would reinstate massive corporate tax loopholes, kill the new tax credits for electric vehicles and clean energy, and end a tax on toxic waste sites used to fund their cleanup.

“At the same time, Republican politicians from Florida to Arizona to Iowa are openly embracing the rhetoric of political violence. In Idaho, the party recently hosted a “Trigger Time With Kyle” event where donors could pay to shoot assault weapons with Kyle Rittenhouse.”

#4 – Republicans honor the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, as Trump is arrested

Dana Milbank reports on this (https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/16/house-gop-trump-indictment-reaction-jan-6). Here’s some of what he writes.

“During the very same hour in which the former president surrendered to federal authorities in Miami, his Republican allies in the House were, in their most visible and official way yet, embracing as heroes and martyrs the people who sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in hopes of overturning Trump’s election defeat.

“In the Capitol complex, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), with sidekick Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and four other far-right lawmakers, held a ‘hearing’ that honored participants in the riot, family members of Jan. 6 rioters and organizers of the attempted overthrow of the 2020 vote.

“Technically, Gaetz couldn’t call such a hearing, because he isn’t a committee chairman. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is trying to win back the support of extremists such as Gaetz, let it happen anyway.”

“Gaetz opened the hearing with a video suggesting FBI culpability in the Jan. 6 attack. He claimed he ‘became aware of evidence’ that the Justice Department had evidence of ‘fraud in the election’ but Trump Attorney General ‘Bill Barr was suppressing evidence.’”

“From the witness table came howls of ‘wrongful conviction’ and ‘fascism.’ From the dais came a cry of ‘tyranny.’ From both came attacks on judges, juries and prosecutors. Audience members were wearing T-shirts saying rioters had been ‘murdered by Capitol police.’ In the hallway, keeping the peace, were two Capitol Police officers, guarding the people accusing them of murder.”

Concluding thoughts

Trump, the Republican Party and their supporters are encouraging violence as one part of their strategy to win control in 2024 of the White House, both branches of the U.S. Congress, and states across the country. They now have the cult-like support of Trump’s massive electoral base and, additionally, much of the corporate community, right-wing media, and the Supreme Court.

If Trump’s indictment ends up putting him in jail, the country will be relieved of one aspiring autocrat. However, in such an eventuality, the interest groups that make up his “base” and the rich and wealthy benefactors of the Republican Party will not disappear. They will go on fighting for a less democracy and worse.

In this political context, with all its flaws, the Democratic Party is presently the only viable alternative with respect to preventing the Republican Party from taking the country down the road to an authoritarian political system.