In 2020, disasters, primarily triggered by weather-related hazards, resulted in 30.7 million forced movements.
That is more than three times the number prompted by conflict and violence.
Join The Union
It is a safety net
Last year, 10.8% or 14.3 million workers, belonged to unions according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 1.7 million workers were covered by a union contract though they did not say they were union members. Union membership was down in 2020 from 20.1% or 17.7 million in 1983, the first year with comparable data.
Union membership increases the household wealth for workers overall, according to a report by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, which analyzed data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances from 2010–2019. It gives a particular boost, increasing earnings, offering access to retirement savings and bolstering other benefits essential for financial security, according to the report.
White union households had almost twice the median wealth of white households that did not include a union member, according to the report, which analyzed the survey data gathered from thousands of U.S. families who answer questions about their earnings, balance sheets, benefits and demographics.
But the difference in wealth was most striking among some workers of color, the report concluded, with Black union households having three times the median wealth of Black families without a union member,
And Hispanic union households having five times the median wealth of their non-union counterparts.
The report attributes the difference in resources between those in a union and those who are not with potentially playing a crucial role in bridging a financial gulf in which white families have roughly ten times the wealth of their Black peers, and over eight times the wealth of the median Hispanic family.
David Madland, senior fellow with the Center for American Progress and co-author of the analysis, explained, “Unions boost wealth for everyone .. but they provide even more of a boost for Black and Hispanic households, and because of this greater boost they help close the racial wealth gaps in a significant way.”
The analysis from the Center for American Progress is also in line with data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and other studies that found union members make more than those not in unions and have more access to employer provided health insurance.
Full-time workers who were represented by a union in 2020 had typical median weekly earnings of $1,138 compared with non-union workers who had median weekly pay of $958, according to the BLS.
And an August 2016 review of the Current Population Survey by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a progressive think tank, found Black workers who belonged to unions earned wages that were 16.4% higher on average than their Black peers who were not in unions.
A September 2008 CEPR survey of the data, which is compiled by the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, found union membership increased Latino workers’ wages on average by 17.6% as compared to their peers. And Latino union members were 26% more likely to have employer-provided health care than their Latino counterparts who were not in unions.
“The differences in household wealth for Black and Hispanic households are largely due to the retirement benefits and job stability afforded by a union contract,’’ says Misael Galdámez, research analyst for social mobility and economic opportunity at UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.
The typical Black union household has more than $100,000 in wealth while the typical non-union Black household has less than $30,000 in wealth, Madland says. Among Hispanic households, the difference is $124,000 as compared to $24,000.
“This is a lot more dollars in people’s pockets and bank accounts that we’re talking about,” he says, adding that those additional resources can fund a child’s college tuition or seed a rainy day fund.
Union members are also more likely to have a pension or other high quality retirement benefit, as well as employer provided health insurance, both pillars of financial security, Madland says.
“Retirement is a key way people accumulate wealth over their lifetime and health insurance is a way to protect the wealth they accumulate so if they go into the hospital they don’t eat into their nest egg as much,” he says.
Unions can also safeguard jobs and provide protections that make workplaces more palatable, Madland says.
“What unions do for job stability is they provide an avenue for workers to have a discussion about workplace conditions which tends to mean that the environment is better and workers want to stay longer,” Madland says. “And they have protections. The employer can’t just fire them for no reason.”
Politicians Face Political Reality
India is cutting the taxes on petrol and diesel to “further spur the overall economic cycle”, the government said. However, the move is also expected to boost demand for fuel as countries try to curb fossil fuel consumption. The tax cuts are also expected to increase consumption of petrol and diesel even as global leaders, including Mr Modi, have been gathering for the COP26 climate change conference to tackle the global economy’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Ben van Beurden, the boss of oil giant Shell has insisted it can transition to net zero by 2050, but it will need the cash from its oil and gas business to pay for it. He said the company’s plans for greener energy could only be funded by oil and gas.
“If we have to build a hydrogen plant from a wind farm that we build in the North Sea for a billion dollars that is not going to be funded by a hydrogen business – it will be funded by the oil and gas business,” he said.
Shell wants to develop new oilfields including Cambo in the North Sea which it hopes will produce 170 million barrels of oil.
It plans to spend four times as much on oil and gas development as on renewables next year. This is why some doubt that Shell can hit either its own targets and those imposed by a Dutch court which require it to halve its own net emissions by 2030 and eliminate them entirely by 2050.
Shell currently has a global carbon footprint the size of Russia’s if you include the emissions from customers using Shell products.
Shu Ling Liauw from research firm Global Climate Insights has analysed the oil firm’s spending plans and estimates that Shell will be producing more emissions by 2030 than it is now as it intends to grow its gas business.
“Even if you’re very generous, and assume they get all the amounts of carbon capture and storage and offsets that they need, they might just miss their 2030 targets, and they will not be able to deliver on 2050. In fact, they will be increasing emissions until 2030, and still be producing significant amounts of emissions in 2050,” she says.
Others point out that if Shell itself were to sell its oil and gas business, those assets would be hoovered up by companies that might be less transparent and less inclined to make the effort to decarbonise.
The world is still hugely reliant on fossil fuel. That reliance needs to be managed down over time according to Mr van Beurden otherwise we will see price shocks in the future that will be counterproductive.
“I think this energy transition can be done but it will require a lot of orchestration and a lot of faith of society that it can be done. If you want to destroy the faith by driving up energy prices, by creating shortages or market failures, I think politicians are going to lose societal acceptance that this is actually doable.”
Oil giant Shell says it needs oil to pay for green shift – BBC News
Capitalism cannot be shoe-horned into making policy decisions that go against economic growth
The Filthy Rich
The total carbon footprint of the richest 1% will grow while that of the poorest 50% stays small, a study says.
Emissions of the wealthiest are on track to be 30 times higher than what’s needed to stop the planet from warming above 1.5C, according to the study.
The poorest 50%, however, will be most severely impacted by climate change.
The super-rich – many of whom have multiple homes, private jets and superyachts – emit a lot more than others. A recent study that tracked the air travel of celebrities via their social media accounts found some emitted over a thousand tonnes a year.
But the global 1% are not just billionaires, or even millionaires – it includes anyone earning over $172,000.
This study also looked at the world’s richest 10% – anyone earning over $55,000 – and found emissions were still high. The richest 10% will emit nine times more carbon than their share.
“A tiny elite appear to have a free pass to pollute,” says Naftoke Dabi at Oxfam, which commissioned the study from the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Institute for European Environmental Policy. “Their over-sized emissions are fuelling extreme weather around the world and jeopardising the international goal of limiting global heating.”
The richest 1% – which is a population smaller than Germany – are on track to be releasing 70 tonnes of CO2 per person a year if current consumption continues, according to the study. In total they will account for 16% of total emissions by 2030, up from 13% of emissions in 1990. Meanwhile, the poorest 50% will be releasing an average of one tonne of CO2 annually.
COP26: Emissions of rich put climate goals at risk – study – BBC News
The Food Waste Crisis
Food waste is not only caused by forgetful consumers and accidents in food supply chains.
In fact, food systems research has shown that food waste is a core, and even profitable, feature of food systems today. But as it is so often the case with environmental hazards, the profit motive trumps preventive action, and the issue of food waste is only superficially addressed.
Industrial food systems create industrial-scale food waste. Several studies have shown that large-scale food waste is an inevitable outcome of the competition, speed, and growth-driven market mechanisms which rely on overproduction to generate profit at the expense of people and the environment.
Currently, up to half of the food produced globally is never eaten.
It represents 8-10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
None of us wants to think that our food systems might be designed to be wasteful, especially given that the world’s resources are being depleted at an alarming rate, and that up to a quarter of our fellow humans are going hungry.
The abundance of calories produced by our food systems (in the United States, up to 4,000 calories per day for each person) presents a glaring contradiction to the scarcity and hunger manufactured alongside it.
United Nations’ Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) Action Track 2, titled Shift to Sustainable Consumption Patterns, focussed partially on the issue of food waste. But it stated “eliminating wasteful patterns of consumption” and “building consumer demand for sustainably produced food”, as the main goals in this arena, rather than addressing root causes of wastage.
Emily Mathiesen of FIAN International notes that “the UNFSS overlooked structural inequalities and human rights abuses that perpetuate food insecurity and hunger”.
Campaigning group Feedback Global’s executive director, Carina Millstone, blames the summit’s shortcomings around the issue of food waste and the food system in general on the disproportionate role corporations played in its organisation.
Millstone was part of the food waste working group of Action Track 2, but she says she realised early on that the group was dominated by a “handful of organisations intent on promoting voluntary, business initiatives and citizen action for food waste above all else”. Like hundreds of others that boycotted the summit, Feedback Global, which has worked on food waste issues since 2013, stepped aside “as it became clear the recommendations would skirt around identifying and addressing the root causes of food waste – profit-driven corporate agribusiness”.
At the farm level, research by Feedback Global showed how unfair trading practices and power concentration in food systems allow major agribusinesses to transfer the risks and costs of food waste to farmers. The consolidation of the manufacturing and retail sectors ensures that large food corporations control the conditions of trade, including prices, aesthetics, cancellation and volumes. Farmers, especially those growing monocultures, are therefore pressured to meet strict buyers’ requirements, and overproduce.
That so much food is being wasted while so many are going hungry is an undeniable sign that our economies of food are lacking justice. But it is misguided to suggest the problems of hunger and food waste can simply be resolved if we invest more in food redistribution.
The global expansion of charitable solutions like food banks cannot fix the underlying economic inequalities that produce hunger. In what food security expert Andrew Fisher calls the “hunger industrial complex”, food waste, hunger and corporate interests collide to maintain the status quo. Beyond the laudable efforts of thousands of volunteers, extensive corporate sponsorship of the global expansion of food banking hints that this model is not about transforming and preventing wasteful systems, but primarily managing, perpetuating and even justifying excess.
Research shows that food charities in many countries often struggle to handle large-scale donations due to a lack of sufficient storage, cooling and transport infrastructure.
The global advocacy group This Is Rubbish highlights in its Plenty To Share campaign, tackling root causes of food waste and hunger means tackling global wealth inequalities while preventing further corporate control over our food sources.
‘Big Food’ at the UN table: A recipe for big waste? | Opinions | Al Jazeera
End Deforestation? Not quite, says Indonesia
Despite Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo signing the agreement to end deforestation by 2030 deal, its Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said development remained Indonesia’s top priority. She said the authorities could not “promise what we can’t do” and went on to say forcing Indonesia to commit to zero deforestation by 2030 was “clearly inappropriate and unfair”, signalling that the country may not abide by it.
“The massive development of President Jokowi’s era must not stop in the name of carbon emissions or in the name of deforestation,” she said, referring to Mr Widodo by his nickname. “Indonesia’s natural wealth, including forests, must be managed for its use according to sustainable principles, besides being fair,” she said.
Ms Nurbaya argued that the country’s vast natural resources must be used for the benefit of its people. She cited the need to to cut down forests to make way for new roads.
Indonesia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mahendra Siregar said that describing the deal as a zero-deforestation pledge was “false and misleading”.
COP26: Indonesia criticises ‘unfair’ deal to end deforestation – BBC News
It is all very well for politicians to sign treaties designed to protect the planet’s health but they are after all are politicians and are accustomed to breaking pledges and promises that are made for popularity and winning elections. Indonesia has stated the quiet stuff out aloud. We can fully expect other national leaders to pay lip service to their commitments.
Keeping coal in its hole?
Another “breakthrough” at Cop26. This time it is about a reduction in the use of coal. Many major coal users including Poland, Vietnam and Chile are committing to shift away from the fossil fuel, in pledges made at the climate summit.
Signatories to the agreement have committed to ending all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally.
They have also agreed to phase out coal power in the 2030s for major economies, and the 2040s for poorer nations.
Juan Pablo Osornio, head of Greenpeace’s delegation at COP26, said: “Overall this statement still falls well short of the ambition needed on fossil fuels in this critical decade.” He added: “The small print seemingly gives countries enormous leeway to pick their own phase-out date, despite the shiny headline.”
The Power of Lobbying
ExxonMobil and Chevron as well as American Petroleum Institute are the world’s most obstructive organisations when it comes to governments setting climate policies, according to research by lobbying experts at the thinktank InfluenceMap.
It concluded that companies were manipulating governments to take “incredibly dangerous paths” in their approach to climate action, using the “prolific and highly sophisticated” lobbying ploys.
Oil giants have mounted “intense resistance” to Joe Biden’s green agenda, according to the report, as the US president’s administration attempted to shift the country away from fossil fuels. The report also said corporate lobbying tactics in part explained why regulators in some countries such as Australia have struggled to build support for more ambitious climate policy in the lead-up to Cop26 and were increasingly viewed as “a road block in global negotiations”.
Ed Collins, a director at InfluenceMap, said “The corporate playbook for holding back climate policy has come a long way from science denialism but it is every bit as damaging. What we are seeing is not limited to efforts to undermine regulations directly. It also involves prolific and highly sophisticated narrative capture techniques, leading governments down incredibly dangerous paths.”
US oil giants top list of lobby offenders holding back climate action | ExxonMobil | The Guardian
The SPGB at COP26
The Socialist Party has secured an official pitch for a street stall at Royal Exchange Square, right in the heart of Glasgow City Centre, during the COP26 climate summit.
The stall will be up and running from Monday until Wednesday next week, from 10am until 5pm each day.
Comrades are travelling from across the UK in order to help spread the party case for socialism to explain the root cause of the environmental mess we find ourselves in.
“We cannot trade Mother Earth in a market system.”
The desire to do something about climate change and global warming should not blind us to whether proposed solutions are actually feasible, or might generate unintended consequences.
Carbon offsetting has been criticised by Tom Goldtooth, a prominent activist within the Indigenous movement, as “part of a system that privatizes the air that we breathe”.
Carbon offsets are a set of schemes that allows companies, but also individuals, to buy credits from different environmental projects – such as tree-planting, or solar and wind farms – to substitute for their own carbon footprints. These schemes can often involve large carbon sinks, such as tropical rainforests, in developing countries.
Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, explained “It allows polluters to buy and sell permits to pollute instead of cutting emissions at the source. It lets governments and corporations pretend they are doing something about climate change, when they are not.” He went on to say, “In our traditional knowledge we know that we cannot own the sky, we cannot trade Mother Earth in a market system.”
Mr Goldtooth, who is Diné and Dakota, has organized around Indigenous issues for the past 40 years. He won the 2015 Gandhi Award and 2016 John Muir Award for his decades of defending Indigenous rights to a healthy environment and combatting fossil fuel projects. He travelled to Glasgow’s COP26 with a delegation representing 15 different Indigenous Nations from Canada, the US including Alaska and Brazil. Mr Goldtooth has attended Cop summits for two decades and says Indigenous peoples still remain at the fringes.
“We’re here and we still don’t have a seat at the table,” he said. “In some areas [of the venue] we don’t have access, and they’re very critical in terms of negotiations. So we’re forced to try to grab people in the hallways.”
Indigenous protesters gathered outside the main turnstiles into the Cop26 venue. The group held up copies of the Financial Times, where they had secured a full-page ad that read: “Carbon offsetting is tearing us apart.”
“We need real reduction, and to keep fossil fuels in the ground,” Mr Goldtooth said. “Carbon offsetting perpetuates the theft of Indigenous people’s land and our territories. Our brothers and sisters have been protecting their lands and forests for thousands of years. Carbon offsets are a new form of colonialism.”
Mr Goldtooth said that the focus on net-zero emissions was “false and clearly dangerous” compared to absolute zero emissions.
“It’s very vague. it hasn’t been clearly defined. It’s got too much risk to it,” he said. He said national governments and corporations continue to push “false solutions” such as carbon capture and storage and solar engineering. “These technical fixes violate the natural laws of the atmosphere, of the sky, of the Mother Earth, all that delicate, harmonious structure,” he said.
He compared the world, particularly the industrialized countries in the North, to a drug addict, and said they were “addicted to the combustion of fossil fuels”.
“I think the world is addicted to energy. It can’t wean itself from this addiction to consumption and also the creation of waste. My fear is that they will continue to burn to the end of the earth,” he added.
“I was hopeful that maybe with this Democratic president [Biden], we might be able to get some things going for ourselves as Indigenous peoples, economically as well,” Mr Goldtooth said. “Around climate policy, I was hoping for something better. He made so many promises on his road to presidency that he was going to tackle climate change and end fossil fuel investments on public lands. He’s lying. He said that he was going to recognize Indigenous rights [but] he’s continued to perpetuate a legacy of broken treaties. Many members of our network that are here don’t trust this person.”
Cop26: Carbon offsetting ‘a new form of colonialism,’ says Indigenous leader | The Independent