While the idea of wars for oil are not new, climate change is adding another dimension to the link between militaries and fossil fuels. Massive global military carbon emissions often go unreported. The billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, jets, tanks and trucks that drive the grinding conflict contribute direct emissions that, amid the fog of battle, remain difficult to quantify — and which are not accounted for in the Paris target of limiting heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

Axel Michaelowa, senior founding partner of German-based climate consultancy, Perspectives Climate Group, is the lead author of a report, released during last week’s climate conference in Bonn, Germany, that highlights the need to better declare and account for military and conflict-related emissions. It shows that military operation emissions in peacetime and war are only partially known, and that no one is taking responsibility for them in the context of the UN climate goals.

“Given that military emissions can reach hundreds of million tonnes of CO2 per year,” nations need to “address more transparently” the direct and indirect climate impacts of war, said Michaelowa.

The expected emissions from rebuilding cities destroyed in the Syrian war are equal to the annual greenhouse gas output of Switzerland, notes Michealowa.

Militaries around the world have for decades been concerned that a growing climate crisis will be the key trigger of future conflict, yet they have done little to address their role in exacerbating global heating through fossil fuel burning. Countries have shown little interest in reining in such outsized military emissions.

The European Union, which collectively has the second-largest armed force, only reports some emissions due to national security concerns — indirect emissions generated by the production of military equipment and weapons, for example, are not included. According to a 2021 report by The Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS), a UK-based monitoring group, UK military emissions alone are at least three times higher than the 11 million tons of CO2 reported in 2018.

While the annual emissions from the US military, the world’s largest, are higher than Sweden or Denmark when properly counted, researchers have said. Emitting around 23.5 thousand kilotons of CO2 in 2017, the US war machine is itself estimated to be the single biggest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons on the planet.

Doug Weir, research and policy director at The Conflict and Environment Observatory, refers to the way the conflict has exposed “energy insecurity” and dependence on fossil fuels. Weir noted that military budgets are also often focused on securing fossil fuel supplies, including in Libya where the decadelong conflict has slowed oil production to a trickle. Between 2018 and 2021, Italy, Spain and Germany have spent more than €4 billion on missions that aim to preserve oil and gas supply.

For Stuart Parkinson, a researcher at Scientists for Global Responsibility and a military emissions expert, any war spending is tied up with fossil fuels — including in Ukraine.

“Military spending is carbon intensive because of the fossil-fuel dependence of the military,” he said, noting that Russia and Ukraine together accounted for around 3.5% of the $2.1 trillion global total military spend before the war, but that Ukraine has since been given $19 billion in military aid from the US alone. A least eight NATO countries are planning to increase military budgets due to the war, with Germany announcing a €100 billion increase, said Parkinson.

“The increase in military spending will impact on the total military carbon footprint on top of the massive emissions from the war directly,” he said.

If compulsory accounting of military emissions could threaten a country’s ability to meet its climate targets, “this could have a deterrent effect on aggression,” said Axel Michaelowa. “If we have a world that is built on renewable, decentralized energy, there will be less funds for those who want to invade their neighbors,”

Ukraine war threatens climate targets | Environment | All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 23.06.2022

 Here are details of another session at Summer School

Take on the Capitalists!

Hosted by Carla Dee

A game of Monopoly normally starts with everyone having the same amount of money, unlike real life. In this session, we’ll see what Monopoly is like with added class divide. 

One player begins with a much bigger pile of money than their competitors, who start with just a few notes each. How long before the ‘capitalist’ has three hotels on Mayfair, or can they be beaten at their own game?

Go here for details

Summer School 2022 – spgb.net (worldsocialism.org)

 

 

Under a sanely ordered social system goods would be produced solely for use and transport and medical and other services would be organised to meet the needs of the population. Not so under capitalism. We need a society where the production of everything – everything from food to housing to health care – is provided on the basis of need, not sales or profit. The market is a crazy way of distributing – in fact, it rations – what people need. The anarchy of production inherent to the capitalist system ensures that periods of prosperity and boom are not everlasting and that a slump is always somewhere around the corner. In any period of boom some industries will inevitably over-expand their production in relation to market demand and have to curtail output and lay off workers as a consequence. This has a knock-on effect for other sectors of industry, resulting in falling output and increasing unemployment for the economy as a whole.

Under capitalism, the means of wealth production—factories, farms, mines, media, means of communication and transportation—are owned and controlled by a small minority of the world’s population. The world is run for the purpose of accumulating profits for that capitalist minority. In the pursuit of profit, the needs, feelings, hopes and dreams of the vast majority. who are the wealth-producers, will inevitably be hurt. Capital exploits the working class and also it abuses us in many ways. It makes workers subjects of a set of economic, political and social relationships which we do not control. In fact, even the capitalists do not control the workings of their system—the system ultimately controls the capitalists and the governments which rule on their behalf. The truth about capitalism is that the workers are economically disenfranchised from real power and the bosses only imagine that they are in charge; everything is chaos and disorder: nobody knows what will happen next.

We live in a society which is full of frightened people. Millions of men and women who are scared of those in power who they do not control. If you are a wage slave you live in the constant fear that you will become too poor to exist. You are on the verge of the living hell reserved for workers who have no money. If you have a home you fear falling behind with the mortgage payments or rent. Repossession is your constant threat.

Fear is characteristic of the normal wage slave. Fear which is the daily companion of most workers is not something natural. To be sure, there are natural fears: physical dangers which threaten all of us occasionally and some to the extent that it destroys them. But most of the powers which assault the working class are the product of the way that society is organised. They are the socially-created effects of a social cause. The cause of our fear is the capitalist system. Under capitalism it is quite sensible to be scared. Even at its moments of greatest hopefulness, capitalism only offers the reasonable person grounds for worry. Just as one social problem is apparently being reformed out of existence two more emerge to plague us. Plans and policies to improve the system fail, either immediately or in the long term. Optimistic prospects of peace collapse when new ruling elites with unforeseen appetites for profits make war a necessity.

Capitalism requires repression. Not only that visible, brutal, blood-stained repression which comes out of the barrel of a gun or other means of state coercion. Mass emotional repression is the order of the day. Workers must learn to know their places, fear stepping out of line, feel afraid to question what it is not for us to question—run and hide, mentally if not physically, when talk of freedom is in the air. The “fear of freedom” (to use the term popularised by Erich Fromm, whose writings have much to offer us in examining the psychology of capitalist life) is amongst the greatest barriers to majority socialist understanding in the world today.

In a socialist society, humans will be free. The most basic social freedom of all is free access to the goods and services we need. Capitalism can never offer such freedom. The market is the antithesis of free access. Socialism means that the common store of global wealth, including all services and the widest artistic opportunities, will be free to all. There will be no money. Each will take from what is available according to their needs, just as all will give to society according to their abilities. Cooperative, democratic human freedom will prevail.

With this economic freedom from the shackles of the market will come a profound emotional freeing of people from the burden of living in fear of powers beyond them. No more bosses, no more gods, no more money-worship. Without the State, liberated from leaders and classes, humanity will be free to explore what we want to make of ourselves. The dreams which had previously been confined to utopian visions will be on the social agenda. Humans will possess the liberty to live with a consciousness unhindered by the fears which come from always having to look over your shoulder. What is needed is the strength to act and the knowledge that conscious, democratic action for socialism is the way out. To our fellow frightened workers we say: Don’t be afraid; it’s time now to give the capitalists something to worry about.

 Should we be surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision to rescind access to abortions and give individual states the authority to pass their own rules and regulations? Right-wing Poland has imposed restrictions upon women having abortions and in left-wing Nicaragua Daniel Ortega has also reduced a woman’s rights to abortion. Despite the anti-abortion propaganda, there is and never has been “abortion on demand”. In every country, there has been laws to be followed by pregnant women and their doctors.  But no-one should experience or witness the human misery caused by unwanted pregnancies.

Abortion is a very serious matter and cannot be seen as another means of contraception. Unfortunately, many of those who support the so-called “pro-life” position are bitterly opposed to sex education beyond the most vague biological facts and some now suggest the next target to be undone should be Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, when SCOTUS ruled the use of contraception between two married individuals was a matter of privacy and constitutionally protected. One way to make terminations unnecessary is to make contraception easily available, give all young people a good sex education with an emphasis on equality, relationships, love, safety and respect for each other and most importantly the end to poverty that deprives working women of child-care provisions. 

Abortion and contraception are not totally separate issues. How about the IUD which prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the wall of the uterus? What about the ‘morning after” pill? Are these contraceptives or early forms of abortion, or both? Then there is the social question of how teenage girls are sexualized by the persuasive power of the glamorization of sex in the media.

In an ideal world, there would be no unwanted pregnancies, but there are, and even in a socialist world, with all the best sex education, access to contraception, there will still be. In an unwanted pregnancy the woman herself should have the final say. No other person should have more rights over her than she has herself. Abortions should be performed as early as possible and as late as necessary. 

 

The truth of the matter is that pro-lifers may defame a person who has an abortion, or who assists in the abortion as “child murderers” but they never condemn the economic system that is complicit in the deaths of millions of children from hunger and preventable illnesses.

Socialists can respect the opinions of people motivated by the idea of protecting all forms of human life out of regard for the supremacy of humanity. Unfortunately, most of those within the so-called pro-life organisations hold little genuine concern for the real sufferings of their fellow  human beings. All express concern for unborn children and yet we wonder how many of these anti-abortionists express anything like the same compassion over the deaths of living children.

Pious sentiments about the sanctity of human life have a hollow ring when each and every day brings fresh evidence of the lack of respect for human life. And moralistic cant about “rights” will do nothing to change the material circumstances that cause women to seek abortions. Only in a society in which human needs are paramount — the needs of women to control their own fertility, the needs of parents to have creative work besides looking after their children, the needs of children to grow up in a secure, loving environment free from want and deprivation. the needs of the handicapped to be respected and useful members of the community — is it possible to imagine a situation where all babies are wanted and abortion is made unnecessary.

 Almost 8 million children under 5 in 15 crisis-hit countries are at risk of death from severe wasting unless they receive immediate therapeutic food and care – with the numbers rising, UNICEF warned.

Since the start of the year, the escalating global food crisis has forced one child every 60 seconds  to suffer from severe wasting in 15 countries bearing the brunt of the crisis, including in the Horn of Africa and the Central Sahel. This rise in severe wasting is in addition to existing levels of child undernutrition. Within the 15 countries, UNICEF estimates that at least 40 million children are severely nutrition insecure, meaning they are not receiving the bare minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop in early childhood. Further, 21 million children are severely food insecure, meaning they lack access to enough food to meet minimum food needs, leaving them at high risk of severe wasting.

“We are now seeing the tinderbox of conditions for extreme levels of child wasting begin to catch fire,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Food aid is critical, but we cannot save starving children with bags of wheat. We need to reach these children now with therapeutic treatment before it is too late.” 

The price of ready-to-use therapeutic food to treat severe wasting has soared by 16 per cent in recent weeks due to a sharp rise in the cost of raw ingredients

“It is hard to describe what it means for a child to be ‘severely wasted,’ but when you meet a child who is suffering from this most lethal form of malnutrition, you understand – and you never forget,” said Russell.

Severe wasting – where children are too thin for their height – is the most visible and lethal form of undernutrition. Weakened immune systems increase the risk of death among children under 5 by up to 11 times compared to well-nourished children.

Global hunger crisis pushing one child into severe malnutrition every minute in 15 crisis-hit countries [EN/AR] – World | ReliefWeb

 “There is a real risk that multiple famines will be declared in 2022. And 2023 could be even worse.” – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres 

UN chief warns of ‘catastrophe’ from global food shortage | AP News

 The percentage of the world’s population living without democracy has grown from 49% to 70% in only a decade.

Undemocratic systems are affecting 5.4 billion people.

Populist leaders: Democracies in danger of extinction | The Global Observer | Opinion | EL PAÍS English Edition (elpais.com)

 

Extracts translated from Description du monde de demain. Un monde sans monnaie ni troc ni échange: une civilisation de l’accès (Description of the World of Tomorrow. A World Without Money or Barter or Exchange: a Civilisation of Free Access) by Jean-Francois Aupetitgendre and Marc Chinal (Editions Réfléchir n’a Jamais Tué Personne, Lyons, 2021)

‘Nothing in this society escapes the imprint of money. It follows from this that wanting to abolish money is to be obliged to think differently about absolutely everything, our very notions of time and space included.’ (p.16)

‘A society of free access would give freedom of choice to all those who currently find themselves in intolerable situations…. In the current system of society moving house to escape from a violent partner, for example, is a real battle if the person cannot show they have gainful employment and does not have money for a deposit on new accommodation. Such victims, without the capitalist ‘get-out’ of financial independence, find themselves trapped. The same thing applies to all the situations brought to the public gaze by the “Me too’ movement. Why would a woman give in to the unwelcome advances of a boss if she did not fear losing out in some way? What pressure could the predator exert if his prospective victim already had free access to everything he might have to offer?’ (p.23)      

‘In a society of free access, all human activities will be chosen by the person doing them and will not bring with them any particular advantages, material benefits, or payment of any kind. Questions around equal reward or prestige will simply not apply. It’s the end of the road for the little Hitler, the office dictator, the ‘prestigious’ role, higher or lower pay.’ (p.23)

 ‘All our technological choices, past and present, are distorted by the buying and selling system and the absolute necessity in all its workings to turn a financial profit.’ (p.34)

‘Let’s imagine that there’s no longer any ownership of the means of production, no more patents, no more “intellectual property”, that every innovation is immediately commonly owned, that there are no longer any brand names to be defended against others, no more fancy advertising.  If we take what’s best in every make of washing machine, car or computer, would we not be able to make all manufactured objects wholly practical, indestructible and resource-light and at a environmentally minimal cost, and to manufacture only the number we need as we need them? How much less destruction and waste if we can finally make money obsolete!’ (p.36)

‘[In a moneyless society] some of the situations that cause violence would still certainly exist: envy, jealousy or frustration can lead to violence, but far less so than the acquisitive pressure current society exerts. An easy test is to look at official statistics and the reasons for incarceration. A quick calculation shows that at least two thirds of crimes are directly attributable to the money system.’ (p.40)

‘Free access is not an exchange economy and is regulated only by the availability of stock, by the ongoing supply of goods, and also by their impact on the environment, all things which concern equally all members of society’’ (p.55)

‘A society of free access by its very nature is a society without commercial imperatives or economic competition. And even the most able will be aware that they need the cooperation of the less able. If conflicts of interests do arise, new methods will emerge to resolve them, with conciliation rather than confrontation the order of the day.’ (p.63)

‘Campaigners who seek alternative methods of organising capitalism believing that they are being more  realistic may well get a shock one day when they realise that all they have done has been to prolong the agony of buying and selling society and hold back the consciousness of so many people.’ (64)

‘The problem is not solved if we aim at the wrong target, at the wrong enemy, if, in thinking we are fighting against capitalism, all we are doing in fact is alleviating some of its worst effects. The point is not to somehow manage capital better but to abolish it, and at the same time the exchange mechanism which is fundamental to it.’ (p.65)

‘Wanting to create an egalitarian, ecologically sound, peaceful society without free access is like wanting to build a car without inventing the wheel.’ (p.66)

‘The only true realists, the only true pragmatists, are those who want to abolish once and for all money, the  state, the market, commodities, the wage and salary system, exchange value and above all the need to turn a financial profit.’ (p.69)

‘[Free access society] will have no state with governments having overwhelming power for the length of their mandate but, instead, representatives elected for specific purposes and readily recallable by the majority. We are often told that such a system would be certain to be long-winded, confrontational and slow …..But a slowly taken decision involving consequences for millions should be a guarantee of quality. And the fact that there will no longer be “professional” politicians but rather delegates elected or appointed for a specific purpose and with a particular mandate will guard against power being taken by individuals or parties.’ (p.82)

‘In present society, absolutely anything can be bought and sold, whether it’s time, knowledge, virginity, or even human organs.’ (p.107)

‘Money is a tool of exchange, but also, wherever we care to look, a tool of exclusion.’ (p.111)

‘We are not talking about returning to a “pre-monetary” world but about using our current knowledge to build a “post-monetary” world, transcending the primitive system of exchange, and getting to a world of comfortable abundance and free access.’ (p.129)

‘A society with commercial goals needs citizens to constantly consume, to fall into the traps laid by manipulative advertising; it needs citizens who are frustrated in their everyday lives and who can be made to believe that happiness comes from purchasing the latest product or service.’ (p.142)

‘Any belief in human solidarity in a monetary world is based on a misconceived vision of that system, even if  associative activities do, despite everything, sometimes take place. But real ongoing solidarity in a monetary world is simply an illusion.’ (p.148-9)

‘Is some form of universal basic income a solution to the problems of the capitalist system? Definitely not.’ (p.170)

‘Real direct democracy does not consist in giving power to those who speak the most eloquently or the loudest. Nor does it open the door to armed or deranged groups of people. The only political arrangement  possible for a post-monetary system is to give to each person equal responsibility and equal access to knowledge and training as well as to decision-making.’ (p.187)

‘An efficient society is one that knows its limits, one that, instead of constantly seeking economic growth, focuses on satisfying everyone’s needs. Once these needs are satisfied, ‘economic growth’ for the sake of it serves no purpose. Once a washing machine is made truly to last, with the means to repair it available if it does break down available, there is no point in continuing to make more of them. Energies need to go into something else. Production responds to need. That is true efficiency.’ (p.191)

‘[Even in capitalism, people know that] a truly good occupation is not one that gives you the most material gain, but one that is socially useful. ’ (p.194)

‘Think of all the occupations directly or indirectly tied to the use of money: banks, insurance, accountancy, taxation, financial administration, commercial law ….. All these occupations will disappear immediately in a post-monetary system.’ (p.205)

‘A society of free access is founded on real direct democracy with each citizen needing to be conscious of this in order to make “reciprocity” function. It follows that any kind of armed or authoritarian revolution is completely incompatible with this vision. Armed or violent revolutions need sheep to send to the slaughter and obedience to leaders. The development towards a free access society needs human beings with clarity of consciousness.’ (p.216)

‘A free access society is not impossible. What is impossible is for us to continue to survive in a world which is poisonous and being poisoned and will continue to be so. What is impossible is to live in harmony in a world where the aim is to compete with our neighbours near and far just to have the means to live decently, a world where supplying armaments is a highly printable pursuit. When a society is harmful, the rules of operation must be changed.’ (p.274)

 

‘When in the society we are aiming for we will have finished repairing the mistakes of the past, then we will no doubt turn towards what we still do not have and we will go further. But we will do this in respecting the environment and the planet’s living beings and without forgetting that we do have limits but that respecting those is no real problem.’ (p.283).

 Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, has promoted itself as a cheap and available destination for US clothing brands seeking low-cost suppliers that can take advantage of 2006 legislation that allows duty-free entry for goods made there by US companies.

The government has not raised the minimum wage since 2019, despite inflation of more than 15%. The country is experiencing catastrophic levels of insecurity and political instability after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last year. As a result, food and fuel prices have escalated. Unions are fighting for an increase in the minimum daily wage of garment workers from 500 to 1,500 gourdes ($5-15).

About 60,000 Haitians work in one of the country’s 41 garment factories, producing clothes for more than 60 American companies.

Yet activists say conditions at the factories are akin to prison camps, with non-existent labour rights and where sexual abuse is rife.

“Workers are not considered as humans or as needing rights,” says Yannick Etienne, of the workers’ rights organisation Batay Ouvriye. “The pay is so low that it puts women in situations where they have to accept [forced] sex in order to pay their rent.”

Female garment factory workers the Guardian spoke to confirm that to get a job – which has become harder because so many people are looking for work – women are expected to have sex with a male manager.

“If you don’t accept to have sex with the manager, your application will be rejected,” one worker says, adding that she works on a line that produces 3,600 T-shirts a day. “You must oblige or you won’t have a job, and also if you want a promotion, you must have sex with your supervisor.”

Workers interviewed by the Guardian also spoke of having to use rags as sanitary towels because they could not afford to buy their own.

Rose-Myrtha Louis, a coordinator at the Haitian Workers’ Renovation Syndicate, said: “We are supposed to have access to pads, but we have to use waste from T-shirts [because] we don’t have enough money. It has given us infections. It’s just another way we are suffering.”

A 2021 report from Better Work Haiti, a labour compliance group backed by the International Labour Organization and the World Bank, found that 80% of workers and their families have had to cut down on meals. It also found that 96% of factories surveyed failed to comply with Haiti’s health insurance and social security contribution requirements, putting workers’ lives at risk.

“When you consider the price that the clothes are sold for, and the wages we receive, it’s as if we are selling our blood,” explained Marie, one of the workers.

Sex for a job: the scandal of Haiti’s exploited US garment workers | Haiti | The Guardian