Millions of Americans have fallen behind on utility bills during the pandemic. 

Utility debt increased from around $12bn before the pandemic to an estimated $32bn by the end of 2020.

The UK, Europe and China have been racked by soaring energy prices. So far most of the US has been spared the worst of it but economists are predicting that here too an energy crisis is looming, and as winter approaches prices are rising, potentially threatening the utilities of millions more. Only Washington DC and three states – New York, New Jersey and Wyoming –have continued utility shutoff moratoriums that were begun during the pandemic. Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans expired in early September.

According to Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association (NEADA), “The upcoming winter is of serious concern. Natural gas, heating oil and propane prices have become very expensive and will put pressure on families this winter. If additional funding is not provided then I expect that arrearages will spike again, unless Congress provides additional funding for energy assistance programs.”

Most states do not require utility companies to provide data on debt collections and shutoffs. An analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity in June found over 1m households in 17 states in the US have experienced a utility shutoff since March 2020.

Since then, additional statewide shutoff moratoriums have expired, including in California where an estimated $2.7bn in utility debt was accrued during the pandemic.

More than one in four Americans report their households are struggling to cover usual expenses, while assistance funds have been slow to reach those in need.

High and unaffordable utility bills are a problem across the US that precedes the pandemic, but one that became more prominent in the past 18 months, as the lack of utility shutoff moratoriums have been linked to a rise in Covid cases and deaths.

“Utilities is one of those day to day issues that gets missed,” said Amna Farooqi, a senior organizer with the organization 9to5 Georgia. Farooqi noted elected officials have consistently diverted responsibilities when pushed on the issue of unaffordable utility bills, and high bills are blamed on personal use rather than systemic problems. “People are trying to kick the can of responsibility around, but we need federal policies in place, state policies in Georgia, but also local policies.”

In Albany, Georgia, where more than 30% live under the poverty rate, residents have experienced high utility bills for years, often exceeding $700 a month. A report released in September by 9to5 Georgia outlined why utility bills for the city and across the nation are often so high, citing the monopoly of energy companies, poor and energy inefficient housing, a lack of accountability for local and state governments overseeing utility services, and extreme weather events worsened by the climate crisis.

In the wake of hurricanes and winter storms throughout the US, utility companies have often passed on the costs incurred by these storms to residents, along with increased rates and fuel costs. Residents in Kansas, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas have complained about sudden surges in their utility bills through 2021.

Jesse Dorle of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, noted her utility bills for a one-bedroom apartment have doubled, from around $175 to $350 a month in recent months due to costs incurred by utility companies for bad winter storms in early 2021.

Said Dorle, “Hard-working people like myself are struggling to keep our heads above water, and this hike is ruining us. Why should we have to pay enormously high costs for a basic human necessity?”

‘I have never felt so hopeless’: millions in US fear utility shutoffs as debts rise | US income inequality | The Guardian

 

The first-ever National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change on the impact of climate on national security through to 2040, the US intelligence community predicts that climate change will lead to growing international tensions in a bleak assessment. The 27-page report is the collective view of all 18 US intelligence agencies. It paints a picture of a world failing to co-operate, leading to dangerous competition and instability. The report is a sign that climate is now a central part of security thinking and that it will heighten existing problems as well as create new ones. The new intelligence estimate sets out the stark problems that lie ahead.

 United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has said the world’s current climate situation is “a one-way ticket for disaster”

“The carbon pollution of a handful of countries has brought humanity to its knees and they bear the greatest responsibility. I hope we are still on time to avoid a failure in Glasgow, but time is running short, and things are getting more difficult and that is why I’m very very worried. I’m afraid things might go wrong,” 

UN chief warns world on ‘one way ticket to disaster’ over climate | Climate Change News | Al Jazeera

 Ninety per cent of the US plastics industry’s reported climate change pollution takes place in just 18 communities, where residents earn 28% less than the average American household and are 67% more likely to be minority communities.

A report, by Bennington College’s Beyond Plastics project, found that the American plastics industry is releasing at least 232m tons of GHG annually, the equivalent to 116 average-sized coal-fired power plants. Since 2019, at least 42 US plastics facilities have opened, are under construction or are in the permitting process. If the facilities become fully operational, they could release an additional 55m tons of GHG – or the equivalent of another 27 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants – by 2025.

“Plastics is the new coal and it is a major environmental justice concern … The health impacts of the emissions are disproportionately borne by low-income communities and communities of color,” said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and former regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator under President Obama.

The World Economic Forum is projecting global plastics production to triple by 2050. 

 Enck said the new focus of the fossil fuel industry is plastics, saying: “Fossil fuel companies are making less money on generating power and less money for transportation … so they see plastics as the plan B. There’s no plan B for the rest of us. We are in a climate crisis,” she said.

The report identified 10 different stages in which plastics manufacturing emits the most significant GHG. Hydro-fracking is expected to release 45m tons of methane annually in the US by 2025. Transporting and processing fracked gases emit roughly 4.8m tons of methane a year. Petrochemical ethane gas cracker facilities release at least 70m tons of GHG annually. Other plastic raw materials manufacturing is responsible for 28m tons of GHG emissions per year. Exports and imports of plastics raw materials and products emit at least 51m tons of GHG annually, equivalent to more than 25 coal-fired power plants.

US plastics to outstrip coal’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, study finds | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 

Nike founder and billionaire, Phil Knight, is worth an estimated $58 billion. Knight has seen his fortunes almost double during the pandemic. The value of Knight’s assets increased from $29.5 billion in March 2020 to $57.9 billion on October 15, 2021, an increase of 96.4 percent.

While Knight has declared he intends to give most of his wealth to charity, the Bloomberg expose documents that for years, Knight has “been using a range of legal techniques to ensure his heirs keep control of most of his assets and profit from them in the process, quietly transferring vast piles of money in a textbook example of how the rich avoid taxes.”

Helen Flannery and Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies point out in this blog post how Knight’s philanthropic activity mostly takes the form of donations to his own private family foundation of highly appreciated Nike stock. Billionaires like Phil Knight are the largest beneficiaries of the tax reductions provided in our tax code. As we’ve documented, for every dollar a billionaire like Phil Knight gives to charity, taxpayers chip in 74 cents in lost tax revenue. Yet for billionaires like Knight, charitable giving becomes an extension of their tax reduction planning and power and influence.

IPS associate fellow Bob Lord, in an article is “The Hidden Ways the Ultrarich Pass Wealth to Their Heirs Tax Free.”  While Knight has declared he intends to give most of his wealth to charity, the using public SEC filings and other publicly available data, Lord “reverse engineered” an analysis of Knight’s tax planning techniques.  Knight has already transferred about $10 billion in wealth free of estate and gift tax (avoiding roughly $3.6 billion in tax) and could avoid estate tax on up to an additional $9 billion if he died today.

“Phil Knight’s estate plan demonstrates beyond doubt that loopholes in America’s estate and gift tax have rendered it useless.” 

Knight created a series of Granter Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), a popular tax avoidance mechanism deployed by many of the super-wealthy.

GRATs “have the basic goal of making wealth look much smaller than it really is.  It’s possible to have your gifts appear to be worth almost nothing, even as you move millions or even billions of dollars tax-free.”  They “construct a legal fiction that this is a normal transaction and not a taxable gift to the trust.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/how-billionaires-pass-wealth-to-heirs-tax-free-2021/

Opinion | Phil Knight: A Case Study in to How Dodge Over $3.6 Billion in Taxes | Chuck Collins (commondreams.org)

 

Waste and Capitalism

A report published in the reputable medical journal, The Lancet, highlights governments’ failure to ambitiously address the climate emergency and related health impacts. Experts from dozens of academic and United Nations institutions collaborated on the report, which tracks 44 indicators sorted into five categories: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerabilities; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement.

“If nothing else will drive the message home about the present threat that climate change poses to our global society, this should,” Lachlan McIver, a Doctors Without Borders physician, explained. “Your health, my health, the health of our parents and our children are at stake.”

“Lowering greenhouse gas emissions is a prescription,” Renee Salas, an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital pointed out. “The oath I took as a doctor is to protect the health of my patients. Demanding action on climate change is how I can do that.”

Echoing several studies released in anticipation of the COP 26 summit, the new analysis raises alarm about the increasing risk of chikungunya, dengue, malaria, and Zika outbreaks and warns that due to rising seas, hundreds of millions of people face flooding, intense storms, and soil and water salinification that could force mass migration.

The impact of climate change on health is getting worse and it is exacerbating existing health and social inequities particularly in communities exposed to food and water insecurity, heatwaves and the spread of infectious diseases. It is increasing health inequities everywhere.

Countdown executive director Anthony Costello noted some of the specific findings: “The 2021 report shows that populations of 134 countries have experienced an increase in exposure to wildfires. Millions of farmers and construction workers could have lost income because on some days it’s just too hot for them to work. Drought is more widespread than ever before.”

“This is our sixth report tracking progress on health and climate change and unfortunately we are still not seeing the accelerated change we need,” said lead author Maria Romanello in a statement. “At best the trends in emissions, renewable energy, and tackling pollution have improved only very slightly,” she continued, describing recent extreme weather exacerbated by rising temperatures as “grim warnings” of the consequences of delayed action.

The report points out that governments around the globe are still dumping massive amounts of money into subsidies for the oil and gas industry, despite conclusions from climate scientists and energy experts that fossil fuels must stay in the ground for the sake of the planet and human health.

Recent research and newly released guidelines from the World Health Organization have highlighted how the fossil fuel industry harms humanity by degrading air quality. Advocating for a “low-carbon transition that prioritizes the health of all populations,” the experts acknowledge that “even in the most affluent countries, people in the most deprived areas overwhelmingly bear the burden of health effects from exposure to air pollution.”

Lancet Report Warns Planetary Crisis Will Spur More Infectious Diseases, Climate Refugees (commondreams.org)

One more warning that socialists can guarantee will go unheeded by capitalist corporations. 

 

In a previous blog post we cited Greta Thunberg explaining that some nations are using “creative carbon accounting” to present a false image of their green policies. Australia is one major culprit of the practice. 

A new coal mine development in New South Wales will be offset through rehabilitation of the coal pit more than a decade after an ecosystem has been destroyed. The plan allows future rehabilitation of the mine site to be claimed as part of Glencore’s offsets for its Mangoola mine expansion.  Replanting and regeneration of the actual mine site years after its operations have finished will count towards offsets the company is required to deliver to compensate for the loss of some of the endangered habitat its project will cause. It is one example to start an ecosystem from scratch to compensate for the loss of mature bushland.

Glencore’s Mangoola expansion was approved in early October by the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley. It is the third coal project the minister has approved in a month.

Rachel Walmsley, the Environmental Defenders Office’s policy and law reform director, said development approvals had increasingly permitted the use of mine rehabilitation to provide biodiversity offsets despite the fact the NSW government still had not finalised rules that defined how mining rehabilitation should work under the state’s offset scheme.

“The idea that in 40 years time a void could be rehabilitated to a functioning ecosystem that is somehow an offset for habitat destruction that is happening now is farcical,” Walmsley said. “Offsetting is a tool that is facilitating decline and extinction and that’s why it needs to be critically reviewed because it is losing its scientific credibility.”

Georgina Woods, the NSW coordinator of the anti-mining group Lock the Gate said, “Allowing coalmines to clear vanishing wildlife habitat and claim imaginary future offset for this loss 20 or more years into the future is not just ineffective: it is cynical and grotesque.” She explained the practice was contributing to a “rapid decline” in biodiversity in NSW.

How the environmental offsets scheme is failing the Australian wildlife it is meant to protect | Environment | The Guardian

 The government has blocked a new law to curb firms’ ability to lay staff off and take them back on different – often worse – pay and terms. The practice is known as “fire-and-rehire”.  

Labour MP Barry Gardiner has put forward a bill that says fire-and-rehire should not be allowed unless employees are properly consulted first. Gardiner’s private member’s bill said employees should be fully consulted on any fire-and-rehire plans. If the employees agreed to it, they could be taken on under new terms, under the proposed new law. But if a dispute occurred between staff and a company, an independent committee would decide on whether the fire-and-rehire could go ahead, the bill said.

If All Refugees Lived in One Place, It Would Be the 17th Most Populous Country in the World