Nina-Bytes: In Between Days

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Days After Climate Summit, Biden To Hold ‘Carbon Bomb’ Gulf Oil Sale

It is not lost on me that I've spent a lot of time recently here on Nina-Bytes essentially wasting my breath, by pointing out the hypocrisy of neoliberal leaders when it comes to the subject of climate crisis. The problem with this approach of course is that we live in a time of unprecedented ruling class power; our society is post-accountability, and post-shame, so the capitalists merely shrug and go right on killing us for dollars. Still, there are times when the stench of corruption and rot become overwhelming; moments when the "my bum is on your lips" nature of the news is too infuriating to ignore. So, despite the fact that I wanted to talk about something else, virtually anything else today, let's talk about how Joe Biden is literally killing the planet while pretending he gives one solitary rat's anus about the climate apocalypse.

In this November 13th, 2021 piece by Chris D'Angelo over on Huffington Post, we discover that on November 17th, mere days after the end of the COP26 climate conference, the Biden administration intends to conduct the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history. Yes, that would be the administration working for Joe Biden, the same guy who promised just last week that America would lead "by the power of our example" in the fight against climate catastrophe. Inexplicably, spokespeople for the U.S. government, and the President himself, have insisted that this all ties into a short term strategy to increase fossil fuel production, while still meeting long term goals. There's just one problem with that excuse - the fields being sold today won't be operational for five to ten years; long after our time runs out to cut emissions in half by 2030.

To be clear, there are mitigating circumstances involved in this story. Specifically, the Biden Administration argues that it actually cannot stop the oil lease sale "following the June decision by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana to strike down Biden’s executive order temporarily pausing new oil and gas leases across federal lands and waters." The government has appealed this highly-spurious ruling, but as our author's study indicates, this isn't even close to the full means Biden had at his disposal to stop this. Furthermore without an injunction, the leases will be sold in the meantime, long before the appeal plays out. This in turn makes it very unlikely the projects on those oil patches will ever be stopped by the government.

The fact is, Joe Biden is almost eighty years old and neither he, nor his political party, have ever given one flying f*ck about climate crisis. Biden's rhetoric is simply that, rhetoric, and if he has to doom every future generation on Earth to geohell to please his corporate donors, that's what he's going to do. You don't have to take my word for it, just watch his actions and the actions of his government for all the proof you'll ever need.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Genocidal Promises on a Boiling Planet

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

The Big Lie Known as 'Net Zero' Will Lead Us to Climate Disaster

Well, it's safe to say that Greta warned us it would end this way. So it comes to pass that COP26 in Glasgow, an international climate conference hailed by its participants as our "last, best hope" to prevent climate apocalypse has drawn to a close; not with the promise of a future for humanity, but with a guttural howl of thinly-concealed violence. As I mentioned this morning over on Instagram, the summit has produced a carbon reduction agreement that neither does enough to stop millions from dying on a boiling planet, nor provides financial assistance in dealing with climate crisis for those on the front lines in the Global South. This is, to put it bluntly, a plan to commit genocide on behalf of capitalist and the ruling capitalist order; not that you should expect the bootlicking media in the Pig Empire to report it as such.

For a sense of what corporate media is not telling you, let's turn to this November 11th, 2021 report by environmental journalist Tina Gerhardt, helpfully reprinted over on Common Dreams. First up, our governments have collectively promised to undertake actions designed to keep the global temperature increase to 1.8 or 1.9 degrees Celsius; which would be fine I guess, except we already know anything over 1.5 degrees Celsius will kill millions. Not that this half a degree matters much, because as our author notes, those pledges are based on faulty data and the targets will at best keep temperature increases at a whopping 2.7 degrees Celsius. Which might be enough to kill billions all by itself; without even considering knock on effects.

Wait; it gets worse because, as it turns out almost none of the richest countries in the Pig Empire actually intend to reduce their carbon emissions to anywhere near zero. Indeed, most nations in the imperial core are promising merely to employ a number of dubiously scalable methods to "offset" their carbon emissions; a bit of creative, but wholly deceptive accounting known in wonk circles as "net zero carbon emissions." Does that have a hope in hell of working? Not even remotely, as Gerhardt notes in the article:

"There simply is not enough land and trees in the world to soak up the emissions of big polluters and northern governments. For these reasons, organizations ranging from Friends of the Earth to Indigenous Environmental Network, from Power Shift Africa to the Third World Network and many others, are calling for "Real Solutions Not 'Net Zero," and satirists like Australia's The Juice are directly mocking net zero as a fantasy."

Finally of course, there's the fact that most of the wealthy, heavy polluter nations in the Pig Empire aren't promising to cut carbon emissions now, but by 2050, or even in some cases 2060. How does that jibe with prior reports that we have until about 2030 to slash carbon emissions in half before we tip over into an unavoidable climate apocalypse? Surprise, it doesn't! These mad bastards are just hoping you forgot, and thus won't realize they're approaching climate catastrophe like schoolchildren putting off their essays until the night before they're due. And really, why shouldn't they? It's not like the media is going to call them out on it; and almost everyone at COP26 will be well into retirement by the time the clock strikes doomsday. 

In other words, it is no exaggeration at all to say that the "wisest" leaders of the Pig Empire just got together to craft an international pledge, to commit genocide, rather than surrender capitalism and fossil fuel profits. Let me know the next time you hear about that on the evening news.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Keep It in the Ground

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground. Everything Else Is Just Talk.

Over the past few weeks on Nina-Bytes, we've spent some time examining the staggering contradictions between climate promises by Pig Empire leadership, and the actions they're taking (or not taking) in government. In particular, I've focused on examining what I call the levels and flavors of self-deception in the fight to prevent climate catastrophe. The plain truth is that we know how to save the world from climate apocalypse, and capitalists are actively preventing us from collectively taking the steps necessary to do so. 

This in turn has lead to the ghastly spectacle of Pig Empire politicians, and neoliberal "thought leaders" trying to square that circle by making climate crisis mitigation promises that we already know won't save us from the climate apocalypse. Do you want to know what grim looks like? It looks like Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of the island nation of Barbados, explaining that even if Western leaders actually keep their current promises (fat chance,) it will still mean the death of millions on a boiling earth. Let me repeat that; our leaders are currently promising climate change policies they know will kill millions of poor people, particularly in the global South. 

Ultimately then, we're talking about a mass murder plot, barely hidden behind bloodless technocratic jargon and empty platitudes about how we're all in this together. Furthermore, you'd have to be an idiot at this point to believe these muppets aren't just as happy to sacrifice Pig Empire paupers on the altar of capital; just look at how the coronavirus pandemic shook out. It is not enough to merely say "net zero carbon is not enough," these folks are choosing to openly sacrifice millions of poor people on behalf of capital; and that's if their harebrained schemes work! This is what systemic genocide looks like in practice; this is fascism, imperialism, and the death cult of capitalism at its darkest.

So what does the opposite of that actually look like? How can you cut through the neoliberal platitudes and focus on a concise, easy to explain solution to climate catastrophe we can all get behind demanding from our leaders? I'm glad you asked, because as this November 7th, 2021 article by George Monbiot on Common Dreams makes clear, the answer is alarmingly simple. We need to leave fossil fuels in the ground. Period. Full-stop. Everything else is just empty talk from folks who mean to kill you for profit. From the article:

 

"And yes, it really is this simple. We have the technology required to replace fossil fuels. There's plenty of money, which is currently being squandered on the destruction of life on Earth. The transition could take place in months, if governments willed it. The only thing that stands in the way is the power of legacy industries and the people who profit from them. This is what needs to be overthrown. The handwaving, the complexity, the grandiloquent distraction in Glasgow are designed above all for one purpose: not to accelerate this transition, but to thwart it."

 

Look, I don't know how to put this any more bluntly. There is simply no such thing as a technocratic plan to stop climate catastrophe. Do you want a future? Would you like to survive to see it? Do you want to save life on Earth? Then stop tolerating politicians who're enslaved to a capitalist death cult that clearly means to kill us all if that's what it takes to make a quick buck. We must stop burning and extracting fossil fuels; to quote piss queen Maggy Thatcher, there literally "is no alternative."

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Shell Game

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

The Only Winning Climate Policy Is a Pro-Worker Climate Policy

Well my friends, it certainly looks like its all over but the crying for Biden's milquetoast climate agenda; and perhaps the human species at large. As I, and many others predicted, the fossil fuel industry, anarcho-capitalist billionaires, and their in-pocket Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema appear to have torpedoed the Clean Electricity Performance Program, or CEPP, that is the centerpiece of Joe Biden's still-woefully inadequate climate action policies. Baring some kind of last minute miracle, liberal incrementalism (if you can even really call Biden a liberal) has once again screwed the pooch on behalf of their wealthy donors. 

Predictably, most of the public ire has fallen on Senators Manchin and Sinema; and why not? They are after all the most visible face of the plot to kill the world for capitalists at this point; although I'd wager such an analysis is letting billionaire supervillains, corporate America, and the mainstream media off lightly. Unfortunately however, as this November 4th, 2021 article by Matt Huber in Jacobin points out, even this analysis allows important culprits to ultimately escape responsibility; specifically President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party he presides over.

As our author details, both the CEPP and Biden's environmental agenda were always technocratic solutions dependent on enticing the free market to "go green" on its own. Biden explicitly rejected the Green New Deal, failed to tie his environmental policies to material improvements for the labor class, and surrendered control of the process to insiders, wonks and corporate stooges. Furthermore, despite rhetoric indicating that Palooka Joe regards climate crisis as the most important issue of our time, the President has failed to use the executive powers granted by his office to do more to mitigate climate catastrophe. All of which reflects poorly on Biden's visit to COP26, as the article notes:

"Which brings us to this week’s underwhelming round of COP negotiations. Joe Biden’s speech featured lofty rhetoric asserting that this is the “decisive decade” for climate action. Yet he’s also come to the meetings without any credible plan to rapidly decarbonize the world’s leading historic emitter.

It’s very easy to blame the downfall of Biden’s climate agenda on Joe Manchin. But while GND advocates spent much of 2018–20 demanding a transformative approach to climate policy, 2021 has been more of the same. When it comes to climate politics, Biden and elite Democrats seem to be saying, “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.”

Frankly, you don't need me to tell you the Democratic Party is broken; the fact that they're getting rolled by fascists and can't even pass a budget despite controlling the House and Senate kind of makes that clear already. We have however been here before, and when dark history repeats itself despite the names and faces changing, that's a clear indication the problem is systemic. This in no way absolves Manchin and Sinema, who deserve every bit of animosity they receive, but there is a larger lesson here. Capitalist neoliberal technocrats are not going to save us from climate catastrophe, no matter what lofty rhetoric to the contrary they deploy at fancy international conferences.

Look, this isn't doomerism. We are still capable of preventing a climate apocalypse, if we just surrender capitalism. The time for dithering away at climate summits however, is growing short. Our choices at this point are pretty simple; we get left, or we get boiled. And as long as those decisions remain in the hands of men like Joe Biden, you can bet it's not going to be the former.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Globalization, Neoliberalism, and COP26 Promises

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Corporations Have the Power to Sue Governments Over Resource Extraction Policies

As a woman whose herky-jerky journey towards becoming a socialist began in the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s, it's been pretty surreal watching the dystopian future I was fighting against back then, become today's everyday reality. In those days, plenty of analysts on the left warned that more than a fight about jobs and wages, the battle over free trade policies was a contest about surrendering state power to corporate control. With each new trade agreement, came new international rules and bodies to enforce a capitalist framework on the participating countries; essentially forever, and certainly regardless of who they elected. 

Although I didn't know anything about it at the time, this line of reasoning tracks closely with theories about neoliberalism published by David Harvey and Karl Polanyi. Harvey in particular argues that the foundational goal of neoliberalism is to restore and increase ruling class power, specifically at the expense of democracy and people power. As Yanis Varoufakis and the citizens of Greece discovered, even if you elect a nominally socialist government, these agreements can prevent you from enacting socialist reforms. Which begs the question, what happens when socialist reforms become literally the only way to save life on Earth?

Well, as it turns out the answer is nothing good. In this November 2nd, 2021 article by Manuel Pérez-Rocha at Truthout, we come face to face with the results when globalization's free trade regime comes into conflict with preventing climate crisis. The answer is, rich guys and corporations can sue your government in a corporate kangaroo court, to block action and/or collect millions, if not billions of dollars in damages. To the surprise of precisely no one, this system has primarily been used by resource extraction companies in the global north, against developing nations in the global south; because capitalism is nothing if not consistently racist.

All of which brings us to the same problem with the COP26 climate summit that we discussed yesterday; none of the promises world leaders make in Glasgow mean anything at all, as long as the policies and agreements they pursue at home continue to lock us into a dystopian climate apocalypse. Telling me you're serious about fighting climate crisis while simultaneously signing and enforcing trade agreements that allow corporations to sue for their right to destroy the world, is a little bit beyond just insulting my intelligence. Literally nobody at COP26 is going to talk about dismantling the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, which means most of their bold pledges are demonstrably nothing more than hot air.

Which sadly, is par for the course I'm afraid.

- nina illingworth

 

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Bleeding Soil and Climate Theater

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Why We Must Defund the Global Climate Wall

I think the important thing to keep in mind when you're watching the news in the Pig Empire, is that despite corporate media's microscopic attention span and atrocious coverage, nothing truly happens in a vacuum. Indeed, this is why I can't say I have very high hopes for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow; because I know the kind of policy these sociopathic world leaders pursue at home. Take for example this November 1st, 2021 article by Todd Miller over on Common Dreams that won't even so much as make a dent in the mainstream media news cycle.

As co-author of a new report called The Global Climate Wall, Miller crunched the numbers and discovered that the world's seven heaviest polluter nations spent literally twice as much money on border security as they did on helping vulnerable countries deal with climate crisis and transition to clean energy. Furthermore, that report goes on to pinpoint the alliance of nefarious public and private sector actors working to ensure this disparity only grows. From Kenny Stancil on October 26th, 2021, also in Common Dreams:

"This nexus of power, wealth, and collusion between fossil fuel firms and the border security industry shows how climate inaction and militarized responses to its consequences increasingly work hand in hand," the authors write. "Both industries profit as ever more resources are diverted towards dealing with the consequences of climate change rather than tackling its root causes."

"This comes at a terrible human cost," they add. "It can be seen in the rising death toll of refugees, deplorable conditions in many refugee camps and detention centers, violent pushbacks from European countries, particularly those bordering the Mediterranean, and from the U.S., in countless cases of unnecessary suffering and brutality."

Back in his article, Miller then talks about the big picture scope of border enforcement enforcement spending and offers a logical solution. Since funding a dystopian police state at the border is expensive and undesirable, why not shift that money over to climate financing instead? This is of course a logical solution that would help address two recognized humanitarian catastrophes in waiting; climate crisis itself, and mass migration. The problem in American in particular however, is twofold, and I don't think either of these barriers would particularly shock Miller; a guy who writes a blog called Border Wars.

First, as the report acknowledges and I've written about earlier this year, there's a lot of influential pigs at this particular trough. This includes obvious actors like private prison contractors, or border guard unions, and less obvious actors such as weapons contractors, or venture capital firms. Which is of course to say nothing of the absurdly powerful fossil fuel lobby that couldn't care less about climate refugees but is opposed to stopping oil consumption anywhere, including the developing world. As we've noted on this very blog, poor kids and polar bears can't afford to hire lobbyists, and clearly the rich guys are investing in some kind of extremely literal climate war. 

Further compounding the problem is the centrality of nativism and anti-migrant hysteria to fascist political actors in the Pig Empire; a topic I touched on while reviewing Greg Grandin's "The End of the Myth" this past spring. The short story here is that dehumanizing and caging non-white migrants has been both profitable, and politically useful, to the very same people pushing fascism on a boiling planet. All of which brings me to my larger point I guess. Given that this same ruling class tends to control every major political party in the entire "West," I'm not really holding my breath in anticipation of how the latest climate summit is going to shake out. 

Look, if you ask corporate media what an ecofascist is, they'll point to survivalist wingers and neonazis appropriating pagan symbols and preaching Volkish mysticism. I'd argue however that modern Pig Empire immigration and climate policy already form the core basis of an ecofascist outlook. If spending billions on cages for poor brown people, while dooming whole populations to an agonizing death from behind a battery of sophisticated weaponry isn't "ecofascist," then the word has no meaning. While we pretend that there is a materially significant climate crisis prevention "debate" going on in Pig Empire governments, the people who truly own those governments are preparing for class war and the apocalypse. 

This isn't a negotiation; they're stalling for time. Time the ruling classes are using to arm up and prepare to kill you rather than surrender their golden goose; capitalism.

- nina illingworth

 

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Capitalism, Carbon, and Neoliberal Climate Denial

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

The ‘Sensible’ Climate Compromise Is Not Sensible

Look, I'm not trying to be a killjoy here, but sooner or later as a society we're going to have to talk about flavors and levels of self-deception in the fight to prevent climate catastrophe. Take for example this well-argued October 27th article by Alexander Sammon over on The American Prospect. As you may have heard, Joe Manchin and Big Oil are current eviscerating Biden's environmental agenda in real time; an agenda that was already a milquetoast liberal compromise fantasy, quite frankly. Discussing the now-gutted climate crisis mitigation measures in the Build Back Better Act, Sammon notes that the Biden climate strategy currently centers around tax credits to two technologies; nuclear energy and carbon capture, utilization, and storage or CCUS.

As the author points out however, there's a pretty big reason why that's a terrible idea:

"So alongside the remaining clean-energy and electric-vehicle tax credits, beefed-up support for nuclear and carbon capture is what Joe Biden is going to take to Glasgow’s COP26 climate talks as proof of the United States’ willingness to tackle climate change head on.

The inconvenient problem is that those technologies don’t exist, at least not in any meaningful way. In the name of compromise, Build Back Better is now forgoing proven, cost-effective technologies for unproven ones, because that, evidently, is less ideological."

Sammon then goes on to demonstrate that we're lightyears away from producing enough nuclear power to meet our energy needs despite plenty of pre-existing subsidies, and that CCUS technology is basically a pipe dream that rewards the worst carbon-spewing supervillains to boot. Finally, Alex really brings home the bacon by pointing out that betting all your chips on fantasy ideas instead of investing in clean-energy solutions we've had for decades, is itself a form of climate science or climate change denial. 

That last point is key. and what I've taken to calling the "neoliberal flavor of climate science denial" is an issue that deserves more regular discussion in our society. When we talk about climate science or climate crisis denial, most people think of astroturf campaigns by fossil fuel companies, or the unhinged ravings of reactionary right wing politicians. It rarely ever occurs to people to consider whether acknowledging climate catastrophe, and yet refusing to take meaningful action to prevent it because your donors profit from the situation, isn't also clearly a form of denial?

And therein lies the problem I have with this piece. I'm not trying to pick on Alex; he's absolutely correct that doing only a fraction of what is required to stop climate catastrophe is its own form of denial. Which unfortunately means writing an article that doesn't acknowledge there's no way to stop climate catastrophe without getting rid of capitalism, is also its own form of denial. Sammon is certainly not alone in this; just this morning I read a piece by a left leaning academic who admitted we're all barbeque unless we get rid of capitalism, but proposed we forget about trying for now because it's impossible. Clearly, the denial runs deep.

Can you hear me in the back? If you're for preventing climate catastrophe and averting a mass extinction event, you're against capitalism. You can't scream "I refuse to acknowledge this" at a boiling planet and pretend you're on the right side of this issue. There is no halfway position here; there's no acceptable compromise between killing the planet for profit and saving the people, no matter what "reasonable center" you start working from. It's capitalism, or the planet, and the rich guys have clearly made their choice already.

So the question I pose to the left-leaning media, who I agree with on so many other issues is simple: which side are you on? I'd choose quickly my friends; before capitalism gets around to deciding you're an acceptable sacrifice too.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”