environment Politics: economics inequality justice sustainability
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 28: God Loves Poor People, Huh?
The New York Times addresses the festering rhinoceros in the room: the economic inequities that are exacerbated by climate change:
WARSAW — Following a devastating typhoon that killed thousands in the Philippines, a routine international climate change conference here turned into an emotional forum, with developing countries demanding compensation from the worst polluting countries for damage they say they are already suffering.
Calling the climate crisis “madness,” the Philippines representative vowed to fast for the duration of the talks. Malia Talakai, a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, a group that includes her tiny South Pacific homeland, Nauru, said that without urgent action to stem rising sea levels, “some of our members won’t be around.”
From the time a scientific consensus emerged that human activity was changing the climate, it has been understood that the nations that contributed least to the problem would be hurt the most. Now, even as the possible consequences of climate change have surged — from the typhoons that have raked the Philippines and India this year to the droughts in Africa, to rising sea levels that threaten to submerge entire island nations — no consensus has emerged over how to rectify what many call “climate injustice.”
Makes me wanna holler — hold up both my hands…November 17:
Global warning’s cruel irony is that the greenhouse emissions triggering the crisis are an unanticipated consequence of industrial and technological changes which have benefited the world’s most privileged, while it is the economically and politically disenfranchised billions who have already begun to feel the consequences, losing their lands, their hopes, and their lives.
In comparison to that of the developed nations, the carbon output of the Philippines is statistically insignificant, yet its citizens are now facing massive devastation from a tropical storm of unprecedented magnitude — just the sort of extreme weather event which climatologists have been predicting for years as a consequence of the intensifying greenhouse effect.
Unlike earlier genocides carried out under the aegis of economic expansion and colonialism, climate change’s impact on the world’s poorest people wasn’t planned. But this does not absolve the developed world of responsibility for the havoc wreaked and the damage wrought.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: divestiture economics heroes justice slavery sustainability
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 19: Just The Word I Was Looking For!
I sure am proud to be from Massachusetts. The Boston Globe:
Some Massachusetts lawmakers want the state to join a growing national movement that is fighting climate change by pressuring institutional investors such as pension funds and university endowments to divest holdings in companies that produce, distribute, and support fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels include oil, natural gas, and coal, which, when burned, produce carbon dioxide, the major culprit in climate change. Earlier this week, the Legislature held its first hearing on a bill that would require the state pension fund to unload over five years some $1.4 billion in investments — about 2.6 percent of the $54.4 billion fund — in oil companies, mining companies, refiners, and similar corporations. An estimated 200 people rallied in support of the bill in front of the State House Tuesday.
If the legislation is approved, Massachusetts would become the first state in the nation to divest its fossil fuel holdings, said state Senator Benjamin B. Downing, a Pittsfield Democrat sponsoring the bill. He argued that divestment makes economic sense given the quickening adoption of wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources.
“At some point, those fossil fuel companies will not be a good investment, and that will have an impact on our pension fund,” Downing said. “We need to transition away.”
This sprang naturally to mind. September 12:
It was in 1831 that Massachusetts’ voice of conscience, William Lloyd Garrison, excoriated public indifference to the evils of slavery, writing, “The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.” His dedication, and that of countless other abolitionists motivated by a profound sense of justice, helped hasten the end of a crime against humanity.
We now confront another kind of bondage — a servitude to the giant multinational corporations which profit hugely by selling us oil and coal to heat our homes, run our automobiles, and power our infrastructure — but which we now know are damaging our planet’s health in ways which will make our descendants’ lives all but intolerable. The movement to divest from fossil fuels is morally and economically analogous to Garrison’s tenacious campaign against another “peculiar institution” one and a half centuries ago.
Warren Senders