HOW THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY IS ATTEMPTING TO BUY THE GLOBAL YOUTH CLIMATE MOVEMENT

Alleen Brown

December 13 2019, 11:30 a.m.

https://theintercept.com/2019/12/13/youth-climate-movement-fossil-fuel-industry/

THE SAME DAY that 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg gave a stirring speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September, in which she criticized delegates for “stealing my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” the architects of the climate crisis welcomed select youth participants from the summit to dine.

CEOs from fossil fuel corporations including BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Norway’s Equinor were attending the annual gathering of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative in New York, which includes industry leaders who claim to be committed to taking “practical” action on climate change. On the agenda for lunch was to “explore options for long-term engagement” with young people the industry could trust. Student Energy, a nonprofit based in Alberta, near Canada’s tar sands region, helped organize the event, which included time for students to grill the CEOs about their inaction on climate change.

Tension in the room was high, Student Energy’s executive director, 30-year-old Meredith Adler, told The Intercept. “The whole discussion started off with one of our participants talking about why youth don’t trust oil and gas companies,” she said. But by the end of the meeting, Adler tweeted that she was “very impressed” with OGCI. “I don’t feel they had all the answers or strong enough answers but they are really listening,” she wrote.

The students’ questions may have been tough, but the event was great PR for the fossil fuel industry. Gone are the days when CEOs openly questioned the existence of climate change. Today, industry leaders are feigning a sense of climate urgency while pushing forward proposals for climate action that will allow companies to keep harvesting carbon-emitting products well into the future. Subjecting themselves to a cohort of skeptical students was an opportunity for oil and gas executives to boost their credibility in an era when many young activists will only engage with them with picket signs.

Young activists say they’re seeing more of this “youth-washing” as the global youth climate movement gains momentum, including at the U.N. annual climate conference, known as COP 25, which is wrapping up in Madrid this week. With “youth” becoming synonymous with climate action, corporations and politicians are increasingly using young people to portray themselves as climate serious.

“The use of youth in campaigning is becoming more and more overt,” said 24-year-old Eilidh Robb, a member of the U.K. Youth Climate Coalition, who has been involved in pushing the U.N. to adopt a conflict of interest policy that would prevent fossil fuel industry representatives from exercising influence at COP. “There’s a real dangerous tokenism of youth for the benefit of public image.”

The OGCI gathering was a particularly egregious example of youth-washing. OGCI has provided funding to Student Energy, and OGCI ventures director Rhea Hamilton is on the group’s board of directors. Among the “partners” listed in Student Energy’s 2018 annual report are Royal Dutch Shell and Suncor, one of Canada’s biggest tar sands producers. Fossil fuel companies consistently fund the organization’s annual conference.

Although Student Energy’s leaders often echo the talking points of activists like Thunberg, the group’s membership — a network it claims includes 40,000 young people — is largely made up of people who want to work in the energy industry.

Student Energy is among the youth groups granted observer status at COP 25, meaning that its members can gain access to negotiation spaces, speak with the negotiating parties, and participate in events. Its presence at the U.N.’s international climate talks is only expected to grow. Student Energy’s 2018 report noted that the group had seen a 73 percent increase in active chapters. Next year, the oil and gas major BP has pledged to send 50 Student Energy delegates to COP26. The funding would double the size of the group’s usual delegation, according to a BP press release. In a conference space that serves as a battleground of ideas about how to address the climate crisis, BP apparently sees Student Energy’s presence as beneficial to the corporation.

But Student Energy’s funders, some of the corporations most responsible for the climate crisis, show no signs of slowing down. Suncor’s production portfolio, which includes mostly tar sands extraction, is the most carbon intensive of the 100 largest fossil fuel companies in the world, and the company has pushed hard for new pipelines that would allow it to continue to increase production. Shell, the world’s 11th-largest greenhouse gas-emitting oil and gas company, is projected to increase its fossil fuel output by 38 percent by 2030. BP, the 14th-largest emitter, will up production by 20 percent.

The corporations’ projections fly in the face of the measures scientists say are required to meet the U.N.’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030. The point of the COP is to move toward that goal.

Adler told The Intercept that Student Energy participated in the OGCI event in order to challenge the oil and gas industry face to face. She said the organization follows strict partnership principles that prevent funders from wielding influence over the group’s activities. A large proportion of the organization’s members want to work in the renewables industry, not for a fossil fuel company, she added, and next year they will be diversifying their funding sources significantly.

As for BP’s COP26 funding, Adler said that Student Energy has not officially accepted the money. “We’re examining what that looks like and the implications of that and if they’re the right partner.”

To Taylor Billings, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Corporate Accountability, it’s no surprise that the industry is seeking a youth movement to collaborate with. As she put it, “If zebras were leading the march, fossil fuel corporations and global north governments would be clambering to get into the zoo.”

Youth-Washing at the United Nations

The U.N. has done little to eliminate opportunities for youth-washing at its conferences. Since 2015, the international governing body has held an annual Global Youth Video Competition, in which participants submit short films highlighting climate action. The prize this year: a fully funded trip to COP 25.

But alongside several U.N. agencies sponsoring the project was the BNP Paribas Foundation, which is funded by a bank that spent more than $50 billion in fossil fuel investments between 2016 and 2018. In response, 29 climate organizations that work with young people sent a letter to the U.N. organizers of the project.

“This kind of corporate capture of a youth empowerment initiative is not only disappointing, but outright criminal,” the letter said, noting that BNP Paribas is the fifth-largest fossil fuel financier in Europe. The organizations called on the U.N. to “immediately terminate their partnership with BNP Paribas to ensure that youth engagement remains free from the influence of big polluters and their financiers.”

“Do not be responsible for the corruption of our courage and action,” the authors urged.

The U.N. dismissed the letter. “We share your views on the need to decarbonize the world and to that end also decarbonize investment portfolios of financial institutions as soon as possible,” said Niclas Svenningsen, the U.N.’s manager of Global Climate Action. However, he added, “We believe that it is also important to open the dialogue and look at how stakeholders from different sectors are transitioning their business models.”

To many, the response is typical. When it comes to youth-washing, “the biggest example and most egregious is the United Nations,” said Jonathan Palash-Mizner, the 17-year-old co-coordinator of Extinction Rebellion Youth U.S., who is attending COP 25. He said that youth spaces at the U.N. often feel like a “kids’ table,” with participants holding little decision-making power.

Meanwhile, “you go into any negotiation and every negotiator will invoke Greta Thunberg,” said Sarah Dobson, a 23-year-old member of the U.K. Youth Climate Coalition. “It’s embarrassing because they’re not going to live up to that vision.”

Dobson has been involved with a long-running youth effort to expel conflicts of interest from the COP. The official youth arm of the U.N., YOUNGO, bars its local chapters from entering partnerships with companies “that stand in conflict with the interests of young people.” The group has pushed for years for a policy that would keep anyone who has worked for a fossil fuel company out of future climate conferences and require disclosure of meetings between the fossil fuel industry and negotiating nations or U.N. officials.

They point to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which states that parties “need to be alert to any efforts by the tobacco industry to undermine or subvert tobacco control efforts” and must protect the agreement from “commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.”

YOUNGO argued again for a conflict of interest policy at a June U.N. gathering where COP logistics were discussed — but with the U.S., the European Union, and other global north delegates dismissive of the idea, they lost.

So, as COP 25 kicked off in Madrid last week, an array of representatives of the fossil fuel industry roamed the hallways alongside the negotiators who will decide the shape of the most important international climate agreement. Leaders from BP, Shell, Total, and Suncor all received accreditation to attend the conference via the industry-led International Emissions Trading Association, which has observer status. Other delegations invited representatives from Chevron, Petrobras, and other fossil fuel corporations. Meanwhile, among the sponsors of COP 25 was the utility company Endesa, the largest carbon emitter in Spain.

The fossil fuel industry has attempted to obstruct a strong climate agreement since the U.N. began negotiating the issue in the 1990s. This year, industry trade associations weighed in most heavily on a section of the agreement known as Article 6, which includes rules for emissions trading schemes. Overall, international carbon trading systems have failed to significantly reduce emissions where they’ve been implemented. Instead of simply forcing cuts via regulations, the markets allow companies to invest in climate offset projects that, in many cases, have been found to have little genuine climate impact.

The shape of the markets will make a huge difference in how much the fossil fuel industry will have to pay. At the COP, as Dobson put it, “Corporations are literally everywhere.”

Fossil Fuel Companies #MaketheFuture

Youth-washing has proliferated beyond the U.N.’s climate gatherings.

Robb pointed to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s meeting with Thunberg in September, held before he participated in a youth-led Fridays for Future march, where he was heckled by Canadians who labeled him a climate criminal. Trudeau has tried hard to frame himself as serious about the climate, but last year his government purchased Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain pipeline, a highly contested and carbon-intensive project key to keeping Canada’s tar sands industry profitable.

Of course, the most disturbing examples of youth-washing involve the fossil fuel industry. This year, BP sponsored the annual One Young World conference, sometimes referred to as “Young Davos,” and paid for 30 students focused on low-carbon energy issues to attend. At the October event, BP’s CEO and its chief economist took turns on stage. “But hang on — I’m chief economist at BP, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. What’s BP doing here? Aren’t we part of the problem? Now, I truly believe we’re not,” the economist, Spencer Dale, pitched the audience. “Companies like BP can be, and indeed need to be, part of the solution.”

And Shell has launched a #MaketheFuture campaign, suggesting that it’s building a better future rather than destroying it. The campaign promotes Shell as a driver of low-carbon technology and features images of young people as well as social media posts about the company’s funding of youth engineering and science programs.

Even the far-right CO2 Coalition, funded by the Kochs’ fossil fuel money and led by former Trump advisers who claim that CO2 emissions are good for the earth, is attempting to recruit young people. After struggling to attract support from young Republican staffers, the group has reportedly sought out students on college campuses in an attempt to “reach them a little earlier.”

“They have pretty much endless money to go out and try to move whichever constituency is most resistant to their agenda,” said 26-year-old Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice president of the progressive think tank Data for Progress.

Indeed, the tar sands giant Suncor was also the “founding partner” of Student Energy’s first Indigenous Student Energy Summit, held last January — an opportunity for the company to reach two demographics associated with fossil fuel resistance at once. Other funders of the Indigenous youth conference included Enbridge, TC Energy, and LNG Canada, all of which stand to profit from tar sands pipelines that have been halted by Indigenous-led coalitions.

Adler said that, until recently, it was only the fossil fuel industry that showed interest in funding the group’s programming. “The reality is there were very few types of organizations that were interested in youth until about a year ago,” she said.

As COP 25 wound down, with key issues unresolved, Thunberg was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. In a speech at the U.N. the same day, she referenced the way corporations and politicians have co-opted her words. “Those phrases are all that people focus on. They don’t remember the facts, the very reasons why I say those things in the first place,” she said. “I still believe that the biggest danger is not inaction — the real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like real action is happening when, in fact, almost nothing is being done apart from clever accounting and creative PR.”

What’s at stake, said Dobson, is the watering down of a forceful youth movement. “For corporations to take our images, to take the symbols of our movement and use them to validate their own activities completely disrespects the effort we put into building this grassroots movement,” she said. “It gives the illusion that the youth have sold out their values to support the activities of horrible businesses.”

Centrists Don’t Want “Party Unity”—They Want to Defend the Wealthy

WEB ONLY / VIEWS » DECEMBER 10, 2019

Attacks by moderate Democrats on Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are really about defending corporate power and structural inequality.

BY CHRISTOPHER D. COOK

http://inthesetimes.com/article/22204/centrists-democrats-2020-bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-wealthy

As the Democratic caucuses and primaries hurtle ever closer, Democratic centrists ranging from billionaire Michael Bloomberg to former President Barack Obama are waging a frantic war to stifle more progressive candidates, i.e. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

In the name of “unifying” to defeat Trump, this centrist deception falsely insists that only a moderate can bring voters together and win in 2020. This argument may sound reasonable at first glance—but it contradicts facts on the ground showing strong support for both progressive candidates and policies.

Polling shows wavering and declining support for would-be centrist standard-bearer Joe Biden, throwing into question his claims of “electability.” And while Pete Buttigieg is polling strongly in Iowa, his numbers among African-American voters—a key Democratic voting bloc—remain persistently low.

While polls are volatile and ever-shifting, some longstanding patterns are clear. Foremost, several leading Democratic candidates—including Bernie Sanders, by substantial margins—consistently beat President Trump by varying degrees, belying the centrist canard that only a moderate can win. Meanwhile, the combined polling of Sanders and Warren consistently demonstrates strong support for a progressive nominee rather than a centrist one. (While Sanders is running on a policy agenda to the left of Warren, they’re both decidedly on the progressive wing.)

Ironically, establishment Democrats insist a progressive nominee can’t win, yet the clear viability of a progressive victory in the primaries and the general election appears to be precisely what they fear.

On issue after issue, from taxing the rich to universal healthcare and free college, a majority of Democratic voters sides with the progressive wing of the party over centrist naysayers. What’s more, analysis by Gabriel Lenz, a political scientist at the University of California, shows that voters are less likely to be scared off by terms like “socialism” if they generally agree with or approve of a candidate. And as Bernie Sanders remains one of the most popular politicians in the country, boasting high approval ratings, there’s ample reason to believe that his left-wing politics would not be the liability many centrists claim.

In the latest move to stop Democrats from embracing a progressive challenge to corporate power, Bloomberg has leaped into the race, plunking down an initial $30 million nationwide ad buy.

Sanders quickly blasted Bloomberg’s multi-million-dollar entry, saying, “We do not believe that billionaires have the right to buy elections. That is why multi-billionaires like Mr. Bloomberg are not going to get very far in this election.”

As Common Dreams reports, Sanders’ speechwriter David Sirota noted that “the timing of Bloomberg’s announcement lines up with Sanders’ rise in the polls and a well-reported meeting between the media mogul and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, one of the two wealthiest men in the world alongside Microsoft founder Bill Gates.” Sirota added, “Bloomberg began floating the idea of a presidential bid in 2016, just as Bernie was beginning to gain momentum in that race. At the time, Bloomberg disparaged Bernie and his campaign’s challenge to Wall Street.”

Obama, who until recently has maintained public neutrality on the Democratic primary, hurled his centrist handwringing into the political sphere, insisting that progressive leaders (read: Sanders and Warren) are pushing the party “too far left.” Politico recently reported that the former president has “said if Sanders held a strong lead in the Democratic primary, he would speak out to prevent him from becoming the nominee.” 

One close adviser to Obama, while refusing to confirm the reports, acknowledged: “The only reason I'm hesitating at all is because, yeah, if Bernie were running away with it, I think maybe we would all have to say something.” The idea that Obama would “intervene” to help prevent a Sanders victory fits a pattern of comments from the former president dismissing progressive candidates or policies as not viable.

The Democratic establishment’s undermining of Bernie Sanders is, of course, nothing new—substantial evidence showed the DNC leadership actively worked to undermine Sanders’ 2016 campaign. This round, establishment Democrats are back at it. In one early salvo, the centrist think tank Center for American Progress published an anti-Sanders video in April criticizing the senator as a “millionaire.”

Clinton loyalist David Brock, a longtime political operative, said he’s had discussions with other operatives about an anti-Sanders campaign and believes it should commence “sooner rather than later,” the New York Times reported last April. In a story depicting centrist moves to stifle Sanders, the Times noted, “His strength on the left gives him a real prospect of winning the Democratic nomination and could make him competitive for the presidency if his economic justice message resonates in the Midwest as much as Mr. Trump’s appeals to hard-edge nationalism did in 2016.”

There is evidence that some Wall Street and corporate powerbrokers who hold sway over the Democratic Party would sit out the 2020 election, or even back Trump to avoid redistributive policies such as the wealth tax. As one senior private equity executive told CNBC anonymously: “You’re in a box because you’re a Democrat and you’re thinking, ‘I want to help the party, but [Warren is] going to hurt me, so I’m going to help President Trump.” (While some Wall Street executives singled out Warren, Sanders’ wealth tax would similarly redistribute America’s wealth downward.)   

In truth, the divisive attacks on Sanders and Warren have nothing to do with assuring Democratic unity, or victory. Rather, they serve to defend deeply embedded financial interests and the wealthy donor class on which the mainstream Democratic Party has come to rely. Such wealthy interests are adamantly opposed to the types of policies being advocated by Sanders and Warren—such as Medicare for All and a Green New Deal—that would threaten their concentrated financial and political power.

Both of these supposedly “radical” policies, which centrist candidates routinely denigrate and dismiss, boast robust nationwide support, even across party lines.

More than two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for All, surveys show, while only 20% “outright oppose” this policy. The Green New Deal, meanwhile, registered more than 80% support among voters in 2018.

While many establishment critiques claim Sanders is unelectable because of his unabashedly left agenda, by many measures, he appears more electable than most of the other candidates in the race. Sanders consistently polls better against Trump than everyone but Biden; he consistently raises more money than his opponents and recently shattered campaign records by reaching four million individual contributors and his 2016 performance in key swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin could bode well for a Sanders victory in the general election.

If the Democratic establishment’s goal is defeating Trump and winning the White House, the evidence is clear: a progressive candidate such as Sanders or Warren can absolutely win. There is, in fact, no evidence that only a centrist can.

As longtime political analyst—and former Democratic National Committee member—James Zogby recently observed, “Pundits & Dem operatives continue to insist that Bernie Sanders is too angry, too left, or too whatever to win. They’re dead wrong. He has the right tone & right issues to win a broad coalition. What won’t win is dull-edged centrism that can’t excite or convince voters.”

What the U.S. Left Can Learn From the Labour Party’s Epic Loss

WEB ONLY / VIEWS » DECEMBER 13, 2019

Liberal pundits say the lesson is that Democrats shouldn’t move left. They’re wrong.

BY DAVID ADLER

http://inthesetimes.com/article/22220/labour-party-jeremy-corbyn-boris-johnson-uk-brexit-bernie-sanders-left

The similarities are impossible to ignore. Both are aging Boomers with long resumes in the struggle for social justice. Both have campaigned on platforms of left populism that take aim at the rich and powerful. And both have helped spark social movements led by activists 50 years their junior. Yes, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders share much in common.

So, as we survey the rubble of the Labour Party’s epic defeat, which saw the largest Conservative landslide since Margaret Thatcher, it’s not unfair to ask: What went wrong? What can the the U.S. Left—and the Sanders campaign more specifically—learn from Corbyn’s loss? And, as the hot takes flood in from American pundits with little understanding of the British political system, it is equally important to ask: What should we not learn from this defeat, as well?

There are three key areas where learning will be essential, and contested:

Staving off character assassination

I knew from my time canvassing for Labour in the UK as well as from reading the polls: Jeremy Corbyn was the most unpopular opposition leader in British history.

Pundits will point to individual traits to explain his unpopularity, ranging from his personality (a hippie! with no charisma!) to his policies (he’s a Commie!) to his political allies (he cavorts with terrorists!) to his base of supporters (they’re anti-Semites, the lot of them).

But speak with many of the Labour supporters who hit the doors in this election, and they will tell you that hatred of Corbyn was far more amorphous, more ineffable, more atmospheric than this. If you were to ask a given voter why they hated Jeremy Corbyn—and I had the opportunity to ask many such voters—they were liable to say: “I just do.”

The electoral costs of such unpopularity were extreme. According to one post-election poll, 43% of respondents voted against Labour because of the party’s leadership, compared to just 17% for its stance on Brexit and 12% for its economic policies. 

What could have produced such an atmosphere of contempt? The short answer: a sustained campaign of character assassination in near every UK tabloid, mainstream newspaper and otherwise respectable publication against Jeremy Corbyn.

The case of anti-Semitism is an instructive one. Most British voters now believe that Corbyn is an anti-Semite, but few can point to an example of his anti-Semitism. Why, then, do they believe it? Because the claim was asserted, over and over, in the papers. If Corbyn weren’t anti-Semitic, voters were right to ask, why would so many stories get written about it so many months in a row? The prophecy was self-fulfilling.

Supporters of Bernie Sanders complain about his absence from mainstream reporting. CNN and MSNBC are liable to throw Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and even Elizabeth Warren onto their chyron, but ignore Sanders, despite his consistent polling near the top of the Democratic field.

But Sanders supporters appear unprepared for the next phase of this process, when he moves back into frame but straight into the crosshairs. It’s been said before but bears repeating: We have seen only a fraction of the stories that the press will use to bring down Bernie Sanders.

The U.S. Left needs to prepare for this, diligently and creatively. The Corbyn camp was far too quick to the bunker: “It’s a conspiracy by the billionaire media.” That may have been true. But the U.S. Left will need a much more proactive strategy for combatting such destructive stories and presenting an alternative vision of Sanders’ progressive personality.

Sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant—only a full-throated challenge to mounting controversy can kill it off. And that challenge may require progressive candidates to go on all available media outlets—including Fox News—and do it themselves.

Maintaining the coalition

The Labour Party electoral coalition is strikingly similar to that of the Democratic Party, in both its general composition and its direction of travel: working-class communities with low levels of education and, increasingly, wealthier city-dwellers with high levels of education.

It’s a coalition that fell to pieces in Thursday’s election. The Tory landslide was a working class wave: the Conservative Party broke through traditional Labour-voting working-class regions, formerly known as the ‘Red Wall,’ to win scores of new seats.

How did Boris Johnson—an Eton-educated, silver-spooned, elite-obsessed Tory—manage to make such gains against a Labour Party explicitly committed to the cause of the working class?

The short answer is Brexit. The question of European Union membership—or more accurately, of whether or not the British government would go ahead with the referendum decision to leave the EU—cut straight through the Labour coalition.

If the Labour Party had embraced Brexit and served as its parliamentary handmaiden, the Liberal Democrats were waiting in the wings to claim the urban middle classes as their own.

If the Labour Party moved to stymie Brexit, however, they would risk losing their Leave constituencies to a Conservative Party that promised to deliver Brexit faithfully. The Labour Party ultimately took the latter risk, and lost predictably as a result.

The good news for Democrats is, of course, that the United States has no Brexit. Nor is the Democratic Party threatened by an adjacent challenger like the Liberal Democrats.

But Americans do have an issue that closely resembles Brexit: the election of Donald Trump.

Many pundits will compare Boris Johnson and Trump, in style as in haircut. But the Brexit-Trump comparison is by far the more relevant. A vote for Trump, like a vote for Brexit, was meant to send a shock to the system and a middle finger to its political establishment. That is why Trump voters, like Brexit ones, rarely care for the immediate consequences of their vote choice: the vote was all that mattered.

If progressives are searching for lessons, then, impeachment may be a good place to start: a political strategy that could ultimately turn out to be both myopic and fruitless.

Like calling for a People’s Vote, impeaching President Trump could be seen as disrespectful to the rebel vote of the 2016 election, and could deepen the sense of discontent that gave rise to Trump in the first place. To keep its coalition together, Democrats will need to find a path to détente between its competing demographics. Impeachment alone is unlikely to be the answer.

Spin, not socialism

Finally, the S-word.

The commentariat is already swarming with takes about the peril of far-left policies. Socialism, the argument goes, was Corbyn’s Achilles heel. And it is likely to be much worse in the United States, where the S-word is wielded with much greater psychological power and historical weight.

The problem with this argument is that it’s wrong. Labour’s policies were their strongest pull—even, or especially, their most socialist ones: the nationalization of industry. A recent poll found 84% of respondents supported nationalizing the water industry. In another, 77% supported the same for energy and 76% for rail.

The issue was that, in the end, it didn’t really matter. The raft of policies that the Labour Party ushered into its manifesto—the stuff of a progressive wonk’s dreams, and the hard work of so many brilliant and creative young policy thinkers in the UK—simply did not bring people to the polls in their favor.

Simply put, socialism was not too strong an ideology, but too weak an electoral strategy.

No, spin still seems to dominate our politics: dirty, rotten spin. Johnson ran an outright corrupt campaign, disseminating lies, shirking accountability and banking on the likelihood that people wouldn’t care. It turns out that 43.6% of them didn’t—choosing to support the Tories anyway.

The lessons from this particular electoral injustice are vexed. But one is clear: Plans and policies do not deliver majorities—even if their details determine how you then govern. To win, then, progressive Democrats must get off of the page and into the street, with a message that is as simple as it is emotionally powerful.

Liberal pundits are going to stop at nothing to swing the Democratic Party back toward the center—and Corbyn’s loss will be powerful ammunition. Progressives cannot sweep it under the rug. The lessons are there, if we are willing to learn them. But in this moment of despair, those of us on the Left must keep repeating to ourselves, over and over: We can win, and we must.

Even in Bankruptcy, Coal Companies Can’t Stop Selling Out Workers

VIEWS » DECEMBER 12, 2019

The industry sees its employees like it sees the Earth: Just another resource to exploit.

BY SARAH LAZARE

http://inthesetimes.com/article/22202/coal-mining-industry-bankruptcies-workers-rights-american-miners-act

After key environmental protections were rolled back by the executive order of President Donald Trump in March 2017—including the Obama-era Clean Power Plan—coal magnate Robert E. Murray cheered the news. “I think it’s wonderful, not just for the United States coal industry, our miners and their families, but it’s wonderful for America,” said Murray, then-CEO of Murray Energy, the largest privately owned coal company in the United States. Murray had aggressively lobbied for the rollbacks, and In These Times published photos of his secret meeting, earlier that month, to deliver a four-page rollback wish list to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. It was sealed with a hug between the two.

Murray has portrayed himself as a champion of coal miners against environmentalists. “I live among these people,” he told the Guardian just before Trump signed the order. “These are the people who fought the wars and built our country and they were forgotten by Democrats who had gone to Hollywood characters, liberal elitists and radical environmentalists.”

But Murray Energy’s 2019 bankruptcy filings tell a different story. Authored by Murray’s nephew and new CEO, Robert Moore, they point to other coal companies that “used bankruptcy to reduce debt and lower their cost structures by eliminating cash interest obligations and pension and benefit obligations.” Reneging on workers’ hard-earned pensions and benefits has left competitors “better positioned to compete for volume and pricing in the current market.”

The language suggests Murray Energy intends to follow the example of companies like Westmoreland Mining and Blackjewel, using bankruptcy to evade coal miners’ healthcare and pension costs. In a particularly dastardly case, in 2007, Peabody Coal created Patriot Coal, a doomed-to-fail spinoff company, and dumped 10,000 retirees there; they lost their pensions after Patriot promptly filed for bankruptcy. But these bankrupt companies still manage to make good on their debts to banks and hedge funds.

Gary Campbell, 37, a member of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and worker at the Murray Energy-owned Marion County Coal Company in West Virginia, is scared for fellow workers who have retired. “The retirees are too old to go back to work,” Campbell says. “So what happens when they can’t afford their house payment or car payment or medical bill? They’re being thrown to the curb. It’s horrible to see people treated like this.”

There’s no question that coal workers face an uncertain future, but a phaseout of coal is a necessity: Coal is the highest carbon-emission fuel source. A 2015 study found that to prevent the worst effects of climate change, the vast majority of fossil fuels—including 92% of U.S. coal reserves—must stay in the ground. That precarity will be felt most by the poor and working class who, unlike Robert E. Murray, won’t be able to retire to a secluded mansion when heat and natural disasters threaten their homes.

The way to champion coal workers is not to save the industry from environmental regulation, as Murray would like us to think, but to ensure a just transition from a fossil fuel economy—something coal companies have no interest in, but environmentalists and labor unions do. The Green New Deal resolution put forward in February 2019 by Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) calls for the United States “to achieve netzero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.” Such a shift could bring coal miners dignified, union jobs in another sector—whether it’s coal cleanup, renewable energy, public transportation, healthcare or another field.

Stanley Sturgill, a retired UMWA coal miner and climate justice activist, advocates a just transition away from fossil fuels as part of a Green New Deal. “As far as a just transition, the only way to look at it is you have to find something equal or better paying than [the jobs] they’ve got right now,” Sturgill says. And it will be workers, not companies, who become the critical leaders in this process.

The just transition can start immediately: Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA and a vocal supporter of the Green New Deal, has repeatedly called on climate activists to support the 2019 American Miners Act (AMA), supported by UMWA. It would protect the pensions of more than 100,000 coal miners whose retirement fund was depleted by the 2008 crash and rescue the healthcare of miners whose companies went bankrupt.

The AMA is only a first step. In a just world, a full transition would include not only the dignified union jobs called for by the Green New Deal resolution, but shut down the coal companies and redistribute their assets to workers before they can go bankrupt and abandon their obligations—or further harm the climate.

At the very least, the Robert Murrays of the world should be recognized for what they are: enemies of the working people who, as Campbell puts it, “made them their fortune.” Coal companies treat their workers just as they treat the earth: something to extract value from, then discard.

The U.S. and Other Rich Countries Stonewalled $300 Billion Climate Relief Fund

FEATURES » DECEMBER 13, 2019

Furious activists protested, but mandatory measures remained lacking as negotiations continue into the night on Friday.

BY CHRISTINE MACDONALD

https://inthesetimes.com/article/22221/u.s.-and-other-rich-countries-successfully-stonewalled-300-climate-relief-f

MADRID—With climate-related disasters happening “at the rate of one a week,” according to the United Nations, more than 150 civil society organizations around the world are using the UN climate negotiations this week to stand with the Global South. They are pushing for demands set out in an open letter to negotiators in November, including a new global climate fund to aid poor countries in the midst of climate catastrophes.

The organizations say it’s about time for a rethink of climate financing as climate-related disasters like extreme storms, droughts, floods and famines take a mounting economic toll on poor countries. Worldwide costs are estimated to grow to between $300 and $700 billion a year by 2030. To cover the costs, poor countries must increasingly borrow from development aid, which is “pushing them into a debt trap,” says Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change with ActionAid International, one of the 150-plus organizations that signed the letter.

The United States and other wealthy countries made a pledge in 2010 to commit $100 billion annually to assist poorer countries, but wealthier countries have consistently failed to pay in. The new proposal calls for a comprehensive and mandatory new fund to help poor countries recover that would make an additional $50 billion available by 2022 and gradually increase the amount to $300 billion a year by 2030.

The money would come from the wealthy countries that are responsible for the vast majority of the emissions behind climate change. Additional funds could be raised from taxes on air travel, fossil fuels and financial transactions. The money would go directly to local organizations working in frontline communities in the Global South to help with rebuilding, recovery and resilience efforts.

However, with negotiations still going on as nighttime fell in Madrid, all suggestion of additional mandatory climate funds have met stiff resistance from wealthy countries. The 47 members of the Least Developed Countries group pushed new “loss and damage” funding commitments, using much of the language culled from the environmental groups’ proposal. But the rich countries that would have to foot the bill, including the United States, Singh says, “would not even engage.”

Earlier in the week, Singh expressed optimism about proposals for beefing up climate recovery funding through something called The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts, or WIM. But by late Thursday, a draft of WIM circulating among negotiators included no mention of additional funding but merely urged developed countries and others to “scale up” their financial commitments. The reality, Singh said, is that a failure to mandate additional funding would merely spread existing funds around more thinly, thus “exposing more people to climate disasters.”

The lack of commitment to countries in the Global South has prompted unprecedented protests this year, both inside of the negotiating halls, led by youth and indigenous activists, and outside on the streets, where an estimated 500,000 people marched with Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg on Friday, December 6.  On Thursday more than 300 activists from around the globe protested just outside of the room where climate talks were taking place. Banging on pots and pans in a version of what is known in Latin America as a cacerolazo, they chanted slogans and yelled “Shame!” until security guards rounded them up, snatching conference IDs from around activists’ necks and herding them out of the building.

In response, UN officials threatened to bar all international observers from the talks, saying the protests were “illegal” under the UN’s code of conduct. After tense negotiations, UN officials agreed to let some but not all of the international observers back into the conference after extracting promises not to carry out any more so-called “illegal protests.” The Fridays for Future organization responded by calling an emergency climate strike this afternoon worldwide.

Activists have denounced the UN for allowing oil company executives to roam free while controlling the access of activists. “The UN should be kicking polluters out of the talks, but instead they are kicking people out,” says Sara Shaw, international program coordinator for climate justice and energy at Friends of the Earth International.

Oil companies and the U.S. government have emerged as the biggest villains of this year’s conference. Increasingly, companies are looking to profitable approaches like trading in carbon offset projects. While wining and dining negotiators over drinks and canapes, industry experts, corporate friendly environmental groups and corporate executives have outlined an array of “market-based solutions” to the climate crisis—despite warnings from scientific experts that it’s magical thinking to assume the world can trade its way out of more than a fraction of the necessary emissions reductions. This week’s industry proposals include plans to launch broad new markets in “natural climate solutions” that will involve investing in everything from mangrove preservation to sustainable farming and more.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration, which is in the process of withdrawing from the UN Paris climate agreement, has taken advantage of its waning negotiating power to push for renewed assurances that the United States and other big polluters can’t be held accountable for historic pollution. This “liability” issue—the same one assailing the world's fossil fuel companies—have been among the most contentious issues in past climate negotiations, which is what led to the “loss and damage” provision being included to help poor countries, in the first place. As negotiations continued Friday, U.S. delegates kept pushing for a liability and compensation waiver included in the final WIM document, a move that Taylor Billings of Corporate Accountability International referred to in Buzzfeed as “an ass-covering maneuver.”

“With this waiver, the U.S. is trying to torch critical elements of climate action on its way out of the Paris Agreement—and create an escape hatch for polluting countries and potentially corporations,” Billings told In These Times. “Across the negotiations, it’s obvious that the U.S. is attempting to gut the Paris Agreement of any promise and potential. That’s what they’ve always done in these talks. Shamefully, it’s not just the U.S.—the EU, Australia and Canada are helping the U.S. do its dirty work and cowering in Trump’s shadow when questioned about it.”

“The U.S. is lighting the house on fire as it's on its way out the door and Global North governments like the EU, Australia and Canada are backing it every step of the way,” said Billings’ colleague Sriram Madhusoodanan, deputy campaigns director of Corporate Accountability, at an ActionAid press conference on the final day of the climate talks Friday.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk on the record, one person involved in negotiations told In These Times that the United States and other developed countries have been unwilling to discuss additional funding beyond the existing commitments for climate adaptation and resilience, in part because they don’t want to open the door to further discussion about climate blame. It remains a thorny issue whether wealthy industrialized countries should pay more to mitigate the impacts of climate change since they are responsible for the bulk of fossil fuel emissions, dating back to the bringing of the Industrial Revolution.

“The U.S. has been very clear that it doesn’t want anything more beyond adaption funding, because if you start talking about ‘loss and damage’ it gets into the issue of who is responsible for the fossil fuel emissions that have created the climate crisis,” the negotiator says.

 “It is the U.S., EU, Canada, Japan and Australia that are not allowing any progress,” concurs Singh.

With poor and rich countries still far apart, there’s speculation that the negotiations may end without agreement on key issues. Some of the less costly ideas outlined in the open letter have found their way into the latest draft agreement. They include language stipulating a new “expert group” by 2020 to help poor countries grappling with climate damages and the creation of a “Santiago Network” for technical assistance, but without additional funding, those measures are expected to have limited effect.

Organizations that penned the open letter, which included 350.org, Friends of the Earth International and WWF International, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Climate Justice Project, say they are not giving up and will continue to push a comprehensive new approach to climate finance even after this year’s negotiation’s wrap up. The proposal by ActionAid and the other 150-plus groups also backs a temporary interest-free moratorium on foreign debt payments of poor countries in the throes of climate disasters. But that idea didn’t even get discussed by negotiators this year.

Dylan Hamilton, a Fridays for Future activist from Scotland, said in a press conference in Madrid today that the UN process “has failed us again” and promising to bring an even bigger fight next year at the 26th annual conference in Glasgow, Scotland, a half hour from where Hamilton lives.

“Get ready,” she said. “We’re going to be even bigger next year.”

Report: Illinois EPA Staff Has Been Cut in Half and That Risks Public Health

FRIDAY, DEC 13, 2019, 11:20 AM

BY JOHNATHAN HETTINGER

https://inthesetimes.com/rural-america/entry/22218/illinois-epa-staff-cuts-fewer-pollution-investigations-environmental-health

The state's lack of investment in the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is putting citizens at increased risk of public health issues, according to a report released by a group of experts on Nov. 26.

The report, entitled “Protecting the Illinois EPA’s Health, so that It Can Protect Ours,” found that staffing at the agency has been cut in half since 2003 and, as a result, inspections of polluting facilities, monitoring of water quality and enforcement of environmental violations have decreased. The report was published by the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Chicago, with input from former IEPA leaders.

The report highlighted the issues with the agency in order to call for a renewed investment to restore the agency back to where it was 15 years ago. In 2003, the IEPA had 1,265 employees. In 2018, the agency had 639.

The decline has been consistent and gradual, the report showed.

"There are real problems at the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency," said Mark Templeton, clinical professor of law and director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Chicago, and an author of the report. 

“The Illinois EPA appreciates the report’s acknowledgement of some of the challenges faced by state government regulators. Like many Illinois state agencies, headcount and resources have decreased steadily over a number of years and under a number of directors and administrations," said Illinois EPA Spokeswoman Kim Biggs in an emailed statement on Nov. 27. "The Pritzker Administration and the Illinois EPA have been actively working to boost hiring, find creative ways to increase revenues, and effectively enforce environmental laws and regulations.”

In 2018, the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting published an analysis of staffing cuts that showed fewer inspections were being conducted, fewer violation notices were being issued and cases referred to the Attorney General had decreased significantly. The story was footnoted in the report.

"They don't have the resources to do everything they need to do," said Doug Scott, who served as IEPA Director from 2005 to 2011 when the employee headcount declined from 1,119 to 923. Scott said, during the decline, the agency has also assumed more responsibilities, as the federal government rolls back the U.S. EPA.

The Illinois EPA has posted 161 positions this year, according to the agency. Between 2013 and 2017, 276 positions were posted. The agency also said they plan to hire a new staff person to oversee recruitment and retention.

The report took about a year to compile, Templeton said.

The authors argue the IEPA needs to get on better footing by increasing fees on polluters, implementing new sources of revenue and a staffing plan to increase timely hiring. 

Other issues highlighted by the report show that inspections of air pollutant emitting facilities have declined by 81 percent since 2003, and nearly 85 percent of river and stream miles and more than 50 percent of lake, reservoir and pond areas have not been assessed for health. 

Mary Gade, who served as IEPA director from 1991 to 1999, said the agency’s work is about “life and death.” The agency has not received any general appropriations from the state since 2003, when the decline started. The decline has continued under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

“This is both a wake-up call and a call to action, to take notice and to take action,” Gade said. “The slow gradual decline needs to be reversed and reversed quickly.”

Why Did Democrats Give Trump a Win on NAFTA 2.0?

WEDNESDAY, DEC 11, 2019, 4:09 PM

BY MICHAEL ARRIA

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22212/democrats-trump-nafta-2.0-trumka-pelosi-usmca

On Tuesday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Democrats had reached a deal with the Trump administration to advance the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), also referred to as “NAFTA 2.0.” In explaining the deal, she said: "There is no question of course that this trade agreement is much better than NAFTA."

Progressives have criticized Pelosi for potentially handing President Trump a political victory during both an impeachment process and an approaching election. After all, Trump ran on the promise that he would renegotiate NAFTA and now it seems that, with help from the Democrats, he will. That could mean more GOP votes in swing states that have been wracked by the damage of the original NAFTA deal. “It does appear that if Trump gets a win on this new NAFTA, his chances of reelection go up considerable,” wrote The Intercept’s Ryan Grim. “He can say he delivered on his promises, and that Democrats don’t really think he’s that corrupt after all, or they wouldn’t have delivered him such a major victory.”

For her part, Pelosi appears to believe that the deal might ultimately be beneficial for moderate Democrats at election time, and many House Democrats certainly seem happy with the final version of the agreement. “You know what I’ve said: These have been the fights,” Pelosi reportedly told party members during a caucus meeting after the agreement was secured. “And we stayed on this, and we ate their lunch.”

The political implications of USMCA remain to be seen and, since the final text of the agreement hasn’t yet been released, it’s hard to assess its full impact. But we already have a pretty good idea of what kind of relief it will supply for workers: not much. A report by economists Thea M. Lee and Robert E. Scott at the Economic Policy Institute concedes that USMCA is a big improvement from the 2017 version, but concludes that it ultimately adds up to “Band-Aids on a fundamentally flawed agreement and process.”

Using statistics from the U.S. International Trade Commission, Lee and Scott point out that, at best, the deal will only create about 51,000 jobs over the next six years and could raise the GDP by a few tenths of a percentage point. These potential jobs would come in farming, manufacturing and mining. The report cites an International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper which predicts nothing but bad news for the (already beleaguered) auto-industry. That same paper concludes that, “At the aggregate level, effects of the USMCA are relatively small...effects of the USMCA on real GDP are negligible.”

Trump continually referenced the devastating impact of NAFTA on the campaign trail, while arguing that it desperately needed to be renegotiated. However, the new agreement does nothing to reverse the damage. While USMCA might generate 51,000 jobs, NAFTA eliminated over 680,000 of them.

Still, USMCA was ultimately endorsed by the AFL-CIO, which also infamously supported the construction of the Keystone pipeline and has criticized the Green New Deal. Not only did the AFL-CIO back the agreement, its President Richard Trumka was instrumental in securing an agreement between Democrats and Republicans.

A piece detailing the negotiations by Politico’s Megan Cassella reveals that Pelosi refused to move the agreement forward unless Trumka signed off on it. She knew that an endorsement from the group would give pro-labor Democrats enough cover to come out in support of it. “I think everyone would acknowledge that Trumka is key,” working group member Rep. John Larson (D-CT) admitted during the process.

Cassella reports that Pelosi ultimately had Trumka come to Congress to assure lawmakers that he was on the verge of supporting the deal. Ultimately, he got on the phone with Trump and after the president agreed to think about moving a pension bill forward, Trumka slapped the deal with an AFL-CIO endorsement.

At least one AFL-CIO member isn’t waiting for the final text to decide whether or not the agreement is worth supporting. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) released a statement declaring its opposition to the agreement, citing the fact that it does nothing to stem the outsourcing of jobs abroad. “Our ability to comment in detail on this agreement is impaired because in the rush to consider such a proposal, we have not even been given the opportunity to review the full agreement in writing,” said the group’s International President, Robert Martinez Jr. “U.S. workers have been waiting for over 25 years for a responsible trade deal that puts their interests ahead of corporations who are fleeing our shores. They are still waiting. The IAM will oppose NAFTA 2.0.”

Robert E. Scott, co-author of the aforementioned EPI report, told In These Times that IAM’s opposition to the deal wasn’t surprising based on what NAFTA has done to the industry. “The aerospace has been hard hit by outsourcing to Mexico,” said Scott, “Their members are very concerned. I don't think there’s anything in there for them. Very transactional deal.”

While Pelosi worked diligently to pass USMCA, she’s failed to move a robust pro-labor bill forward in the House. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) was introduced in May by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA). The bill would make it easier for workers to join unions, extinguish right-to-work laws, crack down on union-busting, address employee misclassification and provide new protections for collective bargaining. The bill already passed the House Committee on Education and Labor earlier this fall.

“I don’t know exactly what the holdup is—it is taking longer than it should given the number of co-sponsors that we have,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) told The Intercept’s Rachel Cohen earlier this month, “Many other bills have come to the floor with fewer co-sponsors than this one.”