2 Years Since Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab Was Abducted for Defying U.S. Sanctions

Record-breaking heat waves and economic hits as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted governments in the United States and the United Kingdom to consider enacting a Green New Deal (GND). But how might these GNDs play out? Will they curb emissions? More importantly, will they curb emissions while upholding the principles of social justice and equity?

In May 2021, Leon Sealey-Huggins, assistant professor in the global sustainable development division at the University of Warwick, wrote a detailed critique of GNDs, including those adopted by the U.S. Democrats and the U.K. Conservatives. Titled, “‘Deal or No Deal?’ Exploring the Potential, Limits and Potential Limits of Green New Deals,” the report calls for closer scrutiny. “GNDs that fail to address the fundamental questions of power, ownership and control will also fail to adequately ameliorate the injustices of climate breakdown,” the report stated.

GNDs also fail to address the need for drastic emissions reductions. 

“Zero by 2050 is a global average target, and to be compatible with the principles of equity and justice under the Paris Agreement, rich nations have a responsibility to reduce emissions much more quickly than this, reaching zero by around 2030,” Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist in Eswatini, the southern African country formerly known as Swaziland, told Toward Freedom. Hickel serves on the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe and on the Harvard-Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. Hickel said GNDs need to include clear and explicit language on scaling down fossil fuels to zero, with binding annual targets. 

“Right now, this language is totally absent,” he added.

 

Current Green New Deals Will Perpetuate Injustice 

Max Ajl, an associated researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment, said Sealey-Huggins’ critique is spot on. Ajl explained GNDs aim at “recolonizing the Third World through monocrop tree plantations, converting the Third World into biofuel plantations and other coercive mechanisms, rather than figuring out ways to reconstruct the United States and the European Union, so they remain socially complex, modern and industrial, but become sustainable, egalitarian and non-imperialist societies.” (“Third World” originally referred to developing states that did not align with the United States nor with the former Soviet Union. In this context, it refers to countries in the global South.) Ajl also is author of the recent book, A People’s Green New Deal.

Others, too, have expressed similar fears about further colonialism via GNDs. For instance, in a op-ed for Al Jazeera, Myriam Douo, a steering group member of Equinox

Initiative For Racial Justice, writes that by employing corporate solutions for climate change, the “EU’s Green Deal will entrench further European neocolonial practices.” Douo notes demand for metals such as nickel, cobalt and lithium has been driving labor abuses and environmental destruction. Such is the case in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in lithium mines of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

The transition to clean energy requires metals like cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel and zinc for battery technology in electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines. A March 2021 report identified that about half the global supply of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); over 80 percent of the global supply of lithium comes from Australia, Chile and Argentina; and 60 percent of the global supply of manganese comes from South Africa, China and Australia.

Between 2010 and 2020, a total of 276 allegations of human-rights abuses were identified in connection with companies that hold a majority-market share in clean energy minerals like cobalt, lithium and manganese, according to the Transition Minerals Tracker report released in February 2021.

Community impacts in the areas of health, violence and Indigenous rights constitute the biggest chunk of human-rights violations, while environmental impacts rank second. Pays to note that many of the countries that hold vast reserves of such minerals are already vulnerable—whether in terms of climate impacts or quality of human life in general.

 

Space for Improvement

Hickel noted that GNDs, as drafted, focus on emissions to the exclusion of resource use. 

“We are overshooting a number of other planetary boundaries, which is being driven by excess resource use,” Hickel said. “Rich nations are overwhelmingly responsible for this problem, with per capita resource use vastly in excess of sustainable levels. The GNDs need to incorporate binding targets to reduce resource use.”

Ajl agreed. “The existing GNDs, including those from most progressives, are oriented to maintaining private control over the means of production, to ignoring climate debt, and to using materials-intensive technologies to solve what are often social more than technical problems,” Ajl said.

In the critique, Sealey-Huggins references versions of the GND Resolution, which the Biden administration might adopt. The resolution first was introduced in 2019 by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-OR), both a part of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. It cites itself as the first comprehensive plan in the United States that aims to tackle the scale of the climate crisis by recognizing deep-rooted economic inequalities. In April 2021, they re-introduced the legislation after it failed to advance in the Senate in 2019.

The GND resolution aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers. More specifically, it calls for actions like overhauling the transportation system, supporting family farming and investing in sustainable farming and land-use practices that increase soil health and restoring natural ecosystems. Biden’s plan for clean energy and environmental justice references the GND as “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.”

But according to Ajl, even the original GND legislation progressives are promoting has its share of problems because it doesn’t do enough to fundamentally transform the system.

Sealey-Huggins too pointed out GNDs in the United States and the United Kingdom show a preference for highly technical, emissions-focused policies. And that by doing so, fail to democratize ownership and control via tools like social organization, redistribution and repair. He went even further to criticize roles adopted by institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has conditioned aid on cuts to welfare services.

Sealey-Huggins suggests “reparative justice” as a path forward. That would involve global redistribution of power, wealth and resources; building grassroots power;  and recognizing “shared goals” with movements led by the world’s Indigenous, African and oppressed peoples.

Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

On February 3, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio. 50 out of 100 train cars ran off the tracks, igniting a massive fire that could be seen from miles away. Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio issued an evacuation order on February 5, due to the possibility of a major explosion. Local community members and activists across the country have sounded the alarms regarding the impacts the incident could have on public health and environment. Many have pointed to reports of animals dying en masse as evidence. Yet, despite the public outcry over the environmental and public health catastrophe, the actions of Ohio authorities reflect an attitude of concealment.

A reporter with NewsNation was recently violently arrested while covering one of Governor DeWine’s news conferences regarding the derailment. Police officers claimed that the reporter, Evan Lambert, was being too loud while the governor was speaking and in response, tackled him to the ground and handcuffed him. Lambert was released from jail the same day. “No journalist expects to be arrested when you’re doing your job,” Lambert told NewsNation.

Ohio officials claim that they have received no reports of animals dying in or near East Palestine, despite multiple public reports of local animal deaths. NewsNation obtained a video of dead fish in the Ohio River near East Palestine. According to Wildlife Officer Supervisor Scott Angelo, these fish could have died due to toxic fumes dissolving oxygen in the water, although the causes have not been confirmed. Farmer Taylor Holzer claims that his foxes have fallen mortally ill after the derailment.

Many concerns of East Palestine residents, as well as those of the rest of the nation, stem from the fact that the derailed train had 20 cars carrying hazardous materials. Norfolk Southern Railroad conducted a “controlled release” on February 6 of several tankers that ran the risk of explosion. State officials are yet to inform residents of East Palestine about what effect this “controlled release” of toxic fumes, combined with a massive fire burning for five days, will have. Five of the derailed cars contained vinyl chloride, a carcinogen linked to various forms of cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is monitoring two other toxic chemicals: phosgene and hydrogen chloride. Public health experts have already indicated that the effects of these chemicals could last decades. “There’s a lot of what ifs, and we’re going to be looking at this thing 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line and wondering, ‘Gee, cancer clusters could pop up, you know, well water could go bad,” Silverado Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist, told NewsNation. Most recently, the EPA discovered that three other toxic chemicals were present in the derailed train.

Railroad Workers Point to Cost-Cutting As the Culprit

For unionized rail workers, the train derailment exposes systemic failures in a railroad system that is driven by profit, not safety. Railroad Workers United (RWU), a cross-union workers’ organization, writes, “in the last 10 years, the Class One carriers [rail companies with the highest revenues] have dramatically increased both the length and tonnage of the average train, while cutting back on maintenance and inspection, and we have a time bomb ticking.”

A report by The Lever highlighted that in 2017 during Republican Donald Trump’s presidency, Norfolk Southern lobbyists successfully rescinded regulations aimed at improving railroad safety regulations. Specifically, the company successfully beat back measures that would require train cars carrying hazardous, flammable materials to be equipped with electronic brakes which can stop trains more effectively than conventional brakes. Railroad company donors delivered over USD$6 million to Republican Party campaigns in the 2016 election cycle, but still claimed that safety regulations would “impose tremendous costs without providing offsetting safety benefits.”

Norfolk Southern made a record of over USD$12 billion in revenue last year, and recently announced a USD$10 million stock buyback program.

Last year, railroad workers in the United States were on the cusp of a strike, which would have shattered the U.S. economy as rail workers are some of the most essential workers in the nation. Workers were demanding more sick leave to combat the effects of “Precision Scheduled Railroading,” a corporate scheme to cut costs by demanding more work from fewer workers. Infamously, U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress blocked rail workers’ right to strike by rapidly passing legislation that forced workers to accept an agreement without sick days.

Railroad Workers United argues that Precision Scheduled Railroading, and the overworking, lay-offs and lack of safety measures that unionized workers were fighting for last year were a primary reason for the derailment. One of the causes of the derailment, RWU argues, is that a damaged car was allowed to leave a terminal due to cut inspection times and layoffs. The train was also not blocked properly, the group claims, because blocking a train properly takes longer and therefore has been mostly done away with by rail companies. More Perfect Union has pointed out that rail companies have cut 22 percent of railroad jobs since 2017. Unionized workers were planning to use their right to strike to combat this trend in 2022. Instead, they were forced back to work on penalty of arrest.

This article was produced by Peoples Dispatch/Globetrotter News Service.

As Afghanistan’s economy continues to spiral, as many as 34 million Afghans are living below the poverty line, says a new UN report. The “Afghanistan Socio-Economic Outlook 2023” report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on April 18 highlights the impact of cuts in international aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban took power.

The report notes that the number of people below the poverty line in Afghanistan has increased from 19 million in 2020 to 34 million today. It also adds, “Even if the UN aid appeal for international assistance to reach $4.6 billion in 2023 succeeds, it may fall short of what is needed to improve conditions for millions of Afghans.”

The UNDP report comes after the UN said that it was “reviewing its presence” in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s ban on Afghan women from working for the international organization earlier this month. The UN statement suggested that it may be planning to suspend its operations in the country.

The report also notes that Afghanistan is currently facing a severe fiscal crisis after the ending of foreign assistance “that previously accounted for almost 70 percent of the government budget.” A severe banking crisis also continues. In 2022, Afghanistan’s GDP contracted by 3.6 percent. The report adds that the average real per capita income has also declined by 28 percent from the 2020 level.

On May 1, the UN began holding crucial talks regarding Afghanistan in Doha. The participants include the five permanent UN Security Council members, countries in the region such as Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and key players such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Notably, the de facto Taliban government of Afghanistan was not invited to participate. “Any meeting about Afghanistan without the participation of the Afghan government is ineffective and counterproductive,” said Abdul Qahar Balkhi, Taliban foreign ministry spokesman.