In this compelling video from She The People Summit 2018, Senator Turner talks about the power of love bringing together “women of a rainbow mosaic” to challenge the systemic injustices of our nation.
Author: telegraph
The Three Big Lessons We Didn’t Learn From The Economic Crisis
Ten years ago, after making piles of money gambling with other people’s money, Wall Street nearly imploded, and the outgoing George W. Bush and incoming Obama administrations bailed out the bankers.
America should have learned three big lessons from the crisis. We didn’t, to our continuing peril.
First unlearned lesson: Banking is a risky business with huge upsides for the few who gamble in it, but bigger downsides for the public when those bets go bad.
Which means that safeguards are necessary. The safeguards created after Wall Street’s 1929 crash worked for over four decades. They made banking boring.
But starting in the 1980s, they were watered down or repealed because of Wall Street’s increasing thirst for profits and its growing political clout. As politicians from both parties grew dependent on the Street for campaign funding, the rush to deregulate turned into a stampede.
It began in 1982 when Congress and the Reagan administration deregulated savings and loan banks – allowing them to engage in risky commercial lending, while continuing to guarantee them against major losses.
Not surprisingly, the banks got into big trouble, necessitating a taxpayer-funded bailout.
The next milestone came in 1999, when Congress and the Clinton Administration, under then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, repealed the Glass-Steagall Act – a 1930s safeguard that had prohibited banks from gambling with commercial deposits. (For the record, I was no longer in the Cabinet.)
Then in 2000, Congress and Clinton barred the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating most over-the-counter derivative contracts, including credit default swaps.
The coup de grace came in 2004, when George W. Bush’s Securities and Exchange Commission allowed investment banks to hold less capital in reserve.
All of this ushered in the 2008 near meltdown – which was followed by another attempt to impose safeguards, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010.
And now? The Street’s political clout is as great as ever, which explains why the Dodd-Frank safeguards are now being watered down – clearing the way for another crisis.
The second lesson we should have learned but didn’t is how widening inequality makes our economy susceptible to financial disaster.
In the decades leading up to 2008, stagnant wages caused many Americans to go deep into debt – using the rising values of their homes as collateral. Much the same thing had happened in the years leading up to 1929.
Wall Street banks were delighted to accommodate – lending willy-nilly and often in predatory ways – until the housing and debt bubbles burst.
And now? The underlying problem of stagnant wages, with most economic gains going to the top, is still with us. Once again, consumers are deep in debt – inviting another crisis.
The third big lesson we didn’t learn concerned the rigging of American politics. After the crisis, many Americans realized that Wall Street, big corporations, and the wealthy had essentially bought up our democracy.
Americans saw the Street get bailed out while homeowners, suddenly owing more on their homes than the homes were worth, got little or nothing.
Millions lost their jobs, savings, pensions, and homes, but the bankers and big investors came out richer than before.
Bankers who committed serious fraud escaped accountability. No executive went to jail. Big banks like Wells Fargo continued to break laws with impunity.
Many officials involved in deregulating the Street became top executives in the Wall Street banks that benefited from deregulation. Some involved in writing the Dodd-Frank Act are now employed by the same financial institutions that are watering it down.
Meanwhile, big corporations and wealthy individuals continue to flood Washington with money, making it the capital of “crony capitalism.”
Widespread outrage at all this fueled the Tea Party on the Right and the brief “Occupy” movement on the Left. Both eventually morphed into the two anti-establishment candidacies of 2016 – authoritarian populist Donald Trump and democratic populist Bernie Sanders.
And now? Anti-establishment fury remains the strongest force in American politics.
Trump has been using it to conjure up racist and xenophobic conspiracies and to create the most authoritarian regime in modern American history. He promised to “drain the swamp” but has made it bigger and filthier.
Democrats don’t know whether to simply oppose Trump and his authoritarianism, or get behind a reform agenda to wrest control of politics and the economy from the moneyed interests.
But to do the latter they’d have to take on those that have funded them for decades. I wish I had more confidence they will.
Sad to say, ten years after the near meltdown of Wall Street we seem to have learned very little. Only worse: We now have Trump.
Why We Should Be Protesting The National Anthem
From day one, the United States has always struggled to walk its talk. In 1776, as the U.S. declared itself independent from Great Britain, the framers of said declaration noted that “all men are created equal.” But Thomas Jefferson, the lead author of the Declaration of Independence, owned men. In his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” he compared Africans to apes. He had sex with an enslaved woman and kept her children in bondage.
This is not just me looking back 242 years and imposing my present-day worldview onto a different era — the hypocrisy was seen and known in real-time.
“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?’’ English writer Samuel Johnson wrote in 1775. A year later, English abolitionist Thomas Day wrote, “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature it is an American patriot signing resolutions of independency with the one hand and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.”
In other words, we are expected to judge this nation’s early leaders on their words and not their deeds. When it comes to the past, we’re supposed to basically do the opposite of what Martin Luther King Jr. said we should do in his “I Have a Dream” speech: actually overlook the content of someone’s character.
Here’s the thing, though: It appears that that’s easier for some people to do than others. I’m stuck. I am simply incapable of respecting someone who bought, sold, traded, bred, and forced human beings into a brutal life of slavery. It’s a disqualifier for me. And my guess is that, the less your ancestors were affected by such a practice, the less of a disqualifier it is for you. But some of us value black lives so much that we find it pretty hard to be wooed by someone’s otherwise brilliant words when they owned black people. Kind of like how it’s hard to marvel over the poetry of Nazis or the photographic skills of 9/11 hijackers. At some point your character, or lack thereof, gets in the way of your contributions.
Francis Scott Key, the author of what is now known as our national anthem, absolutely needs to be on the list of folks drummed out of polite company for their transgressions. He was a genuinely horrible human being. He was an open, flagrant bigot. He was not a silent bigot; he put his bigotry into words and actions.
Key said that African-Americans were “a distinct and inferior race of people.” Of course he thought that: He came from a long line of slaveowners. His family got wealthy off buying, selling, trading, breeding, and working human beings to death. He continued the practice himself and owned human beings for most of his life. Not only that, but as the district attorney of Washington, D.C., Key fought against the rights and human dignity of black people every chance he got. In case after case, he fought against the rights of abolitionists and sought any means available to silence them.
All the way back in 1833, Key was defending heinous incidents of police brutality against African-Americans. The man fought to protect slavery until the day he died. He was no timid beneficiary — Key fought tooth and nail to protect it.
All of that results in me having a problem with Francis Scott Key. I don’t care how great his poetry may or may not have been — I see him as evil. I see slavery as an evil institution. Participating in it, for Key, was not a one-time choice, but a gross daily decision to benefit from and defend at all costs.
When he wrote a poem based on his eyewitness account of the War of 1812, it makes perfect sense that his absolute loathing of free black people found itself into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” There, Key gleefully wrote about the murder of enslaved Africans that had been enlisted in the fighting. Their deaths were a highlight for him. The poem says:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
This poem bothers me. Again, this is not me viewing the 19th century through a 21st century lens. It bothered abolitionists of the day. They, too, were irked by how easily the deaths of enslaved Africans could be celebrated in the same stanza in which this land was hailed as “the land of the free.” Abolitionists even created other songs to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that spoke of the true pain and costs of slavery and how desperately freedom was desired.
There’s a reason why this history is so important. Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick started his demonstration during the national anthem to protest the repetitive cycle of systemic injustice and police brutality in this nation. It did not feel right to him to stand up to a song full of empty promises.
Kaepernick is not alone in the annals of sports. Jackie Robinson, in the final years of his life, in 1972, reflected back on injustice in this nation and said, “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag.” And he was a veteran who gave years of his life in the military. It all ringed so hollow to him.
And it does to me as well. I am a man. I have a brain. I have a heart and soul. My fight in this country is against injustice. The same is true of Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid and so many other NFL players who’ve taken a knee. But something weird has happened where it’s now seemingly politically incorrect to say that anybody is protesting the anthem.
So let me say it: I am protesting the anthem.
I am protesting its deeply bigoted author — who owned human beings for convenience and profit.
And I am protesting injustice in this nation on behalf of so many families that continue to experience systematic racism, police brutality, and inequality — all while others expect us to get up and sing with a heart full of happiness.
I’ll take a pass.
Stephanie Kelton Wants You To Rethink The Deficit
Stephanie Kelton, an economics professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island in New York, has a radical new way for thinking about the economy: Governments that print and borrow their own currency can’t go bankrupt, she says, and the current U.S. budget deficit is, if anything, too small.
That kind of thinking is part of a school of economic thought known as modern monetary theory, or MMT, which Kelton has helped develop. But she also wants to tell me a story from 2012, years before she became better known as an advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.
At that time, Kelton was invited to an all-male breakfast club of the Kansas City rich and powerful. Despite her left-leaning views—and being the only woman—she won the room over.
How she did it is a testimony to her rhetorical and intellectual skills and to just how much her thinking confounds a political graph that is defined solely by tax and spending axes.
Kelton, 48, explained to the room in Kansas City that the government budget is not like a household budget because the government prints its own money. But the problem is that Washington always wants to know how to pay for new programs.
That’s a problem for you, she says she told her listeners, because the conventional wisdom in the capital is that money “grows on rich people” and you pay for nice things by taking it from them.
“Don’t look at me,” she instructed her audience to tell lawmakers. “That’s where the money comes from. And you point at the Treasury. You point at Congress.” And she won the room over.
Insisting that government spending comes from taxes, she says, puts the rich at the center of American policy-making in an unhealthy way. And the very rich, Kelton’s experience shows, are pleased to hear that you don’t have to tax to spend.
Here’s what else she had to say.
Let’s start from the top. The way the federal government works is it takes in money from taxes, and then it spends it. Right?
Well, that’s the usual belief. How it really works is that there’s a constant overlap of things happening. That when Congress sits down, in an ideal scenario, the House and the Senate would come up with budgets. And in all likelihood, they won’t match exactly. And so there will be reconciliation. The budget will either pass or not. It gets signed by the president or not. Congress is writing down numbers and saying, “This is our intention, to spend in these amounts.” And the budget authorization is given that allows the heads of these agencies to go out and start hiring, engaging in contracts. It’s the authorization from Congress that provides the funding. That triggers the spending.
The conventional wisdom about deficits is that we should always be worried about them. When do you worry about deficits?
I worry not just about the magnitude, but about the purpose. We could add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, as we just did with tax cuts that go disproportionately to people in the top-income distribution, and we could have done, for instance, student debt cancellation at virtually the same price tag. We could have done massive infrastructure investment, or R&D investment.
You can have the same budgetary outcome, but very different economic outcomes, in terms of the potential to boost long-term growth and productivity, impacts on the distribution of income, and so forth. Every economy has its own internal speed limit. You can only absorb so much additional spending at any point in time, given the slack that the economy has at that moment. So can the deficit be too big? Of course! But can it be too small? Yes. And that’s something you rarely hear people say. Or complain about it.
It seems like people forget that balance sheets have two sides.
Government debt is just the money the government spent into the economy and didn’t tax back. That’s all the national debt is. It’s a historical record of all of the times that they made a net deposit, spent more than they taxed out, and the bonds are the difference between those. One of the greatest cons ever perpetrated on the American people is this notion that the national debt belongs to us, that we are responsible in our individual capacity for a share of it.
The national debt clock that counts up exactly how much is owed by every man, woman and child in America!
When I worked on the Hill, one of my favorite exercises was to find elected officials, staffers, and ask them if you had a magic wand, and you could wave it, and eliminate the national debt tomorrow, would you do it? Of course. Who wouldn’t do that? Yes, I mean, the quickest “yes” you ever got in your life.
OK, what if I gave you a different wand, and I told you, you can wave the magic wand, and you can eradicate the world of U.S. Treasuries. There won’t be Treasury notes anymore. They’ll just all be gone. How many members of Congress, would do that?
Zero.
They looked at me with a total blank stare.
Why do you think that people generally, and politicians in particular, are stuck on this notion of the government spending being like a household or an individual?
In some ways, it’s rhetorically convenient. No politician wants to stand, I think, in a town hall meeting and try to explain the intricacies of government finance to constituents. So it’s a convenient narrative to just reinforce the conventional wisdom, the norms of understanding. And I think it also provides political cover.
You advised Sen. Bernie Sanders, and you’re a major proponent of a jobs guarantee, support Medicare for all, free college tuition, and on—all things the left wants. Do you think that modern monetary theory has an inherent set of politics?
No. When we started undertaking the research for this body of scholarship that’s now dubbed MMT, it was an exercise in trying to understand the monetary system, the way things work. We just wanted to get a better understanding of how the economy works, how fiscal and monetary operations work. At least 90% of MMT is descriptive in nature. But if you believe that the economy chronically operates under its full potential, then it makes sense to look for policy recommendations to make things more efficient, to maximize potential output. And MMT’s not the only school of thought that does that. You see that with classical supply-siders as well. They think the way to squeeze out the last bit of potential is largely through tax cuts and deregulation.
What about Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Argentina, and their debt crises? They exist. Why don’t those things worry you?
Well, the debt crises in those countries are worrying to me. But it’s not a lesson for America. You know, back in 2010, at the height of the European debt crisis, I can remember standing in my kitchen with the TV on, and turning on the news, cooking dinner, and seeing the opening to the nightly news. And it goes, dah, dah, dah, the debt crisis in America. And I go, what debt crisis in America? But that is really what the narrative started to become: This is a warning for America. We need to get our fiscal house in order.
What’s different? Look, Italy in 1995 had a debt-to-GDP ratio of around 120%. Spain in 1995 had a debt ratio of 62%. Greek debt-to-GDP over 100% before joining the euro. These countries were borrowing and spending in a currency that they created. Who remembers the debt crisis in Europe in ’95? There was no debt crisis in ’95, because Italy could always meet every obligation that came due, on time, in full, because it was paying in lira. Where and how else is the lira going to come from but the Italian government?
Do you think openness to MMT and view of deficits and government debt is generational? Do old people just not get it?
I think so. For a certain demographic, the ’70s are still kind of a fresh memory, and you know, waiting in long lines to put gas in the car, high inflation. And so that’s a live memory for some demographic. But young people—I mean, Obama’s slogan was “Yes we can.” And then all hell breaks loose, and he’s on TV right after the inauguration saying, we ran out of money, so no, we can’t. And then you get Hillary Clinton’s message, which was pretty much, “Yes, we can a little bit.” And millennials see their future, they see climate change, and they take it seriously. They see the cost of college education. They see problems with health care. They can’t get out of the home and start a life. They’re open to a big, ambitious agenda. The threats are real for them.
The Dangerous Myth Of Deregulation
Trump and his appointees are on a binge of deregulation that masks another kind of trickle-down economics, where the gains go to the top and the rest of us bear the risks and losses.
They say getting rid of regulations frees up businesses to be more profitable. Maybe. But regulations also protect you and me — from being harmed, fleeced, shafted, injured, or sickened by corporate products and services.
So when the Trump administration gets rid of regulations, top executives and big investors may make more money, but the rest of us bear more risks and harm.
After heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency has scaled back the way the government decides whether some of the most dangerous chemicals on the market pose health and safety risks. Which may increase the profits of the chemical industry but will leave the rest of us less protected from toxins that can make their way into dry-cleaning solvents, paint strippers, shampoos and cosmetics.
Scott Pruitt may be gone from the EPA, but Trump put a former coal executive in his place. Which means the EPA will continue to try to repeal the Clean Power Plan, a regulation that set the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from U.S. power plants. If it’s repealed, wealthy shareholders may do better, but most of us will bear the costs of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and faster climate change.
Trump’s Education Department under Betsy DeVos has stopped investigating for-profit colleges. Which may result in more profits for the for-profits, but leaves many young people and their parents more vulnerable to fraud.
Trump’s Labor Department is reducing the number of workers who are eligible for overtime pay. And it’s proposing to allow teenagers to work long hours in dangerous jobs that child labor laws used to protect them from. Again, more profits for business, more cost and risk for the rest of us.
Trump is weakening banking regulations put in place after the financial crisis of 2008, even rolling back the so-called Volcker Rule that prevented banks from gambling with commercial deposits. The result: More profits for the banks, and more risk on you and me.
Trump’s gang of industry lobbyists and executives who are busy deregulating the same industries they once represented will no doubt do very well when they head back into the private sector.
But the rest of us won’t do well. We may not know for years the extent we’re unprotected – until the next financial collapse, next public health crisis, next upsurge in fraud, or next floods or droughts because the EPA failed to do what it could to slow and reverse climate change.
Don’t fall for it. Trump’s binge of deregulation is just another form of trickle-down economics – where the gains go the top, and nothing trickles down except risks and losses.
End The Unconstitutional War In Yemen Now
Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Adam Smith (WA-09), Mark Pocan (WI-02), Jim McGovern (MA-02), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), Michael Capuano (MA-07), Yvette Clarke (NY-09), Ted Lieu (CA-33), Barbara Lee (CA-13), and Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) today announced the introduction of a House privileged resolution to remove U.S. military forces supporting Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen.
U.S. support of this conflict continues to fuel the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, killing over 5,000 civilians, and at least 50,000 dead as a result of mass starvation, famine and cholera outbreaks.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said:
“For too long, the United States has turned a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against civilians in Yemen by the Saudi-U.S. coalition. Just last month, the Saudi-led coalition dropped a U.S.-made bomb in adevastating attack on a school bus that killed 40 children; just the latest in a long string of horrors in this genocidal war that has killed tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians, with bombs and mass starvation, creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
“Yet today in Yemen, our military continues to wage this interventionist war alongside Saudi Arabia, unauthorized by Congress. The time for crocodile tears and baseless platitudes is over. Enough is enough. The U.S. must end its support for Saudi Arabia, and stop waging interventionist wars that increase destruction, death, and suffering around the world, drain our resources here at home, and threaten our own national security.”
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is a leading voice for peace in Congress, advocating against counterproductive, regime-change wars. She has condemned U.S. support of Saudi Arabia in the Yemen civil war, pushed for additional oversight on acquisition and cross-service agreements (Section 1271 of the FY19 NDAA), and supported H. Con. Res. 81, a bipartisan resolution that sought to stop U.S. military participation in Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthis in Yemen, and more.
Reps. Tulsi Gabbard and Walter Jones also introduced H.Res 922, which would reclaim Congress’s constitutional right to declare war by:
- Defining presidential wars not declared by Congress under Article I, section 8, clause 11 (Declare War Clause) as impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors”
- Prohibiting the President from perpetuating ongoing wars or supplying war materials, military troops, trainers, or advisers, military intelligence, financial support or their equivalent in association, cooperation, assistance, or common cause without first receiving congressional authorization
Trump’s Policies Will Displace The Dollar
The benefits that the US reaps from having the world’s main international currency are diminishing with the rise of the euro and renminbi. And now President Donald Trump’s misguided trade wars and anti-Iran sanctions will accelerate the move away from the dollar.
Back in 1965, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then France’s Minister of Finance, famously called the benefits that the United States reaped from the dollar’s role as the world’s main reserve currency an “exorbitant privilege.” The benefits are diminishing with the rise of the euro and China’s renminbi as competing reserve currencies. And now US President Donald Trump’s misguided trade wars and anti-Iran sanctions will accelerate the move away from the dollar.
The dollar leads all other currencies in supplying the functions of money for international transactions. It is the most important unit of account (or unit of invoicing) for international trade. It is the main medium of exchange for settling international transactions. It is the principal store of value for the world’s central banks. The Federal Reserve acts as the world’s lender of last resort, as in the 2008 financial panic, though we should recognize too that the Fed’s blunders helped to provoke the 2008 crisis. And the dollar is the key funding currency, being the major denomination for overseas borrowing by businesses and governments.
In each of these areas, the dollar punches far above America’s weight in the world economy. The US currently produces around 22% of world output measured at market prices, and around 15% in purchasing-power-parity terms. Yet the dollar accounts for half or more of cross-border invoicing, reserves, settlements, liquidity, and funding. The euro is the dollar’s main competitor, with the renminbi coming in a distant third.
The US gains three important economic benefits from the dollar’s key currency role. The first is the ability to borrow abroad in dollars. When a government borrows in a foreign currency, it can go bankrupt; that is not the case when it borrows in its own currency. More generally, the dollar’s international role enables the US Treasury to borrow with greater liquidity and lower interest rates than it otherwise could.
A second advantage lies in the business of banking: The US, and more precisely Wall Street, reaps significant income from selling banking services to the rest of the world. A third advantage lies in regulatory control: The US either directly manages or co-manages the world’s most important settlements systems, giving it an important way to monitor and limit the flow of funds related to terrorism, narco-trafficking, illegal weapons sales, tax evasion, and other illicit activities.
Yet these benefits depend on the US providing high-quality monetary services to the world. The dollar is widely used because it has been the most convenient, lowest-cost, and safest unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value. But it is not irreplaceable. America’s monetary stewardship has stumbled badly over the years, and Trump’s misrule could hasten the end of the dollar’s predominance.
Already back in the late 1960s, America’s fiscal and monetary mismanagement led to the breakdown of the dollar-based Bretton Woods pegged-exchange rate system in August 1971, when President Richard Nixon’s administration unilaterally renounced the right of foreign central banks to redeem their dollars in gold. The breakdown of the dollar-based system was followed by a decade of high inflation in the US and Europe, and then an abrupt and costly disinflation in the US in the early 1980s. The dollar turmoil was a key factor motivating Europe to embark on the path toward monetary unification in 1993, culminating in the launch of the euro in 1999.
Likewise, America’s mishandling of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 helped to convince China to begin internationalizing the renminbi. The global financial crisis in 2008, which began on Wall Street and was quickly transmitted throughout the world as interbank liquidity dried up, again nudged the world away from the dollar and toward competing currencies.
Now Trump’s misbegotten trade wars and sanctions policies will almost surely reinforce the trend. Just as Brexit is undermining the City of London, Trump’s “America First” trade and financial policies will weaken the dollar’s role and that of New York’s role as the global financial hub.
The most consequential and ill-conceived of Trump’s international economic policies are the growing trade war with China and the reimposition of sanctions vis-à-vis Iran. The trade war is a ham-fisted and nearly incoherent attempt by the Trump administration to stall China’s economic ascent by trying to stifle the country’s exports and access to Western technology. But while US tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers may dent China’s growth in the short term, they will not decisively change its long-term upward trajectory. More likely, they will bolster China’s determination to escape from its continued partial dependency on US finances and trade, and lead the Chinese authorities to double down on a military build-up, heavy investments in cutting-edge technologies, and the creation of a renminbi-based global payments system as an alternative to the dollar system.
Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the re-imposition of sanctions against the Islamic Republic could prove just as consequential in undermining the dollar’s international role. Sanctioning Iran runs directly counter to global policies toward the country. The UN Security Council voted unanimously to support the nuclear deal and restore economic relations with Iran. Other countries, led by China and the EU, will now actively pursue ways to circumvent the US sanctions, notably by working around the dollar payments system.
For example, Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, recently declared Germany’s interest in establishing a European payments system independent of the US. It is “indispensable that we strengthen European autonomy by creating payment channels that are independent of the United States, a European Monetary Fund, and an independent SWIFT system,” according to Maas. (SWIFT is the organization that manages the global messaging system for interbank transfers.)
So far, US business leaders have sided with Trump, who has showered them with corporate tax cuts and deregulation. Despite soaring budget deficits, the dollar remains strong in the short term, as the tax cuts have fueled US consumption and rising interest rates, which in turn pull in capital from abroad. Yet in a matter of several years, Trump’s profligate fiscal policies and reckless trade and sanctions policies will undermine America’s economy and the role of the dollar in global finance. How long will it be before the world’s businesses and governments are running to Shanghai rather than Wall Street to float their renminbi bonds?
The Climate Crisis And How We Fix Our World For The Future
There is ample evidence that climate change is happening. 97% of scientists believe not only that climate change is happening, but that humans are causing climate change. The National Climate Assessment is a report compiled by over 300 experts guided by the Federal Advisory Committee. Below are some of the key facts that that report uses to demonstrate climate change’s existence.
Global Temperatures are Rising
One of the key aspects of climate change is global warming. While this might not feel like the case during especially cold days of winter, it is unequivocally true. The last three years: 2017, 2016, and 2015 have been the three hottest years on record. The organization Climate Central also points out that “The five warmest years in the global record have all come in the 2010s. The 10 warmest years on record have all come since 1998, [and] The 20 warmest years on record have all come since 1995.”
Looking beyond the last 20 years, the National Climate Assessment shows that in each successive decade since 1930, the average global temperature has increased. The 1980s were the warmest decade on record, surpassed by the 1990s, surpassed by the 2000s.
As a result of this warming, and to further demonstrate its existence, the National Climate Assessment points out that the following is also true:
- Snow and ice cover has decreased in most areas with the most drastic reductions at the poles. In fact, minimum arctic sea ice (usually during September) has decreased by more than 40%. NCA states that “This decline is unprecedented in the historical record, and the reduction of ice volume and thickness is even greater.”
- Sea level is increasing because as water warms it expands and melting ice and icecaps adds water to the oceans.
- Atmospheric water vapor is increasing because warmer air can hold more water.
Extreme heatwaves and heavy precipitation events (storms, hurricanes, etc.) have become more frequent.
Increases in Greenhouse Gasses Are Driving This Increase in Temperature
The cause of this warming is also unequivocal. As the concentration of C02 increases in the atmosphere, the global temperature increases.
Note: The NCA states that “Red bars show temperatures above the long-term average, and blue bars indicate temperatures below the long-term average. The black line shows atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in parts per million (ppm). While there is a clear long-term global warming trend, some years do not show a temperature increase relative to the previous year, and some years show greater changes than others. These year-to-year fluctuations in temperature are due to natural processes, such as the effects of El Niños, La Niñas, and volcanic eruptions. (Figure source: updated from Karl et al. 2009).”
While it is true that the climate has changed in the past due to natural factors, natural factors alone cannot explain the speed of temperature increase and global changes that we are experiencing now. In fact, research indicated that if we only looked at natural factors, the earth should be entering a global cooling stage. However, there is ample evidence that the opposite is true.
NCA explains that, “Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, humans have been increasingly affecting global climate, to the point where we are now the primary cause of recent and projected future change. The majority of the warming at the global scale over the past 50 years can only be explained by the effects of human influences, especially the emissions from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and from deforestation.”
Renewable Energy Around the World
Achieving 100% renewable energy is possible and plausible for the United States of America.
Many other developed nations have almost completely incorporated renewable energy into their economies and have been able to power their entire countries for substantial amounts of time solely on these methods. Others are moving in that direction and achieving small steps – a day, a month, an industry, solely relying on renewable energy.
Here are some renewable energy leaders leaders around the world:
Costa Rica
Costa Rica has been a world leader in renewable energy for years. In 2015, Costa Rica ran on 100% renewable energy for 285 days, and on 100% renewable energy for 250 days in 2016. According to The Costa Rica News, in 2017, “Costa Rica achieved the admirable 300-day in a row mark in which its electric system operated with exclusively renewable sources, mainly [hydroelectric], besides the production of renewable energy covered 99.62% of the electricity needs of the country. A mark that also exceeds the records of 2015 and 2016.” Costa Rica does this through relying heavily on hydroelectric power, wind energy, geothermal energy, and small amounts of solar energy and biomass. This commitment to renewable energy has, according to the Costa Rica News “turned Costa Rica into the largest producer of clean energy from all of Central America and the Caribbean.”
Iceland
Almost 100% of all energy consumed on Iceland is renewable energy. The UN describes that in addition, “9 out of every 10 houses are heated directly with geothermal energy.” Iceland meets it energy needs largely through hydroelectric and geothermal sources. The UN acknowledges that the only exception to Iceland’s pervasive use of renewable energy is its reliance on fossil fuels for transport. The UN describes that Iceland’s move from fossil fuels to renewable energy was not inspired by climate change, instead, “The drive behind this transition was simple—Iceland could not sustain oil price fluctuations occurring due to a number of crises affecting world energy markets. …[and] for its isolated location on the edge of the Arctic Circle.” To rectify this issue, Iceland hired local businesses and entrepreneurs to shift energy reliance from foreign providers to internal sources. The Icelandic government also creates policies to encourage this shift: “To further incentivize geothermal energy utilization, the Government of Iceland established a geothermal drilling mitigation fund in the late 1960s. The fund loaned money for geothermal research and test drilling, while providing cost recovery for failed projects. The established legal framework also made it attractive for households to connect to the new geothermal district-heating network rather than to continue using fossil fuels.” The UN describes that these projects also diversified the economy, created jobs, and established a nationwide power grid.
Norway
“In Norway, 98 percent of the electricity production come from renewable energy sources,” according to the Norwegian government. The vast majority of Norway’s renewable energy comes from hydropower, an industry that has been growing in Norway since the 1800s. However, wind and thermal energy also contribute. Unlike many other countries, the Norwegian government explains that 90 % Norwegian energy production is owned by the state, counties, and municipalities “to secure a role for the Norwegian state in the ongoing electrification of the country, and ensure that the hydropower resources would benefit the nation as a whole.”
Portugal
In March of 2018, Portugal produced 103.6% of the energy required to meet the country’s electrical demand. According to NPR, “Fifty-five percent of that energy was produced through hydro power, while 42 percent came from wind.” Based on this success, Portugal expects that by the year 2040 that “the production of renewable electricity will be able to guarantee, in a cost-effective way, the total annual electricity consumption of Mainland Portugal.”
Germany
In January of 2018, Germany briefly covered 100% of its energy demand through renewable energy. In addition, according to Clean Energy Wire, last year “In the whole of last year, the world’s fourth largest economy produced a record 36.1 percent of its total power needs with renewable sources.” Due to the growing presence of renewable energy in Germany, there are now days when Germany generates half of its power from the sun.
While powering a country with 90% to 100% renewable energy might seem a daunting task for larger economies, many other foreign governments have invested in making certain aspects of their economy run entirely on renewable energy, or have focused on specific areas of the country, setting reasonable (and achievable) goals that will serve as test cases for later expansion of renewable energy. Some of these countries include:
China
In July of 2017 the Chinese announced that Qinghai Province—a territory the size of Texas—had gone a week relying on 100% renewable energy including solar, wind, and hydropower. During that week, Business Insider reports that “the Qinghai province generated 1.1 billion kilowatt hours of energy for over 5.6 million residents. That’s equal to burning 535,000 tons of coal.” This week period was a test by the Chinese government to test the viability of relying on renewables long-term. Ultimately, “China hopes to produce 20% of its electricity from clean sources by 2030.”
About the same time the Chinese released aerial photos of their newest giant solar farm—which seen from above depicts a cheerful black-and-white panda. Business Insider reports that, “it will be able to produce 3.2 billion kilowatt-hours of solar energy in 25 years… reducing carbon emissions by 2.74 million tons.”
England
On April 21st2017, Great Britain managed to meet its power demands without burning a lump of coal for the first time since the launch of the Industrial Revolution. This is one small step towards a transition away from fossil fuels to meet Great Britain’s climate change commitments. The Guardian reports that, Hannah Martin, the head of energy at Greenpeace UK, described this milestone as part of a much larger movement: “The first day without coal in Britain since the Industrial Revolution marks a watershed in the energy transition. A decade ago, a day without coal would have been unimaginable, and in 10 years’ time our energy system will have radically transformed again.”
Holland
In 2015 Holland set a goal to power all Dutch electric trains with wind energy by 2018. By January of 2017, that goal had been met. According to The Guardian, Holland met their goal a year ahead of schedule due to, “an increase in the number of wind farms across the country and off the coast of the Netherlands.”
Chile
Solar production has grown six-fold since 2014 in Chile. In fact, the New York Times reported that “Chilean officials have an even more ambitious projection, saying the country is on track to rely on clean sources for 90 percent of its electricity needs by 2050, up from the current 45 percent.” The initial movement to renewable energy sources was largely due to the high cost and uncertainty of energy supply when that energy was provided by outside sources. In addition, due to severe weather events that have made hydropower plants less reliable in Chile, the government has turned to more varied sources including wind, solar, and geothermal energy sources.
India
The largest coal mining company in the world (which produces 82% of India’s coal), announced the closure of dozens of coal mines and the cancellation of plans for dozens of new coal-fired generation stations because the cost of solar power was significantly undercutting fossil fuel. The Independent describes that “India’s solar sector has received heavy international investment, and the plummeting price of solar electricity has increased pressure on fossil fuel companies in the country.” The Independent also reports that “The government has announced it will not build any more coal plants after 2022 and predicts renewables will generate 57 per cent of its power by 2027.”
The United States
Governmental steps taken to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and to move towards a clean and green future are not solely happening outside of the United States. Fortune reports that “Eighteen percent of all electricity in the United States was produced by renewable sources in 2017, including solar, wind, and hydroelectric dams. That’s up from 15% in 2016.” Since 2008, renewable share of energy consumption has doubled. This is largely due to market forces that are responding to the dropping price of solar and wind energy. Fortune also points out that “the solar and wind industries are creating jobs faster than the rest of the economy.”
Many cities and states are, in fact, far outpacing the rest of the United States and have taken even greater steps towards 100% renewable energy. Below are two examples:
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
In June of 2017, President Trump announced that he would pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement citing that he was elected by the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris. In response, the Mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto responded in a press release that “Pittsburgh will not only heed the guidelines of the Paris Agreement — we will work to move towards 100 percent clean and renewable energy for our future, our economy, and our people.”
Since June of last year, Mayor Peduto have taken steps to make that goal a reality. On April 5th of 2018, 180 U.S. Mayors including Mayor Peduto signed a letter resolving to make solar power a key element in their renewable energy plans. A press release quoted Mayor Peduto: “Solar power is a key component of advancing Pittsburgh’s clean energy transition. We have numerous assets that can provide as the launching point for solar generation in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania, from parking lots to rooftops. Increasing the amount of locally generated solar power helps reduce carbon pollution, clean our air and provide a resilient, sustainable and cost-effective electricity.”
The next month, Pittsburg released its Climate Action Plan that establishes a goal for 100% renewable energy, and 100% fossil fuel free by 2030 as well as complete divestment from the fossil fuel industry.
Hawaii
Cities are not the only entities in the United States that are working towards 100% renewable energy. Hawaii is an example of an entire state that is working toward that goal.
In 2008 Hawaii and the Department of Energy signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) “to collaborate on the reduction of Hawaii’s heavy dependence on imported fossil fuels.” The Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative was begun by that agreement. In 2014, the initial goals were renewed and upgraded to include:
- Achieving the nation’s first-ever 100 percent renewable portfolio standards (RPS) by the year 2045.
- Reducing electricity consumption by 4,300 gigawatt-hours by 2030, enough electricity to power every home on Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Hawaii Island for more than two years.
- Reducing petroleum use in Hawaii’s transportation sector which accounts for two-thirds of the state’s overall energy usage.
In July of 2017, the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission approved an official plan put forward by Hawaiian Electric Companies that laid out exactly how Hawaii would achieve 100% renewable energy by 2040 (five years ahead of the goal.)
Hawaii serves as a reminder that states too can make significant headway towards the goal of 100% renewable energy. Progress is possible and is happening, if slowly.
If you would like to know more about how your state can move towards 100% renewables based on scientific studies that have analyzed the renewable energy potential in each area, visit The Solutions Project website.
A list of cities, counties, and states committed to, or that have achieved 100% renewable energy can also be found here.
The Myth Harming Renewable Energy Development
One of the largest myths about addressing climate change is that transitioning to renewable energy from fossil fuels (especially coal) will create a net loss of American jobs.
However, renewable energy is doing the opposite of putting Americans out of work. The New York Times reported that in 2016 coal was responsible for 160,119 jobs. In contrast solar employed more than double that amount (373,807 Americans).
The number of renewable jobs is also expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Last year, Business Insider reported that “solar and wind jobs are growing at a rate 12 times as fast as the rest of the US economy and… 46% of large firms have hired additional workers to address issues of sustainability over the past two years.”
In addition to renewables’ contribution to overall employment in the United States, there are a number of other economic benefits to American workers when we encourage growth in the renewable energy industry:
Geographic Distribution
While fossil fuel jobs tend to be concentrated in a few states (the vast majority of jobs in coal exist in West Virginia or Wyoming.), renewable energy jobs are spread out around the country. Program Director Liz Delaney at the Environmental Defense Fund points out that “These jobs [in the renewable energy sector] are widely geographically distributed, they’re high paying, they apply to both manufacturing and professional workers, and there are a lot of them.”
Supporting and encouraging the renewable energy industry will help hundreds of thousands of Americans find jobs all across the country. These are not simply installation jobs either, maintenance is a large part of the renewable energy industry.
Small Businesses
Environmental Defense Fund Program Director Delaney also mentions that “70% of the 2.2 million Americans who work in jobs related to energy efficiency are employed by companies with 10 employees or fewer.” These are small businesses, hiring American workers, in one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. In addition, according to Delaney these jobs are also more difficult to outsource because “many sustainability jobs involve installation, maintenance, and construction.” The renewable energy sector is encouraging small business development in America.
Ultimately, encouraging the development of the renewable energy sector is the best path forward for America. Concerns about lost jobs in the fossil fuel and coal industries are legitimate and important to recognize, but those lost jobs should not hinder progress towards a renewable future. This is why training programs should be encouraged to support fossil fuel workers move to other sectors or be trained in budding renewable technology. The New York Times reports that “In Wyoming, home to the nation’s most productive coal region by far, the American subsidiary of a Chinese maker of wind turbines is putting together a training program for technicians in anticipation of a large power plant it expects to supply. And in West Virginia, a nonprofit outfit called Solar Holler… is working with another group, Coalfield Development, to train solar panel installers and seed an entire industry.” These successful test cases demonstrate that America can work towards renewable energy while also supporting and training workers to transition from fossil fuels to renewables in the same way that America is transitioning.
The claim that renewable energy is a job killer or a drain on our economy is a myth, perpetrated by the fossil-fuel business and the politicians who do their bidding. Don’t fall for it. Renewable energy is the path forward for American jobs and the future of our planet.
The Private Sector and Climate Change: Holding Corporations Accountable
There are a number of actions that our country could be taking to reduce our carbon footprint and lessen the progress of climate change, however, there are significant barriers in place that hinder these efforts.
Many of these barriers stem from corporate action. Companies that benefit from the continued use of energy sources that contribute to climate change have a vested interest in hindering the progress of solutions that will move us away from the status quo. Below are a few examples of how corporations have done this:
In the six years prior to 2017, rooftop solar panel installations grew by as much as 900% in the United States. Each year, more and more Americans were taking steps to install solar panels on their roofs, lessen their carbon footprint, and contribute excess energy back into the grid to further diminish the carbon footprint of others who could not afford solar panels. The New York Times reports that in 2017, growth in solar panel installations came “to a shuttering stop.” This was largely because of “a concerted and well-funded lobbying campaign by traditional utilities, which have been working in state capitals across the country to reverse incentives for homeowners to install solar panels.”
In addition, Instead of cutting residents a break for helping solve the climate crisis, the utility companies —led by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Edison Electric Institute (whose lobbying efforts ratepayers actually underwrite)—are lobbying for the end of “net-metering” laws that let customers sell excess power they generate back to the grid.
Moreover, lobbying is frequently combined with political contributions to, and coordination with politicians. Arizona, whose capital lies in the “Valley of the Sun,” has incredible potential for solar power. However, according to Tuscon.com last year in May, “A federal grand jury has indicted a former state utility regulator and his wife for taking bribes.” The former regulator took those bribes for approving a rate hike for the areas utility company. Despite this indictment, coordination between politicians and utilities in Arizona has not stopped. For instance, environmental groups in Arizona have proposed a constitutional amendment to the Arizona ballot that would require that 50% of Arizona’s energy needs be met with renewable energy sources by 2030. Inside Climate News reports that “a senate committee passed a separate bill—which an APS spokeswoman said the utility had proposed—that would add a second ballot initiative with a nearly identical title” The most recent bill has similar language to the one proposed by environmentalists but includes a “safety valve” that would not allow full implementation of the bill. This approach is designed to confuse and halt progress toward renewable energy.
Arizona is not the only state that has experienced corporate lobbying against climate change solutions, nor is net metering the only issue where corporations have succeeded in moving forward with policies and activities that demonstratively harm the environment. For instance, fracking continues despite numerous studies that show significant damage to the environment and public health.
There are a number of ways that we can hold corporations accountable and stop actions that negatively affect the environment.
Get Money Out of Politics
Too frequently, our politicians are able to be swayed by campaign contributions that lead to decisions that harm the American people, and put the future of our planet in jeopardy. It is all too easy to find the enormous contributions made by companies that contribute to our carbon footprint:
According to Open Secrets: Oil and gas companies have so far contributed over $14 million to all candidates in the 2018 election cycle, electric utilities have contributed over $11 million, natural gas pipeline companies have contributed almost $2 million, and coal mining companies have contributed over $800 thousand.
If we get money out of politics legislators might be more likely to vote for policies and ideas that benefit their constituents, the environment, and the world.
Taxes That Reflect The True Cost of Pollution
A “Carbon Tax” is traditionally considered an “economist’s solution” to fighting climate change. In short, the Carbon Tax Center describes that “A carbon tax is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels.” There are two strong arguments for why a carbon tax is both necessary and would work.
- It holds carbon producers and consumers accountable for the damage that their actions have on the environment. To put that damage in perspective, National Geographic reports that “Extreme weather, made worse by climate change, along with the health impacts of burning fossil fuels, has cost the U.S. economy at least $240 billion a year over the past ten years.” Economics Help describes that “The idea of a tax is to make consumers and producers pay the full social cost of producing pollution.” Money raised by the government from this tax could be used to finance initiatives that will further reduce carbon emissions (e.g. subsidizing renewable energy or carbon capture.)
- It creates incentives to for both consumers and producers to act in ways that will reduce their carbon footprint. Producers may invest in ideas that will reduce their carbon emissions to avoid paying as much in taxes. Price increases on items or utilities that include this carbon tax may result in consumers looking to alternative energy sources, or consuming less.
Economics Help describes that “the social marginal cost (SMC) of producing the good is greater than the private marginal cost (PMC) The difference is the external cost of the pollution. The tax shifts the supply curve to S2 and therefore, consumers are forced to pay the full social marginal cost. This reduces the quantity consumed to Q2, which is the socially efficient outcome (because the SMC=SMB)” Therefore, the tax adjusts the price of good to take into account the harm that it is doing.
Carbon Taxes are also proven to have worked elsewhere in the world. British Columbia imposed a carbon tax of 10 Canadian dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in 2008 and then raised that tax to 30 Canadian dollars per ton by 2012. The New York Times reports that the tax “reduced emissions by 5 to 15 percent with ‘negligible effects on aggregate economic performance… It encouraged people to drive somewhat less and be more careful about heating and cooling their homes. Businesses invested in energy efficiency measures and switched to less polluting fuels.”
Get the Incentives Right
Each year, the U.S. government subsidizes a range of economic activities. It is important that those subsidies encourage economic activity that will help reduce our carbon footprint and climate change.
Unfortunately, many subsidies support industries that are contributing to climate change. Researchers at Oil Change International recently found that “Government giveaways in the form of permanent tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry – one of which is over a century old – are seven times larger than those to the renewable energy sector.” These fossil fuel subsidies, including both federal subsidies and state subsidies, total to $20 billion annually.
That said, the renewable energy industry has also received a number of subsidies through the years (varying though different administrations and not to the level of those for the fossil fuel industry). These subsidies have contributed to substantial growth in the renewable energy sector. Eighteen percent of the United States energy needs are now provided by renewable energy. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute states that the U.S. has reduced its emissions “by about 760 million metric tons since 2005.” The increase in renewable energy usage has contributed significantly to that reduction.
These subsidies for renewable energy There are also other benefits to renewable energy subsidies. Quartz Media reported that “the fossil fuels not burnt because of wind and solar energy helped avoid between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths in the US between 2007 and 2015” and that “the US saved between $35 billion and $220 billion in that period because of avoided deaths, fewer sick days, and climate-change mitigation.”
Incentives need to reflect economic activities that will help the environment, Americans, and the world, not harm them.
Get the Penalties Right
While incentives are important for companies that are working to help the environment, it is equally important to include penalties for companies that are harming the environment.
Most Americans are familiar with the largest oil spills in the United States like the BP oil spill, also called the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in 2010. However, large spills that get covered in the news are only a portion of the problem. According to the latest data from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, excluding the BP oil spill, 287,416 barrels of oil (or 12 million gallons of oil) were spilled in the U.S. between 1964 and 2015. That equals over two hundred thousand gallons of oil a year. The BP oil spill added another 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled, totaling over two hundred million gallons of oil. (There are 42 gallons of oil in a barrel.)
A number of news organizations reported in 2015 that BP would pay more than $20 billion in settlement claims as punishment for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Justice Department called the settlement historic and quoted Attorney General Loretta Lynch in saying “Building on prior actions against BP and its subsidiaries by the Department of Justice, this historic resolution is a strong and fitting response to the worst environmental disaster in American history…BP is receiving the punishment it deserves, while also providing critical compensation for the injuries it caused to the environment and the economy of the Gulf region.”
However, when you dig deeper into that settlement, that “historic” amount of money isn’t so large when you take into account U.S. tax laws that allow corporations to write off natural resource damage payments, restoration, and reimbursement of government costs. Forbes reports that ultimately “BP should be able to deduct the vast majority, a whopping $15.3 billion, on its U.S. tax return. That means American taxpayers are contributing quite a lot to this settlement, whether they know it or not.”
In other cases, companies are given penalties that can be considered negligible when their annual earnings are taken into account. The Real News reports that “In the last 12 years, Marathon Petroleum Corporation, who manage one of the largest petroleum pipeline networks in the U.S., has had 61 incidents… including recent spill of 42,000 gallons of diesel. In the same week they had to pay A fine of three hundred thousand dollars for another spill last year.” In reference to this three hundred thousand dollar fine, Sierra Club’s Jodi Perras pointed out that Marathon is “a 13.8 billion dollar company…. they will expect to have a 330 million dollar profit this year. And so they are paying $335,000 for that spill in 2016. That’s pennies to a company like that.” Ultimately, Marathon Petroleum Corporation is being fined 0.1% of their annual profits.
Penalties should be large enough to encourage constructive steps towards reducing future accidents and harm to the environment, and when they are large enough, the burden to pay them should be placed on the company, not taxpayers.
How We Talk About Climate Change
How we talk about climate change has the power to shape the discussion and overall perception of this important issue. A few ideas to consider:
Increase the media coverage and cover the science
The mainstream media rarely covers the important facts about climate change – even when they are directly relevant to issues or events that they are addressing.
Despite the near-continual stream of weather-related disasters and temperature records, Nexus Media reports that “fewer than half of Americans say they hear global warming discussed on the media once a month or more often.” A study by Public Citizen concludes that:
“For the public to be well-informed about climate change, it is critical that the media connect everyday coverage to climate where it is relevant, as well as cover the climate crisis directly, including developments on how we can mitigate it. On both scores, the media performed poorly in 2017. When discussing even the most clearly climate-connected topics, like record heat waves, the media mentioned climate change just 33 percent of the time. Regarding most other subjects, including hurricanes and the spread of mosquitoes, ticks, and the illnesses they carry, the coverage was far worse. One of the most important lacking pieces — a subject that appeared in just nine percent of coverage that mentioned climate change — is solutions.”
The media coverage following Hurricane Maria, with a substantial focus on President Trump throwing paper towels, is a clear example of this failure. The Guardian analyzed the media coverage of Hurricane Maria and hurricane season overall and found that “about 60% of the stories included the word Trump, and only about 5% mentioned climate change.” Coverage of the science was virtually non-existent.
“Equal” representation between climate deniers and the majority of scientists is misrepresentation
There is overwhelming consensus about climate change in the scientific community. In fact, 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and caused by human activity. NASA points out that “most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.”
It is disingenuous and misleading to give climate deniers equal time when the stakes are so high. A balanced equal-time approach between a 97% consensus about climate change against the opposing views of a few extremists, misinforms the public by giving the appearance that both positions are equally credible.
Media representation of climate change must convey the actual science. It must inform the public about how and why climate change is happening, and what options we have to address it.
The terms “uncertainty” and “theory” mean two very different things to the scientific world and the layman. The Union of Concerned Scientists describes that while to most people, the term “uncertainty” means not knowing, to scientists, “uncertainty is how well something is known. And, therein lies an important difference, especially when trying to understand what is known about climate change… climate change deniers have linked less than complete certainty with not knowing anything.”
In light of this, it is vitally important for the media to lead with the scientific findings and imperatives and to structure cogent arguments in ways that can accurately represent the scientific facts, data, and ultimately the dire need to act.
Link climate change to the shared human experience
One of the most important things we can do is to communicate the data around climate change in human terms, in a way that doesn’t require an advanced degree in climate science to understand. Some of the most important numbers and terms can also be the most confusing. The seemingly miniscule 2 degree goal in the Paris Climate Agreement, the incomprehensibly large notion of 5 quadrillion tons of air in the atmosphere, and other terminology such as the current 400 parts per million of CO2 are foreign to many people.
Climate researcher Craig Lee suggests “Simply publishing a piece that presents facts doesn’t give its audience the story behind them. When putting climate change into discussion, this ignores a very human aspect, like the cities affected by rising sea levels. Journalists and researchers alike should strive to frame climate change as a human issue, because in the end, it’s humans who will pay the price.”
The media cannot continue citing numbers without giving context for the average person to understand what those numbers mean and how those numbers and climate change broadly will have an effect on their lives.
According to 350.org, the five hottest years on record are 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2010. Scientists have predicted that unless climate change is addressed, by the end of the century Europe will suffer 150,000 heat-related deaths a year. Global grain yields have declined by 10%, which will impact the food chain and migration. Climate change related storms have caused billions of dollars of damage and incalculable human suffering. Despite all this evidence, there is a clear disconnect between what is happening and the concern of the American public. According to Gallup, less than half (45%) of Americans think that global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime and fewer (43%) worry a great deal about global warming.
Communication about climate change must convey the seriousness of the situation by putting it into terms that people can understand, internalize, and act upon. People need to understand that it will affect them.
What Can I Do About Climate Change?
People ask me all the time: ‘what can I do to fight climate change?’ And it’s a great question, because the problem seems so big, and we seem so small, that it’s hard to imagine there’s anything we could do.
For years, environmental groups focused on individual actions: new light bulbs, different kinds of cars. Those sort of changes are useful: the roof of my house is covered with solar panels, and I can plug my car into them.
I’m glad about that–it’s environmentally sound, and it saves me money. But I try not to fool myself into thinking that’s really how we’ll solve global warming. Because by this point, with the ice caps melting, we can’t make the math of climate change work one person at a time.
Instead, the biggest thing an individual can do is become…a little less of an individual.
Join together with others to form the kind of movements that can push for changes big enough to matter. Those changes fall into three broad categories.
100% Renewable Energy
One is to push for 100% renewable energy in every town and city–and it’s a push that’s really working. Diverse cities from Atlanta to San Diego, from Salt Lake City to Portland, have all announced that they’re going to go fully renewable. In fact, when the president pulled America out of the Paris climate accords, he said it was because he’d been ‘elected to govern Pittsburgh, not Paris.’ That afternoon the mayor of Pittsburgh announced that his city was going 100% renewable.
Keep Carbon In The Ground
Second, is to keep carbon in the ground. Scientists have made it clear that at least 80% of known reserves of coal, oil, and gas have to stay underground if we’re to have any hope of meeting the climate goals the world has agreed on. That’s why we fought so hard against things like the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, or for a moratorium on new coal mines on public land. We win a lot of these fights around the world–and every time we put up a fight we slow down the fossil fuel industry, giving the engineers another year or two to drop the price of clean energy even further.
Divestment
And third, we work to staunch the flow of money to the fossil fuel industry. Our biggest tool is called divestment: convincing cities, states, universities, foundations, and corporations to sell the stock they hold in fossil fuel companies. This tactic–pioneered in the fight against apartheid–really works: new studies show it has focused attention on climate change and robbed companies of some of the money they need for further exploration. New York City was the latest convert, divesting its $200 billion pension funds from fossil fuels–and taking the total global commitment to nearly $7 trillion.
These are big goals–we can only accomplish them through movements. That’s why we join together, all around the country and all across the planet.
While the best thing that we can do to fight the climate crisis is to join together, we can also pair these group actions with the individual ones that climate organizations have been pushing for years.
Reducing our Carbon Footprint / Be More Energy Efficient
The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that being more energy efficient helps the environment, as well as the checkbook. To increase your energy efficiency and reduce your carbon footprint, you can do the following:
- Do not heat or cool your house as much as you would usually.There are two ways to do this: 1) when you are going out of the house, try setting the thermostat to 5 degrees or 10 degrees closer to the outside temperature. 2) Slightly change the temperature consistently. If you usually have it at 70 degrees in the winter, set it at 68. Heating and cooling use a significant amount of energy.
- Unplug electric appliances and chargers when not in use. Energy.gov states that “mobile phone chargers that are left plugged in after your phone is disconnected consume .26 watts of energy — and 2.24 watts when your phone is fully charged and still connected.”
- Use cold or warm water to wash your clothes. 90 percent of the total energy used by a typical washing machine is used to heat the water, while only 10 percent is used to power the motor. By simply setting your washing machine to “cold” you will be saving money on your electricity bill and reducing your carbon footprint.
- Replace old incandescent lightbulbs with energy efficient LED lightbulbs. LED lightbulbs last longer and use much less energy. LED light bulbs use only 2-17 watts of electricity (on third to one thirtieth the amount of electricity used by older lightbulbs.)
- Seal drafty windows and doors. Both cold and warm air can escape from your home though drafty openings which cause your heating or air-conditioning to work harder to keep your home at the right temperature and therefore consume more electricity. Weatherstripping and using caulk on cracks and gaps can go a long way to helping you save on your electricity bill and reduce your carbon footprint
*Note: this is not an exhaustive list of activities to increase your energy efficiency.
As shown in many of the examples above reducing your carbon footprint and being more energy efficient also saves money on your energy bill. It’s a win, win situation.
Choose Renewable Power (if possible)
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “electricity generation is the largest industrial polluter in the country.” Reducing this dependence is critical to slowing global warming. Switching to renewables will significantly reduce your carbon footprint.
There are a number of ways that you can use renewable energy in your home. The most independent and involved way to do this is to invest in personal renewable energy generation on your own property. Department of Energy lists a number of different renewable energy solutions and the steps that you would need to take to install them.
However, installing renewable energy like solar panels on your home can be expensive and a daunting task. Luckily, there are other, less involved, options available in many states.
According to the Institute for Energy Research (IER), 12 states currently mandate green pricing programs for utilities while many others have voluntary green pricing options. These work by allowing individuals and households to buy green energy rather than energy produced by fossil fuels. These green pricing programs work by “charging participating customers a prescribed cost per kWh of green energy purchased.” The IER states that it results in “nominal bill increases.” A couple minute phone call or email communication with your utility company can let you know if they participate in green pricing.
Eat Foods With Lower Carbon Footprints
Different foods contribute differently to your carbon footprint. The video below from Vox outlines how changing your diet can reduce your carbon footprint. Some of the elements they suggest are: reducing the portion size of the meat you eat, choosing meat that has less of a carbon footprint (e.g. choosing fish or chicken instead of beef and lamb), and even cutting out meat and eating a vegetarian, vegan diet.
In addition to adjusting your diet to eat less meat, planning meals and reducing food waste is another great way to reduce your carbon footprint. According to the National Resource Defense Council, “Approximately 10 percent of U.S. energy use goes into growing, processing, packaging, and shipping food—about 40 percent of which just winds up in the landfill.” Through decomposition in landfills, wasted food also produces greenhouse gasses and contributes to climate change. Therefore, we are not only contributing to climate change through demand for the creation of the food products, wasting the produce that we buy contributes as well.
The simplest way to address this is to waste less food. Savethefood.com has put together a simple and clear website describing some of the ways to do this, through shopping techniques (a menu plan helps!), information about what due dates mean, as well as recipes for the most commonly thrown out ingredients.
Ultimately, eating local, in season produce and cutting back on the food groups that produce higher emissions will lower your carbon footprint.
Make Green Travel Choices
Private vehicles produce more C02emissions than any other form of ground transportation. For instance, a private car produces on average 0.96 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile compared to 0.64 from a bus, and 0.33 for commuter rail
The more that you can commute or travel by foot, bike, or public transportation, the lower your carbon footprint. Similarly, reducing air travel will also reduce your carbon footprint.
However, in many areas around the country or because of a number of factors, personal vehicles may be the only option. Luckily, there are some minor change that you can implement in your own vehicle to reduce the CO2emissions including:
- Accelerate more slowly. While flooring the gas gets more immediate results, it also wastes gas.
- Speed less and use cruise control. Cars operate at peak efficiency at around 50 to 60 miles per hour. Staying within the speed limit on highways will not only make you a safer driver, it will help you save at the gas station and reduce your carbon footprint.
- Ensure your tires are inflated to the recommended levels and your engine is tuned. Simply put, the easier it is for the engine to move the car forward, the better your gas mileage will be.
- Avoid idling in traffic, if possible. Many cars continue to burn gas while sitting at a stoplight or in traffic. However, none of the energy produced is being used to move the car anywhere.
- Remove excess weight from your car. Simply put: it takes more energy and therefore more gas to move a heavier car.
These and other pieces of advice to make your car more efficient and contribute less to your carbon footprint can be found at Cotap.org.
Recycle
While this is the most commonly cited way to “help the environment” that does not make it any less important. Many people do not realize the impact that creating so much wast has on the environment. Some quick facts to put this int perspective: Almost 80% of plastics end up in landfill or dumps or is littered into the environment and almost half (47%) of plastic waste is made up of plastic packaging.
A clear example of this waste can be found in our use of plastic bags. Americans use 100 billion plastic bags each year. That breaks down to 1,500 plastic shopping bags that are taken home by the average American family. In addition, these bags are only used for about 12 minutes. They are also very unlikely to be recycled: only 1% of bags are returned for recycling. This must change, not only for plastic bags but for many different single-use plastics.
Landfill produces significant amounts of greenhouse gasses and therefore reducing the amount of trash we produce would greatly reduce those emissions.
Recycling also reduces the demand for new products and therefore slows the use of limited natural resources. The organization LessIsMore.org lists some of the way that recycling helps conserve the environment:
- “One ton of paper recycle saves 17 trees.”
- “One ton of plastic saves 16.3 barrels of oil.”
- “One ton of aluminum saves 4 tons of Bauxite Ore.”
- “One ton of glass saves one ton of mixed limestone, soda ash and sand.”
Taking a couple extra moments every day to recycle can have a significant impact on the environment.
The Next Crash
September 15th will mark the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and near meltdown of Wall Street, followed by the Great Recession. Since hitting bottom in 2009, the economy has grown steadily, the stock market has soared, and corporate profits have ballooned.
But most Americans are still living in the shadow of the Great Recession. More have jobs, to be sure. But they haven’t seen any rise in their wages, adjusted for inflation.
Many are worse off due to the escalating costs of housing, healthcare, and education. And the value of whatever assets they own is less than in 2007.
Last year, about 40 percent of American families struggled to meet at least one basic need – food, health care, housing or utilities, according to an Urban Institute survey.
All of which suggests we’re careening toward the same sort of crash we had in 2008, and possibly as bad as 1929.
Clear away the financial rubble from those two former crashes and you’d see they both followed upon widening imbalances between the capacity of most people to buy, and what they as workers could produce. Each of these imbalances finally tipped the economy over.
The same imbalance has been growing again. The richest 1 percent of Americans now takes home about 20 percent of total income, and owns over 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.
These are close to the peaks of 1928 and 2007.
The U.S. economy crashes when it becomes too top heavy because the economy depends on consumer spending to keep it going, yet the rich don’t spend nearly as much of their income as the middle class and the poor.
For a time, the middle class and poor can keep the economy going nonetheless by borrowing. But, as in 1929 and 2008, debt bubbles eventually burst.
We’re getting dangerously close. By the first quarter of this year, household debt was at an all-time high of $13.2 trillion.
Almost 80 percent of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. In a recent Federal Reserve survey, 40 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills if faced with a $400 emergency.
They’ve managed their debts because interest rates have remained low. But the days of low rates are coming to an end.
The underlying problem isn’t that Americans have been living beyond their means. It’s that their means haven’t been keeping up with the growing economy. Most gains have gone to the top.
It was similar in the years leading up to the crash of 2008. Between 1983 and 2007, household debt soared while most economic gains went to the top. Had the majority of households taken home a larger share, they wouldn’t have needed to go so deeply into debt.
Similarly, between 1913 and 1928, the ratio of personal debt to the total national economy nearly doubled. As Mariner Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1934 to 1948, explained: “As in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing.”
Eventually there were “no more poker chips to be loaned on credit,” Eccles said, and “when … credit ran out, the game stopped.”
After the 1929 crash, the government invented new ways to boost wages – Social Security, unemployment insurance, overtime pay, a minimum wage, the requirement that employers bargain with labor unions, and, finally, a full-employment program called World War II.
After the 2008 crash, the government bailed out the banks and pumped enough money into the economy to contain the slide. But apart from the Affordable Care Act, nothing was done to address the underlying problem of stagnant wages.
Trump and his Republican enablers are now reversing regulations put in place to stop Wall Street’s excessively risky lending.
But Trump’s real contributions to the next crash are his sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, rollback of overtime pay, burdens on labor organizing, tax reductions for corporations and the wealthy but not for most workers, cuts in programs for the poor, and proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid – all of which put more stress on the paychecks of most Americans.
Ten years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, it’s important to understand that the real root of the Great Recession wasn’t a banking crisis. It was the growing imbalance between consumer spending and total output – brought on by stagnant wages and widening inequality.
That imbalance is back. Watch your wallets.
Harry Belafonte And The Long Road To Freedom
On the anniversary of the March on Washington, YES! reporter Sarah Van Gelder revisits an interview with the musician and civil rights activist about his anthology of Black music. This story from the YES! Media archives was originally published in the Spring 2002 issue of YES! Magazine.
Harry Belafonte, singer, recording artist, actor, and producer, has been called “the consummate entertainer.” His album Calypso was the first LP in the history of the music industry to sell more than 1 million copies, and he’s won an Emmy Award and a Tony Award. But his successes as an artist have never eclipsed his passion for justice and civil rights. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and was a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. He is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF and was one of the co-hosts of the 1990 World Summit for Children. He also hosted South African President Nelson Mandela during his U.S. visit. Throughout his life, Belafonte has been a tireless advocate of justice and human rights.
Harry’s most recent musical contribution is The Long Road to Freedom, containing 80 tracks on five CDs, including the blues of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, the voices of Belafonte, Joe Williams, Gloria Lynne, and Bessie Jones and singers from the Georgia Sea Islands. The set, which also contains a DVD and a book illustrated by the renowned American painter Charles White, is a musical narrative of the history of African Americans.
YES! executive editor Sarah Ruth van Gelder interviewed Harry Belafonte shortly after the release of The Long Road to Freedom.
I’m enjoying The Long Road to Freedom very much. Could you tell us the story of how this extraordinary collection came about?
In the last half of the 1950s when the new stirrings of the civil rights movement were coming into evidence, many of us had to examine what we thought we could contribute to this coming struggle.
I realized that most White Americans knew very little about our history and our struggle, and were having difficulty understanding the basis for our agitation and our resistance and our complaints. I also discovered that while Black Americans had a sense of the beauty and tragedy of the journey from the time of slavery until now, we were not rooted in the specifics. I thought one way to familiarize people with that history would be through the voices of the great folk artists.
The more I researched and listened to this music, the more I began to understand that it is one of the very few accurate documentations of the history of our journey. I delighted in the music of Africa, the earliest of the slave plantation songs, the transformation into Christianity and all that Christianity brought to the lives of the Africans who were forced to come here. In this process, we also examined the tragic role the church played in the development of slavery and its role in helping develop tools for the resistance to slavery and ultimately its abolition.
Although some of the material is familiar, few people understand the subtext of a lot of these songs and what the lyrics really say. On the face of it, some of the words appear to be spiritually pure, when in fact much of it is really the language of rebellion, the language of resistance, language calling on the courage to overcome the oppression of slavery and racism.
I understand that you grew up in an urban setting, so rural black America was a new discovery.
Yes, as far as America is concerned, but I grew up in a very rural environment on the island of Jamaica, and had a sense of the experience of slaves through slave descendants who were members of my family, who worked on the banana and the sugarcane plantations of the absentee landlords from England. So my environment as a child prepared me to reflect on what it must have been like for slaves and the slave descendants to work the plantations of America.
Who are some of the people you encountered and what was most meaningful about this discovery for you personally?
Leadbelly, Bessie Jones, Joe Williams and Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee were but a few of the easily identifiable personalities.
When I listen to many of the voices that sang these songs, the soulfulness with which they expressed themselves dimensionalizes for me the sense of how broad my own repertoire of songs could be. As much as I understood about the music of the Caribbean—which some people view as exclusively my artistic voice—it is the folk music of the African diaspora, which includes America and the Caribbean and Brazil and all the nations of Africa, that enriches my own work.
The purity of purpose and the kind of passion Miriam Makeba and the great Calypsonian singers and the other artists I mentioned brought to their work is very, very different from the ways artists express themselves in pop culture. Pop culture has none of the vibrancy that you find in the folk culture, where people speak directly to their own experience in the human condition. Pop culture tends to be escapist and to focus on the boy/girl, moon/June, the great influence of Tin Pan Alley. We had to go outside of that arena into places that were not so accessible to find blues artists and chain gang songs and other expressions that spoke to the suffering and the conditions of Black people.
Also very central to my own development was Woody Guthrie and the folk art of White America, and the kind of alliances that were made between Black and White people who were caught up in the working-class struggle of this country, and indeed the world.
What have these African American traditions taught the larger American society?
I think there’s a lot that the larger society could have been taught or can be taught, but I’m not sure—given how unyielding the larger society has been—that much has been learned.
Each time we arrive at a new level in extricating ourselves from economic, social, spiritual domination, we have a moment when we dance in the world of these new experiences, only to find that the music soon stops, the dance ends, and we’re struggling once again to save ourselves from being thrown back into those conditions.
I don’t know what America has really learned. We are too quick to do what’s expedient on behalf of our culture of greed and hedonism. We’re quite prepared to go to conditions of tyranny to sustain that culture, and we do it in the name of democracy, when nothing could be more undemocratic. We do it in the name of saving the values of our society, when the way we behave corrupts those values. We do it in the name of God in whom we believe, when in fact we have corrupted our own vision of the Christian journey.
A lot of this paradox expresses itself in The Long Road to Freedom. At the very beginning of the album you hear a sermon given by a White preacher to the slaves on the plantation. He twists the teachings of the Bible to preach subservience to the slave masters. Then, bookending the collection, the philosophy of Christianity appears again, but this time used in a more enlightened, compassionate way that leads towards human freedom, as expressed by Dr. King. It’s important symbolically that the first voice you hear is a White preacher and the last voice is a Black voice, Dr. King.
You quote Paul Robeson, who said that the purpose of art is not just to show life as it is, but also to show life as it should be. What does this collection tell us about life as it should be?
That the human spirit is resilient and that truth—no matter how long you abuse it and how long you try to crush it—will, as Dr. King would say, rise up again, and in the final analysis will prevail. From the point of view of the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised, the wretched of the Earth … there will never be peace until their condition has been alleviated and until their humanity is in full bloom.
You survived a period in our history where there was a great suppression of dissident voices and, if I’m not mistaken, you were one of the people whose voice was silenced during that period.
Yes, I was on the black list under McCarthyism.
What were you saying that caused you to be on that list, and how did you come to be politically active?
Well, things not on that list should have been included.
In my earliest of years, my mother was a huge force in my life. She was for all intents and purposes, a single parent. My father had abandoned us. He was an alcoholic and a physical abuser. My mother lived through that tyranny and made her living as a domestic worker. She was uneducated but she brought high principles and decent values into our existence, and she set lofty goals for herself and for her children. We were forever inspired by her strength and by her resistance to racism and to fascism. She was very vocal on the issues of the 1930s, in particular on Hitler and those in America who embraced Hitler’s philosophy. And she embraced Marcus Garvey and the struggles against oppression of Africans.
We were instructed to never capitulate, to never yield, to always resist oppression. That always stayed with me, so much so that during World War II, I volunteered and served in the United States Navy. The Navy came as a place of relief for me. It gave me the chance to learn to read and write and to get off the streets of Harlem and the kind of degradation that surrounded me as I grew up. But I was also driven by the belief that Hitler had to be defeated. Although we had a lot of villainy here at home, he was certainly the most visible illustration of what would happen if fascism went unchallenged.
I became an anti-fascist, and the more I saw what was happening to the peoples of Europe, the Jews, the more I saw the deep cruelty and inhumanity of that system and its philosophy of White supremacy.
My commitment sustained itself after the war. Wherever I found resistance to oppression, whether in Africa, in Latin America, certainly here in America in the South, I joined that resistance. I took part in the labor movement, in social movements, in the church community. I felt that it was the honorable thing to do and still do.
Of course, when you get into that work, you’ll forever come up against those who find you unacceptable and will do whatever they can to get you out of the way. McCarthyism was an attempt to do that. And I think we’re headed that way now, with the very divisive and cynical way in which leaders of our present government are manipulating the democratic process and the constitutional system to deny us our basic rights, and to extract more control and power for those already in power and who are already corrupted by that power.
Having survived McCarthyism, do you have any advice on how to survive this period of political repression we seem to be entering and to keep the movements for positive change alive?
Do not submit. It is extremely critical that oppression be met full head-on and that it be resisted with every fiber in our being. Absolutely no compromise can be made with it. As a matter of fact, compromise is what oppression feeds on.
Without compromise, it would be defeated. Just as some cancers feed on hormones, compromise becomes the hormone of oppression.
Clearly we’ve encountered a lot of dangers since the 9/11 tragedy—fears about terrorism, attacks on civil liberties, the threat of widening war. Do you also see opportunities coming out of this tragedy for greater reflection about what this country is about and what this country could be about?
Not since the early days of the civil rights movement has America been given an opportunity as great as the opportunity we have now. It’s one thing for us to avenge our pain, our anger, and our rage by targeting bin Laden and a handful of men who have wrought this villainy. But one should be wise enough to ask, What fueled all this? What continues to sustain the possibility that this will not go away? I think the answer is poverty.
Dr. King once said that when we reach this kind of crisis, this kind of terror experience, that we should stop long enough to look at ourselves through the eyes of our detractors and find what wisdom we can glean from understanding how we have directly contributed to that tyranny. What have we done to humanity that brings us to this place of inhumanity? Terrorism is in many, many ways the final utterance of voices unheard.
We have the opportunity now to look at the 2 billion people in the world who suffer from the most abject poverty, hunger, disease, and devastation. Add to that another 2 billion people who are just plain poor. If you look into the world of those caught in economic oppression, illiteracy, disease, and sexism, then you’ll understand more clearly what we have to do.
The problem has always knocked at the door; we’ve just never been attentive. And I think now, with our technology, our capacity to grow food, our ability to stop raping the Earth and destroying the ecology and killing off fellow creatures, we have a chance to bring a new harmony and a new path to human development.
America can no longer afford to be as arrogant as we’ve been. We can no longer exempt ourselves from the global family of concern. We can no longer exempt ourselves from conferences on racism like the conference in Durban that we walked out on, or concerns about trade, or global warming.
So this is a great opportunity to take a good, hard look at these things. Because now we’re more vulnerable than we’ve ever been. The only thing that can put that to rest forever is to abolish poverty. To eradicate preventable diseases. First and foremost to get rid of ignorance.
One last question. What keeps you energized and active in this work?
Even with all the difficulties and the frustrations that we feel—those of us who have been consistent in this journey—what makes it so remarkably attractive and encouraging are the men and women you meet on the way. I have met some glorious human beings: Eleanor Roosevelt, Fanny Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and Dr. King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, and Che Guevara, and Cesar Chavez and others not quite so famous—they are the ones who really make the journey rewarding. The work I do with UNICEF. The men and women I’ve met in Rwanda, South Africa, working against HIV/AIDS, and the courageous things that simple, wonderful human beings do for each other.
In the face of all the inhumanity, their humanity feeds the capacity to endure and continue to pursue honorable solutions to our pain.