{"id":25115,"date":"2023-06-12T12:29:07","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T12:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=25115"},"modified":"2023-06-12T12:33:37","modified_gmt":"2023-06-12T12:33:37","slug":"empire-state-of-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2023\/06\/12\/empire-state-of-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Empire state of mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article by Mike Small was first posted on bella caledonia<\/a>. It examines the the environmental legacy dating from the day the Cuyahoga River caught fire on June 22nd in 1969 to June 4th, 2013 when New York recorded the worst air quality indicator for any city in the world, following the major fires in Canada. This was the same time that Rachel Reeves announced Labour’s ditching its \u00a0commitment to borrow \u00a328 million for a green prosperity fund.<\/strong><\/p>\n

EMPIRE STATE OF MIND<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
River Cuyahoga on fire.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On June 22, 1969, an oil slick caught fire on the Cuyahoga River just southeast of downtown Cleveland, Ohio. After Time magazine dedicated its front cover to the incident it became the poster child of the environmental movement. The visual impact of a river on fire blew peoples minds and was regarded as the catalyst for the Clean Water Act (1972) and a raft of legislation. The river fire was memorialised on R.E.M.\u2019s 1986 song \u201cCuyahoga.\u201d<\/p>\n

For decades waste oil and all kinds of other contaminants produced by surrounding industry were simply dumped into nearby rivers. By the 1940s, Detroit industries were dumping close to six million gallons of waste oil a year into the Detroit and Rouge rivers. There were no environmental protections. Cuyahoga was far from the only contaminated oil-filled river, and several others went on fire. But it had the visual impact. Just as did New York turned orange with smog from the Canadian wild fires, the iconic Statue of Liberty and the Empire State shrouded with a dark glaur. It was the single worst day of\u00a0air quality in recorded history.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
New York on June 4th 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Most of the time by the time we have a stark visual indicator it\u2019s too late. The sign that something actually terrible has loomed into view and some apocalyptic event has crash landed on your timeline, or your house is under water, it\u2019s too late. When the sky has turned orange and the air is unbreathable, you know it\u2019s time up. The response to the appalling conditions was global. There is a sense of dread. But nothing seems to actually move policy-makers.<\/p>\n

Here, Rachel Reeves, who once claimed she was going to be Britain\u2019s First Green Chancellor\u2019 announced she is\u00a0delaying plans<\/a>\u00a0to borrow \u00a328bn a year for a green prosperity fund under a Labour government. \u201cNo plan can be built that is not a rock of economic and fiscal responsibility \u2026 I will never play fast and loose with the public finances,\u201d Reeves said on Friday.<\/p>\n

But the idea that you can separate economy and ecology is a funny one. \u201cWhen will we be rich enough to stop destroying the planet?\u201d is the underlying narrative. Labour\u2019s John McDonnell wrote: \u201cThe argument being put forward is that the bond markets will react to Labour\u2019s borrowing in the same way they responded to Liz Truss\u2019s fantasy budget. This would make the necessary borrowing too expensive to deal with, and anyway, it\u2019s impractical to spend on that scale in the early years of a government.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this is a red complete herring. The \u201cbond markets\u201d\u00a0reacted negatively to the Truss budget<\/a>\u00a0because the figures were nonsense. The tax cuts were completely unfunded and \u201cKama\u201d Kwasi refused to put them through the normal Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) assessment. It was a shambles.<\/p>\n

The reality is that our life supporting system is being destroyed in front of our eyes, yet taking action to shift away from fossil fuels and create new jobs is seen as \u201crisky\u201d. It\u2019s unfathomable folly and a further sign \u2013 not just that Labour is desperately timid \u2013 but that the entire political class \u2013 the entire sub strata and structure of western politics is not up the task of responding adequately to the climate crisis. Britain suffers from corporate capture, but also a wider political fragility and a deep social conservatism. There is no sense in just being scared, cowed by the awful reality of it all. There is no point in just descending into apocalyptic doom without doing anything. But as Greta said: \u201cI want you to be scared. I want you to be terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because, unless we own our fear, and then realise it into a radical action, we are not going to rise to meet the scale of this challenge. So Reeves party baulking at the idea of investing in their own programme announced only two years ago is a sign of system failure and political cowardice. Now being \u2018responsible with the public finance\u2019 is juxtaposed with being \u2018responsible with the climate\u2019. As if one has priority over the other.<\/p>\n

It is frightening and it is huge amounts of money involved. Take Biden\u2019s Green New Deal. The Biden administration now has the world\u2019s most generous package of climate incentives \u2013 a\u00a0<\/strong>$370bn green subsidy package<\/a>, which goes by the name of the Inflation Reduction Act. The numbers are staggering, and this from a mainstream Democrat government.<\/p>\n

The philosopher and activist Lorenzo Marsili (author of\u00a0Planetary Politics: a Manifesto)\u00a0<\/a>has argued for Europe to adopt a pan-national response akin to Biden\u2019s:<\/p>\n

\u201cEurope should indeed understand that a great transformation is taking shape in the US. Not only is the climate crisis finally being taken seriously. But industrial planning \u2013 or what some now call the\u00a0designer economy<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 is back in fashion across the political spectrum. This transformation opens a unique opportunity for Europe and the world.\u201d He continues: \u201cThe European Commission seems to understand this: along with a temporary\u00a0relaxation of state aid rules<\/a>\u00a0to stimulate green projects, Brussels wants a\u00a0joint<\/a>\u00a0European sovereignty fund<\/a>\u00a0to channel money to green industry. If taken seriously, this would trigger the emergence of a continent-wide industrial policy, accelerating Europe\u2019s green transformation and the EU\u2019s economic integration. It would place the first- and third-largest economies in the world on an equal climate-war footing, finally making emissions reduction targets a realistic prospect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course Britain is locked-out of such pan-European investments in a green economy. In a neat symmetry the economic self-harm of Brexit also removes us from working with our European neighbours and so, ecological self-harm is also inevitable.<\/p>\n

The Labour climb-down provoked dismay from environmental groups. Rebecca Newsom, Greenpeace UK\u2019s head of politics, said: \u201cRachel Reeves rightly cites the opportunities of green growth, but this prevarication on confirming the scale of investment needed from the start of a new Labour government risks throwing in the towel on the global race in green tech, with the US, China and the EU already far ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m highly sceptical of \u2018tech\u2019 solutions, don\u2019t believe in \u2018green growth\u2019 and deeply suspicious of Biden\u2019s plans. But even with these provisos and hesitancies, Labour look set to have Britain left behind in the transition to a green economy everyone can see is needed, even through the thick smog.<\/p>\n

11.6.23<\/strong><\/p>\n

______________<\/p>\n

also see:<\/p>\n

Environmental degradation and sustainable development – EL&SD coverage<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following article by Mike Small was first posted on bella caledonia. It examines the the environmental legacy dating from the day the Cuyahoga River caught fire on June 22nd in 1969 to June 4th, 2013 when New York recorded the worst air quality indicator for any city in the world, following the major fires…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1843,1857,1845,8866],"tags":[8984],"class_list":["post-25115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-capitalists-organise","category-environmental-degradation","category-us-imperialism","category-disease-ill-health","tag-author-mike-small"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.scot\/@rcfscotland\/110531244890224969","error":""},"views":1059,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25115"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25120,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25115\/revisions\/25120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}