Bernie Sanders: Anti-Union Capitalism Is Wrecking America
The Nation https://www.thenation.com › Article
Feb 16, 2023 — Workers deserve a better deal than the unfettered capitalism that is destroying our health, our democracy, and our planet.
Bernie Sanders spells out why capitalism is failing us – YouTube
YouTube https://www.youtube.com › watch . US Senator Bernie Sanders sits down with PoliticsJOE, exposing the relationship between supermassive businesses and the American state.
No Flying to Disney World from our XNA International Airport?!
Nobody, especially parents, wants to be on the cutting edge of urgently needed change if they might be called a spoilsport on Page One and children might cry when told no flying to Disney World. To the contrary. We cheer Congress for giving the Federal Amusement Agency $1billion dollars to make flying more accessible. Yes, even though flying is a significant source of CO2 surpassing cars, and the Biden Admin. declared the reduction of CO2 one of its goals, it is giving air travel $1 billion a year for five years. Paying no attention to the chaos ahead wrought by airplane fossil fuels emissions, disregarding George Monbiot’s cogent case against flying except for necessity, and despite the number of hungry people around the world climbing to 828 million, the FAA under the Airport Terminal Program is contributing $13 million to XNA’s infrastructural improvementscosting a total of $40 million. For what? To fund conveniences: a skybridge between the parking deck and the terminal, new elevators and escalators, new baggage carousels, and a lobby facelift. (And the state is planning a new approach highway.) XNA urgently needs these improvements? XNA needs these improvements? No, but they “will help meet future demand for travel” (by those wealthy enough and others ignorant, stupid, or willful enough).
An XNA spokesperson thanked the Biden Admin. for recognizing the importance of these improvements. –Dick 7-8-22
New Books on Degrowth
Degrowth is the movement “with hundreds of academic articles already in the literature” seeking to stop planetary destruction resulting from “endless economic growth” and a “constellation of exploitative relations.” Frame, 58.
Schmeizer, Vetter, and Vansintjan. The Future Is Degrowth: A Guide to the World Beyond Capitalism. Verso Books, 2022. Mariko Frame. “Strategies for Degrowth.” Monthly Review (Nov. 2022). By providing “a vision for postcapitalism beyond growth” the authors make it “possible to break with the logic of growth.” Their approach is “thoughtful, nuanced, and holistic.” Frame is the author of Ecological Imperialism, Development, and the Capitalist World-System: Cases from Africa and Asia (2022).
Degrowth Strategy & How to Bring about Social-ecological Transformation. Edited by Nathan Barlow, Livia Regen, Noémie Cadiou, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Max Hollweg, Christina Plank, Merle Schulken, and Verena Wolf. Praise for this book “This book is what the degrowth movement needed the most: a well-reasoned and empirically grounded compendium of strategic thinking and praxis for systemic transformations. This is a true gift, not only to degrowthers, but to all those who understand the need for radical change. In an era of unprecedented challenges as the one we are living through, this book should become essential reading in every higher education course across the social sciences and humanities.” Stefania Barca, University of Santiago de Compostela, author of Forces of Reproduction.
The climate catastrophe is worsening so rapidly it’s impossible to digest even the most outstanding books. Take for example, the decade-old, commanding exposure of the harms done by ECONOMIC GROWTH: Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth (Post Carbon Institute and Watershed Media, edited by Tom Butler and George Wuerthner). The jacket of the copy I own reproduces the famous photo of the collapsing, burning, exploding Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. “The overarching goal of ENERGY is to bring into focus the destructive nature of the extractive economy that has produced the eco-social crisis.” That is, world capitalism, particularly because of one of its chief features—growth–, is destroying our civilization.
The book was published in 2012. Ten years ago the destructiveness of US capitalism was well-known—and magnificently reported in ENERGY.