Compiled by Dick Bennett https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/06/omni-climate-memo-mondays-183-june-17.html
RESISTANCE
Kevin A. Young. Abolishing Fossil Fuels.
Melba Newsome. The Harms of Auto Tires.
Greenpeace. Elect Climate Champions.
Kevin A. Young. Abolishing Fossil Fuels: Lessons from Movements That Won. PM Press, 2024. 264pp.
Overview Purchase the e-Book HERE
Publisher’s Description
Climate destruction is a problem of political power.
We have the resources for a green transition, but how can we neutralize the influence of Exxon and Shell? Abolishing Fossil Fuels argues that the climate movement has started to turn the tide against fossil fuels, just too gradually. The movement’s partial victories show us how the industry can be further undermined and eventually abolished. Activists have been most successful when they’ve targeted the industry’s enablers: the banks, insurers, and big investors that finance its operations, the companies and universities that purchase fossil fuels, and the regulators and judges who make life-and-death rulings about pipelines, power plants, and drilling sites. This approach has jeopardized investor confidence in fossil fuels, leading the industry to lash out in increasingly desperate ways. The fossil fuel industry’s financial and legal enablers are also its Achilles heel.
The most powerful movements in US history succeeded in similar ways. The book also includes an in-depth analysis of four classic victories: the abolition of slavery, battles for workers’ rights in the 1930s, Black freedom struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, and the fight for clean air. Those movements inflicted costs on economic elites through strikes, boycotts, and other mass disruption. They forced some sectors of the ruling class to confront others, which paved the way for victory. Electing and pressuring politicians was rarely the movements’ primary focus. Rather, gains in the electoral and legislative realms were usually the byproducts of great upsurges in the fields, factories, and streets.
Those historic movements show that it’s very possible to defeat capitalist sectors that may seem invulnerable. They also show us how it can be done. They offer lessons for building a multiracial, working-class climate movement that can win a global green transition that’s both rapid and equitable.
Melba Newsome. “When the Rubber Meets the Road.” Sierra
Magazine. Summer 2024.
We are all probably familiar with the harms of auto CO2 emissions, but the harms of auto tires are only now receiving serious attention. Car tires on the road shed metallic particles, microplastics, and chemical compounds, the heavier the vehicle the more the pollution. Production and use of tires involve some 400 chemicals, their danger to humans and animals only now being identified. One chemical called 6PPD-quinone, used to make tires more durable, “has a devastating effect on marine life.” Newsome urges us to buy lighter cars, drive more slowly, carpool, use public transportation, bike, walk. (She says nothing about the significant changes in the auto culture necessary to significantly reduce its harms; for example, a WWII scale transition from cars to busses and trains.) We can do something. (See Art Hobson’s column “Support the transit tax: Automobile culture destroys cities.” NWADG, 9 May 2023.) –Dick 6-9-24
Climate champions get stuff done
Zach, Greenpeace USA Votes <info@greenpeaceusavotes.org> Sat, Jun 8, 2024
| Dick, We must do everything in our power to get climate-forward candidates elected up and down the ballot this November. Did you hear about the millions of acres of Arctic Alaska that are now appropriately managed to protect the economy of rural communities, conserve fish and wildlife habitat, and balance oil and gas extraction activities on public lands? Well, those environmental protections are because YOU Elected a Climate Champion to the White House. Remember last year’s Inflation Reduction Act? It authorized billions of dollars in investments for renewable energy projects and good-paying, union jobs necessary for a just transition off fossil fuels. That bill, although not without its compromises, passed because YOU Elected Climate Champions to the Senate. . . . In solidarity, Zach Norris, California Climate Director, Greenpeace USA Votes |