People Before Profit blog

Global climate change is a working-class issue

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 05:44:00 +0000

The 60th Annual United Nations Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Conference took place at the UN headquarters in New York in early September. The conference focused on climate change as one of the key issues facing the world.

Over 1,700 delegates from 62 countries, from all continents except Antarctica, representing over 500 NGOs, spent three days listening to top scientists, UN officials and NGO activists discuss, debate and wrestle with the many problems climate change is already causing, and additional problems headed our way in the future.

Scientists are talking now about “climate change” instead of global warming because, while the main trend is an accelerating increase in average world temperature, the effects are uneven and contradictory, with greater temperature increases at the North and South Poles, colder winters in other places, changes in weather systems resulting in more rainfall in some areas and more drought in others, more floods and more desertification, and more extreme weather events of all kinds. While all this is linked to global warming, warming is not the only thing happening.

Effects already evident

The world already experiences effects from human-caused climate change — more intense storms and hurricanes, more floods, accelerating desertification, and glacial melting. Several summers ago, Europe faced the hottest summer ever recorded there, and more than 30,000 people died early deaths as a result.

Ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are receding faster than anyone predicted. Ice in the Arctic is melting rapidly (two weeks ago, an area of ice as big as Florida disappeared), and the fabled “Northern Passage” that European explorers searched for will be a reality within a few years.

We face increased dangers to humanity from climate change caused by greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, including threats to our water and food supplies.

As glaciers and ice sheets melt, the sea level will rise — though no one knows for certain exactly how much and how fast; predictions range from several inches to many feet. The glaciers in the Himalayas are projected to disappear by 2035, and 1.2 billion people depend on the rivers those glaciers feed for their water supplies — for drinking, for sanitation and for growing food.

Rising ocean temperature threatens the monsoon cycles in Asia which provide water for crops, and also may shut down the Gulf Stream, threatening northern Europe with much colder winters and shorter growing seasons.

There is a great deal of scientific uncertainty — though not of the kind often reported in the U.S. media. The only uncertainty is whether we may actually face much more severe consequences.

The social issues are also complex. Most of the greenhouse gases causing the problem have resulted from industrial development and energy use in the major industrialized economies, but among the first and worst impacts will be on the least developed countries. Also, the rich in every country will use their wealth and power to avoid the consequences, though they profited most from the industrial development in the first place.

We have to understand that there is already too much accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, produced by industrial activity and carbon burning, to “stop” global warming. There are only three ways for humanity to react — mitigation (slowing or stopping more carbon dioxide emissions from industry, transportation and other energy uses), adaptation (adjusting industry, agriculture and other features of human life to the coming changes) and suffering. Humanity will do all three; the only question is, in what proportions. The more mitigation and adaptation, the less suffering. But action is required right now, before the problems get worse, before the costs of mitigation and adaptation get even higher and before the suffering increases.

What to do?

What can be done? Many changes are required — changes in personal lifestyle and consumption, changes in industrial and agricultural processes, changes to address the inequity in impacts around the world and changes in the political process, especially in the United States.

No one change will be enough by itself. We need to engage in all of them. Recycling, eating less meat and driving less will help, but the major changes we need are not just individual ones. One questioner at a conference panel presentation noted that people whose homes have central heating can’t just “turn down the thermostat,” and that it is pointless to agitate for people who can’t afford them to buy hybrid vehicles. People need to make personal and individual changes, she said, but economic, industrial and agricultural systems have to be changed to make a basic difference. Major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions include coal-fired electricity-generating plants; truck, ship and airline transportation; the use of petrochemicals for everything from fertilizer to packaging; and many other changes beyond the choice of individuals.

Global climate change is a working-class issue, and an issue of justice and equality within societies and across borders. Workers and poor people around the globe, and here at home, face increased suffering the longer it takes for major changes to be accomplished.

Unions, community organizations, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations are realizing that they need to take action, if only to keep the wealthy and major corporations from evading their responsibilities and burdening workers with all the costs and impacts of change.

The Bush administration’s denial of human-caused climate change and ignoring of scientific fact are increasingly at odds with easily observable reality. These issues and problems will play an increasing role in politics and elections in the U.S., including in the 2008 presidential election campaign. Public opinion has already shifted, and that is forcing candidates to address climate change. Some (mainly the Republicans) continue to deny or minimize the problems and the costs we are already paying. Others want to place the greatest burden on individuals. Only a few point out the real problems and real causes.

Call to action

The final call from the NGO conference strongly recommends (among other actions) that:

“a. all governments and civil society foster an ethical, moral foundation for ongoing sustainable development in our interdependent world, making the well-being of all of humankind our priority,

b. all educational institutions and media organizations more effectively educate about the issue of climate change with special emphasis on youth,

c. governmental authorities consider penalties for excessive consumption and pollution as a method of financing climate change improvements, as well as financial incentives to foster climate-friendly technologies so that fossil fuel and nuclear-based technologies can be phased out,

d. governments recognize that war is damaging to the climate,

e. all governments ratify UN conventions on climate change, the Kyoto protocol and other relevant climate conventions.”

This UN NGO conference was but one part of the global efforts — there will be more UN conferences including one in Bali in December, and other ongoing international negotiations. Missing at the table will be the direct voices of workers, farmers, poor people and children. It is part of our job to make those voices heard, and to demand immediate action before the costs of change rise even further.

Individual responsibility includes engaging in political action to force the political system to pass laws and tax the corporations to pay for the required changes. Struggles in the public sphere will determine how much global warming there will be, who pays the price of change and whether the industrial, agricultural and social transformations humanity needs actually happen.

Marc Brodine (marcbrodine @inlandnet.com) attended the UN NGO Climate Change Conference, Sept. 5-7, in New York. Brodine is chair of the Washington State Communist Party and co-authored the second edition of the CPUSA environmental program, “People and Nature Before Profits.”

Zones of conflict: challenge to African unity

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 05:17:00 +0000

There is a new danger plaguing Africa: zones of conflict are expanding into regional wars that take an ever-increasing human toll.

In the recent past, Africa was wracked by wars for liberation from colonial rule, coups d’etat by military commanders, and civil wars stemming from age-old conflicts. More recently, conflicts have begun to spill over national borders, particularly in West Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes Region and Central Africa bordering Sudan.

Africa is a massive and complex continent, rich in human, material and cultural wealth. But most Africans have not shared in the continent’s wealth.

Although 50 years have passed since the decolonization of Africa, starting with the independence of Ghana in 1957, virtually every African nation is saddled by the burden of the colonial past.

The European colonial powers carved up Africa in the 1800s, creating artificial political boundaries and splitting up or merging ethnic groups at the stroke of a pen. The legacy of those divisions lives on in some of the regional conflicts of today.

And foreign domination in Africa is not just a thing of the past. The current imperialist policies of European countries, the United States and Japan, along with the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, help keep Africa poor and underdeveloped.

These policies perpetuate the exploitation of the continent. They also inflate national military budgets, something the peoples of Africa can ill afford.

Giant multinational corporations control the extraction of valuable mineral resources and therefore reap most of the rewards of Africa’s wealth. What wealth does stay in African countries rarely makes it to the hands of working people.

The G8 countries, representing the biggest imperialist powers on the globe, met in Canada in 2002 and discussed Africa, among other things. They blamed Africa itself for its problems.

In response, two organizations, Action for Southern Africa and World Development Movement, issued a statement that reads, in part, “It is undeniable that there has been poor governance, corruption and mismanagement in Africa. However ... the context [is] the legacy of colonialism, the support of the G8 for repressive regimes in the Cold War, the creation of the debt trap, the massive failure of Structural Adjustment Programs imposed by the IMF and World Bank, and the deeply unfair rules on international trade.”

The groups called on the G8 countries to end “the unjust policies that are inhibiting Africa’s development.”

Sudan and Darfur

The U.S. media rarely covers African developments. That has changed to an extent with the conflict in Darfur. The humanitarian crisis there has become a cause célèbre in the U.S., and the call for military intervention in Sudan has become an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.

On July 31, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to send peacekeeping forces to the Darfur region of Sudan in East Africa. The 26,000 UN and African Union (AU) troops will constitute the largest peacekeeping force on the globe today and will replace the 7,400 AU peacekeepers already stationed in Darfur. Their stated mission is to protect the 6 million civilians in the region who have been the main victims of the conflict.

The brutal loss of life in Darfur, totaling anywhere from 200,000-400,000 deaths, is a catastrophe, and international pressure is important to put a stop to the killing. But the conflict is not a simple “ethnic conflict,” as some in the West see it.

Understanding that Darfur is part of a regional conflict that includes Sudan and neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic is essential to finding lasting solutions.

Darfur is a large region in western Sudan, roughly comparable to the size of California. The armed conflict there emerged just as a decade-long civil war in the south of Sudan was ending.

Local groups with long-standing conflicts with the central government in Khartoum erupted in revolt. Some of the groups made demands for reform in Sudanese policies toward the region. Others claimed the right for Darfur to secede. Some of the groups are based in Chad.

Khartoum responded with force. By most accounts, President Omar al-Bashir — who was commander of the military coup that took power in 1989 and subsequently became president in 1993 — supported the brutal suppression of the rebel groups.

Mounted local militias, called the janjaweed, clashed with these groups, raided villages and killed many civilians. UN workers and observers have documented thousands of human rights abuses by the janjaweed, including torture and rape.

What is happening in Darfur is certainly a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions. There is no doubt that Khartoum is backing these activities. The Sudanese military has reportedly assisted in some of the attacks.

Taking a bigger view

The problem, however, is that many concerned groups in the U.S. and elsewhere fail to see Darfur in a broader context.

As the Communist Party of the Sudan notes, “The Darfur problem is a part of the overall crisis of the Sudan” and any solutions must be a “project for national unity which could be agreed upon by all Sudanese parties aiming at paving the way for peace, unity, democracy and equitable development in the country.”

Left out of the equation of causes and solutions by some is the role played by neighboring Chad, a country ruled by another dictatorship, which is funding, supporting and encouraging armed rebellion in Darfur for its own reasons. Direct military conflict between Sudan and Chad broke out around the time of the Darfur crisis. The two countries signed a cease-fire in 2006.

What are these reasons for such conflict? Some explanation can be found in the vast oil and mineral wealth located in the Darfur region. Local and foreign interests — including the U.S. and European corporations — are willing to fight hard for the control of such wealth.

Ecological problems are also at work. Many years of drought, along with an encroaching Sahara Desert, have driven hundreds of thousands from their homes in search for arable land for farming and livestock grazing.

No easy answers

Easy answers for Africa are sure to be off the mark. Sudan is a huge country with a rich and complex history, many tribal and clan groups, and different cultures and languages, not to mention Muslims, Christians and those practicing traditional religions.

The civil war that plagued Sudan for more than a decade was largely between the Muslim rulers in Khartoum and the Christians and animists in the south of the country. The conflict in Darfur is between Muslims on the one side and Muslims on the other side, too. Some have described the conflict as “ethnic” in nature, pitting “Arab Black African Muslims” against “non-Arab Black African Muslims.” Others, particularly Sudanese commentators, say this observation shows a misunderstanding of Sudanese identity and culture.

A 2004 power-sharing agreement, which ended the civil war in the south of Sudan, did not solve the social and political crisis, a crisis that has been aggravated by a theocratic, Islamic dictatorship at the country’s helm. The Communists say only a national “democratic transformation” can resolve the crisis.

Darfur is therefore more complex than many people realize. And well-meaning individuals could help fan the flames of regional war by invoking calls for direct U.S. military action in the region.

The Horn of Africa

The Horn of Africa includes the eastern African countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti. The Horn has been called the most militarized region in the world; it contains the only sub-Saharan U.S. military base, in Djibouti. The Horn is strategically located as well, butting up against the Middle East and with access to the Indian Ocean.

Today, the major conflict stems from a destabilized and increasingly fractured Somalia. Somalia, a primarily Muslim nation, has had no central government for over 15 years, ever since a disputed president was overthrown and the country was divided up between regional powers and self-serving warlords.

More recently, the U.S. bombarded the country and Washington encouraged the government of predominantly Christian Ethiopia to invade and unseat the Islamic Courts Union that had established rule in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.

The Bush administration claims the ICU leaders are connected to Al-Qaida and is therefore a legitimate target in the “war on terrorism.” Although Ethiopia has since pulled out, it claims the “right” to strike against Somalia or to invade again in order to defend its “national interests,” as does the U.S.

Another intervention would likely further destabilize the country and worsen the refugee crisis. Ethiopia has also continued saber rattling over border conflicts with Eritrea, which it previously occupied.

The Great Lakes

The Great Lakes region is the area surrounding the Rift Valley lakes such as the famous Lake Victoria. The countries in this region include Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and others.

In a series of well-documented events, the first elected president of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, an ethnic Hutu, was assassinated in 1993, sparking a well-planned genocidal retaliation by Hutu rebels against masses of Tutsi civilians. This provoked further retaliation by the Tutsi-run military, ultimately resulting in over 100,000 deaths. But the bloodletting was not over.

The following year, a helicopter carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down, sparking a massive civilian slaughter in Rwanda of upwards of 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis.

The conflict in Rwanda and Burundi eventually spilled over into Zaire (now DR Congo). Neighboring Uganda and Rwanda invaded DR Congo. Other countries, including Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, sent troops in support of the government forces of DR Congo. It was the closest Africa has come to a full continental war. The war in the DR Congo officially raged from 1998 to 2003, but fighting continues to smolder in the eastern part of the country.

The war in DR Congo has claimed an unthinkable 4 million lives in less than 10 years. At its height, the war there involved troops or proxies for 12 African countries. This crisis never much reached the U.S. media nor received the same attention as Darfur has.

African solutions exist

Ending the spiraling conflicts in Africa is essential to laying the basis for peaceful development, security for civilians and economic progress. The risk of continent-wide conflict has never been greater, but neither has the potential for continental unity.

African leaders met at the Summit of the African Union in Accra, Ghana, July 1-3, to discuss prospects for open borders and a unified currency and security force. Such a project, first envisioned by Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, is by any measure far off and uncertain. But the African leaders have reasserted the principle that Africans must solve African problems themselves, along with support from the international community.

The AU and its member states have played a decisive role in bringing peace to Africa’s regional conflicts. The AU has helped negotiate peace agreements in Darfur, DR Congo and Ethiopia, for instance. The diplomatic role played by countries like South Africa, including its former president, Nelson Mandela, have also contributed to peace on the continent.

It is clear that true African unity and cooperative peaceful development between African nations will only come when Europe and the U.S., primarily the G8 countries, come to the table with resources and political will to assist Africa in solving its problems in the interests of the people, and not the profit of a few, whether native or foreign.

Prescriptions for change, funds with strings attached and military action will only fan the flames of war and conflict in Africa. Deeper solutions rooted in a full understanding of the historical and economic origins of conflict, based on international cooperation and peacekeeping led by Africans, are the only hope to put out the fires for good.

Libero Della Piana (ldellapiana @cpusa.org) is the chair of the New York State Communist Party. He studied in Liberia and has traveled to Africa several times.

Rethinking Toyota, autoworkers and allies

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:54:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

People who own Toyotas are either the moral equivalent of scabs or they are one of the most potentially powerful allies U.S. organized labor has today.

Which perspective labor decides to take could well determine the success or failure of the UAW and other industrial unions in organizing the more than two dozen foreign car plants that have been built in the United States since 1982.

The idea of a daring new strategy to help workers organize at Toyota and other foreign auto makers came out of a statement made by a member of a Jobs with Justice Workers Rights Board in Kentucky.

“It’s clear to me that a lot of people — forward-thinking, optimistic, liberal, progressive people — buy Toyotas. And those are the kind of people who also believe in equity, fairness, rights and justice. And when those kinds of people find out that the Toyotas they are buying are supporting a company that may not be everything they thought it was, that’s where the change will come,” said Rev. Cynthia Cain of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington, Ky.

Cain recently learned first-hand how Toyota isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. As a member of the public hearing panel organized by Kentucky Jobs with Justice, she heard testimony in June from current and former Toyota workers at the company’s Georgetown, Ky., assembly plant.

The Georgetown plant has been producing Avalons, Camrys and Solaras since 1988. Cain sat on the citizens panel that heard testimony concerning illegal firings, sexual discrimination, exploitation of temporary workers, unsafe working conditions and bad corporate citizenship.

Toyota hires temporary workers at $13 an hour, for instance, compared to $30 an hour (including bonuses) that its permanent workers are paid. Temps are often kept in a nonpermanent status for an average of two years, and many are never made permanent. They can also be easily dismissed.

Two regular workers were fired because they happened upon a company memo that was sitting on a public drive on their work computer. The memo discussed Toyota’s plans to lower the wages of its North American workforce. The two workers were fired for “disruptive behavior” when they told co-workers what they had read.

Another Toyota worker testified that workers injured on the job simply “disappear” from the workforce forever with no explanation.

“We have a right to know how many workers are injured, what type of injuries they suffered, and what happens to our injured co-workers. Hiding this information is wrong. That’s not what we were promised,” this 18-year Toyota veteran said.

If Cain is correct that many Toyota owners made their car purchases based on personal values, such as caring for the planet, then it might be a good bet they also care about people on the planet, including those who build Toyotas.

Just think what a powerful movement could result from the merger of America’s labor union members and progressive-minded consumers. The goal here would not be to call for a boycott of Toyotas. That would only serve to alienate the people labor would be trying to build an alliance with.

Toyota is here to stay. Plus the company has set itself the goal of producing in the United States all the cars and trucks it sells here. That wouldn’t be a bad goal for General Motors, either. Labor also cannot ignore the reality that foreign manufacturers now control more than 50 percent of the auto market in this country.

A Toyota Owners for Fairness group could generate e-petitions and letters calling on management not only to comply with the recommendations of the Kentucky Workers Rights Board, but also to remain neutral while their workers decide for themselves whether to form a union.

If Toyota really listens to car buyers, then maybe the fastest growing auto company in the world might get the message that workers’ rights is just as important to its customers as fuel efficiency.

Jobs with Justice column reprinted from the Detroit Labor News.

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Is Bush planning war on Iran?

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:45:00 +0000

News Analysis

The Sunday Times of London is reporting that the Pentagon has plans for three days of massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran.

Last week, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, told a meeting of The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal, that the military did not intend to carry out “pinprick strikes” against Iranian nuclear facilities. He said, “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military.”

In his Aug. 28 speech to the American Legion, Bush called Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” and pledged to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

Bush’s WMD-hyping against Iran is déjà vu in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Disaster, where he played loose and fast with the truth about Iraq’s alleged WMDs. His statement that a nuclear Iran could put the region “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust” conjures up his images of a “mushroom cloud” in the hype-up to Iraq.

How inconvenient for Bush that the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) just found Iran’s uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity and is nowhere near producing significant amounts of nuclear fuel. The IAEA report says Iran “has been providing the agency with access to declared nuclear materials, and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and facilities.”

Iran and IAEA agreed on a plan with a step-by-step timetable of cooperation to settle unresolved issues. The agreement said there were “no other remaining issues and ambiguities regarding Iran’s past nuclear program and activities,” and characterized the accord as “a significant step forward.”

“This is the first time Iran is ready to discuss all the outstanding issues which triggered the crisis in confidence,” said the IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. “I’m clear at this stage you need to give Iran a chance to prove its stated goodwill.”

In 2003, when ElBaradei reported there was no evidence that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, and as Saddam Hussein became more cooperative with the weapons inspector, Bush became “infuriated,” according to journalist Bob Woodward.

Bush’s current vow, “We will confront this danger before it is too late,” is the Iran incarnation of his illegal pre-emptive war doctrine. In a clear signal he is seeking regime change in Iran, Bush called for “an Iran whose government is accountable to its people, instead of leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.”

In 2002, Bush/Cheney created the White House Iraq Group to lead a propaganda campaign to bolster public support for war with Iraq. The White House decided to wait until after Labor Day of 2002 to kick off the group’s mission. Chief of Staff Andrew Card explained, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Five years later, they’re marketing a new and even more dangerous product — war with Iran. British military historian Corelli Barnett says, “An attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III.”

Our military spending has reached $1 billion every two and half days and we are borrowing $2.5 billion per day. Bush is mortgaging our children’s future security and wealth. We have lost more than 3,700 soldiers in Iraq and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died.

It’s up to the U.S. people to stop it.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law.” This is an abridged version of an article that appears at her web site .