Murray Bookchin and social ecology

Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) developed a unique philosophy of American non-violent anarchism (or libertarianism, according to some). After a revolutionary youth as a Communist, Trotskyist, union organizer, and anti-racist, he urged a “post-scarcity” utopia founded on ecology and local democracy. In the 1960s he wrote ground-breaking studies of chemical pollution, racism -- and ecology as a revolutionary paradigm. At his Institute for Social Ecology and as a professor at New Jersey’s Ramapo College, he explored anarchist and libertarian thought, denouncing Soviet Marxism and US nuclearism alike socially-constructed nightmares.(2) In the 1970s he moved to Vermont, founding ISE and putting his philosophy into practice (3).

Cooperation and interdependence, in his view, were the basis of cultural evolution and ecology. The so-called “law of the jungle” was neither natural in origin nor inevitable in history. The ideal society would be free from drudgery, human exploitation and class domination. See his classic 1993 summary What is social ecology? -- whose core principle is “dialectical naturalism”. (4)

“Social ecology advocates a reconstructive and transformative outlook on social and environmental issues, and promotes a directly democratic, confederal politics. As a body of ideas, social ecology envisions a moral economy that moves beyond scarcity and hierarchy, toward a world that reharmonizes human communities with the natural world, while celebrating diversity, creativity and freedom. Historically, the Institute for Social Ecology has been a pioneer in the exploration of ecological approaches to food production, alternative technologies, and urban design, and has played an essential, catalytic role in movements to challenge nuclear power, global injustices and unsustainable biotechnologies, while building participatory, community-based alternatives. The Institute strives to be an agent of social transformation, demonstrating the skills, ideas and relationships that can nurture vibrant, self-governed, healthy communities.” 

-- from the website of the ISE, Marshfield VT. Current director is Brian Tokar (2^nd row R)

The ISE has links with U of Vermont, Prescott College AZ, SEEDS in Vashon Is. WA, the bilingual Centre d'Écologie Urbaine / Urban Ecology Centre in Montreal, Democratic Alternative and New Compass Press in Norway, Ecologie Sociale in Switzerland; and centers (5) in Ireland, London, Frankfurt, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Latin America and Australia. It both influenced and critiqued the Occupy movement. (6)

Notes

1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_naturalism
2. Bookchin's Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982) greatly influenced the German Green party's four pillars: ecological wisdom, social justice, grassroots democracy, and nonviolence.
3. His libertarian municipalism combined the tradition of New England-style town meetings with the rising Green movement.
4. For his other major publications see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin
5. more weblinks at http://www.social-ecology.org/global-allies-links/ , http://www.social-ecology.org/category/social-ecology-journals/ and http://www.social-ecology.org/projects/
6. See Ursula Le Guin's thoughtful comments “On the Future of the Left“ 4 Feb 2015; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement

The 59th minute -- by David Suzuki

In his 2009 Legacy lecture, "An elder's vision for our sustainable future", David Suzuki points out that the Earth’s water, food and air are finite. If the Earth were a basketball, the biosphere — our only home -- would be thinner than a layer of varnish on its surface. What orthodox economics and our leaders assume, unlimited growth on a limited planet, is suicide.

Human population doubles every 42 years

Test Tube: this NFB animation asks what you would do "if you could find an extra minute". Just type one word and watch the 3 1/2 m video. Here's a note on how it was made using live Twitter data, constantly growing, as an analogue to the bacteria. And an app for your iPhone.

Suzuki proposes a thought experiment. Suppose we are bacteria in a test tube full of food. It’s huge compared to our tiny size, but still finite. Like humans, our population increases exponentially. 

“At time zero you have one cell; one minute you have two; two minutes you have four; three minutes you have eight; four minutes you have 16. That is exponential growth and at 60 minutes the test tube is completely full of bacteria and there is no food left, a sixty minute cycle. When is the test tube only half full? Well the answer of course is at 59 minutes; but a minute later it is filled. So at 58 minutes it is 25% full; 57 minutes 12½ % full. At 55 minutes of the 60 minute cycle it is only 3% full. 

So, if at 55 minutes one of the bacteria said to its companions that they had a population problem, the other bacteria would be incredulous because 97% of the test tube would be empty and they had been around for 55 minutes. 

Yet they would have only 5 minutes left. At the 58th minute it would only be a quarter full. At the 59th minute, half full, And if just before the hour bacteria scientists invented 3 more test tubes, they would only buy 2 minutes of life: the 60th minute, one test tube full; 61st, two full, 62nd, all four. With no food left, the population crashes. Their technology quadrupled the supply (three more Earths), and bought just TWO MINUTES.

In real life can we add even a fraction of 1% more of air, water, soil or biodiversity? We cannot. The biosphere is fixed and finite -- we are past the 59th minute -- and every biologist I have talked to agrees with me, ”

Back on Earth, right now, we see no shortage. In our air conditioned supermarkets the food is stacked to the ceiling, tap water flows in our kitchens, oxygen supplied by the trees. We are in the 59th minute. Time to change. But rightwing deniers (like this one) insist the scientists must be wrong.

Our blog in 2008 posted a 8 min animation that tells the same story: “Are humans smarter than yeast?” Read the two previous posts on this blog, The line cuts through the heart, and Letting go of honest hope. Listen to all of Suzuki's inspiring Legacy lecture, and read Bill McKibben’s Eaarth to understand what has happened to the biosphere in the last two generations, and what we must do about it.

Population mind map by Jane Genovese

Eco-economics deals with the human impact on the biosphere in the anthropocene era.
The Kaya formula  is


Some what better-known is the Commoner, Ehrlich and Holdren formula:
I=PAT
Human Impact (I) on the environment equals P= Population multiplied by A= Affluence and T= Technology. The Quaker book Right Relationship (p.76+) includes E for ethics, I=PATE, to argue that we must both for scientific and moral reasons adjust our impact, making major changes in PAT to reach a sustainable whole earth economy. “Change the system not the climate,” as the protesters chanted at the 2009 climate negotiations in Copenhagen and later. Humanity is still far from E action. We are robbing our grandchildren of their future.

Update - Suzuki Leap Manifesto in 2015, its signatories, and recent news of the movement.

Letting Go of Honest Hope - by Bob McGahey

Bob McGahey is a Quaker deep ecologist, who trained with Joanna Macy, member of North Carolina Interfaith Power and Light,  and the ecojustice committee of the North Carolina Council of Churches. This post from his blog Ecospirit is republished with his permission

------------------
Honest hope. I have insisted upon it for several years now, ever since reading Dianne Dumanoski, who finishes The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth with a short chapter by that title. “In times of danger, bitter truths serve us better than sweet lies.” Blind hope kills, whereas honest hope accepts the immense uncertainty of the survival of civilization, even higher life, in an era beset by accelerating climate disequilibrium, which is offset by the tremendous capacity for adaptation and resilience shown by human evolutionary history.

Georges de la Tour, St Joseph the carpenter (1642)

Honest hope is like tough love, continually tested by the realization that the only certainty is immense uncertainty. Nature has always been uncertain. But since we've flourished during a long calm, the 10,000-year Holocene Epoch, we have become lazy. We take it for granted that farmers will continue to feed 7 to 9 billion people and that we will be able to suck out all the fossil fuels the Earth has sequestered to replace animal power. We are used to easy street. The Big Easy – New Orleans before Katrina. Though humanity has made it through some very tough times, especially repeated eras of glaciation, we have never faced rapid warming and all that sets in motion in the biosphere. As one climate scientist recently said, “They have no idea of what's coming.” The scale of climate disruption we face is unprecedented.

Instead of honest hope, hydra-headed denial fuels a flight from uncertainty into Providence. Dumanoski outlines three forms of providential salvation: faith in the technological fixes that have gotten us through every bottleneck until now; deliverance by the invisible hand of the market; and the clincher – deliverance through Apocalypse and the end of human history. Though these may all sound like the overconfidence of the political right, these fantasies lurk in us all to some degree.

Grimly clinging to my last thread of honest hope, I recently led a retreat entitled “Collapsing Consciously.” Readers of this blog might recognize the title from my review of Carolyn Baker's book Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths for Turbulent Times (March 31). Though the very structure of my retreats, which are based upon Joanna Macy's work in moving through despair to an awakened level of coping, insures residual or renewed hope, my dogged reading of the latest climate science made my statement about honest hope the most tenuous ever. I told the group that honest hope remained, but that it was tied to the thinnest of moorings.

I was completely honest with the group, outlining the latest IPCC report (as well as its glaring omission of the Arctic methane emergency), the tenuousness of the world economic order, and the continuing geopolitical impasse over an international treaty on climate. The latter was leavened by my joining the People's Climate March the preceding week, but we don't know yet if that remarkable event will lead to the necessary shift from protective nationalism to an awakened last-hour accord. And in the central exercise, the Truth Mandala, I once again confessed my fear that we would not survive imminent climate apocalypse.

But the process was resilient enough to allow the group to leaven my darkness and fear, as participants shared their openness to the movement of the Spirit in the midst of dire uncertainty. One person, who had spoken twice of her despair, anger, and deep sadness over the earth crisis came forward, placed both hands on the floor, and testified to the hope that upheld everything. This brought me to a place of wonderment, for shortly before I had pointed out that the very ground of this ritual confession of our deepest feelings was hope. But I had not experienced hope as I spoke. Her eloquent act brought the Buddha's mudra, touch the earth, to bear on our ritual.

As I reviewed the retreat afterwards, rereading Dumanoski's chapter on honest hope. I was startled to realize that my utilization of her concept had subtly morphed over time into a desire that, with some tweaking, the established order would survive. Despite years of wrestling with the central moral dilemma of anthropogenic global ecocrisis, I am still seized by our cultural myth, fearing a break with comforts and the tenuous security of the established order. Thus when I experience myself as cooly rational, I am still provisionally open to techno-fixes like geoengineering, nuclear power, or GMO's as inevitable in the brave new Anthropocene. But this is not honest hope. Honest hope means accepting the challenge of devolving from a complex extractive civilization to a cultural order that is resilient in the face of warming.

“We don't know.” So often my audience says this when I point fatalistically to our impending end. Too often this simply covers a deep-rooted denial of the gravity of our situation. Sometimes it is the simple child-like faith that “God wouldn't let us perish.” But it can also be a genuine openness to the possibility for something new and unforeseen hidden in the nucleus of our uncertain moment in history.

Towards the end of that retreat, I actually found myself saying we don't know for the first time. A sense of wonder and possibility was moving through the room; one man named it the Holy Spirit. The place from which that sentence surprisingly emerged was different from honest hope. And since I later realized that what I was calling honest hope was really a rationalization for a last-ditch confidence that our way of life could be salvaged in some way, then the statement was a tentative doorway to something deeper, even scarier, and more real.

There is a people's climate movement building, with many laudable efforts such as fossil folly divestment, Transition Towns, rapid renewable ramp-ups, shifts in agricultural practices, and a growing call for replacing capitalism with an economic system that is responsive to the earth's stability as well as a chastened but sustainable human presence. But it appears as if we simply don't have time to make changes; we have squandered too many chances. The days of honest hope are coming to an end.

So if we relinquish honest hope, what are we left with? We are in a chiasm strongly reminiscent of the Hebrew community after the fall of the First Temple. It is time for a prophetic response that acknowledges the deep sadness and regret of our seemingly impossible dilemma. Such a response would acknowledge that You have broken God's covenant and will suffer for your ecological sins – but be nevertheless grounded in a deep place of hope. The Hebrew word is batah: confidence, security, without care. It is redoubled in the New Testament with the Greek elpis (“whence cometh our help”) - for elpis is the root of “help.” Neither of these terms can be modified by a downside, as we do with “hope” in everyday speech. Biblical hope is complete, total. It is an unshakable reality, not a feeling.

Even spiritually-minded moderns do not often show this kind of hope. Usually when I hear folks testify to it, I doubt them; surely their faith has not been sufficiently tested. Well we are being tested, and “honest hope” is not going to answer the test.

No matter how bad things get, we need to continue to act as if our actions mattered, honest hope or no, cultivating batah/elpis by something like Paul's continual prayer. When asked the reason for our hope as the world as we know it crumbles around us, answer as Paul did in I Peter 3:15 – Be prepared to give the defense that the Light (Christ) is in your Heart... The experience of hope gives grounds for faith, what I call cosmological faith. This is not collapsing into the arms of Apocalypse, confident of a place in heaven, but seeding the hope of the new Phoenix, whose form we know not. Cosmological faith, rooted in biblical hope, is my anchor when honest hope has become thin to the point of vanishing.

The line cuts through the heart -- by Rick Weaver

Published with the author's permission from his blog The Goat Rope. Rick has the AFSC regional office in West Virginia and writes frequently about its needs and politics. See this link for all the AFSC blogs.

Otter Creek WV - Kent Mason

I've read a lot over the years about the atrocities committed in Stalinist Russia, but I'm only just now getting around to reading (really listening to an unabridged recording of) Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

This morning, while walking the dogs in the rain, I came across this nugget that says a lot about human nature:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good t flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: "Know thyself."

Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, striken dumb; it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.

From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb.
And correspondingly, from evil to good.

After the Climate March, what? -- by David Millar

Art thou a child of the Light, and hast thou walked in the Light? What canst thou say? – Margaret Fell

Aboriginal peoples led the Sep 21 climate March – from an Idle No More video

In addition to the Peoples Climate March [1] in New York, I attended the Peoples Climate Summit (offering “new economy” alternatives to the official UN Summit plan to finance climate action and SDGs by carbon offsets) and Climate Convergence workshops. I reported on these daily by email to QEWdiscussions.[2] where I also posted critical analyses by several trustworthy sources: Pablo Solon of Bolivia, IBON, Third World Network, Indigenous Environmental Network and others. We should be lift up these voices from the global South in our local meetings and Quaker networks. Post them on your Meeting's bulletin board. Send them to non-Quaker friends.

The “rainbow” of indigenes, people of color and the poor is today's front line In North America, as IEN, Idle No More and the Environmental Justice movement remind us – but the destruction of God's Creation and rampant speculation at the expense of Earth commons will affect all future generations. As the Kabarak Call says, “We waste our children's heritage.” [3]

The key question is not, how good do we feel about joining the March? It is what do we do now?

This does not mean giving up your spirituality and your present leadings.[4] Every little bit counts, including personal transformation, habits of consumption, prayer, support for members of your Meeting, multifaith groups and listening projects, and transition networks.[5] You may feel your bucket is full. As UCC leader Rev. Jim Antal [6] reminded us at a post-March Vermont IPL conference, ecojustice is now the container, the “bucket” that unites all our concerns.

Comparing Quaker positions on many concerns with other NGOs, [8] we find ourselves on parallel paths, with common values and concerns. Some (including Britain YM, AFSC and FCNL) may be farther down the path than QEW is. We can learn from them.

Black Quakers in Africa are far ahead of us in developing processes for peacemaking, truth & reconciliation and (re)building the beloved community. [9] Here in North America, we can learn from aboriginal wisdom about Creation, [9] and from the 50 years of civil action by black churches in the Environmental Justice movement. [10] To catch up, we must open up.

I [was] brought up into the covenant, as sanctified by the Word which was in the beginning, by which all things are upheld; wherein is unity with the creation. - George Fox's Journal

Footnotes and links

1. See my album of Quakers at the March, http://flickr.com/fdmillar/sets
2. My emails to QEWdiscussions, reports on the new Jubilee and New Economy conferences. The NGOs with which QEW could exchange info are listed in Climate Convergence, OurPower Campaign and People's Climate Justice Summit (see its amazing workshop list, and videos of the Peoples Tribunal). I could not attend everything but here are others' reports of the Bee-In for food justice Sep 20, EQAT civil dis Sep 20, Flood Wall Street Sep 22, FrackOff, US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) Sep 17-Oct 17, and the first WCIP: World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (I recommend updates from the IGC: Indigenous Global Coordinating Group in preference to the uninformative official UN site).
3. The Kabarak Call to peace and ecojustice was approved by World Conference of Friends, 2012. See also World Council of Churches' declaration for An Economy of Life 2012.
4. Don't give up your leading BFC 26.1 January 2013.
5. Recipes for local multifaith listening projects 2014; see also Transition USA and NEYM blog.
6. Antal powerpoint to be posted on VTIPL. Under his leadership, UCC has approved divestment from all fossil fuels.
7. Multifaith goals for SDGs, a comparison – download the spreadsheet from Dropbox.
8. AGLI download: HROC and peacebuilding manuals; read the story of their development in A Peace of Africa by David Zarembka and Ending Cycles of Violence by Judy Lumb.
9. Yale FORE introduction with sacred texts; and posts tagged native on my blog.
10. Greenfaith resources on Environmental Justice.

World war on the poor

This summary is based on information from a number of NGOs and ecojustice coalitions.

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me: 
Jesus, in Matthew 25:40.

We are called to cooperate lovingly with all who share our hopes for the future of the earth:

the Kabarak Call, approved at Friends World Conference 2012

We need heart politics. The immediate victims are non-white and aboriginal peoples, peasants, fishers -- the majority mothers and children. They are casualties of a world war, now being fought by stealth on at least ten fronts. They have no effective vote. Few powers-that-be in the rich countries care about them. As the aboriginal peoples of Idle No More remind us, We are on today's frontline, and you will be next. Climate refugees: today's 30,000/year will rise to a minimum 50 million in your children's lifetime. Climate change deaths, already 350,000 a year, will be four times that by 2030. UN head Ban Ki-Moon says, “Climate change is every much a security threat as an armed group bent on plunder.”

1. At climate negotiations, rich countries have consistently refused adequate direct aid, proposing “market mechanisms” instead, “leveraging private finance” in various “climate funds” under UNEP and the World Bank. This means carbon offsets: big corporate polluters can buy cheap “emissions credits” to continue polluting under any of the following labels -- CDM, JI, AR, REDD, LULUCF, PES, TEEB, WAVES, EU-ETS, other cap-and-trade systems and “voluntary” offsets, Natural Capital, Green Economy, Green Growth – while bragging about their “sustainability”. Banks, marketers and so-called "independent" consultants take a lion's share. The rest trickles down to big conservation NGOs and Third World governments who declare protected "natural" areas – in which GMO plantations and ethanol crops are counted! Those living there, aboriginal and local populations, are denied true consultation (FPIC), independent monitoring or appeal procedures. In many cases they are evicted at the point of a gun. Back on Wall Street, derivatives and tax deductions can grossly inflate the paper values of offsets into a card castle waiting to collapse: Friends of the Earth call it a "carbon casino" with few winners, many losers.

2. In SDG negotiations, “post-2015” Sustainable Development Goals (combining both climate and poverty action to replace expiring Kyoto goals and MDG) all UN agencies have committed themselves to offset financing. Rio+20's World We Want document June 2012 dictated by business lobbies (such as WBCSD, International Chamber of Commerce, and World Economic Forum at Davos) was massively criticized by NGOs as the “world we don't want”. Since then planning has continued behind closed doors, with NGOs excluded, by a committee of 'experts' drawn from banking and stock markets.

3. In the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) there is a Nagoya agreement on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) which was meant to provide some revenue to poor countries and aboriginal groups whose genetic resources (GR) and traditional knowledge (TK) are being used for vast profit by big pharma and other multinationals. The ABS is halted by legal quibbling. With negotiation deadlocked, the payments are virtually nil, but bio-piracy continues. Is that justice? The CBD Alliance (of NGOs and aboriginal organizations) is now appealing to the UN General Assembly's Open Working Group.

4. In the World Trade Organization, the same interests beat down poor countries' laws to protect food security. Despite rhetoric about "level playing fields" the reality is market rule, not human need. Those who cannot buy food -- urban poor, peasants, fishers, women and children -- will starve. States who break WTO rules face closed-door 'arbitration' courts composed of corporate lawyers. This is already happening. Countries are being sued for loss of anticipated profits, democracy and environmental laws over-ruled, and billions of dollars in fines imposed under 'investor rights'.

5. At the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), attempts to rein in food speculation are being stymied by business lobbies -- a situation proven to drive the price of food to starvation levels (as in the 2007-08 food crisis), despite the best attempts at obfuscation by rightwing economists. Food stocks have dwindled. Speculators will game the market, again. Children's brains will be stunted. People will die. And we will be told (again) "nothing can be done".

6. Fishing to extinction has already occurred in many places. A major source of protein for the poor, still more key fish stocks are in imminent danger. Just offshore in places like Somalia and Senegal, unreported unregulated and illegal (UUI) fishing by rogue fleets continues, financed by the big banks. Bottom trawling, pollution, and climate-caused acidity are destroying marine ecosystems. Marine Protected Areas (MPA) have been proposed – some to be financed by offsets (see 1 above) but so far little has been done.

a new article for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ?

7. The World Water Council, a business lobby supported by UN agencies, continues its efforts to privatize one of life's essentials. For more than a decade Maude Barlow, Nnimmo Bassey and others have argued that water is not a commodity but a human right. Do we remember the Cochabamba water wars of 2000 that brought Evo Morales to power in Bolivia? AS Maud Barlow told the European Citizens Initiative in 2013, "The struggle for water justice is the most powerful struggle I know and absolutely key to all the others. We need democratic, just and public control of water if we are to survive."

8. Pricing medicine. Big pharma continues to insist on huge profits from patents -- “intellectual property rights” (IP) – while pricing AIDS and other vaccines beyond reach of the poor. Pay or die. Though some generic agreements have been reached they are far from adequate. Meanwhile (see 3 above), the same lobbies avoid paying for the genetic resources and indigenous knowledge on which many new medicines are based. And big pharma does "placebo" trials in the Third World (basically leaving a comparison group untreated), exposing those populations both to higher risk without consent AND higher prices.

9. Privatizing public services and resources. Under World Bank-IMF rules, poor countries mired in unjust debt are still forced as in previous Structural Adjustment Plans (SAP) to abandon public services, including hospitals and education, and to sell off lucrative state enterprises that are natural monopolies (electricity, telephone, posts and communications) or scarce resources (old-growth forests, minerals, gas and oil) at fire-sale prices. Business lobbies send lawyers in to “reform” mining codes and deregulate. This is called being “open for business”. Low royalties, tax avoidance, transfer pricing by multinationals, and hot money flight then drain the poor countries’ revenues. In some cases, huge areas of agriculture land are sold or leased – local inhabitants driven out by security forces. They must grow industrial crops for export, rather than develop sustainable smallholder agriculture to feed their people.

abandoned school, Detroit, USA

10. Debt: bringing the Third World home. Now we see the SAP methods being applied in European “austerity”, with youth employment rising as high as 50%. In the USA: 1.3 million jobless thrown off UI benefits. In Detroit: bankruptcy, wiping out of pensions and union rights. Student debt enforcing servitude to the system; “temp” jobs that last forever; jobs with lower-tier benefits and pensions, if any; families falling below the living wage, inequality exploding. It is hard to escape the conclusion that coming generations are being robbed to benefit the 1% whose creed is that their incomes must rise forever. Not to mention the threat that the financial games will fail, the system itself collapse -- taking with it all the sub-systems: capitalist, communist, crony kleptocratic, nature itself with all life, "all our relations" that sustain us. Amid the ruins, at every crisis, there will be less and less ability to rebuild. Gated communities and security systems may keep the desperate hordes at bay; but who will ensure the guards' loyalty?

Police in Ferguson MO August 2014: slate.com photo 

Friends United Meeting, Minute on Care for God’s Creation, 2000 (excerpt): We call upon Friends to examine their own lives to see if their own patterns of consumption reflect self-centeredness and greed rather than a concern for living harmoniously in the creation, that we might witness to the world that harmony. We call upon the nations of the world, and in particular our own governments, to enact laws and reach agreements which will protect the creation from the effects of human exploitation, greed, and carelessness.

A green alternative

None of the above is inevitable. A sharing, caring economy that serves human need and safeguards “all our relations” in the living planet is not only possible, but is being practiced at the local level. My next draft will explore this vision in detail. Some sources: Caring Economy, Transition Network, It’s the Economy, Friends (Quaker Institute for the Future pamphlet, 2012), Beyond the Growth Dilemma (QIF pamphlet, 2012), NEF New Economics Foundation (UK) publications, and the checklist of earthcare goals What can we do?

References

Intro – climate deaths and refugees

Surplus deaths due to climate change were 140,000/year in 2004: World Health Organization (WHO) factsheets. DARA's Climate Vulnerability Monitor calculates over 5 million deaths and 350,000 refugees yearly, the latter rising to four times that rate by 2030. Overall threats to human security: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at Munich Security Conference 2 Feb 2014; and IPCC’s AR5 report (Mar 2014). See also Wikipedia on Environmental_refugees; current estimates are fogged due to political motives -- the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) predicts 50 million as early as 2020; other estimates range as high as 200 million by 2050: Myers 2002 and Reuters 2014. (On this scale, they dwarf the 50 million European immigrants to the US and British colonies between 1840-1914; or current 14 million “refugees”, 22+ million “internally displaced”, and 140 million “migrants” in UN estimates 2010). Massacres of migrants in the Mediterranean, and payment by EU states to corrupt North African regimes to shoot or imprison them before they reach its shores, have been reported for years by investigative journalist Gabriele del Grande's Fortress Europe. Currently the world's wealthiest one billion people alone consume the equivalent of the earth's entire sustainable yield: Hollister Knowlton, "Living in Right Relationship" Friends Journal 2009, quoting 2002 Living Planet Report..

One – climate negotiations

D. Millar and M. Gilbert, The U.N. Green Economy Initiative: A Critique, Quaker Eco-Bulletin July 2011; NGOs' critiques of the 'carbon casino”; Carbon Trade Watch, Carbon Trading (2009), Global Policy Forum on offsets and UN finance. ENS-news 24 Nov 2013 summarizes the offset deals emerging at UNFCCC COP-19: Warsaw REDD+ framework, Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund (to prepare NAMAs), Climate Technology Centre and Network.

Friends of the Earth International director Nimmo Bassey says, Developed countries should radically cut their carbon emissions through real change at home, not by buying offsets from other countries. Carbon offsetting has no benefits for the climate or for developing countries -- it only benefits developed countries, private investors, and major polluters who want to continue business as usual.

Offset programs are described and compared in Dutch-Swiss governments' PMR Technical Note 6: Overview of Carbon Offset Programs - Similarities and Differences (INFRAS 2013). Wikipedia has good explanations of the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation (esp. “risk of fraud” - see also NGO fraud charges in 2010), REDD (see also redd-monitor.org ), LULUCF, Payment for Ecosystem Services. One of the more flagrant examples of greenwashing business-as-usual is the “clean coal” campaign at COP-19 in Warsaw November 2013;the Polish environment minister was fired for protesting. Rich countries are abandoning the Kyoto principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR), pushing the burden of emissions reduction onto the victims, charges Ecuador negotiator Andrés Mogro's Jan 2014 statement to Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD). Some evictions for offsets: Guatemala, Ethiopia, Mexico. Kenya. See also QUNO-Geneva reports 2013-14. For climate vulnerability by country, see Notre Dame U’s ND-Gain index and graphs (but even the “better” countries are threatened, as EPA’s drought map shows).

Two – SDG negotiations

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and Natural Capital, intended as green reforms of business accounting to include externalities, environmental and social impacts excluded by standard economics, are now (despite warnings from the reformers) being used by offset promoters of PES. The 2012 Natural Capital Declaration at Rio+20 was backed by major global banks, business lobbies, UN agencies and big conservation NGOs who benefit from corporate donations. Opposing a November 2013 (Edinburgh) World Forum on Natural Capital, the NGO counter- forum Nature Is Not for Sale stated, Once a price is put on nature, all of our common resources can be bought, sold and packaged. Worse, as we have seen in the recent financial crisis, a market can be manipulated, repackaged and resold as financial derivatives, bonds and other products. In Dec 2013 UNEP aimed a TEEB/Natural Capital campaign at poor African countries. A parallel campaign by the World Bank, Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) presents Natural Capital and PES as a green reform of national accounts to replace GDP; apparently benign, this initiative opens the door to offsets that would further indebt the poor countries – the “public leveraging of private resources” urged by the rich countries' G20 and accepted by the UN General Assembly Open Working Group (OWG) Technical Support Team brief Global Partnership (Jan 2014). See also “Problems of SDG Finance”, in The new Jubilee convergence (Quaker Earthcare Witness minute Oct 2013).

Three – the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD)

The CBD Alliance of environmental and indigenous NGOs is deeply concerned that proposed SDGs developed by business and carbon-market lobbies, incorporated in UN policy by OWG Technical briefs, will override CBD protections of indigenous and local communities (ILC): see its Jan 2014 appeal to the Open Working Group.

There are also problems with implementation. The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing (ABS) was agreed in 2010. Three years later, the first draft rules (by the EU; other countries are even slower) weaken supervision, prior and informed consent (PIC) and access to benefit sharing (ABS); and threaten to legalize biopiracy: according to a 14 Jun 2013 email from Hartmut Meyer of GENET. He cites the 2013 study The Nagoya Protocol - Background and Analysis by Berne Declaration, Bread for the World-Church Development Service, ECOROPA, TEBTEBBA, and Third World Network. According to the Berne study, implementation has been seriously delayed by lack of certificates of compliance, failure to establish patent offices as checkpoints (p.131); multinationals and rich countries have been privileged over ILC (p.132). S Faizi’s 18 Mar 2014 email to biodiv_civsoc attaching a submission to CBD Expert Group on Poverty, repeats and substantiates these charges.

Experts are still quibbling over transboundary payments to support an ABS clearinghouse, indigenous knowledge (IK) vs intellectual property (IP), PIC consultations & mutually agreed terms (MAT) for bio-prospecting by multinationals. For legal and technical details, see International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), Explanatory Guide to the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing (2012). CBD Alliance’s report CBDA Implementation Analysis (April 2014) concludes that when the poor “megadiverse” countries get desperately needed funding, hitherto denied by the rich and the corporations, it will be “just too late” for them and the planet.

Four – the World Trade Organization

Rich and poor countries clashed at the WTO in Bali Dec 2013. Blunt threats were made behind the scenes. The so-called “peace clause” merely delays harsh penalties on Third World regimes. Abandoned by many of its allies, India appeared to have won an exemption to protect food security, but its permitted subsidy cap is in doubt. Rich countries retained their domestic subsidies, which often result in dumping. Indonesia's Jakarta Post said flatly, The right to protect food has been traded away. WRI’s longterm forecast and the recent collapse of metals markets will drive commodities speculators back to food.

Food security depends on support to the world's small farmers, not on expansion of industrial agriculture, say experts in Wake Up Before it is Too Late: Make Agriculture Truly Sustainable Now for Food Security in a Changing Climate (UNCTAD 2013).

Investor rights, the UN and the invisible corporate world government: a short history of the Davos proposal of Nov 2012 for “Sustainable Development”, aka UNFCCC’s “New Market Mechanism” (NMM) is a compilation of numerous sources. See also FCNL's 2013 warning about investor rights in proposed Trans-Pacific and European trade talks, now proposed for US fast-tracking, US Supreme Court 16 June 2014 ruling in favour of “vulture capitalists”.

Five – Food speculation

See "A recipe for starvation" in this blog 8 Oct 2015; Wikipedia on the 2007-2008 food crisis with unprecedented price peaks in 2009 and 2012; commodity speculators were first accused by the NGO World Development Movement (report July 2010), Oxfam (2011), later by the UK Guardian and US Foreign Policy; the latter openly blamed “Wall Street greed” and Goldman-Sachs derivatives. Hundreds of economists called for action, but Congress failed to close the loopholes it had opened by the controversial US deregulation of 1999. Similar inaction followed the crashes of 1987, 1998, and 2007. The UK Independent reported a new round of speculation in 2013, betting on food as millions starve. UNEP's report to Davos Jan 2014 Assessing Global Land Use warns of increasing environmental limits. See the stinging critique of the present food system by Indian NGO Kalpraviksh (editorial, People in Conservation Apr-Oct. 2013). In earlier years, NGOs denounced the influence of agribiz lobbyists in the FAO. Expert reports by Quaker International Affairs Program (QIAP) The Future Control of Food (2008), Oxfam, Growing a Better Future (2012) and UNCTAD, Wake Up Before it is Too Late (2014) insist the whole system must be reformed to support small scale agriculture, food security, and allow the poor to survive. See also QUNO-Geneva reports 2013-14, Oakland Institute 2016 report Unholy Alliance (reviewed by GPF 3 Jun 2016)

Six – Fishing

See Wikipedia on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU); 2009 analyses World fisheries threatened and Fisheries must conserve or collapse; “Governing the high seas: in deep water,” The Economist 22 Feb 2014.  The CBD Alliance Jan 2014 appeal to the Open Working Group cites numerous practices that endanger small fishers. Terramar.org’s Daily Catch is a valuable news aggregator. Sad to say, ocean offsets (see objections in sections one and two above) are being proposed by conservation organizations such as CFTO.org and worldaquarium.org allied with the World Bank's Global Environment Facility (GEF) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Seven - Privatizing water

The World Water Council is dominated by corporations such as Suez, Veolia, Nestle, and the pro-offset IUCN: see Fighting the corporate agenda and Observations from the Budapest water summit 8-11 Oct 2013. For water wars, see Wikipedia on Cochabamba 2000, the movie FLOW (2008), and US Intelligence Community Assessment predictions in Global Water Security (2012), and Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) 2013 reports on the Middle East situation (part 1, part 2). The five-country Amazonia Security Agenda (Oct 2013) raises questions of human security, water, food, health and climate regulation. Barlow's speech is from ECI 2013; for the campaign for water as a human right, see resolutions of the UN General Assembly 2002 and 2010; NGO actions in Circle of Blue and Blue Planet Project. The latter cites statistics such as unsafe water kills 200 children every hour; one third of consumer spending on bottled water would provide safe water for the whole world.

Eight – Pricing medicines

Rich countries refuse aid: Jeffery Sachs, World to Poor: Drop Dead, Huffington Post 12 Apr 2013; on TRIPS+ rules for big pharma, pay or die: Martin Khor, A Matter of Life and Death, IPSnews 10 Apr 2014. See Wikipedia on the Intellectual Property treaty (TRIPS), Generic drugs, and Trans-Pacific Partnership proposals. Global Issues 2010, Harvard Global Health Review 2011, International Health Journal 2011, and Catholic Medical Missions 2013 report typical Third World problems that call into question the defence of “price discrimination” by rightwing economists. In Jan 2014 big pharma threatened to pull investment from South Africa unless its terms were met; the rightwing Economist magazine is taking the side of the companies (no surprise). Primary healthcare needs: UNFPA says 800 women/day die in pregnancy or childbirth; add 200 children/day who die from unsafe water (section Seven above). See also the effect of IMF loan conditions (aka SAP) on medical services in Africa. On use of Third Worlders as "placebo" control groups: Marcia Angell, "Medical research on humans: making it ethical," NYRB 3 Dec. 2015. South Centre's plea for access to medicine June 2016.

Nine – Privatizing public services

UNCTAD 2014 reports historically low levels of investment (FDI) in poor countries; World Bank reports longterm trends in FDI and overseas direct aid (ADA) which is even lower, with remittances from migrants gradually replacing both as a main source of LDC revenues. See Wikipedia on Structural Adjustment, driven by the Washington Consensus in World Bank-IMF policy, and Public-Private Partnerships. The new World Bank president Jim Yong Kim has promised to reverse these policies and aid the poor. Time will tell. The UK New Economic Forum, Action Aid, Bretton Woods Project, US Global Policy Forum, and Jubilee USA criticize long-standing international investment and debt policies, corporate bribes/demands for public subsidy, transfer pricing (first practised by Big Oil: see Anthony Sampson's book The Seven Sisters, 1975), and tax avoidance, that suck billions of dollars out of poor countries' economies – often many times the amount of foreign aid they receive. Land grabs: see Global Policy Forum articles and the Land Matrix database. Evictions: see section One. See also DAWN reports of the impacts on women and girls.

Ten – Debt: bringing the Third World home

29 May 2016 update: Arizona Republican suggests "sterilizing women as a condition for receiving food stamps". The 2008 crash forced many US homeowners (especially minorities) to become renters, and repo men are rack-renting them: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/02/09/the-ponzi-state and http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/06/cash-for-keys

Unaffordable America: poverty, housing and eviction (U Wisconsin study 2015)

See also:

France http://labornotes.org/2016/06/strikes-sweep-france-opposing-labor-law-rollbacks
UK http://www.poverty.ac.uk/report-disability-government-cuts-benefits/benefit-cuts-%E2%80%98hitting-disabled-people-hardest%E2%80%99] 

Spain 

https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/05/27/shattered-dreams/impact-spains-housing-crisis-vulnerable-groups 

The crash of 2008 has caused 10,000 suicides in the developed countries: BBC 11 June 2014. In the EU, ICC (a form of SAP) austerity programs, together with migrant travail détaché [cheap contract labour] rules dictated by business lobbies, drive social welfare and working conditions down to the lowest common denominator: Monde Diplomatique (avril 2014) pp.1, 18-20. See also Mar 2014 Campaign for a European New Deal and Eurodad, Alternative Solutions to the Debt Crisis Mar 2014.

For China, see “Building the Dream”, Economist special report 19 Apr 2014: municipal debt, land grabs, and inequality.

For Canada, see Flaherty's Legacy: The Good, The Bad & The Very Ugly Huffpost.ca 15 Apr 2014.

For the USA, see the hard-hitting UPR stakeholder report (July 2014) by Rutgers'  Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) and the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI); NYRB 9 June 2016 Why the Very Poor Have Become Poorer

by Christopher Jencks; Prof. Robert Reich’s short video War on the poor and middle class, and documentary Inequality for All (2013); he summarizes his argument in Huffpost 25 Jan 2014 and his blog; George Graeber's overview in Debt: the first 5000 Years, ch.12. European austerity only increases inequality and poverty, warns Oxfam (Sept 2103). “It's the Austerity, Stupid: How We Were Sold an Economy-Killing Lie” in Mother Jones (Sep-Oct 2013) and “Truth has no place in the attack of inflation hawks” in Truth-Out 25 Aug 2014 show how rightwing economists and political echo-chambers mislead US media. 1.4 millions more might have lost their homes if Republicans  had successfully stopped extended unemployment insurance: Dailykos 5 Aug 2014. The US home debt/foreclosure racket was analyzed by New Yorker 9 Feb 2009, Rolling Stone 10 Nov 2010, and Mother Jones 13 Jan 2014; NYRB 10 Mar 2016 on evictions: Kicked Out in America;

Bankrupt Detroit is only one of several US cities where “emergency managers” do Wall St bidding by cutting union rights, pensions and basic services to the poor; Sojourners May 2016 reports Detroit water now costs twice the US average, and 100,000 residents have had their water shut off. We The People of Detroit (WPD) are organizing to fight back.

The US student debt crisis affects 40 million, with 7 million in default -- their lifetime credit rating spoiled, according to Kyle McCarthy in Huffpost 25 Jan 2014; Forbes 7 Aug 2013 says it totals $1.2 trillion or 6% of national debt, averages $26,000, but is over $40,000 for one out of ten grads; "Million Student Protest" in Washington Post 12 Nov 2015; Mother Jones Sep-Oct 2013 reported a student debt racket in “For-Profit Colleges: Screw U”; a typical case in Alternet 1 Apr 2014; high debt ~ high pay for college admin: Institute for Policy Studies The One Percent at State U (June 2014). See studentdebtcrisis.org Does a college degree get you out of poverty? In 2012, 1.1million Americans with a bachelor’s degree, household heads working fulltime, earned less than $25,000/year: “10 poverty myths busted”, Mother Jones Mar-Apr 2014. US payday loan banks charge 350% annual interest: Guardian 23 Mar 2014.

The rightwing Economist 22 Feb 2014 urges “pension reform” (cutbacks) in the US, where 15 of 50 states owe 80%-120+% of revenue to ex-employees, a high debt level; and castigates Detroit’s “revenge of the 99%”; p.37 some Chinese provinces face debts 40-80% of revenues.

On the economic and political forces behind Detroit bankruptcy (Wikipedia), see also “Drop Dead, Detroit” in New Yorker 17 Jan 2014; Detroit as the prey of successive vulture capitalists WSWS Feb 2014; and behind US family debt, “The Warren Brief” in New Yorker 21 April 2014; "The Color of Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods"

Pro Publica 8 Oct 2015. US communities' Rolling Jubilee against 'vulture' finance is reported in Forbes 9 Feb 2013; Tikkun 1 Apr 2013, Occupy Faith, Strike Debt 17 Mar 2013, with updates in Huffington Post. Thanks to Marshall Massey for “Occupy Buys $15 Million in Other People’s Debt,“ Non-Profit Quarterly 14 Nov 2013. On debt threat to US states and municipalities, see Tax Foundation map of state credit ratings Nov 2013; Puerto Rico demoted to junk status Feb 2014; "muni market woe" chart in Marketwatch 9 Feb 2014. For the illusory safety of gated communities see Eduardo Galeano 1996, Caracas' kidnapping industry, and Nigeria's Eko Atlantic 2014. US "pay to stay" creates new debtors' prisons: BBC 9 Nov 2015 and ACLU.

Finally, see Occupy / Strike Debt, Debt Resisters' Operations Manual (free online, 2012).

Martin Khor of Third World Network (TWN) 10 Oct 2016 warns of new debt crises; quantitative easing benefited only the 1% in rich countries but failed to induce growth, developing countries are severely indebted to speculatots (aka investors), threatened by instant capital flight and/or "investor rights" lawsuits. Financial reforms after the 2007-08 crash have been weak or absent.