26 July 20
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Bill McKibben | What Joe Biden's Climate Plan Really Signals
 Bill McKibben, The New Yorker McKibben writes: "Non-élites—members of activist movements and renewable-energy engineers—have built the pressure. Assuming that Trump exits next year, and that high-level climate denial goes with him, that pressure will do what pressure does: finally start to make things pop."  hen Joe Biden issued his extensive climate plan last week, there were endless analyses, including mostly positive reviews like those from the energy expert Julian Brave NoiseCat, who called it “a Green New Deal in our view, substantively,” and the Sunrise Movement, which had graded Biden’s primary-season plan an F, but now says that he’s “talking the talk,” and that a post-election mobilization will insure that he’ll “walk the walk.” The main opposition came from President Trump, who insisted that Biden, in his zeal for energy efficiency, had called for abolishing windows.
I don’t want to go deeply into the details of the plan here, because chances are that few of the proposals will get enacted in their precise form, but they seem a truly useful compendium of the mainstream and obvious ideas for an energy and conservation transition. And they provide a good roadmap by which to steer, even if that map avoids the most controversial areas of the debate. (The plan is especially quiet about the efforts that will be necessary to limit mining and drilling for fossil fuels.) The best way to understand them, I think, is as a loud signal in the ever-louder conversation among élites about the trajectory and the pace of that transition.
A big signal comes from the investment community, where banks have started announcing major losses in the hydrocarbon sector. Wells Fargo, for instance, said that forty-seven per cent of its nonperforming corporate loans last quarter were in the three per cent of its deal book devoted to oil and gas. News like that dramatically ups the odds that, say, a Federal Reserve under Biden might increase capital requirements for oil loans. Indeed, earlier this week, a consortium of investors with nearly a trillion dollars in assets urged the Fed to “explicitly integrate climate change across your mandates,” in particular, by providing more information about the financial risks that global warming now presents. On Monday, Morgan Stanley announced that it would rate all its investments for their climate impact—on the one hand, that puts off the necessary end of those investments, but it’s probably also a first signal of acquiescence to reality. And, of course, as big money starts to edge away from the industry, politicians feel less need to do its bidding.
I think we’ve already reached the point where it’s clear that real change is finally coming, and that fossil fuel’s main hope is to slow and shape that change. (Above all, as I wrote last week, the industry is hopeful that natural gas has a future, though new scientific findings and technologies seem to be closing in on even that facet of the business.) The crucial job of activists, then, is to always be demanding that we move faster.
If you want a really powerful signal, one came last week from Teen Vogue, which published an op-ed encouraging young people to not open accounts with banks that are reckless with the planet. (The authors’ “Not My Dirty Money” pledge can be found here.) Meanwhile, Greta Thunberg and fellow climate strikers sent an open letter to the European Union. (I am among the tens of thousands of people who signed onto it.) It says, “You must stop pretending that we can solve the climate and ecological crisis without treating it as a crisis.” Just the right signal, reminding politicians that a devastated climate is not merely an excuse for a jobs program, and at just the right volume. And if signals don’t replace action they do usually precede it—so consider this season a relatively hopeful one.
Passing the Mic
Passing the mic is difficult for me this week, because I can barely even sit up in bed. I fell off my two-wheeled, low-carbon transit device on Thursday, and managed to break six ribs and a shoulder blade, and incurred a severely separated shoulder. I’ve been in the hospital since, and that’s why this newsletter is shorter than usual. I am enormously grateful for all the get-well e-mails; they are a surprisingly good anesthetic. And, although it’s a pretty self-absorbed thing to do, perhaps I can refer you to a letter that I sent my colleagues in the climate movement last week, explaining my plans to do more mic-passing in the years to come.
Climate School
Important news from Al Gore, who has rallied a bunch of hard-chargers in the tech world behind plans for Climate TRACE, which stands for Tracking Real-time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions. The platform “will leverage advanced A.I., satellite-image processing, machine learning, and land- and sea-based sensors to do what was previously thought to be nearly impossible: monitor G.H.G. emissions from every sector and in every part of the world. Our work will be extremely granular in focus—down to specific power plants, ships, factories.” That data will be incredibly powerful: think C.S.I. for carbon.
From time to time, one hears from people contending that the “real cause” of climate change, and all other troubles, is overpopulation. The thinking is sometimes racist, but almost as often, I think, it’s rooted in a leftover understanding of demographic trends. Given a choice, women in most parts of the world are deciding to have far fewer kids than they used to, and the new projections for population circa 2100 are fascinating. It won’t be easy for policymakers to deal with a Japan that is half its present size, but doing so shouldn’t be impossible, either. Japan, after all, was half its present size less than a century ago.
Scoreboard
Even though writers hate to admit it, sometimes a picture (from a really talented photographer) is worth more than words. I’d read often that the enormous Lake Chilwa, in Malawi, is drying out more frequently because of climate change, but it took this image from reader Chris Dawe to really drive that reality home.
Warming Up
There are weeks when one really needs some uplift. That must be why Bill Withers recorded his concert at Carnegie Hall, in 1972.
READ MORE  Chief Justice John Roberts. (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Shutterstock)
Roberts Indifference Towards Voting Rights on Full Display
Emmett Witkovsky-Eldred and Nina Totenberg, NPR Excerpt: "Voting rights advocates are batting 0-4 at the U.S. Supreme Court so far this year." READ MORE  A trial of a potential coronavirus vaccine announced by Moderna in January. Since then, Moderna insiders have sold shares totaling about $248 million. (photo: Ted S. Warren/AP)
Corporate Insiders Pocket $1 Billion in Rush for Coronavirus Vaccine
David Gelles and Jesse Drucker, The New York Times Excerpt: "On June 26, a small South San Francisco company called Vaxart made a surprise announcement: A coronavirus vaccine it was working on had been selected by the U.S. government to be part of Operation Warp Speed, the flagship federal initiative to quickly develop drugs to combat Covid-19." READ MORE  Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Getty)
Chicago Groups Sue to Bar Federal Agents From Protest Duties
Kathleen Foody, Associated Press Foody writes: "A collection of Chicago activist groups want a judge to block federal agents sent to the city to combat violent crime from interfering in or policing protests, arguing in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the surge ordered by President Donald Trump will inhibit residents' ability to hold demonstrations." READ MORE  Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Getty)
Why the Superrich Keep Getting Richer
Grace Blakeley, Jacobin Blakeley writes: "This week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saw the largest single-day increase in wealth ever recorded for any individual." Billionaires like Jeff Bezos aren't obscenely wealthy because they work harder than everyone else or they're more innovative. They're obscenely wealthy because their corporate empires drain society's resources — and we'd all be better off without them.  his week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saw the largest single-day increase in wealth ever recorded for any individual. In just one day, his fortune increased by $13 billion. On current trends, he is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2026.
Those on the right wing of politics argue that extreme wealth is a function of hard work, creativity, and innovation that benefits society. But wealth and income inequality have increased dramatically in most advanced economies in recent years. The richest of the rich are much wealthier today than they were several decades ago, but it is not clear that they are working any harder.
Mainstream economists make a more nuanced version of this argument. They claim that the dramatic increase in income inequality has been driven by the dynamics of globalization and the rise of “superstars.” Firms and corporate executives are now competing in a global market for capital and talent, so the rewards at the top are much higher — even as competition also constrains wages for many toward the bottom end of the distribution.
According to this view, high levels of inequality are a reward for high productivity. The most productive firms will attract more investment than their less productive counterparts, and their managers, who are performing a much more complex job than those managing smaller firms, will be rewarded accordingly.
But here again the narrative runs aground on contact with reality. Productivity has not risen alongside inequality in recent years. In fact, in the United States and the UK productivity has flatlined since the financial crisis — and in the United States, it has been declining since the turn of the century.
There is another explanation for the huge profits of the world’s largest corporations and the huge fortunes of the superrich. Not higher productivity. Not simply globalization. But rising global market power.
Many of the world’s largest tech companies have become global oligopolies and domestic monopolies. Globalization has played a role here, of course — many domestic firms simply can’t compete with global multinationals. But these firms also use their relative size to push down wages, avoid taxes, and gouge their suppliers, as well as lobbying governments to provide them with preferential treatment.
Jeff Bezos and Amazon are a case in point. Amazon has become America’s largest company through anticompetitive practices that have landed it in trouble with the European Union’s competition authorities. The working practices in its warehouses are notoriously appalling. And a study from last year revealed Amazon to be one of the world’s most “aggressive tax avoiders.”
Part of the reason Amazon has to work so hard to maintain its monopoly position is that its business model relies on network effects that only obtain at a certain scale. Tech companies like Amazon make money by monopolizing and then selling the data generated from the transactions on their sites.
The more people who sign up, the more data is generated; and the more data generated, the more useful this data is for those analyzing it. The monetization of this data is what generates most of Amazon’s returns: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most profitable part of the business by some distance.
Far from representing its social utility, Amazon’s market value — and Bezos’ personal wealth — reflects its market power. And the rising market power of a small number of larger firms has actually reduced productivity. This concentration has also constrained investment and wage growth as these firms simply don’t have to compete for labor, nor are they forced to innovate in order to outcompete their rivals.
In fact, they’re much more likely to use their profits to buy back their own shares, or to acquire other firms that will increase their market share and give them access to more data. Amazon’s recent acquisition of grocery store Whole Foods is likely to be the first of many such moves by tech companies. Rather than the Darwinian logic of compete or die, the tech companies face a different imperative: expand or die.
States are supporting this logic with exceptionally loose monetary policy. Low interest rates make it very easy for large companies to borrow to fund mergers and acquisitions. And quantitative easing — unleashed on an unprecedented scale to tackle the pandemic — has simply served to raise equity prices, especially for the big tech companies.
As more areas of our lives become subject to the power of big tech, the fortunes of people like Bezos will continue to mount. Their rising wealth will not represent a reward for innovation or job creation, but for their market power, which has allowed them to increase the exploitation of their workforces, gouge suppliers, and avoid taxes.
The only real way to tackle these inequities is to democratize the ownership of the means of production, and begin to hand the key decisions in our economy back to the people. But you would expect that even social democrats, who won’t pursue transformative policies, could get behind measures such as a wealth tax.
“Building back better” after the pandemic will be impossible without such a tax — and the vast majority of both Labour and Conservative voters support such an approach, according to a recent poll. And yet it appears that Labour’s leadership are retreating from the idea.
In an interview the other day, I was asked why we should care about Jeff Bezos’s wealth if it makes everyone else better off. But the extreme inequalities generated by modern capitalism are making obvious something that Marxists have known for decades: the superrich generate their wealth at the expense of workers, the planet, and society as a whole.
In a rational and fair society, the vast resources of a tiny elite would be put to use solving our social problems.
READ MORE Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad. (photo: YouTube)
Sunday Song: Bruce Springsteen | The Ghost of Tom Joad
Bruce Springsteen, YouTube Springsteen writes: "Shelter line stretchin' 'round the corner. Welcome to the new world order." Men walkin' 'long the railroad tracks He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag The highway is alive tonight Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy Well the highway is alive tonightREAD MORE  GOP Ohio state Rep. Larry Householder, who is charged in the $60 million federal probe. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)
They Spent Millions to Protect Polluters. Then They Got Busted by the FBI.
Rebecca Leber, Grist Leber writes: "A year ago, the Ohio legislature rammed through a law to save four unprofitable nuclear and coal-fired power plants from retirement, while it rolled back energy efficiency and renewable targets and passed on the $1.3 billion cost to customers."
Opponents of the HB6 law, which included an unlikely alliance of environmentalists and the natural gas industry, began to organize a referendum to repeal it, saying it amounted to a corporate bailout for the utility player FirstEnergy.
What ensued was an aggressive and bizarre counter-campaign launched by a set of mysterious actors that didn’t disclose their donors, all singularly focused on preventing the referendum from gathering enough signatures before its deadline. One single-issue group began running ads with false claims that the Chinese government had orchestrated the referendum. Another group, Generation Now, hired the Democratic firm Fieldworks to deploy “petition blockers” who stood near signature gatherers and tried to discourage people from signing the referendum. At one point there was a physical confrontation between a referendum staffer and a petition blocker, and police responded.
By October, it was clear the referendum failed to gather enough signatures, and the debate over the corporate bailout seemed settled — until Tuesday, when federal agents arrested the main architect of the law, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, for a racketeering conspiracy. The FBI charged that Householder, his aide, a former Ohio GOP chair, two lobbyists, and Generation Now of a “conspiracy to participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of an enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity.” The 82-page complaint outlines an enterprise that steered $61 million into campaign contributions to ensure Republicans gained control of the House, bribes, and shadowy groups all to pass and protect the controversial bailout.
The complaint never mentions by name the companies that drove this conspiracy. They are only Company A, B, and C, because of other ongoing investigations. But the identity of Company A, the primary actor that spent $60 million, is obvious enough for U.S. Attorney David DeVillers to say, “Everyone in this room knows who ‘Company A’ is,” in a press conference. It is FirstEnergy, the utility in the state that was the primary benefactor of the law.
The charges describe some especially egregious examples of quid-pro-quo politics, like a payoff for Householder’s Florida home and campaign financing for 21 Republican candidates. More importantly, we get a rare glimpse of how easy it is for corporations to subvert democracy simply by throwing tons of money at blocking ballot initiatives. When they do their work right, they can prevent an initiative from ever reaching a vote — without the public even realizing it could have been a choice.
Most of the $60 million from Company A did not go to bribes or to get the bill through the House and Senate, but was routed through Generation Now — which, because it’s a 501(c)(4),doesn’t have to disclose its donors. That group, the same one that orchestrated the counter-campaign to block the referendum from gathering enough signatures, used a fascinating tactic: There are only so many companies specialized in ballot signature-collecting in the country, and Generation Now bought out 15 of them so the referendum’s organizers couldn’t find any top-tier firms to work for them.
The complaint says: “Generation Now subverted the Ballot Campaign by hiring signature collection firms in an effort to conflict them from working for the Ballot Campaign.” Neil Clark, Householder’s staffer, “advised his clients that if they would retain as many of the signature collection firms as possible, then those firms could not work for their opposition, which would decrease the likelihood that the referendum would collect the requisite number oof signatures for a ballot initiative.” In one meeting the FBI recorded, he wired $450,000 to a firm repeating he had “hired them not to work.”
“The money really went to staging a coup of the Ohio state government,” says David Pomerantz, executive director of the utilities watchdog Energy and Policy Institute. That’s only one example of how hard utilities fight to block environmental initiatives at the ballot. In 2018, Arizona Public Service funded a campaign for town administrators to pass resolutions against Prop 127, which would have required APS generate half of its electricity from renewables. And in 2016, Florida Power and Light spearheaded a confusing ballot initiative that used deceptive language implying it would promote solar power — but really hindered the spread of rooftop solar.
“These tactics are fairly typical of what we see monopoly utilities do around the country,” he says. They have “limitless money and a captive customer base that has no choice but to pay what regulators say they have to pay every month.”
Ohio’s FirstEnergy bailout was so unpopular that in one part of the complaint, Householder’s aide Jeff Lonstreth texted his boss, “Polling shows the more we explain it, the worse it does.” The federal case means an unusual spotlight on common bad-faith tactics. And now there might be some justice: Many of the original backers of the law, including Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican from Ohio who signed it last year, reversed course this week and called for its repeal.
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