I first posted this video back in June of last year. Listen very carefully to Francis Marion’s words (as interpreted by Walt Disney in 1959) beginning at the 7:25 minute mark and you’ll understand why all imperial adventurism and colonialism ultimately fails. The situation has not improved.

Roldo Bartimole sent me a copy of Ralph Nader’s thought on the matter. Nader begins:

The photographs in the New York Times told contrasting stories last week. One showed two Taliban soldiers in civilian clothes and sandals, with their rifles, standing in front of a captured U.N. vehicle. The Taliban forces had taken the northern provincial capital of Kunduz. The other photograph showed Afghan army soldiers fully equipped with modern gear, weapons, and vehicles.

Guess who is winning?

The mightiest military force of the 18th century couldn’t defeat a rag tag bunch of colonials in our own war of secession. Perhaps we’re emboldened by the results of our second such fight, but our track record since has not been great. Nader continues:

ISIS forces from Syria have taken over large areas of northern and western Iraq, including its second largest city, Mosul, and the battered city of Fallujah. ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria are estimated to number no more than 35,000. Like the Taliban, ISIS fighters, who vary in their military training, primarily have light weaponry. That is when they are not taking control of the fleeing, much larger, Iraqi army’s armored vehicles and ammunition from the United States.

Against vastly greater numbers of Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. weapons, U.S. planes bombing daily, 24/7 aerial surveillance, and U.S. military advisors at the ground level, so far ISIS is still holding most of its territory and is still dominant in large parts of Syria.

The American people are entitled to know how all this military might and the trillions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, since 2003 and 2001 respectively, can produce such negative fallouts.

I agree, but since we don’t have a universal draft (I’m a big fan) most families don’t have a dog in the hunt and we’re able to disregard death tolls because no one we know is dying.

Donald Trump suggested we build a fence. Most people laughed. Cartoonist Scott Adams—who repeatedly warms against taking advice from a cartoonist—writes:

To kill an idea, you need a hypnotist, or someone skilled in the art of persuasion. I’ll describe one way to do it. I do not expect any of the candidates to favor this approach. So what follows is not a policy suggestion so much as an example of how a trained hypnotist would kill an idea.

[As always, don’t take cartoonists too seriously. In this blog we kick around new ideas for entertainment. New readers of this blog need to know I am a trained hypnotist.]

A hypnotist would start by defining ISIS in a way that is true (enough) but provides some sort of psychological advantage. For example, you could start by defining the ISIS brand of Islam as “historical” as opposed to modern. That might not be the right world, but you get the idea. We want a label that is fresh (such as “low-energy” or “nice”) so we can imbue it with the qualities we want. In this model, we stop using the old language of “religious extremists” and similar labels because the old words have not helped us enough.

Then we A-B test historical Islam versus modern Islam to see which one does best.

For a cartoonist, Adams does well. At least he seems to be thinking beyond the current bomb them back to the stone age 7th century strategy that is working so well.

Nader continues:

Our “blowback” policies are fueling the expansion of al-Qaeda offshoots and new violent groups in over 20 countries. On 9/11, the “threat” was coming from a corner of one country – northeastern Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney prevaricator frenzy led to local bounty hunters taking innocent captives, falsely labeled as “terrorists,” who were sent to the prisons in Guantanamo, Cuba. These actions have damaged our country’s reputation all over the world.

That is why they hate us. That was why the Vietnamese, whose leader, Ho Chi Minh, wanted to be the George Washington of his country, came to hate us. We need, as Nader concludes, to tell our elected leaders were tired of their bullshit.

Not repeatedly doing what has failed is the first step toward correction. How much better and cheaper it would be if years ago we became a humanitarian power – well received by the deprived billions in these anguished lands.

What changes are needed to get out of these quagmires and leave a semblance of recovery behind? Press those gaggles of presidential candidates, who war-monger with impunity or who are dodging this grave matter, for answers. Make them listen to you.

One of my heroes, Admiral Hyman Rickover, was more emphatic: Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience.

Previously…

Emo Philips gets his due, sort of.

This morning I received thrilling news: a joke I wrote more than 20 years ago has been voted the funniest religious joke of all time! In case you’ve missed it, here it is:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!”

He said, “Nobody loves me.”

I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.”

I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?”

He said, “A Christian.”

I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?”

He said, “Protestant.”

I said, “Me, too! What franchise?”

He said, “Baptist.”

I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Baptist.”

I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.”

I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.”

I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”

I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

Who said the gawd-fearing have no sense of humor?

Last week I finished an essay written as a guest column for my local free weekly: The North Royalton Post. No word yet whether or not The Post will publish the essay, but after reading Jon Queally’s ‘Never Seen Anything Like This Before’ as 2015 Set to Be Hottest Year on Record for Common Dreams, I decided not to wait.

The North Royalton Post published my essay today in the 28 November issue. You can find my copy of the essay here. I’ll add the link to The Post’s copy as soon as they post the column to their website.

The Guardian emails:

Dear Jeff,

When the Guardian launched phase II of Keep it in the Ground we promised to keep you abreast of all the key moves ahead of the Paris climate summit in December.

To recap, the summit is the latest in the annual round of meetings (Conferences of the Parties in UN jargon) to thrash out a global deal on climate change. The talks have been building up to Paris 2015 after the disappointing ending at Copenhagen in 2009.

Here’s a backgrounder on the talks.

This time around, there is widespread optimism that there will be a deal. Why? Because the talks are much further advanced than at the equivalent stage before Copenhagen. Over 150 countries representing 90% of the world’s emissions have already put their greenhouse gas curbing pledges on the table (our big data interactive will help you get to the bottom of what they mean).

Another factor is the French hosts. They have poured a huge amount of diplomatic capital into making these talks a success. Here’s an extract from a piece by the Guardian’s Fiona Harvey, a veteran of reporting many UN climate talks, on France’s diplomatic push:

Every one of France’s ambassadors, in embassies and consulates around the globe, has been educated on the demands of climate change, and instructed in how to communicate the messages to the governments they deal with, ahead of the summit, which starts on 30 November. Ambassadors have been holding public events, private meetings, talks with their diplomatic counterparts, businesses, NGOs and even schoolchildren. At home, the outer walls of the foreign ministry, a stately 19th-century edifice on the banks of the Seine, are covered in a series of banners declaring, in several languages, the messages of Paris Climat 2015. Even the Eiffel Tower. further down the riverbank, has been pressed into service, lit up at night with climate slogans…Climate diplomacy has never seen such a concerted push.

Another hopeful development this week was the landslide by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in the Canadian elections. The outgoing PM Stephen Harper turned Canada into an international climate pariah so Trudeau’s promise to take part in Paris can only have a positive impact on the talks. But, says US environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg, let’s not get carried away. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Your sincerely,

James Randerson

Keep Carbon In The Ground…

Previously in The Guardian emails…

We will need comprehensive policies and programs that make low-carbon choices easy and convenient for everyone. Most of all, these policies need to be fair, so that the people already struggling to cover the basics are not being asked to make additional sacrifice to offset the excess consumption of the rich. That means cheap public transit and clean light rail accessible to all; affordable, energy-efficient housing along those transit lines; cities planned for high-density living; bike lanes in which riders aren’t asked to risk their lives to get to work; land management that discourages sprawl and encourages local, low-energy forms of agriculture; urban design that clusters essential services like schools and health care along transit routes and in pedestrian-friendly areas; programs that require manufacturers to be responsible for the electronic waste they produce, and to radically reduce built-in redundancies and obsolescences. p. 91

From This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Not all the episodes of Mystery in the history of Public Broadcasting could ever wash away the stink from a pathologically destructive company like Exxon Mobile. For years I have offered $100 to anyone who could point me to a scientific paper, published in a juried publication, by authors not in the employ of, or financially supported by, a fossil fuel company. My money has always been safe although two or three fools actually took me up on the offer and I traced the link from their author to a petrochemical company in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

Now I discover that what I’ve been pointing to all along may actually be against federal law.

That I didn’t know.

Writing in Sanders Joins Call for DOJ Investigation into Exxon’s Climate Coverup for Common Dreams, Nadia Prupis lessens my ignorance:

Arguing the oil giant’s behavior may “ultimately qualify as a violation of federal law,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday joined a chorus of voices calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an official fraud investigation into Exxon Mobil’s decades-long efforts to suppress the scientific connection between carbon emissions and climate change.

“Based on available public information, it appears that Exxon knew its product was causing harm to the public, and spent millions of dollars to obfuscate the facts in the public discourse. The information that has come to light about Exxon’s past activities raises potentially serious concerns that should be investigated,” Sanders wrote in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

“Exxon Mobil knew the truth about fossil fuels and climate change and lied to protect their business model at the expense of the planet,” Sanders added in a statement.

I recently wrote an essay on related to this topic for publication. I expect to post the piece here soon.

This is a message that I have done my best to repeat for most of my life: if you want to save the planet, don’t recycle, don’t reuse, feckin’ reduce the amount of crap you buy. Naomi Klein phrases the sentiment much better.

Deep emission cuts in the wealthy nations have to start immediately. That means that if we wait for what Bows-Larkin describes as the “whiz-bang technologies” to come online “it will be too little too late.”

So what to do in the meantime? Well, we do what we can. And what we can do—what doesn’t require technological infrastructure revolution—is to consume less, right away. p. 90

From This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Found in my electronic chapbook.

So, Bernie told a rich guy to to take his money and, well, I’m sure Bernie wasn’t crude, but, hey, maybe he was. In any case, the response to a donation of $2,700 (the maximum allowed from an individual) was spot on. Bernie writes:

A Wall Street hedge fund manager named Martin Shkreli decided that he could make a lot of money off a life-saving drug for AIDS patients and other sick people by jacking the price from $13.50 per tablet to $750. Sick people be damned.

I started a congressional investigation into his price gouging. Shkreli promised to reduce the price, though he hasn’t done so yet.

But Martin Shkreli was angry. He didn’t like that I criticized him, so he tried to get a private meeting with me. And he thought the best way to do that was by donating $2,700 to our campaign.

That may be how other campaigns work. Not ours. We are taking Martin Shkreli’s $2,700 donation and are giving it straight to an AIDS clinic in Washington, DC.

Make a contribution to our campaign to join the fight against corporate greed. Together, we can show Martin Shkreli and the billionaire class that they can’t have it all.

The economic and political systems of this country are stacked against ordinary Americans. The rich get richer and use their wealth to buy elections and legislation.

Saying to Wall Street and the drug companies and the rest of the billionaire class, “please, do the right thing” while taking their money to fund your campaign is both naive and ultimately ineffective.

If we’re serious about creating jobs and health care for all, and addressing climate change and the needs of our children and the elderly, we must be serious about campaign finance reform.

So far we’ve funded our campaign with more than 1.3 million contributions of about $30 a piece. Small contributions of whatever regular folks can afford will win the fight against corporate greed and beat the influence of oligarchs like Martin Shkreli.

When people come together, anything is possible. And together, we can take our country back from the billionaire class.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

To date, I’ve donated $200 to Bernie’s campaign. That is twice what I’ve donated to any presidential candidate and I fully expect to donate much more. How about you?

Cleveland is where Byrd Bennett learned how to screw the youngsters she was well paid to educate.

Education seemed far from her desire. I guess it caught up with her in Chicago.

“Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett faces up to about 7 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday to steering multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts to an education consulting firm in exchange for the promise of lucrative kickbacks and other perks,” reports The Chicago Tribune. The contract was for $20 million plus.

“I plead guilty, your honor,” Byrd-Bennett said in a soft, calm voice, the article noted.

“Her apology to the court sounded hollow and false. What else did you expect?The contract is by far the largest no-bid contract that CPS has entered into in at least five years. And the contract has raised suspicion because CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett had a previous relationship with SUPES. Catalyst detailed those ties in this story, not long after the contract was quietly approved by the School Board,” a December 2013 piece noted in a watchdog publication.

It’s impossible to believe that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was as dumb as Cleveland Mayor Michael White about their school choice of Barbara Byrd Bennett. They both seem quite capable.

They had to know what they were getting, buying.

In These Times, a Chicago publication assessed her Chicago tenure:

Little about that legacy can be seen as positive. Nearly every major decision that Barbara Byrd-Bennett made as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools benefited wealthy white power brokers at the expense of poor and working-class Continue Reading »

Changing the earth’s climate in ways that will be chaotic and disastrous is easier to accept than the prospect of changing the fundamental, growth-based, profit-seeking logic of capitalism.

The rest of us are going to have to quickly figure out how to turn “managed degrowth” into something that looks a lot less like the Great Depression and a lot more like what some innovative economic thinkers have take to calling “The Great Transition.” p. 89

From This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Found in my electronic chapbook.

I’ve only been called for jury duty once—a morning back in 1983 in Athens, Ohio, of sitting in a tiny room while the plea bargain was ironed out and then back home—but if jury duty in Ohio is anything like the experience (at least as related by Scott Adams) in California, then no wonder people do all they can to avoid the obligation.

Here’s what Scott had to say on Day One:

I’m reporting for jury duty selection this morning. I have served a few times, and I recommend it to any citizen who has the opportunity. The experience does a good job of getting you invested in the system, and it makes you appreciate your country a bit more when you see your fellow citizens taking it seriously, which in my experience people do.

On Day Two he wrote:

I recommend serving as a juror at least once, even if it is hard to do. It does wonders for your sense [of the] country. I found it a humbling experience to sit in a packed courtroom, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for half-an-hour while the judge was in his chambers, with no one speaking a word above a whisper. No one had asked us to be quiet. It just felt like the respectful thing to do. The power of the courtroom image, and especially the American flag, is insanely strong.

Good job on that, America. The legal system always needs improvement, but we got the respect part right. That’s the hard part.

Day Three rolls around and Scott’s attitude begins to shift:

Some call it jury duty selection. But it feels more like day-jail with a bad commute.

I’m heading to day three of the jury selection phase, in which dozens of us sit in a court room for hours while a slow-talking and very deliberate judge interviews one citizen at a time. Those of us who are not being addressed by the judge are allowed to sit there doing nothing.

We can’t talk.

We can’t use our smartphones.

We can’t read.

For hours.

We have been ordered to pay attention to the judge’s conversation with each person.

I have not been this far into jury duty since my smartphone addiction became severe. At this point in my life, sitting motionless for hours, staring straight ahead, while my unattended professional life starts forming a death spiral, is extraordinarily uncomfortable. And so totally unnecessary.

Finally, the sun sets on Day Four:

After three days of punishment at the hands of my inefficient government, I am a free man.

It is a deeply unpleasant experience for a modern human to sit in a room for many hours without mental or physical stimulation. That is the method we use to punish children and criminals alike. No kidding, it felt like three days of serving detention for a crime I did not commit.

On my third day, I got lucky. The jury filled up before I got into the final round, so I was released.

Scott’s whole analysis over the three days is worth the read, but the bit on Day three, where no talking, no using smartphones (this is significant, I think, since Scott notes on Day Three that: I have not been this far into jury duty since my smartphone addiction became severe. At this point in my life, sitting motionless for hours, staring straight ahead, while my unattended professional life starts forming a death spiral, is extraordinarily uncomfortable.) and no reading are allowed, I have to wonder if writing would have been allowed. That would have been my choice, bring a legal pad and pen and start taking notes, or at least enough notes that would provide cover for all the other thoughts and observations I would have been writing.

Yes, I know, I’ve cursed myself by drawing the attention of the jury gawds. Expect me to report that I’ve been called to jury duty in the near future.

Now, I realize that this can all send apocalyptic—as if reducing emissions requires economic crises that result in mass suffering. But that seems so only because we have an economic system that fetishizes GDP growth above all else, regardless of the human or ecological consequences, while failing to place value on those things that most of us cherish above all—a decent standard of living, a measure of future security and our relationships with one another. So what Anderson and Bows-Larkin are really saying is that there is still time to avoid catastrophic warming, but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently constructed. Which is surely the best argument there has ever been for changing those rules. p. 88

From This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Found in my electronic chapbook.

The Guardian emails:

Dear Jeff,

UN climate change talks are now less than 7 weeks away: so which countries are promising to do most to curb climate change?

In November, nearly 200 countries will meet in Paris to agree a new climate deal. A data crunch we launched today through Keep it in the Ground showcases all the data you need to understand the upcoming UN climate negotiations.

See which countries are doing the most to stop dangerous global warming.

Please help us inform people about what is at stake this December. We believe that the more light we can shine on the negotiation process, the more chance that politicians will come under pressure to produce a deal.

Thank you to everyone who has recently shared ideas and reporting requests with us. We are integrating some of the ideas into our coverage plans, which I will share very soon.

Best,

James Randerson,

Assistant national news editor

Keep Carbon In The Ground…

Bernie Sanders said a lot Tuesday night that is important, but, from my point of view, what he said that is vital, was his response (timemark 17:00 in the video above) to the question: Who, or what, is the greatest national security threat to the United States?

The scientific community is telling us: if we do not address the global crisis of climate change, transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to sustainable energy, the planet that we’re going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren may well not be inhabitable. That is a major crisis.

I would disagree with Bernie ever so slightly here, climate change is not a major crisis, climate change is the major crisis.

(As an aside, what I think may be the visual from the debate is Clinton’s head-nod starting at 17:20)

Great answer, Bernie, to a question I’m sure the campaign was expecting.

Writing in What One Historian Wishes Bernie Sanders Said About Being a Socialist, Bernard Weisberger did a bit Monday morning quarterbacking and crafted this response to Anderson Coopers question: You call yourself a Democratic Socialist. How can any kind of socialist candidate win a general election in the United States?

Well, first of all, the last I heard Vermont was still an American state and the people of Burlington elected me as mayor four times and were satisfied because I gave them an honest and efficient administration. Then the people of the state as a whole sent me back to the House of Representatives several times, and next to the Senate. They responded to substance, not labels. I think we’re still smart enough to do that.

[As for our not being Denmark, I am not trying to turn the United States into Denmark or any other country in the world. But if we look and see that Denmark has a health care system that treats its people better than ours at lower cost, just as an example, are we forbidden to try it because it hasn’t got a “Made in America” label on it? We’re a lot smarter than that—and saying otherwise is a slander on our people.]

I consider myself a social democrat, yes. And for me, what social democracy simply means is a system that leaves room for small enterprises and individual liberty but also recognizes the fact that we’re all part of a larger community, and what hurts any one group of us eventually hurts us all. So there are some things we don’t leave to the so-called free market. We don’t want people going hungry or suffering from sickness or at the bottom of the ladder in educational attainments because they can’t afford them — especially when in economic downturns millions of us lose jobs through no fault of our own. So we tax ourselves to put money into a common kitty to make sure those things don’t happen and we’re all the better off for it. In other words we agree to bear each others’ burdens and make others’ suffering our concern, bound in “brotherly affection.” A far cry from the virtues of unrestricted and unregulated winner-take-all competition.

And do you know that that’s a basic American idea? What I just said comes straight from a sermon preached by minister John Winthrop to the band of fellow Puritans landing in Massachusetts in 1630. And it’s an idea picked up again and again throughout our history, from early state laws providing for public health and safety and punishing fraud, right on through to the Progressive period and the New Deal when we provided security for our elders, strengthened the bargaining power of workers, created public works programs to stimulate employment and spending, opened space for small business by breaking trusts, and reduced inequality to reasonable levels—without touching the basics of capitalism. That’s the American way and always has been, and I could name a long list of American heroes who embraced it if there were time. So let’s move past labels and start addressing the crises we face now.

Political historians, particularly those on the Right, sometimes refer to the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt as America’s Socialist Revolution. Just as Reconstruction can be seen as America’s second political revolution, I think that we are entering upon a time when we will experience our second socialist revolution. The second wave is upon us.

I didn’t watch the first Democratic Party debate Tuesday night for three reasons: first, I don’t own a television set; second, presidential debates haven’t been anything close to a debate in m lifetime and there was no reason to expect this one would be any different; and third, other people, people much smarter and better informed that me, would be watching and writing about what they saw. Matt Taibbi is one such person.

Writing in Hillary Clinton’s Take on Banks Won’t Hold Up for Rolling Stone, Taibbi observes:

One of the most revealing exchanges in the Clinton-Sanders tilt involved the question of Wall Street corruption. Sanders has always been a passionate crusader against Wall Street perfidy, but Hillary’s take on the subject was fascinating.

Asked about it Tuesday night, she gave an answer that to me sums up her candidacy and the conundrum of the modern Democratic Party in general. She seemed to hit a lot of correct notes, while at the same time over-thinking and over-nuancing a question where a few simple unequivocal answers would probably have won everyone over.

The key exchange began with a question from CNN’s Anderson Cooper:

Just for viewers at home who may not be reading up on this, Glass-Steagall is the Depression-era banking law repealed in 1999 that prevented commercial banks from engaging in investment banking and insurance activities. Secretary Clinton, he raises a fundamental difference on this stage. Sen. Sanders wants to break up the big Wall Street banks. You don’t. You say charge the banks more, continue to monitor them. Why is your plan better?

Backing up: When Bill Clinton took office, it was still illegal in the United States for commercial banks to merge with investment banks and insurance companies. But toward the end of Clinton’s second term, he signed a bill called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that essentially created Too Big to Fail “supermarket” banks like Citigroup.

This isn’t the only reason the financial system is so dangerous now. There’s also the matter of the extreme interconnectedness of the financial services industry. This problem came violently into play in 2008, when the failure of a single idiot investment bank, Lehman Brothers, caused a chain reaction that nearly blew up the whole financial system.

Yes, we can argue that Hillary Clinton was not president when her husband, who was president, signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley. I remember, however, how much the presidency of Bill Clinton was pitched as a dual-presidency, a buy-one-get-one-free deal. Hillary doesn’t get a pass on this.

One more reason why I didn’t watch the debate or take part in one of the more than 4,000 debate-watch parties Tuesday night. I’m solidly in the race to see Bernie Sanders become the next president of the United States. I didn’t need no stinkin’ debate to sell me.

Hard to believe that it has been 15 years since I ended a singular attempt to cover the machinations of the city’s political and power people and institutions. The quest was via a small newsletter called point of viǝw.

In my “Saying Goodbye” message in December 2000 to subscribers I tried to offer a rationale for doing what I did.

Now it is 15 years later that I have used the same modus operandi to continue the same pursuit.

I wrote in Vol. 33 No. 5:

The great advantage of being able to write point of viǝw all these years has been the unfettered freedom it has offered me to observe this community using my own judgment. The great press critic A. J. Liebling said, “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.”

POV never actually owned a printing press but was able to control what was in the newsletter simply by paying the bill to have it printed. Over the years I’ve had a number of printers I owe thanks to for being willing to print what might Continue Reading »

The errors of this period [the passage of NAFTA] cannot be undone, but it is not too late for a new kind of climate movement to take up the fight against so-called free trade and build this needed architecture now. That doesn’t—and never did—mean an end to economic exchange across borders. It does, however, mean a far more thoughtful and deliberate approach to why we trade and whom it serves. Encouraging the frenetic and indiscriminate consumption of essentially disposable products can no longer be the system’s goal. Goods must once again be made to last, and the use of energy-intensive long-haul transport will need to be rationed—reserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally or where local production is more carbon intensive. (For example, growing food in greenhouses in cold parts of the United States is often more energy intensive than growing it in warmer regions and shipping it by light rail.)

According to Llana Solomon, trade analyst for the Sierra Club, this is not a fight that the climate movement can avoid. “In order to combat climate change, there’s a real need to start localizing our economies again, and thinking about how and what we’re purchasing and how it’s produced. And the most basic rule of trade law is you can’t privilege domestic over foreign. So how do you tackle the idea of needing to incentivize local economies, tying together local green jobs policies with clean energy policies, when that is just a no-go in trade policy? …If we don’t think about how the economy is structured, then we’re actually never going to the real root of the problem.”

These kinds of economic reforms would be good new—for unemployed workers, for farmers unable to compete with cheap imports, for communities that have seen manufacturers move offshore and their local businesses replaced with big box stores. And all of these constituencies would be needed to fight for these policies, since they represent the reversal of the thirty-year trend of removing every possible limit on corporate power. p. 85-86

From This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Found in my electronic chapbook.