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Fight Climate Emergency by Nationalizing US Fossil Fuel Industry, Says Top Economist

“If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC’s findings seriously, it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far,” writes Robert Pollin.

In the wake of a United Nations report that activists said showed the “bleak and brutal truth” about the climate emergency, a leading economist on Friday highlighted a step that supporters argue could be incredibly effective at combating the global crisis: nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

“With at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion.”

Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Pollin, an economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and high gas prices exacerbated by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC’s findings seriously,” Pollin wrote, “it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far, both within the U.S. and globally. Within the U.S., such measures should include at least putting on the table the idea of nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.”

“With at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion”

Asserting that “at least in the U.S., the private oil companies stand as the single greatest obstacle to successfully implementing” a viable climate stabilization program, Pollin made the case that fossil fuel giants should not make any more money from wrecking the planet, nationalization would not be an unprecedented move in the United States, and doing so could help build clean energy infrastructure at the pace that scientists warn is necessary.

The expert proposed starting with “the federal government purchasing controlling ownership of at least the three dominant U.S. oil and gas corporations: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.”

“They are far larger and more powerful than all the U.S. coal companies combined, as well as all of the smaller U.S. oil and gas companies,” he wrote. “The cost to the government to purchase majority ownership of these three oil giants would be about $420 billion at current stock market prices.

Emphasizing that the aim of private firms “is precisely to make profits from selling oil, coal, and natural gas, no matter the consequences for the planet and regardless of how the companies may present themselves in various high-gloss, soft-focus PR campaigns,” Pollin posited that “with at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion.”

“The government could determine fossil fuel energy production levels and prices to reflect both the needs of consumers and the requirements of the clean-energy transition,” he explained. “This transition could also be structured to provide maximum support for the workers and communities that are presently dependent on fossil fuel companies for their well-being.”

Pollin pointed out that some members of Congress are pushing for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil companies using various global crises—from Russia’s war to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic—to price gouge working people at the gas pump. The proposal, he wrote, “raises a more basic question: Should the fossil fuel companies be permitted to profit at all through selling products that we know are destroying the planet? The logical answer has to be no. That is exactly why nationalizing at least the largest U.S. oil companies is the most appropriate action we can take now, in light of the climate emergency.”

The economist highlighted the long history of nationalizing in the United States, pointing out that “it was only 13 years ago, in the depths of the 2007–09 financial crisis and Great Recession, that the Obama administration nationalized two of the three U.S. auto companies.”

In addition to enabling the government to put the nationalized firms’ profits toward a just transition to renewables, Pollin wrote, “with nationalization, the political obstacles that fossil fuel companies now throw up against public financing for clean energy investments would be eliminated.”

Nationalization “is not a panacea,” Pollin acknowledged. Noting that “publicly owned companies already control approximately 90% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves,” he cautioned against assuming such a move in the U.S. “will provide favorable conditions for fighting climate change, any more than public ownership has done so already in Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, or Iran,” without an administration dedicated to tackling the global crisis.

Pollin is far from alone in proposing nationalization. Writing for Jacobin last month, People’s Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig argued that “an industry that is absolutely essential to maintain in the short term and absolutely essential to eliminate in the long term is an industry that really should be managed publicly.”

“Private owners and investors are not in the business of temporarily propping up dying industries, which means that they will either work to keep the industry from dying, which is bad for the climate, or that they will refuse to temporarily prop it up, which will cause economic chaos,” he wrote. “A public owner is best positioned to pursue managed decline in a responsible way.”

In a piece for The New Republic published in the early stage of the pandemic a few years ago, climate journalist Kate Aronoff—like Pollin on Friday—pointed out that nationalization “has a long and proud tradition of navigating America through times of crisis, from World War II to 9/11.”

As Aronoff—who interviewed New College of Florida economist Mark Paul—reported in March 2020:

In a way, nationalization would merely involve the government correcting for nearly a century of its own market intervention. All manner of government hands on the scales have kept money flowing into fossil fuels, including the roughly $26 billion worth of state and federal subsidies handed out to them each year. A holistic transition toward a low-carbon economy would reorient that array of market signals away from failing sectors and toward growing ones that can put millions to work right away retrofitting existing buildings to be energy efficient and building out a fleet of electric vehicles, for instance, including in the places that might otherwise be worst impacted by a fossil fuel bust and recession. Renewables have taken a serious hit amid the Covid-19 slowdown, too, as factories shut down in China. So besides direct government investments in green technology, additional policy directives from the federal level, Paul added, would be key to providing certainty for investors that renewables are worth their while: for example, low-hanging fruit like the extension of the renewable tax credits, now on track to be phased out by 2022.

While Pollin, Bruenig, and Aronoff’s writing focused on the United States, campaigners are also making similar cases around the world.

In a June 2021 opinion piece for The Guardian, Johanna Bozuwa, co-manager of the Climate & Energy Program at the Democracy Collaborative, and Georgetown University philosophy professor Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò took aim at Royal Dutch Shell on the heels of a historic court ruling, declaring that “like all private oil companies, Shell should not exist.”

“Governments like the Netherlands could better follow through on mandates to reduce emissions if they held control over oil companies themselves,” the pair added. “It is time to nationalize Big Oil.”

JESSICA CORBETT April 8, 2022

Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics, Science

‘Our House Is Truly on Fire’: Earth Now Has 50% Chance of Hitting 1.5°C of Warming by 2026

“The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic,” said the head of the World Meteorological Organization. “It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”

The World Meteorological Organization warned Monday that the planet now faces a 50% chance of temporarily hitting 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels over the next five years, another signal that political leaders—particularly those of the rich nations most responsible for carbon emissions—are failing to rein in fossil fuel use.

“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise.”

In 2015, by comparison, the likelihood of briefly reaching or exceeding 1.5°C of global warming over the ensuing five-year period was estimated to be “close to zero,” the WMO noted in a new climate update. The report was published amid a deadly heatwave on the Indian subcontinent that scientists say is a glimpse of what’s to come if runaway carbon emissions aren’t halted. Thus far, the heatwave has killed dozens in India and Pakistan.

Signatories to the Paris climate accord have agreed to act to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2°C—preferably to 1.5°C—by the end of the century. Climate advocates have deemed the 1.5°C target “on life support” following world leaders’ refusal to commit to more ambitious action at the COP26 summit in Glasgow late last year.

“We are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement,” Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the WMO, said in a statement Monday. “The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”

“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” Taalas added. “And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and, our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.”

Dr. Leon Hermanson, a climate expert at the U.K. Met Office who led the WMO report, stressed that a short-lived breach of the 1.5°C threshold would not mean that the world is guaranteed to fall short of the Paris accord’s most ambitious warming target, which climate experts and campaigners have long decried as inadequate.

Such a breach, however, would “reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period,” said Hermanson.

The WMO’s latest research also estimates that there is a 93% chance that at least one year between 2022 and 2026 will be the warmest on record. Currently, 2016 and 2020 are tied for the top spot.

Even if global warming is limited to 1.5°C by 2100, countless people across the globe will still face devastating heatwaves, droughts, and other extreme weather, with the poor facing the worst consequences.

Meanwhile, key ecosystems could be damaged beyond repair in a 1.5°C hotter world. One recent study found that 99% of the world’s coral reefs would experience heatwaves that are “too frequent for them to recover” if the planet gets 1.5°C warmer compared to pre-industrial levels.

Scientists behind the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report cautioned last month that if there’s to be any hope of keeping warming to 1.5°C or below by 2100, “it’s now or never.”

“Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” said Jim Skea, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Books, Climate Solutions

Climate Change Books: Why 04-22-22 will mark the Beginning of a New Era in Human History

photo bookshop / Ingram / Lynxotic collage

For 50 years warnings have been ignored: now it will be actions and solutions that matter

As a child I was fascinated with the Geodesic Dome and other inventions, such as the Dymaxion Car by R. Buckminster Fuller. I devoured his books but one stood out in particular. ‘Utopia or Oblivion‘, an obscure title that was difficult to read due to the pregnant prose and the seemingly overwrought message ( and title), the text shocked my young mind.

Originally published in 1963, decades before my birth, is is now nearly 60 years since it came out. What was shocking to me, at the time I first read it, was that the warnings in the book, made abundantly and overtly clear in the title and body, were not heeded, and that basically after decades passed the issue of fossil fuels being a non-sustainable resource was virtually ignored, with prejudice.

In 1963 the ozone layer was for all practical purposes still intact. Climate change, and / or global warming, caused by massive carbon emissions and the whole nasty, familiar story of today, was not even a consideration.

It was enough to know, unequivocally, that oil and other fossil fuels were a finite resource, and therefore will one day run out, that made it imperative, according to Fuller, to begin the necessary journey to building a world without them.

A book written by a genius, scientist, innovator and sage

This book ‘did the math’ and the science and concluded that humankind (still called mankind in those days) would have two fates possible in the next century (our century, f.y.i.): Utopia or Oblivion. To understand why this is absolutely right, in my opinion, I recommend reading the 448 pages of the book, 8 times, as I have.

In the many years since I first read this, now 59 year old book, the only thing that has changed is that his predictions of a world where humanity would face extinction (or be rescued by the realization that utopia is possible once we, as a species, make it possible) are now more definitely certain than ever.

Elon Musk, someone who would likely agree with much of the science in the book, is trying to get the “light of human consciousness‘ to Mars, since Earth’s survival hangs in the balance.

In the years since the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) was released, scores of scientists and world leaders have repeatedly warned of the increasing dangers, with actual occurrences and measurements producing evidence, mountains of evidence month by month. It has reached a point where, even in the USA which has the highest percentage of climate change skeptics, over 70% of the population, nevertheless, believes the threat is serious, important, and real.

Image: SAP/Qualtrics

Finally, nearly 60 years after R. Buckminster Fuller’s seminal work, there is a consensus in the world that this is a problem that must be solved.

Not something to debate or consider. Nothing to prove or produce evidence of in order to justify acting on, we all believe (as a majority) that the solutions must be found and the actions needed to implement those chances must be started immediately.

Some of us, for example anyone who read ‘Utopia or Oblivion’ during the last 59 years, or anyone who ‘did the math’ and understood that oil and fossil fuels are not, and never were, meant to be a permeant source of energy for humanity, are ready to act.

Therefore, this article, and many more you will have the opportunity to read in celebration of Earth Day 2022, is designed to invite you to act now, if only by reading and learning about the challenges we face.

And then, armed with knowledge and understanding, to begin today, on 04-22-2022, the first day of a new era in human history, the beginning of transition to the sustainable, clean energy era. Utopia, then must be achieved, in order to prevent Oblivion.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW‘S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTA major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half-billion years, there have been Five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind’s most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER – In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical–and accessible–plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet’s slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations.

Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions–suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. 
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

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Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability–at the level of literature, history, and politics–to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. 
The extreme nature of today’s climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres.

In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence–a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time. 

No Planet B: A Teen Vogue Guide to the Climate Crisis

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An urgent call for climate justice from Teen Vogue, one of this generation’s leading voices, using an intersectional lens – with critical feminist, indigenous, antiracist and internationalist perspectives. As the political classes watch our world burn, a new movement of young people is rising to meet the challenge of climate catastrophe. This book is a guide, a toolkit, a warning and a cause for hope.


I hope that this book embodies Teen Vogue’s motto of making young people feel seen and heard all over the world. I hope that it forces their parents, communities, loved ones, friends, and–most importantly–those in power to see that the health of our planet depends on how quickly and drastically we change our behaviors. I hope it forces them all to respond. –From the foreword by Teen Vogue editor-in-chief, Lindsay Peoples Wagner

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”–Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

With a new afterwordIt is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible–food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (TheGuardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it–the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation–today’s. Praise for The Uninhabitable Earth“The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”–Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
No Planet B: A Teen Vogue Guide to the Climate Crisis
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
Also can be viewed on Amazon

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Climate Solutions, News

These energy innovations could transform how we mitigate climate change, and save money in the process – 5 essential reads

Building solar panels over water sources is one way to both provide power and reduce evaporation in drought-troubled regions. Robin Raj, Citizen Group & Solar Aquagrid

Stacy Morford, The Conversation

To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is an important source of clean energy. Scientists and engineers see that plus far more potential.

They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their owners money and also reducing transportation emissions.

With scientists worldwide sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers and costs of climate change, let’s explore some cutting-edge ideas that could transform how today’s technologies reduce the effects of global warming, from five recent articles in The Conversation.

1. Solar canals: Power + water protection

What if solar panels did double duty, protecting water supplies while producing more power?

California is developing the United States’ first solar canals, with solar panels built atop some of the state’s water distribution canals. These canals run for thousands of miles through arid environments, where the dry air boosts evaporation in a state frequently troubled by water shortages.

“In a 2021 study, we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California’s canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people,” writes engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. They would also expand renewable energy without taking up farmable land.

Research shows that human activities, particularly using fossil fuels for energy and transportation, are unequivocally warming the planet and increasing extreme weather. Increasing renewable energy, currently about 20% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation, can reduce fossil fuel demand.

Putting solar panels over shaded water can also improve their power output. The cooler water lowers the temperature of the panels by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius), boosting their efficiency, Bales writes.

2. Geothermal power could boost battery supplies

For renewable energy to slash global greenhouse gas emissions, buildings and vehicles have to be able to use it. Batteries are essential, but the industry has a supply chain problem.

Most batteries used in electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are lithium-ion batteries, and most lithium used in the U.S. comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia. China is the leader in lithium processing.

Geologist and engineers are working on an innovative method that could boost the U.S. lithium supply at home by extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region.

Brines are the liquid leftover in a geothermal plant after heat and steam are used to produce power. That liquid contains lithium and other metals such as manganese, zinc and boron. Normally, it is pumped back underground, but the metals can also be filtered out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oYtyEVPGEU8?wmode=transparent&start=0 How lithium is extracted during geothermal energy production. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources.

“If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand,” write geologist Michael McKibben of the University of California, Riverside, and energy policy scholar Bryant Jones of Boise State University.

President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act on March 31, 2022, to provide incentives for U.S. companies to mine and process more critical minerals for batteries.

3. Green hydrogen and other storage ideas

Scientists are working on other ways to boost batteries’ mineral supply chain, too, including recycling lithium and cobalt from old batteries. They’re also developing designs with other materials, explained Kerry Rippy, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Concentrated solar power, for example, stores energy from the sun by heating molten salt and using it to produce steam to drive electric generators, similar to how a coal power plant would generate electricity. It’s expensive, though, and the salts currently used aren’t stable at higher temperature, Rippy writes. The Department of Energy is funding a similar project that is experimenting with heated sand. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fkX-H24Chfw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Hydrogen’s challenges, including its fossil fuel history.

Renewable fuels, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, provide a different type of storage. Since they store energy as liquid, they can be transported and used for shipping or rocket fuel.

Hydrogen gets a lot of attention, but not all hydrogen is green. Most hydrogen used today is actually produced with natural gas – a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen, in contrast, could be produced using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, but again, it’s expensive.

“The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical,” Rippy writes. “The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.”

4. Using your EV to power your home

Batteries could also soon turn your electric vehicle into a giant, mobile battery capable of powering your home.

Only a few vehicles are currently designed for vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, but that’s changing, writes energy economist Seth Blumsack of Penn State University. Ford, for example, says its new F-150 Lightning pickup truck will be able to power an average house for three days on a single charge.

How bidirectional charging allows EVs to power homes.

Blumsack explores the technical challenges as V2H grows and its potential to change how people manage energy use and how utilities store power.

For example, he writes, “some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call ‘peak shaving’ – drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours.”

5. Capturing carbon from air and locking it away

Another emerging technology is more controversial.

Humans have put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries that just stopping fossil fuel use won’t be enough to quickly stabilize the climate. Most scenarios, including in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, show the world will have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well.

The technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air exists – it’s called direct air capture – but it’s expensive.

Engineers and geophysicists like David Goldberg of Columbia University are exploring ways to cut those costs by combining direct air capture technology with renewable energy production and carbon storage, like offshore wind turbines built above undersea rock formations where captured carbon could be locked away.

The world’s largest direct air capture plant, launched in 2021 in Iceland, uses geothermal energy to power its equipment. The captured carbon dioxide is mixed with water and pumped into volcanic basalt formations underground. Chemical reactions with the basalt turn it into a hard carbonate.

Goldberg, who helped developed the mineralization process used in Iceland, sees similar potential for future U.S. offshore wind farms. Wind turbines often produce more energy than their customers need at any given time, making excess energy available.

“Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment,” Goldberg writes.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Stacy Morford, Environment + Climate Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Breaking News, News, Observation, Politics

A historian corrects misunderstandings about Ukrainian and Russian history

image / reuters

by Ronald Suny, University of Michigan

The first casualty of war, says historian Ronald Suny, is not just the truth. Often, he says, “it is what is left out.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin began a full-scale attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and many in the world are now getting a crash course in the complex and intertwined history of those two nations and their peoples. Much of what the public is hearing, though, is jarring to historian Suny’s ears. That’s because some of it is incomplete, some of it is wrong, and some of it is obscured or refracted by the self-interest or the limited perspective of who is telling it. We asked Suny, a professor at the University of Michigan, to respond to a number of popular historical assertions he’s heard recently.

Putin’s view of Russo-Ukrainian history has been widely criticized in the West. What do you think motivates his version of the history?

Putin believes that Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are one people, bound by shared history and culture. But he also is aware that they have become separate states recognized in international law and by Russian governments as well. At the same time, he questions the historical formation of the modern Ukrainian state, which he says was the tragic product of decisions by former Russian leaders Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. He also questions the sovereignty and distinctive nation-ness of Ukraine. While he promotes national identity in Russia, he denigrates the growing sense of nation-ness in Ukraine.

Putin indicates that Ukraine by its very nature ought to be friendly, not hostile, to Russia. But he sees its current government as illegitimate, aggressively nationalist and even fascist. The condition for peaceful relations between states, he repeatedly says, is that they do not threaten the security of other states. Yet, as is clear from the invasion, he presents the greatest threat to Ukraine.

Putin sees Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia, believing that if it enters NATO, offensive weaponry will be placed closer to the Russian border, as already is being done in Romania and Poland.

It’s possible to interpret Putin’s statements about the historical genesis of the Ukrainian state as self-serving history and a way of saying, “We created them, we can take them back.” But I believe he may instead have been making a forceful appeal to Ukraine and the West to recognize the security interests of Russia and provide guarantees that there will be no further moves by NATO toward Russia and into Ukraine. Ironically, his recent actions have driven Ukrainians more tightly into the arms of the West.

The Western position is that the breakaway regions Putin recognized, Donetsk and Luhansk, are integral parts of Ukraine. Russia claims that the Donbass region, which includes these two provinces, is historically and rightfully part of Russia. What does history tell us?

During the Soviet period, these two provinces were officially part of Ukraine. When the USSR disintegrated, the former Soviet republic boundaries became, under international law, the legal boundaries of the post-Soviet states. Russia repeatedly recognized those borders, though reluctantly in the case of Crimea.

But when one raises the fraught question of what lands belong to what people, a whole can of worms is opened. The Donbass has historically been inhabited by Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and others. In Soviet and post-Soviet times, the cities were largely Russian ethnically and linguistically, while the villages were Ukrainian. When in 2014 the Maidan revolution in Kyiv moved the country toward the West and Ukrainian nationalists threatened to limit the use of the Russian language in parts of Ukraine, rebels in the Donbas violently resisted the central government of Ukraine.

After months of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebel forces in the Donbas in 2014, regular Russian forces moved in from Russia, and a war began that has lasted for the last eight years, with thousands killed and wounded.

Historical claims to land are always contested – think of Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis – and they are countered by claims that the majority living on the land in the present takes precedence over historical claims from the past. Russia can claim Donbass with its own arguments based on ethnicity, but so can Ukrainians with arguments based on historical possession. Such arguments go nowhere and often lead, as can be seen today, to bloody conflict.

Why was Russia’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent such a pivotal event in the conflict?

When Putin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states, he seriously escalated the conflict, which turned out to be the prelude to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That invasion is a hard, harsh signal to the West that Russia will not back down and accept the further arming of and placing of weaponry in Ukraine, Poland and Romania. The Russian president has now led his country into a dangerous preventive war – a war based on the anxiety that sometime in the future his country will be attacked – the outcome of which is unpredictable.

A New York Times story on Putin’s histories of Ukraine says “The newly created Soviet government under Lenin that drew so much of Mr. Putin’s scorn on Monday would eventually crush the nascent independent Ukrainian state. During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian language was banished from schools and its culture was permitted to exist only as a cartoonish caricature of dancing Cossacks in puffy pants.” Is this history of Soviet repression accurate?

Lenin’s government won the 1918-1921 civil war in Ukraine and drove out foreign interventionists, thus consolidating and recognizing the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. But Putin is essentially correct that it was Lenin’s policies that promoted Ukrainian statehood within the USSR, within a Soviet empire, officially granting it and other Soviet republics the constitutional right to secede from the Union without conditions. This right, Putin angrily asserts, was a landmine that eventually blew up the Soviet Union.

The Ukrainian language was never banned in the USSR and was taught in schools. In the 1920s, Ukrainian culture was actively promoted by the Leninist nationality policy.

But under Stalin, Ukrainian language and culture began to be powerfully undermined. This started in the early 1930s, when Ukrainian nationalists were repressed, the horrific “Death Famine” killed millions of Ukrainian peasants, and Russification, which is the process of promoting Russian language and culture, accelerated in the republic.

Within the strict bounds of the Soviet system, Ukraine, like many other nationalities in the USSR, became a modern nation, conscious of its history, literate in its language, and even in puffy pants permitted to celebrate its ethnic culture. But the contradictory policies of the Soviets in Ukraine both promoted a Ukrainian cultural nation while restricting its freedoms, sovereignty and expressions of nationalism.

History is both a contested and a subversive social science. It is used and misused by governments and pundits and propagandists. But for historians it is also a way to find out what happened in the past and why. As a search for truth, it becomes subversive of convenient and comfortable but inaccurate views of where we came from and where we might be going.

This article has been updated to reflect the correct ethnic and linguistic character of the villages in the Donbas during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. They were Ukrainian.

This article is republished from The Conversation by Ronald Suny, University of Michigan under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Observation, Stock Market

Opinion: With Trump in the Rear-view we are shifting to the Economy, Corona and Climate

The wheels are already spinning towards new challenges brought on by Trump’s actions

With so many challenges facing the US and, in many ways the entire world, even as the bizarre political drama recedes, it may be hard to find even a moment of neutral footing before the next crisis phase begins.

In fact it is in the most “positive” areas, endlessly touted as a triumph, where the first fireworks could be set off. Although many believe that the stock market is in a bubble phase, as extreme if not more extreme than either the “dot-com crash” of 2000 or the real estate collapse on 2008, this is truly the first time a bubble was inflated during a time when a triple threat – political, medical and climate emergencies, was in various phases of unfolding at the same time.

But it’s the forth “leg”, the lone bright spot as it has seems, that could carry a very big danger. With the pandemic still not showing any signs of abating, although there are vaccines being distributed, and the political madness of 2020 looking to begin to fade (at least partially), it is the possibility that the stock market bubble finding it’s “pin” that could trigger the next challenge to Biden and the country as a whole.

Perhaps the various stimulus funds being planned for dissemination can postpone any reckoning for at least a few months, but if that is not the case the situation could become extremely dangerous very quickly.

How the current stock market climate compares to 1999 and 2007

Looking back at the history of both of those bubble-crash cycles there are some notable differences. But there are far more similarities. All the various sentiment metrics and herding behaviors are present in forms, just as extreme, potentially more so.

The actual peak may be in the future, as SPAC entities are joining with traditional VCs to ride the avalanche of FED funds flooding into the money supply.

As was the case in 1999 there’s a momentum – a reflexivity as George Soros termed it, that begins as a smooth wave and eventually a tsunami of self-perpetuating belief in the absurd.

That moment could already have come and gone, it’s only in retrospect that the over-heated irrational exuberance becomes obvious to all. Perhaps the folly of WeWork will be the pastor child, or perhaps something that is just now happening.

Once the tsunami hits the shore, however, it will make landfall on an already devastated geography. After four years of corruption and devastating lock-downs (underplayed just enough to extend the misery) and so many challenges and messes to clean up, there will be a shock to the financial system that is unlike anything seen in 2000 and 2008.

A trillion plus dollar bail out after several (three?) have already been set in motion for other rescues and attempts to reinvigorate the economy, will be a hard and dangerous method to use, although it “worked” in the first two bubble-crash scenarios.

The big picture may look endless grim but the hope is in the change

Without a doubt the one thing that would like arise from such a nightmare scenario, similarly to the pandemic and the climate crisis, is that deep and irreversible change on a massive scale will be needed to begin a new phase of recovery.

Just as there’s a “bottoming out” that has to happen when a person finally confronts addictions and other self-destructive behaviors, humankind as a whole will be forced to make severe and lasting changes in order to overcome what will seem like an escalation of woe, at precisely the moment that a happy, sunny return to “normal” is anticipated

While all of this sounds dire, there are few today, who are paying attention, who would not say that massive change is needed. In politics, in business, in the economy, in healthcare and, of yes, in our response to existence level threats such as the climate crisis, we need, more than anything else to change.

Perhaps a downturn in a fantasy filled stock market bubble is just the pin prick that we need to wash away the negative trends of the past and begin from a new perspective that recognizes just how different our organizing principals need to be, as a species, in order to not only survive, but to do so in abundance.

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Breaking News, Observation, Politics

Republicans loyal to Trump are threatening ‘Civil War’ but only have each other to fight

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic

January 6th will be remembered, but not for what Trump’s devotees are threatening

Since the end of the Bush years and Obama’s rise there has been a simple yet devastating truth haunting the Republican Party. The demographic realities do not support a continuation of the racist stance that was the bedrock of the party’s appeal for more than half a century. The Southern Strategy does not work when the non-white majority is growing daily. 

Read more: Trump Overseas Flight Plan Timed to Avoid Inauguration Ceremony 

Instead of shifting gradually, for example during the eight years of Obama, a bolt from the blue sent the party back to the stone age with a fluke, a mistake of history, called Donald Trump. A “Rhino” who was able to say anyone who disagreed with his disgusting extreme racist politics was the real “Republican in name only”.

That has led to the current “civil war” within the Republican Party. In essence it is the suicide party of Trump, rather dead than rainbow, vs. the “democratic” Republicans, those that believe that the  US Constitution and the rule of law should be upheld, even if it means that people of color have a demographic advantage and must be included in government going forward. 

Read More: Prediction: January 6th will be the Biggest Failure in Trump’s Entire Life

Groups like the Lincoln Project and RVAT (Republican Voters against Trump) helped to defeat him and represent a more “sane” idea of what they believe the Republican should be about in the future. In reality, the fanatical backing that a reality show demagogue has managed to assemble is both too large and too sick to change anytime soon, particularly not if that change involves disavowing racism as a core belief. 

While talking about his former Party, Schmidt touches on the larger issues for the rest of America

Therefore, as Steve Schmidt, a GOP strategist who co-founded the Lincoln Project, said is a series of tweets this weekend, the coming ‘civil war’, oddly scheduled for January 6th and being announced by many wackos, from “Proud Boys” to Republican senators and congressmen, is not one of a country divided, but the death throes of the Republican Party itself:

“The die is cast for the Republican Party. It will be destroyed on January 6th”

Referring to the suicidal nature of this hopeless attempt to declare a “real” civil war, one where Trump’s 70 million-plus base literally take up arms against the rest of the country including the government, military and law enforcement infrastructure. 

The implication that the threatened war would never take hold, that the armed forces and the entire infrastructure of the country is not ready to commit treason in order to save a crying baby who lost an election, is an unspoken phrase underscoring the prediction of what will actually take place:

That date “will commence a political civil war inside the GOP,” he continued.

He also admits that the Trump led “autocratic” leaning Republicans outnumber the p”pro-democracy” wing of the party and, therefore, the party as a whole will collapse. 

“The autocratic side will roll over the pro-democracy remnant of the GOP like the Wehrmacht did the Belgian Army in 1940. The ’22 GOP primary season will be a blood letting. The 6th will be a loyalty test. The purge will follow.”

The implication of his words are that the party will be split with the Trump faction to remain, weaker yet held together by zealous insanity, while any sane former Republicans will be “purged” and will have to go it alone:

“Fascism has indeed come to America and as was once predicted it is wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. This movement must be defeated. It cannot be appeased, accommodated or negotiated with. It must be recognized for what it is and we must all recognize the new age of American politics it has wrought,” he wrote.

Read More: Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

The future will eventually reflect current reality; ethnic diversity can not be wished away by racism

What is missing from the post is an answer to the question of what this new fascist Republican party will do with a small minority and a leader who will likely be in exile or jail. Perhaps “Trump the Martyr” will cast a long powerful shadow over American politics for years. More likely he will be immortalized in the dustbin of history. 

His most rabid and crazed followers may commit illegal acts, for which they will pay with incarceration or fate, but more than a few impotent and isolated incidents are highly unlikely. Like Trump himself, it will be the incompetence and stupidity, along with the corruption and evil, that will be remembered from his rise, and derided and, rightly, mocked in his fall.

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Breaking News, Observation, Politics

Trump’s End game: Is a Moscow Asylum offer in the cards?

Russia and others speculate on what will become of ‘Trumpusha’ 

When Trump leaves the White House come January 20th, he will undoubtedly have many obstacles to face, both legal and in his business concerns. Meanwhile, it still remains unclear if Trump has plans to try and preemptively pardon himself (and that point is moot since it only covers federal crimes), as he stands to face charges for numerous offenses related to fraud, tax evasion and sexual assault. 

Read More: Trump’s election themed holiday meltdown thanks to South Park creators

What will happen with Trump as he makes his likely final exit as president is a question on many people’s minds, including at the Kremlin, interestingly.

Russian state media have expressed concern about their dear “Trumpusha” or “Comrade Trump” as he is sometimes referred to.  During a state-run TV talk show ‘Russia-1’, Olga Skabeeva brought up the “serious” possibility that the soon to be ex-President should seek asylum within Russia in order to avoid the prosecutions that will surely follow him at the end of his term. 

Other Russian leaders also had more to say, such as Defense Ministry’s Public Council Igor Korotchenko, who also spoke out to defend Trump; which is reportedly a stark contrast to his traditionally combative stance toward other Western leaders.  

“Russia can offer political asylum to the persecuted former president of the United States, Donald Trump. But let him not simply arrive to Rostov or elsewhere, but also transfer his capital here and finally build his famous Trump City somewhere in our New Moscow.”

Day by day the options for Trump dwindle and recede, it seems…

U.S. laws may or may not allow Trump to roam free after he is no longer protected by presidential immunity to prosecution. Yet in Russia, a country who’s laws have the ability to stretch and blur leaders’ accountability, like the constitutional amendment barring any criminal liability for Putin, should he ever step down, that was recently advanced.

The amendment that would secure immunity from any type of criminal prosecution not just within the tenure of the country’s former presidents, but lifetime criminal immunity. Which is just the kind of thing Trump might be wishing for right about now.  

During the Russia-1 TV show, politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky spoke to the idea of potential last-minute surprises that could still be unveiled prior to the 20th of January.

“You don’t know Trump, he has plenty of tricks up his sleeve and can still cause lots of damage to America and the entire world.” This could be an indicator of the reason why Putin held out for as long as possible in acknowledging President-elect Joe Biden.

Ever the Trump cheerleader, Putin has some encouraging words

During an annual news conference, Putin, on center stage, spoke of Trump, future U.S.-Russia relations, as well as continued to deflect questions stemming from the long-standing allegations of Russia’s involvement with hacking and interference in the 2016 presidential elections.  

When asked about the U.S. elections and what Trump’s future would hold, he seemed very optimistic on Trump’s possible future options when he said:

“He is an experienced man both in domestic and foreign policy, and we expect that all the problems that arose, or at least some of them, will be solved with the new administration. Trump, in my view, doesn’t have to find a job, almost 50% of the [US] population voted for him if we count the number of voters, not the electoral college. He has quite a large base of support in the U.S. and, as far as I understand, he is not going to leave the political life of his country.”

Vladimir Putin
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Books, Business, Economics, Stock Market

Looming Economic Collapse and Ways to Prepare; Historic Echos and Warnings

Photo Collage / Book Publishers

2008 and it’s Aftermath was a Wake Up Call that was Heeded by Virtually No-one

There are many good films on the economic collapse of 2008 (The Big Short is a favorite), also known as “The Great Recession” for fear of using the “D” word. Books too have opined on the lessons learned and, in some cases, taken dubious credit for the “rescue” of the world economy.

Read More: Conspiracy Theories are gaining adherents like never before: where’s the Reality?

Watched or read closely, these books, with the exclusion of the self-congratulatory ones mentioned above, all point to a sobering conclusion: the underlying issues that nearly led to a protracted worldwide economic collapse were not solved or fixed but “the can was simply kicked further down the road”.

Unfortunately, they also agree that “further down the road”, currently around 11 years later, translates to “soon”. Accordingly, we’d all be wise to revisit the 2008 crisis and read some of the conclusions, in detail, that have been drawn from a deeper study of the remaining and very serious issues faced as we go further forward into the 2020’s.

So much of our destinies are tied to economics, it is always a wise area to begin to look for solutions to all macro-dilemmas 

Of course, now, in a crowded life-raft of a planet, we also have the rising threat of Climate Change, the ongoing and terrifying challenges associated with global pandemics and sociopolitical trends, that point towards anything but harmonious co-operation, within and between societies around the world. 

All the more reason to embrace what at times appears to be the lone bright spot, in this saga of seemingly-endless doom and gloom: we have educational resources available and the modern marvel of human-networked-communication devices (a.k.a. the internet and the software and hardware we use to access it), is becoming a more powerful ally by the hour. 

Here are books we highly recommend to start your journey towards your heroic contributions to finding solutions and hope, as we look to the future:

The Great Devaluation: How to Embrace, Prepare, and Profit from the Coming Global Monetary Reset

Click here to see “The Great Devaluation”
and help Independent Bookstores.
Also available on Amazon.

The Great Devaluation is the #1 bestselling book that explains why the real crisis facing the world today is not the Coronavirus. The real crisis facing the world is explosive government debt and deficits. Governments are now left with no choice but to spend more than they make, borrow more than they can ever repay, and devalue their currencies to cover it all up.

Former Hollywood storyteller Adam Baratta brings monetary policy to life in this follow-up to his national bestseller, Gold Is A Better Way. You’ll learn how and why Federal Reserve polices have facilitated an explosion in government debt and have systematically undermined the world financial system in the name of profit. The result? An out of control system where financial inequality has become a ticking time bomb set to blow up the global economy. Click here to see “The Great Devaluation” and help Independent Bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

Click here to see “Crashed”
and help Independent Bookstores.
Also available on Amazon.

We live in a world where dramatic shifts in the domestic and global economy command the headlines, from rollbacks in US banking regulations to tariffs that may ignite international trade wars. But current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all–the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath.

Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forcing a rearrangement of global governance. With a historian’s eye for detail, connection, and consequence, Adam Tooze brings the story right up to today’s negotiations, actions, and threats–a much-needed perspective on a global catastrophe and its long-term consequences. Click here to see “Crashed” and help Independent Bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Seventh Edition

Click here to see “Manias, Panics, and Crashes”
and help Independent Bookstores.
Also available on Amazon.

This seventh edition of an investment classic has been thoroughly revised and expanded following the latest crises to hit international markets. Renowned economist Robert Z. Aliber introduces the concept that global financial crises in recent years are not independent events, but symptomatic of an inherent instability in the international system.

Covering such topics as the history and anatomy of crises, speculative manias, and the lender of last resort, this book puts the turbulence of the financial world in perspective. Click here to see “Manias, Panics, and Crashes” and help Independent Bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

The Fed and Lehman Brothers: Setting the Record Straight on a Financial Disaster

Click here to see “The Fed and Lehman Brothers”
and help Independent Bookstores.
Also available on Amazon.

The bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers was the pivotal event of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. Ever since the bankruptcy, there has been heated debate about why the Federal Reserve did not rescue Lehman in the same way it rescued other financial institutions, such as Bear Stearns and AIG. The Fed’s leaders from that time, especially former Chairman Ben Bernanke, have strongly asserted that they lacked the legal authority to save Lehman because it did not have adequate collateral for the loan it needed to survive.

Based on a meticulous four-year study of the Lehman case, The Fed and Lehman Brothers debunks the official narrative of the crisis. It shows that in reality, the Fed could have rescued Lehman but officials chose not to because of political pressures and because they underestimated the damage that the bankruptcy would do to the economy. The compelling story of the Lehman collapse will interest anyone who cares about what caused the financial crisis, whether the leaders of the Federal Reserve have given accurate accounts of their actions, and how the Fed can prevent future financial disasters. Click here to see “The Fed and Lehman Brothers” and help Independent Bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System–And Themselves

Click here to see “Too Big to Fail”
and help Independent Bookstores.
Also available on Amazon.

Brand New for 2018: an updated edition featuring a new afterword to mark the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis. The brilliantly reported New York Times bestseller that goes behind the scenes of the financial crisis on Wall Street and in Washington to give the definitive account of the crisis, the basis for the HBO film.

In one of the most gripping financial narratives in decades, Andrew Ross Sorkin–a New York Times columnist and one of the country’s most respected financial reporters–delivers the first definitive blow-by-blow account of the epochal economic crisis that brought the world to the brink. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, he re-creates all the drama and turmoil of these turbulent days, revealing never-before-disclosed details and recounting how, motivated as often by ego and greed as by fear and self-preservation, the most powerful men and women in finance and politics decided the fate of the world’s economy. Click here to see “Too Big to Fail” and help Independent Bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

Crash of 2008 and What It Means: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets

Click here to see “The Crash of 2008“
and help Independent Bookstores.
Also available on Amazon.

In the midst of one of the most serious financial upheavals since the Great Depression, George Soros, the legendary financier and philanthropist, writes about the origins of the crisis and proposes a set of policies that should be adopted to confront it.

Soros, whose breadth of experience in financial markets is unrivaled, places the crisis in the context of his decades of study of how individuals and institutions handle the boom and bust cycles that now dominate global economic activity. In a concise essay that combines practical insight with philosophical depth, Soros makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the great credit crisis and its implications for our nation and the world. Click here to see “The Crash of 2008 and What it Means” and help Independent Bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

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