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Our three-decade recession
Robert Costanza, Los Angeles Times
The American quality of life has been going downhill since 1975.
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The news media and the government are fixated on the fact that the U.S. economy may be headed into a recession — defined as two or more successive quarters of declining gross domestic product. The situation is actually much worse. By some measures of economic performance, the United States has been in a recession since 1975 — a recession in quality of life, or well-being.
How can this be? One first needs to understand what GDP measures to see why it is not an appropriate gauge of our national well-being.
GDP measures the total market value of all goods and services produced in a country in a given period. But it includes only those goods and services traded for money. It also adds everything together, without discerning desirable, well-being-enhancing economic activity from undesirable, well-being-reducing activity.
Robert Costanza is the director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont.
(10 March 2008)
Labor’s War on Global Warming
Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello & Brendan Smith , The Nation
Figuring out how to respond to global warming has been difficult for organized labor. The issue can pit union against union and unions against environmentalists. Now, however, a new alliance is developing around the idea of “green jobs”–the jobs that will be needed to rebuild our economy and drastically reduced greenhouse gasses.
Seemingly from nowhere, “green jobs” have emerged as a key issue in the presidential election. Barack Obama calls for a $150 billion investment in green-collar jobs. Hillary Clinton refers to renewable energy employment as “jobs of the future” that can create five million jobs. Even John McCain calls for research and development of green technology, calling it the “path to restore the strength of America’s economy.”
… In 2006, the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers initiated the Blue-Green Alliance under the banner of “Good Jobs, A Clean Environment, And a Safer World.” This “strategic alliance” would focus on “those issues which have the greatest potential to unite the American people in pursuit of a global economy that is more just and equitable and founded on principles of environmental and economic sustainability.”
… Unions from much of the world, represented by the International Trade Union Confederation [ITUC], which represents 168 million workers in 153 countries, participated actively in their countries’ efforts to cut greenhouse gases in accord with the Kyoto Protocol, and to ensure that protection of employment and workers rights were included in that process. A few U.S. unions, notably the United Steelworkers, supported the Kyoto Protocol and efforts to cut greenhouses gases in the U.S.–and argued that doing so could create new jobs. But the AFL-CIO reaffirmed its opposition to Kyoto and rarely if ever acknowledged that global climate change was a significant threat.
… The AFL-CIO … has been actively lobbying against such limits on greenhouse gases.
(10 March 2008)
Last year, Jerry Silberman reported for Energy Bulletin on the poor climate record of the U.S. labor movement: Labor conference on global warming fails to address energy.
Overwhelmingly white, the green movement is reaching for the rainbow
Paula Bock, Seattle Times
“What’s a nice black guy like me doing in a movement like this?”
Van Jones strides the stage at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, a charismatic lawyer who grew up in rural Tennessee, graduated from Yale Law, and founded the Ella Baker Center for jobs and justice in Oakland.
Tall, 39, his pate shaved, he cuts a striking silhouette in a black turtleneck and blazer, but it’s his daring message that electrifies the crowd. He’s in Seattle to talk about “The Unbearable Whiteness of Green” and how the environmental movement needs to include people of color and the poor if there’s any hope of slowing global warming.
… “The Prius people, the polar-bear crowd are great,” Jones says. “We’re not mad at them. We like them! At the same time, if the only people who can participate are the kind who can afford to put solar panels on their second home, the green movement is going to be too small to fix the problem. If we want to beat global warming, there’s no way to do it without helping a lot of poor people. If you design a solution that does not do that, it’s a solution that’s too timid.”
(9 March 2008)
Volunteers help warm New England homes
Jerry Harkarvy, Associated Press
… While many get help from the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the average LIHEAP benefit of $750 isn’t enough to fill the standard oil tank at today’s prices. That’s why volunteer efforts like the Rev. Gerald Oleson’s Sunny Corner Fuel Assistance have sprung up to provide emergency help to those who fall through the cracks.
Maine, where four out of five households heat with oil, is making an unprecedented push to raise private money this winter to help the tens of thousands who walk a financial tightrope in order to balance heating expenses with the costs of other necessities like food and medicine.
(9 March 2008)
Big Oil Profit Pushes Democrats to Seek $1.8 Billion
Daniel Whitten, Bloomberg
Record oil-company profits, gasoline prices over $3 a gallon and the threat of a U.S. recession are increasing Democrats’ prospects for taxing oil and gas producers to pay for wind, solar and conservation programs.
Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips reported earnings of almost $10 million an hour in the fourth quarter. The economy appears headed toward the first contraction in a presidential election year since 1980. Democrats will probably raise taxes on the oil companies by at least $1.8 billion a year by 2009, senators in both parties say.
(10 March 2008)
Contributor driller writes:
Let’s see if they’ll do it after the elections.
