News Feeds | ecology.iww.org (2024)

The Green Connection - Wed, 05/22/2024 - 05:38

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

Dogwood Alliance - Wed, 05/22/2024 - 05:23

Many wading birds adapted to thrive in wetland environments. Wetland wading birds are some of the most vulnerable bird species when wetland areas decline. The US has lost more than […]

The post 5 Beautiful Wetland Wading Birds That Will Amaze You first appeared on Dogwood Alliance.

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

Extinction Rebellion - Wed, 05/22/2024 - 05:02

Email: press@extinctionrebellion.uk

Phone: +44(0)7756136396

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As hundreds of thousands of people across the country prepare for what promises to be the biggest march to protect nature in a generation, new polling reveals that almost three-quarters of the public believe the government is failing to protect our country’s nature, threatening our very life support systems and biodiversity.

A new poll released today – International Day for Biodiversity – reveals that a staggering 71% of the UK public thinks the Government isn’t doing enough to protect the environment for the next generation. [1] Voters from all political sides think nature is not being protected adequately for future generations. The polls found that this includes 56% of Conservative voters, 86% of Labour voters and 80% of Liberal Democrat 2019 voters.

All major nature charities and climate and environmental groups in the UK are banding together to warn political parties today that their commitments to nature are falling far short, risking the lives of wildlife and the people of this country and the rest of the world. Together they are urging the public to join them in London in a month’s time on 22nd June to voice alarm at the state of UK nature and demand that politicians Restore Nature Now.

The warning comes ahead of an imminent announcement of the UK’s strategy to meet key international biodiversity agreements from COP15, to halt and restore nature loss and protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. With low expectations from nature groups that the plans will turn the tide for UK nature, it also comes hot on the heels of a warning from the National Audit Office last week, that the Government’s flagship Biodiversity Net Gain scheme may not have the measures in place to ensure its success.

Our politicians have a track record of allowing environment and climate destroying projects such as High Speed 2 (HS2), Road Investment Strategy 2 (RIS2), the West Cumbria Coal Mine and Rosebank oil field to go ahead. It is clear beyond any doubt that protecting the lives of millions of people in and outside of the UK from climate and ecological breakdown is not a priority.

TV wildlife star Chris Packham will spearhead the Restore Nature Now march in London on 22nd June that is expected to draw hundreds of thousands people from campaign groups and nature conservation organisations including Extinction Rebellion, the RSPB, National Trust, Woodland Trust and the Wildlife Trusts.

Chris Packham, TV broadcaster and environmental campaigner, said: “The vast majority of people in the UK care deeply about protecting the environment for the future. We all want a better world for the next generation, but as this research shows we have no faith that our politicians will deliver the change nature needs. There has never been a more critical time for nature, wildlife numbers continue to fall and our wild places continue to deteriorate. We have to shout it from the rooftops that we must Restore Nature Now, and politicians from all parties need to hear us roar.”

Daze Aghaji, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion UK said: “The people know that the state of nature in the UK, and all over the world, is bad. And we know that none of us can survive if the natural world collapses. If we, ordinary people, know this and see how vital it is to act, why are our politicians not acting with the urgency that is needed? It is time that we all stand together and unite to protect and restore nature now, before it is too late.”

Over 170 organisations from across the UK are backing the Restore Nature Now demonstration on 22nd June to protest the poor state of nature in the UK and are united in calling on UK politicians to deliver:

– A pay rise for nature – the nature and climate-friendly farming budget doubled.

– Make polluters pay – new rules to make polluters contribute to nature and climate recovery

– More space for nature – to expand and improve protected areas, and ensure public land and National Parks contribute more to recovery.

– A right to a healthy environment – an Environmental Rights Bill, which would drive better decisions for nature, improve public health and access to high-quality nature.

– Fair and effective climate action – increasing home energy efficiency, supporting active travel and public transport, and replacing polluting fossil fuels with affordable renewables.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

• Restore Nature Now is a legal, peaceful, inclusive and family-friendly demonstration, on 22 June 2024 in central London, which aims to be the biggest gathering of people for nature and climate that the UK has ever seen . It is both a celebration of British nature and a protest calling for urgent political action on the nature and climate emergencies. It is organised by the RSPB, Wildlife and Countryside Link, Extinction Rebellion, Chris Packham, the Wildlife Trusts, The Woodland Trust, WWT, WWF-UK, the National Trust, Friends of the Earth and Plantlife.
• Find out more about the 22 June Restore Nature Now demonstration at www.restorenaturenow.com

1. All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,054 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 15th – 16th May 2024.. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+).
2. Additional quotes:

Hilary McGrady, Director-General at the National Trust, said: “The National Trust was established to promote the preservation of our historic and natural places for everyone to enjoy, forever. We want every generation to experience the benefits nature can offer both our physical and mental wellbeing – and to grow up valuing and cherishing the UK’s precious wildlife. To see so many of our natural places and treasured species remain in jeopardy is heartbreaking. If we all want to see a nature-rich future for generations to come, then we need to stand up and be counted, and whoever forms the next Government should make nature recovery a priority.”

Dr Darren Moorcroft, Chief Executive of the Woodland Trust, said: “We are calling for environmental issues to be moved up right to the top of the political agenda, not just to make the country a greener place but a healthier place too. Our work has shown that where there is more nature and more trees, there are better health outcomes. And it’s not just us saying this – extensive research we carried out with GPs showed they believe investing in trees and nature could help improve the nation’s health and reduce the burden on the health service. There must be a greater, more urgent commitment from politicians to restore nature for the potentially life-giving benefits of a cleaner, greener world, ever more important due to the greater effects of climate change.”

Craig Bennett, CEO of The Wildlife Trusts, said: “People care passionately about nature and many are clearly fed up that the decline of our natural world is being ignored. Some of us are furious. We need action not empty promises. Protecting wildlife and helping nature to recover must be top of the political to-do list to ensure future generations have a thriving natural world in which to live, healthy food, clean water and a stable climate. This is a critical moment and we’re uniting at the march to cry out: Restore Nature Now!”

Beccy Speight, RSPB chief executive, said:“Millions of voters care deeply about the perilous state of our natural world, but as yet no political party has produced an actionable plan to turn things around. With legally binding targets for nature’s recovery in England by 2030, we urgently need a new chapter for nature that rewrites this story of decline. That’s why the RSPB is marching to Parliament on 22 June and urging all nature lovers to join us, because nature can’t wait any longer.”

Richard Benwell, CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link said: “The Government promised to leave the environment in a better state for the next generation, but this research shows that political action still falls far short of public expectation. Nature’s importance to the economy, food production and public health is undervalued, its protection is underfunded and serious investment is way overdue. That’s why we’re taking to the streets in just a month’s time, for the Restore Nature Now march, to speak up for our declining natural world.”

Rebecca Wrigley, Rewilding Britain CEO and nature campaigner, said: “People across Britain care deeply about our natural environment and the remarkable web of life it supports. Yet still we face a growing threat from the burgeoning climate and biodiversity crises. Our politicians need to act with the level of urgency this warrants, half measures and missed targets won’t cut it. There is hope and we can do this, but we need those that care passionately about our wildlife, about restoring our ecosystems and helping nature thrive again to come out onto the streets of London on June 22nd and demand with one voice that we must ‘Restore Nature Now’.

FACTFILE

The State of Nature report 2023 showed that:

• The UK’s wildlife is continuing to decline – UK species have declined on average by 19% since 1970
• Nearly one in six species are threatened with extinction from Great Britain
• farmland birds have suffered particularly strong declines of on average 58%
• Predatory insects, like the 2-spot Ladybird which help control crop pests, have declined by more than a third (34%)
• The numbers of 13 species of seabird have fallen by an average of 24% since 1986
• Distributions of 54% of flowering plant species and 59% of bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) have decreased across Great Britain.
• Mammals show a small long-term decline in average abundance, of 7%. Within this average change some species like Water Vole and Hazel Dormouse have declined dramatically, with Water Voles disappearing from 94% of their former sites and Hazel Dormouse numbers more than halving between 2000-2019.

About Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.

Donate | Support our work
What Emergency? | Read about the true scale of the climate crisis
Why Citizens’ Assemblies? | Breaking the political deadlock
XR UK Local Groups | View a map of all local groups
XR UK website | Find out more about XR UK
XR Global website | Discover what’s going on in XR around the globe

Time has almost entirely run out to address the climate and ecological crisis which is upon us, including the sixth mass species extinction, global pollution, and increasingly rapid climate change. If urgent and radical action isn’t taken, we’re heading towards 4˚C warming, leading to societal collapse and mass loss of life. The younger generation, racially marginalised communities and the Global South are on the front-line. No-one will escape the devastating impacts.

The post UK public: Politicians not doing enough to protect our life support systems appeared first on Extinction Rebellion UK.

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Anthropocene Magazine - Wed, 05/22/2024 - 05:00

Talk of tackling climate change often seems to involve high-tech gadgets—electric cars, giant wind turbines, machines that suck carbon dioxide from the air, and futuristic air conditioners, among other things.

But sometimes, basic things can make the difference between life and death or sickness and health. Things like trees and some white paint.

Just ask scientists in Los Angeles who are studying ways to help keep people cool as the temperature rises. It turns out something as simple as planting more trees and increasing the amount of sunlight reflected from surfaces such as roofs could offer enough relief during a heatwave to cut the number of overheated people seeking help in hospital emergency rooms by as much as 50%. No need for futuristic technology.

“This is a key point,” the researchers write in the International Journal of Biometeorology. “Present strategies exist to greatly improve public health during heat events.”

Heatwaves are among the most obvious and lethal effects of global warming. Cities, with their oceans of heat-absorbing asphalt and fewer trees, are literal hotpots. By one recent estimate, people in cities around the world today are experiencing deadly temperatures three times more than in the 1980s.

The toll is already being felt in LA. When a heatwave strikes there, deaths are estimated to rise 8% above what would normally be expected. Back-to-back extreme days have been linked to a 30% increase in deaths. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that roughly 3,900 Californians died from heat-related problems during heatwaves between 2010 and 2019.

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To see what might be done to help, a team of heat experts known as the Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative looked at how much a difference could be made using low-tech solutions such as trees. That group includes researchers from the University of California Los Angeles, Kent State, Arizona State University and Climate Resolve, an LA-based nonprofit.

In an earlier study, the researchers found that a large expansion of trees and surfaces treated to be more reflective—such as roofs covered in white paint—could drop temperatures in parts of LA by as much as 3 degrees Celsius and cut heatwave deaths by as much as 25%. That equates to saving nearly two dozen people in a heatwave as severe as one that hit the city in September 2010.

In the new research, the scientists turned their attention to relieving medical problems that aren’t lethal. In some ways, that can be trickier to measure because illnesses aren’t tracked as closely by health care agencies as deaths. The scientists opted for using visits to LA county hospital emergency rooms as a surrogate for sickness. They gathered reams of data about these visits between 2005 and 2018. They then looked at how the ER patterns changed when the region was struck by 4 different heatwaves during that time.

Not surprisingly, the data revealed more ER visits as temperatures climbed, particularly for problems that can be exacerbated by heat. In the most severe heatwave, county hospitals got another 245 visits than would be expected in cooler conditions, with 145 of those coming from heat-related conditions, the researchers found.

To see what difference trees and paint might make, the scientists turned to a weather forecasting model created by a group of federal research agencies and the University of Oklahoma. In the digital version of LA, they tweaked the reflectiveness of surfaces and the amount of tree cover to see how that would influence local weather conditions. The most modest scenario had tree cover increase from the current 18% to 22.5%. The reflectivity, or albedo, increased by 75% to 100% for roofs and pavement. In the most ambitious future, the scientists envisioned trees shading 40% of the county and reflectivity doubling or even tripling for different kinds of infrastructure.

The scientists found that the scenario with the smallest increase in tree cover would have reduced ER visits by between eight and 49 people depending on the heatwave. By contrast, a big expansion in trees and white roofs and pavement would have meant between 19 and 85 fewer people going to the hospital—a drop of between 12% and 47%.

New trees tall enough to make meaningful shade don’t grow overnight. But the research suggests that starting now in places like L.A. could mean fewer trips to the hospital and to the morgue in a hotter future. That doesn’t require waiting for a fancy new invention. These options, as the scientists write, “are available and should be prioritized.”

Sheridan, et. al. “Increasing tree cover and high‑albedo surfaces reduces heat‑related ER visits in Los Angeles, CA.” International Journal of Biometeorology. April 29, 2024.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine, AI-generated

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Common Dreams - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 23:40

Apologies for re-visiting GOP lowlifes and their yammering Mad Emperor, but damn things are getting weird out there. Having ended his trial not with a bang but a craven whine - so much for "absolutely" testifying: "I tell the truth" - Trump gave a daft, dark speech at the NRA convention, calling Biden "a Manchurian candidate," vowing to roll back all gun control, pondering a third term and slamming the country as a “cesspool of ruin." Then a long glitch turned him bizarrely silent. It was blissful.

In brief: To the cretins of a sick, corrupt, fast-diminishing NRA gathered in Dallas to endorse him, the tinpot babbled and spewed his usual ugly gibberish. Biden is "a threat to democracy" who'd get the electric chair if a Republican, he's fighting "hateful communists and criminals," Alvin Bragg is "Soros-backed," not even Lincoln did more for "the black individual in this country than Donald J. Trump," he won 31 golf championships or 29, he's just like his friggin' "genius" uncle at MIT, he's "a better physical specimen" than Obama, he's started an imaginary "Gun Owners For Trump" to stop "the violent migrant crime wave (Biden) has unleashed on our country" though violent crime has fallen sharply, and gun owners, of which he's clearly not one, are "under seesh, we're under seesh but they didn't move us an inch" so on Day One "we'll roll back every gun control measure."

Then came what was widely billed a McConnell-like, 35-second "freeze" but in fact more resembled a system glitch - in his brain, his reading of the room or the teleprompter. He was in the middle of his 6th-grade report - "The Texas spirit of proud independence was forged by cowboys and cattle hands, ranchers and rangers...Many came here with nothing but the boots on their feet, the clothes on their back, the gun in their saddle. Together they helped make America into the single greatest nation in the history of the world" - when he fell silent. For a long time. So did the room. He shook his head, furrowed his brow, stared. An ad popped up for a gold IRA: "Text TRUMP." Finally, QAnon/Nazi music swelled and he came back to awful life: "But now, we are a nation in declined. We are a failing nation." Cue inflation, collapsing banks, drugs, crime, dirty airports, other "horror" by "these tyrants and villains."

When news came of his "Milli Vanilli-type" malfunction, he shrieked, "Donald Trump doesn’t freeze!" He cited a "record crowd of very enthusiastic patriots" and a standard pause before "the musical interlude" and besides Biden "freezes all the time," also he didn't fall when his podium once almost tipped over and he can drink a glass of water! Observers noted it was like "Amateur City for a live performance": At his rallies there's "cheering MAGA morons," this time "just the abyss" of a dark room and NRA stage, like a sit-com before they add the laugh track. His team miscalculated, the crowd missed their cue, he has a memorized shtick he's too dumb to tweak, and he couldn't understand why nobody was cheering. Besides, one summarized, "Never, ever trust anything when it comes to Trump. His very existence is a criminal fraud, foully perpetrated to the detriment of the universe."

Donald Trump Rejects Claims He 'Froze' During Rallywww.youtube.com

Meanwhile, the universe is diminished by each of his repulsive followers in the news. "Sam Alito is a fascist insurrectionist," notes Noah Berlatsky in a piece subtitled, "Stop with the appeasem*nt, you quisling motherf*ckers." "He displayed a symbol of support for fascist insurrection shortly after an attempted fascist insurrection. The obvious conclusion would be that (Alito) supports fascist insurrection. He told us who he is. We should believe him." Ditto Rudy Giuliani, now cringingly hawking coffee to pay his legal bills, and Greg Abbott, who with no legal or moral justification pardoned Daniel Perry, serving 25 years for murdering a BLM protester - a pardon, writes Will Bunch, proving the law only applies if an undemocratic few in power say it does, and "a gross injustice in a former Confederate state that (reeks) of the bad old days (when) white men lynched Emmett Till and laughed at justice."

Thus, the "inverted reality" embraced by VP-hopefuls dutifully echoing the Big Lie. "Once one of the two major governing parties no longer believes elections are binding," notes Rachel Maddow, "in many important ways, the democracy ship has sailed." Along with Christina 'Election Integrity' Bobb's creepy mugshot, we have Marco Rubio, the latest to fudge on accepting election results, arguing it's Democrats who question GOP wins (and pay people $10 to vote). He also says Dems are the extremists on abortion and he supports protecting "all unborn human life," though when it comes to the lives of what he claims are up to 30 million migrants - "We don't even know who these people are" - the son of immigrants says, "This is not immigration...This is an invasion of the country." Add another sad bootlicker inexplicably in thrall to the guy who praises "the late, great Hannibal Lecter," though it turns out it's not reciprocal.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter DECLINES Trump's V.P. Offerwww.youtube.com

And that guy just keeps losing. New earnings filings show Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, reported a net loss of $327.6 million, with revenue of just $770,500, in its first fiscal quarter since debuting as a public company on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Also, his campaign to get back the job he so disastrously failed to do isn't doing well in the Saying the Quiet Part Aloud Dept. After eloquently suggesting he might limit access to contraception - "We're looking at that, and I'm going to have a policy on that very shortly...You will find it, I think, very smart" - he abruptly backtracked - "Things really do have a lot to do with the states, and some states are gonna have different policies" - almost like he has no idea what he's talking about. Same with a slipshod video he posted to celebrate his upcoming victory, that touted "A UNIFIED REICH," which quickly went missing.

And there's his trial, nearing its ignoble end. Despite 10 contempt findings, he isn't in jail, but not much else went well. His D-list, red-tie, Hell's Angels! posse - "circling (him) like the cold fragments of a destroyed planet" - was widely mocked, witnesses gave damning testimony, after insisting he'd testify he chickened out, and after claiming MAGA warriors would storm the barricades if he was prosecuted, nobody came. So he made them up: "Thousands of people were turned away, it is an armed camp to keep people away, it looks like Fort Knox." This is complete and utter bullsh*t," said one observer. Others: "There is virtually complete freedom of movement around the courthouse," "Nothing is happening," "There is a mouse pissing on a ball of cotton in China - that’s how quiet it is out here." Later, he bleated Judge Merchan should dismiss the case: "The right thing to do is to END THIS SCAM NOW AND FOREVERMORE." Yes. Please.

Categories: F. Left News

Ecologist - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 23:00

Categories: H. Green News

It's Going Down - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 22:33

The following statement provides an overview of some of the current struggles in so-called Mexico in the lead up to the June 2 presidential elections and was translated by Scott Campbell.

To the CCRI-CG EZLN
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN
To the Sixth Commission of the EZLN
To the National Indigenous Congress, CNI
To the Indigenous Governing Council, CIG
To Ma. de Jesús Patricio Martínez, Spokeswoman of the CNI-CIG
To the People, Tribes, Nations, Communities, and First Neighborhoods that were never conquered
To the National and International Sexta
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion
To the Insubordinate, Dignified and Rebel Europe
To those that signed the Declaration for Life
To the free, independent, alternative, or whatever they’re called media…

Siblings All

With the arrival of the “Fourth Transformation,” [1] its governing policies increased the militarization of Indigenous peoples and communities, especially in Zapatista territory. Paramilitary groups and organized crime operate with total impunity as guarantors of the imposition of not just megaprojects of death such as the Maya Train, the Interoceanic Corridor, and the Morelos Integral Project; they are at the service of the state and big capital to carry out the displacement of territory, Mother Earth, and life.

Amid its “ELECTORAL FARCE,” we see that, in recent weeks, nothing matters but votes, polls, debates, numbers, and electoral preferences; but, above all, its strategy to attack and discredit its enemies as a campaign strategy.

This June 2, a “democracy” is not in dispute, much less a leftist one. What is really in dispute is an economic and political power that seeks to sustain itself with militarization, with impunity, and with the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few in the service of large transnationals. Their plan is to sustain this “Fourth Transformation” with a CAPITALIST WAR against Indigenous peoples and communities.

Faced with the impunity and violence imposed on our territories, from the National Assembly for Water and Life…

WE DENOUNCE

First: In recent years, aggressions against Zapatista autonomous communities have been increasing. In the Moisés y Gandhi region, in the official municipality of Ocosingo, the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (ORCAO) have attacked the Support Bases of the EZLN (BAEZLN), which has led to forced displacements, torture, forced disappearances, and attempted homicides.

So far this year, 28 persons of the BAEZLN were forcibly displaced, residents of the Local Autonomous Government, La Resistencia community, which had already suffered forced displacement in 2022 due to an attack. In January of this year, the Autonomous Primary School, 15 houses, and nearby crops were destroyed, a store and other community property was robbed, in the settlement of Emiliano Zapata a pasture belonging to the support bases was burned. In February, ORCAO members fired more than 100 rounds towards the Zapatista autonomous community of Moisés y Gandhi, more than 100 rounds with high-caliber weapons. We do not forget that in May 2023, Jorge López Sántiz, BAEZLN, was the victim of an armed attack that put his life at serious risk.

The money from social programs has served to arm and empower criminal groups such as ORCAO, increasing violence against Zapatista autonomous communities. In Chiapas, like in the rest of the country, the Sowing Envy program [2] has exacerbated violence over land disputes as ejidos and communities confront each other in order to access the individualized economic support the program offers.

Reforestation is the pretext to dispossess peoples from their collectively used land through the destruction of social organization and ways of life, that is to say, it seeks to break the resistance, facilitating the entry of projects of death in favor of big capital, with the help of the repressive forces of the state, police, National Guard, and army.

Attacks by criminal groups are allowed and covered up by the Mexican state and its three levels of government. The comprehensive war of attrition against Zapatista autonomy, begun decades ago by different political parties, has intensified during this government of the fourth simulation.

Second: In 2020, the Otomí community residing in Mexico City took over the facilities of the misnamed National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), demanding fair housing. Since the beginning of the occupation, harassment by the state has been permanent: electricity cuts, a violent eviction attempt in October 2023, and the recent criminalization of compañero Diego García Bautista who accompanies the dignified struggle of the Otomí community, as well as the presence of judicial police around the compañero’s house and the Casa de los Pueblos, shows the contempt of the traitor Adelfo Regino Montes, director of the INPI, and of the fourth transformation government.

The Otomí community residing in Mexico City has been constant and firm in its accompaniment of all just struggles and they are an example of organization, dignity, and resistance. Because of that, the bad government directs its strategies and attacks against the compañer@s.

Third: In Puebla, the peoples of the Cholulteca region are maintaining an encampment to stop the entry of garbage into the San Pedro Cholula landfill, a criminal business that enriched businesspeople and officials. Since March 21, not one kilo of garbage has entered the dump, and in response to the resistance of the Cholulteca peoples the government unleashed an operation with more than 500 police and shock groups to force the entry of garbage trucks. State and municipal police opened fire against inhabitants resisting at the barricades impeding the entrance of those trucks, and after many hours of repression directed at the encampment and barricades, the police units and National Guard, as well as the garbage trucks, withdrew.

The governor of Puebla, Sergio Salomón Céspedes, and the Secretary of the Interior, Javier Aquino Limón, continue defending the interests of the business ProFaj Hidro Limpieza, which operated the dump, and are attacking the people, opening cases and issuing arrest warrants against inhabitants of the region. However, the struggle of the Cholulteca peoples continues and, asserting their self-determination and autonomy, they will not back down.

During this presidential term, state violence intensified against the Cholulteca peoples: Miguel López Vega was the first political prisoner of the Fourth Transformation and Alejandro Torres Chocolatl was persecuted, both defenders of the Metlapanapa River. We do not forget the operation with more than 500 elements of the National Guard and state and municipal police to evict the peoples of Altepelmecalli and hand over the facilities to the criminal company Bonafont Danone. Nor do we forget the state and municipal police repression against the people of San Luca Nextetelco who opposed the construction of a police complex.

Fourth: Almost ten years after the forced disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, the government continues to show only contempt for them. After numerous investigations which point to the army’s participation as a fundamental part of the disappearances, the fathers and mothers have been denied access to documents from the Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA) that are key to the discovery of the students. The federal executive has accused lawyer Vidulfo Rosales of being an “enemy of the system” – a bloody persecution of compañeros who for almost ten years have not stopped fighting to find the 43 students alive.

Fifth: More than 116,000 disappeared is the figure at which this government’s rule comes to a close. The majority of those cases with no progress in the search, there are mothers and relatives who have carried out the cruel work of finding them. In many cases they have found only remains and with pressure on the institutions to carry out the process of identification, it has been possible to turn them over to their families to give them a little bit of peace. But thousands and thousands of families continue to know nothing of those who were taken from them. The mothers and relatives are at constant risk of attack by criminal groups, the police, and the army, encouraged by the disdain with which the federal executive refers to them. Andrés Manuel López Obrador ends his six-year term stained with the blood of seven mothers who were murdered searching for their children.

Sixth: In 2023, Mexico detained 782,176 migrants, a record number. Not one of these people have committed a crime. To migrate and to seek asylum is an international human right. The rape, kidnapping, extorsion, and murder of migrants is very common. Six out of ten women are raped on their way through Mexico. According to official data, every month around 41 migrants in Mexico are victims of theft, kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, trafficking, and illegal detention. However, the true number is much higher; people do not report out of fear, a lack of rights, and because many times it is the very National Institute of Migration (INM) that is extorting them and handing them over to organized crime.

We demand justice and full reparations for the victims of the fire at the Ciudad Juárez migrant detention center in March 2023. The INM let 40 migrants die – it was a state crime. In reality, migrant detention centers are jails for innocent people and should be eliminated.

Seventh: Freedom of expression and investigation is punished with death in this country. In the past six years, 56 journalists and community communicators were murdered for making the truth public. Mexico is now one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism. The federal executive legitimizes violence against journalism, against those who take a critical stance towards his government and its criminal connections.

Eighth: The systematic pattern of criminalization is a factory of guilt, more so when it comes to Indigenous peoples who defend land and territory. Racism and disdain are the motives to impede the exercise of political rights, of autonomy, and self-determination. The factory of guilt is characterized by the impunity with which the authorities of the justice system operate:

• Collusion between the State Prosecutor’s Office and the State Judiciary.
• Complicit participation of the Prosecutor’s Office for Indigenous Justice used to control the peoples.
• False accusations, torture, excessive use of pre-trial detention and false testimonies.
• Arrests with the participation of members of the army, the National Guard; an inactive and complicit judiciary.
• Arbitrary arrests that seek to punish by example the defense of human rights, of land and territory, and principally, the criminalization of defenders of mother earth and territory threaten the entire community. It is a mechanism of repression with the intention of destroying those who defend the right to life, from their own identity, from their forms of organization, and from their autonomies as native peoples.

Examples abound:

JOSÉ DÍAZ.

José Díaz Gómez, an Indigenous Cho’l peasant, is a hostage of the State Government of Chiapas and victim of the factory of guilt in retaliation for his Zapatista political adherence. He has been unjustly imprisoned since November 25, 2022, falsely accused of violent robbery.

José was arbitrarily arrested, with excessive use of force, was tortured, disappeared, and held incommunicado by specialized police from the Selva District Prosecutor’s Office. In the prosecutor’s office, they forced him to place his fingerprint and signature on blank paper. He was not aided with a translator of his native language, nor with a lawyer. The judges and prosecutors continue to extend the process and his pre-trial detention (prison without a sentence).

The health and therefore the life of José is at risk due to prison overcrowding and precarious medical attention. He shares a cell with 18 other people in a space of approximately 3 x 3 meters, making it difficult to sleep – he can only sleep 2 or 3 hours a day – which shows the existence of inhumane conditions of confinement. In other words, he survives in conditions of TORTURE.

PRISONERS FROM SAN JUAN CANCUC.

The Maya Tseltal defenders of San Juan Cancuc: Manuel Sántiz Cruz, Agustín Pérez Domínguez, Juan Velasco Aguilar, Martín Pérez Domínguez and Agustín Pérez Velasco, have been unjustly imprisoned in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, for two years for having resisted, through community organization, the militarization of their territory and the installation of megaprojects, such as a hydroelectric dam and the San Cristóbal-Palenque super highway. The Prosecutor’s Office of Indigenous Justice fabricated their crimes and all were sentenced to 25 years in prison for aggravated homicide, despite it being shown at trial that the evidence was inconsistent as it was a fabricated crime.

SAÚL ROSALES MELÉNDEZ.

In July 2022, the communal president of San Pedro Tlalcuapan was arrested for the false charge of homicide. Saúl Rosales had participated in the defense of the Matlalcuéyetl forest and that is the real reason for the punishment the state has imposed. On March 15, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

PRISONERS FROM ELOXOCHITLÁN DE FLORES MAGÓN.

After nine years of struggle and resistance, the dignified community of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón has wrested from the state the freedom of four imprisoned compañeros falsely accused of homicide by the bad government of Oaxaca and the Zepeda family despite multiple injunctions. Three imprisoned compañeros remain, and we continue demanding their immediate freedom: Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito and Francisco Durán.

KARLA AND MAGDA.

In April 2022, Karla and Magda were arrested amid a mass operation to evict the Okupa Cuba at the facilities of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). This okupa was carried out in solidarity with the mothers of murdered women who were spurned and forgotten by this institution. Accused of crimes they did not commit (aggravated robbery, property damage, and crimes against health), Karla and Magda remained imprisoned for ten months in Santa Marta Acatitla prison. Pressure from relatives and solidarity collectives obtained their release in February 2023, however, the case against them was reopened due to new accusations and they run the risk of returning to prison.

Ninth: Stigmatization also occurs against organizations that defend human rights. Such is the case with the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) and the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro ProDH), repeatedly denigrated by Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his morning press conferences, labeling them as conservatives and of exaggerating the violence these organizations report.

These statements put defenders at risk, as it can no longer be denied that Mexico continues being one of the most dangerous countries to defend human rights and journalism. Between January 2019 and February 2024, there have been at least 103 murders of land defenders and of more than 40 journalists, as well as the 38 defenders or journalists being disappeared. Twenty-five regained their freedom and 13 remain disappeared.

Today the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador represses and discredits all those who do not think like him, just as was done in the past by the bad governments of different political parties.

In the face of the onslaught of the government and capital against those of us who defend life, freedom, and dignity, we respond with autonomy and self-determination. From this space of encounter and organization, we make the Zapatista initiative our own, so that regardless of calendar and/or geography, we join the process of building “THE COMMON AND THE NON-PROPERTY.” We make our own the defense of the decree that prohibits the existence of landfills, the extraction of water for industrial use, and the contamination of the same in the Cholulteca region; the decree that prohibits mining in Morelos, the struggle and resistance of the Samir Flores Soberanes House of the Peoples and Indigenous Communities; the takeover of the Fourth Neighborhood well in Santiago Mexquititlán; the recuperation of the library in San Gregorio Atlapulco, today Tlamachtiloyan; the defense of the Santiago River in Jalisco; the demand for remediation of the landfills in Santa María Coapan, Puebla, and Laureles, Jalisco; the national unification of families searching for the disappeared; the installation of the university encampment for Palestine at UNAM; the decision of the peoples taking action in defense of life and territory.

We make our own the demands for the freedom of all political prisoners; we demand the immediate return alive of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, forcibly disappeared by the army, and the more than 116,000 disappeared in Mexico, justice for Verónica Guerrero, justice for Samir Flores Soberanes and for all territory defenders, journalists, and women and mothers murdered for searching for their relatives.

SINCERELY

For the Integral Reconstitution of our Peoples

Water, Land, and Freedom

Zapata Lives, the Struggle Continues

Samir Lives, the Struggle Continues

Stop the War Against Zapatista Communities

Until Dignity and Justice Become a Custom

They Took Them Alive, We Want Them Alive

Long Live the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN

Long Live the National Indigenous Congress, CNI-CIG

Freedom for Saúl Rosales Meléndez of San Pedro Tlalcuapan, Tlaxcala

Freedom for José Díaz, Zapatista Support Base

Freedom for Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito, Francisco Durán of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca

Freedom for David Hernández of Puente Madera, Oaxaca

An Us without the State

No to the Maya Train

No to the Morelos Integral Project

No to the Interoceanic Corridor

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WATER AND LIFE

Translator’s Notes:

[1] The Fourth Transformation is the self-anointed title of the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the National Regeneration Movement party (MORENA). It proclaims his presidency to be fourth of Mexico’s major transformations, the others being Mexico’s independence, the rule of Benito Juárez, and the Mexican Revolution.

[2] A play on the name of the Sowing Life (Sembrando Vida) program, a neoliberal government initiative ostensibly aimed at combating deforestation and providing rural assistance. Instead, it’s been responsible for deforestation, corruption, and negatively impacting the communities it targets.

Categories: D1. Anarchism

Tempest Magazine - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 20:39

Tempest: Thanks for talking with Tempest. Could you introduce yourselves?

Amy Conaway: I’m Amy Conaway. I’m a fourth-year molecular and cellular biology student at Dartmouth. I’ve been a union member since before our election last spring and I’m here on the picket line today to support our strike. I’m also a member of our Palestine caucus within the union.

Danny Keane: Thanks for interviewing us. My name is Danny Keane and I’m in comparative literature. I joined the collective action team of the union, a couple of months after coming to Dartmouth, and along with Amy, we formed the Palestine caucus about three weeks ago.

Tempest: Before we get to your Palestine organizing, you have been on strike for a couple of weeks now. What are your demands and how are things going?

AC:We recently, just yesterday, got dental insurance, so that was a big win for us. We are also bargaining over cost-of-living adjustments tied to rent. Two-thirds of our members are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than a third of their stipend in rent. And a lot of people have experienced receiving a raise and then having their rent raised the exact same percentage. And so having cost of living tied to rent will address some critical issues with the housing up here. And then the last piece that’s really holding us back from reaching a contract is childcare. We have very few parents in our bargaining unit, but they can’t afford childcare and we have not been able to use the Dartmouth child care facilities. They’ve offered to expand those facilities, but we would like a specific timeline. And we would also like more of the dependent health care premium to be covered by Dartmouth because it seems to be very affordable and it would make a huge difference in the ability of parents to be a part of this community at Dartmouth.

Tempest: You helped start your union’s Palestine caucus. What has been your experience so far?

DK: We see the Palestine caucus as a way to have conversations around Palestine with fellow people on the picket line or in our union more generally. And our caucus has brought resolutions about Palestine to the general body meetings where everything is voted on. So far we’ve brought a resolution that the union formally condemns the arrests that [Dartmouth President] Beilock made on May 1 to prevent a student Palestine encampment. We made a resolution where we call on the college to disclose their investments and provide transitional funding for researchers who have an ethical reason for wanting to pursue different research. For example, this may apply with research currently funded by the Department of Defense.

AC: We passed the resolution condemning the arrest and calling for the charges to be dropped. And we passed the resolution advocating for transparency and investments in funding. And then we’ve tabled the discussion on providing transitional funding. Something that we’re discussing with the members now is whether we want to tie those public stances to our ongoing strike. We’ve been very inspired by the University of California graduate workers who just recently voted to authorize a strike specifically for these issues around Palestine. And they’ve been real mentors to us in navigating this in our union. It’s been really nice to have the support and mentorship from other students. Students that have been doing this work for longer than we have.

We’ve been very inspired by the University of California graduate workers who just recently voted to authorize a strike specifically for these issues around Palestine. And they’ve been real mentors to us in navigating this in our union.

DK: Both the resolutions passed with a super majority. While I think it will be much harder to get people to vote “yes” on making these strike demands, so far we are getting a lot of support.

Tempest: What prompted you to bring Palestine to the union?

DK: I think ultimately this genocide is happening because it’s benefiting capital. So really the one of the main ways that we in the United States at least have to help stop it is by putting a dent in the profits of this institution. To do that our union needs to take action and that’s the best way we can stand in solidarity with people in Palestine and Yemen and Lebanon who are at the forefront of this fight.

AC: Yeah, and many people have been motivated to be involved specifically by the calls for solidarity from labor unions within Palestine. I think many of our members, especially those that we talked to in the reading group, share the sense that, you know, the money that we bring to Dartmouth with our labor may be invested in causes that we find ethically appalling. And we feel strongly that our work should not be weaponized against other people that we would like to be in solidarity with.

Tempest: You mentioned a reading group. What have you discussed and what has that been like?

AC: Yeah, the main theme of our reading group has been that labor and Palestine do intersect and that it’s not just a political issue, but it is a labor issue. Like Danny said, it’s closely tied to capitalism. We’ve been doing a lot of reading about the history of the anti-apartheid movements in labor, both for Palestine and also against apartheid South Africa. And we’ve been really inspired by the movements that worked in dismantling the apartheid in South Africa. Today we’ll be reading about the history of that movement here at Dartmouth specifically. And so it’s been educational for us because we weren’t adults when this was happening. A lot of it is new information. It’s been inspiring to see that people have been fighting against this for so long and that these things have worked in the past. And I think that’s what continues to motivate us.

DK: I think Amy pretty much covered it. We’ve recently moved to a three times a week reading group on the picket line and then we also do canvassing to try to bring people out to those. Also, next week, Annelise Orleck [Dartmouth professor and former head of Jewish Studies who was arrested standing with students against police sacking of Dartmouth encampment] will be leading a teach-in at the picket line.

[M]any people have been motivated to be involved specifically by the calls for solidarity from labor unions within Palestine. I think many of our members, especially those that we talked to in the reading group, share the sense that, you know, the money that we bring to Dartmouth with our labor may be invested in causes that we find ethically appalling.

Tempest: And have you been in contact with the UAW members in California?

DK: Yeah, so I actually, at Labor Notes in Chicago a month or so ago one thing that was really great was there were a lot of forums or discussions about Palestine. And at one of those I met someone at UC Santa Cruz who now we’ve all talked to a couple times and yeah, as Amy said, has been like a really good sort of source of inspiration and ideas and suggestions.

She also connected us with a larger group called Researchers Against War. That is a national network of graduate students that we plan to join with. Organizers at Santa Cruz in physics and astronomy have been active in Palestine organizing, including promoting the system wide strike just authorized.

Tempest: Any final thoughts on how you see your work related to bringing Palestine into the labor movement, things that you would like to see, opportunities that you’re now thinking about for the future?

AC: On a personal level, I feel very strongly about transparency and where our funding goes and where our investments go. And I think a lot of what I’ve heard from our reading groups is that we work with a lot of scientists who feel very passionate about the work they do in changing the world for the better. It’s a problem not to have control over how science is done. Some of that work is then weaponized against people, and that is really alarming to them. The more control we can give to our scientists to actually have a say in what is funding their research and what it’s being used for is the goal. And I think transparency is the first step and down the line, divestment and supporting students who want to transition away from that kind of work would be a great thing to achieve.

DK: I also see that grad student organizing around Palestine is in conjunction with other movements that we’ve seen across the country. We had 90 people arrested at Dartmouth by police who came in riot gear and it really makes a lot of us think that the money for armored cars, all these riot gear cops on our campus, could be used to pay for student housing, for scholarships, for so many other things. Not to mention we should divest from Israel, of course. That is going to be a long battle. It could be a year before we all go on strike for that. Hopefully sooner, of course. Or it could be two years, but I do feel that it’s going to happen sooner or later. So that gives me a lot of hope.

AC: I will say we are actively bargaining for our right to strike for unfair labor practice. And that is the approach that University of California [workers are] using in their current strike. And so our future opportunities to strike for this issue are directly related to what we can get in our current strike and our current contract. And so a lot of us feel that without the right to strike, our union really has no power. And that’s why we’re pushing so hard for that specific protection.

The post Convergence of labor and Palestine on campus appeared first on Tempest.

Categories: D2. Socialism

Audubon Society - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 20:18

Categories: G3. Big Green

Audubon Society - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 19:57

Categories: G3. Big Green

PoWHR Coalition - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 19:05

Washington, D.C. — The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) wrote to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) today, admitting another delay in construction and pleading with the agency to allow it to go in-service. The beleaguered pipeline project is nearly six years delayed and has more than doubled in budget. The pipeline claims its opponents are “mischaracterizing” their request to go in-service as “premature”, weeks after it exploded one of its failing pipes during hydrostatic testing.

Russell Chisholm, co-director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition (POWHR) responded:

“Over the past decade, we have watched this reckless fossil fuel company botch the process to build a pipeline, and throw tantrums every time something doesn’t go their way. MVP shamelessly accuses those of us in harm’s way of ‘mischaracterizing’ their intent to blast methane through our communities as ‘premature’ when they just blew a pipe up during testing and obscured the facts surrounding the incident. This company’s conduct is revolting and all financiers and government officials who backed this project should be mortified. Let this disgraceful methane gas pipeline saga be a lasting lesson to MVP’s enablers to stop backing dangerous, climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects and start listening to fenceline communities.”

###

Categories: G2. Local Greens

Science for the People - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 18:49

On April 30, two days before UAW4811’s Triennial elections—in which President Rafael Jaime would face a challenger running on a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for all, and a work-to-rule strike for Palestine platform—UCLA’s SJP encampment was violently attacked by Zionist agitators. Jaime was said to have stood alongside beleaguered encampment protestors and demanded answers to UCLA’s negligence. Jaime announced the next day to a crowd at UCLA that 4811 would be filing unfair labor practices charges against the UC for failing to protect workers’ right to free speech. That same night, LAPD violently swept the encampment. Jaime and his “Union MADE” Caucus (previously OSWP, affiliated with the UAW Administration Caucus) then called for a strike authorization vote, effectively opening the door for the union to strike in support of divestment demands.

Three weeks and an overwhelming “yes” vote later, the re-elected leadership continues to publicize the police brutality that occurred at UCLA, UCSD, and UCI on the official 4811 website and social media, but is yet to call a strike anywhere but UCSC. Meanwhile, they declined to offer a timeline or criteria for assessing strike readiness, and have barred rank-and-file members from attending Executive Board meetings to discuss the strike.

Since October 2023, local union chapters at UCLA, UCD, UCB, UCSC, and UCSB have passed numerous BDS resolutions and resolutions to commit to bargaining over BDS. Yet, Jaime and the leadership refused to disseminate this information to the membership; 4811 and Region 6 even endorsed the California Senate candidacy of Katie Porter, who repeatedly voted to send more money to Israel. Now, diverting attention from their weak position on Palestine and the perceived unwillingness to strike, the leadership claims that Science, Engineering, Technology and Math (STEM) workers in 4811, which make up the majority of the current workforce during the summer break, are ambivalent about the strike.

This is false. Not only is the strike action widely and vocally supported in our locals, as evidenced by the strike authorization vote, many STEM workers have joined hand-in-hand with students defending the encampments, protested the US-funded genocide, and were themselves violently attacked by the police. Consider that the call to solidarity with Palestine reflects US public opinion, of which 52 percent of registered voters support an end to US military aid to Israel and 77 percent of Democrats are pro-ceasefire. By deriding our professions, workplaces, and ourselves as regressive, the 4811 leadership is using a trite stereotype as a wedge to divide us from our fellow workers and union siblings. Instead, they should be leveraging the power of STEM workers in the strike.

The urgency to end the US-funded genocide notwithstanding, the future of the labor movement will depend on a clear STEM organizing strategy. The US economy is becoming more and more intertwined with high technology, and universities like UC are rapidly expanding their STEM research operations. The composition of higher ed labor will thus be increasingly STEM-heavy, bolstered by the Department of Defense, the weapons manufacturers, and other industries profiting from developing harmful technologies. It will take a powerful labor movement consisting of a large number of militant STEM workers to disrupt the war machine and protect the rights and safety of all workers and communities.

Concretely at this current moment, it is time to implement the try-and-tested research strike strategy around work-to-rule, which allows STEM workers to withhold labor in the long run. We need to expand the strike to include as many people and as much labor-time as possible to achieve maximum leverage, as well as ensuring that striking workers are protected from retaliation. All of this requires decisive action from the union leadership, which has thus far not gone beyond publicizing slogans, wasting mobilizing energies, while blaming STEM workers for its own inaction.

We, STEM workers of UAW4811, insist that Rafael Jaime and the UAW4811 leadership comply with the popular mandate, seize this historical moment, and immediately call all UC campuses on strike for Palestine.

Categories: B3. EcoSocialism

Green Action - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 17:49

Saturday, October 12, 2024

White Mesa Ute Community of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe:

Spiritual Walk and Protest against Energy Fuels’ uranium mill

Categories: E2. Front Line Community Green

National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 16:45

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) consulted its structures regarding the up-coming national elections on the 29th of May 2024. Guided by the fact that NUMSA is a trade union that has for decades linked shop floor struggles with community struggles, and that our members are confronted with the continuous deepening crisis of socio-economic conditions of the working class, we represent both the organized and the unorganized, it was impossible for NUMSA to keep quiet and for the union not to take a political posture on the elections. Our decision on this question must serve as political guidance for workers and the working class, without deciding for them. Because as a union we are very clear that in any class-divided society, the dominant class that oppresses and exploits the working class, reproduces itself in the state and over time we have grown to learn that the state in a capitalist mode of production, is nothing but an organ of oppression.

As a militant red revolutionary union which is inspired by Marxism and Leninism and guided by Marxism that: “communist disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions”.

We were left with no option faced by these deteriorating socio-economic conditions of the working class and the poor, we had to remember that the trade union whilst it is the prime mass organization that must defend its legal status all the time as correctly advised by Joe Slovo in 1988 in the South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution:

“A trade union is the prime mass organisation of the working class. To fulfil its purpose, it must be as broad as possible and fight to maintain its legal status. It must attempt, in the first place, to unite, on an industrial basis, all workers (at whatever level of political consciousness) who understand the elementary need to come together and defend and advance their economic conditions. It cannot demand more as a condition of membership. But because the state and its political and repressive apparatus is an instrument of the dominant economic classes, it is impossible for trade unions in any part of the world to keep out of the broader political conflict.

Especially in our country where racist domination and capitalist exploitation are two sides of the same coin, it is even more clear that a trade union cannot stand aside from the liberation struggle. Indeed, the trade union movement is the most important mass contingent of the working class.”

NUMSA is very clear that in the past three decades, the South African working class and the poor of our country have gone beyond being victims and statistics of the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and inequality. They go to bed without a plate of food to eat, not just on one day but most days and poverty and unemployment is their daily struggle.

What has become very clear over time in the post-1994 political break through is that what we won was political power without economic power. And this is why in 2013 we said enough is enough, the working class must organize itself as a class for itself.

In 2019 we launched a vanguard party, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) of the revolution which we continue to build as the working class needs its own vanguard party. In this round of elections the SRWP is not contesting elections, however as the union and the SRWP we are very clear that in a class divided society there is nothing neutral. We cannot keep quiet and allow the working class to vote for their worst political butchers simply because we are not contesting this round of elections. Hence our adoption of this political posture of NUMSA which we are announcing today, to guide the working class on how it should vote on the 29th of May 2024.

For the past 3 decades South Africa has been plunged into a deepening crisis where the masses have continued to be dispossessed, landless and economically marginalised, as it was during Apartheid. Therefore, it is NUMSA’s political posture that these coming national elections on the 29th of May must be about a political and ideological clarion call on all political parties whose constituency is the working class and the poor of our country, who are the victims of all failed neo-liberal policies that were advanced by the ANC government, in the context of right-wing capitalist globalisation and, the Washington consensus. Faced with this crisis, as a union having listened and read some of the political manifestos, we have been dismayed by some backward and primitive measures from capitalist right-wing political parties who are contesting these elections. Their mission and task is to attack all the hard won gains of the working class. Below are a few examples:

• Political parties who have no shame in openly promoting xenophobia, and who vow to liquidate the very idea of the existence of trade unions and the very idea of a national minimum wage. They are anti-worker and union bashing champions of labour broking, casual work, and slave wages instead of a living wage.

• Political parties that are extremely patriarchal and have not even moved an inch in understanding the strategic importance of gender equality between men and women.

• Political parties who have gone public to support the racist, Zionist genocide taking place in Palestine and whose policies, aims and objectives, are to continue to deny the African child access to free quality compulsory education.

• Political parties who regard it as a crime to affirm the African majority into ownership and control of the economy, and are doing everything to ensure that blacks and Africans remain on 13% of the land whilst the white minority continues to control over 80% of the land.

• Political parties that continue to champion Apartheid spatial development, right-wing capitalist austerity measures, and the collapsing of the role of the state in the economy. Backward parties whose involvement in politics is to advance privatisation of state assets, and to reject and refuse public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy with a state which must intervene in the economy to direct and re-direct development.

• Political parties who see no need to smash and collapse the inferior apartheid infrastructure which was deliberately built for black and Africans in the township and replace it with modern proper infrastructure that brings back the dignity and true liberation our people deserve.

• Political parties who still want to keep our people away from city centres by promoting apartheid style spatial development which leads to uneven development and unequal access to quality services.

• Political parties that are champions of these inferior conditions suffered by the black African masses that obviously lead to all social ills such as crime, violence, breaking down of the family unit, drugs and various forms of murder and killings. They are the first to champion the call for bringing back capital punishment.

If these political parties are not stopped by workers and the working class, if given the chance to lead, they will take the working class back to slavery. Their mission is not just to privatise and collapse the role of the state in the economy, they are also about privatizing our country’s energy provision so that Eskom and electricity does not remain in public hands. It is NUMSA’s view that energy must be de-commodified and remain as a public good. Noam Chomsky warned us when he said,
“The standard technique for privatisation: defend make sure things don’t work, people get angry, and you hand it over to private capital.”

NUMSA has taken a conscious political decision that we will not dictate to the working class in general which political party they must vote for, it is for them to choose. Just like a union is a voluntary organization NUMSA is very clear that history will judge us harshly if we were to keep quiet and allow our members without guidance to vote for the worst political butchers in the form of these right-wing capitalist political parties who have no mercy for the working class.

All they do in elections is to promise the working class heaven and earth and after securing the votes of the working class, all what they will do, is to attack the same working class. Karl Marx in explaining a state that will form from such backward right-wing bourgeoisie political parties said that: “the state… is truly a sphere for the fomentation of the most scandalous acts of corruption, of all the scandals of the bourgeoisie, and the arena for its total putrefaction.”

NUMSA identifies the following political parties as the worst, which the working class must not vote for, and they are:

• Democratic Alliance

• Action SA

• Freedom Front

• Patriotic Alliance

• Freedom Front Plus

• Build One South Africa

• Rise Mzansi

• ACDP

• NUMSA also called on the working class not to waste votes by voting for individual candidates.

NUMSA is not mincing its words about what our country needs. Our country needs a revolutionary political agenda and we are advancing the following demands to all political parties that are voted into power by the working class and the poor:

1. As a militant red revolutionary union we are very firm that there is no replacement in this country for going back to the liberation vision which is about the full implementation of the Freedom Charter, on whose centre stands the affirmation of our people into ownership and control of the economy, in order to restore the land back to the people. The land must be distributed by a democratic state. This is the only way of equalizing power relations in society, and to realize genuine non-racialism, free of patriarchy and a democratic society.

2. As a manufacturing and industrial union we are calling for the building of a democratic state that takes public ownership of all commanding heights, of all our mineral endowments at the back of these minerals we need a state that can beneficiate them, and that can diversify them to build new sectors and champion manufacturing and industrialisation to create quality jobs that are paying a living wage.

3. We demand a state that intervenes in the economy, a state that directs and redirects development, a state that builds SOE’s and that plays a catalyst role in the economy by using measures such as procurement, and designations to champion localisation. We need a state that ensures that Eskom remains a public utility and that energy is maintained as a public good, so it continues to deliver into the economy a competitive electricity tariff, to power the economy and electrify our communities at an affordable cost.

4. China has become the power house it is today at the back of driving manufacturing and industrialisation. As we speak, The Peoples Bank of China has established a 41,5 billion dollar (approximately 700 billion rand) funding program to help SOE’s buy unsold houses. There is nothing stopping a progressive government, from consciously investing in building proper houses for the people, in order to smash squatter camps and the apartheid form house that we would have characterised as a box of matches and build people proper houses that can restore their dignity. The state can do this by setting people up into housing co-ops where people are trained to make bricks and to build their own houses, funded directly by the state.

5. NUMSA continues to demand that the Reserve Bank must be placed in the hands of the people, it cannot be an insulated institution whose only role is to champion inflationary targeting and maintenance of high interest rates to protect the value of white wealth whose dominance is untransformed finance capital. The Reserve Bank should be releasing liquidity to enable a progressive agenda of government to move away from austerity measures to have an expansionary budget whose focus must be to build infrastructure in order to stimulate economic activity and to drive demand.

6. There is no replacement for breaking of the strangle hold that has held back the wheels of history for years in South Africa which is the power of White Monopoly Capital which has centralised its dominance within the National Treasury and the Reserve Bank together with finance capital which has been left completely untransformed. This sector has been allowed to do as they wish. It has refused to transform and it is militating against government to champion manufacturing and industrialisation. This is a sector which has been at the centre of allowing capital outflows, both legal and illegal. The devastating blow which set the South African economy back was the liberalisation of trade and the removal of exchange controls that allowed money we desperately needed to be invested in productive sectors of the economy, to leave our shores where it ends up in London, Melbourne and leads to financial speculation. This contributed to serious levels of de-industrialisation.

7. Ever since the global financial crisis, when many countries abandoned neoliberal austerity and ramped up government spending to boost aggregate demand and save jobs, our Treasury has been rigorously engaged in fiscal consolidation—a process of curtailing government spending with a view to contain the increase in public debt. The problem faced by financial capitalists is that if government were to increase spending, their conservative framework requires that government borrows from financial markets by selling bonds. However, since government bonds are among the biggest assets in their balance sheets, the increase in the supply of bonds to fund deficits will decrease the price of the bonds. Therefore, financial capital fights against deficit spending. As a result, because Treasury is controlled by financial capital, Treasury has opted to pursue austerity through fiscal consolidation.

8. As part of our agenda to drive manufacturing and industrialisation the South African government must take the necessary measures to reverse the current failure to transform minerals, energy and finance complex which has consistently advanced one path of development, which has resulted in the extraction of our minerals without beneficiating them. There is an obvious need to declare some of our minerals as strategic minerals, such as coal, and the need to ban exportation of chrome ore and push for its beneficiation to produce ferrochrome. This is a glaring example where China has built several smelters at the back of South Africa’s chrome ore whilst they have no chrome ore. A country like Indonesia has banned the exportation of nickel as they have taken a very strategic decision as it is a key ingredient to manufacture electric vehicle batteries.

9. When it was not fashionable to defend Eskom, NUMSA has been very consistent that what we need is a just transition which must be about making sure that we retain existing jobs and we must embark on an aggressive campaign to create the much needed jobs. We have maintained that as a sovereign country we must have a right to decide on what energy mix is suitable to reliably power our economy and to electrify our communities. That is why we rejected, with the contempt it deserved, a foreign agenda to dictate to South Africa that it must dump coal. This being done by the West led by the Empire the USA, with the World Bank and the European Central Bank when their base load in the North is on coal, gas and nuclear.

10. NUMSA has been very clear in the IRP2023 that as a country we must insist on the quality maintenance of power stations to receive 75% Energy Availability Factor to take our country out of the crisis of rolling blackouts that have ruined our economy. The focus of our energy mix must be on dispatchable sources of energy such as gas, nuclear and coal whilst doing everything to connect other sources of energy such as renewables. As a union we reject the expensive scam of breaking Eskom up into 3 separate divisions as a device whose target is to accelerate renewables without consulting the public, and the mechanism to privatise transmission lines.

11. The ultimate end objective is to privatise the country’s energy provision. When this is successfully done the victims will be the public who will lose affordable electricity tariffs. It will be manufacturing and industrialisation which will lose a competitive electricity tariff at a time when we are supposed to go back to basics and industrialize. For example the government needs to take ownership of ArcelorMittal and ownership of Kumba Iron Ore so that we can go back to what was a working competitive cost plus regime to stimulate steel production in the upstream and to create jobs in the downstream.

12. NUMSA is extremely irritated by the DA which has vowed to do away with all incentives targeting sectors such as the auto sector, tyre industry, the rest of the component value chain and the textile sector. The DA’s proposition is not to have subsidies for electricity which means growth in all other sectors will be destroyed. This is further illustrated in the DA Industrial Policy Pyramid which effectively removes industry from its industrial pyramid which will not only lead and be harmful in deindustrialising the country. But very clearly the DAs mission is to destroy industrialisation, clearly their plan is to take South Africa back to a police state.

What the DA is targeting is to destroy the jobs of our members and we call on our members, just like when we go on strike we all tool down in order for our strike to be effective. No NUMSA member should vote for the DA as the DA is targeting the job security of workers and the essence of the outcome of what they want to do when they get power, will destroy 6% of the GDP as a result of destroying the auto industry. The impact of such a senseless decision by the DA in terms of backward and forward linkages in the economy will lead to the shutdown of many towns and worsen a situation where already many towns as a result of austerity measures that have been championed by GEAR.

That is why we must do away with austerity measures and the National Treasury must increase allocations to municipalities and go back to cross subsidisation of small rural towns that were destroyed by the introduction of metros. Below is a direct quote from the DA, this is the very same party we witnessed burning the South African flag:

“Perpetual subsidies, which provide benefits based on ongoing operational behaviour. Perpetual subsidies can become difficult to reduce as they eventually form part of the operational budget of beneficiary companies. These types of subsidies are aimed at creating or retaining industries that would not ordinarily reside in South Africa were it not for the subsidy. An example of these types of subsidies includes our automotive and clothing industries, which would unlikely continue operations within South Africa if subsidies were reduced. However, it is not clear that these industries produce benefits to South Africa that justify their high levels of subsidisation. If the subsidies are not yielding an economic benefit larger than the support provided, then their continued provision should be reconsidered. One example is the number of subsidies provided to the automotive industry, with only 9 out of 42 national departments receiving a budget larger than the R31 billion in automotive subsidies provided in 2021. Furthermore, from 2009 to 2021, subsidies to the automotive industry grew by 130 percent, while employment grew by 15 percent.”

13. We must have a government that moves away from targeting the public sector wage bill. Workers in the public service deserve a living wage, all workers in the public service such as doctors, nurses, teachers, police, social workers, prison wardens and traffic officers and that all vacancies in the public service must be filled. It is in this context that NUMSA supports NHI, if President Cyril Ramaphosa thought that he is just signing the Bill and champion austerity he will see the true colours of the working class in that there are no workers who will tolerate a signed NHI in name which is not being funded. So our support for NHI is on the basis, that the state just like it must drive an expansionary budget it must drive NHI to ensure that there is a real meaningful universal healthcare system.

14. We are calling for a progressive state that will build an aggressive agriculture sector, to deal with land hunger and food hunger. Such a state must be prepared to invest in building irrigation schemes in rural areas, dips to take care of their livestock, such a state must be prepared to give people seeds and tractors. All of this will go a long way to smash poverty.

NUMSA continues to draw its inspiration and its resolve from the revolutionary perspective which was advanced by the liberation movement led by the then ANC that was very clear as it was articulated in Morogoro strategy and tactics in 1969. For years now NUMSA as a union has consistently maintained that there is something fundamentally wrong with South Africa’s political transition. The union was clear at an early stage about the ANC’s dumping of the liberation vision, its failure to fully implement the Freedom Charter and its refusal to live up to the Morogoro 1969 strategy and tactics vision. It was very clear about what should have been the revolutionary programme and an agenda beyond the political breakthrough of 1994, it said the following:

“Our drive towards national emancipation is therefore in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation. We have suffered more than just national humiliation. Our people are deprived of their due in the country’s wealth; their skills have been suppressed and poverty and starvation has been their life experience. The correction of these centuries-old economic injustices lies at the very core of our national aspirations.

We do not underestimate the complexities which will face a people’s government during the transformation period nor the enormity of the problems of meeting economic needs of the mass of the oppressed people. But one thing is certain – in our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals, be they white or black.”

We remain firm that what you have not won in the base which is the economy, you cannot win it in the superstructure which is politics.

NUMSA as a union remains very resolute about the strategic importance of driving international solidarity as international solidarity is a critical component of the struggle of socialism. We are resolute that all wars must end and we applaud the South African government for taking a stand in calling on the International Court of Justice to move swiftly and impose cease fire in Palestine and we demand that the working class must vote for political parties who will not only call for cease fire in Palestine but who will go beyond that and demand that Israel must get out of Palestine and allow Palestinian people to have freedom. Nelson Mandela was right when he said “our freedom is intertwined with the freedom of Palestine as our freedom will not be complete without the people of Palestine having their freedom.”

Issued by Irvin Jim

NUMSA General Secretary

For more information, please contact:

Phakamile Hlubi-Majola

NUMSA National Spokesperson

0833767725

phakamileh@numsa.org.za

NUMSA Head Office number: 0116891700

NUMSA YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsUlgwplI34&t=31s

NUMSA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NumsaSocial

NUMSA Twitter account: @Numsa_Media

NUMSA Website: https://numsa.org.za/

PDF DOWNLOAD: NUMSA press statement on the Special NEC decision on NUMSA’s posture towards the May National Elections

The post NUMSA press statement on the Special NEC decision on NUMSA’s posture towards the May National Elections appeared first on NUMSA.

Categories: C4. Radical Labor

Greenbelt Alliance - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 16:05

Up to $20 billion could quickly go to “shovel-ready” affordable housing projects and create a positive impact on climate, environment, and Bay Area communities.

When Bay Area voters open their ballots this fall, one of the many choices in front of them will include a critical measure to address the region’s ever-worsening affordable housing crisis: a bond of up to $20 billion that will, if it passes, help ensure the development of tens of thousands of new affordable homes throughout the nine counties of the region.

Greenbelt Alliance is proud to support the Bay Area Housing For All (BAHA) bond effort as part of a fast-growing, large coalition with over 40 members in support of this measure.

Continue reading for the breakdown of this new effort and join Greenbelt Alliance, Save the Bay, Transform, and others for a conversation on May 23, at 5 p.m., to go deeper into this topic. Sign up.

Addressing the Housing Crisis

The Bay Area is notorious for its exorbitant housing costs, which have far-reaching impacts on residents, our local economy, and community stability. Nearly half (45%) of all Bay Area renters are burdened, which means they spend over 30% of their household income on rent. Skyrocketing rents and home prices have displaced many long-time residents, forcing them to relocate to areas with fewer job opportunities and longer commutes, exacerbating socio-economic disparities, and increasing transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

The BAHA bond will help to reverse this trend by providing the necessary funding to complete affordable housing projects that have already passed through the rigorous design and approval processes. This immediate availability of shovel-ready projects ensures that funds will be rapidly deployed, accelerating the construction of new homes and delivering on its promises to those most in need in short order.

The BAHA bond, considered a “general obligation bond”, would be funded through ad valorem property taxes. A $10 billion bond would require a tax of $10.26 per $100,000 in assessed value—or about $100 per year for a million-dollar home, according to the BAHA website. The funds would be managed and distributed by the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA). Read more FAQs here.

A $20 billion Bay Area Housing Measure would:

• Produce and preserve upwards of 72,000 affordable homes. Over the lifetime of these developments, more than 800,000 households with low incomes will be housed.
• Create 46,000 jobs annually and generate $1 billion in state and local taxes and $2.3 billion in annual income in California.
• Leverage an additional $61 billion for affordable housing through federal, state, and private funding sources.

Environmental and Climate Benefits

In addition to addressing the urgent need for affordable housing, this regional bond substantially benefits our climate and environment. The construction of affordable housing in urban and suburban centers can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by promoting higher-density living, reducing reliance on long commutes, and allowing us to preserve natural and working lands simultaneously.

Here is how:

• Reducing Emissions: Thanks to state laws and regional planning efforts, most affordable housing developments are strategically located near public transportation hubs and corridors, employment centers, and essential services. TransForm, a Bay Area transportation nonprofit, estimates that the bond could result in constructing more than 50,000 new affordable homes within half a mile of transit. By facilitating shorter commutes and increasing accessibility to public transportation, these projects can significantly reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and, consequently, greenhouse gas emissions. This is particularly important in the Bay Area, where transportation is one of the largest sources of emissions.
• Preserving Open Space: As environmentalists, we advocate that one of the biggest threats to open space is a lack of affordable housing in our existing cities and suburbs. The BAHA bond will help mitigate urban sprawl by promoting infill development within urbanized areas. This not only preserves valuable open space and natural habitats but also reduces the environmental footprint of new construction. Compact, well-planned housing developments use land more efficiently, require less infrastructure, and have lower per capita environmental impacts compared to sprawling, low-density suburbs.
• Social and Economic Impacts: The BAHA bond’s focus on affordable housing is crucial for fostering social equity and economic stability. Providing secure and affordable housing allows residents to invest more in their local communities, support local businesses, and contribute to the overall economic health of the region. Furthermore, stable housing is a foundational element for improving health outcomes, educational attainment, and job stability for residents.

By ensuring that the Bay Area remains accessible to people from diverse economic backgrounds, the BAHA bond helps maintain the social fabric and cultural richness that define the region. Affordable housing developments also play a critical role in preventing homelessness, offering vulnerable populations a chance to rebuild their lives with dignity and stability.

Roadmap to Housing

The Bay Area Housing For All (BAHA) bond is more than just a new funding source for affordable housing: it’s a roadmap to create a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient Bay Area. By providing the necessary funding to complete hundreds of ready-to-build affordable housing projects in climate-smart areas, the BAHA bond will not only address the pressing housing crisis but also deliver substantial environmental benefits.

For Bay Area voters concerned about social equity and environmental sustainability, supporting the BAHA bond in November 2024 should be the clear and compelling choice!

The post Why Voters Should Support a New Regional Housing Bond? appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

Categories: G2. Local Greens

WildEarth Guardians - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 16:04

Biodiversity makes all life possible. The water we drink, the air we breathe, the outdoors we enjoy, the food on our tables – all of it depends on a thriving web of life. This web is like a Jenga tower– with all the pieces working together, the tower stands strong. But as each piece is removed, the tower becomes more and more fragile until, eventually, it collapses.

In recognition of the need to preserve and protect the biodiversity that enriches and sustains our lives, every May 22nd the world honors International Day for Biodiversity.

Few places better exemplify biodiversity and the importance of wild public lands as havens for plants and animals than the Greater Gila Bioregion, located deep in the heart of the American Southwest.

Photo: Adriel Heisey

More biodiverse than Yellowstone and as wild as the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the sacred Greater Gila Bioregion is one of the nation’s last remaining truly wild places. Black bear, cougar, elk, coatimundi, porcupine, 300 species of birds, over 30 species of fish, and many species of cacti, grasses, shrubs, and trees all can be found here.

The Greater Gila is also the ancestral and contemporary homelands of at least 18 different Indigenous Peoples, which may help explain why so much of this diversity persists here.

As we celebrate the Gila Wilderness’ 100th birthday this June, we highlight some of the critters that make it a national hotspot for life on International Day for Biodiversity.

Mexican spotted owl (Strix occidentalis lucida)

ESA status: Threatened

Photo: Dave Palmer

Right about now, Mexican spotted owl chicks are hatching in nests built in the remaining forests in the Southwest, as they do every May. WildEarth Guardians has tenaciously fought to protect the Mexican spotted owl and its ancient forest habitat since the mid-1990s, when the species was first recognized as threatened. Mexican spotted owls are an indicator species for the health of the old-growth forests they depend on. Logging and thinning of mature and old growth forests, and the loss of nesting, roosting and foraging habitat are the greatest threats to this species. Grazing, mining and other human disturbances also threaten the passive and secretive spotted owl. A place where ancient firs and pines reach to the sky, and centuries of geologic activity have cut deep canyons, the Greater Gila is one of the last strongholds of the Mexican spotted owl.

Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi)

ESA status: Endangered and experimental, non-essential

Mexican gray wolf. Photo by Ray Rafiti.

The Greater Gila is home to the country’s only population of critically endangered Mexican gray wolves, 257 known individuals. Also known as the lobo, the Mexican gray wolf is the smallest subspecies of gray wolf. Predator control programs nearly succeeded in eliminating the Mexican wolf from the landscape by 1970. The entire captive population is descended from only seven wolves, which were shuttled into a captive breeding program at the eleventh hour before the species went extinct in the wild. These iconic wolves face threats from illegal killing, a limited range, sanctioned killing at the behest of the livestock industry, and a worsening genetic crisis. In order to recover, lobos need the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work to create more genetic diversity within the population, and allow lobos the freedom to roam throughout suitable habitat in the Southwest.

Chiricahua leopard frog (Lithobates chiricahuensis)

ESA status: Threatened

Photo: Jim Rorabaugh

A streamside critter found in the cienegas, lakes, and ponds throughout the Greater Gila on both sides of the Arizona/New Mexico border, the Chiricahua leopard frog is one of few frogs listed under the Endangered Species Act. But even with these federal protections, the future of the frog is in jeopardy. The species has now vanished from more than 80 percent of its former habitat in Arizona and New Mexico. Vast swathes of this habitat, especially in Arizona’s White Mountains and surrounding parts of the Greater Gila Bioregion, is still unprotected, left vulnerable to water diversions, cattle destruction from streamside grazing, motorized recreation, road construction, mining, and more. The Chiricahua leopard frog, a vital thread in the tapestry of the wild, depends on a protected Greater Gila, connected in wildness across state boundaries.

Our children and all future generations must inherit a world where the Chiricahua leopard frog can still be heard.

Gila Trout (Oncorhynchus gilae)

ESA status: Threatened

Photo: Arizona Game & Fish Department

The Gila trout is a true treasure of the Southwest as one of the rarest species of trout on Earth. Gila trout reside in cold streams in the upper elevations of the Greater Gila, including the headwaters of the Gila River both in Arizona and New Mexico. Gila trout can grow to about 17-18 inches and are yellowish-brown, gold or copper. Between logging, drought, and climate impacts such as rising water temperatures and intense weather events like scouring floods, Gila trout face severe threats to their survival. These treasured and rare fish depend on Gila Guardians fighting to keep forests standing across the Greater Gila to protect the clean water that supports all life downstream.

Gila Monster (Heloderma suspectum)

ESA status: none, but protected by state laws

Photo: Getty Images

This iconic lizard of the southwestern deserts is another member of the Greater Gila Bioregion. Highly camouflaged, elusive, and frequently underground, Gila Monsters are not rare, but they are hard to spot. In the Greater Gila, the subspecies of the Reticulate Gila Monster is prevalent. These carnivorous reptiles are an essential part of the ecological tapestry of the Greater Gila.

The bite of the Gila Monster is venomous, though according to the National Park Service, “reasonably cautious people who watch where they put their hands and feet will not be bitten by a Gila Monster.” In fact, people pose a much greater threat to Gila Monsters through collection, road kills, habitat loss and, as horrific as it is, even intentional and illegal killing. Gila monsters are protected in both Arizona and New Mexico, as well as in other southwestern states and Mexico.

Spikedace (Meda fulgida)

ESA Status: Endangered

Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Another aquatic inhabitant of the Greater Gila, the spikedace is a tiny fish that only grows to a maximum size of three inches – no lunkers here! Once abundant throughout all of the watersheds of the Greater Gila, spikedace populations have precipitously declined and strong recovery measures must be implemented to preserve spikedace across the bioregion. Water diversions and livestock grazing in riparian habitats are known to be major threats to spikedace survival, in addition to mining, drought, and climate change. These fish depend on stronger habitat protections for Gila waterways, particularly restrictions on grazing in sensitive habitat, if they are to recover.

Pinyon jay (​​Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus)

ESA status: Petitioned for listing

Photo: Getty Images

The Greater Gila Bioregion is a stronghold for the pinyon jay, which is suffering major population declines across the U.S. However, in the Gila, the pinyon jay is thriving among the vast, wild stands of piñon and ponderosa pines. Backwards forest “management” such as thinning, burning, and chemical treatments of pinyon-juniper woodlands has had detrimental effects on Pinyon jay populations, and the bird is also vulnerable to oil and gas development and climate change. With the pinyon jay petitioned for listing as a threatened species, protecting its Gila habitat is more essential than ever.

Mogollon death camas (Zigadenus mogollonensis)

Photo: Russ Kleinman, Bill Norris, Leith Young & Richard Felger, Mogollon Mountains

If you travel in the Greater Gila in the late summer, you may be lucky enough to see this rare plant flower. The Mogollon death camas – and yes it is poisonous – thrives in the upper elevations of a very small portion of the Gila Wilderness. This rare plant is often found on the forest floor near stands of aspen. The range of the Mogollon death camas is so narrow that it can only be found in the Mogollon Mountains in the area of White Water Baldy and adjacent peaks. The rarity and beauty of the Mogollon death camas deserves to be protected.

Add your name to the growing list of Greater Gila Guardians

As we celebrate the Centennial of the Gila Wilderness and honor the remarkable species that knit the Greater Gila together, we are clear-eyed about the existential threats this landscape faces – and the specter of extinction that we must prevent at all costs. Click here to join our efforts to protect the Greater Gila for the next century and give this landscape and all the life it supports a fighting chance to not just survive, but thrive.

Photo: Leia Barnett

The post This southwestern biodiversity hotspot deserves celebration… and protection appeared first on WildEarth Guardians.

Categories: G3. Big Green

Audubon Society - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 13:48

Categories: G3. Big Green

By Peter Castagno

A prominent clean energy nonprofit issued a new proposal to revise Duke Energy’s carbon plan to expand rooftop solar throughout the state, arguing the strategy would address climate change and result in lower costs for ratepayers.

NC WARN is a Durham-based nonprofit focused on promoting the clean energy transition in North Carolina. On Tuesday, the group introduced its “Shared Solar” proposal focused on a broad expansion of rooftop solar paired with on-site storage, known as solar plus-storage (SPS).

Under the 2021 state law HB 951, Duke must reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 2005 levels by 2030. The company introduced an updated carbon plan in accordance with the law in January, which includes natural gas expansion as its largest energy source over the next decade. New infrastructure would produce 8,925 megawatts of gas power by 2031 versus 6,640 MW of solar by the same year.

Duke estimates infrastructure development from the current proposal would increase ratepayers’ monthly bills over $50 by 2033 and $80 by 2038.

The NC Utilities Commission is currently reviewing the plan and expected to amend, reject, or approve it in November. The review process involves public hearings for feedback from ratepayers, including a meeting at New Hanover County Courthouse last month. More than 20 residents criticized the plan for its emphasis on natural gas and excessive rate increase projections.

Duke argues natural gas is a necessary component of the carbon plan because economic growth in the state is driving a major increase in energy demand.

“Meeting the energy needs of a growing and economically vibrant state, while delivering a path to cleaner energy that protects reliability and affordability for our customers, requires a diverse, all of the above approach including next-generation nuclear, natural gas, solar, wind and storage resources,” spokesperson Bill Norton told Port City Daily.

The Shared Solar Plan

Although Duke’s current carbon plan already includes a major expansion in solar power, NC WARN argues it excessively focuses on large-scale infrastructure that will take years to build. The group believes emphasizing localized SPS would be a more immediate solution and potentially save billions in transmission infrastructure costs required from reliance on large-scale solar farms.

Under the proposal, customers could choose whether or not to build SPS at their homes. Installation would be funded by the utility and ratepayers, and Duke would pay customers for the right to use excess SPS energy shared to the grid when necessary.

Advocates argue solar and other renewables will progressively lower costs in coming years as fossil fuels sources become more expensive. NC WARN hascited researchsuch as a 2014 study by investment research firm Sanford Bernstein & Co., which found rooftop solar lowers market prices for electricity by reducing peak demand.

Chris Carmody, executive director for Carolinas Clean Energy Business Alliance, told PCD Duke’s recent rate hikes are often mistakenly attributed to renewables, but natural gas and other commodity price fluctuations were the cause of its11.7% rate hikelast year. He also cited anApril studyof NC Utility Commission data by Cary-based consultant EQ Research that found natural gas plants caused 67% of Duke Energy Carolina’s rate increases since 2017.

NC WARN notes they are open to variations of their preferred approach but believe SPS should be given open and fair consideration by the North Carolina Utilities Commission. They argue Duke would still earn a fair return on its investments in solar power and the plan would serve as a boon to the state’s solar companies and workforce.

Duke spokesperson Bill Norton said the company does support rooftop solar, citing an incentive program that opened last week and currently has more than 400 applicants.

“North Carolina is already number four in the nation for solar, and rooftop solar plus storage is poised to grow even more thanks toDuke Energy’s new Power Pair programrecently approved by the North Carolina Utilities Commission,” he said. “Developed in conjunction with solar developers and many other stakeholders, this new incentive helps make a home solar-plus-battery system more affordable for customers.”

Robert Parker — COO of Wilmington-based Cape Fear Solar Systems — praised Duke’s Power Pair initiative after the New Hanover County hearing last month, but argued it will fill up quickly and should be modified into a permanent program. He added it should expand to commercial clients, as it currently only serves residential customers.

Alternatively, NC WARN executive director Jim Warren views the incentive program as a public relations stunt. He differentiated the “Shared Solar” proposal from Duke’s incentive program, noting NC WARN’s effort would have no up-front costs and focus on expanding affordable energy to low- and middle-income people throughout the state, as well as businesses and nonprofits.

“They basically rolled out this pilot program to mask the damage being done to the rooftop solar industry,” Warren said. “Duke does pilot programs to get PR value and then they kill them. It doesn’t matter how successful they are.”

Continue reading

The post NC nonprofit argues Duke opposes rooftop solar due to profitability, proposes alternative carbon plan — Port City Daily appeared first on NC WARN.

Categories: G2. Local Greens

Friends of Gualala River - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 13:28

Mouth of the Gualala River on May 20, 2024; photo courtesy of Bob Rutemoeller

Categories: G2. Local Greens

Green and Red Podcast - Tue, 05/21/2024 - 13:14

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology