News of heat records set in Australia & New Zealand. Killer heat in India, with clips from news Down Under. Pipeline news and court victory, with Karenna Gore clip. Interview with Larry Shoup on the failure of capitalism on climate, the CFR and conspiracy of inaction. Audio from Derrick Jensen’s new video.
Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
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Please help with our “More Radio Ecoshock” campaign! The first stage is to gather more non-profit radio stations to get this message out further, especially to young people who need to know. I’ve “hired” a person with the expertise to reach out, potentially to more than a thousand stations. I say “hired” because he’s working for peanuts, at a slower rate, as your donations come in.
At that stage makes some progress with more stations, then we’ll consider an upgrade to a social media campaign. It’s all a combination of radio and web activism – but there’s no way I can do that without your support. You can make a donation of any amount, or sign up for a $10 a month subscription to help me keep the program going.
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This is Radio Ecoshock with the highs, lows, and no-go zones. Climate change is heating up the other side of the world, you know, in the places your news ignores. We’ll hear about heat already beyond the Paris safe lines in India, another punishing summer in Australia, and a record hot March in Tasmania and New Zealand. We’ve got Dr. Larry Shoup explaining the billionaire club The Council on Foreign Relations and their role in dialing down climate action. PLUS, a teaser talk from Deep Greener Derrick Jensen: industrial civilization is killing us. The future is low on fun, but there are flickers of resistance.
Before we go any further, read this warning from Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director General of Centre for Science and Environment in India:
“In the three seasons – winter, pre-monsoon and post-monsoon – the temperature in India has already increased by more than 1.5 degrees, over the baseline of 1901 to 1930. But if you look at just the winter month of January and February, the temperature anomaly is actually more than 2 degrees [C]. In fact, in 2017 the temperature anomaly in winter was 2.95 degrees.”
India is mainly past the supposed “safety zone” of 1.5 degrees C warming set out in the Paris Accord! At times, they are beyond the 2 degree mark, when very serious impacts ramp up. More in the blog below.
RESISTANCE: THE PIPELINE BATTLE
In my show for February 28th – “The Valve Turners” – we hear from four activists who face prison for shutting down pipelines from Alberta Canada tar sands to America. That fight goes on.
Here is reporting from the UK Independent headline: “Anti-pipeline campaigners found not guilty by judge because ‘protest against climate change crisis’ was legal ‘necessity‘” Here is the lead from that article in the Independent, March 28th:
“More than a dozen protesters who clambered into holes dug for a high pressure gas pipeline said they had been found not responsible by a judge after hearing them argue their actions to try and stop climate change were a legal “necessity”.
Karenna Gore, the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore, was among more than 198 people who were arrested because of their 2015 actions protesting the pipeline in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, a neighborhood of Boston. Thirteen people were to go on trial this week, though prosecutors downgraded their original criminal charges to one of civil infraction.”
Karenna Gore
That was from the Independent newspaper in Britain. In this show, I run the audio of a quick clip of Karenna Gore after winning the lawsuit with a climate defense.
The pipeline battle continues on the West Coast of Canada. The Coast Salish tribe of First Nations people are leading a charge of thousands protesting doubling a pipeline from the dirty tar sands in Alberta to the Port of Vancouver. Megatankers would sail through the precious waters between the mainland and Vancouver Island.
Here is an update emailed by Atiya Jaffar of 350.org,:
“It all started on March 10th when 10,000 people marched in solidarity with Coast Salish spiritual leaders who simultaneously built a watch house — a structure used by their people for generations to watch over enemies — on the path of the Kinder Morgan pipeline on Burnaby Mountain.”
“From March 17th to 24th, 172 people were arrested at the gates of the Kinder Morgan facility on Burnaby Mountain. These courageous action takers included Indigenous activists, youth, retirees, and many others. There were some high profile participants as well: Indigenous actress and activist, Carmen Moore; the leader of the Green Party of Canada, Elizabeth May; and NDP MP, Kennedy Stewart. May and Stewart became the first ever sitting MPs to get arrested in solidarity with an Indigenous-led fight for climate justice.”
Learn more at protecttheinlet.ca
THE TRUMP DUMP
Climate action is going backward in America. The Washington Post reports March 28 that staff at the Environmental Protection Agency have been given “talking points playing down human role in climate change”.
I read this from the Washington Post:
“The list offered suggestions on ways to talk with local communities and Native American tribes about how to adapt to extreme weather, rising seas and other environmental challenges.
Employees crafted the email, first disclosed Wednesday by HuffPost, on the basis of controversial — and scientifically unsound — statements that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has made about the current state of climate research.”
“Human activity impacts our changing climate in some manner,” reads one of the talking points. “The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact, and what to do about it, are subject to continuing debate and dialogue.”
Another states that while there has been “extensive” research and numerous reports on climate change, “clear gaps remain including our understanding of the role of human activity and what we can do about it.”
That was from the Washington Post article by Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin. Here is the way American climate retrogression looks from the OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD, in India, from downtoearth.org.
“The United States, which is historically the largest climate polluter, has pulled out of the Paris agreement. And it’s President, Mr. Donald Trump, is legislating anti-climate and pro-fossil fuel policies, which will see huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. This is indeed a scary situation.
A polluting United States means bad news for the world, and more so for India and other developing countries – simply because a vast majority of people are poor in our part of the world and they are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.”
– Chandra Bhushan
But hey, if your homes are flooded or burned out, don’t worry. The Federal Emergency Management Agency now officially doesn’t think climate change is real. Bloomberg’s Richard Gonzales has the headline “FEMA Drops ‘Climate Change’ From Its Strategic Plan”.
As Bloomberg reports, quote:
“Similarly, under a section about ‘Emerging Threats,’ the document cites cybersecurity and terrorism. There are no references to global warming, rising sea levels, extreme weather events or any other term related to the potential impact of rising surface temperatures.”
It turns out Donald Trump appointed Brock Long to run FEMA, and Mr. Long doubts that climate change is real, or if it is, maybe humans are not to blame. I guess all the science we report here on Radio Ecoshock is just “fake news” or a “witch hunt”.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD
But let’s talk about THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD. It turns out, even when it’s cold and snowy in real places like New York, Oslo, or Moscow… there is a different part of the world where it’s like, really hot. Global heating never stops. The southern half of the globe has a few interesting continents and islands, and a huge amount of ocean. That Southern Ocean is soaking up more and more heat with each year. I’m still trying to find the right expert to tell us how much heat, and when that will all come back out into the atmosphere, likely hundreds to a thousand years from now.
Meanwhile, we have new reporting on heating of the Pacific ocean around Australia’s southern Island of Tasmania. By the way, Tasmania just had the hottest winter from November to January on record. Funny that. New Zealand just had the hottest winter it’s ever seen.
As reported by New Zealand’s Channel One, January 25, 2018, the Tasman Sea surface temperature was “exceptionally high” – more than two degrees above average for December and part of January. That is going to have impacts on sea life that we may never know about. But kelp forests and abalone have been hard hit. In an article published March 27th by the Australian ABC news network, climatologist Dr Blair Trewin said:
“These temperatures were far above any others previously observed at that time of year in the region, and extended west from New Zealand to Tasmania and mainland southeast Australia.”
Australia had a super hot summer too. To get the feeling, even beyond the Sweltering Australian Open tennis match, I’m going to do something unusual for this show. Here is part of a You tube uploaded in Australia by Jay-May Stojanovic. It was on January 19, 2018, as this mother went through a power outage, with the temperature at 113 degrees Fahrenheit, about 45 C. in the shade. Jay-May is not a reporter or an expert. But don’t be fooled! I play her audio report because Stojanovic in her very human way hits all the news you need when the heat wave gets to where you live.
INDIA
But let’s go to a place where Western news just falls off the end of the world. I’m talking about India. I’ve been there, and it’s already hot. Now with climate change, India is going way beyond hot. In fact, as you will hear, during 9 months of the year, parts of India are already beyond the two degree supposed safe target set by the Paris Climate Accord. They have already blown past that.
Here is a transcript from a presentation by Chandra Bhushan in New Delhi:
“Seasons for India is divided into four parts: we have winters in January and February; we have pre-monsoon season which we also call as “summer” which is March to May; we have Monsoon Season which is June to September; and we have post-Monsoon season which is October to December. Now let me show you what the temperature increase for these four seasons looks like. [ Graphic in video]
The season increase in temperature actually looks much more dangerous than the annual increase in temperature. In the three seasons – winter, pre-monsoon and post-monsoon – the temperature in India has already increased by more than 1.5 degrees, over the baseline of 1901 to 1930. But if you look at just the winter month of January and February, the temperature anomaly is actually more than 2 degrees [C]. In fact, in 2017 the temperature anomaly in winter was 2.95 degrees. It is only during the Monsoon months the temperature increase is about 1 degrees Celsius.
So in three out of four seasons – nine months in a year – the temperature in India has breached the aspirational goal of 1.5 degrees set in the Paris agreement. This is becoming dangerous, much sooner than anticipated.”
Watch that 6 minute You tube video here.
Chandra Bhushan
In an article published March 29, 2018, Isha Bajpai reports:
“According to a recent collaborative study by the University of California and IIT-Bombay and IIT-Delhi, summer mean temperatures in the country have increased substantially from 1960 to 2009. The accumulated intensity, count, duration, and days of heat waves have also increased during this time period in most parts of the country, especially in the northern, southern and western parts.
Southern and western India experienced 50 per cent more heat wave events between 1985 and 2009 than the previous 25-year period (1960 to 1984). Similarly, heat wave days and mean duration of heat waves have increased by approximately 25 per cent in the majority of India, the study observes.”
The non-profit downtoearth.org further reports that the government of India really has no way to record heat deaths. Only heat strokes and heat exhaustion are counted, when they are reported or examined at all. But heat kills many other ways from organ failure to strokes and more. Each year since 2015 in India, the government reports somewhere from one thousand to two thousand heat deaths. But the real number is much, much higher, and we are just beginning to enter the age of heat.
CLIMATE, THE CFR, AND THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITALISM – LARRY SHOUP
Let’s get to our feature interview. We don’t need to blame the Russians, or even Donald Trump, for killing a government response to our climate danger. It turns out an American-based cabal of billionaires has been at it for decades.
Dr. Lawrence Shoup has a PhD in history. He’s been a social activist since the 1960’s. Shoup has written many articles for Z Magazine and published five books. His first in 1977 was on the Council on Foreign Relations, and his latest in 2015 is “Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics 1976-2014.”
Chapter 8 of that book is “Fiddling While the Earth Slowly Burns: the Council and the Ecological Crisis, 1990-2014“. That is mostly what we talk about.
In just one minor example of Larry’s research, ExxonMobil played along with these “climate change is a real threat” reports from the Council on Foreign Relations. But at the same time, ExxonMobil donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to establish the Heartland Institute, on of the biggest denial outfits anywhere.
The CFR issues all kinds of reports, which it then tries to use to influence everything from foreign policy to domestic regulation. For example, it’s 2009 CFR report “The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs. Climate Change“. You can read that as a .pdf here.
The “Independent Task Force” of the CFR continued to recommend U.S. policy options on climate change. With big names and big money behind it, they attempted to fill any space in the climate dialog in the American government. The government is occupied by “in-and-outers” who expect to get a high paying corporate or other position when they get “out” of government… It’s a kind of conspiracy to make sure nothing gets done about climate change, and fossil fuel profits keep coming in.
According to Larry’s research, some CFR members feared “prolonged low growth” far more than climate change. That, they thought, could break apart the American social fabric, and possibly capitalism itself. They feared “class frictions”, more than climate impacts.
Shoup writes that our best hope is mass action by the working class around the world. But I wonder: What workers? The low-paid poor, unhealthy, addicted, stressed out, in debt or government dependent – they will save us? There is zero working class consciousness in the U.S., and some of those who do recognize themselves as workers voted for Trump. We talk about that.
Maybe the capitalist plan is like the sci-fi futurist book “Stark” by Ben Elton. The multi-billionaires run a space program, with the aim of blasting off the ruined Earth themselves one day. It’s the ultimate get-away plan, which sounds less crazy now that a series of billionaires are building their own private space launches.
Apparently, it doesn’t matter if the world is authoritarian, democratic, communist, or capitalist. All those forms of government support expanding the economy, draining more resources, and pushing pollution out into the land, water, and atmosphere.
Dr. Lawrence Shoup
In his book “Wall Street’s Think Tank” Shoup suggests eco-socialism is the way toward a survivable world. Is that realistic, and is it starting to develop?
I worry we don’t have time to educate and mobilize workers, as capitalists continue to isolate them, weaken the middle class, and replace everybody with AI and robots. Scientists say we are already ten years late too save the climate. Shouldn’t we try to win over the wealthy and the power-brokers-that-be, so we can act in the next year or two?
Like many of you, I’ve been a social activist for decades. Frankly we failed so far. Maybe something new is coming out of the women’s movement, or a global connection through social media. Do you see a new generation of the resistance, strong enough to govern – in time to avert ecological collapse?
Check out Larry’s web site here at laurenceshoup.com
CRASHING CIVILIZATION – DERRICK JENSEN
Do we need industrial civilization to crash, in order to survive at all? The West-coast author and deep green thinker Derrick Jensen says “yes”. I interviewed Derrick in 2007 and wow, that is 11 years ago! He’s produced a lot since then. So pretty soon, when I’ve drunk in more deep green Jensen, we’ll do another interview with Derrick.
To get you started, I’m just going to toss you into the deep end with the audio from one of Derrick’s most recent videos. It’s called “More Thoughts On Technics” as uploaded to You tube on March 11, 2018. Good luck!
Actually, this video was a follow-up to a first video on the subject: “026 What Are Technics?”.
I did a montage of Derrick Jensen clips in my 2006 show “Kick It Over”. Then we did a Radio Ecoshock interview, after I read his influential two-book series “End Game.
If all goes as planned, we’ll have a new chat with Derrick soon, on Radio Ecoshock.
So map out your shade, and your spot in the sun, when it’s safe enough to go out in the sun. And raise your voice against the machine. I’m Alex. Thank you for listening.
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Please help with our “More Radio Ecoshock” campaign! The first stage is to gather more non-profit radio stations to get this message out further, especially to young people who need to know. I’ve “hired” a person with the expertise to reach out, potentially to more than a thousand stations. I say “hired” because he’s working for peanuts, at a slower rate, as your donations come in.
As that stage makes some progress with more stations, then we’ll consider an upgrade to a social media campaign. It’s all a combination of radio and web activism – but there’s no way I can do that without your support. You can make a donation of any amount, or sign up for a $10 a month subscription to help me keep the program going.
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Alex,
Dr. Shoup is a centrist who spills the beans . i sent you my manifesto. I am one of the few with adequate vision to really address this. you really should talk to me. it is all over but the dying at this point. but we should still try.
Regards
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Just fyi, that should read Australia and NZ’s hottest summer, not winter. Our seasons are reversed here – we haven’t had winter yet. And the way temperature records are going, we’ll be waiting a while yet.