This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media is a new documentary that exposes the real-life consequences of the algorithms of big tech companies and their impact on children and teens. In 2022, social media companies made an estimated $11 billion advertising to minors in the U.S., where 95% of teenagers use social media. One in three teens uses social media almost constantly. “These products, they’re not designed to hook us, adults,” says Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle who is featured in Can’t Look Away. “They are designed to hook children.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

“OPERATION HOPIUM: How the C.I.A. treasonously undermined the Patriot Movement…“

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Nomophobia: the fear of being without one’s smartphone. What’s so smart about that?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Image by Lukáš Lehotský.

The “ADVANCE Act,” a bill to promote nuclear power, was passed 88-to-2 by the U.S. Senate last week. The ADVANCE stands for “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy.” The only senators voting against it were Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

It was approved in the House of Representatives in May, also by a lopsided margin: 393-13. And it now has gone to President Joe Biden,

Among the many points in the bill are the speeding up of the federal licensing process for new nuclear power plants notably those described as “advanced,” reducing licensing fees, allow ownership of nuclear facilities in the U.S. by foreign nations, and establishing in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission an Office of International Programs “to carry out the international nuclear export and innovation activities.”

The action by Congress comes amid what Kevin Kamps of the organization Beyond Nuclear says is “the biggest push for nuclear power that I’ve experienced in 32 years of anti-nuclear power activities.”

The nuclear industry, he says, is “trying to use the climate crisis” by claiming nuclear energy is carbon-free. “It’s not true. It’s not carbon-free by any means,” he says, and “not even low carbon when you compare it to genuinely low carbon sources of electricity, renewables like wind and solar.” But the nuclear industry is involved in a “propaganda campaign” attempting to validate itself by citing climate change, he says, and many in government having “fallen for this ploy.”

Diane D’Arrigo of the group Nuclear Information and Resource Service commented: “Nuclear power makes climate worse—stealing resources from climate solutions and districting us from real solutions—and this bill is putting our already threatened democracy at even greater risk.”

“Clearly, the U.S. Congress doesn’t understand or care about the dangers of radiation that will result,” said D’Arrigo in an interview. “The nuclear Advance Act, passed by nearly the whole U.S. House and Senate, hitched a ride on a must-pass bill fire-fighting bill as wildfire season is taking off during an election year.” The act of more than 90 pages was inserted into a three-page Fire Grants and Safety measure.

“The nuclear industry,” she said, “has been investing in Congress to get massive subsidies for operating and proposed new nuclear power reactors and those huge investments paid off billions in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure laws, possibly more for nuclear and carbon capture than renewables and efficiency. Now the 118^th Congress is again attempting to kickstart nuclear by bending the already-skewed rules making it harder for impacted communities to protect themselves.”

“Possibly most dangerous,” said D’Arrigo, “is the boost to a plutonium economy with accompanying police state. The ‘advanced’ fuel encouraged in this bill is nearly bomb-grade uranium and the bill provides for exporting it to other countries as well as using it in reactors all over this country. It’s a dismal moment in environmental, economic and human history. But one we must continue to challenge.”

Applauding the Senate’s passage of the ADVANCED Act was John Starkey, director of public policy at the American Nuclear Society. “It’s monumental,” said Starkey in an article on HuffPost. His society describes itself as “the premier organization for those that embrace the nuclear sciences and technologies.” Starkey further said: “This has been a long time coming.”

The HuffPost piece by Alexander C. Kaufman on passage of the ADVANCE Act says Biden “is all but certain to sign it into law.” However, his article adds: “Yet it’s only a first step.”

“The full legislation depends on Congress increasing funding to the NRC” and “help the agency staff up for an expected influx of applications” for new nuclear power plants, it says.

The HuffPost article was headlined: “Congress Just Passed The Biggest Clean-Energy Bill Since Biden’s Climate Law. It’s all on nuclear.”

Edwin Lyman, nuclear power safety director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, declared: “Make no mistake. This is not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board, a longstanding industry goal. The change to the NRC’s mission effectively directs the agency to enforce only the bare minimum level of regulation at every facility it oversees across the United States.”

“Passage of this legislation will only increase the danger to people already living downwind of nuclear facilities from a severe accident or terrorist attack,” said Lyman, “and it will make it even more difficult for communities to prevent risky, experimental reactors from being sited in their midst.”

Lyman, co-author of the book Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster, also spoke about it being “extremely disappointing that without any meaningful debate” Congress was “changing the NRC’s mission to not only protect public health and safety but also to protect the financial health of the industry and its investors. Just as lax regulations by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]—an agency already burdened by conflicts of interests—can lead to a catastrophic failure of an aircraft, a compromised NRC could lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown impacting an entire region for a generation.”

Harvey Wasserman, author of the book Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and co-author of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, said:

“The ADVANCE Act is another death rattle for history’s most expensive techno-failure.”

In contrast to nuclear power, “Solar-generated electricity is now ‘too cheap to meter’ in California,” he said. And “every day now California goes 100% renewable for hours at a time.” In Texas, he noted, wind turbines are now producing so much electricity that it’s being distributed “for free” at night.

“Of the four big U.S. reactors ordered in the 21st century, two are stillborn in South Carolina at $9 billion,” said Wasserman in an interview. And the two new Vogtle nuclear power plants built in Georgia “are a $35 billion fiasco.”

“For the first time since 1954, zero big new U.S. nukes are under construction,” said Wasserman. As for what the nuclear industry calls “small modular reactors” that it is promoting, the “small mythological reactors are already soaring in price and crashing in production schedules, light years behind renewables in time and price.”

“The attempt to revive shut-down reactors will never work,” he said.

Also, he says the electricity generated by the two Diablo Canyon nuclear plants in California, slated for closure but now scheduled to keep running, “would $8-12 billion over market” price for electricity through 2030.

“The ADVANCE act aims to bail out a boat whose bottom has fallen out,” said Wasserman. And, “Solartopia’s day has dawned.”

Indeed, the current The Economist magazine on its cover heralds “Dawn Of The Solar Age” The accompanying article in this “special issue” is headlined: “The solar age. The exponential growth of solar power will change the world.” It states: “To grasp that this is not some environmental fever dream, consider solar economics.” The magazine, considered conservative, speaks of “the resources” needed for solar power being “abundant.” Further, “As for demand, it is both huge and electric…The result is that, in contrast to earlier energy sources, solar power has routinely become cheaper and will continue to do so.”

But Senator Shelley Capito, a West Virginia Republican and a lead sponsor of the ADVANCE Act, said after the Senate vote on June 18^th, that “we sent the ADVANCE Act to the president’s desk because Congress worked together to recognize the importance of nuclear energy to America’s future and got the job done.” She is the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Its chairman, Delaware Democrat Tom Carper, said: “In a major victory for our climate and American energy security, the U.S. Senate has passed the ADVANCE Act with overwhelming bipartisan support.”

As the website “Power,” which describes itself as “at the forefront of the global power market,” summarizes the ADVANCE Act in an article titled “The ADVANCE Act—Legislation Crucial for a U.S. Nuclear Renaissance—Clears Congress. Here’s a Detailed Breakdown,” it says it is “sweeping legislation that seeks to promote U.S. nuclear leadership, accelerate advanced nuclear technology development while preserving existing nuclear generation, bolster national security measures, and enhance regulatory efficiency to support new nuclear deployment.”

The act is “likely to be enacted” with signing by Biden and “is a significant endorsement of nuclear energy” says the piece by senior editor Sonal Patel.

“The bill’s passage in Congress, notably, follows a suite of new measures unveiled by the White House on May 30, aimed at slashing risks associated with new nuclear reactor development and construction,” it says. “The White House highlighted recent efforts by the Department of Energy (DOE) to revive and revitalize existing nuclear plants, support advanced reactor demonstrations, and facilitate siting and financing. But it also acknowledged key risks and long-standing barriers that have hindered an expansion of the 70-year-old industry, shining a light on necessary licensing reforms, supply chain and workforce gaps, and high capital costs.”

It quotes Ted Nordhaus, founder and executive director of the archly pro-nuclear Breakthrough Institute, as saying “the NRC has tried to regulate to make risk from nuclear energy as close to zero as possible, but has failed to consider the cost to the environment, public health, energy security, or prosperity of not building and operating nuclear energy plants. This reduces rather than improves public health and safety….But with passage of the ADVANCE bill, Congress is telling the regulators that public benefits are and have always been part of their mission.”

In speaking against the ADVANCE Act on the floor of the Senate, Senator Markey, chair of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, said it “includes language that would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to rewrite its mission to state that its regulation and oversight should ‘not unnecessarily limit’ civilian nuclear activity, regardless of whether it is beneficial or detrimental to public safety and national security. The NRC shouldn’t be the Nuclear Retail Commission. The Commission’s duty is to regulate, not facilitate.”

“This legislation is not wise,” said Markey.

“And while some of the bill’s supporters argue we need new nuclear technologies to combat the climate crisis, I have an arched eyebrow as to why this bill focuses solely on nuclear energy,” he said. He said technologies “such as wind and solar and geothermal…is what

our country should be promoting around the rest of the world.”

Markey continued: “It’s also shortsighted to me to make such a herculean effort to promote new nuclear technologies when we’re yet to solve the longstanding problems resulting from our existing nuclear fleet. To this day, the Navajo nation is dealing with the legacy of uranium contamination, including more than 500 abandoned uranium mines and homes and water sources polluted with elevated levels of radiation.”

Michel Lee, chair of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy, calls “the passage of the ADVANCE Act the legislative equivalent of detonation of a nuclear weapon in our regulatory system.”

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service had extensively campaigned against the ADVANCE Act asking people, as a communication it sent out declared, “Please Ask Your Senators to Vote NO on the Nuclear Advance Act.”

It said: “The nuclear ADVANCE Act, a 93-page bill to promote expensive, dangerous, dirty, environmentally unjust nuclear power that could accelerate nuclear exports and weapons proliferation and allow foreign ownership/control of U.S. nuclear facilities, is hitching a ride …on the short Fire Grants and Safety.” It “shifts the mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to boosting more than regulating.”

As for “new nuclear power,” it said that “from mining to long-term waste management it violates environmental justice and relies on carbon at every step, is radioactively and chemically dirty, dangerous, expensive, slow, takes resources from true climate solutions and leaves intense, long-lasting radioactive waste that technically cannot be isolated for the eons it remains dangerous.”

Also campaigning against the act has been Beyond Nuclear which says: “The ADVANCE Act will significantly increase the risks of nuclear power by changing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s mandate from safety mandate from safety regulation to industry promotion…It would also promote new atomic reactors, and much more highly enriched nuclear fuel, both in the U.S. as well as overseas. This will worsen the hazards, harms and environmental injustices at each and every stage of the uranium fuel chain, from mining to highly radioactive waste dumping. The ADVANCE Act’s allowing of foreign ownership of nuclear facilities in the U.S., and its promotion of High Assay Low-Enriched Uranium fuel, both domestically and overseas, will also significantly increase nuclear weapons proliferation .”

The Sierra Club has opposed the act. In a letter to Senator Majority Leader Charles Schumer, it has declared: “Nuclear power is not a solution to the climate crisis. Spending precious federal resources on nuclear power only takes away from the desperately needed development of a clean, affordable and more equitable energy system powered by renewable energy. Passage of the ADVANCE Act…will lock in the use of dirty, dangerous and expensive nuclear power for a generation.”

“As a result of this legislation ,” the letter continued, “we would expect to see the production of vast amounts of uranium mining and mill tailings waste, even hotter high level radioactive waste, for which there is no final plan for isolation, and depleted uranium that becomes more radioactive over one million years. Additionally, the expansion of nuclear power will result in more so-called “low-level” radioactive waste going into unlined trenches and the release of radioactive liquids and gasses into the air, water and environment from every reactor around the country and around the world.”

Also opposing the act has been Food and Water Watch whose executive director, Wenonah Hauter, has said: “Senator Schumer’s apparent embrace of new nuclear energy development represents a stark betrayal of the clean, safe renewable energy options like wind and solar that he claims to champion. The Senate and President Biden must quickly come to their senses and reject the dangerous and unaffordable false promises of toxic nuclear energy.”

Among many other groups opposing the ADVANCE Act have been:  Climate Justice Alliance, Environment America, Friends of the Earth, Institute for Policy Studies, Indigenous Environmental Network, Science and Environmental Health Network, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Waterspirit, 350 New Orleans, Earth Action, Inc., Endangered Species Coalition, Long Island Progressive Coalition and Methane Action.

In regard to the “follow the money,” that element of Congressional support of the ADVANCE Act was certainly also a factor. Politico in 2011 ran an article headlined: “Nuclear lobbyists clout felt on Hill.”

“Facing its biggest crisis in 25 years, the U.S. nuclear power industry can count on plenty of Democratic and Republican friends in both high and low places,” began the piece by Darren Samuelsohn. “During the past election cycle alone, the Nuclear Energy Institute and more than a dozen companies with big nuclear portfolios have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to lawmakers in key leadership slots and across influential state delegations.”

The Nuclear Energy Institute, “the industry’s biggest voice in Washington, for example, spent $3.76 million to lobby the federal government and an additional $323,000 through its political action committee on a bipartisan congressional slate, inclu2ding 134 House and 30 Senate candidates…”

“Nearly all of the investor-owned power companies that operate U.S. nuclear reactors play in the donation game,” said the article.

That was last decade, but times on this issue don’t change.

The post Congress’s Nuclear Addiction appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Karl Grossman.

Image by Lukáš Lehotský.

The “ADVANCE Act,” a bill to promote nuclear power, was passed 88-to-2 by the U.S. Senate last week. The ADVANCE stands for “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy.” The only senators voting against it were Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

It was approved in the House of Representatives in May, also by a lopsided margin: 393-13. And it now has gone to President Joe Biden,

Among the many points in the bill are the speeding up of the federal licensing process for new nuclear power plants notably those described as “advanced,” reducing licensing fees, allow ownership of nuclear facilities in the U.S. by foreign nations, and establishing in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission an Office of International Programs “to carry out the international nuclear export and innovation activities.”

The action by Congress comes amid what Kevin Kamps of the organization Beyond Nuclear says is “the biggest push for nuclear power that I’ve experienced in 32 years of anti-nuclear power activities.”

The nuclear industry, he says, is “trying to use the climate crisis” by claiming nuclear energy is carbon-free. “It’s not true. It’s not carbon-free by any means,” he says, and “not even low carbon when you compare it to genuinely low carbon sources of electricity, renewables like wind and solar.” But the nuclear industry is involved in a “propaganda campaign” attempting to validate itself by citing climate change, he says, and many in government having “fallen for this ploy.”

Diane D’Arrigo of the group Nuclear Information and Resource Service commented: “Nuclear power makes climate worse—stealing resources from climate solutions and districting us from real solutions—and this bill is putting our already threatened democracy at even greater risk.”

“Clearly, the U.S. Congress doesn’t understand or care about the dangers of radiation that will result,” said D’Arrigo in an interview. “The nuclear Advance Act, passed by nearly the whole U.S. House and Senate, hitched a ride on a must-pass bill fire-fighting bill as wildfire season is taking off during an election year.” The act of more than 90 pages was inserted into a three-page Fire Grants and Safety measure.

“The nuclear industry,” she said, “has been investing in Congress to get massive subsidies for operating and proposed new nuclear power reactors and those huge investments paid off billions in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure laws, possibly more for nuclear and carbon capture than renewables and efficiency. Now the 118^th Congress is again attempting to kickstart nuclear by bending the already-skewed rules making it harder for impacted communities to protect themselves.”

“Possibly most dangerous,” said D’Arrigo, “is the boost to a plutonium economy with accompanying police state. The ‘advanced’ fuel encouraged in this bill is nearly bomb-grade uranium and the bill provides for exporting it to other countries as well as using it in reactors all over this country. It’s a dismal moment in environmental, economic and human history. But one we must continue to challenge.”

Applauding the Senate’s passage of the ADVANCED Act was John Starkey, director of public policy at the American Nuclear Society. “It’s monumental,” said Starkey in an article on HuffPost. His society describes itself as “the premier organization for those that embrace the nuclear sciences and technologies.” Starkey further said: “This has been a long time coming.”

The HuffPost piece by Alexander C. Kaufman on passage of the ADVANCE Act says Biden “is all but certain to sign it into law.” However, his article adds: “Yet it’s only a first step.”

“The full legislation depends on Congress increasing funding to the NRC” and “help the agency staff up for an expected influx of applications” for new nuclear power plants, it says.

The HuffPost article was headlined: “Congress Just Passed The Biggest Clean-Energy Bill Since Biden’s Climate Law. It’s all on nuclear.”

Edwin Lyman, nuclear power safety director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, declared: “Make no mistake. This is not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board, a longstanding industry goal. The change to the NRC’s mission effectively directs the agency to enforce only the bare minimum level of regulation at every facility it oversees across the United States.”

“Passage of this legislation will only increase the danger to people already living downwind of nuclear facilities from a severe accident or terrorist attack,” said Lyman, “and it will make it even more difficult for communities to prevent risky, experimental reactors from being sited in their midst.”

Lyman, co-author of the book Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster, also spoke about it being “extremely disappointing that without any meaningful debate” Congress was “changing the NRC’s mission to not only protect public health and safety but also to protect the financial health of the industry and its investors. Just as lax regulations by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]—an agency already burdened by conflicts of interests—can lead to a catastrophic failure of an aircraft, a compromised NRC could lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown impacting an entire region for a generation.”

Harvey Wasserman, author of the book Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and co-author of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, said:

“The ADVANCE Act is another death rattle for history’s most expensive techno-failure.”

In contrast to nuclear power, “Solar-generated electricity is now ‘too cheap to meter’ in California,” he said. And “every day now California goes 100% renewable for hours at a time.” In Texas, he noted, wind turbines are now producing so much electricity that it’s being distributed “for free” at night.

“Of the four big U.S. reactors ordered in the 21st century, two are stillborn in South Carolina at $9 billion,” said Wasserman in an interview. And the two new Vogtle nuclear power plants built in Georgia “are a $35 billion fiasco.”

“For the first time since 1954, zero big new U.S. nukes are under construction,” said Wasserman. As for what the nuclear industry calls “small modular reactors” that it is promoting, the “small mythological reactors are already soaring in price and crashing in production schedules, light years behind renewables in time and price.”

“The attempt to revive shut-down reactors will never work,” he said.

Also, he says the electricity generated by the two Diablo Canyon nuclear plants in California, slated for closure but now scheduled to keep running, “would $8-12 billion over market” price for electricity through 2030.

“The ADVANCE act aims to bail out a boat whose bottom has fallen out,” said Wasserman. And, “Solartopia’s day has dawned.”

Indeed, the current The Economist magazine on its cover heralds “Dawn Of The Solar Age” The accompanying article in this “special issue” is headlined: “The solar age. The exponential growth of solar power will change the world.” It states: “To grasp that this is not some environmental fever dream, consider solar economics.” The magazine, considered conservative, speaks of “the resources” needed for solar power being “abundant.” Further, “As for demand, it is both huge and electric…The result is that, in contrast to earlier energy sources, solar power has routinely become cheaper and will continue to do so.”

But Senator Shelley Capito, a West Virginia Republican and a lead sponsor of the ADVANCE Act, said after the Senate vote on June 18^th, that “we sent the ADVANCE Act to the president’s desk because Congress worked together to recognize the importance of nuclear energy to America’s future and got the job done.” She is the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Its chairman, Delaware Democrat Tom Carper, said: “In a major victory for our climate and American energy security, the U.S. Senate has passed the ADVANCE Act with overwhelming bipartisan support.”

As the website “Power,” which describes itself as “at the forefront of the global power market,” summarizes the ADVANCE Act in an article titled “The ADVANCE Act—Legislation Crucial for a U.S. Nuclear Renaissance—Clears Congress. Here’s a Detailed Breakdown,” it says it is “sweeping legislation that seeks to promote U.S. nuclear leadership, accelerate advanced nuclear technology development while preserving existing nuclear generation, bolster national security measures, and enhance regulatory efficiency to support new nuclear deployment.”

The act is “likely to be enacted” with signing by Biden and “is a significant endorsement of nuclear energy” says the piece by senior editor Sonal Patel.

“The bill’s passage in Congress, notably, follows a suite of new measures unveiled by the White House on May 30, aimed at slashing risks associated with new nuclear reactor development and construction,” it says. “The White House highlighted recent efforts by the Department of Energy (DOE) to revive and revitalize existing nuclear plants, support advanced reactor demonstrations, and facilitate siting and financing. But it also acknowledged key risks and long-standing barriers that have hindered an expansion of the 70-year-old industry, shining a light on necessary licensing reforms, supply chain and workforce gaps, and high capital costs.”

It quotes Ted Nordhaus, founder and executive director of the archly pro-nuclear Breakthrough Institute, as saying “the NRC has tried to regulate to make risk from nuclear energy as close to zero as possible, but has failed to consider the cost to the environment, public health, energy security, or prosperity of not building and operating nuclear energy plants. This reduces rather than improves public health and safety….But with passage of the ADVANCE bill, Congress is telling the regulators that public benefits are and have always been part of their mission.”

In speaking against the ADVANCE Act on the floor of the Senate, Senator Markey, chair of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, said it “includes language that would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to rewrite its mission to state that its regulation and oversight should ‘not unnecessarily limit’ civilian nuclear activity, regardless of whether it is beneficial or detrimental to public safety and national security. The NRC shouldn’t be the Nuclear Retail Commission. The Commission’s duty is to regulate, not facilitate.”

“This legislation is not wise,” said Markey.

“And while some of the bill’s supporters argue we need new nuclear technologies to combat the climate crisis, I have an arched eyebrow as to why this bill focuses solely on nuclear energy,” he said. He said technologies “such as wind and solar and geothermal…is what

our country should be promoting around the rest of the world.”

Markey continued: “It’s also shortsighted to me to make such a herculean effort to promote new nuclear technologies when we’re yet to solve the longstanding problems resulting from our existing nuclear fleet. To this day, the Navajo nation is dealing with the legacy of uranium contamination, including more than 500 abandoned uranium mines and homes and water sources polluted with elevated levels of radiation.”

Michel Lee, chair of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy, calls “the passage of the ADVANCE Act the legislative equivalent of detonation of a nuclear weapon in our regulatory system.”

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service had extensively campaigned against the ADVANCE Act asking people, as a communication it sent out declared, “Please Ask Your Senators to Vote NO on the Nuclear Advance Act.”

It said: “The nuclear ADVANCE Act, a 93-page bill to promote expensive, dangerous, dirty, environmentally unjust nuclear power that could accelerate nuclear exports and weapons proliferation and allow foreign ownership/control of U.S. nuclear facilities, is hitching a ride …on the short Fire Grants and Safety.” It “shifts the mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to boosting more than regulating.”

As for “new nuclear power,” it said that “from mining to long-term waste management it violates environmental justice and relies on carbon at every step, is radioactively and chemically dirty, dangerous, expensive, slow, takes resources from true climate solutions and leaves intense, long-lasting radioactive waste that technically cannot be isolated for the eons it remains dangerous.”

Also campaigning against the act has been Beyond Nuclear which says: “The ADVANCE Act will significantly increase the risks of nuclear power by changing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s mandate from safety mandate from safety regulation to industry promotion…It would also promote new atomic reactors, and much more highly enriched nuclear fuel, both in the U.S. as well as overseas. This will worsen the hazards, harms and environmental injustices at each and every stage of the uranium fuel chain, from mining to highly radioactive waste dumping. The ADVANCE Act’s allowing of foreign ownership of nuclear facilities in the U.S., and its promotion of High Assay Low-Enriched Uranium fuel, both domestically and overseas, will also significantly increase nuclear weapons proliferation .”

The Sierra Club has opposed the act. In a letter to Senator Majority Leader Charles Schumer, it has declared: “Nuclear power is not a solution to the climate crisis. Spending precious federal resources on nuclear power only takes away from the desperately needed development of a clean, affordable and more equitable energy system powered by renewable energy. Passage of the ADVANCE Act…will lock in the use of dirty, dangerous and expensive nuclear power for a generation.”

“As a result of this legislation ,” the letter continued, “we would expect to see the production of vast amounts of uranium mining and mill tailings waste, even hotter high level radioactive waste, for which there is no final plan for isolation, and depleted uranium that becomes more radioactive over one million years. Additionally, the expansion of nuclear power will result in more so-called “low-level” radioactive waste going into unlined trenches and the release of radioactive liquids and gasses into the air, water and environment from every reactor around the country and around the world.”

Also opposing the act has been Food and Water Watch whose executive director, Wenonah Hauter, has said: “Senator Schumer’s apparent embrace of new nuclear energy development represents a stark betrayal of the clean, safe renewable energy options like wind and solar that he claims to champion. The Senate and President Biden must quickly come to their senses and reject the dangerous and unaffordable false promises of toxic nuclear energy.”

Among many other groups opposing the ADVANCE Act have been:  Climate Justice Alliance, Environment America, Friends of the Earth, Institute for Policy Studies, Indigenous Environmental Network, Science and Environmental Health Network, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Waterspirit, 350 New Orleans, Earth Action, Inc., Endangered Species Coalition, Long Island Progressive Coalition and Methane Action.

In regard to the “follow the money,” that element of Congressional support of the ADVANCE Act was certainly also a factor. Politico in 2011 ran an article headlined: “Nuclear lobbyists clout felt on Hill.”

“Facing its biggest crisis in 25 years, the U.S. nuclear power industry can count on plenty of Democratic and Republican friends in both high and low places,” began the piece by Darren Samuelsohn. “During the past election cycle alone, the Nuclear Energy Institute and more than a dozen companies with big nuclear portfolios have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to lawmakers in key leadership slots and across influential state delegations.”

The Nuclear Energy Institute, “the industry’s biggest voice in Washington, for example, spent $3.76 million to lobby the federal government and an additional $323,000 through its political action committee on a bipartisan congressional slate, inclu2ding 134 House and 30 Senate candidates…”

“Nearly all of the investor-owned power companies that operate U.S. nuclear reactors play in the donation game,” said the article.

That was last decade, but times on this issue don’t change.

The post Congress’s Nuclear Addiction appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Karl Grossman.

Photograph Source: Chic Bee – CC BY 2.0

What explains the Biden Administration’s obsession with the Houthis and the Pentagon’s almost daily launching of missile and air strikes on targets in Yemen? The ostensible rationale is to protect shipping in the Red Sea. Yet, other Arab allied nations, with the exception of Bahrain (a country that houses the largest US military base in the region), have not joined Biden’s very limited “coalition of the willing.”

There are certainly geopolitical considerations behind this latest in a long line of US military interventions in the region and, indeed, around the globe. However, the desire by this and so many other preceding administrations to remain the “indispensable” nation constitutes a determining ideological commitment so such interventions. Thus, to wage war on designated enemies in the middle east, as in Yemen, or to enable US allies, like Israel, to devastate the population of Gaza is a key and lethal component for the US of being the “indispensable” nation.

One particular pertinent insight into the ideology of “indispensability” was delivered early in the so-called “War on Terror” by Emmanuel Todd. According to Todd, “the US is pretending to remain the world’s indispensable superpower by attacking insignificant adversaries. But this America – a militaristic, agitated, uncertain, anxious country, projecting its own disorder around the globe – is hardly the indispensable nation it claims to be and is certainly not what the rest of the world really needs now.”

It should not be a surprise to anyone who has studied US history (and not the whitewashed version being peddled by the right-wing culture warriors) that war and empire have been integral to the birth, expansion, and global hegemony of this nation. So many of us writing about the long history of US involvement with war and empire have underscored its devastating effects on its victims abroad, but also on the population at home (see, for example, Dying Empire)

With such a deeply-rooted engagement with empire and war, it is not surprising that this connection has metastasized into an addiction. Using elements from the Merriam-Webster definition of addiction, the following symptoms could apply to the US: “a compulsive, chronic…psychological need for a habit-forming behavior or activity having harmful…psychological and social effects.”

Of course, any addition takes place within an environment that becomes conducive to that addiction. In turn, there are forces within that environment that are critical to the reinforcement of that addiction. In this regard, I want to highlight the part played by a pivotal pusher in this addiction. Like so many enablers of those with a biochemical addiction, the drug dealers, whether in Big Pharma, or other predatory profiteers, operate in the shadows, hiding either behind corporate immunities or extensive shadow networks.

In the case of the arm dealers who feed the war machine and its imperial operations, there is a clear revolving door between the Pentagon, Congress, and the arms industry. According to a 2022 Senate report, among the leading US defense (sic) contractors, there were close to 700 former government officials offering their “expertise” to those helping to enable the addiction to war and empire. Even with so-called reforms in this revolving door, there is now more access and less transparency. The pusher men just keep the nation strung-out.

With the continuing obscenely growing Pentagon budget (without even an audit – Al Capone must be turning over in envy is his grave!) – now close to $900 billion (larger than the defense expenditures of the next eight countries combined!) – there is at least a public record to record this trope of addiction. Of the top six weapons manufacturers in the world, five are in the US. They are General Dynamics, Northrup Gruman, Raytheon (now RTX), Boeing, and Lockheed Martin Corp. Not only are they pushers in the US, but for a ten-year period through 2019, US arms exports averaged around $162 billion. And, of course, one of the biggest recipients with special deals and expedited service was and is Israel where now US-made weapons are slaughtering innocent Gazans by the tens of thousands.

This awful addiction, while profitable for some, is, thus, deadly to others and, even, debilitating to the whole nation. Taking on this addiction and its pushers is a never-ending and difficult task. However, we owe it to the world and to ourselves to help kick this habit. The sooner, the better!

The post Yeh Man, the U.S. Has an Addiction to War and Empire appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Fran Shor.

Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.

— Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme, (Penguin Books, 1994): p.13.

Getting back into fasting after a break is difficult. In the past, I would fast for two days in every week, but occasionally challenged myself to extend that by a day or two, maybe three, until one day — evidently one day too many — I collapsed like a device unplugged and cracked my head on the sink and toilet bowl on the way down to the stone floor. Syncope is a lovely word, but I wouldn’t recommend the experience.

These days I opt for intermittent fasting, restricting food intake to an eight-hour window in every twenty-four. Thereafter, not even a wee measly sliver of dried mango, a peanut, a prune, a gherkin or grape is allowed through the gate. I don’t starve, but the tantalising whiff of someone’s bag of salt and vinegar-sprinkled chips occasionally tempts me to tap them on the shoulder and ask for one. I assure myself the craving will pass, but not before the prospect of finishing a whole bag alongside a slice of pizza topped with garlic, herbs and Kalamata olives floods the mind…adding a cake by way of dessert to complete the repertoire of gluttony.

Such efforts to control cravings for energy-dense foods are effectively attempts to discipline the savannah brain, more specifically the adaptive preferences for salt, sugars and fats inherited from our evolutionary ancestors. These nutrients are essential to human survival, but whilst they are in abundance for around seven of the eight billion people that currently inhabit the planet, they were most likely rather more scarce in our ancestral environment. Moreover, our ancestors did not live the sedentary lifestyle many of us have today, with all the calorific consequences this implies.

Anticipating famine further down the line, our ancestral urge would be to eat as much as possible of these essential foods whenever found in copious quantities. This inclination remains with us today, but converts to overdrive in circumstances where foods are widely available, made worse by being processed in forms that render them health-threatening and addictive. By imposing a limit on eating times, intermittent fasting therefore serves as a corrective to some of our evolved proclivities — those urges more in keeping with our ancestral environment — and if combined with a high quality diet a relationship with politics is necessarily established; it might not deliver a mortal blow to the ultra-processed food industry, but combined with a whole-food plant-based vegan diet it has a part to play in heightening resistance to some of the shadier tendencies of the food monopolists.

What does politics have to do with what we put in our mouths? Salt, fats, sugars and various additives are today produced in combined, and often concentrated forms by powerful multinational food corporations — global multi-billion dollar concerns that typically pound the public with adverts illustrating people looking like mindless zombies guzzling sugary drinks, emptying cardboard boxes of sugary cereal into breakfast bowls, and devouring unhealthy concoctions of deep-fried dead things from buckets. Their express aim is to maximise profit by exploiting the palatability of desired nutrients, the preference for calories, and the pleasure-seeking pathways — the latter being an increase in dopamine in the brain’s reward circuit, or to put it another way, the habit of liking something, getting a kick out of it, and wanting more. Many people are consequently undernourished, and in one sense starving, not because there is a scarcity of food in the category of good dietary quality, but because there is an abundance of cheap and available energy-dense foods.

The correlation between ultra-processed foods, obesity and food-related illnesses continues into the realm of food addiction. A glance at the criteria for determining addiction in the DSM-5, (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders), shows people who regularly consume foods rich in salt, fats and sugars conform to the stated criteria for addiction — a condition on a par with being hooked on cigarettes, though many self-report their experience to be far worse. These criteria include repeated consumption despite known harmful consequences, needing more of the substance to get the effect you want, wanting to cut down or stop but not managing to, craving to use the substance, and the experience of withdrawal.

It’s not difficult to find evidence that links highly-processed foods with obesity or illness among people of all age groups and all social classes, including their pets, but evidence does indicate a higher incidence of obesity and food addiction among lower income groups. That being said, not everyone suffering from food addiction or food-related illnesses is clinically obese. Whether we deem the continued use of highly processed foods the result of one factor, or a combination of several — biological, socioeconomic, behavioural or substance-related — it is perhaps unsurprising that many people, on becoming aware that they face life-threatening conditions, enter a 12-step recovery programme.

Food addiction and food-related illnesses are set to become our highest health concern. Setting a trend for the world, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023 stated that over 40% of adults and 20% of children and adolescents in the USA are obese, whilst 70% of adults overall are overweight. Those rates are currently lower in Europe, but the trend is no less troubling. Obesity Statistics from the House of Commons Library in 2023 suggest UK obesity rates are running at 25% for adults and children, and that almost 40% of adults are overweight. The Scottish Government’s Health Survey of 2022 indicates that the highest rates of obesity and related illnesses in the UK are in Scotland, and those health risks include diabetes, strokes, sleep apnea, dyslipidemia, hypertension, coronary artery disease, fatty liver disease, a variety of cancers, and possibly cognitive dysfunction — such as poor decision-making and memory impairment.

In light of the individual suffering, the increasing strain on medical services, and what amounts to an impending societal if not global health catastrophe, the heavily-marketed campaign for intermittent fasting should have proved highly beneficial. The overwhelming focus of the programme, however, was not on individuals relinquishing highly processed foods, but simply on their reduction by restricting food consumption within set times. This was a widely-advertised lifestyle intervention, not a challenge to the dark side of the food industry, and as such it was hardly the worst outcome for the unsavoury food giants: continue eating rubbish, just less rubbish.

One might argue that any reduction in food intake, even at the level of basic survival mode, is welcome during an epidemic of obesity-related problems — an epidemic that is currently affecting a quarter of the world’s population. But endorsing highly-processed and addictive foods on the intermittent fasting programme, albeit in lesser quantities, not only leaves people ultimately facing failure and a range of health problems, it somewhat suspiciously sidesteps the chance to publicly condemn the food giants. When one considers the vast number of television programmes and magazine articles devoted to dieting, one can’t help but wonder if perhaps a parasitical connection exists between the dieting industry and the food giants, and whether they are in fact motivated to kill their host. Fat, after all, is a monetarist issue.

The effectiveness of intermittent fasting hinges on the extent to which it is allied to programmes of high dietary quality, otherwise it is no better than the ludicrous calorie-counting diets, some of which even allow chocolate bars and cakes to be counted. If they include foods that are correlated with health concerns, and with added sugars that render them potentially addictive, then even if they help people to lose excess weight, it is difficult to see how they could hope to clear a pathway to optimal levels of health and longevity. On the self-discipline front, speaking from personal experience, intermittent fasting combined with a high quality diet has worked well in the context of everyday circumstances. However, I must admit that when I’m out of the country, fasting all but goes out the window.

Wandering in foreign parts, as I often do these days, it’s easy to lose track of time and for fasting boundaries to become outrageously stretched. Being vegan, there is the additional challenge of finding suitable food, of laboriously checking ingredients, and of struggling to explain across the language barrier what should be left out of prepared meals. After a while it gets easier to navigate, and even in the once vegan-oriented but now notoriously meat-heavy Japan, I eventually located vegan restaurants in Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima, found options in restaurants that were otherwise a horror show, and eventually sampled the buddhist cuisine of shojin-ryori.

Although vegan alternatives are not always on advertised menus, they can often be conjured up if asked. Even in those obscure and in some respects forbidding narrow alleyways, some with vents of rising steam that one might imagine belong to a mythical underworld, people with a pot, a flame and a mix of ingredients will often cobble together something on the vegan front, and in fact I think many folk find the challenge fun. Food is frequently the lingua franca in interethnic situations, of which veganism has often proved to be a particular dialect that many of the people I met were curious to learn.

There have, however, been communication failures. By way of a well-meaning meat alternative, I’ve been offered a variety-bag of deep-fried long-legged bugs, a bowl of baby octopuses with quail eggs stuffed into their brains, and manure-scented peanut brittle; the latter I licked, causing a week-long bout of projectile vomiting and propulsive diarrhoea. I wanted to die. On the plus side, the food poisoning did render it a little easier to get back on the intermittent fasting track once home…not that I’m recommending that particular course for anyone.

Places where monks hang out are always a fair bet, and I’ve been offered vegan platters in or around Buddhist monasteries in Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, Sikh gurdwaras, Jain basadis and Krishna temples across India, Taoist pagodas in Vietnam and Cambodia, and Hindu mandirs throughout Indonesia. The trend continued in Malaysia and Borneo, where the most edifying establishments, built from the ground up for moral instruction and intellectual nourishment, tend also to be the best eating joints…or to be neighbouring them.

Among several areas in which temple followers excelled and I failed was fasting. I have often been beckoned by the aroma of sizzling street food wafting through the tropical night air, and must admit to having devoured a wee Pad Thai at midnight — well outside my fasting hours. In my defence, it is difficult to stick rigidly to a fasting regime whilst wandering wildly for miles in vast areas ten thousand kilometres from home, and when uncertain where the next meal will come from. Stirring up the atavistic remnants of our distant ancestors, I’ve eaten heartily when food was in abundance in preparation for anticipated periods of scarcity, and occasionally compromised to the extent of eating highly processed foods that are potentially detrimental to health. Interrupted fasting might be a more apposite name for my version of intermittent fasting — when I’m abroad, at any rate — but at least I’ve not strayed from the vegan path.

On that side of things it was disheartening to learn that the Jainist, Hindu and Buddhist priests, monks and nuns I encountered — whilst at the level of rhetoric they avowedly adhere to the principles of ahimsa: of having respect for all living things, and the avoidance of violence towards others — were not in fact vegan. If not meat itself, monks and adherents to each of these religious orders, though there were some exceptions, use dairy, and consequently commodify nonhuman animals for personal benefit. Perhaps many would hope to find consolation in the fact that they are vegetarian, but this is no less barbaric than the exploitation of animals as things for clothes or meat and various products. Bizarrely, some Buddhist orders formally announced meat-eating to be at the discretion of the individual — a position that not only contradicts the principle of ahimsa, but effectively condones violence towards all.

One could no more tolerate violence selectively applied towards particular groups of sentient beings, than one could selectively condone human rights abuses, or selectively discriminate against particular religious or ethnic groups. Just as it is not possible to disentangle exploitation from violence, animal or human, there is an equivalence between speciesism and other forms of discrimination, such as sexism and racism. For their perception of ahimsa to be anything less than hypocrisy, they would need to stop eating, wearing, and otherwise using nonhuman animals. Breaking the rules of fasting, and even crossing the line for short periods into the terrain of ultra-processed foods, is one thing, but the moral injustice of exploiting sentient beings as objects of property, no less than human slavery, is quite another.

Becoming vegan does not mean that by definition one upholds the principle of non-violence towards all, but it is impossible to uphold that principle without first becoming vegan. There are many countries around the world with a relatively high percentage of vegans among their population, and occasionally we even hear boasts of a commitment to the extent that the uniforms and boots of their military are made of vegan materials, yet some have a reputation for oppression, war, ethnic cleansing, and a wide range of human rights abuses. Becoming vegan will not automatically render us any less the most murderous species on Earth, but we cannot hope to reverse that trend unless we become vegan.

Precisely because they participate in the exploitation of nonhuman animals, the meat-eater who professes a commitment to spiritual, ethical or indeed socialist principles is at best deeply flawed in their thinking, and at worst morally suspect. The fact that non-human animals are sentient beings that avoid pain, and have a desire to live their lives to the full, renders veganism a moral imperative. In other words — and quite apart from the benefits conferred by veganism with regard to personal health, the global climate, and world hunger — killing animals is clearly contrary to reason and to what is morally right. Whilst it is generally and somewhat misguidedly packaged and promoted as simply a consumer choice, personal preference or lifestyle option, veganism is at heart a moral and political way of life, one that by necessity fits with campaigns against violence, and with social movements against oppression in all its forms.

In the 1820s, the French politician and author of The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, cautioned, “The destiny of nations depends on the way in which they feed themselves.” It is a statement that implies the choices we make about the future begin with the next meal. To put it yet another way, to change the world, start with yourself.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Tritschler.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Photograph Source: Rivers A. Langley – CC BY-SA 3.0

Alabama’s addiction to torturing poor people—disproportionately Black and brown people, and more often than not, people who are severely mentally ill—with inhumane correctional institutions, a dysfunctional parole system, and, in some cases, a secretive and sadistic lethal injection protocol, has been going on for so long, overwhelmingly, Alabamians and Americans are desensitized to it.

Leadership and meaningful—forceful and coercive federal—intervention must be employed to put a stop to it.

Unless you were born yesterday—or, unless your head’s been long-encased in a big block of sand—it’s fair to say, isn’t it: 2023 would be an atypical year in the 21st century if shocking stories weren’t being reported with regularity about Alabama torturing its prisoners—some condemned, and some not—sometimes to death?

In part, that’s why most people—even caring, compassionate people around the country—barely batted an eyelash when news emerged recently that Alabama’s Attorney General’s office had asserted, abominably, in a federal court filing, that the state is, after years of threatening, finally prepared to gas its condemned prisoners to death with nitrogen. The state’s attorneys have since heeded the prison system’s insistence it’s actually “not ready” to gas flesh-and-blood humans to death just yet; backtracking from its good-to-go-on-gassing hubris, the state now maintains, instead, in the face of some condemned prisoners’ willingness to choose virtually anything over Alabama’s current method of execution—colloquially called its “rattlesnake rodeo”—that Alabama’s gassing-to-death protocol is still being fine-tuned, and isn’t quite ready for “prime time”; “roll tide” soon though.

Admitting to “butter fingers” right now about deploying a new and untested method of execution, gassing condemned prisoners with nitrogen, is in some respect, a measure of improvement when it comes to Alabama’s recognition of its own limitations and shortcomings in the killing department.

Having “botched” 3 lethal injections in a row last year—and, with a track record long before that of slicing open with knives, serially sticking with needles, and chemically burning-drowning-and-suffocating its condemned prisoners—no one with any sense thinks Alabama’s first lethal injection execution of the year, that of James Barber, scheduled to occur sometime on July 20-21st, is going to go “smoothly”—much less humanely, and not cruelly and unusually.

Indeed Barber’s attorneys maintain “Barber faces a substantial risk of serious harm because, as the Eleventh Circuit already recognized, the ADOC has demonstrated a recent ‘pattern of superadding pain through protracted efforts to establish IV access.’”

Already strong, this argument received a considerable boost in separate litigation when U.S. District Judge Austin R. Huffaker Jr. ruledKenneth Smith—whom the state tortured but did not kill in November—made plausible claims that the state would violate the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments if it tries to execute him again by lethal injection.

As reported by Al.com, “Huffaker, in his opinion and order issued [July 5], said Smith plausibly alleged pain and suffering during his execution attempt that went beyond receiving multiple sticks with needles in attempts to tap his veins.”

Huffaker wrote “Alabama has released no information about [its self-professed] ‘top to bottom’ [but in actuality short-lived, sham internal] review that shows it has fixed the problems that happened during the last three executions.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Barber’s attorneys’ arguments in this regard have mimicked Huffaker’s conclusions, though even more cynically they point out the only publicly released change Alabama has made to its execution protocol since 2022—“the Year of Classic and Continuous Botched Alabama Executions”—is to add additional restraint straps to its execution gurney.

So what of “intervention”—forceful federal intervention—I submit is needed to end Alabama’s unchecked addiction to torturing its prisoners—prisoners like James Barber, the next man set to be squeezed to death in the heart of Dixie’s torture-vise?

In October of 2021, I argued that supposed death penalty abolitionists such as billionaire Richard Branson, his fellow “progressive-minded” billionaires, and, President Biden too for that matter (on behalf of one of the biggest businesses of all, the federal government), should put their money where their mouth is and: Stop investing money in states that perpetuate capital punishment, such as Alabama, until those states stop killing people.

This followed logically from my previously made—but still unheeded—proposal in April 2021: What if President Biden enacted a policy stating, henceforth, no federal dollars can be spent for trainings or conferences in pro-death penalty states like Alabama?

Now, in 2023, I want to add what would be yet another undeniably effective “bully pulpit” tactic President Biden should immediately deploy—if his administration has the inclination to live up to its previous campaign promise on capital punishment—and that’s this: The Biden administration should do just what it recently threatened to do over its concerns about Alabama’s restrictive abortion law, and threaten to halt plans to move U.S. Space Command’s headquarters from Colorado to Alabama.

Morally, ethically, and politically (for progressives at least), it makes no sense for the Biden administration to not hold back big money-making carrots from Alabama over its disregard and disrespect of abortion rights, thereby effectively prodding the state with a powerful stick, and not also do so over other important human rights issues generally—such as prisoners’ rights; this includes the right to not be subject to torture via unconscionable prison conditions, or, in the pursuit of vengeful capital punishment.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Stephen Cooper.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

A great way to honor Earth Day 2023 (April 22) would be to accelerate our efforts to end our destructive addiction to oil.

The first step toward recovery from any addiction is to tell the truth—admit the addiction, acknowledge its consequences. Yet this is something we still seem unwilling to do with our addiction to oil. It is always easier for addicts to just stay high instead of confronting their addiction and committing to recovery.

The recently approved Willow oil project in Arctic Alaska is just the most recent example of America's persistent oil addiction, just another needle in the arm of an old oil junkie.

While government and industry continue to extol the short-term benefits of oil, they remain unwilling to tell the truth about its long-term costs.

Sooner or later, we will get to the far side of our troubled oil addiction, as we will run out of the stuff. But the sooner we get there, the better chance we have at a sustainable future

Some costs are obvious. Oil spills, such as the 1989 Exxon Valdez in Alaska and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, are easily recognizable disasters that attract widespread public condemnation. Thirty-four years after the Alaska spill and 13 years after Deepwater Horizon, coastal ecosystems have still not fully recovered and toxic oil remains in shoreline sediments. Many oil-producing areas of the world, such as the Niger Delta, the Caspian Sea, and Siberia, have suffered decades of oil spills.

But the true cost of oil goes far beyond the obvious damage from spills. More gradual, less visible costs of oil include ecological habitat degradation from exploration, production, and pipelines; health costs from breathing air polluted with fossil fuel emissions; urban sprawl and traffic congestion around all major cities of the world; and seemingly endless wars fought to secure oil supplies, like Iraq and Sudan, costing thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

Climate change from carbon emissions is incurring enormous present and future costs--storm damage, drought, wildfires, lost agricultural productivity, infrastructure damage, climate refugees, disease, forest decline, marine ecosystem collapse, species extinctions, and lost ecosystem services. Global climate change costs already exceed $1 trillion a year, and will continue to rise. Insurance companies predict that by mid-century, climate change could reduce the global economy by $23 trillion annually.

And wherever it is produced, there is a "socio-political toxicity" of oil, a significant distortion of economic, social, and political systems. Rather than the prosperity promised, oil discoveries around the world often become more curse than blessing, causing social dysfunction, assimilation of indigenous cultures, runaway inflation, a decline in traditional exports, excess consumption, abuse of political power, overextended government spending, and unsustainable growth. Former Venezuelan oil minister Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, a founder of OPEC and once a true believer in the promise of oil, thought differently after he saw the corruption, greed, waste, and debt it caused, then calling oil "the devil's excrement."

Post-pandemic world oil use continues to rise, last year hitting a historic high of 100 million barrels a day, and still climbing. To date, the world has pumped and burned over one trillion barrels of oil, and there may be another trillion barrels of recoverable "conventional" oil left, with several trillion barrels in unconventional reserves such as tar sands; oil shales, like the huge Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming; and heavy oil deposits.

If we want a sustainable future, we'll have to leave most of this oil buried right where it is, as the global climate cannot handle that much additional carbon. But the carbon pushers see hundreds of billions of dollars just waiting to be extracted, and are anxious to get to it. As with any addiction, when the easy stuff is gone and supplies tighten, addicts become desperate and willing to take more risk to secure the next fix, such as drilling in the Arctic and deep ocean basin.

While president George W. Bush stunned the world in his 2006 State of Union speech, stating that: "we have a serious problem, America is addicted to oil," his administration did nothing to help recover from the addiction. And despite candidate Obama's promise to end "the tyranny of oil," and that, if elected, "the rise of the oceans will begin to slow," as president, Obama was more oil enthusiast, boasting that: "We're opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We've quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth, and then some." As a result of such federal deference to oil advocates, the U.S. is now the top oil producer in the world. The tyranny of oil continues, and seas continue to rise.

Oil-producing governments the world over—including the U.S.—are 'captured' and controlled by oil interests that dictate policies to limit regulation, lower taxation, and to favor production and demand for oil over development of low-carbon alternatives. The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United ruling now allows oil companies to pour unlimited funds into oil-friendly candidates and issues, without public disclosure. Media is awash in ads keeping us hooked on the stuff.

The International Monetary Fund reports that governments encourage our fossil fuel addiction with annual subsidies of some $5.9 trillion. Such subsidies artificially depress prices and encourage "demand;" detract from government spending on health care, education, and social services; and keep alternative energy "uncompetitive." A 1998 study estimated that for every gallon of gasoline we bought at the pump, we were actually paying as much as $14 a gallon in additional "hidden" costs. Yet, we continue to ignore these hidden costs, paying for some indirectly through income taxes, and deferring most to future generations. We are tricking ourselves into using "cheap and easy" oil as fast as we can pump it out of the ground.

Clearly, the drug pushers are running the show.

And perhaps the most pernicious cost of oil is that it has fueled an unprecedented degradation of the global biosphere. With access to artificially "cheap and easy" oil over the past century, human population quadrupled and resource consumption increased many times more, now significantly exceeding the Home Planet's carrying capacity. Without access to fossil carbon, humanity would almost certainly have evolved on a more sustainable trajectory. By not accounting for its true cost, oil has allowed us to dig ourselves deeper into an unsustainable hole. The environmental debt we are accruing is far larger and more consequential than our national financial debt.

Governments should have begun acting on this decades ago.

I recall after the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, when Vice President Dan Quayle visited Prince William Sound, Alaska, to see the extensive spill damage first hand, and then met with a few of us local citizens in a private meeting at the tiny airport in Cordova Alaska.

As the clear, transcendent lesson of the Exxon Valdez oil spill was that we needed to reduce our use of oil, in that 1989 meeting I asked the VP—"Shouldn't the Exxon Valdez oil spill motivate us to adopt a progressive national energy policy that reduces our use of oil?" The VP's answer: "Well, I like fusion, you know, there is fission and there is fusion....and I like fusion."

Well, so did we, but there were of course many other things that the U.S. government could and should have done then to begin the transition to a low carbon energy economy–funding to increase energy efficiency and alternative energy, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, instituting a carbon tax, and so on.

But absolutely nothing changed. Nothing. We simply continued to dig our fossil fuel hole deeper. And that is our historic, catastrophic failure. Our collective shame.

What a different world we would have now if, back in 1989 when atmospheric CO ₂ was at 350 ppm and global emissions were 22 billion tons/year, the oil industry and its Republican supplicants had just gotten the hell out of the way of the science and progressive low-carbon energy policy proposals. Today, CO₂ is over 420 ppm, emissions are 40 billion tons/year, both continuing to rise.

If we had acted then, we would now be well along on our path to a low-carbon energy economy, perhaps over the hump, reducing atmospheric CO ₂ levels and global temperature. Imagine that—Arctic sea ice and permafrost reforming; Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets stabilizing; ocean ecosystems recovering; wildfires, floods, drought, heat waves, and weather disasters declining; coastal erosion subsiding; agriculture improving; oil wars a thing of the past; and overall global prosperity increasing.

Instead, these selfish oil zealots saw trillions of dollars of oil just lying in the ground and seabed waiting to be exploited. They wanted it, they got it, and they got piles of money in their pockets—all at the expense of the planet and humanity's future. This is one of the most extraordinary failures in human history.

As the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded, while time is running out, there is still time to act on this. Every gram of hydrocarbons we keep in the ground now will help stabilize our future.

So for this Earth Day, let's get serious about kicking the fossil fuel habit with better regulation and full costing of carbon. The full "social cost of carbon" has been estimated by the federal government at $50 - $100 per ton of CO ₂, and with global emissions now at 40 billion tons per year, this amounts to $2 trillion - $4 trillion annually. This is the amount of money needed to solve this problem. When we account for these very real costs, sustainable alternatives become competitive, and we begin to make rational choices.

Governments must accelerate the clean energy transition by shifting fossil fuel subsidies to sustainable low-carbon alternatives, reducing emissions through regulation, and instituting a carbon tax to help capture the long-term cost of carbon emissions. While the Group of 20 (G20) industrialized nations enacted a 15% global minimum corporate tax in 2021, the G20 has so far failed to enact a global minimum carbon tax. Until this is done, we will continue to trick ourselves into using fossil fuels at artificially reduced costs, projecting the real and dire costs on to future generations. Please engage your elected officials on this.

Sooner or later, we will get to the far side of our troubled oil addiction, as we will run out of the stuff. But the sooner we get there, the better chance we have at a sustainable future.

Then, like most recovering addicts, we will wonder why we didn't get clean sooner.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Rick Steiner.

The 36-page communiqué came out of a weekend meeting for ministers from the Group of Seven (G7)—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus the European Union. Japan hosted the ministerial event in Sapporo and is set to welcome world leaders from those nations to Hiroshima next month.

Allowing the G7's "addiction to fossil fuels to continue with their unsustainable consumption will have dangerous consequences for people and ecosystems," warned Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International.

"Every new investment in planet-heating fossil fuels is a death sentence for the vulnerable communities who are already facing devastating storms, floods, and rising seas," Singh said. "The rich, industrialized countries are also shirking their responsibilities to provide adequate finance to help poorer nations adapt to and recover from the losses and damages caused by climate disasters."

"Every new investment in planet-heating fossil fuels is a death sentence for the vulnerable communities who are already facing devastating storms, floods, and rising seas."

Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development, declared that "instead of delivering on climate finance obligations and fulfilling last year's commitment to end public finance for fossil fuels by the end of 2022, this year's Japan-led G7 continues its shameful disregard for what people and planet urgently need—a rapid, equitable, and just transition directly to renewable energy systems."

Referencing the bolder goal of the 2015 Paris agreement, the communiqué states that "we underline our commitment, in the context of a global effort, to accelerate the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels so as to achieve net-zero in energy systems by 2050 at the latest in line with the trajectories required to limit global average temperatures to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, and call on others to join us in taking the same action."

However, noting the energy impacts of Russia's war on Ukraine, the statement adds that "investment in the gas sector can be appropriate to help address potential market shortfalls provoked by the crisis, subject to clearly defined national circumstances, and if implemented in a manner consistent with our climate objectives and without creating lock-in effects, for example by ensuring that projects are integrated into national strategies for the development of low-carbon and renewable hydrogen."

Oil Change International (OCI) earlier this month published a briefing about how major economies—particularly the G7 countries Japan, the United States, Italy, and Germany—have poured billions of dollars of public financing into new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal capacity over the past decade. That document followed the group's March report calling out multiple countries for breaking their promise to swiftly cut off public finance for international fossil fuel projects.

Pointing to the Group of Seven's related pledge from last year, OCI public finance campaign co-manager Laurie van der Burg said Thursday that a new International Energy Agency analysis "reinforces that for the G7 not to jeopardize the 1.5°C global warming limit, they must not backslide on this commitment by endorsing new gas investments."

"The science is crystal clear that leaving the door open to investments in new gas or LNG leaves the G7 off track for 1.5°C," van der Burg stressed Sunday. "In addition, the claim that last year's G7 commitment to end international fossil fuel finance has been met is an outright lie as evidenced by new investments in fossil fuel projects."

"G7 leaders must next month fully close the door to investments in new gas and LNG and instead maximize on their opportunity to shift billions in public money out of fossil fuels and into the clean energy solutions that can build a more energy secure, sustainable, and affordable future," she said. "The U.K., Canada, and France have shown this can be done, Japan, Germany, Italy, and the United States must urgently catch up."

Along with the gas language in the communiqué, "Japan won endorsements from fellow G7 countries for its own national strategy emphasizing so-called clean coal, hydrogen, and nuclear energy to help ensure its energy security," The Associated Pressreported, explaining that a timeline to phase out coal "is a long-standing sticking point" because the nation relies on it for nearly a third of its power generation.

"This G7 ministerial revealed Japan's failure of climate leadership at a global level," charged OCI Asia program manager Susanne Wong. "At a time when we rapidly need to phase out fossil fuels, this year's G7 host pushed for the expansion of gas and LNG and technologies that would prolong the use of coal. We need Japan to stop prioritizing corporate interests and derailing the transition to clean energy with its dirty energy strategy."

Friends of the Earth Japan campaigner Hiroki Osada similarly argued that the country "has become both a promise-breaker and Earth-destroyer at the same time by continuing to finance fossil fuel projects overseas."

"With no time to waste to address climate change, nothing can justify new investment in fossil fuels, and no exceptions can be allowed," Osada added. "Japan should immediately end international financial support to fossil fuels in line with its G7 commitment, and should also commit to a complete phase-out from coal by 2030."

"LNG is... a bridge that ends in a hotter, more dangerous world for all of us, especially the world's most vulnerable people and ecosystems."

While campaigners certainly took aim at Japan, they also criticized other nations represented at the meeting.

"The effects of Italy's nonexistent implementation of its stop funding fossils pledge are beginning to reverberate on the international scene, now also with the Japan-led G7 ministerial," said Simone Ogno of ReCommon Italy. "We urge that the other G7 members like France and the U.K. work to bring both governments back on track. This is especially important as Italy is scheduled to host the G7 next year."

Leading up to the meeting this weekend, climate campaigners told U.S. President Joe Biden that "the global LNG boom must be stopped in its tracks," warning of the impacts on frontline communities, and were outraged when his administration approved a liquefied natural gas project in Alaska, on the heels of greenlighting ConocoPhillips' Willow oil development in the state.

"LNG is not a bridge fuel to a clean energy future," Leah Qusba, executive director of Action for the Climate Emergency, wrote Friday for The Hill, highlighting the resulting methane emissions. "It's a bridge that ends in a hotter, more dangerous world for all of us, especially the world's most vulnerable people and ecosystems."

After the meeting, OCI United States program manager Collin Rees said that "despite G7 ministers' rhetorical games, new investments in gas and LNG cannot be 'consistent with our climate objectives.' This is a deadly lie inconsistent with science and justice."

"Joe Biden's team signing off on this language rings dangerously hollow just days after he approved a massive LNG project in Alaska that, if built, will devastate communities and the climate for decades," Rees continued. "Biden must stand up to Japan's dirty energy lobby at the G7 and stop doing the gas industry's bidding at home."

Biden's climate envoy, John Kerry, even acknowledged during a Sunday interview with the AP that the international community has made progress over the past few years, "but we're not doing everything we said we'd do."

"A lot of countries need to step up, including ours, to reduce emissions faster, deploy renewables faster, bring new technologies online faster, all of that has to happen," said Kerry, who attended the meeting in Japan.

"If we're going to be responsible, we have to turn around and figure out how we are going to more rapidly terminate the emissions," he added. "We have to cut the emissions that are warming the planet and heading us inexorably toward several tipping points beyond which there is no reverse."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

The post The US Addiction to War and Militarism Continues 20 Years after the Illegal Invasion of Iraq appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Project Censored.

In a bid to increase its energy security, Beijing approved the highest new coal capacity in eight years, increasing coal power project by 45%, or 77 gigawatts (GW), climate change think-tank E3G said in a report released on March 14.

It means China’s total pre-construction pipeline is 250 GW. The world’s largest carbon emitter currently has another 115 coal power projects under construction.

“The second half of 2022 saw the largest-ever increase in pre-construction capacity in China… The scale of China’s renewed coal boom has reversed some of the gains made globally,” the group said in its report.

“As of July 2022, global new coal proposals had fallen by 75% since the Paris Agreement in 2015. This was reduced to 72% by the end of 2022.”

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel and the single largest source of global carbon emissions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), it supplies just over a third of global electricity generation.

E3G said China alone accounts for 72% of the world’s future projects, up from 66% in July 2022. The next five largest countries – India, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia and Turkey – accounted for 18%, while 27 countries made up the last 10%.

“Almost every country and region in the world has stopped planning new coal power stations, and many have now canceled all remaining projects,” said Leo Roberts, a program lead at E3G.

“This is a huge step towards keeping global heating below 1.5°c. Unfortunately, a renewed coal boom in China is sending it off on a diverging pathway from the rest of the world, at potentially massive cost to the climate and China itself.”

In Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Laos fare poorly

Apart from China, only seven new coal projects were proposed worldwide in the last six months of 2022, including six reactivated projects in India and one new “industrial coal” project in Indonesia.

Jakarta canceled or shelved several coal projects last year while agreeing to a U.S.$20 billion dollar financing package for its Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with G7 countries to transition from coal to clean power. 

Vietnam, also a recipient of JETP, saw more than four-fifths, or 7 GW, of its planned coal capacity shelved or canceled since July, E3G said. It currently has six projects under construction.

Southeast Asia, seen as a coal power hub outside China, has experienced a shift away from such new projects in recent years.

“Total planned capacity in the region has contracted by 86% since 2015, including a 5% decline in the second half of 2022,” E3G noted. 

According to No New Coal Progress Tracker, Indonesia has seven coal power projects in the pipeline and 19 under construction. Similarly, Laos has seven in the pipeline, but none under construction, with a total capacity under consideration of 7 GW. 

Neighboring Cambodia and Thailand have one proposed coal project each in the pipeline. The Philippines introduced a moratorium on new permits to pre-construction coal power plants in 2020. It still has two in the pipeline and one under construction. 

Malaysia announced an end to new coal in its national energy plan in 2021, while Myanmar has no new coal power project planned. 

As of January, 65 nations had made a clear commitment to “No New Coal,” while 33 others have no new projects under consideration. China and 32 other countries, including Australia and Japan, have active planned projects for new coal power plants.

China loses its leadership role in climate action

In 2015, countries committed to taking action to restrict the rise in global temperature to no more than 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels. According to the IEA, achieving this objective would require a halt to constructing new unabated coal-fired power plants.

China’s proposed new coal capacity declined by 88% over 2015-2018 following Beijing’s successful introduction of controls to restrict runaway permits by provinces. By January 2019, pre-construction capacity had fallen to 76 GW, just 21% share of the global total.

Coal supplies more than half of China’s total energy consumption, even though it is also the world’s leader in renewables, with the largest manufacturing and consumption of solar panels, wind turbines and hydropower dams. 

During the 2021 Climate Summit, President Xi Jinping committed to “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects, and strictly limit the increase in coal consumption” and phasing them down by 2030 to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2060.

However, since the power shortages in 2021 and last year’s record heatwave, energy security concerns have haunted Beijing, forcing them to increase reliance on coal. The country imported 290 million metric tons of coal, according to Xinhua news agency.

Last week, outgoing Premier Li Keqiang said in his final National People’s Congress report that China “must unleash the role of coal as the main energy source, increase coal production capacity… and ensure a normal supply of energy.”

“China’s coal relapse has seen it lose its leadership position,” E3G said. 

“The coal resurgence across the country is a direct challenge to President Xi’s promise to rein in coal,” said Byford Tsang, a senior policy adviser at E3G.

“Ending the coal plant building spree should be a priority for China’s new cabinet. Doing so will save China from a costly detour on its energy transition and position China as a front-runner on climate.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Subel Rai Bhandari for RFA.

Photograph Source: United States Department of Justice – Public Domain

The mainstream media has done their best to scramble the information on classified documents and the issue of secrecy.  Because the media treasures the idea of balance and equivalence, it has unnecessarily equated the criminal culpability of Donald Trump and the sloppiness of Joe Biden’s staff.  The former led to Trump’s intentionally keeping large amounts of classified material at Mar-a-Lago; the latter led to small amounts of intelligence at Biden’s former office and his home.  Since I held high-level security clearances for more than four decades while in the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense, I have something to offer on the issue of secrets and secrecy.

First, there is a simple fix to the problem of presidents being responsible for the closing of their White House offices and the boxing of sensitive materials.  This work is done at the final stages of a presidential term by members of the president’s staff, some of whom probably even lack the clearances to handle sensitive materials.  The closing down of these offices and the sorting of materials should be done by qualified members of the General Services Administration or, better yet, the National Archives and Records Administration, which can catalogue sensitive materials as well as package them.  In the case of Trump’s perfidy, the National Archives knew it was missing certain documents but had no idea about the rest of the items Trump was concealing.  This must be corrected.

Second, the media actually endorses the government’s classification system that terms items marked “confidential” as liable to cause “damage to the national security”; “secret” as running the risk of “serious damage”; and “top secret” causing “exceptionally grave damage” to national security.  I never read a “confidential” or “secret” document that could cause serious damage to national security, and even in the case of “top secret” the notion of “exceptionally grave damage” is hyped to the point of uselessness.  In the case of the documents found in Biden’s former office, these probably date from his term as vice-president, and their shelf life from seven to fifteen years ago probably renders them limited in value.

A simple fix would be to drop the terms “confidential” and “secret” or at least automatically declassify these items after five years.  This would not harm the national security of the United States. The government and the intelligence community must protect the sources and methods in the collection of intelligence, but it is extremely rare for intelligence marked confidential or secret to be based on sensitive sources and methods.  There are more sensitive materials in the New York Times and the Washington Post on a daily basis then there are in so-called confidential and secret pieces of information.

Third, there is a serious amount of classified material that conveys false and even politicized intelligence.  For example, the Reagan administration conducted the largest peacetime weapons spending spree in the 1980s, which transformed the United States from a creditor nation to a debtor nation.  This defense spending was based on politicized intelligence from CIA director William Casey and the deputy director for intelligence Robert Gates throughout the 1980s.  In actual fact, the Soviet Union was in decline and its economy was a sorry state that Casey and Gates concealed from the White House and the Congress.  The military buildup in the 1980s was costly and unneeded.

The so-called domino theory to justify the Vietnam War in the 1960s was a fraudulent concept within the intelligence community at every level.  The domino theory was used to sell the war to the American public, which seriously questioned the war before the mainstream media joined the anti-war movement.  I joined the CIA  in 1966 and was not aware of any leading policy maker who believed in the idea of a domino theory.

Fourth, the Pentagon and the CIA use the veil of secrecy to keep information out of the public arena, thus foreclosing the possibility of public debate.  Both of these institutions use a review process to make sure that their employees are unable to publish materials that are falsely labeled as classified.  In one of my manuscripts, for example, the CIA took out every reference to the use of drones in Afghanistan, which it considered classified although it had been fully documented in the mainstream media.  A CIA censor even removed a footnote from one of my manuscripts because it contained the headline of a Times’ story that linked the CIA to the use of drones.  Some secret!

Fifth, secrecy is necessary, but it must be limited.  Senator Daniel Moynihan chaired a secrecy commission in the 1990s that reported over six million lower-level classification decisions in 1997.  The classification figure had grown to 80 million by 2014.  Most of these materials were totally innocuous. Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email service for largely innocuous items was an act of arrogance on her part that cost her the presidency in 2016, but it didn’t jeopardize national security.  Whereas the CIA blocks its former employees from citing press articles in their writings, the Pentagon goes further and classifies press articles that are circulated within the building.

Finally, we need to recognize that a great deal of classification of political materials is designed to prevent embarrassing the individuals or institutions involved in acts of policy.  The Pentagon Papers is an excellent example of a document that presented no threat to national security, but did provide an understanding of the lies made to the American public, such as the so-called domino theory, to defend the use of force in Vietnam that cost 56,000 American lives as well as countless Vietnamese civilians.

There is no question that the government must protect its sources and methods in the collection of intelligence.  Regarding substance, however, I believe that, with the exception of details on weapons systems as well as on sensitive negotiations, there are few legitimate secrets and almost none that must remain classified for more than ten years at most.   The secrecy that surrounded the Iran-Contra affair probably saved the Reagan presidency over the short term, but greater transparency would have prevented Iran-Contra from ever getting off the ground in the first place.

Our Cold War culture of secrecy must be addressed.  The loss of blood and treasure in two decades of fighting unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fueled to a great extent by phony intelligence in the case of Iraq and a disdain for history’s lessons in the case of Afghanistan.  A policy of complete openness in most areas of information would lead to a more useful debate of national security issues and perhaps sounder policy choices.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Almost 30 years ago, tobacco CEOs were forced to answer questions – under oath. For the first time, corporate bosses had to admit that tobacco companies were designing cigarettes to sustain addiction – a dark day for corporate profits, tobacco corporations, and the ever supportive management consultancy firm: McKinsey. Yet, it was a good day for everyone else. Corporate CEOs also confessed that they had manipulated an addictive drug. But Big Tobacco wasn’t finished.

The $157bn heavy tobacco giant Philip Morris shot back by trying to intimidate the media. The corporation did this by filing a $10bn lawsuit against two reporters and their employer – ABC News.

The goal was to shut them up – in the so-called “land of the free speech”. The corporation did this because of their investigation into nicotine manipulation in cigarettes. Yet, the corporate strategy came a touch too late. Public sentiments began to turn against Big Tobacco.

Watching all this unfold in horror was McKinsey. The global consultancy juggernaut was forced to observe a rising tide of public disapproval. Yet, McKinsey knew full well – for decades on end – what they had done.

McKinsey had facilitated some of the world’s largest tobacco corporations with the goal to sell more cigarettes. For McKinsey and Big Tobacco, it meant profits and handsome fees. While for smokers, it often means a painful and early death.

The entire affair was handled in a traditional McKinsey way. The firm kept out of the limelight. Even better for the world’s largest management consultancy firm, is when its name did not even feature once in the congressional hearings on tobacco. An outstanding corporate PR success achieving its corporate goal of hiding the truth.

Nobody even asked McKinsey whether its support for Big Tobacco matches its very own and much trumpeted “values” or not? And, what happened to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Business Ethics?

Next to corporate propaganda, the WHO estimates that about eight million people die from smoking related illnesses every year. McKinsey – in part – makes these deaths possible. Worse, the mass casualties of tobacco corporations are camouflaged by McKinsey’s so-called Values, CSR and the ultimate oxymoron of business ethics.

Perhaps it all followed McKinsey’s purpose, mission, and values. These values assisted tobacco corporations in killing about 15 people every hour. In any case, Big Tobacco offers what McKinsey really wants – mountains of cash. Despite what McKinsey calls o”bserve high ethical standards,” Big Tobacco was good for and to McKinsey.

Worse than McKinsey’s ethical greed was the fact that – as Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe write in When McKinsey Comes to Town – “McKinsey knew about the health risk of smoking.” Today, this so-called health risk is a certainty as about three jumbo jets full of people die every hour on a so-called “smoking related disease”.

Imagine three 747 jumbo jets falling out of the sky every hour? After a few hours, global air traffic would grind to a halt.  Luckily for tobacco corporations, most, if not all, smokers die quietly. With mass death out of sight, Big Tobacco can carry on raking in $912bn per year – year after year after year. These are the wonders of Capitalism.

But things got even worse. As global alarms about death through cigarettes intensified, McKinsey found three perfect solutions, while, of course, adhering to their self-imposed task of observe high ethical standards:

1) McKinsey took on new tobacco clients. And these included R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard, Brown & Williamson, British American Tobacco;

2) on top of that, McKinsey even expanded their reach by getting Japan Tobacco International; and,

3) McKinsey sought to boost cigarette sales in Germany and Latin America.

Beyond that, McKinsey also cranked up two of their all-time favorites in order to turbo-charge the profits of Big Tobacco corporations. McKinsey recommended: its classic solution of offshoring, i.e. shifting manufacturing to low-cost countries; and simply paying workers less.

But McKinsey wasn’t done. In cahoots with Big Tobacco, McKinsey also pushed two more strategies: for one, McKinsey sought to weaken tobacco control measures in line with semi-religious belief in deregulation (read: pro-business regulation). The ideology of the free market serves corporations. But perhaps, it is not so good for people dying from lung cancer.

McKinsey’s second strategy was to push the idea that Big Tobacco moves its field of operation towards developing countries where it hopes to find less regulation, weaker states, and the ability to corrupt officials.

Perhaps it is not surprising when federal judge Gladys Kessler wrote, that Big Tobacco has,

known many of these facts for at least 50 years or more. Despite that knowledge, they have consistently, and repeatedly, and with enormous skill and sophistication, denied these facts to the public, to the Government, and to the public health community.

In other words, for about half a century, McKinsey kindly – well, for a fee! – assisted tobacco corporations in flogging off their deadly and toxic goods. McKinsey did so without getting much bad publicity and penalties.

What Big Tobacco and McKinsey did goes well beyond the standard volume of corporate criminality. Meanwhile, $10bn-firmMcKinsey did all this while making a fortune –‘quite’ ethically.

Perhaps the final success of McKinsey’s ethics is that well above 20% of children under eighteen years of age are using e-cigarettes – compared to less than 3% of adults. Big Tobacco knows exactly where profits are coming from. It isn’t from adults. It’s from our children. Of course, McKinsey assisted tobacco corporations in achieving such outstanding successes.

In the end, ethical McKinsey is about corporate growth and profits and, as Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe say, stuff about health was just a cover. Companies like McKinsey and Big Tobacco corporations tend to see “stuff about health” – the impact of smoking on people and society – merely as an externality. It can be off-loaded to someone else.

Yet, as soon as McKinsey smells money, it is very happy to reach beyond Big Tobacco. Of course, McKinsey doesn’t shy away from venturing into another commercial sector. This is the sector where highly addictive behavior can be, as management jargon says, monetized. People can be made addictive to turn a profit.

This time it was gambling – a $260bn global behemoth. McKinsey was never shy when it comes to advising, for example, a major casino on how to keep gamblers at the table when they were about to leave. Pretty soon, super-ethical McKinsey understood that addiction offered big rewards – whether opioids, tobacco, or gambling.

McKinsey was also at hand when people can be made addicted to drugs. Between the years 2004 and 2019, the pharma giant Purdue and its secret Empire of Pain – handed over a cool $83.7 million in fees for so-called marketing advice to McKinsey. The ethical McKinsey assisted Sackler’s Purdue when turbo-charging opioid sales. As a consequence, thousands of people were dying of overdoses.

750,000 people had died in an epidemic crank up by the sales of OxyContin. As of late 2021, opioid deaths showed no sign of abating – thanks to Big Pharma and its lackey of McKinsey. Beth Macy – the author of Dopesick – noted the inevitable, “companies, instead of seeing the potential for tragedy, saw a path to bigger profits.” This is capitalism – our enduring love story!

When Purdue started to realize that it is increasingly under public scrutiny, the corporation sought help. It hired McKinsey. Ethical company McKinsey was tasked with helping – not the people the drug made addicted to but the Big Pharma and how to protect its opioid profits. Seeking McKinsey‘s assistance wasn’t an irrational hallucination. It had three very good reasons:

1) McKinsey had a “good” track record given its ability to crank up profits for Big Tobacco;

2) McKinsey calls itself the leading consultancy for medical product companies – very true; and

3) McKinsey also had a good track record, not just in Big Tobacco, but also with Big Pharma corporations. It had already been advising Johnson & Johnson – a pivotal corporation in opioid production.

McKinsey had already assisted Johnson & Johnson sell its signature opioid drug – a narcotic patch called Duragesic. Meanwhile, as drug stores and law enforcement were trying to limit how much OxyContin was running through the USA, ethical McKinsey was doing the exact opposite.

McKinsey even suggested ways to get around specific safety measures. Such safety measures are unnecessary and unwarranted Uber-regulations for the crypto-religious believers in the free market. In other words, the free market should be free to kill – and, for a profit, of course!

Perhaps the height of immorality and corporate hypocrisy was reached when McKinsey itself claimed to have, “the duty to serve the client’s bottom line within moral and ethical boundaries.” McKinsey showed that hallucination like “corporate social responsibility” and “business ethics” are ideological fig-leafs for what McKinsey calls a “client’s bottom line,” i.e. profits.

It may well be that McKinsey’s understanding of ethics and profits can best be expressed by none other than Karl Marx who once wrote,

a certain 10%, will ensure its employment anywhere; 20%, certain will produce eagerness; 50%, positive audacity; 100%, will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300%, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.

So far, McKinsey has – and given the accounts outlined above – avoided being hanged. As a management consulting firm, it operates in the shadows of corporate capitalism.

Yet, McKinsey oils the wheels of capitalism and has – seemingly – no qualms when profit-making causes the death of hundreds of thousands of people made addicted by large corporations. All for a profit as we are told – that capitalism is the best system to allocate goods and services, and that competition serves us all. It is Capitalism – a Love Story, sold to us through corporate mass media every day.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Klikauer.

In an extended interview, acclaimed physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté discusses his new book, “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.” “The very values of a society are traumatizing for a lot of people,” says Maté, who argues in his book that “psychological trauma, woundedness, underlies much of what we call disease.” He says healing requires a reconnection between the mind and the body, which can be achieved through cultivating a sense of community, meaning, belonging and purpose. Maté also discusses how the healthcare system has harmfully promoted the “mechanization of birth,” how the lack of social services for parents has led to “a massive abandonment of infants,” and how capitalism has fueled addiction and the rise of youth suicide rates.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A multi-agency report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, released on Tuesday, says current global climate mitigation efforts are woefully inadequate and warns without more urgent action the physical and socioeconomic impacts will be increasingly devastating.

"The current fossil fuel free-for-all must end now."

The report, United in Science 2022, found that greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise to record highs and the global emission reduction pledges for 2030 need to be seven times higher to be in line with the 1.5 °C goal of the Paris agreement.

"This year's United in Science report shows climate impacts heading into uncharted territories of destruction," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video message. "Yet each year we double down on this fossil fuel addiction, even as the symptoms get rapidly worse."

The agencies—TKTK—found that the most recent seven years, 2015-2021, were the warmest on record, while the ocean heat content for 2018-2022 was higher than in any other five-year period, with ocean warming rates showing significant increase in the past two decades.

The number of weather, climate, and water-related disasters has increased by a factor of five over the past 50 years, the report concludes, causing $202 million in daily losses.

Human-caused climate change made the 2022 United Kingdom's summer heatwave at least 10 times more likely, according to the World Weather Attribution initiative.

"Floods, droughts, heatwaves, extreme storms, and wildfires are going from bad to worse, breaking records with alarming frequency," said Guterres. "Heatwaves in Europe. Colossal floods in Pakistan. Prolonged and severe droughts in China, the Horn of Africa, and the United States. There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters. They are the price of humanity's fossil fuel addiction."

In addition to monitoring extreme weather incidents, the report addresses the need for further research on global tipping points, which include the melting of the polar ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, which would have "global consequences due to substantial additional sea-level rise for hundreds to thousands of years."

Other global tipping points mentioned in the report include the drying of the Amazon rainforest, which will cause cascading global and local impacts—as well as sustained regional droughts throughout the world, which will "impact the global carbon cycle and disrupt major weather systems such as monsoons."

"The combined effects of higher temperatures and humidity in some regions could reach dangerous levels in the next few decades," the report says, "With physiological tipping points or thresholds beyond which outdoor human labor is no longer possible without technical assistance."

"Today, I urge leaders to heed the facts of this alarming report. We must unite behind the science. We must turn pledges into action. Now."

Cities, which are home to 55% of the global population, are responsible for up to 70% of human-caused emissions and are highly vulnerable to climate change impacts such as increased heavy precipitation, accelerated sea-level rise, acute and chronic coastal flooding, and extreme heat, according to the report.

The report calls on cities to implement inclusive, urgent, and scaled-up mitigation efforts to increase the adaptive capacity of billions of urban inhabitants. It also calls on developed countries to honor the Glasgow decision and provide at least $40 billion dollars a year in climate adaptation to underdeveloped and poorer countries, with adaptation finance needs set to grow to at least $300 billion by 2030.

"The report is a shameful reminder that resilience-building is the neglected half of the climate equation," said Guterres. "It is a scandal that developed countries have failed to take adaptation seriously, and shrugged off their commitments to help the developing world."

While less than half of countries in the world have reported the existence of multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS), the report says they are effective adaptation measures that save lives, reduce losses and damages, and cut costs. Early warning systems are particularly weak in Africa, underdeveloped countries, and small island developing states.

A top international priority set by the United Nations is to ensure that everyone on Earth is protected by the MHEWS in the next five years, which will require cooperation from political leaders and financial sectors.

Guterres also called for a renewable energy revolution and urged all government leaders to drastically cut their carbon emissions.

"The G20, which is responsible for 80% of global emissions, must lead the way. There must be no new coal plants built, with coal phased out by 2030 for OECD countries, and by 2040 for all others." said Guterres.

"The current fossil fuel free-for-all must end now. It is a recipe for permanent climate chaos and suffering," he added. "Today, I urge leaders to heed the facts of this alarming report. We must unite behind the science. We must turn pledges into action. Now."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jenna McGuire.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

The post China’s Stubborn Coal Addiction appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

Criminal justice reporter Keri Blakinger speaks with us about her new memoir, out today, called “Corrections in Ink,” which details her path from aspiring professional figure skater to her two years spent in prison after she was arrested in her final semester of her senior year at Cornell University with six ounces of heroin. Blakinger says her relatively short jail sentence was a lucky case, which she attributes to progressive drug reform as well as her racial privilege. Blakinger went on to become an investigative journalist and now works at The Marshall Project, where she is the organization’s first formerly incarcerated reporter.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A first-of-its-kind report published Wednesday warns that the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels worldwide—particularly in the rich countries most responsible for planet-warming carbon emissions—is imperiling every single sustainable development goal adopted by United Nations member states in 2015.

The 17 SDGs are far-reaching, ranging from ending global poverty to eliminating hunger to combating the climate emergency, and achieving them by 2030 would require ambitious and coordinated action on a global scale.

"Fossil fuel addiction poisons every earnest attempt we make to tackle the sustainable development and climate agendas."

But world leaders' persistent commitment to fossil fuels, which the new report dubs an "addiction," is rendering such action impossible by "amplifying the impacts of climate change and placing the health and stability of both natural and human systems at risk."

"Fossil fuel addiction poisons every earnest attempt we make to tackle the sustainable development and climate agendas," said Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. "Despite a robust pile of evidence that fossil fuels are core to our problems, governments are not moving and international cooperation is lacking."

Authored by researchers at the University of Sussex on behalf of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and other civil society organizations, the report makes use of more than 400 academic articles and advocacy group reports to closely examine for the first time the threat that fossil fuels pose to each of the SDGs.

By 2030, the report notes, the climate crisis could push 122 million more people into extreme poverty worldwide by intensifying extreme weather events, which often cause mass destruction and displacement. Yet globally, "governments spend three times more money on fuel subsidies than the annual amount needed to eradicate poverty," the researchers observe.

Fossil fuels are also undermining global efforts to combat hunger, which has spiked during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Increases in global temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, extreme weather events, and elevated surface carbon dioxide concentrations from burning fossil fuels will reduce the yields of key crops," the report states. "Fossil fuel production, and fossil fuel corporations' carbon offset schemes, are pulling vast amounts of land away from productive uses, such as agriculture."

And on down the list. Promoting good health and well-being, guaranteeing quality education for all, achieving gender equality, ensuring clean water and sanitation, transitioning to renewable energy, and securing lasting peace are all tasks that a fossil fuel-dependent status quo has made unachievable, the new report warns.

"By 2030, humanity needs to have halved global emissions, while at the same time achieving all 17 SDGs," said report co-author Freddie Daley, a research associate at the University of Sussex. "This is an impossible endeavor without concerted global efforts to constrain and phase out fossil fuel production in a fast, fair, and equitable manner, with the wealthy nations that continue to benefit from fossil-fueled economic growth leading the way."

"This research lays out the incompatibility of sustainable development and fossil fuels—and what is at stake if we fail to address unchecked fossil fuel expansion," Daley added.

To dramatically change course and put the world on a path toward achieving sustainable development objectives, the report recommends an entirely new international framework, such as a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty with "binding commitments that constrain fossil fuel production globally."

Such a treaty, the researchers suggest, should include three prongs:

1. Non-proliferation. End new exploration and production by issuing a worldwide moratorium on the extraction of new fossil fuel reserves.
2. Equitable Phase Down. Commit countries to phase down production in existing projects, in line with equity and the 1.5°C global temperature goal.
3. Accelerate a Fair Transition. Provide finance and technological assistance to aid those most dependent on fossil fuel production to climate change to diversify their economies and move away from fossil fuels, scale up access to renewable energy and ensure a just transition for all.

"Every day that we burn fossil fuels is one more day that we're undermining these goals for a sustainable, livable planet," Jean Su, the director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.

"The first step to fighting the extinction of countless species and the scourge of global poverty is to turn off the spigot of dangerous fossil fuels," Su added. "That's the only way we can build a just, peaceful future that protects the dignity of humanity and all life on Earth."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by William Astore.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

So said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday, as he stressed that a swift and just transition to clean energy is necessary to meet the Paris agreement's objective of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—and warned against using Russia's deadly assault on Ukraine as an excuse to ramp up fossil fuel production worldwide.

"We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe."

"The science is clear. So is the math," the U.N. leader said during a speech delivered at a Sustainability Summit hosted by The Economist. "Keeping 1.5 alive requires a 45% reduction in global emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by mid-century." And yet, "according to present national commitments, global emissions are set to increase by almost 14% in the 2020s."

"We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe," Guterres continued. "Our planet has already warmed by as much as 1.2 degrees—and we see the devastating consequences everywhere. In 2020, climate disasters forced 30 million people to flee their homes—three times more than those displaced by war and violence."

Just this past weekend, scientists conveyed shock and alarm in response to reports that temperatures at both of Earth's poles reached more than 50°F above average last week. Peer-reviewed research published on Friday found that increasingly frequent and intense wildfires around the globe are exacerbating Arctic warming, which is worsening the conditions that make future blazes more likely.

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"Two weeks ago," said Guterres, citing part two of the U.N.'s landmark climate assessment, "the IPCC confirmed that half of humanity is already living in the danger zone. Small island nations, least developed countries, and poor and vulnerable people everywhere are one climate shock away from doomsday. In our globally connected world, no country and no corporation can insulate itself from these levels of chaos."

"If we continue with more of the same, we can kiss 1.5 goodbye," he added. "Even 2 degrees may be out of reach. And that would be catastrophe."

Making matters worse, said Guterres, "the fallout from Russia's war in Ukraine risks upending global food and energy markets—with major implications for the global climate agenda."

"As major economies pursue an 'all-of-the-above' strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence."

The United States, United Kingdom, and European Union have moved to restrict imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to Moscow's military offensive. Although progressives have emphasized that the ongoing invasion should lead to an intensification of efforts to move away from dirty energy, profit-hungry proponents of oil, gas, and coal have seized on surging prices to push for boosting extraction and exports.

Guterres warned that "as major economies pursue an 'all-of-the-above' strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence and close the window to 1.5 degrees."

"Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil fuel use," he said. "This is madness. Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction."

"As current events make all too clear, our continued reliance on fossil fuels puts the global economy and energy security at the mercy of geopolitical shocks and crises," added Guterres. "We need to fix the broken global energy mix."

Noting that "the timeline to cut emissions by 45% is extremely tight," the U.N. leader stressed that "instead of hitting the brakes on the decarbonization of the global economy, now is the time to put the pedal to the metal towards a renewable energy future."

His remarks came just hours before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) kicked off a two-week meeting to validate part three of its report, which focuses on the need to drastically slash carbon pollution to avoid the most disastrous outcomes.

Guterres argued that cooperation between the developed and emerging economies of the G20—responsible for 80% of global emissions—is essential to addressing the planetary emergency.

"Accelerating the phase-out of coal and all fossil fuels and implementing a rapid, just, and sustainable energy transition," he said, is "the only true pathway to energy security."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Global oil and gas prices are skyrocketing as the U.S. bans Russian energy imports as part of its sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine. In retaliation, Russia threatened to cut off natural gas to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. We speak to energy and climate investigative reporter Antonia Juhasz, author of “The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry,” about growing calls for a green energy revolution amid the climate crisis and rising prices for fossil fuels. “The bottom line is to achieve, first, peace in Ukraine and stop Putin, and then to make the transition from fossil fuels,” says Juhasz.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Wurtzel’s husband, Jim Freed, told The Associated Press that she died at a Manhattan hospital after a long battle with cancer.

“Prozac Nation” was published in 1994 when Wurtzel was in her mid-20s and set off a debate that lasted for much of her life. Critics praised her for her candor and accused her of self-pity and self-indulgence, vices she fully acknowledged. Wurtzel wrote of growing up in a home torn by divorce, of cutting herself when she was in her early teens, and of spending her adolescence in a storm of tears, drugs, bad love affairs and family fights.

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“I don’t mean to sound like a spoiled brat,” she wrote. “I know that into every sunny life a little rain must fall and all that, but in my case the crisis-level hysteria is an all-too-recurring theme.”

Wurtzel became a celebrity, a symbol and, for some, a punchline. Newsweek called her ”the famously depressed Elizabeth Wurtzel.” She was widely ridiculed after a 2002 interview with the The Toronto Globe and Mail in which she spoke dismissively of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from the year before.

”I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me,” she said, remarks that she later said were misrepresented.

But many readers embraced her story and would credit her with helping them face their own troubles. News of her death Tuesday was met with expressions of grief and gratitude. The writer Anne Theriault tweeted: “It’s hard for me to even articulate how important Prozac Nation was to me at a certain point in my life.” Author Sady Doyle lamented that Wurtzel was regarded as a “Sad Example Of Something — female memoir-writers, women who got famous for being themselves, young women generally.”

“And to see her gone so young is a harsh reminder of how cruel that was,” Doyle tweeted.

Wurtzel’s other books included “Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women” and “More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction.” Her essays were published in The New York Times, New York magazine and other publications.

In a 2015 piece for the Times, she described her initial success in fighting her cancer diagnosis.

“I live in an age of miracles and wonders, when they cure cancer with viruses. If I ever meet cancer again, I will figure it out. You see, I am very Jewish, which is to say … I am undefeated by the worst,” she wrote. “But I would have preferred to skip this. That would have been much better.”