EIA: US added 15 GW of capacity last year, largest net change since 2011: https://t.co/sCHTDxjAKg pic.twitter.com/BHC4e2g63D— Utility Dive (@UtilityDive) February 28, 2017
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Good news, need to fight to make this change faster, but some good news...
Here's the story: http://www.utilitydive.com/news/eia-us-added-15-gw-of-capacity-last-year-largest-net-change-since-2011/437035/
Criminality: When we say Exxon and Shell are organized criminal entities, it's things like this that we are referring to: Shell made a film about climate change in 1991 (then neglected to heed its own warning)
Shell made a film about climate change in 1991 (then neglected to heed its own warning) via Jelmer Mommers, The Correspondent.
Nigeria: Petrostate + Oil Complex + Militarism + Historical Political and Economic Exclusion = Counterinsurgency State Terror. Nigeria’s Army Is Accused of Massacring Civilians
Hunting Boko Haram, Nigeria’s Army Is Accused of Massacring Civilians
"The attack fit the pattern of rampages by Boko Haram, the terrorist group that has killed poor people in this region for years. But Babagana and multiple witnesses to the attack in June, as well as another one days before in a neighboring village, say the radicals were not to blame this time.Instead, they say, the massacres were carried out by the Nigerian military.“They told us they were here to help us,” said a resident, Falmata, 20, adding that soldiers in uniform shouted for villagers to point out the Boko Haram members among them. When none were identified, the killings began, she and other witnesses said." The rest of the story...
Monday, February 27, 2017
Friday, February 24, 2017
NoDAPL: Colonialism and the criminalization of protest.
Here's what one of the officers said, suggesting without irony that the assault on the camp was a defense of nature. (Global warming, air pollution and the threat to water are not ecological disasters?):
“Many months, North Dakota has been faced with this and has been dealing with this day in and day out,” Lieutenant Iverson said. “Today is simply another step forward — moving forward to getting that area cleaned up and making sure that we are avoiding any potential ecological disaster.”And meanwhile, the retrograde oil-bought legislators of North Dakota pass laws that attempt to further criminalize protest and restrict the possibilities for direct action and civil disobedience:
"About an hour after the protest camp was cleared, Mr. Burgum signed into law four bills that had been passed largely as a result of the protests. They expand the scope of criminal trespassing laws, make it illegal to cover your face with a mask or hood while committing a crime, and increase the penalties for riot offenses."And salute to the resistance, who remain defiant:
“Our hearts are not defeated,” Mr. Goldtooth said. “The closing of the camp is not the end of a movement or fight. It is a new beginning. They cannot extinguish the fire that Standing Rock started.”
Clean Coal? It's a form of lying to say these words, and in fact, the idea is impossible, in more ways than one. Here's a reminder from 2016: Southern Company's Kemper Scandal - Energy & Policy Institute
Southern Company's Kemper Scandal - Energy & Policy Institute
In reality, wind and solar are more effective investments to produce carbon-free electricity in the 21st century.
In reality, wind and solar are more effective investments to produce carbon-free electricity in the 21st century.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Didn't read Carbon Democracy? Here's podcast with author Timothy Mitchell. No substitute for the book, but you might still get a B on the exam...
New Podcast: Political historian Timothy Mitchell talks #envhist, carbon autocracies, liberal enviro politics & more https://t.co/C52iwHSQwR— CENHS (@cenhs) February 17, 2017
I can't stand it when people idle their vehicles anywhere, especially near schools. I'm not crazy. (via Reveal) Story on vehicle emissions and child health in schools
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/school-haze/
Great story, give yourself time to listen.
Great story, give yourself time to listen.
Throughout the country, thousands of public schools lie within 500 feet of pollution-choked roads like highways and truck routes. On this episode of Reveal, we team up with The Center for Public Integrity to investigate the high levels of exhaust that surround U.S. schools and how the bad air affects the millions of children who breathe it in.Every day in Newark, New Jersey, almost 600 trucks rumble past Hawkins Street School. Inside, many kids suffer the consequences of polluted air. We meet one family that has struggled with asthma, and we learn that older trucks with outdated diesel engines wreak havoc on the air by remaining on the road.And we find out from CPI reporter Jamie Hopkins how many schools operate near busy roads – and how her team was able to figure that out... Read the rest of the story here, or click on image to listen:
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Or, why the US Chamber of Commerce is a declared enemy of the climate, and thus, an enemy of earth and our children's future: "Hell to pay" if Trump targets EPA climate science, says U.S. Chamber official - Energy and Policy Institute
We've had dustups with the American Chamber of Commerce before. They are a self-declared enemy of climate science, backer of assaults on the EPA, propagator of absurd theories like the solar spots and what not. You know the dominant system of capitalism is deeply corrupted when its leading capitalist spokespeople are waging war on truth and reason.
However, they recognize that they are on the wrong side of history. But rather than changing - which of course, capitalists have trouble doing when the reproduction of certain patterns of wealth accumulation relies on the reproduction of certain patterns of energy production – they are seeking new ways of surviving by pretending to acknowledge climate change. Or, at the least, to stop actively speaking out against climate action. They do this even as they seek new ways to slow and block action on the climate, in more clandestine forms, the "slow rollback" of regulations as they say.
Summary: If you are close to, or embrace the United States Chamber of Commerce, you are part of the problem.
Great piece on the latest from Dave Anderson:
"Hell to pay" if Trump targets EPA climate science, says U.S. Chamber official - Energy and Policy Institute (via Dave Anderson)
However, they recognize that they are on the wrong side of history. But rather than changing - which of course, capitalists have trouble doing when the reproduction of certain patterns of wealth accumulation relies on the reproduction of certain patterns of energy production – they are seeking new ways of surviving by pretending to acknowledge climate change. Or, at the least, to stop actively speaking out against climate action. They do this even as they seek new ways to slow and block action on the climate, in more clandestine forms, the "slow rollback" of regulations as they say.
Summary: If you are close to, or embrace the United States Chamber of Commerce, you are part of the problem.
Great piece on the latest from Dave Anderson:
"Hell to pay" if Trump targets EPA climate science, says U.S. Chamber official - Energy and Policy Institute (via Dave Anderson)
Friday, February 17, 2017
Energy Transition:Solar -- this is a morass of arcane terminologies, but crucial to understanding how big utilities are fighting tooth and nail to slow the solar transition, nationwide: War, peace and innovation: Solar policy in 2016
War, peace and innovation: Solar policy in 2016 (via Utility Dive)
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Are the 'reasonable Republicans' trying to survive by saying they are taking action on climate? Two issues this week: Mankiw and company's 'carbon tax/carbon dividend' scheme (bad ideas all around) & David Roberts: "Renewable energy draws increasing Republican support. That could shift climate politics." via Vox
Updated, Feb. 20, 2017, with links to other proponents of the plan, see below.
I refer to Republicans who acknowledge climate science and anthropogenic global warming as the "reasonable Republicans." There aren't many of them. And they are quite unreasonable in many other ways. But, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope, since they may also recognize that despite the Trump victory, the GOP is dying quickly, and climate is a key issue for young people across the spectrum. So here we see them scrambling for ideas that might both maintain the problems of the system that got us here (oil-dependent capitalism based on unfettered growth) while diverting our attention from what we really need, more radical alternatives to accelerate the energy transition. At any rate, two things in news this week:
1) Free-market and fossil fuel industry interests are once again floating the idea of a carbon tax, and calling it a carbon dividend as a way to sell it to people. It's a jumble of bad ideas that the Harvard economist (orthodox neoliberal) Gregory Mankiw has signed his name to, unsurprisingly, but here it is for you to consider:
Radio story on the A1: http://the1a.org/shows/2017-02-16/conservatives-make-the-case-for-action-on-climate-change
And here's the proposal, from the badly named 'Climate Leadership Council': https://www.clcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/TheConservativeCaseforCarbonDividends.pdf
My take on it:
Here's Rice U. Professor Daniel Cohan, trying to convince liberals that this plan is a good idea. He makes some good points. He's also running calculations that may or may not play out (remember Mitchell on the ways we [mis]calculate.) There's also an assumption that this is the best path to renewable energy – or perhaps 'as good as we can get in this political moment' – which seems a bit defeatist. This also assumes a broader-based grassroots anti-fossil fuel movement will not grow. He may be right, he may be wrong, you decide. For the record/full disclosure: James Baker III is a big backer of this carbon tax scheme. Rice University is home to the James Baker Institute which publishes a lot of pro-oil industry research (and gets a lot of oil industry $$$). I like Prof. Cohan's work. I am making no allegations of conflict of interest. However, since Baker – oil lawyer, foreign policy hawk, and Exxon advocate – is part of this new carbon tax scheme, we'd love to have some assurances that there aren't any backstage pressures influencing these endorsements. (See, for example, James Baker's own push for his plan on the Rice U. Baker Institute home page).
And here's Charles Komanoff, a long-time proponent of the idea of a market-friendly carbon tax, writing in the left-leaning The Nation, also suggesting we need to get on board with something cooked up by hard-line right-wing oil industry supporters. This also seems to be largely the 'this is as good as it gets' argument:
https://www.thenation.com/article/progressives-need-to-get-over-themselves-and-support-this-gop-backed-carbon-tax-plan/. I disagree.
I'll clarify my position: carbon tax, sure. But attached to all sorts of other fossil-fuel industry protecting rules? And absent any other vision for investing in renewable energy infrastructures and incentives? Dividends to families to try to sell it? Alaska does this with oil rents and their infrastructure and public services are awful. And they are still deeply dependent on oil. A national carbon dividend? Never. We could start by simply dismantling all the subsidies that fossil fuels get – tax breaks, etc. We could incentivize renewables instead. We could demand more public control over the grid. Take profit out of utilities. Break the monopolies of big energy. Divest. Point being, there are plenty of other avenues that merit our political investment and energy, no pun intended.
Their long game appears to be to keep burning fossil fuels as long as possible, with inevitably higher prices, no matter the tax, which will be passed on to consumers, who will remain dependent since there is no vision for infrastructural transformation.
And, as with the Stephen Hadley/ Madeleine Albright hawkish road-show, we are talking here of really old thinkers – Prof. Cohan calls them 'elders' too – Reagan-era oil Republicans who are desperately grasping for straws as the world and DC go up in smoke. James A Baker III is 87 years old for goodness sake. And age does not equal wisdom when we are talking fossil fuels. At any rate, the plan has little chance of gaining traction, so it's not clear why we should get too distracted by it.
Read, critique, decide for yourself.
2) Meanwhile, David Roberts at Vox, rightly observes that revenue neutral carbon taxes are bad ideas, but talks about the business of renewables, which is getting more Repub support at the state level... a glimmer of hope and reason coming from the right?.
Renewable energy draws increasing Republican support. That could shift climate politics. D. Roberts (Vox)
I refer to Republicans who acknowledge climate science and anthropogenic global warming as the "reasonable Republicans." There aren't many of them. And they are quite unreasonable in many other ways. But, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope, since they may also recognize that despite the Trump victory, the GOP is dying quickly, and climate is a key issue for young people across the spectrum. So here we see them scrambling for ideas that might both maintain the problems of the system that got us here (oil-dependent capitalism based on unfettered growth) while diverting our attention from what we really need, more radical alternatives to accelerate the energy transition. At any rate, two things in news this week:
1) Free-market and fossil fuel industry interests are once again floating the idea of a carbon tax, and calling it a carbon dividend as a way to sell it to people. It's a jumble of bad ideas that the Harvard economist (orthodox neoliberal) Gregory Mankiw has signed his name to, unsurprisingly, but here it is for you to consider:
Radio story on the A1: http://the1a.org/shows/2017-02-16/conservatives-make-the-case-for-action-on-climate-change
And here's the proposal, from the badly named 'Climate Leadership Council': https://www.clcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/TheConservativeCaseforCarbonDividends.pdf
My take on it:
Carbon dividend: fails to address structural investments needed for energy transition. Bad idea.— Energy Politics (@energy_politics) February 16, 2017
Deregulation: Bad idea.
Repeal of CPP: " " https://t.co/f6lit7aUMd
Here's Rice U. Professor Daniel Cohan, trying to convince liberals that this plan is a good idea. He makes some good points. He's also running calculations that may or may not play out (remember Mitchell on the ways we [mis]calculate.) There's also an assumption that this is the best path to renewable energy – or perhaps 'as good as we can get in this political moment' – which seems a bit defeatist. This also assumes a broader-based grassroots anti-fossil fuel movement will not grow. He may be right, he may be wrong, you decide. For the record/full disclosure: James Baker III is a big backer of this carbon tax scheme. Rice University is home to the James Baker Institute which publishes a lot of pro-oil industry research (and gets a lot of oil industry $$$). I like Prof. Cohan's work. I am making no allegations of conflict of interest. However, since Baker – oil lawyer, foreign policy hawk, and Exxon advocate – is part of this new carbon tax scheme, we'd love to have some assurances that there aren't any backstage pressures influencing these endorsements. (See, for example, James Baker's own push for his plan on the Rice U. Baker Institute home page).
And here's Charles Komanoff, a long-time proponent of the idea of a market-friendly carbon tax, writing in the left-leaning The Nation, also suggesting we need to get on board with something cooked up by hard-line right-wing oil industry supporters. This also seems to be largely the 'this is as good as it gets' argument:
https://www.thenation.com/article/progressives-need-to-get-over-themselves-and-support-this-gop-backed-carbon-tax-plan/. I disagree.
I'll clarify my position: carbon tax, sure. But attached to all sorts of other fossil-fuel industry protecting rules? And absent any other vision for investing in renewable energy infrastructures and incentives? Dividends to families to try to sell it? Alaska does this with oil rents and their infrastructure and public services are awful. And they are still deeply dependent on oil. A national carbon dividend? Never. We could start by simply dismantling all the subsidies that fossil fuels get – tax breaks, etc. We could incentivize renewables instead. We could demand more public control over the grid. Take profit out of utilities. Break the monopolies of big energy. Divest. Point being, there are plenty of other avenues that merit our political investment and energy, no pun intended.
Their long game appears to be to keep burning fossil fuels as long as possible, with inevitably higher prices, no matter the tax, which will be passed on to consumers, who will remain dependent since there is no vision for infrastructural transformation.
And, as with the Stephen Hadley/ Madeleine Albright hawkish road-show, we are talking here of really old thinkers – Prof. Cohan calls them 'elders' too – Reagan-era oil Republicans who are desperately grasping for straws as the world and DC go up in smoke. James A Baker III is 87 years old for goodness sake. And age does not equal wisdom when we are talking fossil fuels. At any rate, the plan has little chance of gaining traction, so it's not clear why we should get too distracted by it.
Read, critique, decide for yourself.
2) Meanwhile, David Roberts at Vox, rightly observes that revenue neutral carbon taxes are bad ideas, but talks about the business of renewables, which is getting more Repub support at the state level... a glimmer of hope and reason coming from the right?.
Renewable energy draws increasing Republican support. That could shift climate politics. D. Roberts (Vox)
/cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53279057/sam_brownback.0.jpg) |
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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback reconsiders the whole “picking winners” thing. (Bo Rader/Wichita Eagle/TNS via Getty Images)
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Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Monday, February 13, 2017
Middle East: On War, Militarism, Oil, and US Exceptionalism -- In the News
The New York Times – the conservative liberal hawkish paper – stepped up to defend US exceptionalism in two op-eds last week.
The first was called "Blaming America First" and took Trump to task for saying, rightly in my view, that the US is not so innocent.
Read it here: "Blaming America First"
A scathing critique of that piece was done by fair.org's Adam Johnson. Read the critique here:
http://fair.org/home/nyt-unlike-russian-wars-us-wars-promote-freedom-and-democracy/
And, on Sunday, the Times printed a piece by an American soldier, who derided the torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, but celebrated American heroism for being able to kill lots of Iraqis, honorably. The story also recounts how true American soldiers will medically treat those who we wound in battle. The message: We are exceptional when we stick to our values and these are good wars we are fighting. Torture is not American values, but heroic war-fighting is.
Nothing was said about oil, only about heroes and victims of bad decisions (about torture being legal). A fair exposé of why torture is wrong, but nothing said about the pursuit of this war itself.
Read it here, decide for yourself: "What We're Fighting For" (Phil Klay)
The first was called "Blaming America First" and took Trump to task for saying, rightly in my view, that the US is not so innocent.
Read it here: "Blaming America First"
A scathing critique of that piece was done by fair.org's Adam Johnson. Read the critique here:
http://fair.org/home/nyt-unlike-russian-wars-us-wars-promote-freedom-and-democracy/
And, on Sunday, the Times printed a piece by an American soldier, who derided the torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, but celebrated American heroism for being able to kill lots of Iraqis, honorably. The story also recounts how true American soldiers will medically treat those who we wound in battle. The message: We are exceptional when we stick to our values and these are good wars we are fighting. Torture is not American values, but heroic war-fighting is.
Nothing was said about oil, only about heroes and victims of bad decisions (about torture being legal). A fair exposé of why torture is wrong, but nothing said about the pursuit of this war itself.
Read it here, decide for yourself: "What We're Fighting For" (Phil Klay)
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United States Army soldiers transported Iraqi detainees captured during Operation Steel Curtain in 2005.
Credit
Jehad Nga
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Thursday, February 9, 2017
More on the botched Yemen raid and klling of civilians (via Juan Cole, Informed Comment): Yemen withdraws blanket approval for US action after Trump's botched Raid
Yemen withdraws blanket approval for US action after Trump's botched Raid
"Yemen is extremely hostile territory for US military action. Many Yemenis, even those who dislike the Houthis, are angry about indiscriminate Saudi bombing of civilians and infrastructure. They have held large demonstrations in the capital, Sanaa, against the Saudi bombing raids. The Saudis bomb them during the demonstrations. The US has been closely associated with this Saudi war, providing refueling facilities, help with strategy, and even help with choosing specific targets for Saudi bombing runs. Many Yemenis see the US as complicit in their misery.The Zaydis in the north resent decades of Saudi hegemony, and feel that the hard line Wahhabis in Riyadh are trying to convert them from their moderate Shiism."
A "New Approach to the Middle East" - Hadley and Albright's road show, and my brief notes on their 'strategic report'
Bret Gustafson
February 9, 2017
I compiled these notes after a summary review of the Hadley-Albright presentations and their report. It is neither new, nor encouraging, but exemplifies what has been a longer history of US oil-military action in the region, as detailed and critiqued by Mitchell in Carbon Democracy.
The Atlantic Council is a think tank focused on US-Europe relations with programs in a range of areas, including the Middle East. In 2014 it was featured in a NY Times investigation into the influence of foreign governments on US think tanks. In this case, it was suggested that scholars at the Atlantic Council were influenced in certain directions, in one case, not to criticize the military government of Egypt (which receives significant amounts of US foreign aid). The Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East was funded by the family of, and named after, Rafik Hariri, a former Prime Minister of Lebanon, assassinated in 2005. It thus appears to be the case that the Atlantic Council, staffed and advised by prominent members of the national security community, maintains close relationships with the military-oil oriented status quo in the Middle East.
Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley, who came to WUSTL on February 8, 2017, are the co-chairs of the Middle East Strategy Task Force at the Atlantic Council. As I wrote elsewhere, briefly, they are both associated with a "hawkish" (militaristic) approach to the Middle East, Hadley even moreso than Albright. Hadley has been deemed a 'war criminal' by the feminist and women-led anti-war organization Code Pink.
Hadley and Albright oversaw the production of a "Final Report" on the "new" approach to the Middle East, which is the basis of their ongoing 'educational' tour that brought them to St. Louis. The list of 'senior advisors' to the co-chairs on the report is a who's who of defense community, NATO, and Middle East country officials (including Saudi Arabia), along with conservative representatives of the US think-tank and academia (report, pp. i-ii).
The task force was convened in February of 2015. It is reasonable to think that the idea was that the report, in some way, would inform US foreign policy once Hillary Clinton (or one of the non-Trump Republicans) was elected. It looks like Trump threw a monkey-wrench in that plan so the road show is an attempt to promote it against Trump's rather chaotic - though sometimes brutally honest – talk about cutting heads off and taking oil in the Middle East.
The language of the report is one of "development" and "opportunities" for creating a "stable and peaceful order of sovereign states". To wit, from the executive summary:
Note how the crisis is deemed to emanate 'from' the Middle East, a place where outsiders have 'interests' and may play a role. Note also that among US vital interests, there is no mention of oil. This exemplifies what I (and Mitchell) might call a politics of 'detachment' - the notion that there is an inside and outside, and that causes of the current situation are largely internal to the region. This is empirically wrong and discursively dooms the project from the start.
The basic "new" strategy has two "prongs" [note the militaristic language]. First, military force exerted by "external powers" (i.e. the US) and second, 'development' efforts to "unlock the region's rich, but largely untapped, human capital – especially the underutilized talents of youth and women" (p.2). This sounds reminiscent of the discourses of self-determination and intervention, and the 'good will' imperialism of 'development' that Mitchell describes for the last 60-70 years of US policy.
Military action
In short, ramp up US military activities in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen to "wind down these civil wars."
Push for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine (but makes no statement about settlements).
Contain Iran so it does not become hegemonic. This is a nod to Israel and Saudi Arabia, who both oppose Iran.
Development (aka "unleashing the region's human and economic potential")
"develop the region's human capital"
Translation: education reform without large bureaucracies (the neoliberal model) and encouragement of American-style education and universities. Updated 2/13/17: After reflecting on Mitchell (ch. 4), you should see quite clearly how this story of the need to improve the "human capital" of the Middle East not only masks a not-so-subtle colonial racism, but echoes the projects of racial improvement from decades past. This is the heart of "development" as a form of imperial or indirect control.
"Big Bang" regulatory reforms
Translation: promotion of a free-market agenda, the discourse of "entrepreneurialism", promotion of private industry, free trade "trade barriers must be eliminated", promote foreign investment through deregulation, nothing said about NOCs, but the message is to make the region safe for foreign corporations
"citizen participation in civic problem-solving"
Translation: introduce the category of 'civic' and 'civic groups' as central in the society, to correspond with weakening of labor unions and other forms of political identification and engagement, position support for women as a key justification of intervention
"good governance" by "local governments"
Translation: push for decentralization, a long-standing mantra of neoliberal reformism, which gives more influence to large corporations and capital vis-a-vis the state, a technical approach to "solving problems" rather than a political approach to addressing political and economic inequality
"regional framework for dialogue"
Translation: make a new regional organization that weakens the influence of the Arab League (and maybe OPEC?)
"Regional Development Fund for Reconstruction and Reform"
Translation: Create a Marshall Plan or World Bank style fund that could exert influence and interventionism by offering or withholding credit in exchange for certain policy adoptions, i.e. "encourage and drive private sector development".
Where's the oil? In no part of the executive summary is the word oil mentioned, or even obliquely referenced, except in the part relating to American interests, where one might infer that helping the "American economy" and "enabling American global military operations" means, making sure the oil keeps flowing as it has been. [Note, it is curious that a new approach "for" the Middle East and "from" the Middle East is to advocate for and "enable" American military operations. That in itself is a bit mind-boggling but reveals not so subtly the hand of the oil-militarism nexus at work.]
The word oil is only explicitly mentioned in later sections (p 15-16), in the context of the importance of American exports to the region (though arms and military equipment are not mentioned) and American economic stability. And again, briefly, oil prices are referenced in the links between lower oil prices and changes in Saudi government and education (p37) (aspirational, not yet real); the conflict between Kurds and Iraqi national leadership (p 68); and some efforts of US universities to establish campuses in places like Doha and Abu Dhabi (p86).
Note the focus on the 'price' of oil with no mention of the problematic relationship of weapons for oil, or the close historical linkage between this relationship and the reproduction of oligarchic and violent rule across the region (c.f. Mitchell).
There is absolutely no mention of climate change or global warming. The word climate appears twice, once in reference to the "macroeconomic climate" (53) and once in reference to a "regulatory climate" (88).
The word "environment" appears only once as such, in reference to some initiatives for youth in Jordan. Otherwise it appears repeatedly but is used in what we might call the thinking of economic (free-market) calculation: in reference to "security environment" or "enabling environment" (96) or "investment environment" (88) or "entrepreneurial environment" or "legal and regulatory environment" (e.g. 87), all of which are used to orient discourse toward the pro-business, free-market approach to 'reform'.
None of this sounds very "new" nor does it address the fundamental problem of the American oil-weapons nexus with the Middle East, nor the problem of the overconsumption of oil and global warming.
Whereas Mitchell argues that oil is at the heart of the political machinery that currently exists, and that the political machineries of the West and the Middle East are entangled through oil, this report is one of economic calculation and imperialistic approaches to so-called 'self-determination' (now through development) that obfuscates that reality.
It thus exemplifies the way of thinking and the longer historical patterns that Mitchell sets out to critique.
St. Louis Public Radio wrote a soft-ball piece on the visit here. The article is revealing, since it shows how this tour was (mis)educating young people both on campus and in high schools, who went away feeling rosy and 'inspired' about our urge to 'help' the Middle East, but with nothing to say about the nexus between oil, militarism, and climate change.
February 9, 2017
I compiled these notes after a summary review of the Hadley-Albright presentations and their report. It is neither new, nor encouraging, but exemplifies what has been a longer history of US oil-military action in the region, as detailed and critiqued by Mitchell in Carbon Democracy.
The Atlantic Council is a think tank focused on US-Europe relations with programs in a range of areas, including the Middle East. In 2014 it was featured in a NY Times investigation into the influence of foreign governments on US think tanks. In this case, it was suggested that scholars at the Atlantic Council were influenced in certain directions, in one case, not to criticize the military government of Egypt (which receives significant amounts of US foreign aid). The Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East was funded by the family of, and named after, Rafik Hariri, a former Prime Minister of Lebanon, assassinated in 2005. It thus appears to be the case that the Atlantic Council, staffed and advised by prominent members of the national security community, maintains close relationships with the military-oil oriented status quo in the Middle East.
Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley, who came to WUSTL on February 8, 2017, are the co-chairs of the Middle East Strategy Task Force at the Atlantic Council. As I wrote elsewhere, briefly, they are both associated with a "hawkish" (militaristic) approach to the Middle East, Hadley even moreso than Albright. Hadley has been deemed a 'war criminal' by the feminist and women-led anti-war organization Code Pink.
Stephen Hadley, who spoke today @wustl, not only lied his *** off, he is on @codepink 's war criminals list. https://t.co/vfLfGwH6HD— Bret Gustafson (@bretgustafson) February 8, 2017
Hadley and Albright oversaw the production of a "Final Report" on the "new" approach to the Middle East, which is the basis of their ongoing 'educational' tour that brought them to St. Louis. The list of 'senior advisors' to the co-chairs on the report is a who's who of defense community, NATO, and Middle East country officials (including Saudi Arabia), along with conservative representatives of the US think-tank and academia (report, pp. i-ii).
The task force was convened in February of 2015. It is reasonable to think that the idea was that the report, in some way, would inform US foreign policy once Hillary Clinton (or one of the non-Trump Republicans) was elected. It looks like Trump threw a monkey-wrench in that plan so the road show is an attempt to promote it against Trump's rather chaotic - though sometimes brutally honest – talk about cutting heads off and taking oil in the Middle East.
The language of the report is one of "development" and "opportunities" for creating a "stable and peaceful order of sovereign states". To wit, from the executive summary:
...a global crisis emanating from the Middle East convulsing much of the region in instability and violence, while projecting the threat and reality of terrorism and disruption far beyond...There are opportunities in the Middle East, not just challenges.
To be able to harness these opportunities, it is necessary to change the political trajectory of the region from state failure and civil war toward a stable and peaceful order of sovereign states. It goes without saying that the states and peoples of the Middle East have the greatest stake in what happens there. Yet the United States also has vital interests that impact both the lives and livelihoods of Americans and their families: keeping citizens safe from terrorism; protecting the US economy; empowering friends and allies; enabling American global military operations; preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction; and averting destabilizing humanitarian disasters.
Advancing American interests will require far more than a unilateral “American strategy.” Outsiders cannot x what ails the Middle East. Neither can they avoid its global consequences through some combination of defense, disengagement, and containment.
The basic "new" strategy has two "prongs" [note the militaristic language]. First, military force exerted by "external powers" (i.e. the US) and second, 'development' efforts to "unlock the region's rich, but largely untapped, human capital – especially the underutilized talents of youth and women" (p.2). This sounds reminiscent of the discourses of self-determination and intervention, and the 'good will' imperialism of 'development' that Mitchell describes for the last 60-70 years of US policy.
Military action
In short, ramp up US military activities in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen to "wind down these civil wars."
Push for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine (but makes no statement about settlements).
Contain Iran so it does not become hegemonic. This is a nod to Israel and Saudi Arabia, who both oppose Iran.
Development (aka "unleashing the region's human and economic potential")
"develop the region's human capital"
Translation: education reform without large bureaucracies (the neoliberal model) and encouragement of American-style education and universities. Updated 2/13/17: After reflecting on Mitchell (ch. 4), you should see quite clearly how this story of the need to improve the "human capital" of the Middle East not only masks a not-so-subtle colonial racism, but echoes the projects of racial improvement from decades past. This is the heart of "development" as a form of imperial or indirect control.
"Big Bang" regulatory reforms
Translation: promotion of a free-market agenda, the discourse of "entrepreneurialism", promotion of private industry, free trade "trade barriers must be eliminated", promote foreign investment through deregulation, nothing said about NOCs, but the message is to make the region safe for foreign corporations
"citizen participation in civic problem-solving"
Translation: introduce the category of 'civic' and 'civic groups' as central in the society, to correspond with weakening of labor unions and other forms of political identification and engagement, position support for women as a key justification of intervention
"good governance" by "local governments"
Translation: push for decentralization, a long-standing mantra of neoliberal reformism, which gives more influence to large corporations and capital vis-a-vis the state, a technical approach to "solving problems" rather than a political approach to addressing political and economic inequality
"regional framework for dialogue"
Translation: make a new regional organization that weakens the influence of the Arab League (and maybe OPEC?)
"Regional Development Fund for Reconstruction and Reform"
Translation: Create a Marshall Plan or World Bank style fund that could exert influence and interventionism by offering or withholding credit in exchange for certain policy adoptions, i.e. "encourage and drive private sector development".
Where's the oil? In no part of the executive summary is the word oil mentioned, or even obliquely referenced, except in the part relating to American interests, where one might infer that helping the "American economy" and "enabling American global military operations" means, making sure the oil keeps flowing as it has been. [Note, it is curious that a new approach "for" the Middle East and "from" the Middle East is to advocate for and "enable" American military operations. That in itself is a bit mind-boggling but reveals not so subtly the hand of the oil-militarism nexus at work.]
The word oil is only explicitly mentioned in later sections (p 15-16), in the context of the importance of American exports to the region (though arms and military equipment are not mentioned) and American economic stability. And again, briefly, oil prices are referenced in the links between lower oil prices and changes in Saudi government and education (p37) (aspirational, not yet real); the conflict between Kurds and Iraqi national leadership (p 68); and some efforts of US universities to establish campuses in places like Doha and Abu Dhabi (p86).
Note the focus on the 'price' of oil with no mention of the problematic relationship of weapons for oil, or the close historical linkage between this relationship and the reproduction of oligarchic and violent rule across the region (c.f. Mitchell).
There is absolutely no mention of climate change or global warming. The word climate appears twice, once in reference to the "macroeconomic climate" (53) and once in reference to a "regulatory climate" (88).
The word "environment" appears only once as such, in reference to some initiatives for youth in Jordan. Otherwise it appears repeatedly but is used in what we might call the thinking of economic (free-market) calculation: in reference to "security environment" or "enabling environment" (96) or "investment environment" (88) or "entrepreneurial environment" or "legal and regulatory environment" (e.g. 87), all of which are used to orient discourse toward the pro-business, free-market approach to 'reform'.
None of this sounds very "new" nor does it address the fundamental problem of the American oil-weapons nexus with the Middle East, nor the problem of the overconsumption of oil and global warming.
Whereas Mitchell argues that oil is at the heart of the political machinery that currently exists, and that the political machineries of the West and the Middle East are entangled through oil, this report is one of economic calculation and imperialistic approaches to so-called 'self-determination' (now through development) that obfuscates that reality.
It thus exemplifies the way of thinking and the longer historical patterns that Mitchell sets out to critique.
St. Louis Public Radio wrote a soft-ball piece on the visit here. The article is revealing, since it shows how this tour was (mis)educating young people both on campus and in high schools, who went away feeling rosy and 'inspired' about our urge to 'help' the Middle East, but with nothing to say about the nexus between oil, militarism, and climate change.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Yemen: After the killings last week, outrage against the United States
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Good news of the day: Peabody Coal's ex-CEO has quietly left the WUSTL board of trustees
Good news of the day, dirty coal execs have left our university's board of trustees. @wustl.— Bret Gustafson (@bretgustafson) February 7, 2017
If they put another coal exec on there... https://t.co/q2L7pTzpxH
Energy Politics in the St Louis Region: Events of Interest to our course...
Hello all, some events related to our course that I hope someone goes to see because I’m swamped:
1) “The Mortality - Air Pollution Nexus and Actions to Mitigate Impacts"
Tonight, from 5:30 - 6:30 PM.
Farrell Teaching and Learning Ctr on the Medical Campus, Room 214
Info here: https://publichealth.wustl.edu/events/mortality-air-pollution-nexus-actions-mitigate-impacts/
Finally someone at the med school talking about dirty air. I hope they talk about moving to renewables rather than just ‘mitigating’ impacts.
2) “A New Approach to the Middle East” wouldn’t that be nice?
Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley will speak tomorrow at 9 AM in Graham Chapel.
I’d love to hear what the new approach is, but don’t have too much faith in these two, but one can always hope. Hadley is a war hawk who helped the Bush administration lie our way into the second Iraq war after 9/11. He is also close to Robert Gates and company of the oil-loving militaristic right, and he’s closely tied to the weapons industry we’ll be critiquing tomorrow. Madeleine Albright was ambassador to the UN and later secretary of state under Clinton. She was trying to stir up support for an attack on Iraq even before 9/11. Albright is a proponent of American exceptionalism and militarism in the Middle East. WUSTL gave Albright an honorary PhD in 2003. She infamously suggested that women who didn’t vote for Hillary would go to hell. More on Madeleine Albright here
Somebody please go listen to them and report back to class. (I’ll excuse you for being late to class, but we’ll also be talking about Saudi Arabia.) I’m guessing Albright and Hadley won’t have much to say about oil, which will basically prove my point from yesterday. But I hope I’m wrong. The event will also be streamed so I might catch some of it.
As I write this I’m thinking we should show up to protest, but with Trump in office even war mongers like these two start sounding rational. smh. When I get like this I listen to this song: “War Pigs” (Black Sabbath), written during Vietnam War times, but relevant today.
3) Resisting new pipeline infrastructures in the St Louis Region.
Meeting this Saturday at 6 PM at Mokabe’s Coffeehouse (3606 Arsenal St, St Louis)
A local organization, MORE, is starting to mobilize people to push the transition by resisting new oil infrastructures. A number of WUSTL students have been involved with MORE over the years, perhaps some still are. They helped us during the sit-in against Peabody. Join up.
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