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Page added on June 18, 2016
Our Fossil-Fuel Economy Destroys the Earth and Exploits Humanity
I am a Mexican immigrant and a senior at Columbia University who’s been organizing around fossil fuel divestment since freshman year. Two years ago, I had a bit of a crisis. I suddenly felt disillusioned with the movement—not with the tactic of divestment, but rather with the fact that national campaigns were solely focused on taking down the fossil fuel behemoth. Don’t get me wrong; it’s extremely satisfying to hear of another divestment win, to see the fossil fuel industry take a hit. But I began to realize that while we need people to fight the bad in this world, we also need people creating the society we do want to live in. I want to be one of those people.
That summer, as a 350.org Fossil Free Fellow, I was introduced to the reinvestment campaign. I learned about a way that we, as students, can build off the successes of the divestment movement to fight for what we want. This campaign is one tactic we can use to facilitate the transition out of our current economy into a regenerative economy. But before we talk about where we want to go, let’s talk about where we are now.
Jihan Gearon, Black Mesa Water Coalition; Deirdre Smith, 350.org; Ed Whitfield, Fund for Democratic Communities; and Gopal Dayaneni, Movement Generation discuss reinvestment at the Richmond Our Power National Convening, August 2014 (photo credit: Reinvest in Our Power Network)
America’s extractive economy
Whether or not we care to admit it, our current economy is extractive—that is, it’s built on the exploitation and extraction of human labor and the earth’s resources. It relies on corporations that force workers to work long hours in unsafe conditions for insufficient wages and benefits. It exists by the continual removal of nutrients from the soil, minerals from the mountains, and fossil fuels from underground. This system isn’t working for us today, and it isn’t going to work for us tomorrow. We know that infinite growth is not possible, but this economy depends on it.
Regenerative economy
In contrast, a regenerative economy satisfies the needs of the present planet without diminishing the prospects of future generations. It builds community wealth by shifting economic power, making workers the owners of their own businesses, community members the decision makers about their resources. It also strengthens the public sector such that it serves the people rather than private interests. A just transition to a regenerative economy restores our relationship to food, Mother Earth and our communities.
A just transition requires accountability, transparency, and solidarity. It exposes the false promises of corporations and governments and values solutions from the people who are most impacted by systemic issues.
This all sounds really great, but it seems impossible, right? There are incredibly powerful forces keeping our extractive economy in place. People in power talk about our economic system like it’s gravity—“it’s just the way the world works.” But a regenerative alternative is not just a figment of the leftist imagination. People wrote the rules for the extractive economy and we can write different rules.
People across the globe have demonstrated that it is possible to justly revitalize their economies. The “solidarity economy” has taken root in many communities throughout Latin America and Europe. Take Argentina, for example, where people saw economic crisis as an opportunity to build an economy more just than the one that had failed them.
Argentina’s solidarity economy: A seed of inspiration
In 2001, the economy of Argentina collapsed. Business executives with capital were afraid, so they fled and left workers without jobs—without their livelihoods. Factory workers realized that although they had been laid off, the perfectly functioning machines they had worked with lay unused. So they decided to take over the factories and claim them as public goods. After many legal and political battles, hundreds of factories came under the democratic ownership of workers. Fifteen years later, these worker-owned cooperatives continue to play a key role in sustaining their communities.
La Base (know as the Working World in English) is one of the organizations that made this just transition possible. La Base offers loans for raw materials, flexible payment schedules, extremely low interest rates, as well as technical assistance to democratically-managed businesses. They only require that loans be paid back if and when businesses are solvent. In doing so, La Base prioritizes the wellbeing of workers and their families. Unlike banks which profit whether or not businesses succeed, La Base’s own success relies on the success of the businesses they support. A remarkable 98 percent of La Base’s loans have been repaid in full. This demonstrates that generating community wealth does not require exploitation nor extraction.
In spring of 2015, I studied abroad in Buenos Aires and got to meet dozens of cooperative members who had been democratically operating their businesses for years. I also got to witness first-hand the way the La Base team practiced their values of open communication, trust, and respect in interactions with worker-owned cooperatives.
This story has not only inspired me to do this work; it has also been a seed of inspiration for a regenerative economy in the United States. Worker-owned businesses and local funds are springing up across the nation with the help of the Working World, La Base’s U.S. affiliate. From a factory occupation in Chicago to the establishment of a democratically owned grocery store in Greensboro, communities across the country are rewriting the rules of their economies. They are building something beautiful.
So what does this have to do with the divestment movement?
Our movement has done incredible things over the past few years. We have built more power for climate justice on college campuses than any campaign before us. We’ve mobilized thousands of students, shifted popular opinion about the fossil fuel industry by running strong campaigns and populated today’s movements with a new generation of organizers. This is incredible work and we should be proud of ourselves. We also know that we have more work to do.
Iliana Salazar-Dodge leads the youth contingent of the People’s Climate March, September, 2014. (photo credit: Yong Jung Cho)
In the past, we’ve been told that it’s not our job to tell our universities where to invest our endowments. We’re not economists or fund managers, after all. But we are part of a movement that measures “returns” differently: we believe an economy is successful when it meets the needs of people and the planet. Defining success in these terms is our best shot at ensuring our collective survival.
We can leverage the power we’ve built in the divestment movement to move our institutions’ resources and build popular support for a just transition. With divestment, we’ve said, “we’re not content with the way things are.” With reinvestment, we say, “this is the way things should be, can be and will be.”
The author would like to thank Movement Generation and the Reinvest in Our Power campaign for writings on the work that informed this article.
18 Comments on "Our Fossil-Fuel Economy Destroys the Earth and Exploits Humanity"
onlooker on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 12:23 pm
It is also what allows and has allowed so many humans to live and live prosperous. So the benefits and drawbacks are what define the current quandary or catch 22 , humanity finds itself in now
Davy on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 12:34 pm
This divestment movement folks are like angles with iron wings. It is not fossil fuels killing the planet it is humans who chose to use fossil fuels and unfortunately must use them to survive. There are no alternatives especially the so called alternatives.
We can theoretically come to an understanding and initiate an oil reduction protocol. This will force the entire global economy into economic crisis and we can begin the tough reductions to our material standard of living and population levels that is a necessary systematically per natural laws. Macro population and consumption must drop per a balanced ecosystem. This will involve loss of life and include pain and suffering for everyone. It will be the end of modern man and the beginning of who knows what.
If you phrase it that way these divestment movement people will be like “But…but..but..that’s not what we mean” It is what they mean but they are in denial of the resulting consequences. In any case their movement is nothing more than feel good thAng. It will give people some false hope that they are making a difference but it means nothing in the greater scheme of things where climate is destabilizing, the economy is in a slow collapse process, and peak oil dynamics is draining away our life blood oil.
There is no getting out of jail free. We can’t have our cake and eat it. We are in a catch 22 trap. We have options but no good options. In almost every direction we go someone must die. It is a game of real life musical chairs but the ones caught standing up will be killed by a process that will not care what class, color, and or sex that person is. A natural rebalance process is a bitch for the species caught in the middle of the process and unfortunately we are that species.
bug on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 12:37 pm
Can not improve on what onlooker stated.
We are in this catch 22 we created, there is no escape except the end. Thank goodness.
John Kintree on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 1:49 pm
When we realized that second-hand smoke was harmful, we banned smoking in restaurants.
At over 400 ppm of co2 in the atmosphere, and approaching 500 ppm of co2 equivalent, it is increasingly clear that we are cooking ourselves. There may be moment of awakening when most carbon intensive activities are outright banned: cruise ships, flying, commuting in single occupancy vehicles.
Or, we may set two tons of co2 emissions per person per year as a limit, and let people decided for themselves how they will live within their limit.
penury on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 2:16 pm
I am glad that people are interested in looking for solutions. However, the true solution is the one thing that no one will discuss. Overpopulation. Guess what until humans are willing to face reality the rest of this stuff is bulls
Davy on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 2:22 pm
John, you do realize there are consequences to the actions you just mentioned and those consequences are a collapsed economy. There are no ways around this. We can’t curb the markets using markets. That is the snake eating his tail. The only way to solve this problem is for modern man to commit suicide.
Goat1001 on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 4:02 pm
Soylent Green day is Tuesday. Maybe I’ll find room on the steps to sleep tonight, the street’s a real bummer for sleeping. Oh, the low tonight is 40 degrees C.
rockman on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 5:05 pm
And again another enthusiastic child that understands nothing about “divestment”. First, t simply means transferring stock from one shareholder to another. That change is completely invisible to the management of ExxonMobil et al. Second, in the very unlikely event that enough shareholders dump enough stock to cause Lowe prices the companies are benefited…not hurt. First it allows them to buy back their stock at a significant bargain price. Second a lower stock price means they distribute less dividens while it has no effect on their income. IOW they retain more revenue to find increased oil/NG extraction projects.
But again that’s not a very likely scenario. Essential who owns any pubco’s stock has no affect on how they conduct business. Unless they represent a major position and can affect the board’s decision. Of course that would mean raising tens of $billions to buy enough stock. And the reward if the plan has some succes: missing $billions in equity.
Yep, that’s a great plan. But if the divestature bullsh*t gives them the false illusion of hurting the industry so be it. ExxonMobil certainly won’t try to pop their bubble. LOL.
Davy on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 8:40 pm
“Watch These Synthetic Leaves Suck CO2 Out of the Sky”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-15/watch-these-synthetic-leaves-suck-co2-out-of-the-sky
“They discovered a commercially available resin that can grab carbon dioxide at low concentrations when the material is dry and release it when the material is moist. The CO2 it collects could be stored underground, used in greenhouses, or fed to algae for biofuel production.”
freak on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 9:20 pm
We are witnessing global economic crises starting in many parts of the earth and a global population unable to feed itself. Expect to here rumors and companies get caught selling human flesh as beef.
http://www.naturalnews.com/054217_human_flesh_meat_products_China.html
As things worsens and with the right marketing and social engineering cannibalism might be acceptable way to feed starving populations.
onlooker on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 9:33 pm
I also feel this can become inevitable as humans become largest source of food on Earth. Soylent Green anyone?
rockman on Sat, 18th Jun 2016 9:43 pm
“They discovered a commercially available resin…” Rather clever wording. I bet some reading that statement think they are saying the proposed process is commercial. But what they are actually saying it can be bought from a 0manufacturer. And there have been material that absorb CO2 for decades that has been used in rebreathing equipment. Anyway I can’t imagine how such a process can be “commercial”. Maybe selling it to algae growers…or Coke. LOL.
Couldn’t find any info on the cost. Then I would their hope would be for a govt grant to pay them for it. BTW they can forget about requestion into a reservoir: increasing the pressure from 14 psi to several hundred in order to inject it would create more CO2 then they are getting rid of.
theedrich on Sun, 19th Jun 2016 1:26 am
Kudos to this (¿legal?) microcephalic Mexican. Along with all of the other snowflakes and parasites, he is expecting MSM glorification for his politically correct blather. As Rockman has pointed out, “divestment” is a delusion as to efficacy. Nice, however, to see the Spic’s racially mixed pic, so politically correct. And all the proper verbiage: “community,” “just transition,” “solidarity,” “worker-owned,” etc., etc. Marx and Ø would be proud.
Of course, once the “world” (i.e., the White man) starts down the path of this “Movement,” the world economy will jam into reverse. As Davy put it, “If you phrase it that way these divestment movement people will be like, ‘But…but..but..that’s not what we mean.’ It is what they mean, but they are in denial of the resulting consequences. In any case their movement is nothing more than feel good thAng.”
And, of course, the members of such bowel movements invariably omit the gruesome facts of war and its consequences, present and future — never mind biospheric overload. The fantasts invariably invent other fictions to defend their infantilisms. And their attacks are directed strictly against evil Whites on the premiss that all other races are innocent victims of predatory White racism and the muddies have nothing to do with the population explosion, wildlife extinction, etc. Makes for good entertainment on the evening MSM propaganda shows.
Davy on Sun, 19th Jun 2016 5:17 am
While I can’t say for certain what is coming nor can I dismiss a wide range of possible scenarios, widespread cannibalism is possible but less likely then the sporadic occurrences. Marketing and social engineering of cannibalism is highly unlikely. Marketing and engineering imply complexity and if we get to the point of cannibalism it is likely society is well out of the range of those types of complexities.
We know from the history of some of the Chinese famines babies were traded for food. The idea behind this is the revulsion of eating one’s own is avoided. It was understood the babies would die anyway because of the famine. I have read Japanese soldiers practiced it. I saw a documentary of one such soldier finding one of his comrades and confronting him about the horrors of it. We don’t really see widespread cannibalism anywhere in our history. It is said Neanderthals practice cannibalism and their human cousins ate Neanderthals. Even among primitive tribes that practiced it generally it was more for ritual reasons of the death grieving process or celebration of a victor.
I dwell on this subject because there is a fascination on our board with the topic. We constantly hear the soylent talk. Soylent is probably not a future food because again widespread commercial use of human flesh in a soylent substance points to complexity. My point is we will have lost our complexity by the time we indulge in human flesh. I suspect the occurrences of cannibalism in a collapse time will be situational and sporadic.
I do see us humans scouring the land and eating up many of the smaller mammals, reptiles, and insects. There are many nuts and plants we can eat. In most cases when we get to the point of locust and then yeast I suspect death will come quick to many. We will likely see groups killing other groups as an attempt to gain resources and reduce competition. Instead of cannibalism I see genocide.
It is more likely we are going to see a switch from a birth/growth paradigm to death/decline over a generation. This concept carries the averaging concept so this means there will be periods of large death events and times of less. This would likely coincide with war, famine, and pestilence.
This collapse/death subject is important because it may touch us all. All of us will be thinking about cannibalism when and if a collapse occurs. It will be one of those fears we have that goes with the suffering and death of the coming collapse period. Personally I think it is one of those overblown fears humans carry around. Most of us will not meet our deaths through cannibalism but many will fear it. It will be a superstitious fear we unreasonably fear that will rarely occur or maybe I am in denial of the horror of it.
kanon on Sun, 19th Jun 2016 6:59 am
An oil reduction protocol will certainly be a crisis for the corporate oligarchs and their money system. It even appears that any type of reduction protocol is a crisis for the toxic establishment as we have been in QE mode since 2008. IMHO the pontificators on this board have small imaginations when it comes to other possibilities. Now we know TINA still lives and is as phony as ever.
Kenz300 on Sun, 19th Jun 2016 8:57 am
There are safer, cleaner and cheaper ways to generate and use energy. Clean energy production with wind and solar and clean energy consumption with electric vehicles. That is the future.
The fossil fuel industry needs to evolve or die……….sticking their collective heads in the sand is no answer……..
Big Coal Funded This Prominent Climate Change Denier, Docs Reveal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/roy-spencer-peabody-energy_us_57601e12e4b053d43306535e
Oil Giants Spend $115 Million A Year To Oppose Climate Policy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oil-companies-climate-policy_us_570bb841e4b0142232496d97
Roger on Sun, 19th Jun 2016 10:13 pm
“The fossil fuel industry needs to evolve or die……….sticking their collective”
Why are you so worried about them? Perhaps because you know they’re not going to die…and, though you’ll never admit it — your very survival is tied to those fossil fuels. They don’t expect your thanks, but why bite the hand that holds you?
Regarding the links…hoffopost is certainly the place to look to fulfill what you seek.
Boat on Sun, 19th Jun 2016 11:35 pm
Our Fossil-Fuel Economy Destroys the Earth and Exploits Humanity
I am a Mexican immigrant and a senior at Columbia University.
The plants run by worker owned employees use fossil fuel to run the machines, light the buildings and ship the products. Bet they have plenty of gadgets in the workplace. Forklifts, machines for packaging using plastic and cardboard. How is this going to save the planet?
So if a competitor uses robotics and makes the product cheaper will they do the same to survive? Great they are doing well now. Ideolgy wont survive with capitalism. The company has to come before people or the company dies. New products and constant innovation allow survival. I wish them th best of luck.