Venezuela's Opec Stand Is A Win For Climate Change Campaigners

[polly7]

Venezuela's Opec Stand Is A Win For Climate Change Campaigners
By Mark Weisbrot

http://www.zcommunications.org/venezuelas-opec-stand-is-a-win-for-climate-change-campaigners-by-mark-weisbrot

Environmentalists seem to realize that they have some stake in a fight such as the Ecuador-Chevron lawsuit. That case, which Chevron has recently moved to an international arbitration panel in an attempt to avoid a multibillion penalty handed down by Ecuadorian courts, is about whether a multinational oil corporation will have to pay damages for pollution for which it is responsible. Most environmentalists figure that would be a good thing.

But what about fights between multinational oil giants and the governments of oil-producing states over control of resources? Do people who care about the environment and climate change have a stake in these battles? It appears that they do, but most have not yet noticed it.....

[Peace Patriot]

1. Interesting argument but I'm not sure that I fully agree.

One thing that Weisbrot doesn't mention is that, while Venezuela and other OPEC nations reduce oil production which drives up the price of oil, and we get $5/gal here, for instance (for this and other reasons)--a gasoline price that is further impoverishing millions of poor people here--Venezuelans enjoy gas prices that are kept artificially low.

Venezuelans get low gas prices and other huge benefits from their oil sector--including funding for education, universal medical care and other programs--as a matter of SOCIAL JUSTICE. They have demanded this "New Deal" for themselves and elected the Chavez government, and have supported this government through coup attempts and other attacks by the U.S. and by the right, and through many elections, precisely for social justice reasons. And it has paid off. The UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean recently designated Venezuela as "THE most equal country" in Latin America on income distribution.

The SOCIAL JUSTICE aspect of oil resources, oil production, oil prices and oil distribution MUST be considered along with saving Planet Earth. These two matters cannot be separated. Numerous Latin American countries, which have elected leftist governments, are facing the same dilemma as Venezuela: how to utilize their rich natural resources to benefit the people who live there while NOT further damaging Earth's ecosystem and while finding the ways to restore it. This is the dilemma in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Peru, in Brazil and other countries--and it is both an excruciating dilemma and one that causes serious conflict on the left (which has erupted in Indigenous tribes, for instance, turning against leftist leaders in some of these countries, over environmental concerns).

People who are poor often feel that they cannot afford to protect the environment and they blind themselves to the damage that they do as employees of natural resource extraction companies. And the corporations that form around this business, of course, propagandize their workers and exploit them, taking most of the profits to enrich the rich. The illusion of prosperity is created, with what seem like high salaries--for instance, for logging or oil production jobs--but, considering that most of the workers start with nothing (no land, no savings, no investments, no assets), the relatively high salaries are not really equitable--they are a bribe--and, as soon as the resource is depleted, the rich withdraw, invest in something else, and leave behind a depressed community with no resources.

You gotta laugh at the corporate propaganda (what else can you do?). "Trees--the renewable resource," for instance, a bumper sticker that you see in regions that still have a few trees that haven't yet been logged. The bumper sticker disappears, though, when those last marketable trees have been taken and there are no more timber jobs. Fly over northern California's redwood counties and you will see the reality: huge patches of clearcuts and/or immensely depleted forest--a landscape of patchwork deserts with a few, small, scraggly trees. Not. A. Forest. Never. Will. Be. A. Forest. Again.

And 40%, 50%, 60% unemployment. Timber jobs, all gone. Collateral damage to the fishing industry (logging destroys fish spawning habitat). Catastrophic loss of biodiversity. Hotter, dryer or more extreme weather. All the profit bled out of the community. That profit then used to control governments, to buy politicians, to lobby, to create "think tanks" that spew the corporate party line, to inflict resource wars on the world and to ravage other peoples' countries.

What a cruel joke it is, the propaganda that says that Nature will always renew itself. We are finally coming up against that "Big Lie." The truth is that Nature CAN be harmed irreparably, IS being harmed irreparably by us and that WE--who consider ourselves so clever and superior--can go extinct.

The irony is that prosperity--at least, of the kind that we in the Western World have defined (consumerist prosperity, rather than the riches of culture, community and sustainable living)--actually creates the leisure to think about things, and often includes the education needed to achieve a bigger view. Thus "environmentalism" seems to be largely a middle class endeavor, in our society. Doctors and teachers become concerned about endangered species; not loggers or oil workers. (Where Indigenous populations still remain, this is not true--the often very poor Indigenous are the strongest environmentalists, but they do NOT define "prosperity" as we do.)

What the Chavez government has done is to insure that Venezuela's main resource--oil--is not drained dry with the profits going ELSEWHERE. It is a social justice agenda. And they really cannot be--and should not be--held responsible for the high price of gasoline here. THAT is largely the result of private, U.S.-based, transglobal corporate PRICE MANIPULATION and RAMPANT PROFITEERING--and is indirectly the result of corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems and other anti-democracy measures HERE, by which we have lost control of our government to corporate entities that have no loyalty to US (or to anyone).

I've heard a lot of crapola about the $5/gal gasoline--for instance, that it's somehow Iran's fault. (The U.S. saber-rattles at Iran and the price of gas doubles up--and that's IRAN's fault!?) But I think the biggest crapola is that it's OPEC's fault. WHY would temporarily decreased production raise the price of gasoline to astronomical levels HERE? Nope. What we are seeing is Exxon Mobil's executives and biggest investors passing the cost of their third yachts onto to US.

All of this said, how does Weisbrot's thesis--that high gas prices benefit Planet Earth hold up? I don't think it holds up well because it leaves out social justice. If the impact of high gas prices--and of a carbon tax, which (as he says) environmentalists advocate--fall exclusively on THE POOR, while the rich get richer anyway (because they WILL pass this cost on)--thus gaining even more power to ravage the poor and to destroy democracy--the result WILL BE BAD, on all fronts. The rich will merely go on destroying the Earth in some other way--and endlessly lying to, and exploiting, workers, as well. For instance, converting food producing land to palm oil production, using slave labor conditions and soil-destroying pesticides!

Weisbrot makes a clever point--that the Venezuela vs Exxon Mobil fight is about the Venezuelan government's ability to REDUCE oil production (as per OPEC quotas)--and thus should be of interest to environmentalists. He is quite correct to say that this struggle has been about democratic government control of resources vs transglobal corporate monster control. But I think he misses an important aspect of this struggle--that Venezuela's oil profits are now PROPERLY being used to BENEFIT the POOR. It is THIS aspect of the worldwide struggle (and U.S. war) over resources that environmentalists need to pay attention to. How does a country like Venezuela achieve BOTH social justice AND environmental protection? You can't tell them to do so by REDUCING oil production. They may do so temporarily, in response to OPEC rules. But they are dependent on oil--both as a transportation and industrial production commodity (as we are) and as a source of funds for social justice programs (we can only wish). So they will go back to increased production, at some point, and meanwhile the high oil price reduces their incentive to diversify their economy.

This is a complicated matter--environmentalism vs social justice. And the matter of saving Planet Earth cannot be reduced, simply, to high oil prices. I think that the most important element of this discussion is DEMOCRACY. WHO controls the resources? HOW can ideas and projects for sustainable living emerge when transglobal corporate entities control the discussion, all public resources and the levers of government, in their own private, profiteering interest--as they do here?

Venezuela, at least, has official government projects for land reform, organic farming, food security, economic diversity, help to small business and other environmentally beneficial ideas. And they are allied with Bolivia and other countries, for instance, in an effort to provide world leadership to address global climate change (so utterly lacking here). They are AWARE OF and discuss these fundamental problems and conflicts. Here, the discussion is how much to loot Social Security or how much to reduce Medicare, to pay for U.S. corporate resource wars (the latter point unsaid).

THEY have the right idea because they have a healthy democracy. We get all the wrong ideas shoved down our throats because our democracy is sick, indeed. And one of the supreme ironies of this reality is that our corporate-run government never stops slandering Venezuela as "UN-democratic."

WHO has the power--the People or the Corporate Thugs? That is the important question

[naaman fletcher]

2. two comments:

"Numerous Latin American countries, which have elected leftist governments, are facing the same dilemma as Venezuela: how to utilize their rich natural resources to benefit the people who live there while NOT further damaging Earth's ecosystem and while finding the ways to restore it. This is the dilemma in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Peru, in Brazil and other countries--and it is both an excruciating dilemma and one that causes serious conflict on the left (which has erupted in Indigenous tribes, for instance, turning against leftist leaders in some of these countries, over environmental concerns)."

It's not really a dilemma. They all just ignore the environmental side.


You gotta laugh at the corporate propaganda (what else can you do?). "Trees--the renewable resource," for instance, a bumper sticker that you see in regions that still have a few trees that haven't yet been logged. The bumper sticker disappears, though, when those last marketable trees have been taken and there are no more timber jobs. Fly over northern California's redwood counties and you will see the reality: huge patches of clearcuts and/or immensely depleted forest--a landscape of patchwork deserts with a few, small, scraggly trees. Not. A. Forest. Never. Will. Be. A. Forest. Again.

I have never seen such a bumper sticker. That being said, you clearly know nothing of the timber industry. While there are some old growth forests that unfortunatley continue to be cut, the vast majority of trees come from timber farms, that are really no different from any other type of farm other than the length of the growing cycle. If it were as you said, the last tree would have been cut down decades ago.

[Peace Patriot]

3. "Trees/renewable resource" was a common bumper sticker in N. California while...

...Louisiana Pacific, Georgia Pacific and others were stripping California of NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of its old old growth redwood forest, and we never see that bumper sticker today because all the timber jobs are GONE. The salmon industry has also gone belly up due in part to the destruction of salmon spawning habitat in the creeks and rivers damaged by overlogging. The creeks and rivers run brown every winter. Salmon cannot spawn in muddy water. One particularly sensitive species, the Coho, has been virtually extirpated. The local economy is now profoundly depressed and will not recover until those who bought up these forest lands on spec start developing them, i.e., converting them to housing projects, shopping malls and the current interim step, vineyards.

I'm afraid that you are the one who doesn't know what you're talking about. The destruction of old growth forests is proceeding at an alarming rate worldwide--and this is on top of a century of heavy duty logging in remote areas made possible by new road building, machines and fuel, especially in the last half century. EIGHTY PERCENT of the Earth's old growth forests have been removed or seriously damaged. That is a major cause of global climate change, as well as of the profound loss of biodiversity worldwide and damage to fresh water supplies.

The fact is that the Earth's old growth forest is being CONVERTED to "tree farms," at best--or utterly lost, at worst. It's all fine and good to grow young trees and cut them down frequently on land that was never old growth forest. But it is extremely destructive to CONVERT former old growth forest to "tree farms" because the ecological values of old growth forest will then be lost forever, including its ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, its regulation of the weather, its slow filtering of rain (without flooding), its rich soil built up over centuries and its numerous species from fungi to fish, birds, bears and other critters.

You are also wrong about the environmental policies of leftist governments in Latin America. Evo Morales, for instance, president of Bolivia, was THE leader for more serious action on climate change at the recent global forum on climate change, and was joined by Rafael Correa, of Ecuador, Chavez and others. Indeed, Bolivians recently voted for a constitution that includes the rights of Mother Earth ("Pachamama&quot along with human rights. I believe that Ecuador's new constitution has a similar provision. Chavez, for his part, recently stopped a big mining operation in Venezuela because of its damage to the environment. Brazil's Lula da Silva used "decree" powers to protect large swaths of the Amazon forest. (LOL! It's one of the examples of the use of "decree" powers as a common practice in Latin America, that puts the lie to all the rightwing/corporate blather about Chavez being a "dictator"!) All of these leaders, and all LatAm leaders who are elected as populists (representing the interests of the majority), are under pressure from environmental groups, from the Indigenous and from the general population to protect and provide good stewardship of LatAm's rich natural resources and all have policies toward that end. It is the RIGHT, working in the interest of transglobal corporate ravagers, that is oblivious to the LatAm and worldwide environmental crisis.

This does not mean that there are no conflicts on the left about environmental policy. There most certainly are. Due to leftist government policies, many LatAm countries are now poised to become industrial giants, like their northern counterparts were in the previous century--and to benefit from the short term prosperity that the wholesale destruction of natural resources can bring. These governments are obliged to create jobs at the same time that the Earth's ecosystem is in extreme peril from the previous century's resource destruction (industrialization combined with globalization). We've seen Lula da Silva, for instance, support palm/soy fuel production on forest and farmland for SHORT-TERM job creation, ignoring the advice of environmental and small farmer groups against conversion of these lands. We've seen direct conflicts between leftist leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru with Indigenous peoples' opposed to development projects and/or resource exploitation.

It is the classic conflict of industrialization: jobs vs. the environment. And these new leftist leaders and numerous environmental and social groups are struggling with, and agonizing over, this dilemma. We've also seen conflicts between a leftist government--Lula/Brazil--and itinerant loggers/ranchers in the Amazon. The latter are NOT transglobal corporate interlopers. They are often poor Brazilians trying to eke out a living by burning the forest for ranchland and/or logging it for short-term profit. The leftist government has tried to provide more regulation and enforcement but it has been very difficult to slow down the destruction of the Amazon forest by these kinds of exploiters of the resource (local) as well as corporate exploiters (who often pioneer the way for local ranchers/loggers by building roads).

"It's not really a dilemma. They all just ignore the environmental side."

That is simply not true. The left is the only political force that DOESN'T ignore "the environmental side." It is also the only political force that has tried--successfully in many cases--to regain democratic control of the country's natural resources from outside, transglobal (and often U.S.) corporate entities--by re-nationalizing resources, re-negotiating contracts, resisting World Bank/IMF exploitation policies and other assertions of sovereignty and social justice. The upshot is to insure that local people benefit from local resources--that profits from the exploitation of resources are used for education, medical care, nutrition, local infrastructure and other such projects to bootstrap the poor and create a good and prosperous society. But this alone--democratic control of resources--does not guarantee the protection of vital resources, such as forests and water, into perpetuity, nor policies that address worldwide climate change. That is where the struggle lies now-- and it is a very difficult struggle and an excruciating dilemma.

I remember when California was similarly poised to become a worldwide economic powerhouse, back in the 1950s and 1960s. Unknown to me, though--I was very young at the time--part of that economic growth was being fueled by destruction of California's old growth redwood forest. The governor was a LEFTIST of the "old school" (Edmund G. Brown--Jerry Brown's father)--pro-labor, pro-jobs, pro-development and liberal/progressive in every way EXCEPT on environmental issues. Ironically, it was the Republicans in California who were the environmentalists in those days. Well, the DEMOCRATS proceeded with cataclysmic economic growth and it was "good times" for all for a couple of decades, until the shit started hitting the fan in the '80s and '90s (with the brief "Silicon Valley" boom forestalling reality); the Republicans abandoned their true "conservatism" ("conserving" the environment, among other things) and became extremist advocates for various kinds of lawlessness by the rich (for instance, looting of the Savings and Loan institutions, which had a curious connection to the destruction of the redwood forest; de-regulation of the energy industry, resulting in the theft by Texas energy corporations, including Enron, of BILLIONS of California tax dollars--the entire surplus; and the dumping onto the streets of California of all the mental patients whom the state had previously cared for, creating one of the most obscene crises of homelessness in the world; and, possibly worst of all, the looting and destruction of the best educational system in the world).

The Democrats had meanwhile become the "environmentalists"--but, really, in name only. They also aided and abetted various extremist Republican policies, and, together, ruined the state of California, while the extremist Republicans were ruining the entire country, with the Bush Junta and its wars.

I know a thing or two about this conflict: profit vs the environment. I see a more genuine effort by the left in Latin America to address this conflict before it is too late, than we ever saw here in the U.S. (with the Democrats' phony adoption of "environmentalism" because they are, indeed--or were--the "big tent" party, more responsive to the concerns of all, including the 70% to 80% of the American people who support strong environmental protection--or did, the last time I saw any polls on this, about a decade ago). As a Democrat, I have been witness to the "phoniness" of our party leaders' commitment to the environment and I am acutely aware of the conflicts and various forces that are involved. I have been noting the conflict, and its various players, in LatAm, in the course of following events in LatAm over the last decade. I also know that there is a rather quiet, on-going, organic farming revolution occurring here, which includes profound aspects of environmentalism (reverence for local ecologies, preservation and restoration of natural resources, rejection of pesticides and other aspects of the "clear-cutting" (corporate) mentality, heritage seed preservation, creation of local foods for local markets, etc.) which has great kinship with the huge campesino movement in LatAm--a movement that has been a critically important element of the leftist democracy revolution in LatAm.

The chosen leaders--the elected representatives--of the leftist democracy revolution in LatAm--have to govern in a typical political context that includes multiple interests. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Ecuador, where the leftist president, Rafael Correa, was moved to state to the Indigenous tribes that oppose some of his policies, on environmental grounds, that Ecuador's resources "belong to all Ecuadorans." He will not (and legally cannot) shut down every project that damages--or may damage--the environment. He will not (and legally cannot) forbid mining projects, for instance, on Indigenous land. They now have the right of consultation. But they do not own resources that could benefit all Ecuadorans.

I can't tell you how deeply I feel this conflict--from afar. It is so very like the conflict in my own home state of California--a conflict that environmentalists (and the majority, which has supported strong environmental protection) have basically lost. California is well on the way to "being paved over" from end to end--with vast, pesticide-ravaged, soil-depleted, desert-like corporate-run swaths of utter degradation in between the sprawling housing developments that they dare to call "cities" (housing that is often built with IMPORTED wood from Canada and Asia, by the way!). This is the "end-game" of corporate destruction of the environment. And the only way to prevent it is the socialist policy of democratically controlled natural resources--and, of course, even then, there is no guarantee of local environment protection or protection/restoration of the entire planet's ecosystem.

Short of installing a king with militarized wardens to protect the king's forests (the king = the land, in that magical-mystical systems), DEMOCRACY--real democracy, not the kind we have here (with corporations now even owning and controlling the "TRADE SECRET' voting systems)--is the only feasible system in which environmental protection can be achieved--and it is a very difficult, conflict-ridden struggle, even so. We are seeing that struggle in LatAm, and I cannot predict how it will go nor what creative solutions might emerge. You have a country like Nicaragua, denuded of its forests by (U.S.-supported) tyrants, now trying to restore forests WHILE addressing poverty. You have Venezuela trying to convert to organic agriculture, but only just beginning that process, WHILE trying to achieve food security. You have the world's computer industry looking to Bolivia for its rare lithium and the leftist government trying to invest that project with both social justice and environmental values. You have Indigenous tribes in Ecuador and the government trying to enforce rulings against Chevron-Texaco for past pollution and destruction, WHILE existing projects and potential projects, all with environmental consequences, are on the table, with Indigenous tribes mounting protest actions against the government!

There are evidences of this struggle EVERYWHERE in LatAm--the worst manifestations of it being the murder of environmentalists in the Amazon, in Brazil, and the mass murder of environmentalists, peasant farmers and others, by rightwing death squads and the military, in Colombia. It is an on-going struggle and its outcome is not clear, at all. The leftist leaders that are enmeshed in it are, by no means, as hypocritical as our political leaders, here, who gave up on the environment, and the planet, long ago. The latter are wholly in thrall to the rich and the corporate. LatAm's leftist leaders are not. They are responsive to environmental concerns, even if they try to juggle conflicting interests and goals.

[ocpagu]

5. A very nice insight, Peace Patriot. Thank you.

Yes. It is, in fact, a dilemma.

First of all, we have to bear in mind that protecting the Amazon is not an easy task, no matter how well-intentioned, well-equipped or wealthy a government is. We are talking about an area almost as large as the continental United States, entirely covered by broadleaf vegetation - larger than the whole U.S. if you consider the adjacent transitional ecosystems, such as the Pantanal. Not only it's a huge area, it's also isolated. There are jungle states in Brazil which are impossible to be reached by land. Several governments in Brazil, from late 19th century to the 60s tried to open roads and rail lines in the Amazon to interconnect the Brazilian jungle states and they all failed. The forest takes them right after they are built. Finally, Amazon spreads accross 9 countries, what makes it more difficult to establish unified strategy of preservation.

One thing is certain: the leftist Latin American governments' record in this subject is far, far better than whatever had been done before.

The military government of Brazil and the subsequent right-wing governments never cared for the preservation of the Amazon. They only saw it as a generous source of money. Several top officials became filthy rich by illegally exploiting the Amazon. From 1970s to 1980s the military government drilled 241 oil wells in the Amazon. Luckly, they found nothing. In the 1970s, the Brazilian Armed Forces created a Center for Testing Weapons in Serra do Cachimbo, where they intended to test a nuclear bomb. Right in the Amazon jungle!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_de_Provas_Brigadeiro_Velloso

Since the Workers Party went to power in Brazil, the deforestation in the Amazon Jungle has dropped to the lowest level ever.

http://www.brasil.gov.br/para/press/press-releases/february/amazon-deforestation-drops-46-percent-in-a-year

http://hypervocal.com/news/2011/the-good-the-bad-the-logging-amazon-deforestation-drops-to-lowest-levels-since-1988/

http://rainforestrescue.sky.com/our-campaign/news-items/positive-start-2012-amazon-deforestation-drops

Of course there are a lot of problems. The main issue is combining poverty reduction with preservation. The social indicators of the Brazilian jungle state are much lower than the average social indicators of Brazil. They'll need energy to subsidize economic growth and prosperity (therefore, the controversial government plans of building dams in the region, based on the premise that the cost benefit for preservation would be positive, expanding the jobs market in the jungle capitals and taking workers out of illegal activities, such as logging and mining). Another problem is the strong lobby of landowners in congress whose interest is solely to transform the Amazon in a huge cattle field. And, as mentioned by Peace Patriot, they have no problem in killing to impose their will.

[Bacchus4.0]

4. just want to comment that most of forests in the eastern US are second growth

more than 90% of eastern forests were cleared in the earlier days of US history. there is more forest land now than there was 100 years ago.

I imagine this is due to a variety of factors: less reliance on wood products and as fuel, timber farms, replanting and re-harvesting, wood products obtained from other countries, greater laws and regulations protecting forests.