Ataque directo: Trump reverte avanços na acção climática nos primeiros 10 dias de 2026

Passados apenas 10 dias de 2026, Donald Trump já lançou uma série de ataques sucessivos ao clima.

A administração dos EUA tem vindo a afastar-se gradualmente de reconhecer o seu envolvimento na crise climática ou de a enfrentar, apesar de ser o segundo maior emissor anual de gases com efeito de estufa e, historicamente, o maior contribuinte para o aquecimento global.

No ano passado, os EUA não enviaram qualquer delegação às negociações da COP30 e, desde então, apagaram todas as referências a combustíveis fósseis do site da sua Agência de Proteção Ambiental. Entretanto, Trump tem criticado o boom das energias renováveis e levado a sua atitude "drill baby drill" ao plano global.

Eis um resumo do que o Presidente dos EUA fez até agora, com menos de duas semanas de 2026.

EUA retiram-se de tratado climático da ONU

Esta semana, o Presidente foi acusado de "descer a um novo mínimo" depois de retirar os EUA de um tratado climático crucial numa retirada abrangente das instituições globais.

Num Memorando Presidencial assinado a 7 de janeiro, Trump argumentou ser "contrário aos interesses dos EUA" permanecer membro, participar ou prestar apoio a mais de 60 organizações, tratados e convenções internacionais.

Isto inclui a Convenção-Quadro das Nações Unidas sobre Alterações Climáticas (UNFCCC), que visa estabilizar as emissões de gases com efeito de estufa, e o Painel Intergovernamental sobre Alterações Climáticas (IPCC), a principal autoridade mundial em ciência do clima.

"Numa altura em que a subida do nível do mar, o calor recorde e desastres mortais exigem ação urgente e coordenada, o governo dos EUA escolhe recuar", afirma Rebecca Brown, presidente e CEO do Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

"A decisão de retirar financiamento e sair da Convenção-Quadro das Nações Unidas sobre Alterações Climáticas (UNFCCC) não absolve os EUA das suas obrigações legais de prevenir as alterações climáticas e reparar os danos climáticos, como o mais alto tribunal do mundo deixou claro no ano passado".

Venezuela: controlo do petróleo

Após forças especiais dos EUA terem capturado o Presidente da Venezuela e a sua mulher numa operação relâmpago, Trump mostrou claro interesse nas reservas de petróleo.

A Venezuela detém as maiores reservas provadas de petróleo bruto do mundo, estimadas em 303 mil milhões de barris (Bbbl), superando petroestados como a Arábia Saudita e o Irão.

Trump confirmou de imediato que os EUA estariam "muito fortemente envolvidos" na indústria petrolífera do país, com planos para enviar grandes empresas norte-americanas para reparar a infraestrutura petrolífera da Venezuela e "começar a fazer dinheiro para o país". Numa entrevista a 8 de janeiro, disse que os EUA poderiam explorar as reservas de petróleo da Venezuela durante anos.

"Numa era de agravamento acelerado da crise climática, cobiçar as vastas reservas de petróleo da Venezuela desta forma é simultaneamente imprudente e perigoso", diz Mads Christensen, da Greenpeace International.

"O único caminho seguro passa por uma transição justa longe dos combustíveis fósseis, que proteja a saúde, salvaguarde os ecossistemas e apoie as comunidades, em vez de as sacrificar por lucros de curto prazo".

Novas orientações alimentares

Os Departamentos de Saúde e Serviços Humanos e da Agricultura dos EUA foram alvo de críticas após publicarem as orientações alimentares de 2026, que incentivam as famílias norte-americanas a privilegiarem dietas assentes em "alimentos integrais e densos em nutrientes".

A nova pirâmide alimentar coloca uma imagem de um bife de vaca e carne de vaca picada no topo, na secção "proteína", apesar de a carne de vaca ser responsável por emissões de gases com efeito de estufa 20 vezes superiores por grama de proteína do que alternativas de base vegetal, como feijões e lentilhas.

Nenhum destes alimentos surge na pirâmide alimentar, mas ambos são referidos nas orientações completas.

"Embora existam muitas formas de satisfazer as nossas necessidades de proteína, nem todas as fontes de proteína têm o mesmo impacto nas pessoas ou no planeta", afirma Raychel Santo, investigadora de alimentação e clima no World Resources Institute (WRI).

"A carne de vaca e o borrego, em particular, têm alguns dos custos ambientais mais elevados entre os alimentos ricos em proteína, com emissões de gases com efeito de estufa, uso do solo e poluição da água significativamente superiores por onça de proteína face à maioria das alternativas".

Bloqueio de Trump às renováveis

No ano passado, a administração Trump suspendeu concessões em todos os projetos eólicos offshore nos EUA, invocando preocupações de segurança nacional. A medida travou trabalhos em cinco locais, incluindo os parques Revolution Wind e Sunrise Wind da Ørsted, bem como áreas de empresas como a Equinor e a Dominion Energy.

Segue-se à crítica constante de Trump às energias renováveis, que já descreveu como a "burla do século". Mas a decisão teve consequências dispendiosas que transitaram para o novo ano.

Na semana passada, Ørsted apresentou uma ação judicial contra a suspensão do governo dos EUA, argumentando que já tinha obtido todas as licenças federais e estaduais exigidas em 2023. O seu projeto Sunrise Wind deverá custar ao promotor mais de 1 milhão de dólares por dia (cerca de 859 100 euros).

O Departamento do Interior afirmou, em dezembro, que a pausa daria ao governo "tempo para trabalhar com concessionários e parceiros estaduais na avaliação da possibilidade de mitigar os riscos de segurança nacional colocados por estes projetos".

Interesse de Trump na Gronelândia

A obsessão crescente de Trump com a Gronelândia suscitou preocupações entre ambientalistas relativamente aos seus recursos minerais críticos, vistos como "essenciais" para a transição para a energia verde.

Um levantamento de 2023 concluiu que 25 dos 34 minerais considerados "matérias-primas críticas" pela Comissão Europeia foram encontrados na Gronelândia. Estima-se que o território detenha entre 36 e 42 milhões de toneladas métricas de óxidos de terras raras, o que o torna a segunda maior reserva depois da China.

Explorar estes recursos poderia ajudar os EUA a reduzir a dependência da China, que atualmente processa mais de 90 por cento dos minerais de terras raras do mundo, e reforçar a posição dos EUA à medida que a procura aumenta.

Desde o primeiro mandato, Trump tem procurado responder a este tema, aprovando leis para aumentar a produção mineral norte-americana e intensificando a mineração em mar profundo, tanto em águas dos EUA como em águas internacionais.

No entanto, alguns especialistas acreditam que as reservas minerais da Gronelândia podem ser apenas uma cortina de fumo para os verdadeiros motivos de Trump.

The Hidden Crisis: How America’s Critical Minerals Blind Spot Became a National Security Time Bomb

America is burning through crises every single day — groceries up, gas up, rent up, wages flat. People are scrambling just to make the next bill. But underneath all of that, hidden in plain sight, is a threat nobody on cable news wants to touch because it isn’t sexy, it isn’t clicky, and it doesn’t fit neatly into a left-right shouting match.

But it should scare the hell out of every American. Right now, our entire modern life — our phones, our cars, our power grid, and yes, our military — depends on a handful of minerals most people have never heard of. Rare earths. Critical minerals. The stuff inside every missile, every jet engine, every smartphone, every EV battery, every wind turbine. If you can hold it, drive it, or fight a war with it, it needs these minerals.

And here’s the part no one is reporting: we don’t control our own supply.

Not even close.

The United States — the world’s largest economy, the most advanced military on Earth — is effectively one bad week away from a national security emergency because we rely almost entirely on China for the minerals, the processing, and the manufacturing that keep this country running.

This isn’t a partisan story. This isn’t a culture-war distraction. This is about whether America can physically function in the next decade. And the frightening part? This crisis is being ignored, buried, underreported, and overshadowed by political theater while China tightens the noose.

This is the story the lobbyists don’t want talked about, the politicians don’t understand, and the corporations don’t want you to notice.

And we’re going to talk about it.

What “Critical Minerals” Actually Are And Why They Matter

“Critical minerals” sounds like an obscure geology term you’d hear on cable at 2 a.m. However, these minerals are in everything you touch and in every modern system we rely on.

They’re the quiet backbone of the entire 21st-century economy.

Think about your day.

You wake up and grab your phone?

Critical minerals.

Do you turn on a lamp?

Critical minerals.

Your car — gas or electric?

Critical minerals.

The power grid that keeps your house lit?

Critical minerals.

Medical equipment. Computers. Wind turbines. Solar panels. Fighter jets. Missile guidance systems. Radar. Satellites.

It’s all the same story: these minerals are the microscopic gears that keep modern life spinning. These aren’t “nice to have.” These are “without them, society literally stops functioning.” If the flow slows down even a little, entire sectors shut down — electronics, clean energy, defense, infrastructure, everything.That’s why the stakes are so high.

The Alarming Reality: China Controls the U.S. Supply Chain

If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s this: America’s supply chains are only strong until the day they break.

COVID-19 exposed every weakness we had, not on a battlefield, but on grocery shelves. Remember the empty aisles? The shipping delays? The scramble for basic medical gear?

That was a warning shot, because the same vulnerabilities exist with the minerals that power our entire economy — only worse.

China controls:

~70% of global mining for these minerals

~90% of processing and refining

~94% of the magnets used in U.S. jets, missiles, and defense systems

And here’s the kicker: Even the minerals we mine in America must still be shipped to China for processing. That means China controls the bottleneck at every stage.

One export restriction — the same kind they’ve already used on gallium and germanium — and the U.S. suddenly can’t:

1. build jets
2. manufacture missiles
3. produce EV batteries
4. expand the power grid
5. build satellites
6. or maintain modern technology

COVID was the preview. Critical minerals are the real crisis.

What’s Actually Happening Behind the Scenes

Washington is treating this like an emergency behind closed doors, even if they won’t admit it publicly.

Here’s what they don’t say out loud:

1. Quiet negotiations with China

Even as politicians rant about “getting tough,” the U.S. is negotiating in secret to keep Chinese minerals flowing, because they know if the tap shuts off, we’re done.

2. We don’t have a strategy — just duct tape

The Carnegie report is damning: the U.S. lacks a coherent plan. We have scattered programs, half-built incentives, and short-term patches.

3. The MP Materials panic deal

The Pentagon rushed into a megadeal that bypassed normal procurement rules. That only happens when officials are scared of shortages.

4. The U.S. is considering buying companies outright

The government is looking at taking direct ownership stakes in rare-earth companies. That only happens when the market has failed and national security is at stake.

Washington knows how dangerous this is. They just haven’t told the public.

Why This Is a National Security Crisis Waiting to Happen

Here’s the blunt truth: If China cut off minerals tomorrow, the U.S. military would be paralyzed.

Every advanced weapon system we rely on requires rare-earth magnets and alloys we don’t control.

If the mineral flow stops:

1. jets stop
2. missile production halts
3. radar systems stall
4. surveillance systems degrade
5. precision weapons can’t be replenished

It’s not that production slows — it stops.

And it hits civilians too:

1. EV production stops
2. smartphones and laptops become scarce
3. medical tech is disrupted
4. power grid upgrades stall

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s the most predictable crisis in modern U.S. history, and the least reported.

How We Got Here: Political Failure, Corporate Greed, and Strategic Blindness

America walked into this crisis with eyes wide open. Both parties ignored warnings for decades. Corporations chased cheap labor overseas. We offshored manufacturing and shut down processing plants. We assumed China would “liberalize” and play fair.

We kept the fun part — designing iPhones — and outsourced the hard part, the dirty part, the essential part. Now we’re paying the price. This wasn’t an accident. It was a choice.

The Hidden Risk: No Plan for Processing or Manufacturing

Even if we mined more minerals here, we cannot process them. We don’t have the infrastructure. We don’t have the workforce. We don’t have the factories. A rare-earth processing plant takes 3–5 years to build, and 7–10 years to fully scale. Magnet factories take years more.

Experts say the U.S. is at least 8–10 years away from independence, even if we started today.

That means if China cut us off right now, we wouldn’t catch up until the mid-2030s. That’s the hole we’re in.

Domestic Obstacles No One Talks About

Even if America woke up tomorrow ready to act, we’d hit the wall of our own system.Permitting takes years. Lawsuits drag on. Local communities block projects. Environmental reviews stall progress. Companies avoid investing because the regulatory maze is unpredictable. Everyone wants clean energy, cheap tech, and national security, but nobody wants a mine or processing plant in their backyard. China builds industrial clusters in 18–36 months. America debates permit language for five years.We cannot rebuild a supply chain with a system designed not to build anything.

What Needs to Happen And Who’s Blocking It

Here’s what we need:

1. a national strategy that integrates mining, processing, manufacturing, workforce, and environmental protection
2. multiple U.S. processing plants
3. at least two magnet factories
4. permitting reform
5. long-term corporate investment
6. bipartisan political courage
7. real media coverage

Here’s who’s blocking it:

1. corporations addicted to cheap Chinese labor
2. politicians terrified of local backlash
3. regulators stuck in outdated systems
4. media outlets that ignore anything without celebrity drama

We know what to do. We know who’s in the way. We just need the will.

America Is One Bad Week Away From a Crisis

America is one bad week away from a crisis we are not prepared for — one export ban, one geopolitical dispute, one supply chain disruption. China doesn’t need to attack us. They can just pause a shipment.This is the most important underreported national security issue in America today.The silence doesn’t make us safer. It makes us blind.

If you learned something here today — if this gave you clarity corporate media refuses to provide — then this is why independent journalism matters.

I’ll keep reporting the stories others ignore. Because the only way we fix this crisis is by understanding it, and the only way we understand it is by talking about it — openly, boldly, and without fear.

Sources:

1. Allan, Bentley, and Jonas Goldman. “Securing America’s Critical Minerals Supply.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 8, 2025.
2.  Serena Li and Ke Wang. "The Critical Minerals Conundrum: What You Should Know" WRI, October 8, 2025
3. “China Deal Buys US Time to Build Critical Minerals Supply Chain.” Reuters, November 17, 2025.
4. “Trump Expands Critical Minerals List to Copper, Metallurgical Coal, Uranium.” Reuters, November 7, 2025.
5. “US House Report Accuses China of Minerals Market Interference.” Reuters, November 12, 2025.
6. “Exclusive: A New Rare Earth Crisis Is Brewing as Yttrium Shortages Spread.” Reuters, November 14, 2025.
7. “Minerals, Manufacturing, and Markets: Foreign Policy for U.S. Energy Technology and Minerals.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 26, 2025.
8. “Unmined Potential? Opportunities for Development Finance to Support Sustainability and Inclusion in Transition-Mineral Supply Chains.” Global Development Policy Center, Boston University, March 4, 2025.
9. “Critical Minerals and Great Power Competition.” SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), October 2024.

Relatório da Oxfam

BREAKING: Fifty of the world’s richest billionaires produce more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in their entire

lifetime. Oxfam’s new report exposes the luxury-driven lifestyles of the super-rich as a key driver of the climate crisis. Private jets, superyachts, and fossil fuel investments are pushing us closer to a global catastrophe. This isn’t just about lavish living—it’s about the future of our planet.

Ativistas do Climáximo entram no aeródromo de Tires e pintam jato privado

Elementos do movimento Climáximo entraram hoje no aeródromo de Tires, Cascais, pintaram um jato privado e acorrentaram-se às rodas do aparelho, num protesto contra as emissões de gases com efeito de estufa dos voos de luxo, anunciou a organização.

Em comunicado, o movimento refere que uma viagem num jato privado entre Londres e Nova Iorque "emite mais CO2 [dióxido de carbono] do que uma família portuguesa num ano inteiro".

"Estar aqui corta mais emissões do que qualquer escolha individual. Os donos do mundo culpam pessoas normais de forma ingrata pelos seus hábitos, quando na realidade esta é de longe a forma de transporte com mais emissões per capita, e é usada quase exclusivamente por ultra ricos", afirma Noah Zino, do Climáximo, citado no comunicado.

A agência Lusa tentou obter mais informações sobre o caso junto da esquadra do aeródromo de Tires, mas em vão. O Expresso entrou também em contacto com o aeródromo de Cascais mas não foram tecidos comentários ao sucedido.

Fonte da esquadra da PSP de São Domingos de Rana, freguesia onde se insere o aeródromo, disse que alguns dos seus elementos foram para o local.

No comunicado, acompanhado de fotos onde se podem ver alguns jovens acorrentados às rodas de um dos jatos estacionado e que foi pintado com tinta vermelha, o Climáximo lembra ainda: "A ONU afirma que o 1% tem de cortar mais de 97% das suas emissões, mas os voos duplicaram no ano passado".

"Jatos privados são armas de destruição em massa, não têm lugar numa sociedade em chamas. Só a poluição da queima de combustíveis fósseis já mata, todos os anos, mais pessoas que os campos de concentração", refere o movimento.

O movimento critica o facto de os líderes mundiais se deslocarem "de jato privado aos Emirados Árabes Unidos para 'negociações climáticas", considerando que "pintam uma imagem da realidade tão nítida como a tinta vermelha que os denuncia".

Cortar as emissões de luxo e "voos supérfluos", como os de jato privado e os voos de curta distância, travar qualquer plano de aumento da aviação -- "seja um novo aeroporto em Lisboa ou a expansão em curso do Aeroporto de Cascais" - e requalificar milhares de trabalhadores, desenvolvendo amplamente a rede ferroviária nacional e internacional, são algumas propostas avançadas pelo Climáximo para travar a crise climática.

O movimento convida ainda todas as pessoas a juntarem-se e saírem à rua no próximo sábado, numa "manifestação de resistência climática".

Ler mais:

5 impactos pouco conhecidos da poluição do ar

Desigualdade Climática

Os 50% mais pobres da população mundial contribuem com 12% das emissões globais, mas estão expostos a 75% das perdas relativas de rendimento devido às alterações climáticas, enquanto possuem apenas 2% da riqueza mundial.

The bottom 50% of the world population contributes to 12% of global emissions but is exposed to 75% of relative income losses due to climate change while owning just 2% of world wealth.

A crise climática começou a perturbar as sociedades humanas, afetando severamente os próprios fundamentos da subsistência humana e da organização social. Os impactos climáticos não são distribuídos igualmente em todo o mundo: em média, os países de baixo e médio PIB sofrem impactos maiores do que seus equivalentes mais ricos. Ao mesmo tempo, a crise climática também é marcada por desigualdades significativas dentro dos países. Pesquisas recentes revelam uma alta concentração de emissões globais de gases de efeito estufa entre uma fração relativamente pequena da população, que vive em países emergentes e ricos. Além disso, a vulnerabilidade a inúmeros impactos climáticos está fortemente ligada ao PIB e à riqueza, não apenas entre os países, mas também dentro deles.

O objetivo deste relatório é duplo. Em primeiro lugar, procura lançar luz sobre essas várias dimensões da desigualdade climática numa análise sistemática e detalhada, com foco em países de baixo e médio PIB  em particular. Em seguida, baseia-se nessas percepções, juntamente com trabalho empírico adicional e entrevistas com especialistas, para sugerir caminhos para a cooperação para o desenvolvimento, e políticas tributárias e sociais que combatem as desigualdades climáticas em sua essência.

Climate Inequality 2023 report

Tax Expenditure Scrutiny Can End Trillion-Dollar Political Game

Tax expenditures should be scrutinized as much as direct spending but are often under-reported, if reported at all. Improving estimates and reporting of such outlays would ease budget constraints and help governments better align their core policy objectives, say Flurim Aliu and Agustin Redonda of the Council on Economic Policies and Doug Koplow of Earth Track.

Though a quarter-century old, the federal child tax credit has been the subject of increased debate in recent years within the United States. Conservatives highlight its large fiscal cost while proponents focus on its effectiveness in fighting child poverty. Both camps rely on a significant amount of data on the cost and impacts of the provision.

This type of data is missing for many tax breaks in the US and is lacking entirely in many countries. When it comes to evaluating the scope, size, and impact of tax expenditures, policy makers are most often driving blind.

Too often, government spending is understood only as cash payments to specific individuals or groups. However, targeted exemptions or reductions in taxes owed strain public coffers similarly to direct spending, though often with far less visibility.

This type of outlay, referred to as tax expenditures, is used widely, and the resulting loss in revenue flowing into Treasuries (revenue forgone) is surprisingly large. In fiscal 2021, for example, income-related federal tax expenditures in the US amounted to $1.4 trillion in revenue forgone—a figure equal to more than 20% of the $6.8 trillion in federal direct spending during that same period.

Perhaps even more sobering, the lost revenue from tax breaks were equal to roughly 70% of the $2.1 trillion in federal tax revenue collected, or about 6% of GDP. They nearly equaled the $1.6 trillion in total federal discretionary spending that year, a category that includes key government support for defense, food and agriculture, energy and environment, transportation, and education.

The US is not an outlier—2020 tax expenditures amounted to 14.2% of GDP in the Netherlands and 10.4% in Ireland. During the same year, Canada and the UK logged revenue losses comparable to the US at 6.5% and 8.1% of GDP, respectively. Average revenue losses globally approach 4% of yearly GDP.

Similar to direct spending programs, tax expenditures are used to pursue a variety of policy goals, including regional development, attracting foreign direct investment, greening the economy, or mitigating inequality and poverty. And like those spending programs, tax expenditure provisions can be politically influenced or poorly structured such that they end up supporting non-target groups or generating windfall gains to the wealthy.

The big difference across these two areas is in terms of transparency, and that needs to change. Assessing the scale of support, the main beneficiaries, and the effectiveness of a tax break in achieving its stated policy goals are critical to ensure the efficient use of public resources.

The scope and degree of detail of the Canadian Tax Expenditure report provides a useful model. Capturing not just basic information on each provision and why it is classified as a tax break, Canada also links revenue forgone estimates to policy goals and the standard functions of government, recognizing that tax expenditures and direct spending are often interchangeable policy strategies. Further, the Canadian report on federal tax expenditures includes references to specific evaluations of tax breaks. The 2021 report, for example, included a cost-benefit assessment of subsidies to childcare.

Transparency Challenges

Unfortunately, we are far from achieving even a minimal level of transparency. The Global Tax Expenditures Database is the most comprehensive tally of tax expenditures in the world, gathering all available tax expenditure information published by national governments worldwide since 1990. Yet, among the 218 countries it tracks, more than half—116—are classified as non-reporting against the low bar of having released at least one official tax expenditure report within the last three decades.

Even among the 102 reporting countries, the quality and scope of the information provided varies significantly and is often quite limited. For example, of nearly 23,000 tax expenditure provisions currently captured within the GTED from national-level data, 30% included no estimate for the associated revenue forgone. This is a critical value to assess the magnitude of the tax breaks and prioritize reform. Yet, of the roughly 16,000 provisions that do contain a revenue loss estimate, 60% don’t disclose the policy goal that they were implemented to achieve, making evaluations of policy efficacy near impossible.

Under-reporting is a pervasive problem. The latest TE report of the UK, for example, lacks revenue forgone values for more than 30% of its reported tax expenditure provisions. While the report lists six broad reasons for this gap, they are generic, such as lack of data, confidentiality issues, and the rather unhelpful category of “other.”

An even bleaker scenario arises with sub-national reporting and disclosure. Initial data reviews of OECD’s fossil fuel subsidy database indicate that sub-national tax breaks supporting the production and consumption of fossil fuels are significant in many countries. These sub-national subsidies often are reported sporadically or not at all.

The US is an exception. Most states report on tax expenditures with disclosure that compares favorably even with national tax expenditure reports in many other countries. A detailed inspection, however, shows that important gaps remain. For instance, the lack of transparency and data tracking between federal and state opportunity zone programs renders proper evaluation of the total taxpayer subsidy to construction projects impossible.

Another example is a legislative loophole for mandatory tax expenditure reporting in Texas that enables large exemptions from smaller tax bases to be excluded, even if they result in substantial losses to state taxpayers. The result is that the single largest tax break to natural gas, worth more than $1 billion in 2022, didn’t have to be included in the report.

Tax expenditures should be subject to as much scrutiny as direct spending. Indeed, the opacity of tax expenditure beneficiaries creates political pressures to increase the public resources directed in this way because the political costs to both recipients and their political supporters are lower. Improving tax expenditure estimation and reporting would ease budget constraints and allow the design of tax expenditures that better align with the government’s core policy objectives.

Para resolver a crise climática, devemos controlar os ricos perdulários

“Eating just one billionaire would do more to prevent climate change than going vegan or never driving a car for the rest of your life.” So proclaimed a post on Extinction Rebellion’s Instagram last week.

XR has not previously been known for its class analysis (nor even now: “This is obviously a joke,” the group’s caption averred). And yet it hit home: the post has been liked 40,000 times, about as much as XR’s previous 11 posts combined.

The image was a meme of Lisa Simpson before an auditorium, crafted by an account called the Ragged Trousered Philanderer. But it encapsulates a serious developing shift in the narrative of climate activism: we can’t solve the climate crisis without solving the problem of inequality.

For decades, climate change has been understood by the public as a crisis in which we are all implicated. Environmental campaigns exhorted us all to turn off our lights, buy more fuel efficient cars, recycle as much as possible – our consumption had to be adapted to minimise our impact on the planet.

But it is becoming increasingly clear that such efforts, while by no means unnecessary, are less than a drop in the ocean. Nothing drove this home more this summer than another Instagram post: Kylie Jenner's picture of her and partner Travis Scott standing in front of two private jets, captioned: “you wanna take mine or yours?”

It was posted days after Jenner, it subsequently emerged, took her private jet on a flight that lasted just 17 minutes. That might not sound like much, but it was estimated to have belched a tonne of carbon into the atmosphere – about a quarter of the annual carbon footprint of the average person globally.

Jenner’s conspicuous carbon consumption became a catalyst for a wave of reporting on the use of private jets by the rich. And not just the super-rich. In the Guardian we reported on Disney’s marketing of a $110,000 round-the-world package holiday with a carbon price tag of 6.2 tonnes for each of its 75 paying guests. That’s about 20 times more than the 0.3 tonne average of someone in a low-income country, according to the World Bank.

Flying is without a doubt the most egregious example of carbon profligacy by the rich, according to Andreas Malm, professor of human ecology at Lund University, Sweden, and author of influential polemic How To Blow Up A Pipeline.

“If you as an individual consumer want to burn as much carbon as possible, emit as much CO2 as possible, what you do is go on a flying binge,” Malm says. “That’s the most CO2 intensive act of consumption you can engage in. It exceeds everything else, driving and meat eating and whatever – particularly since these are emissions that don’t fulfil any legitimate purpose and don’t serve any human need.”

Consumption like this has made the richest 1% of the world’s population responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the poorest 50% – 3.1 billion people – in the last 25 years, according to Oxfam. And as inequality continues to grow, so will their disproportionate impact. By 2030, Oxfam predicts, the carbon footprints of the world’s richest 1% will be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement.

And yet that is not even half the story, since the impact of the world’s wealthiest people is not only their consumption, but in the realm of production, from where the super-rich obtain their wealth, says Matthew Huber, professor of geography at Syracuse university in New York.

In a new book, Climate Change as Class War, Huber sets out how the fossil fuel system is inextricably tied to an economic system that continually leads to greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Yes, it’s true that Jenner, or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk and others, are contributing to climate meltdown with their superyachts and private jets and the like – but what, Huber asks, about the people who sold them the fuel in the first place?

If there are lessons here for activists – and for anyone who is interested in tackling the climate crisis – Huber and Malm say change must start with the wealthiest and most powerful. But, says Malm, we cannot expect governments to do the work for us.

“All the governments I know of are beholden to these people, their taskmasters, if you like; the classes that they have to coddle the most,” Malm says. “That makes it extremely hard to envision any government moving against precisely these people, because that’s the people that are closest to.”

“If governments can’t do attack the most egregious instances of luxury emissions, then ordinary people will have to," he adds. "I think the next step for that kind of activism to go after private jets and super yachts and other monstrous machines for luxury emissions. It’s not that we’re done with SUVs, that campaign just needs to multiply and spread further and intensify. But there are more targets than SUVs.”

And so, it seems, that if we are serious about a future on a livable planet, eating billionaires might not be such a joke after all.

COP26: Crise energética e agenda climática impulsionam energia nuclear

Após o acidente nuclear de 2011 na central nuclear  japonesa de Fukushima, houve uma relutância crescente para o uso de usinas nucleares, mas crise energética e climática trouxeram tema à tona.

Impulsionados pela crise climática, os defensores da energia nuclear, a começar pelo chefe da Agência Internacional de Energia Atômica (AIEA), vieram promover seus méritos na COP26, em Glasgow.

"Esta COP é talvez a primeira em que a energia nuclear tem lugar na mesa de negociações, é levada em consideração e pode falar sem o fardo ideológico que existia antes", comentou à AFP o argentino Rafael Mariano Grossi, diretor-geral da AIEA.

Nos anos após o acidente nuclear de 2011 na usina japonesa de Fukushima, houve uma relutância crescente, mas agora "a situação mudou", garante.

No contexto das mudanças climáticas, ganha importância o argumento sobre suas baixas emissões de CO2, principalmente ligadas à extração de urânio e concreto para as usinas.

"A energia nuclear é parte da solução para o aquecimento global. Não é uma panaceia, pode não ser para todos, mas já fornece mais de 25% da energia limpa".

"Sem ela, não teremos sucesso", defende Grossi, defensor da causa desde que assumiu o cargo, em dezembro de 2019.

"A minha primeira COP foi em Madrid", no final daquele ano, lembra. "Fui lá apesar da ideia difundida de que a energia nuclear não seria bem-vinda. Agora até desperta muito interesse", acrescenta.

Reatores centenários

Em Glasgow, reuniu-se com ministros e outras autoridades, explicando que essas tecnologias podem substituir os combustíveis fósseis.

O átomo acarreta grandes riscos: acidentes, armazenamento complicado e tratamento de lixo altamente radioativo por milhares de anos, custos elevados... argumentos que mobilizam várias ONGs.

Mas Grossi defende que as críticas são exageradas.

"Você tem que ver os fatos", diz. "Na França ela representa mais de 70% (da eletricidade), nos Estados Unidos 20%, na Rússia o mesmo... A energia nuclear nunca para, ela complementa outras fontes, inclusive as renováveis", argumenta.

Em sua opinião, "os acidentes são raros, se olhar as estatísticas em termos de consequências, bem abaixo do que outras fontes de energia".

Mas será que novos reatores podem ser implantados com rapidez suficiente para reagir às mudanças climáticas? O argentino defende que "temos que começar preservando os existentes".

E quanto tempo podem durar? "Estamos vendo usinas planejadas para 60 anos com os mais rígidos padrões aplicados pelos reguladores nacionais e supervisionados pela AIEA", afirma.

Nos corredores da COP26, ativistas da "Nuclear for Climate" - alguns deles profissionais do setor - se fazem ouvir.

"Vamos falar de energia nuclear!", diz a camiseta de Callum Thomas, um observador britânico nas negociações em nome do Fórum Industrial Atômico do Japão. "Muitos veem os preços do gás quadruplicar e a viabilidade da energia nuclear aumentar", destaca.

Para todos?

O mundo está tão atrasado em seus objetivos climáticos e na transição energética para eliminar os hidrocarbonetos que o argumento nuclear pode ser muito poderoso. Alguns cientistas o defendem.

Na maioria dos cenários do Painel Intergovernamental da ONU sobre Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC) para limitar o aquecimento a +1,5°C, a proporção da energia nuclear aumentou, embora também alertem que sua implantação "pode ser limitada pelas preferências da sociedade".

Os países estão divididos. A Alemanha se opõe enquanto a França o defende, a China tem o maior número de reatores do mundo e a União Europeia debate se deve incluí-lo em sua classificação de investimentos "sustentáveis".

Muitas instituições também não financiam projetos nucleares, como o Banco Mundial, recentemente visitado por Grossi. Na COP26, "os países em desenvolvimento, em particular, vieram nos pedir ajuda", afirma.

"Os países veem as pequenas unidades como uma alternativa interessante, envolvendo centenas de milhões (de dólares) e não biliões", explica ele, propondo também "programas em etapas" para acompanhar os recém-chegados.

Canadá e Estados Unidos já desenvolvem pequenos reatores modulares, ou SMR por sua sigla em inglês, embora até agora apenas a Rússia tenha aberto uma central flutuante com essa tecnologia.

Dia Mundial da Monitorização da Água

O objetivo da celebração é sensibilizar e envolver as pessoas de todo o mundo na proteção dos recursos hídricos pela monitorização dos recursos hídricos locais. O objetivo desta efeméride é sensibilizar e envolver as pessoas de todo o mundo na proteção dos recursos hídricos através da monitorização local dos mesmos.

Actualmente os habitantes de quase 400 regiões do planeta já estão a viver sob condições de “extremo stress hídrico”, segundo um novo relatório do World Resources Institute (WRI), um centro de pesquisa sediado em Washington.

Do México ao Chile, a áreas da África e a pontos turísticos no sul da Europa e no Mediterrâneo, o nível de “stress hídrico” – a quantia de água extraída de fontes terrestres e superficiais em comparação com o total disponível – está a atingir níveis preocupantes.

Quase um terço da população global – 2,6 mil milhões de pessoas – vive em países em situação de stress hídrico “extremamente alto”, incluindo 1,7 mil milhões em 17 nações classificadas como “extremamente carentes de água”, segundo o WRI.

Enquanto os países do Médio Oriente são considerados os de maior stress hídrico, o estudo destaca também que a Índia está a “enfrentar desafios críticos sobre o seu uso e gestão da água que afectam tudo, desde a saúde ao seu desenvolvimento económico”.

Paquistão, Eritreia, Turcomenistão e Botsuana também são, actualmente, considerados extremamente carentes de água. Os dados foram compilados a partir da plataforma Aqueduct 3.0 do WRI, que analisou vários modelos hidrológicos e calculou o quanto de água é retirada dos suprimentos de águas superficiais e subterrâneas disponíveis em cada região em comparação com o total de água disponível.

Quando a proporção excedia 80%, as áreas eram consideradas “extremamente carentes de água”. “Como alguém que trabalha com dados, tento ser bastante imparcial sobre o que esperar dos números, mas fiquei surpreendido com a situação na Índia”, diz Rutger Hofste, principal autor do estudo, à BBC.

Jeremy Corbyn: Climate Crisis Is a Class Issue

In a column for Jacobin, Jeremy Corbyn writes that we need class politics to transform our economies and save humanity from climate apocalypse. There’s no other way.

The UN secretary-general declaring climate scientists’ report a “code red for humanity” is a critical warning.

The evidence in this week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report speaks for itself: the hottest five years in recent history, tripling rises in sea levels, and the global retreat of glaciers and sea ice.

But it is also nothing significantly new. Scientists are taking an urgent tone because they have been making the same warnings for decades — while serious action on our warming world has failed to materialize.

Indeed, oil giant Exxon predicted climate change in the 1970s — before going on to spend decades publicly denying its existence.

The political and economic system we live in does not produce climate change by accident but by design, rewarding big polluters and resource extractors with superprofits.

This is our historical legacy. In the UK, imperial-era fortunes were made from oil from places like the Persian Gulf, where Britain sponsored an antidemocratic coup in the 1950s to preserve the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s profits. AIOC later became BP, which continues to pump hundreds of millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere at sites from the Gulf of Mexico to the Caspian. And much of the world’s fossil money is handled by City of London financial institutions which specialize in managing oil profits.

More Disasters Are Coming

Around the world, governments continue to act on behalf of these fossil networks, even as they claim to be taking climate action. Boris Johnson has even copied the Green Industrial Revolution language we in the Labour Party developed. But he has copied only the words, not the actions. In June, the UK’s Climate Change Committee demonstrated that on its current course the government will fail to reach even its own woefully insufficient targets.

On May Day 2019, as leader of the Opposition, I successfully moved a parliamentary statement for Britain to declare a climate emergency — making ours the first parliament in the world to do so. I was, and remain, determined that the Labour Party and our movement should take the climate and environmental crisis very seriously.

If this system remains unchallenged, we can expect a swift increase in the floods, droughts, and wildfires that have ripped through Australia, Siberia, British Columbia, East Africa, California, and much of Europe over the last year. Intense rainstorms are up by two-fifths this century. The heaviest are three-quarters stronger than they were in the 1950s, and once-in-an-epoch hurricanes are now commonplace.

But it is not just the physical consequences of these events we need to worry about; it is also the political ones. In Greece, austerity, deregulation, and the neglect of fire services have magnified the impact of horrific blazes in Evia. In Texas earlier this year, the state allowed energy firms to price-gouge on emergency power, leaving people with unpayable debts.

And from the United States to the European Union, governments are investing in surveillance technology and military equipment to attack the refugees that environmental crises help create. The billions being spent on new guards and drones in the Mediterranean is money not being spent on a green transition, instead going to the profits of a border, surveillance, and military industry deeply tied to the fossil economy. The British Parliament is even currently debating a draconian Nationality and Borders Bill aiming to make it illegal to save refugee lives at sea — putting Britain at odds with the universal law of the sea.

With military budgets ballooning across the world, powerful countries are preparing for conflict, not cooperation, to deal with the climate emergency. Such false solutions will increase all our suffering; but as ever, will favor the wealthy few while punishing the many — whether people flooded out of their homes in England or people fleeing drought in North Africa.

We Can Stop This

But it doesn’t have to be like this, and our reaction must be one of hope rather than fear. Climate scientists can and do tell us with forensic accuracy what a temperature rise of 1.5 or 3 or 5 degrees will do to sea levels, water scarcity, or biodiversity. But the reason they cannot predict what that rise will be is because it is impossible to predict the choices we will make next. Those, as the IPCC report reminds us, are still up to us.

And if we take on the powerful, removing the systemic incentives to burn the planet for a quick windfall, we can do things differently. That means workers everywhere mobilizing for a global Green New Deal at COP26 this year which takes carbon out of the atmosphere and puts money back in workers’ pockets, while tackling injustice and inequality in the Global South. There is no town anywhere that would not benefit from green public transport, or rewilding with new forests, or local renewable energy, or jobs in the green industries of the future.

From climate change, to poverty and inequality, to our dangerous collective failure to get poorer countries vaccinated against COVID-19, we are living through the consequences of a system that puts billionaires first and the rest of us last. The climate and environmental crisis is a class issue. It is the poorest people in working-class communities, in polluted cities, and in low-lying island communities who suffer first and worst in this crisis.

But we do still have the power to change it. In 2019, schoolchildren striking for climate action captured the imagination and attention of people around the globe overnight. If they can do it, so can we. Our response to the climate “code red” must be to work in our communities, in politics, in schools and universities, in our workplaces and with our trade unions to demand and win a livable planet — and a system which puts human life and well-being first.

Como a definição de Floresta da FAO prejudica pessoas e florestas? Carta aberta à FAO

Fonte: WRM

Lançada no dia 21 de setembro de 2016, Dia Internacional de Luta contra as Monoculturas de Árvores

Em setembro de 2015, durante o XIV Congresso Florestal Mundial, milhares de pessoas foram às ruas de Durban, na África do Sul, para protestar contra a forma problemática em que a Organização das Nações Unidas para Agricultura e Alimentação (FAO) insiste em definir as florestas.(1) A definição da FAO basicamente considera as florestas apenas como “um monte de árvores”, enquanto ignora outros aspectos fundamentais, incluindo as suas muitas outras formas de vida, como outros tipos de plantas, animais e as comunidades humanas que dependem da floresta. Da mesma forma, a definição ignora a contribuição vital das florestas para os processos naturais que proporcionam solo, água e oxigênio. Além disso, ao definir “florestas” como sendo apenas uma área mínima de terra coberta por um número mínimo de árvores com um percentual mínimo de altura e copa, a FAO tem promovido ativamente o estabelecimento de muitos milhões de hectares de plantações industriais de árvores, principalmente de espécies não nativas e nos países do hemisfério Sul. Como consequência, apenas um determinado setor tem se beneficiado: a indústria de plantações de árvores. As plantações industriais de árvores têm sido a causa direta de muitos impactos negativos sobre as comunidades locais e suas florestas, os quais têm sido bem documentados. (2)

Na marcha de protesto que aconteceu em Durban, as pessoas tinham cartazes dizendo Plantações não são florestas!, e a manifestação terminou em frente à sede do Congresso Florestal Mundial, que foi organizado pela FAO. Em resposta a um chamado de líderes da sociedade civil na marcha, um membro do WFC saiu do prédio onde ocorria o Congresso para receber um abaixo-assinado com mais de 100.000 assinaturas de pessoas e grupos de todo o mundo. O documento chamava a FAO a alterar urgentemente sua definição de floresta e reconhecer as florestas por seu verdadeiro significado. Mas, mais uma vez, a organização não alterou a sua definição.

No entanto, algo novo aconteceu: ao contrário do silêncio diante das reivindicações anteriores para que a FAO mudasse sua definição equivocada de floresta, desta vez a organização reagiu ao protesto e enviou uma carta. Um ponto que consta da carta da FAO é particularmente interessante: “Na verdade, há mais de 200 definições nacionais de florestas que refletem uma variedade de interessados no tema…”. E continua: “… para facilitar a comunicação de dados…, é necessária uma categorização globalmente válida, simples e operacional das florestas”, que permita “comparações constantes, durante longos períodos, sobre o desenvolvimento e as mudanças florestais globais”. Ao escrever isto, a FAO tenta nos convencer de que o seu papel é apenas o de harmonizar as mais de 200 diferentes definições de florestas de diferentes países.

Mas será que a definição atual de floresta da FAO não influencia a forma como as 200 definições nacionais foram formuladas? E a FAO está correta ao afirmar que as muitas definições nacionais de floresta refletem uma variedade de interessados nesses países, novamente menosprezando sua própria influência?

Nós acreditamos no contrário. Para começo de conversa, a definição de floresta da FAO foi adotada há muito tempo, em 1948. De acordo com uma análise conjunta feita recentemente por diferentes autores de conceitos e definições florestais, “a definição da FAO, acordada por todos os seus membros [membros da ONU], é a primeira a ser usada por todos os países para fazer relatórios com padrões comuns; a definição de floresta adotada pela FAO continua sendo a mais usada hoje em dia”.(3)

Um bom exemplo para ver se a definição da FAO está sendo usada é o Brasil, o país com a maior cobertura florestal no Sul global e, de acordo com fontes oficiais, com quase 8 milhões de hectares de plantações industriais de árvores, principalmente monoculturas de eucalipto. Em sua publicação Florestas do Brasil, de 2010 (4), o Serviço Florestal Brasileiro (SBF), que faz parte do Ministério do Meio Ambiente e é responsável por questões relacionadas a florestas, “(…) considera como floresta as tipologias de vegetação lenhosas que mais se aproximam da definição de florestas da Organização das Nações Unidas para Agricultura e Alimentação (FAO)”. Como consequência lógica do fato de que sua definição se baseia no que a FAO já definiu, afirma que “o Brasil é um país (…) de florestas naturais e plantadas”, onde a expressão “florestas plantadas” se refere aos 8 milhões de hectares de monoculturas, em sua maioria de eucalipto. A forma como o governo brasileiro define floresta, portanto, não é resultado de um processo que “…reflete uma variedade de interessados no tema”. Pelo contrário, é resultado do que a FAO já havia determinado.

Mas a influência da definição de floresta da FAO vai além de determinar as definições nacionais. Nestes tempos de mudanças climáticas, ela tem sido o principal ponto de referência para definir o que é uma floresta no âmbito da Convenção sobre Mudanças Climáticas da ONU (UNFCCC). Ao adotar a definição estreita da FAO, baseada na madeira, a UNFCCC também promoveu uma visão da floresta como uma área de terra contendo apenas árvores. Para a UNFCCC, o mais importante em uma floresta são as árvores, por causa de sua capacidade de armazenar carbono à medida que crescem, e não as comunidades que dependem da floresta. Na maior parte, essas comunidades afetadas são impactadas negativamente pelas restrições impostas ao uso de recursos florestais por “projetos de compensação carbono florestal”, também chamados, muitas vezes, de projetos de REDD+ (5). Uma definição de florestas que trata apenas de árvores abre a porta para incluir “florestas plantadas” – leia-se: plantações industriais de árvores – uma forma completamente falsa de “redução do desmatamento e da degradação florestal” – como opção dentro da convenção de mudanças climáticas, através da qual o carbono pode supostamente ser sequestrado da atmosfera e armazenado permanentemente. Na prática, é apenas mais uma oportunidade para a indústria das plantações de árvores ganhar dinheiro e uma grande ameaça para as comunidades afetadas pela tendência de expansão dessas plantações como “sumidouros de carbono”.(6)

Na sequência das últimas negociações da UNFCCC, os países têm revisto suas leis florestais recentemente, na esperança de atrair o chamado “financiamento para o clima”. Previsivelmente, as definições usadas têm por base a definição de florestas da FAO. Em Moçambique, por exemplo, em um seminário sobre REDD+, um consultor propôs uma nova definição de floresta para o país. Assim como a da FAO, ela também se baseia na presença de árvores, dizendo que uma floresta é uma área onde há “… Árvores com potencial para alcançar uma altura de 5 metros na maturidade (…)”. Também na Indonésia, a apresentação do Ministério do Meio Ambiente e Florestas à Conferência da ONU sobre o Clima em 2015 declarou que tinha “… adaptado a definição de floresta da FAO…” para definir suas florestas. Mais uma vez, é uma formulação que define e valoriza uma floresta somente através de suas árvores e divide “florestas” em um número de diferentes categorias, incluindo “floresta natural” e algo chamado de “florestas de plantação”.

A definição de floresta da FAO também influencia as ações das instituições financeiras e de desenvolvimento que promovem atividades baseadas na madeira, como a extração industrial de madeira de florestas, as plantações industriais de árvores e a compensação de carbono por REDD+. O principal exemplo é o Banco Mundial (BM), o qual, como parte do conglomerado da ONU, tem feito parcerias com a FAO por décadas, em uma série de iniciativas relacionadas a florestas. Recentemente, eles uniram forças mais uma vez, em um dos planos mais ambiciosos lançados durante a COP 21 em Paris, a chamada Iniciativa para a Restauração da Paisagem Florestal Africana (AFR100) (7). A AFR100 visa cobrir com árvores 100 milhões de hectares de terras desmatadas e chamadas de “degradadas” em diferentes países africanos. O Banco Mundial vai disponibilizar um bilhão de dólares para o plano. Mas, para entender o que o Banco considera como “reflorestamento”, é crucial ver como ele próprio define uma floresta. Previsivelmente, sua definição também é emprestada da FAO, descrevendo uma floresta como “uma área de terra … com cobertura de copa de mais de 10% e que tenha árvores …”. (8) Ao definir florestas dessa forma, o Banco Mundial escancara as portas para que empresas de plantação da árvores expandam suas grandes monoculturas sobre os territórios comunitários na África e, assim, façam parte do ambicioso plano de “restauração” que ele está promovendo em conjunto com a FAO e outros parceiros. A proposta da AFR100 se parece muito com o fracassado Plano de Ação para a Silvicultura Tropical (TFAP) da década de 1980, que também foi idealizado pelo Banco Mundial em colaboração com a FAO.

Considerações finais

É urgente que a FAO pare de apresentar as plantações industriais de árvores como “florestas plantadas” ou “silvicultura”, pois governos nacionais, outras instituições da ONU e instituições financeiras, bem como os principais meios de comunicação, seguirão seu exemplo inadequado. Essa confusão deliberada de plantações de árvores com florestas está enganando as pessoas, porque as florestas em geral são vistas como algo positivo e benéfico. Afinal de contas, quem seria contra “florestas”?

Acima de tudo, a FAO deve assumir total responsabilidade pela forte influência que sua definição de “floresta” tem sobre as políticas econômicas, ecológicas e sociais globais. O abaixo-assinado de 2015, que foi apresentado à FAO em Durban, afirma que ela se apresenta, em seus princípios fundamentais, como um “fórum neutro, onde todas as nações se reúnem como iguais”. Para corresponder a essa afirmação, entre outras coisas, a FAO deve rever urgentemente sua definição de floresta, passando de uma visão que reflete as preferências e perspectivas de empresas de madeira, celulose/papel, borracha e comércio de carbono, para uma que reflita as realidades ecológicas, bem como os pontos de vista dos povos que dependem da floresta. Em contraste com a atual influência dominante que as indústrias baseadas na madeira exercem através da FAO, um processo transparente e aberto para estabelecer definições novas e apropriadas para florestas e plantações de árvores também deve envolver efetivamente essas mulheres e esses homens que dependem diretamente das florestas e por isso as protegem.

1 – “Terra com cobertura de copa (ou densidade equivalente) de mais de 10% e área de mais de 5 hectares (ha). As árvores devem ter potencial para atingir uma altura mínima de 5 metros na maturidade in situ”.

2 – Veja mais em http://wrm.org.uy/pt/navegue-por-tema/plantacoes-de-arvores/

3 – Chazdon, R. L., Brancalion, P. H. S., Laestadius, L. et al. Ambio (2016). doi:10.1007/s13280-016-0772-y. When is a forest a forest? Forest concepts and definitions in the era of forest and landscape restoration (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-016-0772-y).

4 – http://www.mma.gov.br/estruturas/sfb/_arquivos/livro_portugus_95.pdf.

5 – Veja mais em http://wrm.org.uy/pt/livros-e-relatorios/redd-uma-colecao-de-conflitos-contradicoes-e-mentiras/

6 – http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/seasia/Indonesia/pdf/FREL_Report.pdf

7 – http://www.wri.org/our-work/project/AFR100/about-afr100.

8 – http://tinyurl.com/j5d6mbv

Is the World poor, or unjust?

"Poor countries are not 'under-developed', they are over-exploited." —Michael Parenti

By Jason Hickel

Social media has been ablaze with this question recently. We know we face a crisis of mass poverty: the global economy is organized in such a way that nearly 60% of humanity is left unable to meet basic needs. But the question at stake this time is different. A couple of economists on Twitter have claimed that the world average income is $16 per day (PPP). This, they say, is proof that the world is poor in a much more general sense: there is not enough for everyone to live well, and the only way to solve this problem is to press on the accelerator of aggregate economic growth.

This narrative is, however, hobbled by several empirical problems.

1. $16 per day is not accurate

First, let me address the $16/day claim on its own terms. This is a significant underestimate of world average income. The main problem is that it relies on household surveys, mostly from Povcal. These surveys are indispensable for telling us about the income and consumption of poor and ordinary households, but they do not capture top incomes, and are not designed to do so. In fact, Povcal surveys are not even really legitimate for capturing the income of “normal” high-income households. Using this method gives us a total world household income of about $43 trillion (PPP). But we know that total world GDP is $137 trillion (PPP). So, about two-thirds of global income is unaccounted for.

What explains this discrepancy? Some of the “missing” income is the income of the global rich. Some of it is consumption that’s related to housing, NGOs, care homes, boarding schools, etc, which are also not captured by these surveys (but which are counted as household consumption in national accounts). The rest of it is various forms of public expenditure and public provisioning.

This final point raises a problem that’s worth addressing. The survey-based method mixes income- and consumption-based data. Specifically, it counts non-income consumption in poor countries (including from commons and certain kinds of public provisioning), but does not count non-income consumption or public provisioning in richer countries. This is not a small thing. Consider people in Finland who are able to access world-class healthcare and higher education for free, or Singaporeans who live in high-end public housing that’s heavily subsidized by the government. The income equivalent of this consumption is very high (consider that in the US, for instance, people would have to pay out of pocket for it), and yet it is not captured by these surveys. It just vanishes.

Of course, not all government expenditure ends up as beneficial public provisioning. A lot of it goes to wars, arms, fossil fuel subsidies and so on. But that can be changed. There’s no reason that GDP spent on wars could not be spent on healthcare, education, wages and housing instead.

For these reasons, when assessing the question of whether the world is poor in terms of income, it makes more sense to use world average GDP, which is $17,800 per capita (PPP). Note that this is roughly consistent with the World Bank’s definition of a “high-income” country. It is also well in excess of what is required for high levels of human development. According to the UNDP, some nations score “very high” (0.8 or above) on the life expectancy index with as little as $3,300 per capita, and “very high” on the education index with as little as $8,700 per capita. In other words, the world is not poor, in aggregate. Rather, income is badly maldistributed.

To get a sense for just how badly it is maldistributed, consider that the richest 1% alone capture nearly 25% of world GDP, according to the World Inequality Database. That’s more than the GDP of 169 countries combined, including Norway, Argentina, all of the Middle East and the entire continent of Africa. If income was shared more fairly (i.e., if more of it went to the workers who actually produce it), and invested in universal public goods, we could end global poverty many times over and close the health and education gap permanently.

2. GDP accounting does not reflect economic value

But even GDP accounting is not adequate to the task of determining whether or not the world is poor. The reason is because GDP is not an accurate reflection of value; rather, it is a reflection of prices, and prices are an artefact of power relations in political economy. We know this from feminist economists, who point out that labour and resources mobilized for domestic reproduction, primarily by women, is priced at zero, and therefore “valued” at zero in national accounts, even though it is in reality essential to our civilization. We also know this from literature on unequal exchange, which points out that capital leverages geopolitical and commercial monopolies to artificially depress or “cheapen” the prices of labour in the global South to below the level of subsistence.

Let me illustrate this latter point with an example. Beginning in the 1980s, the World Bank and IMF (which are controlled primarily by the US and G7), imposed structural adjustment programmes across the global South, which significantly depressed wages and commodity prices (cutting them in half) and reorganized Southern economies around exports to the North. The goal was to restore Northern access to the cheap labour and resources they had enjoyed during the colonial era. It worked: during the 1980s the quantity of commodities that the South exported to the North increased, and yet their total revenues on this trade (i.e., the GDP they received for it) declined. In other words, by depressing the costs of Southern labour and commodities, the North is able to appropriate a significant quantity effectively for free.

The economist Samir Amin described this as “hidden value”. David Clelland calls it “dark value” – in other words, value that is not visible at all in national or corporate accounts. Just as the value of female domestic labour is “hidden” from view, so too are the labour and commodities that are net appropriated from the global South. In both cases, prices do not reflect value. Clelland estimates that the real value of an iPad, for example, is many times higher than its market price, because so much of the Southern labour that goes into producing it is underpaid or even entirely unpaid. John Smith points out that, as a result, GDP is an illusion that systematically underestimates real value.

There is a broader fact worth pointing to here. The whole purpose of capitalism is to appropriate surplus value, which by its very nature requires depressing the prices of inputs to a level below the value that capital actually derives from them. We can see this clearly in the way that nature is priced at zero, or close to zero (consider deforestation, strip mining, or emissions), despite the fact that all production ultimately derives from nature. So the question is, why should we use prices as a reflection of global value when we know that, under capitalism, prices by their very definition do not reflect value?

We can take this observation a step further. To the extent that capitalism relies on cheapening the prices of labour and other inputs, and to the extent that GDP represents these artificially low prices, GDP growth will never eradicate scarcity because in the process of growth scarcity is constantly imposed anew.

So, if GDP is not an accurate measure of the value of the global economy, how can we get around this problem? One way is to try to calculate the value of hidden labour and resources. There have been many such attempts. In 1995, the UN estimated that unpaid household labour, if compensated, would earn $16 trillion in that year. More recent estimates have put it at many times higher than that. Similar attempts have been made to value “ecosystem services”, and they arrive at numbers that exceed world GDP. These exercises are useful in illustrating the scale of hidden value, but they bump up against a problem. Capitalism works precisely because it does not pay for domestic labour and ecosystem services (it takes these things for free). So imagining a system in which these things are paid requires us to imagine a totally different kind of economy (with a significant increase in the money supply and a significant increase in the price of labour and resources), and in such an economy money would have a radically different value. These figures, while revealing, compare apples and oranges.

3. What matters is resources and provisioning

There is another approach we can use, which is to look at the scale of the useful resources that are mobilized by the global economy. This is preferable, because resources are real and tangible and can be accurately counted. Right now, the world economy uses 100 billion tons of resources per year (i.e., materials processed into tangible goods, buildings and infrastructure). That’s about 13 tons per person on average, but it is highly unequal: in low and lower-middle income countries it’s about 2 tons, and in high-income countries it’s a staggering 28 tons. Research in industrial ecology indicates that high standards of well-being can be achieved with about 6-8 tons per per person. In other words, the global economy presently uses twice as much resources as would be required to deliver good lives for all.

We see the same thing when it comes to energy. The world economy presently uses 400 EJ of energy per year, or 53 GJ per person on average (again, highly unequal between North and South). Recent research shows that we could deliver high standards of welfare for all, with universal healthcare, education, housing, transportation, computing etc, with as little as 15 GJ per capita. Even if we raise that figure by 75% to be generous it still amounts to a global total of only 26 GJ. In other words, we presently use more than double the energy that is required to deliver good lives for everyone.

When we look at the world in terms of real resources and energy (i.e., the stuff of provisioning), it becomes clear that there is no scarcity at all. The problem isn’t that there’s not enough, the problem, again, is that it is maldistributed. A huge chunk of global commodity production is totally irrelevant to human needs and well-being. Consider all the resources and energy that are mobilized for the sake of fast fashion, throwaway gadgets, single-use stadiums, SUVs, bottled water, cruise ships and the military-industrial complex. Consider the scale of needless consumption that is stimulated by manipulative advertising schemes, or enforced by planned obsolescence. Consider the quantity of private cars that people have been forced to buy because the fossil fuel industry and automobile manufactures have lobbied so aggressively against public transportation. Consider that the beef industry alone uses nearly 60% of the world’s agricultural land, to produce only 2% of global calories.

There is no scarcity. Rather, the world’s resources and energy are appropriated (disproportionately from the global South) in order to service the interests of capital and affluent consumers (disproportionately in the global North). We can state it more clearly: our economic system is not designed to meet human needs; it is designed to facilitate capital accumulation. And in order to do so, it imposes brutal scarcity on the majority of people, and cheapens human and nonhuman life. It is irrational to believe that simply “growing” such an economy, in aggregate, will somehow magically achieve the social outcomes we want.

We can think of this in terms of labour, too. Consider the labour that is rendered by young women in Bangladeshi sweatshops to produce fast fashion for Northern consumption; and consider the labour rendered by Congolese miners to dig up coltan for smartphones that are designed to be tossed every two years. This is an extraordinary waste of human lives. Why? So that Zara and Apple can post extraordinary profits.

Now imagine what the world would be like if all that labour, resources and energy was mobilized instead around meeting human needs and improving well-being (i.e., use-value rather than exchange-value). What if instead of appropriating labour and resources for fast fashion and Alexa devices it was mobilized around providing universal healthcare, education, public transportation, social housing, organic food, water, energy, internet and computing for all? We could live in a highly educated, technologically advanced society with zero poverty and zero hunger, all with significantly less resources and energy than we presently use. In other words we could not only achieve our social goals, but we could meet our ecological goals too, reducing excess resource use in rich countries to bring them back within planetary boundaries, while increasing resource use in the South to meet human needs.

There is no reason we cannot build such a society (and it is achievable, with concrete policy, as I describe here, here and here), except for the fact that those who benefit so prodigiously from the status quo do everything in their power to prevent it.

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Jason Hickel

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Jason Hickel