Robert Pollin

Economist Robert Pollin analyzes the state of the global green transition in the lead-up to Sunday’s mass protest.

A UN climate report ahead of the upcoming COP28 summit says that governments are failing to cut emissions fast enough for the planet to avoid an unmitigated disaster and calls in turn for the phasing out of fossil fuels. In the wake of the hottest summer on record, climate advocates have organized a “March to End Fossil Fuels” in New York City as part of the wave of global mobilizations with the aim of putting an end to the poisons that are killing the planet. The action will take place Sunday, September 17.

Amid this crucial mobilization, the climate movement is working hard to expose the roots of this crisis and chart an alternate course, wrestling with questions such as: Why do governments continue to subsidize fossil fuels? Aside from the obvious resistance of the fossil fuel industry, what are the economic and technological challenges we would face by moving to a post-fossil fuel future? How do we actually get to zero emissions?

Robert Pollin, one of the world’s leading progressive economists and an expert on the macroeconomics of climate change and energy, tackles these questions in an extensive and exclusive interview for Truthout. Pollin is distinguished professor of e conomics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has published scores of books and articles on jobs and macroeconomics, labor markets, wages and poverty, and environmental and energy economics. He was selected by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the “100 Global Thinkers for 2013.” His latest book, coauthored with Noam Chomsky, is Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet.

C. J. Polychroniou: On Wednesday, September 6, the European Copernicus Institute reported that the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever recorded in history by a large margin, prompting in turn UN Secretary-General António Guterres to issue a statement saying “climate breakdown has begun.” And speaking of the UN, on Friday, September 8, it released an assessment of the progress on cutting emissions in which it said that countries are failing to make good on their commitments to curb emissions and that, subsequently, “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

First, what’s the current picture of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and that of renewable energy, respectively, and why is it that eight years after the Paris Agreement the world is still falling short of its climate goals?

Robert Pollin: To have any chance of moving onto a viable global climate stabilization path, the single most critical project at hand is straightforward. It is to phase out the consumption of oil, coal and natural gas, so that, by 2050, fossil fuel consumption for producing energy will have fallen to zero. This is because producing and burning fossil fuels to produce energy is responsible for about 90 percent of all CO2 emissions.

As of the most recent data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the leading mainstream organization focused on global energy market conditions, global CO2 emissions were at around 36 billion tons in 2021. This represents a roughly 70 percent emissions increase since 1990 and a 14 percent increase just since 2010. More to the point, according to the IEA’s estimates for future emissions under two alternative realistic scenarios — what they term as their “stated policies” and “announced pledges” scenarios — emissions will fall barely at all by 2030 and will not come close to achieving the zero emissions target by 2050.

The IEA does also develop a scenario through which the world can reach zero emissions by 2050. The difference between the IEA’s stated policies and announced pledges scenarios relative to their net zero emissions by 2050 scenario is what the IEA demurely terms an “ambition gap.” The question for getting to zero emissions is therefore to figure out how to close this “ambition gap.”

Closing this ambition gap must, of course, recognize that people do still need to consume energy to light, heat and cool buildings, to power cars, buses, trains and airplanes, and to operate computers and industrial machinery, among other uses. As such, to make progress toward climate stabilization requires a viable alternative to the existing fossil fuel dominant infrastructure for meeting the world’s energy needs.

Specifically, we need to be building a high-efficiency clean renewable energy-dominant global energy system as we also phase out to zero the fossil fuel dominant global energy infrastructure. There are important, if still not nearly adequate, positive developments here. First of all, on costs: The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reports that, as of 2021, fossil fuel-generated electricity ranged between 5-15 cents per kilowatt hour within the high-income economies. By contrast, the global average costs for generating a kilowatt of electricity from existing utility-scale onshore wind, at 3.3 cents, or solar photovoltaic technology, at 4.8 cents, were already at the low end of the fossil fuel-generated electricity cost range. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, even with existing clean energy technologies, electricity can be delivered now at approximately half the costs of fossil fuel-generated electricity. This is without taking account of any policy incentives to support clean energy investments or, for that matter, any environmental costs from continuing to burn fossil fuels.

In addition to these figures on costs, IRENA reports that global investments in renewables and high efficiency reached a record high of $1.3 trillion in 2022. However, IRENA also emphasized that this wasn’t nearly enough, stating that annual investments need to “at least quadruple” to be on track for bringing global emissions down to zero by 2050.

Putting it all into some basic arithmetic: As of 2021, total fossil fuel energy consumption amounted to 502 quadrillion British Thermal Units (Q-BTUs). To bring fossil fuel consumption down to zero by 2050 would entail, in absolute figures, cutting consumption by an average of about 19 Q-BTUs per year over 27 years, starting in 2024. This amounts to a 3.8 percent cut in fossil fuel consumption each year relative to the 2021 consumption level.

Technically speaking at least, this is an entirely realistic path to zero CO2 emissions, as long as the clean energy infrastructure is advancing in full force while fossil fuel energy consumption falls to zero. But it will obviously require a massive political movement to overcome the power of the global oil companies, who continue to reap record-breaking profits from destroying the Earth. In 2022, profits for the major oil corporations reached an all-time high of $200 billion. The oil companies and their shareholders have no intention whatsoever of relinquishing these riches. That is the simple answer to your question as to why we have accomplished so little on behalf of saving the planet eight years after 193 countries formally endorsed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

Clearly, the “March to End Fossil Fuels” coming up this Sunday, September 17, in New York City, could not be more timely and important. I myself very much look forward to being out there with hopefully hundreds of thousands of other marchers.

The 2015 Paris Agreement failed, ironically enough, to make any mention of fossil fuels even though these poisons are responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions and hence global warming. Yet, the UN assessment of global progress on cutting emissions calls for the immediate phase out of fossil fuels and even the European Union is pushing for fossil fuel phaseout “well ahead” of 2050 at COP28 climate summit. Undoubtedly, leaving oil, coal and gas in the ground is the most effective way to curb global warming, but this is not happening. Are economics or lack of technological innovation in any way responsible for delaying the transition to a post fossil fuel future?

Inevitably, there are major economic and technical challenges involved in completely transforming the global energy system from being dominated by fossil fuels to one being dominated by clean renewable energy sources and high efficiency. But these challenges are by no means overwhelming, much less insurmountable. By my own calculations, the level of new global investment spending on clean renewables and high efficiency will need to average about $4.5 trillion per year, every year until 2050 — a figure that is very close to the IRENA estimate that I cited above. This amounts to an average of about 2.5 percent of global GDP per year between now and 2050. It is also less than 1 percent of the current level of total global financial assets of $470 trillion. So, considering the big global financial framework, the transition project is an entirely realistic proposition.

There are three major sets of challenges in building a high-efficiency/renewable-energy dominant global energy infrastructure. These concern the issues of 1) intermittency with solar and wind energy; 2) mineral requirements as inputs in building the clean energy infrastructure and 3) land-use requirements for renewables, especially solar and wind. Let’s briefly consider these.

Intermittency refers to the fact that the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow 24 hours a day. Moreover, on average, different geographical areas receive significantly different levels of sunshine and wind. As such, the solar and wind power that are generated in the sunnier and windier areas of the globe will need to be stored and transmitted at reasonable costs to the less sunny and windy areas.

In fact, these issues around transmission and storage of wind and solar power will not become pressing for many years into the clean energy transition, probably until the mid-2030s This is because fossil fuels, along with nuclear energy, will continue to provide a baseload of nonintermittent energy supply as these energy sectors proceed toward their phase out while the clean energy industry rapidly expands. Fossil fuels and nuclear energy now provide roughly 85 percent of all global energy supplies. Even with a phase out to zero by 2050 trajectory, with fossil fuel supply cut on average by 18 Q-BTUs per year, fossil fuels will continue to provide the majority of overall energy demand through about 2035. Meanwhile, fully viable solutions to the technical challenges with transmission and storage of solar and wind power — including around affordability — should not be more than a decade away, certainly as long as the market for clean energy grows at the rapid rate that is necessary. For example, IRENA estimates that global battery storage capacity could expand between 17- to 38-fold as of 2030.

Building a global clean energy infrastructure will entail a massive expansion in demand for the set of minerals that are used intensively in clean energy technologies. Some of the most heavily required minerals include lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel. Several rare earth minerals will also experience heavily increasing demand, including tellurium, used for solar cell production and neodymium, used in producing wind turbines and electric vehicles.

Short-term supply shortages will likely emerge with some of these minerals as demand for them expands rapidly. But none of the likely shortages should be insurmountable. One solution will be to greatly expand the industry for recycling the needed metals and minerals. At present, average recycling rates for these resources are below 1 percent of total supply. By contrast, recycling rates for aluminum throughout the world are at around 75 percent. Increasing recycling rates by even relatively modest amounts will make a substantial contribution towards overcoming supply shortages.

Beyond these considerations are the equally critical issues relating to where, and under what conditions, these required minerals will be extracted. To begin with, the majority of deposits of the key minerals are located in the Global South. Thus, over 50 percent of all lithium deposits are located in the so-called “lithium triangle’” of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. Nearly 50 percent of all cobalt deposits are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with another 12 percent in Indonesia and the Philippines. Indonesia, Brazil and the Philippines account for 44 percent of all nickel deposits, while South Africa and Brazil account for 61 percent of all manganese deposits.

The rapid expansion of mining in these regions creates conditions for both significant positive as well as negative impacts. The positive possibilities include the employment creation, infrastructure investments and export earnings that could result through the large-scale expansion of the respective regions’ mining operations. On the negative side, the major expansion of these mining operations will almost certainly create harmful environmental impacts. For example, in the Chile/Argentina/Bolivia lithium triangle, approximately 500,000 gallons of water are needed to produce one ton of lithium through the particular “brine pumping and solar evaporation” extraction technique deployed there. This alters the natural hydrodynamics of the region and reduces the availability of water for local communities.

It will also always be an open question as to how large a share of the export revenues generated by these mining operations will accrue to the host country governments or local enterprises. This will depend on the terms established between the respective countries’ governments and local enterprises vis-a-vis the multinational corporations who obtain concessions to develop and operate the mines. Unless the local governments and enterprises succeed in gaining favorable terms, the profits from these mining operations will then mostly be repatriated back to the shareholders of the multinational firms, thereby replicating a pattern of corporate imperialism that has deep historical roots.

The issue of land use requirements is frequently cited to demonstrate that building a 100 percent renewable energy global economy is unrealistic. But these claims are not supported by evidence.

As one individual country case, the situation in Greece is useful in demonstrating how land use issues with respect to renewable energy development can be managed either poorly or well. In fact, land use for renewable energy projects has been controversial in Greece for several years. This is primarily because wind turbines have already been erected in environmentally sensitive areas such as mountaintops and pristine ecological sites. These installations are scarring the impacted land areas and contributing to biodiversity losses.

My coauthors and I have developed a series of scenarios through which Greece can supply 100 percent of its energy needs with renewables by 2050 while creating minimum impact on undeveloped or agricultural land areas. In one specific case, we show how the 100 percent renewable energy requirement by 2050 can be met while locating renewable installations on a total of 709 square kilometers (km2) of land, which amounts to only 0.5 percent of Greece’s total land area. Crucially, within this scenario, we show that renewable installations would need to be located on only about 0.2 percent of Greece’s roughly 88,000 km2 of agricultural and undeveloped areas. We also exclude altogether the roughly 37.000 km2 of forests and woodland shrub areas of land cover in Greece. The key to minimizing solar and wind installations on environmentally sensitive sites is to maximize installations on the full range of available artificial surfaces, including commercial, industrial and residential rooftops, along roadways and rail lines, at airports, sports and leisure facilities and at mineral extraction sites.

How much of a role do subsidies play in hindering fossil fuel phaseout?

One of the few postulates in economics that you can actually count on is: “If you pay people lots of money to do something, you will get more of that something than if you didn’t pay them.” This pretty much sums up the situation with fossil fuel subsidies all over the world today. Despite reams of official pledges and resolutions over many years from virtually every international and national governmental body, governments continue to pay out huge sums of money to underwrite the production and consumption of fossil fuels and thus, the ongoing destruction of a livable planet.

There are different estimates as to exactly how much governments are now spending on fossil fuel subsidies. In my view, the most relevant measure — combining figures from the International Energy Agency and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — is $1.4 trillion for 2022. This figure is roughly equal to the record amount of global clean energy investments in 2022 that I cited above. It is also roughly double the total fossil fuel subsidy figure of $650 billion from 2019, just prior to the COVID lockdown of 2020.

Why are governments still paying out fossil fuel subsidies in the face of all the commitments they have made to eliminate them? The most benevolent explanation is that these subsidies have been critical for keeping low-income people afloat. This is true, most especially in poor countries but in high-income countries as well. However, governments would be able to provide much more generous levels of support to low-income people, at much lower costs, through other measures, including simple cash transfers or subsidized prices for food.

In fact, the overwhelming amount of support provided by fossil fuel subsidies is not received by poor people, but rather flows to high-income households and the fossil fuel companies. To take the case of Indonesia, the share of total fossil fuel subsidies going to the richest 10 percent of households is approximately 10 times greater than the amount going to the poorest 10 percent. This results because every Indonesian is able to buy fossil fuel energy at the same subsidized retail prices. The only difference is that, on average, rich households spend 10 times more on energy than poor households.

Still more lavish benefits go to the fossil fuel companies. If these subsidies were channeled instead into clean energy investments, as they should be, the fossil fuel companies would face steadily mounting competition from clean energy sources and their markets would dry up. Instead, thanks to ongoing subsidy support, fossil fuel companies continue to reap outsized profits.

What do you think of the idea of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty as a way of stopping the expansion of fossil fuel exploration?

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation proposal is being led by the Pacific Island nations of Vanuatu and Tuvalu that are being severely impacted by the rising sea levels resulting from global warming. The website for this initiative states: “It’s time to leave behind the pollution, economic and climate and security risks caused by coal, oil and gas. There is enough affordable, renewable energy capacity in every nation of the world to power people’s lives and communities.” I completely agree with this. Of course, we have to embrace all forms of mobilization to save our planet, including this important one.

Hundreds of international, national and local organizations have endorsed the September 17,“March to End Fossil Fuels” in New York City, which is part of a mass global escalation to put an end to fossil fuel production. Similar demonstrations have already taken place in different parts of the globe, including London on April 24, 2023, where some 50,000 people gathered outside Parliament to demand that the U.K. government stop all fossil fuel explorations immediately. What should we make of concerns and claims that demands for climate regulations are driving voters straight into the arms of extreme populist parties and movements?

The point here is that building a clean energy economy cannot just be seen by voters only in terms of “demands for climate regulations.” It is critical to understand the clean energy transition as a great source of new opportunities, along multiple dimensions. First, investments to build a clean energy economy have already become a major new source of job creation in all places that clean energy investments are being mounted. This expansion of job opportunities will continue growing as the clean energy transition proceeds. As we have seen, clean renewable energy, combined with high efficiency, will also deliver energy at lower prices than the current costs of fossil fuel energy. Further, low-income economies will be able to build relatively small-scale, lower-cost, clean energy infrastructures in their rural regions. To date, working within the conventional massive fossil fuel infrastructure scale, governments in developing economies have failed to deliver electricity to roughly half of their rural populations. Finally, of course, there will also be major health benefits everywhere through eliminating both indoor and outdoor pollution generated by burning fossil fuels. These are all in addition to the fundamental goal of driving emissions to zero.

Still, there is also no question that workers and communities throughout the world whose livelihoods depend on people consuming oil, coal and natural gas will lose out in the clean energy transition. As such, just transition policies for these workers and communities have to be understood as central features of the overall clean energy transition project.

Along with several coworkers, I have developed just transition programs for eight U.S. states, as well for the U.S. economy overall and for other countries, most recently South Korea.

Focusing on transition policies for the fossil fuel industry dependent workers, I would argue that, as a first principle, the aim of such policies should be, simply, to truly protect them against major losses in their living standards. To accomplish this, the critical components of a just transition policy should include three types of guarantees for the workers: 1) a guaranteed new job; 2) a guaranteed level of pay with their new job that is at least comparable to their previous fossil fuel industry job and 3) a guarantee that their pensions will remain intact regardless of whether their employers’ business operations are phased out.

The imperative of generous just transition policies was recently described by Norman Rodgers. Rodgers has been an oil refinery worker in Los Angeles for 24 years and is a leader of the United Steelworkers Local 675 that represents the region’s oil refinery workers. Rogers writes as follows:
‘Many speak of a ‘just transition,’ but we’ve never seen one. No worker or community member will ever believe that an equitable transition is possible until we see details fully funded state safety net and job creation programs…. With a fully funded equitable transition plan — meeting the immediate need for a safety net for workers and communities and offering a bold vision to restructure our economy — we can … move California workers, communities and the planet toward a more secure future.’

Following from Norman Rodgers, I hope that Sunday’s “March to End Fossil Fuels” will highlight and celebrate the massive opportunities — including the immediate tangible opportunities, like jobs, greater access to affordable electricity, and healthy environment — that will result through creating our clean energy future. Of course, these are all in addition to saving the planet by driving C2O emissions to zero. Equally, I hope we marchers will loudly insist on just transition policies for all workers and communities whose livelihoods now depend on the fossil fuel industry.

Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

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C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published scores of books and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).

A conversation with Pastor Alape, former guerrilla mayoral candidate for the Comunes Party.

On May 4, 2023, during the International Summit on Nonviolence held in Antioquia, Colombia, a handshake shocked those who were present. The handshake was between two men with vastly different histories. One of the men was Daniel Gaviria, whose father—Guillermo Gaviria, former governor of Antioquia—was killed in 2003 when he was a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP). The other man was Pastor Alape, former commander of the FARC-EP. Gaviria said that the handshake took place because Pastor Alape was “taking steps toward nonviolence.” “That gives me confidence and leads me to extend forgiveness to him,” said Gaviria.

Pastor Alape commanded one of the FARC-EP’s regions and was part of its highest body, the Estado Mayor Central. FARC-EP, founded in 1964, signed a peace agreement with the Colombian state in 2016. It was then transformed into the Comunes Party, comprising former guerrillas and members from various social movements. This party, which has contested elections, focuses its attention on the need to implement the peace agreement and advance the cause of social justice in Colombia. One of the lingering problems in the country is the full incorporation of former guerrilla fighters into the country’s social and political life.

Not long after the handshake, we spoke to Pastor Alape about the process of reintegration. He told us that as part of this process, he has decided to be the first former member of the national leadership of the FARC-EP to run for regional elections. Pastor Alape is running to be the mayor of Puerto Berrío in Antioquia, where he grew up. In his new civilian life, the former combatant decided to combine the name given to him by his parents (Félix Antonio Muñoz Lascarro) with the name given to him by the guerrilla struggle (Pastor Alape) and be called Pastor Lisandro Alape Lascarro. Earlier in July, he said that he joined the FARC-EP to “change the country with a lead” and now through Comunes he wants to “change it with the votes.”

Resistance of a Legal Kind
In 1974, Pastor Alape—at the age of 15—joined the Communist Youth. That year, a pact that was formed in 1958 between the Liberal and the Conservative parties to govern together as a National Front ended. It was this political turmoil that led to the armed struggle of the FARC-EP and other groups in the 1960s. But, in 1974, the Colombian Communist Party (PCC)—which had been underground—became politically active again. His work in the Communist Youth from that time, Pastor Alape told us, allowed for his “political formation through legal resistance.” This time was short-lived, and when the violence restarted, Pastor Alape joined the FARC-EP.

After 53 years of armed resistance, the warring parties signed a historic peace agreement in Havana in 2016 and Comunes entered the electoral domain. As part of the peace agreement, to incorporate Comunes into legal politics, the party is represented in Congress by 10 members. But it has thus far not been able to win many seats in the different local and regional bodies. In the October 29 regional elections, Comunes will contest 145 seats, including for the mayor’s office in Puerto Berrío, which Pastor Alape is running for.

A Community That Survives
“I have not been very fond of electoral politics,” Alape told us. “But when I arrived in the town of Puerto Berrío and met with old and new friends and family, these interactions gave me the impetus to try and use the political system to initiate state action on behalf of marginalized communities.”

Puerto Berrío or El Pueblo, as Pastor Alape calls it, is a small municipality of around 51,000 people in the province of Antioquia, which is located on the banks of the Magdalena River. On December 17, 1979, Pastor Alape left his home on a small boat on this very river to go to Matarredonda in Chaparral (Tolima) to join the FARC-EP. Now, he walks along the riverbanks and campaigns to become its mayor.

Pastor Alape told us that his campaign is “a very demanding exercise in listening.” One of the main aspects of his campaign is to involve the people of the town in the “construction of public policies.” During the meetings with the community, he concentrates on gathering people’s thoughts and ideas about how to improve things in the town. “These communities,” he told us, “have had the power to survive the most adverse conditions.” Due to this, they already know how to “govern their homes, their communities, their villages.” But they have faced barriers from the state, which rather “than guaranteeing rights has a policy of violating rights.”

The Guerrilla’s Campaign
As a new party and as a party of the left, Comunes does not possess the resources of established parties of the wealthy. That is why Alape’s campaign is managed by a very small team. To compensate for this, Pastor Alape said that he is drawing upon his experience as a guerrilla fighter. He is also utilizing the experiences of various local governments and building knowledge from their experiments and their failures.

The point of his campaign is to “broaden democracy,” which is a phrase that could mean a variety of things but with Alape it means something specific. His campaign aims to, “design the lines of action based on community commitment.” If the community will not commit itself to making certain changes, then Alape is not going to go ahead with them. The community must, he said, “feel part of the government,” and change must happen with community involvement. If the community is not committed, then the policy will fail, which is why Alape said that he will not “promise what cannot be fulfilled.” If the community is not committed to a certain agenda, then that agenda will have to be set aside for now. “We might have to postpone the aspirations we have,” he said.

“We do not have economic resources,” Pastor Alape told us. “But we have people.” And if “everyone contributes, we will magnify our work.” If policies that are possible are backed by the community, and if these are realized, then more people will begin to imagine deeper policies and more enduring solutions. This momentum will increase “the expectation of change.” This method of doing politics, Pastor Alape said, comes from his experience during the guerrilla struggle.

Countries like Colombia as well as Nepal have shown not only that peace agreements can hold after decades of conflict but also that the guerrilla fighters can bring their experiences in the armed struggle and use them in civilian life. If it works in Colombia, as it seems to be working in Nepal, it should be able to work in other long-term conflict zones too.

Byline:

Taroa Zúñiga Silva and Laura Devia López

Author Bio:

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Taroa Zúñiga Silva is a writing fellow and the Spanish media coordinator for Globetrotter. She is the co-editor with Giordana García Sojo of Venezuela, Vórtice de la Guerra del Siglo XXI (2020). She is a member of the coordinating committee of Argos: International Observatory on Migration and Human Rights and is a member of the Mecha Cooperativa, a project of the Ejército Comunicacional de Liberación.

Laura Devia López is a Colombian historian and teacher. She lived in exile in Cuba until the signing of the Colombian peace accord in 2016. She works in Colombia as an activist for peace and feminism.

Source: Globetrotter

Eric Laursen

An international group of researchers and data scientists are creating a comprehensive database of the world’s archaeological knowledge—and changing our understanding of humans’ prehistoric heritage.

Archaeology isn’t what it was in Indiana Jones’s heyday. The traditional image of the khaki-clad researcher scrambling over an excavation site with rock hammer and camel-hair brush has been supplemented by aerial and satellite photography, CT scanners and 3D modeling, and lidar that can isolate the smallest details of long-buried settlements. What archaeologists do with the artifacts and data they gather is changing dramatically as well, as they use network science and new software tools to map the complex connections between regional economic networks in the millennia before written history.

With this new, technology-driven approach, researchers can form a far more comprehensive picture of early communities’ ties with other human clusters sometimes thousands of miles away, by examining the goods and raw materials they exchanged and tracing these from their points of origin to the far-flung places where they were abandoned and then rediscovered centuries later. This is yielding additional insights into social inequality and power relations within communities, differences and similarities between communities living next to each other, and patterns of migration and settlement.

“You get more of a sense of a dynamic,” says Tim Kerig, an archaeologist at Kiel University’s ROOTS Cluster of Excellence in Social, Environmental, and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies, in Germany, “of people coming from other places and how, over the generations, they filled that landscape. So we’re looking at the whole system, over not centuries but millennia.”

Network science is the study of complex relationships—and probable relationships—between physical, biological, social, and cognitive phenomena. Applying network science to archaeology was an idea in the minds of researchers as far back as the 1960s, says Kerig, whose own work focuses on the European Neolithic period—from about 8000 BC to 2000 BC—and the evolution of social inequalities. But while interest grew in succeeding decades, archaeologists lacked the tools to easily collate and analyze the millions of data points that had been gathered over many decades. The few efforts to do so proceeded punishingly slowly, on top of which, there was less interest at the time in exploring the connections that material and economic exchanges between far-flung communities could reveal.

“Sociological questions were mostly answered by looking at goods that were found in graves—the ‘sphere of kings’—which tended to be highly valued luxury items,” Kerig says, while archaeologists were less interested in “the daily stuff”: fragments of flint or stone objects or implements that made up the fabric of most people’s everyday lives. This was partly due to an overabundance of these humbler items. “Don’t forget that at a Stone Age site in Denmark, for example, you might have 100,000 artifacts to deal with, and they all look to most of us exactly the same.”

“Big Exchange” is the name of a project that an international cluster of scholars and data scientists, including Kerig, launched in 2020 with the aim of using digital tools to break down the barriers to applying network science to archaeology. The most critical hurdle they faced was overspecialization. Traditionally, archaeologists have focused on specific objects or raw materials—amber, obsidian, jade, flint, other metals—rather than the totality of findings at a given site, which prevented them from seeing the totality of that community’s networks of exchange. Big Exchange’s first objective is to create a database that collates all these materials and makes them available for more sophisticated, cross-referenced study and analysis.

“The approach of our project is to include all recordable raw materials, their find locations and places of origin in the analysis for the period from the end of the Middle Stone Age [or Mesolithic, 10,000 years ago,] to Antiquity,” Johanna Hilpert, a Big Exchange postdoc researcher at the ROOTS Cluster, told Phys.org in July 2023. “This can only be done by means of network analysis and with AI [artificial intelligence].”

A Deeper, More Granular Understanding
As of July 2023, Big Exchange has already collated data from 6,000 sites from which millions of artifacts have been recovered, and expects to complete the task in another two and a half years. The objective is to collect and digitize as much information as possible and establish classifications for all of it—for example, by site location, time period, and how far a material was found from its place of origin.

Establishing the database itself has not proven to be an easy task. Some of the source data for Big Exchange had already been digitized in some form; some of it is being digitized for the first time. It quickly became clear that the way researchers analyze these findings has changed over the past hundred years, “and so you can imagine all kinds of technical problems,” Kerig says.

Big Exchange used PostgreSQL, a common relational database management system. Working bottom-up, they started by inputting the individual datasets, developing the formal structure of the database, including comparisons of attributes and concepts, as they went along. Once all existing data is integrated, the database can be used by researchers working to reconstruct long-vanished economic and social networks.

But the project is already producing results. One study, published this year in the journal Antiquity, analyzed the geographic expansion of one of the most studied Neolithic cultures, the Linear Pottery culture (LPC) that extended from roughly the present-day Netherlands to the Black Sea and flourished from about 5500 BC to 4500 BC.

Applying a heterogeneous information network (HIN) analysis—a sophisticated graphic model that can map the relationships between diverse but interconnected sets of data—to raw materials in circulation at the time, researchers were able to detect differences in material culture between the northwest subgroup of the LPC and other subgroups that surrounded it. For example, sites associated with the northwest group contained no shells of Spondylus, a bivalve mollusk, that were a prestige good in Neolithic burial sites farther east in the Carpathian Mountains.

Previously, researchers assumed this was because of poor conditions for preservation in the area that the northwest group occupied. But HIN mapping revealed that the region lacking Spondylus shells was much wider than the area where preservation was difficult, and that it contained a good supply of flint that had originated much farther west. This suggested that the blend of raw materials used by the northwestern group wasn’t dictated by local availability, but by cultural or economic choice, linking the group to exchange networks that other LPC subgroups didn’t participate in, in spite of the fact that those other subgroups were close neighbors.

The HIN analysis allowed the Big Exchange researchers to develop a deeper, more granular understanding of the LPC—a culture that archaeologists thought they had already acquired a detailed knowledge of—that teases out previously undetected cultural and economic differences between subgroups.

Combining Big Exchange’s practice of looking at all the objects found at a particular excavation site with its focus on networks of exchange, the project is also producing new insights into inequality and power relations within groups. “The meaning of these objects changes depending on the regional and chronological context,” says Kerig. For instance, a fragile item found in a protective leather wrapping, with no evident practical use, will tend to come from a greater distance than more common items, indicating that a distant origin and the difficulty of obtaining it conferred a prestige value on the object. A large finding of such objects would indicate that an elite was emerging in the community connected with that site.

Clearing Away Cultural Bias
Already, however, the researchers are confronting limitations in the data they are collecting: limitations that point to larger issues. The vast majority of known archaeological sites outside the Americas are in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the Near East—a comparatively small area—with far fewer elsewhere, Kerig notes. Exchange networks in the Neolithic era certainly stretched far beyond these two regions. The more connections revealed by projects like Big Exchange, the more urgent will be the need to expand excavation and recovery into other parts of Eurasia; one goal of Big Exchange is to offer guidance as to where the most promising sites might be located.

Cultural bias is another issue. “We are not only collating datasets; we are also collating the authors of the datasets,” Kerig says. For some sites that he and his colleagues wanted to include, no actual data is available; perhaps research began in those areas but then was interrupted, or else documentation was lost during wartime, and all that remains are published or unpublished writings, often with less quantitative content and heavily informed by the preconceptions of the time. While evidence can be teased out of these sources, it has to be handled with care.

“These more qualitative things are very, very important—perhaps worth more than the actual datasets,” says Kerig. “But we meet regularly to discuss these things, and it’s new for all of us. I would expect that we will get a bloody nose if we don’t.” This is where technologies like artificial intelligence could become more useful in the future, by helping researchers to tease out valid observations from the mass of culturally biased material.

Big Exchange’s most pressing challenge, however, is keeping the project going. The painstaking work of inputting and mapping data into the project’s evolving database is currently being carried out by students at the Kiel ROOTS Cluster. “It’s a very labor-intensive thing,” says Kerig. He is now looking for a long-term home for Big Exchange that can host its growing data-analytic treasure trove and make it available to archaeologists and other investigators in coming decades.

But he remains hopeful about Big Exchange’s future. “I am pretty sure that something is coming in in this direction,” he says.

Byline:
Eric Laursen

Author Bio:
Eric Laursen is an independent journalist, historian, and activist. He is the author of The People’s Pension, The Duty to Stand Aside, and The Operating System. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including In These Times, the Nation, and the Arkansas Review. He lives in Buckland, Massachusetts.

Source:
Independent Media Institute

Credit Line:
This article was produced by Human Bridges, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

John P. Ruehl – Source: Independent Media Institute

09-11-2023 ~ Around the world, diverse initiatives are being introduced to manage population changes.

In early 2023, India surpassed China as the most populous country in the world with the latter having 850,000 fewer people by the end of 2022—marking the country’s first population decline since famine struck from 1959 to 1961.

While this reduction may seem modest considering China’s 1.4 billion population currently, an ongoing decline is anticipated, with UN projections suggesting that China’s population could dwindle to below 800 million by 2100.

Populations fluctuate through immigration, emigration, deaths, and births. China’s previous one-child policy, enforced from 1980 to 2015, and the resulting gender imbalance slowed its birth rate. The Chinese government is now trying to boost birth rates, including by discouraging abortion.

The Malthusian population growth model, proposed in the 1700s, suggested that populations grow exponentially and outpace resource availability until inevitable checks, such as famine, disease, conflict, or other issues, cause it to drop. During the high global population growth rates of the early 1960s, these concerns abounded. Yet around the world, population growth has slowed dramatically, and in China and many other countries, natural decline is already underway.

A 2020 study published in the Lancet medical journal revealed that based on current population trends, more than 20 countries are on track to halve their populations by 2100. The Pew Research think tank, meanwhile, declared that 90 countries will see their populations decline by 2100, while the Center of Expertise on Population and Migration (CEPAM) predicts the global population will peak at 9.8 billion around 2070 to 2080.

The fear of a shrinking and aging population looms over governments and economists alike. Increased payments toward pension and social welfare systems will strain a reduced labor force, while younger populations also contribute more to economic growth and innovation. Countries may also experience a reduction in their global influence—not least because of a smaller population available for military service.

Various metrics gauge fertility and birth rates, but the total fertility rate (TFR), which measures the number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, is the most common. Yet achieving replacement level fertility rates, typically 2.1 children per woman, has proven challenging.

The decline in global fertility rates can be attributed to societal and cultural shifts, family planning initiatives, wider access to contraception, improved infant mortality rates, increased cost of child-rearing, urbanization, delayed marriages and childbirth due to educational and career pursuits, and social welfare systems reducing reliance on familial support.

A case in point is Japan, whose population peaked at 128 million in 2008 and has since shrunk to below 123 million. It is poised to decrease to 72 million by century’s end, its decline sustained by a low fertility rate, an aging population (almost 30 percent of the population is 65 or older), and limited immigration. Initiatives to slow this decline include changing immigration laws and government-sponsored speed dating.

Remarkably, despite hitting a record low in 2022, Japan’s TFR is now higher than China’s and South Korea’s. Since 2006, South Korea has invested more than $200 billion in establishing public daycare centers, free nurseries, subsidized child care, and other initiatives to boost its TFR. But at 0.78, South Korea’s TFR remains the world’s lowest. South Korea’s government also introduced immigration reforms in the early 21st century, all while leading the world in automation with 1,000 robots per 10,000 employees—more than double of second-ranked Japan.

In Europe, efforts to boost populations have occurred for decades. For instance, Romania criminalized abortion and banned contraception except for certain medical conditions in 1966. Consequently, illegal abortions increased, and Romania had the highest maternal mortality rate in Europe in the 1980s as a result of this. While Romania’s TFR stabilized at 2.3 by the late 1980s, it collapsed in the 1990s, alongside a population exodus through emigration that has been sustained after Romania joined the EU in 2007.

Other Eastern European nations have experienced similar TFR declines and emigration. Contrastingly, Western European countries have managed to grow slightly since 2000, but largely only due to immigration. Even so, countries like Italy have seen population declines, spurring initiatives by the government to offer houses to foreigners for as little as 1 euro in an effort to repopulate small towns.

The U.S. has a lower average age than most European countries and saw a rebound in TFR rates in the 2000s. But this dropped after the recession in 2008 and it has never recovered. And unlike European countries, life expectancy continued to decline after COVID-19. Immigration has mitigated these issues, but as in Europe this has become increasingly political, and the U.S. population growth rate has slowed considerably. While there is no official policy to boost birth rates, the U.S. promotes family planning initiatives abroad. Republican and Democrat administrations have meanwhile oscillated since 1984 between enforcing and rescinding the Mexico City Policy, requiring foreign NGOs to not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” in order to receive U.S. government funding for family planning initiatives.

Russia’s TFR faced a rapid decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union, reaching a low of 1.16 in 1999, and causing a population decline. However, government initiatives saw it rebound to 1.8 in 2014 before falling again. The Kremlin announced a desired TFR of 1.7 in 2020, and increased payments for parents of at least two children. To further stabilize its population, Russia has also relied on immigration and taking parts of Ukraine.

Iran’s birth rate policies have fluctuated over the last few decades. During the 1950s, Iran implemented fertility controls but abolished them after the 1979 Islamic revolution. However, they were reintroduced in the late 1980s to release pressure on the economy. Once seen as a “success story,” Iran’s TFR fell faster than anticipated to 1.6 in 2012. That year, the government began attempts to boost the birth rate by limiting access to birth control, abortion, and vasectomies.

Although India now holds the mantle of the world’s most populous country, its TFR is now below replacement level. Nonetheless, its population will continue to grow, fueled by a large, youthful population—a demographic feature increasingly common across the Global South. While India’s population is eventually projected to begin declining by the 2060s, India is currently managing its youthful population through initiatives such as promoting employment opportunities abroad.

The perils of not utilizing a large working population extend beyond unrealized economic potential. Without economic prospects, large youthful populations can generate significant social and political upheaval. Neighboring Pakistan is trying to reduce its population growth to avoid exacerbating strains on resources, infrastructure, education, and health care systems.

Pakistan’s concerns are similar to much of Africa. Aside from Afghanistan, the top 20 countries with the highest TFR are all located in Africa. Nigeria’s population is projected to grow from 213 million currently to 550 million in 2100, while some projections see half of all births in Africa between 2020 and 2100. Even so, family planning programs have helped slow growth in recent years across the continent.

Contrastingly, the experience of countries where campaigns supporting fertility have seen some success (including Germany, the Czech Republic, and Hungary) suggests direct financial incentives, tax breaks, cheap/free child care centers, generous maternity/paternity leave, housing assistance, and more flexible approaches to work-life balance are successful at interrupting decline.

While gender equality has often been cited as a barrier to higher birth rates in the past, this no longer seems to be the case. Highly educated women had the lowest fertility rate in the U.S. in 1980, for example, but this was not true in 2019. Additionally, Mongolia’s TFR declined from 7.3 kids per woman in 1974 to under two by 2005. But Mongolian birth rates then increased to around three children per woman by 2019, despite Mongolian women becoming better educated, increasingly represented in traditionally male-dominated fields, and having access to improved rural maternal health services.

Nonetheless, Mongolia’s recent population boom has resulted in school crowding, pollution, housing problems, and other issues, and points to the need for flexible approaches to population growth, decline, and stabilization.

With a median age in Europe of 44.4 years old and a median age of about 19 in Africa, different parts of the world will require different measures to deal with fluctuating population numbers this century. China is not alone in the perception that it will grow old before it grows rich, and such countries will develop their own methods to deal with aging societies. Seeking the creation of long-term sustainable approaches to population management, which avoid coercion but also provide help for those raising children, should be prioritized.

Byline:
John P. Ruehl

Author Bio:
This article was produced by Globetrotter.

John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

Source:
Globetrotter

Richard D. Wolff

In the United Kingdom, the BBC prepared and published data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in January about different nations’ growth forecasts for 2023 and 2024. The BBC foregrounded some really bad news for the UK. Of nine major industrial economies—the G7 (the U.S., Canada, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, and Canada), plus Russia, and China—the UK would be the only one to suffer real economic decline: a contraction in its 2023 GDP (its total annual, national output of goods and services). So dubious a distinction for the UK followed the long political night of rule by the Conservative Party. That night’s darker moments included austerity after the severe 2008-2009 global capitalist crash, scapegoating Europe for the UK’s economic troubles, Brexit taking place during the peak of that scapegoating, enjoyment of COVID cocktail parties by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government that it prohibited for the British public, and endless, transparent, and cringeworthy lying to the public when caught and exposed. But the BBC’s report on the new IMF data was shocking about far more than the poor performance of the UK economy.

For the rest of 2023, the IMF says China’s GDP will grow more than 5 percent or more than twice Japan’s GDP growth rate. All other G7 countries will grow their GDPs more slowly than Japan. China’s growth rate will be more than triple that of the U.S. in 2023. Finally, the IMF’s projected GDP growth for 2024 shows both Russia and China growing much faster than any G7 country. These comparative forecasts comprise a reality check that clashes with most politicians’ statements, mass media accounts, and propaganda barrages (worsened by the Ukraine war) emerging from the G7’s old capitalist establishment. The BBC report was thus both rare and arresting.

For 30 years, skepticism and disparagements confronted China’s claims about its economic growth. When these attempts to debunk Beijing’s claims were subsequently proven wrong by the country’s stunning record of superior economic growth, the intensity of these efforts nonetheless mounted. Disbelief in China’s economic achievements grew even as in-person visits to China confirmed high rates of industrialization, internal migration and urbanization, and fast-rising mass consumption levels. The need to disregard China’s economic transition from extreme poverty to economic superpower status rivaling the U.S. reminds us of the Cold War-driven nonrecognition of Soviet economic achievements after 1945. A parallel nonrecognition figures again in the G7 sanctions strategy against Russia over the Ukraine war. For anyone seriously interested in understanding the momentous changes now sweeping across the world economy, one question looms. How do we account for the gap between what the old capitalist establishment says (and may even believe) and what is real?

The answer is that we are confronted with a combination of denials and pretenses that are caused by the conjoined decline of U.S. capitalism and its global empire (or hegemony). Those declines have occasionally become clear enough, at least fleetingly, to observers within the old capitalist establishment. For example, such key moments include the U.S. military’s inability to “win” local wars even against poor countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Another example was the U.S. medical-industrial complex’s subpar performance in managing the high number of COVID deaths and illnesses. U.S. capitalism’s crash in 2020 and into 2021 was severe and then was followed immediately by a bad inflation and then a fast, destabilizing tightening of credit: not exactly a stellar economic record. Debt levels of the U.S. government, corporations, and households are at or near record levels. Inequalities of wealth and income, already extreme, keep rising. A public viewing such facts might reasonably wonder whether something bigger is at play beyond these events being seen in isolation. Might there possibly be a systemic problem?

But before such a line of thought can jell into a conscious question, let alone any serious pursuit of an answer, denial sets in. A systemic breakdown seems an unbearable thought, so denial of systematicity is undertaken. Statements about specifics are carefully crafted to omit connecting them to their context of a declining capitalist system. Evasion of the systemic dimension leads to undervaluing the dangers each particular problem or crisis presents. Like rose-colored glasses, anti-systemic glasses make economic problems appear less dangerous, narrower, and more limited in effects than they actually are. The anti-systemic bias is a form of denial.

Consider, for example, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen or other officials when they bemoan deepening U.S. economic inequality. They do not refute nor even seem able to imagine that within a declining capitalism, the richest and most powerful will use their positions to shift the costs of its decline onto others. For example, raising interest rates these days to counter inflation—instead of imposing wage-price freezes like former President Richard M. Nixon did in 1971 or imposing a goods rationing system as former President Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 1940s—is an anti-inflation policy choice. The burden of this option falls more heavily on middle- and lower-income recipients than on the rich. Similar cost-shifting is entailed by a policy of huge federal budget deficits because they are financed by borrowing disproportionally from (and thus paying more interest to) the richest parts of society. Yet mainstream G7 discussions of those policy choices and deficits rarely link them to the decline of U.S. capitalism and its global hegemony.

Complementing denial of systemic problems in G7 economies are loud pretenses about their good health in contrast to problems elsewhere. Like the repeated affirmations about a “great” U.S. economy contrasted with deep difficulties afflicting the Russian and Chinese economies. Ironically, those difficulties are regularly rendered as systemic, flowing from the “natures” of an “authoritarian” or socialist economic system. For example, in recent years, mainstream U.S. media reported that Russia’s ruble would soon “collapse,” that China’s building boom was collapsing, that China’s anti-COVID policies were wrecking its economy, and so on. Apropos Russia’s economy, the late U.S. Senator John McCain dismissed Russia as a “gas station masquerading as a country.” Around former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, the argument was often advanced that beyond all policy specifics (regarding tariffs, trade, sanctions, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), economic system change in China was necessarily a goal on the horizon.

Reality undermines these denials and pretenses. That is one reason why they struggle so hard to obscure reality. For example, China’s economic performance, as measured by its world-leading GDP growth over the last quarter century, undergirds its confidence in and loyalty to its particular economic system. The BBC’s graphic only further confirms that confidence. By the same logic, that graphic challenges the systemic self-confidence of the old G7 capitalist establishment. Denials and pretenses are not likely to be sustainable responses to the widening differences between G7 performance and the emerging (and already larger in GDP terms) alternative gathered around the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

Of course, both G7 and BRICS are heterogeneous assemblages including many significant differences among their members. Nor is there any guarantee that either bloc will retain its capitalist or socialist components or make transitions between them. Relations between the G7 and BRICS, like any possible transitions among various forms of capitalism and socialism, are now crucial social issues and struggles. Social movements inside both blocs will shape those issues and those struggles. To do that, especially if wars are to be avoided, social movements will need to set aside denials and pretenses and face realities.

Byline:
Richard D. Wolff

Author Bio:
Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York. Wolff’s weekly show, “Economic Update,” is syndicated by more than 100 radio stations and goes to 55 million TV receivers via Free Speech TV. His three recentbooks with Democracy at Work are The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself, Understanding Socialism, and Understanding Marxism, the latter of which is now available in a newly released 2021 hardcover edition with a new introduction by the author.

Source:
Independent Media Institute

Credit Line:
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Tess Woolfenden – Photo: Debt Justice

To break our global dependence on fossil fuels, we must take on neocolonial debt, researcher Tess Woolfenden says.

In the current age of climate emergency, many countries in debt are being forced by Global North elites and institutions to continue to rely on fossil fuels in order to repay loans taken from rich countries. This neocolonial debt trap creates a vicious cycle because — as a new analysis from the organization Debt Justice shows — revenues from fossil fuels are not enough to repay debts and instead leave countries even deeper in debt while at the same time worsening the prospects of achieving the goal of zero global emissions by 2050.

This debt trap is one of many ways in which colonialism continues to shape the current era. While dozens of countries gained independence through successful decolonization struggles after World War II, colonialism persists through the use of economic and political pressures to control “dependencies” as a means of reinforcing global capitalism.

In the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows, Tess Woolfenden, senior policy and research officer at Debt Justice and the author of the aforementioned report, discusses the dynamics between debt and fossil fuels, highlights the consequences of fossil fuel colonialism and offers concrete policy solutions for breaking the cycle.

C. J. Polychroniou: Tess, it’s a well established scientific fact that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) cause global warming. The burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — accounts for over 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, making them the largest contributor to global climate change. Yet, fossil fuels still account for more than 80 percent of global energy production and the energy transition proceeds very slowly. In fact, it is projected that by 2023, “fossil fuels will still account for 78 percent of the global energy mix.” Why is it so hard to phase out fossil fuels?

Tess Woolfenden: Very simply, the people with the power to phase out fossil fuels — governments, corporations and institutions — do not want to. The fossil lobby is powerful, and with huge profits to be made ($52 trillion since 1970 reportedly), it is in their interests for the world to keep burning fossil fuels despite the devastating consequences.

For years, climate justice activists have fought to get the powerful global north governments, institutions, corporations and billionaires overwhelmingly responsible for creating the climate crisis to transition to clean, renewable energy. But despite making various commitments over the years, phasing out fossil fuels is still not happening. For example, at COP26 governments committed to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, yet just last week research by the International Institute for Sustainable Development showed that the world’s richest governments put a record $1.4 trillion into subsidising oil, coal and gas in 2022. Rich governments clearly do not see these commitments as binding.

In the case of many Global South countries, we also must consider their long-standing dependency on fossil fuels. For decades, Global South governments have been reliant on their natural resources, including fossil fuels, to keep their economies going and to repay high debt burdens. This dates back to colonialism where, under European rule, countries’ economies were transformed to focus on the export of raw materials such as oil and coal, to feed industrial growth taking place in Europe. The ongoing extraction of resources and inequalities in the global trade, tax and financial systems have meant that Global Aouth countries have not been able to diversify their economies, and remain reliant on commodity exporting even today — many refer to this as the “commodity dependency trap.” What’s more, Global North governments and Global North-dominated institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have extended this trap by encouraging and enforcing Global South reliance on commodity exporting, through, for example, conditions attached to loans. This has kept countries poor and reliant on loans; it has also guaranteed cheap access to Global South countries’ natural resources. So, for many Global South countries, phasing out fossil fuels also requires us to dismantle deep long-standing inequalities etched into our global systems.

Debt Justice, a U.K.-based organization, has just released a report, titled “The Debt-Fossil Fuel Trap,” which you actually wrote, on the links between debt and fossil fuel production in Global South countries. But before we get into those links, what do you make of the argument that Global South countries should be allowed to continue relying on the burning of fossil fuels for development purposes while the Global North countries reduce their carbon footprint?

I understand this argument. It comes from a place of recognizing that the Global North has used up more than its fair share of atmospheric space and has been able to develop and profit in the process, while Global South countries bear the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Why should countries in the Global South now not be able to do the same?

But as many groups in the Global South highlight, to do so would lead us further down the path of climate catastrophe. It would also maintain Global South countries’ reliance on fossil fuels, extending commodity dependency and the economic injustices and challenges this presents.

Instead, in the global debt movement we call on rich, polluting governments, institutions and corporations to pay their “climate debt” — the debt they owe for the destruction of the climate crisis they caused — and to provide reparations. These are broad, expansive demands that would allow Global South countries to put an end to their reliance on fossil fuels and have the resources they need to transition to clean, renewable energy.

The analysis behind “The Debt-Fossil Fuel Trap” suggests that the developed countries and major global institutions like the IMF and the World Bank have trapped many Global South countries into dependence on fossil fuels as a way of repaying their debt. First, can you talk a bit about the external public debt dynamics that the world’s poorest countries have to deal with and how the climate crisis and further dependence on fossil fuel projects is driving them even further into debt distress?

An important starting point is to understand that debt in Global South countries is not an accident or necessity — Global South indebtedness has been engineered by Global North elites to pilfer wealth and maintain their position of power in a postcolonial setting.

Many Global South governments started their journey of independence in an economically weak position after centuries of colonial rule and had no choice but to borrow. Former colonial powers were happy to lend — not because they were generous or invested in the development of Global South countries, but because it benefited them, politically and economically. Global South governments have spent trillions on interest payments to wealthy Global North lenders since 1970, while at the same time, governments and institutions like the IMF and World Bank have used their power as lenders to control and shape global south government policies, including forcing decades of austerity onto Global South countries and communities with devastating consequences. Many lenders, but especially the private sector, have seen Global South countries’ need to borrow as a huge opportunity for profit, charging extortionate interest rates on their loans supposedly to cover the risk of lending. The result is recurring debt crises.

Thanks to these dynamics, and the economic impacts of the 2008 financial crisis, COVID-19 and the Ukraine war (none of which the Global South bears responsibility for), Global South countries are once again in debt crisis. Fifty-four countries are in crisis, while many others are struggling with high debt burdens. This means the resources that countries could be spending on addressing the needs of people, from health and education to addressing the climate crisis, are instead being spent on debt repayments to wealthy creditors. Our analysis shows that lower income countries are spending five times more on debt repayments than addressing the climate crisis.

But it’s not just that debt is hampering climate action. The climate crisis is also making debt much worse, due to the refusal of Global North elites to adequately and justly respond to the climate crisis they created.

On the one hand, Global South countries are being forced to pay for the costs of the climate crisis themselves, pushing many into more debt as rich governments, institutions and corporations refuse to provide adequate, non-debt creating climate finance to Global South countries. In Pakistan for example, after devastating floods in 2010, the country had to borrow $20-40 billion more than would have otherwise been the case. On the other hand, we have the reality that Global South governments are trapped in fossil fuel exploitation which also exacerbates debt, despite Global North governments’ and institutions’ claims to the contrary. As I mentioned before, Global North governments and institutions like the IMF and the World Bank have long pushed commodity dependency in the Global South, including extracting and exporting fossil fuels, seeing this as a way for Global South countries to develop, grow and repay debt. Not only has this caused devastating human and environmental harm to Global South communities and land. But also, the financial benefits of such endeavours often do not materialise and can push Global South countries further into debt.

In Argentina for example, the government and IMF are pushing the development of fracking in the Vaca Muerta oil and gas field, in part to generate revenue to repay debt. Activists have been highlighting that, because of the huge investments needed for this project, it will likely exacerbate debt levels rather than reduce them. In Mozambique, government guarantees on liquified natural gas (LNG) projects could exacerbate the government’s already unsustainable debt burden, while the expected profits from LNG projects — which are yet to materialise — reportedly enabled the government to take out huge loans from the private sector which pushed the country into a debt crisis. In Ghana — a country already in debt crisis – contracts which force the government to buy gas and other fossil fuel supplies at a set price and volume which far exceeds the country’s needs have reportedly added $1.2 billion to the country’s debt burden.

The reality is that high debt burdens are severely hampering Global South countries’ ability to address the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the failure of Global North elites to adequately respond to the climate crisis is exacerbating the debt crisis — a crisis which is already in full swing and causing significant harm to Global South countries and communities. We have to break this cycle if we want to avoid total climate catastrophe.

With debt as a prime example, we can see that colonial legacies continue to shape the contemporary global political economy. And the same goes with fossil colonialism, which refers to the exploitation of fossil fuels in the Global South by companies and governments from the Global North. In fact, even the German and European Union green hydrogen projects in Africa follow colonial patters, according to critics. So, what solutions are there for the Global South countries, and can there be climate justice without debt justice?

As a starting point, we urgently need debt cancellation. But this is not happening currently, largely because of a lack of political will. There is a G20-led process in place to support countries seeking debt relief from their external bilateral and private creditors, but it has failed. Only four countries have applied, and only one finalised a deal with both its bilateral and private creditors — Chad. But this deal didn’t actually provide any debt relief and instead locked the country further into fossil fuel exploitation by including oil revenues as part of the country’s debt repayment deal to commodities trading company Glencore (a challenge Suriname is also facing with its private creditors).

Part of the reason this process is failing is because powerful creditors in the private sector — like BlackRock — have not been forced to participate in the process. While being one of the biggest investors in fossil fuels in the world, BlackRock is also one of Global South countries’ largest bondholders and could make huge profits from the debt it holds. For example, BlackRock could make profits of 110 percent if repaid in full by Zambia. We need to force these creditors to the table, and the best way to do this is legislation. Nearly all Global South external debt owed to the private sector is governed under English or New York law, so the U.K. and U.S. have a special responsibility to act and introduce new laws that would force private creditors to participate in debt relief.

But debt cancellation is only part of the story. As we have seen in the past with the mass debt cancellation that took place in the early 2000s, debt cancellation without wider reform that addresses the injustices and inequalities embedded in debt and financial systems will just see debt levels build up time and time again.

That’s why many of us in the debt movement are also demanding reparations — a broad set of demands that seek repair for the harms of injustice already experienced and realized over centuries, and that ensure those harms cannot happen again. From a debt perspective, this includes many elements, from regulating creditors and their predatory behaviour to ending Global South countries’ commodity dependency and reliance on borrowing to meet people’s needs. It also means recognizing that debt is one tool of injustice and exploitation among many and must be recognized as deeply connected to other struggles, including, of course, the climate crisis.

Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

C.J. Polychroniou

C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published scores of books and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).