[Not only are existing pensions too few, too poor, and/or facing increased downward pressure with repeated stock market crashes, but some of our pension funds actually invest in high objectionable businesses. Another needed element of a "green recovery"....Gene McGuckin]
One might have hoped that the very severity of the threat posed by the pandemic would compel the elites who manage capitalist societies to behave more responsibly and decently. The return of the pre-neoliberal “nanny state” (however inadequate it was) seemed to some a real possibility. But while the capitalist state may be concerned with maintaining social equilibrium, preserving a basic level of public health and upholding its own legitimacy, it remains utterly devoted to ensuring the conditions in which businesses can function and profits can continue to flow.
The article below provides important information about shifting economic theories, but it totally ignores class power and the political, economic, ideological, and repressive tools the ruling class has available to preserve its rule and its privileges.
A coalition of 40 global businesses – including energy majors such as BP, Iberdrola, Orsted, and Shell – have called on governments to support “a massive wave of investments in renewable electricity” and other low-carbon energy solutions when devising recovery plans from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The rush to reopen the economy highlights a divide between those motivated by public health and those who would sacrifice minimum wage workers to protect profits
Last week John Ivison wrote a lazy screed for the National Post arguing that the CERB was too generous and would prompt minimum-wage workers to stay home rather than return to work in the middle of a pandemic.
I am getting sketched out. I am wearing a bandana on my face. I feel totally stupid that in frikken 2020, all I can find to protect my face is a piece of fabric. I am in the crowded elevator, breathing everyone else’s air. Mostly, people are making fun of me, or acting like I’m a paranoid weirdo. But one worker I don’t know well, a foreman from another trade, he looks at me with compassion in his eyes. I can see that he takes it seriously, as well.
[Editor: If not the last words on the film certainly worth reading.]
May 10, 2020
The backlash may be more revealing than the film itself, but both inform us where we are at in the fight against climate change and ecological collapse. The environmental establishment’s frenzied attacks against Planet of the Humans says a lot about their commitment to big-money and technological solutions.
Irving’s circuitous route is seen as a novel way to get around regulatory logjams in Canada that have stalled a number of pipelines
CALGARY – After failing to secure Western Canadian oil via the scrapped West-to-East Energy East pipeline back in 2017, Irving Oil Ltd.’s finally been able to get federal approval for a new route to connect the oilsands to its refinery on the East Coast.
![Accelerating renewable energy investment in the recovery phase of the pandemic would deliver global GDP gains of $98 trillion above a business-as-usual scenario by 2050, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). [EPA-EFE/KHALED ELFIQI]](https://ecosocialistsvancouver.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/article-image/solar_desert-800x450.jpg?itok=A_pBII8n)
