In her new 75-minute podcast entitled Humanity has not yet failed — recorded under the COVID-19 lock down — Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg explains that there is no solution to the climate crisis without system change.
“The climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today's political and economic systems. That is not an opinion, that's a fact,” she says, with typical bluntness.
For Canada, an easy place to start would be the cancellation of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion
Once in a generation. Once in a lifetime.
These phrases keep cropping up to describe the historic opportunity now before us. With governments preparing to spend massively to revive a global economy battered by the COVID-19 crisis, there is a chance to use the coming stimulus to not only emerge from this recession but also put people back to work building a world that avoids further climate breakdown.
Building a More Humane, Robust Way of Putting Food on the Table
Covid-19 outbreaks are now reaching far beyond the meatpacking industry. Migrant farmworkers in fruit orchards and vegetable fields, long the targets of intense exploitation, are seeing their health put in even greater jeopardy as they’re pushed to feed an increasingly voracious supply chain in pandemic-time.
Strengthening the care economy, expanding the public sector, and a Green New Deal are vital in the wake of COVID-19
A good reflex to have, if we’re critical of reopening the economy in the same way as it was before, is to use the term ‘reconstruction’ rather than ‘recovery,’” says Guillaume Hébert.
“That choice of terms is, itself, a political choice.”
A study published in Nature Climate Change recently found that, in early April, daily global carbon dioxide emissions decreased by 17 percent compared to the 2019 mean levels. Because of shelter-in-place rules and businesses being closed, people have been driving and flying less, leading to lower emissions.
[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]
This crisis has reinforced what we already know — our current economic system is leading us down a path of destruction
Economists are cautioning that the Canadian economy has entered one of the deepest recessions in our history. Our country is not alone in this. The impact of COVID-19 has put the global economy on track for a “new Great Depression.”
May 14,2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — The transport sector represents one of the most serious challenges when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, which are increasing faster than from any other sector in society – and at an ever-increasing pace (over 120 per cent globally over the last 30 years – and still increasing in all parts of the world).
