| THIS WEEK |
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just released a report warning that the impacts of climate change have now become “widespread and pervasive.” Only immediate steps to transition to a net-zero economy, the panel stresses, can avoid irreversible damage to the planet.
A feeling of despair can come easy when we read news like this. But we need to resist that despair, and here at Inequality.org we’re going to continue to do our best to hold the rich and the corporations they run accountable for the environmental damage they’re visiting upon our Earth. We’re also going to continue uplifting those bold solutions to climate change that will create a more equitable, sustainable world for everyone.
“Addressing climate change effectively and justly,” as Inequality.org contributor Basav Sen, the Climate Policy Project director at the Institute for Policy Studies, puts it, “requires us to transform the unjust social and economic systems that gave us climate change in the first place.”
More on how we can transform these unjust systems in this week’s issue.
Chuck Collins and Rebekah Entralgo,
for the Institute for Policy Studies Inequality.org team
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| INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS |
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| FACES ON THE FRONTLINES |
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| How the Wage Gap So Deeply Impacts Evictions |
| For three nights earlier this month, Congresswoman Cori Bush slept on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to pressure her colleagues and the White House to extend the federal eviction moratorium. Ultimately, her organizing proved effective, and the Biden administration extended the moratorium on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. Black women currently earn just 63 cents for every dollar earned by their white male counterparts, resulting in $24,000 lost to the wage gap every year. The extension Cori Bush won will no doubt provide relief to many struggling tenants. But Black women, in a wage-gap America, will continue to be particularly vulnerable to evictions. Inequality.org managing editor Rebekah Entralgo has more. |
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| WORDS OF WISDOM |
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PETULANT PLUTOCRAT
OF THE WEEK |
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| This Billionaire ‘Angel’ Came Prepared to Profiteer |
| Kelcy Warren, the Texas natural gas mogul, used to fancy himself a songwriter. Goes one of his old lyrics: “Do you ever talk with angels? Put in a good word for me.” Warren these days has become an “angel,” at least politically speaking. He’s pumped $250,000 a year into the campaign coffers of Texas governor Greg Abbott since 2014. Earlier this summer Warren upped that annual handout to $1 million. And why not? Abbott has delivered. This past January, winter storm Uri cost Texans almost $300 million in damages and left hundreds dead. Warren’s natural gas company brazenly exploited that crisis — “by selling fuel,” the Texas Observer notes, “at unprecedented prices” — and cleared a $2.4-billion profit. Abbott then signed into law an energy “reform” that gave that profiteering a total pass. Warren’s flacks, meanwhile, are busy justifying his windfall, claiming his firm had simply prepared better for the crisis. |
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| BOLD SOLUTIONS |
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| Budgeting for a Big, Bold Civilian Climate Corps |
| U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to deliver “the biggest, boldest Civilian Climate Corps possible.” But exactly what that means remains up for debate. Climate advocates inspired by FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, an effort that hired 3 million young men to combat unemployment and conserve natural resources during the Great Depression, want a new CCC that advances equity for all. Many Democrats in Congress agree that any new CCC must focus on diverse frontline communities and provide good union jobs. Their proposed price-tags for such a program range from $10 to $130 billion. Our Inequality.org Next Leader Bella DeVaan explores the proposals now on the table — and how a bigger investment could lead to a significantly better outcome. |
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| GREED AT A GLANCE |
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| TOO MUCH |
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| A China-U.S. Face-Off Worth Cheering, Not Fearing |
| Has the United States now entered a new Cold War, this time around with China? Rhetoric coming out of Washington, Andrew Bacevich of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft observed this past spring, “appears to take a Second Cold War as a given, something perhaps even to be welcomed.” The BBC’s Jonathan Marcus, meanwhile, is advising us not to consider current China-U.S. relations a mere “Cold War mark II.” The superpower face-off now emerging, he predicts, could become “something far more dangerous.” Can we avoid that danger? Sure, but only if our two global superpowers, instead of itching for a new Cold War, start itching for greater economic equality — on both sides of the Pacific. Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati has more. |
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| MUST READS |
This week on Inequality.org
John Cavanagh, IPS Mourns the Death of AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka. The former mineworker received the Institute’s Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in 1990 for his leadership in the successful Pittston coal strike.
Sarah Anderson, To Break the Corporate Tax Logjam, Tax Overinflated CEO Pay. A CEO pay surtax would have two appealing selling points for Manchin and other moderate Dems.
Elsewhere on the Web
Jane Mayer, The Big Money Behind the Big Lie, New Yorker. The modern conservative movement has survived and thrived by leveraging the fortunes of wealthy reactionaries.
Ana Diaz, In Golf Club: Wasteland, the super-rich putt on the desiccated remains of Earth, Polygon. An upcoming video game takes players on an odyssey through a future where humans have been wiped off the face of the Earth and the planet has become a golf course for the ultra rich.
Maureen Tkacik, How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Sacklers? American Prospect. How Purdue Pharma illustrates what has become an epidemic of judges granting legal immunity to the rich and powerful in bankruptcy court.
Antony Sguazzin, South Africa Wealth Gap Unchanged Since Apartheid, Says World Inequality Lab, Bloomberg. Attempts to wipe away the legacy of apartheid and colonialism have failed to narrow the imbalance between rich and poor, with 3,500 adults owning more than the poorest 32 million people.
Six tips for success not as effective as ‘have wealthy parents,’ Daily Mash. Best headline so far this year. Text not shabby either.
Hanna Ziady, Wall Street is buying up family homes. The rent checks are too juicy to ignore, CNN Business. Wealthy investors hoovering up existing properties that would otherwise have been sold to individuals are squeezing out first-time buyers already struggling to afford their first homes.
Jessa Crispin, Move over, space. Tech billionaires have a new utopian boondoggle: the ‘metaverse,’ Guardian. Imagine a massive, invisible world that surrounds you but which you cannot see or engage unless you own the correct — expensive — technology.
Alex Ledsom, Are You in the Global Middle Class? New Tools Calculate Your Standing, Forbes. The Covid-19 pandemic appears to have reversed the decade-long trend of people moving into the middle class around the world. |
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| A FINAL FIGURE |
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| BE THE 1% (NO, NOT THAT 1%) |
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Our goal for 2021: that 1% of our Inequality.org subscribers become monthly sustainers and help grow our newsletter and research efforts. Be the 1%, for as little as $3 a month! |
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