December 13, 2023                                                          Home   Subscribe    Open in Browser

The UN Climate Change Convention — COP28 — has just come to a close and a deal in Dubai. Nearly 200 nations have pledged to “phase down” but not “phase out” their use of fossil fuels. This “transition” promise, leaders from Africa to the Alliance of Small Island States are pointing out, comes riddled with loopholes and weak commitments. 

As Basav Sen — our Institute for Policy Studies climate expert — explained to us this morning, the COP28 agreement also fails to ensure transition funding from wealthy nations for lower-income nations in the Global South. Countries like Nigeria and Ecuador depend on fossil fuel exports for survival and debt repayments, he notes, but hold no responsibility for the lion’s share of planet-warming emissions. COP28 didn’t even have debt cancellation on the table.

Even the UN’s top exec on climate change, Simon Stiell, has conceded that COP28 “didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era,” instead calling it “the beginning of the end” only so long as nations take it upon themselves to metabolize their pledges into “real-economy outcomes.”

This outcome comes as no surprise. Who, exactly, was presiding over the contentious convention? The chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

But legions of courageous activists saw this coming: They flooded COP28 with protests and clarion calls for a rapid, holistic fossil fuel phaseout and a just transition to a clean energy future. 

Climate change, we all know, is going to reap its most devastating impact on those with the least resources. Officials in the Marshall Islands had to present at COP28 a plan that prepares for a total evacuation of their population.

We turn to the insights of Jacob Johns, an Indigenous climate activist shot earlier this fall at a rally in New Mexico. He miraculously recovered in time to deliver an existentially critical message to Dubai.

“I want to see the hearts and minds of our world leaders shift into a more logical frame,” said Johns. “We as Indigenous people understand that as the old world dies, that a new one is created and that we must focus on that creation process.”

Chuck Collins and Bella DeVaan
for the Institute for Policy Studies' Inequality.org team

Fighting for Housing That Strengthens Communities

“I’ve learned through generational poverty that the lack of affordable housing is one of the biggest obstacles to thriving,” writes Kazmyn Ramos, an Indianapolis-based anti-poverty advocate. 

Ramos learned even more when she worked for an organization that conducts home visits with low-income mothers to assess their needs. She “saw conditions that you wouldn’t believe existed in the richest country in the world,” with immigrant mothers facing rampant evictions.

Now a poverty expert with the advocacy group RESULTS, Ramos is drawing from her own lived experience to fight for real solutions to our country’s affordable housing crisis. Read on for more of her views on how housing policies can build communities instead of maximizing profits for the wealthy.

Confronting Corny Agribusiness Oligopolies in Mexico

This coming January 1 marks the 30th anniversary of the trade pact originally known as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. That agreement has since evolved into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the USMCA. 

For Mexico, NAFTA meant the loss of food sovereignty amid massive new imports of basic grains, a dynamic that increased inequality within Mexico and huge migrations out of it. Those same dynamics have created a vacuum that organized crime has at a deadly cost filled. Meanwhile, for a handful of transnational agribusiness corporations, NAFTA has delivered huge profits.

Food shortages continue to worsen, La Jornada reports, while imports of basic grains into Mexico now account for more than half of the nation’s grain consumption. In the face of these increases, U.S. and Canadian civil society groups are supporting the successful efforts of the “Sin Maíz No Hay País” (“Without Corn There’s No Country”) campaign.

This effort is protecting Mexico’s cultural heritage and biodiversity by preventing the planting of genetically modified corn and the use of the herbicide glyphosate. 

Trinational solidarity can help Mexico stand up to the pressure of the agribusiness oligopolies and stop what could be the final blow to Mexican food culture. Read more from Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow Manuel Pérez-Rocha, translated by our Liam Crisan, at the link below.

Another Professional Sports Shakedown: Your Money or Your Team!

Oklahoma City, a local minister pointed out last month, has needs far more pressing than building a $900-million arena for the city’s most comfortable. One such need: The city’s shortage of affordable housing now has some 42 percent of renter households paying over 30 percent of their gross income on rent. Given that housing squeeze, the minister went on, asking voters to greenlight “a plan to build a new house for multi-millionaires, but not one to house average Oklahomans,” shows that something has gone clearly “amiss” in Oklahoma City. Inequality.org’s Sam Pizzigati has more.

On a Lucrative Rush to Leave Truck Stops in the Rear-View Mirror

This week’s dour deep pocket: The 69-year-old Jimmy Haslam, the current majordomo of a family fortune — now worth $17.8 billion — originally built by his dad Jim.

What has him sour: Back in 2017 the Haslams cut a deal to sell their Pilot Travel Centers, the nation’s largest truck stop chain, to billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire investment empire. By earlier this year, Berkshire had gobbled up 80 percent of Pilot. But Haslam is now charging that Berkshire is using an accounting maneuver to unfairly devalue the worth of the remaining 20 percent, a move that could cost the Haslams some $1.28 billion.

Berkshire, in response, is claiming that Jimmy Haslam this past March promised big bucks to over two-dozen of the truck stop chain’s execs if they made moves to boost the company’s short-term profits — and the sale value of the remaining Haslam 20 percent stake. A Haslam family attorney has labeled this bribery charge against Haslam a “wild invention.”

The last word: Jimmy Haslam seems to clearly prefer the luxury suites of sports stadiums and arenas to the pleasures of truck stops. He’s been on a pro sports franchise-buying spree since he swooped up the NFL Cleveland Browns in 2012 for $1.05 billion. 

Power In The Air - 2023 Arts & Culture Retreat, New York Poor People's Campaign. A behind-the-scenes look at how talented economic justice activists came together to compose new movement music. 

Jen Taub, Chuck Collins on Altar to an Erupting Sun, Booked Up. Discussing how inequality, climate disruption, philanthropy, the racial wealth divide, affordable housing, and billionaire wealth dynasties find form in Chuck's writing.

Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah, A.D.A. Now!, Throughline. First-person stories on the making of the movement for the most important civil rights law since the 1960s — and what the disability community is still fighting for more than 30 years later. 

Over the past four decades, those at the tippy top of the U.S. economic ladder have enjoyed by far the fastest income growth. Between 1979 and 2020, the average income of the nation’s richest 0.01 percent, a group that today represents about 12,000 households, grew 17 times as fast as the income of the bottom 20 percent of earners. For an interactive version of this chart and other income inequality charts, check out the link below.

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