Sunday 31 March 2019

Why Recycling is a ‘Pseudo-Solution’ to Reducing Plastic Waste

by 





Decades of consumerism, fueled by the concept of short-term convenience, has left our planet drowning in plastic waste.  Much of it is used just once and then thrown away, polluting oceans and contaminating our bodies.  At the center of this problem lies the effectiveness of eliminating plastic while its production remains high and there are fewer places that process it.  As a result, a few corporations and communities are being forced to deal with waste in other ways rather than recycling — the main form of plastic disposal many people have relied on over the years.
“The public opinion about [recycling] is very naive,” says Rowland Geyer, a Professor of Industrial Ecology at University of California Santa Barbara, who specializes in green supply chain management. Geyer wants to make one thing clear: recycling by itself is a ‘pseudo solution’ to eliminating plastic waste. “[People] recycle because they believe in it, but it is not a real part of the solution,” he adds.
In fact, eliminating plastic becomes almost a surreal idea when considering the staggering amount of plastic discarded each year.  In its June 2018 edition ‘Planet or Plastic’, National Geographic’s Laura Parker’s bombshell article uncovered that 44% of all plastic that has ever been manufactured globally has been made since 2000.  Additionally, 448 million tons of plastic was produced in 2015 alone, with 40 percent of that — some 161 million tons — for single-use packaging that never gets recycled or incinerated.  In fact, until 2018, less than a fifth of all plastics was ever recycled, and only 12% was incinerated globally.  As a result, an estimated 8 million tons of plastic bottles A 2016 study by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has projected that if considerable reduction in production is not implemented, oceans could have more plastic than fish by 2050.
Besides the ugly aesthetic of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for example, plastic pollution has other dire consequences.  Scientists at the Medical University of Vienna found the presence of microplastics in human excrement just last Summer.  The tiny fragments of plastic originated from waste accumulated in the sea was ingested by sea animals, and then integrated into the food chain.
While the health effects of microplastics on the human body are still being investigated, the impact of plastics on climate change are now better understood by scientists.  In addition to plastic being a direct product of the greenhouse-gas emitting fossil-fuel industry, researchers at the University of Hawaii found that when plastics degrade, they produce two greenhouse gases, methane and ethylene. When exposed to solar radiation these contribute to global warming. “[The] results show that plastics represent a heretofore unrecognized source of climate-relevant trace gases that are expected to increase as more plastic is produced and accumulated in the environment,” wrote the study‘s authors.
Despite all the data,  the plastic industry is not slowing down production. In fact, the petrochemical-plastic sector is expected to expand in the next decades.  According to the World Economic Forumabout 8 percent of world oil production is used to make plastic today.  By 2050, it is forecast to rise to 20 percent worldwide.  Meanwhile in the United States, with President Donald Trump having withdrawn from the 2015 Paris Agreement and the Environmental Protection Agency actively deregulating pollution controls, the petrochemical industry announced more than $200 billion in new investment last September. This astounding figure will contribute to the expansion of factories, pipelines and other infrastructure along the Gulf Coast’s corridor in order to establish a new plastics and petrochemical belt across Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York.  These projects are designed to cut costs of plastic and chemicals produced in the U.S. by using raw materials from the region’s fracked gas.
A plastic submarket also slated for expansion is synthetic-based products.  According to Grand View Research — a chemicals, materials, and energy research firm —  the global market for PVC (polyvinyl chloride, used to make credit cards, pipes and synthetic leather, for example) and PET (polyethylene terephthalate, used to make plastic bottles, food jars and clothing) was valued at $3.52 billion in 2016.  By 2025, it is estimated to grow by 4.3%.  And, a higher global demand for synthetic fibers — polyester, nylon, acrylic, spandex —  used for clothing, home furnishing and automotive applications —  is expected to grow by 6.3% reaching $88.5 billion by 2025.  These market expansions in turn are likely to fuel even greater plastic pollution.
Recycling: a pseudo solution
In response to the myriad problems that plastic use has created over the years, we have repeatedly turned to and relied on recycling.  However, it is a not a solution because it is finite, it does not contribute to significantly reduce plastic waste, and recently, it has become more expensive. As a result, the recycling industry has been left with lower revenues and fewer options to rid of its recyclable materials.
Recycling has its limitations because plastic materials cannot be recycled forever.  Plastic consists of a long chain of polymers, and each time it is recycled the chain gets shorter, resulting in a lower quality plastic. Geyer explains that, “[in] each cycle you have some yield losses, [and] you have to deal with contamination, and reduction in quality of materials.” “Eventually you’ll have to dispose it again,” he adds.
This is the case of companies that  upcycle plastic into their production lines, for example.  The clothing industry has been proactively incorporating recycled synthetic fibers from plastic bottles into their puffer jackets, fleece pullovers, parkas and even swimwear over the years.  Everlane, for example, has used some 3 million bottles to make its first batch of clothing products in 2018, and Fair Harbor Clothing has repurposed recycled plastic bottles into its swimwear line.  The apparel, footwear, and home goods company Unifi has recycled more than 10 billion plastic bottles into fibers.  By 2020, it plans to use 20 billion more bottles, and by 2022, 30 billion.  At the end of their life cycle, these products will ultimately end up either in a landfill or an incineration center, both of which contribute to the warming of the planet.
Repurposing plastic into clothing or everyday items alone hasn’t been able to put a dent into the vast amounts of plastic waste created.  According to the Euromonitor International and Container Recycling Institute, “nearly a million plastic beverage bottles are sold every minute around the world.  In 2015, Americans purchased about 346 bottles per person – totaling 111 billion plastic beverage bottles in all.” And, Nestlé recently admitted that recycling its water bottles is not enough to deal with the enormous plastic waste pollution.  It announced plans to make all of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025, and will incorporate single-use paper and other alternatives in its product line.
Recycling programs have also become more expensive.  That’s because since January 2018, China started implementing a broader anti-pollution campaign banning various types of plastic and tightening the standards for materials it accepts. With that, the U.S.’s recycling industry has suffered with higher costs.  According to the National Waste and Recycling Association China’s new policies have forced recyclers to slow down the lines and add more sorters, which has increased processing costs. Also, other markets are not “economically viable” to absorb the costs of recycling, so the materials are either stockpiling in recycling plants or have ended up at one of the 2,000 landfills across the U.S.
These regulations have also put more pressure in communities. Since 2018, hundreds of U.S. cities have discontinued or curtailed their curb-side recycling programs because the costs became higher than officials and residents were willing or able to pay.  New York, San Diego, Pittsburg, Seattle, Philadelphia and Deltona, in Florida are a few.  Deltona, for example, used to receive $39,000 in rebates for sale of its recyclables, but since China’s ‘green fence’ policy, the cost of recycling nearly doubled and the rebates disappeared.
As a result, the plastic recycling industry has experienced lower revenues “due to depressed commodity prices.”  Plastic waste used to be America’s sixth largest export to China.  In 2015, it was valued at more than $300 million, but in the first quarter of 2018, revenue dropped to $7.6 million. With China’s new restrictions, recyclers have to rid of some materials at much lower prices, forcing the industry to sell at a loss, and those changes have left the industry scrambling to find new markets to buy U.S.’s 1.42 million tons of scrap plastics.  The markets left to absorb part of this waste are Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.
In an attempt to mitigate global plastic pollution, a group of nearly 30 multi-national companies — all with ties to the plastics-industry chain — recently announced a $1.5 billion commitment over five years to promote recycling technologies, to train communities on waste prevention, and to invest in waste management infrastructure, specifically in Southeast Asia.  David Taylor, CEO of Procter & Gamble, and the chairman of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW), said in a press release that the campaign is a “comprehensive effort to date to end plastic waste in the environment.”
However, environmental groups believe the effort is mere ‘greenwashing.’ Greenpeace’s Global Plastics Project Leader Graham Forbes believes AEPW’s campaign is a desperate move by the industry to maintain the status quo and continue production of plastics. “Make no mistake about it: plastics are a lifeline for the dying fossil fuel industry, and [this] announcement goes to show how far companies will go to preserve it,” Forbes said in a statement. He continued, “[t]he same companies that rely on cheap plastics to profit off of countries in the Global South are now looking to build up some infrastructure so they can claim they tried to tackle the plastics problem, while ensuring their profits keep rolling in. The truth is we will never escape this plastic pollution crisis through better recycling and waste management efforts.”
Alternatives to Recycling: Reduce and Reuse
So how does one solve the problem of plastic pollution? It is unlikely that real change will come from within the plastic industry any time soon.  But given its complexity and scope, some businesses, organizations, communities and even consumers are making more responsible decisions, and putting pressure on the industry to find alternatives to plastic — small steps towards mitigating this ever-growing problem.
Although recycling has taken a more prominent role than it deserves to reduce plastic waste, Geyer says “there’s not enough talk about reducing and reusing, which are more powerful solutions than recycling.” One simple concept, he points out, is the waste hierarchy, which is represented diagrammatically by a pyramid where reductionand reuse are higher than >recycling.
“I’m very much focusing on the source reduction and the reuse pieces,” Geyer says. “Source reduction typically means just using less.”  As examples of source reduction for consumers, he lists: buying unpackaged or less-packaged goods, rather than packed ones; buying reusable items and using them a lot; and simply buying longer-lasting and durable products.  At the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UCSB where Geyer teaches, for example, every student, staff and faculty member gets a metal cup. “If you want a drink at our parties, you better bring your reusable cup, so everyone does,” he quips.
From a business perspective, however, what about making corporations responsible for the disposal of their products? — what’s known as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).  Geyer says this concept is still challenging. “When you say, let’s recycle, you’re talking about creating a whole new industry,” he explains. “As soon as you say ‘less [production of something]’, you’re talking from an economic point of view, you make everyone unhappy, unless, you say, let’s figure out a business model [that] is most effective environmentally.”  In other words, if we truly want to tackle plastic pollution, you cannot link it to a growth-based economic model, he explains.
But, not all companies are running away from EPR.  One example is Patagonia, which has established the Worn Wear program a few years ago. The company is not only helping reduce the use of virgin materials but is also giving its customers the opportunity to repair, reuse, and recycle their gear. “I think the leadership in Patagonia knows at this point that selling more fleeces, recycled polyester, is not really the end goal,” Geyer says. “Ideally, you’d at some point make sure the product lasts as long as it can. [And] mending and repairing things can do that, [so] we’re back to doing things the way our grandparents did.”
In other countries, businesses are also embracing the reduce and reuse concept.  IDenmark and the UK, parents are leasing baby and children’s clothing, instead of buying them, in order to reduce their footprint. “The idea is, we know that we buy nice baby clothes, and at 9 months the baby has outgrown it,” he points out. “So, [leasing] it sort of has a limited life folded into it.”
Other industries are creating biopolymers, green chemistry and fiber engineering, as well as, chemical recycling of end-of-life plastic into virgin materials.  Biome Bioplastics in the UK, for example, has developed from natural materials a “fully compostable and recyclable cup using potato starch, corn starch and cellulose.”  These, plus the adoption of novel materials, reusable and multi-use alternatives, are all positive steps towards the goal of zero plastic waste.
While these alternatives to recycling plastic waste have been getting more traction, a group of about 1,400 organizations from around the world launched the Break Free From Plastic campaign recently, which focuses on stopping plastic pollution by reducing single-use plastic and focusing on zero waste.
“[In] the end, it all comes down to implementing something that should truly reduce impact. And, it kind of bring us all back to reduction,” Geyer concludes.
Many communities in the U.S. are adopting such reduction campaign.  A growing number of cities and states started banning  single-use plastics, for example.  Some that have discontinued their recycling programs are using the money saved from the program to educate its residents about recyclable materials and reduction of plastic consumption. This is the case of Deltona in Florida.
In the end, what is needed is a comprehensive plan by governments, industry, businesses and scientists to reduce plastic production while curtailing all the plastic waste generated in the last 80 years. Without attacking this problem head-on, plastic waste will continue to exponentially grow, and contribute to global warming.  In the absence of such a proposal, consumers will have to start making better decisions about how much plastic they buy and dispose.
Anna Buss is a 2018-2019 fellow journalist with the New Economy Coalition’s Reporting Project, focusing on stories about climate change from a solutions perspective. She’s also the Assistant Producer of the daily news and political radio and TV show ‘Rising Up With Sonali,’ on the Pacifica Radio Network and Free Speech TV.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/why-recycling-is-a-pseudo-solution-to-reducing-plastic-waste/

Re: The Green New Deal: First, Shoot the Economists


 

Photograph Source Senate Democrats
Note: please do not shoot economists. The title is a metaphor.
Soon to be released research from the United Nations is expected to place species loss, a/k/a mass extinction, as an environmental threat equal to or greater than climate change. Industrial agriculture— vast expanses of monoculture crops managed with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, will feature prominently as a cause. This plant agriculture supplies people with increasingly toxic and processed food and antibiotic and hormone dependent factory farms with animal feed.  Together, these link the model of capitalist efficiency economists have been selling for the last two centuries to environmental crisis.
Understanding the theoretical precepts of Western economics is crucial to understanding these crises. Capitalism is scientific economic production, a method in search of applications. Its object is to maximize profits, not to growth nutritious food sustainably. As industrial agriculture has demonstrated, these objectives are antithetical. Crop yields have increased as the nutritional value of the food produced has declined. But far more troublingly, the narrow focus on profits has led to a form of environmental imperialism where interrelated ecosystems are viewed atomistically.
Mass extinction is largely attributable to the drive for economic control— the expansion of industrial agriculture to feed factory farm animals has been both geographic and intensive. The annihilation of insects through pesticide use on crops has led in turn to the annihilation of the species that feed on them. Interrelated ecosystems are systematically destroyed through a logic that does not ‘work’ otherwise. Leaving ecosystems intact upends it. When value is granted to what is destroyed, industrial agriculture ceases to earn a profit. In a broader sense, this means that it never earned a profit in the first place.
Unlike the narrow technocratic fixes being put forward to resolve global warming, mass extinction points to the systemic problems within capitalist logic. Within it, reconfiguring pieces of the world has a limited impact— so small in fact that the impact is considered ‘external’ to production processes. In an interrelated world, reconfiguring pieces— including annihilating or favoring them, impacts the broader relationships within the system. Were capitalist production not rapidly killing the planet, such esoterica could have remained within the purview of academia.
But it is killing the planet, suggesting that the organizing logic of capitalism is fundamentally flawed. Mass extinction and climate change are related through it to capitalist production. Theory here ties quite precisely to actual practice. Through the production of so-called goods, capitalist industries put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect began. Industrial agriculture used herbicides and pesticides to kill unwanted species and catastrophic species loss began. These problems are of both type and degree. This is why more capitalism won’t solve them.
Recognizing 1) that capitalist production is deeply integrated into how people get by in the world and 2) that abruptly ending these practices would put billions of lives and livelihoods at risk, young socialists in congress have proposed a transition program. A Green New Deal would assure that people’s basic needs are met as a planned transition to a sustainable economy is undertaken. With climate change and mass extinction already well underway, the alternative is an unplanned transition in which the lives of billions of people are put at risk.
Not content with having acted as apologists for rapidly accumulating environmental crises, economists are now coming out of the woodwork to give their advice on the limitations of any transition program. In the first, the claim is that ‘we’ can’t afford one. In the second, it is that even if we could afford such a program, it would cause inflation. Both assertions proceed from the premise that Western capitalism is a neutral basis from which to proceed. Phrased differently, were doing nothing to result in the loss of lives and livelihoods for a billion or more people, the fault would lie with nature.
Were environmental destruction truly ‘external’ to capitalist production, its solution would be simple: stop producing it. For instance, if greenhouse gas emissions are external to fossil fuel production and consumption, they could be foregone. However, were doing so economically viable while maintaining profitability, they never would have been produced in the first place. The social impact of this sleight-of-hand has been to allow capitalists to claim profits based on 1) costs necessary to capitalist production but 2) that would reduce or eliminate profits if they (capitalists) were forced to bear them.
(With apologies, a bit of economic arithmetic is needed to fill out this point:
Profits = Revenues minus Costs), or P = R – C. C = (Cd + Ce); where Cd is direct costs and Ce is externalized costs. This can be rewritten as: P + Ce = R – Cd. Then define Pt = Pd + Ce, where Pd is the direct profit and Pt is the total profit to producers. Here environmental destruction is a direct benefit to the capitalists who produce it through costs not borne by them).
The affordability argument is a canard: capitalists have already absconded with the “profits” that make a Green New Deal necessary. These profits are either equal to or greater than the cost of cleaning up the environmental mess they created, or the totality of profits is less than their cost in terms of environmental destruction. In the prior, the Green New Deal is affordable. Capitalists have already proven it is by putting its costs in their own pockets. In the latter, three centuries of capitalist production have been a net loser once environmental costs are considered.
The question then is not affordability— paying for a Green New Deal is a political problem, not an economic one. Proponents of MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) have argued 1) that government spending is independent of tax revenues, therefore 2) the Federal government could create the resources needed to fund the program. As far as it goes, the Federal government spends resources into existence quite regularly. Challenges from ‘economists’ are 1) whether this could be done on the scale of a GND and 2) whether doing so would be inflationary?
In more intuitive terms, George W. Bush launched his multi-trillion-dollar war against Iraq without any apparent concern for how to pay for it. Both Mr. Bush and Barack Obama committed trillions of dollars in public resources to bail out Wall Street and the auto industry in the 2008 economic meltdown without any publicly stated plan for how to pay for them. More broadly, the Pentagon is the bedrock of the American economy, doling out hundreds of billions of dollars each year to private military contractors, many with profit guarantees (‘cost-plus’), to fight wars with no known enemy, largely for nominally ‘private’ interests. The Pentagon is also the largest domestic consumer of fossil fuels.
MMT emerged from two branches of economics that are quite distinct from the more implausible fantasies that inform mainstream theories— chartalism and institutional economics. Mainstream studies ‘proving’ that sovereign governments can’t stray too far from balanced budgets assume institutional equivalence between the U.S. in the present and say, Croatia. The MMT people of whom I am aware seem bright. I doubt this is their contention. But even if it were, it has no bearing on what the Federal government of the U.S. can do in present circumstances.
However, the political problems are more vexing. One need not be a Marxist to accept that Western governments serve the interests of the rich. Political scientist Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues have spent their careers collecting and interpreting empirical evidence that supports this conclusion. Given this relationship of economic to political power, a logical leap can be made that those whose wealth derives from destroying the environment will use their political power head off a Green New Deal. And more particularly, to keep themselves from paying for it.
MMT is useful in that it provides options. Either 1) the rich can be made to pay for a Green New Deal, 2) the Federal government can fund it or 3) some combination thereof. In any of these cases, the problem with not politically sidelining the rich is that their wealth and political power comes from environmental destruction. Even if they wrangled out of paying for the transition and cleanup, the survival of the planet depends on shutting down the source of their wealth and power. The liberal theory that this could be achieved through electoral politics usually proceeds from radically understating the problem.
To the extent that maintenance of the status quo can be used to represent a generic ‘moderate’ position, any substantive challenge to the status quo would be extreme by the quantum of the challenge. So, how about doing nothing— no challenge. The planet cooks, mass extinction accelerates, and billions of lives are put at risk. How about implementing only politically feasible solutions given the current distribution of political power. Tweaks could be made as environmental crisis accelerates until survival dictates that more radical measures than would have been needed in the first place are implemented. Moderation in the face of crisis isn’t moderate.
But are climate change and mass extinction really crises worthy of radical and far-reaching action yet? The separate silos of climate and biology emerged from the modular premise of capitalism, the one where the world is an accumulation of smaller pieces, rather than an interrelated whole. However, the causal bases of both in capitalist production suggest they are interrelated, and that the environmental crises already underway are symptoms of a radically dysfunctional relationship with the world based on a fundamentally flawed conception of it.
The IPCC says we’ve got twelve years from six months ago to cut carbon emissions in half or climate chaos will ensue. Sixty percent of the mammals, birds, fish and reptiles on the planet have been wiped out in the last fifty years. Given 1) that these crises are already well underway and 2) the lead-time needed to keep them from becoming apocalyptic for even the human chairwarmers in Congress is a matter of a few years at most, the time for radical and far-reaching action is now. A transition will take place. The choices are whether it will be planned or unplanned. An unplanned transition would indicate complete political failure, with the social consequences that entails.
The problem with moderation is that it implies, against the evidence, that current circumstances will persist into the future. The analytical starting point to solving a crisis is to define the problem. The problems of climate change and mass extinction have been defined. The next step is to develop solutions. If what is politically feasible falls short of what is needed to solve the problems, then the problems as they are currently defined aren’t solvable. Partial solutions leave the problems to be redefined in possibly far more dire circumstances in the future. Regardless of whether action is taken, current circumstances will not persist.
More fundamentally, capitalism is revolutionary, not evolutionary. It doesn’t simply produce new iterations of old technologies. Monoculture planting using chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides is an integrated technology that replaced smaller scale, but more environmentally integrated and sustainable methods. The same is true of building technologies once mechanical heating and cooling systems and electric lights were made ubiquitous. Existing technologies were replaced, not ‘improved.’ This is part of what makes transition away from capitalist technologies so challenging— no fallback plan was left once the old technologies were discarded.
The risk of inflation from a Green New Deal, raised by MMTers and a few lefties, deserves some attention. The basic idea is that there is an existing relationship between demand for goods and the quantity of goods produced at relatively stable prices. A Green New Deal would require resources that will initially add to this demand, thereby raising the general price level. A rising price level acts as a regressive tax, burdening those with the fewest resources the most. Having the government fund the GND entirely would be the most inflationary, funding it partially would be less so, and taking the entire funding from the rich would be the least inflationary.
Without going too far into the weeds, this construction 1) narrowly defines inflation in terms that benefit the rich, 2) gives credence to the conspicuously failed capitalist conception of market pricing and 3) assumes that the form and function of political economy that would emerge from a GND would resemble its starting point. In the first, asset price inflation, a/k/a the wealth of the rich, goes very far in explaining why the rich are rich and the rest of us aren’t. This isn’t simply a matter of rising stock prices. Relative to corporate earnings and a host of other measures, stock prices are about as inflated as they have ever been. Why isn’t this inflation considered problematic?
Next, the relation of environmental crises to capitalist production implies that market prices are already wildly unrelated to the real costs of capitalist production. One way of measuring this distance is to add back the cost of a Green New Deal needed to clean up the mess. With a robust GND and luck, life on the planet continues. Without them, sayonara cruel world. In a narrow sense the MMTers and a few lefties have a point. If existing market relations remain intact and a GND increases demand for goods, goods price inflation will likely result. But market prices that reflect the true costs of production would mean the end of capitalism. Inflation is a relatively small part of the larger problem.
Given the relationship of capitalist economic theories to potentially world-ending environmental crisis, capitalist economists have little to offer related to a Green New Deal. In defense of their realm, their practice has been to serially understate environmental problems and then offer the same canned ideology they were indoctrinated with decades ago as cautionary tales. The question for a GND should be: what is needed to transition from the environmentally apocalyptic path we are on to long-term sustainability while insuring that everyone— every last person, has their material and social needs met?
Again, please do not shoot economists. Love them for their humanity. The title is a metaphor.
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/re-the-green-new-deal-first-shoot-the-economists/

In Iraq, as US Influence Ebbs, Iran’s Flows

Author: Ulson Gunnar


TRM653422


In the dead of Christmas night last year, to evade possibly being shot down, US President Donald Trump made a surprise, whirlwind visit to US troops in Iraq.

He visited Al Asad Air Base about 100 miles west of Baghdad in Al Anbar province, or about halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border where US forces are also operating. Between Al Asad and Baghdad are the notorious cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, hotbeds of resistance after the 2003 US invasion, and since then, hotbeds of extremism fueling the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq.

The base is home to about 5,000 US service members.

As in Syria, America’s presence in Iraq seems to be clinging to areas where extremism and separatism are greatest. In many instances, it is the US openly and deliberately encouraging both, especially in Kurdish territory stretching over both nations, but also in areas dominated by Sunni Muslims where extremist fronts like Al Qaeda and IS believe they can find support.

The fact that President Trump visited American forces in the dead of night, meeting no one from the actual Iraqi military or government, helps illustrate the increasingly isolated position the US holds in Iraq.

While the US claims it is fighting extremists from Syria to Iraq and beyond, with Syrian, Russian, Iranian and Iraqi forces clearing these extremists out of virtually all corners of Syria and Iraq except where US forces occupy, it seems the US isn’t fighting extremism, it is cultivating it.


Enter Iran
Several months later, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made his first official visit to Iraq. His trip brought him to the center of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. There he met with top representatives of the Iraqi government including Iraqi President Barham Salih. He also travelled through the city to visit Al-Kadhimiya Mosque, a particularly important pilgrimage site for Shia’a Muslims.

President Rouhani had previously commented on Trump’s swooping in at night and his failure to meet with any actual Iraqis in an open and official capacity. The Washington Post would quote President Rouhani as also stating:
“You have to walk in the streets of Baghdad … to find out how people will welcome you.” 
In addition to meeting Iraqi representatives and leaders, and travelling through Baghdad, President Rouhani also signed agreements involving “oil and gas, land transport, railways, agriculture, industry, health and regarding the central bank,” the Washington Post would report.

French news portal France24 would note in their article, “Iraq attempts balancing act as Iran’s Rouhani arrives for first official visit,” that:
Last year, Iran’s exports to Iraq amounted to nearly $9 billion. Tehran hopes to increase the roughly $13 billion volume in trade between the two neighbouring countries to $20 billion. Also, some 5 million religious tourists bring in nearly $5 billion a year as Iraqis and Iranians visit Shiite holy sites in the two countries.
The article would note the growing ties between the two nations and the growing influence Iran has over Iraq in contrast to America’s ebbing presence there.


Iraq-Iran Ties are Built on Mutual Interests – US Ties are Built on Fabricated Threats 
The Trump-Rouhani visits and the stark contrast between the two illustrates another very important point.

President Trump would openly admit the US was in Iraq to “to watch Iran,” the New York Times would report.

The New York Times would also report:
Mr. Trump’s comments come as the United States has quietly been negotiating with Iraq for weeks to allow perhaps hundreds of American commandos and support troops now operating in Syria to shift to bases in Iraq and strike the Islamic State from there. Military leaders are seeking to maintain pressure on the militant group as the president fundamentally reorders policy toward Syria and toward Afghanistan, where peace talks with the Taliban are underway.
Yet there are serious problems with this claim. President Rouhani’s visit highlights Iran as a key ally for Iraq.

In terms of security, Iranian-backed militias helped rid Iraq as well as neighboring Syria of Al Qaeda, its affiliates and IS.

And as just pointed out, Iran is also a key economic partner for Iraq.
The US on the other hand has little to offer in terms of security or economics. Its presence in Iraq to allegedly fight extremists it and its regional allies themselves helped fund and arm in the first place, only adds to Iraq’s many security challenges.

In terms of economics, while the US provides Iraq a large export market, it is a market still dwarfed by China and India. It is also smaller than the combined export market of Iraq’s major European trade partners. The geographical proximity of Iraq and Iran to one another means deeper and more practical economic ties can be developed than anything on offer by the US, if economic partnership was actually one of Washington’s goals.

By President Trump’s own admission, the US is in Iraq not to assist it in any way, but to use it for Washington’s own self-serving agenda regarding neighboring Iran. Since the United States and its Persian Gulf allies have nothing of significant value to offer Iraq in terms of real security or economics, it is instead playing a diplomatic balancing act where it associates with and radicalizes Sunni communities, then poses as combating the terrorism that predictably results.

It is a balancing act that is hardly sustainable, especially opposite the significant security and economic benefits Iran can counter-offer Baghdad.

It is not hard to see why Iran’s influence in the Middle East continues to flow, despite being targeted by the US through an array of subversive measures, while US influence in the region ebbs despite having a clear advantage in terms of resources and military might.

It is also not hard to see the significance of remaining US bases in Iraq being in Kurdish areas or regions where extremism still persists. The US presence in Al Anbar, as pointed out as far back as 2017, along with supposed reconstruction aid offered by Washington’s Persian Gulf allies, all seems to point toward a strategy of growing an extremist threat to serve as a counterweight or spoiler against Iran’s constructive contributions to Iraq’s security situation and economic growth.

It is a strategy that will only further exhaust US credibility and resources, as well as those of its regional partners, all while forcing it opponents to expand further and dig in deeper, as Iran has been doing.

Despite claims that the biggest threats to US interests and national security are extremists in the Middle East, or even revisionist states like Russia and China, in truth, the United States’ biggest enemy is its own unsustainable foreign policy and the exhausting aggression that underpins it. Its ebbing influence in Iraq despite the trillions in dollars and many years invested there, serves as “exhibit A.”


Gunnar UIson, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

https://journal-neo.org/2019/03/31/in-iraq-as-us-influence-ebbs-irans-flows/
https://journal-neo.org/2019/03/31/in-iraq-as-us-influence-ebbs-irans-flows/


The Coldest Spot on Earth, Melting


 

Joe Mastroianni, National Science Foundation • Public domain
Global warming is a fact of life that haunts society with consequences that hit hard, exponentially, but where nobody lives. It is happening hyper fast, and it’s downright scary as major ecosystems of the planet turn upside down in nasty fashion.
But none of the ecosystems has the punch of East Antarctica. Its clout is humongous with a couple hundred feet of fresh water contained in ice. When it rumbles, scientists pay attention.
In that regard, as a potential savior in the face of irrefutable global warming dangers, America is fortunate to have a powerful fighting spirit in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). She has strong instincts about the dangers of global warming. She is beating the drums for a Green New Deal, which cannot come soon enough and, in fact, may not come soon enough to save most life on the planet. Meanwhile, Republicans belittle her as foolhardy, not in the spirit of America’s capitalistic enterprise. A socialist?
But, brushing aside off-putting Republican obstructionism, the planet is endorsing AOC, as it sends clear signals of impending disaster straight out of East Antarctica. After all, no signal can be as strong as the melting of the coldest spot on the planet, which is comparable to knocking someone in the head with a ball-peen hammer as a wake up call.
(As an aside: Nicola Jones has an excellent article about East Antarctica entitled: Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest Region Is Starting to Melt, YaleEnvironment360, March 28, 2019, which, in part, inspired this article.)
East Antarctica is the final frontier of global warming, but alas, overwhelmed by too much heat from ocean waters heating up way too soon. The evidence is compelling. AOC has got it right! Global warming is in full throttle, haunting 10,000 years of the Holocene Era’s Goldilocks “not too hot, not too cold” pitch perfect planet coming to an end much sooner than scientists ever realized. It’s happening that fast, and AOC knows it.
The scientific community has always maintained that East Antarctica was not a major concern. With ice up to three miles thick and temperatures on average running around -65° F, seemingly it was immune to the ravages of global warming. But, shocking new discoveries are turning heads in the scientific community.
For example, Eric Rignot (professor, University of California/Irvine and principal scientist for the Radar Science & Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory) gave a recent lecture “Sea Level Rise and What To Do About It” at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C. on March 27th. Dr. Rignot has been responsible for groundbreaking research on the melting of glacial ice due to global warming.
Rignot opened his lecture by saying that polar ice caps are changing fast as a result of global warming, which is intriguing from a scientific viewpoint, But, for society at large, the bearer of bad news, stating: “I don’t think you need to run for the hills, but I would walk.” Which is a bold statement with grave undertones.
Rignot’s lecture was laced with risks of rapid acceleration of glacial flow into the seas. It’s the flow of glaciers that carries the biggest risks, for example, if glacier flow overall happens to accelerate six times, it would produce 12-13 feet of sea level rise per century. Fortunately, that’s mostly in the abstract as of today, but some exceptions are now showing major cause for alarm.
East Antarctica is sending discomforting signals, and year-over-year scientists’ opinions have been sideswiped by acceleration of climate change. It happens where nobody lives, until it hits home. Then, everybody will see what scientists see at the fringes of continents and on vast uninhabited plains of tundra. Global warming’s impact is happening faster than scientists’ models can compute. Hidden danger exists all the way from the North Pole to the South Pole. It’s happening remarkably fast.
Nothing on the planet is so deeply troubling as East Antarctica melting… period! In fact, one of the fastest moving glaciers, the Totten Glacier alone contains ice equivalent to 12 feet sea level rise.
Here’s the grisly truth about the consequences of global warming: The following statistics come from an article in The National Academy of Sciences: Eric Rignot, et al, Four Decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance from 1979-2017, January 22, 2019:
“The total mass loss from Antarctica increased from 40 ± 9 Gt/y in the 11-y time period 1979–1990 to 50 ± 14 Gt/y in 1989–2000, 166 ± 18 Gt/y in 1999–2009, and 252 ± 26 Gt/y in 2009–2017, that is, by a factor 6.”
That’s acceleration-plus, to wit, ten year cycles, except for 2009-17 (8 yrs.), demonstrated increasingly rapid acceleration year-over-year, as follows: 40 Gt (1979-1990), 50 Gt (1989-2000), 166 Gt (1999-2009), 252 Gt (2009-2017) sure looks like rapid acceleration. Doesn’t it?
According to Rignot, acceleration of Antarctic glaciers of 5-to-8 times already happened with the Larsen B ice shelf collapse years ago. Significantly, ice shelves hold back glacial flow like a hockey goalie, when he leaves the game the net is open, similarly when the ice shelf collapses, glacial flow rolls ahead faster and faster without the ice shelf to stop it. In Larsen B’s case, sure enough glacial flow sped up 5-to-8 times. That’s big acceleration for a glacier. What if all of Antarctica’s glaciers follow suit?
According to Rignot, “Theoretically, if that happens continent-wide, it would raise sea levels by 13 feet per century.”
The main issue is: As the oceans have absorbed 85%-90% of planetary warming, those warmer waters are now registering heavy-duty impact in Antarctica.
Keeping in mind, it’s the first few feet of sea level rise that takes down one city after another and then another, starting with Miami Beach where global warming has already forced the city to raise streets by 2 feet.
For a photo of raised streets in Miami Beach, Google: “Miami Beach is Raising Streets by 2 Feet to Combat Rising Seas” or “Miami is Racing Against Time to Keep Up with Sea-Level Rise.”
Alas, the worst-case scenario is already in motion along shorelines around the world, including, the Trump Resort in Ireland permit application to “build a seawall because of climate change” (see here).
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/the-coldest-spot-on-earth-melting/