Merck announced on Tuesday that it is suing the government over a recently approved plan to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, aiming to stop one of the nation’s first efforts to take a small step toward lowering sky-high drug prices in the U.S. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington on Tuesday, claims that the plan is unconstitutional and calls it a “sham” and…
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The Inflation Reduction Act presupposes a private sector–led transition. But battles over its implementation could build the political constituencies and expertise needed to take on the fossil fuel industry.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released a new climate report which updates and combines the findings from all past reports in the IPCC’s sixth assessment. The synthesis report urges immediate action to curb global warming and secure a livable future for all. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin offer remarkable insights on what the…
The Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre has more than doubled its 2030 forecast for the value of a diversified battery industry to the Australian economy to $16.9 billion, but argues stronger economic alliances will be needed to realise it. A 2021 report commissioned by the Future Batteries Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC) had initially…
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With the National Reconstruction Fund bill now having passed in the House of Representatives, Industry and Science minister Ed Husic is “quietly confident” that the $15 billion industrial plan will be legislated soon, giving local manufacturers a massive shot in the arm. The scale of the NRF would act as a bulwark to keep Australia’s…
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The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act are two landmark bills with the potential to carry significant economic and environmental benefits. They also speak volumes of the role that progressive voices and organizations can play in helping to create sustainable and equitable economic growth and in powering a safer future. Of course, they are imperfect bills…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Two years after President Biden’s bold commitment to center under-resourced communities and racial justice in curbing the climate crisis, the funding capable of doing so is materializing — millions at a time — and on an almost daily basis. The record level of public money is intended for projects that address structural racism, such as the disproportionate concentration of high-emitting power…
A coalition of more than three dozen progressive advocacy groups based in the United States and the European Union on Monday implored E.U. policymakers to stop pursuing challenges to the Inflation Reduction Act and urged governments on both sides of the Atlantic to start prioritizing decarbonization over corporate-friendly trade rules.
“As part of any E.U.-U.S. transatlantic sustainable trade initiative, we urge the E.U. to refrain from challenging the IRA with trade instruments. And we call on the U.S. and E.U. to commit to a Climate Peace Clause to protect climate policies around the world from trade disputes, as well as to make good on climate financing and green technology transfer to countries in the Global South,” says a letter sent to the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council.
The letter comes as European Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis travels to Washington, D.C. for meetings this week with top U.S. officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
Amid an ongoing disagreement over North American electric vehicle manufacturing incentives, renewable energy tax credits, and other green provisions in the IRA, Dombrovskis plans to “negotiate better outcomes for the E.U.,” according to Politico, just as the U.S. Treasury Department prepares to release “a list of criteria for what qualifies as a free trade agreement, potentially making more countries eligible to receive tax credits under the IRA,” which was passed by congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Joe Biden last August.
“Countries desperately need to enact bold climate measures and cannot allow outdated trade rules to get in the way.”
The letter’s 41 signatories—including the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Transnational Institute, and other civil society organizations representing millions of people—noted that “at the most recent meeting of the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council, the Global Trade Working Group announced its intent to embark on a transatlantic sustainable trade initiative.”
Melinda St. Louis, the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said Monday in a statement that if the U.S. and the E.U. are serious about this, “they first need to commit to ‘do no harm’ by refraining from attacking one another’s climate legislation.”
While the IRA “was far from the comprehensive legislation needed to address the urgent climate crisis,” states the letter, “it was the result of a difficult compromise negotiated in a narrow but historic window of political opportunity and is a critical step that the U.S. has taken to meet its climate commitments.”
Despite this, the E.U. “claims that the structure and the domestic content requirements of tax incentives for electric vehicle, electric battery, and renewable energy production offered through the IRA violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules,” the letter continues. “And it has repeatedly threatened to refer the matter to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, attempting to force the U.S. to change this law. The E.U. even publicly complained about the incentives before the bill had passed, potentially threatening passage of the important legislation, which passed by the narrowest of margins.”
“Time is running out to meet our climate commitments,” it adds. “Investments in green jobs and production of green products will be needed to usher in the clean energy transition the world needs,” and that requires “adapt[ing] the rules to accelerate a just transition.”
\u201cAs @EU_Commission’s @VDombrovskis visits DC this week, US & EU groups call for a ceasefire on trade challenges to the IRA & other climate policies #ClimatePeaceClause https://t.co/NXiSpYI4ji\u201d— Trade Justice Education Fund (@Trade Justice Education Fund) 1677510296
“Will the Biden administration stand up to these trade threats and implement the law as intended to create green jobs and boost manufacturing in the clean energy economy?” asked St. Louis. “And will they commit to supporting other countries as they enact their own bold climate policies?”
Fabian Flues, a trade campaigner with PowerShift Germany, insisted that there is no other reasonable choice.
“This is simple: climate action has to take precedence over trade rules,” said Flues. “The E.U. would do the fight against climate change a huge disservice if it challenged the Inflation Reduction Act in trade tribunals. Instead, the E.U. should increase its efforts to pursue a genuine ecological and fair industrial policy. Such efforts must be accompanied by increased climate financing and green technology transfer so that countries in the Global South don’t lose out from increased climate action in the U.S. and E.U.”
According to the coalition:
As advanced economies and major current and historic emitters of greenhouse gases, it would be a powerful step for the U.S. and E.U. to agree to a Climate Peace Clause—a binding commitment by these governments to refrain from using dispute settlement mechanisms in the WTO or other trade and investment agreements to challenge each other’s climate policies. Not only should the E.U. refrain from using trade rules to challenge the IRA, but both should commit to refraining from challenging other countries’ policies meant to hasten the green transition. This would set an example and create the much-needed space for governments to adopt and maintain the climate policies needed to create green jobs and meet their commitments under the Paris climate agreement.
Such an agreement between these two powers must also include climate financing for countries in the Global South and the sharing of green technologies, as outlined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris agreement, to support/contribute to climate solutions that are truly sustainable and equitable for all. This will be necessary to support the clean energy transition in countries that cannot afford similar subsidy-based incentives. A true transatlantic collaboration to address catastrophic climate change, and related global social, health, and biodiversity crises, will entail supporting—rather than undermining—green industrial policies on both sides of the Atlantic. Further, we must work together to meet commitments for financial support and technological transfer to developing countries and to transform inequitable global structures in order to facilitate a just transition for all.
This is not the first time labor and environmental groups have demanded that policymakers stop impeding sorely needed climate action by weaponizing global trade rules. As Biden hosted French President Emmanuel Macron just before a December meeting of the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council, activists held a protest outside the White House to denounce the leading role that Macron has played in fostering E.U. opposition to the IRA.
On the same day, the Sierra Club and the Trade Justice Education Fund published an analysis outlining the need for a Climate Peace Clause.
As the groups’ research explained, North American production requirements were key to securing the political support needed to enact the IRA, but progress on creating green jobs and slashing planet-heating pollution remains at risk of being derailed by Investor-State Dispute Settlement complaints and other objections filed at neoliberal trade institutions.
As Trade Justice Education Fund executive director Arthur Stamoulis said Monday, “Countries desperately need to enact bold climate measures and cannot allow outdated trade rules to get in the way.”
“By committing to not challenge other nations’ climate initiatives as violations of old trade rules,” Stamoulis added, “the United States can simultaneously encourage countries to take more ambitious climate action and better defend its own climate-focused industrial policy.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Australia’s national hydrogen strategy is set for a review following an agreement by state and federal energy ministers at the first meeting of the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council on Friday. The review aims to “ensure the national strategy positions Australia on a path to be a global hydrogen leader by 2030 on both…
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President Joe Biden said during his State of the Union address Tuesday that the climate crisis is an “existential threat” and political leaders have an obligation to confront it. Seconds later, the president briefly deviated from his prepared remarks to add, “We’re still going to need oil and gas for a while” — prompting applause from Republican lawmakers. To climate advocates…
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The White House on Saturday condemned a newly introduced Republican bill that would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, a law that includes a number of changes aimed at lowering costs for Medicare recipients. Unveiled Thursday by freshman Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tennessee), the bill has 20 original co-sponsors and is endorsed by several right-wing groups, including the Koch-funded organization…
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Fortescue will manufacture electrolysers developed in-house at its $114 million production facility being developed in Gladstone following the collapse of its partnership with US-based supplier Plug Power. Although Plug Power Electrolysers will not be produced from the facility, they may still be supplied to other Fortescue projects, according to Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) chief executive…
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A pair of green groups on Monday released a report detailing how U.S. President Joe Biden can work toward his goal of 100% clean electricity nationwide by 2035.
The roadmap from Evergreen Action and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) comes after Biden last year signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) following a bitter battle in Congress. While elements of the legislation alarmed climate campaigners, they welcomed that it contained about $370 billion in climate and energy investments.
“This new report not only shows that President Biden’s climate goals for the power sector are achievable—but it is among the first to lay out how we can actually get there,” said NRDC president and CEO Manish Bapna in a statement.
“There is no time for half-measures or delay.”
“We don’t need magic bullets or new technologies,” Bapna stressed. “We already have the tools—and now we have a roadmap. If the Biden administration, Congress, and state leaders follow it, we will build the better future we all deserve. There is no time for half-measures or delay.”
While the Inflation Reduction Act is a positive step, new modeling in the report shows that “the U.S. must take further action to meet its clean energy goals this decade,” the publication states. “The IRA’s investments are projected to increase carbon-free electricity in the U.S. from approximately 40% in 2022 to 66% clean power by 2030. This falls short of the 80% target that’s consistent with the path to 100% clean electricity by 2035.”
The legislation “is also estimated to help cut economy-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030—an important step, but short of America’s 50-52% commitment under the Paris agreement,” the report adds.
To deliver on Biden’s climate pledges, the report urges U.S. policymakers to:
“The IRA was a pivotal moment for climate action in the United States, but it is not mission accomplished for the Biden climate agenda,” said Evergreen Action power sector policy lead Charles Harper. “President Biden committed to the most ambitious set of climate goals in American history—including getting us to 100% clean power by 2035 and slashing 2005 climate pollution levels in half by 2030.”
“Important progress has been made, but President Biden must take bold action this year in order to deliver on those commitments,” Harper continued. “By ramping up its work to transition the U.S. economy toward 100% clean energy, the Biden administration and state leaders can reduce toxic pollution, cut energy costs, create good jobs, and advance environmental justice. Let’s get to work.”
\u201cSounds like a plan!\nhttps://t.co/xntJf0KeDt\u201d— Sunrise Movement \ud83c\udf05 (@Sunrise Movement \ud83c\udf05) 1674504864
Although further progress could be hampered by Republicans controlling the U.S. House of Representatives, advocates are emphasizing the importance of the president and other supporters of climate action not wasting the remainder of his first term.
Evergreen co-founder and senior adviser Sam Ricketts, who co-authored the report, told The Washington Post that “it’s really incumbent upon the administration to use these next two years to make important progress on cleaning up the power sector.”
Ricketts plans to join Bapna, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), the NRDC’s Lissa Lynch, and University of California, Santa Barbara professor Leah Stokes for a Tuesday afternoon presentation of the new report.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Progressive U.S. lawmakers on Monday took House Republicans to task after the Congressional Budget Office said the erstwhile deficit hawks’ first bill before the 118th Congress—a measure critics say is meant to “protect wealthy and corporate tax cheats”—will swell the federal deficit by more than $100 billion.
“They all run on reducing the deficit and now the House GOP’s first… bill will increase the deficit by $114 billion,” tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). “Make it make sense.”
Increasing the federal deficit can help people and the economy. Republicans have been criticized for hypocritically pushing cuts to social safety net programs in the name of fiscal responsibility while being willing to raise the deficit to help corporations and the rich.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the euphemistically named Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act—which faces a vote as soon as Monday evening—would “decrease outlays by $71 billion and decrease receipts by $186 billion over the 2023-2032 period.”
\u201cThe @HouseGOP preaches about the deficit. Well here’s their first bill \ud83d\udc47https://t.co/OujTofeKS0\u201d— Raul M. Grijalva (@Raul M. Grijalva) 1673306214
That’s because the legislation would rescind $72 billion of $80 billion worth of new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by the Demorcat-controlled 117th Congress and signed into law last year by President Joe Biden.
In a December 30 letter to colleagues, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said the proposed bill “rescinds tens of billions of dollars allocated to the IRS for 87,000 new IRS agents” under the IRA, a GOP talking point that has been widely debunked.
“Today, Republicans in Congress demonstrated their commitment to ‘fiscal responsibility,’” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sardonically tweeted. “The first bill advanced by the GOP adds $114 billion to the deficit—by allowing the super-wealthy to cheat their taxes while everyone else pays. Corporate lobbyists are popping champagne.”
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) lamented that the “first order of business in the GOP House of Representatives” will be to “vote to increase the deficit $114 BILLION by letting tax cheats dodge paying what they owe.”
“Once again,” she added, “they’re putting politics over poor and working people.”
Advocacy groups also questioned GOP lawmakers’ motives for introducing the bill, with Americans for Tax Fairness tweeting that “House Republicans are using their new majority to try and repeal IRS funding that will make rich and corporate tax cheats pay what they owe.”
“The GOP wants to let their rich friends keep cheating the rest of us,” the group added.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Republicans began their control of the 118th Congress Tuesday with a narrow majority that failed six times to elect a speaker but had in hand “hit-the-ground-running” plans to pass legislation that critics say will “protect wealthy and corporate tax cheats” by rescinding tens of billions of dollars in new Internal Revenue Service funding in the Inflation Reduction Act.
On Monday, Steve Scalise (R-La.), a party leader, said that the lower chamber’s first order of business after electing a speaker will be taking up the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act.
“This Republican bill is ill-named because what it actually does is protect tax cheaters by repealing most of the new IRS funding set forth in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act,” Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic wrote.
\u201cDemocrats secured new funding for the IRS to restore funding slashed by Republicans in 2010.\n\nIn their first legislative vote, Republicans will vote to repeal $9 out of every $10 in new IRS funding.\n\nAll to protect their rich tax cheat friends from paying taxes they owe.\u201d— Americans For Tax Fairness (@Americans For Tax Fairness) 1672772471
In a December 30 letter to House Republicans, Scalise said the legislation—along with 10 other bills and resolutions he proposed—would let GOP lawmakers “hit the ground running in our first weeks in the majority.”
Scalise said in the letter that the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Act “rescinds tens of billions of dollars allocated to the IRS for 87,000 new IRS agents in the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Although the “87,000 new IRS agents” claim has been widely debunked, it has nevertheless become a GOP talking point.
Writing for The American Independent, Josh Israel noted: “It has appeared in ads run by the campaigns of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and North Carolina Republican Senate nominee Rep. Ted Budd; it has been used in Senate Leadership Fund attack ads in Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Ohio; and the right-wing Club for Growth Action and Congressional Leadership Fund have run spots lying about the number of new IRS agents. The Senate Republican conference’s official Twitter account and those of dozens of other House and Senate Republicans have also tweeted the bogus 87,000 number.”
\u201cAs the new, narrow GOP majority tries to elect a House speaker, their initial priorities include:\n- weakening congressional ethics \n- a bill to protect wealthy & corporate tax cheats & make taxpayers keep enduring long waits to contact the IRS. \n\nI oppose the #TaxCheatAct!\u201d— Congressman Dwight Evans (@Congressman Dwight Evans) 1672772546
As Mechanic pointed out, “From 2010 to 2018, even as the IRS received 9% more tax returns, its annual budget was slashed by $2.9 billion—a 20% reduction that cost the agency more than one-fifth of its workforce.”
“Virtually no partnerships were audited in 2018,” he continued. “By then, with [former President] Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the kneecapped IRS was scrutinizing the individual returns of just 0.03% of those $10 million—plus taxpayers, down from a peak of 23% in 2010. Audits of the $5 million—to—$10 million filers fell from just under 15% to a scant 0.04%.”
Mechanic added:
A fair subset of superwealthy Americans doesn’t even bother filing. The Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration reported in 2020 that nearly 880,000 “high income” non-filers from 2014 through 2016 still owed $46 billion, and the IRS was in no condition, resource-wise, to collect. The 300 biggest delinquents owed about $33 million per head, on average. Fifteen percent of their cases had been closed without examination by IRS staffers, and another one-third weren’t even in line to be “worked.”
“The recently enacted IRS funding—$80 billion over 10 years—was meant to remedy this shameful state of affairs,” he wrote.
Despite the disunity evident in the speaker struggle, House Republicans appear united when it comes to
slashing Social Security, gutting ethics safeguards, and pursuing policies like the IRS defunding measure that exacerbate inequality in one of the most unequal societies in the developed world.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
A provision capping Medicare recipients’ insulin copayments at $35 a month took effect on the first day of the new year, a change that Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock applauded Tuesday as a crucial victory that lawmakers must work to extend to all people who need the lifesaving medicine.
“If you need insulin, you really need insulin—it is not a choice,” said Warnock (D-Ga.), whose December runoff win over Republican Herschel Walker helped Democrats secure a narrow majority in the U.S. Senate.
“I’m thrilled to see my provision to cap insulin costs for Medicare recipients finally take effect because, simply put, this measure will save lives,” Warnock added. “I’m going to continue working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make insulin affordable for all Georgians and Americans.”
Warnock spearheaded the push to include the broadly popular insulin copay cap in the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains a number of modest provisions aimed at lowering sky-high prescription drug costs. Under the new law, Medicare Part D recipients won’t have to pay more than $35 a month for covered insulin products.
The AARP’s Dena Bunis notes that “beginning on July 1, Medicare enrollees who take their insulin through a pump as part of the Part B durable medical equipment benefit will not have to pay a deductible and they will also benefit from the $35 copay cap.”
Patricia McKenzie, a Medicare recipient who lives in Lithonia, Georgia, welcomed the new copay cap, saying it will help her pay for the Humalog insulin she uses to treat her diabetes.
“I live with high blood pressure as well as insulin-dependent diabetes,” said McKenzie. “I live on a fixed income, so I have to plan carefully in order to afford my prescriptions. The new $35 copay cap for my insulin will ensure I can afford my insulin for as long as I need it.”
Another patient, Steven Hadfield of Charlotte, North Carolina, said his insulin “carries a monthly list price of $283, which only adds to the large financial burden of my other drugs.”
“Over the past year, I’ve gone without my Lantus [insulin] at times because of its cost,” added Hadfield, who lives with blood cancer and Type 2 diabetes. “Now, it will only cost me $35, which will bring me more consistency and, for the first time, lower my drug costs.”
“The new $35 copay cap for my insulin will ensure I can afford my insulin for as long as I need it.”
The Inflation Reduction Act originally included a broader $35-per-month insulin copay cap for people with private insurance, but Republicans used a parliamentary maneuver to strip out the provision, leaving only the Medicare cap intact.
The exclusion of people with private insurance and the uninsured from the new insulin copay cap means the majority of people with diabetes in the U.S. won’t benefit.
According to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in October, 1.3 million U.S. adults with diabetes are forced to ration insulin due to the cost of the medicine, which is significantly higher than in other wealthy nations. Skipping insulin treatments is dangerous and can be life-threatening.
The study found that “among adults aged 65 years or older, 11.2% rationed insulin… versus 20.4% of younger persons.”
“Universal access to insulin, without cost barriers, is urgently needed,” Adam Gaffney, an ICU doctor at the Cambridge Health Alliance and the lead author of the study, told NBC News following publication of the research. “We have allowed pharmaceutical companies to set the agenda, and that is coming at the cost to our patients.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
A new analysis of federal data shows that wind and solar alone could generate more electricity in the United States than nuclear and coal over the coming year, critical progress toward reducing the country’s reliance on dirty energy.
The SUN DAY Campaign, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable energy development, highlighted a recently released U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) review finding that renewable sources as a whole—including solar, wind, biomass, and others—provided 22.6% of U.S. electricity over the first 10 months of 2022, a pace set to beat the agency’s projection for the full year.
“Taken together, during the first ten months of 2022, renewable energy sources comfortably out-produced both coal and nuclear power by 16.62% and 27.39% respectively,” the SUN DAY Campaign noted Tuesday. “However, natural gas continues to dominate with a 39.4% share of total generation.”
The new EIA figures show that electricity output from solar alone jumped by more than 26% in the first 10 months of last year. In just October, the SUN DAY Campaign observed, “solar’s output was 31.68% greater than a year earlier, a rate of growth that strongly eclipsed that of every other energy source.”
Ken Bossong, the campaign’s executive director, said that “as we begin 2023, it seems very likely that renewables will provide nearly a quarter—if not more—of the nation’s electricity during the coming year.”
“And it is entirely possible that the combination of just wind and solar will outpace nuclear power and maybe even that of coal during the next twelve months,” Bossong added.
“It is entirely possible that the combination of just wind and solar will outpace nuclear power and maybe even that of coal during the next twelve months.”
The encouraging data comes amid the broader context of U.S. failures to sufficiently accelerate renewable energy production and phase out fossil fuel use, which is helping push greenhouse gas emissions to record-shattering levels globally.
Gas production, a major contributor to highly potent methane pollution, likely broke an annual record in the U.S. last year, according to the latest federal data. One recent analysis found that the U.S. is currently pursuing more new oil pipeline capacity by length than any other country.
The Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a site created by a group of scientists to analyze nations’ emissions targets and progress, rates the U.S. as “insufficient” overall, arguing the country’s “climate policies and action in 2030 need substantial improvements to be consistent with the 1.5°C temperature limit.”
On the positive side, CAT welcomes the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a law that’s set to boost the U.S. build-out of renewable energy infrastructure.
“However, while the largest share of the IRA is directed to clean technologies, it also includes several concessions for the fossil fuel industry such as requiring minimum acreages of public lands for drilling leases,” CAT notes. “These concessions contradict President Biden’s promise on his first day in office to ban new oil and gas drilling on federal lands.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Global pharmaceutical giants plan to hike U.S. prices for hundreds of drugs next month in anticipation of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which will allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of certain drugs starting in 2026, an analysis published Friday revealed.
The analysis, conducted by the healthcare research company 3 Axis Advisors and reported on by Reuters, said that Big Pharma corporations including Pfizer, AstraZeneca PLC, and Sanofi SA are set to raise the list prices—which do not include any rebates—on over 350 drugs early in January.
Reuters reports:
In 2022, drugmakers raised prices on more than 1,400 drugs according to data published by 46brooklyn, a drug pricing nonprofit that is related to 3 Axis. That is the most increases since 2015.
The median drug price increase was 4.9% last year, while the average increase was 6.4%, according to 46brooklyn. Both figures are lower than inflation rates in the United States.
Drugmakers largely have kept increases at 10% or below—an industry practice followed by many big drugmakers since they came under fire for too many price hikes in the middle of the last decade.
The new analysis came as drugmakers brace for implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which contains several provisions to lower prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries and to reduce the amount spent by the federal government on medications.
\u201cWhy? Because they can. Big pharma does not care about us. https://t.co/nlNkCMAWI9\u201d— act.tv (@act.tv) 1672436939
The IRA will require the government to negotiate future prices of some drugs covered by Medicare. Drugs selected for 2026 price negotiation will be announced by September 1, 2023, with negotiations set to begin the following month and run through August 2024.
Antonio Ciaccia, president of 3 Axis, told Reuters that the IRA would further a dynamic in which drugmakers launch products at higher costs in anticipation of public criticism of annual price hikes. Biogen’s highly controversial Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm initially carried a $56,000 per year price tag—which the company’s CEO called “fair”—that was later halved amid public outrage and questions surrounding the medication’s efficacy.
“Drugmakers have to take a harder look at calibrating those launch prices out of the gate… so they don’t box themselves into the point where in the future, they can’t price increase their way back into profitability,” Ciaccia explained.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Big Pharma and its Republican boosters and beneficiaries in Congress are trying to stymie the Biden administration’s implementation of the drug price negotiation provisions of the IRA. Their efforts will be challenged by determined patient advocates, many of whose lives depend on access to affordable prescription drugs.
“The drug price provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act aren’t a political ‘sound bite’—they are historic legislation that allow for the innovation we need at prices we can afford,” Utah-based activist Meg Jackson-Drage wrote in a letter to Deseret News earlier this month.
“Patients fought hard for the reforms in the Inflation Reduction Act,” she added, “and we won’t let Big Pharma and its allies’ fearmongering scare us.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
The pharmaceutical industry and its Republican allies in Congress are openly signaling their plans obstruct at every turn as the Biden administration looks to begin implementing a recently passed law that will allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time in its history. In November, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and several other Republican senators introduced legislation that would…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the midst of World War II, on November 10, 1942, Winston Churchill said of the war: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
The year 2022 was disappointing for the stated American goal of reducing the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, which rose by 1.5%. In contrast, China’s emissions fell by 0.9% and Europe, despite the Putin energy crisis decreased its output by 0.8%.
The Inflation Reduction Act has $369 billion in it to promote green energy.
The Biden administration and U.S. civil society organizations and private companies, however, laid the groundwork for potentially impressive U.S. progress through the rest of this decade. That is, 2022 may have been the end of the beginning.
The Infrastructure and Jobs Act passed a little over a year ago contained $7.5 billion for zero- and low-emission buses and ferries, and another $7.5 billion for a nation-wide network of electric car chargers. It contains $105 billion to upgrade and expand public transportation, which will mean fewer people dependent on automobiles. Even the monies dedicated to improving port and airport infrastructure have a mandate to reduce congestion and carbon emissions.
While initially Postmaster Louis DeJoy, a Trump-era holdover, was dragging his feet on electric vehicle purchase, he caved to pressure from the administration and Congress and has agreed to purchase at least 66,000 battery-electric vehicles through 2028 as part of a 106,000 vehicle purchase plan. He is also expanding USPS parking structures and putting in electric chargers. All environmentalists would have been pleased if he would move even faster. Still, there are only 1.7 million EVs on the road in the US (up from 400,000 in the second quarter of 2018), and 66,000 would be 4% of all those existing electric vehicles. The more EVs are bought, the more the price of the batteries will fall and the more their efficiency will increase. Automobile costs are expected to fall over the next decade as a result, and big government purchases will be very helpful.
This year, 18% of new car registrations in California were electric, and about 6% in the country as a whole. That is a big increase from almost zero just a few years ago. All the big auto firms are betting the farm on going electric, and with Biden administration help are building billions of dollars worth of new battery plants. It will take a few years for this build-out to come to fruition, but when it happens, it will be like opening the floodgates.
There are only 229 coal-fired power plants left in the U.S. In November, President Joe Biden pledged to close them all. Despite the energy crisis, nearly 6% (11,778 megawatts) of U.S. coal-fired generation capacity is expected to shut down in 2022. If we can double that rate of closure every year for the next ten years, they will all be gone by 2032, which is a reasonable expectation. The cost of solar-wind-battery generation will fall over that period, making coal prohibitively expensive. In fact, coal is already expensive, costing about 6 cents a kilowatt hour to generate electricity. That does not count all the health and climate damage it does. If that were figured in, it would be more like 80 cents a kilowatt hour. In contrast, wind and solar are roughly 4 cents a kilowatt hour and have been falling. In very sunny states solar could be as little as 2 cents a kilowatt hour.
Battery storage capacity is also increasing rapidly throughout the states, which can cover at least some high-demand periods. California is up to 3 gigawatts, with plans for more.
The Inflation Reduction Act has $369 billion in it to promote green energy. The Biden Administration is letting leases for offshore wind farms. $4 billion in bids were let for New York and New Jersey alone, and over $700 million for installations off the coast of California. Likewise, Houston and New Orleans have their eyes on this energy source. Off the coast of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico the shelf is shallow enough so that wind turbines can be anchored to the sea bottom. The Pacific is so deep off California that firms will have to put up floating wind turbines, of a sort that have been installed off the coast of Scotland. The U.S. has lagged behind on offshore wind as an energy source, having almost none right now. But in two years, that will begin changing. One advantage of offshore wind is that winds blow more steadily out at sea and so those turbines can take up some of the slack from solar panels, which go dark at sundown.
We are on the verge of an amazing new, low-carbon America. CO2 emissions will be with us for years to come, but by 2030 perhaps we can start talking about the beginning of the end.
The idea of industrial policy has taken on almost a mystical quality for many progressives. The idea is that it is somehow new and different from what we had been doing, and if we had been doing industrial policy for the last half-century, everything would be better.
This has led to widespread applause on the left for aspects of President Biden’s agenda that can be considered industrial policy, like the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the infrastructure package approved last year. While these bills have considerable merit, they miss the boat in reducing income inequality in important ways.
First, the idea that we had not been doing industrial policy before Biden, in the sense of favoring specific sectors, is wrong. We have been dishing out more than $50 billion a year to support biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. If that isn’t supporting our pharmaceutical industry, what would be?
We also have a whole set of structures in place — most obviously Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also many other financial institutions — as well as tax policies to support home ownership. We also support the (bloated) financial sector through tax policy, deposit insurance, and all but explicit too-big-to-fail guarantees.
Even the subsidies for the shift to clean energy in the IRA were not new. They hugely expanded and extended subsidies that had already been in place. This was a good policy from the standpoint of saving the planet, but it was not a sharp break from what we had previously been doing.
The government has always favored some industries, implicitly at the expense of others, so we are not doing something new if we declare “industrial policy.” But, there is an argument for making the subsidies explicit so that they can be debated.
For example, it might have been easier to move away from fossil fuels if we had to debate whether we would continue to subsidize the industry by not making it pay for the damage it was doing to the environment. If someone proposed subsidizing a new development by letting it dump its untreated sewage on neighboring properties, there would likely be less support than if the city let the development do the dumping without any explicit policy. So, there is an advantage to having subsidies be explicit, even if the idea of subsidizing specific industries is hardly new.
There are a variety of motives for the industrial policy measures Biden has pushed through. The climate ones in the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill are both obvious and important.
There is also the belief that these measures will hasten economic growth. There is a good case for this. Much research shows that infrastructure spending increases productivity and growth. There are certainly visible bottlenecks that can constrain the economy, which became clear with the supply chain problems during the pandemic.
There is also a national security issue. This can be overplayed. We don’t really need to worry about being cut off from supplies of key inputs from Canada, and probably not from Western Europe, in the event of a military conflict. On the other hand, being heavily dependent on semiconductors from Taiwan, in a context where a conflict with China is, unfortunately, a possibility, is a problem. For this reason, some reorientations towards domestic production make sense.
However, one of the main motivations for these measures is to reduce income inequality by increasing domestic manufacturing. This is not likely to be the outcome.
One of the great tragedies of the last four decades was the war on manufacturing, pursued by politicians of both parties, that centered on a policy of selective free trade. While we continued to protect doctors and other highly paid professionals from foreign (and domestic) competition, our trade policy was quite explicitly designed to put our manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world.
This competition had the predicted and actual effect of costing us millions of manufacturing jobs and putting downward pressure on the wages in the jobs that remained. Since manufacturing had historically been a source of relatively high-paying jobs for workers without college degrees, our trade policy had the effect of increasing wage inequality.
It also decimated many towns and cities across the country that had been heavily dependent on manufacturing. There is no shortage of places, especially in the industrial Midwest, where the major employer closed up shop and left a community without a viable economy.
It is easy to identify villains in this story – NAFTA, the high dollar policy pursued by Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and admitting China to the WTO all contributed in a big way to the loss of manufacturing jobs. They also placed downward pressure on wages in the jobs that remained, but that doesn’t mean that getting manufacturing jobs back will be a step toward reducing inequality.
The problem is that the wage premium in manufacturing has largely disappeared due in large part to U.S. trade policy. The graph below shows the average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing and the private sector as a whole.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics and author’s calculations.
As can be seen, the average hourly wage in manufacturing used to be higher than the average wage in the private sector as a whole. In 1980, it was 4.1 percent higher. They crossed in 2006 and have continued to diverge in the years since. The average hourly wage for production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing is now 8.9 percent less than the average for the private sector as a whole.
This is not a comprehensive measure of the wage premium since we would have to also consider benefits, which have historically been higher in manufacturing, and also specific worker characteristics, like age, education, and location, but this sort of change in relative wages almost certainly implies a large reduction in the manufacturing wage premium.[1]
A big part of the reduction in the manufacturing wage premium is the decline of unionization in manufacturing. In 1980, close to 20 percent of the manufacturing workforce was unionized. This had fallen to just 7.7 percent by 2021, only slightly higher than the private sector average of 6.1 percent.
Furthermore, while the Biden administration has been very supportive of unions, there is little reason to believe that the return of manufacturing jobs will mean a substantial increase in unionized manufacturing jobs. From the recession trough in 2010 to 2021, the manufacturing sector added back over 800,000 jobs. However, the number of union members in manufacturing actually dropped by 400,000 over this period.
While there will undoubtedly be some good-paying manufacturing jobs associated with the reshoring efforts in these bills, there is no reason to think they will have a major impact on income inequality. The impact of trade on manufacturing over the last four decades is not reversible. Losing millions of jobs in the sector was terrible from the standpoint of income inequality, but getting some of these jobs back will not be of much help.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these bills is the fact that there is literally no discussion of who will own intellectual property being created through government spending in these areas. For some reason, there is virtually zero interest in policy circles in discussing the impact of intellectual property on inequality, even though it has almost certainly been a huge factor.
Just as Republicans don’t like to talk about climate change, Democratic policy types don’t like to talk about intellectual property. They are much more comfortable just making assertions like “inequality is due to technology,” rather than discussing how some people have been situated to get most of the gains from technology.
The idea that intellectual property derived from government-supported research can lead to inequality should not sound far-fetched. The Trump administration, through Operation Warp Speed, paid Moderna over $400 million to cover the cost of developing a Covid vaccine and its initial Phase 1 and 2 trials. It then paid over $450 million to pay for the larger Phase 3 trials, in effect fully covering Moderna’s cost for developing a vaccine and bringing it through the FDA’s approval process.
It was necessary for Moderna to do years of research so that it was in a position to quickly develop an mRNA vaccine, but even here the government played a very important role. Much of the funding for the discovery and development of mRNA technology came from the National Institutes of Health. Without its spending on the development of this technology, it is almost inconceivable that any private company would have been in a position to develop an mRNA vaccine against the coronavirus.
In spite of this massive contribution from the public sector, Moderna has complete control over its vaccine and can charge whatever price it wants. It is likely to end up with more than $20 billion in profit from sales of its coronavirus vaccine. According to Forbes, the vaccine had made at least five Moderna billionaires by the middle of 2021, with the company’s CEO, Stephane Bancel, leading the way with an increase in his wealth of $4.3 billion. In addition, there were undoubtedly many others at Moderna who made millions or tens of millions due to this government-supported research.
And, it is important to recognize that the money for the Moderna billionaires comes directly out of the pockets of everyone else. Its control of intellectual property associated with the vaccine allowed it to charge around $20 a shot (much more for boosters) for vaccines that would likely sell for less than $2 in a free market without intellectual property protections. Higher drug prices reduce the real wage of ordinary workers.
The wealth of Moderna’s nouveau riche also has the effect of pushing up housing prices for the rest of us. When the rich can buy more and bigger houses, it raises house prices for everyone, effectively reducing their real wage. So, the issue of inequality is not an abstraction. More money for those on top means lower living standards for everyone else.
If we see many more Modernas from the funding in the CHIPS Act and the other bills, it will not reduce inequality in the economy, it will make it worse. Serious people cannot pretend to not notice the huge amounts of money redistributed upward when the government pays for research and then lets private actors get property rights in the product. This is almost literally giving away the store.
There is a different route the government can follow with its research spending. It can pay private companies to do work developing technologies in important areas, but it can insist that the products be in the public domain. (Where there are security issues at stake, the government can control the technology.)
This would allow private companies to profit from research, which would be awarded through a competitive bidding process, and it would also allow them to make profits off the manufacture of the finished products. However, there would be no profit to be made from ownership of the technology itself. That could be freely used by anyone with the capability to benefit from it.
This path would avoid having our industrial policy make inequality even worse. It also is exactly what we should want to see with climate technologies. We should want the technologies to generate wind and solar power, as well as to store it, to be available as cheaply as possible. This will maximize the pace at which it can be adopted.
We should also want the whole world to have access to this technology to hasten the rate at which other countries can adopt clean energy. (Ideally, we would negotiate reciprocal agreements whereby they commit to funding research in some proportion to their GDP, and also make the technology freely available.) We should go the same rate with biomedical research.
We have to recognize that the upward redistribution of the last four decades was not something that just happened, it was the outcome of deliberate policy choices. Trade and government policy on intellectual property are a huge part of that story.
It’s great that we are finally getting some honest discussion of the role of trade in increasing inequality, but we still need to get recognition of the impact of our policies on intellectual property. If the Biden administration and members of Congress insist on ignoring its impact, their policies are virtually certain to make inequality worse. The talk about bringing back manufacturing doesn’t change the picture.
[1] In a comprehensive analysis of the manufacturing wage premium, Mishel (2018) found a 7.8 percent straight wage premium for non-college-educated workers for the years 2010 to 2016, after controlling for age, race, gender, and other factors. That compares to a premium for non-college-educated workers of 13.1 percent in the 1980s.
The analysis found that differences in non-wage compensation added 2.6 percentage points to the manufacturing wage premium for all workers, but the compensation differential may be less for non-college-educated workers since they are less likely to get health care coverage and retirement benefits.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
The Australian government is calling on the United States to make assurances that green hydrogen production tax credits, legislated through the Inflation Reduction Act, will not distort the global market, as international pressure mounts. In particular, the government is seeking “clarification on what, if any, steps the US may take to minimise the risk of…
The post Australia cautions US over hydrogen market distortion appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
The Biden administration’s efforts to support renewables through the landmark Inflation Reduction Act presents a significant critical minerals processing and export opportunity for Australia, according to Arthur Sinodinos, Australia’s Ambassador to the United States. Legislated in August, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced and expanded several tax credits to accelerate the transition to clean energy…
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This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
To prevent socialism from becoming stale orthodoxy, we need to be alive to changes in the world around us.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
The Biden administration recently announced the recipients of nearly $1 billion in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding for “clean school buses” aimed at accelerating the transition to low-emission vehicles and reducing air pollution around schools and neighborhoods. Demand from local school districts was so high that the EPA nearly doubled the amount awarded, which will help pay for more than 2,400 new buses that students and parents depend on across 389 school districts. Roughly 1,600 other applicants will have to wait for next year’s round of funding after requesting $4 billion for 12,000 school buses.
The funding for new school buses is included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law championed by President Joe Biden as a breakthrough deal for improving transportation and fighting climate change. However, the $1 trillion package approved by Congress in 2021 includes only $550 billion in new spending and was much less ambitious than the White House’s initial $2.3 trillion proposal for creating jobs, fixing roads and ensuring clean drinking water, among other priorities. As the midterms approach, this early compromise struck by Biden has largely faded in the rearview mirror.
While the Biden administration directs billions of dollars in transportation and infrastructure funding into communities — often with little fanfare from a media obsessed with contentious elections — the EPA is rolling out the government’s most ambitious climate program to date. The EPA’s national “green bank” will leverage public money in hopes of raising private capital for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building out renewable energy infrastructure. Officially known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the green bank was created by the Inflation Reduction Act, a tenuous legislative victory for Democrats facing backlash over the flailing economy from midterm voters.
Unlike the new electric school buses, which are paid for by rebates and grants delivered directly to school districts from the EPA, the $27 billion earmarked for the national green bank will flow through a complex web of nonprofits, new businesses, private financial investors and an existing network of state and local green banks. A coalition of mainstream environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a host of solar pioneers and green tech entrepreneurs have pushed for a national green bank for years, building off what they say are successful “green banking” efforts to attract private investment in cleaner energy at the local level.
While the EPA’s green bank is generating plenty of buzz in the world of green capitalism, climate activists say relying on the financial markets and for-profit companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a mistake.
“Direct federal funding of distributed renewables, such as community solar, is a good thing,” said Mitch Jones, managing director of the climate action group Food and Water Watch, in an email. “Laundering that funding through financial institutions that can decide where to send it is not.”
Sam Ricketts, the co-director of Evergreen Action, which advocates for a transition to a clean energy economy, said the EPA’s green bank will support an “ecosystem of finance” throughout the U.S. and “catalyze” investments in renewable energy infrastructure, particularly in disadvantaged communities often overlooked by investors.
“This is one of the investments in the Inflation Reduction Act that’s most exciting because of its ability to catalyze — as existing financial institutions are already doing — in disadvantaged communities and in environmental justice communities, new clean energy projects,” Ricketts said in a newsletter distributed by the Coalition for Green Capital on Thursday.
The “disadvantaged” and “environmental justice” communities Ricketts refers to are cities and neighborhoods that disproportionately suffer from climate threats, industrial pollution and failing infrastructure, often as a result of economic collapse or the machinations of systemic racism. The EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund includes $7 billion in “competitive grants” to help “low-income and disadvantaged communities” deploy or benefit from zero-emission energy projects, including community microgrids and rooftop solar panels that can reduce carbon emissions and provide electricity during hurricanes and other disasters.
“At the end of the day, we’re all trying to accomplish the same goals, which is to stimulate and accelerate the adoption of climate technology on the ground, in our community so that it can create real impact,” said Damon Burns, CEO of Finance New Orleans, a company that provides “green mortgages” and financing for “sustainable developers” in southern Louisiana. “That’s what’s unique about the green bank network; everybody is interested in building up the industry. This is not a competitive thing.”
However, there will certainly be competition for the $20 billion in green bank funding vaguely earmarked by the EPA for “eligible entities” that provide “financial and technical assistance” to projects that reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions.
Although $8 billion is set aside for reducing emissions in low-income communities, this money would not flow directly into community-based projects. Instead, a community solar nonprofit or a private business working to reduce its carbon footprint would receive cheap loans or other “creative” financing solutions from the green bank or its network of beneficiaries. For example, a green bank could provide tailored financing to help a private delivery company purchase electric vehicles.
Jones said green banking encourages investments in “false solutions” that will not prevent global warming, such as the purchasing of carbon offsets, which allow private companies to claim a reduction in their carbon emissions by buying parcels of land or planting trees, for example.
“We know how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: Build renewables and shutdown fossil fuels,” Jones said. “Profiting off of false solutions such as biogas or offsets will not reduce emissions.”
The idea behind a green bank is to give emission-reducing projects and industries a financial leg up so they can attract private investors who would otherwise not be interested in a risky solar start-up or a windmill project in a low-income area. Proponents point to examples set by existing state and local green banks, which help finance local solar projects that are too small or risky to attract traditional investors. Once those solar projects pay back their low-interest loans, building credit in the process, the green bank can then recycle the money into financing for a different project.
By 2020, existing green banks across 22 states leveraged $2 billion in bank funding to generate $7 billion in investment capital for clean energy and efficiency projects, according to the Coalition for Green Capital.
Critics see short-term benefits and long-term pitfalls in green banking. Under this model, public dollars are leveraged to reduce risk for private capitalists, who are then rewarded with profits for “doing the right thing” about climate change, according to Adrienne Buller, author of The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism. In a Q&A published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Buller succinctly articulated her critique of green banking, saying:
Without question, this strategy can direct urgently needed new investment flows toward certain low-carbon alternatives. But it has clear limitations. Ultimately, it’s a program based on the idea that to be worth pursuing, any low-carbon infrastructure should and will be more profitable than fossil fuel-driven alternatives. Moreover, this is supposedly not only necessary but also desirable. In truth, there are lots of areas in which, with respect to both necessity and desirability, the optimal systems and solutions that can deliver a decarbonized future are not based around maximum profit — like, for instance, replacing a culture of mass private vehicle ownership with affordable and accessible public modes of transport.
The question that hangs over the Inflation Reduction Act is to what extent we’re willing to accept the compromise of handing control over investment in our collective decarbonized future to a handful of investment giants because we are desperate enough to get something — anything — that can cut through the quagmire of US climate politics.
The green bank is a market-driven solution to the climate crisis, or at least it is designed to drive energy and tech markets in a certain direction. While mainstream climate activists may applaud the focus on “low-income” and “disadvantaged” communities, much of the excitement around green banking is coming from large environmental groups allied with labor unions and green tech entrepreneurs. A large chunk of this federal investment will not flow into the coffers of local governments, environmental watchdogs and nonprofits — at least not directly. Instead, billions of federal dollars will cycle through nonprofit financial institutions and their partners, in hopes of drawing private investments in clean tech.
The EPA is currently seeking public comments and holding listening sessions with activists, community members and financial stakeholders on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. What the national green banking system will ultimately look like remains to be seen, and plenty of questions remain about whether investments in clean energy and critical local infrastructure will reach the communities that need them most.
A roundtable on Democrats and the left.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
Frontline climate leaders just secured a huge win by stopping West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s pipeline bill from weaseling into the Senate’s key funding bill. In the face of fierce opposition, conservative Democrat Manchin asked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) to remove this “permitting reform” bill from the continuing resolution just hours before they voted on its fate.
The importance of this national victory being accomplished by frontline organizers cannot be understated. Frontline leaders joined forces together to lobby and call their representatives, tell their stories, and rally in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, with the support of “Big Green” environmentalists. This was made possible by years of relationship building amongst frontline organizations and, notably, efforts to repair the relationships between grassroots organizations and Big Greens. On the latter, there is still a lot to be done, but this was a significant step where big organizations followed the lead of the grassroots and uplifted their voices, even after grassroots voices were left out of conversations about the Inflation Reduction Act that many of these Big Greens trumpeted as a win.
Manchin’s bill threatened to fast-track the pipeline I spent my days fighting to stop. Prior to my time fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), I was a national climate organizer with 350.org and before that I was a global climate advocate with the World Resources Institute. I have seen many wins and losses in the climate movement and this one strikes me as particularly special.
Before the news broke that Manchin had side-swept his side deal, I tried not to think about what would happen if this bill passed because it threatened to overturn the core objective of my work: stopping the Mountain Valley Pipeline. But late one night after a long day of work, I sat down in my living room and let myself consider what was at stake. From my perspective in the MVP fight, what came to mind was the near-decade fight to stop this pipeline from steamrolling through Appalachia. I saw the faces of all the people I fight alongside who have been in this from the start and who have dedicated their life to stopping this pipeline. These people have set aside their lives as outdoor adventurers, farmers and coffee baristas to prevent this pipeline from destroying what they love most: their people and mountains. At that moment, the audacity of Sen. Joe Manchin to sacrifice his own constituents to fast-track an unnecessary pipeline during a climate crisis in order to get more money from a dying industry filled me with rage. Then despair — and I broke down into tears.
My partner, sitting next to me, was surprised. “You’re usually so realistic. You usually say, ‘I don’t know if we’ll win but the one thing I can do is try.’” And it’s true. As a queer person of color from the Global South, I’m used to seeing communities like mine put in losing positions, so I stay prepared for that. But I felt like I had been carrying an insurmountable weight for weeks that I hadn’t let myself acknowledge, and acknowledging it felt earth-shattering.
I joined the Mountain Valley Pipeline fight in part because the people in West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina that this pipeline is targeting are continually sacrificed for political and financial gain and I have seen the same thing done to my communities over centuries. I have fostered life-long friendships in this moment and with the land that the pipeline threatens. The moment I burst into tears in my living room was also the moment I acknowledged how much this frontline fight meant to me.
The reason I am in the climate movement is to make sure that voices like mine from communities like mine are listened to. This fight against Manchin’s dirty deal felt like a moment where they finally were. In early September, I helped organize a rally in D.C. to stop this deal and that rally featured Appalachian, Indigenous, Black and working-class organizers on the front lines of environmental injustice fights. Seeing them on the stage with a crowd of 600 people and representing hundreds of thousands of people from across the country felt historic. It’s not often that people like me and the folks I work with get to see ourselves and our power represented in Washington, D.C., but those leaders traveled across the country to make sure we were heard, and many Congresspeople joined our opposition, helping us secure this win.
The climate movement is stronger coming out of this win and that is because we followed those on the front lines. In order to avoid the worst of the climate crisis and ensure a livable future, we must keep that up.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Since the historic and controversial Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law in August, the economy has begun showing early signs of shifting and recalibrating beneath our feet. Honda Motor Company and LG Energy Solution have announced plans for a lithium ion battery plant, with their sights on Ohio; hiring has ticked up at a small business in Texas that builds wind and solar power plants; and the state of Connecticut is soliciting applications for millions in funding for community-led climate adaptation plans in anticipation of IRA funds to come, plus funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law signed last year. The IRA set aside $369 billion in climate and energy spending, which researchers estimate will translate to 9 million jobs over the next decade.
But as cities, states, nonprofits, industry groups and corporations all scramble to sweep up a slice of that funding, the degree to which these jobs will live up to being the Biden administration’s promise of “good-paying union jobs” remains to be seen. So too does whether and how those positions will be made available to the frontline and fenceline communities of color that have suffered the most from decades of disinvestment, pollution and manipulation at the hands of the fossil fuel industry, as well as to those working in the industry itself.
“Having that stuff in the federal bill is great, but unless we are organizing to bring these things into reality, it’s not going to happen,” said Rick Levy, president of the Texas AFL-CIO at a Climate Jobs Summit earlier this month. Levy warned that Republican-led state officials and contractors could be wary over accepting clean energy grants and tax breaks from the federal government, given the labor protections and training stipulations the money is contingent upon.
Opportunities to work in renewables were already growing prior to the passage of the IRA. Wind, hydropower, geothermal and other clean energy industries all added jobs in 2021, while fossil energy jobs declined, or grew more modestly. Solar was the fastest-growing of the energy industries in 2021, with 255,037 workers, up more than 9 percent from the previous year, according to the latest National Solar Jobs Census. Federal funding anticipated to be available as early as 2023 will further expand clean energy employment, with 5 million new jobs to be had in deploying our future energy systems.
But the jobs that bring these carbon-free technologies to life have developed a reputation for accidents, union busting and precarity. As solar panel installer Thomas Shade told Motherboard, he has grown accustomed to jumping from utility-scale solar farm gigs in North Carolina, where he’s from, to others in Texas, Virginia, Nevada, Georgia and elsewhere, earning anywhere from $16 to $25 an hour paid out by a temp agency. “They don’t want to pay you enough for your room and for you to eat for the week,” Shade said of the itinerant nature of the work. “So you got two guys in beds and a guy sleeping on the floor [and] one guy on the couch or a chair.”
Though he now has a decade of experience working in solar and would like a full-time job with benefits, Shade told Motherboard, he hasn’t been able to land one. For solar workers who have been hired full-time, attempts to unionize have previously been met with intimidation. When, after a series of accidents, construction workers at New York City-based Bright Power attempted to unionize with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 in 2019, the company fired the whole crew, announcing that they would replace those workers with subcontractors.
These stories are concerning for workers most vulnerable to the winding down of fossil fuels, including those who work in oil and gas. Diane Sicotte is a professor of environmental sociology at Drexel University, who co-published a study in June establishing how unionized energy workers tend to be pro-environment and favor clean energy systems, but are wary to switch to jobs like wind and solar due the industry’s notoriety for low wages — a result of how the renewable energy sector has rolled out amid “peak neoliberalism,” Sicotte told Truthout.
Since Bright Power’s union busting in 2019, however, union organizing has picked up pace across industries, as data from the National Labor Relations Board indicates, and public approval of unions is at a 57-year high. Energy workers are no exception. Since July, some of those to vote to form unions include eight energy workers at the North Alabama Electric Cooperative; 33 workers at Covanta Plymouth Renewable Energy in Pennsylvania; 22 workers at a construction supply manufacturer in Illinois and 550 utility construction workers in North Carolina.
An estimated 10 percent of solar workers are now union members or covered by project labor agreements, though membership varies widely by state, and unionization rates appear to correlate with the rigor of state-level legislative wins by and for workers. In Illinois and Rhode Island, the rates of solar workers unionized or covered by a project labor agreement are above average, at 12.9 and 15 percent, respectively. Those two states have passed the most ambitious climate jobs laws on the books.
The latitude of what can be bargained for is also widening. In May 2022, the North America’s Building Trades Unions signed a first-of-a-kind project labor agreement with Danish wind turbine developer Ørsted, which requires all contractors and subcontractors to hire union workers and sets high safety and training standards for those hired to build out 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity that will speckle the shores from Maine to Florida. Such rising collective bargaining activity is not only timely, Sicotte said, but holds potential to level the playing field beyond what’s been previously accomplished in the U.S., where the most significant infrastructure overhaul to date eased economic inequality but also entrenched racist federal policy and laid the foundation for the racial wealth gap.
And the act of unionizing alone might itself be good for the climate. Research published in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research in March suggests that unionization is linked with lower climate-warming emissions. The study found that for every 1 percent increase in unionization, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 0.25 percent, due perhaps to unions’ ability to reduce inequality (a driver of carbon emissions in the Global North) and enable collective bargaining agreements that lead to “green” policies.
The rising environmental-labor coalition whose work stands to be bolstered by the IRA has the potential to usher in a paradigm shift that builds more popular support among workers for tackling the climate crisis, Lara Skinner, a researcher at the Cornell Worker Institute and executive director of the Labor Leading on Climate Initiative, said at the Climate Jobs Summit. “People have to see how building a new clean energy economy improves their lives, expands their access to jobs, increases their pay and benefits, protects and supports existing good jobs, lowers energy bills, expands prosperity and makes our communities healthier,” Skinner said.
The IRA offers a 30 percent tax credit for entities developing energy projects one megawatt or greater that satisfy prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements. Contractors must pay what’s considered a living wage for a given geographic area and ensure that a certain segment of its workforce are qualified apprentices with access to mentors. Unions involved with labor-climate alliances — such as the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers and the Laborers’ International Union of North America — are already training and retraining members, and are well-positioned to expand these programs as more workers join unions, given that union dues, which cover training programs, expand with membership.
But bringing these retraining opportunities to marginalized communities will require building trust and relationships with grassroots groups, as well as intentional outreach, equity experts impress. “We can’t just expect underrepresented workers to materialize,” said Allison Ziogas, journeywoman electrician and labor relations manager for Ørsted.
Still, many environmental and climate justice organizers remain livid that the passage of the most significant climate action to date involved quietly tucking labor and climate provisions into the bill in exchange for continued support for fossil fuel production and market-based “solutions.” José Bravo, executive director of the Just Transition Alliance, calls the exchange “economic blackmail” that’s occurring at the expense of the low-income, Black and Indigenous communities the Biden administration paid lip service to in its first actions. That’s something organizers at large must not lose sight of, he said. Bravo was one of 11 arrested on September 22 for protesting the Big Oil giveaway penned by coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) that would bring the Mountain Valley Pipeline back to life.
Given the IRA’s shortcomings, activists are poised to leverage and expand the IRA’s provisions, including through campaigns for administrative policy changes that link the distribution of IRA funds to agreements like ensuring workers’ right to organize; and requiring that future grant recipients adhere to federal standards on project labor agreements, even for smaller-scale projects. But as long as taxpayer dollars support what activists call false solutions that extend the life of the fossil fuel industry — such as the build-out of infrastructure supporting biogas and hydrogen fuels — workers in frontline and fenceline communities will continue to suffer from the disproportionate health impacts of pollution, thus impacting their ability to learn and work in the first place, advocates say.
Norman Rogers has worked at a Los Angeles-area oil refinery for over 20 years and is second vice president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675. He told Truthout that inhibiting the sunset of oil and gas isn’t even good for fossil fuel industry workers such as himself, in part because it could delay the retraining of this workforce.
“To the extent that we hold onto what’s been, we’re not doing folks that are set to lose their jobs any service,” Rogers said. “Let’s make the break. Let’s do it cleanly. Let’s invest what we would put in [to the Mountain Valley Pipeline] into finding jobs and employment for those folks in those areas.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Conservative coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) released the text of a 91-page permitting proposal containing huge giveaways to the fossil fuel industry on Wednesday night — and senators from both sides of the aisle have expressed their disapproval.
The proposal is the result of a deal made between Manchin and Democratic leaders to convince the conservative Democrat to support the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). It would expedite fossil fuel projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, weaken the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and require President Joe Biden to choose 25 energy projects to prioritize, including a “minimum” number of Big Oil priorities like fossil fuel and carbon capture projects, according to the summary of the bill.
In short, the proposal would majorly ramp up the permitting and construction process for a wide swath of fossil fuel projects and would further entrench the fossil fuel industry for years to come — posing a major threat to a livable planet.
Democratic leaders planned for the proposal to be included in an upcoming government spending bill that must be passed by the end of this month in order to avert a government shutdown. But now that the text of the deal has been released, lawmakers from both major parties are voicing their opposition, potentially dooming the proposal in an ironic twist of fate for Manchin.
The latest Democrat to speak out against the bill was Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), who told reporters that the provisions for the Mountain Valley Pipeline are “completely unacceptable. I was not consulted about it. I will do everything I can to oppose it.”
“Allowing a corporation that is unhappy about losing a case to strip jurisdiction away from the entire court that has handled the case? Unprecedented,” added Kaine, referring to a proposal to require litigation on the pipeline to be moved from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has ruled against the pipeline multiple times, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “It would open the door for massive abuse and corruption.”
Kaine joins a small chorus of Democratic senators who oppose the deal. A group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) made their opposition known with a letter on Wednesday asking for the bill to come to a vote separately from the budget bill so that opponents can vote against it without risking a government shutdown.
The letter was signed by Democratic Senators Cory Booker (New Jersey), Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), among others.
“We have heard extensive concerns from the environmental justice community regarding the proposed permitting reforms and are writing to convey the importance of those concerns, and to let you know that we share them,” the lawmakers wrote, per Politico. Only Sanders has publicly made the pledge to vote against the budget bill if Manchin’s proposal is included.
Meanwhile, it appears that Republicans oppose the deal out of a desire for revenge for the passage of the IRA. Nearly all Senate Republicans have signed onto their own fossil fuel permitting proposal, led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia). Their proposal is similar to Manchin’s bill, with provisions like fast tracking the Mountain Valley Pipeline, but would go further in opening up avenues for air and water pollution with provisions like removing the Clean Air Act requirement for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review federal construction projects. The GOP proposal likely has no chance of passing or being attached to the budget bill.
Manchin’s proposal also faces opposition from Democrats in the House. Last week, a group of 77 House Democrats sent a letter to the chamber’s leadership, urging them to oppose the inclusion of Manchin’s deal in the government spending bill, saying that the provisions amount to “attempts to short-circuit or undermine the law in the name of ‘reform.’”
Climate and Appalachian activists have spoken out against the deal, with hundreds of groups sending multiple letters and leading protests against what they say is a massive and unacceptable giveaway to fossil fuels.
“We’ll never get off fossil fuels if Congress keeps greasing the skids to make it ever easier to approve dirty gas pipelines, refineries and other polluting infrastructure,” government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity Brett Hartl said in a press release that characterizes Manchin’s deal as the “most significant environmental rollback in decades.”
“Any member of Congress who claims this disastrous legislation is vital for ramping up renewables either doesn’t understand or is ignoring the enormous fossil fuel giveaways at stake,” Hartl continued.
Appalachian organizers are angered by the deal, saying that it undoes years of progress and struggle from local Indigenous and community activists.
”For eight years we have tirelessly fought the Mountain Valley Pipeline and other fossil fuel projects in West Virginia and Virginia,” Russell Chisholm, Mountain Valley Watch coordinator, said in a statement. “Nearly a decade of our lives and our health has been shaped by fighting these unnecessary projects as the climate crisis escalates and pummels our homes with intensified storms and floods. Manchin’s dirty pipeline deal is an insult to his constituents and furthers a fossil-fueled death sentence to many people and the planet.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the American ethos, sacrifice is often hailed as the chief ingredient for overcoming hardship and seizing opportunity. To be successful, we’re assured, college students must make personal sacrifices by going deep into debt for a future degree and the earnings that may come with it. Small business owners must sacrifice their paychecks so that their companies will continue to grow, while politicians must similarly sacrifice key policy promises to get something (almost anything!) done.
We have become all too used to the notion that success only comes with sacrifice, even if this is anything but the truth for the wealthiest and most powerful Americans. After all, whether you focus on the gains of Wall Street or of this country’s best-known billionaires, the ever-rising Pentagon budget, or the endless subsidies to fossil-fuel companies, sacrifice is not exactly a theme for those atop this society. As it happens, sacrifice in the name of progress is too often relegated to the lives of the poor and those with little or no power. But what if, instead of believing that most of us must eternally “rob Peter to pay Paul,” we imagine a world in which everyone was in and no one out?
In that context, consider recent policy debates on Capitol Hill as the crucial midterm elections approach. To start with, the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) promises real, historic advances when it comes to climate change, health care, and fair tax policy. It’s comprehensive in nature and far-reaching not just for climate resilience but for environmental justice, too. Still, the legislation is distinctly less than what climate experts tell us we need to keep this planet truly livable.
In addition, President Biden’s cancellation of up to $20,000 per person in student loans could wipe out the debt of nearly half of all borrowers. This unprecedented debt relief demonstrates that a policy agenda lifting from the bottom is both compassionate and will stimulate the broader economy. Still, it, too, doesn’t go far enough when it comes to those suffocating under a burden of debt that has long served as a dead weight on the aspirations of millions.
In fact, a dual response to those developments and others over the past months seems in order. As a start, a striking departure from the neoliberal dead zone in which our politics have been trapped for decades should certainly be celebrated. Rather than sit back with a sense of satisfaction, however, those advances should only be built upon.
Let’s begin by looking under the hood of the IRA. After all, that bill is being heralded as the most significant climate legislation in our history and its champions claim that, by 2030, it will have helped reduce this country’s carbon emissions by roughly 40% from their 2005 levels. Since a reduction of any kind seemed out of reach not so long ago, it represents a significant step forward.
Among other things, it ensures investments of more than $60 billion in clean energy manufacturing; an estimated $30 billion in production tax credits geared toward increasing the manufacture of solar panels, wind turbines, and more; about $30 billion for grant and loan programs to speed up the transition to clean electricity; and $27 billion for a greenhouse gas reduction fund that will allow states to provide financial assistance to low-income communities so that they, too, can benefit from rooftop solar installations and other clean energy developments.
The IRA also seeks to lower energy costs and reduce utility bills for individual Americans through tax credits that will encourage purchases of energy-efficient homes, vehicles, and appliances. Among other non-climate-change advances, it caps out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, reduces health insurance premiums for 13 million Americans, and provides free vaccinations for seniors.
As the nation’s biggest investment in the climate so far, it demonstrates the willingness of the Biden administration to address the climate crisis. It also highlights just how stalled this country has been on that issue for so long and how much more work there is to do. Of course, given our ever hotter planet and the role this country has played in it as the historically greatest greenhouse gas emitter of all time, anything less than legislation that will lead to net-zero carbon emissions is a far cry from what’s necessary, as this country burns, floods, and overheats in a striking fashion.
Earlier iterations of what became the IRA recognized a historic opportunity to enact policies connecting the defense of the planet to the defense of human life and needs. Because of the resistance of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, as well as every Senate Republican, the final version of the reconciliation bill includes worrying sacrifices. It does not, for instance, have an extension or expansion of the Child Tax Credit, a lifeline for poor and low-income families, nor does it raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even though that was a promise made in the 2020 election. Gone as well are plans for free pre-kindergarten and community college, in addition to the nation’s first paid family-leave program that would have provided up to $4,000 a month to cover births, deaths, and other pivotal moments in everyday life.
And don’t forget to add to what’s missing any real pain for fossil-fuel companies. After all, coal baron Manchin seems to have succeeded in cutting a side deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for a massive natural gas pipeline through his home state of West Virginia and that’s just to begin a list of concessions. Indeed, the sacrificial negotiations with Manchin to get the bill passed ensured significantly more domestic fossil-fuel production, including agreement that the Interior Department would auction off permits to drill for yet more oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and possibly elsewhere, all of which will offset some of the emissions reductions from climate-change-related provisions in the bill.
It’s important to note as well that, although progress was made on reducing fossil-fuel emissions, expanding health care, and creating a fairer tax system, for the poor in this country, “sacrifice zones” are hardly a thing of the past. As journalist Andrew Kaufman suggests, “One thing that does seem assured, however, is that the arrival — at last — of a federal climate law has not heralded an end to the suffering [of] communities living near heavy fossil-fuel polluters.” And as Rafael Mojica, program director for the Michigan environmental justice group Soulardarity, put it, the IRA “is riddled with concessions to the big carbon-based industries that at present prey on our communities at the expense of their health, both physically and economically.”
Keep in mind that Michigan is already anything but a stranger to sacrifice zones. Case in point: the water crisis in the city of Flint as well as in Detroit. The Flint Democracy Defense League and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization have battled lead-poisoning and water shut-offs for years in the face of deindustrialization and the lack of a right to clean water in this country. Such grassroots efforts helped sound the alarm during the Flint water crisis that began in 2014 and have since linked community groups nationwide dealing with high levels of toxins in their water supply so that they could learn from that city’s grassroots organizing experience. Meanwhile, so many years later, Michiganders are still protesting potential polluters like Enbridge’s aging Line 5 oil pipeline.
And there are many other examples of frontline community groups protesting the ways in which their homes are being sacrificed on the altar of the fossil-fuel industry. Take, for example, the communities in the stretch of Louisiana between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that contain hundreds of petrochemical facilities and has, eerily enough, come to be known as Cancer Alley. There, among a mostly poor and Black population, you can find some of the highest cancer rates in the country. In St. James Parish alone, there are 12 petrochemical plants and nearly every household has felt the impact of cancer. For years, Rise St. James and other local groups have been working to prevent the construction of a new plastics facility near local schools on land that once was a slave burial ground.
Then, of course, there are many other sacrifice zones where the issue isn’t fossil fuels. Take the city of Aberdeen in Grays Harbor County, Washington, once home to a thriving timber and lumber economy. After its natural landscape was stripped and the local economy declined, that largely white, rural community fell into endemic poverty, homelessness, and drug abuse. Chaplains on the Harbor, one of the few community organizations with a presence in homeless encampments across the county, has now started a sustainable farm run by formerly homeless and incarcerated young people in Aberdeen as part of an attempt to create models for the building of green communities in places rejected by so many.
Or take Oak Flat, Arizona, the holiest site for the San Carlos Apache tribe. There, a group called the Apache Stronghold is leading a struggle to protect that tribe’s sacred lands against harm from Resolution Copper, a multinational mining company permitted to extract minerals on those lands thanks to a midnight rider put into the National Defense Authorization Act in 2015. Along with a growing number of First Nations people and their supporters, it has been fighting to protect that land from becoming another sacrifice zone on the altar of corporate greed.
On the east coast, consider Union Hill, Virginia, where residents of a historic Black community fought for years to block the construction of three massive compressor stations for fracked gas flowing from the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Those facilities would have potentially subjected residents to staggering amounts of air pollution, but early in 2020 community organizers won the fight to stop construction.
Consider as well the work of Put People First PA!, which, in Pennsylvania communities like Grant Township and Erie, is on the tip of the spear in the fight against an invasive and devastating fracking industry that’s ripping up land and exposing Pennsylvanians to the sort of pollutants that leaders in Union Hill fought to prevent. Note as well that, in many similar places, hospitals are being privatized or shuttered, leaving residents without significant access to health care, even as the risk of respiratory illnesses and other industrially caused diseases grows.
Such disparate communities reflect a long-term history of suffering — from the violence inflicted on indigenous people, to the slave plantations of the South, to the expansion (and then steep decline) of industrial production in the North and West, to pipelines still snaking across the countryside. And now historic pain inflicted on low-income and poor Americans will increase thanks to a growing climate crisis, as the people of flooded and drinking-water-barren Jackson, Mississippi, discovered recently.
In a world of megadroughts, superstorms, wildfires, and horrific flooding guaranteed to wreak ever more havoc on lives and livelihoods, poor and low-income people are beginning to demand action commensurate with the crisis at hand.
While reports on the passage of the IRA and student debt relief dominated the news cycle, another major policy announcement at the close of the summer and far from Capitol Hill slipped far more quietly into the news. It highlights yet again the “sacrifices” that poor Americans are implicitly expected to make to strengthen the economy. Just outside of Jackson, Wyoming, one of the wealthiest and most unequal towns in this country, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell committed his organization to take “forceful and rapid steps to moderate demand so that it comes into better alignment with supply and to keep inflation expectations anchored.”
Couched in typically wonkish language, his comments — made in the “equality state” — may sound benign, but he was suggesting capping wages, an act whose effects will, in the end, fall most heavily on poor and low-income people. Indeed, he warned, mildly enough, that this would mean “some pain for households and businesses” — even as he was ensuring that the livelihoods of poor and low-income people would once again be sacrificed for what passes as the greater good.
What does it mean, for instance, to “moderate demand” for food when more than 12 million families with children are already hungry each month? It should strike us as wrong to call for “some pain” for so many households facing crises like possible evictions or foreclosures, crushing debt, and a lack of access to decent health care. It should be considered inhumane to advocate for a “softer labor market” when one in three workers is already earning less than $15 an hour.
It is disingenuous to say that the economy is “overheating,” as if what’s being experienced is some strange, abstract anomaly rather than the result of decades of disinvestment in infrastructure and social programs that could have provided the basic necessities of life for everyone. Nonetheless, Powell continues to push a false narrative of scarcity and the threat of inflation to smother the powerful resurgence of courageous and creative labor organizing that we’ve seen, miraculously enough, in these pandemic years.
At this point, as a pastor and theologian, I can’t resist quoting Jesus’s choice words in the Gospel of Matthew about how poor people so often pay the price for the further enrichment of the already wealthy. In Matthew 9, Jesus asserts: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The Greek word “mercy” is defined as loving kindness, taking care of the down and out. In Jesus’s parlance, mercy meant acts of mutual solidarity and societal policies that prioritized the needs of the poor, which would today translate into cancelling debts, raising wages, and investing in social programs.
Despite the encouraging policy-making that hit the headlines this summer, America remains a significant sacrifice zone with economic policies that justify their painful impact on the poor and marginalized as necessary for the greater good. It’s time for us to fight for a comprehensive, intersectional, bottom-up approach to the injustices that continually unfold around us.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.