Friday Homestead Dispatch

Noxious Nestled Newt

Everyone knows me but no one can tell me. No one knows me even though everyone has heard my name. Everyone talking together makes something that seems like me but is not me. Everyone doing things in the world makes me. I am blood in the streets, the catastrophe you can never forget. I am the tide running under the world that no one sees or feels. I happen in the present but am told only in the future, and then they think they speak of the past, but really they are always speaking about the present. I do not exist and yet I am everything.
You know what I am. I am History. Now make me good. — The Ministry For the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

1.
What do you do when you read that the United States, along with Canada, Australia, Norway, and the United Kingdom—five global north countries with the greatest economic means and moral responsibility to rapidly phase out production—are responsible for a majority (51%) of planned expansion from new oil and gas fields through 2050, with the U.S accounting for more than one-third of planned global oil and gas expansion.

Oil Change International released a report on Tuesday that identifies the United States as "planet-wrecker-in-chief.”

The report notes that "In 2023 alone, the administration greenlit the Alaska Willow Project; approved multiple LNG export facilities in Alaska and along the Gulf Coast, held a massive oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, fast-tracked the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and oversaw the weakening of bedrock environmental laws, making it easier for fossil fuel infrastructure to move forward.”

I’m left a bit speechless here…how do you fight the big business of oil and gas? The executives and shareholders in this country making billions in profit, with much of the fuel price surge driven by the war in the Ukraine, are not tied to any political parties and have little need to be concerned about political issues at all, except to funnel money to lobbyists to ensure future revenue to pass oil-friendly laws by bought and paid for politicians. Repeat that sentence five times really fast…

According to the NRDC, Big Oil shows it can deliver for shareholders but not the planet, and the second quarter of 2023 is no different. Despite oil and gas market volatility, the fossil fuel industry once again earned billions at the expense of the climate and our air and water. The entire world has experienced record high ocean temperatures and heat waves this summer, and U.S. taxpayers alone continue to pay an estimated $20 billion in direct federal subsidies every year to the fossil fuel industry. And that’s not including the billions more that individual states dole out annually to this increasingly destructive industry.

While the ocean warms and marine ecosystems begin to collapse, fossil fuel interest groups are urging the Biden Administration to expand fossil fuels on public lands and waters. In an open letter to the Biden Administration, the American Petroleum Institute and 14 other oil and gas industry organizations called on the President to list 11 new lease sales for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. These lease sales could occur between 2023 and 2028 as a part of the, National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program (five-year leasing program). The leasing area up for auction could cover an estimated 700 million acres of public waters and could result in hundreds of winning bids.

And, according to the New York Times and the International Energy Agency, Overall, oil and gas companies are projected to spend more than $500 billion this year on identifying, extracting and producing new oil and gas supplies and even more on dividends to return record profits to shareholders.

Just take a look at the Exxon-Mobil web site where you’ll see happy hard-hatted workers diligently working to provide for your energy needs. The quote on the front page is: The need for energy is universal. That's why ExxonMobil scientists and engineers are pioneering new research and pursuing new technologies to reduce emissions while creating more efficient fuels. We're committed to responsibly meeting the world's energy needs.

Shell Oil Company (SOC) is also a major U.S. oil company that is the principal American subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, a giant oil company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands. Their happy picture on the Shell U.S. website pictures musicians from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, most likely a heavy donor of said event.

In the U.S., a car is seen as a status symbol, part of our identity. Some have said that a reason smaller cars, as seen in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY, aren’t available here is that U.S. buyers often have different tastes than foreign car shoppers. And the reason we have those tastes has everything to do with automobile manufacturers selling us a giant load of manure for profit. As long as we view vehicles as penis enlargers the more we’ll keep gobbling up what the manufacturers hand out, and thus pumping much more fuel, thus the billions in profit for the shareholders who are loyal to no country nor creed.

And to the next level…

The Guardian reports that Earth’s life support systems have been so damaged that the planet is “well outside the safe operating space for humanity”, scientists have warned. Their assessment found that six out of nine “planetary boundaries” had been broken because of human-caused pollution and destruction of the natural world. The planetary boundaries are the limits of key global systems – such as climate, water and wildlife diversity – beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing. Phasing out fossil fuel burning and ending destructive farming are the key actions required.

Not only do the giant oil firms operate with their own set of rules, big banks are helping to finance the march to planetary doom. Again, the Guardian reports Top US banks like Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase have offered trillions to Saudi Aramco, Exxon and other fossil fuel companies for fossil fuel activity in developing countries in regions such as South America and Africa. Europe’s HSBC and the United States’ Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup lead the pack, offering billions of dollars to big agricultural giants like Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2016), ADM, Cargill and ChemChina.

And you can’t leave the auto industry out of this hot mess…the United Auto Workers are taking a hard line in an ongoing negotiation, and according to a report by Robert Reich there are five main reasons they are doing so: 1) The Big Three have made $250 billion over the last decade, $21 billion in the first six months of 2023 alone, 2) CEO pay at the Big Three is out of sight. Ford’s CEO pulled in $21 million last year. The CEO of Stellantis got $24 million. GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, got a whopping $29 million in 2022, 3) the UAW’s 350,000 unionized auto workers have largely been excluded from the fruits of this prosperity. Over the last four years, their wages have risen only 6 percent, 4) the two-tier wage system that most autoworkers still labor under, which pays new hires substantially less than old ones, and 5) is the emergence of another two-tier system: The Big Three have been quietly siting new plants to supply batteries for electric vehicles in non-union states. As of midnight last night, as I’m sure you’ve heard, the UAW did indeed launch the strike. And, you guessed it, major conservatives are blaming Joe Biden for it. Yes, Joe is personally responsible for CEO’s greed and low wages for the proletariat. JUST. VOTE. RED. Errrr, scratch that…

2.
Some kittens.

3.
In 2021 the child tax credit boost lifted 2.1 million children above the poverty line, from 9.7% the year before to 5.2%. Then, when the GOP (along with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) chose NOT to extend the credit, the poverty rate in 2022 rose to 12.4%. They rejected efforts by the Biden administration and most congressional Democrats to maintain the enhanced child tax credits. As Robert Reich (once again) writes, Ending poverty is not difficult, especially for wealthy nations such as the United States. We know exactly how to do it. We did it. Then we undid it. In effect, the United States is now making a concerted effort to impoverish millions of our children.

Behind the scenes, and something you won’t hear about watching mainstream news, is that in June U.S. Representatives Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Suzan DelBene (WA-01), and Ritchie Torres (NY-15), reintroduced the American Family Act, legislation that would make permanent the expanded and improved monthly Child Tax Credit.

If passed the legislation would 1) make the credit fully refundable, so it would be available to children in families left behind because of an earnings requirement, 2) continue the child tax credit of $3,600 a year for children 6 or younger, 3) expand the credit to $3,000 a year for children ages 6 to 17. 4) allow families to receive the credit every month, and 5) expand the credit to U.S. territories. 

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene said, “The enhanced Child Tax Credit was one of the most transformational policies from the American Rescue Plan, lifting millions of children out of poverty, boosting our economy, and helping parents pay rent, put food on the table, and afford other essentials for their kids. This is a proven program that will help grow our economy by rebuilding and strengthening the middle class. We must build on this progress by permanently reinstating this monthly benefit to ensure that every child has a fair chance at success.”

4.
For a bit of local good news we turn to the University of Arizona where a scale-model solar system, a new, permanent exhibit stretching more than half a mile across the University of Arizona, is located from the Kuiper Space Sciences Building on the UA Mall to Main Gate at the west edge of campus with a collection of 10 informational signs.

Tiny Tidbits of Goddamn!

1. In Houston, new ISD superintendent Mike Miles, a former Army Ranger and CEO of a corporate school chain, is eliminating librarians at dozens of schools in the district while converting their libraries into multi-use spaces where misbehaving students will be disciplined. The libraries at those schools will continue to include books that can be read or checked out by students but are otherwise being reimagined as "team centers" where special programming will be held and disruptive students will be sent so as not to interfere with their classmates' learning. Goddamn!

2. And in more school library news, Leavenworth Republican and Kansas State Board of Education member Danny Zeck got a bit excited when he quoted “I admit that I masturbate” from the teen book “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” The Kansas Reflector reported that Zeck alternately cursed, waved books he objected to, and raised concerns about the “Marxist lesbian” in charge of the American Library Association during a Kansas State Board of Education meeting Tuesday, as other board members tried to redirect the conversation. BOE chairwoman Melanie Haas asked members to refocus on policies and procedures for instructional materials. A few moments later, Zeck appears to say under his breath: “You’re full of sh*t.” Haas responds: “Danny, if you have a question, you’re next on my list.” He later apologized, telling his fellow members he sometimes gets emotional. Goddamn!

A sincere thank you to those of you who have recently become paid subscribers to my ramblings! So looking forward to quitting those overnight shifts at Taco Bell…

And now…