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Capitalism = Extinction?
MARC STEINER Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. We’re living in a very dangerous time, as many of you know, when it comes to our environment and our future. There was an article written by one of our colleagues here at Real News for Jacobin called “Socialism or Extinction.” Dharna Noor wrote it. She is one of the leaders of the Climate Bureau here at The Real News and it is a devastating article that makes you wake up. Either you could get totally depressed, or you say, “what do we do to stop this?” Dharna, hi.
DHARNA NOOR Hi. Thanks for having me.
MARC STEINER So I’m— You know, I read the article. I said, my first reaction was, “oh my God. I’m so depressed. Now what do I do?”
DHARNA NOOR Yeah.
MARC STEINER So, I mean, we’ll talk about some of the things you wrote about in here, but you really were trying to put the dangers we face about the environment and our Earth at the foot of capitalism and the foot where our societies are taking us.
DHARNA NOOR Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely a bummer and the question of how not to be depressed, I think, is not one to be undermined. I actually think it’s really important and it’s important to, sort of, deal with the scale of this kind of problem, of issues like in this case, mass extinction and the climate crisis. But also, I guess it’s important that we find a way to collectively not let that depression inhibit our ability to act. Something that’s really important for me is to note that there are ways that we can combat the, for instance, the mass extinction crisis, that would also make life for humanity far better in the short-term. In a sense, this article is just a list of ways that we can do that, a list of facts. But there’s ways that, I think, if we make a more just food system, for instance, we could have short-term benefits and of course long-term benefits. In a sense, I think that gives me hope. It means that, you know, at least fighting the greatest crises of our time will not necessarily make life worse for people. In fact, I think in many cases, it will make life better for many people.
MARC STEINER You know, what you put in this article and it was really well-done and really well- written.
DHARNA NOOR Thanks, Marc.
MARC STEINER And for me, it was also overwhelming because you have to wrestle with the reality in your face. You know, when you write about 40 percent of all amphibian species, one-third of all coral reefs, all marine mammal societies are just being devastated, pollinators are gone, 85 percent of our wetlands on the earth have been decimated with development or for whatever other reason— but to stop that onslaught is the question, which is not an easy thing to answer because people keep saying capitalism is the problem. Perhaps capitalism is a problem, but capitalism isn’t going anywhere tomorrow morning, and the earth is slowly dying, rapidly dying. Losing species, as you wrote, is one thousand times faster than ever before.
DHARNA NOOR Yeah, yeah. I mean, I of course do not disagree that capitalism is the problem, but I also don’t think that it’s true that, you know, until we abolish the profit motive, we can’t make any real changes. I do think that it’s important to fight for reforms that could come long before we get to anything like socialism. For instance, we don’t need to dismantle capitalism to change what kinds of crops get subsidized. We could easily, I think I said in the article, feed a billion more people or even billions more people if we just started prioritizing growing food for people instead of food that gets fed to livestock, which is far less efficient in terms of land use and its footprint in terms of energy. We could, kind of, you know, we could subsidize things like oats instead of corn, which is less energy-intensive to grow. So there are things that we could do, I think, in a reformist sense in the meantime, but I think it is important to, sort of, keep the end goal in mind and to see that the thing driving this is really the motive to grow our profits above everything else, above taking care of the planet and people’s health.
MARC STEINER I think part of the subtext that drives your entire article is just what you just said. You know, when I think about what you wrote about in terms of the farming system that we have in this country. Let’s talk about our own country, right? And to change the nature of farming— And I live out in the country now. I’m surrounded by this beautiful rural area and all the corn that I hate to see growing is all chemical corn, as we call it, chemical soy, because that’s where the marketplace is. That’s what the farmers have to grow if they want to make a living and keep their land because they want people buying their stuff. And so, and these are gigantic farms that are growing all of our strawberries and everything else. So the question is, it would take a real struggle for people to begin to understand what we’re facing for this to change. I think people can be complacent because you go to grocery and buy what you want and come home. You don’t know you’re breathing in plastics every other second every time you do— a credit card’s worth a day they say now in terms of size. I mean, this is part of opening minds in a political struggle, and that’s the question of how do you think you can get to that?
DHARNA NOOR Yeah, and I guess I don’t want to make it seem like there won’t be any sacrifices. It’s true that maybe we won’t have as many choices in the grocery store if we do create a more just farming system, but I think it’s pretty clear that the benefits outweigh that. I mean, a million species, a million plant animal species alone at risk of extinction is huge, and that doesn’t even include things like, you know, microscopic organisms that could have huge effects on other kinds of species and on human life. Plus, quite frankly, monoculture is just not the only way to grow good-tasting crops. I mean, we could prioritize eating and cooking and enjoying the taste of things that are indigenous to our country. I don’t think that that would be such a huge loss for people and we could save, quite literally, billions of lives in the process.
MARC STEINER Talk about this Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that you focused your piece on and the stuff that came out of that. So talk a bit about what they are, who they are, what this report really was, and how it came out.
DHARNA NOOR So this is a UN group, a UN group of scientists. It’s, sort of, the leading group in the world on studying ecosystems, studying life on Earth. And this is the most comprehensive report that’s ever been produced on biodiversity in the history of the world. I think that that’s not contested. I mean, it’s an analysis of—
MARC STEINER When did this come out?
DHARNA NOOR This came out about a month ago.
MARC STEINER That’s what I thought.
DHARNA NOOR Right. Interestingly, very soon after the IPCC’s Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Report, just six months ago or something, which was similarly devastating but also had a similar message. Which is, you know, it’s not too late to change our future. Just, it will take radical, transformative change in, sort of, every sector of the economy, of social life, of political life.
MARC STEINER So when this comes out like this and it—My biggest interest is when you take stuff like this, when you learn that nearly three quarters of the world’s freshwater resources are now devoted to crop or livestock production, and the amount of methane that comes out of that livestock production pollutes the air, that our industrial farming, as you wrote about, is the second biggest polluter on the planet earth after the energy industry itself. So the question is, people aren’t just going to be moved by that polar bear behind us, right?
DHARNA NOOR Agreed.
MARC STEINER [laughs] Unfortunately, so it’s how you popularize the discussion for people to understand what it means for the future, for their children’s future.
DHARNA NOOR I agree, and I do want to say that I think there have been some takes on this report, and on other environmental reports before it, that seemed to assert that it’s elitist or wrong to be sad about nonhuman life being threatened.
MARC STEINER Yes, right.
DHARNA NOOR I don’t really agree. I don’t think that it’s elitist to be concerned about tigers being absent from 96 percent of their natural territory. I don’t think that that’s wrong. I think that it’s human to be concerned about nonhuman life and I don’t think that’s wrong. However, I will say that I think that there’s no question that it’s important that we are honest about the way that this crisis, the mass extinction crisis specifically, impacts human life. You know, it’s not just that mass extinction itself could threaten human life because we depend so much on the ecosystems of the rest of the world. We depend on, you know, a fair climate, we depend on biodiversity for food and for a climate that we can live in. But also, the drivers of this biodiversity crisis are actually the drivers of much, much human suffering themselves. So it’s not just that biodiversity loss is bad for human life. It’s also that, you know, industrial agriculture has been devastating for farmers. Farmers have lost many, many profits, as these four companies that control the majority of the world’s industrial agriculture actually are growing. So it’s not just that eventually these systems will be bad for people. I think right now there are millions of people suffering because of these systems that are driving this crisis.
MARC STEINER And we covered the Monsanto-Bayer merger and all the rest that are happening that are devastating the food industry. You know, when you write about two-thirds of the people of Asia go hungry. One out of six children starve in the developing world and die from starvation. In a country like ours, which is apoplectic on some sectors over immigration and people coming into America, this was driving people to leave. This was driving people to move because they have no choice. They’ve got to move. You know, I interviewed Baba Aye earlier today about what’s going on in Mali and the war going on Mali, and that’s all being fueled by the climate crisis and by the urge to get more minerals out of West Africa.
DHARNA NOOR Yeah and Africa is—Of course, it’s always the countries populated by people of color, poorer countries, that are suffering the worst effects of all of this. I know that that’s at this point kind of obvious, but I think it bears repeating. And that’s not just true of the climate crisis. It’s true of biodiversity loss, as well.
MARC STEINER So I’m curious in this article—And you said you didn’t make up the title, you didn’t come up with the title “Socialism or Extinction.” Jacobin did, [laughs] which is cool.
DHARNA NOOR Yeah. Shout out to Ella Mahony [laughs] who came up with that title.
MARC STEINER Right. But so, I’m curious how this kind of research in putting this article together about this report, how does it affect your work? What has it taught you about what needs to happen, and what kind of stories you need to talk about, and how you need to do that?
DHARNA NOOR I mean, it’s a hard question. On the one hand, this was a—To be perfectly honest, I was writing this at, sort of, a difficult time anyway. I was writing most of this article on my laptop, sitting in the hospital, as my grandfather was threatened with his own mortality. So it was, you know—
MARC STEINER He’s okay now, right?
DHARNA NOOR Yeah. Yeah. He’s living now. Yeah. I should say that. But, I mean, it was an emotional time anyway. I mean, I felt like I was potentially grieving the life of somebody so close to me, who’s nearing the end of their life, and then also grieving, in a sense, the future of so many other people’s lives— human and nonhuman alike. And it’s not easy, obviously, to reckon with a crisis of this scale. I mean, I already find it really difficult to recon with something as huge as the climate crisis, and then this report argues that the biodiversity crisis, which is separate. I mean, it’s inextricable from the climate crisis, but it is a separate crisis in and of itself, is on the same scale of the climate crisis. That’s huge and devastating, but in a sense, that makes it kind of easier to write about.
I mean, you don’t need to develop some incredible narrative to show that. The statistics speak for themselves. I heard David Wallace-Wells, the acclaimed climate journalist, David Wallace-Wells— much has been made of his newest work— say in an interview, these statistics have all of the poetry that you need in them. You don’t need to prove to somebody that a million species facing extinction is bad. I mean, that’s just—The scale of that problem is obvious if you encounter these kinds of statistics. The question is, I think, as you’re saying, how to make this relevant to human beings. I think actually the IPBES Report does that really, really well. It makes a strong case that shows that humanity will be affected by this crisis. I just think it’s important to again show that it’s already affecting human life.
MARC STEINER Well, I think it’s very important for the viewers here, people on YouTube, to know that you have taken the Climate Bureau seriously in helping push that here at The Real News. This article is just, kind of, the heart of why this heart beats so strong and what you have to do. So I just want to say that I really do appreciate the article you wrote—
DHARNA NOOR Thanks, Marc.
MARC STEINER In Jacobin, “Socialism or Extinction,” about what we face, and we look forward to a great deal many reports come out from you and the other folks at the Climate Bureau here.
DHARNA NOOR Thanks so much for having me, Marc.
MARC STEINER Dharna, this is great. And that was Dharna Noor and I’m Marc Steiner here of The Real News. We both are. So we’ll be both talking to you again soon about many things. Take care.
Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of Naval Operations, rebuffed pointed interrogations by GOP lawmakers who grilled him over his decision to recommend sailors read a book deemed by some conservatives as anti-American.
The U.S. Navy’s top admiral also defended moves to address and root out racism and extremism in the forces as well as its efforts to bolster inclusion and diversity, which have prompted criticism from some conservatives and Republican lawmakers.
“Do you personally consider advocating for the destruction of American capitalism to be extremist?” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., asked Gilday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, referring to a passage from Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist,” which argues capitalism and racism are interlinked.
Banks continued to interrogate the admiral over specific quotes from Kendi’s book, which was a No. 1 New York Times best seller in 2020, and statements he had made elsewhere in the past.
Visibly distraught, Gilday fired back:
“I am not going to sit here and defend cherry-picked quotes from somebody’s book,” he said. “This is a bigger issue than Kendi’s book. What this is really about is trying to paint the United States military, and the United States Navy, as weak, as woke.”
He added that sailors had spent 341 days at sea last year with minimal port visits — the longest deployments the Navy has done, he said.
“We are not weak. We are strong,” Gilday said.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., also challenged the admiral by citing specific quotes from the book and asked him how those ideas laid out by Kendi would further advance or improve the Navy’s power.
Gilday responded by arguing the importance of transparency and open dialogue about racism.
“There is racism in the Navy just as there is racism in our country, and the way we are going to get out of it is by being honest and not to sweep it under the rug,” he expounded, adding that he does not agree with everything the author says in the book.
The key point however, he said, is for sailors “to be able to think critically.”
The exchange was the latest in vociferous complaints from some conservative leaders and lawmakers who suggest the armed forces are becoming a pawn for the country’s culture wars and “wokeness” ideology, as the military takes steps to address issues of racial inclusion, extremism, racism and white supremacy.
And only last week, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., accosted Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about Kendi’s book, which Cotton said promoted “critical race theories” at a different Senate Armed Services Committee hearing where Austin was testifying.
Days earlier, Cotton and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas — two combat veterans — launched a “whistleblowers” online platform to report examples of “woke ideology” in the military.
“Enough is enough. We won’t let our military fall to woke ideology,” Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, said in a tweet.
Also in February, Austin instructed a one-day stand-down across the Defense Department pausing regular activities to address extremism and white nationalism in the ranks — an issue Austin declared as a priority after a number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol in January were found to have military backgrounds.
The stand down completed in April was an effort to better understand the scope of the problem of extremism in the ranks, Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby said in a briefing then.
Earlier, Austin had revoked a ban on diversity training for the military.
More recently, in May, a U.S. Army animated ad focused on soldier diversity — featuring the real story of a soldier who enlisted after being raised by two mothers in California — drew criticism and political backlash from some conservative lawmakers.
“Holy crap,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a tweet. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea. . . .”
Cruz was referring to a TikTok video that compared the U.S. Army ad with a Russia campaign that showed buff soldiers doing push-ups and leaping out of airplanes, adding that the contrast made the American soldiers “into pansies.”
The confrontation Tuesday is also the latest in reproaches by Rep. Banks, who is a Naval Reserve officer, and other GOP members over Gilday’s recommendation to include Kendi’s book in the Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program.
In February, Banks sent a letter to Gilday arguing that the views promoted in the book are “explicitly anti-American” and demanded Gilday explain the Navy’s decision to include it on the reading list or remove it.
Gilday responded to Banks in a letter obtained by Fox News saying that the book was included on the list because “it evokes the author’s own personal journey in understanding barriers to true inclusion, the deep nuances of racism and racial inequalities.”
Lamborn and Rep. Vicky Hartzler, D-Mo., also wrote a letter to the admiral to convey their concern about the inclusion of Kendi’s book as well as Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” and Jason Pierceson’s “Sexual Minorities and Politics.”
The GOP lawmakers argued the books “reinforce a view that America is a confederation of identity categories of the oppressed and their oppressors rather than a common homeland of individual citizens who are united by common purposes,“ Lamborn and Hartzler wrote, according to Fox News.
Our understanding of events refines with time. New developments reframe the issues, and prompt reassessment of the solutions applied, their design and outcomes. What does looking back on the 1991 reforms in 2021 tell us?
For three decades, India celebrated and criticised the 1991 reforms. The reformers of 1991 say that the idea wasn’t only to tide over a Balance of Payments (BOP) crisis; the changes they brought in went beyond the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) conditionalities for the bailout. The reforms, they insist, were ‘home-grown’. In the years leading up to 1991, technocrats in government had been thinking and writing about how India’s economic policies had been blocking the country’s rise to potential and the structural changes needed. If the broad range of reforms—including tearing down the industrial license permit raj, an exchange rate correction, and liberalising foreign direct investment and trade policies—could be launched within a matter of days of a new government joining office, they argue, it is because the blueprints were ready, waiting for the go-ahead from the political leadership.
The reformers of 1991 say that the idea wasn’t only to tide over a Balance of Payments (BOP) crisis; the changes they brought in went beyond the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) conditionalities for the bailout.
At least two well-regarded technocrats that were important in the 1991 reforms disagree—publicly and in off-the-record conversations. In a media interview last month, one of them, the economic adviser in the reforms team, Dr Ashok Desai, suggested that if there were any reformers in government before the IMF “forced” India to liberalise in 1991, “they hid themselves very well”. According to him, after the BOP crisis was resolved, finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh turned “dead against reforms”.
The multiple versions of the reforms story make it difficult to separate fact from romance. It cannot be disputed, though, that the 1991 BOP crisis was a turning point for the economy. India had tided over BOP crises earlier with loans from the IMF, repaid them prematurely, and avoided going through with the bailout’s conditionalities. 1991 was singularly different because India was on the brink of default, which is likely to have forced politicians to set politics aside and listen to technocrats. Any default on external obligations would have meant hurting India’s credibility grievously and an inescapable sense of national shame. The government probably took the view that there was no choice other than to take corrective steps. Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao named Dr Manmohan Singh, who had been a technocrat in government and was well regarded in global policy circles, as his finance minister. Dr Singh clearly had the Prime Minister’s, his party’s and the IMF’s trust. Records irrefutably show that the Congress party’s acceptance of the reversals in the interventionist economic policies of the first four post-Independence decades was not secured by the Prime Minister. He had delegated the task of tackling doubts and resistance within the party to his ministers, in particular, the finance minister and the commerce minister, and an aide in his office. The finance minister defended the reforms on the floor of the house in Parliament.
National Public Radio (NPR) ignited a social media firestorm Thursday night over a tweet that appears to mock capitalism, despite taxpayer dollars accounting for much of the organization’s annual budget.
The outlet posted a story titled “And Now, Crocs With Stiletto Heels” that explores a curious new collaboration between luxury fashion brand Balenciaga and Crocs, the rubber slipper company responsible for fashion faux pas among the millions of comfort-clinging owners nationwide.
The caption accompanying the article, which was written in both uppercase and lowercase letters, appears to mock the collaboration: “CaPitAliSm bReEds InNovAtiOn,” it reads.
The tweet’s language sparked outrage on social media, with figures like conservative Tim Young calling out the irony in NPR’s three-word post.
“You wouldn’t exist without capitalism, clown who is tweeting on behalf of NPR,” he wrote.
“Job at public news station wouldn’t exist wo capitalism,” another user echoed. “Are you guys ok?”
“Our tax money shouldn’t pay for this,” one person expressed.
“It’s still a hell of a lot better than communism at breeding innovation, even if some of the products are silly,” one woman fired back.
