eu
Breaking: ICJ rules that Germany can continue Israel arms sales despite genocide
International Court of Justice reject Germany’s attempts to strike out case but refuses by 15 votes to 1 to issue emergency measures banning weapons sales
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has refused Nicaragua’s request for a provisional order banning Germany from exporting weapons to Israel, despite its earlier ruling that Israel is ‘plausibly’ committing genocide in Gaza. Nicaragua had argued that Germany is enabling genocide. The court rejected Germany’s request to strike out the application.
Germany is Israel’s second-largest arms supplier. The court expressed continued concern about the situation in Gaza but has allowed Germany to continue supplying the slaughter, despite Israel’s complete disregard of the court’s existing orders to protect Palestinian lives and Germany’s repression of pro-Gaza protest. The genocide case continues and is expected to take more than a year to conclude.
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Germany as Collateral Damage in America’s New Cold War
As published in Berliner Zeitung.
The dismantling of German industry since 2022 is collateral damage in America’s geopolitical war to isolate China, Russia and allied countries whose rising prosperity and self-sufficiency is viewed as an unacceptable challenge to U.S. hegemony. To prepare for what promises to be a long and costly fight, U.S. strategists made a pre-emptive move in 2022 to turn Europe away from its trade and investment relations with Russia. In effect, they asked Germany to commit industrial suicide and become a U.S. dependency. That made Germany the first and most immediate target in America’s New Cold War.
Upon taking office in January 2021, Joe Biden and his national-security staff declared China to be America’s number one enemy, viewing its economic success as an existential threat to U.S. hegemony. To prevent its market opportunities from attracting European participation as it built up its own military defense, the Biden team sought to lock Europe into the U.S. economic orbit as part of its drive to isolate China and its supporters, hoping that this would disrupt their economies, creating popular pressure to surrender their hopes for a new multiipolar economic order.
This strategy required European trade sanctions against Russia, and similar moves to block trade with China in order to prevent Europe from being swept into the emerging China-centered mutual prosperity sphere. To prepare for its U.S.-China war, U.S. strategists sought to block China’s ability to receive Russian military support. The plan was to drain Russia’s military power by arming Ukraine to draw Russia into a bloody fight that might bring about a regime change. The unrealistic hope was that voters would resent war, just as they had resented the war in Afghanistan that had helped end the Soviet Union. In this case they might replace Putin with oligarchic leaders willing to pursue neoliberal pro-U.S. policies akin to those of the Yeltsin regime. The effect has been just the opposite. Russian voters have done what any population under attack would do: They have rallied around Putin. And the Western sanctions have obliged Russia and China to become more self-sufficient.
This U.S. plan for an extended global New Cold War had a problem. The German economy was enjoying prosperity by exporting industrial products to Russia and investing in post-Soviet markets, while importing Russian gas and other raw materials at relatively low international prices. It is axiomatic that under normal conditions international diplomacy follows national self-interest. The problem for U.S. Cold Warriors was how to persuade Germany’s leaders to make an uneconomic choice to abandon its profitable commerce with Russia. The solution was to foment the war with Russia in Ukraine and Russia and incite Russophobia to justify imposing a vast array of sanctions blocking European commerce with Russia.
The result has been to lock Germany, France and other countries into a dependency relationship on the United States. As the Americans euphemistically describe these NATO-sponsored trade and financial sanctions in Orwellian doublespeak, Europe has “freed itself” from dependency on Russian gas by importing U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) at prices three to four times higher, and divesting itself of its business linkages with Russia, and moving some of its major industrial companies to the United States (or even China) to obtain the gas needed to produce their manufactures and chemicals.
Joining the war in Ukraine has also led Europe to deplete its military stocks. It is now being pressured to turn to U.S. suppliers to rearm – with equipment that has not performed well in Ukraine. U.S. officials are promoting the fantasy that Russia may invade Western Europe. The hope is not only to rearm Europe with U.S. weapons but that Russia will exhaust itself as it increases its own military spending in response to that of NATO. There is general refusal to see Russia’s policy as defensive against NATO’s threat to perpetuate and even escalate attacks to grab Russia’s Crimea naval base in pursuit of the dream of breaking up Russia.
The reality is that Russia has decided to turn eastward as a long-term policy. The world economy is fracturing into two opposing systems that leaves Germans caught in the middle, with their government having decided to lock the nation into the unipolar U.S. system. The price of its choice to live in the American dream of maintaining a U.S.-centered hegemony is to suffer industrial depression. What Americans call “dependency” on Russia has been replaced by a dependency on more expensive U.S. suppliers while Germany has lost its Russian and Asian markets. The cost of this choice is enormous. It has ended German industrial employment and production. That has long been a major buttress of the eurozone’s exchange rate. The future for the EU looks like a long-term downward drift.
So far, the loser in the U.S. New Cold War has been Germany and the rest of Europe. Is economic vassalage to the United States worth forfeiting the opportunity for mutual prosperity with the fastest growing world markets?
The post Germany as Collateral Damage in America’s New Cold War first appeared on Michael Hudson.
French economy minister tells EU to raid €35 TRILLION from private savings to fund war
“35,000 billion euros lying dormant today in European bank accounts… is no longer acceptable” – Bruno le Maire, who said he was going to collapse Russian economy, now wants the money of millions of EU citizens
Bruno le Maire’s ‘rant’
Bruno le Maire, arch-centrist French president Emmanuel Macron’s economy and finance minister, said in 2022 that France and the EU was going to collapse the Russian economy. Now, with Russia’s economy outperforming both the EU and US, le Maire has decided that the EU doesn’t have enough cash reserves and that he wants to raid the bank accounts of European citizens to get access to what he says is 35 trillion euros lying ‘dormant’.
And he wants them, at least in part, to fund war-readiness.
As French observer Arnaud Bertrand has pointed out, le Maire wants to “mobilize all the savings of Europeans” by taking their savings into a ‘European savings product’ – but while le Maire says that it will be ‘voluntary’ for EU nations to enter the scheme, there is no mention of ordinary people having the same freedom of choice if their country does enter it. In a video on the topic, le Maire says:
I am at the Council of Ministers of Finance in Ghent, Belgium, and I just raised a fuss because the capital markets union is not progressing. What is the capital markets union? It’s the ability to mobilize all of Europeans’ savings – 35,000 billion euros – to finance the climate transition, fund our defence efforts, and invest in artificial intelligence.
Since things aren’t moving forward with all 27 members, I proposed that we move forward on a voluntary basis with a small number of member states to propose a European savings product in the coming months, to propose European supervision of capital markets to ensure that regulation works well, and therefore to raise several tens of billions of euros to finance our growth and prosperity.
Europe cannot economically weaken as it has been doing for several months because it does not have sufficient financial reserves. Europe cannot miss the climate turning point because it does not have sufficient financial reserves. Europe cannot miss the artificial intelligence turning point because it is unable to agree on this capital markets union and make Europeans’ savings work.
35,000 billion euros lying dormant today in European bank accounts instead of fostering Europe’s prosperity tomorrow, instead of financing artificial intelligence, instead of financing the climate transition, is no longer acceptable. That’s the gist of my rant this morning in Ghent.
Deducing, probably correctly, that ‘defence’ really means the Ukrainian military, Betrand called le Maire’s plan:
immensely ironical that mister “I’ll collapse Russia’s economy” comes back to us 2 years afterwards, telling us “Europe cannot economically weaken as it has been doing for several months”, we need to take your savings… When Russia’s economy, far from collapsing, has been growing faster than all European countries. All this in part to “fund our defense efforts”, likely a code for “send it to Ukraine”, the most corrupt country on the continent currently fighting an endless money pit war that it has no chance of winning. Pure madness.
Europe and NATO seem increasingly determined to have war, with Sweden reintroducing conscription, other countries discussing it, the UK and EU banging the drum about Russia, whitewashing Ukrainian nazis and misrepresenting military goals, and many of them seemingly ready to conscript the life savings of civilians in order to fund endless conflict.
If only the same resolve was directed toward the actions needed to stop the actual genocidal war being perpetrated by Israel on the civilians of Gaza as there is to fanning the flames of war in Europe.
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Russian media claim UK behind downed plane carrying Ukrainian POWs
Ria Novosti and others say ‘informed source’ close to events insists Britain pressured Ukrainian military to fire missile without checking identity of aircraft
Russian news agencies have claimed that an ‘informed source familiar with the situation’ has told it that pressure from UK military advisers in Kiev was responsible for the 24 January Ukrainian missile that brought down a Russian IL-76 aircraft carrying sixty-five Ukrainian prisoners to a prisoner exchange, along with three Russian officers and six crew members. All were killed.
Ria says that its source – it does not state whether it is a Russian, Ukrainian or British whistleblower – told it that:
The attack on the Il-76 was carried out under pressure from British advisers without the consent of the air defense headquarters in Kyiv and additional verification of information about the movement of aircraft over the Belgorod region.
Russia has claimed that US MIM-104A ‘Patriot’ missiles caused the crash.
US magazine Newsweek has carried the story, but the UK ‘mainstream’ media have ignored it, as they did Seymour Hersh’s investigation last year that concluded that the US was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines that triggered an energy crisis in the UK and Europe.
Calls have been made for an international investigation, but so far nothing has been announced, at least publicly.
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Nicaragua brings ICJ case vs UK, Germany, NL, Canada for complicity in Gaza genocide
While individual UK politicians face potential personal liability for collusion in Israel’s slaughter, UK government as a whole is now also on hook
The Nicaraguan government initiated proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) yesterday against the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Canada for complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza by providing the Israeli occupation with weapons and support used in the killing of Palestinians.
A statement by the Nicaraguan government notes that it had warned these states of their likely complicity in “flagrant and systemic violations” of the Genocide Convention, urging them to immediately stop providing Israel with weapons and tech that were likely to be used in violation of the Convention and that the ICJ’s ruling against Israel last month had put a duty on all countries to stop supplying Israel with the means to conduct its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
The ICJ ordered Israel not just to stop its own killing of Gazans but to “take all measures” to prevent their deaths and to improve the dire humanitarian situation.
UK PM Rishi Sunak, so-called ‘opposition leader’ Keir Starmer and other senior politicians have already been warned by the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) that it will prosecute them for their personal liability for colluding in and providing cover for Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian civilians.
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Ireland leading EU coalition to recognise Palestine, review EU-Israel relationship over human rights
Irish PM Varadkar says ‘a lot’ of EU countries moving toward Palestinian statehood and potential severance or downgrade of Israel accord
Leo Varadkar (image: Houses of the Oireachtas, Creative Commons)
Irish PM Leo Varadkar is leading a coalition of EU countries toward formal recognition of Palestinian statehood – and a review of the EU’s relationship with Israel, over Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
The EU-Israel Association Agreement contains conditions on human rights, and Varadkar told reporters he believed Israel ‘may’ be in breach of those provisions – and that ‘a lot’ of other EU nations were of like mind:
EU-Israeli relations are founded on an agreement which has a human rights clause, and a lot of us believe that Israel may be in breach of it. That’s something we’re talking about.
Irish MPs, MEPs and public have been outspoken in support of Palestinian human rights and in condemnation of Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza, which has killed and maimed more than 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, according to human rights watchdog Euro-Med Monitor.
Varadkar’s announcement will infuriate Israel’s extremist regime, which has been frothing since the International Court of Justice put it on trial for genocide last week and ordered Israel to protect Palestinian lives, a legally-binding instruction that the Netanyahu regime has flouted. Norway’s foreign minister has warned the leaders of states supporting Israel’s mass slaughter that they face potential prosecution for complicity in genocide.
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Video: Irish MEP Daly hammers ‘Butcher Biden’, ‘Frau Genocide’ von der Leyen over Gaza complicity
One of a number of outstanding Irish MEPs, Clare Daly tells Biden to take the name of Ireland out of his mouth
Clare Daly, an outspoken and courageous left-wing Irish MEP, has an outstanding track record of taking the right side of global issues – and she has let US president Joe Biden and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen have both truth-barrels for their complicity in Israel’s genocide and array of other war crimes against the innocent Palestinian civilians of Gaza.
Publishing the clip of her speech at the European Parliament, Daly said:
As Israel loses in the court of public opinion, we see desperate attempts to widen the conflict. All with the blessing and material support of the Butcher Biden, a US President who claims Irish descent. Keep our country out of your mouth, @JoeBiden. Your ancestors disown you.
As well as arming and funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, Biden has eagerly amplified the Israeli regime’s lies about the events of 7 October to help it ‘justify’ the slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of civilians.
And von der Leyen has sided with Israel shamelessly, despite saying Russia was committing a war crime by cutting off electricity and water in Ukraine – a situation far less grim that the one created by Israel doing the same and worse to Gazans.
Oh for politicians of Daly’s calibre in the UK Parliament, to actually provide the opposition that is conspicuous by its absence with warmongering friend of apartheid Keir Starmer masquerading as ‘Labour’ leader.
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More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech – review
In More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech, Meredith Broussard scrutinises bias encoded into a range of technologies and argues that their eradication should be prioritised as governments develop AI regulation policy. Broussard’s rigorous analysis spotlights the far-reaching impacts of invisible biases on citizens globally and offers practical policy measures to tackle the problem, writes Fabian Lütz.
More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech. Meredith Broussard. MIT Press. 2023.
Find this book: 
As the world witnesses advancements in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and new technologies, governments around the world such as the UK and US the EU and international organisations are slowly starting to propose concrete measures, regulation and AI bodies to mitigate any potential negative effects of AI on humans. Against this background, More than a Glitch offers a timely and relevant contribution to the current AI regulatory debate. It provides a balanced look at biases and discriminatory outcomes of technologies, focusing on race, gender and ability bias, topics that tend to receive less attention in public policy discussions. The author’s academic and computer sciences background as well as her previous book Artificial Unintelligence – How Computers Misunderstand the World make her an ideal author to delve into this important societal topic. The book addresses algorithmic biases and algorithmic discrimination which not only receives increasing attention in academic circles but is of practical relevance due to its potential impacts on citizens and considering the choice of regulation in the coming months and years.
[More than a Glitch] provides a balanced look at biases and discriminatory outcomes of technologies, focusing on race, gender and ability bias, topics that tend to receive less attention in public policy discussions
The book’s cornerstone is that technology is not neutral, and therefore racism, sexism and ableism are not mere glitches, but are coded into AI systems.
Broussard argues that “social fairness and mathematical fairness are different. Computers can only calculate mathematical fairness” (2). This paves the way to understand that biases and discriminatory potential are encoded in algorithmic systems, notably by those who have the power to define the models, write the underlying code and decide which datasets to use. She argues that rather than just making technology companies more inclusive, the exclusion of some demographics in the conceptualisation and design of frameworks needs to stop. The main themes of the book, which spans eleven short chapters, are machine bias, facial recognition, fairness and justice systems, student grading by algorithms, ability bias, gender, racism, medical algorithms, the creation of public interest technology and options to “reboot” the system and society.
Biases and discriminatory potential are encoded in algorithmic systems, notably by those who have the power to define the models, write the underlying code and decide which datasets to use.
Two chapters stand out in Broussard’s attempt to make sense of the problems at hand: Chapter Two, “Understanding Machine Bias” and more specifically Chapter Seven “Gender Rights and Databases”. Both illustrate the author’s compelling storytelling skills and her ability to explain complex problems and decipher the key issues surrounding biases and discrimination.
Chapter Two describes one of the major applications of AI: machine learning which Broussard defines as to take
“..a bunch of historical data and instruct a computer to make a model. The model is a mathematical construct that allows us to predict patterns in the data based on what already exists. Because the model describes the mathematical patterns in the data, patterns that humans can’t easily see, you can use that model to predict or recommend something similar” (12).
The author distinguishes between different forms of training a model and discusses the so called “black box problem” – the fact that AI systems are very often opaque – and explainability of machine decisions. Starting from discriminatory treatment of bank loan applications, for example credit score assessment on the basis of length of employment, income or debt, the author explains with illustrative graphs how algorithms find correlations in datasets which could lead to certain discriminatory outcomes. She explains that contrary to humans, machines have the capacity to analyse huge amounts of datasets with data points which enable for example banks to make predictions on the probability of loan repayment. The mathematics underlying such predictions are based on what similar groups of people with similar variables have done in the past. The complex process often hides underlying biases and potential for discriminations. As Broussard points out,
“Black applicants are turned away more frequently than white applicants [and] are offered mortgages at higher rates than white counterparts with the same data […]” (25).
The book also demonstrates convincingly that the owners or designers of the model wield a powerful tool to shape decisions for society. Broussard sums up the chapter and provides crucial advice for AI developers when she states, advice for AI developers when she states,
“If training data is produced out of a system of inequality, don’t use it to build models that make important social decisions unless you ensure the model doesn’t perpetuate inequality” (28).
Chapter Seven looks at how databases impact gender rights, starting with the example of gender transition which is registered in Official Registers. This example illustrates the limitations of algorithmic systems as compared to humans, not only in light of the traditional binary system for assigning gender as male and female, but more generally the binary system that lies at the heart of computing. Both in the gender binary and computer binary framework, choices need to be made between one or the other leaving no flexibility. Broussard describes the binary system as follows:
“Computers are powered by electricity, and the way they work is that there is a transistor, a kind of gate, through which electricity flows. If the gate is closed, electricity flows through, and that is represented by a 1. If the gate is open, there is no electricity, and that is represented by a 0” (107).
When programmers design an algorithm, they “superimpose human social values onto a mathematical system.” Broussard urges us to ask ourselves, “Whose values are encoded in the system?” (109).
The resulting choices that need to be made within AI systems or forms used in administration often do not adequately represent reality. For people who do not feel represented by the options of male and female, such as gender non-conforming people, they are asked to make the choice in which category they fall even though this would not reflect their gender identity. Here again, Broussard reminds us of the importance of design choices and assumptions of coders which impact people’s everyday life. When programmers design an algorithm, they “superimpose human social values onto a mathematical system.” Broussard urges us to ask ourselves, “Whose values are encoded in the system?” (109). The chapter concludes with the challenge of making “technological systems more inclusive” (116) and argues that computers constitute not only mathematical but sociotechnical systems that need to be updated regularly in order to reflect societal change.
Computers constitute not only mathematical but sociotechnical systems that need to be updated regularly in order to reflect societal change.
The book successfully describes the invisible dangers and impacts of these rapidly advancing technologies in terms of race, gender and ability bias, making these ideas accessible through concrete examples. Ability bias is discussed in Chapter Seven, “Ability and Technology”, where she gives several examples, how technology companies try to provide technology to serve the disabled community in their daily jobs or lives. She gives the example of Apple shops where either sign language interpreters are available or where Apple equips employees with an iPad to communicate with customers. For consumers, she also highlights Voiceover screen reader software, auto-captioning and transcripts of audio or read-aloud functions of newspaper sites. Broussard points both to the advantages and the limitations of those technological solutions.
She also introduces the idea of tackling biases and discrimination with the help of audit systems
Readers are invited to reflect on concrete policy proposals and suggestions, on the basis of some ideas sketched out in last chapter, “Potential Reboot” where she shows her enthusiasm for the EU’s proposed AI Act and the US Algorithmic Accountability Act. She also introduces the idea of tackling biases and discrimination with the help of audit systems and presents a project for one such system based on the regulatory sandbox idea, which is a “safe space for testing algorithms or policies before unleashing them on the world” (175). The reader might wish that Broussard‘s knowledge of technology and awareness of discrimination issues could have informed the ongoing policy debate even further.
In sum, the book will be of interest and use to a wide range of readers, from students, specialised academics, policy makers and AI experts to those new to the field who want to learn more about the impacts of AI on society.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: Vintage Tone on Shutterstock.
Time to Make a Material Difference
by Gary Gardner
The close of COP28. Cause for celebration? (United Nations)
Well, COP 28 ended yesterday with (seeming) agreement to (sort of) walk down the fossil fuel ladder toward a (not for a while) sustainable future. Geez! It’s almost 2024, more than half a century since Limits to Growth was published, and the human family is in a pouting mood. Why is it like pulling teeth to do the right thing, sustainability-wise? Why are we sleepwalking toward a cliff?
There are many reasons, of course. But maybe one is that we don’t dare to think creatively, imaginatively, and, least of all, systemically. Too many of us seem to be governed by inertia and comfort and content with incremental change. We seem to miss the radical urgency of the moment.
What would it look like if we insisted on living like responsible humans, caring for each other—and for the planet that cares for us? What might it look like, for individuals, companies, and governments? My guess is that at each level, the principals would step back, look at the big picture, and work to respond to our crisis in as comprehensive and systemic a way as possible.
The Power of One
Each of us is an economic actor with a responsibility to shape a sustainable economy. “Consumer” is a title we should take seriously, given that consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy, and it’s largely folks like you and me doing the shopping. If individuals drive the economy, it follows that we could play a major role in shrinking its size, one person at a time.
Many people already live simply and soberly, but the poster child for simplicity might be Lauren Singer, who gained prominence a decade ago when her YouTube video showed her entire waste load for a year. Odds and ends like clothing labels and fruit stickers that she’d been unable to offload constructively were squeezed into a single, 16-ounce Mason jar. On later videos Singer reported that the same jar held five years’ waste, suggesting that she had mastered an essentially zero-waste lifestyle.
Buying in bulk is part of a zero-waste lifestyle. (Laura Mitulla on Unsplash)
And that’s her systemic secret: commitment to a zero-waste lifestyle. It’s a comprehensive philosophy that extends well beyond curbside recycling to minimize her materials imprint on the planet. Singer recycles, composts, buys in bulk, and favors second-hand goods over new. She steers clear of plastic. She avoids packaging almost entirely, largely by making her own toothpaste, lotions, deodorant, and cleaning supplies, as her Trash is for Tossers blog describes.
Singer is an extreme example, to be sure, but her experience suggests what a systemic approach to consumption might look like. A zero-waste ambition looks and feels different from a promise to recycle aluminum cans, or to embrace meatless Mondays. Yet however marginal Singer’s experience, she asserts that it’s not difficult once you learn how to do it. She adds that her zero-waste lifestyle has left her richer, healthier, and happier—not a bad return at all, and benefits fully realized only because of her comprehensive systemic approach to it.
We consumers may not be ready to follow Singer’s example fully, but we have ample room to reduce our consumption and waste. In contrast to the nearly unappreciable contents of Lauren’s mason jar, the average American garbage can ferries nearly 1,800 pounds of waste to the curb each year. Each pound eliminated saves material, of course, but also energy, and it avoids changing the climate. Add these to richer, happier, and healthier, and you have an incentive package for the comprehensive approach to reducing one’s personal materials footprint.
Tapping Corporate Engines
Corporate PR departments work hard to display corporate efforts to green their operations. Just check out any of the annual corporate sustainability reports—80 percent of Fortune 500 and S&P 500 firms have one—that claim steady improvements in firms’ efficiency and waste reduction.
Yet corporate efforts to reduce materials use are often narrow in scope and ambition. Consider Delta Airlines, which is seeking to ditch the single-use plastic cups used in its in-flight beverage service. The company has designed and is now testing new paper cups made of materials that work well with hot, cold, and alcoholic beverages and are recyclable. If trials of the new cups are successful and the cups are adopted across the Delta network, they will eliminate nearly 7 million pounds of single-use plastics each year, the airline says.
Kudos to Delta for working to eliminate plastic cups. But couldn’t it have thought more creatively and systemically about its plastic cup problem, with greater benefit to itself, society, and the environment? Why not stop providing cups altogether and encourage passengers to bring their own reusable versions? Offer incentives, or maybe collaborate with designers of water bottles to build a cup into their design, once a feature of thermoses. Those bottles are already tucked into the side pouches of many a backpack carry-on!
Broader thinking like this could help create a societal commitment to re-usable products and reduced waste, a continent-sized version of Lauren Singer’s reuse habit. It would require a savvy PR campaign to prepare the flying public, but if successful, wouldn’t Delta’s enlightened practice spread quickly to other airlines? And from there to cafeterias, coffee shops, and virtually all take-out restaurants across the land.
Today’s ubiquitous water bottles could be designed for reuse and could replace disposables. (Jonathan Shembere, Pexels)
And not just cups: Why not replace disposable dinnerware generally with beautifully designed mess kits that are lightweight, durable, collapsible, and portable? In the process, businesses that rely on disposables could convert a cost center (the current disposables), into a money-maker (the reusable eating ware), sold at any food establishment and even on Delta flights!
Of course, any systemic critique of Delta would extend beyond its beverage service. The elephant on the plane is not in the cabin, but in the wings, in the form of jet fuel. One of the most difficult economic sectors to mitigate, aviation sports a large and growing carbon footprint because each flight uses tons (literally) of fossil fuel. Indeed, if global commercial aviation were a country, it would have been sixth among the world’s largest emitters of CO2 in 2019 (before flying took a dive during the COVID pandemic). Passenger air travel constituted the highest and fastest growth in individual emissions, even as the efficiency of aircraft and flight operations increased steadily.
Meanwhile, initiatives like “sustainable” aviation fuel, electric aircraft, and hydrogen aircraft all have serious drawbacks, leaving the industry still heavily dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. More creative and systemic thinking will be needed, outside-the-box thinking similar to swapping out disposables for reusables. A start in this direction is the innovative partnering practice some airlines have with rail companies to eliminate short-haul flights in favor of train travel. At least that starts to approach the solution—ending the habit of fossil-fueled flying—needed to reform airlines.
So yes, Delta’s work to eliminate single-use plastic is good. But it’s hardly the system-level overhaul we need from corporations.
Changing the Rules
If many individuals are slow to challenge the consumerist mindset, and if corporate efforts are unambitious in their sustainability ambition, governments are well positioned to set the stage for comprehensive, systemic change to alter patterns of materials use. On this front, encouraging news was announced by the European Union last week. The European Parliament and Council agreed provisionally to legislation “to make sustainable products the norm,” an unprecedented intervention in product design on the continent. The ‘take-make-use-dispose’ economic model used in industrial economies for decades “can be avoided,” they announced.
The new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) is one piece of the EU’s Green Deal, which seeks to put the entire EU economy on a sustainable footing. The ESPR will replace the EU’s 2009 Ecodesign Directive, which largely focused on energy efficiency. By contrast, ESPR covers a wide range of products and broadens the scope of requirements applied to each product, with the expected effect of decreasing the economy’s resource requirements and increasing their circularity.
Look at the adjectives describing the vision of the legislation; they are concepts that have excited sustainability researchers since the 1990s. Products should be durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable, and made of recycled materials. They should not contain “substances of concern” that reduce recyclability. Premature obsolescence—limiting a product’s lifetime via design features—will be prohibited. Destroying unsold products will be discouraged and in some cases, banned.
ESPR: Maybe we’ll value old and lasting over new and fleeting? (Wikimedia Commons)
The circularity and sustainability criteria should apply to a broad range of goods, including intermediate ones. So they will cover iron, steel, aluminum, chemicals, and textiles, as well as goods like, furniture, tires, detergents, paints, and lubricants,. And the law will apply to any product sold in the EU, including imported products.
The regulation also creates a “Digital Product Passport” to help consumers make more sustainable product choices. The ‘passport’ is essentially an eco-certification scheme that uses product tags to convey measures of the product’s sustainability.
Of course, the legislation could contain as many loopholes as it does inspiring passages of progressive law, so caution is in order. It’s not clear that it applies to online sales, for example, or to agricultural products, which have a huge environmental footprint. And it’s not clear if products will be evaluated using life-cycle analysis, to give the fullest understanding of their impacts, although some analyst believe it will. And it would be smart to expect industry blowback as the law is progressively applied.
The European Parliament and the Council must formally adopt the new regulation, which is expected in the first quarter of 2024. Within nine months after adoption, officials will unveil the first working plan, identifying the first products to be targeted. Product-specific requirements will be spelled out in further legislation. Each product will have its own transition period. If all goes well, the legislation’s impact could begin to be felt within a year or two.
Close, but no Cigar
Of course, none of the exemplary cases cited or suggested here would guarantee a steady state economy. They are about making resource use more efficient rather than capping or scaling back total materials use. But surely zero-waste lifestyles, redesigned travel, and rigorous rules for a materially simpler economy is more congruent with steady statesmanship than simply recycling, re-designing paper cups, or a focus on efficiency. A comprehensive, systemic approach could make all the difference.
Suppose, for example, that beyond a focus on minimizing waste, people worked to reduce their entire materials footprint. They’d be keen to reduce their carbon footprint, of course, and they’d likely find that the simplest and surest path is to greatly reduce the sheer volume of material in their lives.
Shopping for services rather than goods would likely help. Appreciating nature—at parks, on hiking trails, even on neighborhood walks—rather than seeking distraction at the mall or on TV would deliver meaning with a minimum of material. Pursuing friendships and community involvement is another materials-lite path (in principal, at least) to an enriched life. The guiding ethic: tread lightly on the earth.
The future of transatlantic travel? (For a few). (Dave Smith, Flickr)
Suppose, too, that corporate commitment extended beyond greening its margins to a wholesale rethinking of its very purpose. Airlines would have a particularly tough go of it, as there is no avoiding the reality that fossil-fueled flights would have to end, and alternative fuels and technologies are distant and in any case still materials-intensive. Airlines could think creatively and look to the long run, exploring investment in cleaner modes of transport such as airships and sailing ships. But the emissions and materials math would have to pencil out, and it’s hard to imagine that sustainable long-distance travel could survive at today’s scale. (Which points us back to the individual, who will have to lower expectations of the material base of their lifestyle.)
At the government level, suppose that the EU applied ESPR aggressively across all product categories, and that it continued to lower its population growth rate, which averaged less than 0.2% annually over the past decade. These developments would arguably constitute a credible down payment on a resource-use cap and a steady state economy. But it would require an unflinching commitment to radically reducing the material footprint of the EU economy.
Approached systemically and creatively, the timid signs of progress commonly cited today could be enlarged and multiplied, boosting our confidence that a steady state economy could be within reach. No more weasel words in final communiques of international sustainability conferences. It’s time to step up our game and insist on seeing a material difference.
Gary Gardner is CASSE’s Managing Editor.
The post Time to Make a Material Difference appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Dublin city council unanimously agrees to fly Palestinian flag in solidarity with Gaza
Palestinian flag flying during a demo in Manchester (image: S Walker)
Dublin city council will fly the Palestinian flag from its buildings in solidarity with Gaza against oppression and genocide. The move was agreed unanimously by city councillors last night, after a motion was submitted by the Independent Group, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, People Before Profit and several individual councillors. The flag will be flown for a week, beginning today.
This is not the first time that the flag has appeared above Dublin’s City Hall – in 2017, it was raised to mark fifty years of the illegal occupation of the West Bank. Irish MEPs have been among the most outspoken in the EU parliament against Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Shamefully, the UK government opted to project the Israeli apartheid occupier’s flag on public buildings, despite strong public opposition.
Dublin councillor Cieran Perry told the Irish Independent:
Over 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the indiscriminate attacks begin. More than 6,000 of the victims have been children. This slaughter must stop, we reiterate our call for an immediate ceasefire and for the release of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
It’s obvious Israel couldn’t care less about the widespread disgust at their indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Gaza so we have to continue to keep the pressure on the leaders in the countries supporting [Israel].
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