Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland
There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation.
What is Australia's fair share when it comes to financing the necessary climate transition?
In a headline today, the Australian government has pledged AU$150m in #ClimateFinance for Pacific nations.
Good news, right? Isn't this PM Anthony #Albanese "ending the #ClimateWars" by actually doing what #Australia ought to have done years ago? Let's consider that assumption.
Back in 2009 at the much hyped, but ultimately deeply disappointing international climate negotiations in #Copenhagen known as #COP15, one step forward that was agreed, even as more comprehensive or ambitious agreements slipped away was that the wealthy nations of the world (including #Australia) collectively pledged to be providing US$100b each year to help the poorer nations transition away from #FossilFuels (#ClimateMitigation) and develop in ways that help societies adapt to the warming that cannot be mitigated (#ClimateAdaptation).
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Anyone who thinks #FossilFuels are ever the 'cheaper'/'more affordable' option (a claim that hasn't been true for years, even within the very blinkered assumptions of conventional economic analysis), hasn't even begun to reckon with the true costs of #dirtyEnergy
A more clear-eyed analysis would see that continuing to burn ancient carbon to power our societies is largely a way to strip wealth from the poor and those not yet born and funnel the vast majority of it into the pockets of a tiny number of #plutocrats.
The time to end our reliance on #coal, #oil and #gas was decades ago, but today is better than tomorrow for taking the most ambitious steps imaginable that remain compatible with the avoidance of societal #collapse and a commitment to #justice.
Another world is not just possible, given #ClimateDisruption, it is inevitable. The degree to which that world is habitable, equitable or even slightly just is very much up for grabs.
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More at Stake for Auto Workers Than Wages and Benefits
American oligarchs, the plutocrats who own the so-called free press, billionaires and other denizens of the ruling class seem genuinely startled at this strike. Why, asked one corporate-bought-and-paid-for congressman, can’t these strikers just be fired? Others in Congress no doubt wonder why can’t Joe “Phony Lunch Pail” Biden do to them what he did to the railroad workers,
If you regularly follow debates about public policy, especially those involving wealthy tech bros, it’s obvious that there’s a strong correlation among the three Cs: climate denial, COVID-19 vaccine denial and cryptocurrency cultism.
It's a great time to be an #oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.
The Hubris of #Plutocrats Who Shield Themselves From the Climate Crisis
However far they run, they cannot escape the coming heat.
“Jackson Hole” features prominently in a rip-roaring story on the “dissident right” by James Pogue in the Feb 2023 issue of Vanity Fair. The town and its surrounding landscape comprise the kind of place that highfalutin’ refugees have long been drawn to, given its climate and natural beauty, their own sense of privilege
I’m constantly struck by parallels between slaveholders trying to force people in non-slavery states to participate in maintaining slavery (e.g. Fugitive Slave Acts) and this sort of behavior. #Alabama senator #Tuberville is holding up promotions to force the military to stop covering travel for medical care that includes #abortion. Gift access at https://wapo.st/3qlP6Ln#misogyny#ReproductiveRights
With our food systems on the verge of collapse, it’s the plutocrats v life on Earth
Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo
The new paper explores the impacts on crop production when meanders in the jet stream (Rossby waves) become stuck. Stuck patterns cause extreme weather.
Why do the ultra rich and powerful seem to think they will be immune from the global collapse of society? They seem indifferent to the death by starvation or violence of billions of people: that they will somehow retreat to safe bunkers and survive. History shows that when civilisations collapse eventually the poor and desperate turn on the elite, and by then there are no laws to save them. #plutocrats#survival#ClimateCrisis#GlobalWarming
@Radical_EgoCom So true that an entire generation of people born after a World War is collectively responsible for what #RulingClasses have been doing since the beginning of recorded history. Let’s blame old people struggling to survive for what #republicans & #plutocrats have actually done while they were busy working.