Politics – The Cooperative Society

Domestic Damage Assessment of Trump’s First Three Months in Office

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
April 2025, Issue 52
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Trump has begun his second term as President with a flurry of executive orders downsizing the federal government, reducing assistance to developing countries, and, in early April, doubling down on and then “PAUSE”ing a bewildering array of tariffs around the world: on traditional friends, trade rivals, small developing countries, and even a few uninhabited islands.

His America First Trade Policy, that’s essentially based on bullying the rest of the world, is likely to have serious negative consequences across the globe, including in the United States. I thought about cataloguing the international impacts of his quixotic words and deeds in this article, but decided that such an approach would be too overwhelming for me to write and for you to read.

Instead, the focus of this article is on a brief damage assessment of his administration’s actions at home – on the pocketbooks, health, and other quality of life issues in the United States. There is a caveat to this analysis. Trump changes course a lot. His tariffs and other actions should be viewed as “bargaining chips.” In the 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, which a ghost writer wrote for him, Trump gives his take on how he “masterfully” negotiates deals that are to his advantage. Too many people have the mistaken impression that Trump is a successful businessman and economic genius. Many well-researched analyses, however, have concluded that he is neither of the above. For example, see here and here. So, with his incompetence and self-serving unpredictability in mind, following is a summary of the downward economic spiral in which he is leading the country and its inhabitants.

Let’s start with his campaign promises. The American Federation of Teachers recently noted that during his campaign, Trump “vowed to make housing more affordable, lower grocery prices, . . . and reduce the overall cost of living. But since taking office, [he] has failed to deliver on these promises.”

Based on the analyses of numerous economists, quite the opposite of increasing American prosperity is already well underway. Both the cost of living and the unemployment rate are likely to go up rather than down during Trump’s administration. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as “stagflation,” and is measured by the “Misery Index” (the sum of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate).

For example, the well-respected Budget Lab at Yale University recently published a report that projected the economic impact on American households of Trump’s tariff bombardment and retaliations to it by other countries as calculated on April 15: “The price level from all 2025 tariffs rises by 3% in the short-run, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $4,900 [in 2025] . . . .” As noted above, these estimated numbers will change during the year as the global tariff war transpires.

And that’s just the potential impact of tariffs on US consumers.

When economists analyze the combined hot mess that will result if his economic goals related to tariffs, cutbacks in the federal budget (which appear to be particularly targeting Medicaid’s 70-some million recipients), tax reductions (you guessed it – primarily for large corporations and the wealthy), and an increase in the national debt, they reveal the makings of an historic economic disaster for the United States, and less so, for the rest of the world, over the next couple of years.

And that’s just the fallout from his “economic agenda.”

Then there are the other major domestic disruptions that Trump is setting in motion. To name a couple near the top of the list: the deportation of about 1 million immigrants in 2025 and the slashing of federal health, education, social, and other services.

Again, as many economists are pointing out, the above actions are likely to worsen the quality of life in the United States rather than improve it.

One of the most egregious examples of Trump’s cabinet appointments is Robert Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Social Services. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, recently called for him to resign, citing “complete disregard for science.”

On top of all of the above, Americans are beginning to be viewed as pariahs in many other countries. We get booed at hockey games between Canadian and American teams. Tourism in the US by residents of other countries is already starting to suffer, creating a downturn in the US hospitality industry.

Those manufacturing jobs that Trump is promising? Forget about it. With a few exceptions, foreign corporations can’t just pick up and relocate their production facilities to the US overnight. Plus, there’s a good reason why many of those jobs have been outsourced in the first place. They don’t pay much. And without clarity on what Trump will decide to play with in his sandbox from day to day, companies can’t make informed decisions anyway.

Conclusion
In a recent Fox News interview, Trump asserted that “We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. … It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.” As this article illustrates, we aren’t heading toward greatness with the bizarre, cobbled-together actions begun during his first three months in office.

Terms likes stagflation and the Misery Index have already come back into our vocabulary in 2025. It will take several years and a dramatic shift in leadership before we have a healthy domestic economy again.

COP29: Fiddling while the world burns

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
December 2024, Issue 50
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Azerbaijan a poor choice for the November 2024 UN climate change conference
Dominant role by petrostates and the fossil fuel industry in slowing progress on a renewable energy transformation
President-elect Donald Trump, China, and Saudi Arabia – three elephants impacting the outcome of the conference
Extreme dissatisfaction by poor countries with the amount of financing approved for addressing climate change problems

Incremental responses to a set of world-threatening environmental crises
For the 29^th time, UN member countries held a Conference of the Parties (in UN shorthand, a “COP”) to draft policies to address problems associated with global warming, and for the 28th time, little progress was made. COP21, held in Paris in 2015, was the exception, because of the historic agreement achieved at that event to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” by 2050.

However, scientific projections show that member countries’ dithering, insincere commitments to reducing fossil fuel production and consumption, and cockamamie pseudo-solutions, such as championing fossil gas as a bridge to clean energy and unscalable carbon capture and storage technologies, have made it virtually impossible to achieve that goal by 2050.

Petrostates and fossil fuel companies again block significant progress
As with COP28, held in the United Arab Emirates – an authoritarian petrostate, COP29 was hosted by Azerbaijan – another authoritarian petrostate. In welcoming attendees to this year’s conference, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev proclaimed oil and gas as a “gift of God,” a message that flew in the face of what the conference was supposed to be about. Not only that, BBC reported that the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, was recorded touting Azerbaijan’s attractiveness as a fossil fuel investment – thus turning a conference intended to reduce fossil fuel emissions into a bazaar for increasing them.

Equally troubling, the fossil fuel industry itself appears to be calling many of the shots behind the scenes of these recent annual COP charades. The Guardian reported that “Fossil fuel-linked lobbyists outnumber delegations of almost every country at climate talks in Baku.”

Questionable performance on the top agenda items for the conference
Two of the most important topics at this year’s conference were climate credits and climate finance.

Climate credits are a means for countries and corporations to indirectly reduce their greenhouse gas footprints by paying for initiatives carried out by other entities that reduce emissions, for example carbon sequestration through forest preservation and clean energy development projects. Research has shown that most climate credit projects reduce emissions by far lower amounts than claimed, thus the need for greater accountability for these projects. The conference did reach an agreement on tighter rules for such projects. But the devil is always in the details, and time will tell whether the revised climate credit criteria and monitoring will be effective.

Climate finance, essentially payments by developed countries to developing countries to assist them to carry out clean energy projects and mitigate damages from global warming, was by far the most contentious issue addressed at the conference. And it was not addressed to the satisfaction of most developing countries. A last-minute “compromise,” which was really a “take it or leave it” proposition by the developed countries, was passed at the end of the conference offering far less money than the trillions of dollars needed. As reported by International IDEA, “Some delegations defined the outcome as ‘a joke’ and ‘an insult’, the least developed countries (LDCs) and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) being the most disappointed.”

The three elephants
Trump, who has consistently promised to pull out of the Paris Agreement in 2025 as he did during his first administration, was not at the conference, but his shadow loomed over it. His frequent climate change denials and the projected absence of US funding for climate action over the next four years put a damper over the conference.

China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, but also defined as a developing country, was not formally included in the commitment to provide climate financial assistance to other developing countries. But, informally, China positioned itself to replace the United States as the climate action champion of the developing world.

Saudi Arabia played the role of behind-the-scenes spoiler at the conference, undercutting the agreement reached at COP28 to “transition away from fossil fuel.” Largely as a result of its lobbying efforts, the theme of fossil fuel reduction appeared nowhere in the COP29 final documents.

The need for an effective worldwide strategy to take on global warming
BBC published an article summarizing an open letter presented by climate experts to conference participants, stating that, as currently structured, the climate talks “simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.” The BBC article further reported that “the authors [of the letter] are concerned that the current COP process is not able to make change happen quickly or able to force countries to act.”

Cop30, to be held in Brazil in November 2025, has an ambitious agenda.

Key focus areas for this event will be:

Road Transport: Expanding the Global Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEV) Transition Roadmap to increase ZEV adoption in emerging markets.
Power Generation: Tripling renewable power capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements.
Steel and Cement: Defining low and near-zero emissions standards to facilitate adoption within national policies by 2025.
Buildings: Launching a Global Framework for Action for Near-Zero Emission and Resilient Buildings (NZERB).

Conclusion
Here’s hoping that UN General Assembly members and the rest of us can begin to achieve the “exponential speed and scale” in Brazil, which appears to have a genuine commitment to rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a goal that was so clearly lacking in Azerbaijan.

Recent severe droughts in Africa. Ignoring these climate disasters won’t make them go away.

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
August 2024, Issue 48
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out E.G.’s new book, “The Emerging Cooperative Economy”

People have a tendency to think that if we just pretend a problem isn’t there, voilà, the problem disappears. This magical-thinking approach to “problem-solving” is especially prevalent when the problems are somebody else’s. For many of us, heat waves, torrential rains, rising sea levels, hurricanes, and droughts are somebody else’s problems (including our children’s and grandchildren‘s) and not our own. Therefore, we needn’t worry about them or take actions to solve them.

To illustrate this “out of sight, out of mind” mentality, most of us have no idea that much of Africa south of the Sahara has been experiencing extreme drought conditions since 2020. And why would we? Our “Global North” news media tell us little or nothing about these ecological and humanitarian disasters, despite the fact that they are affecting about 50 countries and 1.25 billion people – approximately 15% of the world’s population.

Southern Africa
According to the US Agency for International Development, “Southern Africa has recorded the most severe drought during the January-to-March [2024] agricultural season in more than 100 years. . . . An estimated 26 to 30 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity throughout the region . . . . Four countries [Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe] had declared a state of emergency due to drought as of May.”

The Greater Horn of Africa
The World Health Organization recently stated that the Greater Horn of Africa [Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda] “accounts for close to 22% of the global humanitarian caseload in 2024. It is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change. The historic four-year drought that hit East Africa caused massive suffering. The increase in deadly climate-related disasters together with conflict has driven large displacements and extremely high levels of hunger. 45.9 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity. . . . 10.8 million children under the age of five years are estimated to be facing acute malnutrition.” For comparison, that is more than half of the total number of children under five in the entire United States.

The Sahel (West and Central Africa)
The ten countries of the Sahel region comprise about 5% of the world’s population. Drought conditions in the Sahel are currently less widespread than in eastern and southern Africa. However, the region has a long history of droughts, and many changes in agricultural practices and contingency plans must be implemented to prepare for future disasters related to food insecurity.

Potential ways to ameliorate drought in Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is not powerless in the face of frequent and widespread food insecurity. The following represent examples of efforts to address this crisis:

Emergency food assistance
The United Nations World Food Programme is “the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.” Emergency food aid like this is important but is not a replacement for ongoing efforts to sustain agricultural production in the countries most affected by food shortages.

Increased irrigation
ODI, an independent international think tank, makes a strong case for increasing irrigation in Africa, which “can increase yields and production, protect against yield losses to variable rains, and enable cultivation in dry seasons and of potentially high-value crops that consume more water. Crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa are often compared unfavourably to those seen in Asia. . . . Asia has 30% of its arable land irrigated, compared to 6% or less in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Conservation agriculture
According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, “Conservation Agriculture (CA) is a farming system that can prevent losses of arable land while regenerating degraded lands. It promotes maintenance of a permanent soil cover, minimum soil disturbance, and diversification of plant species. It enhances biodiversity and natural biological processes above and below the ground surface, which contribute to increased water and nutrient use efficiency and to improved and sustained crop production.”

Regenerative agriculture
The Noble Research Institute defines regenerative agriculture as “a management philosophy that seeks to improve soil health. At its core, regenerative agriculture is the process of restoring degraded soils using practices (e.g., adaptive grazing, no-till planting, no or limited use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer, etc.).” One way to think of regenerative agriculture is that it applies to animal farming as well as crop agriculture.

Agricultural cooperatives
I have conducted approximately a dozen evaluations of agricultural co-op development projects in sub-Saharan Africa during the past 20 years. Most of these co-ops play an important role in training small-scale farmers in conservation agriculture and other drought-resistant practices. A key benefit of these co-ops is their ability to bring large numbers of farmers together in order to efficiently improve farming techniques and help farmers gain access to agricultural supplies and identify markets for their agricultural products.

Agricultural co-op members in Ghana – E.G. Nadeau

Of course, all of these approaches to reducing the toll of drought and the resulting humanitarian and ecological consequences in sub-Saharan Africa cost money. Multi-lateral aid through the United Nations and other sources, bilateral assistance from countries in the Global North, cooperation among African countries, and philanthropic support are needed to make a positive difference, especially as the negative impacts of global warming continue to mount. Farmers often know effective ways to improve agricultural management techniques and market access. They just don’t have the funds to implement them. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a program that provides small cash grants to farmers and others that allows them to make their own investment decisions.

Conclusion
The main problem with magical thinking is that we can only fend off reality for so long. The longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive problems will be to solve, and the more unnecessary suffering and damage to the environment will occur. What’s more, drought in sub-Saharan Africa is only one example of a worldwide set of catastrophes resulting from human-caused global warming. Disastrously, most countries are not acting quickly enough on this broad set of global problems.

As the climate crisis impacts more and more people, it is becoming increasingly difficult—and increasingly perilous—to ignore. A shift in the way we think about community is necessary. We can no longer afford to consider our sheltered enclaves as separate from the plight of others. To understand the effects of climate change in some distant village not as an injury to “them” but as an injury to “us” can at least guide our thinking on how to be responsible members of a global community.

Taking on the most dangerous drug cartel in the world: the fossil fuel industry

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
April 2024, Issue 46
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

In early March 2024, Darren Woods, chief executive of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest investor-owned oil company, asserted that “‘The world is off track to meet its climate goals and the public is to blame.’ Exxon is among the top contributors to global planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. But Woods argued that big oil is not primarily responsible for the climate crisis.”

As the article in The Guardian goes on to report, “Experts say Woods’s rhetoric is part of a larger attempt to skirt climate accountability. No new major oil and gas infrastructure can be built if the world is to avoid breaching agreed temperature limits but Exxon, along with other major oil companies currently basking in record profits, is pushing ahead with aggressive fossil-fuel expansion plans.”

‘’‘It’s like a drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems,’ said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia business school.’” (Quoted from the same article.)

In a similar vein to Woods’s comments, Amin H. Nasser, the CEO of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil and natural gas company, recently labeled the phaseout of fossil fuels as a “fantasy.”

The source of 80% of CO₂ emissions
To underscore what the real fantasyland is, one needs only to look at the recent headline-grabbing Carbon Majors Database Launch Report, page 31, published in April 2024. One of the most startling statistics in the report is that ”57 fossil fuel and cement producers [are] linked to 80% of global fossil CO₂ emissions since the Paris Agreement” signed by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2015. In other words, the world’s fossil fuel emissions could be radically reduced by changing the behavior of a few dozen companies.

Why aren’t we able to swiftly ameliorate the climate crisis? The basic answer is that the world’s economic problem-solving model is broken. We are deferring to those most responsible for global warming and other world problems – large for-profit corporations, powerful governments, and their enabling political and economic elites – to solve the very problems that they are responsible for creating and perpetuating. Wagner’s reference to drug lords is a very apt analogy.

So, we need a new paradigm, one based on putting the well-being of the many ahead of the profits and power of the few.

Supply and demand
In a December 2023 article I outlined one strategy for outmaneuvering the fossil fuel industry: reducing the demand for their products by continuing to reduce the relative cost of clean energy compared to dirty energy. As I wrote, “Basic economics tells us that no matter how much fossil fuel companies can produce, they won’t be able to sell their products if they are not competitive in the marketplace. In other words, dirty energy companies can control supply of their products, but they can’t control demand for them. As demand dries up, the market for oil, gas, and coal disappears.”

I cited the example of the European Union as employing such a demand-side strategy that puts its 27 member countries on track for net zero carbon emissions by 2050. A key part of the strategy is an Emissions Trading System that transitions EU companies from fossil fuels to clean energy such as solar, wind, and geothermal energy. A second component, as summarized by the European Commission, is to use a “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) . . . to put a fair price on the carbon emitted during the production of carbon intensive goods that are entering the EU, and to encourage cleaner industrial production in non-EU countries.”

Expanding the EU’s initiative
But the EU cannot fight this battle alone. The world needs a Carbon Reduction Initiative II – a broad, international coalition of countries that would accelerate their pace of change toward an increased use of clean energy. Coalition members could impose a tax on carbon emissions generated by domestic companies similar to the EU’s cap and trade system, and a border adjustment mechanism applied to the importation of carbon-intensive goods. If the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and dozens of other countries were to enact such carbon taxes on domestically produced and imported goods, China, India, Russia, and other major oil-, gas-, and coal-producing states and companies would be far more inclined to abandon their dirty energy ways.

There are a range of other components to this demand-side strategy favoring clean energy over dirty energy. Clean energy is less expensive (and on course to being even more economical in the decades ahead). It’s also a far less risky long-term investment for companies and countries that are likely to face stranded assets when the value of their fossil fuel energy reserves decreases as demand drops off. The longer these countries and companies wait to join the clean energy bandwagon, the more expensive their energy transitions will be.

Clean energy also doesn’t pose the health risks of fossil fuels such as polluted communities; accidents arising from production, distribution, and industrial applications; and environmentally ravaged landscapes.

Legal challenges against fossil fuel companies are also on the rise within countries and in international courts. These costly challenges are based on the environmental degradation, overvaluation, and lies that fossil fuel companies have spread about the “benefits” of their products.

In summary, we are already beginning to break our addiction to fossil fuels as the world’s primary sources of energy. We can accelerate this recovery through concerted efforts to rapidly reduce demand for fossil fuels among most of the world’s countries.

Following COP28, does the world now have an agreement to end fossil fuel use?

No way!

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
November/December 2023, Issue 44
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D

In early December, most of the countries of the world wrangled with Saudi Arabia and other petrostates at COP28 – the recent climate change conference in Dubai – over whether there should be an explicit reference to a phaseout of fossil fuels in the conference’s final agreement. The debate went far into overtime, and the pro-phaseout advocates appear to have won the battle.

But don’t believe it! This is a Swiss-cheese, non-binding agreement that “Dirty Energy” will find plenty of ways to subvert.

Despite the many loopholes, there is hope for a genuine phaseout of the vast majority of fossil fuels by 2050. It won’t happen by trusting the goodwill of the fossil fuel-producing companies and their allies but, instead, by reducing the demand for these fuels as quickly as possible.

How do we reduce demand?
The short answer is by continuing to reduce the relative cost of clean energy versus dirty energy. We need to accelerate the deployment of clean energy in both the Global North and the Global South, rapidly increase energy efficiency, make trillions of dollars available for the expansion of clean energy resources, provide support to energy-poor and vulnerable countries to cope with the harmful effects of climate change, and end subsidies to the producers and distributors of dirty fuels.

Basic economics tells us that no matter how much fossil fuel companies can produce, they won’t be able to sell their products if they are not competitive in the marketplace. In other words, dirty energy companies can control supply of their products, but they can’t control demand for them. As demand dries up, the market for oil, gas, and coal disappears.

Examples
Let’s dig a little deeper into this demand-side strategy for phasing out dirty energy. The best place to start is with a couple of good examples. In 2023, the European Union enacted “Fit for 55” as a package of programs to accelerate the EU’s reduction of carbon emissions – with the goals of achieving a 55% reduction of emissions in 2030 compared to those in 1990, and net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The main components of Fit for 55 are:

An emissions trading system (ETS) that gradually increases the cost of carbon emissions by both domestic “operators” and by companies wanting to export goods to EU member countries
The addition of several new target emitters to those already subject to the ETS, including shipping, aviation, road transport, and energy-inefficient buildings
Clear, measurable goals and increasingly severe consequences over time for operators failing to meet the goals that are built into the system
Periodic updating of the implementation strategy based on changing conditions
A carbon border adjustment mechanism that effectively imposes carbon taxes on companies operating outside the EU that market their products to the EU. These carbon taxes protect EU-based companies from unfair competition.

In summary, this strategy is a straightforward, clearly understandable means to reduce fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions in order to achieve the 2030 and 2050 Paris Agreement goals.

Thirteen states in the United States provide a second set of examples of demand-side programs to reduce fossil fuel use. Like the European Union, these states also use carbon-pricing mechanisms to ratchet down fossil fuel use by utilities and other companies. What makes this a big deal is that these states have a significant presence in the world economy. If California were a country, it would have the fifth largest economy in the world.

This demand-side approach could be enlarged dramatically in the next few years, especially if funds were available to developing countries to accelerate their clean energy growth. After all, the large, developed countries in the world caused the current climate crisis through their profligate use of fossil fuels, especially during the last century. And yet, developing countries are suffering the main consequences of this profligacy in the form of droughts, starvation, floods, excessive heat, and other climate-related disasters. Countries in the Global North have a responsibility to provide technical and financial support to these developing countries. Such aid would be part of a broader strategy to reduce worldwide carbon emissions and global warming.

As reported by a UN press release, “The United Nations Climate Change conference, COP28, has concluded with a historic agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable energy and increase climate finance for the most vulnerable.”

We have the potential to make this agreement more than just a set of vague promises, especially through concerted efforts to increase the use of clean energy and to rapidly reduce demand for fossil fuels. This demand-side strategy can make a dramatic difference by 2030 despite the disingenuous actions of Dirty Energy to continue the world’s dependency on fossil fuels for as long as possible.

A neglected source of clean energy

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
September 2023, Issue 43
By E. G. Nadeau

From rural Uganda to Madison, Wisconsin, renewable natural gas (RNG) is an important source of clean energy that also has other major environmental benefits.

What is RNG? It’s a gas derived from organic waste material such as livestock manure, food waste, garden and lawn clippings, and other animal and plant-based material. It is often concentrated on farms, in landfills, and in waste treatment facilities.

The big difference between “natural gas” and renewable natural gas is that the former is a fossil fuel and the latter is a clean energy resource derived from current waste products.

I first encountered the use of renewable natural gas as a clean energy resource when I was doing a research project on dairy cooperatives in Uganda in 2006. I met a middle-aged widow who was raising two daughters from the proceeds of a two- or three-cow dairy farm. She sold the milk to her local co-op and used the cow manure to produce biogas. She had learned a simple technique from a dairy co-op advisor on how to build a small manure digester and to pipe the gas into her house. The biogas provided the energy for two small lamps and a gas cooking stove. She was able to pay the school fees for her daughters from the sale of milk and to provide lighting for them to study in the evenings.

Biogas and its more purified product, renewable natural gas (RNG), can be generated by an anaerobic digester that can be as simple as the one used by the Ugandan dairy farmer or it can be a multi-million-dollar processing facility.

Renewable natural gas is a valuable environmental resource not only in communities in developing countries but those in developed countries as well, including Madison Wisconsin, where I live.

The difference between so-called “natural gas” and renewable natural gas
Many people have the misconception that “natural gas” is a clean fossil fuel. In fact, it’s a dirty, nonrenewable source of energy. Natural gas is made up of almost 90% methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and is a major contributor to global warming. Natural gas produces slightly more than half as much carbon dioxide as coal when it is combusted, but it is prone to leak significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere at the wellhead, during its distribution, and at the point of combustion. Some scientists have concluded that because of this leakage, natural gas may be just as bad for global warming as coal.

Renewable natural gas, in contrast, is carbon neutral because it is derived from an ongoing recycling of plant and animal products. It also has the benefit of reducing methane emissions from landfills, livestock, food scraps, and other degradable waste products.

According to the American Biogas Council, there is a cornucopia of benefits from RNG and other biomass processing. “Biogas systems protect our air, water, and soil by recycling organic waste into renewable energy and soil products, while reducing GHG emissions.

“In the U.S., there is an urgent need to manage the millions of tons of food, water and animal waste. The main benefits of biogas systems come from the fact that they are recycling all this material while also producing renewable energy and soil products which displace fossil fuels.

“When you put these and other benefits together, we can prevent tons of carbon emissions from entering our air, prevent nutrients from entering our waterways, create healthier soils with natural, non-fossil fuel-based fertilizers, and produce reliable, baseload renewable energy.”

The American Biogas Council identifies substantial growth opportunities for these biogas-related benefits. In the United States alone, the Council projects that more than 15,000 new biogas systems could be developed. Worldwide, there is massive potential for these systems.

A cluster of anaerobic digesters process organic waste to become renewable natural gas.

Following are two brief examples of biogas and RNG use

East Africa

In East Africa (including Uganda), farmers and local communities are turning organic waste into biogas for cooking, lighting, and other household uses, while at the same time reducing carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

Since the vast majority of households in developing countries use dirty and unhealthy fuels such as bottled natural gas or scarce resources such as wood or charcoal for cooking and heating, biogas is an excellent clean energy alternative.

Madison, Wisconsin, USA

My favorite thing about living in Madison is the chain of lakes that runs through the city and the surrounding countryside. This beautiful resource, however, is not what it used to be. Seventy years ago, the lakes were crystal clear – excellent for swimming, boating, and picnicking along the shorelines. Today, the lakes are plagued with weeds and periodic blooms of blue-green algae that are toxic to humans and animals. On several summer days each year, the lakes stink because of the decaying vegetation.

The primary cause of this deterioration of the lakes‘ quality? Phosphorus runoff from the increasingly large nearby dairy farms that provide nutrients for the weeds and algae. In the past few decades, far more phosphorus has been imported to the Madison-area watershed in the form of chemical fertilizers and animal feed than has been exported from it as dairy, meat, and grain products. Thus, the mess the lakes are in today.

Madison, Wisconsin, is situated on a chain of lakes that runs through the city and the surrounding countryside.

What does this lake problem have to do with renewable natural gas? Anaerobic digesters can radically reduce the amount of phosphorus runoff as well as the amount of methane generated by cow manure, landfills, and other sources of waste.

In fact, for the first time in the past seven decades or so, the Madison-area watershed is on the verge of exporting more phosphorus per year than it imports because of two recently installed manure digesters and one planned for 2024 or 2025, all of which will not only extract RNG from manure, but also remove harmful chemicals such as phosphorus. The long-term result will be increasingly clear lakes as well as the reduction of harmful methane emissions into the atmosphere.

The county landfill also has a new state-of-the-art processing facility that converts methane from landfills into RNG. The facility inserts this renewable gas – and that generated by manure digesters and other sources – into natural gas pipelines which allow the clean energy fuel to be used locally as well as transported to other parts of the country.

Conclusion

Renewable natural gas needs to become a better-understood and more frequently utilized resource for creating a clean energy future on small dairy farms in Uganda as well as in metropolitan areas in the United States and other countries.

Algeria gets an F for its climate actions. Tunisia gets a B. Why are these ratings important for the rest of the world?

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
January 2023, Issue 39
by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

I recently took a two-week trip to Tunisia and Algeria. Here are my observations on the climate situations in the two countries, which are neighbors in North Africa along the Mediterranean Sea.

Despite its fall back into authoritarianism, Tunisia appears to be making a genuine effort to reduce its carbon emissions. There are solar panels spread throughout the country. The government is planning an additional 1.7 GW of solar construction projects in the next three years.

Tunisia is famous for its olive trees and date palms that are ubiquitous in the northeast and northern regions of the country. These plantations are not only important to the country’s economy but also to its sequestration of carbon.

In October 2021, the country increased its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 41% by 2030 compared with 2010.

A contrast in Algeria

Algeria, on the other hand, is on track to have a worse carbon emission record in 2030 than it did in 2015. Its 2015 climate plan sets a low goal of 27% of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2030, but its climate actions indicate that its performance will be far worse than that.

Algeria increased its oil and gas production during the Russian war on Ukraine in 2022, and accelerated its exploration for domestic gas and oil. In other words, Algeria is going backward rather than forward in its reduction of climate emissions.

These two countries account for a very small part of the world’s carbon emissions. But small percentages add up, especially in countries such as Algeria that are flaunting their disregard for the world’s clean energy initiatives.

A questionable sharing of energy

Algeria is far from alone in this category. Take Morocco, it’s neighbor to the west as another example. Much is being made of an agreement between Morocco and the United Kingdom in which electricity from solar and wind sources – enough to meet 8% of the UK’s electricity needs – is planned to be sent by undersea cable to the UK.

However, one doesn’t hear much about the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project in which Morocco is planning to participate with Nigeria and a number of other West African countries to pipe large quantities of natural gas within the region. If my calculations are correct (and they may not be), the gas project would transport about twelve times as much energy per year as the electricity project. So much for transitioning to clean energy.

Dozens of countries aren’t taking the reduction of carbon emissions seriously, or worse, like Algeria, are actually undercutting the world’s carbon emission goals.

In the 2015 Paris Agreement, the UN helped countries negotiate a procedure to create “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) in which each country would develop its own climate goals and modify them over the years. The big problem with this approach is that there are no required targets for country-level goals, and some are abusing the process by setting weak goals or by not making an effort to carry out their goals.

A Berber cave house in Tunisia, probably a few hundred years old. The Berbers used the insulation of the caves to stay warm in winter and cool in the summer.

Dealing with scofflaws

There are three ways the world community can deal with these scofflaws: apply economic sanctions, provide incentives, or both.

For example, the G20 countries are imposing a $60 per barrel limit on the price of Russian oil in the international market. The goal is to limit Russia’s revenue from oil sales.

Similar international sanctions could be put on countries, like Algeria, whose energy policies and actions are increasing climate change problems rather than reducing them.

Incentives can also be a powerful means for improving energy performance. There is currently a project in South Africa intended to wean the country off coal and carry out a major shift to renewable energy. The United States and European countries are helping to finance this project.

Whether by economic sanctions, incentives, or both, the NDCs need to be backed up by enforcement and/or economic and technical assistance.

What could happen if we let the current pattern of hollow promises or outright disregard of needed climate actions continue? We won’t meet our goal – agreed to through the United Nations – of keeping the world’s temperature below 1.5°C compared to preindustrial levels, and we will reap the consequences in terms of human-made environmental catastrophe.

Photos by E.G. Nadeau

Politics

The January 6 Committee and the Future of American Democracy

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
July 2022, Issue 36
by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Let’s start with a subtle series of quotes from William Barr referenced in a recent New Yorker article:

Bill Barr did not think much of Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. According to his videotaped testimony before the House select committee investigating how those lies resulted in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump’s former Attorney General told Trump this to his face. Among his choice words about various claims by the Trump legal team: “bullshit,” “completely bullshit,” “absolute rubbish,” “idiotic,” “bogus,” “stupid,” “crazy,” “crazy stuff,” “complete nonsense,” and “a great, great disservice to the country.” What’s more, Barr added, if Trump actually believed the garbage he was spewing about the election, then he had become dangerously “detached from reality.”

The hearings currently being conducted by the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol” may rival, or even exceed, the impact on the future of American democracy of the 1973 Senate Watergate Hearings. While the 1973 hearings played a pivotal role in bringing about President Nixon’s resignation by exposing his involvement in the Watergate break-in, the current hearings may reduce the likelihood of future coups and preserve democratic electoral processes in the United States for decades to come.

Some have questioned the political balance on the committee between Democrats and Republicans (seven of the former and two of the latter). However, the facts that the committee co-chair is Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, and that in the seven committee hearings held to-date, the majority of the testimony has been by Republicans with close links to the Trump administration, has dispelled some observers’ concerns about committee bias.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-Miss.), gives opening remarks as Rep. Liz Cheney, (R-Wyo.), looks on, at the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack public hearing on June 9.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/12/politics/january-6-committee-transcripts-doj-request-thompson/index.html

It’s too early to tell what impact these hearings will have on the perception of Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection, or of his continuing “Stop the Steal” campaign of election lies. But, since the hearings began, a recent poll has shown a weakening in support for Trump as a 2024 presidential candidate.

So, kudos to the bipartisan January 6 committee! Congratulations have to be qualified, however, because we have yet to see the conclusions and recommendations of the committee’s final report, scheduled to be completed before the November midterm elections. Also, if the Democrats lose control of the House, the new Republican majority is likely to immediately terminate the committee and reject its recommendations. Similarly, if the Republicans win control of the Senate, any bills resulting from the committee’s work would hit a dead end there.

Despite these negative scenarios, the committee’s courageous work on behalf of American democracy will never be forgotten.

But, uh-oh, the threat to our democracy is not over yet

Not by a long shot.

Regardless of the persuasive evidence that the committee amasses and reports regarding the activities surrounding the January 6 coup attempt, that does that not mean that it will preclude future such attempts to steal elections in the United States. The unprecedented attempt to undermine the 2020 presidential election has unfortunately set the stage for more of the same in future elections.

A number of efforts are underway by Trump-assisted and inspired national, state, and local Republican officials and candidates and by the current conservative Supreme Court to disenfranchise voters in future elections. Four main strategies are being pursued:

Gerrymandering is ameans to change the boundaries of voting districts to unfairly benefit one party over the other. In recent years this sleazy technique has been used far more by Republicans than by Democrats. And, unfortunately, the Supreme Court has effectively sanctioned this practice, even in a case that was clearly racially motivated.
Voter suppression is an umbrella term covering dozens of electoral rules that make it more difficult for some groups of citizens to vote than others. A number of Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted such rules in recent months. For example, requiring photo IDs tends to discourage voting by the elderly end the poor, who are less likely to have a drivers’ license than the rest of the adult population. Another example is reducing the number of polling places, which makes it more difficult for people without their own transportation to get to the polls. And on and on.
Legitimating the “independent state legislature” doctrine is an even more extreme tactic for disenfranchising voters. It involves a sketchy interpretation of the Constitution that argues that state legislatures should have the final say in approving or disapproving a set of electoral results. With the support of this doctrine by an extreme Supreme Court, a state legislature could arbitrarily decide that a set of election results were invalid, and substitute its own “victorious” candidate or slate of candidates, ignoring the will of the voters. A recent article in The Economist makes the case that the adoption of this anti-democratic doctrine is not so far-fetched given the current political orientation of some Republican-dominated state legislatures and the wacko majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Electing governors and secretaries of state who agree to reject “unfavorable” election results is an equally insidious means to steal elections. Trump and his loyalists attempted this type of approach in the 2020 presidential election, but were thwarted by ethical Republican officials at the state level. However, there is a concerted effort underway to elect secretaries of state and governors in 2022 who would be willing to overturn the results of free and fair elections by refusing to ratify them, and substituting slates of “fake” electors.

The need for future federal legislation that would preclude stealing presidential and other elections

Such legislation may be hard to come by in the near future, due to opposition by many currently serving Republican members of Congress.

How do we address this democracy-threatening problem?

A key first step would be a national mobilization of voters to preserve American democracy by electing officials at all levels who oppose the types of shenanigans outlined above.
After voting the rascals out and their ethical replacements of both parties in, pass federal legislation that guarantees voter rights and cannot be interpreted to allow for manipulation of vote counts at the local, state, or federal levels. Note that there is a bipartisan committee in the Senate that is planning to introduce legislation to preclude the kind of electoral shenanigans attempted by Trump and his loyalists in the 2020 presidential election and being planned for 2024.
As extreme rightwing members of the current Supreme Court retire, select future members who clearly and explicitly oppose the independent state-legislature doctrine and other ideologically based positions that would undercut free and fair elections in the United States. Part of this transition could be based on the passage of federal legislation that limits the tenure of Supreme Court justices to fixed terms, for example 10 years.

Conclusion

In its public hearings, the January 6 Committee is doing an excellent job of exposing in gripping detail the big lies pushed by Trump and his loyalists about a stolen presidential election and the many illegal actions that they and others have taken to launch a coup to install him as an illegitimate president.

However, the committee’s job, and indeed the job of the American people, of shoring up our democracy and ensuring that we will be safe from future such insurrection attempts is still in its early stages.

This article has outlined some of the threats to American democracy that are still very much unresolved. It has also presented key steps that we can take to counter these threats.

Democracy Is Making A Comeback!

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
March 2022, Issue 34
by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

“The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2021 is down to 1989 levels. The last 30 years of democratic advances are now eradicated. Dictatorships are on the rise and harbor 70% of the . . . world population . . . .”
Democracy Report 2022

Not exactly uplifting news for those of us who value “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Other recent analyses have drawn similar conclusions about the erosion of democracy over the last decade or more.

And then along came Putin the Terrible‘s[1] invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In addition to the deaths, destruction, suffering, and dislocation inflicted on Ukrainians by Russia’s ”special military operation,” there have been three major consequences not intended by Putin: strong, effective resistance by the Ukrainian government and its people to the invasion; an outpouring of support for Ukraine by democratic countries around the world; and a level of political, economic, and military cooperation among them that has not been seen since the end of World War II.

Thus, despite the gradual decline in democratic institutions in recent decades and the continuing tragedy of the war in Ukraine, the tone of this newsletter is optimistic about the future of democracy in the world. I will start out by reviewing the recent, mostly negative, trends related to democracy, then analyze the early reactions of many democratic countries to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and conclude by projecting a renewal of democratic growth in the years ahead.

Changes in Democracy Since World War II

Each year the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Freedom House and other organizations publish reports on the current state of democracy in the world. For the past 16 years the EIU’s Democracy Index has been on a downward trend. The Freedom House index has shown a similar negative pattern for 17 years. That is, the countries of the world have become less democratic and more authoritarian during most of the 21^st century to date.

*Freedom in the World.* The note in the lower-left corner reads: Note: Countries whose scores were unchanged are not included in this comparison. *Freedom in the World* assesses 195 countries and 15 territories.

There was a very different pattern that began during World War II, according to the Center for Systemic Peace. The world experienced an unprecedented flowering of democracy that continued through the remainder of the 20^th century. According to the Center, the approximate number of democratic countries increased from 10 during World War II in the early 1940s to 80 in 2000, and autocratic rule declined from a peak of about 90 countries in the late 1970s to 30 in 2000.

What accounts for the rapid rise, then gradual decline of democracy since World War II?
This is a complicated question. Following are some possible answers.

Much of the proliferation of new democracies after World War II resulted from the end of colonialism in Asia, Africa, and on islands in Oceania and the Caribbean from the late 1940s through the 1970s, and from the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia around 1990. As we have found out, however, one cannot just wave a magic wand and create a democracy.

In 1945, there were 74 sovereign states in the world. Today, there are 193 member states in the United Nations, representing almost every country in the world. That is approaching an almost three-fold increase in less than 80 years.

Many of the newly minted (or liberated) countries struggled to become democratically run – even if they were formed as nominal democracies. Major problems included:

The tendency of elected leaders to seek lifetime tenures rather than submit to periodic, fairly conducted elections
Traditional ethnic rivalries that degenerated into civil wars rather than developing into functioning democracies
The self-interested interference of former colonizers or other outsiders that undercut democracy
Military coups

There are a different, but overlapping, set of factors that have undercut long-established democracies in the early 21^st century:

Self-serving politicians and political parties, often financed by wealthy individuals and corporations, that weakened the role of other parties in order to secure and maintain political control
Military coups
Inequality that undercuts balanced political participation
Political apathy
White supremacy

Taken together, these diverse factors have reduced the level of democracy around the world.

The reaction of democratic countries to Putin’s war
The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, and other democratic countries and institutions have denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They also quickly supported a range of economic sanctions on Russia and the provision of arms and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, including support for refugees.

The current actions of democratic countries around the world echo their response to the German, Italian, and Japanese invasions of their neighbors in World War II. Democracy in the world was up against the wall in the early 1940s, but the allies prevailed in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

At the time, Russia was a key, but uneasy, part of this anti-fascist coalition. As was borne out in the following decades, Russia had a very different, long-term goal from its democratic allies – creation of an authoritarian Soviet empire rather than preservation and expansion of democracy.

Now, Russia is the autocratic aggressor against its democratic neighbor, Ukraine. And a world democratic alliance has rapidly formed to counter this aggression.

A resurgence of democracy, an unintended consequence of Putin’s war
As Jennifer Rubin put it in a recent Washington Post opinion piece: “A renaissance of bipartisan, pro-democracy sentiment may be one of the many startling consequences of Russia’s invasion.”

As this newsletter is distributed in late March 2022, there is no way of knowing yet what the short- or long-term effects of Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine will be. Nor is it clear whether or not the heightened level of cooperation among democratic countries of the world will continue after the war is over. Another uncertainty is whether the current democratic upsurge will translate into transitions within countries that make them more democratic.

For example, will the current bipartisan support of Ukraine in the United States create a broader conciliatory relationship between the two political parties? Will support of Ukraine reduce the proliferation of some of the crazy conspiracy theories about the outcome of the last presidential election and set the stage for free and fair elections in 2022 and 2024?

In Hungary, will support of Ukraine lead to the electoral defeat of Prime Minister Victor Orban, who has turned the country into an oppressive, “illiberal democracy” during the past decade? Will President Erdogan of Turkey or Prime Minister Modi of India curb their autocratic tendencies in the face of popular support for democratic reforms? What impact will support of Ukraine have, If any, on China’s international relationships?

In sum, will there be a carryover from the heroic actions of millions of Ukrainians, and the support for these actions by hundreds of millions of people around the world and by the countries in which they live?

We don’t know the answer to these questions yet. But I’m betting on future reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House, and other analysts, showing increases in democracy around the world rather than the gradual decreases we have seen in recent years.

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An edited version of this article first appeared in The Capital Times, a weekly newspaper published in Madison, Wisconsin, on Saturday, March 26, 2022.

[1] There are a number of parallels between Ivan the Terrible, the brutal tsar who ruled Russia in the mid-1500s, and Vladimir Putin. For example, “Ivan’s reign was characterised by Russia’s transformation from a medieval state to an empire … but at an immense cost to its people and its broader, long-term economy.”

Note:
The Cooperative Society Project has been following trends in democracy since we began in 2015. You can read more in the second edition of The Cooperative Society – and in several articles. All can be accessed at our website.

Covid 2022: Five Lessons and Three Predictions

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
January 2022, Issue 33
by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

I had planned to write about the resurrection of the Build Back Better legislation in the United States Congress, but as of this writing, it is stalled.

Instead, the big news I’d like to reflect on is what appears to be a plateauing of worldwide Covid cases, and significant declines in some countries. South Africa, where the Omicron variant originated, has one-sixth the number of cases that it had a month ago. The United Kingdom, the first European country hit hard by Omicron, has experienced an almost 50% decline in weekly cases since its peak level. The United States has begun a downward trend in just the past week.

New cases and deaths. Graphic from *The New York Times*.

Thus, it’s time to look back at the world’s almost two-year ordeal (so far) with the pandemic and to prepare for what comes next.

This is a fitting Cooperative Society topic because, if we’re going to shape a better world, we have to learn from the lessons of catastrophic events like the worldwide spread of the coronavirus and do a much better job when the next killer virus or other worldwide disaster comes along.

The five lessons and three predictions:

Lesson 1. Avoid complacency about potential future disasters

In many ways, international health organizations, governments, pharmaceutical companies, and the scientific community got caught with their pants down when Covid emerged in China in December 2019. There had been a lot of discussion in the early 2000s about creating a quick response system to address new viruses and other major international health threats. However, when Covid arrived, the world’s response capabilities were woefully inadequate and had to be cobbled together anew.

The lesson? After more than 5.5 million global Covid deaths and counting, let’s get serious this time. We need to create and maintain a worldwide readiness system.

Lesson 2. Act quickly and cooperatively when disaster strikes

This lesson builds directly on the previous one. It’s not enough to have a system in place to deal with potential worldwide health and other disasters. The system needs to be activated quickly, effectively, and universally. China dawdled, mostly in secrecy, when the country’s leaders became aware of the seriousness of a new virus that first emerged in Wuhan in mid-December 2019. China’s leaders were slow to warn the rest of the world about the potential threat of a pandemic. And when they did come clean, many of the world’s political leaders minimized the threat and/or were slow to act. For example, the infamous comment by then-President Trump on January 22, 2020: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

Lesson 3. Denial is the hobgoblin of little minds

Speaking of Trump, the United States, under his lack of leadership, became the world’s bastion of incompetence in limiting the spread of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in 2020. His denial mentality continued even after his presidency ended, carried on by other Republican leaders and followers. As a result, in January 2022, the U.S. still has the lowest vaccination rate among developed countries and the highest number of Covid deaths of all the countries in the world.

On the international stage, there were a number of other governmental leaders who exacerbated Covid deaths through their attempts to minimize the seriousness of the pandemic. For example: Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Lukashenko in Belarus, and Lopez Obrador in Mexico.

The lesson? To avoid unnecessary suffering and death in pandemics and other health crises, governmental leaders should avoid political posturing and, instead, take actions based on science.

Lesson 4. We have the ability to solve complex problems

On the positive side of the Covid ledger, the world has an incredible ability to solve scientific and logistical problems. In the United States and in other countries, major funding was provided to pharmaceutical companies and scientific institutions to develop vaccines, tests, and other means to combat the pandemic. In an unprecedentedly short period of time, several effective vaccines were available for widespread use in some countries.

Lesson 5. The distribution of resources

We still need to learn how to distribute resources equitably when disaster strikes. Almost two years into the pandemic, only about 5% of people in low-income countries are fully vaccinated compared to an average of over 70% in high-income countries. And in some countries that have good access to the vaccines, there are groups of people – usually people of color, the poor, and those in rural communities – who were last in line to get vaccines and, in some cases, still haven’t received them.

Prediction 1. Covid and its variants will decline steeply soon

By early summer, people around the world will emerge from their Covid bunkers and become sociable again. Recent data suggest that the rapid International spike in Covid caused by the Omicron variant will soon be on a swift downturn. In addition, Pfizer announced in early January that it will be releasing a new vaccine beginning in March specifically targeted to protect against Omicron. What these events most probably mean is that life for many of us will almost return to normal by the end of June.

Prediction 2. Covid will become more effectively preventable and treatable by the fall

An extension of the previous prediction is that by the fall of 2022, Covid will cease to be a pandemic. Instead, it will be a nuisance virus like the flu, for which many of us will receive an annual, or possibly semi-annual, vaccination. Covid cases will still occur, and there may be incidents of troublesome mutations that cause temporary flareups and vaccine adjustments. But Covid will no longer be a major threat to world health.

Prediction 3. The lessons from Covid will provide a model for addressing future disasters

Our battle with Covid will make us better able to solve the climate change crisis and be better prepared for future worldwide disasters.

This is the iffiest of the three predictions. Will we really learn from all the suffering and death wrought by the coronavirus and our bumbling response to it? Or will we just saunter blithely along, forgetting about the international nightmare caused by the pandemic?

Despite our tendency as a species to ignore the lessons of the past, there is a real possibility that we will learn from the Covid pandemic, and apply that learning to other world disasters, such as global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels; the gross inequality of people around the world not having adequate access to food, healthcare, and other necessities of life; or another killer virus.

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Videos, books, and downloads
• We invite you to view a brief, informative video on community solar co-ops. It’s a summary of E.G.’s December 2021 presentation at the World Cooperative Congress in Seoul, Korea. E.G. describes the ease, affordability, and benefits of establishing a solar co-op.

• Also newly released is a video during which E.G.’s son, Luc, interviews E.G. about his 2021 book Strengthening the Cooperative Community. Luc is co-founder – with E.G. – of The Cooperative Society Project. The book is based on E.G.’s 50 years of international cooperative research and development experience. Of special interest are the 16 recommendations E.G. provides for realizing future cooperative development opportunities.

Strengthening the Cooperative Community is available as a free PDF and as a print book through Amazon and local booksellers. Shown below are some comments E.G. received about the book:

“Anyone interested in concrete ideas for reducing inequality domestically or internationally should read this book,…”—Dave Grace, Managing Partner, Dave Grace and Associates

“Thank you for this lively, agile, and accessible introduction to the cooperative world…”—Gianluca Salvatori, CEO, Euricse

“E.G. has made a major contribution to the history and future impact of cooperative enterprise…I hope the 16 recommendations in this narrative will be given serious consideration by cooperative leadership at the global, regional, national and local levels across all sectors.”—Dr. Martin Lowery, Executive Vice President Emeritus, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, International Cooperative Alliance board member and Chair, ICA Cooperative Identity Committee

And we remind you that E.G’s book The Cooperative Solution is available on our website as a free download. Published in 2012, EG’s points about making both economic democracy and political democracy the foundations of American society continue to be very relevant today.

Category: Politics