Newsletters

Changes in The Cooperative Society Project

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
August 2025, Issue 54
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Greetings to all of you who read The Cooperative Society Project’s bimonthly newsletter.

Our first article was published in January 2017, featuring a cartoon of the just-inaugurated Donald J. Trump as the emperor with no clothes.

This August 2025 article is the 54th and the last in this bimonthly series.

However, that doesn’t mean we’re going away. And we hope you aren’t either.

The Cooperative Society Project website will undergo some minor renovations during the next couple of months.

The Project will continue to pursue its two primary goals:

  1. Discussing a paradigm shift in which humans may be on the threshold of a new historical stage: one characterized by cooperation, democracy, the equitable distribution of resources, and a sustainable relationship with nature.
  2. Making recommendations for how we can increase the likelihood of moving toward a more cooperative society during the next several decades.

All 54 newsletter articles and other articles, reports, videos, and social media posts will be available on our website. The primary themes of these posts are the development of cooperative enterprises, societal cooperation, political democracy, economic democracy, quality of life, environmental sustainability, and an emerging cooperative world economy in the 21st century.

Brief summaries of, and information on accessing, the following five books will also continue to be provided on the website:

Changes in activities will include:

1. Publishing occasional (rather than bimonthly) articles and more in-depth reports.
Topics during the next year may include:

  • A “Primer on Building a More Cooperative World Economy”
  • A “Report on Lessons Learned from the United Nations-sponsored 2025 International Year of Cooperatives”
  • A “Report on the Role of Cooperatives in Ameliorating Climate Change”

2. Joint activities with other US-based and international organizations that share our mission and goals. For example:

  • Increasing the role of cooperatives in implementing the United Nations’ development goals programs. There are many cooperatives, non-profit organizations and countries that actively supported the United Nations‘ Millennium Development Goals (MDG) program, which began in 2000 and ended in 2015, and currently support the UN Sustainable Development Goals program, which began in 2016 and ends in 2030. We anticipate a third UN development program, which will likely run from 2031 through 2050. Now is the time to apply the lessons learned since 2000 to shape the third development goals program.
  • Preparing a report on how the United States and the rest of the world can recover from Donald Trump’s second term in office and build a more cooperative world economy. Work on that report should begin immediately so that it is ready to serve as part of a plan of action for the 2026 and 2028 US election seasons and begin implementation in January 2029.

3. E.G. Nadeau is currently working on a monthly series of articles on corruption during Trump’s second term in office. This series of articles is not directly associated with The Cooperative Society Project. However, it will soon be accessible on a new website.

Conclusion
Again, thank you, Cooperative Society Project readers and supporters. Please stay with us as we make these minor changes in the Project, and please share with us your ideas, questions and concerns as we move forward by emailing The Cooperative Society.

Here is to working together to create a more cooperative world economy in the decades ahead.

Happy Co-ops Day! And Happy Co-ops Year!

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
June 2025, Issue 53
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Co-ops Day
The International Day of Cooperatives isn’t until Saturday, July 5, but I thought I would give you an early heads-up. 2025 marks the 103rd celebration of this event. The theme this year is “Driving Inclusive and Sustainable Solutions for a Better World.” In its Co-ops Day announcement, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) stated that “Cooperatives operate in every sector of the economy worldwide—agriculture, finance, housing, health and care, education, energy, retail, industry and services . . . and have consistently demonstrated their ability to advance social justice, economic democracy, and ecological sustainability while offering efficient, innovative and inclusive solutions to community needs.”

Co-ops Year
2025 has been designated by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Year of Cooperatives in a resolution that states, in part, “cooperatives . . . promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of local communities and all people, including women, young people, older persons, persons with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples, whose inclusion strengthens economic and social development, and contribute[s] to the eradication of poverty and hunger. . . . “

The resolution also “encouraged all Member States, as well as the United Nations and all other relevant stakeholders, to take advantage of the International Year as a way of promoting cooperatives and raising awareness of their contribution to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.” (More about the Sustainable Development Goals below.)

So, why celebrate these events?
Co-ops are a big deal in the world economy. As democratically owned enterprises that put service above profit, they are a stark contrast to large stockholder- and state-owned corporations that currently dominate the global marketplace. The International Cooperative Alliance reports that there are more than 1 billion members of about 3 million cooperatives worldwide, and that 10% of the global employed population works for cooperatives.

There is plenty of room for exponential growth in the cooperative movement in the next couple of decades. The International Labour Organization, an agency of the United Nations, concluded in a post-pandemic report that “more than 4 billion people [over half the world’s population lack] . . . access to health care and income security, particularly in relation to old age, unemployment, sickness, disability, work injury, maternity or loss of a main income earner, as well as for families with children.”

This analysis is consistent with the estimated need for reducing extreme poverty and hunger, and achieving a range of health, social service, economic and energy goals by 2030 identified in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals program.

A joint announcement by several UN agencies and co-op apex organizations recently stated that “[c]ooperatives are uniquely positioned to drive sustainable development, embodying principles of inclusivity, equity, and people-centered growth. By prioritizing the needs of their members and communities, cooperatives contribute directly to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs].” The announcement went on to list the roles that co-ops can play in advancing each of the 17 SDGs.

Because of the effectiveness of co-ops in addressing these problems, there is excellent potential to double the number of cooperative members to 2 billion by 2050.

For this rapid growth to occur, however, the international cooperative community will need to make some fundamental improvements in supporting and coordinating cooperative development projects.

These improvements are a key component of transitioning to a more cooperative world economy in the coming decades.

Conclusion
The good news is that millions of co-ops and more than a billion co-op members are already in place. We know the model works, and that many opportunities are available for expanding the size and number of these cooperatives.

The less-good news is that there is a need for much greater coordination among cooperative development organizations and other organizations supportive of co-op development to increase the effectiveness of fundraising, planning, organizing, financial networking, and applied research in order to realize the potential for exponential growth in the next quarter century.

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.

US Rural Electric Cooperatives

Some are coming clean, some aren’t. Why you should care.
(Revised 02/24/2025)

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
February 2025, Issue 51
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

The past and future of rural electric co-ops?

Did you know that there are about 900 rural electric cooperatives in the United States serving 40 million people (over 10% of the US population), including individual households, farms and other businesses? These co-ops own over 40% of all the distribution lines in the country.

A little historical background
Most of urban America was electrified by 1920, but by 1932 only about 10% of rural areas had access to electricity. Utility companies did not see the potential for profitability in rural America because of the long distances between hook-ups. It was only through intense lobbying by groups representing rural America, especially farm organizations, that the federal government approved the Rural Electrification Act in 1936, which provided low-interest, long-term loans to bring electricity to the countryside. Even with these federal incentives, most for-profit utilities chose not to take advantage of them (and, in fact, many of them boycotted the program).

That’s where rural electric cooperatives come into the picture. Community by community, rural residents and organizations rapidly began to sign up and make commitments to form and join new local electric co-ops.

The start-up of each of these co-ops was a eureka moment for the beneficiaries. Many rural residents in the late 30s and the 40s and 50s remembered exactly what they were doing “when the lights came on.”

These co-ops are organized in two main tiers – local distribution co-ops and generation and transmission (G & T) co-ops. Coal has been the primary source of energy for electricity for most of their history.

Two flies in the ointment
In addition to the many benefits of rural electricity, especially for women (washing machines, refrigerators, pumped water for indoor plumbing, etc.), there were also less readily apparent downsides. As is often the case with large organizations or networks of organizations, over the years, RECs gravitated toward centralized decision-making, with the large generation and transmission co-ops (and their political allies) at the top.

Those RECs that were dependent on coal and other fossil fuels for energy also became major greenhouse gas emitters. They and other dirty-energy emitters contributed to the climate change crisis the world is now facing.

Increased centralization and greenhouse gas emissions feed off of each other. Beginning in the early 2000s, a number of REC leaders chose to “fight rather than switch” when it came to their organizations’ fossil fuel dependencies. This resistance came despite the realization in the past decade or so by many distribution co-ops and their members that clean energy sources such as solar, wind, hydro and battery storage generated almost no greenhouse gas emissions and, in most cases, were less expensive than dirty energy sources such as coal, natural gas and oil.

Thus, today’s RECs can be divided into two main camps – clean energy co-ops and fossil fuel co-ops – with a few undecideds in between.

A few examples
My favorite REC is the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative. It is one of the newest additions to the REC family, having bought out its for-profit predecessor in 2002. It currently provides electrical energy from a mix of fossil fuel and clean energy sources. In 2023, almost  60% of its energy came from renewable sources. The Kauai REC is committed to generating 100% of its energy from renewables by 2033.

In contrast, Hawaiian Electric, a for-profit, monopoly utility has a different story to tell. It provides electricity to all of Hawaii’s major islands except Kauai. Despite the advantages of clean energy, Hawaiian Electric has a very weak net zero electrical energy target of 2045. Most of its electricity is fueled by diesel at a cost to the consumer of about $.43 per kilowatt hour. Homegrown solar, wind, and hydropower are about three times cheaper and much cleaner. Hawaii Electric is driven primarily by profit. It has no incentive to switch from expensive diesel fuel to clean energy sources. The company and its shareholders make more money under the current arrangement.

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association serves about one million customers in parts of Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico. It is a good example of a large secondary co-op that recently made the decision to transition from primarily fossil fuel energy to primarily clean energy. Its near-term goals are 50% clean energy in 2025 and 70% in 2030.

Dairyland Power Cooperative – serving parts of Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin – is a G & T co-op that is in the “undecided” middle. After fighting for years to build a new natural gas plant in northwestern Wisconsin, Dairyland all but abandoned that goal in favor of more clean energy projects. But, thanks to the U.S.’s new steamroller-in-chief, and despite strong local opposition, the plant is being “fast-tracked” for approval.

Basin Electric, the largest G & T in the country, for the most part, still has its head in the sand when it comes to a clean energy transition. Despite having run afoul of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2024, Basin has just announced that it is planning to build a 1500 megawatt natural (fossil fuel) gas plant in North Dakota, ignoring the strong likelihood that a combined wind, solar and battery storage project would have been far cheaper to build and operate. Under the Trump administration, the co-op probably won’t have to worry about federal pushback on this greenhouse gas-emitting behemoth.

Conclusion
With our recently coronated, “drill, baby, drill” president, the nation’s Rural Electric Cooperatives almost assuredly will not be burdened by stringent federal clean energy oversight. But, as member-controlled cooperatives, they are likely to continue to face opposition to relatively expensive, greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuel projects from their own members/customers. That would be bottom-up democracy at its best.

This article was revised on 02/24/2025 to reflect new developments with Dairyland Power Cooperative

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 29th 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.

The United Nations “Summit of the Future ” wrapped up in late September. Will it “steer humanity on a new course” or produce another collection of empty rhetoric?

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
October 2024, Issue 49
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at the Summit of the Future. Photo credit Loey Felipe

I recently finished reading the Pact for the Future, agreed to by all 193 UN member countries at their late September “Summit of the Future.” The UN hyped the event as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine the multilateral system and steer humanity on a new course to meet existing commitments and solve long-term challenges.”

Translating from “UN-speak,” the UN members agreed on a somewhat vague path toward improving sustainable development; increasing international peace and security; better coordinating science and technology; addressing the needs of youth and future generations; and transforming global governance. They agreed on 56 actions to implement the five goals set forth in the pact.

The pact stated that “We are confident that, through the implementation of these actions, we will be well on course towards the better and more sustainable future we want for ourselves, our children and all the generations who will come after us” by the fall of 2028.

A daunting commitment. Or, is it just another collection of hot air balloons being floated by UN members?

Let’s take a closer look at the challenges the UN members are planning to take on over the next four years.

I. Sustainable development and financing for development
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Program contains 17 goals to be achieved between 2016 and 2030. Nine years into the program, the world is not on track to achieve any of its lofty goals for eliminating extreme poverty and hunger, dramatically improving health, and a range of other accomplishments related to enhancing quality of life in the world. On the positive side, the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Program, which ran from 2000 to 2015, was far more successful in making dramatic progress on a set of similar goals.

Evaluation: It is extremely unlikely that the SDG program will be able to achieve its goals given the deficit it needs to make up in the next six years. On the other hand, there is no reason why the United Nations can’t improve its performance and launch a more successful development goals program beginning in 2031.

II. International peace and security
The world is currently experiencing several interrelated conflicts in the Middle East, an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the presence of terrorist groups and violent drug cartels in a number of developing countries, and political instability in other parts of the world.

Evaluation: It is theoretically possible that the above threats to world peace and security could be resolved by 2030, but it’s highly unlikely. The related UN actions described in the pact sound more like unrealistic goals than realistic action items. Take, for example, “Action 18. We will build and sustain peace.”

III. Science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation
There is evidence that some countries in the Global South are more effectively supporting their access to international cooperation in science, technology and innovation.

Evaluation: During the next six years, this increased pressure from the Global South could result in a fairer distribution of this knowledge and these resources. This may be particularly true in issues related to clean energy and adaptation to the consequences of global warming (such as drought-resistant agricultural innovations).

IV. Youth and future generations
Young people in both the Global South and Global North are asserting their rights and responsibilities related to actions that affect the world they will be living in as adults. The median age of countries in the Global South, especially in Africa, is far lower than in Europe and North America, and the gap is increasing.

Evaluation: Independent of the actions presented in the UN Pact for the Future, young people themselves will be having increasing impacts that challenge both economic and political dynamics on the world stage.

V. Transforming global governance
For the first time in its 79 year history, the structure of the United Nation’s Security Council is under serious review. One possible change would be the inclusion of one or two permanent members from the Global South.

Evaluation: Such a change could significantly alter the decisions that the Security Council votes on and makes, particularly as they affect developing countries. However, it may be very difficult to change the composition of such an established decision-making body.

Conclusion
The UN General Assembly has a mixed record when it comes to bloviation versus realistic, world-changing plans. An example of the latter is the development and delivery of an effective Millennium Development Goals Program.

My take on the Pact for the Future is that it contains some proposed actions with promise for a new and better course for humanity and others that are clichés without the potential for realistic improvements.

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.

Press Release: The Emerging Cooperative Economy

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
July 2024, Issue 47
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Saving the world by 2050?
Why is this human-dominated world so deeply flawed by the powerlessness and uncertainty that most of us feel, by the dramatic differences in the quality of our lives, and by the damage that we inflict on our physical environment?

In The Emerging Cooperative Economy, author E.G. Nadeau makes the case that we can transition to an international economy based on increasing political and economic democracy, meeting human needs, and sustaining the environment. This new book presents a path for moving toward an economy that puts the well-being of the many ahead of the wealth and power of a few.

Advance Praise
“Your book is amazing! It is a sweeping look at how we arrived at today, and it presents a blueprint for survival – not just survival, but a world with hope, rooted in a cooperative economy.”
Mark Lefebvre, Former President and CEO of Stanton & Lee Publishers

“E.G. Nadeau’s call for growing alternatives to our current economic order is . . . an urgent call to action.”
Tom Webb, Cofounder of The International Centre for Co-operative Management, St. Mary’s University

About the author
E. G. Nadeau has been researching, promoting, writing, and teaching about cooperatives and cooperation for more than 50 years. His cooperative career began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal in 1970. He has participated in dozens of cooperative development projects in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia and has authored or co-authored five previous books and numerous articles on cooperatives and societal cooperation. He is currently Codirector of The Cooperative Society Project, a nonprofit initiative.

Availability
The Emerging Cooperative Economy can be ordered through local booksellers and from Amazon.

For more information, contact E.G. Nadeau at (608) 345-3984 or egnadeau3@gmail.com.

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.

Islands and Renewable Energy:

The good, the bad, and the somewhere-in-between

Far too many islands are not taking advantage of their renewable energy resources

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
February 2024, Issue 45
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

As I began writing this article, I was sitting at a dining room table at the Vaoto Lodge on Ofu Island (population 200) in American Samoa. American Samoa is the southernmost territory of the United States. It has a total population of about 70,000, and is near the middle of the Pacific Ocean about 15° south of the equator.

There is a U.S. National Park here that spans parts of four islands. The islands are a combination of steep jungle-covered mountains, beautiful sand beaches, and reefs with patches of vibrant living coral and colorful fish, along with cemeteries of bleached dead coral that look like underwater ghost towns – mostly thanks to global warming.

I was there with my two sons, Luc and Isaac. We were on vacation, but we were also there to learn about the islands’ people and environment.

Powering the islands
I’m particularly interested in how the islands’ inhabitants have or have not replaced fossil fuel sources of energy with clean energy, especially solar and battery storage. A few miles to the east of Ofu, the island of Ta’u has 100% clean electricity due to a solar panel array and a battery storage system. Or so I thought. According to local sources, the system is currently meeting about 80% of the island’s electricity needs, due to some glitches that are in the process of being remedied.

There was a similar solar+battery system on Ofu until a few years ago, when the battery storage unit burned to the ground. After lengthy haggling with the insurer of the system, it is about to get repaired. In the meantime, most of the island’s electrical energy has reverted to very dirty and expensive diesel fuel.

Tutu’ila, where most American Samoans live, depends on diesel fuel for the majority of its electricity. When one walks around the island, the unhealthy smell of diesel fumes is pervasive. As a whole, the territory’s goal for 100% clean energy electrification is 2045 – an incredibly unambitious goal considering the financial and health costs of diesel, and the abundant availability of solar and wind energy. A transformation that could happen in the next few years is planned to take more than 20.

The nearby island country of Samoa (if you’re interested, look up the reason why there is a U.S. territory right next to a nation with the same name) appears to be far ahead of its neighbor on the clean energy front, with the goal of achieving 100% clean electrical energy by next year.

Slow-walking
American Samoa is not the only island territory or nation that is slow-walking toward net zero energy. Despite all the negatives of fossil fuel for island energy, and the abundance of far less expensive, renewable energy resources, many of the 200,000 or so ocean islands around the world, comprising about 7% of the earth’s land surface and about 9% of its population, are in similar carbon-emitting boats. This, despite the increasing vulnerability of many of them due to rising ocean levels, hurricanes, tsunamis, and flooding, resulting from human-made global warming.

Here are a few more – bad and good – examples of approaches being taken by other island communities to clean up their sources of energy:

Examples of other approaches
Hawaii. To get to American Samoa from the mainland United States, one has to fly to Honolulu, take a left turn, and fly about another 5 ½ hours south. Hawaiian Electric Company is a monopoly utility providing electricity to all of Hawaii’s major islands except Kauai. Despite all the advantages of clean energy cited above, Hawaiian Electric has the same astoundingly weak net zero electrical energy goal of 2045 as American Samoa. Electricity fueled by diesel in Hawaii currently costs about $.43 per kilowatt hour. Homegrown solar, wind, and hydropower is about three times cheaper and much cleaner. So, go figure.

The beautiful Hawaiian island of Kauai has a different story to tell. The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, owned by the island’s residents and businesses, bought out the previous, for-profit utility in 2002. Since then, it has been gradually transforming Kauai’s electrical energy system to solar, wind, hydropower, and increased energy storage. The co-op is shooting for 100% percent renewable energy by 2033, 12 years ahead of the state’s goal.

Puerto Rico. Shifting our attention to a U.S. territory in the Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico was devastated by a direct hit from Hurricane Maria in September 2017, which knocked out much of the island’s power for almost a year. Six-and-a-half years later, the island is still 97% dependent on diesel fuel for its electrical energy. Puerto Rico had the opportunity after the hurricane to make its electricity much less vulnerable to the devastation of tropical storms by decentralizing it into interconnected, multiple smaller grids powered by solar, wind, water, and battery storage. Instead, Puerto Rico – with the support of its U.S. government enablers – sold the island’s power grid to a consortium of U.S. and Canadian companies – that made the jaw-dropping, but not unexpected, decision to rebuild a highly vulnerable, centralized grid similar to the one that was devastated in 2017.

We don’t have the time or space for another 190-some thousand stories, but you get the idea.

The Alliance of Small Island States and its supporters in the United Nations and elsewhere are doing their best to replace unsustainable fossil fuel energy in island communities with local clean energy. The future of these islands and our planet depends on it. The country of Samoa is a clean energy leader in this group of small islands. The U.S. territory of American Samoa unfortunately is not. My sons and I loved the people and the beauty of the territory but could have done without the diesel smog.