Back in May, in Sri Lanka:
Recently, they also burned down the President’s home.
Meanwhile, the Canadian government:
The tax will apply to new cars and aircraft with a retail sales price over $100,000 and to vessels over $250,000. It will be calculated at the lesser of 20 percent of the value above a set threshold ($100,000 for cars and personal aircraft, and $250,000 for vessels) and ten percent of the full value of the item subjected to tax.
And the US Senate’s Climate bill, which Manchin approved:
The bill includes $60 billion to boost domestic clean energy manufacturing, including $30 billion in production tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and critical mineral processing. It also offers lower- and middle-income motorists a $7,500 tax credit for clean vehicles, while states and electric utilities would see $30 billion in grants and loans to expand clean energy. The bill also includes $60 billion for environmental justice communities and a fee on methane emissions that will rise to $1,500 a ton by 2026.
All of these are what I would class as “good news,” though insufficient. Adam Smith once quipped that “there is a lot of ruin in a nation,” but a country like Sri Lanka has less ruin than many others. England’s decline could be considered to have begun in 1914, and it’s only this decade that they’re likely to lose Scotland — and it’ll be a while yet before Brits start burning down toff mansions wholesale.
The problem with Sri Lanka is that almost all of the debt which is crippling it is to Western institutions, not to China (which is at about ten percent), but China is the country which will wind up bailing it out after the initial IMF stopgap, because China needs a stable country to have a naval base in. If India was smart, they’d step in instead, to deny the Chinese the base. As for the West, they don’t care and just want their money. China is likely delaying in part because they’d rather not send a ton of money to the West by paying for Sri Lanka’s debt.
Elites finally seem to be starting to understanding that climate change is serious, and that the rich are out of control. I think that the rich will come to regret the Russian oligarch sanctions hunt, because it taught everyone how easy it actually is to take everything from rich people, a lesson of the post-war era which has been forgotten because most who remember it are old or dead.
This is all very slim “good news.” With respect to climate change, I am of the opinion that we will not hold it at two degrees C, though some climate scientists disagree. I have found that the more “pessimistic” forecasts have consistently been more reliable, and I believe that self-reinforcing cycles, such as methane release from permafrost and swamps, and the destruction of most of the world’s remaining great forests, have been triggered. We can and should mitigate climate change by reducing emissions, but we have left it too late to contain catastrophic climate change. (I also expect a couple of marine inundations this century (colloquially, great floods) — and earlier than most people think likely.)
As for the rich, they’re still in control, but that control is unlikely to remain as firm as they expect. They were warned of this many times; that they couldn’t allow rampant inequality, poverty, catastrophe, and gouge on necessities like water, food, fuel, and life-saving medicines and expect to escape unscathed.
They key variable to watch is food, or rather, hunger. When people can’t eat (or drink), social controls break down. The Chinese understand that; every dynasty has known that if they didn’t feed the people, they were in great danger, and the Communist dynasty (that’s what it is, and it’s still essentially “rule by bureaucrats”) understands it as well. The Indian government, on the other hand, obsessed with fucking over non-Hindus and cleansing the country, seems to have forgotten.
The West, as a whole, has a great deal of agricultural surplus, and it will take some time for hunger to really hit, unless neoliberal ideology blinds politicians to the danger of continuing to allow rampant food inflation. If people can’t afford to eat, it’s the same as there not being enough food for them, and hunger leads to people with little to lose.
Interesting times, etc. Might as well enjoy the show as best we can, because we’re going to suffer through it as well.