Military Emissions in Peace and War – Pushing it up the UN’s Climate Agenda

Posted on June 23, 2022 by TPNS • Posted in 1. Recent Posts, The 5% Campaign • Tagged Climate change, GHG Emissions, Military spending, Wars

Military emissions in peacetime and war – getting this onto the UNFCCC agenda

Dear friends, colleagues and supporters,

The TV pictures of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – tanks, jets, missiles and smashed up infrastructure – has meant that the world is now, finally and belatedly, looking at war and conflict through the climate change lens. It is doing so in a way it never did for Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria or any other conflict in recent times.

World leaders will have to finally deal with the climate impact of conflict as they head into the G7 summit in Germany.

To coincide with the G7 Summit in Germany 26-28 June, a new technical report with a companion advocacy briefing, commissioned by Tipping Point North South and written by Perspectives Climate Group (Germany), explores the military emissions ‘reporting gap’, both in peacetime and war. Military and conflict-related emissions: Kyoto to Glasgow and beyond offers a much needed robust set of proposals to address this within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The report is covered here in Deutsche Welle, published today. Continue reading →

Green New Deal Plus

Posted on January 11, 2021 by TPNS • Posted in 2. Advocacy/Campaigns, The 5% Campaign • Tagged Green New Deal Plus

MILITARY SPENDING: A HIDDEN DRIVER OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The global military is a major driver of climate change. It is exempt from reporting its carbon emissions despite some countries’ militaries being among the largest consumers of fossil fuels in the world. It is a scandal that needs exposing.

Runaway global military spending fuels this state of affairs and impedes development in myriad ways: as a matter of urgency it must be put centre-stage as an international development, environment and human security concern.

Moreover, all current Green New Deal economic thinking (in the UK, Europe, the USA and elsewhere) must take account of the links between these two very closely linked issues: military spending and climate change.

Green New Deal Plus and the Five Percent Proposal

Two new and inter-related proposals that connect global military spending and Green New Deal thinking.

Green New Deal Plus (GND Plus) is a five-point plan that gives shape to an essential, additional dimension to all existing Green New Deal discussions and plans – that of not just green prosperity, but peaceful green prosperity.

Green New Deal Plus argues that we cannot exempt the world’s militaries from all current and future plans for Green New Deals, wherever they may be advocated. We cannot ask major areas of economic activity (energy, mining, construction, transport, agriculture, manufacturing, commercial businesses and residential housing) to go green, cut greenhouse gas emissions and play their part in getting nations and the planet to net zero by 2050 (IPCC, 2018)[1] while conveniently permitting some of the world’s worst emissions offenders to carry on their carbon-intensive business as normal.

It is therefore, inevitably, an urgent –if challenging– call to rebalance the relationship between governments & defence industries on one hand and citizens, economy & environment on the other

The Five Percent Proposal offers a practical roadmap to progressively cut runaway global military spending, cut greenhouse gas emissions and fund human security, international development and the global green economy needs. It can be an integral part of any GND Plus thinking.

The Five Percent Proposal and Green New Deal Plus are intended for NGOs working in international development and/or environment and/or human rights and/or peace; also for national and international organizations and political leaders developing various types of GND policies.

The Five Percent series of reports and briefings on runaway global military spending are listed below. The Green New Deal Plus concept came about as a result of our Five Percent report Indefensible: The true cost of the global military on climate change and human security

A Brief Introduction to Green New Deal Plus
The Five Percent Campaign FULL REPORT (2013)
Why Runaway Global Military Spending Is An International Development Issue
Indefensible: The true cost of the global military on climate change and human security (to be co-published with Christian Aid November 2019)
Through the Looking Glass: BAE Systems, Corporate Social Responsibility and war, insecurity and climate change
Weapons, Walls and Oppression: The EU/UK/Israel Military Relationship
Approaching the $2 trillion redline
The $1 trillion yellow line that we need to return to
Solidarity Campaigning: Don’t Buy Don’t Sell UK – Saudi Arabia
Solidarity Campaigning : Don’t Buy Don’t Sell Germany – Turkey
Hearts and minds: the military, movies & gaming
Climate Change & EU Foreign, Security And Defence Policy

Current Green New Deal Thinking

Across the UK/Europe and USA there is a growing call for a ‘Green New Deal’, taking the term from President Roosevelt’s successful 1930s New Deal where investment in public works was key to reinvigorating the USA economy during the Great Depression. It was a concept revisited with the New Economics Foundation’s ‘Green New Deal’ in 2008[2] and the later formation of the Green New Deal Group[3]. Today, a Green New Deal is a central plank in the Democratic Party’s election offer to the American people; here in the UK it is coming to the fore of both Labour Party and Green Party policy-thinking and there is also now a call for a progressive EU-wide Green New Deal.

The 21^st century Green New Deal comprises primarily a set of government funded social and economic reforms and public work projects with renewable energy, resource efficiency and decarbonisation at its heart, and deliverable through a massive programme of investment in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure.

As time rapidly runs out for humanity to raise its collective game on addressing global warming and climate change, the long overlooked ‘war economy’ & runaway global military spending must now be part of the equation.

Notably absent in present day Green New Deal thinking is an awareness about the role of the world’s militaries and their significant (and profoundly under-reported) contribution to climate change. All forms and versions of current Green New Deal policy-making could be extended further by addressing runaway military spending. An ambitious strategy to address it would ensure all Green New Deal thinking is not missing this vital element.

What is Green New Deal Plus?

Green New Deal Plus comes at time of climate breakdown, global inequality and the rising extreme right. It is an urgent call to rebalance the relationship between governments & defence industries on one hand and citizens, economy & environment on the other.

Through its Five Percent Proposal, Tipping Point North South (https://tippingpointnorthsouth.org/) has been building the case that global runaway spending is of profound relevance to international development and, increasingly, mitigation of climate catastrophe. It argues that runaway military spending should therefore be of much more serious concern than at present to those working in these sectors, both NGOs and politicians alike, and advocates that they make a much greater effort to engage with it.

Green New Deal Plus argues that we cannot exempt the world’s militaries from all current and future plans for Green New Deals, wherever they may be advocated.

The military-oil industry relationship is intertwined and interlinked with climate change. We must quantify, expose and act upon the climate burden put upon people and planet by the world’s big military spenders.

Until now, we have collectively and consistently ignored the massive yet unaccounted for responsibility of the world’s militaries to climate change, from their day-to-day operational activities to the wars and conflicts of which they are part. We must start to factor both into climate calculations because we have been ignoring them at our peril.

We cannot ask major areas of economic activity (energy, mining, construction, transport, agriculture, manufacturing, commercial businesses and residential housing) to go green, cut greenhouse gas emissions and play their part in getting nations and the planet to net zero by 2050 at the latest while conveniently permitting some of the world’s worst emissions offenders to carry on their carbon-intensive business as normal.

While this may raise serious issues about the nature of our global defence systems and security thinking, this is no more or less a challenge than those required of transforming our production and consumption of energy, food, water and other natural resources and our infrastructure and usage of transport fit for a green future. Indeed, aside from nuclear war (by accident or design) there is no greater threat to human survival than man-made climate change. We are in a global emergency, we need paradigm-shifting thinking on every aspect of human activity and every culpable sector must not only play its part in massive reduction of carbon emissions, but also in redefining new ways of being in this new carbon-neutral era.

Green New Deal Plus therefore believes that addressing the role of the world’s militaries in reducing climate change will bring an essential dimension to all current GND economic thinking: that of peaceful green prosperity. Why exclude carbon culprits such as defence contractors and national militaries from GND thinking that is otherwise intending to deliver economic, social and environmental justice?

Green New Deal Plus is designed to complement any and all variations on current Green New Deal policies, in the UK and internationally as well as offer up an international development and environment framing for runway military spending.

Key Stats:

Carbon emissions of F35 fighter jet per mission (28 Tonnes CO2e) = One person’s emissions (living in the West) over 2 years

USA military and defence industry combined carbon footprint: 339m tonnes CO2e. (6% of national total emissions)

If the Pentagon (which oversees the US military) was a country, it would the world’s 55th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, more than industrialised countries such as Sweden and Portugal.

US defence industry emissions for 2017 = 280m tonnes CO2e, higher than Egypt

UK military and defence industry combined carbon footprint: 13m tonnes CO2e. (3% of national total emissions)

Global carbon footprint estimate of the military-industrial complex (i.e. global militaries and defence industries) = around 5%

This is higher than carbon emissions from global Civil Aviation = 3%

Transport (including cars, trucks, airplanes, ships and other vehicles) account for 25% of global carbon emissions

Agriculture = 10%

In other words, the global military-industrial complex carbon footprint is one half and one fifth respectively of the global emissions from the everyday activities of food production and transport.

(Slides from a presentation by Dr Stuart Parkinson of Scientists for Global Responsibility)

References:

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/ClimateChangeandCostofWar
https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/carbon-boot-print-military
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/aviation_en
https://www.iea.org/statistics/co2emissions/
https://www.agrighg-2018.org/
https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/a-tale-of-two-puzzles-accounting-for-military-and-climate-change-expenditures

What Would a Green New Deal Plus Want to Achieve?

The five points below are a guide to how we can realise the potential benefits to any and all current GND plans that see the important of the GND Plus concept.

The break-up of the military-oil industry relationship and complete decarbonising of the world’s militaries

- The world’s militaries are the biggest institutional users of oil in the world and are therefore a major driver for climate change, both in terms of day-to-day operations as well as wars, many of which are conducted for oil. Runaway global military spending enables all this. A carbon-neutral world demands we fully decarbonise our militaries.
- Green New Deal Plus applauds the ongoing efforts by all those advocating the diversification of the defence and security industries – they must also decarbonise so that they are fit for the green new world.

A decarbonised military, defence and security sector is not about delivering ‘greener ways to conduct war’: weaponry and war will always kill living beings, will always destroy and pollute environments. Rather, this idea is the starting point for much needed if challenging discussion, one that can lead us to a paradigm shift in national and international defence and security policy-making for a carbon-neutral world.

Open up debate: What kind of ‘defence’ policy is fit for the 21^st century- and beyond?

Green New Deal Plus calls for a decarbonised sustainable global military with a transformed and transformative doctrine fit for purpose in this century of climate breakdown – one based on revisiting and updating earlier work on the concept of non-offensive defence[4] and prioritising global human security through social, economic and environmental justice. Primarily, national self-interest should be replaced with global human security. Much greater investment in conflict prevention and international peacekeeping will reap significant reward[5] – it is cheap in comparison to arms-race spending between countries, driven by self-interests, profits and domination and we need much greater investment for on the ground, local peace-building. As for security threats, we need the definitions to go much wider – we need far greater investment in early warning and disaster risk reduction, as well as post disaster reconstruction.

- Linked to this, we need a transformation on the UN Security Council, notably the well past its sell by date current P5 arrangement. The UN P5+1 nations[6] charged with keeping the world’s peace account for 80% arms sales, the majority of which to the developing world.[7] Many developing countries spend more on defence than either education or health and often buy from developed nations.
- Climate change is a social, economic and environmental issue but it is currently a pretext for some governments to expand their military/security reach. Refugees fleeing their homes because of climate change should be free to move if they must and then welcomed by other nations – not left to drown in the seas and oceans.

Implementation of The Five Percent Formula to progressively cut runaway global military spending (and emissions) in order to fund human security; international development and climate change impact; global green economy needs.

Tipping Point North South’s Five Percent Proposal makes the case that runaway military spending is a long overdue international development issue.[8] We need to implement an ambitious, fair, practical formula that can start to pull back the scandalous sums spent individually and collectively on global military spending; to redirect those savings to urgent human need and long term development; this in addition to funds to clean up our shamefully polluted planet; and to properly fund peacekeeping and peace-building.

As we creep ever closer to a $2 trillion ‘redline’ of global annual military spending, we are about to enter another arms spending race.[9] Should governments and multi-lateral agencies adopt the two-part Five Percent Formula, global military spending would be gradually and decisively decreased, halving over 10 years, followed by a 5% threshold formula designed to rein military spending back thereafter.

This would open up $700 billion funding over the first decade and can be allocated to address:

- International: immediate and urgent poverty reduction; sustainable development reflecting civil society activism on climate & economic justice; peace/conflict prevention & human rights; investing in the global green economy.
- Domestic: counteracting effects of austerity on public services; investing in clean, green jobs.

NOTE: These savings can offer smarter ways of spending finite resources (also helping reduce root causes of conflict and violence) and can be applied to developing new ideas such as funding universal basic (health and education) services or help developing countries to set up universal basic income to eliminate extreme poverty. Free (or affordable) public services and cash-based programmes are superior to aid-based programmes for development.

Encourage international country to country solidarity campaigning across development, human rights & peace movements : Don’t Buy Don’t Sell

“Out of a global population of 7.4bn, two billion people live in countries where development outcomes are affected by fragility, conflict, and violence. By 2030, at least half of the world’s poor people will be living in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Conflicts drive 80% of all humanitarian needs.” (The World Bank)[10] The arms trade fuels conflict and enables the oppression of civilians by states and when linked to government contracts, it means sales of everything from bullets and weapons to tanks and planes. The suffering of Yemenis is a result of UK government and others arming Saudi Arabia.

For bi-lateral arms deals that harm the public good we say don’t buy, don’t sell.[11],[12]

Moreover, many developing countries spend more on defence than either education or health and often buy from developed nations – the UN P5+1 members account for 80% of global arms sales, the majority of which to the developing world. At the same time, there is ample evidence that indicates defence spending impedes development whereas education and health spending has significant multiplying effect on raising living standard (across economies, developed and developing). Don’t buy, don’t sell.

Transformation of the relationship between government departments

We need (i) international development to become global social justice; (ii) foreign policy-making to be ethical and (iii) a progressive defence & security policy-making that leads on fresh thinking on how taxes directed to military spending should reflect a different type of security policy-making that delivers equity, human security, green jobs and minimisation and mitigation of climate breakdown.

In the UK for example, contrary to the current Conservative Party calls to shift money from the development budget to the MOD, the UK – indeed all nations who follow this call – may have a far better security outcome if policies supporting international social justice secured more funding, not less.

*******************

Historically, military spending has been central to re-enforcing power, poverty, unjust distribution of resources, economic and environmental collapse. The Green New Deal Plus argues that unless or until we place military spending in the Green New Deal ‘frame’, the economic, social and environmental GND gains will only ever be partial. Surely we need peace to accompany – indeed enable – green prosperity.

And the longstanding destructive role of western militaries is matched by the historic harm caused by those same nations’ corporate interests across the global south, notably through the extraction of resources. These commercial interests have been and remain a major cause of instability and armed conflict while developed nations grew rich on those resources. Today, although climate change is a global social, economic and environmental issue, history must not repeat itself. The solutions for climate change cannot be with the sacrifice of those same nations and peoples – the developed world must not adapt to the reality of climate breakdown at the expense of the poor.[13] Moreover, it must not become an excuse for the global north to further militarise and exploit the global south.

Peace and green prosperity will remain elusive as long as the military-oil industry relationship remains intact and all powerful. We need a very different starting point to consider and address the annual almost $2trillion global military spend and it should be global human security. Only if we can lay that as the foundation stone, can the human family create and sustain peaceful prosperity in a green economy working in harmony with the natural world.

References

[1] The Guardian view of UK’s climate responsibility: zero emission target needed, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/26/the-guardian-view-of-uks-climate-responsibility-zero-emission-target-needed

[2] A Green New Deal, New Economics Foundation, 2008. https://neweconomics.org/2008/07/green-new-deal

[3] 2013 Press Release, The Green New Deal Group. http://www.greennewdealgroup.org/?page_id=200

[4] Non-offensive defence for the twenty-first century, edited by Bjørn Møller and Håkan Wiberg, 1994. https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/2855683

[5] Evaluating the Conflict-Reducing Effect of UN Peacekeeping Operations, Håvard Hegre, Lisa Hultman and Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, 2018. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/700203

[6] Permanent members of the security council, USA, Russia, China, UK, France, plus Germany

[7] Trends In International Arms Transfers, SIPRI, 2017. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/fssipri_at2017_0.pdf

[8] https://thefivepercentcampaign.org/the-five-percent-campaign/military-spend-is-a-development-issue/

[9] The $2 Trillion Redline, The Five Percent Campaign. https://tippingpointnorthsouth.org/2016/01/25/the-2-trillion-redline/

[10] Helping Countries Navigate a Volatile Environment, World Bank, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190509170355/https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/overview

[11] Don’t Buy Don’t Sell: Germany – Turkey, The Five Percent Campaign. https://thefivepercentcampaign.org/2018/04/26/dont-buy-dont-sell-germany-turkey/

[12] Don’t Buy Don’t Sell: UK – Saudi Arabia, The Five Percent Campaign. https://thefivepercentcampaign.org/articles/

[13] The ‘green new deal’ supported by Ocasio-Cortez and Corbyn is just a new form of colonialism, Asad Rehman, 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-corbyn-colonialism-climate-change-a8899876.html

Transform Defence

Posted on December 3, 2020 by TPNS • Posted in The 5% Campaign • Tagged Transform Defence

Transform Defence for Sustainable Human Safety is our new project comprising a number of elements including the Five Percent Proposal and the case that military spending is an urgent international development issue; the global military’s impact on climate change and human insecurity; the absence in UN processes of the global military’s emissions accounting; and Green New Deal Plus. It has its own dedicated website at https://transformdefence.org/.

Transform Defence for Sustainable Human Safety works to put sustainable human safety at the heart of 21st century foreign, defence, security and international development policy-making. We must question the limits of 20th century national self-interest if we are to address the greatest threat to our collective survival – runaway climate change. Transform Defence for Sustainable Human Safety describes the paradigm shift we will need to meet this monumental challenge.

Transform Defence for Sustainable Human Safety is Tipping Point North South’s primary policy/advocacy project. It grew out of its work to make the case that runaway military spending is an unaddressed yet urgent international development issue, initially framed through the Five Percent Proposal and its two-part formula for cuts to global military spending to redirected to global human needs.

This in turn led to research on how runaway global military spending is inextricably linked to the global military’s impact on climate change – its significant emissions burden enabled by those same big budgets and combined, ensuring that international development and human safety is harmed in myriad ways

Additionally, our work now also addresses the absence of military emissions reporting in various critical UN processes and the absence of the military in Green New Deal discussions for a green economic recovery post-Covid-19.

If the expectation of every aspect of human activity is to decarbonise – from agriculture to fashion, transport to house building- then the global military must surely be part of this. And if this is the case, as it must be, then what does this mean for our collective foreign, defence, security policy-making?

All these threads ultimately lead to one destination – the need to transform defence for sustainable human safety.

We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction.[1]

Yet the most socially and economically damaging threat to our collective global safety – climate change – is nowhere near centre stage in defence/security policy-making. The numbers speak for themselves.

In 2016, total public expenditures on climate change (international and domestic) amounted to $141 billion in while military expenditures of $1.66 trillion.[2] On average, the expenditure of national governments on climate change amounted to 8.5% of what they spent on defence, a ratio of 12:1.[3]

Every person, community, society, nation, region needs protection from aggressors and terrorists and it is the job of government to defend its citizens from such threats. But climate chaos and pandemic show us that ‘national security’ – or rather sustainable human safety – policies need to be drawn from a much wider remit if they are to truly rise to the challenge of combating the greatest threats to our collective human safety. The time has come to place conventional threats alongside the much greater but entirely marginalised human safety threats of climate change and pandemic.

Moreover, a much needed cost-benefit analysis of present-day defence spending can only move us towards far greater, genuine ‘value for money’ as we redirect and repurpose military spending from 20^th-century ‘national security’ protection of ‘national interests’ to 21^st-century sustainable human safety needs.

The climate emergency, Covid-19, Black Lives Matter and #MeToo Movement are all demanding an already long overdue social and economic change. A practical, imaginative, brave discussion about redefining and re-making foreign and defence policy such that it is truly fit-for-purpose as well as understanding its role in climate change, pandemic, economic, racial and gender injustice must be an integral part of the system change process.

[1] What is a ‘mass extinction’ and are we in one now?, https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-are-we-in-one-now-122535

[2] https://climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017-Global-Landscape-of-Climate-Finance.pdf

[3] https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/a-tale-of-two-puzzles-accounting-for-military-and-climate-change-expenditures

Upcoming (Groundbreaking) Webinar Series We’re Keen To Share In A World (Awash) With Drugs

Posted on September 4, 2020 by TPNS • Posted in 1. Recent Posts, Rethink the War on Drugs

‘A World with Drugs: Legal Regulation through a Development Lens.’

Invitation to webinar series running September~December

We are delighted to be sharing news of an 8-part international webinar series, co-organised by our friends and colleagues at Health Poverty Action. It will explore why drug policy reform is vital for sustainable development.
Drug policy has been undermining progress towards development for decades – it has fuelled violence and conflict, undermined democracy, driven poverty, inequality and poor health, and prevented access to vital medicines worldwide. Furthermore, drug policy reform – especially legal regulation – could significantly contribute to achieving sustainable development if done in the right way

The decades-long ‘War on Drugs’ and its impact on international development has been an issue TPNS has worked on previously, convinced that the evidence points in one direction only: for all the political capital and money thrown at it, it has been an abject failure on just about every count.

This new international webinar series explores the intersection of drug policy reform and development related issues such as trade justice, tax justice, climate justice, sustainable livelihoods and community participation. Between September and December, the webinar series will look at how drug policy reform is vital if we wish to achieve sustainable development worldwide.
Continue reading →

MLK Global’s statement on the killing of George Floyd

Posted on July 1, 2020 by TPNS • Posted in #MLKGlobal, 1. Recent Posts

GEORGE FLOYD

REST IN PEACE

The last words of George Floyd

“I can’t breathe”

It’s my face man.

I didn’t do nothing serious man.

Please. Please. Please. I can’t breathe.

Please man. Please somebody. Please man.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe please.

Man I can’t breathe. My face.

Just get up.

I can’t breathe. Please.

I can’t breathe shit.

I will.

I can’t move.

Mama. Mama.

I can’t. My knee. My nuts.

I’m through. I’m through.

I’m claustrophobic. My stomach hurts.

My neck hurts. Everything hurts.

Some water or something. Please. Please.

I can’t breathe officer. Don’t kill me.

They gonna kill me man, come on man.

I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe.

They gonna kill me. They gonna kill me.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

Please Sir. Please Sir.

Please I can’t breathe!”

George Floyd’s dying words at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin

Cry for his pain when you read them.
Continue reading →

Sharing some more links – film event; Palestine COVID appeal; our future work

Posted on April 4, 2020 by TPNS • Posted in 1. Recent Posts, The 5% Campaign • Tagged Jeremy Hardy, Make Apartheid History, We Are Many

Dear friends and supporters,

A brief mini-update below on some of the issues we continue to work on with a few links we hope may be of interest.

WE ARE MANY FILM April 8^th

We’re excited to share news about Stop the War’s Mass Viewing of We Are Many and Q&A with director Amir Amirani on Wednesday 8 April.Stop the War are giving 5 days to try and watch this acclaimed film about the global anti-Iraq war movement, after which they will host a Q&A with Amir and two special guests, via Zoom.

You can watch the film here:
iTunes – https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/we-are-many/id1118498978
Amazon – https://www.amazon.co.uk/We-Are-Many-Damon-Albarn/dp/B01IFW0WX4

Other outlets are also available and if you’ve seen it before or would just like to tune in anyway you can join in on Zoom from 7pm on April 8th. Register here
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Zv-2463wSxCd77PZ1juvzw
Continue reading →

In times of Coronavirus: UBI is an idea whose time has finally come

Posted on April 4, 2020 by TPNS • Posted in #MLKGlobal, 1. Recent Posts, The 5% Campaign • Tagged Coronavirus, Martin Luther King Jr., Military spending, UBI

The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income. … We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.

Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (1968)

We hope this email finds you, and all those you care for, safe and well.

Many of us also have family, friends and colleagues in many different parts of the world and, coupled with the ever rising number of cases here in the UK/Europe/USA, the news about the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) across the global south, for many of us, will be even more worrying.

It is becoming more apparent with every passing day that the Coronavirus pandemic is holding a mirror up to every single aspect of human life and activity and that this scrutiny leaves much of humanity’s 21^st century day to day behaviour sorely wanting. The ultimate damning evidence of this is the millions upon millions of our fellow sisters and brothers in the global south who don’t even have access to the basic protective shield of soap and water as this pandemic rages across the globe.

It’s not as if we didn’t know the system was long broken. We did. The evidence has been piling up for years and years. However, global inequality and the unstoppable ascendency of the tax evading greedy 1%; the harm of agribusiness and factory farming at one end and illegal poaching at the other; big pharma’s monopolies and the erosion of the primacy of publicly funded healthcare and research; and finally, ultimately, climate catastrophe; none of this was enough to force the hands of the political class, financial and corporate sectors to change course and ‘do the right thing’.
Continue reading →

Green New Deal Plus

Posted on June 20, 2019 by TPNS • Posted in The 5% Campaign • Tagged Green New Deal Plus

MILITARY SPENDING: A HIDDEN DRIVER OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Green New Deal Plus and the Five Percent Proposal

Two new and inter-related proposals that connect global military spending and Green New Deal thinking.

It is therefore, inevitably, an urgent –if challenging– call to rebalance the relationship between governments & defence industries on one hand and citizens, economy & environment on the other

A Brief Introduction to Green New Deal Plus
The Five Percent Campaign FULL REPORT (2013)
Why Runaway Global Military Spending Is An International Development Issue
Indefensible: The true cost of the global military on climate change and human security (to be co-published with Christian Aid November 2019)
Through the Looking Glass: BAE Systems, Corporate Social Responsibility and war, insecurity and climate change
Weapons, Walls and Oppression: The EU/UK/Israel Military Relationship
Approaching the $2 trillion redline
The $1 trillion yellow line that we need to return to
Solidarity Campaigning: Don’t Buy Don’t Sell UK – Saudi Arabia
Solidarity Campaigning : Don’t Buy Don’t Sell Germany – Turkey
Hearts and minds: the military, movies & gaming
Climate Change & EU Foreign, Security And Defence Policy

Current Green New Deal Thinking

What is Green New Deal Plus?

Green New Deal Plus argues that we cannot exempt the world’s militaries from all current and future plans for Green New Deals, wherever they may be advocated.

Key Stats:

Carbon emissions of F35 fighter jet per mission (28 Tonnes CO2e) = One person’s emissions (living in the West) over 2 years

USA military and defence industry combined carbon footprint: 339m tonnes CO2e. (6% of national total emissions)

US defence industry emissions for 2017 = 280m tonnes CO2e, higher than Egypt

UK military and defence industry combined carbon footprint: 13m tonnes CO2e. (3% of national total emissions)

Global carbon footprint estimate of the military-industrial complex (i.e. global militaries and defence industries) = around 5%

This is higher than carbon emissions from global Civil Aviation = 3%

Transport (including cars, trucks, airplanes, ships and other vehicles) account for 25% of global carbon emissions

Agriculture = 10%

(Slides from a presentation by Dr Stuart Parkinson of Scientists for Global Responsibility)

References:

What Would a Green New Deal Plus Want to Achieve?

The five points below are a guide to how we can realise the potential benefits to any and all current GND plans that see the important of the GND Plus concept.

The break-up of the military-oil industry relationship and complete decarbonising of the world’s militaries

- The world’s militaries are the biggest institutional users of oil in the world and are therefore a major driver for climate change, both in terms of day-to-day operations as well as wars, many of which are conducted for oil. Runaway global military spending enables all this. A carbon-neutral world demands we fully decarbonise our militaries.
- Green New Deal Plus applauds the ongoing efforts by all those advocating the diversification of the defence and security industries – they must also decarbonise so that they are fit for the green new world.

Open up debate: What kind of ‘defence’ policy is fit for the 21^st century- and beyond?

- Linked to this, we need a transformation on the UN Security Council, notably the well past its sell by date current P5 arrangement. The UN P5+1 nations[6] charged with keeping the world’s peace account for 80% arms sales, the majority of which to the developing world.[7] Many developing countries spend more on defence than either education or health and often buy from developed nations.
- Climate change is a social, economic and environmental issue but it is currently a pretext for some governments to expand their military/security reach. Refugees fleeing their homes because of climate change should be free to move if they must and then welcomed by other nations – not left to drown in the seas and oceans.

Implementation of The Five Percent Formula to progressively cut runaway global military spending (and emissions) in order to fund human security; international development and climate change impact; global green economy needs.

This would open up $700 billion funding over the first decade and can be allocated to address:

- International: immediate and urgent poverty reduction; sustainable development reflecting civil society activism on climate & economic justice; peace/conflict prevention & human rights; investing in the global green economy.
- Domestic: counteracting effects of austerity on public services; investing in clean, green jobs.

Encourage international country to country solidarity campaigning across development, human rights & peace movements : Don’t Buy Don’t Sell

For bi-lateral arms deals that harm the public good we say don’t buy, don’t sell.[11],[12]

Transformation of the relationship between government departments

*******************

References

[2] A Green New Deal, New Economics Foundation, 2008. https://neweconomics.org/2008/07/green-new-deal

[3] 2013 Press Release, The Green New Deal Group. http://www.greennewdealgroup.org/?page_id=200

[4] Non-offensive defence for the twenty-first century, edited by Bjørn Møller and Håkan Wiberg, 1994. https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/2855683

[5] Evaluating the Conflict-Reducing Effect of UN Peacekeeping Operations, Håvard Hegre, Lisa Hultman and Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, 2018. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/700203

[6] Permanent members of the security council, USA, Russia, China, UK, France, plus Germany

[7] Trends In International Arms Transfers, SIPRI, 2017. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/fssipri_at2017_0.pdf

[8] https://thefivepercentcampaign.org/the-five-percent-campaign/military-spend-is-a-development-issue/

[9] The $2 Trillion Redline, The Five Percent Campaign. https://tippingpointnorthsouth.org/2016/01/25/the-2-trillion-redline/

[10] Helping Countries Navigate a Volatile Environment, World Bank, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190509170355/https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/overview

[11] Don’t Buy Don’t Sell: Germany – Turkey, The Five Percent Campaign. https://thefivepercentcampaign.org/2018/04/26/dont-buy-dont-sell-germany-turkey/

[12] Don’t Buy Don’t Sell: UK – Saudi Arabia, The Five Percent Campaign. https://thefivepercentcampaign.org/articles/

Breast Cancer: An Environmental Disease. In celebration of our dear friend and longstanding colleague Diana Ward, on Rachel Carson Day

Posted on May 28, 2019 by TPNS • Posted in 1. Recent Posts, From Pink to Prevention • Tagged Breast Cancer, Diana Ward, Rachel Carson day

Marking the life and legacy of our dearest friend Diana Ward, on Rachel Carson Day.

Every year, at this time, we at From Pink to Prevention campaign take time to mark the life of the extraordinary, visionary Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964). Carson wrote and lobbied the USA government about the impact of toxic chemicals on the environment and human health.

This will be the first year we mark Rachel Carson day without our own extraordinary, visionary friend and campaigner, Diana Ward.
Continue reading →

MLK Global: An end to poverty, racism & militarism

Posted on December 9, 2018 by TPNS • Posted in #MLKGlobal • Tagged Martin Luther King

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”

Rev Martin Luther King Jnr (1963)

Visit the MLK Global Website.

MLK Global launched in 2018 to mark the 50 anniversary of Reverend Dr Martin Luther King’s assassination. His ‘last great exertion’ in 1967/68 was the Poor People’s Campaign and – often overlooked and forgotten – an Economic Bill of Rights.

MLK Global calls for a renewed ‘internationalising’ of Dr. King’s vision. In particular, for global civil society to unite around his ever-more relevant demand for an end to the inter-connected ‘triple evils’ of economic exploitation, racism and militarism.

MLK Global wants to see a renewed awareness of his 5-point Economic Bill of Rights, re-envisioned for today. Economic inequalities, racism, militarism & climate change are destroying families, communities, nations and the very planet we live on.

The time to fulfil Dr. King’s vision of a “radical redistribution of power” is now.

Find out more

(I) How his Economic Bill of Rights can work for today

https://mlkglobal.org/2017/11/23/dr-kings-econ-bill-of-rights-revived/

(2) An end to poverty, racism and militarism – in our lifetime: A new global campaign?

https://mlkglobal.org/2017/11/23/an-end-to-poverty-racism-militarism/

(3) Articles

From Pink to Prevention October Art Exhibition

Posted on November 5, 2018 by TPNS • Posted in 1. Recent Posts, From Pink to Prevention • Tagged Breast Cancer, UK

An Exhibition of Original Work by Diana Ward, marking Breast Cancer ‘Prevention’ Month launched on Wednesday 17 October.

On Wednesday 17 October UNISON hosted with a reception a new exhibition of 23 original cartoon works by From Pink to Prevention co-founder Diana Ward. Diana’s art-work is a unique way into the subject of the politics of breast cancer and it reflects on the decades of scientific evidence linking environmental and occupational risk factors to breast cancer. Continue reading →

We Are Many

Posted on September 1, 2018 by TPNS • Posted in 3. Films, The 5% Campaign • Tagged TPFF, We Are Many

Amir Amirani’s film We Are Many was in the research and making for more than nine years. Addressing the illegality of the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent undermining of democratic processes, it sets alongside the power of public protest and mass mobilisations of the anti-Iraq war movement – a movement that was to inspire the Egyptian uprising of 2011; a movement of more than 15 million people, in 800 cities, in 70 countries who marched to protest the imminent invasion of Iraq; a movement which shaped a generation.

Tipping Point Film Fund was the film’s first funder in late 2010 and was an executive producing partner throughout. It was a lead partner on a Kick-starter campaign that raised $92k for the production costs and worked with Amir across fundraising, production, editing, and release in UK cinemas in 2016, as well as the film’s outreach on related peace issues. Find out more here.

WE ARE MANY is available on iTunes and Google Play.

Continue reading →

As the NHS turns 70, let’s make it our major export

Posted on July 4, 2018 by TPNS • Posted in #MLKGlobal, Attlee Nation, What interests us • Tagged NHS, Privatisation, UK

‘As we celebrate the NHS here, we must not underestimate its symbolism beyond our borders. As the People’s Health Movement, the global network of health activists, made clear in evidence to my recent consultation, the health service does not just impact on the lives of people in the UK. It is a beacon of hope to millions of people around the world who are fighting for their own access to healthcare. Its very existence demonstrates that universal, publicly funded healthcare is possible.

This was always its intention. As Nye Bevan said on the day the NHS was brought into existence: “The eyes of the world are turning to Great Britain. We now have the moral leadership of the world.” Continue reading →

Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America

Posted on June 7, 2018 by TPNS • Posted in #MLKGlobal, What interests us • Tagged Capitalism, Democracy, Economics, Neoliberalism, Politics

By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual lynchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean

Ask people to name the key minds that have shaped America’s burst of radical right-wing attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they will typically mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman, libertarian guru Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.

James McGill Buchanan is a name you will rarely hear unless you’ve taken several classes in economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many economics students have little understanding of his work.

The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.

That is a dangerous blind spot, MacLean argues in a meticulously researched book, Democracy in Chains, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. While Americans grapple with Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency, we may be missing the key to changes that are taking place far beyond the level of mere politics. Once these changes are locked into place, there may be no going back.
Continue reading →

Cannabis: Regulate it. Tax it. Support the NHS. Promote public health.

Posted on June 5, 2018 by TPNS • Posted in Rethink the War on Drugs, What interests us • Tagged Cannabis, War on Drugs

A new report by Health Poverty Action.

The so-called ‘war on drugs’ was always built on shaky foundations. Now countries and jurisdictions around the world are dismantling it piece by piece and building a new, 21^st century approach to drugs that puts public health first.

Read the report

Nowhere are the foundations of this new approach to drugs more obvious than in the global movement towards regulated, legalised cannabis markets. And despite the US being the ostensible leader of the ‘war on drugs’, it has been US states at the forefront of this move. The results from the US so far are generally positive: confounding critics whilst bringing in additional tax income to fund public services.[1] And this is just the start: in the summer of 2018 Canada will become the first G7 country to legalise cannabis.

Regulating and legalising cannabis is an idea whose time has come.

Sign the petition

It is time to accept that prohibition is not only ineffective and expensive, but that regulation could – if it is done well – protect vulnerable groups and support public health. It would also generate both taxes (at least £1 billion annually, but potentially more) and savings, which taken together would mean more resources for health, harm reduction and other public services.

It is time for the UK government to catch up with the global shift and take the responsible approach by bringing in a regulated, legal market for cannabis.

To do this the UK government should

move primary responsibility for cannabis policy and all other domestic (legal and illegal) drug policy to the Departments of Health (DH) and International Development (DFID)[2];
bring together a panel of experts to develop the most effective model for a regulated market; and,
establish a Cannabis Regulatory Authority to implement their recommendations.

It is time to act.

Read the full report here:

[1] Transform, (2015) ‘Cannabis regulation in Colorado: early evidence defies the critics’ Available online: www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/cannabis-regulation-colorado-early-evidence-defies-critics

[2] Health Poverty Action (2018) ‘Building a 21st Century Approach to Drugs’ Available online: https://www.healthpovertyaction.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Building-a-21st-century-approach-to-drugs_briefing2018.pdf

Media Coverage

#MLKGlobal launched on MLK Day!

Posted on January 16, 2018 by TPNS • Posted in #MLKGlobal, 1. Recent Posts

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” Rev Martin Luther King Jnr (1963)

On January 15^th 2018, MLK Day, we launched our new MLK Global website and statement calling for action on an end to poverty, racism and militarism in our lifetime. We do this in the lead up to the 50^th anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. King’s structural analysis of race, economy and war & his solutions were way ahead of his time and remain a correct analysis of our world in 2018. The same ‘Triple Evils’ he talked of in 1967/68 are still interconnected today, only now they are global: $2trillion global military spend; greater levels global inequality; racism and far-right rising. MLK Global says we need global civil society to unite again around Dr. King’s call for an end to racism, poverty & militarism in our lifetime. https://mlkglobal.org/…/an-end-to-poverty-racism-militarism/

MLK Global believes that Dr. King’s analysis of the underlying structures that reinforce inequality speaks to peoples across the global north & south who share a deep desire for long-overdue change. MLK Global wants to see a renewed awareness of his 5-point Economic Bill of Rights, re-envisioned for today. Economic inequalities, racism, militarism & climate change are destroying families, communities, nations and the very planet we live on. The time to fulfil Dr. King’s vision of a “radical redistribution of power” is now. https://mlkglobal.org/…/dr-kings-econ-bill-of-rights-reviv…/

You can read more about the background to our statement https://mlkglobal.org/background-to-mlk-global-statement/

and find the Statement and Endorsees here https://mlkglobal.org/mlk-global-statement/.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.”

4 April 1967, Riverside Church, Beyond Vietnam speech

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Xmas Greetings! Our 2017 Highlights

Posted on December 28, 2017 by TPNS • Posted in 1. Recent Posts, News and Analysis

Dear friends, supporters and colleagues,

An end of year round-up is always interesting – a mixed sense of have made progress yet realising the scale of any given issue is so great that there is always so much further to go..

In 2017, we made progress on existing work and launched some new projects… Below are some links to our 2017 highlights.

Wishing you peace and happiness in 2018.

From everyone at Tipping Point

Continue reading →

The World Inequality Report

Posted on December 27, 2017 by TPNS • Posted in #MLKGlobal, What interests us • Tagged Inequality, World

by Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy, Oxfam International

This week saw the launch of the first ‘World Inequality Report’ written by the team at the Paris School of Economics and based on the data collected by over 100 researchers behind the World Incomes Database. The summary is very short and full of fantastic charts, well worth taking a look at. They have pioneered the use of tax data and other sources to recalculate the incomes of those at the top, which are hugely underestimated. They have now done this for enough large countries to make some conclusions about global trends, which is the basis of the report.
Continue reading →

£280bn Global Arms Sales in 2016

Posted on December 13, 2017 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged Arms trade, Military spending, World

Global sales of weapons and military services have risen for the first time in five years, helped in part by an increase in sales by British companies.

Weapons – many of which are fuelling deadly conflicts in the Middle East – are now being bought and sold at the highest level since 2010, with sales up more than a third (38 per cent) since 2002.

Military kit worth $374.8bn (£280bn) was sold in 2016 by the industry’s top 100 companies, an annual review by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) found.

The findings came as UK firm BAE Systems signed a $6.7bn deal with Qatar to buy 24 Typhoon fighter jets.

British arms sales rose 2 per cent last year and now amount to almost 10 per cent of global sales, researchers found.

Germany’s arms sales jumped 6.6 per cent while South Korean companies notched up 20 per cent more sales than a year earlier. …

Sales by Lockheed Martin – the world’s largest arms producer – rose by 10.7 per cent in 2016, the report found, linked to the sale of F-35 combat aircraft. Continue reading →

Destruction Of Black Wealth During The Obama Presidency

Posted on December 13, 2017 by Lin • Posted in #MLKGlobal, Blog, What interests us • Tagged Economy, Housing Bubble, Inequality, USA

Between 2007 and 2016, the average wealth of the bottom 99% decreased by $4,500. This decline was particularly
concentrated among the housing wealth of AfricanAmericans. Outside of home equity, black wealth recovered its 2007 level by 2016. But average black home equity was still $16,700 less. Meanwhile, over the same period, the average wealth of the top 1% increased by $4.9 million. Much of this decline in wealth, we argue, was the direct result of policies enacted by President Obama. His housing policies, particularly regarding foreclosures, were a disastrous failure that led to millions of families losing their homes, with black families suffering especially harsh losses. What’s more, Obama had power—money, legislative tools, and legal leverage—that could have very sharply ameliorated the foreclosure crisis, if not largely prevented it. He chose not to use them.

In the following essay, we shall examine the circumstances that led to the housing bubble, and its eventual collapse in Part I. In Part II, we shall take a close statistical look at the decline in black housing wealth. And in Part III, we shall outline an approach that would have halted the foreclosure crisis, had President Obama chosen to pursue it.

Click to access Foreclosed.pdf