News bits: Climate change causes inflation; Capitalism vs. labor; etc.

Climate change is a source of inflation: Various news sources are beginning to report on climate change being a factor in inflation for some products. The NYT writes:

How Climate Change Is Making Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive

When the Agriculture Department finished its calculations last month, the findings were startling: 2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the state where the coarse fiber is primarily grown and then sold around the globe in the form of tampons, cloth diapers, gauze pads and other products.

In the biggest loss on record, Texas farmers abandoned 74 percent of their planted crops — nearly six million acres — because of heat and parched soil, hallmarks of a megadrought made worse by climate change.

That crash has helped to push up the price of tampons in the United States 13 percent over the past year. The price of cloth diapers spiked 21 percent. Cotton balls climbed 9 percent and gauze bandages increased by 8 percent. All of that was well above the country’s overall inflation rate of 6.5 percent in 2022, according to data provided by the market research firms NielsenIQ and The NPD Group.  

“Climate change is a secret driver of inflation,” said Nicole Corbett, a vice president at NielsenIQ. “As extreme weather continues to impact crops and production capacity, the cost of necessities will continue to rise.”

Halfway around the world in Pakistan, the world’s sixth-largest producer of upland cotton, severe flooding, made worse by climate change, destroyed half that country’s cotton crop.

The NYT article goes on to point out that huge areas of the US are verging on a return to 1930s dust bowl conditions that drove millions of people to move out of drought-stricken areas. Since then, the Southwestern cotton crop depended on water pumped from the huge Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies eight western states from Wyoming to Texas. But now the Ogallala is in decline partly because of climate change. The 2018 National Climate Assessment, now asserts that “major portions of the Ogallala Aquifer should now be considered a nonrenewable resource.” 

An abandoned farm in west Texas

Dust bowl days return

Restating the obvious, the radical right Republican Party and the carbon energy sector continue to deny, distort, downplay, and oppose federal and private sector efforts to deal with climate change. The GOP and Exxon-Mobil say it’s a hoax and not something that aversely affects people’s lives. If there are any bad impacts, The GOP blames Biden, Obama, Hillary and liberals generally, all of whom should be locked up. 

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Capitalism hates organized labor: This is something I've seen in person. A labor union starts talking to employees. Management instantly freaks out and calls a meeting of all managers. The CEO bashes the union, scares the crap out of everyone, and tells the management team to fight like hell and fire anyone who seems to be sympathetic to a union appeal. I was in the room at the time. It was and still is illegal to fire employees for union organizing activities. But the law just doesn’t matter very much. Common Dreams writes:

A federal judge issued a nationwide order late Friday barring Starbucks from firing union organizers—a ruling that affirmed a long-established law which workers say the coffee chain has violated hundreds of times since unionizing efforts were first launched in Buffalo, New York in 2021.

U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith ruled in Michigan that former shift supervisor Hannah Whitbeck must be reinstated in her position, which she was fired from in April 2022.

Whitbeck and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Detroit Regional Director Elizabeth Kerwin argued that the former worker had been fired because of her involvement in union organizing at the store where she worked in Ann Arbor—one of 366 Starbucks stores across the U.S. where employees have organized to create bargaining units. Nearly 300 stores have won union elections so far.

Starbucks Workers United, the employees’ union, has accused the company of firing more than 200 employees in illegal retaliation for organizing.

Lots of big companies, probably most, break laws many times when labor unions try to organize. Capitalism hates organized labor for two obvious reasons, wealth and power. Capitalism routinely causes elites to breaks laws to keep wealth and power concentrated with the elites.

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From the deep distrust files: The NYT writes about what deep distrust of government can lead people to do: 

Many in East Palestine, Skeptical of Official Tests, Seek Out Their Own

The moves reflect residents’ deep-seated mistrust of government screenings of toxic chemicals and fears of long-term effects from the train derailment

When a team came by the morning of Valentine’s Day to test the air quality in Maggie Guglielmo’s store a few blocks from where a freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed this month, the smell was undeniable.

“The air monitoring team left within 10 minutes due to the unpleasant/overwhelming odor,” the team of government and private environmental experts wrote in its report, describing a “super glue/pool/fruity-like odor.” But there was no detection of significant amounts of vinyl chloride, a colorless gas carried by the train, or other toxic chemicals.

Reflecting the fundamental mistrust residents have in the railroad company Norfolk Southern and the government, Ms. Guglielmo is one of several people who live in the region who are seeking independent tests or are looking for ways to conduct their own.

Fomenting distrust of the government has been a core goal of radical right propaganda for decades. The problem is serious. It is made worse by a government and corporations that routinely deceive, lie and betray the public. There are good reasons for skepticism. Neoliberal and brass knuckles capitalist ideologies are undeniably compatible with deceiving and betraying the public. Unfortunately, deep distrust of government is a democracy killer. Demagogic tyrants and opportunists rush in to fill the void that distrust creates. It’s a lose-lose situation for citizens and democracy, but a win-win for the other guys and tyranny. Ronald Reagan, 1986, fomenting distrust:

The most terrifying words in the English language are: 

I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

Actually, the most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the tyrants and capitalists and I’m here to help.