Canada and the United States resume aluminum tariff war

Carl Bronski

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland of the ruling Liberal Party announced last Friday that the Canadian government will impose C$3.6 billion in tariffs on US metal products in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s placing of a 10 percent tariff on Canadian non-alloyed, unwrought aluminum. Trump, in a continuation of his reactionary “America First” agenda, cited unsubstantiated “national security” concerns to resurrect a metals trade war with Canada that he boasted will “save American jobs.” The Trump tariff will take effect on August 16.

Freeland branded the Trump administration as the most protectionist in US history and called Trump’s national security rationale “ludicrous” and “absurd.” However, she was careful to couch her government’s criticism as a defence of the Canadian ruling elite’s long-standing military-strategic partnership with US imperialism. “Canadian aluminum does not undermine US national security. Canadian aluminum strengthens US national security and has done so for decades through unparalleled co-operation between our two countries,” stated Freeland.

With approximately three-quarters of all Canada’s exports going to the US and Canada’s global position dependent on its military-security partnership with Washington, Canadian big business and its political representatives view their alliance with the US as pivotal to upholding their own imperialist interests.

President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Canada’s response, said Freeland, would be designed therefor to be “perfectly reciprocal,” so as not to escalate the trade dispute further. The federal Liberal government will now take the next 30 days to determine what specific US metal products will be targeted, “dollar for dollar,” by the Canadian tariffs. It is expected that the government will select industries in the United States that are located in electoral “swing states” that are crucial to Trump’s flagging re-election bid.

The current dispute is a resurrection of earlier trade frictions between the two countries. In 2018, Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on Canadian steel and a 10 percent aluminum tax. The Canadian government then responded in kind. Those tariffs were lifted in May 2019 in order to ease the way for the subsequent passage through Congress and the Canadian parliament of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada continental free trade agreement (USMCA). The central purpose of the USMCA is to consolidate North America as a US-dominated trade bloc capable of confronting the global rivals of North America’s two imperialist powers, above all China and Russia.

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been striving to accommodate Trump and sustain a close working relationship with his administration since his election in November 2016, both to protect the vast corporate profits dependent on exports to the United States and to enable Canadian corporations to continue to scour the globe in search of new markets on the coat-tails of US imperialism.

The exacerbation of Canada-US trade tensions—at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic, the global crisis of capitalism and the concomitant growth of working class resistance has threatened the very foundations of bourgeois rule—has angered business organizations on both sides of the border.

In the first half of this year, Canada provided about 75 percent of all aluminum shipped to the US. American manufacturers have no ready outlet to purchase aluminum from other sources and thus will be forced to buy the metal from Canada at the increased price, thereby driving up consumer prices. At the same time, the proposed Canadian tariffs on US metal products will put a downward pressure on American jobs in selected industries.

The US Chamber of Commerce, other American trade organizations and think tanks as well as many manufacturers denounced Trump’s new tariffs. Tom Dobbins, president of the US Aluminum Association called the move an “ill-advised action on a key trading partner…at a time when U.S. businesses and consumers can least afford it.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board opined, “Mr. Trump at his policy worst.”

As was the case in 2018 when all Canada’s political parties came together to demand swift retaliation against Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, the Conservatives, NDP, business groups and the trade unions united with the Liberals to denounce Trump. Hard-right Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has spent his two years in power gutting public spending, attacking teachers, and preparing to privatize large swathes of the public sector, asserted, “I had a good conversation with the deputy prime minister this morning regarding this and I just have to say how disappointed I am with President Trump right now.” He added that Canada was in “a battle” and must “hit ‘em where it hurts.”

A statement by the Canadian director of the United Steelworkers (USW) struck a similarly reactionary nationalist chord. “The Trump administration is flouting the May 2019 agreement between the US and Canada which removed baseless Section 232 ‘national security’ tariffs on Canadian exports at that time,” declared USW Canada director Ken Neumann. “The re-imposition today of these bogus US tariffs on Canadian aluminum is now threatening thousands of Canadian jobs. The Canadian government must respond with retaliatory tariffs on a wide range of U.S. exports.”

The USW’s full-throated endorsement of protectionism and trade war measures is a logical continuation of its pro-corporate, pro-imperialist line that has seen it endorse USMCA and the emergence of a North American trade bloc. The last time Trump imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, the USW campaigned against them by reminding lawmakers in Washington that Canadian steel and aluminum have been used for decades to supply the US war machine with tanks, guns, and aircraft.

Among Canadian union bureaucrats, USW and Unifor have been first among equals in promoting a nationalist orientation—calling on big business governments to defend “Canadian” jobs and enact protectionist measures to support “Canadian” companies. This pro-capitalist perspective serves to block any united action on the part of workers in North America and around the world against the transnational giants that are relentlessly seeking to intensify the exploitation of all workers, irrespective of their nationality.

Moreover, the unions’ nationalism has failed to protect a single job. Unifor, which began talks with the Detroit Three automakers on a new contract yesterday, has waved the Maple Leaf in the faces of autoworkers since the 1980s, while it (and its predecessor the Canadian Auto Workers—CAW) imposed round after round of wage rollbacks and other concessions, and presided over the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs at Fiat-Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors.

In addition to trade war, the conflict between the ever-more integrated global economy and the division of the world into competing capitalist nation-states is paving the way for wars of aggression, including military clashes between the imperialist powers themselves. As Trudeau, Trump, and the European and Chinese leaders recklessly implement tariffs and counter-tariffs, they are all arming their respective militaries to the teeth.

The global capitalist crisis has undermined the Canadian bourgeoisie’s long-standing strategy of advancing its own imperialist interests in close alliance with US imperialism, while at the same time relying on multilateral international institutions to offset the power imbalance that has always prevailed between Ottawa and Washington. As tensions between the American and European imperialists, and China mount, Canada’s ruling elite is being thrust ever more forcefully into the maelstrom of imperialist conflict.

Workers must reject with contempt the unions’ nationalist propaganda and the attempt by the entire political establishment to posture as defenders of workers’ interests. In opposition to the nationalist, pro-capitalist policy of lending support to Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, Canadian workers must link their struggles to the growing upsurge of the American and international working class.

It is impossible to advance the interests of Canadian workers in alliance with big business and its political representatives. Instead, Canadian workers must join forces with their class brothers and sisters in the US, Mexico, and around the world in a counter-offensive against the austerity, militarism, and nationalism promoted by the ruling elite in every country. In opposition to the imposition of tariffs and counter-tariffs, and the descent of the global capitalist system into trade war and military conflict, workers must make socialist internationalism the axis of their struggles.

Germany: SPD nominates Finance Minister Scholz as its candidate for chancellor

Peter Schwarz

On Monday, the leadership committee of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) unanimously nominated Olaf Scholz as their candidate for chancellor for the federal elections in autumn 2021. They have thus made a decision that fits the character of the SPD perfectly. Scholz, the current vice-chancellor and finance minister in the grand coalition with the Christian Democrats headed by Merkel, embodies the right-wing policies of a party that has absolutely nothing in common with its former roots in the workers’ movement.

Scholz’s nomination is a signal to the financial oligarchy and the right-wing elements in the state apparatus that they can rely on the SPD without reservation in the face of growing social conflicts. There has been no attack on social and democratic rights in the last two decades in which Scholz has not been personally involved.

Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) presents the federal government's emergency measures (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, pool)

The coronavirus pandemic has lent an extraordinary sharpness to the social antagonisms and international tensions that have been developing for a long time. Resistance is growing in factories, schools and hospitals; trade wars and the threat of war are spreading; democratic structures are collapsing; and opposition to capitalism is mounting. Under these circumstances, the SPD has decided to abandon the usual political fig-leaves and openly proclaim its right-wing policies by appointing Scholz as candidate for chancellor more than a year before Election Day.

Just last year, the party had organised a travelling circus lasting for weeks, in which seven pairs of candidates competed for the party chairmanship at 23 regional conferences, pretending to be grassroots democrats. Scholz had experienced a humiliating defeat at that time. He and his partner Klara Geywitz were defeated in the second round of voting by the duo Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, who have led the party ever since. The two had passed themselves off as left-wing critics of the grand coalition, supported by Juso (Young Socialist) Chairman Kevin Kühnert, the spokesman for the GroKo opponents in the 2018 SPD member survey.

At the time, the WSWS rejected this deception. After the election of the new SPD leadership, we commented, “The claim that Walter-Borjans and Esken pursued a different policy, embodied a left-wing of the party and rejected the Grand Coalition is a myth that does not stand up to serious scrutiny.”

Now, Walter-Borjans and Esken have proposed the defeated Scholz as the party’s candidate for chancellor, which means that he sets the course of the party. Juso leader Kühnert also supports Scholz. He justified this with the words, “We are doing this in the knowledge and recognition that we—and this is the difference to past years—are running in a common direction.” Kühnert appealed to the party’s supposed “left wing” to engage constructively in the debate. “We are also capable of learning,” he said.

By “common direction,” Kühnert meant the billions and trillions of euros that Finance Minister Scholz forked over to the banks and large companies during the coronavirus crisis. This is not a break with his previous austerity course, the “black zero” (balanced budget) policy, but rather its continuation by other means. It continues the enrichment of the wealthy at the expense of the poor, which the grand coalition has been pursuing for years.

For example, of the €756 billion in the emergency package adopted by the federal government in March, €600 billion went to large companies, €50 billion to small firms and the self-employed (who make up 58 percent of all employees subject to social security contributions), several billion went to armaments spending and nothing to education and social welfare. In addition, Scholz is already planning to recoup the gifts made to corporations and the rich through further social cuts.

This policy in the interest of the financial oligarchy runs like a red thread through Scholz’s political career.

Born in 1958 as the son of a civil servant, he studied law in Hamburg and began his political career with the Jusos, where he, like Helmut Schmidt, Andrea Nahles and many other prominent SPD leaders, employed left-wing and pseudo-Marxist phraseology. From 1982 to 1988, the representative of the so-called Stamokap (state monopoly capitalism) wing was deputy federal chairman of the SPD youth organisation.

In 1998, Scholz was elected to the Bundestag (federal parliament). In 2001, he took over the office of the Interior Senator (state minister) in the Hamburg state executive. Even then, he attracted attention as a law-and-order politician because he introduced the compulsory administration of emetics to drug dealers to preserve evidence, which the European Court of Human Rights later condemned as contrary to human rights.

In 2002, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder brought him to Berlin as SPD secretary-general to enforce his government’s attacks on welfare and labour rights against massive resistance. In 2007, he was rewarded for this with the office of minister of labour in Merkel’s first cabinet. In this function, he raised the retirement age from 65 to 67 years.

From 2011 to 2018, Scholz was mayor of Hamburg, where he again stood out for his close relationship with big business and his law-and-order policies. Among other things, Scholz is responsible for the brutal police action against the G20 demonstrations in the summer of 2017, one of the largest police deployments in German history, which served to criminalise hundreds of young people who were exercising their right to demonstrate.

In 2018, Scholz then became one of the driving forces in the SPD advocating the continuation of the grand coalition with the Christian Democrats to implement a programme of social cuts, the strengthening of state powers and militarism. By joining the grand coalition, the SPD also specifically helped the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) become the leader of the parliamentary opposition, which greatly increased its influence, despite it winning only 13.5 percent of the vote.

In Merkel’s fourth cabinet, Scholz took over the office of finance minister from Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) and continued his austerity course in Europe and Germany. To prove his loyalty to the banks, he brought the German head of the major US bank Goldman Sachs, Jörg Kukies, into his ministry as state secretary.

Until the end of last year, Kukies maintained close contacts with the Dax-listed Wirecard Group, which has since gone bankrupt and whose managers are in custody for fraudulent accounting, market manipulation, embezzlement and money laundering. The fact that Wirecard has been subject to the supervisory authorities of the Finance Ministry for years could still create problems for Scholz.

Scholz’s nomination is a clear commitment to continue the grand coalition, the most right-wing government since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded following World War Two. Scholz’s relationship with Chancellor Merkel is now so close that the Süddeutsche Zeitung felt compelled to comment, “Vice-Chancellor Scholz could certainly be successful in reaching out to voters who would like to see Angela Merkel’s government continue.”

However, Scholz’s nomination also means he is prepared to govern together with the Greens or the Left Party, which pursue the same reactionary policies.

Asked by Neues Deutschland about possible collaboration with Scholz, Left Party leader Riexinger immediately signalled his approval. “The decisive factor is whether there is agreement on content,” he said. “We heard interesting announcements from the SPD leadership over the weekend: they want to overcome the Hartz IV system [of welfare attacks] and abolish sanctions, something the Left Party has long been calling for. They want a significantly higher minimum wage, and the rich to be taxed more heavily.”

Riexinger, of course, does not believe that Scholz—who is himself described by the bourgeois press as the SPD’s right-wing frontman—and the SPD have suddenly changed. What is clear is his willingness to cooperate with a Scholz-led SPD.

UK in record recession as social catastrophe looms

Thomas Scripps

The UK is officially in the worst recession on record. Having recorded two consecutive quarters of declining GDP, Britain’s economy is the same size as it was in 2003, smaller than the lowest point reached during the 2008-9 financial crisis. The response of the Johnson government and the employers will be a brutal assault on the living standards of the working class. After a fall of 2.2 percent in the first three months of the year, the UK economy plunged by more than a fifth (20.4 percent) in the next three months to the end of June. This is the biggest quarterly decline since records of similar statistics began to be kept in 1955. It is the worst experienced by any of the G7 nations—roughly double the decline suffered by Germany and the United States.

Britain has been especially hard-hit, in part due to the structure of its economy, heavily weighted towards the services sector, which accounts for 80 percent of output. Largely consumer-facing, this sector has been especially affected by social distancing and lockdown measures, and by the caution shown by the population in response to the COVID-19 virus.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson (Image Credit: AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

Consumer spending was down 27.7 percent in May and was still 14.5 percent lower than a year earlier in June. Visits to retail destinations were down 39.4 percent last month nationally and down 69 percent in central London, which is more heavily dependent on tourists and office workers.

Services fell 19.9 percent last quarter—accounting for three quarters of the fall in total GDP—and recorded a relatively low uptick of 7.7 percent month-on-month in June. Manufacturing fell by 16.9 percent, followed by an 11 percent climb. Construction collapsed by 35 percent but has since jumped 23.5 percent.

Overall, including growth registered across the economy in May (2.4 percent) and June (8.7 percent) as public health measures were recklessly lifted, GDP is now 17.2 percent below its February level. The Bank of England (BoE) forecasts an annual fall for 2020 of 9.5 percent, the deepest drop since 1921 in the aftermath of the First World War, amid the collapse of British imperialism’s commanding world position.

The BoE predicts the recovery of GDP to slow significantly after the initial rebound, with output only reaching pre-pandemic levels at the end of 2021.

Things could be worse still. In May, the BoE forecast a 14 percent collapse in GDP, the worst recession in 300 years. The improved outlook was prompted by the earlier than expected easing of the lockdown and a more rapid pickup in some areas of consumer spending. However, the BoE is warning of “downside risks,” including a resurgence of COVID-19 that is guaranteed by the reckless ending of the lockdown.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has highlighted the risks posed by a lasting lag in business investment, down 31.4 percent since the first quarter, as nonessential spending is cut or postponed, especially in consumer-facing industries. Tom Stevenson, investment director at Fidelity International, told the Guardian, “No one knows exactly what the recovery from coronavirus will look like—particularly with the potential for a second wave of infections and further local lockdowns—but it is likely that it will be a slow crawl towards pre-COVID levels.”

The BoE is also worried about unemployment and the impact of job insecurity on spending. UK payrolls dropped 730,000 jobs between March and July, according to the ONS, and vacancies are 45 percent lower than a year earlier. The number of people claiming out-of-work benefits reached 2.7 million in July, double the level before the pandemic.

This situation will worsen dramatically after the government furlough scheme is ended in October. Around five million people were still on the scheme in June, according to the ONS. The Financial Times quotes Gerwyn Davies of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) saying, “A real concern is that this is just the first wave of bad news for the jobs market,” and Capital Economics consultancy’s Ruth Gregory warning, “This is just the lull before the storm.”

Research by the CIPD and recruiter Adecco, reported Monday, found a third of employers intended to make redundancies between July and September. The BBC obtained figures showing the number of firms notifying the government in June of their intention to cut 20 or more jobs was five times higher than in the same month last year.

Brexit and the prospect of higher tariffs in Europe paid by British companies are listed as another risk factor.

Even taken together, these warnings and announcements are only a snapshot of a developing crisis of British capitalism, itself only a specific manifestation of a world breakdown centred on the failure of the capitalist system to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus is out of control across the Americas and in resurgence across the world. Chancellor Rishi Sunak is reportedly considering delaying his autumn Budget until spring in the case of a new series of local lockdowns and a spike in coronavirus cases. The content of the government’s economic plans, however, is already clear. Sunak told the BBC after the official figures on the recession were announced: “I’ve said before that hard times were ahead, and today’s figures confirm that hard times are here. Hundreds of thousands of people have already lost their jobs and, sadly, in the coming months many more will. But while there are difficult choices to be made ahead, we will get through this and I can assure people that nobody will be left without hope or opportunity.”

Workers have heard all this before. It will be followed by calls to “tighten belts” and “sacrifice” in the national interest. Mass unemployment, on a scale not seen in decades, will be used to enforce vicious cuts to wages and conditions. As in the crash of 2008-9, government debt will be used to justify the evisceration of essential social services.

The working class must reject all such demands. Only they are called on to make sacrifices. Trillions have already been handed to the super-rich globally, on the pretext of confronting a public health and economic catastrophe of capitalism’s own making after years of worsening social inequality, financial parasitism, and assaults on the social conditions of the working class. Now the pandemic rages on, and a further historic collapse in living standards is in preparation. The money and assets looted by the super-rich must be reclaimed by the working class, and the corporations taken into public ownership, turned towards socially useful production, and placed under democratic control. In the Labour Party and the trade unions, workers confront a hostile force that has worked hand-in-glove with the Conservative government throughout the pandemic and will continue to do so as the economic crisis deepens. A fightback against them all demands the formation of rank-and-file committees of workers, and the building of the revolutionary party, the Socialist Equality Party, to lead a struggle for socialism.

Report charges US-Saudi arms sale ignored civilian casualties

Bill Van Auken

In its invoking of a phony state of emergency to ram through an $8.1 billion weapons deal that included precision-guided missiles (PGMs) for Saudi Arabia in May of last year, the US State Department “did not fully assess risks and implement mitigation measures to reduce civilian casualties and legal concerns associated with the transfer of PGMs,” a report released Tuesday by the department’s Office of Inspector General charged.

The emergency was declared by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on May 24, 2019 as a means of circumventing congressional opposition to arms sales to the Saudi monarchy and the United Arab Emirates. Pompeo claimed at the time that the weapons were needed urgently to “deter Iranian aggression.”

Saudi airstrike in Yemen (Credit: Saba)

The report, requested by the Democratic-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee, came amid fresh reports from Yemen of atrocities caused by US-supplied Saudi warplanes and munitions.

At least nine children were among 20 killed in an August 6 Saudi airstrike against a four-vehicle civilian convoy in northern Yemen. A local health official said that the majority of the dead were women and children, as were seven others who were critically wounded.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Lise Grande, said the attack came “as the victims were traveling by road.” She added, “Like all senseless acts of violence against civilians, this is shocking and completely, totally unacceptable.”

The British charity Save the Children also confirmed the civilian casualties. “In less than a month at least 17 children have lost their lives as a result of indiscriminate attacks in Yemen,” said Xavier Joubert, the charity’s director in Yemen.

On July 14, the UN reported another airstrike in Yemen’s Hajjah province that killed seven children, some as young as two years old.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the US-backed, Saudi-led war against Yemen has killed over 100,000 people since it began in 2015. The Saudi bombing campaign would be impossible without US weapons and logistical support, which has included targeting intelligence as well as aerial refueling for Saudi warplanes.

The devastating impact of the estimated 257,000 Saudi airstrikes has been compounded by a naval blockade mounted by the UAE with US naval support for the express purpose of starving the Yemeni population into submission. Many thousands more Yemenis, including at least 75,000 children under the age of five, have died of starvation, while the worst cholera epidemic on record has infected 1.2 million. Fully half of Yemen’s 28 million people are living on the brink of starvation.

The US State Department held a press briefing the day before the OIG’s report was released, claiming that the “big takeaway” was that the report confirmed that the State Department and Pompeo acted in “complete accordance of the law and found no wrongdoing in the administration’s exercise of the emergency authorities.”

This claim was echoed by Pompeo at a press conference in Prague Wednesday. “We did everything by the book,” he said. “I am proud of the work that my team did. We got a really good outcome. We prevented the loss of lives.” He failed to specify which “lives” he had in mind. Clearly they were not those of the thousands killed by US munitions in Yemen.

The OIG report does not exonerate Pompeo. It states at the outset that it did not “make any assessment of the policy decisions underlying the arms transfers and the associated emergency.” It notes that the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) of 1976 merely requires that the executive branch declare that “an emergency exists,” which requires that the sale be made immediately “in the national security interests of the United States” in order to override Congress.

The publicly released report was heavily redacted, with the acting Inspector General Diana Shaw invoking in a cover letter “executive branch confidentiality interests, including executive privilege.”

In addition to its indictment of the State Department for failing to concern itself with the civilian casualties caused by the weapons being fast-tracked to the House of Saud, an unredacted copy of the OIG’s report leaked to the media also provides a timeline that makes clear the claim of an “emergency” was entirely fraudulent. It establishes that discussion on the use of the AECA emergency clause began nearly two months before it was actually invoked, and that when the report’s findings were issued to the State Department, just $20 million of the billions of dollars in arms sales involved had been implemented.

Far from Washington having to rush weapons to a beleaguered ally, the emergency declaration was made for the dual purposes of fueling the US war buildup against Iran and safeguarding the billions of dollars in profits from Saudi arms sales accruing to Raytheon and other major US weapons manufacturers.

Congressional opposition to arms sales to the Saudi monarchical regime increased in the wake of the October 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist and former regime insider, who was killed and dismembered at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Democrats’ profession of concern over the Saudi atrocities carried out with US weaponry in Yemen was belated, to say the least. American arms sales to Riyadh soared under the administration of Barack Obama, which provided the Saudi military with cluster bombs, fighter jets, white phosphorus, targeting lists, midair refueling and around-the-clock maintenance, without which the slaughter of Yemenis would have been impossible.

In any case, for Washington and both US capitalist parties, Yemen and its US-backed war crimes are merely a sideshow in the greater game of struggle for hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East.

The drive to war against Iran has not been blunted by the exponential spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the US and internationally. On the contrary, the crisis which it has unleashed has only intensified American militarism, which provides a means of directing uncontrollable domestic tension outward.

Washington’s determination to effect regime change in Iran has only escalated in the face of Beijing’s cementing last month a far-reaching agreement with Tehran, providing $400 billion of investments in Iran’s oil, gas and transport sectors, in exchange for cheap oil supplies. In addition to Chinese investments in other sectors, it will allow China to deploy up to 5,000 troops to protect its interests in Iran.

The danger of a US war against Iran, made plain with Washington’s drone assassination at Baghdad’s international airport on January 3 of Gen. Qassem Suleimani, one of the most senior officials in the Iranian government, is bound up with US preparations for war against nuclear-armed China and Russia and the threat of a nuclear holocaust.

This threat can be answered only through the political mobilization of the international working class in struggle against war and its source, the capitalist profit system.

Schools make students sign liability waivers acknowledging risk of death

Sam Wayne & Usman Khan

Many colleges, universities and K-12 schools across the United States have sent letters and emails to parents and students, requiring liability waivers be signed before students can return for in-person classes.

Some of the higher education institutions using such waivers include Bates College, the University of New Hampshire, Point Park University in Pittsburgh and St. Xavier University. Universities such as the University of Memphis and Ohio State University sent liability waivers to all student athletes but may extend these waivers to all students.

There are also a number of K-12 school districts using these waivers including Florida’s Volusia County, South Carolina’s Berkeley County, the Catholic schools and centers in St. Petersburg and Tampa under superintendent Chris Pastura, and St. Andrew’s Schools in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Screenshot of a waiver for students at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine

The purpose of these waivers is to exempt schools from liability in the event that students get infected with the coronavirus when they return to campuses and schools in the fall.

Some schools and colleges are requiring students and parents to sign forms that directly suggest students will be waiving their right to hold the school liable if they become infected. Other institutions are opting for more subtle agreements that use terms like “informed consent” and “shared responsibility.”

In a recent article in Inside Higher Ed, Heidi Li Feldman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, stated, “Universities encourage students to think that the universities they are enrolled in are benevolent towards them, that they care about them as people.” Feldman continued: “You cultivate a climate of trust, and in the context of a deadly disease, you’re busy laying the groundwork for your litigation defense.”

One such agreement issued by the College of Southern Maryland, a community college in La Plata with over 6,000 students, includes the following language:

…by coming to campus, you indicate your understanding of these safety requirements and rules, and you agree to comply with and abide by them.

In the interest of complete transparency, CSM wishes to reinforce to students, employees, and visitors that attending, visiting, or working on any CSM campus carries an inherent risk of being exposed to or contracting the coronavirus or COVID-19. By coming onto campus, you indicate your acknowledgement, acceptance, and assumption of these risks.

You likewise signal, by returning to a CSM campus, that you understand the contagious nature of the virus, the potential difficulty of identifying it in others, the possibility of exposure to a person infected with COVID-19, and the risk of subsequently being infected with the disease. You further signal your acceptance and assumption of these risks. [Emphasis in original]

Such COVID-19 student agreements imply that the decision to risk one’s life is being made by the student of their own volition and, should a student become infected, the students are at fault for not following the institution’s safety guidelines. As we have noted in a recent article “Universities prepare to blame students for COVID-19 outbreaks,” students are being set up to take the blame when coronavirus outbreaks occur.

There are a number of issues with such agreements that must be addressed.

First, students who are planning to attend school for in-person instruction are hardly making a “choice.” For college students who are old enough to have a say in the matter, they are making the decision under economic pressures—particularly in a period when millions of workers are unemployed and seeking a college education is seen as the only chance at getting a decent job. Moreover, many college students are attending institutions that either require students to return to campus for in-person or “hybrid” instruction or make it difficult for students to attend remotely by requiring students to apply for “approval” from the school for remote learning.

For younger students in primary or secondary schools, particularly those of working class families, their parents are being forced to choose between sending their children back to school in order to return to work or staying home and potentially risking foreclosure, eviction or starvation. The difficulty facing parents is compounded by the recent ending of the $600 federal unemployment benefit, with both Democrats and Republicans currently negotiating how much to cut these benefits in order to create conditions that will force workers back to work. This weekly supplement, which many families have relied on to cover their expenses, was cut in half by an executive order issued by Trump last Saturday.

The fact that schools are issuing liability waivers in the first place is a glaring admission that sending students back to schools is not safe. Already there have been over 5.2 million Americans infected with COVID-19 with over 166,000 dying from the disease.

Moreover, the claims made by some politicians, including President Trump, that children and youth are not affected by the virus are patently false. The emergence of nine new COVID-19 cases in the last week among North Paulding students and staff in Georgia tragically confirms the emerging science concerning the ability of children to spread the virus. In just the last two weeks of July, nearly 100,000 children tested positive for the coronavirus.

What is the basis for the back-to-school drive?

For K-12 schools, the ruling class is engaging in a campaign to send students back for in-person learning so that their parents can then be pushed to return to work to produce profits. Colleges and universities are seeking the return of students to fill dormitories and dining halls, which colleges rely heavily on for revenue along with sports and tuition.

While the issuing of liability waivers is being used by schools to evade liability for students getting sick, this policy must be seen within a broader context. Funding for public schooling and for higher education has been repeatedly cut over several decades. This has driven universities to continuously increase tuition costs to the point where the majority of young people seeking a college education can expect to be saddled with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in debt. The outbreak of the pandemic has greatly exacerbated the financial problems facing higher education, with a number of colleges not expected to financially survive the pandemic.

For public K-12 schools, cuts in funding have meant overcrowded classrooms, poverty wages for teachers, shifting the cost of purchasing school materials onto the backs of parents and teachers and allowing schools to become dilapidated. Many public schools have been shut down, and there has been an increasing drive to privatize education through the establishment of charter schools.

A fighting program for parents, students, and educators

In opposition to the back-to-school campaign, which is being carried out by the entire ruling class, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has issued a call for a general strike. In this statement, we call on educators and workers to raise and discuss the following demands in their schools, workplaces and neighborhoods: Keep all schools closed until the virus is eradicated! Full funding for public education and online instruction! Halt all nonessential production! For massive expansion of testing and contact tracing!

Wall Street continues to feed on death and economic devastation

Nick Beams

Amid mass death, economic contractions not seen since the Great Depression, rising unemployment, and impoverishment for millions, Wall Street continues its relentless surge, siphoning up wealth to the heights of society.

Yesterday, the S&P 500 index ended up by 1.4 percent. It briefly climbed above its record high set in February during the day, before finishing within a hair’s breadth of that level. The index has risen 3.3 percent so far this month and is up by 4.6 percent compared to the start of the year.

The Dow rose by 269 points, or 1 percent, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ index climbed by more than 2 percent.

Since the crisis of mid-March, when the market plunged and the financial system froze, the S&P 500 has risen by 50 percent on the back of government corporate bailouts and the pumping of trillions of dollars by the Fed and the assurances that it will continue to function as the backstop for Wall Street.

The rise of the US market followed similar developments in Europe, most notably in the UK where the FTSE 100 index rose by 2 percent. This came in the face of data for the second quarter that showed Britain had experienced its worst recession on record. Gross domestic product fell more than 20 percent for the three months, an annualised rate of almost 60 percent.

A breakdown of the rise in the S&P 500 index points to the growth of monopoly and the increasing domination of the high-tech companies, with more than one third of yesterday’s rise coming from the increase in the share prices of just three companies, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.

Together with Alphabet (the owner of Google) and Facebook, these companies dominate the S&P 500. Amazon’s revenue alone has risen by 40 percent for the quarter as a result of the increase in online orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is a different story for smaller companies. Companies in the Russell 2000 stock index have reported aggregate losses so far of $1.1 billion compared to profits of close to $18 billion a year ago.

Predictably, as COVID infections and deaths have continued to mount in the US, President Trump has hailed the rise of the stock market as an indication of economic health. Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday evening, he said the US economy was “rebounding with a strength like nobody thought was possible… We’re very poised for a great third quarter and very poised for some great stock numbers.”

Amid a continuing health disaster, by far the worst per capita in the world, he claimed the decline in European GDP was 40 percent worse than in the US and “we’ve built such a strong base that we’re able to do things and sustain better than anybody in the world by far.”

But rather than the stock market rise indicating underlying economic health, it is a fever chart of the diseased character of the US economy and its financial system for which Trump is the representative.

Less than five months ago, all US financial markets—including the $20 trillion market for US Treasury bonds, the foundation of the global financial system—froze threatening to set off a meltdown going far beyond that of 2008.

Nothing has been resolved since then. In essence what has taken place is that a debt crisis has been temporarily resolved by the creation of still more debt through the interventions of the Fed.

As a recent article in the Financial Times noted, after spending years warning of the dangers of excessive corporate debt, central bankers have responded to the coronavirus storm in financial markets by creating more of it—a continuation and intensification of the measures put in place after 2008.

“To stave off a debt crisis, monetary policymakers create conditions that allow companies to borrow even more, increasing the potential severity of the next crisis,” the article noted.

So far this year, more corporate bonds have been issued than in the whole of 2019 with more debt expected next year under conditions where the capacity to repay this debt is being weakened.

According to the Bank of America, the ratio of the debt of top-rated US companies to editda (earnings before interest, tax depreciation and amortization) hit 2.4 at the end of the second quarter, the highest level in records going back 19 years, and will reach 3.2 by the end of this year.

Even companies whose bonds are rated as junk, that is, lower than investment grade, have been able to cash in. Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that one such company, Ball Corporation, a maker of aluminium cans, was able to raise $1.3 billion by issuing a 10-year bond paying below 3 percent—the lowest borrowing cost ever recorded in this market.

With the Fed intervening in financial markets to buy up all forms of debt—from US Treasuries to corporate bonds—companies have gorged themselves on cheap money. In the 12 years since the 2008 crisis, the level of outstanding US corporate bonds outstanding has doubled to $12 trillion.

These figures have far-reaching economic and social implications. On the one hand, they signify that all the conditions are being created for a meltdown of the financial system, leading to companies either going bankrupt or slashing jobs and investment as they struggle to make repayments, with defaults threatening to rip through the financial system.

On the other, they signify a deepening of the assault on the working class already underway.

The Fed can create massive amounts of money through the press of a computer button, adding to the already existing mountain of financial assets. But it cannot create new value. Financial assets, including stocks, do not of themselves embody value. In the final analysis they are a claim on the surplus extracted from the working class in the process of production which must now be increased to meet the demands of Wall Street.

The divergence between the claims of the stock market is indicated by the rise of the S&P index to its record high in the face of the biggest contraction in the real economy since the Great Depression.

The price to earnings ratio of stocks in the S&P 500 now sits at 22.5 compared to the average of 15.5 over the past decade—an indication of the extent of the onslaught on wages, jobs and working conditions that is already being undertaken and which will intensify in the immediate future.

Growing wave of protests across the US against school openings

Evan Blake

Across the United States, thousands of teachers, education workers, parents and students are mobilizing to oppose the unsafe reopening of schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Car caravans, demonstrations and other forms of protest are building wherever schools are slated to resume in-person instruction.

The reopening of schools is taking place in an unplanned, haphazard manner, in which each of the country’s nearly 14,000 local school districts are being left to their own devices. Cash strapped schools are quickly improvising as students return, including in Oklahoma, where teachers this week were given two rolls of paper towels, three boxes of tissues, one 24-ounce bottle of spray disinfectant, and a mask and gloves to carry out daily cleaning over nine weeks.

(Image Credit: Fayetteville Education Association)

Predictably there have already been outbreaks at schools in Georgia, Oklahoma, Indiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Hawaii.

The scientific case against the reckless reopening of schools has been bolstered by a new study from the University of Florida based on capturing and analyzing air samples containing the live virus from hospital rooms. The study confirms that tiny droplets, known as aerosols, produced simply through speaking, can travel 16 feet or more, well beyond the recommended six feet for social distancing. The aerosols can also remain airborne for hours.

A classroom simulation shows that the spread of the virus can be significantly reduced by placing ventilation near a teacher. However, the Government Accountability Office recently found that 41 percent of school districts need to update or replace the ventilation systems in at least half of their schools, and a 2016 report by the Center for Green Schools found that 15,000 schools have indoor air quality deemed unfit for students and staff to breathe.

From the US to Brazil, South Africa, Britain, France, Australia, Germany and other countries, capitalist politicians are demanding that schools reopen in order to force parents back into unsafe workplaces to resume the flow of corporate profit. In the US—the epicenter of the global pandemic with over 5.3 million cases and nearly 170,000 deaths—the drive to reopen schools finds its most homicidal expression.

On Wednesday, the White House issued a press release that stated in part, “The education of children is more than an essential business—it’s a top national priority to ensure America can continue to aggressively compete with the rest of the world.”

Shortly after the press release, a forum was held with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and a panel of teachers, academics, and Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran, who is pushing the resumption of full in-person instruction in one of the nation’s epicenters. The aim of the event, titled, “Kids First: Getting America’s Children Safely Back to School,” was to promote pseudoscience and downplay the risks of reopening schools.

While cynically feigning concern for students, Trump threatened to utilize the pandemic to defund public education, saying, “I’d like to see the money follow the student,” i.e., to parochial and other private schools. He added, “If a school is closed, why are we paying the school?”

Trump and his Republican allies on the state level express most nakedly the demands of the ruling class, but the return to in-person schooling is a bipartisan policy. Last week New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that “all schools can reopen” across the state, including in New York City, the largest district in the country with 1.1 million students and 135,000 teachers and support staff. In other Democratic-controlled districts like Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, schools are opening online initially or rotating online and in-person learning, but this is largely aimed at dissipating opposition and biding time to reopen fully.

Opposition to the reckless reopening of schools is mounting in the working class, whose interests are dictated by science and public health, not the rise of the stock market. Facing a concerted, bipartisan campaign to vilify educators, create divisions with parents, and use students as pawns in the return-to-work campaign, educators, parents, and students have courageously organized dozens of protests to voice their opposition.

In Elizabeth, New Jersey, a groundswell of resistance forced local officials to reverse their plans to provide in-person instruction, as demanded by Democratic Governor Phil Murphy. Over 400 teachers opted out of in-person instruction, prompting the school board to change to entirely online instruction at the start of the year. This decision prompted Governor Murphy to announce that he will reverse a previous policy and develop plans for remote learning in the state.

There are growing protests across Nebraska, where Republican Governor Pete Ricketts has promoted the resumption of in-person instruction. On Monday, over 200 educators rallied at Memorial Park in Omaha, and another 100 protested in Lincoln. One teacher dressed as the Grim Reaper held a sign saying, “I can’t wait to meet my kids!”

Roughly 60 educators held a silent protest outside the Papillion La-Vista school board meeting in Papillion, Nebraska on Monday, demanding a halt to the resumption of fully in-person instruction. At the board meeting, parents and educators spoke out in favor of online learning, with Dr. James Wilson, a biology professor, stating, “I have a four-year-old little girl and a 78-year-old pair of parents that I cannot go see starting tomorrow because I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Despite the outpouring of opposition, the board voted unanimously to resume in-person instruction, which began Tuesday and Wednesday.

In Arkansas, teachers protested against Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson’s plans to fully reopen even as the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths have risen statewide over the past month. Dozens of protesters participated, holding signs that read, “The blood will be on Asa’s hands,” “Whose child has to die?” “I can teach from home. I can’t teach from a ventilator,” “School = super spreader event” and others.

The Fayetteville Education Association, a local affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), was compelled to organize the protest due to the immense opposition developing among educators in the state. In less than six weeks, the Facebook group Arkansans For Safe Public Schools has rapidly gained nearly 14,000 members.

In Utah, dozens of teachers protested the resumption of in-person learning in Alpine School District, the largest district, which has roughly 80,000 students. The district is located in Utah County, which currently has the highest rate of infections in the state. The guidelines adopted only mandate that a school closes when 15 or more positive cases are found.

With schools slated to resume in-person learning in Washoe County School District, in Nevada, over 100 educators, parents and students protested outside the district’s school board meeting Tuesday. High school teacher Debra Harris told the Reno Gazette Journal, “This is insane. This cannot be a safe condition during COVID.” She noted that professional development, which is usually focused on lesson planning, was now entirely about hygiene, commenting, “Nothing has been about education because that’s not what’s going to happen this year on campus.”

Facing immense pressure from educators, parents and students, Jefferson Parish Schools, the largest school district in Louisiana with some 50,000 students, was forced to delay the start of the school year by two weeks to August 26. Last week, hundreds protested at a school board meeting. With COVID-19 spreading rapidly throughout the state, nearly half of all students in the districts chose distance learning over in-person instruction.

Brian Williams J.D., a Jefferson Parish schoolteacher, spoke to the WSWS about the opposition to reopening. Describing the school board meeting, he said, “They are clueless about actual conditions on the ground. If they think school is safe, then they should put their jobs on the line, the way our lives are on the line. Promise us it’s safe by offering to resign if you’re wrong.”

Highlighting the connection between the back-to-school campaign and the back-to-work campaign, Williams said, “[These are] low-income, minority communities, essential workers. Jefferson Parish is the hottest spot for COVID-19 in all of Louisiana. Talking about reopening, the only thing you can figure is, they’re so desperate for the children’s parents’ labor that they’re willing to risk our lives.”

While last week’s protest was partially organized by the Jefferson Federation of Teachers, the local teacher union, Williams expressed disappointment with their actions. He said they were “unmotivated, moving very slowly, very hesitantly” and not calling for a strike.

The above protests are a small fraction of the dozens and possibly hundreds that have taken place across the country in recent weeks, in nearly every state.

The central task facing educators is to develop fighting organizations to connect their disparate struggles and prepare for a nationwide general strike to halt the drive to reopen schools. This can only be done independently of the procorporate American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), which have rejected the widely supported call for a nationwide strike.

The initiative and active struggle of educators, parents and students must be expanded and deepened as widely as possible. To organize and coordinate these struggles, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) calls upon all those opposed to the deadly reopening of schools to form a network of interconnected rank-and-file safety committees in every school and neighborhood.

These committees must establish connections with the broadest sections of the working class—manufacturing, logistics, health care, transit and other workers—to prepare a common fight against both corporate-controlled parties, which intend to use all forms of intimidation and state repression to force teachers back into the classrooms, regardless of the human toll.

The fight to stop the reopening of the schools will require the political mobilization of the entire working class against both corporate-controlled parties and the capitalist system they defend. Instead of squandering trillions on Wall Street and the Pentagon war machine, the working class must ensure that the resources are made available to provide state-of-the-art online learning for all students, the payment of full wages to parents who must care for their children, free and universal health care and a massive program of regular testing and contact tracing, which is the only way to contain the deadly virus.

DAAD Masters Scholarships 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 31st August 2020

Type: Masters

Eligibility:

• Excellently-qualified graduates who have completed a first degree (Bachelor, Diplom or comparable academic degree) at the latest by the time they commence their scholarship-supported study programme.
• For applicants from artistic disciplines and the field of architecture, the DAAD offers subject-specific scholarship programmes.

Selection Criteria:

• As a rule, applicants should have taken their final examinations no longer than six years before the application deadline.
• Applicants who have been resident in Germany for longer than 15 months at the application deadline cannot be considered.
• Notification of admission from the German host university for the desired degree course; please note that you yourself are responsible for ensuring that you apply for admission at the host university by the due date. If notification of admission is not yet available at the time of application, it must be subsequently submitted before the scholarship-supported study begins. A Scholarship Award Letter from the DAAD is only valid if you have been admitted to study at the desired host university.
• If the degree programme includes a study period or work placement abroad lasting several months, funding for this period abroad is usually only possible under the following conditions:
  The study visit is essential for achievement of the scholarship objective.
  The study period is no longer than a quarter of the scholarship period. Longer periods cannot be funded, even partially.
  The study period does not take place in the home country.

Eligible Countries: International

To be Taken at (Country): Germany

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Participation in a postgraduate programme after a first undergraduate course of study for the purpose of technical or scientific specialisation
• Specifically, the following is supported:
  a postgraduate or Master’s degree programme completed at a state or state-recognised university in Germany
  or
  the first or second year of study at a state or state-recognised German university as part of a postgraduate or Master’s degree programme completed in the home country or in another foreign country; recognition of the academic achievements rendered in Germany must be guaranteed. The standard period of study of the postgraduate or Master’s degree programme should not be exceeded as a result of the study year in Germany.

Value

• Scholarship payments of 861 euros a month
• Payments towards health, accident and personal liability insurance cover
• Travel allowance
• One-off study allowance

Under certain circumstances, scholarship holders may receive the following additional benefits:

• Monthly rent subsidy
• Monthly allowance for accompanying members of family

Duration of Award: For a postgraduate or Master’s degree completed in Germany:

• between 10 and 24 months depending on the length of the chosen study programme
• The scholarships are awarded for the duration of the standard period of study for the chosen study programme (up to a maximum of 24 months). To receive further funding after the first year of study for 2-year courses, proof of academic achievements thus far should indicate that the study programme can be successfully completed within the standard period of study.
• Applicants who are already in Germany in the first academic year of a 2-year postgraduate or Master’s programme at the time of their application may apply for a scholarship for the second year of study. In this case, it is not possible to extend the scholarship.

For a study period in Germany as part of a postgraduate or Master’s degree completed in a foreign country:

• usually one academic year; an extension is not possible.

The scholarship usually begins on 1st October, or earlier if the student takes a language course prior to the study programme.

How to Apply: The application procedure occurs online through the DAAD portal.Please note that the access to the application portal only appears while the current application period is running. After the application deadline has expired, the portal for this programme is not available until the next application period.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

The Improbability of CO2 Removal From the Atmosphere

Manuel Garcia Jr

The concentration of carbon dioxide gas in today’s atmosphere is 417ppm (parts per million). There are 10^44 gas molecules in the entire atmosphere (78% diatomic nitrogen, 21% diatomic oxygen, 1% everything else), so 1ppm is equivalent to 10^38 gas particles. The 417ppm of CO2 represents a total of 4.17×10^40 molecules.

Some people hope for new technology to remove carbon dioxide gas from Earth’s atmosphere, and then forestall the advance of global warming, or even completely eliminate it. I see this as improbable because I think any such technology would be extremely inefficient at CO2 removal, and be energy intensive as well. The process of gaseous diffusion, as with the release of CO2 into the atmosphere, requires no energy; the gases just mix, spread and dilute, and the entropy of the atmosphere increases. It is an “irreversible process” in the parlance of chemical thermodynamics. This means that the spontaneous un-mixing of gases and their re-concentration into separate volumes has never been observed. Energy must be invested to effect any such desired separation of component gases in a mixture. To explore the possibility of CO2 removal, I have quantified my sense of improbability about it, and describe that here.

Consider a hypothetical CO2 removal machine that is a tube with a filter box in the middle. Air is fanned into the tube, flows into the filter box where some of its CO2 is removed, and then flows out of the tube to rejoin the atmosphere and to slightly reduce the global average concentration of CO2. Energy is supplied to entrain air into the device, and energy is supplied to power the unspecified process that effects the CO2 removal within the filter box. The machine would operate continuously so that over time all the atmosphere would be filtered and de-carbonized.

This would be a very large machine, and most likely be a large array of identical or similar units all over the world that would comprise a composite machine. I will describe this composite as if it were a single tube. 

Machine #1

This machine has a filter cross-sectional area of 10,000 km^2 (10^10 m^2) into which air is fanned through at 1meter/second (2.24mph). Producing that continuous mass flow from still air requires 16GW of power, assuming an efficiency of 40% (from raw power into moving air). The filtration process is assumed to consume 40GW (1% of the power used by the United States) and be 1% effective at CO2 removal. The anthropogenic emission of CO2, at its current rate of 35.5GT/year (giga metric tons per year), is assumed to continue indefinitely (the economy!), with the oceans absorbing 29% of those emissions (10.4GT/y).

At the end of 10 years of continuous operation Machine #1 would have cleared 3.26ppm of CO2 from Earth’s atmosphere, at a cost of 1.77×10^19 Joules of energy (4.92×10^12 kilowatt-hours). Reducing the CO2 concentration to the pre-industrial level of 280ppm would require 507.6 years.

Machine #2

Clearly, improvements are required for Machine #1. So, we assume that 10% efficiency of CO2 removal can be effected by investing 400GW (10% of the power used by the United States) into the filter box. Now, the power consumption is 416GW for Machine #2. After 10 years of continuous operation 31.5ppm of CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere (bringing the concentration down to 386ppm), at an energy cost of 1.31×10^20 Joules (3.64×10^13kWh). Reducing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 back to 280ppm would require 51 years. This might seem promising except for the fact that the assumed 10% efficiency is pure fantasy.

Machine #3, All Earth’s Lands

To regain a sense of reality, consider the actual performance of the entire land surface of the Earth (1.489×10^14 m^2) acting as a CO2 removal filter. This was the case in the clearing of 2500ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere over the course of 200,000 years during the geologically brief episode of explosive global warming 55.5 million years ago, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). I described the PETM and cited numerous public-access scientific references to it in.

Using the same rate of CO2 removal (the e-folding time) as occurred during the PETM, in my formulation of CO2 removal machines, it transpires that the efficiency of removal by the Earth-filter (rock weathering reactions in the long term) is 8.6×10^-8 (0.0000086%). After 10 years, this Earth-machine would clear 0.42ppm of the atmospheric CO2 (bringing the level down from 417ppm to 416.6ppm). That level would be reduced to 280ppm in 3,984 years.

Machine #4

Hope in technology springs eternal for some, so maybe our Machine #2 even with a realistic efficiency can better the clearing-time set by the Earth, natural Machine #3. We accept an efficiency of 1.474×10^-7 (0.00001474%), invest 1.31×10^19 Joules of energy every year at a rate of 416GW of continuous power, and after 10 years find 0ppm of CO2 removal! in fact however long we run this machine there will always be 0ppm of CO2 removal, because the rate of technological removal is equalled by the rate of anthropogenic emissions. Reaching 280ppm is literally infinitely far away.

Machine #5

Maybe by some technological breakthrough the efficiency can be raised by a factor of 100, to 1.474×10^-5 (0.001474%). Then in 100 years Machine #5 would have cleared 0.0478ppm of atmospheric CO2 (reducing the level from 417ppm to 416.95ppm) for an investment of 1.31×10^21 Joules (3.64×10^14kWh). Achieving 280ppm would require 348,577 years. It’s hard to beat the Earth at its own game.

Best Course of Action

It should be obvious by now that our best course of action is to apply our energy resources to the betterment of our many societies and the equalization of living standards worldwide, and to the transformation of our economic activities for minimal CO2 emissions. The current catch-phrase for this transformation is “degrowth.”

During this pandemic year of 2020, the U.S. GDP shrank by 33%, and the CO2 emissions by the United States also shrank by the same proportion. Worldwide CO2 emissions shrank by 17%. Zero emissions require zero GPD, as we now know it.

Global warming will advance and its consequences will add great stresses to many human, animal and plant populations. This geophysical process could be experienced as “the collapse of civilization,” or it could be taken as a collective challenge to advance human civilization by bonds of solidarity, and the restoration of its reverence for the natural world. If we put our energy into fashioning that imperfect utopia, we would live through global warming with a justifiable sense of pride, and even have fun.