Global Justice Ecology Project – 2004-04-04 17:59:50
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund-the financiers for the Empire-have impoverished millions and caused massive environmental devastation. Their Structural Adjustment Programs force the world’s poorest countries to slash social services and open their borders to privatization and exploitative foreign investment.
The World Bank also promotes free trade and funds mega-development projects. All of this is designed to subsidize giant corporations-enabling them to continue their feeding frenzy on the world’s remaining wild places and traditional indigenous lands. The US dominates the World Bank.
The US is headquarters to the world’s most massive corporations. With 6% of the Earth’s population, it consumes 25% of the world’s resources including one-quarter of the world’s oil. It simultaneously emits 25% of the world’s greenhouse gases.
The US military budget is massive — equivalent to the budgets of the next 25 countries combined. This US is utterly dependent on an unimpeded supply of oil.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter pronounced the Carter Doctrine, which states that the US will use whatever means are necessary to ensure the continued supply of oil.
National security depends on oil. A Pentagon study adds to this by stating, “National Security depends on successful engagement in the global economy.” Indeed, the US economy cannot function without oil, the over-consumption of which is causing global climatic change, which threatens the survival of many plant and animal species.
Globalization Is Fueled by Oil
Expansion of the global economy requires “unlimited growth” –a never-ending increase in the transformation of so-called “resources” into capital. What does this mean to the Earth?
A World Wildlife Fund report found that one-third of the Earth’s natural wealth was lost from 1970 to 1995.
The Smithsonian estimates that the Earth loses over 300 species per day due to habitat destruction.
Likewise, native peoples are being driven into extinction.
Corporate globalization, with its mandate to put profit first, above both planet and people, has pushed the life support systems of the Earth to the brink of collapse. This ecological crisis makes it increasingly obvious that an economic system based on the accumulation of wealth and unlimited growth is incompatible with our finite planet. The transformation of virgin forests, pristine rivers, etc. into “resources” is simply not sustainable.
Wars Are Fought over Resources
The world’s violent conflicts revolve around resources: fossil fuels, fresh water, timber, and minerals. As these resources diminish, conflicts over these dwindling reserves escalate.
Most of the world’s remaining caches of resources are in the Global South: concentrated largely in the equatorial regions of Africa and Latin America. A World Bank study found that countries that export oil are over 40 times more likely to be engaged in war than countries that do not produce oil.
Corporate globalization (Global Neoliberal Capitalism) is a form of economic coercion designed to wrest control of natural resources away from resident populations (mainly poor indigenous peoples and people of color primarily in the Global South).
This economic coercion is likewise used to transform even human beings into expendable resources.
Communities that attempt to resist this economic violence are met with military violence at the hands of paramilitaries, police and armies. These forms of violence are two sides of the same corporate globalization coin.
What We Can Do
This spring, we have a momentous and historic opportunity to confront the beast in whose belly we live.
In April, the World Bank plans to celebrate its 60th year of destroying communities and annihilating ecosystems.
We will be there to spoil their party.
The environmental movement, the global justice movement and the anti-war movement will come together in Washington DC on April 21-25 to confront the Bankers for the Empire — the funding the wholesale destruction of the Earth.
The time is now. 2004 is pivotal. The Presidential elections in the US combined with the flagrant Empire-driven behavior of the Bush Administration have resulted in an American public more aware and receptive to our message than we have seen in a very long time.
We must be loud and we must be strong. Life on earth depends on it.
April Mobilization Updates:
http://globalizethis.org/
http://www.50years.org/
Global Justice Ecology Project, PO Box 412, Hinesburg, VT 05461, (802) 482-2689 ph/fax
“Some say that being against globalization is like being against the law of
gravity…then, down with gravity!” –Subcomandante Marcos
