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Here's a quote from the president's 2020 campaign material: "Joe Biden knows there is no greater challenge facing our country and our world. That's why he is outlining a bold plan -- a Clean Energy Revolution -- to address this grave threat and lead the world in addressing the climate emergency." A year later, in office, he was already plugging his green-energy achievements, having "spearheaded the most significant domestic climate action in U.S. history, including passing the historic Inflation Reduction Act" spurring a new era of clean American manufacturing, enhancing energy security at home and abroad, and driving down the costs of clean energy for consumers in the U.S. and around the world."
And all of that seemed both true and hopeful. However, just before the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its recent devastating report on how close to the edge of no return humanity now is, Biden took a giant leap in the wrong direction. He gave the green light (oh, sorry about that!) to the Willow Project, overriding a presidential promise not to allow new oil drilling on federal lands. Instead, he granted oil giant ConocoPhillips (which already had record profits in 2022) the right to spend the coming decades drilling more than 600,000,000 barrels of oil in Alaska. And believe it or not, at this point, Joe Biden has green-lighted (oops again!) a few more oil leases than Donald Trump had at the same moment in his presidency! And oh, don't forget that the Biden Interior Department is now auctioning off the right to drill for oil and natural gas in a part of the Gulf of Mexico the size of Italy!
In our country, such criminal decisions (and they will someday be seen as crimes of the first order) are still considered "politics," though given the state of this planet, we probably should have another name for it. Anyway, stop for a moment and imagine that the president of the richest country on Earth has done that. Now, think what the world must look like to countries in the Global South, in debt, desperate, and facing climate horrors almost beyond imagining. And then consider just how truly remarkable Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president that TomDispatch regular John Feffer focuses on today, is and what our country should do to support him. Tom
The Shift from Pink to Green in Latin America
Can the United States Become a Green Good Neighbor?
By John Feffer
Gustavo Petro doesn't just want to transform his own country; he wants to change the world. The new leader of Colombia, who took office last August, is targeting what he calls his nation's "economy of death." That means pivoting away from oil, natural gas, coal, and narcotics toward more sustainable economic activities. Given that oil and coal make up half his country's exports -- and Colombia is the world's leading cocaine producer -- that's not going to be easy.
Still, if Colombia were to undertake such a pivot, it would prove to other countries similarly addicted to such powerful substances -- including the United States -- that radical change is possible. With the latest news that the international community will almost certainly fall short of its carbon reduction target for 2030, Colombia's pathbreaking detox effort has become more urgent and significant than ever.
Not surprisingly, Petro and Francia Marquez, his environmentalist vice president, have encountered significant resistance to their plans, even from within their own ranks. Although they immediately declared a moratorium on new oil and gas drilling as part of a bid to phase out the country's fossil-fuel industry, their own finance and energy ministries, fearing the moratorium's effect on the economy, refused to rule out such future contracts. The government also proposed a major new tax on oil exports, only to quickly scale it back in the face of widespread industry resistance, including from the state-owned oil company Ecopetrol.
An even bigger challenge comes from the monstrous debt problem the Petro administration faces. Fully one-third of government revenues flow toward servicing Columbia's huge foreign debt. Similarly shackled to onerous interest payments, much of the Global South has been forced to extract ever more resources simply to pay the never-ending bills from international banks.
Still, whatever problems he faces, Petro represents something new. After all, the Latin American left has long favored more mining and drilling to boost exports, trade, and government revenues. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has typically pursued the renationalization of the oil industry to (yes!) boost production. That's also been the strategy of Luiz Ina'cio Lula da Silva (Lula) in Brazil, while the Peronist government in Argentina has focused on an attempt to significantly increase offshore oil drilling. Progressivism in Latin America, as in many other parts of the world, has long been inextricably linked to raw material extraction designed to distribute more wealth to the poor, while closing the gap with the richer North.
Sadly, however, despite similar growth strategies pursued by left, right, and center governments, the countries of the region have collectively failed to achieve either of those goals. Latin America remains the most economically unequal region on the planet. Instead of beginning to catch up to the North, it has fallen ever further behind. In 1980, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) on that continent was 42% of the G7's, the world's most industrialized countries. By 2022 -- notwithstanding all the wealth scratched from the ground and the sea, the promises of the advocates of free trade, and the efforts of progressive politicians who won power -- the region's GDP per capita had fallen dramatically to 29% of the G7 countries.
Now, Colombia is trying something different. The electoral victory of Petro and Francia has been hailed -- or derided -- as part of a new "pink wave" in Latin America that's brought Gabriel Boric to power in Chile, Xiomara Castro to the top spot in Honduras, and Lula back to the presidency of Brazil.
But given what Petro and Francia are attempting, simply identifying them with that pink wave would be misleading. They are, after all, offering a fundamentally different paradigm of economic development, one that's more green than pink.
Perhaps you're familiar with the first rule of holes: if you find yourself in one, stop digging. For decades, Latin American countries have tried to dig themselves out of poverty -- drilling for oil, mining for lithium -- only to find themselves in an ever-deeper pit.
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