Plantation Capitalism vs. Jesus’ Jubilee Economy, Session 2: Plantations vs. Planet; Producer vs. Consumer

We examine Jesus’ teaching on the relationships of Plantations vs. Planet, and Producers vs. Consumers — the first 2 of the 12 relationships we will cover. And: Why do we take a public good, common good approach to Christian faith and public policy? Because Jesus’ teaching & story require us to be concerned about other-harm. He carries forward Israel’s wisdom impacting Gentiles in uplifting the poor and oppressed (we look at 5 examples).

3:40 Romans 13 and Four Interpretations.

4:58 The Public Good, Common Good Interpretation, and Why.

9:05 Five Examples of Israel Influencing the Gentiles in Policy

9:15 Example 1: Abraham pulls a "Saving Private Ryan" with Lot and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah

10:55 Example 2: Joseph provides for the Israelites and the Egyptians

11:24 Example 3: Daniel tells King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to care for the poor

11:36 Example 4: Esther and Mordecai help the Jews overcome a plot to kill them

11:53 Example 5: Psalm 72 says the Davidic King will influence the Gentiles to care for the poor

13:30 The New Testament addresses structures and systems, in Luke 3:12 - 14 and 19:1 - 10

18:32 Plantations vs. Planet: soil depletion; whale decimation; ecological warfare and bison killing. 20:43 Jesus' response to the exploitation of the planet; Jesus' use of temple-mountain imagery; Jesus' claim to own the planet; Jesus' care for nature

28:15 Producers vs. Consumers: "do not steal," "do not lie," limited liability vs. full responsibility. 31:45 Jesus' intent to make an honest, responsible people. 33:15 British evangelicals opposed corporate limited liability law.

Plantation Capitalism vs. Jesus’ Jubilee Economy, Session 5: Labor vs. Capital; Privatizers vs. Common Goods

We examine Jesus’ teaching on the relationships of Labor vs. Capital and Privatizers vs. Common Goods. Jesus asserted his claim on all creation and all people. So he extended the relational vision of God for human flourishing, where human health and land health, along with human rights and labor rights took clear priority over the rights of capital and the ability of elites to use money to make more money. How does Walmart do?

relationship 9: Labor vs. Capital

5:20 The Dominance of Capital Rights in the Colonies and Early U.S.: Banks Financialized Slave Bodies; Enslaved Black Women Used for Breeding More Slaves

8:42 Economic Capital Consolidation by Rich Whites, and the Condition of Poor Whites

The Dominance of Capital Today

10:50 Patterns of Public Disinvestment

16:45 WalMart as Example of Elites Extracting Wealth and Health

18:24 Wage Theft

22:55 Tipping

23:44 Externalities -- Shifting Costs to the Environment and People

Jesus' Jubilee Economy on Labor Over Capital

26:15 Jewish Law and Jesus' Claim on All Creation

39:11 The Priority of Labor over Capital

42:14 The Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act

45:46 More Examples in the U.S.

relationship 10: Privatizers vs. Common Goods

52:28 Privatizers, English Law, and John Locke's Theory of Private Property Absolutism

59:15 God Gave Creation in Common to Humans

1:06:21 Examples of Early Christian Thought on the Commons: Ambrose of Milan and John Chrysostom of Constantinople

Out of Eden: A Christian Study and Action Guide to Food and the Environment

A practical Study and Action Guide for use by small groups discussion or personal reflection. The guide covers topics that are actionable on the personal and policy levels: sugar’s impact on our bodies and sugar corporations’ truth-telling and accountability, corn and corn subsidies creating over-supply, plastic and its biological impact on animals and humans, the true cost of meat in terms of soil depletion and air pollution, and food waste and the practices which can diminish it.

Wikipedia, Riparian Water Rights (Wikipedia article) from English common law, the rights of people who live next to a body of water

Ritchie C. Shoemaker, Mold Warriors. Gateway Books | Amazon page, 2005.

Bulletproof Media, Moldy (DVD film)

National Geographic, Can the Blue Revolution Solve the World's Food Puzzle? National Geographic, date unknown.

Robert Glennon, Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It. Island Press | Amazon page, 2009.

The Story of Bottled Water. The Story of Stuff Project video, 2010.

Ritchie C. Shoemaker, Surviving Mold: Life in the Era of Dangerous Buildings. Otter Bay Books | Amazon page, 2010.

Alex Prud'homme, The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century. Scribner | Amazon page, 2011.

Phil Waggoner, I'm From West Virginia and I've Got Something to Say About the Chemical Spill. Huffington Post, Jan 14, 2014.  

Elizabeth Behrmann, Teslas in California Help Bring Dirty Rain to China. Bloomberg, Mar 14, 2014.  

Kate Galbraith, Tapped Out? California's Drought. Stanford Alumni Magazine, Jul/Aug 2014.

Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy, Nelson Schwartz, California Drought Tests Theory of Endless Growth. NEW YORK Times, Apr 4, 2015.

Mary Beth Griggs, MIT Invention Makes Ocean Water Drinkable with a Little Help from the Sun. Business Insider, Apr 23, 2015.

Ross Brooks, World's First Urban Algae Canopy Produces the Oxygen Equivalent of Four Hectares of Woodland Every Day. Inhabit, Apr 28, 2015.

Maude Barlow, The California Drought Is Just the Beginning of Our National Water Emergency. The Nation, Jul 15, 2015.

Deena Shanker, Organic Farming Is Actually Worse for Climate Change Than Conventional Farming. Quartz, Jul 15, 2015.

Patrick Ray, et.al., Confronting Climate Uncertainty in Water Resources Planning and Project Design: The Decision Tree Network. Open Knowledge book, Aug 25, 2015.

Michael Klare, The Water Wars Are Coming: Civilization Will Never Survive Climate Calamity. Salon, Nov 5, 2015.

Danyelle Solomon and Tracey Ross, Flint Isn’t the Only Place with Racism in the Water. Center for American Progress, Feb 9, 2016.  spotlights Cancer Alley in Louisiana alongside Flint, Michigan

Associated Press, Saudi Land Purchases in California and Arizona Fuel Debate Over Water Rights. Los Angeles Times, Mar 29, 2016.  See also Larry Bodine, Saudis Buy Huge Arizona Farmland After Sucking their own Aquifers Dry. Blog for Arizona, Dec 14, 2018.  See also Lauren Markham, Who Keeps Buying California’s Scarce Water? Saudi Arabia. The Guardian, Mar 25, 2019.  To grow alfalfa in Blythe, CA for cow feed in Saudi Arabia. Renee Wilde, 'American Soil' Is Increasingly Foreign Owned. NPR, May 27, 2019.  “Today nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmland are held by foreign investors. That number has doubled in the past two decades, which is raising alarm bells in farming communities.”

Will Scott, Why North Carolinians Can’t Drink Their Well Water. Talk Poverty, Aug 19, 2016.  re: coal ash runoff

Justin Gillis, Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun. New York Times, Sep 3, 2016.

Robin Bravender, Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition. Scientific American, Sep 26, 2016.

Dominique Mosbergen, We Just Passed A Grim Carbon Dioxide Threshold, Possibly For Good. Huffington Post, Sep 28, 2016.

Charlie Campbell, China's Greening of the Vast Kubuqi Desert is a Model for Land Restoration Everywhere. Time, Jul 26, 2017.

John Nichols, How Donald Trump and Elaine Chao Sold Off Flood-Control Policy to the Highest Bidders. The Nation, Aug 28, 2017.  See also Ella Nilsen, Trump Rolled Back Federal Standards to Flood-Proof Infrastructure Projects a Few Weeks Before Harvey Hit. Vox, Aug 29, 2017.

Ana Campoy and David Yanofsky, Houston’s Flooding Shows What Happens When You Ignore Science and Let Developers Run Rampant. Quartz, Aug 29, 2017.  See also David Leonhardt, Harvey, the Storm That Humans Helped Cause. New York Times, Aug 29, 2017.  See also George Monbiot, Why Are the Crucial Questions About Hurricane Harvey Not Being Asked? The Guardian, Aug 29, 2017.

James Hamblin, The Looming Consequences of Breathing Mold. The Atlantic, Aug 30, 2017.

Oliver Milman, A Civil Rights Emergency: Justice, Clean Air and Water in the Age of Trump. The Guardian, Nov 20, 2017.

PBS News Hour, The Story of American Poverty, As Told By One Alabama County. PBS News Hour, Jul 7, 2018.  More than 18 million Americans live in “extreme poverty,” according to a report from the United Nations, which ranked poverty in the U.S. alongside some of the poorest areas in the world. The UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty paid a visit to the U.S. last year, drawing worldwide attention to his findings. This Alabama African American community lacks clean sewage water treatment because the State of Alabama has opposed extending public infrastructure there. This is a case study of how most Americans have benefited from massive public investment yet insist that American society is an “meritocracy of individual achievement,” and why “small government conservatism” is often a smokescreen for “prejudice and systemic racial injustice.”

Vanessa Romo, Massive Fatberg Found Blocking Sewer In British Seaside Town. NPR, Jan 8, 2019.

Mark Arax, The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California. Knopf | Amazon page, May 21, 2019.  a bestseller about how Californians have fought water wars since the Gold Rush

Tom Dart, A Trail of Toxicity: The US Military Bases Making People Sick. The Guardian, May 23, 2019.  re: perflourinated compounds, or per- and polyflouroalkyl substances, the runoff from grease, stain, and fire resistant chemicals; 98% of Americans have this in our blood; studies show they affect learning and behavior of infants and older children; lower a woman’s chance of getting pregnant; interfere with the body’s natural hormones; increase cholesterol levels; affect the immune system; and increase the risk of kidney and testicular cancer and thyroid problems. They are also in cosmetics: Lauren Zanolli, Pretty Hurts: Are Chemicals in Beauty Products Making Us Ill? The Guardian, May 23, 2019.

Jose A. Del Real, They Grow the Nation’s Food, but They Can’t Drink the Water. New York Times, May 21, 2019.  “Water is a currency in California, and the low-income farmworkers who pick the Central Valley’s crops know it better than anyone. They labor in the region’s endless orchards, made possible by sophisticated irrigation systems, but at home their faucets spew toxic water tainted by arsenic and fertilizer chemicals.”

Aylin Woodward, Vintage EPA Photos Reveal What US Waterways Looked Like Before Pollution Was Regulated. Business Insider, Jul 2, 2019.

Mitch Smith, America’s Farmers, Reeling From Floods, Face a New Problem: No Water. New York Times, Jul 29, 2019.  “The breach of an irrigation canal left more than 100,000 acres of farmland in Nebraska and Wyoming without water at a critical point in the growing cycle”

New York Times, The Great American Lawn: How the Dream Was Manufactured.  New York Times, Aug 9, 2019.  

Coral Davenport, Trump Removes Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands. New York Times, Jan 22, 2020.  Impacting especially farmers’ use of pesticides.

Cassidy Randall, Who Owns A River? The Question Is Tearing This Community Apart. Huffington Post, Jun 20, 2020.

Netflix, Vox, Explained: The World’s Water Crisis. Netflix, Apr 17, 2020.  an 19 min video highlighting the coming crisis in the supply of fresh water

Vox, How “Forever Chemicals” Polluted America’s Water. Vox, Aug 4, 2020.  PFAS made in the 1930s by DuPont; focus on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. See also Sharon Lerner, The Battle for Decatur. The Intercept, Aug 23, 2020.  which is about PFAS pollution done by 3M.

Natalie Kitroeff, ‘This is a War’: Cross-Border Fight Over Water Erupts in Mexico. New York Times, Oct 14, 2020.  “Boquilla, Mexico — The farmers armed themselves with sticks, rocks and homemade shields, ambushed hundreds of soldiers guarding a dam and seized control of one of the border region’s most important bodies of water. The Mexican government was sending water — their water — to Texas, leaving them next to nothing for their thirsty crops, the farmers said. So they took over the dam and have refused to allow any of the water to flow to the United States for more than a month.” The wars over fresh water begin.

Catherine Coleman Flowers, Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. The New Press | Amazon page, Nov 2020.  which affects water and sewage systems, and more. See interview with Krystal Ball, Activist Reveals the Shocking Sanitation Crisis Crippling Rural America. Rising | The Hill, Dec 14, 2020.

Kim Chipman, California Water Futures Begin Trading Amid Fear of Scarcity. Bloomberg, Dec 6, 2020.  “Water joined gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world. Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike are now able to hedge against -- or bet on -- future water availability in California, the biggest U.S. agriculture market and world’s fifth-largest economy.” See also Stephen Colbert, Uh-Oh, Water Is Now A Commodity - Stephen Colbert's Most Unfortunate Segment. The Late Show, Jan 26, 2021.

CBS News, Prosecutors Detail Charges in Flint Water Investigation. CBS News, Jan 14, 2021.  Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and 8 other government officials face criminal charges.

Vice News, The Town Trying to Pump Billions of Gallons of Water to Their Desert Community. Vice News, Mar 5, 2021.  “Washington County, Utah is one of the fastest growing regions in the country and to sustain that growth they want to build a pipeline to divert billions of gallons of water from the Colorado River. Conservationists say the project could be a disaster for the drought-stricken Southwest.”

Nick Estes, Bill Gates Is the Biggest Private Owner of Farmland in the United States. Why? The Guardian, Apr 5, 2021.  One suspects because of water rights.

Claire Felter and Kali Robinson, Water Stress: A Global Problem That’s Getting Worse. Council for Foreign Relations, Apr 22, 2021.  “Water scarcity threatens the health and development of communities around the globe. Climate change is intensifying the problem, pushing governments to find more innovative, collaborative ways to address water stress.”

Second Thought, The Water Wars Are Coming. Second Thought, May 14, 2021.  12 minute video covering very important statistics and alarming trends.

William Bringham, Californians Scramble for Fresh Water as Taps, Wells Run Dry. PBS News Hour, Jul 20, 2021.

Vice News, 40 Million People Rely on the Colorado River, and Now It's Drying Up. Vice News, Aug 14, 2021.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Walton Family Spends Millions to Privatize Water. Breaking Points, Oct 11, 2021.

Diana Marcum, A California Town Refused to Help Its Neighbors with Water. So the State Stepped In. Los Angeles Times | MSN, Oct 30, 2021.  Demonstrates the important of democratic but centralized governance compared with decentralized governance.

Ocean Robbins, Food and Water: What You Eat Matters for People & the Planet.  Food Revolution Network, Dec 29, 2021.  “Water is an essential part of every form of life on Earth. But by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population may be facing freshwater shortages, and ecosystems around the world may suffer even more. So what can we do to save water so future generations can drink and grow food? A lot! And it can all start with the food on our plates.”

New York Times, Meet the People Getting Paid to Kill Our Planet.  New York Times Opinion, Feb 1, 2022. This 14 minute video is excellent.  “Our focus is American agriculture, an industry that, while feeding the United States, is also damaging the environment — contaminating the air and water, exhausting the soil, destroying wildlife habitats and spurring climate change.  But despite these harms, the sector has largely been spared environmental regulation. This exception reflects, in part, the special place that farmers occupy in the American imagination. But the industry, particularly the big corporations that are increasingly dominating the sector, are also aided by one of the most effective lobbies on the planet.”

John Oliver, Water. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Jun 27, 2022. Re: the water shortage in the U.S. west, “how it’s already impacting the people who live there, and what God has to say about it.”

Libby Leonard, Pearl Harbor Water Poisoning: US Military Families Say They Continue to Fall Ill.  The Guardian UK, Jul 2, 2022.  Symptoms include:  debilitating ocular migraines, vomiting with severe abdominal pain, chemical burns, and crippling back pain.

KSL News, ‘Dust Lake City’ Disaster Looming as Utah Professor Fights to Save the Great Salt Lake.  KSL News, Aug 9, 2022.  Newly exposed dust and minerals -- including arsenic -- pose a threat to millions along the Wasatch Front.  

Symone, The Dire Water Crisis Developing Around the Colorado River Basin. Symone | MSNBC, Aug 23, 2022.  “The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people. Debra Krol and Luke Runyon discuss the “mega-drought” and water crisis in the Colorado River Basin and what it means for residents of Arizona, Nevada and tribal lands.”

Deutsche Welle, Historic Drought Is Threatening Italy’s Water Supply.  Deutsche Welle News, Aug 24, 2022.  “Scarce rain and successive heat waves across Europe have affected river discharges and water levels. In Northern Italy, there hasn't been significant rainfall for months, and snowfall this year was down 70%, resulting in less meltwater. That's led to a drying up of important rivers like the Po, which flows across the country's agricultural and industrial heartland.”

Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw, Arizona Politicians Sell Out Residents To Saudi Company. Breaking Points & The Intercept, Nov 30, 2022. A former Saudi lobbyist who fought for a foreign company to use depleted Arizona water supplies now sits in a key position in Maricopa county as water disputes rage.

James LaPorta, Konstantin Toropin, and Patricia Kime, Poisoned Water: How a Navy Ship Dumped Fuel and Sickened Its Own Crew. Military.com, Jun 1, 2023. In 2016, the U.S.S. Boxer “intentionally and potentially illegally dumped diesel fuel into the ocean and immediately sucked the noxious liquid back aboard the ship and into its water supply.”

PBS News Hour, Study Estimates Nearly Half of U.S. Water Supply Contaminated with 'Forever Chemicals'.  PBS News Hour, Aug 16, 2023.  “A recent government study estimates nearly half of America’s tap water could contain toxic "forever chemicals" known as PFAS. These chemicals have been used in many everyday items since the 1940s from nonstick cookware to cosmetics to rain jackets. Exposure to them can lead to serious health outcomes.”  Kidney and testicular cancer in particular are linked to PFAS chemicals.  People who live in areas with known contamination of drinking water, and people who work with PFAS, are at elevated risk.

Julia Manchester, Nanoplastics From Bottled Water Found In our Bodies? The Hill, Feb 18, 2024. Plastics are found in placentas, organs, etc. in bottled water, cosmetic materials, clothing, etc.

Grace Livingstone, ‘It’s Not Drought - It’s Looting’: The Spanish Villages Where People Are Forced to Buy Back Their Own Drinking Water. The Guardian, Nov 23, 2024.