EARTH DAY COMMENTARY

by Len Yannielli

In the earlier part of the new millennium, Connecticut state officials pushed the slogan “20 for 2020”. The idea was that our state would have 20% renewable energy generating electricity by the year 2020. It’s 2022. Connecticut has 2.5% of its electricity generated by renewable energy, mostly solar. How can this be?

It turns out that the reason is “inconvenient” to the profit system that guides and funds their political lives. However, there is a revolutionary concept that can help explain this inconvenient truth.

It was an immigrant woman from the Caribbean that introduced the concept of the triple oppression of African American women. Claudia Jones explained this oppression at the intersection of gender, race, and class.

So what does that have to do with fossil fuels and politics? As it turns out – plenty!

We all know what an intersection is on our roads. So Jones, a trade unionist and Communist operating in the Cold War years of the 1950s, expanded the intersection concept to explain the triple oppression of African American women.

It doesn’t stop there. One of the key tests of a viable theory is can it have wider application? In other words, is it expansive? As it turns out, Jones’s concept of intersectionality is just that.

Connecticut’s current mix of electrical generation is 56% natural (methane) gas, 38 % nuclear and 2.5% renewables. The former is a major contributor to climate change. Nuclear dangers were revealed to the world at Chernobyl (Soviet Union) and Fukushima (Japan).

So the mixture of fossil fuel profits and politics has proven toxic to both our collective health and politics in favor of the profit orgy.

Now we are seeing this toxic mix playing out with the war in the Ukraine. One of the reasons behind this imperialist war is who will control the fossil fuel market in Europe.

• Get the Ct People’s World out at the grassroots this Earth Day weekend to help explain this revolutionary truth.

• Support off-shore wind projects in New London and Bridgeport tied to union jobs and hiring people of color, and in this legislative session Senate Bill 10, to put into law a commitment for Connecticut to transition to a zero-carbon electricity supply by 2040.