Newsletter No 4

Date: 30 August 2024

This month on Critical Takes:

Sanyu Awori explains why corporate power is an urgent problem for feminists.

Coming up soon: small farmers versus corporate power in Africa; the huge scale of profit extraction from the Global South.

 

Interesting takes in other places:

The climate emergency threatens to wreck the business models of many large corporations. Business Green (paywalled) says that unpriced environmental costs exceed profits at a quarter of the largest listed US companies.

They’re drawing on estimates from S&P, the credit rating agency, that 60 per cent of these companies own assets at high risk of damage from the climate crisis, from wildfires and water stress to heatwaves and hurricanes.

Can corporate profits continue to grow on a damaged planet and, if not, what does that mean for multinationals? Here’s Critical Takes from June on this question.

 

Google in the dock

A US judge has found that Google has been running an illegal monopoly on internet search.

This judgement is a big deal for Big Tech; now people are waiting to see what remedies the court imposes, which could include breaking off part of Google.

Unsurprisingly, wealthy donors to the ruling Democrats want them to get rid of the US government’s anti-trust regulator, Lina Khan, whose team has brought a string of cases against big corporations. US progressives are pushing back, however.

This in-depth conversation between two US commentators, Matt Stoller and Ed Zitron, delves into the harm caused by monopolies and why the US has so many of them.

Here’s Nicholas Shaxson’s piece for Critical Takes on the problem and here Stan de Spiegelaere explains why the solutions include more bargaining power for workers.

 

Mining and the energy transition

As demand rises for key minerals for the energy transition, the UN Secretary-General’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals will offer recommendations in September for steering away from mining’s long history of exploitation and destruction.

The panel’s conclusions will not have legal force, but they will help to shape the official conversation about the rush for critical minerals around the world.

A political fight in Serbia over the fate of a giant lithium mine exemplifies the tensions between citizens and communities, Big Mining and governments.

This short and detailed briefing by the Business and Human Rights Centre calls for just sharing of mining’s benefits with local communities and reviews the legislation in several African countries.

That’s it for this month. Good luck with your work!

The Editor

 

Critical Takes is looking for analysis and comment about corporate power, by and for people from civil society. Please click here to find out more.