Tropical cyclones have become more intense around the globe in the past four decades, with more destructive storms forming more often, according to a study that further confirms the theory that warming oceans would drive more dangerous cyclones. Analysis of satellite records from 1979 to 2017 found a clear rise in the most destructive cyclones – also known as hurricanes or typhoons – that deliver sustained winds in excess of about 185km/h. Experts told Guardian Australia the finding was in line with climate model predictions and the knowledge that increasing ocean temperatures gave tropical storms more energy.



Dr Hamish Ramsay, a senior research scientist at CSIRO who studies cyclones, said: “This study confirms what the climate models have been pAmphanredicting for some time – that the proportion of the most intense storms will increase as the climate warms.” Ramsay said as well as increasing the wind speeds in cyclones, warming oceans would also likely see cyclones delivering more rainfall. There was still uncertainty as to whether the numbers of all categories of cyclones would rise or fall under climate change.

The coronavirus culture war is “kind of a petri dish of all the psychoses of US history”, as Dunbar-Ortiz, the author of An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, put it.



Today, “who is being asked to die for the market to be open?”  Patrick Blanchfield, the author of a forthcoming 500-year history of American gun violence,  said. “It’s black people. It’s Native American tribal communities.” Blanchfield said. “The very fact that people are dying is taken as both pragmatically offering market opportunities … but also as a theological vindication of your own survivorship.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/all-the-psychoses-of-us-history-how-america-is-victim-blaming-the-coronavirus-dead

New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has suggested employers to consider a four-day working week and other flexible working options as a way to boost tourism and help employees address persistent work/life balance issues.



The prime minister’s comments have excited many New Zealanders, some of whom have wondered whether systemic change will result from the pandemic – or whether life will return to normal with all its associated problems.



The World Socialist Party (New Zealand), however, has a better idea. What about socialism as the answer?

The coronavirus catastrophe provides an opportunity for transforming a system that is riven with deep economic and political inequalities and is profoundly unstable ecologically. Important changes must be made, not just expanding social safety nets, but decisively moving toward a qualitatively new economic system, the socialisation of production and distribution with the democratisation of economic decision–making.



We in the Socialist Party are seeking a “steady-state economy” which corresponds to what Marx called “simple reproduction” – a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them.



Such a society would already have decided, according to its own criteria and through its own decision-making processes, on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilised at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods. The point about such a situation is that there will no longer be any imperative need to develop productivity, i.e. to cut costs in the sense of using less resources; nor will there be the blind pressure to do so that is exerted under capitalism through the market. Of course, technical research would continue and this would no doubt result in costs being able to be saved, but there would be no external pressure to do so or even any need to apply all new productivity enhancing techniques



Since the needs of consumers are always needs for a specific product at a specific time in a specific locality, we will assume that socialist society would leave the initial assessment of likely needs to a delegate body under the control of the local community (although, other arrangements are possible if that were what the members of socialist society wanted).



In a stable society such as socialism, needs would change relatively slowly. Hence it is reasonable to surmise that an efficient system of stock control, recording what individuals actually chose to take under conditions of free access from local distribution centres over a given period, would enable the local distribution committee to estimate what the need for food, drink, clothes and household goods would be over a similar future period. Some needs would be able to be met locally: local transport, restaurants, builders, repairs and some food are examples as well as services such as street-lighting, libraries and refuse collection. The local distribution committee would then communicate needs that could not be met locally to the bodies charged with coordinating supplies to local communities.



The individual would have free access to the goods on the shelves of the local distribution centres; the local distribution centres free access to the goods they required to be always adequately stocked with what people needed; their suppliers free access to the goods they required from the factories which supplied them; industries and factories free access to the materials, equipment and energy they needed to produce their products; and so on. Production and distribution in socialism would thus be a question of organising a coordinated and more or less self-regulating system of linkages between users and suppliers, enabling resources and materials to flow smoothly from one productive unit to another, and ultimately to the final user, in response to information flowing in the opposite direction originating from final users. The productive system would thus be set in motion from the consumer end, as individuals and communities took steps to satisfy their self-defined needs. Socialist production is self-regulating production for use.



Socialism will be an inter-linked system to provide for a self sustaining steady–state society. And we can set out a possible way of achieving an eventual zero–growth, steady–state society operating in a stable and ecologically benign way. This could be achieved in three main phases.



First, there would have to be emergency action to relieve the worst problems of food shortages, health care and housing which affect billions of people throughout the world.



Secondly, longer term action to construct means of production and infrastructures such as transport systems for the supply of permanent housing and durable consumption goods. These could be designed in line with conservation principles, which means they would be made to last for a long time, using materials that where possible could be re-cycled and would require minimum maintenance.



Thirdly, with these objectives achieved there could be an eventual fall in production, and society could move into a stable mode. This would achieve a rhythm of daily production in line with daily needs with no significant growth.



 On this basis, the world community could reconcile two great needs, the need to live in material well being whilst looking after the planet