We live in a world where more than two billion people have no access to water with more than a billion people who live in slums and informal settlements. People are forced to queue at a communal water pump to get water for the family
More than four billion have no access to sanitation. Many cities lack effective sewer sanitation plants.
And more than three billion have no access to hand-washing with water and soap. Washing hands frequently with both water and soap, is inaccessible to 40 percent of the world population.
1.8 billion people use or work in healthcare facilities without basic water services. One in five respiratory infections in Covid cases can beprevented, diarrhoea episodes reduced by nearly half, as doctors are better able to fight antimicrobial resistance.
In the least developed countries, nearly 75 percent of people have no access to these basic needs.
43 percent of schools have no facilities for hand-washing with soap
Those who are most at risk of getting very sick from COVID-19 are largely the same people who lack secure jobs, housing, land, education, access to healthcare and water, sanitation and hygiene.
Imagine COVID-19 in a world with water and sanitation for all | Coronavirus pandemic | Al Jazeera
Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years, coal and gas-fired power plants must close in the next decade and lifestyle and behavioural changes will be needed to avoid climate breakdown, according to the leaked draft of a report from the forthcoming third part of the landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
CTXT, the Spanish publication that leaked the draft, said it showed that the global economy must be shifted rapidly away from a reliance on conventional GDP growth, but that the report underplays this. “The essential radical change in an economic system whose perverse operation of accumulation and reproduction of capital in perpetuity has brought us to the current critical point is not clearly mentioned.”
This is the crucial core case from socialists of why we argue that mitigation of climate change under capitalism will fail.
Part three is not scheduled to be released before next March, but a small group of scientists decided to leak the draft via the Spanish branch of Scientist Rebellion, an offshoot of the Extinction Rebellion movement.
The leak reflected the concern of some of those involved in drawing up the document that their conclusions could be watered down before publication in 2022. Governments have the right to make changes to the “summary for policymakers”.
Rich people in every country are overwhelmingly more responsible for global heating than the poor, with SUVs and meat-eating singled out for blame, and the high-carbon basis for future economic growth is also questioned.
The top 10% of emitters globally, who are the wealthiest 10%, contribute between 36 and 45% of emissions, which is 10 times as much as the poorest 10%, who are responsible for only about three to 5%, the report finds. “The consumption patterns of higher income consumers are associated with large carbon footprints. Top emitters dominate emissions in key sectors, for example, the top 1% account for 50% of emissions from aviation,” the summary says.
The report underlines the lifestyle changes that will be necessary, particularly in rich countries and among the wealthy globally. Refraining from over-heating or over-cooling homes, cutting air travel and using energy-consuming appliances less can all contribute significantly to the reductions in emissions needed, the report finds.
Eating patterns in many parts of the rich world will also need to change.
“A shift to diets with a higher share of plant-based protein in regions with excess consumption of calories and animal-source food can lead to substantial reductions in emissions, while also providing health benefits … Plant-based diets can reduce emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission-intensive western diet,” the report says.
“Weaker near-term action would place limiting warming to these levels out of reach, as it would entail assumptions about subsequent accelerated policy development and technology development and deployment, inconsistent with evidence and projections in the assessed literature,” the report warns.
It draws attention to the danger of “business-as-usual”
“Existing and planned infrastructure and investments, institutional inertia and a social bias towards the status quo are leading to a risk of locking in future emissions that may be costly or difficult to abate,” the scientists say. “The combined economic impacts of stranded fossil fuel resources and capital could amount to trillions of dollars,” the report says. For example, coal-fired and gas power plants with working lives usually measured in decades will have to be decommissioned within nine to 12 years of construction, the report finds, and that no new fossil fuel development can take place if the world is to stay within 1.5C of heating.
Technology to capture and store carbon dioxide has not progressed rapidly enough to play a major role yet, the report also finds, but technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would almost certainly be needed to hold heating to 1.5C.
The report underlines a point frequently raised by this blog that address the needs of the world’s poor in the undeveloped and developing world cannot be neglected and, in fact, briging, modern energy to all those who currently lack it would have a “negligible” effect on emissions, the report notes.
According to a report by rights groups Amnesty International Canada and Project Ploughshares Canada is violating international law by selling weapons to Saudi Arabia.
The report, titled ‘No Credible Evidence’: Canada’s Flawed Analysis of Arms Exports to Saudi Arabia, accuses Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government of violating the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), an international agreement that Canada became a party to in 2019.
“It has been established through investigations and expert reports that Canadian weapons exports to Saudi Arabia are contrary to Canada’s legal obligations under the ATT,” the report reads.
Canadian weapons exports to Saudi Arabia totalled $1.05bn ($1.31bn Canadian) in 2020, according to government figures. That was second only to the US and accounted for 67 percent of Canada’s total non-US arms exports.
Weapons exported from Canada to Saudi Arabia, have included light-armoured vehicles and sniper rifles, and they have been diverted for use in the war in Yemen.
Canada violating int’l law by selling arms to Saudis: Report | Human Rights News | Al Jazeera
A DISTANT MEMORY FROM THE PAST
Those US progressives liberals who called for a vote for Biden as the lesser evil to Trump have a lot explaining to do when it comes to immigration policy.
Biden is over-seeing a new US practice of transferring asylum seekers and migrants expelled under public health order Title 42 by plane to southern Mexico without any opportunity to plead their asylum case.
The Department of Homeland Security admitted families were sent back to their home countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras
“Removal from the US to southern Mexico, outside any official transfer agreement with appropriate legal safeguards, increases the risk of chain refoulement – pushbacks by successive countries – of vulnerable people in danger, in contravention of international law and the humanitarian principles of the 1951 Refugee Convention,” Matthew Reynolds, the UNHCR representative to the United States and the Caribbean, said in a statement.
Reynolds also said the expulsion flights would further strain the humanitarian response capacity in southern Mexico and heighten the risk of Covid-19 transmission across national borders.
“UNHCR reiterates the May 2021 appeal by UN high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi for the United States government to swiftly lift the Title 42 public health-related asylum restrictions that remain in effect and to restore access to asylum for people whose lives depend on it,” said Reynolds.
Tyson Foods is ranked 73rd on the Fortune 500 list, with a revenue of $43bn in the last fiscal year.
Tyson accounts for the single largest share of chicken plants across the US, processing 2.3 billion birds in 2020.
Tyson is one of the world’s largest food companies, with 139,000 US employees and 177 slaughter and processing plants across 21 states.
The company supplies burgers and nuggets, among other chicken products, to chains including Walmart, McDonalds, KFC and Taco Bell, as well as schools and prisons.
Tyson controls almost every part of its supply chain, including the mills that process grains into animal feed and the hatcheries that produce eggs. It contracts farmers for their labor raising chicks, paying them according to how well they perform compared with other farmers.
Tyson spends big on politics, having invested a total of nearly $18m in lobbying.
The hold that America’s largest meat processing company has on the chicken industry has generated dire consequences for its workers, farmers and the environment.
In Arkansas, where the multinational is headquartered, the company currently accounts for an estimated two-thirds of processed poultry sales. It’s a near monopoly in Arkansas. Tyson and the other three top firms control about 87% of poultry production in the state. Economists and food justice advocates largely agree that consumers, farmers, workers, small companies and the planet lose out if the top four firms control 40% or more of any market.
A five-month investigation is based on research and analysis of the most recently available economic, government and industry data, and interviews with labor and farming advocates as well as current and former workers at three Tyson plants.
Its findings include:
Market dominance: Tyson operates almost half the poultry slaughter and processing facilities in Arkansas – the state with the largest number of plants and contract farms in the country.
Farm closures: A complex contracting system used by Tyson and other major processors has coincided with the closure and consolidation of thousands of poultry farms.
Employee benefits cut: Some breaks and bonuses have been curbed, including combining the previously separate annual Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.
A points-based disciplinary system is used to pressure employees to comply with obligatory overtime which keeps many fearful employees working even when injured or sick.
Covid outbreaks: Measures to limit the spread of Covid have been inadequate or poorly implemented, resulting in multiple deaths at its Arkansas plants.
Misleading job advertisements offering new recruits $15 per hour are deceptive as most roles are excluded, according to employees. The Guardian interviewed workers with more than 20 years at Tyson earning below $14 an hour.
Speed and output targets are prioritized over employee welfare, hygiene and food safety, according to workers from three plants interviewed by the Guardian.
Cockroaches, flies and crickets are rife in some plants and can end up in chicken nuggets and burgers supplied to schools, fast food joints and supermarkets, workers said.
The economist Rebecca Boehm, lead author of the new UCS report Tyson spells trouble for Arkansas, explains “When a company like Tyson can get so big and powerful, where they have a near-monopoly and monopsony in their industry, they make their own rules and rake in profits, while everyone else suffers.”
Tyson contracts farmers to raise millions of chicks and then dispose of the litter generated in the densely confined factory farms. In 2017, its Arkansas farms produced about 50bn lb of this fecal waste – which is used as fertilizer but which studies show contributes to poor air quality and can contaminate local waterways. Large Latino and Indigenous communities in Benton and Washington counties are disproportionately impacted.
Plant workers and residents are blighted by offensive odours and noise pollution, which have a detrimental impact on their health, quality of life and house prices. “I don’t complain because I don’t want to alienate the biggest employer in the area, but I haven’t had people over in almost 20 years,” said Matthew Pelto, a homeowner who lives opposite Tyson’s huge plant in downtown Springdale.
As a near monopoly, Tyson can largely dictate worker wages and prices for farmers, as well as a whole range of conditions and regulations affecting everything from animal welfare to worker safety to environmental hazards.
“The farmers are on a treadmill, earning only what the big corporations are willing to pay, regardless of the true labor and environmental costs,” said Joe Maxwell, president of Family Farm Action.
Raquel Jimenez has lived in the US for 35 years – most of which she’s spent working for Tyson’s flagship Springdale plant.
Jimenez works six days a week at the imposing slaughter and processing facility, including obligatory overtime every Saturday even though she’d rather be home with her children and grandchildren. If she doesn’t go in, Jimenez will get one to three punitive points; 14 points gets you fired.
In the past, workers report, they earned two hours’ credit for every obligatory Saturday shift, but that benefit was cut several years back. Two half-hour breaks have been cut to one 20-minute break, during which workers must remove their protective gear, heat up their food, eat, go to the bathroom, redress, and be back on the line. Supervisors stand around the dining room, making sure no one is late back.
“We barely have time to eat and it’s tense and uncomfortable with them watching us. I’m fed up but it’s hard to complain. They could fire me at any moment,” said Jimenez. “As Tyson has made more money, our benefits have been cut and cut. It’s very disheartening. If we were Americans, they wouldn’t treat us like this. It’s racism against migrants.”
31,000 mostly Black and brown people work in Arkansas’ poultry slaughter and processing industry, accounting for 10% of the nationwide industry total. The jobs are often fast and repetitive, with workers exposed to hazards including chemicals, extreme temperatures, dangerous equipment, excessive noise and in some cases unfair and degrading treatment by supervisors and nurses.
Non-fatal injury and illness rates in the poultry-processing industry were higher than in all other private industries.
Covid hospitalizations are at an all-time high in Arkansas, but public health measures are not being implemented in the plants, according to employees. It is named in several ongoing lawsuits for alleged negligence that allowed Covid to spread in its plants.
Tyson has been fined at least $169m since 2000 for employment, antitrust and environmental violations.
Carlos Sanchez, 39, is a machine operator and says the quantity of chicken nuggets and burgers produced every shift has risen substantially since he started, while staff numbers have been cut. This can impact worker and food safety.
Sanchez said: “Tyson earns billions while we have to work in brutal conditions for low pay. I would never recommend anyone work for the company.”
Salmonella is the second leading cause of food poisoning in the US, making an estimated 1.35 million Americans sick annually, and leading to about 26,500 hospitalisations and 420 deaths.
US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations aim to curtail – but not eliminate – the bacteria. Under the current “performance standards”, for example, up to 15.4% of chicken parts leaving a processing plant are permitted to test positive for salmonella.
Contamination exceeds those levels in about one in 10 plants, according to a report in July by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). Chicken and turkey are responsible for about a fifth of infections – more than any other food category.
The infection rate remains stubbornly high. A 2020 CDC report said: “The incidence of most infections transmitted commonly through food has not declined for many years.” It found that the incidence of illnesses, hospitalisations and deaths due to salmonella rose by 5% in 2019 compared with the previous three years.
Current regulations for salmonella in poultry are “antiquated”, says Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for the US non-profit organisation Consumer Reports, who has called for stronger enforceable standards over the salmonella strains that pose the greatest public health risk.
Advocacy groups have petitioned the USDA, without success, to enact a zero-tolerance policy for certain types of salmonella in poultry. A federal court ruled that the USDA could not shut down a plant for failing to meet salmonella standards because the bacteria occur naturally in animals and can be destroyed by proper cooking.
Chemical washes do not kill all bacteria.
“If you want to eliminate the worst types of salmonella, you really do have to start at the farm because that’s where the pathogens are spreading between animals,” says Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest. . That might involve vaccinating poultry and regularly testing flocks to control a worrisome strain before it spreads, she adds.
Reducing nastier strains of salmonella before poultry reaches the slaughterhouse has been proven to work.
Trade organisations claim the FSIS has no jurisdiction over farms and cannot legally compel processors to take responsibility for how poultry growers raise their birds.
Why salmonella is a food poisoning killer that won’t go away in the US | Food safety | The Guardian
Wild forest fires are appearing all over the world. The latest in the media headlines is now Algeria. Western North America, Russia, Turkey, Lebanon, Greece, Italy. Where next?
“This is what climate scientists have been warning about for years now,” says Park Williams, a hydroclimatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Drought and fire have always been a part in climates, but increasing heat, which scientists say is directly attributable to human-caused climate change, has had a devastating impact. “These things amplify each other,” Williams says, adding that the effects exponentially increase.
New research also suggests that the wildfires themselves will increase drought and heat, adding a new dimension to the catastrophic cycle. Researchers are discussing hypotheses, Andrew Hoell, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains, that smoke and aerosols released into the atmosphere by wildfires can alter weather patterns. There are already studies that show wildfires influence the formation of clouds in the sky and could decrease precipitation.
Although more research is needed to better understand these complex relationships, the scientific record is clear that rising heat will lead to an increase in extreme events.
Many young people listen to Greta Thunberg and some of the media believes she speaks for them.
In an interview with the style and culture magazine, Vogue Scandinavia, she called out fast fashion companies for “greenwashing”.
Thunberg pointed out the contradiction between mass-produced fashion and sustainability.
“Many are making it look as if the fashion industry are starting to take responsibility, by spending fantasy amounts on campaigns where they portray themselves as ‘sustainable’, ‘ethical’, ‘green’, ‘climate neutral’ and ‘fair’,” Thunberg wrote. “But let’s be clear: This is almost never anything but pure greenwashing. You cannot mass produce fashion or consume ‘sustainably’ as the world is shaped today. That is one of the many reasons why we will need a system change.”
“The fashion industry is a huge contributor to the climate-and-ecological emergency,” she continued, “not to mention its impact on the countless workers and communities who are being exploited around the world in order for some to enjoy fast fashion that many treat as disposable(s).”
Greta added that there was a misconception around the attitude of activists.
“This is some kind of misconception about activists, especially about climate activists that we are just negative and pessimists and we are just complaining, and we are trying to spread fear but that’s the exact opposite,” she said. “We are doing this because we are hopeful, we are hopeful that we will be able to make the changes necessary.”
Greta Thunberg: ethical fast fashion is ‘pure greenwashing’ | Fashion | The Guardian
Street Stall
August 14,
Queen St, Cardiff, Sat 2-4pm
