Because of a massive shortfall in farmworkers an “unprecedented” amount of food to be thrown into landfills in 2021.

Growers say they have been forced to throw away millions of pounds of produce, including blueberries, raspberries, apples, salad leaves and tomatoes.

One British salad grower reported that around £1m of premium salad leaves – a third of their annual crop – had been used to make “very expensive manure” because food processing plants do not have enough staff.

The food industry as a whole is now estimated to need an additional half a million workers to plant and harvest food, pack it, process it and deliver it to retailers, restaurants and peoples’ homes.

Fruit and vegetable growers had 34 per cent fewer workers than they needed at the peak of the harvesting season in July and August.

According to Ali Capper, an apple grower and chair of the NFU’s horticulture board,  “Businesses are reporting worker shortages of between 15 and 40 per cent. When it’s 15 per cent everyone rolls up their sleeves and works harder. When it’s 40, you simply have to walk by and have to let produce rot in the fields. You have no choice.”

Shoppers are being advised to brace for more empty shelves and significant food price inflation as UK production falls and more goods are imported, increasing the country’s carbon footprint.

Fruit-picking robots are far less efficient and more expensive than human beings and, even with significant investment, it is likely to be around five to seven years until they are a viable alternative. 

Farmers to slash food production after worker shortage causes ‘unprecedented’ waste | The Independent

A government is as Marx described it, the executive committee of the capitalist class and as such it acts in the “national” interest which happens to always be the vested interest of the nation’s ruling class. 

 The Israeli defence ministry outlawed six prominent Palestinian human rights groups, Al-Haq, a human rights group founded in 1979, Addameer, Defence for Children International – Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees,  alleging that they are linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular political movement with an armed wing.

 Shawan Jabarin, the director of Al-Haq, said the move was an attempt to stifle criticism. “They may be able to close us down. They can seize our funding. They can arrest us. But they cannot stop our firm and unshakeable belief that this occupation must be held accountable for its crimes.”

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called the government’s declaration “an act characteristic of totalitarian regimes, with the clear purpose of shutting down these organisations”. It added: “B’Tselem stands in solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues, is proud of our joint work over the years and is steadfast to continue so.”

Human Rights Watch and London-based Amnesty International released a joint statement condemning the move as an “attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement. For decades, Israeli authorities have systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who criticize its repressive rule over Palestinians,” they said. “This decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations.”

The Palestinian Authority said, “This fallacious and libelous slander is a strategic assault on Palestinian civil society and the Palestinian people’s fundamental right to oppose Israel’s illegal occupation and expose its continuing crimes.” 

The groups, well known for their human rights work, have received funding from EU member states, the United Nations and other donors.

The European Union delegation to the Palestinian territories said past allegations of the misuse of EU funds by partners “have not been substantiated” but that it takes the matter seriously and is looking into it.The local office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights said that in making the declaration, Israel had listed “extremely vague or irrelevant reasons, including entirely peaceful and legitimate activities.” It called on Israel to “fully respect the rights to freedom of association and expression, without any interference or harassment against the organizations or their staff,” adding that it considers some of the Palestinian organizations to be “key partners.”

The U.S. State Department said it would seek more information from Israel on the designation and had not been given advance warning about it.

Israel labels Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organisations | Israel | The Guardian

Israel outlaws Palestinian rights groups, alleging terrorism (apnews.com)

 Friends of the Earth U.K. explain that businesses and the fossil fuel industry are engaging in “a dangerous distraction” by advocating a scheme known as carbon offsetting while continuing activities that are worsening the climate emergency.

Its report A dangerous distraction—the offsetting con takes issue with both the more commonly known practice of carbon offsetting as well as biodiversity offsetting. FOE explains:

“Carbon offsetting is touted as a way to compensate for continuing fossil fuel emissions by reducing emissions elsewhere or drawing them down using trees, etc. As well as carbon offsetting, businesses and governments are also promoting biodiversity offsetting. This is where harming nature in one place is in theory compensated by restoring nature elsewhere.”

“The real and credible solutions to the environmental emergencies we face are clear,” the report states. “We must rapidly stop using fossil fuels. And we must fund the proper protection, conservation, and restoration of nature.” It continues, ” The best way to prevent the heating of our planet is to end the use of fossil fuels for good. Yet offsetting is being used as an excuse to continue using these climate-wrecking fuels.”

Carbon offsets are relatively cheap, the report says, and “will remain cheaper than cutting carbon emissions in the decade the world needs to reduce emissions to stay within safe limits,” even if projects’ ability to lock up carbon over the long term is not guaranteed.

To try and square the circle of selling fossil fuels and being carbon neutral, BP has bought a major carbon offset company, Finite Carbon, which it claims “has the potential to build a global platform for managing and financing natural climate solutions.” Finite Carbon already specializes in forest carbon offsets in the USA, where forests are now increasingly ravaged by wildfires and pests, in a real-life demonstration of how temporarily carbon may be locked up in trees.

The overall offsetting scheme leads to a situation that corporations can delay real action to change their planet-heating practices. Simply put, offsetting lets “politicians and business leaders avoid confronting the reality of climate breakdown and nature decline, and continue with business as usual and the latest kind of greenwashing instead,” the report states.

Destroying one tract of nature cannot simply be remedied by restoring or creating another.

An example is mining giant Rio Tinto’s activities in Madagascar.

“Rio Tinto’s QMM ilmenite mine is destroying 6,000 hectares of littoral forest along the southeast coastline, while claiming it will leave a net-positive impact on biodiversity. To do this, its offsetting programme has acquired three forest areas in what has been considered a double land grab. Some of the area is already protected under a national conservation program, and in Antsotso the offset has resulted in loss of forest access, traditional livelihoods, and food security. Villagers living on less than a dollar a day are criminalized if they cut a tree to replace a dug-out canoe for fishing. Mineral extraction accounts for most of the forest loss in the region, and some of the poorest people on the planet are carrying the cost of greening Rio Tinto’ mine”

Carbon Offsets Are Nothing But a ‘Dangerous’ Con Job, Warns Climate Group (commondreams.org)

As with all their business practices, capitalists seek options without cost to them and invent solutions to suit their balance sheets. 

 Millions of Americans have fallen behind on utility bills during the pandemic. 

Utility debt increased from around $12bn before the pandemic to an estimated $32bn by the end of 2020.

The UK, Europe and China have been racked by soaring energy prices. So far most of the US has been spared the worst of it but economists are predicting that here too an energy crisis is looming, and as winter approaches prices are rising, potentially threatening the utilities of millions more. Only Washington DC and three states – New York, New Jersey and Wyoming –have continued utility shutoff moratoriums that were begun during the pandemic. Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans expired in early September.

According to Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association (NEADA), “The upcoming winter is of serious concern. Natural gas, heating oil and propane prices have become very expensive and will put pressure on families this winter. If additional funding is not provided then I expect that arrearages will spike again, unless Congress provides additional funding for energy assistance programs.”

Most states do not require utility companies to provide data on debt collections and shutoffs. An analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity in June found over 1m households in 17 states in the US have experienced a utility shutoff since March 2020.

Since then, additional statewide shutoff moratoriums have expired, including in California where an estimated $2.7bn in utility debt was accrued during the pandemic.

More than one in four Americans report their households are struggling to cover usual expenses, while assistance funds have been slow to reach those in need.

High and unaffordable utility bills are a problem across the US that precedes the pandemic, but one that became more prominent in the past 18 months, as the lack of utility shutoff moratoriums have been linked to a rise in Covid cases and deaths.

“Utilities is one of those day to day issues that gets missed,” said Amna Farooqi, a senior organizer with the organization 9to5 Georgia. Farooqi noted elected officials have consistently diverted responsibilities when pushed on the issue of unaffordable utility bills, and high bills are blamed on personal use rather than systemic problems. “People are trying to kick the can of responsibility around, but we need federal policies in place, state policies in Georgia, but also local policies.”

In Albany, Georgia, where more than 30% live under the poverty rate, residents have experienced high utility bills for years, often exceeding $700 a month. A report released in September by 9to5 Georgia outlined why utility bills for the city and across the nation are often so high, citing the monopoly of energy companies, poor and energy inefficient housing, a lack of accountability for local and state governments overseeing utility services, and extreme weather events worsened by the climate crisis.

In the wake of hurricanes and winter storms throughout the US, utility companies have often passed on the costs incurred by these storms to residents, along with increased rates and fuel costs. Residents in Kansas, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas have complained about sudden surges in their utility bills through 2021.

Jesse Dorle of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, noted her utility bills for a one-bedroom apartment have doubled, from around $175 to $350 a month in recent months due to costs incurred by utility companies for bad winter storms in early 2021.

Said Dorle, “Hard-working people like myself are struggling to keep our heads above water, and this hike is ruining us. Why should we have to pay enormously high costs for a basic human necessity?”

‘I have never felt so hopeless’: millions in US fear utility shutoffs as debts rise | US income inequality | The Guardian

The first-ever National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change on the impact of climate on national security through to 2040, the US intelligence community predicts that climate change will lead to growing international tensions in a bleak assessment. The 27-page report is the collective view of all 18 US intelligence agencies. It paints a picture of a world failing to co-operate, leading to dangerous competition and instability. The report is a sign that climate is now a central part of security thinking and that it will heighten existing problems as well as create new ones. The new intelligence estimate sets out the stark problems that lie ahead.

 United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has said the world’s current climate situation is “a one-way ticket for disaster”

“The carbon pollution of a handful of countries has brought humanity to its knees and they bear the greatest responsibility. I hope we are still on time to avoid a failure in Glasgow, but time is running short, and things are getting more difficult and that is why I’m very very worried. I’m afraid things might go wrong,” 

UN chief warns world on ‘one way ticket to disaster’ over climate | Climate Change News | Al Jazeera

 Ninety per cent of the US plastics industry’s reported climate change pollution takes place in just 18 communities, where residents earn 28% less than the average American household and are 67% more likely to be minority communities.

A report, by Bennington College’s Beyond Plastics project, found that the American plastics industry is releasing at least 232m tons of GHG annually, the equivalent to 116 average-sized coal-fired power plants. Since 2019, at least 42 US plastics facilities have opened, are under construction or are in the permitting process. If the facilities become fully operational, they could release an additional 55m tons of GHG – or the equivalent of another 27 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants – by 2025.

“Plastics is the new coal and it is a major environmental justice concern … The health impacts of the emissions are disproportionately borne by low-income communities and communities of color,” said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and former regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator under President Obama.

The World Economic Forum is projecting global plastics production to triple by 2050. 

 Enck said the new focus of the fossil fuel industry is plastics, saying: “Fossil fuel companies are making less money on generating power and less money for transportation … so they see plastics as the plan B. There’s no plan B for the rest of us. We are in a climate crisis,” she said.

The report identified 10 different stages in which plastics manufacturing emits the most significant GHG. Hydro-fracking is expected to release 45m tons of methane annually in the US by 2025. Transporting and processing fracked gases emit roughly 4.8m tons of methane a year. Petrochemical ethane gas cracker facilities release at least 70m tons of GHG annually. Other plastic raw materials manufacturing is responsible for 28m tons of GHG emissions per year. Exports and imports of plastics raw materials and products emit at least 51m tons of GHG annually, equivalent to more than 25 coal-fired power plants.

US plastics to outstrip coal’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, study finds | Climate crisis | The Guardian

Nike founder and billionaire, Phil Knight, is worth an estimated $58 billion. Knight has seen his fortunes almost double during the pandemic. The value of Knight’s assets increased from $29.5 billion in March 2020 to $57.9 billion on October 15, 2021, an increase of 96.4 percent.

While Knight has declared he intends to give most of his wealth to charity, the Bloomberg expose documents that for years, Knight has “been using a range of legal techniques to ensure his heirs keep control of most of his assets and profit from them in the process, quietly transferring vast piles of money in a textbook example of how the rich avoid taxes.”

Helen Flannery and Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies point out in this blog post how Knight’s philanthropic activity mostly takes the form of donations to his own private family foundation of highly appreciated Nike stock. Billionaires like Phil Knight are the largest beneficiaries of the tax reductions provided in our tax code. As we’ve documented, for every dollar a billionaire like Phil Knight gives to charity, taxpayers chip in 74 cents in lost tax revenue. Yet for billionaires like Knight, charitable giving becomes an extension of their tax reduction planning and power and influence.

IPS associate fellow Bob Lord, in an article is “The Hidden Ways the Ultrarich Pass Wealth to Their Heirs Tax Free.”  While Knight has declared he intends to give most of his wealth to charity, the using public SEC filings and other publicly available data, Lord “reverse engineered” an analysis of Knight’s tax planning techniques.  Knight has already transferred about $10 billion in wealth free of estate and gift tax (avoiding roughly $3.6 billion in tax) and could avoid estate tax on up to an additional $9 billion if he died today.

“Phil Knight’s estate plan demonstrates beyond doubt that loopholes in America’s estate and gift tax have rendered it useless.” 

Knight created a series of Granter Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), a popular tax avoidance mechanism deployed by many of the super-wealthy.

GRATs “have the basic goal of making wealth look much smaller than it really is.  It’s possible to have your gifts appear to be worth almost nothing, even as you move millions or even billions of dollars tax-free.”  They “construct a legal fiction that this is a normal transaction and not a taxable gift to the trust.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/how-billionaires-pass-wealth-to-heirs-tax-free-2021/

Opinion | Phil Knight: A Case Study in to How Dodge Over $3.6 Billion in Taxes | Chuck Collins (commondreams.org)