Waste and Capitalism

A report published in the reputable medical journal, The Lancet, highlights governments’ failure to ambitiously address the climate emergency and related health impacts. Experts from dozens of academic and United Nations institutions collaborated on the report, which tracks 44 indicators sorted into five categories: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerabilities; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement.

“If nothing else will drive the message home about the present threat that climate change poses to our global society, this should,” Lachlan McIver, a Doctors Without Borders physician, explained. “Your health, my health, the health of our parents and our children are at stake.”

“Lowering greenhouse gas emissions is a prescription,” Renee Salas, an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital pointed out. “The oath I took as a doctor is to protect the health of my patients. Demanding action on climate change is how I can do that.”

Echoing several studies released in anticipation of the COP 26 summit, the new analysis raises alarm about the increasing risk of chikungunya, dengue, malaria, and Zika outbreaks and warns that due to rising seas, hundreds of millions of people face flooding, intense storms, and soil and water salinification that could force mass migration.

The impact of climate change on health is getting worse and it is exacerbating existing health and social inequities particularly in communities exposed to food and water insecurity, heatwaves and the spread of infectious diseases. It is increasing health inequities everywhere.

Countdown executive director Anthony Costello noted some of the specific findings: “The 2021 report shows that populations of 134 countries have experienced an increase in exposure to wildfires. Millions of farmers and construction workers could have lost income because on some days it’s just too hot for them to work. Drought is more widespread than ever before.”

“This is our sixth report tracking progress on health and climate change and unfortunately we are still not seeing the accelerated change we need,” said lead author Maria Romanello in a statement. “At best the trends in emissions, renewable energy, and tackling pollution have improved only very slightly,” she continued, describing recent extreme weather exacerbated by rising temperatures as “grim warnings” of the consequences of delayed action.

The report points out that governments around the globe are still dumping massive amounts of money into subsidies for the oil and gas industry, despite conclusions from climate scientists and energy experts that fossil fuels must stay in the ground for the sake of the planet and human health.

Recent research and newly released guidelines from the World Health Organization have highlighted how the fossil fuel industry harms humanity by degrading air quality. Advocating for a “low-carbon transition that prioritizes the health of all populations,” the experts acknowledge that “even in the most affluent countries, people in the most deprived areas overwhelmingly bear the burden of health effects from exposure to air pollution.”

Lancet Report Warns Planetary Crisis Will Spur More Infectious Diseases, Climate Refugees (commondreams.org)

One more warning that socialists can guarantee will go unheeded by capitalist corporations. 

 

In a previous blog post we cited Greta Thunberg explaining that some nations are using “creative carbon accounting” to present a false image of their green policies. Australia is one major culprit of the practice. 

A new coal mine development in New South Wales will be offset through rehabilitation of the coal pit more than a decade after an ecosystem has been destroyed. The plan allows future rehabilitation of the mine site to be claimed as part of Glencore’s offsets for its Mangoola mine expansion.  Replanting and regeneration of the actual mine site years after its operations have finished will count towards offsets the company is required to deliver to compensate for the loss of some of the endangered habitat its project will cause. It is one example to start an ecosystem from scratch to compensate for the loss of mature bushland.

Glencore’s Mangoola expansion was approved in early October by the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley. It is the third coal project the minister has approved in a month.

Rachel Walmsley, the Environmental Defenders Office’s policy and law reform director, said development approvals had increasingly permitted the use of mine rehabilitation to provide biodiversity offsets despite the fact the NSW government still had not finalised rules that defined how mining rehabilitation should work under the state’s offset scheme.

“The idea that in 40 years time a void could be rehabilitated to a functioning ecosystem that is somehow an offset for habitat destruction that is happening now is farcical,” Walmsley said. “Offsetting is a tool that is facilitating decline and extinction and that’s why it needs to be critically reviewed because it is losing its scientific credibility.”

Georgina Woods, the NSW coordinator of the anti-mining group Lock the Gate said, “Allowing coalmines to clear vanishing wildlife habitat and claim imaginary future offset for this loss 20 or more years into the future is not just ineffective: it is cynical and grotesque.” She explained the practice was contributing to a “rapid decline” in biodiversity in NSW.

How the environmental offsets scheme is failing the Australian wildlife it is meant to protect | Environment | The Guardian

 The government has blocked a new law to curb firms’ ability to lay staff off and take them back on different – often worse – pay and terms. The practice is known as “fire-and-rehire”.  

Labour MP Barry Gardiner has put forward a bill that says fire-and-rehire should not be allowed unless employees are properly consulted first. Gardiner’s private member’s bill said employees should be fully consulted on any fire-and-rehire plans. If the employees agreed to it, they could be taken on under new terms, under the proposed new law. But if a dispute occurred between staff and a company, an independent committee would decide on whether the fire-and-rehire could go ahead, the bill said.

If All Refugees Lived in One Place, It Would Be the 17th Most Populous Country in the World

 The number of foreign-born citizens living in Chile has more than tripled, to 1.5 million, between 2014 and the end of 2019, many fleeing violence and poverty in Haiti and Venezuela – continue to arrive in the country.

José Antonio Kast, a supporter of the dictator Augusto Pinochet, is presently leading the presidential election opinion polls. “The far right have managed to weaponise migration in the run-up to the election,” says Romina Ramos, a sociologist at Arturo Prat University in Iquique. “They are playing on fears of a threat to security and Chilean identity – and Kast has been able to present the arrivals as an invasion which must be fought off.”

“Fundamentally, Kast defends free markets and traditional values, and favours the image of a monocultural Chile of European descent,” says Gilberto Aranda, an academic at the University of Chile who studies rightwing movements. “His advance in the polls is a reaction to the simplistic narrative that everything that has happened over the last 30 years has been negative.”

His programme focuses on conservative family values, moves against corruption and the strengthening of public security. He makes a point of criticising political correctness, inclusive language, identity politics and the perceived “abandonment” of Chilean traditions.

Chile far-right candidate rides anti-migrant wave in presidential poll | Chile | The Guardian

 Despite all their promises  by the Wealthier countries and the pharmaceutical industry to deliver 1.8 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the undeveloped and developing nations, they have delivered just 261 million doses, or 14%.

“The approach remains focused on inadequate charity and non-binding donation pledges instead of legally binding sharing, collaboration, and cooperation,” reads the People’s Vaccine Alliance report. “This approach will not work.”

“It is painfully clear that the developing world cannot rely on the largesse and charity of rich nations and pharmaceutical companies, and hundreds of thousands of people are dying from Covid-19 as a result,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, a member of the People’s Vaccine Alliance. “This is beyond appalling.”  Only 1.3% of people in low-income countries are vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to Oxfam.

TRY SOCIALISM INSTEAD

 Despite all governments and politicians claims, Greta Thunberg concludes “there are no climate leaders … at least not among high-income nations” 

Greta Thunberg accused countries including the UK of being in denial over the extent of the climate and ecological crisis and using “creative carbon accounting” to augment their green credentials.

In an opinion piece for the Guardian, the Swedish activist says world leaders have been responsible for several years of inaction in reducing emissions which she has termed “their decades of blah, blah, blah”.

Thunberg also accused the UK, the US and China of spinning emissions statistics to make it appear that their levels are lower.

She wrote: “Between 1990 and 2016, the UK lowered its territorial emissions by 41%. However, once you include the full scale of the UK emissions – such as consumption of imported goods, international aviation and shipping etc – the reduction is more like 15%.

“And this is excluding burning of biomass, like at Drax’s Selby plant – a heavily subsidised so-called “renewable” power plant that is, according to analysis, the UK’s biggest single emitter of CO2 and the third biggest in all of Europe. And yet the government still considers the UK to be a global climate leader.

“The UK is, of course, far from the only country relying on such creative carbon accounting. This is the norm.

“China, currently by far the world’s biggest emitter of CO2, is planning to build 43 new coal power plants on top of the 1,000 plants already in operation – while also claiming to be an ecological ‘trailblazer’ committed to leaving “a clean and beautiful world to future generations.”

 Tax evasion and avoidance schemes have cost governments an estimated €150bn (£127bn) in lost revenues, research by a team of experts at the University of Mannheim, in partnership with the German not-for-profit group Correctiv, shows.

 

Nearly 4 million low-income households are behind on rent, bills or debt payments, up threefold since the pandemic hit, according to a study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).

It reveals the growing cost of the living crisis facing the UK’s poorest families.

A third of the 11.6 million working-age households in the UK earning £25,000 or less were found to be in arrears on their rent or mortgage, utility bills, council tax bills or personal debt repayments. The findings indicate that 3.8 million households are behind with household bills, 950,000 are in rent arrears, 1.4 million are behind on council tax bills, and 1.4 million are behind on electricity and gas bills.

A third of all low-income families are in arrears, up from 11% prior to the pandemic, it estimated. This rises to 44% of working-age households and 71% of younger households aged between 18 and 24. Families with children and black, Asian and minority ethnic households were particularly hard hit.

“Behind these figures are parents gripped by anxiety, wondering how they will put food on their children’s plates and pay the gas bill; young people forced to rely on friends to help cover their rent and avoid eviction,” said Katie Schmuecker, the JRF deputy director for policy and partnerships.

 The Tory-controlled District Councils Network (DCN), which represents 200 councils in English towns, has warned of a rise in homelessness this winter as a result of the end to government support measures such as furlough and eviction ban. A survey of district councils completed earlier this month found that just under three-quarters reported an increase in homelessness acceptances over the past four months, while nearly two-thirds said people they had housed during the pandemic had recently slipped “back in the homelessness cycle”.

District councils also reported increased numbers of families seeking support, and increases in the numbers of residents with severe mental health and other complex needs using council services. More than a third of councils reported significant increases in referrals to local food banks.

Third of low-income households unable to pay bills, finds research | Household bills | The Guardian

 

Countries are trying to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change.