Global warming first came to wide public attention in the late 1980s. A crucial turning point was the presentation that climate scientist James Hansen made to Congress in 1988. At that time a large majority of Americans proved receptive to the idea of climate change. A poll conducted in 1992 showed 88% of respondents believing that global warming was ‘a serious problem.’ The near-consensus encompassed both major parties, with Republican as well as Democratic politicians open to proposals for preventive action. 

By 1997, however, only a minority of respondents considered global warming a serious problem — 42% (with only 28% supporting immediate action). What had happened to shatter what had seemed an emerging consensus? In his book The Petroleum Papers Geoff Dembicki argues that the decisive factor was a massive campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the Global Climate Coalition and generously funded by fossil fuel interests – above all, by Exxon and Koch Industries. 

Public recognition of climate science grew again in the early 2000s, but a renewed effort by the deniers reversed this process. Global warming lost its status as a bipartisan issue: since Trump won the presidency in 2016 the Republican Party has been monolithically denialist (at least in public).

There are various degrees of denialism. The very idea that the climate is changing may be ridiculed or dismissed out of hand. Or climate change may be acknowledged but attributed wholly to natural causes. Or it may be claimed that climate change is too uncertain to justify costly action. 

Denialism in the broad sense of denying truths that commercial interests find inconvenient is nothing new. The same ‘Public Relations’ firms and consultants who now deny global warming were previously employed by the tobacco companies to deny the harm that smoking does to health. Liars for hire have followed the same basic playbook ever since Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays created the PR industry in the 1920s. True, the stakes have risen – from the lungs of smokers to the ‘lungs’ of the planet. 

What do executives believe?

What do the executives and capitalists who fund the denialist campaign themselves believe? We cannot rely on their public statements, as these reflect not their personal beliefs about reality but calculations of corporate advantage.

Some oil companies – British Petroleum, for instance – recently changed their tune. They evidently concluded that it may be advantageous to pay lip service to climate science. At the same time they secretly continue to fund climate denialists. The rationale for such apparently inconsistent behavior may be that different kinds of propaganda are required for different audiences. 

They may be thinking along the following lines: ‘The more people remain unconcerned about global warming the better for us. But denying climate change can only anger those who are deeply committed to alarmist ideas. To placate them we must agree that fossil fuels will have to be given up eventually and claim that we are earnestly working toward an energy transition. That will give us at least a few more years of business as usual.’ 

Executives, I suspect, care very little if at all about what is true. They care about what is profitable. Those who have fought their way to the top of corporate hierarchies are a very select group. They have undergone selection not only for performance as profit-makers but also for loyalty to the culture of profit-making. An employee lower down the hierarchy who even raises an issue of ethics or scientific truth — or anything else that may get in the way of the pursuit of profit – risks summary dismissal.

Very occasionally a top executive experiences a shock that temporarily diverts him from the single-minded pursuit of profit. This is what happened to Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide Corporation, in December 1984, in the wake of a leak of poisonous gas from an insecticide plant owned by the company’s Indian subsidiary in the city of Bhopal. Some 15-20,000 people were killed and half a million survivors suffered blindness, respiratory problems, and other effects. Anderson declared that he felt responsible and intended to devote the rest of his career to righting the wrong done. This immediately set alarm bells ringing. Had he persisted in his new resolve, he would surely have been ousted by one means or another. Against the advice of colleagues he set off for India to investigate, only to be arrested on arrival. The US government had to intervene to rescue him. After this episode he seems to have calmed down. He retired in 1986.  

It may be argued that over the long term climate change threatens profit-making along with all other human activities. There will be no profits to be made if the Earth turns into a second Venus. However, the time horizon of capital is short – a decade or two at most. The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes expressed a typical capitalist sentiment when in response to an appeal to consider the long term he observed: ‘In the long term we are all dead.’ 

The case of Rupert Murdoch

What about the media tycoons who control what millions of people read in the newspapers, hear on the radio, and watch on TV? What do they believe? What orders do they give to their underlings?

One such tycoon is Rupert Murdoch. His vast media empire includes Fox News, News Corp, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post in the United States, The Australianand The Daily Telegraph in Australia, and Sky News and The Sun in Britain. For many years all these outlets were dismissive of climate change. 

In 2006 and 2007, however, under the influence of his son James and especially his environmentally aware daughter-in-law Kathryn, Murdoch had a change of heart. He told his media to start taking climate change seriously. Some, like The Sun, adapted easily to the new line. Others resisted. 

The people at Fox News were particularly reluctant to promote what they regarded as ‘fake science.’ Murdoch expressed confidence that he could persuade them. What may well have happened instead is that they persuaded him, or perhaps he fell out with Kathryn, but in any case he gradually started to entertain doubts about climate change. 

In 2014, flying over an icy seascape in the North Atlantic, he tweeted that the view was hardly consistent with the idea of global warming. Unfortunately, no one was with him to say: ‘Yes, there’s still plenty of ice out there, but not as much as there was. And the ice is much thinner than it used to be.’ 

It also confused him that ‘the Arctic is shrinking while Antarctica is expanding.’ Again, no one was at hand to explain to him that more snow was falling over Antarctica due to increased precipitation; there too temperatures were rising but not yet enough to turn the snow into rain. 

Murdoch is a highly educated man – he graduated from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) – but he never acquired an understanding of science or the ability to assess evidence in a scientific manner. It is fairly safe to assume that he is not in the habit of reading scientific reports. He needs to see climate change with his own eyes – for example, to watch the Greenland ice cap melting. 

It seems odd to discuss the family dynamics and mode of thought of a single individual at such length. But if that individual happens to own as many mass media outlets as Rupert Murdoch does, then such things can actually make a great difference to the world. That is one of the consequences of the immense concentration of wealth and power.

Source. Geoff Dembicki, The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change. Greystone Books, 2022

STEPHEN SHENFIELD

Global warming first came to wide public attention in the late 1980s. A crucial turning point was the presentation that climate scientist James Hansen made to Congress in 1988. At that time a large majority of Americans proved receptive to the idea of climate change. A poll conducted in 1992 showed 88% of respondents believing that global warming was ‘a serious problem.’ The near-consensus encompassed both major parties, with Republican as well as Democratic politicians open to proposals for preventive action. 

By 1997, however, only a minority of respondents considered global warming a serious problem — 42% (with only 28% supporting immediate action). What had happened to shatter what had seemed an emerging consensus? In his book The Petroleum Papers Geoff Dembicki argues that the decisive factor was a massive campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the Global Climate Coalition and generously funded by fossil fuel interests – above all, by Exxon and Koch Industries. 

Public recognition of climate science grew again in the early 2000s, but a renewed effort by the deniers reversed this process. Global warming lost its status as a bipartisan issue: since Trump won the presidency in 2016 the Republican Party has been monolithically denialist (at least in public).

There are various degrees of denialism. The very idea that the climate is changing may be ridiculed or dismissed out of hand. Or climate change may be acknowledged but attributed wholly to natural causes. Or it may be claimed that climate change is too uncertain to justify costly action. 

Denialism in the broad sense of denying truths that commercial interests find inconvenient is nothing new. The same ‘Public Relations’ firms and consultants who now deny global warming were previously employed by the tobacco companies to deny the harm that smoking does to health. Liars for hire have followed the same basic playbook ever since Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays created the PR industry in the 1920s. True, the stakes have risen – from the lungs of smokers to the ‘lungs’ of the planet. 

What do executives believe?

What do the executives and capitalists who fund the denialist campaign themselves believe? We cannot rely on their public statements, as these reflect not their personal beliefs about reality but calculations of corporate advantage.

Some oil companies – British Petroleum, for instance – recently changed their tune. They evidently concluded that it may be advantageous to pay lip service to climate science. At the same time they secretly continue to fund climate denialists. The rationale for such apparently inconsistent behavior may be that different kinds of propaganda are required for different audiences. 

They may be thinking along the following lines: ‘The more people remain unconcerned about global warming the better for us. But denying climate change can only anger those who are deeply committed to alarmist ideas. To placate them we must agree that fossil fuels will have to be given up eventually and claim that we are earnestly working toward an energy transition. That will give us at least a few more years of business as usual.’ 

Executives, I suspect, care very little if at all about what is true. They care about what is profitable. Those who have fought their way to the top of corporate hierarchies are a very select group. They have undergone selection not only for performance as profit-makers but also for loyalty to the culture of profit-making. An employee lower down the hierarchy who even raises an issue of ethics or scientific truth — or anything else that may get in the way of the pursuit of profit – risks summary dismissal.

Very occasionally a top executive experiences a shock that temporarily diverts him from the single-minded pursuit of profit. This is what happened to Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide Corporation, in December 1984, in the wake of a leak of poisonous gas from an insecticide plant owned by the company’s Indian subsidiary in the city of Bhopal. Some 15-20,000 people were killed and half a million survivors suffered blindness, respiratory problems, and other effects. Anderson declared that he felt responsible and intended to devote the rest of his career to righting the wrong done. This immediately set alarm bells ringing. Had he persisted in his new resolve, he would surely have been ousted by one means or another. Against the advice of colleagues he set off for India to investigate, only to be arrested on arrival. The US government had to intervene to rescue him. After this episode he seems to have calmed down. He retired in 1986.  

It may be argued that over the long term climate change threatens profit-making along with all other human activities. There will be no profits to be made if the Earth turns into a second Venus. However, the time horizon of capital is short – a decade or two at most. The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes expressed a typical capitalist sentiment when in response to an appeal to consider the long term he observed: ‘In the long term we are all dead.’ 

The case of Rupert Murdoch

What about the media tycoons who control what millions of people read in the newspapers, hear on the radio, and watch on TV? What do they believe? What orders do they give to their underlings?

One such tycoon is Rupert Murdoch. His vast media empire includes Fox News, News Corp, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post in the United States, The Australianand The Daily Telegraph in Australia, and Sky News and The Sun in Britain. For many years all these outlets were dismissive of climate change. 

In 2006 and 2007, however, under the influence of his son James and especially his environmentally aware daughter-in-law Kathryn, Murdoch had a change of heart. He told his media to start taking climate change seriously. Some, like The Sun, adapted easily to the new line. Others resisted. 

The people at Fox News were particularly reluctant to promote what they regarded as ‘fake science.’ Murdoch expressed confidence that he could persuade them. What may well have happened instead is that they persuaded him, or perhaps he fell out with Kathryn, but in any case he gradually started to entertain doubts about climate change. 

In 2014, flying over an icy seascape in the North Atlantic, he tweeted that the view was hardly consistent with the idea of global warming. Unfortunately, no one was with him to say: ‘Yes, there’s still plenty of ice out there, but not as much as there was. And the ice is much thinner than it used to be.’ 

It also confused him that ‘the Arctic is shrinking while Antarctica is expanding.’ Again, no one was at hand to explain to him that more snow was falling over Antarctica due to increased precipitation; there too temperatures were rising but not yet enough to turn the snow into rain. 

Murdoch is a highly educated man – he graduated from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) – but he never acquired an understanding of science or the ability to assess evidence in a scientific manner. It is fairly safe to assume that he is not in the habit of reading scientific reports. He needs to see climate change with his own eyes – for example, to watch the Greenland ice cap melting. 

It seems odd to discuss the family dynamics and mode of thought of a single individual at such length. But if that individual happens to own as many mass media outlets as Rupert Murdoch does, then such things can actually make a great difference to the world. That is one of the consequences of the immense concentration of wealth and power.

Source. Geoff Dembicki, The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change. Greystone Books, 2022

STEPHEN SHENFIELD

 For many, childhood poverty lasts a lifetime. One in three children born and raised in poverty will live their adult lives in poverty, leading to an intergenerational cycle of hardship and deprivation. 

The impact of the war in Ukraine and subsequent economic downturn on child poverty in eastern Europe | UNICEF Europe and Central Asia

 The war in Ukraine, and the resulting rise in the cost of living, has plunged millions more children into poverty in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in recent months, warns a study by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). It claims that while children make up 25% of the population, they account for nearly 40% of the 10.6 million additional people in poverty this year. The report covers 22 countries.  

“Children are bearing the heaviest burden of the economic crisis caused by the war in Ukraine,” Unicef said. The increase in child poverty in Eastern Europe and Central Asia could result in an additional 4,500 children dying before their first birthday and 117,000 more children dropping out of school in 2022 alone, UNICEF warns.

The conflict “and rising inflation have driven an additional four million children across eastern Europe and Central Asia into poverty, a 19 percent increase since 2021”.

“Russia accounts for nearly three-quarters of the total increase in the number of children living in poverty due to the Ukraine war and a cost-of-living crisis across the region, with an additional 2.8 million children now living in households below the poverty line,” Unicef reported.

“Ukraine is home to half a million additional children living in poverty, the second largest share,” Unicef said.

Romania followed closely behind, with a further 110,000 children in poverty.

UNICEF: 4m more children in poverty in eastern Europe and Russia due to war and inflation | Euronews

“The probability that the size of the world’s population will start to shrink in the next twenty years is much higher than we initially expected,” says  James Pomeroy, an economist at HSBC. He predicts that the world’s population could reach just over 4 billion by the end of the century because of the fertility rate’s sharp decline.

There are many reasons for the decline in fertility rates. The integration of women into the labor market delays the age at which they have their first child. The increase in real estate prices in rich countries limits the development of large families due to high costs. Increased education and better access to health care and contraceptive practices also play a role in families having fewer children. The pandemic has only accentuated the downward trend in births.

 In Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, the current fertility rate predicts that populations in these countries will be halved by the end of the century.

In Europe, James Pomeroy notes “At the current rate, the population will have halved by 2070, with the continent at risk of losing 400 million inhabitants by 2100. Similarly, if we continue the current trend, India’s population would rise to 1.54 billion in 2050, while China’s would fall to 1.17 billion. France would then have 62.3 million inhabitants and Germany 70.3 million.”

This projected decrease in population numbers is good news in the fight against climate change and the conservation of biodiversity.

It is not the same for all countries, however.

 “The decline in fertility rates is global, but for some countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, the level, although declining, allows for continued population growth,” explains James Pomeroy. 

Africa’s share of the world’s population will increase, with a large number of young people who will need to be integrated into the world of work, either locally or in developed or emerging countries with labor shortages.

 La population mondiale risque de diminuer de moitié d’ici à 2100 | Les Echos

 NOVA  is a widely used food classification system that separates foods into four categories based upon their level of processing.

Group 1 is unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk). 

Group 2 is made up of processed culinary ingredients such as sugars, oils and butter. 

Group 3 is processed foods (canned vegetables and fish, bread, jam). 

Group 4 is ultra-high processed foods, which are mostly low in protein and fibre, and high in salt, sugar and fat, and have undergone industrial interventions such as extrusion, moulding and milling.

In his book Spoon-Fed, the King’s College epidemiologist Tim Spector notes: “The ultra-processed nature of modern food generally means that the complex structure of the plant and animal cells is destroyed, turning it into a nutritionally empty mush that our body can process abnormally rapidly.”

Recent research suggests that high UPF consumption also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and, according to a recent American study involving 50,000 health professionals, of developing colon cancer. Last month a study in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology found that people born after 1990 are more likely to develop cancer before they’re 50 than people born before 1970. It’s suspected that UPF might be a contributing factor to this development.

As the UK is estimated to draw more than 50% of its calorie intake from UPF, this is no passing health scare.

King’s College Dr Sarah Berry, a nutrition expert in the area of cardio-metabolic health,  says: “There is very clear observational data showing that people who have higher intakes of ultra-processed foods have higher levels of ill-health, whether it be cancer, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, obesity or type 2 diabetes.”

Berry explains while the problem of UPF may be scientifically well-established, it isn’t easy, on an individual level, to deal with. After all, UPFs are so prevalent that stripping them completely out of our diet would be a logistical and time-consuming nightmare. What’s more, people enjoy their convenience and often relish their industrially enhanced taste.

The popularity of vegan cuisine in recent years has been mass-produced and carefully marketed. Yet so many of the glossily packaged plant-based substitutes are in fact UPFs.

“Look at oat milk, for example,” says Berry, citing a popular substitute for cow’s milk. “Its original structure has been taken out and it’s full of additives.”

Sophie Medlin, dietitian and chair of the London branch of the British Dietetic Association said: “The more you’re trying to make something imitate something that it’s not, the more processing it’s going to have to go through.” Medlin also said that it has become much easier to be a very unhealthy vegan.

Not so long ago the main criticism about UPF was that it lacked nutritional substance, and to counter that absence so-called healthy nutrients were added. Now food science is looking more closely at the different ways that natural food structures and ultra-processed foods are broken down by the human body. One theory is that food with its natural structure removed is the cause of inflammation, the body’s defence response to infection. A recent study that involved 20,000 Italian adults found that those with the highest consumption of UPF had the greatest risk of dying prematurely from any cause. It also found that inflammatory markers, such as higher white blood cell count, were most pronounced in those whose diets had the highest levels of UPF.

One of the big breakthroughs in understanding food nutrition in the 21st century is a greater understanding of the microbiome, the mostly gut-based micro-organisms that play a vital part in the digestion process. It’s known that some food additives such as sweeteners and emulsifiers commonly found in ultra-processed foods cause changes to the microbiome that increase inflammation.

Some researchers believe the body responds to elements of UPF as though they were a pathogen, as it would with an invading bacteria. This increase in inflammation throughout the body has been called “fast food fever”.

Fast food fever: how ultra-processed meals are unhealthier than you think | Food science | The Guardian

 Sasa Braun has been for the past six years a criminal intelligence officer with Interpol’s environmental security program.

“The brutality and profit margins in the area of environmental crime are almost unimaginable. Cartels have taken over entire sectors of illegal mining, the timber trade and waste disposal,” he said. Braun listed examples of villages in Peru that had resisted deforestation efforts being razed to the ground by criminal gangs in retribution, while illegal fishing fleets had thrown crew overboard to avoid having to pay them.

According to the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), environmental crime — the third most lucrative area of crime worldwide after drug trafficking and counterfeit goods — generates profits of between $110 billion and $280 billion each year. It is difficult to be more precise because there is an extremely high number of unreported cases. 

Environmental crime has many faces and includes the illegal wildlife trade, illegal logging, illegal waste disposal and the illegal discharge of pollutants into the atmosphere, water or soil. It is a lucrative business for transnational crime networks. 

Illegal waste trafficking, for example, accounts for $10 to 12 billion (€10.28 to 12.34 billion) annually, according to 2016 figures from the United Nations Environment Program. Criminal networks save on the costs of proper disposal and obtaining permits. For some crime networks, the profits from waste management are so huge that it has become more interesting than drug trafficking.

The profits from illegal logging have also grown. Well-seasoned tropical hardwood, which is used to build yachts for example, is increasingly rare and demand is high. According to a 2021 study by the German Association of Engineers (VDI), illegal logging accounts for 30% of activities in the global forestry sector. This figure can rise to almost 90% in countries that produce tropical timber.

“Too often in Europe, there is no real penalty for environmental crime. Lawbreakers can go unpunished and there are too few incentives to observe the law,” explained European Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius last year.

Environmental crime, where profit margins can be higher than the drug trade | Environment | All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 16.10.2022

Australian charity Foodbank’s annual Hunger Report surveyed more than 4,000 Australian adults, finding the problem extended beyond those on fixed incomes and was affecting many people in work.

The report estimates about 500,000 households on any given day experience food insecurity, which describes being uncertain about getting enough food and compromising on nutrition through to disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.

The report said 21% of Australians – or more than 2 million people – had experienced severe food insecurity in the past 12 months. That was up from 17% on its 2021 report. Past estimates have put the rate of food insecurity in Australia between 4% and 14%, while a UN report said 16% of Australian children under 15 lived with an adult who was food insecure in 2017. 

The new Foodbank report said that among those experiencing food insecurity, 64% cited increased or high living expenses and 42% pointed to “reduced or low income or government benefits” as a key cause. Among those experiencing severe food insecurity, 67% said their circumstances were worse this year than last. Households with children reported food insecurity at 1.5 times the national average, while about a third of people in work had experienced it in some form in the past year.

Only two in five households who reported being food insecure had sought food relief, a statistic attributed to ongoing stigma and practical factors such as a lack of access or eligibility.

The report said the diverse range of people facing food insecurity was likely to increase “due to the range of external factors impacting households which may never have experienced food insecurity before”, such as the increasing cost of living, the frequency and severity of natural disasters and the pandemic.

Brianna Casey, the chief executive of Foodbank, said, “I’ve never seen anything like what we are seeing right now. It’s going to come as a surprise to many that we are seeing rates of food insecurity that are worse than at the height of the pandemic … People have come out of the pandemic in many instances in a more vulnerable position than they went in.”

Inflation and inadequate welfare fuelling Australia’s food insecurity crisis, Foodbank finds | Welfare | The Guardian

 From the October 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard