Less than three weeks to go before the Qatar World Cup kicks off. Krishna Timislina worked for several years at construction sites for the stadiums the conditions were “hell on earth”. Sometimes 18 hour working days in searing heat and powered by energy drinks), water of dubious quality, prefab housing without space or privacy, and people dying from accidents or exhaustion.

 He told French journalists Sébastian Castelier and Quentin Muller for their book “Les Esclaves de l’Homme Pétrole” (“The Oil Man’s Slaves”) that with “precarious living conditions, terrible water quality and interminable shifts, we know our health is being damaged – but do we have a choice?” He explained, “So much of Qatar is being built thanks to our work – stadiums, shopping malls, bridges and roads are being constructed – but we’re not invited to share in the dream.” 

 Qatar has used a massive influx of foreign workers to build the infrastructure for the footballing extravaganza – with migrants building roads, a new airport, a railway network and seven new stadiums. However, the human cost has been dreadful. 

In a report published in August 2022, Amnesty International said that more than 15,021 foreigners of all ages and occupations had died in Qatar between 2010 and 2019. A February 2021 investigation found that at least 6,751 migrant workers died in Qatar from 2010 to 2020. But Castelier noted the real number is likely much higher. “These figures mainly come from Asian embassies in Qatar; we don’t have the statistics for African workers there.”  That figure also does not take into account workers who die after returning home. They point out that many such untimely deaths are due to kidney problems following the consumption of unsafe water. An Amnesty International investigation found that at least 6,751 migrant workers died in Qatar from 2010 to 2020 from drinking homemade alcohol and energy drinks as they struggle to keep up with the frantic work pace.

Qatar’s climate has a lot to do with the high mortality rate. “It’s very hot in the summer,” Castelier said. “It’s just hell working in the construction industry. Qatar has banned working outdoors in the open from 10:30am to 3pm, but many violations have been reported.”

Lack of training can be another cause of death. “They put people who haven’t been trained on huge machines or on scaffolding, and they often have no idea about safety measures – so there are plenty of accidents,” Castelier said. Qatar knows all this makes for bad PR: “It’s perfectly aware that the stories about migrants workers are a problem; they’re constantly trying to put forward a narrative that they’re a modernising country.”

Qatar hosts nearly 400,000 migrant workers, often in conditions of modern-day slavery.

“It’s like a disposable workforce,” Castelier said. “That’s how migration to the Gulf states works. It’s impossible for an immigrant to obtain local citizenship. So when they’re no longer working, they have to leave.” Migrants arriving in Gulf states soon fall prey to an exploitative system, with “kafala” at the heart of it. In a widely used system in the Gulf, a sponsor (or “kafeel”) is assigned to each migrant, often his or her employer. The system puts migrants at the mercy of their employers, who often confiscate their passports upon arrival.

The kafala system “gives the employer a lot of power over the employee”, Castelier said. “Everything is OK if the employer respects the rules. But if not, the employee’s life can become a living hell.”

In a public relations attempt to improve its image, Qatar officially abolished the kafala system in 2016. Yet in reality, “many aspects of it are still in force”, Castelier said. “Most notably, an employer can say that a migrant working for them is a fugitive. So if a domestic worker, for example, wants to denounce abuses by their employer, the latter can easily say that they have absconded – and instead of looking into the worker’s complaints, the police will just return them to their employer.”

‘Just hell’: New book shines light on migrant deaths ahead of Qatar World Cup (france24.com)

COP27

Climate in crisis, temperatures soaring,

Hurricanes vying with droughts to be worse

And humanity’s primary curse,

As sea levels rise. It’s worth restoring

Equilibrium surely? And yet,

Perhaps the problem is just too intense:

The only response, another conference

For politicians to attend by jet.

Banquets are arranged, discussions begun,

Though radical measures are rejected

If it seems profits might be affected,

Even though all say something must be done.

A strong resolution, they’re all for it,

Until they fly home and then ignore it.

D. A.

A new draft US federal report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation, and NASA  notes that the country, the largest emitter of carbon in history, is warming faster than the Earth as a whole, with the continental U.S. 1.3°C (2.5°F) warmer than it was in the 1970s. The planet has warmed 1.1°C or 2°F above preindustrial temperatures.

Millions of people in the U.S. have already had firsthand experience with the impacts of the climate crisis, says the report. More than 3,000 homes and other structures were destroyed by wildfires in California in 2021, and a heatwave across the Pacific Northwest last year killed 229 people. As climate scientists have consistently warned, hurricanes are growing more severe.  According to the report. “Many of the harmful impacts that people across the country are already experiencing will worsen as warming increases, and new risks will emerge.”

The report warns that “more severe wildfires in California, sea level rise in Florida, and more frequent flooding in Texas are expected to displace millions of people” in the United States.

Four decades ago, disasters costing $1 billion or more took place roughly once every four months, but 20 such events were recorded in 2021, averaging about one every three weeks. 

“Compound events—combinations of weather or climate events affecting one location back-to-back or multiple locations at the same time—are already occurring in every region of the country and are projected to become more frequent as the world continues to warm,” the draft report reads. “These events have cascading effects through supply chains, food networks, and other interdependent systems that typically cause greater harm than isolated events.”

Some climate harms facing Americans that have been covered less frequently than extreme weather, including threats to drinking water supplies as rising sea levels send saltwater into aquifers and flooding pollutes wells and other sources. Other public health risks include rising tick populations and the spread of Lyme disease amid warmer weather, increased transmission of mosquito-borne illnesses, and the inhalation of toxic wildfire smoke in communities across the West.

“Faster, deeper cuts” to fossil fuel emissions that are needed to see a 6% annual reduction, which the report says is necessary to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Report Demands ‘Rapid Transition’ to Renewables as Climate Calamities Spread Across US (commondreams.org)

 “A growing number of governments and nonstate actors are pledging to be carbon-free—and obviously that’s good news,” Guterres said while introducing a report, entitled Integrity Matters: Net-Zero Commitments by Businesses, Financial Institutions, Cities, and Regions, “The problem is that the criteria and benchmarks for these net-zero commitments have varying levels of rigor and loopholes wide enough to drive a diesel truck through.”

“We must have zero tolerance for net-zero greenwashing,” he continued. “Today’s expert group report is a how-to guide to ensure credible, accountable net-zero pledges. Let’s tell it like it is. Using bogus ‘net-zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. It is rank deception. This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff. The sham must end. “

“We urgently need every business, investor, city, state, and region to walk the talk on their net-zero promises,” Guterres added. “We cannot afford slow movers, fake movers, or any form of greenwashing.”

“This analysis only scratches the surface of how deeply conflicted these ‘net-zero’ initiatives are,” Sara Shaw, climate justice and energy international program coordinator for Friends of the Earth International, said in a statement. “It paints a picture of how this isn’t just about polluters trying to build ‘green credibility,’ but of how they position themselves to shape and obstruct policy progress.”

Climate Defenders Urge ‘Zero Tolerance for Net-Zero Greenwashing’ as UN Publishes New Report (commondreams.org)

 Greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas facilities around the world are about three times higher than their producers claimed.  Under the UN system, countries are responsible for reporting their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate Trace, a project to measure at source the true levels of carbon dioxide and other global heating gases, published a new report on Wednesday showing that half of the 50 largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world were oil and gas fields and production facilities.

Many are underreporting their emissions, and there are few means of calling them to account. Atmospheric levels of methane, a greenhouse gas about 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, have been rising strongly in recent years, but countries’ reported emissions of the gas have been found to be much lower than the reality.

 Under-reporting emissions, Al Gore, explained,  “For the oil and gas sector it is consistent with their public relations strategy and their lobbying strategy. All of their efforts are designed to buy themselves more time before they stop destroying the future of humanity.”

Saudi Arabia has reported its oil and gas production emissions. We have measured them empirically and we find a huge gap, that the emissions are larger than those that have been reported. When we look more carefully at the emissions we find from their refining centre, it turns out that the volume of emissions from their refining centre, that have not been reported, exactly match the amount by which their reported admissions are undercounted.

Oil and gas greenhouse emissions ‘three times higher’ than producers claim | Climate crisis | The Guardian

The Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) launched by more than two dozen nations at the COP27 was denounced by Greenpeace as unlikely to stop deforestation. 

“…this partnership is nothing but a green light for eight more years of forest destruction, with little respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities,” Victorine Che Thōner of Greenpeace International said. According to Thōner, the alliance “gives polluters a license to do more business as usual through carbon trickery instead of advancing true climate action.”

Notably, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo are not part of the FCLP.

At last year’s COP26 meeting in Scotland, 145 governments signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration “to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation” by the end of the decade. However, as the annual Forest Declaration Assessment showed two weeks ago, “not a single global indicator is on track to meet these 2030 goals of stopping forest loss and degradation and restoring 350 million hectares of forest landscape.” Only 22% of the $12 billion in public money pledged for forests by 2025, funds committed in Glasgow, had so far been disbursed. This sum pales in comparison to the $460 billion per year that is needed to protect, restore, and improve forests on a global scale.

26,000 square miles of forest—an area roughly equivalent to Ireland—were destroyed around the world in 2021, harming biodiverse ecosystems and releasing into the atmosphere 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution, or about as much as the European Union generates each year.

Scientists warned that averting the worst consequences of the climate and biodiversity crises hinges in part on putting an end to clear-cutting, which is being driven by corporations looking to make space for cattle ranching, monocropping, and other harmful practices.

Greenpeace said the new pact “was mainly a progress review from 2021 in support of carbon markets as a mechanism for funding investment in protecting existing carbon sinks.”

Thōner explained that “…we must look beyond the needs of greedy businesses to effectively deliver on non-market approaches for nature protection…Real commitments are needed now to protect and restore nature along with the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.”

Greenpeace Dismisses COP27 Deforestation Pact as ‘Carbon Trickery’ (commondreams.org)

 The chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA),  Andy Haldane,  has warned more than a century of progress on health and wellbeing was going into reverse, with a direct impact on the economy and the cost of living emergency. “We’re in a situation for the first time, probably since the Industrial Revolution, where health and wellbeing are in retreat,” he said. “Having been an accelerator of wellbeing for the last 200 years, health is now serving as a brake in the rise of growth and wellbeing of our citizens.”

Haldane said the economy was being held back after a sharp fall in the number of people in the British workforce since the onset of the Covid pandemic. However, the former chief economist at the Bank of England said the global health emergency had only served as a “tipping point”. “Spending on healthcare systems, at least by G7 comparisons, the UK sits towards the bottom of the pack,” he said. “It should come as no surprise that we therefore see macroeconomic headwinds such as a record number of unfilled vacancies. We haven’t got enough people.”

About 600,000 workers have dropped out of the workforce, including 200,000 out of work for five years or more due to ill health.  30,000 more people with long Covid and are unable to work. About 50,000 more people have retired early in the last two years, while the number of people who have never worked swelled by 250,000 with two-thirds of this group accounted for by students and a third by people with ill health or disabilities not being able to get into work rather than leaving it.

The situation is made worse by the baby boomer generation taking retirement and lower migration – “with half a million fewer non-UK born workers than there would have been on the pre-2016 trend”.

UK economy being held back by worsening health of British public, Andy Haldane warns | Economic growth (GDP) | The Guardian

Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, said the prosperity of the rich world had been achieved at the expense of the poor in times past, and now the poor were being forced to pay again, as victims of climate breakdown that they did not cause.

“We were the ones whose blood, sweat and tears financed the industrial revolution,” she said. “Are we now to face double jeopardy by having to pay the cost as a result of those greenhouse gases from the industrial revolution? That is fundamentally unfair.”

She warned of a billion climate refugees around the world by the middle of the century.

“We need to have a different approach, to allow grant-funded reconstruction grants going forward, in those countries that suffer from disaster. Unless that happens, we are going to see an increase in climate refugees. We know that by 2050, the world’s 21 million climate refugees today will become 1 billion.”

About $2tn will be needed each year by 2030 to help developing countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the effects of climate breakdown. The cash will be needed so that poor countries can switch away from fossil fuels, invest in renewable energy and other low-carbon technology, and cope with the impacts of extreme weather.

Poor countries have been promised since 2009 that by 2020 they would receive at least $100bn a year to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather. But that target has repeatedly been missed.

 The number of people in Sri Lanka needing urgent humanitarian help has doubled to 3.4 million. 

The United Nations warned of a worsening food crisis amid an unprecedented economic crisis.

UN agencies in Sri Lanka in a joint statement said that they had raised $79m to feed those in need, but the increasing number of poor people meant an additional $70m was needed.

“Food insecurity in Sri Lanka has increased dramatically due to two consecutive seasons of poor harvests, foreign exchange shortages, and reduced household purchasing power,” the statement said.

With food inflation of 85.6 per cent in October 2022, many Sri Lankans are struggling. Twenty-eight per cent of the population—or 6.3 million people—face moderate-to-severe acute food insecurity.

 Among its targets are immediate food assistance for 2.4 million vulnerable and food-insecure people; provision of support and fertilizers for 1.5 million farmers and fishers to revive food systems that have been severely disrupted.

The appeal also seeks to provide nutrition support for 2.1 million people, including pregnant women and schoolchildren; safe drinking water for over 900,000 people; and essential medicines and healthcare, including sexual and reproductive healthcare, for 867,000 people. It will enable protection services to continue for vulnerable women and children at risk of violence.

The UN has said that the poverty rate in the South Asian nation has doubled to 25.6 percent this year, up from 13.1 percent last year.

UN ramps up its urgent humanitarian appeal to bring life-saving assistance to 3.4 million Sri Lankans [EN/SI/TA] – Sri Lanka | ReliefWeb

 The climate crisis has pushed the planet’s stores of ice to a widespread collapse that was “unthinkable just a decade ago”, with Arctic sea ice certain to vanish in summers and ruinous sea level rise from melting glaciers now already in motion, according to the State of the Cryosphere report, a major new report, has warned.

Even if planet-heating emissions are radically cut, the world’s vast ice sheets at the poles will continue to melt away for hundreds of years, causing up to three metres of sea level rise that will imperil coastal cities, the report states. The “terminal” loss of sea ice from the Arctic during summers could arrive within a decade and now cannot be avoided, it adds. Disappearance of sea ice will open up the dark Arctic ocean, which will absorb – rather than reflect – heat, causing global heating to escalate further. It will also upend the region’s ecosystem, harming everything from algae to large animals such as seals and polar bears that need the sea ice for hunting.

“There’s nothing we can do about that now, we’ve just screwed up and let the system warm too much already,” said Julie Brigham-Grette, a scientist at University of Massachusetts Amherst and report co-author, about the sea ice. “That milestone has now past so the next thing we need to avoid is ice shelf collapses in Antarctica and the further breakdown of the ice systems in Greenland. We can’t stuff the genie back into the bottle once they are gone.” 

She continued,  “The costs to places like Florida and Bangladesh and the Nile delta are just enormous, it’s going to be a huge strain,” adding that the Arctic is now shifting towards a state not seen in 3 million years. “We can’t allow ourselves to get to such a place but what worries me is we won’t respond to this emergency until it is front of us.”

“It’s a terminal diagnosis and now we have to live with consequences,” said Robbie Mallett, a sea ice expert at University College London Earth Sciences. “It’s been quite emotional to think of a time by the end of my career when I will see an Arctic free of sea ice. It’s been a shocking few years in Greenland with ice disappearing before our eyes. We are driving a whole environment to extinction.”

The loss of Arctic sea ice is “not the only sign of growing cryosphere collapse”. In just the past year, researchers have been astonished by the sight of rain at the summit of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet for the first time on record, followed by rain, rather than snow, falling on east Antarctica in March amid startling heatwaves at both poles, with temperatures 40C (72F) above normal. The report documents shell damage to crustaceans in the Arctic Ocean, a sign that the seawater is acidifying due to greenhouse gas emissions, the loss of 5% of glacier ice in the Alps over a single summer and a record low sea ice extent around Antarctica, earlier this year.

A huge amount of sea level rise appears to be already locked in due to the rampant burning of fossil fuels, the report states, with sections of the west Antarctic ice sheet potentially collapsing even without any further emissions over the coming centuries, causing more than four metres of additional sea level rise. Greenland’s ice loss has already committed around 30cm to sea level rise.

The Arctic is heating up around four times as quickly as the global average, which, combined with record heatwaves in Antarctica, risks a rapid “meltwater pulse” not seen at any time in the past 130,000 years, during which time human civilization has developed. This surge in water could prove disastrous for coastal areas.

Meanwhile, glaciers in places such as the Himalayas and the Andes are winnowing away, risking the drinking water supplies of tens of millions of people and, conversely, raising the threat of disastrous flooding.

 Brigham-Grette said, “If we don’t accept that moral responsibility we aren’t going to be very good ancestors, we won’t be looked upon fondly. It will be a human tragedy.”

World faces ‘terminal’ loss of Arctic sea ice during summers, report warns | Climate crisis | The Guardian