Greta Thunberg has given her response to the outcome of two weeks of talks, what is now called the Glasgow Climate Pact:

 ‘…beware of a tsunami of greenwashing and media spin to somehow frame the outcome as “good”, “progress”, “hopeful” or “a step in the right direction”. ’

And her words were soon proved true when U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told The Associated Press. “It’s a good deal for the world. It’s got a few problems, but it’s all in all a very good deal.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ conclusion was  that the “outcome is a compromise, reflecting the interests, contradictions & state of political will in the world today.” He explained, “Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread. We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe.”

Ahead of the Glasgow talks, the United Nations had set three criteria for success, and none of them were achieved. The criteria included pledges to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030, $100 billion in financial aid from rich nations to poor, and ensuring that half of that money went to helping the developing world adapt to the worst effects of climate change.

“We did not achieve these goals at this conference,” Guterres said 

Mohamed Adow, director of the Nairobi-based think tank Power Shift Africa, said: “The needs of the world’s vulnerable people have been sacrificed on the altar of the rich world’s selfishness. The outcome here reflects a Cop held in the rich world and the outcome contains the priorities of the rich world.” Adow added: “We are leaving empty-handed…”

Lia Nicholson, lead negotiator for Antigua and Barbuda, which chairs the 37-strong Alliance of Small Island States, said they were “extremely disappointed” by the lack of progress on loss and damage – the principle that richer countries, which bear the main responsibility for the global warming, should pay compensation to poorer ones because of climate impacts. She added: “We will express our grievances in due course.” 

 Aminath Shauna, the Maldives minister for environment, climate change and technology said. “I’d like to note that this progress is not in line with the urgency and scale with the problem at hand…The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is a death sentence for us. We didn’t cause the climate crisis. No matter what we do, it won’t reverse this.”

Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam’s international executive director, stated: “Clearly some world leaders think they aren’t living on the same planet as the rest of us. It seems no amount of fires, rising sea levels or droughts will bring them to their senses to stop increasing emissions at the expense of humanity. The world’s poorest have done the least to cause the climate emergency, yet are the ones left struggling to survive while also footing the bill.”

“It’s meek, it’s weak and the 1.5 C goal is only just alive…” said Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson, speaking for a group of retired leaders called The Elders, said the pact represents “…nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster. People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty.”

Global Witness Director of Campaigns, Seema Joshi, said:

“Despite the science, the energy, enthusiasm and passion of communities, activists, environmental defenders and NGOs both in Glasgow and across the world, global leaders at COP26 have failed to put people and the planet ahead of profits and vested corporate interests.  The fight to save humanity is on. In the words of Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate, anything above 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming will be a “death sentence” in many parts of the world, with indigenous communities, people of colour and the poorest being hit hardest…”

Once again the words of Greta Thunberg resonates with many

 “The COP26 is over. Here’s a brief summary: Blah, blah, blah.”

 According to the most recent data, governments are planning to produce 57% more oil, 71% more gas and 240% more coal than is consistent with a 1.5°C target by 2030. 

To even have half a chance of keeping 1.5°C alive, at least 60% of oil and gas and 90% of coal must remain in the ground

 “COP26 is a performance. It’s an illusion constructed to salvage capitalist economy rooted in resource extraction & colonialism. I didn’t come here to fix the agenda, I came here to disrupt it. I’m not going to my coloniser for solutions” – Ta’Kaiya Blaney, 19, a member of Canada’s Tla’Amin First Nation

 “COP26 is a performance. It’s an illusion constructed to salvage capitalist economy rooted in resource extraction & colonialism. I didn’t come here to fix the agenda, I came here to disrupt it. I’m not going to my coloniser for solutions” – Ta’Kaiya Blaney, 19, a member of Canada’s Tla’Amin First Nation

 As the disillusioned environmentalists and disappointed COP26 delegates begin to depart Glasgow, what can we say except that our aim still remains one of achieving the socialist principle, ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’ – free access – or post-scarcity socialism to reword the title of a Murray Bookchin’s book.

The World Socialist Movement (WSM) has always held that a society of abundance for all is possible and can be quickly turned into a reality. The fact that science and technology have developed to the point where it could be applied to produce enough for everybody to be able to satisfy their material needs strengthens the case for socialism. If the technological preconditions exist in today’s world but what is lacking is the required vast popular movement to bring such a society into being.

How much is too much? Some futurist scenarios are built upon the assumptions that people want luxury and that they detest work. We suggest that neither of these is fully correct and take their reasoning from projecting the capitalist ethos into non-market and not–for–profit economic system.  

Our critics claim that there are no other alternatives for the allocation of resources other than prices calculated by the free market or determined centrally by a command economy.

Our critics remain fixated on what we can call the ‘Lazy, Greedy Hypothesis’ which simply preaches the conventional capitalist wisdom about peoples ‘selfishness’, rejecting a system that abolishes the money, prices and exchange economy on the grounds that a money-free scheme would permit the least social conscious, those without any sense of social responsibility to ‘win’ out because they will take more from society and give less to the community becoming anti-social parasites and free riders. Are some innately selfish and inherently idle?

We say no and don’t share this pessimistic view. We have always thought we left ‘Original Sin’ to the blinkered religious believers, not for the progressive-minded to accept.

People behave differently depending upon the conditions that they live in. Although in today’s world working equates to mindless repetitive drudgery there is much more to hard work than that as demonstrated by the long waiting lists to enjoy the sweat of digging at one’s allotment. Working people develop deep friendships with co-workers when they engage in social production.

Human behaviour reflects society. In a society such as capitalism, people’s needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organised in such a dog-eat-dog manner. In capitalist society a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth through the accumulation of possessions and conspicuous consumption.

As Marx contended, the prevailing ideas of society are those of its ruling class then we can understand why, when the wealth of that class so preoccupies the minds of its members, such a notion of status should be so deep-rooted.

 In socialism, status based upon the material wealth at one’s command would be a meaningless concept. Why take more than you need when you can freely take what you need? In socialism, the only way in which individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to society, and the more the movement for socialism grows the more will it subvert the prevailing capitalist ethos, in general, and its anachronistic notion of status, in particular. How can the status of conspicuous consumption be used as a reward as it is now for a privileged elite when all have equal free access.

In free access socialism, the notion of income or purchasing power would be devoid of meaning. So, therefore, would the notion of status be based upon the conspicuous consumption of wealth because individuals would stand in equal relation to the means of production and have free access to goods and services.

Under capitalism, there is a very large industry devoted to creating needs. Capitalism requires consumption, whether it improves our lives or not, and drives us to consume up to, and past, our ability to pay for that consumption. In a system of capitalist competition, there is a built-in tendency to stimulate demand to a maximum extent. Enterprises, for example, need to persuade customers to buy their products or they go out of business. They would not otherwise spend the vast amounts they do spend on advertising.

Socialism requires that we appreciate what is meant by ‘enough’ and that we do not project onto it the insatiable consumerism of capitalism. Socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. Would they want to jeopardise the new society they had helped create? Socialists very much doubt it.

Socialism does not require self-sacrifice and for all of us to become altruists, placing the interests of others above our own. Socialism doesn’t require people to be any more humane than they are today. We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be respected and appreciated by others as well as our requirement for companionship and sexual intimacy. No doubt too, we will wish to ‘possess’ personal belongings, and seek to feel secure in accommodation, but this will be just that – our home and not a financial asset. Such ‘selfish’ behaviour will still exist in socialism but the acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist.

The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of other more negative ones which capitalism encourages. 

A sense of mutual obligations and the realisation of universal interdependency arising from this would profoundly colour people’s perceptions and influence their behaviour in such a society. We may thus characterise such a society as being built around mutual aid and a system of generalised reciprocity.

34,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers prepare to strike on Monday.

Semanu Mawugbe, a Kaiser nurse in Los Angeles explained, “It’s a slap in the face,” he said, noting that the 1%-a-year offer was well below this year’s 5%-plus inflation rate. “They tell us we’re heroes and we’re much appreciated because of everything we did during the pandemic”, he said. “But their offer shows they don’t mean it. We’re the ones who sustained the hospitals and took care of the sick like it’s a war zone…None of us want a strike, but there are times it has to be done,” he said. “We’re hoping for a last-minute, 11th-hour turnaround.”

The unions say Kaiser is seeking to squeeze wages when the non-profit company is doing well, with $45bn in cash reserves and $6.8bn in operating profits the last three years.

Denise Duncan, president of the United Nurses union, called Kaiser’s offer “totally unacceptable”. She derided the proposal to pay new workers less: “You can’t solve a nursing shortage that way.” She faulted Kaiser’s wage survey, saying it should have been done in cooperation with Kaiser’s unions. She said the survey, comparing Kaiser’s pay levels with those at smaller, less sophisticated medical institutions, often in rural areas, was apples and oranges. 

“Ultimately, we just had to pull our levers for a strike”, Duncan told the Guardian. “Our members were angry. Everyone worked so hard. We feel Kaiser let our principles of partnership go.”

‘A slap in the face’: nurses’ strike signals Kaiser’s end as union haven | US unions | The Guardian

 According to the most comprehensive study of the region ever carried out, more than 200 scientists collaborated on the new report, which finds that the Amazon rainforest more than a third of the world’s biggest tropical forest is degraded or deforested, rainfall is declining and dry seasons are growing longer and an irreversible, catastrophic tipping point threatens. Tipping points may already have been passed in some areas, such as the south-east Amazon and on the border between northern Brazilian states Maranhão and Pará, where more than 70% of the rainforest has gone and once-abundant species are endangered.

Jos Barlow of Lancaster University said the urgency of the Amazon crisis necessitated a change of outlook. “…there is now irrefutable evidence that parts of the Amazon have reached a tipping point, with mega-fires, increased temperatures, reductions in rainfall. The severe social and ecological changes mean that a rethink is urgently needed. We cannot continue business as usual…”

The diversity of plants, insects and animals confers stability and resilience to local ecosystems, plays a critical role in global water cycles and regulates climate variability. The basin produces the largest river discharge on Earth, accounting for 16% to 22% of the world’s river input to the oceans. These globally important functions are weakening as a result of land conversion for cattle ranches and soy plantations, and disruptions of river systems by dams and hydroelectric dams. About 17% of the Amazon has been cleared and more than 17% degraded.

Human destruction is emerging so quickly that there has not been time to include them all in this study. In the past week, the forest has been cleared in Ecuador’s Yasuni national park for an oil road and pipelines. In the Volta Grande stretch of the Xingu River in Brazil, the Canadian mining company Belo Sun is closing in on a deal for an open cast pit that would scar the Amazon landscape and could contaminate water supplies that have already been disrupted by the nearby Belo Monte hydroelectric dam.

The problem is likely to widen unless the current destructive model of development, which only benefits a small minority, is replaced by a more holistic and inclusive approach. 

Transform approach to Amazon or it will not survive, warns major report | Cop26 | The Guardian

To ensure a harmonious relationship with our environment only a coherent policy can abolish the gloom and uncertainty which has been made possible by insane and irrational policies which result from an unplanned and blind economic and social system, which is what capitalism is. Capitalism is different from all preceding class societies in that its driving force is accumulation for the sake of accumulation. Commodity production has become an end in itself under capitalism. Goods are produced for their exchange value, not their use-value.

Under capitalism, there are no limits to exploitation as each unit of capital has to compete with all the others. Surplus value in the form of profits is reinvested in the production process by each capitalist rather than consumed. The logic of capitalist competition forces each capitalist to obtain the maximum profit possible; otherwise, they will fall behind their competitors and go out of business. Production is therefore organised around the short term and the effect on nature, negative or otherwise is not a concern for the capitalist. Air pollution caused by a factory is not treated as a cost of production internal to that factory, rather it is viewed as an external cost to be borne by nature and society.

The fight against climate change and transition to renewable energy sources mean breaking with a capitalist economy based on the endless expansion of production no matter the cost. It’s time we made conscious and collective decisions. 

The World Socialist Movement clearly identifies the culprit: the capitalist system with its insatiable greed and irrepressible need for growth. If we want to save the world, we must dismantle capitalism itself. instead of manufacturing products for profit, we will produce to satisfy human needs with useful, durable, repairable, adaptable products, not throwaway consumer goods. A radical break with the capitalist system is required.

Socialism is all about planning at the local, regional, continental, and world levels with major decisions that could be made by the population or by committees composed of elected delegates. We replace the so-called “invisible hand” of the market with the very visible decision-making of the collective will of working people. Rather than argue against the usual environmentalist approach that focuses on individual choice and lifestyle consumption, the WSM suggests questioning the logic of capitalist production itself.

Businesses are compelled to produce more in order to sell more to maximise profits and it employs a vast elaborate advertising industry to ensure customers buy more and with built-in obsolescence, those customers are obliged to constantly re-purchase replacements. Capitalism is a hugely wasteful economy that would not be necessary with rationally organised production.

Given the urgency of the climate emergency, there couldn’t be an any better argument than a mass social revolution that changes the priorities of the system. A reformist approach that advocates piecemeal gradual change can not even begin to seriously solve the scale of the problem. The WSM envisages a future socialist society that would prioritise human needs instead of profit and restructure the economy and energy and transport usage in such a way that is sustainable and beneficial to both humanity and our surroundings. Frequently, the objection to all the practical measures to reduce global warming by mainstream economists is based on cost.

Such financial reasons will not apply inside socialism. Nor will population numbers which are often mistakenly viewed as a problem prove to be an obstacle. Each new life will not be treated as an extra mouth to feed but as an additional brain and pair of helping hands for the betterment of humanity and nature.

The new U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, report revealed that a rising number of people worldwide are fleeing violence, insecurity, and the effects of the climate emergency, with over 84 million relocating within and beyond their home countries during the first half of this year.

Internally displaced people (IDP) make up more than half of the agency’s total tally at 48 million. According to UNHCR, from January to June, there were also 26.6 million refugees as well as 4.4 million asylum-seekers and 3.9 million Venezuelans displaced abroad, which is its own category.

The actual number of stateless people in the world remains unknown due to a lack of accurate data. 

“The international community is failing to prevent violence, persecution, and human rights violations, which continue to drive people from their homes,” said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. “In addition, the effects of climate change are exacerbating existing vulnerabilities in many areas hosting the forcibly displaced.” He pointed out that “It is the communities and countries with the fewest resources that continue to shoulder the greatest burden in protecting and caring for the forcibly displaced.” 

Developing countries hosted 85% of refugees and Venezuelans displaced abroad;73% of refugees and displaced Venezuelans lived in neighboring countries;Asylum-seekers submitted 555,400 new claims, with the United States receiving the most applications—72,900;Turkey hosted the world’s largest refugee population at 3.7 million people;16,300 refugees were resettled during the first half of this year;1.1 million people returned to their areas or nations of origin; and68% of all refugees—including those from Venezuela—came from just five countries.

The countries from which the most people fled were Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar. Some of those nations also have large amounts of internal displacement.

More than a million people were newly displaced within both Congo and Ethiopia. 

Globally, the nations with the next highest new internal displacements were Afghanistan, Myanmar, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Mozambique, and Burkina Faso.

Africa witnessed the most new internal displacements as conflict and violence flared in several countries across the continent,” says the report, specifically noting the impact of Civil War on Ethiopia’s Tigray region, problems in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado, and “a crisis of governance and instability in rural areas of Burkina Faso linked to the presence of armed insurgents.”

According to the report:

“At the end of June 2021, the number of pending individual asylum applications of all types stood at 4.4 million, nearly 7% more than the 4.1 million ending at the end of 2020. This trend is concerning, as lengthy backlogs heighten the risk that individuals with international protection needs will not be able to access protection and solutions in a timely and effective manner. If backlogs become protracted and asylum-seekers wait multiple years for a final determination of their claims without meaningful access to rights or certainty about their future, there will be negative consequences for everyone, including erosion of public confidence in the system, increased costs, and difficulties in returning rejected applicants.”

Over 84 Million People Forcibly Displaced by Climate Emergency, Insecurity, and Violence (commondreams.org)

“Despite the ever-increasing numbers of vaccines produced, both states and pharmaceutical companies are continuing to fail to guarantee fair access to lifesaving medicines for all,” Amnesty’s briefing explains. “Pfizer, one the largest and most profitable vaccine developers… has delivered in excess of 1.8 billion doses to date,” the publication continues. “Despite its many pledges—some misleadingly phrased—Pfizer… continues to reserve the bulk of its vaccines for higher-income countries.”

96% of people in low-income countries remain unvaccinated.

Pfizer expects to earn 36 billion dollars in vaccine sales this year alone, has distorted reality to benefit its corporate image. Pfizer claimed it is “committed to sharing our scientific tools and insights, development expertise, and manufacturing capacity,” yet the company has opposed sharing of intellectual property through the WHO’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). The company is still refusing to participate in technology sharing initiatives, such as the South African-based [World Health Organization] mRNA technology hub, and has lobbied vigorously against efforts to lift intellectual property restrictions, proposals put forward by India and South Africa to the World Trade Organization Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to suspend critical intellectual property provisions of the TRIPS Agreement, 

“Pfizer is still putting profits before people,” Amnesty charges.

Pfizer vaccines language is misleading.” The briefing asserts “Pfizer has amalgamated low, lower-middle, and upper-middle countries—over 84% of the global population—into one group and referred to them as ‘low and middle-income.’ Within this very broad category, the bulk of Pfizer’s doses have in fact been going to ‘upper-middle’ income countries such as Malaysia, Mexico, and Thailand.”

Pfizer said it had shipped two billion vaccine doses by the end of September, but only 154 million doses, or less than 8% of its total—had been sent to 42 low and lower-middle-income countries, and that less than 10% of those shots had gone to low-income countries.

Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty’s head of business and human rights, said in a statement Thursday that “Pfizer says it is committed to supplying doses to low- and middle-income countries, but the numbers just don’t bear this out. The fact is that this company is still putting profits first. As much as these companies might want to massage the facts, the numbers are crystal clear..”

Shame on those countries hoarding vaccines, shame on Big Pharma prioritizing profits over people. Shame on both for blocking attempts to increase vaccine production.

Pfizer Misleading World With False Claims of Equitable Vaccine Distribution: Amnesty (commondreams.org)