We have a capitalist society where at its heart lies production for profit on which the whole system depends. This fact shapes everything about the world we live in, including the very ideologies and policies of the political parties, the world’s governments and global corporations. History has often revealed that those who rule have often been prepared to see the whole of society collapse into chaos rather than accept the change that challenged their power. Is there any reason to suppose anything different and they will behave any differently to their predecessors in these modern days?

Yes, we can imagine a section of the global ruling class, and some governments taking action and refusing to gamble on the future of civilisation. But we say that there exists a surer path than that hopeful reliance upon the good intentions of a few political leaders and some business executives.

We are required to mobilise the power of millions of ordinary people, and bring down the whole edifice of today’s capitalist society. Capitalism has simply proven incapable of stopping or limiting global warming. The cure for the climate crises involves wresting power out of the hands of those who have it now. Such a transformation is a revolution, with its aim as socialism. Not everyone who recognises the threat to the world’s climate understands the need to change society from top to bottom. The World Socialist Movement has to convey the inherent logic that we must go beyond mere reforms within the existing structures of economic and political power.

Capitalism is driven by its hunger for profits. Such a rapacious system cannot tackle the climate crisis or make rational planned decisions about what to produce that is separate from the bottom line of profits.

Engels was well aware of this when he wrote:

“…What cared the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertiliser for one generation of very highly profitable coffee trees – what cared they that the heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of the soil, leaving behind only bare rock..”

Capitalism is the cause of climate change and socialism ie social ownership and democratic planning of production is the solution.Yet many climate activists object and tell us “There is no time to wait for the Revolution.” Rather than seeking to overthrow capitalism, they wish an immediate campaign to force governments to act now.

Our answer is concise. “There is no time to wait for you to convince governments and corporations to change policies.”

It is clearly not working and there is no reason to believe it will. Politicians and CEOs run up against and get blocked by capitalist competition which is central to the system: hence the failure. Our solution to prevent runaway climate change is revolution.

Too many environmentalists still stand for the continuation of capitalism complete with commodity production and rival nation–states. By accepting that capitalist production should continue the ecology movement diminishes its credibility despite the best of aspirations. Their manifestos of a controlled reshaping of capitalism managed by governments is an old and failed idea. Nor is it practical to imagine that all sections of world capitalist producers, either as corporations or governments could agree to adopt production methods that were less polluting.

With the abolition of capitalism, in which goods take the form of commodities for sale on the market, and the abolition of the wage-labour/capital relationship, socialism will establish direct co-operation between producers and goods will be produced directly for need. This will eliminate the economic constraints which at present severely limit the use of production methods. Production for use will consciously regulate production and this will include a choice of methods limited only by available technique and practicality. Socialism will also eliminate a vast amount of waste and at least increase the number of people available for useful work many-fold.

Socialism would have no difficulty in applying a principle of sustainable production which would include working with the natural environment in non-destructive ways and within existing natural systems without altering them. It is inconceivable that the life of world society can achieve balance with nature unless it first achieves unity and common purpose within its own organisation.

The continuation of capitalism on its blind and uncontrolled course is a gamble on life itself. This is surely clear to anyone with a serious concern for ensuring stable natural ecosystems in which humanity can enjoy being part of nature.

Who are the ecologists? The World Socialist Movement.

Members of the environmentalist campaigns should join with us now.

 “HSBC’s public rhetoric on climate change can’t be trusted,” said Adam McGibbon, UK campaign lead at Market Forces. 

A new analysis of projected extraction in the Permian Basin in the U.S. Southwest exposes the extent to which oil and gas executives put humanity’s future in jeopardy. 

“If left unchecked,” the report notes, “the Permian could continue to produce huge amounts of oil, gas, and gas liquids for decades to come. With global markets flush with Permian oil and gas, it can only be harder to steer the world’s economy toward clean energy.”

 Oil Change International, Earthworks, and the Center for International Environmental Law warn that if the drilling and fracking boom that has turned the Permian Basin into “the world’s single most prolific oil and gas field” over the past decade is allowed to persist unabated for the next three decades, it will generate nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide by mid-century. nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide that would be emitted from burning the fossil fuels that corporate executives expect to extract from the Permian Basin by 2050 represent about 10% of the world’s remaining “carbon budget.” Moreover, “scientists studying methane emissions in the Permian Basin estimate that as much as 3.7% of gas production is being vented and leaked into the atmosphere,” the report notes.

Lorne Stockman, research co-director at Oil Change International, said in a statement. “Producers have free rein to pollute and methane is routinely released in vast quantities. Oil exports fuel Permian production growth and today they constitute around 30% of US oil production. While climate science tells us that we must consume 40% less oil in 2030, Permian producers plan to grow production more than 50%” from 2021 to 2030, said Stockman. “This must not happen.”

An effort by global financial giant HSBC to water down an industry climate pledge exemplifies the fact that banks and other profit-driven companies “cannot be trusted” to end their complicity in the human-caused climate emergency, critics charge. HSBC wrote to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA)—the initiative started by Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of England—on behalf of 12 large banks, calling on the alliance to loosen restrictions and delay deadlines in order to keep the banks from having to commit to far-reaching climate action. Writing on behalf of banks including JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America, HSBC asked that the alliance remove from its pledge the list of high-emissions sectors for which banks are required to set net-zero targets for within 18 months of joining the NZBA.

HSBC wanted to make the climate commitments from key sectors— including fossil fuels, agriculture, real estate, and steel—”less rigorous” by delaying new emissions reduction targets until 2025 or even 2030. HSBC also asked that members be required to set net-zero targets only for industries with so-called “credible transition pathways,” which “could be highly subjective.” 

Since “committing” to net-zero financed emissions by 2050 one year ago, HSBC has “helped Saudi Aramco, the world’s most polluting company, raise [$13.9 billion] and Qatar Petroleum raise [$12.4 billion] to fund the expansion of the world’s largest gas field.

“Time and time again we see banks launch voluntary climate initiatives which seem to be aimed purely at reaping PR benefits now, while postponing all concrete action as far into the future as possible,” said Maaike Beenes, climate coordinator at BankTrack.

It’s true that multiple global pledges have emerged from COP26. None are legally binding. Few stand up to scrutiny, and most offer sufficient vagueness to be meaningless, full of small-print and caveats. False solutions are being peddled at the COP such as carbon markets, “smoke and mirrors to avoid  keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

If we continue not acting against the real cause of the climate crisis—the capitalist mode of production and society will carry on towards collapse. The scenario is the most dire ever. There are 816 new oil & gas wells being planned and drilled until the end of the year and in 2022. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It is the way this system operates: just enough propaganda of “ambition” and technofixes to keep fossils flowing as ever, while the climate collapses. If the climate change debate is framed by companies and governments around the terms of net-zero, carbon credits, carbon taxes and offsettings, rather than stopping emissions, when will it ever come to the real problem of the climate crisis? Governments and companies are actively not cutting emissions, but also effectively increasing them. Each and every one of these wells is a crime against humanity.

 The reason why the climate crisis is not being solved is that it means the biggest change in power in the history of humanity

 40 Billion Tons of CO2 by 2050 (commondreams.org)

Critics Say Behind-the-Scene Efforts by HBSC Prove Big Bank Climate Pledges ‘Cannot Be Trusted’ (commondreams.org)

Opinion | Drill, Baby, Drill: Capitalism’s Only Plan for Climate Is Collapse | João Camargo (commondreams.org)

The richest 1% of the world’s people (those earning more than $172,000 a year) produce 15% of the world’s carbon emissions: twice the combined impact of the poorest 50%. On average, they emit over 70 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person every year, 30 times more than we can each afford to release if we’re not to exceed 1.5C of global heating. While the emissions of the world’s middle classes are expected to fall sharply over the next decade, thanks to the general decarbonisation of our economies, the amount produced by the richest will scarcely decline at all: in other words, they’ll be responsible for an even greater share of total CO2. Becoming good global citizens would mean cutting their carbon consumption by an average of 97%.

Even if 90% of the population produced no carbon at all, the anticipated emissions of the richest 10% (those earning over $55,000) across the next nine years would use almost the entire global budget. The disparity in environmental impact mirrors a nation’s inequality. No wonder the prosperous people of the wealthy nations are so keen to seek to shift the blame to China, or on to other people’s birthrates: sometimes it seems they will try anything before attending to their own impacts.

A recent analysis of the lifestyles of 20 billionaires found that each produced an average of over 8,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide: 3,500 times their fair share in a world committed to no more than 1.5C of heating. The major causes are their jets and yachts. A superyacht alone, kept on permanent standby, as some billionaires’ boats are, generates around 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. 

Flying accounts for most of the greenhouse gas emissions of the super-rich, which is why the wealthiest 1% generate roughly half the world’s aviation emissions. 

Bill Gates has an estimated footprint 3,000 times bigger than the good global citizen’s, largely as a result of his collection of jets and helicopters. He claims to “buy green aviation fuel”, but there is no such thing. Biofuels for jets, if widely deployed, would trigger an environmental catastrophe, as so much plant material is required to power a single flight. This means that crops or plantations must displace either food production or wild ecosystems. No other “green” aviation fuels are currently available.

Make extreme wealth extinct: it’s the only way to avoid climate breakdown | George Monbiot | The Guardian

A global water crisis is being ignored at Cop26 to the detriment of billions of people’s lives, according to the charity WaterAid.

A 2016 study found two-thirds of the global population, four billion people, faced water shortages, and many were at increased risk of floods and droughts brought on by the climate crisis.

“The climate crisis is a water crisis at its core,” he said. Rainfall patterns have changed in many parts of the world; “more intense and more frequent floods pollute water sources and destroy crops or homes, while longer and more frequent droughts dry up the springs many people need to survive.”

Water had not had “nearly enough” attention at the climate conference in Glasgow, with urgent action needed, said Tim Wainwright, chief executive of WaterAid.

“The way that climate change affects human beings is almost entirely through water, either too much or too little,” he said. “So why aren’t we talking about water all the time? We need the kind of action on water that we have already happening on the energy transition,” he said Wainwright said very little action was being taken to help affected communities. A WaterAid analysis in 2020 found that water received less than 3% of climate finance overall.

Rising sea levels were introducing salt into water sources in places, and drought was pushing water deep underground in others, he said, forcing people, mostly women, to spend longer and walk further in search of water.

“Water is fundamental to life,” said Wainwright. “It underlies your health, your ability to have an education…Unless action was taken, the future would not be “not worth thinking about”, Wainwright added. “It’s calamitous. A lack of access to water is already killing people … It’s unthinkable not to do something about this. The world has to rise to this challenge.”

“We need a revolution that takes us to zero carbon and we need a revolution that takes us to adapting the world to cope with the climate change that is irreversible,” he said.

There are two billion people, or 1 in 4, who lack access to safe drinking water.

Nearly half the world’s population (3.6 billion people) don’t have adequate sanitation.

6 billion cases of diarrhoea.

12 billion cases of parasitic worms. 

Despite pledges made at the climate summit COP26, the world is still nowhere near its goals on limiting global temperature rise, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT).

At the current level of greenhouse gas emissions, the Middle East and North Africa region will suffer scorching heatwaves and impossible living conditions. The Middle East and North Africa is already the hottest and driest region on the planet but climate change could make some areas uninhabitable in the coming decades with temperatures potentially reaching 60 degrees Celsius or higher.

The repercussions throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region would be devastating including chronic water shortages, the inability to grow food because of extreme weather and resulting drought, and a surge in heat-related deaths and health problems.

By 2100 about 600 million inhabitants, or 50 percent of the population of the region, may be exposed to “super-extreme” weather events if current greenhouse gas projections hold, one recent study in the journal Nature noted.

Lasting weeks or even months, the scorching heat would be “potentially life-threatening for humans”, it said. “We anticipate that the maximum temperature during … heatwaves in some urban centres and megacities in the MENA could reach or even exceed 60 °C, which would be tremendously disruptive for society,” the scientists wrote.

George Zittis, lead author of the study, explained, “Heat stress during summers will reach or exceed the thresholds of human survivability, at least in some parts of the region and for the warmest months.”

“Cities will feel an increasing heat island effect and most capital cities in the Middle East could face four months of exceedingly hot days every year,” according to the World Bank.

More than 12 million people in Syria and Iraq are losing access to water, food and electricity because of rising temperatures, record low levels of rainfall, and drought, which are depriving people across the region of drinking and agricultural water. Syria is currently facing its worst drought in 70 years. Aid groups described the situation as an “unprecedented catastrophe”.

Water scarcity will also be a financial burden with estimates suggesting MENA will suffer the most of any region around the world, costing governments 7-14 percent of their gross domestic product by 2050. The agricultural sector, which provides the most jobs in the Middle East and North Africa, could be devastated with water availability declining by as much as 45 percent. Food production is expected to suffer severely as a result with about one-third of the arable land scorched by extreme heat.

Cobalt is one of the world’s most sought-after minerals because it is a key ingredient in the batteries that power most electric vehicles (EVs).  Global sales of passenger EVs – excluding hybrids – are expected to soar from 3.3m in 2021 to 66m in 2040. The volume of sales of cobalt into the sector will rise four or fivefold over the coming decade. The World Bank estimates that demand for cobalt production will increase 585% by 2050.

“Pierre” works in Fungurume, in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s southern mining belt. His basic wage is the equivalent of £2.60 ($3.50) a day, but if he works through lunch and puts in hours of overtime, he can make up to about £3.70. Not that lunch is worth waiting for: he claims he is given just two small bread rolls and a carton of juice. If he takes a day off, money is deducted from his wages. If he is sick and misses more than two days in a month, more money is cut. “You can’t even argue. If you do, you’ll be fired,”

Pierre explains, “The mine makes so much and we make so little,” he says. “The relationship between us and the mine is like a slave and a master.”

The harsh and dangerous working conditions endured by miners in the DRC’s informal, or artisanal, cobalt mines – of child labour and miners being buried alive as tunnels cave in – have provoked an international outcry in recent years, forcing the western technology and automotive brands that rely on the mineral to look for ways to source “clean” cobalt, free from human rights abuses. Some companies in the cobalt supply chain have promised to stop sourcing from artisanal mines and instead get the mineral from large-scale industrial mines, which are seen as a safer option both for workers and corporate reputations. 

Pierre is not working at an artisanal mine, however. He is employed, via a subcontractor, at Tenke Fungurume mine (TFM), one of the country’s biggest industrial mines, which is 80% owned by the Chinese company China Molybdenum(CMOC).

Some workers are often employed through subcontractors, allege they are victims of severe exploitation, including wages as low as 30p an hour, precarious employment with no contracts, and paltry food rations. In a number of mines run by Chinese companies, workers made allegations of discrimination and racism reminiscent of the colonial era.

Kolwezi is the DRC’s cobalt capital, a city so defined by mining that some communities sit on the rim of the giant craters that have been excavated in search of copper and cobalt. It is mining on a massive scale, highly mechanised and dependent on cutting-edge technology but powered by thousands of workers – more than 10,000 at TFM – who, like Pierre, are employed as mineral processors, drivers, mechanics, welders, security guards and general workers.In the last 15 years, Chinese companies have begun to enter the mining business, buying out North American and European companies so that they now control the majority of the cobalt and copper mines in southern DRC. And with this change, Congolese workers say, has come abuse, discrimination and racism. They say they are insulted, in some cases beaten, and claim they are paid less than Chinese workers who do the same job. They allege that Chinese supervisors disregard their experience and put production before safety. One Congolese worker at TFM described sitting through a two-hour meeting in Chinese, only to be given a two-minute translation at the end. Almost 70% at TFM, for example – are hired through sub-contractors. The use of subcontractors can leave workers in an extremely precarious position: often hired on short-term contracts, or no contract at all, with limited benefits, low pay and the threat of termination always hanging over them.

Josué Kashal, a lawyer for Centre d’Aide Juridico-Judiciaire, a local organisation that represents miners, says the use of subcontractors can lead to the big mines being able to avoid accountability. Kashal claims are more than 50 subcontractors that have been used by the Kamoto Copper Company (KCC) mine, which is owned by the Swiss commodities and mining giant Glencore.

“Glencore is using many subcontracted workers, so employees depend on the subcontractor, not Glencore. This way they don’t have responsibility and can end a contract at any time,” says Kashal. While some workers said they hoped to get hired directly by KCC, saying it offered better wages than other mines, 44% of KCC’s workers are employed through sub-contractors. 

Congo Dongfang International Mining (CDM) mine and refinery workers say they are employed for as little as £88 a month. “Payslips” seen by the Guardian were written only in Chinese on a pencil-thin strip of paper. CDM is wholly owned by Huayou Cobalt, a Chinese conglomerate with interests in every step of the cobalt supply chain, from mining to cathode production. Renault and Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, name CDM among their suppliers.

A report launched today by UK-based corporate watchdog Raid and Congolese lawyers from the Centre d’Aide Juridico-Judiciaire, says many multinational mining companies – and the subcontractors they hire – create poorly paid jobs that keep workers in poverty. Workers said they deeply resented the way they were treated, but felt powerless to protest. “It’s a shocking situation, but I can’t leave the job because there is no other choice,” says one. “Where can I get another job?”

“Cobalt is an essential mineral for the green transition, but we must not turn away from the abusive labour conditions that taint the lithium-ion batteries needed for millions of electric vehicles,” said Raid director Anneke Van Woudenberg

‘Like slave and master’: DRC miners toil for 30p an hour to fuel electric cars | Africa | The Guardian

The World Socialist Party of the United States has issued an appeal of solidarity for one of its incarcerated members. 

Joe R. Hopkins, who is serving a life sentence in Florida, joined the World Socialist Party of the US in 2009 after seeing one of our ads in a magazine. Despite the difficulty of communication, he has always been keen to participate in party discussions and has written many articles for our website and publications (some are listed below). Also of interest: Joe’s poems and his account of two years spent in a mental hospital as a young child.

Joe is now 67 (almost 68) and gravely sick with cirrhosis of the liver. He is stuck in a prison where he is at risk of assault and not getting the care he needs – Calhoun Correctional Institution (Blountstown, FL). 

Let me explain how he has ended up in this prison. For many years he was at Union Correctional Institution (Raiford, FL). This January, following a hernia operation, he was not sent back to UCI but taken to Columbia Correctional Institution Annex (Lake City, FL). While there he applied for ‘elderly transfer’ to Zephyrhills Correctional Institution, a facility designed for elderly and sick men. The transfer was approved but has still not taken place. At the end of May he was moved instead to Calhoun. Even now no date has been set for his transfer to Zephyrhills.  

I have launched an online petition addressed to Mark S. Inch, director of the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC), asking him to transfer Joe to Zephyrhills without further delay. Please consider signing the petition. If you follow this link, you will be able to read and sign it and also publicize it on Facebook and Twitter. 

Joe was discovered to have hepatitis C in 1991, but for 27 years he received no treatment for the disease. He finally received a course of treatment in 2018 after District Judge Mark Walker ordered the Florida Department of Corrections to treat prisoners with hepatitis. The hepatitis was eliminated, but it had already caused serious damage to his liver. According reports of test results issued by BioReference Laboratories in 2018 and 2020, fibrosis of the liver had reached Stage F4, indicating the onset of cirrhosis.

Cirrhosis can cause many different physical and psychological symptoms. Let me reproduce Joe’s list of his symptoms. None of them started to occur earlier than a year ago. Joe has not been permitted to give a full description of his symptoms to prison medical staff. They refuse to accept written documents from him and tell him to shut up if he talks ‘too much.’  

I am in constant and severe pain from bursitis – inflammation of the fluid-filled sacs in my shoulder joints. I often feel weak, tired, drowsy, or lethargic.Often I cannot breathe smoothly and gasp for breath.I have a tremendously heightened sensitivity to high temperatures; in summer I feel as though I am experiencing transient and sequential fevers. My liver causes me constant discomfort. I have bouts of dizziness. I feel a constant and overwhelming urge to defecate, urinate, and pass intestinal gases while being unable to do so, leaving me feeling bloated. I lack appetite. My skin itches. Blood vessels make spiderlike patterns on the skin. I have redness on the palms of my hands. I suffer from a general loss of memory. Quite often I am unable to recognize well known faces until prompted. I cannot think clearly. Sequential operations confuse me.I am often overcome by depression, free-floating anxiety that sometimes escalates to panic, sorrow, and regret. I lack interest in my surroundings. My speech is slurred. I am almost completely unable to pay attention for even short periods of time, making it impossible for me to read and understand a book and difficult to watch a movie or even participate in a conversation.

Joe has asked to be admitted to the infirmary, but was told that he does not satisfy the requirements. 

Joe has asked for a special medical diet but the request has been ignored. Prisoners are usually granted only five or six minutes to eat their meals in the chow hall, which is hardly long enough to get half way through. In order to satisfy his hunger and maintain his weight Joe has to supplement those part-meals with snacks bought at the commissary, but the commissary charges high prices and visits there are allowed only at irregular and unpredictable intervals. ‘If I do not eat enough of the right kind of food,’ Joe reports, ‘I get sick and my whole digestive system goes out of wack. I fart and get cramps.’

Joe may have an urgent need to go to the toilet at any time of day or night. However, prisoners are not allowed to go to the toilet during count time, which on some days occupies a considerable period. Joe was once sent to disciplinary confinement for three days merely for getting off his bed during count time and asking for permission to go to the toilet.

Joe has now been at Calhoun for over five months. It is a violent place. There are knifings and gang members make threatening remarks. Very few if any of the other prisoners at Calhoun are as old or as sick as Joe. He is too weak to stand up for himself. He has no means of protection and would not survive an assault.  

To conclude, a man as old and sick as Joe should not remain any longer at a prison like Calhoun Correctional Institution. He should not have to wait an indefinitely long time for his already approved transfer to Zephyrhills Correctional Institution. I appeal to the Florida Department of Corrections to arrange the transfer without further delay.

Besides signing and publicizing the online petition, you may like to mail a polite letter to: 

Mark S. Inch, Secretary

Florida Department of Corrections

501 South Calhoun Street

Tallahassee

FL 32399-2500

Articles by Joe Hopkins

How I became a socialist — http://www.wspus.org/2020/03/how-i-became-a-socialist/



http://www.wspus.org/2020/01/enough-is-enough-joe-the-dolphin-speaks-out/



http://www.wspus.org/2019/11/the-black-death-stalks-the-usa/



http://www.wspus.org/2019/06/american-democracy-and-the-electoral-college/

http://stephenshenfield.net/archives/the-libertarian-communist (articles by Joe Hopkins in issues Nos. 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, and 28)

Personal reflections

There is a pervasive institutional culture within the prison system that stigmatizes prisoners as inferior beings. One practice that typifies this culture is that of addressing and referring to prisoners as ‘inmates’: Joe, for instance, is always called ‘Inmate Hopkins’ – never ‘Mr. Hopkins.’ I used to assume that – as in the outside world — special consideration would be given to the sick and the elderly, and it came as something of a shock to me to discover that they are treated with the same rigor and harshness as everyone else. 

The individuals who work in the system are not to be blamed overmuch. It is very difficult to defy an institutional culture. Moreover, doing so may well put a person’s job and livelihood in jeopardy. The pressure that comes from above is to prevent escapes, cut costs, and hush up any scandals. Pressure from outside the system is capable of improving the situation, but it is a very slow process. 

But don’t criminals deserve to be treated harshly? Does Joe not deserve harsh treatment?

Quite apart from the scientifically proven fact that quite a few prisoners are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted, there are often mitigating circumstances that should have been taken into account but were not. 

The abuse that fills some, even while still children, with bitter hatred and a thirst for revenge, like Joe after his release from the mental hospital. 

The craving that drives an addict like Joe to take part in robbing a house, just to get the money for his next fix.  

The ambivalence that led Joe first to tie up a victim of the robbery and then to protect him from injury at the hand of his confederate. 

And it was so long ago. Over thirty years have passed. Years in which Joe has changed so deeply that he can barely recognize himself in his former self.

This all demands consideration at much greater length. But two final questions.

‘Rehabilitation’ is coming back into fashion as a goal of the prison system. Does an institutional culture of harshness and contempt assist rehabilitation or hinder it?

And what harm does such an institutional culture do to the people who operate and administer the system?

Scientists have been warning about deadly levels of heat and humidity for some years.

A billion people will be affected by extreme heat stress if the climate crisis raises the global temperature by just 2C, according to the UK Met Office.

The Met Office assessed wet-bulb temperature, which combines both heat and humidity. Once this measure reaches 35C, the human body cannot cool itself by sweating and even healthy people sitting in the shade will die within six hours. The Met Office analysis used a wet-bulb temperature limit of 32C, at which workers must rest regularly to avoid heat exhaustion, for at least 10 days a year.

If efforts to end the climate emergency fail and temperatures rise by 4C, half of the world’s population will suffer from this extreme heat stress.

Heat is the most obvious impact of global heating and extreme heat in cities across the world has tripled in recent decades, according to a recent study. In the summer of 2020, more than a quarter of the US population suffered from the effects of extreme heat, with symptoms including nausea and cramps.

Andy Wiltshire, at the Met Office, said: “Any one of the climate impacts presents a scary vision of the future. But, of course, severe climate change will drive many impacts, and our maps show that some regions will be affected by multiple factors.”

Tropical countries including Brazil, Ethiopia and India are hardest hit by extreme heat stress, with some parts being pushed towards the limit of human livability. 

A 2015 study showing the Gulf in the Middle East, the heartland of the global oil industry, set to suffer heatwaves beyond the limit of human survival if climate change is unchecked.

The deadliest place on the planet for extreme future heatwaves will be the north China plain, one of the most densely populated regions in the world and the most important food-producing area in the huge nation, according to 2018 research.

But Prof Albert Klein Tank, director of the Met Office Hadley Centre, said: “These maps reveal areas of the world where the gravest impacts are projected to occur. However, all regions of the world – including the UK and Europe – are expected to suffer continued impacts from climate change.”

1bn people will suffer extreme heat at just 2C heating, say scientists | Climate crisis | The Guardian