Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab. He is the author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution

“We have zero years before climate and ecological breakdown, because it’s already here. We have zero years left to procrastinate. The longer we wait to act, the worse the floods, fires, droughts, famines and heatwaves will get… If we fail, the planet will continue to heat up, creeping past 1.5C, then 2C, then 3C of global heating as we keep squandering precious time. With every fraction of a degree, the floods and fires and heat will get worse. Coastal cities will be abandoned. Ocean currents will shift. Crops will fail. Ecosystems will collapse. Hundreds of millions will flee regions with humid heat too high for the human body. Geopolitics will break down. No place will be safe…”

Jennifer Francis is senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center

“If we do not succeed in changing our destructive behavior, the increasing trends in extreme weather, sea levels, government destabilization and human misery will continue and worsen. Extreme heatwaves, drought, wildfires and flooding events like those we’ve seen in recent summers will become commonplace. Many coastal cities and communities around the globe will be increasingly inundated by high tides and storm surges. Longer, more intense droughts will destroy cropland and force agricultural communities to uproot their families in search of a better life. The devastation of coral reefs around the world will worsen, wiping out fisheries that provide staple protein for millions of people. All of these impacts are happening now.”

Michael E Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. He is author of the recent book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back our Planet

“How many years do we have to act? Strictly speaking, zero – which is to say, that we must act, in earnest, now. We have a decade within which we must halve global carbon emissions…We must now choose between two paths as we face our future. One leads to massive suffering and collapse of our civilizational infrastructure. The other leads to a prosperous future for us, our children and grandchildren. But it requires that we leave fossil fuels behind. The choice is ours.”

Holly Jean Buck is a postdoctoral research fellow at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. She is the author of After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration

 “…If we don’t succeed in transitioning away from fossil fuels globally, we could face an uneven world where a few rich countries congratulate themselves for going green, and a few oil producer nations are supplying the rest of the world with dirty fuel, which they use because they don’t have alternatives…”

All these experts overlook one important point. Our economic system must be changed to sustainable socialism. What do we do when the scientific community cannot see the solution?

How many years until we must act on climate? Zero, say these climate thinkers | Jennifer Francis , Michael Mann , Holly Jean Buck and Peter Kalmus | The Guardian

 Chevron’s has conducted an unprecedented legal campaign against environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger over his role in 2013 by securing a $9.5 billion judgment in the case held in Ecuador—the largest human rights and environmental court judgment in history. In 2014, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan refused to enforce the judgment, saying it had been secured through bribery, fraud and extortion.

 A federal judge has found him guilty of six counts of criminal contempt of court after he refused to turn over his computer and cellphone. 

“It’s time to pay the piper,”  U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska wrote in a 241-page decision, following a five-day trial with no jury in May.

 The charges against him were brought not by the public court system, but by private prosecutors—a first for the American judiciary – led by Rita Glavin, who at the time of her appointment was a partner at the law firm Seward & Kissel. In April 2020, Seward & Kissel admitted that it had represented Chevron as a client as recently as 2018—a major conflict of interest.

Judge Preska, who convicted Donziger and also placed him on house arrest back in 2019, wasn’t randomly assigned to oversee the case as is typical. Instead, she was handpicked for the role by Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over a 2012 RICO case against Donziger in an unprecedented and highly suspect process. Preska serves as an advisor to the pro-business Federalist Society, to which Chevron has donated massive sums.

Donziger led a case against the energy giant Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous residents and peasant farmers in the Amazon. The firm’s pollution, which leached into local soil and drinking water and has been linked to increased rates of cancer and birth defects, left a legacy so toxic that it’s been compared with Chernobyl. 

Steven Donziger, Lawyer Who Beat Chevron, Found Guilty of Contempt (gizmodo.com)

 A new study has found that many of the key indicators of the global climate crisis are getting worse and either approaching or exceeding, key tipping points as the earth heats up. Overall, the study found some 16 out of 31 tracked planetary vital signs, including greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat content and ice mass, set worrying new records.

“There is growing evidence we are getting close to or have already gone beyond tipping points associated with important parts of the Earth system,” said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who co-authored the new research. “The updated planetary vital signs we present largely reflect the consequences of unrelenting business as usual,” adding that “a major lesson from Covid-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and consumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required.”

While the pandemic shut down economies and shifted the way people think about work, school and travel, it did little to reduce the overall global carbon emissions. Fossil fuel use dipped slightly in 2020, but the authors of a report published in the journal BioScience say that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide “have all set new year-to-date records for atmospheric concentrations in both 2020 and 2021”.

In April 2021, carbon dioxide concentration reached 416 parts per million, the highest monthly global average concentration ever recorded. The five hottest years on record have all occurred since 2015, and 2020 was the second hottest year in history.

The study also found that ruminant livestock, a significant source of planet-warming gases, now number more than 4 billion, and their total mass is more than that of all humans and wild animals combined. 

The rate of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon increased in both 2019 and 2020, reaching a 12-year high of 1.11 million hectares deforested in 2020.

Ocean acidification is near an all-time record, and when combined with warmer ocean temperatures, it threatens the coral reefs that more than half a billion people depend on for food, tourism and storm surge protection.

In order to change the course of the climate emergency, the authors write that profound alterations need to happen.

The authors also highlight the need for a phase-out and eventual ban of fossil fuels, and the development of global strategic climate reserves to protect and restore natural carbon sinks and biodiversity. 

Disappointingly, they suggest green capitalism has a role to play. They say the world needs to develop a global price for carbon that is linked to a socially just fund to finance climate mitigation and adaptation policies in the developing world.

But more importantly, the report concludes with this message:

“Policies to alleviate the climate crisis or any of the other threatened planetary boundary transgressions should not be focused on symptom relief but on addressing their root cause: the overexploitation of the Earth”.

Only by taking on this core issue, the authors write, will people be able to “ensure the long-term sustainability of human civilization and give future generations the opportunity to thrive”.

The SOYMB blog is optimistic that eventually and hopefully in time people will learn that the only way to a sustainable steady-state society is with socialism.

Critical measures of global heating reaching tipping point, study finds | Climate change | The Guardian

 The results of a Swedish study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology found that men’s spending habits cause 16% more climate-heating emissions than women’s has gone viral on the internet. Climate change exacerbates increasing inequality and hits women harder than men. UN data suggests that 80% of people displaced by climate change are women. 

The biggest difference seems to be that men spend more money on petrol. Another big difference: the men surveyed bought more meat than women. Placing the burden of mitigating climate change on individuals, no matter their gender, feels futile as we watch corporations and the 1%, who are the main drivers of climate change, do whatever the hell they like. The problem isn’t that certain men are spending more on motoring and meat than their female counterparts – it’s the obsession with economic growth at any cost for capital accumulation and the profit motive.

The focus on the gender-based spending habits of ordinary consumers is futile. The fact is that women in rich countries are responsible for far more emissions than men in poor countries. In Madagascar, more than a million people are facing desperate food shortages due to what has been called the first famine in modern history caused by global heating alone. “This is an area of the world that has contributed nothing to climate change, but now they’re the ones paying the highest price,” said the UN World Food Programme.

The climate crisis is not going to get fixed by shaming powerless individuals or getting men in the west to eat more veggie burgers; it can be fixed only through system change.

The adage “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” feels truer each new day. 

We plebs keep getting told we have to change our lifestyle habits while our masters have made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of changing theirs.  It is galling to be lectured on the evils of flying in planes while billionaires are shooting themselves into space. Billionaires and corporations seem intent on having us believe not only that their greed isn’t ruining the world, but that it will in fact be its salvation. “We have to go to space to save Earth,” Jeff Bezos has declared.

Don’t blame men for the climate crisis – we should point the finger at corporations | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian

Twelve directors of children’s services in the north-east of England have warned that “shameful” levels of poverty in the region are driving dramatic rises in child protection intervention and the number of children in care.  They argue the “dysfunctional market” for children’s residential care must be dismantled or radically overhauled and profit-making eliminated or capped.

The north-east has the highest rate of referrals to children’s social care in the UK, significantly higher than the national average. Since 2009, the region has seen a 77% increase in its care population. Inner London has seen a 25% reduction over the same period. The region saw the steepest increase in relative child poverty (after housing costs) between 2014-15 and 2019-20 – rising from 26% to 37%. This is compared with a UK-wide increase from 29% to 31% and means that the north-east has gone from having a child poverty rate just below the UK average to the second highest of any region or nation in just five years.

The high level of deprivation in the north-east is a significant driver of demand for children’s social care services. “National measures to reduce poverty, focused on raising family incomes, are needed to break the cycle of deprivation which is driving concerns about child welfare,” they argue. 

One of the directors said in the report: “Poverty is stark, shameful and obvious. Life chances are blighted. I’ve worked in a number of local authorities all over the country, but I’ve never worked anywhere where poverty is as bad and life chances so poor.”

Levels of domestic abuse are also high, with one director of children’s services saying: “I worry that levels of violence and abuse are so endemic in some of our communities that it is not even recognised as a problem. We are dealing with a lot of violence in families – children-to-adult violence as well. This is learned acceptable behaviour.”

Demand for child mental health intervention outstrips supply.

The directors say: “The north-east is in a vicious cycle with levels of demand causing pressure across the system and spiralling costs. With a larger proportion of the budget being spent on statutory services, there is a squeeze on spending compromising the ability to provide the prevention and early help needed to manage risk outside the statutory system and reduce children coming into care.”

 In the three years to 2019-20 north-east councils saw an increase in net expenditure in children’s social care services of more than £77m (18.2%). Net expenditure on children looked after and safeguarding services increased by almost £83m (27%).

Dire poverty in north-east England ‘driving many more children into care’ | Child protection | The Guardian

 More than one in three middle-aged British adults are suffering from at least two chronic health conditions, including recurrent back problems, poor mental health, high blood pressure, diabetes and high-risk drinking.

The study of “generation X” adults born in 1970 found that those who grew up in poorer families were 43% more likely to have multiple long-term health conditions than their peers from wealthier households. Adults from poorer backgrounds had almost three and half times higher risk of suffering from mental ill-health and arthritis, and about three times the risk of having poor mental health and high blood pressure in their late 40s.

Those who had experienced physical and mental health problems as children, including lower birth weight, higher body mass index, lower cognitive ability at age 10 and worse emotional and behavioural issues at age 16 were also more likely to suffer from multiple chronic health problems.

Dawid Gondek, the UCL researcher who authored the paper, said: “This study … shows that a substantial proportion of the population are already suffering from multiple long-term physical and mental health problems in their late 40s, and also points to stark health inequalities, which appear to begin early in childhood.” He added, “Compared to previous generations, it appears that the health of British adults in midlife is on the decline.”

A third of middle-aged UK adults have at least two chronic health issues – study | Health | The Guardian

 More than three million people across the globe have died of Covid-19 in the roughly nine months since India and South Africa first proposed a temporary patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, a popular measure that Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other rich countries have blocked.

More than 100 WTO member countries—including the United States—have backed the patent waiver. But because the WTO operates by consensus, several powerful rich countries have been able to thwart the patent waiver push.

It has left pharmaceutical companies in control of vaccine manufacturing even as it has become abundantly clear that current production levels are not sufficient to meet global needs.

Nick Dearden, the director of Global Justice Now explained that “Every one of those deaths is a mark of shame for the governments of countries like the U.K. and Germany who have protected patents over human lives…The virus is ravaging the world’s poorest while rich governments buy booster shots and vaccinate low-risk groups. Extreme vaccine inequality will be never-ending unless we remove the corporate monopolies which are preventing the world from ramping up production…Many of the deaths we mourn today could have been prevented if not for the shameful intransigence of governments like our own.”

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division, said,  “The Delta variant is burning a murderous path through a world where most people are literally dying for a vaccine but there simply is no supply. Until the WTO intellectual property barriers are waived, and governments force technology transfer and fund major new manufacturing capacity so the needed vaccines are made to inoculate the world, it will be one variant after another getting hatched.”

Mozambique, Kenya, Indonesia, Namibia, and other nations struggling to gain access to vaccine doses as the highly transmissible Delta strain tears through their populations. Namibia, which has one of the highest Covid-19 death rates in the world, has thus far been able to provide a single vaccine dose to just 1% of its population.

3 Million People Have Died of Covid Since Rich Nations Began Obstructing Vaccine Patent Waiver | Common Dreams News

 Jeff Bezos has offered to cover $2bn (£1.4bn) of Nasa costs in order to be reconsidered for a key contract to build a Moon landing vehicle.

 The International Monetary Fund has warned the world economy risks losing $4.5tn (£3.3tn) from highly infectious variants of Covid-19 spreading through poor countries where vaccination rates are lower. It is calling on rich countries to take urgent action to share at least 1bn doses with developing nations, or risk severe economic consequences. The IMF has joined the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization in urging the wider deployment of vaccines across the developing world.

The IMF has come up with two downside scenarios: one in which emerging countries are hit by a new wave of the virus this year and advanced countries rapidly reverse stimulus policies in the face of rising inflation; and a second in which rising infections affect rich countries as well as poor. In the first scenario, global growth would be 0.75% lower this year and 1.5% lower next than the IMF is currently forecasting. In the second, 0.8 percentage points are shaved off growth in both years. In both cases, the global economy ends up $4.5tn (£3.3tn) smaller than expected by 2025.

 The IMF said the gap between rich and poor economies had widened during the pandemic and risked worsening further next year.  Rich countries have the financial power to support their economies through the crisis while poor countries do not. A new north-south divide is opening up. Better-off countries can look forward to life returning to something like normal by the end of the year, but the less fortunate nations still face rising infection rates and death tolls.

Vaccines have improved the economic outlook in wealthier countries, including the UK, while a lack of resources to improve vaccination rates and support the reopening of their economies has depressed growth rates across low-income countries. The IMF said financial markets could be thrown into panic if the virus was believed to be spreading out of control, restricting lending and investment, and lowering the potential for growth over many years.

The report said that close to 40% of the population in advanced economies had been fully vaccinated, compared with 11% in emerging market economies and an even lower small fraction in low-income developing countries. High-income countries account for 7m doses a day. By contrast, fewer than 100,000 doses a day are being administered in low-income countries.

IMF’s chief economist, Gita Gopinath, said: “A worsening pandemic and tightening financial conditions would inflict a double hit on emerging market and developing economies and severely set back their recoveries.” Gopinath said: “Multilateral action is needed to ensure rapid, worldwide access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. This would save countless lives, prevent new variants from emerging, and add trillions of dollars to global economic growth.”

Global GDP fell from a peak of $87.6tn in 2019 to $84.7tn last year, meaning that a $4.5tn loss over four years would knock 1.3 percentage points off the world’s annual GDP growth. The IMF’s most recent proposal to end the pandemic sets a goal of vaccinating at least 40% of the population in every country by the end of 2021 and at least 60% by mid-2022 at a cost of $50bn. Vaccine supplies and deliveries to low- and lower-middle-income countries must increase sharply to meet the proposal’s targets. Close to half of countries recent daily vaccination rates fell below the rate needed to meet the 40% target by the end of 2021.

Failure to help poor countries fight Covid ‘could cost global economy $4.5tn’, says IMF | International Monetary Fund (IMF) | The Guardian

The IMF is right: global economic recovery from Covid could go wrong | Larry Elliott | The Guardian

 Tobacco giant Philip Morris, makers of Marlboro,  has said it could stop selling cigarettes in the UK in 10 years’ time as it focuses on alternatives, such as heated tobacco. The firm also indicated it would welcome a government ban on cigarettes.