The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing a report but most of the report will not be published in time for consideration by policymakers at Cop26.

 However, a draft of the report apparently from early this year has been leaked.

Previous work by the IPCC has been criticised for failing to take account of tipping points. The new report is set to contain the body’s strongest warnings yet on the subject. The IPCC draft details at least 12 potential tipping points:

 “The worst is yet to come, affecting our children’s and grandchildren’s lives much more than our own,” the report says.

It warns of a series of thresholds beyond which recovery from climate breakdown may become impossible. 

It warns: “Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot.”

A decade ago, scientists believed that limiting global warming to 2C above mid-19th-century levels would be enough to safeguard the future. It says that with 1.1C of warming clocked so far, the climate is already changing. Earlier models predicted that Earth-altering climate change was not likely before 2100. But the UN draft report says prolonged warming even beyond 1.5C could produce “progressively serious, centuries-long and, in some cases, irreversible consequences.”

Tipping points are triggered when temperatures reach a certain level, whereby one impact rapidly leads to a series of cascading events with vast repercussions. For instance, as rising temperatures lead to the melting of Arctic permafrost, the unfreezing soil releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that in turn causes more heating. Other tipping points include the melting of polar ice sheets, which once under way may be almost impossible to reverse even if carbon emissions are rapidly reduced, and which would raise sea levels catastrophically over many decades, and the possibility of the Amazon rainforest switching suddenly to savannah, which scientists have said could come quickly and with relatively small temperature rises.

Bob Ward, the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said:

 “Scientists have identified several potential regional and global thresholds or tipping points in the climate beyond which impacts become unstoppable or irreversible, or accelerate. They could create huge social and economic responses, such as population displacements and conflict, and so represent the largest potential risks of climate change. Tipping points should be the climate change impacts about which policymakers worry the most, but they are often left out of assessments by scientists and economists because they are difficult to quantify.”

Simon Lewis, a professor of global change science at University College London, said: 

 “…But put together, the stark message from the IPCC is that increasingly severe heatwaves, fires, floods and droughts are coming our way with dire impacts for many countries. On top of this are some irreversible changes, often called tipping points, such as where high temperatures and droughts mean parts of the Amazon rainforest can’t persist. These tipping points may then link, like toppling dominoes.”

Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford, commented on that avoiding dire impacts was still possible. 

“It’s important people don’t get the message ‘we’re doomed anyway so why bother?’. This is a fixable problem. We could stop global warming in a generation if we wanted to, which would mean limiting future warming to not much more than has happened already this century. We also know how. It’s just a matter of getting on with it.”

IPCC steps up warning on climate tipping points in leaked draft report | Climate change | The Guardian

Billionaires have armies of lawyers and accountants to devise tax circumvention schemes that adhere to the letter (though not the spirit) of the law, allowing them to pay a pittance in taxes compared to the riches they’re reaping.

George W Bush  declared that “most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes” 

He cut the IRS units that audit the wealthy expecting everyone not to realize the connection between the IRS departmental cuts and the tax evasion.

Analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, showed that roughly $380bn of owed taxes goes unpaid every year.

A report from Harvard University researchers showing that about three-quarters of that tax gap is from underpayment by the wealthiest 1%.

The Center for Equitable Growth finding that more than one-fifth of the top 1%’s income is going unreported to tax authorities.

The takeaway: the richest 1.6 million households are pilfering somewhere between $175bn and a quarter-trillion dollars of owed-but-unpaid taxes every single year – and they are apparently getting away with it.

We are told that while their tax avoidance schemes to reduce tax liability may be immoral, the tactics are all perfectly legal. Billionaires may occasionally be depicted as greedy fat cats– but no longer portryed as robber barons.

Why does anyone make such a generous and charitable assumption? The legal presumption of innocence is questionable. The answer is class bias from both government and the media.  White-collar crime is almost never prosecuted, crime is seen by the government as something that only poor people do. Through this lens, grand larceny is presumed to be just shrewd accounting rather than lawbreaking. News outlets quick to convict the poor via sensational headlines are hesitant to do the same to billionaires who can weaponize media law.

 They bankroll the political and media system itself.  They are the owners of television stations and newspapers. They are the benefactors of thinktanks and universities who employ the pundit class. They pay intellectuals for defense speeches. They take cases to court with unlimited resources, bankrupting news outlets that cross them. They are the donors who finance the politicians to get themselves legislative favors .

After using a one-time gift of free tuition to generate positive headlines for himself, the Vista Equity Partners billionaire Robert Smith last year settled a massive criminal case over tax evasion.  Robert Smith was granted a non-prosecution agreement, giving his firm necessary cover to continue managing workers’ pension money. 

 UBS, Credit Suisse, HSBC and KPMG have paid fines to settle justice department cases uncovering their roles in rampant tax evasion – and in the process, some of them have confessed to criminal wrongdoing. Bank executives money-laundering for drug cartels, facilitating dictators looting their state treasuries never entails jail-time.

These schemes were not isolated incidents: as prosecutors noted in the emblematic Credit Suisse case, the bank “knowingly and willfully aided and assisted thousands of US clients in opening and maintaining undeclared accounts and concealing their offshore assets and income from the IRS”.

The banks and accounting firms in the aforementioned tax evasion cases were given deferred prosecution agreements. Both Credit Suisse and UBS were granted government waivers from laws that could have barred them from managing retirees’ money.

For decades,  officialdom has been tough on crime drum for the working class, while actively helping the wealthy cheat the system. Trump preached about “law and order” while gutting the IRS enforcement budget and trying to shield corporations from consequences when they violate foreign laws. 

The IRS now audits low-income beneficiaries of the earned income tax credit at twice the rate as it audits corporations, the IRS audit rate for those making more than $1m has plummeted, and the agency has been referring a record low number of cases for criminal prosecution.

Adapted from here

We’re told billionaire tax avoidance is ‘perfectly legal’. But is it? | David Sirota | The Guardian

 There were not enough skilled workers in the Czech Republic.

 Many businesses report that the labor shortages that blighted the Czech economy before the pandemic are already an issue again. Joblessness at the end of the first quarter stood at just 3.2%, the second-lowest in the EU after neighbouring Poland.

Despite the import of hundreds of thousands of workers from Ukraine and other selected source markets, the lack of factory hands, builders and drivers — as well as more skilled workers — had become a major brake on economic growth.

A dearth of foreign workers is an issue for other sectors. The supply of Ukrainians and other nationalities invited to Czechia under government visa schemes dried up during the pandemic as embassies and borders closed and those already in the country began to wend their way home. Construction has been particularly hard-hit. Further up the skills ladder, the IT sector’s heavy reliance on foreign workers meant that before the pandemic it could take up to two years to fill vacancies. Whether those foreign workers will soon start making their way back to Czechia is not yet clear. Border restrictions and limited transport links persist, while the government is only now discussing restarting its visa easing schemes.

One study by the Mendel University in Brno released in May called for politicians to stop offering the view that immigration is a security threat and instead explain that the country needs a long-term strategy to attract foreign workers. The rhetoric since the migrant crisis of 2015 “actually went hand in hand with the admission of a large number of migrants in the industries that required it,” the researchers noted with irony. However, the likelihood that the long-term needs of the economy can push ahead of politics just four months ahead of national elections in October is slim.

Although not Czech-born, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was not shy of using anti-migrant rhetoric to help win the last election in 2017. Now, with his ANO party trailing in polls, the populist billionaire is already beating a similar drum, warning voters that his opponents want to force them to share their houses with migrants.

Labor shortages are back to haunt Czech economy | Business| Economy and finance news from a German perspective | DW | 23.06.2021

 For the 29th year, the members of the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution demanding an end to the 60-year U.S. economic blockade on Cuba.

184 nations voted for the resolution, while the U.S. and Israel voted against it. (Three nations — Brazil, Colombia, and Ukraine abstained.)

Biden newly declared foreign policy called “rules-based order” actually means the United States-based order.

 The story of Canada’s stolen children continues.  

Remains of 215 children were found at a residential school run by the Catholic Church in British Columbia.

Now more unmarked graves of indigenous children at the site of a similar former residential school in Saskatchewan province.  The Marieval residential school operated from 1899 to 1997 in the Qu’Appelle Valley. Marieval was run by the Roman Catholic Church until Cowessess First Nation took over its operations in 1981.

The Cowessess First Nation began to use ground-penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves at the cemetery of the Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan. The Cowessess called the discovery “horrific and shocking”.

With 146 residential schools across Canada, there are likely more undiscovered burial sites. With records being either destroyed or withheld, many children who went to — and died — at Canada’s residential schools are undocumented.

Niigaan James Sinclair, an Anishinaabe writer and associate professor at the University of Manitoba, says the new discovery of unmarked graves in Saskatchewan confirm stories told in the community for decades. 

“Every Indigenous community in this country has a story of lost children, has a story of children who went to the schools and never came home,” he said.

Survivor Elizabeth Sackanay related the abuse she endured at St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont. still haunts her to this day.

“What I went through in residential school, I wouldn’t want anyone to go through,” Sackanay said . When she was at the school, Sackanay said kids used to disappear, sometimes overnight, and the priests would tell the other children that they had simply gone home. “How can they go home in the middle of the night?” she said. “When they are going to bed when you go to bed, and they’re gone in the morning?”

It’s estimated that more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend these state-funded schools where they were often subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Under the Indian Act, Indigenous people were forced by the Canadian government to attend residential schools, and the RCMP played a major role in what survivors call kidnappings

Sask. First Nation finds hundreds of burial sites near former residential school | CTV News

The government has set “historic” targets on the climate crisis but has failed so far to come up with the policies needed to reach them, the government’s independent advisers on the climate have warned.

The Climate Change Committee published two progress reports showing the UK lagging behind on its key goal of 78% cuts to greenhouse gases by 2035 and making recommendations on how to get back on track.

Lord Deben, the committee chairman, said: “The targets are remarkable and have set a major example to the world. But the policy is just not there. It’s very clear we need to step up very rapidly.” Deben warned that if the UK did not have its own clear roadmap and policies, other countries would not come forward with credible plans. “People are going to judge us by whether we link promises with policy and a programme to deliver. If all we do is promise, other people will not take us seriously … it puts the whole process of Cop26 into jeopardy,” he said.

Greenhouse gas emissions fell last year, but because of the impacts of the pandemic rather than policy. 

Chris Stark, the chief executive of the CCC, said: “The fall in emissions is a real whopper. But progress is illusory. Government strategy on cutting emissions has been late and what has come has almost all been too little.”

The committee found that while emissions from energy generation had fallen sharply in recent years, those from other key sectors – transport, buildings, industry and agriculture – were not coming down in line with the targets. 

The government has been criticised for a series of actions and proposals that campaigners have said run contrary to ministers’ green claims and damage the UK’s reputation ahead of Cop26. These include: the initial go-ahead for a mooted new coalmine in Cumbria, now subject to a public inquiry; new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea; a £27bn road-building plan; slashing incentives for electric cars; airport expansion; cutting air passenger duty on domestic flights; scrapping the green homes grant insulation programme; and cutting overseas aid.

Climate campaigners also said the government’s actions were at odds with its words.

 Mike Childs, the head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said: “With no climate action plan and his government’s support for more roads, runways, and an overseas gas mega-project, Boris Johnson risks being a laughing stock at the UN climate summit he is hosting in Glasgow later this year. The chancellor’s role in delivering net zero is crucial – unfortunately, this year’s budget did little to demonstrate the Treasury’s enthusiasm for building back greener.”

Chris Venables, the head of politics at Green Alliance, a thinktank, said: “It’s becoming clearer than ever that there’s an embarrassing lack of progress at home from the UK government in this crucial year for tackling climate change…”

UK policies will not deliver emission cuts pledge, says climate adviser | Climate Change Committee | The Guardian

 Robert Black, the most senior executive at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation (TMO), told the public inquiry into the disaster that the obsolete plan showing no more than 12 vulnerable or disabled people was caused by staff not carrying out managers’ instructions allowing the block’s fire safety plan to become 15 years out of date so it failed to account for more than two dozen of the disabled people in the block.

Grenfell flats was in fact home to 37 disabled people and 15 of them died. 

Counsel to the inquiry Richard Millett QC put it to Black: “In reality, as the chief executive you were ultimately responsible for a failure to keep these documents up to date lower down in your organisation”.

“Pass,” he replied. “It should have been updated. I’m not shying away from that, so that’s my situation.”

 “Information should have been updated by staff,” Black told the inquiry. “The whole thing that I suffered throughout my career working with people is the ability to forget to fill in the paperwork.”

Black also said he had made a decision not to act on warnings that the landlord should draw up specific emergency evacuation plans for vulnerable and disabled people, claiming it was impractical and that the key policy was to tell residents to stay put in the event of a fire.

The inquiry heard how, in the preceding years, the TMO let the idea of producing personal emergency evacuation plans for vulnerable people “drop” despite warnings from safety consultants and the London fire brigade that its fire risk management was falling short. Seven years before the fire a consultancy hired by the TMO said it should develop “formal procedures to deal effectively with fire safety issues associated with disabled or vulnerable tenants and leaseholders … this should include a range of options from relocation in severe cases … and the provision of personal emergency evacuation plans in those less serious cases.”

It indicated this was a “high risk” issue, but asked whether this was done, Black said: “No, we didn’t have individual emergency plans per block.” He didn’t accept that specific fire evacuation plans needed to be made for disabled people, despite being warned that failing to do so would breach fire safety regulations. 

Black also described how he gave the TMO’s director in charge of financial services and IT, Barbara Matthews, responsibility for fire safety, even though he did not check if she had any experience in fire safety.

“Can you account for having a head of health and safety who had no health and safety background?” asked Millett.

“I wouldn’t have had the income to have someone sitting on the executive specifically doing health and safety,” said Black. “Local authority funding across the country had been cut.”

CEO of Grenfell Tower landlord blames staff for outdated fire safety plan | Grenfell Tower inquiry | The Guardian

Americans pay around two and a half times as much for prescription drugs as people in other developed countries.

 Prescriptions cost so much because the pharmaceutical industry wields monopoly control to set and keep drug prices high. 

So while the U.S. makes up only 15 percent of the global insulin market, it accounts for nearly half of the revenue that these corporations bring in every year. 

Insulin prices are on average eight times higher in the United States than in 32 other countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Turkey.

 In one study, one in three Americans has skipped refilling a prescription.  In another study, one in four Americans who rely on insulin also admitted to rationing it

Opinion | Big Pharma Companies Have All the Power With Families Like Mine at Their Mercy | Annemarie Gibson (commondreams.org)