A team of more than 60 scientists from 36 institutions used 14 different models to estimate the changes in the ice sheet under two different greenhouse gas emissions pathways: a pessimistic scenario, where there is no change in current trends, leading to a rapid increase in emissions; and an optimistic scenario, where comprehensive steps are taken to reduce emissions. They projected the changes of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets between 2015 and 2100 under global warming conditions predicted by the latest climate models. The goal of the research was to estimate how much the mass loss of the ice sheets would contribute to the rise in average sea levels beyond what has already been put in motion.

The study found that by 2100, the Greenland ice sheet would raise sea levels by 4 to 14cm under the pessimistic scenario, but only 1.5 to 5cm under the optimistic scenario.

For the Antarctic ice sheet, the results point to a greater range of possibilities, from ice sheet change that decreases sea level by 7.8cm, to increasing it by 30cm under the pessimistic scenario, with an increase of 0 to 3cm under the optimistic scenario.

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/antarctica-greenland-ice-sheet-melt-impact-climate-crisis-sea-level-b486394.html

 Recycling plastic is a scam. The companies making all that plastic have spent millions on advertising campaigns lecturing us about recycling while knowing full well that most plastic will never be recycled.

According to one analysis, only 9% of all plastic ever made has likely been recycled. 

A new investigation by National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reports that the large oil and gas companies that manufacture plastics have known for decades that recycling plastic was unlikely to ever happen on a broad scale because of the high costs involved.

“They were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling because they wanted to sell virgin material,” Larry Thomas, former president of one of the plastic industry’s most powerful trade groups, told NPR. 

There is a lot more money to be made in selling new plastic than reusing the old stuff. But, in order to keep selling new plastic, the industry had to clean up its wasteful image. “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Thomas noted. And so a huge amount of resources were diverted into intricate “sustainability theatre”. Multinationals misleading people for profit.

While the plastics industry’s greenwashing will come as no surprise to anyone, the extent of the deception alleged in NPR’s investigation is truly shocking.

The subterfuge around recycling plastic is also an important reminder of just how cynically and successfully big companies have shifted the burden of combating the climate crisis on to individuals. 

This might be best encapsulated in a famous ad campaign that aired in the US during the 1970s with the slogan “People Start Pollution. People can stop it.” The campaign was created by a non-profit group called Keep America Beautiful, which happened to be heavily funded by beverage and packaging companies with a vested interest in convincing people that they were the ones to blame for a polluted planet, not capitalism.

Perhaps one of the most effective bits of propaganda that big business has come up with to shift the burden of combating the climate crisis on to individuals is the idea of the “carbon footprint”. BP popularised the term in the early noughties, in what has been called one of the most “successful, deceptive PR campaigns maybe ever”. 

While oil companies were telling us to fret about our carbon usage they were doing whatever the hell they liked: 20 fossil fuel companies can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, an analysis by leading climate researchers found last year. Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell are behind more than 10% of the world’s climate emissions since 1965.

 We have been successfully convinced that people start pollution and people can stop it. That if we just fly less and recycle more the planet will be OK. To some degree that is right: there must be a level of personal responsibility when it comes to the climate emergency. 

But individual action is a tiny drop in a heavily polluted ocean; we need systemic change to make a real difference. And, more than anything, we need to change what we value.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/15/most-plastic-will-never-be-recycled-and-the-manufacturers-couldnt-care-less

 Evo Morales was the first indigenous president of Bolivia, which has the largest percentage of indigenous population of any country in the Americas. His government was able to reduce poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60%, which disproportionately benefited indigenous Bolivians. The November coup was led by a white and mestizo elite with a history of racism, seeking to revert state power to the people who had monopolised it before Morales’ election in 2005.

The racist nature of the state violence is emphasised in  a study by Harvard Law School’s (HLS) International Human Rights Clinic and the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) released a month ago, including eyewitness accounts of security forces using “racist and anti-indigenous language” as they attacked protesters; it is also clear from the fact that all of the victims of the two biggest massacres committed by state forces after the coup were indigenous.

 The New York Times reported on 7 June,  the Organization of American States “flawed” analysis immediately following the 20 October election fuelled “a chain of events that changed the South American nation’s history”. The opposition claimed that there was fraud and took to the streets. The OAS Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) issued a press statement the day after the election expressing “deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results after the closing of the polls”. But it provided no evidence to support these fraud allegations – because there wasn’t any. This has since been established repeatedly by expert statistical studies. But the truth was quite plain and easy to see from data available immediately following the election. And indeed the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where I am co-director, used that data to disprove the OAS’s initial allegations the next day; and followed up with a number of statistical analyses and papers in the ensuing months, including a refutation of its final Audit report.

But after its initial press release, the OAS produced three more reports, including its preliminary audit of the election results, without ever considering the obvious possibility that the later-reporting areas were politically different from those whose votes came in earlier. This is overwhelming evidence that OAS officials did not simply make a mistake in their repeated allegations of fraud, but it appears to have known that their allegations were false. With the original, and politically decisive, allegations of fraud increasingly discredited, the OAS turned to “irregularities” in the election to maintain the assault on its legitimacy. But it turned out that these allegations, like the ones based on statistical claims, could not withstand scrutiny.  According to the Los Angeles Times, “Carlos Trujillo, the US ambassador to the OAS, had steered the group’s election-monitoring team to report widespread fraud and pushed the Trump administration to support the ouster of Morales”.  The White House promoted the “fraud” narrative, and its Orwellian statement following the coup praised it: “Morales’s departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard.”

Bolivia’s  de facto president, Jeanine Áñez, has called indigenous religious practices “satanic”.  In January she warned voters against “allowing the return of ‘savages’ to power, an apparent reference to the indigenous heritage of Morales and many of his supporters”, according to the Washington Post. Hers was supposed to be a “caretaker” government, but new elections – now scheduled for 18 October – have already been postponed three times because of the pandemic. Trump administration’s support has been over.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/18/silence-us-backed-coup-evo-morales-bolivia-american-states

The “global war on terror” following al-Qaida’s September 11 attacks have displaced an estimated 37 million people, according to a new report by teams from American University and Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

The 37 million people displaced include 8 million refugees and asylum seekers and 29 million displaced within Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Displacing 37 million people is equivalent to removing all the residents of Texas and Virginia combined or almost all of Canada. The estimate of 37 million displaced is a conservative one. The true total displaced by the US post-9/11 wars could be closer to 48–59 million – more people than in all of England.

The US government is not solely responsible for displacing 37 million people. The UK government and other US allies share responsibility, as do the Taliban, Iraqi Sunni and Shia militias, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic State, al-Qaida, and other combatants, governments, and actors.

The eight wars in our study are ones the US government bears significant responsibility for initiating (Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq), for escalating as a major combatant (Libya and Syria), or for fueling through drone strikes, battlefield advising, logistical support, and other military aid (Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines). Displacement across these wars has totaled:

5.3 million Afghans;

9.2 million Iraqis;

3.7 million Pakistanis;

1.7 million Filipinos;

4.2 million Somalis;

4.4 million Yemenis;

1.2 million Libyans;

7.1 million Syrians.

The  US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Georgia is reportedly the site of a involuntary sterilization project. 

A whistleblower report published by the non-profit Project South alleges that large numbers of migrant women held at the Irwin county detention center, a privately run facility that imprisons undocumented immigrants, received hysterectomies that they did not want and which were not medically necessary.

A nurse working at the detention center, Dawn Wooten, describes the conditions there and conversations she had with imprisoned women in detail. 

The women say they were not told why they were having hysterectomies, with some saying that they were given conflicting reasons for the procedures or reprimanded when asked about them. Wooten’s account in the Project South report was corroborated by two lawyers, who told NBC News that four women in the facility whom they represent, had been sterilized without medical cause and without their consent. 

Doctors on behalf of the attorneys are examining new records and more women are coming forward to report their treatment.

Dr Julie Graves, a family medicine and public health physician in Florida, called the process “absolutely abhorrent”. 

“It’s established US law that you don’t operate on everything that you find,” she said. “If you’re in a teaching hospital and an attending physician does something like that, it’s a scandal and they are fired.”

 It evokes comparisons to previous government-sanctioned efforts in the US to sterilize people to supposedly improve society – victims who were disproportionately poor, mentally disabled, American Indian, Black or other people of color. Thirty-three states had forced sterilization programs in the 20th century.

Forced sterilizations like the ones that happened to women at the Irwin county center and to women throughout the nation during the 20th century are first and foremost human rights violations, cruel abridgements of those women’s dignity, autonomy and rights to self determination. But they are also statements of white supremacist hostility, an assertion by white racists of the thing they most hate and fear: new Americans of color.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/17/ice-hysterectomy-allegations-us-eugenics-history

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/18/migrant-women-us-detention-center-georgia

 The Home Office has drawn up immigration policies on “anecdote, assumption and prejudice” instead of relying on evidence, the public accounts committee said.

 The influential parliamentary committee has concluded  Priti Patel’s department was unaware of the damage caused by policy failures on “both the illegal and legitimate migrant populations”.

It said in summary that Home Office’s officials had “no idea” what its £400m annual spending on immigration enforcement achieves.

Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, said: “The Home Office has frighteningly little grasp of the impact of its activities in managing immigration. It shows no inclination to learn from its numerous mistakes across a swathe of immigration activities – even when it fully accepts that it has made serious errors. It accepts the wreckage that its ignorance and the culture it has fostered caused in the Windrush scandal – but the evidence we saw shows too little intent to change, and inspires no confidence that the next such scandal isn’t right around the corner.”

The Home Office does not know whether hostile environment policies deterred illegal migration, while a lack of evidence and significant lack of diversity at senior levels has created blind spots in the organisation, the report said.

Minnie Rahman, campaigns and public affairs manager for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said the report painted a “very accurate picture of a clueless, careless and cold-hearted Home Office. It is but the latest in a slew of reports to slam the Home Office’s working culture and practices.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/18/home-office-policies-based-anecdotes-prejudice-damning-report

 Unaffordable water bills and the threat of disconnection causes significant psychological distress for Americans, according to a new study published in the Journal of Public Health.

A Guardian investigation into 12 American cities found the price of water and sewage increased by an average of 80% between 2010 and 2018, with more than two-fifths of residents in some cities living in neighborhoods with unaffordable bills.

 In Detroit, at least 141,000 have been disconnected since the city filed for bankruptcy in 2014 as part of a widely condemned debt-collection policy targeting mostly poor black residents. Nowhere has the unfolding affordability crisis hit harder than Detroit, where water rates have increased by up to 400% in the last 20 years. Almost four in 10 Detroit residents live in poverty, the highest rate among the 20 largest US cities. The UN described the mass shutoffs as “contrary to human rights” and condemned the disproportionate impact on African Americans, who account for 80% of the city.

“Water is vital to health, of course, but also to human dignity. For the world’s wealthiest country to be segregating access, it takes a toll. We’re only beginning to appreciate the level of water worry that poor people in this country carry,” said Nadia Gaber, lead research from the department of anthropology, history and social medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/us-water-bills-psychological-distress-study

 The value of the Queen’s land and property has been written down by more than half a billion.

The Crown Estate encompasses London’s Regent Street and St James’s as well as malls and retail parks around the country, alongside the rights to seabeds around the British Isles. However, the coronavirus pandemic has forced it to consider the value of its holdings as retailers and office tenants struggle to make rental payments. The group wrote down the value of its portfolio by £552.5m to £13.4bn in annual results.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/18/queens-property-holdings-crown-estate-500m-writedown-fall-rental-receipts

 More than 197,000 Americans have died from coronavirus and more than 50m Americans have lost their jobs, 23 million have no health insurance, and 13 million are hungry

Over the same period, the already vast fortunes of America’s 643 billionaires have soared by an average of 29% since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has at the same time laid waste to tens of millions of jobs around the world.

The richest of the superrich have benefited by $845bn , according to a report by a US progressive thinktank, the Institute for Policy Studies.

The report calculated that 643 billionaires in the US had racked up $845bn (£642bn) in collective wealth gains since 18 March, when lockdowns began across the US and much of the rest of the world. The collective wealth of the billionaire class increased from $2.95tn to $3.8tn. That works out to gains of $141bn a month, or $4.7bn a day.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, who was already the world’s richest person, has benefited most from the pandemic and subsequent global lockdowns. His personal fortune, as estimated by Forbes magazine, has risen by $73.2bn since the start of the crisis to a record $186.2bn. That 65% increase results mostly from the soaring value of Amazon shares as more people turn to the delivery service. In just one day in July, Bezos saw his fortune increase by more than £10bn. Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic

Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of electric car company Tesla, has also benefited from the pandemic. His estimated fortune has risen by 274%, to $92bn.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has seen his wealth increase by 84% or $45.9bn to $100.6bn.

Bill Gates has seen his estimated fortune grow by 19% to $116bn.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/17/wealth-of-us-billionaires-rises-by-nearly-a-third-during-pandemic

 Spain has the highest number of cases in Western Europe, with more than 610,000, while more than 30,000 have died.

Less well-off communities like El Raval are being hit harder, with the gap between poorer and richer areas at the heart of a tense debate in Spain over how to curb the increase in cases, as some cities envisage targeted lockdowns that would focus on the more affected – and therefore often poorer – areas.

At the peak of the pandemic, Barcelona’s district with the lowest income had 2.5 times more cases than the richest while across the Catalonia region the mortality rate was five times higher among the poorest, two studies showed.

In Madrid, the infection rate in a northern district is almost six times lower than in a southern district with a lower average income and a higher migrant population.

Pedro Gullon, a Spanish Epidemiology Society board member, said the inequality gap, fuelled by housing and labour factors, was not the only reason behind Spain’s high infection rate, but the increase in cases had made those disparities more visible.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-spain-poverty/in-hard-hit-spain-the-poor-suffer-even-more-from-the-pandemic-idUKKBN2682VQ