Fault Lines

The real fault is not subterranean.

Speculators and their compliant state

Caring more for profit than people’s fate,

Or inconvenient regulation

Simply circumscribed by backhanded gifts.

Body after body after body,

Battered, broken, lifted from the shoddy

Where apartments dropped like free falling lifts.

Charity appeals are quickly begun.

Survivors become miracles when dragged

From rubble, as the rest are body bagged

While the media poses, “What can be done?”

Through all societies fault lines are found,

With capital standing on shaky ground.

D. A.   

 Class – Paul Bennett, 9th December 2022

Spycatcher – Howard Moss, 16th December 2022

Has the Crypto bubble finally burst? – Paddy Shannon, 13th January 2023

Extinction Rebellion’s plan to overthrow the government – Adam Buick, 20th January 2023

 Millions of parents use formula milk in what has become a multibillion-dollar global industry. But a study published in the BMJ has found most health and nutritional claims about the products appear to be backed by little or no high-quality scientific evidence, prompting calls for stricter marketing rules to be introduced worldwide. The study found that existing marketing curbs on formula milk are failing to stop companies from using controversial claims to promote their products.

“The wide range of health and nutrition claims made by infant formula products are often not backed by scientific references,” said Dr Ka Yan Cheung and Loukia Petrou, the joint first co-authors of the study. “When they are, the evidence is often weak and biased.”

Cheung and Petrou, from Imperial College London, added: “It’s essential that the industry provides accurate and reliable information to consumers, rather than using vague or unsupported claims as marketing tools.”

They concluded: “Despite previous attempts to change the landscape of infant formula marketing … progress in regulating infant formula claims is slow. Transparency is still lacking about health and nutrition claims linked to infant formula. We have identified a high prevalence of claims on infant formula products in multiple countries that seem to have little or no scientific substantiation.”

Most health claims on formula milk ‘not backed by evidence’ | Nutrition | The Guardian

 British Gas owner Centrica’s full-year profits hit £3.3bn for 2022, more than triple the £948m it made the year before.

Centrica said it would extend its share buyback scheme, the money it returns to its shareholders, to £300m and also pay out a full-year dividend of 3p a share.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said Centrica had been “coining it in from our massive energy bills while sending bailiffs to prey on vulnerable consumers the length and breadth of the country”.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said that the British energy market was “broken” and called for energy retail companies to be brought into public ownership.

Simon Francis, coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, added the energy market was “failing consumers and is in desperate need of reform”.

 While energy companies have reaped record profits from rising prices, up to 141 million more people around the world have fallen into extreme poverty because of it, a study has found.

The cost of energy for households globally could have increased by between 62.6% and 112.9% since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a modelling study by an international group of scientists published in Nature Energy.  

Researchers estimated that overall household expenditure rose by between 2.7% and 4.8%.  As a result, they estimate that an additional 78–141 million people worldwide could be pushed into extreme poverty.

Yuli Shan, a professor at the University of Birmingham, said: “High energy prices hit household finances in two ways: fuel price rises directly increase household energy bills, while energy inputs needed to produce goods and services push prices up for those products as well, and especially for food, which affects households indirectly. Unaffordable costs of energy and other necessities will push vulnerable populations into energy poverty and even extreme poverty.”

Klaus Hubacek of the University of Groningen, said: “This crisis is worsening energy poverty and extreme poverty worldwide. For poor countries, living costs undermine their hard-won gains in energy access and poverty alleviation. “

Soaring fuel bills may push 141m more into extreme poverty globally – study | Energy | The Guardian

  Britain should pay full and unconditional reparations to generations affected by its forcible displacement of Chagos Islands inhabitants in the 1960s and 70s, an action that constituted a crime against humanity, Human Rights Watch has said in a 106-page report.

Forced deportations were carried out so that the largest island, Diego Garcia, could be leased to the US to use as an airbase. Human Rights Watch (HRW) says this was a crime against humanity by both the UK and its transatlantic ally.

Additionally, it says the UK committed two more crimes against humanity by blocking the return of the Chagossians – despite UN’s highest court ruling that the continuing British occupation was illegal – and through racial persecution of the people.

The NGO also said that individuals should be put on trial for the expulsion of Chagossians when the UK retained possession of what it refers to as British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), after Mauritius gained independence in 1968.

Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at HRW and lead author of the report said: “The UK is today committing an appalling colonial crime, treating all Chagossians as a people without rights.”

 HRW said the UK had neither committed to meaningful consultations with the Chagossian people nor, in the final settlement, committed to full and effective reparations, including the right of return.

Chagossians interviewed said that some people, including children, died from the economic hardship and, they believed, from the emotional devastation, which they called chagrin, of being torn from their homeland. When many Chagossians moved to the UK, after the government granted them the right to apply for citizenship from 2002, they faced discrimination, including in housing and work, the report says.

The report calls for the UK to immediately lift the ban on Chagossians permanently returning to their homeland and, along with the US, ensure financial and other support to restore the islands and enable the people to return and live and work in dignity. It says reparations should be made to “every generation” and that King Charles should issue a “full and unreserved apology”.

Bernadette Dugasse, of Chagossian Voices, who was born on Diego Garcia, explained, “UK ministers are still not considering us as human beings, as people with rights.” She said, “I was dumped in the Seychelles, and the Mauritian government never recognised us and we never got any compensation. I agree there should be reparations, they should agree to let us return to our islands.”

Chagos islanders must get full reparations for forced exile, says NGO | Chagos Islands | The Guardian

The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor, released by the NewClimate Institute for Climate Policy and Global Sustainability and Carbon Market Watch, examines the climate commitments of two dozen large global companies, from Apple to Walmart to Mercedes-Benz to Samsung. The detailed study finds that the climate pledges of some of the world’s largest companies are often highly misleading, lack transparency, and fall well short of what’s necessary to avert catastrophic warming, casting further doubt on the viability of global emission-reduction plans.

The report, which offers an in-depth examination of the 24 companies’ climate pledges, points specifically to “offsetting” as a tactic companies use to overstate the scope of their climate action. Offsetting involves making up for carbon emissions by funding carbon pollution cuts elsewhere. According to the new study, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and other prominent corporations are guilty of using offsetting to make it appear as though they’re on track to meet their 2030 emission-reduction commitments.

Sabine Frank, the executive director of Carbon Market Watch, told the Wall Street Journal that “at a time when corporations need to come clean about their climate impact and shrink their carbon footprint, many are exploiting vague and misleading ‘net zero’ pledges to greenwash their brand while continuing with business as usual.”

Companies often tout their net-zero-emissions commitments and support for the Paris climate accord as proof that they’re helping lead the way to a more sustainable future, a closer look shows that their plans are “wholly insufficient and mired by ambiguity,” the new study argues, spotlighting the misleading tactics that businesses deploy to make their pledges appear more ambitious than they are.

The analysis explains, “Overall, we find the climate strategies of 15 of the 24 companies to be of low or very low integrity. We found that most of the companies’ strategies do not represent examples of good practice climate leadership. Companies’ climate change commitments do not add up to what their pledges might suggest.”

It states, “Their combined emission-reduction commitments are wholly insufficient to align with 1.5°C-compatible decarbonization trajectories; targets and potential offsetting plans remain ambiguous; and the exclusion of emission scopes severely undermines the targets of several companies.”

 The new research concludes that companies’ stated emission-reduction targets for 2030 can’t be trusted because they “address only a limited scope of emission sources, such as only direct emissions (scope 1) or emissions from procured energy (scope 2), and only selected other indirect emission categories (scope 3),” even though the last category accounts for more than 90% of the greenhouse gas pollution for most of the examined corporations. For the 22 companies with targets for 2030, we find that these targets translate to a median absolute emission-reduction commitment of just 15% of the full value chain emissions between 2019 and 2030.” 

One of the report’s authors, Thomas Day of the NewClimate Institute, said that “in this critical decade for climate action, companies’ current plans do not reflect the necessary urgency for emission reductions.”

NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch points out:

“Half of the companies we assessed—including Apple, Deutsche Post DHL, Google, and Microsoft—make carbon neutrality claims today, but these claims only cover 3% of those companies’ emissions on average. The vast majority of emission sources are excluded from these claims, but this critical information is not clear in the marketing materials displayed to consumers. At least three-quarters of the companies we assessed plan to heavily rely on offsetting through forestry and land-use-related projects in the future. This is problematic for two key reasons: the non-permanence of biogenic carbon storage makes such projects fundamentally unsuitable for offsetting emissions; and the scale of carbon credit demand implied by these companies’ plans would require the resources of 2-4 planet Earths, if followed by others.”

Lindsay Otis, a policy expert at Carbon Market Watch, said that “by making such outlandish carbon neutrality claims, these corporations are not only misleading consumers and investors, but they are also exposing themselves to increasing legal and reputational liability.”

The report’s conclusion is that, based on the growing evidence of deceptive corporate practices, regulators can’t “rely on existing voluntary initiatives to ensure compliance with the necessary standards for credible and transparent corporate climate action.”

“Companies’ plans for the period up to 2030 fall far short of the efforts needed in this crucial decade for climate action to stand a reasonable chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.” 

Study Shows How Corporations Are Deceiving the Public to ‘Greenwash Their Brand’ (commondreams.org)

Reuters reported that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) made $802 million in net profit in 2022, up 33% from $604 million in 2021. The drilling giant is anticipating another record-breaking year—with a projection of $850 million to $1 billion in net profit in 2023—largely because it intends to ramp up extraction, including from so-called “unconventional” wells, despite evidence that doing so will contribute to locking in the worst consequences of the climate crisis.  Despite scientists’ repeated warnings that expanding fossil fuel production will worsen the deadly impacts of the climate emergency, ADNOC and hundreds of other corporations are planning to ramp up planet-heating pollution in the years ahead.

Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber is the chief executive of ADNOC, one of the world’s largest oil and gas producers He also happens to be president-designate of the forthcoming United Nations climate summit, COP28. 

 “…entirely incompatible with his role as president-designate of COP28,” Marta Schaaf of Amnesty International said in a statement. “Sultan al-Jaber cannot be an honest broker for climate talks when the company he leads is planning to cause more climate damage.”

Schaaf, Amnesty’s program director for Corporate Accountability and Climate, Economic, and Social Justice, continued, “It is obvious, despite Sultan al-Jaber’s denials, that his dual role is a glaring conflict of interest which will contribute to further climate disaster and unfolding human rights violations,” said Schaaf.

“Since he was announced as COP28 president-designate last month, Sultan al-Jaber has said that climate concerns should never compromise economic growth. He has described natural gas—a core part of ADNOC’s expansion plans whose main ingredient is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide—as a critical component in the transition to sustainable energy.”

Genevieve Guenther, founding director of End Climate Silence, accused al-Jaber of attempts to minimize Big Oil’s role in causing the climate crisis and willingness to intensify it. As Guenther points out, al-Jaber has portrayed a benign-sounding “energy industry”—bereft of references to oil, gas, and coal companies—as a needed partner in decarbonization even though it is precisely the nature of “the energy industry” that environmental justice groups are trying to transform.

“Following reports that some ADNOC staff have been seconded to the COP28 organizing team,” Schaaf said, “the expansion plans will heighten concerns that this crucial climate conference is being hijacked by the state oil company and will serve wider fossil fuel interests.”

Profits, Drilling Plans Prove UAE Oil Exec ‘Unfit’ to Chair UN Climate Summit: Amnesty (commondreams.org)

 The climate crisis is causing sea levels to rise faster than for 3,000 years, bringing a “torrent of trouble” to almost a billion people, from London to Los Angeles and Bangkok to Buenos Aires, António Guterres,  the UN secretary general, said. An increase in the pace at which sea levels are rising threatens “a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale”.

 Guterres said slashing carbon emissions, addressing problems such as poverty that worsen the impact of the rising seas on communities and developing new international laws to protect those made homeless – and even stateless – were all needed. He said sea level rise was a threat-multiplier which, by damaging lives, economies and infrastructure, had “dramatic implications” for global peace and security.

Significant sea level rise is already inevitable with current levels of global heating, but the consequences of failing to tackle the problem are “unthinkable”. Guterres said: “Low-lying communities and entire countries could disappear for ever. We would witness a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale. And we would see ever fiercer competition for fresh water, land and other resources.

“People’s human rights do not disappear because their homes do,” he said. “Yes, this means international refugee law.”

Guterres said: “Even if global heating is miraculously limited to 1.5C, there will still be a sizeable sea level rise.” A sea level rise of about 50cm by 2100 is likely, but the WMO said there would be a 2-3 metre rise over the next 2,000 years if heating were limited to 1.5C, and 2-6m if it were limited to 2C. A UN report in October said there was “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place”. Current national targets, if met, would mean a 2.4C rise in temperature.

New data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that sea levels are rising fast and the global ocean has warmed faster over the past century than at any time in the past 11,000 years. Sea levels rise as warmer water expands and ice caps and glaciers melt.

Rising seas threaten ‘mass exodus on a biblical scale’, UN chief warns | Sea level | The Guardian

 In front of our TVs and laptops in the relative safety of our living rooms, most of us watched with empathy the plight of the tens of thousands clawing away at the rubble in frantic and selfless efforts to rescue those who may still be trapped and alive under the ruins of buildings collapsed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. The internet and social media allows us to witness, almost live and first hand, the disaster and  tragedies suffered by our fellow humans around the world, evoking within us all manner of emotions, from the urge to donate to some charity but also the feeling of despair at not being able to help out even more. Many observers have criticised the ineffectiveness of the relief operation, particularly in regard to Syria because of the political relations that exist.

After every natural catastrophe, the rescue missions slowly swing into action and the ‘experts’ tell us we can learn lessons from it. It is the same message repeated over and over again with each new disaster. Each time there are calls for an International rapid deployment force of rescue and first aid teams. Questions are asked as to how such devastation could not have been foreseen and demands for more cooperation and coordination. Few point to the mountain of red tape that has to be cut through before rescue teams can be fully mobilised – (ie. the observance of national sovereignty,  getting permission from this or that government, working out who will pay the bill before operations are underway etc.

There is inadequate planning for future disasters –guaranteed to come.  Foresight as ever proves an expensive luxury to those who currently have the greatest say in our lives.

As we await further natural disasters we can only guess at how long it will take the ‘experts’ to contemplate a system of society in which the earth’s scientific and technological resources are the common property of all and in which the death tolls from such disasters are greatly reduced.