Greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas facilities around the world are about three times higher than their producers claimed.  Under the UN system, countries are responsible for reporting their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate Trace, a project to measure at source the true levels of carbon dioxide and other global heating gases, published a new report on Wednesday showing that half of the 50 largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world were oil and gas fields and production facilities.

Many are underreporting their emissions, and there are few means of calling them to account. Atmospheric levels of methane, a greenhouse gas about 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, have been rising strongly in recent years, but countries’ reported emissions of the gas have been found to be much lower than the reality.

 Under-reporting emissions, Al Gore, explained,  “For the oil and gas sector it is consistent with their public relations strategy and their lobbying strategy. All of their efforts are designed to buy themselves more time before they stop destroying the future of humanity.”

Saudi Arabia has reported its oil and gas production emissions. We have measured them empirically and we find a huge gap, that the emissions are larger than those that have been reported. When we look more carefully at the emissions we find from their refining centre, it turns out that the volume of emissions from their refining centre, that have not been reported, exactly match the amount by which their reported admissions are undercounted.

Oil and gas greenhouse emissions ‘three times higher’ than producers claim | Climate crisis | The Guardian

The Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) launched by more than two dozen nations at the COP27 was denounced by Greenpeace as unlikely to stop deforestation. 

“…this partnership is nothing but a green light for eight more years of forest destruction, with little respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities,” Victorine Che Thōner of Greenpeace International said. According to Thōner, the alliance “gives polluters a license to do more business as usual through carbon trickery instead of advancing true climate action.”

Notably, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo are not part of the FCLP.

At last year’s COP26 meeting in Scotland, 145 governments signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration “to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation” by the end of the decade. However, as the annual Forest Declaration Assessment showed two weeks ago, “not a single global indicator is on track to meet these 2030 goals of stopping forest loss and degradation and restoring 350 million hectares of forest landscape.” Only 22% of the $12 billion in public money pledged for forests by 2025, funds committed in Glasgow, had so far been disbursed. This sum pales in comparison to the $460 billion per year that is needed to protect, restore, and improve forests on a global scale.

26,000 square miles of forest—an area roughly equivalent to Ireland—were destroyed around the world in 2021, harming biodiverse ecosystems and releasing into the atmosphere 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution, or about as much as the European Union generates each year.

Scientists warned that averting the worst consequences of the climate and biodiversity crises hinges in part on putting an end to clear-cutting, which is being driven by corporations looking to make space for cattle ranching, monocropping, and other harmful practices.

Greenpeace said the new pact “was mainly a progress review from 2021 in support of carbon markets as a mechanism for funding investment in protecting existing carbon sinks.”

Thōner explained that “…we must look beyond the needs of greedy businesses to effectively deliver on non-market approaches for nature protection…Real commitments are needed now to protect and restore nature along with the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.”

Greenpeace Dismisses COP27 Deforestation Pact as ‘Carbon Trickery’ (commondreams.org)

 The chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA),  Andy Haldane,  has warned more than a century of progress on health and wellbeing was going into reverse, with a direct impact on the economy and the cost of living emergency. “We’re in a situation for the first time, probably since the Industrial Revolution, where health and wellbeing are in retreat,” he said. “Having been an accelerator of wellbeing for the last 200 years, health is now serving as a brake in the rise of growth and wellbeing of our citizens.”

Haldane said the economy was being held back after a sharp fall in the number of people in the British workforce since the onset of the Covid pandemic. However, the former chief economist at the Bank of England said the global health emergency had only served as a “tipping point”. “Spending on healthcare systems, at least by G7 comparisons, the UK sits towards the bottom of the pack,” he said. “It should come as no surprise that we therefore see macroeconomic headwinds such as a record number of unfilled vacancies. We haven’t got enough people.”

About 600,000 workers have dropped out of the workforce, including 200,000 out of work for five years or more due to ill health.  30,000 more people with long Covid and are unable to work. About 50,000 more people have retired early in the last two years, while the number of people who have never worked swelled by 250,000 with two-thirds of this group accounted for by students and a third by people with ill health or disabilities not being able to get into work rather than leaving it.

The situation is made worse by the baby boomer generation taking retirement and lower migration – “with half a million fewer non-UK born workers than there would have been on the pre-2016 trend”.

UK economy being held back by worsening health of British public, Andy Haldane warns | Economic growth (GDP) | The Guardian

Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, said the prosperity of the rich world had been achieved at the expense of the poor in times past, and now the poor were being forced to pay again, as victims of climate breakdown that they did not cause.

“We were the ones whose blood, sweat and tears financed the industrial revolution,” she said. “Are we now to face double jeopardy by having to pay the cost as a result of those greenhouse gases from the industrial revolution? That is fundamentally unfair.”

She warned of a billion climate refugees around the world by the middle of the century.

“We need to have a different approach, to allow grant-funded reconstruction grants going forward, in those countries that suffer from disaster. Unless that happens, we are going to see an increase in climate refugees. We know that by 2050, the world’s 21 million climate refugees today will become 1 billion.”

About $2tn will be needed each year by 2030 to help developing countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the effects of climate breakdown. The cash will be needed so that poor countries can switch away from fossil fuels, invest in renewable energy and other low-carbon technology, and cope with the impacts of extreme weather.

Poor countries have been promised since 2009 that by 2020 they would receive at least $100bn a year to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather. But that target has repeatedly been missed.

 The number of people in Sri Lanka needing urgent humanitarian help has doubled to 3.4 million. 

The United Nations warned of a worsening food crisis amid an unprecedented economic crisis.

UN agencies in Sri Lanka in a joint statement said that they had raised $79m to feed those in need, but the increasing number of poor people meant an additional $70m was needed.

“Food insecurity in Sri Lanka has increased dramatically due to two consecutive seasons of poor harvests, foreign exchange shortages, and reduced household purchasing power,” the statement said.

With food inflation of 85.6 per cent in October 2022, many Sri Lankans are struggling. Twenty-eight per cent of the population—or 6.3 million people—face moderate-to-severe acute food insecurity.

 Among its targets are immediate food assistance for 2.4 million vulnerable and food-insecure people; provision of support and fertilizers for 1.5 million farmers and fishers to revive food systems that have been severely disrupted.

The appeal also seeks to provide nutrition support for 2.1 million people, including pregnant women and schoolchildren; safe drinking water for over 900,000 people; and essential medicines and healthcare, including sexual and reproductive healthcare, for 867,000 people. It will enable protection services to continue for vulnerable women and children at risk of violence.

The UN has said that the poverty rate in the South Asian nation has doubled to 25.6 percent this year, up from 13.1 percent last year.

UN ramps up its urgent humanitarian appeal to bring life-saving assistance to 3.4 million Sri Lankans [EN/SI/TA] – Sri Lanka | ReliefWeb

 The climate crisis has pushed the planet’s stores of ice to a widespread collapse that was “unthinkable just a decade ago”, with Arctic sea ice certain to vanish in summers and ruinous sea level rise from melting glaciers now already in motion, according to the State of the Cryosphere report, a major new report, has warned.

Even if planet-heating emissions are radically cut, the world’s vast ice sheets at the poles will continue to melt away for hundreds of years, causing up to three metres of sea level rise that will imperil coastal cities, the report states. The “terminal” loss of sea ice from the Arctic during summers could arrive within a decade and now cannot be avoided, it adds. Disappearance of sea ice will open up the dark Arctic ocean, which will absorb – rather than reflect – heat, causing global heating to escalate further. It will also upend the region’s ecosystem, harming everything from algae to large animals such as seals and polar bears that need the sea ice for hunting.

“There’s nothing we can do about that now, we’ve just screwed up and let the system warm too much already,” said Julie Brigham-Grette, a scientist at University of Massachusetts Amherst and report co-author, about the sea ice. “That milestone has now past so the next thing we need to avoid is ice shelf collapses in Antarctica and the further breakdown of the ice systems in Greenland. We can’t stuff the genie back into the bottle once they are gone.” 

She continued,  “The costs to places like Florida and Bangladesh and the Nile delta are just enormous, it’s going to be a huge strain,” adding that the Arctic is now shifting towards a state not seen in 3 million years. “We can’t allow ourselves to get to such a place but what worries me is we won’t respond to this emergency until it is front of us.”

“It’s a terminal diagnosis and now we have to live with consequences,” said Robbie Mallett, a sea ice expert at University College London Earth Sciences. “It’s been quite emotional to think of a time by the end of my career when I will see an Arctic free of sea ice. It’s been a shocking few years in Greenland with ice disappearing before our eyes. We are driving a whole environment to extinction.”

The loss of Arctic sea ice is “not the only sign of growing cryosphere collapse”. In just the past year, researchers have been astonished by the sight of rain at the summit of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet for the first time on record, followed by rain, rather than snow, falling on east Antarctica in March amid startling heatwaves at both poles, with temperatures 40C (72F) above normal. The report documents shell damage to crustaceans in the Arctic Ocean, a sign that the seawater is acidifying due to greenhouse gas emissions, the loss of 5% of glacier ice in the Alps over a single summer and a record low sea ice extent around Antarctica, earlier this year.

A huge amount of sea level rise appears to be already locked in due to the rampant burning of fossil fuels, the report states, with sections of the west Antarctic ice sheet potentially collapsing even without any further emissions over the coming centuries, causing more than four metres of additional sea level rise. Greenland’s ice loss has already committed around 30cm to sea level rise.

The Arctic is heating up around four times as quickly as the global average, which, combined with record heatwaves in Antarctica, risks a rapid “meltwater pulse” not seen at any time in the past 130,000 years, during which time human civilization has developed. This surge in water could prove disastrous for coastal areas.

Meanwhile, glaciers in places such as the Himalayas and the Andes are winnowing away, risking the drinking water supplies of tens of millions of people and, conversely, raising the threat of disastrous flooding.

 Brigham-Grette said, “If we don’t accept that moral responsibility we aren’t going to be very good ancestors, we won’t be looked upon fondly. It will be a human tragedy.”

World faces ‘terminal’ loss of Arctic sea ice during summers, report warns | Climate crisis | The Guardian

The Grenfell Tower public inquiry should lead to criminal prosecutions of organisations involved in the disaster, lawyers for the bereaved said. 

 They accused a “rogues gallery” of firms of being  “grossly negligent”, “fraudulent” and “reckless”.

Greed was a key motivator and private sector organisations involved in the refurbishment had shown “a callous indifference to anything – morality, honesty, life safety – that was not related to the bottom line of the business”, said Imran Khan KC.

Grenfell was “a human rights disaster, a systematic failure of state and private actors to protect the life, security and dignity of people” and that institutional racism “infected every aspect of the disaster”. Of the people who died in the fire, 85% were from ethnic minorities.

Arconic, the US-owned firm that made the highly combustible cladding panels, was first among those named by Stephanie Barwise KC, representing one group of survivors, in a “rogues gallery” as responsible for the speed of the fire’s growth and spread, followed by the architect Studio E, and fire engineer Exova.

Celotex, which made most of the combustible insulation used on the tower, and Kingspan, another manufacturer, “were fraudulent in their sales tactics and in their dealings with those who were charged with testing and certifying the products”, said Adrian Williamson KC. 

Studio E, Harley, the facade contractor, and Exova were “grossly negligent”, Michael Mansfield KC said.

Among those responsible for exacerbating the fire’s impact were the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its tenant management organisation. RBKC’s housing director rejected an annual inspection programme of door closers on grounds of cost despite the fire brigade requiring it. Several closers were missing on the night of the fire, assisting the spread of fire and deadly smoke.

“This conscious cost-benefit analysis with human life as the cost was not a legitimate way for a local authority to behave,” said Stephanie Barwise KC, representing one group of survivors.

While pleased the inquiry has uncovered truths about what caused the fire, many survivors are impatient that it has delayed criminal justice as the Metropolitan police have said criminal charges can only be considered after the inquiry report is published, expected later in 2023.

‘Rogues gallery’ of Grenfell firms should be prosecuted, lawyers say | Grenfell Tower inquiry | The Guardian

 For decades, immigration statistics were based purely on a survey of people arriving and departing from UK air, sea and rail ports. Millions of passengers enter and leave the UK each year and picking migrants out of this enormous haystack has in part been a matter of luck. In the early 2010s, for example, these figures appeared to show an alarming situation where half of all international students were overstaying their visas. 

Under Theresa May, the Home Office launched a multi-pronged campaign to identify illegal immigrants, which included closing bogus colleges and introducing right-to-work and right-to-rent checks. New statistics in 2017 concluded the original overstaying estimate for students had simply been wrong, a fault of failing to count people properly – and a sign of how unreliable migration statistics were as a whole. There is no evidence of a major issue of non-EU students overstaying their entitlement to stay

But it was too late for one group that fell on the wrong side of the so-called hostile environment policies: people who had come legally from Commonwealth countries in the postwar era but couldn’t provide enough proof of this when questioned.

 These victims of the Windrush scandal suffered multiple injustices thanks to an imaginary foe in the numbers and a failure of government record-keeping.

From migration to railways, how bad data infiltrated British politics | Georgina Sturge | The Guardian

  As the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh takes place,  Egypt’s authoritarian regime stands accused of human rights abuses. 

 Sahar Aziz, a professor at Rutgers University in the US, says “the Egyptian government has given summit access only to local governmental NGOs that support the regime”. The Egyptian regime, he points out, has treated civil society as “enemies of the state”.  Hosting the event seems like a political cover for its self-defeating repression of civil society, writes Aziz, author of ‘The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom’.

 Amnesty International (AI) said the arrest of hundreds of people in the past two weeks alone, in connection to calls for protests during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), is a reminder of the grim reality of Egypt’s policy of mass arbitrary detention to crush dissent.

At least 151 detainees are currently being investigated by the Supreme State Security Prosecution, while hundreds more have faced shorter arrests and questioning.

“The arrest of hundreds of people merely because they were suspected of supporting the call for peaceful protests raises serious concerns over how the authorities will respond to people wishing to protest during COP27 – an essential feature of any UN climate conference”.

“The Egyptian authorities must allow peaceful demonstrators to gather freely and refrain from using unlawful force or arbitrary arrests to deter protests,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director. “World leaders arriving in Sharm El-Sheikh for COP27 must not be fooled by Egypt’s public relations (PR) campaign. Away from the dazzling resort hotels, thousands of individuals including human rights defenders, journalists, peaceful protesters and members of the political opposition continue to be detained unjustly,”

“They must urge President Abdelfattah al-Sisi to release all those arbitrarily held for exercising their human rights. As a matter of urgency, this should include imprisoned activist Alaa Abdel Fattah…”

In the run up to the climate summit (6 November-18 November), Egyptian authorities released 766 prisoners following a decision by President al-Sisi to reactivate a Presidential Pardons Committee (PPC) in April, said Amnesty International.

Yet over the same period, Amnesty International has documented the arrest of double that number; 1,540 people who were questioned over the exercising of free speech and association.

In the past six months, Amnesty International has gathered data from dozens of lawyers who regularly attend interrogations and detention renewal hearings, reviewed court decisions and other official documents, and interviewed former prisoners as well as relatives of detainees. In recent weeks, security forces have arrested and detained hundreds of people in downtown Cairo and town squares across Egyptian cities over content on their phones — a tactic often employed by police ahead of expected protests. While most were released within hours or days, some were taken to prosecutors, while others remain subject to enforced disappearance according to lawyers

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, explained that hosting a global conference such as COP 27 places a special obligation on Egypt’s government to respect and enable the exercise of fundamental freedoms as per international law.

“The right to protest peacefully and the right against arbitrary detention are essential elements of international law. In the present instance, Egypt’s government can easily order the release of arbitrarily imprisoned prisoners of conscience and allow protests to take place without impediments as a sign of good faith,”

 Human Rights Watch said Egyptian authorities escalated the use of abusive Emergency State Security Courts to prosecute peaceful activists and critics who joined thousands of dissidents already in the country’s congested prisons. And Courts issued death sentences in mass trials, adding to the sharply escalating number of executions.

Gadir Lavadenz, Global Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice and Lidy Nacpil, Executive Director, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, write: climate conferences are increasingly becoming spaces for greenwashing of not just the big polluters’ crimes, but also of the regimes and presidencies hosting COP.

 The official COP app requires access to the user’s location, their email, and their photos. The wi-fi at COP is apparently restricting access to human rights organizations and some news organizations. According to the website of the Egyptian presidency for COP27, anyone wishing to organize protests in Sharm El-Sheikh must inform the authorities 36 hours in advance and show the organizers a COP27 badge. Protests will only be allowed between 10:00-17:00 in an area far from the conference and monitored by cameras. The authorities have also limited the content of protests to climate-related issues.

COP27: Egypt’s Repressive Regime Under Fire—While it Hosts a Key Climate Summit | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

The Hurun Rich list, which ranks China’s wealthiest people with a minimum net worth of 5 billion yuan ($690m), said only 1,305 people made the threshold this year, down 11% from last year. 

Their total wealth was $3.5tn, down 18% from last year.

The number of individuals with $10bn or more fell by 29, 

The number of billionaires, in US dollars, dropped by 239 this year

The global economic outlook has been heavily affected by the war in Ukraine and slowing economic growth in China, that has in turn been exacerbated by the country’s ultra-strict Covid policies and a prolonged property slump.

Zhong Shanshan, whose listed companies include water bottler Nongfu Spring and vaccine developer Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, took first place on the list for the second year running, with a fortune that grew 17% to $65bn.

The founder of ByteDance, which owns TikTok, Zhang Yiming, took second place, but saw his wealth fall 28% to $35bn due to a drop in ByteDance’s valuation. 

In third place was Zeng Yuqun, chairman of battery giant CATL.

Yang Huiyan, the businesswoman behind Country Garden Holdings, which like many other Chinese developers has been battling debt issues, saw her wealth fall by $15.7bn, the biggest drop on the 2022 list.

Tencent founder Pony Ma posted the second largest drop, falling $14.6bn amid sliding tech stock prices, to take fifth place on the list. 

Alibaba founder Jack Ma and his family tumbled four places to be ranked number nine.

A two-year regulatory crackdown has hit China’s biggest tech names such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.

China’s super-rich see fortunes plunge as economy slows | China | The Guardian