A team at the University of Oxford reveals that transitioning to 100% clean energy within the next three decades could save not only lives and the planet but also $12 trillion. The study from the Oxford Martin Program on the Post-Carbon Transition, published in the journal Joule, comes as scientists continue to warn about the climate and health impacts of fossil fuels.

“There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean, green energy will be painful, costly, and mean sacrifices for us all—but that’s just wrong,” Oxford professor and study co-author Doyne Farmer said in a statement. “Renewable costs have been trending down for decades.”

“They are already cheaper than fossil fuels in many situations, and our research shows that they will become cheaper than fossil fuels across almost all applications in the years to come. And if we accelerate the transition, they will become cheaper faster,” he explained.

The study’s lead author, Rupert Way, pointed out that “past models predicting high costs for transitioning to zero carbon energy have deterred companies from investing and made governments nervous about setting policies that will accelerate the green transition and cut reliance on fossil fuels.”

“But past models have overestimated key green technology costs again and again, leaving modelers to play catch-up as real-world costs plunged over the last decade,” he stressed.

As the researchers detailed in their paper: “We use an approach based on probabilistic cost forecasting methods that have been statistically validated by backtesting on more than 50 technologies. We generate probabilistic cost forecasts for solar energy, wind energy, batteries, and electrolyzers, conditional on deployment. We use these methods to estimate future energy system costs and explore how technology cost uncertainty propagates through to system costs in three different scenarios.”

The first scenario, which they call the “fast transition,” would feature an end to fossil fuels by 2050; this is the path that they estimate would save the world $12 trillion. The second scenario, or “slow transition,” would involve shifting to clean energy by around 2070. The third scenario is “no transition,” meaning the energy system would remain dominated by fossil fuels.

“Only a few years ago, net-zero by 2050 was believed to be so expensive that it was barely considered credible, yet now even the most pessimistic models concede that it’s entirely within reach,” noted Way. “Accelerating the transition to renewable energy is now the best bet not just for the planet, but for energy costs too.”

Farmer highlighted that currently, “the world is facing a simultaneous inflation crisis, national security crisis, and climate crisis, all caused by our dependence on high cost, insecure, polluting, fossil fuels with volatile prices.”

Rapid Green Energy Transition by 2050 Could Save the World at Least $12 Trillion (commondreams.org)

The USA poverty level has been often stated to be around 11 per cent of the population, but several independent and credible studies indicate much higher levels of economic distress. A study by the Urban Institute (UI) in 2018, before the pandemic struck, found that nearly 40 per cent of non-elderly adults and their families struggled to afford at least one basic need for health care, housing, utilities or food in 2017.

The 2018 study of UI was based on a well-being and basic needs survey of non-elderly adults in the age-group 18-64. While 40% struggled to access at least one basic need, within this group 60% struggled to meet two basic needs and 34% struggled to meet three needs.

As many as 23% said that they were food insecure in the last 12 months. 18% struggled to pay medical bills while almost the same number (17.8%) decided to go without some required medical treatment due to costs. Deprivation levels were found to be higher among younger adults, women, households with children, blacks and Hispanics. Those struggling to meet basic needs included several of those who were regarded not as poor but as middle-class.

This data is from a study of 18-64 age group. However, in 2020 it was reported that child poverty levels (under 18 age group) have been found to be 1.5 times higher than adult poverty levels.

The World Inequality Report 2022 tells us that the bottom 50% of the USA population has only 1.5% of its wealth and only 13% of its income. 

The World Inequality Report 2022 tells us that in the USA, the share of wealth held by the top 1% ( 35%) is 23 times higher than the share (1.5%) held by the bottom 50%. In 1968 the top 20 per cent of US households accounted for 43% of income but in 2018 they took away 52% of the income, more than the bottom 80% who got a share of only 48%.

According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the USA has the highest inequality in G7 countries— the USA has Gini coefficient of 0. 434 while for the remaining six countries this ranges between 0.326(France) and 0.392(UK). 

According to an inclusive development index prepared by the World Economic Forum the USA appeared at number 23 in a total of 30 rich countries. According to Stanford University’s State of the Union—The Poverty and Inequality Report (2016) the USA is ranked at the bottom in an index of 10 rich countries. When this index was widened to include some of the less rich countries, the USA appeared at number 18 in a total of 21 countries.

 The Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston has prepared the Elderly Economic Security Standard Index which found that in 2016 a majority of seniors lacked the “financial resources required to meet basic needs.” Conditions in nursing homes have been often found to be precarious.

A Gallup poll in December 2019 found 25% of persons contacted saying that they or a member of their family had delayed treatment for an illness due to cost factors.

The number of homeless persons, estimated to be around 550,000 or so, is set to increase significantly. As the country emerged from the pandemic, in June 2021 nearly 2 million were found to be lagging behind mortgage payments and nearly 6 million were missing out in rent payments. A substantial number of these 8 million households face the threat of eviction, while the average number of cases of evictions filed in a year till 2018 was around 3.7 million. The landlords have legal counsel in over 90% of cases; the tenants rarely have such help. This amounts to about 10,000 eviction notices in a single day, a shocking figure surely, or 416 per hour, or 7 per minute.

The extent of denial of basic needs of people in a country so well-endowed for prosperity in various ways is inexcusable and one of its leading causes is excessive militarization .

The USA spends $800 billion a year on military expenses, out of the $2000 billion spent by the entire world. This excludes many expenses listed as civilian but having strong military implications and relationships. A huge and increasing share of discretionary federal spending is taken up by military expenses. According to the Cost of the War Project based in Brown University, $8000 billion were spent on the war on terror during 20 years 2001-21, resulting in direct loss of 900,000 human lives by bomb, bullet and fire.

Taken from here

Inequalities And Militarization In USA Have Led To Millions Being Deprived Of Basic Needs| Countercurrents

 Average pay including bonuses rose by 5.5% in the three months to July while regular pay (excluding bonuses) increased by 5.2%, up from 4.7% in June.

Workers continued to be hardest hit in the public sector, where regular pay grew by 2%, compared with 6% in the private sector. Annual inflation was 10.1% in July, the highest level in 40 years.

According to the Office for National Statistics, wages adjusted for inflation fell by 2.6% including bonuses and by 2.8% excluding bonuses.

Samuel Tombs, the chief UK economist at the consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the business surveys chimed with the official data to show that “labour demand is barely rising”. Tombs added that unemployment would rise as the economic situation worsened over the coming months and unemployment will rise to about 4% by the end of the year and 4.5% by mid-2023.

UK pay growth lags behind inflation as cost of living crisis bites | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 The Nationality and Borders Act that allows citizenship to be stripped without notifying the subject.

Frances Webber,  the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) vice-chair and report author, wrote: “The message sent by the legislation on deprivation of citizenship since 2002 and its implementation largely against British Muslims of south Asian heritage is that, despite their passports, these people are not and can never be ‘true’ citizens, in the same way that ‘natives’ are.

“While a ‘native’ British citizen, who has access to no other citizenship, can commit the most heinous crimes without jeopardising his right to remain British, none of the estimated 6 million British citizens with access to another citizenship can feel confident in the perpetual nature of their citizenship.” 

Webber said: “These classes of citizenship were brought in to target British Muslims of south Asian and Middle Eastern heritage. Such divisions act as a constant reminder to minority ethnic citizens that they must watch their step, and reinforce racist messages about ‘undeserving’ racialised groups unworthy of being British.”

The “Citizenship: from right to privilege” report argues the effect is that certain people have a “second-class, disposable, contingent citizenship”. The report describes the criteria for deprivation of citizenship as “nebulous and undefined” and warns of a risk of its use for political purposes.

The report said citizenship-stripping is “just one aspect of measures targeting Muslim communities, in Britain and abroad, in the past two decades, which have helped to turn British Muslims in the UK into a ‘suspect community’”.

British Muslims’ citizenship reduced to ‘second-class’ status, says thinktank | Islam | The Guardian

 An estimated 6.3 million people in Sri Lanka are facing moderate to severe acute food insecurity and their situation is expected to worsen if adequate life-saving assistance and livelihood support are not provided, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned.

Two consecutive seasons of poor harvests led to a nearly 50 percent drop in production coupled with reduced imports of food grains due to foreign exchange constraints.

According to the joint FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission (CFSAM) report immediate food assistance and livelihood programmes – including through existing social assistance mechanisms — are critical to enable households to access nutritious food – particularly moderately and severely acute food insecure ones. 

A severe macro-economic crisis in Sri Lanka has caused acute shortages and spikes in the prices of essential products, including food, agricultural inputs, fuel and medicine, severely compromising the economic activity, with major disruptions to agricultural production.

Production of paddy rice, the main food staple, is forecast at 3 million mt in 2022, the lowest level since the 2017 drought-affected harvest, mostly due to low yields following reduced application of fertilizers, the report finds.

Production of maize, mostly used as animal feed, is about 40 percent below the past five-year average, with negative effects on poultry and livestock production. Likewise, production of vegetables, fruits and export-oriented crops, such as tea, rubber, coconut and spices, is well below average, causing a significant decline in households’ income and export revenues.

Without assistance, the food security situation is expected to deteriorate further, particularly during the October 2022 to February 2023 lean season, driven by poor harvests of staple foods, in particular paddy rice, and the ongoing economic crisis.

“Months into this crippling economic crisis, families are running out of options – they are exhausted. More than 60 percent of families are eating less, and eating cheaper, less nutritious food. This comes at a time when financial constraints have forced the government to scale back on nutrition programmes, such as school meals and fortified food to mothers and undernourished children,” said WFP Representative and Country Director in Sri Lanka, Abdur Rahim Siddiqui.

Prices of most food items have been on a steady rise since the last quarter of 2021 and reached a new record high in August 2022, with the year-on-year food inflation rate at nearly 94 percent.

The total cereal import requirement in 2022 is estimated at 2.2 million mt. In the first six months of 2022, more than 930,000 mt of cereals were imported, leaving an outstanding import requirement of 1.27 million mt. Given the persisting challenges, there is a high risk that the remaining import requirement will not be met.

Food crisis in Sri Lanka likely to worsen amid poor agricultural production, price spikes and ongoing economic crisis, FAO and WFP warn – Sri Lanka | ReliefWeb

Fifty million people around the world are trapped in modern slavery, either forced to work against their will or forced into a marriage, according to new global estimates, marking a significant rise over the past five years.

“It is shocking that the situation of modern slavery is not improving. Nothing can justify the persistence of this fundamental abuse of human rights,” said the ILO’s director general, Guy Ryder.

The number of people trapped in forced labour, including sex trafficking, rose to 28 million, with a further 22 million trapped in forced marriage, says a report published on Monday by the International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the anti-trafficking human rights group Walk Free.

10 million more people had fallen victim to forms of modern slavery in 2021 compared with 2016, with women and children the most badly affected.

86% cases of forced labour were found in the private sector in industries including manufacturing, construction, agriculture and domestic work. Millions of people, mainly women and girls, are also estimated to be trapped in commercial sexual exploitation. 

The other 14% of cases are state-sanctioned forced labour.

The main form of coercion used by employers was the deliberate withholding of wages and the threat of dismissal, and that the refugee crisis has fuelled a surge of exploitation in supply chains and commercial businesses and industries.

More than 6 million more women and girls have also been forced into marriage, particularly child marriage affecting girls of 16 and under. 85% of forced marriages were driven by family pressure, with most cases occurring in Asia and the Pacific and across the Arab states.

Slavery is occurring at scale across the world, with more than half (52%) of all forced labour and a quarter of forced marriages occurring in high-income or middle-income countries.

Fifty million people now trapped in modern slavery in a ‘surge of exploitation’ | Slavery | The Guardian

 Speaker: Adam Buick

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/audio/do-human-rights-exist/

 The Royal Family is known for its longevity. The Queen was 96 when she passed away. The Queen’s mother died in 2002 at the age of 101. Her husband was 99 when he died.  Do the blue-bloods just have better genes than the rest of us? Or do the Royals get the best medical care possible while living in comfort?

 A report from the King’s Fund notes that in 2018–20, males in the poorest 10 percent of areas in England died almost a decade earlier than males in the 10 percent wealthiest areas, with an 8-year difference among females. Aren’t these deaths a tragedy, too?

At least 168,000 excess deaths in Britain have been estimated since the Covid pandemic began. How many were from the Royal Family?

 A recent study showed that 90,000 Britons die in a state of poverty every year. More than one in four working-age women die impoverished, a number that climbs substantially among minorities. On a human level, every death is an occasion for mourning. Who mourned the needlessly dead? Instead, the Queen’s prime minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer were attending office parties. 

“God Save the Queen”, “God Save the King”. But who will save working people?

Adapted from here

Opinion | Mourn the Queen, But God Save the People | Richard Eskow (commondreams.org)

 With accession of Prince Charles to the throne, Prince William automatically inherits the Duchy of Cornwall. 

 Thanks to the ownership of a landed estate of more than 52,000 hectares (128,000 acres), which also makes him one of England’s biggest landowners.  The duchy’s net assets were valued at more than £1bn, the bulk of which came from investment property assets.

The Duchy of Cornwall owns land across 20 counties in England and Wales – the majority of it not in Cornwall – stretching from Devon to Kent, and Carmarthenshire to Nottinghamshire. Much of the estate comprises farmland, but it also includes homes and commercial properties, forests, rivers, coastline and about – a third of the Dartmoor national park, which was once used for mining minerals such as tin and copper. Some of the estate’s more unusual holdings include Oval cricket ground as well as Dartmoor prison.

 He also inherits the residential development project at Nansledan, an extension to the town of Newquay in Cornwall, where more than 4,000 homes and a high street are being built in a project expected to last three decades.

Duchy of Cornwall estate worth £1bn passes to Prince William | Monarchy | The Guardian

While millions are living on the brink of famine, there has been a major boon for Wall Street giants, according to new data showing that the world’s 100 largest banks are on pace to smash commodity trading profit records this year.

“The 100 biggest banks by revenue are set to make $18 billion from commodities trading in 2022,” Bloomberg reported Friday, citing figures from the London-based firm Vali Analytics. “That would be the highest in the data, which goes back 14 years, and exceed the previous high watermark in 2009.”

“The prediction is the latest evidence that the wild swings in energy prices triggered by the war in Ukraine are delivering a boon to commodity traders, even as they push European nations into crisis,” Bloomberg added.

The prices of wheat and other food staples remain significantly elevated compared to last year, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, leaving millions vulnerable to hunger and starvation.

The World Food Program estimates that “as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night” and “the number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared—from 135 million to 345 million—since 2019.”

“People’s misery makes capitalists’ superprofit,” Salvatore De Rosa, a researcher at the Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies, tweeted.

“We’re in a market where speculators are driving prices up,” Michael Greenberger, former head of the Division of Trading and Markets at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, told Mongabay in July.

“Commodity markets are supposed to be hedging markets for people who are dealing with the commodity involved,” Greenberger said. “In the case of wheat, it would be farmers and people buying wheat. But if we looked at it, there would be banks in there with no interest in what the price of wheat is, writing swaps and controlling this price.”

“It’s too easy to say the war in Ukraine has unbalanced all these markets, [or that] supply chains and the ports are shot, and that there’s a supply and demand reason for these prices going up,” Greenberger added. “My own best guess is anywhere from 10% to 25% of the price, at least, is dictated by deregulated speculative activity.”