The United Nations’ latest annual ranking of nations by “sustainable development goals” have as its top four countries the Scandinavian nations. 

The United States is forty-first, just below Cuba. Other nations better than the USA include Estonia, Croatia, the Slovak Republic, Romania, and Serbia.

The seventeen “sustainable development goals” (SDGs) include the absence of poverty and hunger, good health and education, gender equality, clean air and water, and reduced inequality. The purpose of the report is to measure countries’ progress, or development, toward a civilized and sustainable future.

 As historian Kathleen Frydl points out, “Under this methodology … the U.S. ranks between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries.” 

 How does a country that was once “developed” become “developing”? The phrase “developing country” implies that there are countries that have achieved development, and countries that are on their way. It leaves no room for the possibility that a nation, once it developed, can “un-develop” itself. It’s like saying that a “growing child” can become “un-grown.” 

And yet, that’s exactly what is happening to the United States.

Albeit, other measurements and reports may not place the US below Cuba or Serbia, but most major measurements seem to point one way: down. Life expectancy is declining. Economic inequality is rising. Other measurements are flat at best.

Opinion | Is Progress Obsolete? The United States Is Now an ‘Un-Developing’ Country | Richard Eskow (commondreams.org)

 Agricultural water use makes up nearly 80% of total water consumption in the Colorado River basin, with roughly half of that going toward the production of alfalfa hay, according to a 2020 study. One out of every three farmed acres in  California’s Imperial Valley is dedicated to growing alfalfa, which dries into a high-protein hay commonly used as food for livestock. 

The large-scale production of alfalfa during a megadrought is, in a large part, possible because the Imperial Valley is the single biggest controller of rights to Colorado River water. Now, with the basin on the brink of the most severe water cuts in history, the alfalfa industry has been propelled to the center of longstanding debates over sustainable water use and the future of farming in the west.  Farmers have faced growing criticism for what some have characterized as the “perverse” practice of growing a thirsty crop – none of which goes directly to feeding people – in a drought-stricken region.

The Colorado River, which supplies freshwater to more than 40 million people in seven states and 29 federally recognized tribes across the south-west, as well as northern Mexico, is in rapid decline. Reduced snowpack, drought conditions and higher average temperatures have all reduced the river’s flow in recent decades.

The two biggest reservoirs along the river, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are each close to hitting levels so low that the Colorado River could stop flowing entirely, a condition ominously known as dead pool.

 “We’re teetering on the edge,” said Jack Schmidt, a professor and director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. “We’re irrigating alfalfa in 120-degree temperatures in the dead of July … how does that possibly make any sense?” Schmidt said.

Alfalfa production in California uses around 5 feet an acre (6167.4 cubic metres) of water, making it one of the most water-intensive crops alongside the likes of almonds, pistachios and rice. Crops such as sugar beets use roughly 3 feet an acre (3,700 cubic metres), and dry beans as little as 1.5 feet each acre (1,850 cubic metres).

Stephen Hawk, a fourth-generation farmer who grows a mix of forage crops and vegetables, decided to scale back production of alfalfa – then his biggest crop. He ramped up production of vegetables like lettuce, onions, carrots and sugar beets. In addition to conserving water, the decision allowed him to diversify revenue streams and practice ground rotation, which comes with soil health benefits. 

“We’re ultimately stewards of the land and our resources,” Hawk said. “And our water is our most precious resource.” He added: “There’s a lot of farms that are 100% forage. That’s going to be very difficult for them to continue. When there’s a shortage, they won’t have enough water to farm all their acres.”

Policymakers have imposed various restrictions aimed at curtailing residential water use, including limiting pool sizes and paying people to rip up their lawns. But others argue that municipal conservation measures can only go so far.

“Even if everybody ripped up their lawns and planted native plants that didn’t need to be irrigated, we’re still going to have this problem. We need to address agriculture straight on,” said Amanda Starbuck, research director of Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group on farming and water issues. “Alfalfa is one of the major crops that is being grown with this water. And it is unfortunately one of the most water-thirsty”.

In 2021, nearly 20% of alfalfa produced in the west was shipped abroad, according to analysis of United States Department of Agriculture data. Nationwide, alfalfa exports reached a record high last year, driven by strong demand from China. Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia are among other top importers.

It’s the thirstiest crop in the US south-west. Will the drought put alfalfa farmers out of business? | Water | The Guardian

 According to statistics compiled by CBS, as of 16 September Texas and Arizona had sent almost 300 buses carrying approximately 13,000 migrants to Washington DC, New York and Chicago. Florida has become the third Republican-run state to traffic migrants/asylum seekers to Democratic controlled states or cities. The bulk of these people were sent from Texas.

“Extreme climate change risks are under-explored,” Luke Kemp, a researcher with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, warned. “Climate scholars have strong incentives to err on the side of least drama. You don’t want to be branded an alarmist.” But with fossil fuel emissions still going up and climate-fuelled disasters multiplying, it’s time for an “honest assessment of the risks and what can be done”, he told an audience with a frank assessments of looming threats.

As they grapple with ever-clearer data about how close the planet may be to irreversible tipping points, scientists say they are struggling to deliver clear and realistic warnings about the unthinkable, without undermining hope.

With new evidence that catastrophic climate-change “tipping points” are nearing – from surging sea levels as polar ice melts to spiking temperatures as methane escapes thawing permafrost scientists are quietly planning for the unthinkable.

“It’s scary and it’s real – and these are the futures that are going to be opening up to us if we don’t act strongly now,” warned Laura Pereira of the Global Change Institute at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University.

A study in the journal Science found that four dangerous planetary tipping points are “likely” above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7F) of warming above preindustrial temperatures – a level that could be passed within a decade.  Tipping points happen when a small change – such as an incremental increase in global temperature – sparks a rapid, often irreversible transformation, scientists say.

Accelerating melting leading to the eventual collapse of the Greenland ice sheet may have already been triggered, setting in motion 7 metres (23 feet) of sea level rise over an indeterminant time, enough to swamp key coastal cities.

David King, former chief scientific advisor for Britain and founder of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, an expert panel, said he thinks “the Arctic circle tipping points are now passed”.

With the Arctic having warmed 3C – well above the global average, which is already about 1.3C, risks are also growing that large amounts of methane trapped in thawing permafrost could be released. Adding much more of that potent greenhouse gas to the atmosphere could drive an unstoppable cycle of higher global temperatures and more melting.

“If all of that is released, we’ll see temperatures rise 5-8C (8-14F) over 20 years,” he said, adding this would be “extraordinarily destructive to the future of humanity”, likely causing food system collapse and displacing billions of people.

An array of new efforts to reduce catastrophic risk – or to deal with the consequences of failing – are starting to appear.

Efforts to pass a fossil fuel “non-proliferation” treaty – designed to end new oil, gas and coal exploration and production – are gathering steam, while the Bezos Earth Fund this week put $1.15 million into efforts to “activate” positive tipping points. “non-proliferation” treaty. Scientists also want a special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on catastrophic climate change and tipping points, in part to help raise the profile of the threats.

 The EU parliament voted to approve the report on Thursday, which accused Prime Minister Viktor Orban of creating an “electoral autocracy”. Hungarian civil liberties groups have welcomed the report.

“For Hungarian human rights organisations, this is sadly not surprising,” Dr Marta Pardavi explained. “This is obviously something that is very painful for us as Hungarian citizens, but we do see that the report’s conclusion is inevitable.” Dr Parvdavi, who is co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee – a human rights monitoring group – said “very serious violations” of democratic norms have been documented against Mr Orban’s regime. “Over the past four years what has happened in Hungary is a solidifying of undemocratic practices,” she added. “It [the report] emphasises the ongoing and almost permanent nature of this democratic backsliding.”

US oil industry’s internal documents showed companies attempted to distance themselves from agreed climate goals, admitted “gaslighting” the public over purported efforts to go green. A congressional hearing produced documents obtained from the oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP.

The revelations are part of the third hearing held by the House committee on oversight and reform on how the fossil-fuel industry sought to hamper the effort to address the climate crisis.

New documents are “the latest evidence that oil giants keep lying about their commitments to help solve the climate crisis and should never be trusted by policymakers”, said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.

Ro Khanna, co-chair of the committee, said the new documents are “explosive” and show a “culture of intense disrespect” to climate activists. The oil giants’ “climate pledges rely on unproven technology, accounting gimmicks and misleading language to hide the reality,” he added. “Big oil executives are laughing at the people trying to protect our planet while they knowingly work to destroy it.”

Several emails and memos show executives, staffers and lobbyists internally contradicting public pronouncements by their companies to act on lowering planet-heating emissions.

The documents include an August 2019 memo by an executive to Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, on the need to “remove reference to Paris agreement” from an announcement by an industry lobby group that Exxon is a member of. Such a statement “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris agreement goals”, the executive warned. 

A separate note on a 2018 Exxon presentation also admitted that biofuels derived from algae was still “decades away from the scale we need”, despite the company long promoting it as a way to lower emissions.

Shell documents show a private 2020 communication in which employees are urged to never “imply, suggest, or leave it open for possible misinterpretation that (net zero) is a Shell goal or target”. Shell has “no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio” over the next 10 to 20 years, it added. A Shell tweet posted in 2020 asking others what they could do to reduce emissions resulted in a torrent of ridicule from Twitter users. A communications executive for the company wrote privately that criticism that the tweet was “gaslighting” the public was “not totally without merit” and that the tweet was “pretty tone deaf”. He added: “We are, after all, in a tweet like this implying others need to sacrifice without focusing on ourselves.”

The UK-headquartered oil company, which in July announced a record $11.5bn quarterly profit, also poured scorn on climate activists, with a communications specialist at the company emailing in 2019 that he wished “bedbugs” upon the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led US climate group.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they wish bedbugs on you, then you win,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise. The organization accused Shell of a “legacy of violence and of ignoring the wellbeing of communities across the globe”.

Previous releases of internal documents have shown that the oil industry knew of the devastating impact of climate change but chose instead to downplay and even deny these findings publicly in order to maintain their business model.

Criticism intensifies after big oil admits ‘gaslighting’ public over green aims | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 More than 452 million children worldwide live with war in about 30 countries or territories, according to NGOs, double the number of affected children than 20 years ago. 

Of that, 27 million cannot go to school and an estimated 250,000 have been forced to fight or otherwise serve fighters, including as sex workers.

Their injuries and deaths are rarely investigated, and crimes against them rarely punished. 

 India, recently became the fifth-largest global economy, has the Earth’s largest population below the age of 35, with considerable smartphone and social media penetration 

Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India by Rukmini S, a data journalist, challenges widely-held beliefs and debunks media coverage far removed from the data. Her account is contrary to the image many Indians have of themselves as a largely tolerant nation, peopled with mostly liberal citizens, who, despite great odds, adversity and backsliding, remain committed to the democratic, secular and pluralistic values of the Indian Constitution. Rukmini found that India is less committed to democratic principles, freedom of speech, free operation of the judiciary and the opposition, than most other countries.

“This is not a liberal country nor do most Indians see liberalism as a virtue,” she writes. “Age, education and levels of urbanisation and income do not produce the moderating, progressive liberal effects on views that we in our popular imagination in India assume they do,” she said

On caste, the data reveals that Indian society continues to be steeped in casteism, where the banned practice of untouchability is still followed, not just in rural India, but in cities as well. 

“…The organisation of Indian society as being extremely hostile to any inter-group mingling or relationship or communication of any sort. The majority of Indians in opinion polls say they are opposed to inter-caste and inter-religious marriages, large numbers of people say they do not have friends of another religion or caste, and a significant share of people, even in urban India, say that someone in their family practices untouchability…We are seeing laws being brought in to discourage inter-religious marriage. We are seeing violence against backwards castes. We are seeing a lot of violence against Muslims…We are seeing all sorts of criminalisation and intimidation around all sorts of mixing between religious groups. Places of worship that were shared between groups are being actively weaponised and polarised…”

“…Young people are saying they do not support inter-caste, inter-religious marriage to a greater degree than views expressed by their grandparents. They are not saying they have greater commitments to free speech or to secular values than older people…”

In 2011-2013, 30 percent of rural households reported practising untouchability while in urban areas the corresponding figure was lower at 20 percent.

While there appears to be more latitude for women choosing their life partners, the data reveals that Indians believe that women should be subservient to their husbands and should not go out for paid work.

“…The overall national picture is bleak in terms of even having the ability to have any say on your marriage, to choose a partner, to be able to take any decision around the household purchase, to have any assets in your own name, to have any cash on hand, to be able to even go the doctor without permission — all of these numbers are pretty bleak, particularly in the north and centre of the country…Overall in the country, we have one of the lowest levels of female labour force participation of any country in the world. This is an indicator that has not risen but has fallen substantially. It is also extremely low for extremely well-educated and rich women…”

Between 1990 and 2014, those who opposed homosexuality fell from 89 percent to 24 percent, from an overwhelming majority to a clear minority. Between 2014 and 2019, the share of Indians who believe homosexuality should be accepted by society more than doubled.

 “…Given that decriminalisation occurred in 2018, I feel it is an avenue to explore whether it made people perhaps feel that if the Supreme Court says that it is not criminal, perhaps I should change my views, or if it allowed people who already had people in same-sex relationships in their lives — children, nephews and cousins—it made them feel that this is something they have already seen and now even the law said it wasn’t criminal…It is certainly worth thinking that if an important constitutional authority comes out with clear and resounding support of a position, can it change societal values significantly?  It makes you think about what could be done if the courts came out strongly in support of interfaith relationships or other democratic principles. This was one of the areas where there was mass media support as well…”

India Far Less Committed to Liberal Values Than Imagined, Data Shows – Consortium News

A poll of more than 2,000 workers earning less than the real living wage of £9.90 an hour, or £11.05 in London, by the Living Wage Foundation found that 78% said this was the worst financial period they had ever faced. As many as 4.8 million people in the workforce have earnings of less than the real living wage.

More than half had used a food bank in the past year, while 42% reported regularly skipping meals for financial reasons. 

More than a fifth of these workers, 21%, said they had no money at all left over after paying for essentials, such as rent and food.

More than two-thirds of the workers surveyed said their financial situation was negatively affecting their levels of anxiety, and their overall quality of life – with women particularly badly affected.

Katherine Chapman, director of the Living Wage Foundation said: “Everyone is feeling the pressure from soaring inflation, but our polling shows that low-paid workers are being hit harder than most. These shocking findings bring to life what it’s like to be paid less than a real living wage during a cost of living crisis.” She added: “It’s more important than ever that those employers who can, step up and provide a wage based on the cost of living.”

Britain’s lowest-paid workers say finances have never been worse | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 “Climate change is no longer a ticking timebomb, it is exploding before our eyes. It is making extreme weather such as droughts, cyclones and floods – which have increased five-fold over the past 50 years – more frequent and more deadly,” Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, said.

Extreme hunger is closely linked to the climate crisis, with many areas of the world most affected by extreme weather experiencing severe food shortages.  Oxfam examined 10 of the world’s worst climate hotspots, afflicted by drought, floods, severe storms and other extreme weather, and found their rates of extreme hunger had more than doubled in the past six years.

The 10 countries covered by the report – Somalia, Haiti, Djibouti, Kenya, Niger, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Madagascar, Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe – were those with the highest number of UN appeals driven by extreme weather events.

Within the countries studied, 48 million people are currently suffering from acute hunger, up from about 21 million people in 2016. Of these, about 18 million people are on the brink of starvation, according to the Oxfam report.

 The profits of fossil fuel companies over 18 days would be enough to fulfil the UN’s $49bn appeal for humanitarian aid this year, the Oxfam report found.

Bucher said: “Leaders of rich polluting countries must live up to their promises to cut emissions. They must pay for adaptation measures and loss and damage in low income countries, as well as immediately inject lifesaving funds to meet the UN appeal to respond to the most impacted countries.” 

Somalia is experiencing its worst drought on record, and 1 million people have been forced to flee, while in Kenya 2.5 million livestock have died and 2.4 million people are going hungry.

Cereal production in Niger has fallen by 40% owing to extreme weather, leaving 2.6 million people in a state of acute hunger, while the desertification of crop and pasture land in Burkina Faso has resulted in more than 3.4 million people in extreme hunger.

Extreme hunger soaring in world’s climate hotspots, says Oxfam | Climate crisis | The Guardian