“…Despite unprecedented scenes on our screens this summer of wildfires obliterating entire streets in English villages, there are still those who refuse to accept that global heating is a thing. These people call themselves climate skeptics, but they are deniers pure and simple, and almost invariably of the libertarian hard right. Climate breakdown offends their worldview, as they see it as a threat to the free-market, capitalist framework that they worship as a god. Indeed, it is a threat to capitalism, and capitalism will not tackle the climate emergency, not survive it. No system predicated on greed and short-term profit, rather than the greater good, will prevail against the storm that is coming, and, ultimately, the deniers will reap the whirlwind along with everyone else…” – Bill McGuire, volcanologist and Emeritus Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London.

https://truthout.org/articles/capitalism-wont-fix-the-climate-crisis-it-will-also-not-survive-it/

 Is it 30 years already? Perhaps it does not seem as long as that because the conflict is frozen, as though it persists in some eternal realm outside the flow of time. The positions of the two sides remain irreconcilable. The main change followed in the wake of the Russian-Georgian war of 2008, when Russia and a handful of its allies – Syria, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the Pacific island of Nauru – recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. This change, however, made a diplomatic resolution of the conflict even more distant: now Abkhazia and South Ossetia are even less likely to surrender their statehood, while Tbilisi is as adamant as ever in asserting its territorial integrity within the borders of Soviet Georgia.

Of course, time flows on. There have been many important changes in the world situation in the course of these 30 years – changes that cannot but affect the Caucasus in general and Georgia and Abkhazia in particular. In no sphere is this truer than in that of climate change.

Global warming is very much in evidence both in Georgia and in Abkhazia. A farmer on Shiraki Plain in eastern Georgia (Kakheti) reports a temperature of 18 degrees Centigrade in January 2019 – a time of year when ‘its normally below freezing’ [1]. One result is more crop diseases. Meanwhile, the average year-round temperature in Abkhazia has increased by 1.8 degrees Centigrade in recent years [2].

While both eastern Georgia and Abkhazia are getting warmer, precipitation has changed in opposite directions in the two regions. The farmer on Shiraki Plain notes a sharp decline in rainfall and consequently in the level of groundwater. ‘There was no snow at all this year,’ he reports. Drought, exacerbated by ‘strong dry winds that erode fields and scatter seeds,’ has put paid to the traditionally high soil fertility of the area.

In the Abkhazian capital of Sukhum, by contrast, the amount of rainfall has roughly doubled since the turn of the century, when it was already at a high level – a meter and a half (1,500 millimeters) per year. ‘The water level is rising in rivers, eroding the banks and destroying the surrounding infrastructure… We see that long-term rainfall creates serious problems for agriculture [in Abkhazia].’ Presumably the section of the Black Sea littoral to the south that belongs to western Georgia faces the same problem.

So eastern Georgia endures drought while Abkhazia and western Georgia face flooding — consistent with the worldwide pattern of increasing spatial concentration of precipitation. Is there some way to channel excess rainfall from west to east, across the rugged terrain in between?

Much worse is certainly to come in the next 30 years. Expanding areas of the earth’s surface will turn into uninhabitable deserts and swampland. Low-lying coastal cities will be inundated. Extreme weather events will become ever more extreme and ever more pervasive.

Given the rising threat of climate chaos, what sense does it make to continue to waste our attention on trivia like ‘territorial integrity’ and the location of state borders? Let’s decide territorial disputes by arbitration – if the sides can agree on an arbiter – or by wrestling matches between champions, or just by tossing a coin. We might even dismantle existing states and set up a world administration. Then we can focus single-mindedly on the real problems facing our species and our planet.   

Notes

[1] See the website of the UN Environment Program: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/restoring-fortune-fields-georgia

[2] Talk by Roman Dbar, director of the Institute of Ecology of Abkhazia, at the Discussion Club of the World Abaza Congress, February 28, 2020. See: https://abaza.org/en/global-climate-change-and-the-role-of-abkhazia-in-these-processes-were-discussed-at-the-wac-club

Stephen Shenfield

Specialist on politics and society in Russia and the post-Soviet region. For several years he produced the Research and Analytical Supplement to Johnson’s Russia List. USA.

 India does not have a national policy or a law to deal with refugees. The country is, however, not a signatory to international laws such as the 1951 UN Convention and the 1967 Protocol, which secure the rights of refugees to seek asylum and protect them from being sent back to life-threatening places. Refugees entering the country without a visa are treated as illegal immigrants under the Foreigners Act or the Indian Passport Act. An absence of documents can mean that refugees coming to India have no access to basic facilities like healthcare, education and employment.

In 2019, the Modi government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which offers amnesty and expedites the path to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim “illegal immigrants” from the neighbouring countries, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were provided an allowance by the state government and allowed to seek jobs. India has for years supported the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees who followed him into exile and sought asylum in the country.

Hours after Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri’s tweet that there are plans to provide housing and security to the Rohingya community in the capital, New Delhi, the government said the refugees would be held in detention centres until they were deported.

According to Human Rights Watch, an estimated 40,000 Rohingyas are in India – at least 20,000 of them are registered with the UN Human Rights Commission.

 The number of people at risk of starvation in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa has increased to 22 million, the UN’s world food programme (WFP) says.

“This number will continue to climb, and the severity of hunger will deepen if the next rainy season … fails and the most vulnerable people do not receive humanitarian relief,” WFP said in a statement. “Needs will remain high into 2023 and famine is now a serious risk, particularly in Somalia”, where nearly half the population of 15 million is seriously hungry.

Years of insufficient rainfall across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia have caused the worst drought in 40 years and conditions akin to famine in the hardest-hit areas, aid groups say.

Four failed rainy seasons has killed millions of livestock, destroyed crops and forced 1.1 million people from their homes in search of food and water.

“The world needs to act now to protect the most vulnerable communities from the threat of widespread famine in the Horn of Africa,” the WFP executive director, David Beasley, said on Friday. “There is still no end in sight to this drought crisis, so we must get the resources needed to save lives and stop people plunging into catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation.”

At the start of 2022, WFP warned that 13 million people across the three countries faced starvation, and appealed for donors to open their purses at a time of great need. But funds were slow in coming, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine among other crises drawing attention from the disaster in the Horn, humanitarian workers said.

Horn of Africa drought places 22 million people at risk of starvation, says UN | Africa | The Guardian

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that there was “still a long way to go” in resolving the global food crisis. He was on a visit to the Ukrainian port of Odesa, where grain exports are moving after a months-long blockade. Guterres also spoke of the need for unimpeded access to Russian food and fertilizers, which are subject to export delays because of sanctions.

“It is time for massive and generous support so developing countries can purchase the food from this and other ports — and people can buy it,” Guterres said.

The climate measure act Biden signed bypasses the administration’s concerns about emissions and guarantees new drilling opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

It boosts oil and gas interests by mandating leasing of vast areas of public lands and off the nation’s coasts. The law reinstates within 30 days the 2,700-square miles (6,950-square kilometers) of Gulf leases that had been withheld. It ensures companies like Chevron will have the chance to expand And it locks renewables and fossil fuels together. Chevron executives have  predicted continued growth in the Gulf and tied that directly to being able “to lease and acquire additional acreage.”

If the Biden administration wants solar and wind on public lands, it must offer new oil and gas leases first. The measure’s critics say that’s holding renewables hostage unless the fossil fuel industry gets its way. As a result, U.S. oil and gas production and emissions from burning fuels could keep growing.

 The leasing provisions mark a failure in efforts by environmentalists and social justice advocates to impose a nationwide leasing ban. The movement’s high point came when Biden followed campaign pledges to end new drilling on federal lands with an order his first week in office suspending lease sales.

Explained Andrew Gillick with Enverus, an energy analytics company whose data is used by industry and government agencies, “The folks that think oil and gas will be gone in 10 years may not be thinking through what this means.” The result would be more planet-warming carbon dioxide — up to 110 million tons (100 million metric tons) annually.

The increase in oil and gas emissions could be as much as 77 million to 110 million tons (70 to 100 million metric tons) of additional carbon dioxide annually by 2030 from new leasing, according to economist Brian Prest with the research group Resources for the Future.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said that the government was “barreling full-steam ahead” without adequately considering global emission increases.

There’s uncertainty about how quickly other pieces of the bill could bring emission cuts. Wind and solar construction could run into the supply chain problems hindering many economic sectors. And technology to capture and store carbon dioxide is still being refined and is in limited use.

In Louisiana’s St. James Parish, where petrochemical plants dominate the landscape, environmental justice activist Sharon Lavigne said the legislation will allow pollution from fossil fuels to keep harming her community.

“That’s just like saying they’re going to continue to poison us, going to continue to cause us cancer,” said Lavigne.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-technology-science-oil-and-gas-industry-climate-environment-28df40ad9ebb33f4447815b6593673b3

 On August 16, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 into law. Some progressives have been complaining that Manchin watered the bill down and that Sinema watered it down even more.

Asset manager Steven Rattner, who served as counselor to the secretary of the treasury under President Barack Obama argues that it essentially leaves the United States’ super-rich unscathed.

The Inflation Reduction Act, Rattner notes, contains “no increase in the egregiously low corporate income tax rate, no reversal in overly generous deductions for businesses” and “no rise in income tax or capital gains rates paid by the wealthy.”

“Wealthy individuals escaped essentially unaffected by the new legislation,” Rattner observes. “Ms. Sinema even objected to closing the indefensible carried interest loophole, through which many private equity executives and some hedge fund managers pay only a 23.8 percent tax rate on gains achieved on their share of investors’ capital…. On the expenditure side of the ledger, we lost the chance to enact many other worthy initiatives, like continuation of the expanded child tax credit; tuition-free community college; parental leave and an augmented earned-income tax credit.”

 Rattner laments. “It was a missed opportunity of extraordinary scale.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to meet with representatives from drug manufacturers, pharmacies, and state health departments on August 30 to “map out” how to shift the bill for coronavirus jabs and therapeutics from the federal government to individuals, according to The Wall Street Journal. It reported, “Switching vaccine purchasing to the commercial market would mean that each insurer and pharmacy benefit manager would be negotiating with drug manufacturers and prices would likely be higher than what the federal government has paid, said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Insurers would have to start paying for the vaccines, he said, likely raising premiums.”

“We’ve known at some point we’d need to move over into the commercial market, and we’re approaching that time now,” said Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary at HHS for preparedness and response. 

Tahir Amin, an intellectual property lawyer and co-executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK), described the Biden administration’s plan as a “recipe for disaster, unless you are a pharmaceutical company or other profit center in the healthcare market.”

How one senator ensured the wealthy would be ‘essentially unaffected’ by spending bill: ex-treasury adviser – Alternet.org

‘Terrible Idea’: Biden Preparing to Shift Costs of Covid Treatments, Vaccines to Patients (commondreams.org)

 The latest State of Global Air report, published by US-based research organisation Health Effects Institute (HEI) on Wednesday, covers more than 7,000 cities around the world. It is the first such study to focus only on urban air pollution.

The world’s biggest cities are suffering from extremely hazardous levels of toxic air, which has killed more than 1.7 million people.

State of air report: 1.7 million deaths in cities linked to air pollution with Delhi ranked worst in world – report | The Independent

 Middle Eastern states are to land a $1.3tn (£1.09tn) windfall from extra oil revenues over the next four years, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF said it expected oil and gas exporters in the region, notably the Gulf states, to benefit from high prices and opportunities to ramp up their market share.

The windfall is expected to benefit some of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds including the Qatar Investment Authority, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the Kuwait Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and ADQ. Gulf states are expected to spend the proceeds of the oil boom on building huge infrastructure projects, as well as investing overseas.

Middle East states in line for $1.3tn windfall from extra oil revenues | Oil | The Guardian

 Worsening harvests, infertile soil and increasing food poverty are affecting the majority of small farmers across the globe, especially in the Global South. But the climate and food crises are not isolated phenomena. They are the result of a global capitalist system that has prioritised big corporate agricultural profits over people and the planet.

“Most farmers can no longer produce adequate food for their families,” says Vladimir Chilinya, a Zambian coordinator for FIAN International, an organisation that campaigns for the democratisation of food and nutrition.“Profit-making entities control our food systems… including the production and distribution of seed.” He explained, “Under recent policy changes, priority is given to maize production. This is one of the key drivers for monocropping, which is responsible for the reduction in varieties of available foods in Zambia.” 

FIAN is documenting how the corporate control of agriculture is weakening food security. Seed systems have gone from being cooperative-led (which gives farmers more agency and fair prices) to being corporate-led (which prioritises profits).

In May, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the number of people living in famine conditions has increased by more than 500 percent since 2016, and more than 270 million people are now living in extreme food insecurity.

While Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions on Russia has exacerbated this crisis climate change and capitalism are the primary engines behind this global food emergency.

By 2030, global warming will have diminished the world’s average agricultural production by more than a fifth. 

In Zambia, the maize harvest for 2021/22 is expected to be down by a quarter, thanks to droughts and flash floods between 2019 and 2021,