The new U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, report revealed that a rising number of people worldwide are fleeing violence, insecurity, and the effects of the climate emergency, with over 84 million relocating within and beyond their home countries during the first half of this year.

Internally displaced people (IDP) make up more than half of the agency’s total tally at 48 million. According to UNHCR, from January to June, there were also 26.6 million refugees as well as 4.4 million asylum-seekers and 3.9 million Venezuelans displaced abroad, which is its own category.

The actual number of stateless people in the world remains unknown due to a lack of accurate data. 

“The international community is failing to prevent violence, persecution, and human rights violations, which continue to drive people from their homes,” said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. “In addition, the effects of climate change are exacerbating existing vulnerabilities in many areas hosting the forcibly displaced.” He pointed out that “It is the communities and countries with the fewest resources that continue to shoulder the greatest burden in protecting and caring for the forcibly displaced.” 

Developing countries hosted 85% of refugees and Venezuelans displaced abroad;73% of refugees and displaced Venezuelans lived in neighboring countries;Asylum-seekers submitted 555,400 new claims, with the United States receiving the most applications—72,900;Turkey hosted the world’s largest refugee population at 3.7 million people;16,300 refugees were resettled during the first half of this year;1.1 million people returned to their areas or nations of origin; and68% of all refugees—including those from Venezuela—came from just five countries.

The countries from which the most people fled were Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar. Some of those nations also have large amounts of internal displacement.

More than a million people were newly displaced within both Congo and Ethiopia. 

Globally, the nations with the next highest new internal displacements were Afghanistan, Myanmar, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Mozambique, and Burkina Faso.

Africa witnessed the most new internal displacements as conflict and violence flared in several countries across the continent,” says the report, specifically noting the impact of Civil War on Ethiopia’s Tigray region, problems in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado, and “a crisis of governance and instability in rural areas of Burkina Faso linked to the presence of armed insurgents.”

According to the report:

“At the end of June 2021, the number of pending individual asylum applications of all types stood at 4.4 million, nearly 7% more than the 4.1 million ending at the end of 2020. This trend is concerning, as lengthy backlogs heighten the risk that individuals with international protection needs will not be able to access protection and solutions in a timely and effective manner. If backlogs become protracted and asylum-seekers wait multiple years for a final determination of their claims without meaningful access to rights or certainty about their future, there will be negative consequences for everyone, including erosion of public confidence in the system, increased costs, and difficulties in returning rejected applicants.”

Over 84 Million People Forcibly Displaced by Climate Emergency, Insecurity, and Violence (commondreams.org)

To ensure a harmonious relationship with our environment only a coherent policy can abolish the gloom and uncertainty which has been made possible by insane and irrational policies which result from an unplanned and blind economic and social system, which is what capitalism is. Capitalism is different from all preceding class societies in that its driving force is accumulation for the sake of accumulation. Commodity production has become an end in itself under capitalism. Goods are produced for their exchange value, not their use-value.

Under capitalism, there are no limits to exploitation as each unit of capital has to compete with all the others. Surplus value in the form of profits is reinvested in the production process by each capitalist rather than consumed. The logic of capitalist competition forces each capitalist to obtain the maximum profit possible; otherwise, they will fall behind their competitors and go out of business. Production is therefore organised around the short term and the effect on nature, negative or otherwise is not a concern for the capitalist. Air pollution caused by a factory is not treated as a cost of production internal to that factory, rather it is viewed as an external cost to be borne by nature and society.

The fight against climate change and transition to renewable energy sources mean breaking with a capitalist economy based on the endless expansion of production no matter the cost. It’s time we made conscious and collective decisions. 

The World Socialist Movement clearly identifies the culprit: the capitalist system with its insatiable greed and irrepressible need for growth. If we want to save the world, we must dismantle capitalism itself. instead of manufacturing products for profit, we will produce to satisfy human needs with useful, durable, repairable, adaptable products, not throwaway consumer goods. A radical break with the capitalist system is required.

Socialism is all about planning at the local, regional, continental, and world levels with major decisions that could be made by the population or by committees composed of elected delegates. We replace the so-called “invisible hand” of the market with the very visible decision-making of the collective will of working people. Rather than argue against the usual environmentalist approach that focuses on individual choice and lifestyle consumption, the WSM suggests questioning the logic of capitalist production itself.

Businesses are compelled to produce more in order to sell more to maximise profits and it employs a vast elaborate advertising industry to ensure customers buy more and with built-in obsolescence, those customers are obliged to constantly re-purchase replacements. Capitalism is a hugely wasteful economy that would not be necessary with rationally organised production.

Given the urgency of the climate emergency, there couldn’t be an any better argument than a mass social revolution that changes the priorities of the system. A reformist approach that advocates piecemeal gradual change can not even begin to seriously solve the scale of the problem. The WSM envisages a future socialist society that would prioritise human needs instead of profit and restructure the economy and energy and transport usage in such a way that is sustainable and beneficial to both humanity and our surroundings. Frequently, the objection to all the practical measures to reduce global warming by mainstream economists is based on cost.

Such financial reasons will not apply inside socialism. Nor will population numbers which are often mistakenly viewed as a problem prove to be an obstacle. Each new life will not be treated as an extra mouth to feed but as an additional brain and pair of helping hands for the betterment of humanity and nature.

 AstraZeneca has started to move away from providing its Covid-19 vaccine to countries on a not-for-profit basis. The drugs giant has signed a series of for-profit agreements for next year. 

 2021 marks 100 years since the discovery of insulin. Before 1921 the diagnosis of diabetes was a death sentence, with an average life expectancy of fewer than 2 years in young people, who were only kept alive by a starvation regimen that reduced them to walking skeletons.  The discovery of insulin in 1921 was transformative and many patients with diabetes went on to live full and productive lives. Insulin treatment was a ground-breaking scientific and clinical achievement that transformed diabetes care. 

Banting, Best, and Collip sold their patent rights to insulin for the sum of one dollar to guarantee access for anyone who needed insulin. But despite the altruistic sentiments of the discoverers—Banting, Best, Collip, and Macleod—that “insulin belongs to the world”, the lack of access to insulin over the past 100 years reflects an appalling policy and implementation failure when it comes to insulin provision in low-income and middle-income countries.

 537 million adults now live with type 1 or type 2 diabetes worldwide, an increase of 16% or 74 million people. Globally, an estimated 76% of children with type 1 diabetes are unable to stay within the recommended glycaemic ranges, putting them at risk of life-threatening short-term and long-term complications. More than 50% of patients with type 2 diabetes are unable to receive the insulin they need.  Early deaths from type 1 and type 2 diabetes globally have increased by 5% since 2000, in stark contrast to premature deaths from other non-communicable diseases, which have been decreasing. In one 20-year study from Soweto, South Africa, the mortality rate for people with type 1 diabetes was 43%. Globally, around 80% of patients living with diabetes live in low-income and middle-income countries, yet most interested parties continue to pursue a research agenda driven by high-income needs. 

Global production and supply of insulin are dominated by three companies—Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi.  Insulin remains unaffordable for many people. In the USA, a quarter of the 7 million patients taking insulin have reported difficulties in affordability. Documents show a century of controversial pricing practices, including price-fixing, that has led to repeated market failures and continued unnecessary deaths in the USA.  Policy and regulatory processes work to the benefit of a few greedy drug companies rather than serving the needs of people who require insulin. 

Structural racism complicates insulin access pricing for racially marginalised Americans, who are both more likely to be prescribed insulin and more likely to be from low-income, uninsured, or underinsured populations that are unable to pay for it. Racial and ethnic minorities have a higher burden of disease from diabetes, in terms of prevalence, poor glycaemic control, comorbid conditions, diabetes-related complications, and diabetes-related mortality. 

Along with difficulty in getting insulin, many patients do not have access to basic blood glucose monitoring, diagnosis continues to be a problem. In high-income countries advanced technologies, such as insulin analogues, insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitoring, and hybrid closed-loop devices, have become firmly established for diabetes management and treatment. Many believe that closed-loop devices, which adjust insulin infusion largely automatically according to changing glucose values, will soon enable people with type 1 diabetes to lead lives without the continual demands of self-management. 

 In many low-income and middle-income countries, few patients can afford modern insulin analogues let alone devices to record glucose continuously or adjust insulin automatically. The provision of free medicines and glucose monitoring would make a major difference. 

100 years of insulin: a technical success but an access failure – The Lancet

“We by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like something standing outside nature … we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst … ” Engels

What threatens society is a lethal and unpredictable mixture of global warming with associated extreme weather events. The planet only supports life because of its delicate relationships with nature’s ecosystems. The anarchic development of capitalism and the rapacious greed of today’s multinational corporations now threaten this fine balance, which is being disturbed on a massive scale. The ‘Greenhouse Effect’ will make the climate hotter and will have a disastrous effect on agriculture. 

Under capitalism, the tremendous achievements that science has contributed to society have been used and developed in an irrational and unplanned manner which has resulted in many catastrophes. capitalism has proved incapable of using the capacity of modern science and technology to ease the nightmare conditions of the people. Conditions of life so characterised by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy still prevail in my countries. Science and technology have made possible the development of computers and robots, the real ‘energy crisis’ for over many people is to obtain the firewood or charcoal as fuel for cooking and little access to electricity. A searing indictment of  big business has been the devastation of the mighty Amazon rainforest with the blessing of the present Brazilian government 

The destruction of the environment is inevitable in a society dominated by blind market forces and has now reached calamitous proportions. The inherent contradictions, antagonisms and the competition of interests make capitalism absolutely incapable of introducing adequate safeguards against excessive carbon emission pollution. Our survival necessitates the elimination of the blind consumerism that causes us to squander so many of the world’s resources needlessly. We believe in socialism where fulfilment will be found in the relationships among people and not in the consumption of things.

Our enemy is capitalism. In order to fight the enemy and win, we have to understand the enemy. Capitalism dominates our economic system. Under capitalism, a handful who own the factories, the mines, corporate farms, and the banks control the wealth that the majority of the people produce. It is this system that we are fighting. The struggle for a liveable planet is a life-and-death issue. The greed of the corporations has polluted our air, poisoned our waters, and drenched our soil and food with dangerous chemicals. People will have to change how they live and how society is organised. The threat to the environment affects everyone. More and more seas of the world are being increasingly polluted because nations are pursuing policies of plunder, blindly seeking high profits in disregard of the safety of the people. The capitalists have polluted and destroyed the environment as they plundered the mineral wealth of all nations.

Capitalism can never be ‘green’ and ethical shopping in your local high street can never save the world. A business, well-intentioned or not, cannot escape market pressures. Competition squeezes profits and strangles ethics. While the market forces standards down it keep the consumer in the dark. Bogus claims about products go unchecked and unpunished. The capitalist market never creates stable, sustainable relationships. Because it is unplanned and because it is driven by the crude search for profits, the short term interests of particular capitalists will always prevail over the welfare of communities and the countryside. The last line of defence for ‘green capitalists’ is the desperate claim that ‘at least they are doing something’. Yet the kind of lifestyle solution promoted by ‘green capitalists’ betrays a deep pessimism about the environment. It suggests the problems are too big and complex for a real, organised solution. The only hope is that by buying eco-friendly products you are putting off an environmental Armageddon for a few years.

Capitalism is harming the environment. The damage to environmentally important areas of our planet is not caused by scarcity or overpopulation suggesting that people, particularly poor people, were a form of pollution. But there was already enough food in the world to sustain the population twice over. The problem in large areas of the globe is not over-exploitation but under-development. In Africa, only 10 percent of farmland is properly irrigated, and the amount of arable land there could be increased. 

Capitalism compromises our relation to nature. All production decisions are made by a tiny handful of capitalists, not in the interests of humanity, but purely for profit. Environmental concerns are ignored in the short term scramble for profit. The vast majority of the population who want to live in a safe, healthy world, and to enjoy nature, have no control over decisions that affect our lives. Some environmentalists claim that economic growth, or even human society itself, is innately hostile to nature. Modern technology is not in itself destructive.

The market can never be harnessed to develop a harmonious relationship with nature because it depends on its exploitation. Its priority is profit and it will inevitably result in the destruction of the environment.

Despite pledges made at the climate summit COP26, the world is still nowhere near its goals on limiting global temperature rise, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT).

A global water crisis is being ignored at Cop26 to the detriment of billions of people’s lives, according to the charity WaterAid.

A 2016 study found two-thirds of the global population, four billion people, faced water shortages, and many were at increased risk of floods and droughts brought on by the climate crisis.

“The climate crisis is a water crisis at its core,” he said. Rainfall patterns have changed in many parts of the world; “more intense and more frequent floods pollute water sources and destroy crops or homes, while longer and more frequent droughts dry up the springs many people need to survive.”

Water had not had “nearly enough” attention at the climate conference in Glasgow, with urgent action needed, said Tim Wainwright, chief executive of WaterAid.

“The way that climate change affects human beings is almost entirely through water, either too much or too little,” he said. “So why aren’t we talking about water all the time? We need the kind of action on water that we have already happening on the energy transition,” he said Wainwright said very little action was being taken to help affected communities. A WaterAid analysis in 2020 found that water received less than 3% of climate finance overall.

Rising sea levels were introducing salt into water sources in places, and drought was pushing water deep underground in others, he said, forcing people, mostly women, to spend longer and walk further in search of water.

“Water is fundamental to life,” said Wainwright. “It underlies your health, your ability to have an education…Unless action was taken, the future would not be “not worth thinking about”, Wainwright added. “It’s calamitous. A lack of access to water is already killing people … It’s unthinkable not to do something about this. The world has to rise to this challenge.”

“We need a revolution that takes us to zero carbon and we need a revolution that takes us to adapting the world to cope with the climate change that is irreversible,” he said.

There are two billion people, or 1 in 4, who lack access to safe drinking water.

Nearly half the world’s population (3.6 billion people) don’t have adequate sanitation.

6 billion cases of diarrhoea.

12 billion cases of parasitic worms. 

The richest 1% of the world’s people (those earning more than $172,000 a year) produce 15% of the world’s carbon emissions: twice the combined impact of the poorest 50%. On average, they emit over 70 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person every year, 30 times more than we can each afford to release if we’re not to exceed 1.5C of global heating. While the emissions of the world’s middle classes are expected to fall sharply over the next decade, thanks to the general decarbonisation of our economies, the amount produced by the richest will scarcely decline at all: in other words, they’ll be responsible for an even greater share of total CO2. Becoming good global citizens would mean cutting their carbon consumption by an average of 97%.

Even if 90% of the population produced no carbon at all, the anticipated emissions of the richest 10% (those earning over $55,000) across the next nine years would use almost the entire global budget. The disparity in environmental impact mirrors a nation’s inequality. No wonder the prosperous people of the wealthy nations are so keen to seek to shift the blame to China, or on to other people’s birthrates: sometimes it seems they will try anything before attending to their own impacts.

A recent analysis of the lifestyles of 20 billionaires found that each produced an average of over 8,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide: 3,500 times their fair share in a world committed to no more than 1.5C of heating. The major causes are their jets and yachts. A superyacht alone, kept on permanent standby, as some billionaires’ boats are, generates around 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. 

Flying accounts for most of the greenhouse gas emissions of the super-rich, which is why the wealthiest 1% generate roughly half the world’s aviation emissions. 

Bill Gates has an estimated footprint 3,000 times bigger than the good global citizen’s, largely as a result of his collection of jets and helicopters. He claims to “buy green aviation fuel”, but there is no such thing. Biofuels for jets, if widely deployed, would trigger an environmental catastrophe, as so much plant material is required to power a single flight. This means that crops or plantations must displace either food production or wild ecosystems. No other “green” aviation fuels are currently available.

Make extreme wealth extinct: it’s the only way to avoid climate breakdown | George Monbiot | The Guardian

 “HSBC’s public rhetoric on climate change can’t be trusted,” said Adam McGibbon, UK campaign lead at Market Forces. 

A new analysis of projected extraction in the Permian Basin in the U.S. Southwest exposes the extent to which oil and gas executives put humanity’s future in jeopardy. 

“If left unchecked,” the report notes, “the Permian could continue to produce huge amounts of oil, gas, and gas liquids for decades to come. With global markets flush with Permian oil and gas, it can only be harder to steer the world’s economy toward clean energy.”

 Oil Change International, Earthworks, and the Center for International Environmental Law warn that if the drilling and fracking boom that has turned the Permian Basin into “the world’s single most prolific oil and gas field” over the past decade is allowed to persist unabated for the next three decades, it will generate nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide by mid-century. nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide that would be emitted from burning the fossil fuels that corporate executives expect to extract from the Permian Basin by 2050 represent about 10% of the world’s remaining “carbon budget.” Moreover, “scientists studying methane emissions in the Permian Basin estimate that as much as 3.7% of gas production is being vented and leaked into the atmosphere,” the report notes.

Lorne Stockman, research co-director at Oil Change International, said in a statement. “Producers have free rein to pollute and methane is routinely released in vast quantities. Oil exports fuel Permian production growth and today they constitute around 30% of US oil production. While climate science tells us that we must consume 40% less oil in 2030, Permian producers plan to grow production more than 50%” from 2021 to 2030, said Stockman. “This must not happen.”

An effort by global financial giant HSBC to water down an industry climate pledge exemplifies the fact that banks and other profit-driven companies “cannot be trusted” to end their complicity in the human-caused climate emergency, critics charge. HSBC wrote to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA)—the initiative started by Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of England—on behalf of 12 large banks, calling on the alliance to loosen restrictions and delay deadlines in order to keep the banks from having to commit to far-reaching climate action. Writing on behalf of banks including JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America, HSBC asked that the alliance remove from its pledge the list of high-emissions sectors for which banks are required to set net-zero targets for within 18 months of joining the NZBA.

HSBC wanted to make the climate commitments from key sectors— including fossil fuels, agriculture, real estate, and steel—”less rigorous” by delaying new emissions reduction targets until 2025 or even 2030. HSBC also asked that members be required to set net-zero targets only for industries with so-called “credible transition pathways,” which “could be highly subjective.” 

Since “committing” to net-zero financed emissions by 2050 one year ago, HSBC has “helped Saudi Aramco, the world’s most polluting company, raise [$13.9 billion] and Qatar Petroleum raise [$12.4 billion] to fund the expansion of the world’s largest gas field.

“Time and time again we see banks launch voluntary climate initiatives which seem to be aimed purely at reaping PR benefits now, while postponing all concrete action as far into the future as possible,” said Maaike Beenes, climate coordinator at BankTrack.

It’s true that multiple global pledges have emerged from COP26. None are legally binding. Few stand up to scrutiny, and most offer sufficient vagueness to be meaningless, full of small-print and caveats. False solutions are being peddled at the COP such as carbon markets, “smoke and mirrors to avoid  keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

If we continue not acting against the real cause of the climate crisis—the capitalist mode of production and society will carry on towards collapse. The scenario is the most dire ever. There are 816 new oil & gas wells being planned and drilled until the end of the year and in 2022. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It is the way this system operates: just enough propaganda of “ambition” and technofixes to keep fossils flowing as ever, while the climate collapses. If the climate change debate is framed by companies and governments around the terms of net-zero, carbon credits, carbon taxes and offsettings, rather than stopping emissions, when will it ever come to the real problem of the climate crisis? Governments and companies are actively not cutting emissions, but also effectively increasing them. Each and every one of these wells is a crime against humanity.

 The reason why the climate crisis is not being solved is that it means the biggest change in power in the history of humanity

 40 Billion Tons of CO2 by 2050 (commondreams.org)

Critics Say Behind-the-Scene Efforts by HBSC Prove Big Bank Climate Pledges ‘Cannot Be Trusted’ (commondreams.org)

Opinion | Drill, Baby, Drill: Capitalism’s Only Plan for Climate Is Collapse | João Camargo (commondreams.org)