Asia suffered its hottest year on record in 2020. The mean temperature pushed 1.39C above the 1981-2010 average, according to a report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

“Extreme weather and climate change impacts across Asia in 2020 caused the loss of life of thousands of people, displaced millions of others and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while wreaking a heavy toll on infrastructure and ecosystems,” the WMO said in its State of the Climate in Asia report. “Sustainable development is threatened, with food and water insecurity, health risks and environmental degradation on the rise.”

“Weather and climate hazards, especially floods, storms, and droughts, had significant impacts in many countries of the region,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas. “Combined, these impacts take a significant toll on long-term sustainable development.” 

In 2020 floods and storms affected approximately 50 million people in Asia, resulting in more than 5,000 fatalities.

The report revealed the total annual average losses due to climate-related hazards. China suffered an estimated $238bn, followed by India at $87bn, Japan with $83bn and South Korea on $24bn. But when the size of the economy is considered, the average annual losses are expected to be as high as 7.9% of gross domestic product for Tajikistan, 5.9% for Cambodia and 5.8% for Laos. 

Increased heat and humidity are forecast to lead to an effective loss of outdoor working hours across the continent, with a potential cost of many billions of dollars.

In 2020, average sea surface temperatures reached record high values in the Indian, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Sea surface temperatures and ocean warming in and around Asia are increasing more than the global average. They have been warming at more than triple the average in the Arabian Sea, and parts of the Arctic Ocean.

There are approximately 100,000 square kilometres of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas – the largest volumes of ice outside the polar regions and the source of 10 major Asian rivers.

“Glacier retreat is accelerating and it is projected that glacier mass will decrease by 20 percent to 40 percent by 2050, affecting the lives and livelihoods of about 750 million people in the region,” the report said. “This has major ramifications for global sea level, regional water cycles and local hazards such as landslides and avalanches.”

Asia had hottest year on record in 2020 – UN | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 Asia suffered its hottest year on record in 2020. The mean temperature pushed 1.39C above the 1981-2010 average, according to a report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

“Extreme weather and climate change impacts across Asia in 2020 caused the loss of life of thousands of people, displaced millions of others and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while wreaking a heavy toll on infrastructure and ecosystems,” the WMO said in its State of the Climate in Asia report. “Sustainable development is threatened, with food and water insecurity, health risks and environmental degradation on the rise.”

“Weather and climate hazards, especially floods, storms, and droughts, had significant impacts in many countries of the region,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas. “Combined, these impacts take a significant toll on long-term sustainable development.” 

In 2020 floods and storms affected approximately 50 million people in Asia, resulting in more than 5,000 fatalities.

The report revealed the total annual average losses due to climate-related hazards. China suffered an estimated $238bn, followed by India at $87bn, Japan with $83bn and South Korea on $24bn. But when the size of the economy is considered, the average annual losses are expected to be as high as 7.9% of gross domestic product for Tajikistan, 5.9% for Cambodia and 5.8% for Laos. 

Increased heat and humidity are forecast to lead to an effective loss of outdoor working hours across the continent, with a potential cost of many billions of dollars.

In 2020, average sea surface temperatures reached record high values in the Indian, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Sea surface temperatures and ocean warming in and around Asia are increasing more than the global average. They have been warming at more than triple the average in the Arabian Sea, and parts of the Arctic Ocean.

There are approximately 100,000 square kilometres of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas – the largest volumes of ice outside the polar regions and the source of 10 major Asian rivers.

“Glacier retreat is accelerating and it is projected that glacier mass will decrease by 20 percent to 40 percent by 2050, affecting the lives and livelihoods of about 750 million people in the region,” the report said. “This has major ramifications for global sea level, regional water cycles and local hazards such as landslides and avalanches.”

Asia had hottest year on record in 2020 – UN | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 More than half of Afghanistan’s population is facing acute hunger in one of the world’s largest food crises.

23 million Afghans will be hungry due to conflict, drought and an economic downturn that is severely affecting livelihoods and people’s access to food as a harsh winter looms, the UN has warned; an increase of nearly 35% compared with last year.

“Afghanistan is now among the world’s worst humanitarian crises – if not the worst – and food security has all but collapsed. This winter, millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and starvation,” the World Food Programme’s executive director David Beasley said, adding that “we are on a countdown to catastrophe”.

Foreign aid payments – 40% of the country’s gross domestic product – have ceased and almost $10bn (£7.3bn) of Afghan central bank assets have been frozen.

 Urban residents, for the first time, suffer similar rates of food insecurity to rural communities; a shifting pattern of hunger in the country. In the southern city of Kandahar, the malnutrition ward at Mirwais hospital was packed with women and children, most of them sharing beds with several others. Although the hospital is the biggest health facility in southern Afghanistan, it is poorly equipped. More than 2,000 health clinics across the country have closed due to lack of funds.

In Kabul’s Indira Gandhi children’s hospital, the biggest paediatric clinic in the country, doctors said about a dozen children were arriving each day, even though the city’s markets were still stocked with food.

“We don’t have money to afford it,” said Fereshta, a 30-year-old mother. 

Cash is largely unavailable, and many government employees are waiting for unpaid salaries.

Only 5% of households have enough to eat every day, the UN said. 

The Taliban launched a ‘wheat-for-work’ scheme, saying it would employ 40,000 casual labourers in Kabul who would be paid in wheat instead of cash. During the initiative, set to last for two months, the Taliban pledged to distribute 11,600 tonnes of wheat in the capital.

Many families who fled fighting before the Taliban takeover can’t afford to go back home and remain in makeshift camps with no source of income. 

About 3.5 million people remain displaced within the country.

‘Countdown to catastrophe’: half of Afghans face hunger this winter – UN | Hunger | The Guardian

 Philip Dunne, the chairman of the cross-party environmental audit committee explained, “Encouraging announcements of investment in green sectors of the economy are very welcome but the government admits that claims about green jobs lack explanation and data on how the targets will be achieved.” Dunne said. “Monitoring the sectors and regions where the jobs are needed, and rebooting careers advice that demystifies green jobs, is critical if we are to meet our environmental goals.”

The UK’s net zero strategy, claims to support up to 440,000 jobs by 2030, should have been used to define and measure what green jobs are, the committee said, and called for a detailed action delivery plan. 

The government’s lack of understanding showed up in the green homes grant voucher scheme, where it failed to engage with the sector to develop the skills needed, leading to contractors making staff redundant as consumers awaited confirmation of vouchers.

 Kevin Bentley, the chairman of the LGA’s people and places board, said “Councils know where and in what sectors these jobs will be. It now needs the levers to work with partners to build a skilled and experienced workforce which is crucial to the government meeting its net zero targets and ‘levelling up’ ambitions.

Cross-party MPs deride government’s ‘inconsistent’ green jobs policy | Green politics | The Guardian

Despite its pledges, the British government, according to its own politicians, cannot deliver a coherent and cohesive policy.

It has been the practice of the blog to occasionally post articles from non-World Socialist Movement members if it is thought that the content holds sufficient merit that it should reach a wider audience.

 We may not endorse everything stated in the article nor accept the views and opinions expressed on other topics.

John Spritzler is a Boston-based activist involved with the New Democracy group that now publishes content on the People for Democratic Revolution website.

The following is a partial transcript of an e-mail exchange Spritzler had with his local Boston Jewish Voice for Peace chapter where he explains that in his view the purpose and motive of the Israeli government’s violence against Palestinians are not to make Jewish-Israelis safe but to enable the Jewish-Israeli ruling class of Israel to control (using the fear of the Palestinian bogeyman) Israeli working-class Jews whom it oppresses.

First: Most of the general public, to their credit, want nothing to do with anything that they perceive to be “against the Jews,” i.e., anti-semitic.

​

Second: The main Zionist Big Lie–the PILLAR of Zionist propaganda–is that the Israeli government is about protecting Jews from harm and that the violence it uses against Palestinians is only what is required for it to accomplish this.

Third: Because most people believe the Zionist Big Lie (about the Israeli government protecting Jews from harm) they also agree with former Harvard President Larry Summers’s assertion that anti-Zionism–because it criticizes what the Israeli government does to protect Jews from harm–is antisemitic in effect if not intent.

​

Fourth: The only way to win over the great majority of the public to support the anti-Zionist movement is to persuasively (and truthfully!) refute the Zionist Big Lie, as my article (at https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-s-government-attacks-jews-to) has been proven to do even with Jews who were passionately pro-Israel before reading it. My article proves that the Israeli government treats Palestinians like dirt not simply to grab more land from them but FOR THE PURPOSE of making them be so angry at Israel that they will be perceived by Israeli Jews as a frightening bogeyman enemy–an “existential threat”–so that the Israeli government can pretend to be protecting Jews from their “real enemy” (Palestinians) and thereby prevent working class Israeli Jews from seriously challenging the power of the Israeli government while actually economically oppressing working class Israeli Jews horribly in order to enrich the billionaire Israeli upper class. Jews who were passionately pro-Israel change their mind after reading my article and see the Israeli government as their enemy, not the protector of Jews. And non-Jews likewise change their mind because they see that it is not antisemitic to oppose the Israeli government but is actually antisemitic to support it.

​

Fifth: Until we persuasively refute the Zionist Big Lie, the anti-Zionist movement will remain a minority movement that the U.S. government will therefore be able to ignore and thus continue to give enormous support to the Israeli government. The anti-Zionist movement will remain a minority movement because it asks people to choose between “supporting Palestinians” or “supporting Jews” and most, in order to support Jews and avoid doing what they believe would be antisemitic, will oppose the anti-Zionist movement.

​

Sixth: It is an unfortunate fact that, having done my due diligence to try to find a single prominent anti-Zionist person or organization that is refuting the Zionist Big Lie (note that merely pointing out that Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews are discriminated against in Israel does not refute the Zionist Big Lie; the truth is that ALL working class Israeli Jews are oppressed by the Israeli government, including Holocaust survivors who are Ashkenazi Jews of course) I have not found a single one. Not a single one! As long as the Zionist Big Lie goes un-refuted, Zionism will prevail. (If you know of a prominent person or organization that is refuting the Zionist Big Lie, please let me know so I can get in touch with them and help them.)

​

Seventh: I hope JVP will devote serious and energetic efforts to refuting the Zionist Big Lie. Otherwise Zionism will prevail.I trust you agree that the idea expressed here is extremely important for all JVP members to hear and discuss…

…I am asking the JVP to persuasively refute the Zionist Big Lie that enables Zionism to maintain the support of a majority of the U.S. public. The Zionist Big Lie says Israeli government violence against Palestinians is for the purpose of protecting Jews from harm. To persuasively refute this Big Lie one must show that the real purpose of the Israeli government’s violence against Palestinians is to enable the billionaire ruling class of Israel to control Israeli working class Jews whom it oppresses terribly in order to enrich itself at their expense.

​

Here are some simple yes or no questions that I would like to hear your answer to:

​

Question #1. Do you agree that the purpose of Israeli government violence against Palestinians is to enable the billionaire ruling class of Israel to control Israeli working class Jews whom it oppresses terribly in order to enrich itself at their expense?

​

Question #2. If you answered No to Question #1, then Do you agree that the true purpose of Israeli government violence against Palestinians–whatever it actually is–is NOT to protect Jews from harm?

​

Question #3. If you answered No to Question #2, then Do you agree with the Zionist claim that Israeli government violence against Palestinians is for the purpose of protecting Jews from harm?

​

Question #4. If you answered Yes to either Question #1 or #2, then Do you want JVP to directly and persuasively refute the Zionist Big Lie by showing that the purpose of Israeli government violence against Palestinians is NOT to protect Jews from harm?

​

Question #5. If you did not answer Yes to either Question #1 or #2, then Do you agree that JVP’s opposition to Israeli government violence against Palestinians is opposition to violence the purpose of which is to protect Jews from harm? (Note: If you answer No here, then I challenge you to defend your answer because, after answering No to both Question #1 and #2, it is illogical. If you answer Yes here, then you are essentially agreeing with former Harvard President, Larry Summers, who said that anti-Zionism is antisemitic in effect if not intent; this argument is what keeps a majority of the U.S. public in the pro-Israel camp, of course, and if it is not refuted then Zionism will prevail.)

​

Question #6. If you answered Yes to Question #5 (after answering No to both Question #1 and #2), then Do you intend to win over a majority of the U.S. public to the anti-Zionism side in spite of the fact (that you agree with) that the anti-Zionism side opposes the violence that the Israeli government uses to protect Jews from harm?…

​

John Spritzler

With the climate crises, the worse-case scenarios begin with the triggering of invisible climate tripwires known as tipping points.

“Climate tipping points are a game-changing risk — an existential threat — and we need to do everything within our power to avoid them,” said Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter. “Just because tipping points are challenging to predict doesn’t mean they can be ignored,” Lenton said.

An analogy is to lean back in a chair balancing on two legs and there is a threshold beyond which you irrevocably crash to the floor. That portal between two stable states — in this case, an upright versus a fallen-over chair — is a tipping point, and Earth’s complex, interlocking climate system is full of them. Planet-altering tipping points have different temperature thresholds. Scientists know these tripwires are there, but not exactly where they lie. More unsettling is how easily efforts to eliminate carbon pollution could be overwhelmed by the changes set in motion.

“We have seen a number of tipping points already in coral reefs and polar systems, and more are likely in the near term,” the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a draft report on climate impacts, due out in February. “Abrupt responses and tipping points of the climate system… cannot be ruled out,” the UN’s climate science advisory body now warns.

In most cases, reversing the changes set in motion would be beyond the grasp of humanity for many generations, if not millennia.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), explained, 

“Planetary machinery — the monsoon system, ocean circulation, the jet stream, the big ecosystems — abounds with non-linear systems,” referring to the potential for abrupt, dramatic change. “That means you have so many points of no return.”

Scientists count about 15 significant tipping points in the planet’s climate system. Some are regional, others are global, all are interconnected.

Those most vulnerable to global warming and closest to a point of no return are tropical coral reefs, the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, alpine glaciers, Arctic summer sea ice and the Amazon forest.

Scientists cannot rule out the possibility that the AMOC will stall altogether, as it has in the past. If this happened, European winters would become much harsher and sea levels in the North Atlantic basin could rise substantially.

For example, accelerating melt-off from the Greenland ice sheet is almost certainly slowing down the conveyor belt of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This, in turn, could push Earth’s tropical rain belt southward and weaken the African and Asian monsoons, upon which hundreds of millions depend for rain-fed crops. Scientists cannot rule out the possibility that the AMOC will stall altogether, as it has in the past. If this happened, European winters would become much harsher and sea levels in the North Atlantic basin could rise substantially.

Johan Rockstrom, PIK director, said a 2C cap on warming was “not a social or economic choice, it is actually a planetary boundary. The moment that the Earth system flips over from being self-cooling — which it still is — to self-warming, that is the moment that we lose control.” 

Climate scientists fear tipping points (maybe you should too) – France 24

  In  Cape Town, South Africa,  two warehouses have been converted into a number of airlocked sterile rooms where young scientists are assembling and calibrating the equipment needed to create a coronavirus vaccine. Over the objections of the original developers, The Cape Town initiative is intended to expand access to the novel messenger RNA technology that Moderna, as well as Pfizer and German partner BioNTech, used in their vaccines. If the team in South Africa succeeds in making a version of Moderna’s vaccine, the information will be publicly released for use by others.

 Dr. Tom Frieden, the former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has described the world as “being held hostage” by Moderna and Pfizer, whose vaccines are considered the most effective against COVID-19. The novel mRNA process uses the genetic code for the spike protein of the coronavirus and is thought to trigger a better immune response than traditional vaccines.

It’s a last-resort effort to make vaccine doses available for people going without because of the refusal of Big Pharma and the World Trade Organization to temporary rescind intellectual property laws.

 “We are doing this for Africa at this moment, and that drives us,” said Emile Hendricks, a 22-year-old biotechnologist for Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, the company trying to reproduce the Moderna shot. “We can no longer rely on these big superpowers to come in and save us.”

With the approval and assistance of the World Health Organization, he and his colleagues are applying reverse engineering — recreating vaccines from fragments of publicly available information — as one of the few remaining ways to redress the power imbalances of the pandemic.

 Only 0.7% of vaccines have gone to low-income countries so far, while nearly half have gone to wealthy countries. The U.N.-backed effort to equitably allot vaccines globally, known as COVAX, has failed to alleviate severe shortages in poor countries. Donated doses are coming in at a fraction of what is needed to fill the gap. Meanwhile, pressure for drug companies to share vaccines has led nowhere.

 After pleading with drugmakers to share their formulas,  raw materials and technological know-how, some poorer countries are done waiting.

Afrigen Managing Director Petro Terblanche said the Cape Town company is aiming to have a version of the Moderna vaccine ready for testing in people within a year and scaled up for commercial production not long after.“We have a lot of competition coming from Big Pharma. They don’t want to see us succeed.”

Moderna has not offered to help outside companies to make its mRNA shot.  The Medicines Patent Pool repeatedly tried but failed to convince Pfizer and BioNTech to even discuss sharing their formulas.

Zoltan Kis, an expert in messenger RNA vaccines at the University of Sheffield, said reproducing Moderna’s vaccine is “doable” but the task would be far easier if the company shared its expertise. Kis estimated the process involves fewer than a dozen major steps. But certain procedures are tricky, such as sealing the fragile messenger RNA in lipid nanoparticles, he said. “It’s like a very complicated cooking recipe,” he said. “Having the recipe would be very, very helpful, and it would also help if someone could show you how to do it.”

“The enemy to these corporations is losing their potential profit down the line,” Joia Mukherjee, chief medical officer of the global health nonprofit Partners in Health, said.

Africa tries to end vaccine inequity by replicating its own (apnews.com)

Burnley has one of the largest proportions of adults on universal credit in the country. About one in five adults of working age in Burnley depend on universal credit Burnley had registered the highest rate of infection in England, something partly traced to its high levels of poverty and overcrowded housing. Two years ago the town elected its first Conservative MP in more than 100 years. 

Pastor Mick Fleming who runs the Church on the Street that operates a food bank, advice on benefits plus help with homelessness and addiction, explains,  “There’s still the need for food, but the big issue is people’s mental health. That’s spiralled out of control. The lack of resource, and the lack of hope because of that – you get more suicides.” He has also seen an increase in alcoholism. “That’s due to the pandemic. Many, many people have lost money and relationships and businesses because of Covid. And the timeframe between when help’s needed and when people might get it – in that gap, people die. That’s something we see more of.”

In regard to the cuts in the Universal Credit, Pastor Fleming pointed out, “I’ve seen an increase in fear. People are like: ‘How am I going to manage without this money?’ Again, it’s to do with mental health. Anxiety. It’s real, real stuff. It’s not just taking 20 quid off somebody. And 40% of the people getting the money taken away are working. So it’s people who work as carers asking me for food parcels. Paid workers who are looking after people, needing access to food.”

‘We’ve been hammered’: on the breadline in Burnley | Poverty | The Guardian

When it comes to addressing the climate crises, many politicians are talking the talk but few are actually walking the walk.

 Biden is just one of several politicians who have promised to deliver policies to slow the advance of global warming. There has been no Green New Deal. Biden may say he listens to climate activists such as the Sunrise Movement but he is long overdue in meeting their demands. Biden’s government has little to show other than lip-service rhetoric.  If Biden is indeed a climate champion and the planet’s great hope, he appears to be punch-drunk and bout to be counted out. 

His administration is on track to approve the most drilling permits on federal land since George W. Bush was in office. The U.S. is currently the world’s largest producer and consumer of oil and gas.

 Biden could declare climate change a national emergency which would open up vast federal resources and capabilities. He could revoke the permits for pipeline constructions (Line 3, Line 5, and Mountain Valley.)

Many official members of the administration have ties to the oil and gas industry.

Amos Hochstein was a marketing executive for the fossil fuel company Tellurian. Now, Hochstein is essentially promoting American gas internationally as the State Department’s senior adviser for energy security. Susan Rice, Obama’s director of the Domestic Policy Council has had strong financial ties to the fossil fuel industry, holding stock in Enbridge (the Canadian oil and gas company). Rice has been ordered by federal ethics regulators, aware of the conflict of interest, to divest her holdings. Biden also nominated Neil MacBride to be general counsel of the Treasury Department. MacBride formerly worked at the corporate law firm Davis Polk, where he sued the Treasury Department on behalf of Exxon. Biden is hiring a lot of people who have lobbied or they worked for big law firms that represented oil and gas firms. Biden has given government positions to lawyers from the law firm currently used by Chevron, Gibson Dunn, to executive positions. These include Jose Fernandez (under-secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment), Stuart Delery (deputy White House counsel) and Avi Garbow (senior counsellor to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator — a job Garbow has since left).

A matter of employing a fox to catch a fox? We think not, but suggest simply another instance of the revolving door practice where corporations acquire political influence. 

Biden holds tremendous influence on the global economic stage, with veto power in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and an outsized role in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. So far the U.S. has been reluctant to use it to drive action on climate change. Biden could start by acting decisively on a technology transfer and waiving intellectual property rights for green technologies. Biden could use his weight to reduce, at least, if not outright cancel the sovereign debt that is an oppressive financial burden on so many Global South governments in introducing infrastructure measures to mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Biden holds as much credibility as Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil when it comes to keeping true to environmental pledges. Truth is found in action, not words. 

Adapted from here

Joe Biden is in no position to lecture the world on climate change | openDemocracy