COVID-19 pandemic has not slowed the pace of climate change. Virus-related economic slowdown and lockdowns caused only a temporary downturn in CO2 emissions last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said. 

“There was some thinking that the COVID lockdowns would have had a positive impact on the atmosphere, which is not the case,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said.

 The United in Science 2021 report, which gathers the latest scientific data and findings related to climate change, said global fossil-fuel CO2 emissions between January and July in the power and industry sectors were already back to the same level or higher than in the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. 

Although CO2 emissions from road traffic in 2021 have been below the levels before the pandemic outbreak, concentrations of the major greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming continued to increase, according to the report. 

“We are still significantly off-schedule to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale  reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5C will be impossible, with catastrophic consequences for people and the planet on which we depend.” Guterres said.

UN: Pandemic did not slow advance of climate change | News | DW | 16.09.2021

  U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) released the report (pdf) with the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that warns that the public support mechanisms for agriculture, totaling about $540 billion annually, “are actively steering us away from achieving” the Sustainable Development Goals and the aims of the 2015 Paris agreement. It calls for “repurposing” 87% of this support, or about $470 billion, to meet global environmental and social goals.

Billions of dollars in price incentives and production-related subsidies each year “are inefficient, distort food prices, hurt people’s health, degrade the environment, and are often inequitable, putting big agribusiness ahead of smallholder farmers, a large share of whom are women,” the agencies explained 

“Agricultural policies, while shaping what food is produced, also have impacts well beyond the farm gate,” the report emphasizes, noting the effect on not only nutrition, health, equity, and efficiency but also nature and climate—due to planet-heating emissions; carbon sequestration; soil, freshwater, and forest preservation; and biodiversity loss.

“Repurposing agricultural support to shift our agri-food systems in a greener, more sustainable direction—including by rewarding good practices such as sustainable farming and climate-smart approaches—can improve both productivity and environmental outcomes,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP’s administrator. “It will also boost the livelihoods of the 500 million smallholder farmers worldwide—many of them women—by ensuring a more level playing field.”

Inger Andersen, executive director of  UNEP, said, “By shifting to more nature-positive, equitable, and efficient agricultural support,” Andersen said, “we can improve livelihoods, and at the same time cut emissions, protect and restore ecosystems, and reduce the use of agrochemicals.”

UN Report Calls for ‘Repurposing’ $470 Billion in Agriculture Support to Serve People and Planet | Common Dreams News

Will Big Ag’s lobbyists permit cuts in the generous and lucrative government subsidies provided to industrial farming? 

 In an open letter thousands of academics and scientists from around the world are urging governments to negotiate an international treaty to bring about a rapid and just transition away from coal, oil, and gas—”the main cause of the climate emergency.”

Characterizing the climate crisis as “the greatest threat to human civilization and nature,” the letter notes that “the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—is the greatest contributor to climate change, responsible for almost 80% of carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution.”

The 2,185 experts from 81 countries write: “We, the undersigned, call on governments around the world to adopt and implement a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, as a matter of urgency, to protect the lives and livelihoods of present and future generations through a global, equitable phase out of fossil fuels in line with the scientific consensus to not exceed 1.5ºC of warming.”

Alluding to nuclear treaties created to reduce the threats posed by atomic weapons, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative argues that swiftly phasing out fossil fuel production and expediting the transition to cleaner and healthier alternatives requires “unprecedented international cooperation in three main areas—non-proliferation, global disarmament, and a peaceful, just transition.”

“Air pollution caused by fossil fuels was responsible for almost 1 in 5 deaths worldwide in 2018,” says the letter, which emphasizes that while the negative impacts “derived from the extracting, refining, transporting, and burning of fossil fuels… are often borne by vulnerable and marginalized communities,” coal, oil, and gas corporations “concentrat[e] power and wealth into the hands of a select few, bypassing the communities in which extraction occurs.”

“The world’s leading scientists could not be clearer,” said Rebecca Byrnes, deputy director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “Coal, oil, and gas are the primary cause of the climate crisis and are responsible for nearly one in every five deaths worldwide.”

“This is a global emergency,” NASA climate scientist and signatory Peter Kalmus said in a statement. “It requires global coordination to quickly eliminate the immediate cause: deadly fossil fuels.”

 The researchers’ letter calls for the development of a new treaty that establishes “a binding global plan” to:

End new expansion of fossil fuel production in line with the best available science as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Environment Programme;

Phase out existing production of fossil fuels in a manner that is fair and equitable, taking into account the respective dependency of countries on fossil fuels, and their capacity to transition; and

Invest in a transformational plan to ensure 100% access to renewable energy globally, support fossil fuel-dependent economies to diversify away from fossil fuels, and enable people and communities across the globe to flourish through a global just transition.

 “The interlinked crises of pollution, climate change and biodiversity act as threat multipliers, amplifying conflicts, tensions and structural inequalities, and forcing people into increasingly vulnerable situations,” UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said. “As these environmental threats intensify, they will constitute the single greatest challenge to human rights of our era.”

The UN rights chief cited “murderous climate events”, including the fires in Siberia and California, and floods in China, Germany and Turkey. Bachelet warned severe droughts could additionally force millions of people into misery, hunger and displacement.

Addressing the environmental crisis is, therefore “a humanitarian imperative, a human rights imperative, a peace-building imperative and a development imperative”

Environmental threats ‘greatest challenge to human rights’: UN | Climate Change News | Al Jazeera

 Human Rights Watch (HRW) accuses a few rich countries of stalling a proposal that could address vaccine inequality after being lobbied by big pharmaceutical companies.

HRW’s Aruna Kashyap, associate business and human rights director:

The push for a waiver of medical patents is back on the agenda this week with talks due to be held at the World Trade Organization, almost a year since it was first proposed by India and South Africa.

Yesterday, medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières called out the UK, EU (led by Germany), Switzerland and Norway as barriers to the proposal. Its supporters say it would allow vaccines to be produced more quickly by tapping into unused capacity around the world and take pricing out of the hands of pharmaceuticals.

The pharmaceuticals have however opposed the move and argued it would not help speed up vaccine production.

If you go to the Scottish Highlands now, you will find many valleys almost without people. Yet we know from history and archaeology that many people lived in the Highlands for thousands of years. What happened? Between about 1740 and 1900, the Highland landlords decided to clear out the people and establish great sheep farms instead. Five volumes will tell the story, starting with volume one – “Clans and Clearance”.

In Highland histories, some beliefs (though clearly at odds with the evidence) re-appear regularly, all these, and other, misapprehensions are dealt with in “Clans and Clearance” e.g –

* There was an enormous Highland population increase in the century after 1750: this never happened – the highest possible increase is 37% in the years 1750-1840 – during which time food production doubled or trebled.*. Some figures in original documents are clearly inaccurate, but have been accepted by writers who feel that documents cannot lie; they claim that Highland parishes averaged 400 square miles. This is clearly wrong, and can be disproved by anyone who has an atlas and a ruler: the average was about 100 square miles.

* The clearances were carried out by “the English”. In reality, they were carried out by the clan chiefs, after the Lowlanders and the English conquered the Highlands, following the Battle of Culloden, 1746. The British state forced the private-property system onto the Highlanders; the clan chiefs were made into landowners, who suddenly realized they could make themselves rich by driving out the clans folk and letting the land to large farmers.

* Most of the Highlanders were Catholics. In fact, 96% of the Highlanders were Protestant.

* The old Highlanders were “crofters”. In fact, the Highlanders were hunter-gatherers, with a second ample food source in their vast flocks and herds. The crofters appeared only after the clearances when some of the evicted were kindly allowed to try growing potatoes in an acre or two of barren, waste ground.

* The clan chiefs were tyrants, jailing and executing clans folk indiscriminately. No, the chiefs had no state apparatus – police, soldiers, lawyers, courts, jails, torturers, executioners etc – so had to rule with the general approval of the clans folk.

* The Highlanders’ cattle lived under the same roof as the Highlanders. No, the herds far too large; this only happened after the clearances, when Herds no longer had enough pasture for their great flocks, and therefore had very few animals left – and very little grazing, so the cow had to be housed in the same building.

* The clans folk were wildly licentious, drinking enormous quantities of whisky, while at the same time they fervently believed in a strait-laced religion. No, both these opposite convulsions appeared as extreme reactions to the social misery caused by the clearances.

Clans and Clearance. The Highland Clearances Volume One – Theory and Practice

742 pages. Available in hardback and eBook

Hardback: ISBN 978-0-9956609-9-1

Buy from Academic Book Collection (UK)

Buy from Waterstones (UK)

Buy from Book Depository (UK)

Buy from Amazon (UK)

Buy from Amazon (US)

Ebook: ISBN 978-0-9956609-3-9

Buy from Amazon (UK)

Buy from Amazon (US)

Audio Talk

The Highland Clearances – spgb.net (worldsocialism.org)

 Following a plea from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres for immediate funding to protect Afghan children and other vulnerable people from starvation $1 billion in aid for Afghanistan has been pledged. 

The U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the country would direct $64 million to Afghanistan.

 That is just a mere 6% being given by the country which plunged Afghanistan into two decades of war.

After Spending Trillions on War in Afghanistan, US Answers Call for Aid With Just $64 Million | Common Dreams News

 Many socialists have drawn attention to the dietary habits of people in contributing to global warming, a pattern of food consumption that is encouraged by the profit needs of the capitalist food production system. The damage done to the environment by a predominantly is highlighted in a new report. 

The global production of food is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity, with the use of animals for meat causing twice the pollution of producing plant-based foods, a major new study published in Nature Food has found.

The entire system of food production, such as the use of farming machinery, spraying of fertilizer and transportation of products, causes 17.3bn metric tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, according to the research. This enormous release of gases that fuel the climate crisis is more than double the entire emissions of the US and represents 35% of all global emissions, researchers said.

“The emissions are at the higher end of what we expected, it was a little bit of a surprise,” said Atul Jain, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois and co-author of the paper. “This study shows the entire cycle of the food production system, and policymakers may want to use the results to think about how to control greenhouse gas emissions.”

The raising of animals for food is far worse for the climate than growing and processing fruits and vegetables for people to eat, the research found, confirming previous findings on the outsized impact that meat production, particularly beef, has on the environment.

The use of cows, pigs and other animals for food, as well as livestock feed, is responsible for 57% of all food production emissions, the research found, with 29% coming from the cultivation of plant-based foods. The rest comes from other uses of land, such as cotton or rubber. Beef alone accounts for a quarter of emissions produced by raising and growing food.

 The majority of all the world’s cropland is used to feed livestock, rather than people.

Xiaoming Xu, another University of Illinois researcher and the lead author of the paper, explained, “To produce more meat you need to feed the animals more, which then generates more emissions. You need more biomass to feed animals in order to get the same amount of calories. It isn’t very efficient.”

 To produce 1kg of wheat, 2.5kg of greenhouse gases are emitted. A single kilo of beef, meanwhile, creates 70kg of emissions.

Meat accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gases from food production, study finds | Meat industry | The Guardian

Socialists do not desire to impose strict vegetarianism or veganism upon people but our view of how life will be in a future socialist society is that people will generally adopt a flexitarian diet, a greatly reduced intake of meat. 

Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, has been saying something the Socialist Party has always counselled our fellow workers don’t rely on the Labour Party.

“We can’t keep hoping for the election of a Labour government to solve our members’ problems. Putting all our eggs in the Westminster basket will not deliver. When did the parliamentary Labour party win a collective bargaining agreement at a workplace? Fighting for our members must come first. We cannot have the political tail wagging Unite’s industrial dog any longer.”

“We need to get back to what it says on the trade union tin: fight for jobs, pay and conditions…So for me, it’s about going back to the workplace. A powerful union capable of winning disputes and workplace battles is the only way workers will be protected through the pandemic and beyond…”

Of course, Graham still retains the delusions of past trade union leaders that have always been a flaw in the movement when she says: 

“We want companies to do well so that our members can share in the benefits. So Unite will have no issues with what we might call “good bosses”… “

My union will no longer rely on Labour – fighting for our members must come first | Sharon Graham | The Guardian