Evolution, creation and now, Global Civilizational State.

"We are racing to the edge of disaster"
 

Noam Chomsky: Coronavirus - What is at stake? | DiEM25 TV

A conversation with philosopher and co-founder of DiEM25, Srecko Horvat.

The coronavirus pandemic is influencing the entire human world. The pandemic’s impact and the changes it will bring are searched. After the crisis is over, there will be many changes. The longer the pandemic lasts, the more people may embrace new aspects of lifestyle.

The global oil industry has been hit hard. Oil prices have crushed. Long-term viability of many of the oil producers are being questioned. In some cases, the costs of shutting down a well are so high that drillers are paying customers to take oil away.

Low oil prices are forcing massive cuts to supply, which will be slow to return when demand bounces back. When demand outpaces supply, there will be inflation. Industries relying on petroleum will feel the pain of surging costs, and the industries may be forced to make long-term changes.

The way people live may be changing. Social distancing and home office may turn into a routine.

These depend on how long the pandemic keeps economic activity frozen.

Goldman Sachs’ Jeff Currie wrote in a note to clients on Monday: “The global economy is a complex physical system with physical frictions, and energy sits near the top of that complexity. It is impossible to shut down that much demand without large and persistent ramifications to supply.”

In his note, Currie explores the immense challenges the industry faces as it aims to balance supply and demand in a profitable way.

Currie wrote: “The climate change debate will almost certainly take a different course when the global economy emerges from this and is faced with the prospect of having to make large-scale investments into carbon-based industries.”

“The silver lining of the coronacrisis is that the virtual shutdown of key carbon industries – autos, airlines and cruise ships – is likely to cause carbon emissions to fall this year, with initial data from China pointing to a c.20%+ fall during the peak of the shutdown,” he added.

Currie wrote: “People are adapting to a more local existence and living off more sustainable activities, consuming less globally-produced fresh food, producing less waste with a more conservative approach to consumption, all of which may have lasting impacts on demand. Further, commuters and airlines account for c.16.0 million b/d of global oil demand and may never return to their prior levels.”

Currie added: “While oil prices are low today and physical constraints are forcing the behavioral changes, as oil shortages develop once economic activity normalizes, the high oil prices will likely accelerate the energy transition by constraining demand.”

He wrote: “Higher oil prices would also greatly improve the relative economics of EVs and hydrogen. But from the supply side, capital markets’ push for de-carbonization is likely to prevent the broad investment the industry will need to get out of this crisis and will reinforce a tight physical market beyond 2020.”

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is expanding rapidly and had been detected in more than 190 countries globally. The absence of precise epidemiological and clinical data at the on-set of the out-break have upset the public health decision-making taken by several countries. At the time when health system runs on data, from disease modelers to government, from people quarantined to practicing physical distancing, all need potential data to increase the efficiency of the healthcare.

Fragmented data as we are currently witnessing in the battle against COVID-19 creates risk for individual patients and risk for care. Fragmentation also creates a risk for data privacy as disorganized and disorderly data is shared across various health actors. At the institutional level, the data fragmentation only provides a partial picture on which the health outcomes depend. Whether collecting and collating health data across jurisdictions will provide us real time epidemiological information to combat this global health crisis is yet to be seen.

In this critical period we need to firstly place reliance on the benefits of the collation of global health data and acknowledging the challenges it posses before us specifically the fragmentation problem and secondly guiding the health data to immediate health intervention and situational awareness.

Global Health Data Today

Blizzard of health data at an increasing rate is generated by the health systems in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic across 190 countries. The proliferation of data from traditional record keeping and using of sophisticated technology attempts to gives us a broader picture of the current crisis. But the varied healthcare systems across varied jurisdictions have held us to reach a common meeting ground of data sharing. Drawing lessons from the Spanish Flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Ebola, and lethal influenza like avian and swine flu which have taken millions of life, we cannot let COVID-19 to haunt us from our past.

Another feature which the health data offers is a substantial promise to improve the healthcare. A recent study published in February 20200 lancet infectious disease by Xu & Kremer on COVID19 mentions “Consistent recording of epidemiological information is important to understand transmissibility, risk of geographic spread, routes of transmission, and risk factors for infection, and to provide the baseline for epidemiological modelling that can inform planning of response and containment efforts to reduce the burden of disease.” This is essential as it will translate into the providing us multiplicity of analyses providing a consensus for intervention in the current health crisis.

Fighting Pandemics with Data Analytics

Historical approaches versus data analytics which will prevail? The tussle on both sides remains that historical approaches are slow and reliable as they go through the hospital reports whereas on the other hand data analytics such as data mining give us a more accurate picture of when and where the next pandemic is going to emerge or how to avoid one which is unfolding before us. Both the approaches do add value in any given out-break and charting out progression for combating infectious diseases.

But novel datasets subjected to data-analytics do have enormous edge to overcome the challenges in pandemics including the current COVID19. A case in point is Blue dot which is an infectious disease data analytics firm which have successfully predicted Zika to the US by contextualizing ecological data, world itineraries, global population data, environmental and other factors.

What we know so far? The COVID19 have provided us with datasets of travel history, onset dates as well as confirmation dates, symptoms and a global map to chart on. Though the current data available is updated but at the same time lot of data are outdated as the pandemic is unfolding rapidly. It must be remembered no one sector, no one country, no one doctor and no one individual can solve the current global health crisis. To make sense of the raw data a unified behemoth effort is required by the health agencies and data firms to transmit and translate the practices on use of data across the globe.

Resilience in Global Health Data

The inaccessibility of health data, the perennial question of privacy and the fear of medical error are all questions of vital importance when addressing global health crisis. The search for balance and need to have access to data for valuable life saving inputs, identifying persons at risk and applying appropriate medical measures is where global health data can step in. Since the data on the current COVID19 leans heavily on information found online as well as the information released by the public health officials of each countries it is difficult to draw analysis to address the crisis on unverified data.

For the sake of resilience in Global Health Data the World Heath Organization has designed a SOLIDARITY trial which is a robust data sharing study to suppress and control the current pandemic as well as provide data for the most effective treatment for the fight against the COVID19. However, till date only 10 countries have joined the trial. SOLIDARITY will pool resources from across the countries and will provide verified and vetted information to battle COVID19. We urge all the countries that are fighting the current global health battle to share information and be part of this global health data movement.

The unpredictability of globalised pandemics needs health data to draw counter measures. The countries today need to avail the choice of global collectivism and cohesiveness which will lead to bridging the gap of information vacuum in global health data. This will lead to predict progression which will help prevent the current and future pandemics of the 21st century.

Jitamanyu Sahoo & Syed Mujtaba Hussain are Research Scholars working in (Comparative Heath Law, Human Security & Constitutional Law)

March 07, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - The most commonly reported mainstream media account of the creation of the Coronavirus suggests that it was derived from an animal borne microorganism found in a wild bat that was consumed by an ethnic Chinese resident of Wuhan. But there appears to be some evidence to dispute that in that adjacent provinces in China, where wild bats are more numerous, have not experienced major outbreaks of the disease. Because of that and other factors, there has also been considerable speculation that the Coronavirus did not occur naturally through mutation but rather was produced in a laboratory, possibly as a biological warfare agent.

Several reports suggest that there are components of the virus that are related to HIV that could not have occurred naturally. If it is correct that the virus had either been developed or even produced to be weaponized it would further suggest that its escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab and into the animal and human population could have been accidental. Technicians who work in such environments are aware that “leaks” from laboratories occur frequently.

There is, of course and inevitably, another theory. There has been some speculation that as the Trump Administration has been constantly raising the issue of growing Chinese global competitiveness as a direct threat to American national security and economic dominance, it must might be possible that Washington has created and unleashed the virus in a bid to bring Beijing’s growing economy and military might down a few notches. It is, to be sure, hard to believe that even the Trump White House would do something so reckless, but there are precedents for that type of behavior. In 2005-9 the American and Israeli governments secretly developed a computer virus called Stuxnet, which was intended to damage the control and operating systems of Iranian computers being used in that country’s nuclear research program. Admittedly Stuxnet was intended to damage computers, not to infect or kill human beings, but concerns that it would propagate and move to infect computers outside Iran proved to be accurate as it spread to thousands of PCs outside Iran, in countries as far flung as China, Germany, Kazakhstan and Indonesia.

Inevitably there is an Israeli story that just might shed some light on what has been going on in China. Scientists at Israel’s Galilee Research Institute are now claiming that they will have a vaccine against coronavirus in a few weeks which will be ready for distribution and use within 90 days. The institute is claiming that it has been engaged in four years of research on avian coronavirus funded by Israel’s Ministries of Science & Technology and Agriculture. They are claiming that the virus is similar to the version that has infected humans, which has led to breakthroughs in development through genetic manipulation, but some scientists are skeptical that a new vaccine could be produced so quickly to prevent a virus that existed only recently. They also have warned that even if a vaccine is developed it would normally have to be tested for side effects, a process that normally takes over a year and includes using it on infected humans.

If one even considers it possible that the United States had a hand in creating the coronavirus at what remains of its once extensive biological weapons research center in Ft Detrick Maryland, it is very likely that Israel was a partner in the project.

Helping to develop the virus would also explain how Israeli scientists have been able to claim success at creating a vaccine so quickly, possibly because the virus and a treatment for it were developed simultaneously.

In any event, there are definite political ramifications to the appearance of the coronavirus, and not only in China. In the United States President Donald Trump is already being blamed for lying about the virus and there are various scenarios in mainstream publications speculating over the possible impact on the election in 2020. If the economy sinks together with the stock market, it will reflect badly on Trump whether or not he is actually at fault. If containment and treatment of the disease itself in the United States does not go well, there could also be a considerable backlash, particularly as the Democrats have been promoting improving health care. One pundit argues, however, that disease and a sinking economy will not matter as long as there is a turnaround before the election, but a lot can happen in the next eight months.

And then there is the national security/foreign policy issue as seen from both Jerusalem and Washington. It is difficult to explain why coronavirus has hit one country in particular other than China very severely. That country is Iran, the often-cited enemy of both the U.S. and Israel. The number of Iran’s coronavirus cases continues to increase, with more positive tests confirmed among government officials last Saturday. There were 205 new coronavirus cases, bringing the government claimed total to 593 with 43 fatalities, though unofficial hospital reports suggest that the deaths are actually well over 100. That’s the highest number of deaths from the virus outside of China.

No less than five Iranian Members of Parliament have also tested positive amid a growing number of officials that have contracted the disease. Iran’s vice president Masoumeh Ebtekar and deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi had also previously been confirmed with the virus.

The usual suspects in the United States are delighted to learn of the Iranian deaths. Mark Dubowitz, Executive Director of the Washington-based but Israeli government connected Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) boasted on twitter Tuesday that “Coronavirus has done what American economic sanctions could not: shut down non-oil exports.” An Iranian government spokesman responded that “It’s shameful and downright inhuman to cheer for a deadly Virus to spread – and enjoy seeing people suffer for it…” Dubowitz followed up with an additional taunt, that Tehran has “spread terrorism” in the Middle East and “now it’s spreading the coronavirus.”

So, you have your choice. Coronavirus occurred naturally, or it came out of a lab in China itself or even from Israel or the United States. If one suspects Israel and/or the United States, the intent clearly would have been to create a biological weapon that would damage two nations that have been designated as enemies. But the coronavirus cannot be contained easily and it is clear that many thousands of people will die from it. Unfortunately, as with Stuxnet, once the genie is out of the bottled it is devilishly hard to induce it to go back in.

Philip Giraldi Ph.D., Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest. A former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases. He holds a BA with honors from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in Modern History from the University of London.  "Source" 

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March 18, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Maynard Keynes have been knocked into a cocked hat by Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Emmanuel Macron, the new holy trinity of dirigiste capitalism.

According to the laws of capitalist economics, an airline which cannot fill its seats must go to the wall. If the public's taste for ocean-going cruises dissipates either by fashion or pandemic, the cruise company goes under the relentless waves, sink or swim.

John Maynard Keynes and Franklin D. Roosevelt bucked that in the 1930s Great Depression, deciding that the fate of nations could not be left merely to the unseen hand of market forces, but that if not a heart then at least a brain must be applied. That accountancy was not economics.

First, it is ignored.

Second, it is widely ridiculed.

Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

March 19, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - With COVID-19, we have now entered Stage 2. At first, the media ignored the claims and the analysis that the virus could have originated in the US. But the spread of information and restatements of evidence from all sides, including in the US itself, has become too intense and now the claims are being openly ridiculed in the Western media.

Briefly, Chinese virologists discovered conclusively that the original source of the virus was not China, nor Wuhan, nor the seafood market, but had been traced to the US, a possible scenario being that the virus might have originated at the US Military’s bio-weapons lab at Fort Detrick (which was shut down by the CDC in July, because of outbreaks), and brought to China during the World Military Games in October 2019.

Also, Japanese and Taiwanese virologists arrived independently at the conclusion that the virus could have originated in the US.

The Americans did their best from before the beginning to deflect culpability by crafting tales of bats, snakes, pangolins, the seafood market, the Wuhan University being a bio-weapons facility (which it is not), and the CIA tale leaked through the VOA and Radio Free Asia that the virus leaked from that university. They stated (factually) that Chinese researchers had participated (7 years ago) in similar virus research funded by the US NIH, thus somehow insinuating Chinese culpability, ignoring that the prior research was irrelevant to current events.

I must say the Americans have proven to be very skillful in grabbing the microphone first, to create an “official” narrative of a current event while flooding the media with sufficient finger-pointing to preclude a gullible public the time to logically assemble the pieces on their own.

They ignored the very real fact that few nations would either create or release a biological weapon that attacks primarily itself. They ignored too, the geopolitical likelihood of an ”end game” – that a virus is a powerful weapon of economic warfare, able to do to China’s economy what a trade war could not do.

Casual readers tend to ignore the fact that, in the American mentality, there are many solid geopolitical reasons to attack China, Iran, and Italy, the remaining countries merely constituting unfortunate collateral damage.

Many virus articles containing this and similar information had been published by second-tier internet news sites, some articles gaining enormous readership with hundreds of thousands of downloads and much re-posting. Many of these articles have been translated into 6 or 7 languages and published on websites all around the world. Simultaneously, many posts were made on Chinese social media speculating on the odd circumstances and long chain of unusual coincidences that led to the virus outbreak in Wuhan.

One of the articles referred to above, was translated and posted on Chinese social media and gathered 76,000 comments in the first 8 hours. Eventually, the major Chinese media outlets made the same claims – that the virus could have originated in the US and that the Americans were engaging in a massive cover-up.

Then, Zhao LiJian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, made the story official, through a number of posts on US social media. One major media article, this in the NYT, noted that “Zhao’s remarks were spread on China’s most prominent social media platform, Weibo . . . [and] had been viewed more than 160 million times, along with screenshots of the original Twitter posts.

It seems LiJian’s Twitter posts, being essentially an official source that could not easily be ignored, claiming the virus was brought to China from the US during the Military Games, and demanding an explanation from the US, were receiving too much public attention to be ignored. All of the above created sufficient political pressure to force the Western media to respond. And of course they responded by ignoring the facts of the message and trashing the messenger.

On March 12, the UK Guardian ran a story claiming China was “pushing propaganda” about the virus coming from the US. (1) On March 13, the New York Times ran a similar story of a “China coronavirus conspiracy” of false claims about the source of the virus. (2) Then, on March 14, ABC News ran a story titled “False claims about sources of coronavirus cause spat between the US, China”, in which it ridiculed China and the claims of a US-virus. (3)

The Seattle Times published a version of the story, stating, “China is pushing a new theory about the origins of the coronavirus: It is an American disease . . . introduced by members of the U.S. Army who visited Wuhan in October. There is not a shred of evidence to support that, but the notion received an official endorsement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose spokesman accused American officials of not coming clean about what they know about the disease.” (4) The UK Independent published their own version of “China’s conspiracy theory” (5), as did CNN (6).

The ABC article claimed that “Assistant Secretary David Stilwell gave [Chinese] Ambassador Cui Tiankai a “very stern representation of the facts,” claiming Cui was “very defensive” in the face of this “official” American assault. The US State Department is quoted as having said, “We wanted to put the [Chinese] government on notice we won’t tolerate [conspiracy theories] for the good of the Chinese people and the world.”

Following that, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, and half a dozen other press wires and media outlets have contacted this author for interviews, eager for an opportunity to trash this ‘conspiracy theory’ at its source. The US Embassy in Beijing also “reached out” to the author “to talk about it”.

If the public information campaign and the resulting political pressure can continue, we will eventually enter stage three where the media will begin admitting first the possibility, then the likelihood, then the fact, of the US being the source of the “China” virus.

In the health and economic crisis in which we find ourselves, the government is going to need all the public trust it can get. Bailouts of those who caused their problems and ours won’t meet the fairness test.  

As I previously wrote, nationalization is a four-letter word for many, but it actually offers a chance to correct for the decades of deregulation and concentration and thereby restore competition to the economy.  Nationalized banks too-big-to-fail, for example, can later be broken up and the pieces sold back into private hands. Commercial banks can again be separated from investment banks, and concentrated financial power can be broken.

Now that we know that markets are not self-regulating, we can restore sensible financial regulation and require banks to lend for productive purposes, not for financializing and leveraging existing assets.  The US financial system has not served the productive side of the US economy for a long time.

While ordinary heavily indebted Americans are losing their jobs right and left as businesses close, shopping center lobbyists are asking for a $1 trillion guarantee. The hotel industry wants $150 billion.  The restaurant industry wants $145 billion. The National Association of Manufacturers wants $1.4 trillion. (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/21/coronavirus-1-trillion-rescue-package-might-not-be-enough-for-businesses.html)  Food service distributors are in trouble. Boeing wants $60 billion funded in part by loan guarantees. Local and state governments need support. The US conference of mayors wants $250 billion. The list is endless. 

And what is to be done for the 40% of Americans who, according to a Federal Reserve study, cannot raise $400 in cash without selling personal property?  How are the large number of uninsured going to be cared for during this health crisis? Where will hospitals and medical practices get the money?

The only solution is to nationalize health care so that the bills can be paid.  We cannot survive large numbers of infected and jobless people roaming the streets raiding for food and whatever they can take.

The only solution for the economy is debt forgiveness for the ordinary people and nationalization for the companies.  Trump indicated that aid might be given in the form of an equity stake, and later sell the government’s stake for a profit in a privatization when things return to normal.  This would be a partial nationalization.  Much better to go whole hog as it allows a cure for concentration and deregulation.   

The pandemic has made it clear that a society of self-seeking individuals is not a society.  A society is a social system. A successful social system is one that can support its members.  Once a self-sustaining social system exists, then there is a basis for people to branch out on their own.  But without a sustainable social system, there can be nothing.

To create a sustainable society in the United States requires the abandonment of dogmatic ways of thinking.  Old ideologies are in the way.  We and our leaders must think creatively if we are to successfully deal with the health and economic crisis.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order. Donate and support Dr, Roberts Work.

Within 50 years, a third of all plant and animal species could be caught up in a mass extinction, as a consequence of climate change driven by ever-rising temperatures. What is new about this warning is the method, the precision, the timetable and the identification of a cause.

And – entirely felicitously – support for the prediction is backed by a series of separate studies of individual species survival in a world rapidly warming because of human commitment to fossil fuels.

Tiny marsupial insect-hunters in Australia could, on the evidence of direct experiment, fail to adapt to ever-higher thermometer readings, and quietly disappear.

As frogs and other amphibians in Central America are wiped out by invasive fungal pathogens – perhaps assisted by climate change – a set of snake species that prey upon them have also become increasingly at risk.

And directly because the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, the polar bears of Baffin Bay in Canada are thinner than they were 30 years ago, and have fewer cubs. That’s because Ursus maritimus hunts its seal prey on the sea ice. And as the winter ice forms later and melts earlier each decade, the bears have begun to go hungry.

Biologists, ecologists and conservationists have been warning for four decades that planet Earth could be on the edge of a sixth Great Extinction, as a simple consequence of the growth of human numbers and human economies, and the parallel destruction of natural habitat.

They have also repeatedly warned that climate change driven by human-triggered planetary heating would inevitably accelerate the losses.

Repeated surveys

But researchers from the University of Arizona have now confirmed the climate connection by using another approach: they decided to look directly at the numbers. They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they selected data from 538 species and 581 places around the globe: they chose these numbers and sites because they could be sure that specific animal and plant species had been repeatedly surveyed over intervals of at least a decade.

They also factored in the changes in local climate conditions at each site, and isolated 19 different variables in the climate machine to work out what it could be about global heating that would directly pose the most significant threats. They also considered the options open to their chosen species: could these, for instance, migrate easily, or tolerate longer periods of extreme heat?

And then they did the calculations. They found that 50% of the chosen species went extinct locally if temperatures rose by more than 0.5°C, and 95% if the mercury reached an additional 2.9°C.

In the last century, the planet has warmed by 1°C above the average for most of human history and prehistory. Right now, thanks to ever-increasing fossil fuel use and continued forest destruction, the planet could be more than 3°C warmer by 2100.

But the researchers also found that the climate factor most closely linked to the extinction of any population was simply the maximum annual count – the hottest daily highs in summer.

This also implies that extinction could be two or even four times as frequent in the tropics as in the temperate zones: it is in the tropics – the reefs, the rainforests, the wetlands and savannahs – that the world’s species are concentrated.

Antechinis flavipes, or yellow-footed antechinus, is a native Australian: it is not exactly a mole, or a mouse, or a shrew. It is a little marsupial carnivore with an unhappy love life: males mate in a frenzy and then tend to die from stress-related immune system breakdown.

It is also sensitive to temperature. When the mercury drops, the creature can go into a torpor and once comatose can even sleep through a bushfire.

Norwegian scientists report in the journal Frontiers in Physiology that they exposed 19 captive juveniles to spells of cold (17°C) and hot (25°C) temperatures, measured their growth and metabolic rate, and observed changes in behaviour. They conclude that, while individuals of the species can cope with short periods of high temperature, they may not have any way of surviving extended heat extremes.

Which is a problem for antechinus, because all the predictions for Australia – and indeed most of the planet – is that as the century proceeds and ever more greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere, the hottest spells will become hotter, more frequent and more extended.

North American researchers have been tracking the polar bears who hunt seals and mate in Baffin Bay, between north-eastern Canada and Greenland, for almost three decades. They report in the journal Ecological Applications that when sea ice retreats, the bears wait on Baffin Island and live on their accumulated fat.

In the 1990s, the average stay on land – and away from the bears’ preferred prey – was 60 days. In the last decade, this rose to 90 days. Sampled females proved to be thinner than they had been, and were more likely to have one cub rather than two, all because unseasonally high temperatures in the Arctic mean that the hunting season on the ice is becoming ever shorter.

In 2004, the population of amphibians in a national park in Panama started to perish on a huge scale, and an estimated 30 species of frog and other creatures all but vanished in the wake of a pathogen fungus outbreak.

US scientists report in the journal Science that they set out to look at their wildlife observational data before and after the outbreak to measure the effect on the region’s snake species that prey on amphibians.

Rarely observed snakes

Even though the scientists logged 594 surveys in the seven years before the outbreak and 513 in the six years that followed, they had to use mathematical techniques to come up with probabilities of local snake extinction, because snakes are hard to observe at any time. Of the 36 snake species recorded there, 12 have been observed only once, and five only twice.

The bad news is there is an 85% probability that there are now fewer snake species than there had been, simply because of the disappearance of amphibian prey.

The study also highlights another worry for conservationists and ecologists: extinction of species is happening at an accelerating rate, but biologists still cannot put a number to the total of species at risk. Most of them have never been described or named. Like some of the snakes of Panama, they will have gone before scientists even knew they were there.

The climate connection with the worldwide loss of amphibian species is still uncertain. The certainty is that climate change will make life too hot for many species that – because what was once wilderness has now been cleared for cities, quarries, farms and commercial plantations – can no longer shift to cooler terrain.

John Wiens of the University of Arizona, one of the authors behind the research that predicts massive extinctions by 2070, thinks there is something that can be done.

In 2015 in Paris more than 190 nations vowed to act to contain global warming to “well below” 2°C. “In a way, it’s a ‘choose your own adventure,’” he said.

“If we stick to the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, we may lose fewer than two out of every 10 plant and animal species on Earth by 2070. But if humans cause larger temperature increases, we could lose more than a third or even half of all animal and plant species, based on our results.”

Originally published in Inside Climate News

The world’s tropical forests are no longer carbon sinks because of human activity, and these forests now emit more carbon than these are able to absorb from the atmosphere as a result of the dual effects of deforestation and land degradation, finds a new study.

The study tracking 300,000 trees over a period of 30 years finds: The ability of the world’s tropical forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere is decreasing.

The research report – “Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests” – published in research journal Nature on March 4, 2020, (Hubau, W., Lewis, S.L., Phillips, O.L. et al. Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests. Nature 579, 80–87, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2035-0) challenges the decades-long consensus that tropical forests are a moderate carbon sinks by storing more carbon than they emit due to natural processes and human activity.

The international scientific collaboration, led by the University of Leeds, reveals that a feared switch of the world’s undisturbed tropical forests from a carbon sink to a carbon source has begun.

Tropical forests are capable of storing large amounts of carbon. This is because trees absorb carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and then use it to build new leaves, shoots and roots. But forests can also release carbon into the atmosphere. Some of this release is through natural processes such as plant respiration, droughts and wildfires. Emissions can increase further by human activities, such as deforestation and illegal logging.

The scientists assessed trends in the carbon sink using 244 structurally intact African tropical forests spanning 11 countries, compare them with 321 published plots from Amazonia and investigate the underlying drivers of the trends.

The study report said:

Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Climate-driven vegetation models typically predict that this tropical forest “carbon sink” will continue for decades.

The carbon sink in live aboveground biomass in intact African tropical forests has been stable for the three decades to 2015, at 0.66 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year (95 per cent confidence interval 0.53–0.79), in contrast to the long-term decline in Amazonian forests.

Therefore, the carbon sink responses of Earth’s two largest expanses of tropical forest have diverged. The difference is largely driven by carbon losses from tree mortality, with no detectable multi-decadal trend in Africa and a long-term increase in Amazonia. Both continents show increasing tree growth, consistent with the expected net effect of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and air temperature. Despite the past stability of the African carbon sink, our most intensively monitored plots suggest a post-2010 increase in carbon losses, delayed compared to Amazonia, indicating asynchronous carbon sink saturation on the two continents. A statistical model including carbon dioxide, temperature, drought and forest dynamics accounts for the observed trends and indicates a long-term future decline in the African sink, whereas the Amazonian sink continues to weaken rapidly. Overall, the uptake of carbon into Earth’s intact tropical forests peaked in the 1990s. Given that the global terrestrial carbon sink is increasing in size, independent observations indicating greater recent carbon uptake into the Northern Hemisphere landmass reinforce our conclusion that the intact tropical forest carbon sink has already peaked. This saturation and ongoing decline of the tropical forest carbon sink has consequences for policies intended to stabilize Earth’s climate.

Intact tropical forests are well-known as a crucial global carbon sink, slowing climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in trees, a process known as carbon sequestration. Climate models typically predict that this tropical forest carbon sink will continue for decades.

However, the new analysis of three decades of tree growth and death from 565 undisturbed tropical forests across Africa and the Amazon has found that the overall uptake of carbon into Earth’s intact tropical forests peaked in the 1990s.

By the 2010s, on average, the ability of a tropical forest to absorb carbon had dropped by one-third. The switch is largely driven by carbon losses from trees dying.

The study by almost 100 institutions provides the first large-scale evidence that carbon uptake by the world’s tropical forests has already started a worrying downward trend.

Study lead author Dr Wannes Hubau, a former post-doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds now based at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium, said: “We show that peak carbon uptake into intact tropical forests occurred in the 1990s.

“By combining data from Africa and the Amazon we began to understand why these forests are changing, with carbon dioxide levels, temperature, drought, and forest dynamics being key.”

“Extra carbon dioxide boosts tree growth, but every year this effect is being increasingly countered by the negative impacts of higher temperatures and droughts which slow growth and can kill trees.

“Our modeling of these factors shows a long-term future decline in the African sink and that the Amazonian sink will continue to rapidly weaken, which we predict to become a carbon source in the mid-2030s.”

In the 1990s, intact tropical forests removed roughly 46 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, declining to an estimated 25 billion tonnes in the 2010s.

The lost sink capacity in the 2010s compared to the 1990s is 21 billion tonnes carbon dioxide, equivalent to a decade of fossil fuel emissions from the UK, Germany, France and Canada combined.

Overall, intact tropical forests removed 17% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions in the 1990s, reduced to just 6% in the 2010s.

This decline is because these forests were less able to absorb carbon by 33% and the area of intact forest declined by 19%, while global carbon dioxide emissions soared by 46%.

In the 2000s, intact tropical forest sequestered 36 billion tonnes carbon dioxide, equivalent to 9% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions.

“After years of work deep in the Congo and Amazon rainforests, we’ve found that one of the most worrying impacts of climate change has already begun. This is decades ahead of even the most pessimistic climate models,” said Simon Lewis.

“There is no time to lose in terms of tackling climate change,” he said.

The findings represent the collaborative effort of roughly 100 institutions in which researchers tracked some 300,000 trees spanning 565 patches of undisturbed tropical forests across Africa and the Amazon over a 30-year period.

Researchers used measurements of tree growth and death, along with CO2 emissions, rainfall, and temperatures, to estimate carbon storage or “sequestration.”

“We show that peak carbon uptake into intact tropical forests occurred in the 1990s,” said another lead author Wannes Hubau of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium.

At that time, the forests were able to store 46 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, representing about 17% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Fast forward to the 2010s, and the researchers found the amount dropped to an estimated 25 billion tonnes, on par with roughly 6% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Over the 30 years, the area of intact forest shrunk by 19% but global carbon dioxide emissions soared by 46%, the researchers noted.

The downward trend of carbon absorption didn’t happen in the zones at the same time, the study also found. The downward trend of sequestration hit the Amazon in the mid-1990s and the African forests about 15 years later.

The potential for the Amazon forests to switch from carbon sink to carbon source is not far off, with the study predicting it could happen as soon as the mid-2030s.

Hubau, in his statement, stressed need for ongoing monitoring “as our planet’s last great tropical forests are threatened as never before.”

For the moment, at least, humanity should still consider tropical forests carbon sponges. But, if urgent and bold measures aren’t taken soon, that could well change.

“Intact tropical forests remain a vital carbon sink but this research reveals that unless policies are put in place to stabilize Earth’s climate it is only a matter of time until they are no longer able to sequester carbon,” said Lewis, pointing to the possibility of a feedback loop being triggered.

“One big concern for the future of humanity is when carbon-cycle feedbacks really kick in, with nature switching from slowing climate change to accelerating,” Lewis said.

“By driving carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero even faster than currently envisaged, it would be possible to avoid intact tropical forests becoming a large source of carbon to the atmosphere. But that window of possibility is closing fast,” said Lewis.

Professor Douglas Sheil at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, a contributing researcher to the study, put the findings in stark terms.

“Our results are alarming,” he said. “The word ‘alarming’ should not be used lightly,” continued Sheil, “but in this case it fits.”

An earlier study (Baccini et al., 2017, “Tropical forests are a net carbon source based on aboveground measurements of gain and loss”, Science, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/
early/2017/09/27/science.aam5962) found that the world’s tropical forests gained 436m tonnes of carbon from 2003 to 2014. This was largely due to the recovery of previously disturbed forests, the scientists conducting the research said.

The tropical forests experienced a carbon loss of 861m tonnes of carbon over the same period.

This means that tropical forests experienced a net carbon loss of 425m tonnes of carbon over the study period – from 2003 to 2014. This figure is considerably higher than previous estimates of carbon loss from tropical forests.

The scientists collected carbon density measurements from forests across the tropics and used these to create a statistical model. The model then used to simulate fine-scale changes in carbon gain and loss in tropical forests over the course of 12 years.

The research findings suggest that curbing deforestation and protecting existing forests could be instrumental in removing greenhouse gases (GHG) from the atmosphere and fighting future climate change, he adds.

Calculating the balance between the uptake and release of carbon allows scientists to determine whether tropical forests are a “carbon sink”, meaning they take in more carbon than they release, or a “carbon source”, meaning their carbon emissions exceed their intake.

A recent rise in human activity in the world’s forested regions could have disrupted the balance between uptake and emissions, says Dr Alessandro Baccini, a researcher at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts and lead author of the earlier study published in Science.

He said: “The main discovery is that forests in tropical regions are not a carbon sink, but a carbon source. That means that the amount of carbon emissions from tropical regions are actually bigger than the carbon removal that this region is able to achieve.”

The results find that the largest carbon losses took place in forests in Latin America, while the largest gains were made in Africa.

This pattern is largely driven by local levels of deforestation and land degradation, Baccini explained: “What we see is Latin America, especially Brazil, is a region that is giving off the largest amount of emissions. That is in part because the size of its forests but there is also a lot of disturbance and deforestation for cattle rearing going on. What we find in Africa there is a much smaller amount of disturbance and this is mainly driven by mining and deforestation for palm oil. In Asia, we see a lot of deforestation for palm oil.”

Calculating carbon loss

Traditionally, studies of carbon loss in tropical forests have relied on data taken from satellite images of tree cover.

This approach allows scientists to see the extent of deforestation in tropical regions, but it can overlook more subtle types of human activity, such as illegal logging, forest disturbance and land degradation.

Baccini said: “Degradation is a process where only a small portion of trees are removed from a forest. From a satellite image, the area will still look like an intact forest. But, when you lose even a small proportion trees, you lose a significant amount of carbon.”

Because of this caveat, the researchers opted instead to look for changes in “carbon density” from tropical forests spanning America, Africa and Asia.

Baccini said: “Carbon density is a measure of the weight of carbon that is held by forests. Even in the field we don’t really collect direct measurements of weight but we can collect direct measurements of the trees, such as their diameter and height, and then you use an equation to convert that into biomass.”

The figures found were considerably higher than that of previous estimates of carbon loss from tropical forests. This could be because previous research underestimated the impact of land degradation on carbon loss, said Baccini.

The research found that land degradation and disturbance accounts of 69% of total carbon losses from tropical forests.

Baccini explained: “We discovered that land degradation has a very significant effect on carbon loss. The carbon loss from land degradation is small but, because it happens a lot over a very large area, then it adds up to a lot of loss. We like to think that this is the first study where we can provide an estimate of the losses due to degradation over such a large area as the entire tropics.”

Although the world’s tropical forests are currently considered to be a carbon source, there are a number of steps that could be taken to turn them back into a carbon sink.

On this issue, Baccini said: “There is a possibility that by restoring the forest, by reducing, decreasing or stopping deforestation, by reforestation projects, we could actually make it into a sink. And it would be a pretty big sink.”

Restoring the ability of forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere could help us tackle climate change, he adds.

Baccini said: “Reforestation and afforestation could improve the quality of the planet through the conservation of biodiversity and an improvement in water quality and water resources, and all of this while we are reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s a win-win-win possibility.”

Global warming is not waiting around for the signatories to the Paris climate accord ‘15 to go to net zero emissions 2030/50. Sorry, those bold plans are way too little way too late. Already, across the board, the planet is on a hot streak that defies all projections. It’s starting to look downright scary!

Listen… when Helsinki has no snow in January/February accompanied by inordinate heat, it’s a powerful signal that “something is not right.” According to the Finnish Meteorological Institute: “Monthly records were not just broken, they were shattered with large margins.” (Source: 9 Freaky Phenomena Revealing How Warm This Winter Was, Treehugger, March 3, 2020)

Not only that, across the planet, heat-heat-heat too much heat is altering ecosystemsbeyond expectations, as, for example, an “uncharted granite island” suddenly emerged from rapidly melting ice in Antarctica, surprising researchers stationed off the coast of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, which has the troubling distinction as one of the fastest retreating glaciers in the world. The research team named the new discovery Sif Island.

Similar to global warming’s recent onslaught, Pine Island Glacier also is not waiting around for Paris ’15 signatories to take mitigation steps to avert catastrophic “Global Warming,” which likely will be officially renamed“Global Heating” at some point in time in the near future, not global warming, which term is already out-of-date.

Perilously, Pine Island Glacier experienced yet another monster iceberg calving event February 2020 the size of a U.S. state.  Monster calving events used to occur every 5-6-7 years but have become annual events. Making matters scarier yet, “large cracks in the ice shelf are forming in places that scientists hadn’t seen before, such as the middle of the ice shelf.” (Source: Iceberg That’s Twice the Size of Washington Cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a Sign of Warming, The Washington Post, February 10, 2020)

Scientists are deeply concerned and closely monitoring Pine Island Glacier and nearby Thwaites Glacier for signals of “runaway melting” that would free up inland ice flow. The ice shelves that are calving hold back rapid glacial flow to the sea. According to NASA, just those two glaciers hold back a surrounding region of potential glacial ice flow thatcouldraise sea levels by 4 feet, which is a mere 2% of total Antarctic sea level rise locked in ice.

Therefore, the sudden emergence of Sif Island out of the blue is not a comforting signal. Not only that, but according to Carlos Schaefer, a Brazilian government scientist who’s analyzing recent Antarctica temperatures of68°F (sizzling hot for Antarctica): “We have never seen anything like this.”

Dreadfully, the entire planet is being hit with hot stuff. French ski resorts had to import snow with helicopters. Snow-less Moscow shattered previous record temperatures by an astonishing 3.5°C.

And, heaping one disaster on top of another disaster, Japan’s Daisen White Ski Resort had to shut down early in January because it was so hot that fake-generated snow melted as soon as it was generated. And, for the first time ever, ever, ever Germany was unable to make ice-wine in any of the German wine regions. The 2019 ice-wine vintage will go down as the first-ever no harvest. It was too hot!

Still, by all appearances, global average temperatures are a misleading indicator for public instruction of global warming’s true impact. Global averages miss the true impact of regional global warming events that have the power to undercut life, as we know it.

For example, Yakutia, an eastern Siberian federal Russian republic, has heated up by more than 3°C preindustrial or three-times the global average, bringing on disastrous results. Yakutia, one-third the size of the U.S., has seen its arable land for farming plummet by more than 50% as a result of cascading permafrost. And, buildings are sagging into the ground, hillsides are collapsing, and lakes suddenly appear throughout the region. Life is turning chaotic.

All of which brings to mind the ever-dicey East Siberian Arctic Shelf where massive quantities of subsea permafrost contains and holds back vast reservoirs of methane frozen in ice in extremely shallow waters, unfortunately. Even though mainstream science believes the risks are lowof a major eruption of methane out of the ESAS, which in turn could ignite powerful damaging Runaway Global Warming, there are serious scientists who have studied the ESAS in detail and who adamantly claim otherwise by assigning a high risk to the event, which would take civilization down to its knees by decimating agricultural regions across the planet as well as turning several latitudinal zones uninhabitable.

Meanwhile, according to the IEA (International Energy Agency)fossil fuel companies plan on increasing oil and gas production by 120% to 2030. Demand for oil is irrepressible. And, not only that, China is embarking on mega-mega construction plans for new coal-burning power plants, and so is India, and Japan recently announced its intention of building 22 new coal-burning plants over the next 5 years.

All of that in the face of irrefutable evidence of acceleration of climate change well beyond the influence of natural events. Still, Trumpers refuse to recognize and act upon that reality, thus unofficially blessing other nations increases in fossil fuel usage and thus silently encouraging rejection of Paris ’15. Is that wayward influence a plot hatched in America?

As a result, and with great fanfare,trumpets blaring, and drums rolling, Trump has been crowned“the Worst President for our Environment in History” by nine major green orgs: Alaska Wilderness League Action, Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, EDF Action, Friends of the Earth, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, and The Wilderness Society. Trump is Global Warming’s Man of the Year 2019.

The year 2019 is the 43^rd consecutive year, since 1977, with both land and ocean temperatures above the global 20^th century average. And, of extreme significant deep concern, the global rate of global warming has doubled, specifically since 1977. That is an ominous and clear signal of acceleration of an unwelcoming rate of global warming. Frankly, it’s horrible news. Brace yourself!

Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 articles published, including several translated into foreign languages, appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He has been interviewed on numerous FM radio programs, as well as television.

We live in a world in extreme crisis. By the estimates of the Global Footprint Network, the human species currently consumes at a rate 1.7 times what Earth’s regenerative systems can sustain. Yet billions of people face a daily struggle for survival that strips them of happiness and fulfillment of their human potential.

A growing concentration of financial wealth puts ever more political power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. According to Oxfam, twenty-six billionaires now hold personal financial assets greater than those of the poorest half of humanity (3.9 billion people).

This rapidly accelerating environmental and social crisis is a direct and predictable consequence of global rules that facilitate a concentration of economic and political power in corporations—rules that provide minimum accountability for the consequences of how they use that power to monopolize markets, evade taxes, and operate in whatever place offers the cheapest labor and least environmental protections.

As Allen White has correctly noted, appeals to corporations to exercise conscientious self-regulation do not work. The reason is simple. Mentally healthy living humans have a conscience. Corporations are constructs of law. They have no conscience beyond whatever responsibilities the law may require of them—backed by strict enforcement.

Corporations that are under the control of individual humans—rather than the financial markets—may act responsibly when those individuals possess a deep concern for the common good. Such corporations, however, are rare – at least among those of any consequential size.

Most large corporations are captives of financial markets that drive the pursuit of short-term financial gain with no concern for the social or environmental consequences. Not only do they fail to serve the common good, but they are also driving us all toward civilizational collapse. Indeed, they are driving us toward human self-extinction.

These conditions create an imperative for urgent structural change. Fortunately, corporations are entirely human creations. Indeed, there is no equivalent in nature. If they do not serve our needs, humans have both the right and the means to change—even eliminate—them.

Corporate purpose

Allen White notes there was a time in the early United States when corporations were chartered only for a specific length of time to fulfill a designated public purpose, such as to build a bridge or a canal. The former colonies had fought a brutal war to gain their freedom from the abuses of imperial rule, including the state-sanctioned monopoly power of the British East India Company. They were acutely aware of the potentials for abuse of corporate power, and they wanted none of it.

Despite that early public awareness, corporate interests have been able to mount a relentless drive for power that has, over time, reduced US democracy to little more than an aspiration. Indeed, the United States has become a global driver of the processes by which global corporations pursue with impunity the destruction of Earth’s capacity to support life. And ironically, they do so for the primary purpose of growing the fortunes of billionaires.

It is worth remembering that a corporation exists only when a government has issued a charter. There is no legitimate reason for any democratically accountable government to issue a corporate charter other than to serve a public purpose. Similarly, there is no legitimate reason why a corporation chartered by one government jurisdiction has any inherent right thereby to do business in any other jurisdiction unless granted that privilege by the people of that jurisdiction through their government.

That current law contradicts these simple truths is a consequence of corporate interests’ ability to manipulate the legal system.

Current rules governing corporate conduct encourage and reward what should be treated as criminal behavior. Consider the following examples:

1. They allow corporations to reap the rewards of their decisions without bearing the full costs. For example, when they evade paying taxes, they evade paying their fair share of the costs of infrastructure, education, or other essentials of doing business.

2. They allow the corporation to assess value only in terms of financial costs and returns, thus ignoring the need to secure the health of Earth’s regenerative systems on which all life depends.

3. They allow corporations to use their enormous financial resources and centralized decision-making to shape public opinion and pressure politicians to assure that laws favor corporate interests instead of public interests.

Calls for corporate responsibility generally assume that those who work for corporations, especially top management, are free to exercise moral responsibility on behalf of the corporation should they choose to do so. This ignores an important reality. Unless they own the corporation, those who lead a corporation only appear to be in charge. They serve only at the pleasure of financiers who compete for control of any corporation that is not taking full advantage of opportunities to maximize profits – which often means externalizing costs.

Business in service to community

Science is coming to recognize what many indigenous people have long understood: life exists – can only exist – in diverse communities of living beings that self-organize to create and maintain the conditions of their own existence. The concept is captured by the South African term ubuntu, which translates to “I am because we are.”

This basic frame of how life organizes is demonstrated in a very personal way by the human body. For each of us, our body consists of tens of trillions of cells and micro-organisms that self-organize beyond our conscious awareness to create and maintain the vessel of our consciousness and the vehicle of our agency. On a far grander scale, the countless living organisms that comprise Earth’s community of life similarly self-organize to create the conditions on this planet essential to life’s existence.

The purpose of all human institutions—including corporations—must be to serve human well-being and the health of the planet on which we all depend.

Trying to set and enforce rules at a global level to force transnational corporations to serve the people and planet they were created and designed to exploit would be an exercise as futile as a call for voluntary responsibility. Any global institution created to implement such rules will be subject to nearly instant co-option by the very corporations it is created to control.

A better solution is to break up transnational corporations and restructure them in ways that assure community accountability. How this might be done to best serve the well-being of people and Earth is a topic worthy of serious discussion, with implications well beyond the corporation.

With few exceptions, humans have fallen into a pattern of organizing around hierarchical institutions that centralize power. Capitalism vs. socialism is a false choice specifically because both, as currently understood and practiced, centralize rather than distribute power. Thus, they diminish local control and responsibility and suppress essential local adaptation to changing local conditions. Electing the leaders who head those institutions is only a partial corrective.

Our challenge in learning to function as a global society dependent on the health of a living Earth is to learn to organize as life organizes – within holonic structures that self-organize from the bottom up in response to constantly changing local conditions, with the support of higher system levels. It is a frame for which we barely have the language needed for a coherent discussion. Yet it is the way that life has organized since life first emerged. And it is the way we must now learn to organize.

The closest human approximations would probably be the organizational forms common to most indigenous societies. In the business sector of contemporary societies, they might be the varied forms of cooperative organization based on cooperative ownership.

The work of developing creative options would be a fitting challenge for schools of management interested in creating organizational models for the new human civilization we must now create together.

Capitalism gathered together resources, labor, and capital to start an industrial revolution that brought prosperity and elevated standards of living to much of the earth’s inhabitants. Once in motion it generated additional capital that gathered more labor and more resources in a perpetual cycle of increased production that constantly benefitted populations. The achievements did not occur smoothly, they sputtered from periodic recessions that solicited government policies to recharge the system.

Soviet style socialism did not wait for a capitalism to provide capital formation, industrial development, allocation of resources and prosperity, including housing and luxuries for much of the population. The Soviets struggled to house, clothe, and feed, in a short time, a deprived population that had barely survived World War II, which led to mismanagement, shoddy construction, and misallocation of resources. By not following Karl Marx’s observations, which praised capitalist development and urged its necessity before socialist constructions, the Soviet system doomed itself to failure.

Capitalism has neared a peak, mostly using capital to generate capital, unable to comprehend the challenges faced by its actions, going as far as it can go without intensifying major problems it has created. Slowly and inexorably, the socio-economic system refutes a counter-productive capitalism, that is taking more than it gives, that is destroying more than it creates, and that has become more irresponsible than responsible. In the coming decades, cooperation will be preferred to competition, sharing preferred to taking, responsibility to all preferred to irresponsibility to one, socialization preferred to capitalization.

The change does not arrive from ideological, economic, social, or political considerations; it arrives from the realization that the earth is on fire and only a strong willed and collective community can dampen the conflagration. The change comes from realization that private and civic initiatives cannot and will not resolve the forecasted problems, each will protect what they have and deny the challenges — climate change that modifies coastlines and arable lands; greenhouse gas emissions that heat the atmosphere and petition a handover from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources; robotics and artificial intelligence that change the factory floor, its administration, and the composition of the workforce; possibility of nuclear war in an atmosphere of intense international hostility and growing arms races; pandemics from new disease microbes that replicate quickly, defy conventional medicine, and spread beyond borders; security enhancements due to internal conflicts and external hostilities; political, economic and social polarizations that have stimulated populist movements; and population migrations that cause cultural conflicts and reassignment of resources. Allied to these challenges are the subsidiary challenges each of them creates – reallocation of food sources and possible shortages in food supply; economic upheavals due to bankruptcies of resource and transportation industries and nations dependent upon fossil fuels; re-orientation of the work force to prevent severe unemployment; forced arms controls to prevent global wars; sharing of resources to lessen predicted large scale migrations; international controls and research to prevent spread of disease; more equal distribution of income to assure all have basics for survival in a quickly changing economic landscape, and regulations that assure adequate privacy, security, and disease mitigation. Despite public awareness and concern for all the challenges, inertia is apparent. Escaping human extinction will require government intervention in all aspects of the socio-economic system.

Climate Change

The earth and its inhabitants have proved adaptable, surviving catastrophes and climate changes in previous epochs. The predicted rapidity of this climate change and the scientific analysis that attributes it to carbon emissions make it unlikely that, without more centralized planning and regimentation, the earth will have sufficient time to correct for the climate shifts.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Containing carbon emissions demands regulation of all its sources and severe changes in the air, sea, and ground transportations that use the energy sources. The latter change can be fulfilled by a shift to electric vehicles, which, due to elevated costs, will require subsidies. Present air and sea transportation engines are not easily substituted and they may face restrictions, which means severe reductions in international transport and other industries that need fossil fuels for powering the efforts.

Allied to addressing the effects of greenhouse gas emissions is addressing severe economic problems due to population, agriculture and labor shifts, and answering a possible economic decline due to lower and changing demand in companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction, petroleum refining, fossil energy transport, pipeline and associated equipment manufacture. Fisheries, tourism, airlines, shipping, animal husbandry, recreation, investment, and plastics industries will also be affected. By directing investments so they factor climate change into their capital distribution, investment powerhouse, Black Rock, has already considered a general makeover of the economic system.

Food Supply

Shifts in arable lands, increases in desert lands, a dwindling fish supply, and possible limits to meat production, due to less grasslands and restrictions on methane gas release from herds, will re-orient the food supply. Warmer water temperatures will cause changes in habitat ranges of many fish and shellfish species. Unless food production and distribution are carefully monitored and controlled, famines will occur. Sustainable farming will become a rule.

Water Resource

The United Nations World Water Development Report 2018 states that “The global demand for water has been increasing at a rate of about 1% per year over the past decades as a function of population growth, economic development and changing consumption patterns, among other factors, and it will continue to grow significantly over the foreseeable future….At the same time, the global water cycle is intensifying due to climate change, with wetter regions generally becoming wetter and drier regions becoming even drier. Other global changes (e.g., urbanisation, de-forestation, intensification of agriculture) add to these challenges. At present, an estimated 3.6 billion people (nearly half the global population) live in areas that are potentially water-scarce at least one month per year, and this population could increase to some 4.8–5.7 billion by 2050.”

Will private industry be able to regulate and equitably distribute available water resources? Only governments, acting in concert with one another and with international agencies will determine who gets what, when, and where.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) plus Robotics

Robotics clears the factory floor of workers and AI, by replacing much administration — solving problems, clarifying work schedules, preparing and managing budgets — clears the offices of managers.

New software and manufacturing industries will emerge, but will the tools of the new industrial age be used to satisfy the wants and needs of the populace or mainly the profits of entrepreneurs? Will the self-operating machines be able to generate income for all those who have left the factories; will there be sufficient income in the system to purchase all goods in the expanded market? Will supply exceed demand and profits become a mirage? Will AI and extensive Robotics be a suitable companion to the workers of a new and less profit oriented system industrial system, where wages can be coupons for more equitably distributed abundance? Arrangement between humans and the new machines reorder the democracy and the social; reorder society into Democratic Socialism.

Population Migrations

Already a major problem that has reached crisis proportions, a 2018 World Bank Group report enhances the problem. The report “estimates that the impacts of climate change in three of the world’s most densely populated developing regions—sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—could result in the displacement and internal migration of more than 140 million people before 2050.” A mass movement of that scale will need cooperative government actions and international agreements to prevent political and economic strife and enable continued development in the affected regions.

Nuclear war

Nations that rely on fossil fuel exports to maintain their economic system — Middle East, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and others — and nations destabilized by the effects of climate change — water scarcity, agriculture losses, food depletion — that cannot effectively compete and re-orient themselves in the changing world may become aggressive and seek opportunities by engaging in warfare, which could lead to use of weapons of mass destruction. A byproduct of the switch to renewable fuels and climate change – inability to compete in the new economic environment – must be accommodated to prevent military catastrophes. Arms controls and peaceful cooperation will replace arms races and unilateral actions.

Disease and Pestilence

China’s recent actions to contain the spread of Covid-19 virus serve as a model for future actions in controlling pandemics. Local actions can contain the pandemic but cannot prevent its spread. Centralized programs that mobilize all agencies and institutions and the entire public are necessary to coordinate all activities that defeat the pandemic. National health plans, which enable every citizen to have adequate medical coverage, will assure that everyone will be able to seek medical assistance quickly and halt the spreading of diseases. Trends to increased isolation, remaining home, and ordering goods and foods online will change life styles and cripple commercial activities of retail stores, restaurants, entertainment, sports arenas, local transportation, and suburban malls. With more work from home, rather than from offices, rapid changes in urban environment, industry composition and employment will appear, and necessitate government assistance to prevent business collapses and severe unemployment.

Security Enhancements

Terrorist and mass shooting actions from those who are mentally ill, feel estranged from society, and have been coopted by extremists will grow. Tighter law enforcement, increased surveillance, and privacy invasions will follow. Protection of all will replace self-protection.

Political and Social Polarization

Modern democracies have given people freedom and hope, more of the air to breathe. In the process, groups have taken advantage of the freedoms and increased their concentration of wealth and power, which has led to oligarchies. Those who feel they have been unfairly sidetracked from the prosperity have sought refuge by gathering together in nationalist organizations and populist politics. The coming socialization poses a solution by implementing workplace democracy in which workers have a stake in corporate management and are able to institute a more equitable distribution of income and wealth.

Conclusions

All of the posed problems have previously required some form of government intervention. The convergence of them at one time, and the growing perils from climate change and pandemics strike a new chord in domestic and international relations — cooperation before competition, survival of all before survival of the fittest, limited material wealth before unlimited natural catastrophes.

Those who previously exclaimed, “Better Dead than Red” need not transpose to “Better Red than Dead.” “Better Pink than Sink,” is the new slogan for the Democratic and Socialist communities, pushed to leadership in order to prevent Capitalism’s latest offering — human extinction.

Dan Lieberman edits Alternative Insight, a commentary on foreign policy, economics, and politics. He is author of the book A Third Party Can Succeed in America, a Kindle: The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name).
Dan can be reached at alternativeinsight@earthlink.net

The devastating effects of neoliberal economic schemes have laid the foundation for rebellion against this very system. Neoliberalism, understood as unrestricted free market economics can be traced to the sixteenth-century European colonization of the “new world” and its later manifestation in imperialism and neo-imperialism. This strategy has also fueled the industrial revolution until it met its fate with the Great Depression. The New Deal policies of the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s provided a temporary reprieve, but ultimately failed to secure a permanent solution to market failure. The proof of this vulnerability is made clear in the Great Recession some seventy years later with the market collapse in 2008.

In spite of these historical calamities, the rich have amazingly benefitted from their own economic disaster while the middle class and poor have been forced to financially both suffer from economic devastation and, adding insult to injury, bare the cost of repairing the disaster the rich have visited upon them. The rich, power elite, or one percent, whatever the spin, are clearly waging economic war on the people, and this has been dragging itself out since the inception of the United States. Today the result for most citizens is the lived reality of being “liquid asset poor,” or put in other terms, “one paycheck away from disaster.”Moreover, the devastation of the administrative state over the past forty years, starting with the Reagan era, has been a major factor in destroying the social safety netand in so doing unleash the “animal spirits” of the free market.

It is obvious. The neoliberal economic model is destroying life for Americans and some form of resistance to capitalism is needed more than ever. To this Erik Olin Wright develops an anti-capitalist strategy using metaphors such as: smashing capitalism, taming capitalism, escaping capitalism, and eroding capitalism. In this Wright constructs a new conceptual model based on two of the metaphors, “taming and eroding”capitalism.[1]

Smashing Capitalism

The evidence that neoliberal and monopoly capitalism has historically devastated the lives of people, “smashing capitalism” is understandable. The reason for smashing capitalism is because it is a corrupt institution; reform is impossible since it is controlled by the interests of powerful elites. At times small reforms are possible through public policy, yet such reforms are contingent and subject to legislative change. Wright argues that policy in this regard is held captive by its elite clientele and international elites. This makes public policy unresponsive to the needs of the general public. In lieu of this, “smashing capitalism” through class struggle seems to be the only alternative. The idea that capitalism can be rendered a benign social order to which ordinary people benefit is a delusion. Instead the rational alternative is to end the life of capitalism and then reconstruct a state socialist alternative.

Aside from the strengths and weaknesses of revolutionary action, there are too many “moving parts,” too much complexity, and too many unintended consequences in which revolutionary action, directed at terminating capitalism, is not feasible. Attempts at “system rupture” as Wright describes it, will tend to unravel into such chaos that revolutionary elites, regardless of their motives, will be compelled to resort to pervasive violence and repression to sustain social order. Such violence, in turn, destroys the possibility for a genuinely democratic, participatory process of building a new society. The evidence from the revolutionary tragedies of the twentieth century seem to indicate that smashing capitalism, according to Wright, fails as a strategy for social emancipation.

Taming Capitalism

An alternative to smashing capitalism is taming capitalism. Critics of capitalism argue that capitalism is self-destructive. It generates levels of inequality that undermine social cohesion. Capitalism destroys traditional jobs and leaves people to fend for themselves. It creates uncertainty and risk for individuals and communities. These are consequences of the inherent dynamics of a capitalist economy. Nevertheless, Wright argues that it is possible to build counteracting institutions neutralizing the negative externalities of capitalism. Well-crafted policies are more than possible at taming capitalism.Given favorable political circumstances, it is possible to win policy battles and impose the constraints needed for a more benign form of capitalism. The idea of taming capitalism does not eliminate the underlying tendency for capitalism to generate harms; it simply counteracts their effects.

This is similar to a medicine which effectively deals with symptoms rather than underlying causes. Known as the “Golden Age of Capitalism” – roughly the three decades following World War II – social-democratic policies, specifically in those locations where they were most thoroughly implemented, did a fairly good job at moving in the direction of a more humane economic system. Three clusters of state policies, in particular, that significantly counteracted the harm of capitalism are: health, employment, and income. So too, the state provided an expansive set of public goods (funded by a robust tax system) that included basic and higher education, vocational skill formation, public transportation, cultural activities, recreational facilities, research and development, and macro-economic stability. In large part the corporate media is to blame. Educational institutions as well.  Still, for Wright taming capitalism remains a viable expression of anti-capitalism.

Escaping Capitalism

One of the oldest responses to the onslaught of capitalism has been to escape. For Wright, escaping capitalism may not have crystallized into systematic anti-capitalist ideologies, but nevertheless it has a coherent logic: capitalism is too powerful a system to destroy. Truly taming capitalism would require a level of sustained collective action that is unrealistic, and albeit, the system as a whole is too large and complex to control. The power elite control the United States and they will always coopt opposition and defend their privileges.The impulse to escape is reflected in many familiar responses to the harms of capitalism. For example, the movement of farmers to the Western frontier in nineteenth-century United States was, for many, an aspiration for stable, self-sufficient subsistence farming rather than production for the market.

Escaping capitalism is implicit in the “hippie” motto of the 1960s, “turn on, tune in, drop out.”The “Go It Alone” demeanor and the “community economy” may be motivated by stagnant individual incomes during a period of economic austerity, but they can also point to ways of organizing economic activity that are less dependent on market exchange. More generally, the lifestyle of voluntary simplicity can contribute to broader rejection of consumerism and the preoccupation with economic growth in capitalism. Fleeing from the complexities and even injustices associated with capitalism will, in the long run, fail to address the deeper structural issues that could in fact return to promote worse outcomes from prior experiences. Escaping capitalism fails to address the underlying causes of capitalism’s inadequacies and the outcomes that effect other’s lives whatever their perspectives on capitalism.

Eroding Capitalism

The fourth form of anti-capitalism is the least familiar, eroding capitalism. This orientation for Wright, identifies capitalism as a socioeconomic system organized around three basic components: private ownership of capital; production for the market for the purpose of making profits; and employment of workers who do not own the means of production. Capitalists claim that markets are the most efficient and effective means for the distribution of scarce resources.The same capitalists, on the other hand, must confront problems with the distribution and equity of these resources. As a result, public policy has attempted to address these issues through what Wright describes as the“eroding capitalism” theme: policy implementationsto remediate market failures.This includes nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations.

A number of these organizations can be thought of as hybrids, composed of capitalist and non-capitalist entities; some are non-capitalist while some are anti-capitalist. Thus, the eroding force on capitalism is to construct more inclusive, democratic, egalitarian, economic models wherever possible, and to struggle to expand and defend these efforts to the point where capitalism is no longer dominant. The eroding process evolves over time. As a strategic vision, eroding capitalism is both enticing and far-fetched in that social justice and emancipatory social change, attempt to build on a new world on economic and environmental justice, within the current capitalist structure, albeit flawed. Simply put, an economy dominated by capitalism could never be eliminated since the existence of large capitalist corporations are responsible, to a large degree, for livelihoods.

Eroding capitalism is not a fantasy for Wright. It is only plausible if it is combined with the social-democratic idea of taming capitalism, linking the bottom-up, society-centered strategic vision of anarchism with the top-down, state-centered strategic logic of social democracy. The goal is to tame capitalism in ways that make it more erodible so that eroding and taming capitalism, without its total elimination, is a position that makes sense in the context of understanding this position as a “pipedream” or “utopia.”

Taming and Eroding

So, how should one as an anti-capitalist seek to implement a democratic economy?

First, abandon the fantasy of smashing capitalism. Capitalism is not able to be smashed, at least if the goal is to construct an emancipatory future aimed at social justice. It is a massive international institution whose destruction, presumably by some revolutionary force, would devastate the world financial system. Second, by escaping capitalism and moving off the grid and minimizing involvement with the market, is neither a realistic nor an appealing option for most people, especially those with families, financial responsibilities, etc. As a tactic for social change, it has little potential to foster a broader process of social emancipation.

In summary, if persons are concerned about living in a civilized world, in one way or another, social justice demands that capitalism, as it manifests itself today on a global scale, must address its inner demons, structures and institutions. Anti-capitalism thus directs its attention to taming and eroding capitalism. The real utopian emancipatory efforts can be directed at democratic economic models that serve the needs of labor as a priority, profits follow subsequently. This arguably is the best approach to remediating the precarious nature of the market and which also presumes that individuals and communities need to participate both in political movements for taming capitalism through public policies and in socioeconomic projects for eroding capitalism through the expansion of ongoing emancipatory forms of economic activity.This implies that people must renew an energetic progressive social democracy that not only neutralizes the harms of capitalism but also facilitates initiatives to build real utopias with the potential to erode the dominance of capitalism.

An anti-capitalist emancipatory project must have specific human rights guarantees in order for this emancipatory project to be successful. As Bernie Sanders argues, authentic freedom must embrace “economic security.” Arguably, this can best be achieved with the reintroduction of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights. Hence the assurance of a democratic economy and an anti-capitalist strategy based on taming and eroding the inherent contradictions and nihilistic direction of capitalist designs.

[1]Erik Olin Wright, How to Be an Anti-capitalist for the 21st Century, Verso Books, 2019.

Ed Martin, The Human Rights Project, Tubac, Arizona

As the human onslaught against life on Earth accelerates, no part of the biosphere is left pristine. The simple act of consuming more than we actually need drives the world’s governments and corporations to endlessly destroy more and more of the Earth to extract the resources necessary to satisfy our insatiable desires. In fact, an initiative of the World Economic Forum has just reported that ‘For the first time in history, more than 100 billion tonnes of materials are entering the global economy every year’ – see ‘The Circularity Gap Report 2020’ – which means that, on average, every person on Earth uses more than 13 tonnes of materials each year extracted from the Earth.

As I have explained elsewhere, however, the psychological damage we have all suffered, which leaves us with unmet but critically important emotional needs (and, in many cases, the sense that our lives are meaningless), cannot be rectified by material consumption. Despite this, most of us will spend our lives engaged in a futile attempt to fill the aching void in our psyche by consuming and accumulating, at staggering cost to the Earth. Identifying when we have ‘enough’ is a capacity that most modern humans have never acquired for reasons that can be easily explained. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

Hence, our world continues to vanish, as has been extensively documented. For a summary, see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’.

And nowhere is this more evident than in the planet’s oceans, which are being systematically destroyed and where life is being progressively extinguished.

In fact, our destruction of the oceans is now so advanced that the fish, mammals(including seals, whales, manatees, sea otters and polar bears), crustaceans(including crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimps, prawns, krill and barnacles), coral reefs (made up of coral polyps, marine invertebrate animals that live in colonies) and the millions of species that live in and around them (including sponges, mollusks, sea anemones, seahorses, sea turtles as well as crustaceans and an enormous variety of fish), plants (such as algae, seaweed and seagrass), microscopic organisms (residing in the ocean and on the ocean floor), invertebrates (such as sea urchins and sea slugs), birds (including better known ones such as penguins, auks, murres, razorbills, puffins, tubenoses – such as the albatross and petrels – pelicans and gulls and a great many species that are less well known), and the other lifeforms that live in and on the ocean are vanishing rapidly.

Starkly illustrating the catastrophic nature of what is taking place, one recent incident alone killed 100 million Pacific cod. See ‘Ocean heat waves like the Pacific’s deadly “Blob” could become the new normal’.But, tragically, such incidents are no longer unusual and, of course, they generate cascading impacts. See, for example, ‘Fish all gone!… Millions of small sea birds died since 2015’.

‘How can we destroy the oceans?’ you might ask. Unfortunately, far too easily when you consider the range of assaults to which they are being subjected.

So let me give you a brief 18-point outline of what we are doing that is destroying the oceans –where life on Earth originated and which remains the planet’s main life support system by dominating the processes that keep our planet habitable such as regulating the climate by absorbing excess carbon dioxide and heat – while also giving you some idea of the impacts of this on the creatures that live in and on the oceans.

As a result of human activities that generate carbon emissions, we are dumping ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the oceans which have absorbed 20–30% of total anthropogenic emissions in the last two decades. This is causing the oceans to warm, acidify and lose oxygen, among several other adverse outcomes. See ‘The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate: A Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’.p. 450. These adverse changes, in turn, generate a range of ‘downstream’ negative impacts. However, there are other human activities unrelated to carbon emissions that are destroying the oceans too.

So here is the summary.

1. The oceans are warming.

In relation to warming, the oceans have been heating up for several decades and, since 2005, the increase has been unchecked. Moreover, it is occurring at all ocean depths, including in the deep ocean (below 2,000 metres). In addition, the rate of warming has been increasing and the rate of ocean uptake of atmospheric CO2 has continued to strengthen in the last two decades in response to the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is causing the upper ocean to stratify making the surface ocean less dense over time, compared to the deeper ocean, and inhibiting the exchange between surface and deep waters.

As one result of this ocean warming, the range of some species has expanded and, in the case of tropical species that have expanded into higher latitudes, it has led to increased grazing on some coral reefs, rocky reefs, seagrass meadows and epipelagic (near-surface) ecosystems, leading to altered ecosystem structure.

Ocean warming has also contributed to changes in the biogeography of organisms ranging from phytoplankton to marine mammals, consequently changing community composition, and in some cases, altering interactions between organisms. The net outcome is anadverse impact on marine organisms and fisheries with serious implications for human communities and food production.

Ocean warming is also manifesting in a range of diverse and unpredicted ways with one of the more catastrophic aberrations, touched on above, being the occurrence of ‘blobs’: huge patches of unusually warm ocean water that can be millions of square kilometres in size. These ‘marine heatwaves’ wreak havoc, sometimes killing millions of ocean creatures in a single incident (including by disturbing food chains), forcing others to relocate, and perhaps generating unusual blooms of toxic algae. See ‘Ocean heat waves like the Pacific’s deadly “Blob” could become the new normal’.

Among its other impacts, the warming oceans mean there is more available energy that can be converted into cyclonic winds. Research on this subject indicates that there has been ‘an increase in intense hurricane activity over the past 40 years’.See ‘Hurricanes and Climate Change’and ‘Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment’. These events cause landslides, collapses in fisheries, and damage to reefs and shallow-water habitats. When they impact on coastal communities, they kill people and destroy properties, among other outcomes. See ‘The state of our oceans – The damaging effects of ocean pollution’.

Warming oceans also cause coral bleaching. This is because corals have algae that live in their tissues and these algae provide the coral with essential nutrients and give them their color. The warming oceans cause this relationship to become stressed, forcing the algae out of the coral. As a result, the coral becomes white, loses its main food source, and becomes more vulnerable to disease. See ‘Coral Bleaching’.

Warmer ocean water causes sea level rise too because warmer water has a greater volume than colder water. Of course, sea level rise also occurs because of the additional water from melting land ice and a devastating level of rise from this cause is already ‘locked in’ because of past emissions. See ‘Sea Level Rise!’

Ocean warming and increased stratification disturb ocean nutrient cycles and this is having a regionally variable (but usually adverse) impact on many species too.

And finally, ocean warming – most likely from ice loss in the Arctic – is weakening the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) which is one of the key drivers of global ocean circulation; it includes the Gulf Stream that transports warm and salty tropical waters north to the western coasts of Europe where the warm water releases heat to the atmosphere, playing a key role in the warming of western Europe and thus its functional habitability. Once the tropical water reaches the south and east of Greenland, it cools before sinking to the base of the North Atlantic Ocean because it is saltier and thus denser than the surrounding fresh water. The water is then pushed south along the abyss of the Atlantic Ocean completing what has been, from a human viewpoint, a perpetual cycle. See ‘Arctic sea-ice decline weakens the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation’and ‘Global Ocean Circulation Appears To Be Collapsing Due To A Warming Planet’. How much longer it will be so appears to defy reliable scientific assessment. But as it breaks down, the adverse outcomes multiply rapidly.

In fact, ocean circulation generally is being impacted by the warming climate, as established by a recently concluded study:

Ocean circulation plays a vital role in regulating the weather and climate and supporting marine life…. Here, we show for the first time, independent satellite observational evidence demonstrating that the large-scale ocean gyres are moving poleward during the past four decades. Further analysis based on climate models and various other data sets reveal that the poleward shifting of the ocean gyre circulation is most likely to be a consequence of global warming, which so far has not been well recognized by the public and the scientific community…. Such changes have had disastrous consequences…. See ‘Poleward shift of the major ocean gyres detected in a warming climate’.

2. The oceans are becoming more acidic.

In response to the increasing carbon uptake the oceans are also becoming more acidic. This has probably been the case for three-quarters of the near-surface open ocean since prior to 1950 and it is very likely that over 95% of the near surface open ocean has now been affected. See ‘The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate: A Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’. p. 450.

In a stark warning issued by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) in 2013, scientists had already noted that the oceans are becoming more acidic at the fastest rate in 300m years. Why? Because of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. ‘This [acidification] is unprecedented in the Earth’s known history. We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction may have already begun.’ See ‘Rate of ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years’.

In its latest report, issued in 2018, IPSO declared the following: ‘The ocean, by its breadth and depth, occupies more than 97% of the living space on Earth. It dominates the processes that keep our planet habitable…. But this protection comes at a cost as the ocean is now becoming more acidic…. For too long we have mistaken the immensity of the ocean for inviolability, but those days are gone, and we stand at a critical juncture. Cutting emissions, while essential, will not alone solve the environmental problems we face.’ See ‘Eight urgent fundamental and simultaneous steps needed to restore ocean health, and the consequences for humanity and the planet of inaction or delay’.

3. The oceans are deoxygenating.

Oxygen in the air or water is of paramount importance to most living organisms. Unfortunately, as a recent report documents in considerable detail (and which confirms earlier research), oxygen levels are currently declining across the ocean (and not just in the more widely known ocean ‘dead zones’: see below). See ‘Ocean deoxygenation: Everyone’s problem. Causes, impacts, consequences and solutions’.

Deoxygenation of the ocean is the result of two overlying causes – eutrophication (the process by which a body of water becomes overly enriched with minerals and nutrients thus inducing excessive growth of algae which absorb the oxygen at the expense of the water body) as a result of nutrient run-off from land and deposition of nitrogen from the burning of fossil fuels, as well as the heating of ocean waters as another outcome of burning fossil fuels, primarily causing a change in ventilation with the overlying atmosphere so that the oceans hold less soluble oxygen (and which is compounded by reduced ocean mixing and changes in currents and wind patterns). Ocean deoxygenation is but the latest consequence of our activities on the ocean to be recognized and is yet another ‘major stressor’ on marine systems.

Eutrophication has been identified as a problem in 900 separate areas of the ocean, with 700 of these suffering hypoxia (low oxygen) as a result. But because ocean warming lowers oxygen directly, it is now impacting vast areas of the ocean as well. As a result, ‘the ocean has now become a source of oxygen for the atmosphere even though its oxygen inventory is only about 0.6% of that of the atmosphere’. Moreover, different analyses have concluded that global ocean oxygen content has decreased by 1-2 % since the middle of the 20th century. Given existing trends in the factors driving this change, the rate of loss must accelerate.

Obviously, the future intensification and expansion of low oxygen zones will have further adverse ecosystem and biogeochemical consequences, particularly in combination with, and sometimes synergistically with, other threats. For example, ‘ocean warming accompanied by deoxygenation will drive habitat contraction and fragmentation in regions where oxygen levels decline below metabolic requirements’.

4. The oceans are being contaminated with nuclear radiation.

Despite an extensive and ongoing coverup by the Japanese government and nuclear corporations as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), vast amounts of radioactive waste are being dumped into the biosphere from the TEPCO nuclear power plant at Fukushima in Japan including by discharge into the Pacific Ocean. This is killing an incalculable number of fish and other marine organisms and indefinitely contaminating expanding areas of that ocean. See ‘Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation’,‘2019 Annual Report – Fukushima 8th Anniversary’, ‘Eight years after triple nuclear meltdown, Fukushima No. 1’s water woes show no signs of ebbing’and ‘Fukushima’s Three Nuclear Meltdowns Are “Under Control” – That’s a Lie’.

In addition, one critical legacy of the US military’s 67 secretive and lethal nuclear weapons tests on the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 is the ‘eternally’ radioactive garbage left behind and now leaking into the Pacific Ocean. See ‘The Pentagon’s Disastrous Radioactive Waste Dump in the Drowning Marshall Islands is Leaking into the Pacific Ocean’.

And, of course, there are up to 70 ‘still functional’ nuclear weapons as well as nine nuclear reactors lying on the ocean floor as a result of accidents involving nuclear warships and submarines. These are leaking an unknown amount of radiation into the oceans. See ‘Naval Nuclear Accidents: The Secret Story’, ‘A Nuclear Needle in a Haystack: The Cold War’s Missing Atom Bombs’ and, for one specific example (the former Soviet submarine Komsomolets), see ‘Soviet nuclear submarine emitting radiation “100,000 times normal level” into sea, scientists find’.

5. The oceans are being contaminated as a result of offshore oil and gas drilling, as well as oil spills.

The complex but far-from-perfect technologiesandthe many environmental challenges associated with oil and gas drilling in the ocean have ensured the near-routine occurrence of often disastrous accidents which invariably lead to fossil fuels and other contaminants being discharged into the ocean, sometimes on a vast scale.

The classic case, of course, was the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig which had drilled a well to 35,055 feet (10 kilometers) while operating in 4,130 feet (1 kilometer) of water. The oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010 releasing 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean making it the worst environmental disaster in US history. It caused extensive damage to the ocean, corals and beaches and killed millions of fish, birds and marine mammals in and on the ocean. Despite a ‘clean up’, only one quarter of the oil was ever removed from the ocean. See ‘The Dangers of Offshore Drilling’.

The simple reality is that despite the industry’s safety claims, oil rig fires are commonplace. See ‘Why Is Offshore Drilling So Dangerous?’

And so are oil spills into the ocean for other reasons, including from tankers – see ‘Top 10 Worst Oil Spills’ – as the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 demonstrated all too graphically. See ‘The Complete Story of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill’.

Often enough as well, oil is discharged into the ocean as a result of military activities and war. During the Gulf War in 1991, for example, vast quantities of oil were released into the Persian Gulf as a military tactic. See ‘The World’s Largest Oil Spill: The Gulf War Kuwait, 1991’and ‘Gulf War Oil Disaster: A Brief History’.

6. The oceans are being damaged by deep sea mining.

Recent technological advances spurred by growing demand for minerals used in consumer electronics has led to increased interest in deep sea mining as the next frontier in resource extraction. Hailed as the new ‘global gold rush’, deep sea mining entails extracting minerals from deposits in the deep sea (approximately 400 to 6,000 meters below sea level) for use in emerging and high technology, among other sectors. Predictably, deep sea mining shares many features with past resource scrambles, including a general disregard for environmental and social impacts, and the marginalization of indigenous peoples and their rights. See ‘Broadening Common Heritage: Addressing Gaps in the Deep Sea Mining Regulatory Regime’ and ‘Deep-sea mining possibly as damaging as land mining, lawyers say’.

Beyond these adverse impacts, however, recent research makes it increasingly clear that deep sea mining poses a grave threat to vital seabed functions, including those played by hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, for example, which support remarkable biodiversity and sequester disproportionate amounts of carbon.Moreover, recent scientific breakthroughs have further revealed that most of the excess heat resulting from increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases has been absorbed by the deep ocean, thereby significantly limiting the climate catastrophe’s impacts on the ocean’s surface and on land. See ‘Deep sea ecology: hydrothermal vents and cold seeps’ and ‘Broadening Common Heritage: Addressing Gaps in the Deep Sea Mining Regulatory Regime’.

In essence, deep sea mining threatens the ‘common heritage’ the seabed provides through its substantial contributions to biodiversity, climate regulation and heat storage.

7. The oceans are being polluted with industrial (including chemical) and farming wastes including pesticides and fertilizers which are generating ‘dead zones’, regions of the oceans that are devoid of life.

Despite the existence of the ‘Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and other Matter’ (otherwise known as the London Dumping Convention, 1972), an international treaty ‘that created a global system to protect the marine environment from pollution caused by ocean dumping’ – and certainly including radioactive wastes, fossil fuels, some toxic wastes, biological and chemical warfare agents, and persistent synthetic materials such as plastic – and supposedly ‘ensures that the few materials that are permitted for ocean disposal are carefully evaluated to make sure that they will not pose a danger to human health or the environment’ – see ‘1972 Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention)’ – the Convention must be one of the least comprehensive and most violated in international law. In any case, there is no evidence that it has any restraining impact on the actions of states or corporations as the evidence above and below demonstrates.

For example, a vast runoff of industrial wastes (including heavy metals), agricultural poisons, fossil fuels and other wastes is discharged into the ocean, adversely impacting life at all ocean depths – see ‘Staggering level of toxic chemicals found in creatures at the bottom of the sea, scientists say’ – and, as noted above, generating ocean ‘dead zones’ (of which there are many hundred): regions that have too little oxygen to support marine organisms. See ‘Ocean Dead Zones Are Getting Worse Globally Due to Climate Change’ and ‘Ocean “dead zones” are spreading – and that spells disaster for fish’.

8. The oceans are being polluted by nitrogen.

While nitrogen is vital to the health of the ocean, like everything else that makes up the ocean, it must be in balance, not fluctuating beyond very narrow parameters. See ‘Understanding nitrogen’s role in the ocean’.

But it is now well past the point when this state has been the case.

This is because nitrogen is one important element of the industrial and agricultural pollution just mentioned. It is the nitrogen component in the runoffs of these wastes (such as fertilizers and sewage) into the oceanthat causes harmful algal blooms, eutrophication and ocean dead zones (hypoxia) while making marine life more vulnerable to disease, reducing biodiversity in shallow estuarine waters, degrading ocean ecosystems and contributing to global warming. ‘Algal blooms deplete dissolved oxygen, causing marine wildlife to suffer and become more vulnerable to toxins and disease. Nitrogen in the blooms also produces nitrous oxide (N20), a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. This contributes to global warming, which further degrades oceans by increasing acidity in the water as the oceans absorb more and more carbon.’ See ‘Stop Nitrogen Pollution of Oceans – Green Algal Slime Busters’.

9. The oceans are being polluted with discharges from warships, commercial shipping and cruise ships: bilge water, ballast water, sewage, graywater and general rubbish.

Despite the 1973 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, known as the MARPOL Convention, which has been routinely added to over subsequent years and gives the impression of being comprehensive, there is obviously little interest in abiding by the terms of the Convention and little evidence that most ship crews do so. Moreover, given that many provisions of the Convention focus on minimizing discharges within 12 nautical miles of land, that leaves a great deal of ocean into which such discharges can be done legally even if disposal of plastics beyond the 12 mile limit remains illegal.

In addition, while the MARPOL Convention was theoretically designed to minimize releases by both operational and accidental causes, laws do not preventaccidents as the long list of oil tanker accidents, touched on above, such as that of the Odyssey in 1988, the Exxon Valdez in 1989 and the Haven in 1991, resulting in massive oil discharges into the ocean reminds us. See, for example, ‘Top 10 Worst Oil Spills’.

But the law is violated deliberately in any case. Bilge water – a filthy, oily mess of fresh water, seawater, chemicals, oil, sludge, and other fluids from a ship – is found at the very bottom of the ship where the two sides of the hull meet. Seawater is pumped into large ships to cool their engines andas the water moves through the cooling system it picks up loose oil and waste from the engine and this, together with oil drips from the pipes and machinery fittings, ends up in the bilge well of the ship. See ‘What is Bilge Water?’

However, despite the MARPOL Convention, across the world many oceangoing vessels break these international laws and empty their untreated bilge water into the ocean. For example, in 2016 Princess Cruises, one of 10 brands owned by Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest cruise holiday company, was fined £32million for bypassing oil treatment systems on their vessels, deliberately and illegally dumping thousands of gallons of oil and waste off the UK coast. See ‘Cruise line fined £32m for using “magic pipe” to dump oily waste into UK waters’.

And while we are on cruise ships, of which there are more than 300 carrying half a million passengers annually – see ‘2018 Worldwide Cruise Line Passenger Capacity’ – the glossy advertising brochures do not tell you the extraordinary downside of this holiday/travel option which, among many other problems, are an ecological nightmare for our oceans. Altogether, the 16 major cruise lines generate over one billion gallons of sewage each year, much of it raw or poorly treated and simply discharged into the ocean. And apart from the carbon emissions (with one cruise ship producing 13 million cars worth of CO2 each day) and the oily bilge water, grey water and various other pollutants are a concern both while at sea and docked in port. See ‘16 Things Cruise Lines Never Tell You’.

And while some shipwrecks are a source of fascination for scuba divers and treasure hunters, the vast bulk of the estimated 3 million shipwrecks, particularly more recent ones, are just more junk (or even sources of contamination) in the ocean. See ‘How Many Shipwrecks Are There?’

10. The oceans are being used as a vast rubbish dump, resulting in such phenomena as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

We are making the oceans a rubbish dump for vast quantities of pollutants and contaminants, ranging from plastic, microplastics, microbeads and microfibers to toxic and radioactive wastes.

In relation to plastic, a major scientific study involving 24 expeditions conducted between 2007 and 2013, which was designed to estimate ‘the total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world’s oceans’ the team of scientists estimated that there was ‘a minimum of 5.25 trillion particles weighing 268,940 tons’. See ‘Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea’ and ‘Full scale of plastic in the world’s oceans revealed for first time’.

Since then, of course, the problem has become progressively worse with vast quantities of plastic (entangled in other garbage) forming into floating garbage patches that are vast in size. See ‘Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific’and ‘Plastic Chokes the Seas’.

Furthermore, a recent UN report documenting marine debris – that is, rubbish in the ocean – noted the increasing number of marine species impacted by debris through ingestion and entanglement and provided further information on the types of impacts occurring, particularly with respect to microplastics and their physical and chemical effects. The report paid particular attention to ‘persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic substances’ (PBTs), noting the recent studies of the presence of toxic chemicals derived from plastics in marine taxa in a separate appendix. See ‘Marine Debris: Understanding, Preventing and Mitigating the Significant Adverse Impacts on Marine and Coastal Biodiversity’.

Another articlehighlights the now ubiquitous nature of the ocean garbage problem: There is rubbish everywhere, literally. See ‘How an Uninhabited Island Got the World’s Highest Density of Trash’.

‘Does it matter?’ you might ask. According to a UN report, it matters a great deal: marine debris is harming an increasing number of species, now more than 800, and previous research places the cost of pollution caused by marine debris at $13 billion annually. See ‘New UN report finds marine debris harming more than 800 species, costing countries millions’.

11. The oceans are being overfished and illegally fished.

Apart from the destruction wrought by aquaculture, considered in the next section, the world’s oceans are being plundered mercilessly for remaining fishstocks. In 2017, a report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted that ‘The international community is harvesting fish at unsustainable biological levels. The Mediterranean Sea is about 70 per cent exploited; the Black Sea 90 per cent.’ Of course, the fact that the fishing industry is subsidized to the tune of $US35billion annually (more than one-fifth of the annual fish market of $US150billion) adds enormous additional incentive to fish the world’s oceans. Needless to say, these subsidies facilitate ‘a race to the bottom’ as fishing fleets compete to harvest increasing amounts of fish ‘at a time when seafood is already a scarce resource’. See ‘Next month’s ocean conference eyes cutting $35 billion in fisheries subsidies – UN trade officials’.

Unfortunately too, despite supposed ambitions to end illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing methods, the annual value of fish caught these ways is estimated at $US23billion. See ‘More Plastic than Fish or How Politicians Help Ocean Destruction’.

In essence, with a global fishing fleet of 4.6 million vessels, massive government subsidies to encourage over-fishing, virtually nothing done to prevent illegal and unregulated fishing, and almost half the human population relying on fish for an adequate diet, the increasing biological unsustainability of fishing is destined, particularly when considered in conjunction with other threats mentioned above and below, to wreak ongoing havoc on fish populations (as well as species caught incidentally as ‘bycatch’) until the oceans are emptied of fish.

Moreover, given the ever-neglected synergistic impacts of the many threats discussed in this article, as well as the inevitably increasing number of incidents – such as the ‘blob’ that suddenly killed 100 million Pacific cod mentioned above – this can now happen very quickly.

Of course, it is not just fish that are being taken from the ocean. Many other species are heavily impacted too.

Whales have been hunted mercilessly for a very long time with the total number in the ocean reduced from about 5 million 500 years ago to about 1 million now. This has caused enormous damage to the ocean but also the biosphere as a whole given the prodigious capacity of whales to sequester carbon, for example. See ‘How Whales Sequester Tonnes of CO2: Our Secret Weapon against Climate Change’. Apart from the ongoing hunting – see ‘Iceland is killing fin whales for Japanese pet treats’ – whales are now killed by many other human activities ranging from entanglement in discarded fishing gear and consumption of plastic – see ‘Plastic Waste Kills Six-Ton Whale’ – to seismic airguns which are a probable cause of beach strandings – see ‘337 Dead Whales In Chile Is Worst Case Of Mass Deaths So Far’ – as explained below.

And sea otters – which play a vital role in maintaining the health of the ocean’s kelp forests by eating the sea urchins that eat the kelp – have also been mercilessly slaughtered in vast numbers for their fur pelts in the past. More recently, however, they are being hunted by killer whales which have changed their diet to include otters because their main food source, the great whale, has been almost entirely wiped out by commercial hunting. See ‘Sea Otters as Habitat Protectors’.

12. The oceans are being subjected to destructive fishing practices, such as bottom trawling, blast fishing, cyanide fishing, ghost fishing and aquaculture.

Some fishing methods are so destructive that they cause harm to the ocean environments where fish are caught. ‘Bottom trawling’ is one such practice: it involves fishing boats dragging large, heavy nets along the ocean floor and itis practiced on a huge scale all around the world. Blast fishing involves the use of explosives and cyanide fishing uses poison.

Damage to the surrounding ocean – including corals, sponges, and other organisms living on the seabed – is inevitable ‘collateral damage’ to these types of fishing. See ‘The state of our oceans – The damaging effects of ocean pollution’.

But if you think the above fishing practices are bad, consider ‘ghost fishing’: the damage done by the (at least) 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear that is lost or abandoned in the oceans each year. Official estimates indicate that ‘ghost gear’ makes up 10% of waste in the oceans. Moreover, while it has an enormous adverse impact on ocean life, derelict gear also detrimentally alters seabed and marine environments.

See ‘Our oceans are haunted: How “ghost fishing” is devastating our marine environments’ and ‘Ghost Fishing? 640,000 Tonnes of Fishing Gear Dumped in Oceans Every Year’.

And if the existing overfishing and illegal fishing are not doing enough damage to Earth’s oceans, every year 80 million tons – almost half of annual seafood consumption – is produced by ‘aquaculture’: an industry that builds floating cages for salmon, artificial ponds for prawns on the coasts, and tanks for seafood in factory buildings – that is, aquatic factory farms. Of course, aquaculture is not the solution to overfishing: it is worsening the problem. ‘Trawler fleets sweep up vast quantities of wild fish and grind them into fishmeal and fish oil to feed farmed fish. Far from being “sustainable”, this is an incredibly inefficient and wasteful process: it takes up to five kilos of edible fish such as anchovies, mackerels or sardines, for example, to produce a single kilo of salmon.’

Moreover, as traditional stocks of species used to make fishmeal and fish oil collapse, the industry becomes less discriminating in its selection of targeted species and frequently includes juveniles as well as rare and endangered species, including turtles, stingrays and sharks. Predictably investigators researching the problem ‘did not have to dig deep to uncover shocking evidence of how this industry is trashing the oceans, but the full scale of its impacts is concealed from public view’. See ‘Fishing for Catastrophe: How global aquaculture supply chains are leading to the destruction of wild fish stocks and depriving people of food in India, Vietnam and The Gambia’, ‘Stop plundering the oceans for industrial aquaculture!’ and ‘Until the Seas Run Dry: How industrial aquaculture is plundering the oceans’.

Another problem with aquaculture is the way in which disease and parasites can spread among the intensively-farmed fish with, for example, the sea louse causing enormous problems among farmed salmon in Scotland, Norway, and Canada reducing the amount of fish produced by tens of thousands of tons per year and causing increasingly drastic – that is, inhumane and environmentally harmful – responses to be attempted. See ‘Salmon farming in crisis: “We are seeing a chemical arms race in the seas”’.

But disease and parasites can spread from the intensively farmed fish to wild populations too and, for example, this is causing populations of wild salmon and trout to decrease. See ‘The state of our oceans – The damaging effects of ocean pollution’.

13. The oceans are being damaged by sand mining.

The largest mining endeavour on Earth, accounting for 85% of all mineral extraction, is sand mining. See ‘The Hidden Environmental Toll of Mining the World’s Sand’.However, one study has suggested that existing figures ‘grossly underestimate global sand extraction and use’ because official statistics widely under-report sand use and typically ‘do not include nonconstruction purposes such as hydraulic fracturing and beach nourishment’. See ‘Global Patterns and Trends for Non‐Metallic Minerals used for Construction’and ‘The world is facing a global sand crisis’.

More problematically than inaccurate official statistics, however, is that sand mining, of all mining activity, is ‘the least regulated, and quite possibly the most corrupt and environmentally destructive.’ See ‘The Hidden Environmental Toll of Mining the World’s Sand’.

Why is sand mined? Sand is mainly used for the concrete that goes into building but it is also a key ingredient for roads, glass and electronics. In addition, massive amounts of sand are mined for land reclamation projects, shale gas extraction and beach renourishment programs. See ‘A looming tragedy of the sand commons’and ‘The world is facing a global sand crisis’.

Of course, not all of this sand comes from the oceans but plenty of it does. Moreover: ‘As land quarries and riverbeds become tapped out, sand miners are turning to the seas, where thousands of ships now vacuum up huge amounts of the stuff from the ocean floor.’ See ‘The Deadly Global War for Sand’.

For example, Britain now gets up to a quarter of its sand from sand banks off East Anglia in the North Sea, dredging up to 10 million tons from a region where there has been concern that the loss of sediment accelerates rampant coastal erosion, as well as damaging sea-bed communities such as crabs and starfish. See ‘A new sand and gravel map for the UK Continental Shelf to support sustainable planning’ and ‘The Hidden Environmental Toll of Mining the World’s Sand’.

But much of the sand dredged from the ocean is used for land reclamation projects, particularly in Asia. Most notoriously, Singapore has created an extra 50 square miles of land, expanding its area by 20 percent. How? It imported more than half-a-billion tons of sand, most of it from Indonesia, where at least 24 small islands have reportedly been removed from the map. But countries like the Philippines, Malaysia and China are also reclaiming vast quantities of sand, usually to expand or build coastal cities and, in China’s case, to dump on reefs and make islands to consolidate its territorial claims to the South China Sea. See ‘The Hidden Environmental Toll of Mining the World’s Sand’.

Does this cause much damage to the ocean floor? According to a United Nations Environment Program report: ‘Dredging and extraction… from the benthic (sea bottom) zone destroys organisms, habitats and ecosystems and deeply affects the composition of biodiversity, usually leading to a net decline in faunal biomass and abundance’. See ‘Sand, rarer than one thinks’.

14. The oceans are being damaged by port and harbour dredging.

There is growing economic and social demand for the development of coastal regions all over the world. Virtually all of these activities, such as coastal construction, land reclamation, beach reclamation and port construction/maintenance, involve dredging: the ‘excavation, transportation and disposal of soft-bottom material’ such as sand and debris from the bottom of ports, harbors, and marinas usually so that facilities are kept deep enough for ships to use. Dredging is also carried out where a river or ocean currents drop lots of sediment onto the seabed, to improve water drainage from a river so that flood risk is reduced and to remove sediments on the seabed if they are contaminated with environmental pollutants.

But, of course, all of this comes at a cost to the local ecology. Notably, in many cases, dredging has contributed to the loss of coral reef habitats. This can occur directly, due to the removal or burial of reefs, or indirectly, as a consequence of stress to corals caused by elevated turbidity and sedimentation. Dredging can also affect surrounding areas in a number of ways including turbid plumes, sedimentation and the release of contaminants.See‘Environmental impacts of dredging and other sediment disturbances on corals: A review’.

Dredging does not only adversely impact coral reefs, however. Dredging also kicks up a lot of debris into the water disturbing the resident plants and animals. And when the collected sediment is dumped at sea, it again disturbs the resident organisms.

15. The oceans are being damaged by the increasing spread of invasive species.

Invasive species are those animals or plants from another region of the world that arrive in a new environment where they do not belong. They can be introduced to an area by ship ballast water, accidental release, ocean temperature rises allowing them to migrate, attachment to ship hulls or floating plastic, and most often, by people. Invasive species usually do not have natural predators in their new environment which means their populations can increase rapidly. They often compete with indigenous species for local resources, can permanently alter habitats, destroy biodiversity and lead to the extinction of plants and animals. See ‘What is an invasive species?’

The lionfish is an excellent example. A carnivorous fish native to the Indo-Pacific, it is now an invasive species in the Atlantic, notably the U.S. southeast and Caribbean coastal waters. Because the lionfish is a top predator, it has the capacity to harm reef ecosystems by competing for food and space with overfished native stocks such as snapper and grouper. Scientists fear that lionfish will also kill off species, such as algae-eating parrotfish, that will allow seaweed to overtake the reefs. The lionfish population is continuing to grow – a mature female releases roughly two million eggs a year – and to expand its range. With no known predators, this invasive species is causing enormous damage in its new home. See ‘What is a lionfish?’

You can read more examples of invasive species in the article ‘5 Invasive Species You Should Know’.

16. The oceans are being damaged by the live trade in fish and coral for the aquarium industry.

Because it is difficult to breed marine fish in aquariums, they must be captured from the wild. The tropical seas around Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and the central Pacific Islands including Hawaii are particularly popular as sources for these fish but there are other sources too. Because ornamental fish are in high demand and can have a very high market value, they are being caught in ever larger numbers threatening the sustainability of the fishery and the habitat in which they are caught. For example, the Yellow Tang, which cannot be bred in captivity, is one of Hawaii’s most targeted fish with fishers taking somewhere between 2 and 10 million Yellow Tangs every year. As a result, its population has plunged in recent years. See ‘The state of our oceans – The damaging effects of ocean pollution’ and ‘The Hawaii Legislature wants to stop the aquarium fish trade. The governor has other ideas’.

Not content with reef fish alone, however, since 1990 the aquarium trade has seen a shift in consumer preference from fish-only aquariums to miniature reef ecosystems. As a result, the most recent estimates suggest that the trade targets over 150 species of stony corals, hundreds of species of non-coral invertebrates, and at least 1,472 reef fish species from 50 families.

Hence, with about 1,800 species of fish traded internationally for some 2,000,000 (private and public) aquariums worldwide – see ‘Revealing the Appetite of the Marine Aquarium Fish Trade: The Volume and Biodiversity of Fish Imported into the United States’ – and the industry worth about $5billion annually – see ‘The Hawaii Legislature wants to stop the aquarium fish trade. The governor has other ideas’ – the trade in fish and coral is now a major global enterprise.

Little, if any of it, however, is sustainable. Even worse, virtually all of the saltwater fish that are captured for aquariums are caught illegally using cyanide. This also kills non-targeted fish and coral (at the rate of one square meter per fish captured) as collateral damage. As the coral on the reef is progressively killed, reef fish, crustaceans, plants, and other animals no longer have food, shelter, and breeding grounds and these impacts ripple up the food chain affecting thousands of species. Given that reef habitats provide food for tens of millions of people and contribute to the livelihoods, through commercial fishing and tourism, of many more, capturing fish using cyanide is utterly destructive. See ‘The Horrific Way Fish Are Caught for Your Aquarium – With Cyanide’.

17. The oceans are being damaged by the increasing level of noise pollution.

Several studies have revealed the nature and extent of the damage caused to ocean life by human activities that generate noise in the oceans. And there have been calls by scientists to protect marine life from such noise. See, for example, ‘Marine Life Needs Protection from Noise Pollution’.

The main noises are generated by nuclear explosions, ship-shock trials (explosions used by the Navy to test the structural integrity of their ships), seismic airgun arrays, military sonars, supertankers, warships, merchant vessels (of which there are now more than 53,000 in the world: see ‘Number of ships in the world merchant fleet’), fishing vessels and pleasure craft (such as speed boats and jet skis). For example, seismic airgun surveys to discover oil and gas deposits are loud enough ‘to penetrate hundreds of kilometers into the ocean floor, even after going through thousands of meters of ocean’. See ‘A Review of the Impacts of Seismic Airgun Surveys on Marine Life’.

The damage these noises cause to marine mammals include disruption of feeding and breeding habitats – see ‘Fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) population identity in the western Mediterranean Sea’ – hearing loss – see ‘Marine seismic surveys and ocean noise: time for coordinated and prudent planning’ – physiological changes such as stress responses to trauma and a weakened immune system; behavioral alterations such as avoidance responses; a change in vocalizations or through masking (obliterating sounds of interest); interference with communications, particularly among species, such as humpback and fin whales, that communicate over distances of at least tens of kilometers; and through impacts on prey. Seismic airguns are a probable cause of whale strandings (‘beachings’) and deaths as well. See ‘A Review of the Impacts of Seismic Airgun Surveys on Marine Life’.

But studies of fish, turtles and invertebrates such as squid also reveal a range of adverse impacts to anthropogenic noise including seismic air guns. Fish have exhibited damaged ears, decreased egg viability, increased embryonic mortality and damage to brain cells. Turtles have exhibited behavioural change and hearing loss with squid suffering internal injuries with organs and ears badly damaged. See ‘A Review of the Impacts of Seismic Airgun Surveys on Marine Life’.

18. The oceans are being damaged by wildfires.

Just because the oceans cannot burn, it does not mean that they are not adversely impacted by wildfires. Apart from the people and wildlife they kill, wildfires leave vast amounts of charred plants and ash behind which subsequent rainswash into creeks and rivers where it flows into coastal lakes, estuaries, and seagrass and seaweed beds with a range of adverse impacts on the ocean and life that occupies these areas. For a fuller explanation in one recent context, see ‘Australia’s Marine Animals Are the Fires’ Unseen Victims’.

Summary

As can be seen from the evidence presented above, the oceans are under siege on a vast range of fronts. They are being stripped of everything of value to humans (ranging from its many creatures, such as fish and whales, to products such as sand, oil and minerals) while having a monumental range and quantity of garbage and pollutants (ranging from household to radioactive waste) dumped into them.

Is anything being done? Not really. There are some tokenistic efforts to tackle the plastics problem by cleaning the occasional beach and ongoing calls to limit certain forms of resource exploitation or waste dumping but all international laws in relation to this are largely ignored with impunity. Other efforts have less than marginal impact. Of course, there is also plenty of talk, including that which will take place at the forthcoming UN Ocean Conference in June 2020 when powerful corporate interests will again ensure that nothing profound happens.

So while there is considerable but still utterly inadequate attention given to the climate catastrophe and some activists draw attention to other threats to human survival (such as the nuclear threat, the biodiversity crisis, the dangers of electromagnetic radiation and especially 5G, geoengineering, and destruction of the rainforests), the ongoing threat to the biosphere as a whole, including the oceans, attract only marginal attention and, sometimes, tokenistic responses.

And because human beings are so psychologically dysfunctional and, so far at least, incapable of responding strategically to our multifaceted crisis, the urge to consume and accumulate will continue to overwhelm serious efforts to avert of our extinction.

Saving the Earth’s Oceans

If you wish to fight powerfully to save Earth’s biosphere, including the oceans, consider joining those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which outlines a simple program to systematically reduce your consumption and increase your self-reliance over a period of years.

Given the fear-driven violence in our world which also generates the addiction of most people in industrialized countries to the over-consumption that is destroying Earth’s biosphere – see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ – consider addressing this directly starting with yourself – see ‘Putting Feelings First’ – and by reviewing your relationship with children. See ‘My Promise to Children’ and ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’. For fuller explanations, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

If you wish to campaign strategically to defend the oceans then consider joining those working to halt the climate catastrophe, end military activities of all kinds including war, and halt all forms of resource extraction from the oceans as well. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategywhich already includes a comprehensive list of the strategic goals necessary to achieve two of these outcomes in ‘Strategic Aims’.

In those cases where corrupt or even electorally unresponsive governments are leading the destruction of the oceans – by supporting, sponsoring and/or engaging in environmentally destructive practices – it might be necessary to remove these governments as part of the effort. See Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

You might also consider joining the global network of people resisting violence in all contexts, including against the biosphere, by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Or, if none of the above options appeal or they seem too complicated, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children(see explanation above)
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, includingby minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not buy rainforest timber
8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Do all these options sound unpalatable?Prefer something requiring less commitment? You can, if you like, do as most sources suggest: nothing (or its many tokenistic equivalents). I admit that the options I offer are for those powerful enough to comprehend and act on the truth. Why? Because there is so little time left and I have no interest in deceiving people or treating them as unintelligent and powerless.See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

Conclusion

Every person on Earth depends directly on the ocean. It covers 71% of the Earth’s surface and contains about 97% of the Earth’s water. It generates 50 percent of the oxygen we need and is home to up to 80 percent of all life.

Yet human activity is destroying it. You can make choices that make a difference. Or leave it to others.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Where the virus may potentially claim the lives of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, global heating above 4^oC is bound to claim the lives of billions, yet most governments hardly listen to the science

By the 25 March 2020 more than 4% of Covid-19 patients, nearly 19,000 people, tragically died worldwide, with more to come, and each death its own heartbreaking story.  Many governments are listening to medical science, implementing essential measures to combat the plague, instigating social isolation and economic support systems in order to avoid a potential demise of hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives.

Climate change is already causing deaths, according to a new report global warming would cause an additional 250,000 deaths per-year from heat and extreme weather events, yet most authorities continue to ignore the scientific evidence of climate disruption that threatens to exceed +2 degrees Celsius and toward 4 degrees Celsius. Potentially this is leading to a demise of billions of lives and many species through extreme weather events.

Between 1998 and 2017, 526,000 people across the world died due to extreme weather events caused by climate change.

Health protection measures to restrict the effects of COVID-19 are essential, but the looming social and economic collapse is something else. It is not entirely clear why, in the majority cases, populations cannot continue to operate at safe distances using protective gear?

There has been no social and economic collapse in the west when:

• The estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 405 000 in 2018
• Seasonal flu kills 291,000 to 646,000 people worldwide each year,
• Each year there are 1.3 million to 4.0 million cases of cholera, and 21 000 to 143 000 deaths worldwide due to cholera.

Nor have societies and economies collapsed in the western world during genocidal atrocities such as in Korea, Viet Nam, Rwanda, Myanmar, the Middle East and Yemen, which killed millions, namely:

• When 6 million people were bombed in Vietnam
• When millions were killed in Rwanda and the Congo
• When millions of people were killed and fled the Middle East
• When half a million refugees had to escape Mien-Mar

Media reports depend on the profile of the victims. The effects on the share market are elevated above the health issue. Poor and dark-skinned people receive less attention. Memories are short and most people worry about one problem at a time. Nowadays the fatal consequences of a deliberate or accidental nuclear war and of global warming toward four degrees Celsius, as real as those of the pandemic, are hardly mentioned.

Andrew Glikson, Earth and climate scientist

You can almost smell the fear-laden sweat oozing from the pores of television broadcasts and social media posts as it finally dawns on our political and media establishments what the coronavirus actually means. And I am not talking about the threat posed to our health.

A worldview that has crowded out all other thinking for nearly two generations is coming crashing down. It has no answers to our current predicament. There is a kind of tragic karma to the fact that so many major countries – meaning major economies – are today run by the very men least equipped ideologically, emotionally and spiritually to deal with the virus.

That is being starkly exposed everywhere in the west, but the UK is a particularly revealing case study.

Dragging their heels

It emerged at the weekend that Dominic Cummings, the ideological powerhouse behind Britain’s buffoonish prime minister Boris Johnson, was pivotal in delaying the UK government’s response to the coronavirus – effectively driving Britain on to the Italian (bad) path of contagion rather than the South Korean (good) one.

According to media reports at the weekend, Cummings initially stalled government action, arguing of the coming plague that “if that means some pensioners die, too bad”. That approach explains the dragging of heels for many days, and then days more of dither that is only now coming to a resolution.

This was 2 weeks ago. 1000s had already died all around the world, the WHO was already begging government’s to enforce distancing & to “test test test.” This gross negligence by the Johnson’s gov should never be forgotten nor forgiven.

https://twitter.com/JackDunc1/status/(br) 1242195497181478912

Cummings, of course, denies ever making the statement, calling the claim “defamatory”. But let’s dispense with the formalities. Does anybody really – really – believe that that wasn’t the first thought of Cummings and half the cabinet when confronted with an imminent contagion they understood was about to unravel a social and economic theory they have dedicated their entire political careers to turning into a mass cult? An economic theory from which – by happy coincidence – they derive their political power and class privilege.

And sure enough, these hardcore monetarists are already quietly becoming pretend socialists to weather the very first weeks of the crisis. And there are many months more to run.

Austerity thrown out

As I predicted in my last post, the UK government last week threw out the austerity policies that have been the benchmark of Conservative party orthodoxy for more than a decade and announced a splurge of spending to save businesses with no business as well as members of the public no longer in a position to earn a living.

Since the 2008 financial crash, the Tories have cut social and welfare spending to the bone, creating a massive underclass in Britain, and have left local authorities penniless and incapable of covering the shortfall. For the past decade, the Conservative government excused its brutalist approach with the mantra that there was no “magic money tree” to help in times of trouble.

The free market, they argued, was the only fiscally responsible path. And in its infinite wisdom, the market had decided that the 1 per cent – the millionaires and billionaires who had tanked the economy in that 2008 crash – would get even filthier rich than they were already.

Meanwhile, the rest of us would see the siphoning off of our wages and prospects so that the 1 per cent could horde yet more wealth on offshore islands where we and the government could never get our hands on it.

“Neoliberalism” became a mystifying term used to reimagine unsustainable late-stage, corporate capitalism not only as a rational and just system but as the only system that did not involve gulags or bread queues.

Not only did British politicians (including most of the Labour parliamentary party) subscribe to it, but so did the entire corporate media, even if the “liberal” Guardian would very occasionally and very ineffectually wring its hands about whether it was time to make this turbo-charged capitalism a little more caring.

Only deluded, dangerous Corbyn “cultists” thought different.

Self-serving fairytale

But suddenly, it seems, the Tories have found that magic money tree after all. It was there all along and apparently has plenty of low-hanging fruit the rest of us may be allowed to partake from.

One doesn’t need to be a genius like Dominic Cummings to see how politically terrifying this moment is for the establishment. The story they have been telling us for 40 years or more about harsh economic realities is about to be exposed as a self-serving fairytale. We have been lied to – and soon we are going to grasp that very clearly.

That is why this week the Tory politician Zac Goldsmith, a billionaire’s son who was recently elevated to the House of Lords, described as a “twat” anyone who had the temerity to become a “backseat critic” of Boris Johnson. And it is why the feted “political journalist” Isabel Oakeshott – formerly of the Sunday Times and a regular on BBC Question Time – took to twitter to applaud Matt Hancock and Johnson for their self-sacrifice and dedication to public service in dealing with the virus:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/
status/1242096188859584514

Spare a thought this morning for health secretary @MattHancock who has such enormous responsibility right now and is working crazy hours trying to help the nation beat this. The hourly judgements he and @BorisJohnson have to make are so difficult.

Be ready. Over the coming weeks, more and more journalists are going to sound like North Korea’s press corps, with paeans to “the dear leader” and demands that we trust that he knows best what must be done in our hour of need.

Saved by the bail-outs 

The political and media class’s current desperation has a substantive cause – and one that should worry us as much as the virus itself.

Twelve years ago capitalism teetered on the brink of the abyss, its structural flaws exposed for anyone who cared to look. The 2008 crash almost broke the global financial system. It was saved by us, the public. The government delved deep into our pockets and transferred our money to the banks. Or rather the bankers.

We saved the bankers – and the politicians – from their economic incompetence through bail-outs that were again mystified by being named “quantitative easing”.

But we weren’t the ones rewarded. We did not own the banks or get a meaningful stake in them. We did not even get oversight in return for our huge public investment. Once we had saved them, the bankers went right back to enriching themselves and their friends in precisely the same manner that stalled the economy in 2008.

The bail-outs did not fix capitalism, they simply delayed for a while longer its inevitable collapse.

Capitalism is still structurally flawed. Its dependence on ever-expanding consumption cannot answer the environmental crises necessarily entailed by such consumption. And economies that are being artificially “grown”, at the same time as resources deplete, ultimately create inflated bubbles of nothingness – bubbles that will soon burst again.

Survival mode

Indeed, the virus is illustrative of one of those structural flaws – an early warning of the wider environmental emergency, and a reminder that capitalism, by intertwining economic greed with environmental greed, has ensured the two spheres collapse in tandem.

Pandemics like this one are the outcome of our destruction of natural habitats – to grow cattle for burgers, to plant palm trees for cakes and biscuits, to log forests for flat-pack furniture. Animals are being driven into ever closer proximity, forcing diseases to cross the species barrier. And then in a world of low-cost flights, disease finds an easy and rapid transit to every corner of the planet.

The truth is that in a time of collapse, like this decade-long one, capitalism has only “magic money trees” left. The first one, in the late 2000s, was reserved for the banks and the large corporations – the wealth elite that now run our governments as plutocracies.

The second “magic money tree”, needed to deal with what will become the even more disastrous economic toll wrought by the virus, has had to be widened to include us. But make no mistake. The circle of beneficence has been expanded not because capitalism suddenly cares about the homeless and those reliant on food banks. Capitalism is an amoral economic system driven by the accumulation of profit for the owners of capital. And that’s not you or me.

https://twitter.com/joejglenton/
status/1241771584886575108

No, capitalism is now in survival mode. That is why western governments will, for a time, try to “bail out” sections of their publics too, giving back to them some of the communal wealth that has been extracted over many decades. These governments will try to conceal for a little longer the fact that capitalism is entirely incapable of solving the very crises it has created. They will try to buy our continuing deference to a system that has destroyed our planet and our children’s future.

It won’t work indefinitely, as Dominic Cummings knows only too well. Which is why the Johnson government, as well as the Trump administration and their cut-outs in Brazil, Hungary, Israel, India and elsewhere, are in the process of drafting draconian emergency legislation that will have a longer term goal than the immediate one of preventing contagion.

Western governments will conclude that it is time to shore up capitalism’s immune system against their own publics. The risk is that, given the chance, they will begin treating us, not the virus, as the real plague.

This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/

Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

Take careful notice – as of March 2020, the United States is operating as a more than strict Democratic Socialist system. The government is regulating aspects of American life — economic, social, and medical. The Federal Reserve is printing money and making it available to financial and commercial industries and the public. Americans are being told what to do, what to produce and where they can go.

The Covid-19 epidemic has proven the final test for the capitalist system, which had a temporary rescue by neoliberal free enterprise. After the Reagan administration changed the economic landscape so that budget deficits drove the economy and Capitalism ran on debt, the neoliberal system chugged through several recessions and one major recession, reached its peak, and now has met its fate by a microscopic bug. The capitalist system could not respond to the crisis and fell apart in all its formations — economy dropped precipitously, shortages of medical equipment appeared, health institutions did not know where to obtain supplies, workers were stranded, industry did not know how to proceed, and the Republican government reacted too slow and too uncoordinated.

Briefly reviewing the real history of the development of the crisis, which is much different than presented by President Donald Trump, we learn the extent of the failure of the present system in its duty to the American people.

Data gathered from World Health Organization, archived Peoples Daily Online, British Broadcasting Report, United States newspaper reports.

On December 30, 2019, Chinese doctor Li Wenliang noticed seven cases of a virus that resembled Sars. He informed some of his associates that an unusual number of pneumonia cases were occurring in Wuhan.

The next day, December 31, the Chinese government informed the World Health Organization (WHO) in Beijing of the appearance of a possible new virus.

On January 1, the local government closed the food market in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, and performed environmental sanitation and disinfection. WHO requested further information from China.

Because the virus had leaped from animal to human, it was unknown if the virus could be transmitted by human contact.

To prevent panic, and stall people from leaving Wuhan and possibly spread the disease, the Wuhan Public Security Force (not the central government) accused the doctor of disturbing the public order and prevented him from speaking further on the matter.

On January 7, Chinese scientists announced the identification of a new virus that, like SARS and the common cold, belonged to the coronavirus family

On January 11, China reported the first known death from the coronavirus, a 61-year-old man who bought food at the Wuhan market. WHO received “detailed information” from Chinese authorities that there is “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” linked to these coronavirus cases.

On January 15, Wuhan’s health commission, in a reply to WHO, released a statement: “The possibility of limited human-to-human transmission cannot be ruled out.”

On January 20, Chinese officials confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission, with two patients in Guangdong catching the virus from infected family members and medical staff also testing positive for the virus.

On January 24, a week before travel restrictions, the Center for disease control (CDC) confirmed two cases of the novel coronavirus in the U.S. from people who had returned from Wuhan, China.

On January 31, the Secretary of Health and Human Services declared the novel coronavirus to be a public health emergency. Due to a quirk in federal law, anyone wanting to test for the coronavirus first needed to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

On January 31, travel restrictions prohibited non-U.S. citizens, other than the immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who had traveled to China within the previous two weeks, from entering the United States. Americans returning from China were allowed into the country, but faced screening at select ports of entry and were required to undertake 14 days of self-screening to ensure they did not pose a health risk. Those returning from Hubei province, the center of the outbreak, were subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine. Note that this was not a total travel ban between the U.S. and China.

On February 29, the FDA allowed other labs that met certain prior regulatory requirements to use their own tests before they had received explicit approval from the FDA.

On March 23, President Trump, announced, “May soon loosen federal guidelines for social distancing and encourage shuttered businesses to reopen,” which differs from worldwide approach to the epidemic and contradicts China’s successful methods in containing the virus. Rather than let the economy fail, Americans must sacrifice themselves.

In a Democratic Socialist system, the economic emergency only means a delay in production. No matter how long a crisis lasts, in a Democratic Socialist society the community’s basic needs are provided and citizens are secure in knowing full employment is eventually guaranteed.

For neoliberal free enterprise, in which production and GDP are dependent on debt, the economic emergency means a drastic decline in revenue that prevents many from meeting credit payments, a prelude to bankruptcies of industries, financial sectors, small businesses, and individuals. Recovery will be punishing, and, for many, unemployment will be high and insecurity prevalent. The dollar will fall, inflation will increase as import prices increase, and much of U.S. export market will be lost to those — China, Japan, Korea — whose industries revive quicker from the catastrophe.

The Federal Reserve rushes to provide free money and prevent the calamity, but cannot entirely accomplish the task. Trump administration economist Larry Kudlow has said a stimulus package “would include $4 trillion in lending power for the Federal Reserve as well as a $2 trillion of aid.” Similar, to the General Motors bailout, the government offers a Democratic Socialist method ─ taking a stake in falling corporations ─ an offer that Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun said he is not willing to accept.

A misshaped socioeconomic system, compounded by a misshaped U.S. president, failed to contain the ultra-damaging health and economic effects of Covid-19. Another failure is that of inaction by the Democratic Socialists.

Disappointing and mystifying that the Democratic Socialist organizations, socialized community leaders, and the entire progressive community failed to capitalize on this significant historical moment, which has shown a desperate need for Democratic Socialism. Nowhere, in speeches, articles, discussions, agendas, and meetings are there loud expressions to arouse the public into understanding the urgency and importance to the American community of a socialized economy that could have met this challenge and would meet future challenges — climate change that modifies coastlines and arable lands; greenhouse gas emissions that heat the atmosphere and petition a handover from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources; robotics and artificial intelligence that change the factory floor, its administration, and the composition of the workforce; possibility of nuclear war in an atmosphere of intense international hostility and growing arms races; pandemics from new disease microbes that replicate quickly, defy conventional medicine, and spread beyond borders; security enhancements due to internal conflicts and external hostilities; political, economic and social polarizations that have stimulated populist movements; and population migrations that cause cultural conflicts and reassignment of resources.

National leaders with the reputation of past social figures — Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Wallace — are not here to energize the crowds and move the electorate, and a slowly fading Bernie Sanders is not taking advantage of the opportunity now available to him.

The only way that Sanders could win was to answer critics who viewed his plans as being misaligned with American public leanings and history. In this endeavor, his campaign and progressive backers have not effectively characterized the Democratic Social programs and neglected to show that, because the present administration could not respond to the pandemic by conventional means, it is using Democratic Socialist policies to resolve the crisis.

A lost opportunity is lost forever.

The revolution is not in the streets. The revolution is in the locked homes.

Dan Lieberman edits Alternative Insight, a commentary on foreign policy, economics, and politics. He is author of the book A Third Party Can Succeed in America, a Kindle: The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name). Dan can be reached at alternativeinsight@earthlink.net

We see clearly what is near to us

There is a remarkable contrast in the way that governments around the world have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and the way that they have responded to the climate emergency. The pandemic, which indeed represents an extremely grave danger to humanity, has produced a masive global response. Borders have been closed, airlines have become virtually inoperative, industries, restaurants and entertainments have been closed, sporting events have been cancelled or postponed, people have been asked to stay at home and practice social distancing, and the everyday life of citizens around the world has been drastically changed.

By contrast, let us consider the threat that if immediate action is not taken to halt the extraction and use of fossil fuels, irreversible feedback loops will be initiated which will make catastrophic climate change inevitable despite human any human efforts to prevent it. This threat is even more serious than the COVID-19 pandemic. Climate change could make much of the earth to hot for human life. It could  produce a famine involving billions of people, rather than millions. My own belief is that catastrophic climate change would not lead do the extinction of the human species; but I think that because much of the world would become uninhabitable, the global population of humans would be very much reduced.

How have governments responded to the climate emergency? A minority, for example the Scandinavian countries, have taken appropriate action. Most governments pay lip service to the emergency, but do not take effective action; and a few countries, such as the United States under Donald Trump, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, and Saudi Arabia,  deny that there is a climate emergency and actively sabotage action. The world’s net response has been totally inadequate. The Keeling curve, which measures CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, continuse to rise, and the rate of rise is even increasing.

What is the reason for this remarkable contrast in our response to two serious emergencies? We see clearly and respond to what is close to us, and are relatively indifferent to what is far away. We hear of  people dying every day from the COVID-19 pandemic, and there is a danger that as many as 100 million people could die before it is over. By contrast, although immediate climate action is needed today to avoid disaster, the worst consequences of climate change lie in the long-term future. Old people, like me, will not live to see massive deaths from starvation and overheating. However, we have a responsibility to our children and grandchildren, and to all future generations. A large-scale global famine could occur by the middle of the present century, and children who are alive today could experience it.

Recovery from the pandemic offers climate action opportunities

When the COVID-19 pandemic is over, governments will be faced by the task of repairing the enorouus economic damage that it has caused. The situation will be similar to the crisis that faced US President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he took office during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Roosevelt, encouraged by John Maynard Keynes, used federal funds to build much-needed infrastructure around the United States. His programs, the New Deal, ended the Great Depression in his country.

Today, the concept of a similar Green New Deal is being put forward globally. This concept visualizes government-sponsored programs aimed at simultaneously creating both jobs and urgently-needed renewable energy infrastructure. The Green New Deal programs could be administered in such a way as to correct social injustices.

A sustainable economic system

Economists, with a few notable exceptions such as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Aurelio Peccei and Herman Daly, have a cynical tendency to confine their discussions to the short-term future. With self-imposed myopia, they refuse to look more than a few decades into the future. This allows them to worship growth, and to advocate perpetual growth. Of course, they realize that perpetual growth of anything physical on a finite planet is a logical impossibility. They realize that present growth implies future collapse. But before that collapse happens, they plan to sell their stocks and bonds and buy large estates to which they can retire.

Our present financial system is unsustainable, and it works for the interests of a few very rich people.  For the sake of the long-term future, we must build a sustainable, steady-state economic system, an economic system which reduces inequality, and which serves the broad public interest.

John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Since 1990 he has been the Chairman of the Danish National Group of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Between 2004 and 2015 he also served as Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy. He founded the Journal of Bioenergetics and Biomembranes, and was for many years its Managing Editor. He also served as Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (19881997). http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com. To know more about his works visit this link. http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/

According to Johns Hopkins University on Sunday, there are more than 721,000 coronavirus cases and 33,900 deaths worldwide.

The U.S. now leads the world with more than 120,000 confirmed cases while the U.S. coronavirus deaths surge past 2,000.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that the U.S. could experience more than 100,000 deaths and millions of infections.

Italy

Coronavirus deaths in Italy fall for second consecutive day. Over 10,000 people have now died of the disease in Italy, followed by more than 6,528 in Spain, 3,100 in China, 2,500 in Iran and 2,300 in France.

Italy’s Civil Protection department said 756 people died Sunday, which is 133 fewer deaths than the 889 reported the day before. In total, 10,779 people have died due to COVID-19 in Italy making up a third of global deaths.

Spain

The number of people to have died after testing positive for the coronavirus in Spain has risen to 6,528 after 838 more people died. Another 6,549 cases have been reported in the country, bringing the total there to 78,797.

Spain has been in lockdown for two weeks under a national state of emergency.

Prime minister Pedro Sanchez’s Cabinet will approve on Sunday a new decree to tighten those controls and impede workers from commuting to work in all industries unrelated to health care and food production and distribution, for two weeks.

Germany

Germany has so far registered 62,095 coronavirus cases, with 541 patients succumbing to the disease.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her first address to the nation on the coronavirus pandemic, appealed to citizens’ reason and discipline to slow the spread of the virus.

China

The city at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak has reopened tube trains and long-distance train services in another step towards ending restrictions that confined millions of people to their homes.

Passengers in Wuhan in the central province of Hubei had to wear masks and be checked for fever after service resumed Saturday. Signs were posted telling passengers to sit with empty seats between them.

Most access to Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, was suspended on January 23. The last controls that block residents of Wuhan from leaving Hubei are due to be lifted on April 8.

China sends train with medical supplies to Germany

The first cargo train to Europe since the start of the outbreak left China for Germany on Saturday carrying medical supplies, car parts, electronic productions and optical communication fiber.

Absence of robust screening until it was ‘far too late’ revealed failures U.S. government

A March 29, 2020 dated report by the New York Times said:

“The absence of robust screening until it was ‘far too late’ revealed failures across government, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, a former CDC director. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, said the Trump administration had ‘incredibly limited’ views of the pathogen’s potential impact. Dr. Margaret Hamburg, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said the lapse enabled ‘exponential growth of cases.’”

The report – “The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to COVID-19” – by Michael D. Shear, Abby Goodnough, Sheila Kaplan, Sheri Fink, Katie Thomas and Noah Weiland said:

“Early on, the dozen federal officials charged with defending America against the coronavirus gathered day after day in the White House Situation Room, consumed by crises. They grappled with how to evacuate the U.S. consulate in Wuhan, China, ban Chinese travelers and extract Americans from the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships.

“The members of the coronavirus task force typically devoted only five or 10 minutes, often at the end of contentious meetings, to talk about testing, several participants recalled. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its leaders assured the others, had developed a diagnostic model that would be rolled out quickly as a first step.

“But as the deadly virus spread from China with ferocity across the U.S. between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels, according to interviews with more than 50 current and former public health officials, administration officials, senior scientists and company executives.

“The result was a lost month, when the world’s richest country — armed with some of the most highly trained scientists and infectious disease specialists — squandered its best chance of containing the virus’s spread. Instead, Americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe.”

The report said:

“And Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top government scientist involved in the fight against the virus, told members of Congress that the early inability to test was ‘a failing’ of the administration’s response to a deadly, global pandemic. ‘Why,’ he asked later in a magazine interview, ‘were we not able to mobilize on a broader scale?’

“Across government, they said, three agencies responsible for detecting and combating threats like the coronavirus failed to prepare quickly enough. Even as scientists looked at China and sounded alarms, none of the agencies’ directors conveyed the urgency required to spur a no-holds-barred defense.”

CDC guidelines extended

U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he was extending the CDC guidelines for limiting social contact through April 30.

Doctors scramble in New Orleans

In the U.S., New Orleans doctors scramble as coronavirus deaths and cases soar. 151 people died of COVID-19 in Louisiana by late Sunday. The state has confirmed 3,540 cases since 9 March – among the world’s fastest-growing infection rates. Louisiana’s soaring infection rates mean some hospitals will have to start turning away patients in the next week.

U.S. will have millions of cases

The US government’s foremost infection disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, says the US will certainly have “millions of cases” of Covid-19 and more than 100,000 deaths.

As the US tops the world in reported infections from the new coronavirus, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases predicts 100,000-200,000 deaths from the outbreak in the US.

Dr Fauci was speaking to CNN’s State Of The Union as the federal government is discussing rolling back guidelines on social distancing in areas that have not been hard-hit by the outbreak.

Dr Fauci says he would only support the rollback in lesser-impacted areas if there is enhanced availability of testing in place to monitor those areas. He acknowledged, “it’s a little iffy there” right now.

Hoarding of ventilators in the U.S.

U.S. President Trump accused hospitals on Sunday of hoarding ventilators that are in scarce supply across the country as the coronavirus spreads, adding any hospitals not using the devices must release them.

Trump, whose critics have accused him of trying to deflect blame over his handling of the crisis, did not cite any evidence to back his accusation that hospitals were hoarding the devices. It was also unclear which medical facilities he was referring to. “We have some healthcare workers, some hospitals … hoarding equipment including ventilators,” Trump said at the White House following a meeting with corporate executives, including from U.S. Medical Group.

Trump downplaying virus cost American lives, says Pelosi

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on CNN Sunday morning that President Trump downplaying the virus cost American lives.

“His denial at the beginning was deadly,” said Pelosi on “State of the Union.” “His delaying of getting equipment – it continues — his delaying of getting equipment to where it is needed is deadly and now I think the best thing is to prevent more loss of life rather than open things up because we just don’t know. We have to have testing, testing, testing that is what we said from the start before we can evaluate the nature of it is in some of these other regions as well. I do not know what the purpose of that is. I do not know what the scientists are saying to him. When did the president know about this and what did he know? What did he know and when did he know it? That’s for an after-action review, but as the president fiddles, people are drying, and we just have to take every precaution.”

“Are you saying his downplaying ultimately cost American lives?” asked host Jake Tapper.

“Yes, I am. I’m saying that,” replied Pelosi. “The other day when he was signing the bill, he said ‘Just think 20 days ago everything was great.’ No, everything wasn’t great, we had nearly 500 cases and 17 deaths already and in that 20 days because we weren’t prepared we now have 2,000 deaths and 100,000 cases.”

While Trump has claimed recently he always took the virus seriously, he spent the end of January, all of February and early March downplaying the threat while the federal government was slow to mobilize a response.

Temporary hospital in Central Park in New York

A temporary hospital has been set up in Central Park in Manhattan, New York. The effort is being spearheaded by the global relief agency Samaritan’s Purse. The charity was working with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Mount Sinai, with the aim of receiving patients within two days.

Amazon workers plan to walk off job in New York

The e-commerce giant’s employees who work at a New York City warehouse plan to walk off the job Monday. Those who work at the fulfillment center on Staten Island want the building be sanitized after several workers tested positive to COVID-19, says Chris Smalls, a manager assistant who is coordinating the walkout.

Smalls said employees at the warehouse, where about 5,000 people work throughout the week, were “not returning to work until they close the building down.” “They know at lunch time, when they clock out, do not return,” Smalls said.

UK government was warned its health service would struggle to cope with pandemic three years ago

The British government was warned three years ago that the NHS would struggle to cope in the event of a pandemic like coronavirus, it has been revealed.

A major cross-government test called Exercise Cygnus was carried out in October 2016 to examine how well the NHS would handle a severe outbreak.

After the damning test results were collected, ministers were reportedly warned that Britain’s health service would be quickly overwhelmed – but the government failed to act on the report’s recommendations.

According to The Sunday Telegraph, Exercise Cygnus showed the NHS lacked adequate “surge capacity” and would require thousands more critical care beds.

UK: 50% survival rate

Coronavirus patients in UK intensive care have 50% survival rate. The mortality rate for patients put in intensive care after being infected with Covid-19 is running at close to 50%, a report has revealed.

Data from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) showed that of 165 patients treated in critical care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland since the end of February, 79 died, while 86 survived and were discharged.

The figures were taken from an audit of 775 people who have been or are in critical care with the disease, across 285 intensive care units. The remaining 610 patients continue to receive intensive care.

UK lockdown could continue up to June

The nationwide coronavirus lockdown in the UK could last until June, according to one of the government’s leading scientific advisors.

Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, told The Sunday Times that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months. “We’re going to have to keep these measures in place, in my view, for a significant period of time – probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic,” he said.

India: Modi apologizes for the lockdown

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologised to the public on Sunday for imposing a three-week national lockdown.

“I apologize for taking these harsh steps that have caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people,”

Modi said in his monthly address, broadcast by state radio. “I know some of you will be angry with me. But these tough measures were needed to win this battle.”

The unprecedented lockdown order, which came into effect on Wednesday to keep India’s 1.3 billion people at home for all but essential trips, is meant to prevent the spread of the virus from surging and overwhelming India’s already strained healthcare system.

The lockdown has caused tens of thousands of people, mostly young male day labourers but also families, to flee their New Delhi homes, and has effectively put millions of Indians who live off daily earnings out of work.

India: 867 cases

India health officials have confirmed 867 cases of coronavirus, including 25 deaths.

Experts have said local spreading is inevitable in a country where tens of millions of people live in dense urban areas in cramped conditions with irregular access to clean water.

It’s only a matter of time before virus sweeps India, say doctors

A Bloomberg report – “Doctors Say It’s Only a Matter of Time Before Virus Sweeps India” – by Ari Altstedter, Ragini Saxena, Bibhudatta Pradhan and Dhwani Pandya said on March 30, 2020:

“It’s the phone calls at all hours of the night he remembers. As swine flu ravaged northern India in 2015, a radiologist working at a hospital in a Delhi suburb said people would call begging for a bed.

“That outbreak ultimately infected more than 31,000 people and killed nearly 2,000, as many died waiting for treatment. With the far more infectious novel coronavirus now sweeping the globe — and threatening to take hold in India — the doctor, who asked not to be identified criticizing the country’s preparedness to tackle the pandemic, thinks this time will be much worse.

“Cases of Covid-19 in the world’s second-most populous country have ticked rapidly higher the past week, raising alarm over the ability of India, with its fragile health-care system and battered economy, to handle a virus crisis of the magnitude of China or Italy’s. While India has seen 27 deaths and just over 1,000 cases, experts fear the real tally could be much higher and say the disease is already spreading in the community. Authorities say there’s no evidence for this and have not significantly ramped up testing.

“In the country’s already stretched hospitals, though, concern is rising.

“Bloomberg News spoke to more than a dozen front-line physicians across India, and while none reported the sort of spike in patients with respiratory ailments that would suggest Covid-19 is already running rampant, all agreed it’s just a matter of time — and that India isn’t ready.

“With its densely packed cities and under-funded medical system, India has little margin for error when it comes to the coronavirus.”

The report said:

“It’s a reality not lost on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which ordered the population of 1.3 billion people not to leave their homes for three weeks on March 24, initiating the world’s largest quarantine even as cases numbered only in the hundreds. But there’s concern it still might not be enough, and such a large-scale lockdown will be difficult to implement, particularly in a place where the poor live in close quarters and the social distancing measures being advocated in the west are almost impossible.

“Along with the lockdown, India has also acted to curb inbound travelers from overseas. Should these measures fail to halt the virus’ spread, though, epidemiologists say the numbers could be staggering. A University of Michigan-run study predicts the country could have 915,000 coronavirus infections by mid-May, more than the case load for the whole world right now.

“‘This is just an interval period,’ said Anup Warrier, an infectious diseases specialist in the southern city of Cochin. Warrier was alarmed when 14 patients turned up at the private hospital where he works this week with symptoms similar to acute cases of Covid-19. They all tested negative.

“‘I do not think this lucky streak is going to last much further,’ he said.

“India acted relatively early to seal off entry points into the country, with international travelers the main vector for the virus’ global spread. That may have stemmed an influx of cases, but the small infection tally – which puts it below places like Finland and Chile – could be because India is not looking hard enough for new cases, with one of the lowest testing rates in the world.

“The country had tested just 35,000 people for coronavirus as of Sunday, according to data from the Indian Council of Medical Research, a minuscule portion given its population size. That’s despite 113 local government laboratories and as many as 47 private labs now authorized to process tests.

“The U.S., which has also been criticized for being late to ramp up testing, had undertaken 552,000 tests as of March 26, while South Korea, which has contained its outbreak without a mass quarantine, has tested more than 320,000 people.

“In viral hot spots like China’s Hubei province, Italy, Spain and now New York, a rapid surge of infections brought a wave of patients to hospitals that exceeded their capacity for critical care. Doctors have been forced to effectively choose who lived and who died through the deployment of scarce resources like ventilators.

“In India, that tipping point – if it comes – will arrive sooner.

“The country spent just 3.7% of gross domestic product on health care in 2016, putting it in the bottom 25 of nations globally, according to the most recent World Bank data. On numbers of doctors, nurses and hospital beds, India ranked similarly near the bottom. While there is a growing private hospital sector, nearly 65% of the population has no health insurance, putting significant pressure on the overcrowded, understaffed and sometimes rundown public hospitals.

“‘If you see the pattern of coronavirus infection in all the countries affected so far, this is the time we expect numbers to climb,’ said a doctor caring for Covid-19 patients in the business hub of Mumbai, who asked not to be named because of growing stigma around the disease. ‘I can’t see why India will be any different.’

“Only one public hospital in Mumbai was initially authorized to test and treat Covid-19 patients. A doctor working there, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly, reported working 24-hour shifts screening cases. People are waiting up to seven hours to get tested, and quarantine areas are overcrowded, he said. Pictures of the hospital shared on Twitter showed a washbasin filled with what looked like vomit, rusted cot frames and a stray cat sitting between beds.

“Mumbai, home to more than 18 million people, appears to be bracing for more cases. There are now three government hospitals allowed to test and treat coronavirus patients, and three quarantine facilities are being prepared.

“India’s national government claims there’s still no evidence of “community spread” of Covid-19, when infections are found that can’t be traced back to a case brought in from abroad. Mass testing would be an unnecessary strain on resources, they say, with each test costing 4,500 rupees ($60). Officials also say a ramp up in testing risks sparking a panic.

“Doctors, meanwhile, are starting to see potentially worrying signs. Mehul Thakkar, a respiratory specialist who splits his time between a private hospital and his own practice in the suburbs of Mumbai, said he and colleagues are seeing an influx of cold and flu cases.

“‘These might be mild Covid-19 cases, but we don’t know yet,’ he said.

“India could face an epidemic worse than Iran or Italy’s, according to T. Jacob John, former head of the Indian Council for Medical Research’s Centre for Advanced Research in Virology, with the virus spreading to as much as 10% of the population — some 130 million people. John worries the lockdown came too late. ‘It is bold and unprecedented — it is also risky,’ said Paul Ananth Tambyah, president of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection. ‘If the lockdown works and the virus does not get established in India, there is a chance that the virus can be contained globally.’

Pakistan

Pakistan has said the number of people testing positive for Covid-19 is increasing, raising the country’s total number of confirmed patients to 1,495.

Health authorities also report another death of a man in the country’s commercial hub, Karachi, increasing the death toll to 12.

A breakout shows the largest Punjab province has 557 patients, and southern Sindh province has 469.

Southwestern Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has 133, and Khyber Pakhtukhwa, which borders Afghanistan, has 188. The Gilgit Baltistan region has 107 patients, while the federal capital, Islamabad, has 39. Pakistan controlled Kashmir has two confirmed cases.

The count shows there is an increase of 87 cases, with seven of the patients stated to be in critical condition.

Brazil court orders government to stop advising against virus isolation

A federal court in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday banned the government from disseminating propaganda against confinement measures aimed at controlling the coronavirus pandemic.

On Thursday night, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro shared a video on Facebook showing a caravan of vehicles celebrating the reopening of businesses and schools in the southern state of Santa Catarina.

Brazil’s president claims: It’s momentary

Brazilian president Bolsonaro has staked out the most deliberately dismissive position of any major world leader, calling the coronavirus pandemic a momentary, minor problem and saying strong measures to contain it are unnecessary.

Bolsonaro called it “a little flu” and said state governors’ aggressive measures to halt the disease were crimes. Bolsonaro said he feels Brazilians’ natural immunity will protect the nation.

“The Brazilian needs to be studied. He does not catch anything. You see a guy jumping into sewage, diving in, right? Nothing happens to him. I think a lot of people were already infected in Brazil, weeks or months ago, and they already have the antibodies that help it not proliferate,” Bolsonaro said. “I’m hopeful that’s really a reality.”

Moscow

The mayor of Moscow ordered all residents of the Russian capital to self-isolate.

Vietnam’s PM asks major cities to prepare for lockdown

Vietnam’s prime minister on Monday asked major cities to prepare for possible lockdowns to stop the spread of coronavirus as the number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country reached nearly 200. “Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have to review and update plans to battle the virus, and have to stand ready for city lockdown scenarios,” Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in a statement. “Vietnam has entered the pandemic’s peak period, major cities have to speed up and take advantage of each hour and minute to carry out defined measures,” Phuc said.

Tokyo’s coronavirus infections spike after Olympics delayed

Before the 2020 Olympics were postponed, Japan’s coronavirus infection rate appeared to have been contained. Now that the games have been pushed to next year, Tokyo’s cases are spiking and the city’s governor is requesting that people stay home, even hinting at a possible lockdown. The sudden rise in the number of virus cases in Tokyo and the government’s strong actions immediately after the Olympic postponement have raised questions in parliament and among citizens about whether Japan understated the extent of the outbreak and delayed enforcement of social distancing measures while clinging to hopes that the games would start on July 24 as scheduled.

Nigerian president locks down country’s capital

The Nigerian President said: Based on the advice of the Federal Ministry of Health and the NCDC, I am directing the cessation of all movements in Lagos and the FCT for an initial period of 14 days with effect from 11pm on Monday, 30th March 2020.

Portugal

The Portuguese health minister has said a 14-year-old boy with Covid-19 has died. Authorities said the boy had prior health conditions.

Portugal reported on Sunday it has 119 total deaths from the virus and 38,042 infections.

North Macedonia

North Macedonia has reported two more deaths to raise the death toll to six. They are both men in their 30s.

More than 9,000 people in the country of 2.1 million are in quarantine or in self-isolation. The country is under curfew.

Serbia

Pet owners in Serbia are furious over the populist government’s decision to ban even a brief walk for people with dogs during an evening curfew to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

Angry dog owners have flooded social networks, warning that the ban could harm their dogs’ health and cause frustration and anxiety for both the animals and their owners.

Veterinarian Nenad Milojkovic said protecting animal rights is a test for a society during hard times such as an epidemic. He said skipping the evening walk could worsen the condition for the dogs with urinary problems and “aggravate basic hygienic conditions in people’s homes.”

Serbia’s government made the decision on Saturday, revoking a previously introduced 20-minute permission for dog owners to walk their pets.

Serbia has imposed some of the harshest measures in Europe against the spread of the new coronavirus, including a total ban on movement for people over 65 years and a curfew from 5pm until 5am.

Norway

Norwegian health authorities say they are set to start performing random coronavirus tests, following the experiment Iceland has done.

Citing officials at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norwegian public broadcaster NRK said on Sunday such random testing among all citizens will provide answers to two key questions: how many of those who appear to be infected actually have the coronavirus and how wide the spread of the virus is.

NRK said Iceland, with its 12,000 random tests among its population of 340,000, has the largest number of tests per capita in the world. Norway, a nation of 5.4 million, has so far reported 4,054 coronavirus cases with 25 deaths.

Syria

Syria has reported the first coronavirus death in the war-torn country, which has five confirmed infections.

State news agency SANA said a woman died on reaching an emergency room and tested positive for the virus, without saying where it happened.

Syria has closed schools, restaurants and nightclubs, and imposed a nighttime curfew last week aimed at preventing the virus’s spread.

Its health care system has been battered by nearly a decade of civil war, leaving the country particularly vulnerable.

Canada

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he will continue to self-isolate at home even though his wife has recovered from coronavirus.

Australia

Australia has announced that public gatherings will be limited to two people, down from 10, and has enacted a six-month moratorium on evictions for those who cannot pay their rent.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the new measures on Sunday night after earlier in the day flagging a 1.1 billion Australian dollar (£546 million) welfare package.

Australia had 3,966 confirmed cases of the virus as of Sunday, including 16 deaths.

Sweden

The Swedish authorities have advised the public to practice social distancing and to work from home, if possible, and urged those over age 70 to self-isolate as a precaution.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, warning of “many tough weeks and months ahead,” announced Friday that as of Sunday, gatherings would be limited to 50 people instead of 500. The government said weddings, funerals and Easter celebrations would be affected.

New Zealand

New Zealand has reported its first death from Covid-19. Health authorities said Sunday the victim was a woman in her 70s.

She was admitted to a West Coast hospital last week with what they initially thought was flu, and hospital staff did not wear full protective equipment.

As a result, 21 members of staff have been put in self-isolation for two weeks.

The country has reported 514 cases of Covid-19. Last Wednesday, New Zealanders began a strict four-week lockdown.

Experts now say people should wear masks

The World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention insist that healthy people do not need masks. But as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, some experts are suggesting the opposite. A report in The New York Times said:

“The recent surge in infections in the United States, which has put the country at the center of the epidemic, with more confirmed cases than China, Italy or any other country, means that more Americans are now at risk of getting sick. And healthy individuals, especially those with essential jobs who cannot avoid public transportation or close interaction with others, may need to start wearing masks more regularly. ‘The swift increase in cases to these levels in the U.S. highlights to an even greater degree the importance of implementing and adhering to public health measures,’ said Dr. Robert Atmar, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine. While wearing a mask may not necessarily prevent healthy people from getting sick, and it certainly doesn’t replace important measures such as hand-washing or social distancing, it may be better than nothing, Atmar said.”

Vatican City

Pope Francis is backing the UN chief’s call for a ceasefire in all conflicts raging across the globe to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. He also said his thoughts are with those constrained to live in groups, citing in particular rest homes for the elderly, military barracks and jails.

During his traditional Sunday blessing, the Pope called for “the creation of humanitarian aid corridors, the opening of diplomacy and attention to those who are in situations of great vulnerability”.

He cited UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres’s appeal this past week for a global truce “to focus together on the true fight of our lives” against the coronavirus.

Francis, as he has throughout most of the coronavirus emergency due to bans on public gatherings, addressed the faithful from his private library in the Apostolic Palace, and not from a window overlooking St Peter’s Square as is tradition.

Minister of one of Germany’s wealthiest states commits suicide ‘over coronavirus worries’

The finance minister in the German state of Hesse, Thomas Schaefer, has taken his own life. His colleagues said he was pushed over the edge by the inability to cope with the harsh economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Schaefer’s body was discovered near the speed railway track line in the town of Hochheim am Main on Saturday. The prosecutors said that the cause of his death was most likely suicide.

Hesse is one of the wealthiest states in Germany and home to Frankfurt am Main, which is regarded as the financial capital of Europe’s largest economy. The city hosts the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the European Central Bank (ECB) as well as the HQs of Deutsche Bank and other major German companies.

Schaefer was credited for having contributed to the region’s well-being while serving as its finance minister for the last decade. The 54-year-old’s professional qualities were praised by many, with the man expected to eventually replace Bouffier as the state’s PM.

The coronavirus, however, dealt a massive blow to the system he was so thoroughly tending all those years, sending stocks into a freefall and locking the workforce at home with quarantine.

Schaefer leaves behind a wife and two children. He was working day and night in order to minimize the impact of the pandemic on businesses and employees, but the task turned out to be unsurmountable.

Stay human, stay active, stay safe

Mazin Qumsiyeh
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