Sadly, there isn’t just one obvious reason for this generational debacle. If there were, we could focus on it, tackle it, and perhaps even fix it. But no such luck.

So why do America’s disastrous wars persist? I can think of many reasons, some obvious and easy to understand, like the endless pursuit of profit through weapons sales for those very wars, and some more subtle but no less significant, like a deep-seated conviction in Washington that a willingness to wage war is a sign of national toughness and seriousness. Before I go on, though, here’s another distinctive aspect of our forever-war moment: Have you noticed that peace is no longer even a topic in America today? The very word, once at least part of the rhetoric of Washington politicians, has essentially dropped out of use entirely. Consider the current crop of Democratic candidates for president. One, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, wants to end regime-change wars, but is otherwise a self-professed hawk on the subject of the war on terror. Another, Senator Bernie Sanders, vows to end “endless wars” but is careful to express strong support for Israel and the ultra-expensive F-35 fighter jet. The other dozen or so tend to make vague sounds about cutting defense spending or gradually withdrawing U.S. troops from various wars, but none of them even consider openly speaking of peace. And the Republicans? While President Trump may talk of ending wars, since his inauguration he’s sent more troops to Afghanistan and into the Middle East, while greatly expanding drone and other air strikes, something about which he openly boasts.

War, in other words, is our new normal, America’s default position on global affairs, and peace, some ancient, long-faded dream. And when your default position is war, whether against the Taliban, ISIS, “terror” more generally, or possibly even Iran or Russia or China, is it any surprise that war is what you get? When you garrison the world with an unprecedented 800 or so military bases, when you configure your armed forces for what’s called power projection, when you divide the globe -- the total planet -- into areas of dominance (with acronyms like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) commanded by four-star generals and admirals, when you spend more on your military than the next seven countries combined, when you insist on modernizing a nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion) already quite capable of ending all life on this and several other planets, what can you expect but a reality of endless war?

Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise) path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn’t an “exceptional” belief system, what is?

If we’re ever to put an end to our country’s endless twenty-first-century wars, that mindset will have to be changed. But to do that, we would first have to recognize and confront war’s many uses in American life and culture.

War, Its Uses (and Abuses)

A partial list of war’s many uses might go something like this: war is profitable, most notably for America’s vast military-industrial complex; war is sold as being necessary for America’s safety, especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that “freedom isn’t free.” In our politics today, it’s far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right.

As the title of a book by former war reporter Chris Hedges so aptly put it, war is a force that gives us meaning. And let’s face it, a significant part of America’s meaning in this century has involved pride in having the toughest military on the planet, even as trillions of tax dollars went into a misguided attempt to maintain bragging rights to being the world’s sole superpower.

And keep in mind as well that, among other things, never-ending war weakens democracy while strengthening authoritarian tendencies in politics and society. In an age of gaping inequality, using up the country’s resources in such profligate and destructive ways offers a striking exercise in consumption that profits the few at the expense of the many.

In other words, for a select few, war pays dividends in ways that peace doesn’t. In a nutshell, or perhaps an artillery shell, war is anti-democratic, anti-progressive, anti-intellectual, and anti-human. Yet, as we know, history makes heroes out of its participants and celebrates mass murderers like Napoleon as “great captains.”

What the United States needs today is a new strategy of containment -- not against communist expansion, as in the Cold War, but against war itself. What’s stopping us from containing war? You might say that, in some sense, we’ve grown addicted to it, which is true enough, but here are five additional reasons for war’s enduring presence in American life:

• The delusional idea that Americans are, by nature, winners and that our wars are therefore winnable: No American leader wants to be labeled a "loser." Meanwhile, such dubious conflicts -- see: the Afghan War, now in its 18th year, with several more years, or even generations, to go -- continue to be treated by the military as if they were indeed winnable, even though they visibly aren’t. No president, Republican or Democrat, not even Donald J. Trump, despite his promises that American soldiers will be coming home from such fiascos, has successfully resisted the Pentagon’s siren call for patience (and for yet more trillions of dollars) in the cause of ultimate victory, however poorly defined, farfetched, or far-off.
  
   
• American society’s almost complete isolation from war's deadly effects: We’re not being droned (yet). Our cities are not yet lying in ruins (though they’re certainly suffering from a lack of funding, as is our most essential infrastructure, thanks in part to the cost of those overseas wars). It’s nonetheless remarkable how little attention, either in the media or elsewhere, this country’s never-ending war-making gets here.
  
   
• Unnecessary and sweeping secrecy: How can you resist what you essentially don’t know about? Learning its lesson from the Vietnam War, the Pentagon now classifies (in plain speak: covers up) the worst aspects of its disastrous wars. This isn’t because the enemy could exploit such details -- the enemy already knows! -- but because the American people might be roused to something like anger and action by it. Principled whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning have been imprisoned or otherwise dismissed or, in the case of Edward Snowden, pursued and indicted for sharing honest details about the calamitous Iraq War and America’s invasive and intrusive surveillance state. In the process, a clear message of intimidation has been sent to other would-be truth-tellers.
  
   
• An unrepresentative government: Long ago, of course, Congress ceded to the presidency most of its constitutional powers when it comes to making war. Still, despite recent attempts to end America’s arms-dealing role in the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen (overridden by Donald Trump’s veto power), America’s duly elected representatives generally don’t represent the people when it comes to this country’s disastrous wars. They are, to put it bluntly, largely captives of (and sometimes on leaving politics quite literally go to work for) the military-industrial complex. As long as money is speech (thank you, Supreme Court!), the weapons makers are always likely to be able to shout louder in Congress than you and I ever will.
  
   
• America’s persistent empathy gap. Despite our size, we are a remarkably insular nation and suffer from a serious empathy gap when it comes to understanding foreign cultures and peoples or what we’re actually doing to them. Even our globetrotting troops, when not fighting and killing foreigners in battle, often stay on vast bases, referred to in the military as “Little Americas,” complete with familiar stores, fast food, you name it. Wherever we go, there we are, eating our big burgers, driving our big trucks, wielding our big guns, and dropping our very big bombs. But what those bombs do, whom they hurt or kill, whom they displace from their homes and lives, these are things that Americans turn out to care remarkably little about.

All this puts me sadly in mind of a song popular in my youth, a time when Cat Stevens sang of a “peace train” that was “soundin’ louder” in America. Today, that peace train’s been derailed and replaced by an armed and armored one eternally prepared for perpetual war -- and that train is indeed soundin’ louder to the great peril of us all.

War on Spaceship Earth

Here’s the rub, though: even the Pentagon knows that our most serious enemy is climate change, not China or Russia or terror, though in the age of Donald Trump and his administration of arsonists its officials can’t express themselves on the subject as openly as they otherwise might. Assuming we don’t annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons first, that means our real enemy is the endless war we’re waging against Planet Earth.

The U.S. military is also a major consumer of fossil fuels and therefore a significant driver of climate change. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, like any enormously powerful system, only wants to grow more so, but what’s welfare for the military brass isn’t wellness for the planet.

There is, unfortunately, only one Planet Earth, or Spaceship Earth, if you prefer, since we’re all traveling through our galaxy on it. Thought about a certain way, we’re its crewmembers, yet instead of cooperating effectively as its stewards, we seem determined to fight one another. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out so long ago, surely a spaceship with a disputatious and self-destructive crew is not likely to survive, no less thrive.

In other words, in waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet.

Spaceship Earth should not be allowed to remain Warship Earth as well, not when the existence of significant parts of humanity is already becoming ever more precarious. Think of us as suffering from a coolant leak, causing cabin temperatures to rise even as food and other resources dwindle. Under the circumstances, what’s the best strategy for survival: killing each other while ignoring the leak or banding together to fix an increasingly compromised ship?

Unfortunately, for America’s leaders, the real “fixes” remain global military and resource domination, even as those resources continue to shrink on an ever-more fragile globe. And as we’ve seen recently, the resource part of that fix breeds its own madness, as in President Trump’s recently stated desire to keep U.S. troops in Syria to steal that country’s oil resources, though its wells are largely wrecked (thanks in significant part to American bombing) and even when repaired would produce only a miniscule percentage of the world’s petroleum.

If America’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything, it’s that every war scars our planet -- and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life.

Despite all of war’s uses and abuses, its allures and temptations, it's time that we Americans showed some self-mastery (as well as decency) by putting a stop to the mayhem. Few enough of us experience “our” wars firsthand and that’s precisely why some idealize their purpose and idolize their practitioners. But war is a bloody, murderous mess and those practitioners, when not killed or wounded, are marred for life because war functionally makes everyone involved into a murderer.

We need to stop idealizing war and idolizing its so-called warriors. At stake is nothing less than the future of humanity and the viability of life, as we know it, on Spaceship Earth.

William Astore, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor. His personal blog is Bracing Views.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Copyright 2019 William J. Astore

The impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.  As described in this executive summary and the report that follows, President Trump’s scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign.  The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election.  To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations:  a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.

During a July 25, 2019, call between President Trump and President Zelensky, President Zelensky expressed gratitude for U.S. military assistance.  President Trump immediately responded by asking President Zelensky to “do us a favor though” and openly pressed for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory.  In turn, President Zelensky assured President Trump that he would pursue the investigation and reiterated his interest in the White House meeting.  Although President Trump’s scheme intentionally bypassed many career personnel, it was undertaken with the knowledge and approval of senior Administration officials, including the President’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.  In fact, at a press conference weeks after public revelations about the scheme, Mr. Mulvaney publicly acknowledged that the President directly tied the hold on military aid to his desire to get Ukraine to conduct a political investigation, telling Americans to “get over it.”

President Trump and his senior officials may see nothing wrong with using the power of the Office of the President to pressure a foreign country to help the President’s reelection campaign.  Indeed, President Trump continues to encourage Ukraine and other foreign countries to engage in the same kind of election interference today.  However, the Founding Fathers prescribed a remedy for a chief executive who places his personal interests above those of the country:  impeachment.  Accordingly, as part of the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in coordination with the Committees on Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs, were compelled to undertake a serious, sober, and expeditious investigation into whether the President’s misconduct warrants that remedy.

In response, President Trump engaged in an unprecedented campaign of obstruction of this impeachment inquiry.  Nevertheless, due in large measure to patriotic and courageous public servants who provided the Committees with direct evidence of the President’s actions, the Committees uncovered significant misconduct on the part of the President of the United States.  As required under House Resolution 660, the Intelligence Committee, in consultation with the Committees on Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs, has prepared this report to detail the evidence uncovered to date, which will now be transmitted to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration.

 

1. Preface
2. Executive Summary
3. Key Findings of Fact
4. Report
   

Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, did his best to rally a sense of unity as the two-day summit hosted by Britain came to a close. The event was supposed to be a celebration, marking the 70th anniversary of NATO’s founding.

Far from being a “happy birthday” party, the NATO gathering descended into embarrassing farce with bickering and jibes. Video footage appeared to show the French, British and Canadian leaders making fun of American President Donald Trump over his rambling press conferences. Trump then hit back, accusing Canada’s Justin Trudeau of being “two-faced”.

There were other spats, between France and Turkey over Ankara’s military incursion into northern Syria against Kurdish militants, whom France and the US regard as allies. Turkey was also chided for buying the S-400 air defense system from Russia.

However, the biggest clash came between Trump and France’s Emmanuel Macron, who was taken to task by the American leader for his recent media remarks about NATO being “brain dead”. Trump said those comments were “very, very nasty” and “disrespectful”. Macron bridled at their joint press conference, saying he stood by his earlier critical comments.

It was toe-curling stuff, especially the lecture on politeness coming from Trump who himself has several times in the past disparaged NATO as “obsolete”.

Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian secretary-general, tried to smooth over the ruffled relations by claiming: “NATO is the most successful alliance in history because we’ve changed at the world has changed.” He went on to describe the 29-nation military bloc as “agile, active… adapting.”

That was after he pointed out that the combined NATO military spend was set for massive increases. An extra $400 billion will be forked out by the alliance by 2024, said Stoltenberg, on top of the current $1 trillion.

Already NATO’s total budget is 20 times that of Russia and five times that of China.

This is not about being “agile” or “adapting”. It’s about what NATO has always done: actively expand its military forces on a global scale in a way that deliberately destabilizes security and thus creates “challenges” that “need” to be responded to.

At this year’s summit, the NATO leaders have “for the first time” discussed China as a collective security challenge. They also discussed making “space an operational domain” for military technology.

And, of course, Russia featured as the time-honored “bogeyman”, with Stoltenberg talking about increasing battalions on Russia’s borders to “protect Poland and the Baltic region”.

There were also a few token statements about “fighting terrorism” thrown into the mission mix during the two-day summit near London.

But the “anti-terror” platitudes can’t hide the fundamental purpose of NATO which is expansionism and the creation of international tensions, conflicts and enemies, or more politely “adversaries”.

When NATO was founded in 1949 until 1991 it comprised 12 members. The organization was supposed to “defend” Europe from attack by the Soviet Union. That was always a much-overblown claim even back in the Cold War decades. Since the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact dissolved, NATO has more than doubled its size with 17 new member states, most of them proximate to Russia’s borders. The recruitment goes on, with talk of Georgia and the Ukraine joining in the future. Yet NATO inverts Russia’s legitimate concerns over an increasing security threat, by absurdly claiming that Russia is threatening Europe.

It wasn’t Russia that attacked the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans in the late 1990s, nor conducted regime-change wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. It wasn’t Russia that oversaw a coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014. In all the mayhem over the past three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has relentlessly ramped up foreign wars, destabilizing the entire globe.

Adding China and the militarization of space as new remits to its mission, this is NATO seeking to expand its real “insecurity agenda”, in contrast to its official claims of maintaining global security.

The truth is NATO is a front organization for the military-industrial complex that drives the corporate-capitalist economies in North America and Europe, but primarily in the US. Without NATO’s annual $1 trillion spend – soon to escalate further – the militarized economies of the US and its allies would flounder from the lack of massive public subsidy year after year.

If NATO were disbanded and the war economies of the US and its allies were to cease, then more civilized economies would lead to greater social equality and democracy, which would not be tolerated in Western plutocracies.

The NATO dinosaur plods on… for now. But the disaster of poverty and unsustainable international tensions that it leaves in its wake suggest that the beast is soon heading for long-overdue extinction. Either that, or the planet could very well be made extinct from its reprehensible rampaging.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

This article was originally published by "Sputnik" - -

Trump abruptly cancels NATO news conference after summit turns sour: Hours before it was set to start, video emerged of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau caught on a hot mic apparently mocking Trump.

Trump Was Laughed Out of the NATO Summit: Trump seemed surprised that, after three years of crapping all over America’s allies, they do not hold him in high regard.

NATO’s Dirty Little Secret Is Out : The pro-NATO case is built on a fundamental deception.

Trump to seek $250M in new lethal aid to Ukraine

Gallagher’s situation emerged onto the front pages only because of the intervention of Trump. Otherwise, these accusations of war crimes or “misconduct” emerge, they are sometimes investigated, and then they just dissipate. Report upon report has accumulated over the past 16 years of war crimes committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S.-NATO war on Afghanistan began in 2001, while the U.S. war on Iraq began in 2003. Hardly a day goes by in these countries where their combatants aren’t committing war crimes.

As early as December 21, 2001, the United Nations inquired about reports of “summary execution of prisoners after capture”; the immediate news was that about 2,000 Taliban prisoners at Qala-i-Jangi, near Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, had been “suffocated to death or shot in container trucks,” according to a report by the Physicians for Human Rights. In 2009, it became clear that the administration of George W. Bush had obstructed any investigation into this particular atrocity. Not one person has seen the inside of a court for this war crime.

What is a “war crime”? The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—which went into effect in 2002 but was drafted in 1998—defines war crimes as “serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict.” These include attacks against civilians, attacks against those who have surrendered, attacks with biological and chemical weapons, and attacks against medical and cultural institutions.

The Rome Statute builds on 100 years of legal precedent established in the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions. There is no ambiguity in the Statute, which should be read by schoolchildren in countries that are prone to prosecute wars.

International Criminal Court

The United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court (ICC). It had helped establish the Court, but then reversed course and refused to allow itself to be under the ICC’s jurisdiction. In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which allows the U.S. government to “use all means” to protect its troops from the ICC prosecutors. Article 98 of the Rome Statute does not require states to turn over wanted personnel from a third party if these states had signed an immunity agreement with the third party; the U.S. government has therefore encouraged states to sign these “article 98 agreements” to give its troops immunity from prosecution.

The enormity of evidence of war crimes by U.S. troops and U.S.-affiliated troops in Afghanistan and Iraq weighed on the credibility of the ICC. In 2016, after a decade of investigation, the ICC released a report that offered hope to the Afghan people. The ICC said that there is “a reasonable basis” to pursue further investigation of war crimes by various forces inside Afghanistan—such as the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and the United States military forces alongside the Central Intelligence Agency. The next year, the ICC went forward with more detailed acknowledgment of the possibility of war crimes. Pressure on the ICC’s prosecutor mounted.

Pressure on the Court

This is where everything seemed to end. The Trump administration, via John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, made it clear to the ICC that if they pursued a case against the U.S., then the Trump administration would go after the ICC prosecutor and judges personally.

An application for a U.S. visa by Fatou Bensouda, the ICC prosecutor, was denied; she had intended to come to the U.S. to appear before the United Nations. This was a shot across the bow of the Court. The U.S. was not going to play nice. Not long thereafter, in April 2019, the ICC said that it would not go ahead with a war crimes case against the United States, or indeed against any of the belligerents in Afghanistan. The Court said it would “not serve the interests of justice” to pursue this investigation.

Trump responded to this decision by calling the ICC “illegitimate” and—at the same time—that the ICC’s judgment was “a victory, not only for these patriots, but for the rule of law.”

Staff at the ICC were dismayed by the ICC’s decision. They were eager to challenge it, fearing that if they let the U.S. mafia tactics prevent their own procedures then the ICC would lose whatever shred of legitimacy remains. As it is, the ICC is seen as being deployed mainly against the enemies of the United States; there have been no serious investigations of any power that is closely aligned with the United States.

In June, Fatou Bensouda, the ICC prosecutor, filed a request inside the cumbersome system of the ICC to essentially appeal the decision not to pursue the investigation of the war crimes in Afghanistan. Bensouda’s appeal was joined by various groups from Afghanistan, including Afghan Victims’ Families Association and the Afghanistan Forensic Science Organization. In September, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Court said it would allow the appeal to go forward. Bensouda’s office is now going to have to assemble an enormous case for her appeal; this could itself take the better part of six months. It is likely that the Trump administration has already begun to pressure the Court, which the Court’s staff worries will have an impact on the appeal as it did on the first filing.

Britain and the Court

The main U.S. ally in these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been the United Kingdom. A recent television program in the UK provided chilling evidence of British war crimes in Iraq. In 2017, the ICC said it had “credible” evidence that UK armed forces had committed horrific war crimes—including murder, torture, and rape—between 2003 and 2009. Reports piled up, but action was not taken. Now, given the new revelations on BBC’s “Panorama,” the ICC says that it will likely take up the case again.

There is no doubt that if the UK’s case is fairly adjudicated, it will raise many issues about the senior partner in these wars, namely the United States. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the UK for now, says that he wants to pass legislation that—like in the U.S.—gives immunity for its troops. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has said, on the other hand, that it welcomes the scrutiny.

No soldier should be above the law. Nor should those who sent the soldiers into battle. None of these inquiries asks that more fundamental question.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the U.S. war on Iraq “illegal.” No one, not even Bensouda, has suggested that George W. Bush, his Cabinet, and Tony Blair be brought into the dock.

If justice is to be sought, it is not at the level of someone like Edward Gallagher alone; it should be his superiors on the political side who need to answer questions about not just this or that war crime, but about the entire war and the crime of it all.

Vijay Prashad - Independent Media Institute

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Then the Reich, with no justification whatever, having absolute air superiority, attacked Poland, bombing undefended cities and killing huge numbers of people. It was a German pattern several times repeated. Many reporters told of the smell of rotting bodies, of refugees dying of hunger and thirst. Today the Reich is endlessly remembered as a paragon of evil. It was.

Johnson has won a decisive mandate to “get Brexit done”, at least from London’s perspective. His party now has a substantial parliamentary majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons which will ensure delivery on his promise to execute Britain’s departure from the European Union on January 31. The actual final severance will take another year or two to complete because of negotiations between London and Brussels to definitively hammer out divorce terms. But at least Johnson can claim that he has consummated the final journey to leave the EU on January 31, a journey which began over three years ago when Britons had originally voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.

However, crucially, the Conservative government’s mandate for Brexit only applies to England and Wales. It was in these two countries that saw the significant swing of voters from the opposition Labour party to Johnson’s Tories. Thus, in effect, his parliamentary majority stems from voters in England and Wales.

By total contrast, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the other two regions which make up the United Kingdom, the voters resoundingly rejected Johnson’s Brexit plans and voted for parties wanting to remain in the European Union. The outcome is consistent with the 2016 referendum results when Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted against Brexit.

Moreover, the latest election results have reinforced the call for independence in both Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The Scottish Nationalists swept the election to enhance their already existing majority. They now control nearly 90 per cent of all seats in Scotland. Party leader Nicola Sturgeon says there is an unquestionable mandate to hold a second referendum for Scottish independence. The previous independence referendum held in 2014 was defeated. But Scottish nationalists claim that popular support for their cause has surged since the Brexit referendum in 2016. The Scots, by and large, do not want to leave the EU. To remain in the EU therefore necessarily means separating from the United Kingdom and its central government in London.

Boris Johnson has so far rejected calls for holding a second Scottish independence referendum. But his position is untenable. Given the parliamentary numbers for separation stacking up in Scotland, he will have to relent. Nationalists there are demanding the holding of another plebiscite as early as next year.

In Northern Ireland, the election outcome is perhaps even more momentous. For the first time ever, nationalist parties have a majority over pro-British unionist parties. Mary Lou MacDonald, the leader of Sinn Fein, the main nationalist party, says that there is now a clear mandate for holding a referendum on the question of Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom. Given the breakthrough nationalist majority in the latest election, that would inevitably lead to a United Ireland, from the northern state joining with the existing southern state, the Republic of Ireland.

Nationalists in Northern Ireland have long-aspired for independence from Britain. Northern Ireland was created in 1921 from an audacious act of gerrymandering by the British government when it partitioned the island of Ireland into an independent southern state (which became the Republic of Ireland) and a small northern state (which became Northern Ireland). The latter remained under Britain’s jurisdiction. The arbitrary, imperialist act of partitioning Ireland was done in order to give the British authorities in London a mandate to rule over a portion of Irish territory because in newly created Northern Ireland the pro-British unionists were in a majority over nationalists. It was British establishment cynicism par excellence.

The present political structure of the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is only a century old. (Before that, the UK included all of Irish territory, but London was forced to grant partial Irish independence due to an armed insurrection.)

In any case, nearly a century after the setting up of Northern Ireland the natural demographic changes in its population have now created a majority for nationalists. The outcome of the election on December 12 is an undeniably huge historic event. For the first time ever, the nationalist mandate has overcome the unionist vote. The historic violation by British gerrymandering against Irish nationalist rights to independence and self-determination has finally been reversed in terms of electoral ballot.

When the Northern Ireland peace deal known as the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998 to bring an end to nearly 30 years of armed conflict, enshrined in that treaty is the “principle of consent”. The British government is treaty-bound to abide by the electoral mandate of a majority in Northern Ireland wanting a United Ireland.

The threshold for triggering a referendum on Northern Ireland leaving British jurisdiction has now been reached. And nationalist parties are openly demanding that the legislative process to achieve that separation is now implemented.

Jonathan Powell, a seasoned British diplomat who oversaw the negotiations of the Good Friday Agreement, is not one for hyperbole. But in an interview with Matt Frei for Britain’s LBC Radio on December 14, Powell said he expected to see the “collapse of the United Kingdom” within the next decade, if not sooner. He was referring specifically to the electoral results in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Boris Johnson’s seeming victory in the British election is a double-edged sword. He may claim to have a mandate to cut off ties with the European Union. But the results also mean Scotland and Northern Ireland are empowered to now cut off their ties with the rest of Britain. The separation of those two states, leaving behind England and Wales, spells the end of the so-called United Kingdom.

Johnson’s election success is not “unleashing great potential” as he claims. Rather, it is unleashing an existential constitutional crisis for the British establishment.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

A word usually associated with deranged Russian oil tycoons is suddenly front and center in many American’s minds thanks to a new study by researchers at Princeton and Northwestern. The analysis of 1,779 recent policy outcomes found that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” while average citizens “have little or no independent influence.”

In other words, the U.S. is an oligarchy: a system of government where a small number of elites rule. Everyone else? Not so much.

“Well I could have told you that”

This might seem obvious to some readers. After all, everyone knows economic elites run the show in the United States, right?

As it turns out, there are surprisingly few studies out there on this topic. That’s what makes this study so important. If we want to have an informed debate about issues of money and influence, those things “everyone knows” have to be backed up with real data. Let’s look behind the headline to see what the research really says.

The surge in demand for market skills led to a complete overhaul of higher education with the result being universities becoming mere affiliation hosting bodies for the vocational colleges located at a distance from its main campus. Once the demand overshot even this customary practice was done away with and autonomous institutes were allowed to function outside the purview of any existing university. This ushered in big money in education sector that led to the growth of sprawling campuses in almost all metropolitan cities. The opportunity was judiciously cashed by thugs who used the avenue to convert their ill-gotten black money. From politicians across political divide to real estate developers the sector found benefactors from varied quarters. If in doubt one only had to visit the Chairman’s room in these newly established colleges and private universities to ascertain the truth. At such visit most often one would find a person sitting on a highly raised pedestal wearing some heavy gold stuff. The ambience of the institution is so maintained that the cash rich client walking in to take admission is not turned down at his first visit.

Understandably, for a government with a proven monochromatic view of everything, universities are not a garden but a contract farm. However, the fact is, Universities are sanctuaries of ideas. To stifle the universities is to erode the base for rational and critical thinking and stall knowledge creation that is essential to even the far right.A welfare state irrespective of its ideological affiliations is duty bound to protect not just these sanctuaries but ensure access of its resources to all its citizens alike.

Therefore, an Increase in fee, decrease in scholarship, misappropriation of research grants, delaying of stipend,closure of courses in liberal arts, a general apathy towards non vocational courses,making admission procedure adversarial to students coming from far flung areas and poor and marginalized communities and discouraging students bodies thereby denying a proper forum for grievance redressal mechanism is all a well-orchestrated plan of furthering corporatisation of education.

While in school students learn from scratch, in universities the learning begins by unlearning. The discovering and rediscovering of the self is a continuous feature of university education, unlike school,which have in their sight a basic development of the child. The teaching pedagogy in universities is aimed at allowing the students to appreciate their surroundings and establish a critical thinking based on their own understanding. The government in its utter idiocy does not want the mental faculties of the students to develop beyond school level.

In the world struggling with the post truth phenomenon, far right posturing, corporatisation of media, paid news, yellow journalism and social media trolls it is left to the universities to keep the propaganda at bay and document all voices that are nowhere to be heard.Universities in their line of duty have to be vigilante with their research, thorough with their facts and absolute with their hypothesis. But, it’s a sad state of affairs that barring a few pioneers like JNU, no university in India has it armoury filled with the required provisions.

Universities are public good and assume even more importance in the environment of rising inequality, and aggravated marginalization. It is incumbent on the universities, so much as a duty to offer a critique of socio political and economic policies of the state. Institutions like JNU endow the other public institutions their knowledge and skills and also keep a vigilante eye on state excesses. But, for them we would loose another important block that is significant to keep checks and balances in our democratic setup.

Md. Aariz Imam is a political commentator

Climate change is real, happening. It is human caused – mostly through our use of fossil fuels, and could be catastrophic, could be a tragic end to our present evolution. Without effective mitigation.

But we’ve gone three decades of failure to even slow the increase in burning coal, oil and natural gas, with consequential greenhouse gases (GHGs) increasing in the atmosphere, with a consequential rise in global temperatures, which in turn leads to more extreme weather, sea level rise, drought and forest fires, etc. Climate change damage is accelerating and becoming increasingly costly; devastating weather is already a growing threat multiplier in our tightly linked global society.

There are also latent positive feedbacks like melting permafrost or the drying Amazon. Human induced warming is predicted to accelerate these positive feedbacks and the most worrying earth systems climate science strongly suggests we are near a threshold beyond which a cascade of such feedbacks is triggered that is irreversible – nothing then we could do about it – leading to a 5-7C rise in temperature to Hothouse Earth and the certain collapse of civilization and maybe even human extinction.

Fossil fuels have been the lifeblood of our meteoric ascent to our very fortunate global civilization of wealth and opportunity today, but burning fossil fuels had an unanticipated side-effect and now adds unacceptable GHG emissions which are a potentially fatal toxin for all we know and love.

Transitioning out of fossil fuels to a new, post-carbon economy and society was never going to be easy but three decades of denial, procrastination and failure must mean urgent, emergency action is required if the society we are so intimately coevolved with is to survive and keep on evolving.

The main reason for this failure to effectively mitigate has been the success of global business at creating a business friendly global governance that protects long term investment (downsized governments wearing their golden straitjackets). While successfully boosting economic activity, wealth creation and lifestyle innovation, this ‘neoliberal’ governance has not allowed mitigation policies that could have restricted fossil fuel use or helped speed up the needed transition.

Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address. By the late 1980s, when it became clear that man-made climate change endangered the living planet and its people, the world was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it.   George Monbiot

” (W)e haven’t even started to talk about what might be ‘possible’ and are still mostly arguing about what is ‘feasible without compromising economic growth.’ These are of course extremely different things, and the latter will not get us anywhere near the 1.5 degrees C target.” Damon Matthews

Under neoliberalism, climate change is extraordinarily difficult to deal with.

The options that do not violate the neoliberal worldview are few, which explains why so many governments resort to little more than mild carbon pricing that stops well short of what is needed, the Trudeau government’s Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate Change being a stellar example of this. Even when facing the end of the world, neoliberal governments would at most tinker only marginally with already low levels of industry and trade regulation, taxation, public investment, economic planning, and so on. Anything more would risk interfering with a society maintained for the wealthy in the name of market liberty and efficiency.   Arron Saad

It was our bad luck that this idea that markets solve all problems and that government should be left to wither away crested just at the moment when it could do the most damage.  Bill McKibben

The primary commitment of the international community is to maintain the current social and economic system….The reality is that Nation States and international corporations are engaged in an unremitting and ongoing expansion of fossil fuel energy exploration, extraction and combustion, and the construction of related infrastructure for production and consumption.  Clive Spash

Every barrel of oil produced and burned is wealth creation not easily forgone. You want a booming economy – ask Trump – you do whatever you can to increase fossil fuel supply. And in our now neolib societies governments dare not introduce any policies that negatively effect the economy, effect GDP, by even minor percentage points. It’s the economy, stupid is the all encompassing religion of our times.

So fossil fuel production and use, and GHGs, continue to increase even though the consequences are acknowledged (by those not in denial) as increasingly existential.

Presently we are like somebody with a potentially fatal disease that has ignored the doctors insistent advice for lifestyle change, for deep systemic change, to the point where effective treatment is now problematic and needed change is becoming just too hard to even contemplate.

This is our predicament and all of us – especially those most effected globally today and future generations – could lose big time for not making the transition we have to make. Is eliminating civilization going to be a side-effect of the neolib goal of making a better world for business?

There is now no hope of effective mitigation in time without business. Global business – especially American business –  must consciously roll back the neoliberal capture of government so that ‘transforming system change’ becomes possible, so that governments can organize and fund ‘big government plans’ like the Green New Deal (GND) and, more importantly if more heretically, so that governments can effectively regulate a managed decline of fossil fuel production and use.

If business doesn’t organize itself to back off so that deep systemic change is possible urgently than we are all going to lose big time. If business doesn’t agree to and help form wartime-style coalition governments and fossil fuel proliferation treaties across trade groups, and agree to government intervention, regulation and even triage support for markets in the transition to a hopeful post-carbon society, such a transformation will not happen (at least not in the timeframe dictated by the science).

It is still possible that we could make the needed transition – renewables and dematerializing technologies have tremendous promise. There still is hope that we could conduct an emergency operation to save our very fortunate societies and come out the other side into a much more secure and even wealthier market-based governance. Even the present fossil fuel companies could survive and thrive.

But the need for effective mitigation is urgent (it is even possible that it is already too late but we must try). And business must lead instead of continuing to be the main impediment, the main villain threatening all of our futures.

It is far too late to still try and shoehorn climate mitigation into business as usual. Decarbonization where renewables out compete fossil fuels in existing markets is now just pretend mitigation. It might have succeeded if initiated with business support in the 90s but now the illusion of 100% renewables is just being used as predatory delay. Even leading decarbonization jurisdictions like California or the UK are restricted to mitigation plans to fail and won’t make even their limited emission reduction targets.

We need revolutionary change – deep systemic change. But not socialism, not anti-capitalism, because we need business innovation within markets (stabilized by government for the transition like in previous wartime examples) with creative destruction and new safe growth.

Most people think that building renewable 100% capacity is the key to needed emission reduction. Hence plans like the GND. But if you read and understand expert commentators like Smil, MacKay, Cox and Rees you have to get far more sophisticated: mitigation planning must facilitate hyper creative destruction within continued opportunity for investment so that capital is not lost and the transition can be made as rapidly as possible.

This is why we need emergency government to not only allow systemic change but to protect and stabilize continuing markets (like during WW2) so that this hyper creative destruction is possible, so that we get a kind of controlled collapse that is fast but not fatal because there is a viable opportunity for new growth.

If we can make such a transition the vast majority of citizens in our western democracies want to live in market-based economies because of the wealth and opportunity they produce, albiet with government freed from capture and with improved equity of wealth distribution and with certainly more precautionary regulatory powers for governments.

So how does business lead now in getting to this hopeful transition?

Business must accept the need for deep systemic change. Business leaders must speak out and must convince those now opposed within business and their present political supporters to get on board. Business leadership must affirm that climate change is a battle that must be fought and won, if only to protect the continuing evolution of business.

Then business must empower government by consciously stepping back. Governments must be freed from the golden straitjacket and encouraged to regulate, even where the immediate consequences are negative for business.

If business returns to government the power to introduce needed ‘transformative system change’, effective climate mitigation finally becomes possible. Then our kids – the world’s kids – can hopefully enjoy opportunity and wealth creation in a future with a safe climate for our continuing evolution.

Bill Henderson is a climate change activist

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road, is based on a 2,100-year-old trade route between the Middle East and Eastern Asia, called the Silk Road. It wound its ways across the huge landmass Eurasia to the most eastern parts of China. It favored trading, based on the Taoist philosophy of harmony and peaceful coexistence – trading in the original sense of the term, an exchange with “win-win” outcomes, both partners benefiting equally.

Today, in the western world we have lost this concept. The terms of trade are imposed always by the ‘stronger’ partner, the west versus the poorer south – the south where most of the natural resources are lodged. Mother Earth’s assets have been and are coveted by the west– or north – for building and maintaining a lifestyle in luxury, abundance and waste. This trend has lasted for centuries of western colonialism: Exploitation, loot, esclavisation and rape of entire peoples of the Global South by the Global North, to use the current soothing World Bank lingo.

The New Silk Road, or BRI, is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s brainchild.It’s based on the same ancient principles, adjusted to the 21^st Century, building bridges between peoples, exchanging goods, research, education, knowledge, cultural wisdom, peacefully, harmoniously and ‘win-win’ style. On 7 September 2013, Xi presented BRI at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University. He spoke about “People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. He referred to the Ancient Silk Road of more than 2,100 years ago, that flourished during China’s Western Han Dynasty (206 BC to 24 AD).

Referring to this epoch of more than two millenniums back, Xi Jinping pointed to the history of exchanges under the Ancient Silk Road, saying,“they had proven that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.”

President Xi’s vision may be shaping the world of the 21^st Century. The Belt and Road Initiative is designed and modeled loosely according to the Ancient Silk Road. President Xi launched this ground-breaking project soon after assuming the Presidency in 2013. The endeavor’s idea is to connect the world with transport routes, infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, teaching and research institutions, cultural exchange and much more. Since 2017, enshrined in China’s Constitution, BRI has become the flagship for China’s foreign policy.

BRI is literally building bridges and connecting people of different continents and nations. The purpose of the New Silk Road is “to construct a unified large market and make full use of both international and domestic markets, through cultural exchange and integration, to enhance mutual understanding and trust of member nations, ending up in an innovative pattern with capital inflows, talent pool, and technology database”. BRI is a perfect vehicle for building peacefully a World Community with a Shared Future for Mankind – which was the theme of an international Forum held in Shanghai, from 5-7 November, a tribute to China’s 70^th Anniversary of her Revolution and achievements – with a vision into the future.

BRI is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese Government. Already todayBRI has investments involving more than 150 countries and international organizations – and growing – in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. BRI is a multi-trillion investment scheme, for transport routes on land and sea, as well as construction of industrial and energy infrastructure and energy exploration – as well as trade among connected countries.Unlike WTO (World Trade Organization), BRI is encouraging nations to benefit from their comparative advantages, creating win-win situations. In essence, BRI is to develop mutual understanding and trust among member nations, allowing for free capital flows, a pool of experts and access to a BRI-based technology data base.

At present, BRI’s closing date is foreseen for 2049 which coincides with new China’s 100^th Anniversary. The size and likely success of the program indicates, however, already today that it will most probably be extended way beyond that date. It is worth noting, though, that only in 2019, six years after its inception, BRI has become a news item in the West. Remarkably, for six years BRI was as much as denied, or ignored by the western media, in the hope it may go away. But away it didn’t go. To the contrary, many European Union members have already subscribed to BRI, including Greece, Italy, France, Portugal – and more will follow, as the temptation to participate in this projected socioeconomic boom is overwhelming.

Germany, the supposed economic leader of Europe, is mulling over the benefits and contras of participating in BRI. The German business community, like business throughout Europe, is strongly in favor of lifting US-imposed sanctions and reconnecting with the East, in particular with China and Russia. But official Berlin is still with one foot in the White House – and with the other trying to appease the German – and European – world of business. This balancing act is in the long run not sustainable and certainly not desirable. At present BRI is already actively involved in over 80 countries, including at least half of the EU members.

To counteract the pressure to join BRI, the European Union, basically run by NATO and intimately linked to Washington, has initiated their own ‘Silk Road’, attempting to connect Asia with Europe through Japan. In that sense, the EU and Japan have signed a “free trade agreement” which includes a compact to build infrastructure, in sectors such as energy, transport and digital devices. The purpose is to strengthen economic and cultural ties between the two regions, boosting business relations between Asia and Europa. It is an obvious effort to compete with or even sideline China’s BRI. But it is equally obvious that this response will fail. Usually initiatives taken in ill-fate are not successful. And China, non-belligerent China, is unlikely to challenge this EU-Japan competitive approach.

In another approach to counter BRI, The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), launched on 4 November the Blue Dot Network (BDN), an initiative supposedly run entirely by private actors, funded by private banking, intended to bring together governments, the private sector, and civil society “to promote high-quality, trusted standards for global infrastructure development in an open and inclusive framework.”

It is not clear how the BDN will interact with or counteract BRI. Anything run entirely by the private sector, especially western private banking, is no good omen for the country their “development effort” touches. Such investments’ objectives are primarily shareholder profits, not socioeconomic development benefitting the countries where they plan to invest. No competition for China’s BRI. Again, non-aggressive China is unlikely to react.

China’s New Silk Road is creating a multipolar world, where all participants will benefit. The idea is to encourage economic growth, distributed in a balanced way, so as to prioritize development opportunities for those most in need. That means the under-developed areas of western China, eastern Russia, Central Asia, Central Europe – reaching out to Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, as well as to South East Asia and the Pacific. BRI is already actively building and planning some six to ten land and maritime routes, connecting Africa, the Middle East, Europe and South America.

The expected multi-trillion-dollar equivalent dynamic budget is expected to be funded by China, largely, but not exclusively, by the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), by Russia – and by all the countries that are part of BRI and involved in singular or multi-country projects. The long-term return on these massive investments in people’s wellbeing is an exponential multiple of the original investments and cannot be limited to numerical economics, as social benefits of wellbeing cannot be defined by linear accounting.

Implementing BRI, or the New Silk Road, is itself the realization of a vision of nations: Peaceful interconnectivity, joint infrastructure and industrial development, as well as joint management of natural resources. For example, BRI may help with infrastructure and management advice resolving or preventing conflicts on transboundary water resources. There are some 263 transboundary lake and river basins, covering almost half the earth’s surface and involving some 150 countries. In addition, there are about 300 transboundary aquifers serving about 2 billion people who depend on groundwater.

The Chinese government calls the Silk Road Initiative “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”. Today, John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” is more relevant than ever. And China is a vanguard in promoting peaceful development across the globe. BRI, China’s foreign policy flagship, is clearly an initiative towards world Peace.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organizationaround the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

Poor people are not generally concerned about the adverse affects of climate change. Atleast this was the conclusion that several recent articles wanted to reach as far as I understood by reading them.

These articles had mentioned poor people’s lack of understanding about the climate change as the major reason for their dis-concern.

While this cannot be denied outright, it cannot also be said in general that all the poor people lack concern about the adverse affects of climate change.

There are a number of researches demonstrating the fact that the income or wealth of people is not a determining factor for their understanding of the climate change impact.

The University of Bristol’s analysis on a number of countries had, infact, found the opposite. According to the analysis, people in poorer countries are more concerned about the quality of air and water in their localities.

It is, therefore, less about their concern, but more about their participation.

The unfortunate reality about the poor people is that their financial hardships do not allow them to participate in the discussions that take place surrounding the climate change.

The widely given example about poor people’s barrier to participation in the climate change discussion comes in the form of re-usable products. While the rich can afford to brag about re-usable drinking straws as one of their contributions to saving the planet from the adverse affects of climate change, such discussion or action does not fit the lifestyle or thought-process of the poor.

Hence, despite being the most vulnerable to the adverse affects of climate change, the poor people are left behind in the discussions and actions on climate change.

It is true that poor people generally lack formal or academic education, as they cannot generally afford the financial cost of academic education, particularly higher education. But it is certainly not true that this lacking would make their participation less effective.

Simply presuming that their lack of education would not allow them to effectively participate in environmental discussions and actions would be wrong, as by doing this we are excluding entire communities who could have been doing many things to reverse the changing patterns of our planet’s climate.

Their participating in the discussions would have let the educated and well-off communities understand what happens on the ground when a natural disaster hits an area, and how they have experienced the gradual worsening of the climate conditions over the years. This would have given a lot of information to researchers to carryout their research even further.

Besides their discussions, their actions would have added weight to what the highly-educated environmental activists and conservationists have been doing over the decades.

More is better. More hands in the effort to save our planet from adverse consequences of climate change is certainly the best thing we could expect in this very moment of crisis.

This article was originally published on Oped Column Syndication.

Simi Garewal is a member of Global Affairs Writers’ Association. Her areas of interest are the cultural and economic developments of South Asia as well as the global trend of climate change.

The United Nations Environment Programme issued its tenth Emissions Gap Report yesterday, which highlighted the stark failure of the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb global greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming. Even if countries hold themselves to their emissions pledges from four years ago, the report warns that global average temperatures will still increase to 3.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and Earth will be increasingly hostile to human life.

This is well past the two degree limit set by the Paris Agreement, and more than twice the 1.5 degree limit that has been adopted since then. As the report notes, governments and corporations have not curbed their carbon emissions, but largely done the opposite. Greenhouse gas emissions have risen at an average rate of 1.5 percent over the past decade, resulting in the release of the equivalent of 55.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2018, 37.5 gigatons of which were emitted from burning fossil fuels.

Global warming has already caused catastrophic injury to large sections of the world’s population. More powerful hurricanes such as Sandy, Maria and Dorian cause billions of dollars in destruction and cost thousands of lives. Wildfires in Australia have made koalas “functionally extinct.” Nearly 900 million human beings are at risk of starvation as previously fertile lands turn into desert, while 3.2 billion men, women and children live in areas that will not support human life likely by the end of the next decade.

A segment of an ice sheet (Credit: Nasa.gov)

There are already at least 210 million so-called “climate refugees”–those forced to permanently flee their homes as a result of climate change-related disasters, and not from war or other forms of violence. The United Nations estimates that up to one billion will be displaced by 2050.

To have any chance of abating the unfolding crisis, the document echoes reports going back more than four decades calling for reduced carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions. In 2011, the fifth assessment report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world could only burn an additional 565 gigatons of carbon (coal, oil natural gas) before reaching a critical point of no return for the world’s climate. It also noted that there were 2,795 gigatons of carbon already contained in proven fossil fuel reserves.

Since then, energy production and industrial use have put an estimated 364 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. As the Emissions Gap Report notes, countries and companies will have to reduce the greenhouse gases they release by at least 7.6 percent each year from 2020 to 2030 in order to have any chance of alleviating the devastation that has already been wreaked by man-made climate change and to prevent even worse catastrophes.

The report places special emphasis on the fact that the twenty richest countries in the world (the G20) account for 78 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, noting that it is the European Union and countries such as the United States, China, India and Russia that will have to make the most drastic cuts. It calls for “radical transformations” in energy production and the industrial sector, transferring power generation from coal and oil to solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and other renewable energy sources.

Another way of putting this, however, is that 70 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from 100 major companies, a fact that United Nations reports gloss over. It is not the world’s population that is responsible for climate change, but rather its transnational corporations, which operate only to enrich their executives and major shareholders. To quote British Petroleum (BP), they are more concerned with the “potential financial impact” of limiting carbon emissions than the health of the planet and those that live on it.

The UN’s figures, however, do not account for natural processes that have been triggered by the warming that has already taken place. Last year, Dr. Andrew Glikson of the Australian National University warned of a “methane time bomb” in the Arctic as melting permafrost steadily releases the hundreds of gigatons of methane–a greenhouse gas nearly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide–stored in soil, lakes and sediment in Canada and Siberia. Scientists have also witnessed methane boiling up from underneath the Arctic Ocean, which is estimated to contain thousands of gigatons of methane.

If these methane reserves are ever fully released, the results would be cataclysmic. The extreme weather events of the past decade would be only the precursors of much more devastating storms, longer heat waves, drier droughts and nonstop wildfires. Coral reefs across the world would die, eliminating significant parts of the food chain. Glacial melting and sea level rise would flood every coastal city on the planet, home to between one-third and one-half of the world’s population, potentially drowning billions of people. At least one million of the Earth’s species would die and continent-scale portions of the world’s surface would become uninhabitable.

Moreover, Earth’s temperature would no longer be directly related to the burning of fossil fuels, making it exponentially more difficult for modern scientific techniques to contain or reverse.

The only way to avert such a scenario would be to implement a scientifically planned global restructuring of the world’s energy industry to transition from a reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy. This in turn would involve a transformation on the same scale of transportation, logistics, agriculture and ultimately society as a whole. Such changes would necessarily cut across national boundaries, corporate profits and national security interests, all of which are features of capitalism: the division of the world into rival nation-states and the subordination of economic life to the accumulation of private profit.

The only way to place the world’s productive forces on such an internationally coordinated basis is to overthrow the profit system, nation-states and capitalism. Its opposite must be established—socialism, the democratic control of the world’s productive forces by the international working class.

Originally published by WSWS.org

Due to capitalism’s rapaciousness, our species is hurtling towards ecocide at a frightening pace.

In the early twentieth century, tens of millions died under the Stalinist regime. We blame these deaths on the wickedness of socialism. Later, in Germany, around 6 million Jews were systematically murdered in gas chambers. We blame these deaths on the ills of fascism. At the other end of the Eurasian continent, around 22 – 45 million died under Chairman Mao between 1958-1962. These deaths are blamed on the evils of socialism. Further south, Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of between 13 percent and 30 percent of the population. The deaths of up to 2.8 million people in Cambodia’s Killing Fields were attributed to the peril of communism.

In 2019, a staggering 795 million people, or one in nine of us, does not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. By 2025, around 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, and two thirds of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed regions. If there is no water, then there will be no food.

While the future famines will be caused by a lack of water, the malnourishment we see today isn’t the result of a lack of food on our planet. In fact, there are now more people suffering from obesity than those that are malnourished. The problem stems from our current system of capitalism. Why do we not call capitalism out for all this suffering as we do with socialism, communism or fascism?

This system deems it fair for 13 of the richest billionaires to enjoy as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent. This system regards it rational for these 13 individuals to extract and use as much of the world’s natural resources as 3.6 billion people. If the world’s 13 richest billionaires wished to use their money to buy half the world’s resources, there would be nothing in this current system to stop them doing so. How can this be ethical?

This is why today, people in wealthy countries can spend their days in comfort, chowing down on steaks, whiling their time away playing video games and watching endless TV series and movies, and then go on to talk about these video games and TV shows in an endless loop of nothingness. All while people with the mere misfortune to be born in a different geographical space in time are trying their best to survive in harsh conditions we in the global north car barely imagine. We have more money and more money equals the right to use more resources. We can enjoy ourselves at the expense of the poor.

Due to capitalism’s rapaciousness, our species is hurtling towards ecocide at a frightening pace. All of us in the global north are to blame, some more than others. The fossil fuel companies that have lied to us for decades to keep us hooked on their products, the large conglomerates profiting from the destruction of entire ecosystems to keep us hooked on the flesh of animals even as we are awakening to the fact that plant based diets are healthier and more sustainable, the agrochemical corporations that enrich themselves and their shareholders by forcing farmers to use their chemicals on the food we eat which in turn makes us sick and decimates insect populations and contaminates our soil and kills our earth worms, the car companies that lie about emissions and lobby our elected leaders so we buy more of their products are largely responsible for our current predicament.  These companies and the humans that lead them are complicit in nothing short of the manslaughter of millions, the destruction of the ecosystems we rely on for our survival, and the extinction of up to 10,000 species a year. They will also be responsible for the mass starvation of billions of humans in just a decade or so. This is the work of the greed that capitalism encourages and desires in us. Capitalism only survives by us buying more and more things so investors receive returns. The GDP must keep going up and up and up forever or the system collapses. But we all know this is not possible. We have extremely limited resources, and for the GDP to keep rising, we need more and more people. We cannot continue to expand our population in perpetuity. The system was flawed at the outset, and its flaws have never been more apparent than now as we start to see our life systems unravel before our very eyes.

The capitalists and our corrupt governments are largely to blame for this destruction and the extinctions. They will also be to blame for the deaths as food and water runs dry. They were told by scientists that this would happen if they didn’t change course, but they continued anyway to keep the system going, and they ignore the reality of our distress as they fly around in private jets and moor their yachts off shore in the same place they hide their wealth.

But, just as the left in Germany were complicit in the rise of Nazism, we are also complicit in this crime of ecocide. We all benefit from the system that is eating itself. Every day that goes by that we continue to talk about trivial nonsense instead of accepting our dire situation and acting. Every day that goes by as we bury our heads in the sand. Every day that goes by that we carry on buying pointless crap. Every day that goes by that we continue to feed 70 billion farmed animals in factory hell holes while almost a billion humans go hungry. Every day we stay silent as ecosystems collapse, we are complicit in the manslaughter of the global south. We are complicit in the needless resource theft of future generations. We are complicit in the future starvation and conflict that is surely going to arrive at our children’s door. We are enabling the worst to happen to our own children.

If we must blame historical deaths on socialism, communism or fascism, then let’s be honest with ourselves and blame capitalism for ecosystem collapse, extinctions and mass starvation. But, let’s not forget that as we stay silent and act like children, while children act like adults, that we too are to blame.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We have options open to us, but time is running out. Will you play video games and watch TV shows tonight, or will you awaken from this drunken stupor and rise up with humanity to demand a just transition to a fairer and more equal system that encourages love not fear and bridges not walls.

Do you want Extinction or Rebellion?

The movement of Students along with other Universities and Institutes of Excellence in the country do raise questions on the importance of Public Education. Education in India has always received a low priority with only about 3% of the National Budget spent on Education. Even within this, there is a lot of inequity with IITs, IIMs receiving the larger share among educational Institutions and Central Universities receiving more share in relation to State Universities. Overall, however the spending on education by the State has been low.

Despite the miniscule investment on Education by the State, the Public Education has played an important role in creating opportunities for Social Mobility. Those belonging to the poor, marginalised and vulnerable sections of Society through benefiting from subsidised education have witnessed inter-generational mobility. Many of them have risen to become Civil Servants, Officials, Social Work professionals, Media personal and Academics.

The changing priorities of the State which tends to move towards privatisation and commercialisation of education has attempted at increasing fee driven by the logic of reducing subsidies towards the same. While the fee raise has been successful with many of the IITs and Universities in the recent past, it has received resistance at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Many IITs and Universities too have started mobilizing students and providing resistance.

With the arrival of BJP at the Centre, JNU has been subject to a defamation drive. The fake news and media affiliated to saffron wing, while on the one hand intends defame the University in the name of propagating that it is the ground for anti-national activities, on the other hand it also tries to argue of  the irrelevance of higher education. Pursuing of higher education is depicted as a wastage of public and tax payer’s money.

A modern society intending to create social and economic equity cannot do away with public education. While education plays an important role in creating social mobility and gaining access to employment, vocations and occupations – its role is much beyond that. Education creates an enlightened citizenry. The more the opportunities available for those from poor & marginalized sections, those in remote areas, women, Dalits, Adivasis to gain access to higher education – the better the movement it creates towards social progress.

Along with a commercial agenda, the communal agenda of the present regime also adds to its present drive. University is seen as a place where ideas and ideologies are discussed, debated, critiqued, intellectualised, written, argued and spoken. University provides spaces where not one but several ideologies may find a fertile ground. There could be Liberals, Marxists, Ambedkarites, Gandhians, Feminists, Environmentalists, Right leaning, Left learning or Centrists. Prevalence of followers of multiple ideological viewpoints can only strengthen the intellectual environment in a University. This needs to be enriched and celebrated.

However, a regime which is intolerant of other ideological viewpoints and sees other than itself as anti-nationals, University and in particular higher education is seen as spaces which corrupts. It is seen as places which creates anti-nationals who do not turn into Saffron Bhakts but become critics of the same. The strongest critics of the current regime in the recent past from the younger generation are the ones who have come from the most marginal sections of society. The current regime looks at this as a threat to its agenda of Hindu Rashtra. The lesser they get exposed to universal values and ideas, the lesser the blocks towards creating a theocratic state.

Due to its proximity with Ambanis, the current regime also intends to promote private universities such as Jio Institute, which has received the tag of Institute of excellence even before its start.

The misadventures by the current regime due to both commercial and communal agenda is leading to the current student unrest.

Public Education cannot be done away with without giving up on the need for Social Progress and Social Equity.

Author: T Navin is a Researcher and works with an NGO

Imagine this rather typical SF scenario: alien invaders arrive on Earth. They are vastly superior in intelligence, technology, and most importantly, ethics. They quickly perceive that Earthlings are a dire mortal threat to the Earth’s biosphere. They reason that they must take decisive action soon, or else the Earth will meet its biological death. What are they to do?

First, they take up a consequentialist position and reason that eliminating a significant portion of the human population would immediately alleviate Earth’s acute environmental problems while saving countless numbers of species.

Second, they reason deontologically according to a “planetary ethic” that the biosphere of a planet and all the species that inhabit it are sacred and must be protected at all costs. If one species is destroying it, it must be destroyed before it is further able to inflict greater and lasting damage to it.

However, some aliens see the problem more complexly. They in their turn try to work out a maximally “virtuous” solution that will both ensure the continuance of the human race and the flourishing of the biosphere.

Of course, in this tale, most humans would root for the third option.

The question for us then is how do we get there?

If we adopt a mix of all three perspectives perhaps we will be closer to a solution.

If we accept some version of a “categorical planetary ethic” then we as a species have an absolute duty to both the biosphere and all its inhabitants. We have a sacred duty of care and preservation.

If this first premise is widely agreed upon then a number of possible restrictive actions follow:

1) Human reproductive freedom should/must be immediately limited to a rate of replacement and thus 0 growth. It is neither rational nor ethical that human population growth should be unlimited while the capacity of the biosphere to sustain such growth is not.

2) Human economic, political, scientific endeavors should be structured/organized in such a ways as to produce the maximum benefit to the biosphere and its inhabitants. The source of all life takes precedence over particular lives and their parochial interests.

3) Humans should be educated and sensitized to their universal duty to the planet viewing themselves not just as “cosmopolitans” but as “defenders of the biosphere”.

4) Radical green politics should coordinate their policies on a voluntary, if urgent, worldwide foundation. Thus, Global governance should “green” with time.

These of course are just some basic ideas. The future of the Earth and not just humanity depends on both a change of consciousness and new ethical practices. We must leave our old nationalist, productivist, consumerist, paranoically competitive identities behind and become a new collectivity of planet loving “aliens” who have come to rescue us from ourselves.

Dan Corjescu has a PhD in Continental Philosophy from Sofia University. Teaches at Ravensburg-Weinburg and Neu Ulm University of Applied Sciences.

A rapid and deep decarbonization of power supply worldwide is required to limit global warming to well below 2 °C. Beyond greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the power sector is also responsible for numerous other environmental impacts. An international team of scientists in their study has found this.

Producing electricity in a climate-friendly brings huge benefits for our health – mainly due to a reduction of air pollution from combusting fuels.

The scientists’ study report said in the “Introduction” section:

“The international community has agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 °C, and to reach net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions neutrality in the second half of the twenty-first century. Electricity supply is the single most important emissions source sector, accounting for around 40% of global energy-related CO₂ emissions. It also offers the largest low-cost potential for emissions reductions, and thus cost-optimal strategies for keeping global warming to below 2 °C typically feature near-zero electricity sector emissions by mid-century, and rely increasingly on electrification to minimize fossil fuel use in the transport, industry and buildings sectors.”

The scientists – Gunnar Luderer, Michaja Pehl, Anders Arvesen, Thomas Gibon, Benjamin L. Bodirsky, Harmen Sytze de Boer, Oliver Fricko, Mohamad Hejazi, Florian Humpenöder, Gokul Iyer, Silvana Mima, Ioanna Mouratiadou, Robert C. Pietzcker, Alexander Popp, Maarten van den Berg, Detlef van Vuuren and Edgar G. Hertwich – write in the study report, “Environmental co-benefits and adverse side-effects of alternative power sector decarbonization strategies”, published in Nature Communications (volume 10, issue 1, 2019 article number: 5229):

“Beyond economic costs and GHG emissions, sound climate policies also have to take into account other sustainability dimensions, such as those laid out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. The energy sector is the origin of a wide variety of environmental impacts. While much of the public debate focuses on its contribution to global warming via greenhouse gas emissions, energy supply systems also account for substantial shares of other environmental impacts, such as air and water pollution, land occupation, water use, ionizing radiation and nuclear waste, as well as fossil and mineral resource depletion. Energy system futures therefore are particularly relevant for SDGs 3 (health), 6 (clean water), 12 (responsible consumption and production), 14 (life below water) and 15 (life on land).

“Thus far, there is only very limited system-level research on the benefits and adverse side-effects of future decarbonized power supply in terms of nonclimate environmental impacts. Process-detailed integrated assessment models (IAMs) of the energy-economy-climate system are frequently used to analyze alternative climate change mitigation strategies and their implications, with a focus on greenhouse gas emission reductions. Only recently other specific environmental impacts such as air pollution, land-use for bioenergy or water demand have been included in IAMs, but so far, none of these studies considers the breadth of impacts studied here. Accordingly, a consistent and holistic evaluation of co-benefits of different mitigation pathways is still missing.”

The report said:

“Power supply also accounts for a substantial share of mineral resource depletion, mostly for the construction of power generators. In 2010, around 5% of global copper, 2.5% of aluminum, and 3% of iron went into the electricity supply sector. Mineral resource depletion accounts for the aggregate demands from these bulk metal demands along with some 20 other important mineral resources. It should be noted that concerns about mineral resource depletion involve a large number of minerals, not all of which are covered by life-cycle impact assessment methods. For example, the indicator used here does not include neodymium or dysprosium (used in certain wind turbines), or indium or tellurium (used in certain photovoltaic cells). In all scenarios, nonfuel mineral depletion increases relative to current levels. In contrast to all other indicators, we find that all climate policy scenarios feature higher mineral resource requirements, and that in the NewRE scenarios 2050 mineral resource depletion is around twice as high as in FullTech, and around four times higher than in the baseline. This is explained, first, by the higher per-unit metal requirements for renewable technologies, particularly solar PV; second, the fact that wind and solar technologies require substantial material upfront investments before operation (which here are attributed to the year of construction); and finally, to a lesser extent, the additional metal resources required for the build-up of additional grid and storage infrastructure to accommodate the variability of wind and solar power supply. We further find that different decarbonization strategies result in distinctly different profiles of risks and co-benefits. Wind and solar-based decarbonization (NewRE scenario) consistently achieves highest reductions in health-related environmental impacts. Fossil technologies — especially coal — dominate aggregate health impacts by far; thus, their faster and deeper phase-out in the NewRE scenarios yields greatest benefits, with around 60% lower aggregate mortality compared to Conv, and an around 50% decrease relative to FullTech in 2050. The most prominent contributors to health impacts are air pollution and human toxicity.”

It said:

“NewRE decarbonization also minimizes pollution-related ecosystem impacts compared to Conv and FullTech scenarios. Aggregate ecosystem damage, as derived from the corresponding ReCiPe endpoint characterization factors, are dominated by land occupation and natural land transformation. These land-use related impacts are highly uncertain and of comparable magnitude across the different decarbonization scenarios: While NewRE scenarios are characterized by greater land-requirements for wind and solar power as well as grid expansion, the higher bioenergy deployment in the Conv scenarios induces greater natural land transformation.”

The scientists found:

“Decarbonization will fundamentally change the resource requirements of the power sector, away from fossil fuel inputs and towards mineral resources (FullTech and NewRE) and geological storage space for CO₂ (FullTech and Conv). For the NewRE scenarios in 2050, fossil depletion decreases by 90%, while bulk material requirements increase four-fold compared to baseline levels. In addition, certain wind power and photovoltaics technologies also rely on specialty minerals, such as dysprosium or indium, which are not addressed in the resource depletion assessment method employed here, but are subject to geopolitical supply risks. The low-carbon transformation, especially if it relies heavily on wind and solar technologies, can be expected to have profound implications for the geopolitical landscape, pointing to the need for flanking the global clean energy effort with an integrated critical materials strategy.”

The report said:

“Fossil fuels by far dominate resource surplus costs, the aggregate ReCiPe endpoint indicator for resource depletion. This result suggests that the benefit to society stemming from reduced fossil requirements in NewRE outweigh the burden due to additional mineral resource depletion. In addition, it should be kept in mind that much of the 2050 resource requirements for wind and solar installations can be attributed to upfront investment for electricity produced later, and that mineral resources are amenable to recycling, while fossil resources are not.

“In terms of technologies, fossil fuels are the major drivers of health impacts and also dominate resource surplus costs; thus, their reduction in the context of climate policies yields substantial benefits. Bioenergy emerges as the greatest driver of ecosystem damage, chiefly due to land occupation and induced loss of natural lands. On the other hand, numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of bioenergy for the 1.5 and 2 °C targets, both due to its versatility in substituting fossil fuels and the possibility of generating negative emissions. This underlines the need for an integrated global land management to navigate the tradeoff between climate change mitigation and conservation.”

In the “Discussion” section of the report, it was said:

“The world is currently witnessing a dynamic and robust growth of wind and solar power, which is also expected to become the most important contributor towards near-term CO₂ reduction efforts worldwide. Our results suggest that further relying predominantly on these new renewables in the transition towards a near-zero emissions power system also reduces most nonclimate environmental impacts on the system level compared to strategies that limit the contribution of wind and solar power largely in favor of greater CCS deployment.

“It is important to bear in mind that our forward-looking global analysis with wide system boundaries, despite the methodological advancements brought by integrating integrated assessment models and prospective life-cycle assessments, is subject to significant limitations and uncertainties. For example, the linearized approach of life-cycle impact assessment cannot account for scale-dependent variations in per-unit impacts, e.g., due to threshold or saturation effects, or interaction among different environmental impacts. Human toxicity and ecosystem impacts are subject to spatial variability. Changes in population and age structure matter for health damages, ecosystem damage will depend on future land-use patterns, and the economic consequences of resource depletion on competing resource uses. Our study accounts for dynamic changes in technical systems (e.g., increased material efficiency of PV cells, or reduction of air pollution due to end-of-pipe measures), but lacks a dynamic description of crucial nonclimate environmental mechanisms, mostly due to a lack of knowledge or demonstrated importance of relevant developments. While our analysis accounts for uncertainties in energy technology deployment as well as innovation in individual technologies, we were not able to account for uncertainties in the characterization factors translating stressor flows to environmental impacts.”

“When looking at the big picture – from the direct emissions of power installations, to the mining of minerals and fuels for their construction and operation, to the lands necessary for the energy supply infrastructure – we found that the best bet for both people and environment is to rely mainly on wind and solar power,” Gunnar Luderer explains. He is lead author and deputy chair of PIK’s research domain on transformation pathways.

He said: “A main winner of decarbonisation is human health: switching to renewables-based electricity production could cut negative health impacts by up to 80 per cent. This is mainly due to a reduction of air pollution from combusting fuels. What is more, the supply chains for wind and solar energy are much cleaner than the extraction of fossil fuels or bioenergy production.”

The scientists compared three scenarios of decarbonising the power sector by 2050: One focused mainly on solar and wind power, a second relying mainly on carbon capture and storage in combination with biomass and fossils, and a third route with a mixed technology portfolio. In all scenarios, land use requirements for power production will increase in the future. By far the most land-devouring method to generate electricity is bioenergy.

The researchers used complex simulations sketching out the possible paths of decarbonising the electricity supply (Integrated Assessment Modelling) and combined their calculations with life cycle analyses.

“Per kilowatt hour of electricity from bioenergy, you need one hundred times more land than to harvest the same amount from solar panels,” said Alexander Popp, head of the land use management group at the Potsdam Institute.

Alexander Popp said: “Land is a finite resource on our planet. Given the growing world population with a hunger for both electricity and for food, pressures on the land and food systems will increase, too. Our analysis helps to get the magnitudes right when speaking of the at times much-hailed technology of bioenergy.”

Anders Arvesen from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) said: “In combining two pairs of analytical spectacles, we were able to look at a wide range of environmental problems, from air pollution to toxicants, from finite mineral resources needed to manufacture wind turbines to the extent of lands transformed into bioenergy plantations if relying on negative emissions. This is a promising approach also to tackle other sectors, like buildings or the transport sector.”

“Our study delivers even more very good arguments for a rapid transition towards a renewable energy production. However, we need to be aware that this essentially means shifting from a fossil resource base to a power industry that requires more land and mineral resources,” adds Luderer.

Luderer said: “Smart choices are key to limiting the impact of these new demands on other societal objectives, such as nature conservancy, food security, or even geopolitics.”

Alex Lo is one of my favorite journalists; he writes for one of my favorite non-left newspapers, “The South China Morning Post.” This morning he wrote a piece, which while merely stating the obvious, does so with remarkable clarity and understated eloquence.  The title of his article: “The United States is once again selective in caring about rights.”

He opens by saying “Americans only care about democracy, freedom and human rights when they can be used against enemies, and the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act is testament to that.”  Of course, it would have been better if he had said the American government, or even better yet,  The Capitalistate, “only cares about democracy, freedom and human rights when they can be used against enemies, ” as immediately after President Trump signed the Act European Union States stepped in to offer their support to the raging rebels tearing Hong Kong apart.  This was very much the point of my article published just today:(https://countercurrents.org/2019/11/the-hong-kong-revolt-a-view-from-the-left-in-response-to-brancati-and-law).

Instances of American attempts to foment dissent among the people of its “enemies” in order to undermine their power by creating chaos in their nations has been ubiquitous. Few places in the world have not been impacted by this strategy: from Cuba to South Sudan, from Libya and Iran to the nations of Central and south America.  This was the case with the anti-Chavez coup in Venezuela, the attempted coup against Maduro, and the recent coup against Morales in Bolivia.  It was certainly the case in Chile when Allende was overthrown although in the case of Chile, stringent sanctions which brought the Chilean economy to its knees were also employed and proved to be successful. It has long been the case with Cuba and Russia, although it has failed dismally in both cases.  In fact, the list of U.S. attempts to overthrow governments by fomenting dissent amongst its people,  is too long and the details too many to express in a single article. (for more details see: https://www.globalresearch.ca/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list-of-u-s-regime-changes/5400829) (https://www.unz.com/audio/kbarrett_andre-vltchek-on-us-empires-destabilization-efforts-vs-authentic-revolutions/ ), (https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/20/mapped-the-7-governments-the-u-s-has-overthrown/)

These attempts have been both well organized and well planned through an internally related system of tightly knit organizations.  Aside from the CIA itself, primary amongst them is the  US Agency for International Development (USAID) which is a cover for CIA agents under the pretext of helping the poor and oppressed of the world.  In today’s Europe, USAID has openly stated its goal as “Countering  Malign Kremlin Influence – as a framework to help democratic institutions safeguard elections, counter propaganda and misinformation, and avoid dependence on Russian energy.”  It has focused on the Ukraine, Georgia (which is currently experiencing protests against Russian influence) and Moldova. USAID Assistant Administrator Brock personally stated that the U.S. is committed to its strategic interests across a region that is important to the U.S.  When Putin responds to U.S. intentions by either closing down NGOs that have ties to and/or are funded from abroad, the response in the Western press has been to point to the unjustness and repressiveness of Putin’s actions.  They are labeled as just another instance of the denial of democratic freedoms in a country in which the people are completely cowed into submission.  The West never says that Putin’s response is perfectly rational in light of what has become the standard operating procedure of the United States, which is to use and fund organizations whose sole purpose is to provoke the people of Russia into swarming into the streets, marching, demonstrating and engaging in acts of destruction demanding “democracy.”

The same plan of action has long been in place for China.  While USAID operates outside US territory, other sister organizations operate both outside and within America to further dissent in China and offer the appearance that the people of America are fully behind their government’s goals .  One of these is the National Endowment for Democracy, which since it was founded in 1983, has been used mainly as a “soft-power” vehicle to advance the U.S. foreign policy and military agenda through sowing chaos in countries targeted for “regime change.” Prominent investigative journalists made claims over the last few years that the NED is “dedicated to meddling in other countries’ affairs, interfering in elections, toppling elected leaders and spreading public relations campaigns to sow chaos against countries that resist U.S. agenda.” It is currently operating on American soil by providing funding for demonstrations in support of the Hong Kong activists slated to take place in Washington DC.

Yet another demonstration, is being organized by U.S. government funded group called Citizen Power Initiatives for China, which defines itself as committed to promoting democracy in China through “overseas” support and assistance.   It has circulated posters for the demonstration online  carrying the image of the so-called ‘Chinazi’ flag – an altered version of the Chinese national flag with the yellow stars arranged to form a swastika and with a hammer and sickle placed in the center.  This flag first appeared at a demonstration in Hong Kong on September 15, alongside a banner which portrayed Carrie Lam as Hitler against a backdrop of yellow swastikas.   The Hong Kong demonstrators claim that using the term “Chinazi,”  and drawing comparisons between the Nazis and the Chinese government is justified in order to draw out the parallels between Holocaust concentration camps and China’s internment camps in Xinjiang.  Clearly it does not suffice to call China “undemocratic” but rather, it must appear to be every bit as fascistic as Nazi Germany.

Fascistic indeed!   As Alex Lo concludes, “Six months of civil unrest in Hong Kong and not a single protester has been killed by police, despite wild stories, lies and fabrications by the rioters and their supporters. Terms such as double standards and hypocrisy do not even begin to describe the US bill and the outrageous motives behind it as America proves ready to turn Hong Kong into a frontline in its new cold war against China.”

But then Alex, are we really surprised?

Mary Metzger is a 74 year old semi retired teacher. She did her undergraduate work at S.U.N.Y. Old Westbury and her graduate work In Dialectics under Bertell Ollman at New York University. She has taught numerous subjects, from Public Sector Labor Relations to Philosophy of Science, to many different levels of students from the very young to Ph.D. candidates, in many different institutions and countries from Afghanistan to Russia. She has been living in Russia for the past 12 years where she focuses on research in the Philosophy of Science and History of the Dialectic, and writes primarily for Countercurrents. She is the mother of three, the grandmother of five, and the great grandmother of two.

Throughout its history, Earth has experienced five mass extinction events. See, for example, ‘Timeline Of Mass Extinction Events On Earth’. It is now experiencing the sixth.

1. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction, which occurred about 439 million years ago, wiped out 86% of life on Earth at the time. Most scientists believe that this mass extinction was precipitated by glaciation and falling sea levels (possibly a result of the Appalachian mountain range forming), catastrophically impacting animal life which lived largely in the ocean at the time.

2. The Late Devonian Extinction happened about 364 million years ago and destroyed 75% of species on Earth. Possibly spread over hundreds of thousands of years, a sequence of events that depleted the oceans of oxygen and volcanic ash that cooled the Earth’s surface are believed to have driven the extinctions. It was to be 10 million years before vertebrates again appeared on land. ‘If the late Devonian extinction had not occurred, humans might not exist today.’

3. The Permian-Triassic extinction, which occurred 251 million years ago, is considered the worst in all history because around 96% of species were lost. ‘The Great Dying’ was precipitated by an enormous volcanic eruption ‘that filled the air with carbon dioxide which fed different kinds of bacteria that began emitting large amounts of methane. The Earth warmed, and the oceans became acidic.’ Life today descended from the 4% of surviving species.

4. The Triassic-Jurassic extinction happened between 214 million and 199 million years ago and, as in other mass extinctions, it is believed there were several phases of species loss. The blame has been placed on an asteroid impact, climate disruption and flood basalt eruptions. This extinction laid the path that allowed for the evolution of dinosaurs which later survived for about 135 million years.

5. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, best known of ‘the Big 5’ mass extinctions, occurred 65 million years ago, ending 76% of life on Earth including the dinosaurs. A combination of volcanic activity, asteroid impact, and climate disruption are blamed. This extinction period allowed for the evolution of mammals on land and sharks in the sea.

6. The sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history is the one that is being experienced now. Unlike earlier mass extinctions, which helped to pave the way for the evolution of Homo sapiens, the precipitating cause of this extinction event is Homo sapiens itself and, moreover, Homo sapiens is slated to be one of the species that becomes extinct.

Let me explain why this is so by touching on the diverse range of forces driving the extinctions, concepts such as ‘co-extinction’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’, the ways in which extinction impacts are often ‘hidden’ in the short term, thus masking the true extent of the destruction, and the implications of all this for life on Earth, including Homo sapiens, in the near term.

But before I do this, consider this excerpt from the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind written by Yuval Noah Harari, commenting on the expansion of ancient humans out of Africa:

‘If we combine the mass extinctions in Australia and America, and add the smaller-scale extinctions that took place as Homo sapiens spread over Afro-Asia – such as the extinction of all other human species – and the extinctions that occurred when ancient foragers settled remote islands such as Cuba, the inevitable conclusion is that the first wave of Sapiens colonisation was one of the biggest and swiftest ecological disasters to befall the animal kingdom. Hardest hit were the large furry creatures. At the time of the Cognitive Revolution [which Harari argues occurred during the period between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago and probably involved an internal restructuring of the Sapiens brain to facilitate learning, remembering, imagining and communicating while also, in the case of the earlier date, coinciding with the time when Sapiens bands started leaving Africa for the second time], the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution [about 12,000 years ago], only about a hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet’s big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools.

‘This ecological tragedy was restaged in miniature countless times after the Agricultural Revolution’ with mammoths, for example, vanishing from the Eurasian and North American landmasses by 10,000 years ago as Homo sapiens spread. Despite this, mammoths thrived until just 4,000 years ago on a few remote Arctic islands, most conspicuously Wrangel, then suddenly disappeared with the arrival of humans.

While there has been some debate about the full extent of the human impact compared to, say, climate and environmental changes including ice age peaks – see, for example, ‘What killed off the giant beasts – climate change or man?’ and ‘What Killed the Great Beasts of North America?’ – the archeological record provides compelling evidence of the role of Homo sapiens as, in Harari’s words, ‘an ecological serial killer’. There is further well-documented evidence in Professor Tim Flannery’s The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and Peoplean excerpt of which in relation to New Zealand, where the megafauna survived until Maoris arrived just 800 years ago and then rapidly vanished, can be read here: ‘The Future Eaters’.

And the onslaught has never ended as the inexorable encroachment of Homo sapiens to the remotest corners of the Earth (including virtually all of the thousands of islands of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans) has inevitably led to the extinction of myriad local species including birds, insects and snails. In fact, following the Industrial Revolution about 270 years ago which enabled the development of killing technologies on a scale unheard of previously, the human assault on life on Earth has accelerated so effectively that 200 species of life are now driven to extinction daily.

Whatever other claims they might make about themselves, human beings are truly the masters of death.

So where do we stand today?

According to one recent report, the Earth is experiencing what could be described as ‘just the tip of an enormous extinction iceberg’. See ‘Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change’. ‘Just the tip?’, you might ask.

Extinction-causing Behaviours

The primary human behaviours that are modifying Earth’s biosphere, with catastrophic outcomes for many species, are readily apparent and well-described in the scientific literature: destruction of habitat (such as oceans, rainforests, grasslands, wetlands, mangroves, lakes and coral reefs) whether through military violence, radioactive contamination, industrial activities (including ecosystem destruction to build cities, roads and railroads but a vast range of other activities besides), chemical poisoning or other means; over-exploitation; biotic invasion and the effects of environmental modification,including climatic conditions, leading to temperature rise, more frequent droughts, ocean acidification and other impacts which so alter a locality’s environmental conditions that tolerance limits for inhabiting species are breached causing localized extinctions. Unfortunately, however,  there are other, more complicated, mechanisms that can exacerbate species loss.

‘In particular, it is becoming increasingly evident how biotic interactions, in addition to permitting the emergence and maintenance of diversity, also build up complex networks through which the loss of one species can make more species disappear (a process known as ‘co-extinction’), and possibly bring entire systems to an unexpected, sudden regime shift, or even total collapse.’ In simple language, a species cannot survive without the resources (the other species) on which it depends for survival and the accelerating loss of species now threatens ‘total collapse’ of ‘entire systems’.

This is because resource and consumer interactions in natural systems (such as food webs) are organized in various hierarchical levels of complexity (including trophic levels), so the removal of resources can result in the cascading (bottom-up) extinction of several higher-level consumers.

Summarizing the findings of several studies based on simulated or real-world data, Dr. Giovanni Strona and Professor Corey J. A. Bradshaw explain why ‘we should expect most events of species loss to cause co-extinctions, as corroborated by the worrisome, unnatural rate at which populations and species are now disappearing, and which goes far beyond what one expects as a simple consequence of human endeavour. In fact, even the most resilient species will inevitably fall victim to the synergies among extinction drivers as extreme stresses drive biological communities to collapse. Furthermore, co-extinctions are often triggered well before the complete loss of an entire species, so that even oscillations in the population size of a species could result in the local disappearance of other species depending on the first. This makes it difficult to be optimistic about the future of species diversity in the ongoing trajectory of global change, let alone in the case of additional external, planetary-scale catastrophes.’

In an attempt to emphasize the importance of this phenomenon, Strona and Bradshaw note that ‘As our understanding of the importance of ecological interactions in shaping ecosystem identity advances, it is becoming clearer how the disappearance of consumers following the depletion of their resources – a process known as “co-extinction” – is more likely the major driver of biodiversity loss’ [emphasis added] and that ‘ecological dependencies amplify the direct effects of environmental change on the collapse of planetary diversity by up to ten times.’ See ‘Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change’.

In their own recently published scientific study ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’ the authors Professors Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo document another frequently ignored element in understanding the accelerating nature of species extinctions.

‘Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions…. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction … using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species.’ Their research found that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is ‘extremely high’,even in ‘species of low concern’.

In their sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851 out of 27,600) are decreasing; that is, they have decreased in population size and range. In the 177 mammals for which they had detailed data, all had lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species had experienced severe population declines. Their data revealed that ‘beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’

Illustrating the damage done by dramatically reducing the historic geographic range of a species, consider the lion. Panthera leo ‘was historically distributed over most of Africa, southern Europe, and the Middle East, all the way to northwestern India. It is now confined to scattered populations in sub-Saharan Africa and a remnant population in the Gir forest of India. The vast majority of lion populations are gone.’

Why is this happening? Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo tell us: ‘In the last few decades, habitat loss, over exploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification, and more recently climate disruption, as well as the interactions among these factors, have led to the catastrophic declines in both the numbers and sizes of populations of both common and rare vertebrate species.’

Further, however, the authors warn ‘But the true extent of this mass extinction has been underestimated, because of the emphasis on species extinction.’ This underestimate can be traced to overlooking the accelerating extinction of local populations of a species.

‘Population extinctions today are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’ Moreover, and importantly from a narrow human perspective, the massive loss of local populations is already damaging the services ecosystems provide to civilization (which, of course, are given no value by government and corporate economists and accountants).

As Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo remind us: ‘When considering this frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization, one must never forget that Earth’s capacity to support life, including human life, has been shaped by life itself.’ When public mention is made of the extinction crisis, it usually focuses on a few (probably iconic) animal species known to have gone extinct, while projecting many more in future. However, a glance at their maps presents a much more realistic picture: as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth with us are already gone, as are billions of local populations.

Furthermore, they claim that their analysis is conservative given the increasing trajectories of those factors that drive extinction together with their synergistic impacts. ‘Future losses easily may amount to a further rapid defaunation of the globe and comparable losses in the diversity of plants, including the local (and eventually global) defaunation-driven coextinction of plants.’

They conclude with the chilling observation: ‘Thus, we emphasize that the sixth mass extinction is already here and the window for effective action is very short.’

Another recent study examined ‘Experimental Evidence for the Population-Dynamic Mechanisms Underlying Extinction Cascades of Carnivores’, and was undertaken by Dr. Dirk Sanders, Rachel Kehoe &Professor F.J. Frank van Veen who sought to understand ‘extinction cascades’. Noting that ‘Species extinction rates due to human activities are high’, they investigated and documented how ‘initial extinctions can trigger cascades of secondary extinctions, leading to further erosion of biodiversity.’ This occurs because the diversity of consumer species is maintained due to the positive indirect effects that these species have on each other by reducing competition among their respective resource species. That is, the loss of one carnivore species can lead to increased competition among prey, leading to extinctions of those carnivore species dependent on prey that loses this competition.

Another way of explaining this was offered by Dr. Jose M. Montoya: ‘Species do not go extinct one at a time. Instead… ecosystems change in a kind of chain reaction, just like in bowling. The impact of the ball knocks down one or two pins, but they hit other pins and this ultimately determines your score. Likewise, when in an ecosystem one species goes extinct many others may follow even if they are not directly affected by the initial disturbance. The complex combination of direct and indirect effects resulting from species interactions determines the fate of the remaining species. To predict the conditions under which extinctions beget further extinctions is a major scientific and societal challenge under the current biodiversity crisis…. Sanders and colleagues… show how and why initial extinctions of predators trigger cascades of secondary extinctions of the remaining predators.’ See ‘Ecology: Dynamics of Indirect Extinction’.

To fully grasp the extent of the crisis in our biosphere, we must look well beyond Earth’s climate: There are a great many variables adversely impacting life on Earth, many of which individually pose the threat of human extinction and which, synergistically, now virtually guarantee it absent an immediate and profound response. As reported in the recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services researched and published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – the scientific body which assesses the state of biodiversity and the ecosystem services this provides to society – ‘Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. The IPBES Global Assessment ranks, for the first time at this scale, the 5 direct drivers of change in nature with the largest global impact. So what are the culprits behind nature’s destruction?’ Number 1. on the IPBES list is ‘Changes in land and sea use, like turning intact tropical forests into agricultural land’ but, as noted, there are four others. According to this report: one million species of life on Earth are threatened with extinction.

And in their latest assessment of 100,000 species, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) concluded that not one species had improved prospects of averting extinction since their previous ‘Red List’ report. See ‘News Release’and‘From over 100,000 species assessments in IUCN update, zero improvements’.

Of course, separately from the systemic extinction drivers noted above, including the unmentioned destruction of Earth’s oceans through its absorption of carbon dioxide, pollution with everything from pesticides to plastic, and chronic overfishing which is pushing many ocean species to, or over, the brink of extinction as well, humans also engage in yet other activities that drive the rush to extinction. Hunting wildlife to kill it for trophies or pet food – see ‘Killing Elephants “for Pet Food” Condemned’ – and trafficking wildlife: a $10-20 billion-a-year industry involving illegal wildlife products such as jewelry, traditional ‘medicine’, clothing, furniture, and souvenirs, as well as exotic pets – see ‘Stop Wildlife Trafficking’ and ‘China must lead global effort against tiger trade’ – play vital roles as well.

In summary, the tragedy of human existence is that the Cognitive Revolution gave Homo sapiens the capacity to plan, organize and conduct an endless sequence of systematic massacres all over the planet but, assuming that we have the genetic capacity to do so, our parenting and education models since that time have ensured that we have been denied the emotional and intellectual capacities to fight, strategically, for our own survival. And the time we have left is now incredibly short.

So what can we do?

Given that the ongoing, systematic industrial-scale destruction of Earth’s wildlife has its origin in evolutionary events that took place some 70,000 years ago but which probably had psychological origins prior to this,it is clearly a crisis that is not about to be resolved quickly or easily.

‘Why the mention of psychology here?’ you might ask. Well, while many other factors have obviously played a part – for example, abundance of a species in a particular context might mean that the issue of killing its individual members for food does not even arise, at least initially – it is clear that, given the well-documented multifaceted crisis in which human beings now find themselves, only a grotesquely insufficient effort is being put into averting the now imminent extinction of our own species which critically requires us to dramatically stem (and soon halt) the tide of wildlife extinctions, among many other necessary responses. See, for example,‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’ and ‘Doomsday by 2021?’

It is psychologically dysfunctional, to put it mildly, to participate in or condone by our silence and inaction, activities that will precipitate our own extinction, whether these are driven by the insane global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – or by our own dysfunctional overconsumption. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

For that reason, after 70,000 years, we must finally ask ‘Why?’ so that we can address the fundamental driversof our extinction-threatening behaviour as well the several vital symptoms that arise from those drivers. Let me explain what I mean.

The fundamental question is this: Why are humans behaving in a way that will precipitate our own extinction in the near term? Surely, this is neither sensible nor even sane. And anyone capable of emotional engagement and rational thinking who seriously considers this behaviour must realize this. So why is it happening?

Fundamentally it is because our parenting and education models since the Cognitive Revolution 70,000 years ago have failed utterly to produce people of conscience, people who are emotionally functional and capable of critical analysis, people who care and who can plan and respond to crises (or even problems) strategically. Despite this profound social shortcoming, some individuals have nevertheless emerged who have one or more of these qualities and they are inevitably ‘condemned’ to sound the alarm, in one way or another, and to try to mobilize an appropriate response to whatever crisis or problem confronts them at the time.

But, as is utterly obvious from the state of our world, those with these capacities have been rare and, more to the point, they have had few people with whom to work. This is graphically illustrated by the current failure to respond strategically to the ongoing climate catastrophe (with most effort focused on lobbying elite-controlled governments and international organizations), the elite-driven perpetual (and ongoing threat of nuclear) war as well as the other issues, such as the use of geoengineering and the deployment of 5G, that threaten human survival. See ‘The Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why?’, ‘The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War’ and ‘Why Activists Fail’.

Given the preoccupation of modern society with producing submissively obedient students, workers, soldiers, citizens (that is, taxpayers and voters) and consumers, the last thing society wants is powerful individuals who are each capable of searching their conscience, feeling their emotional response to events, thinking critically and behaving strategically in response. Hence our parenting and education models use a ruthless combination of visible, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence to ensure that our children become terrified, self-hating and powerless individuals like virtually all of the adults around them.

This multifaceted violence ensures that the adult who emerges from childhood and adolescence is suppressing awareness of an enormous amount of fear, pain and anger (among many other feelings) and must live in delusion to remain unaware of these suppressed feelings. This, in turn, ensures that, as part of their delusion, people develop a strong sense that what they are doing already is functional and working (no matter how dysfunctional and ineffective it may actually be)while unconsciously suppressing awareness of any evidence that contradicts their delusion. See ‘Why Violence?’,‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’,‘Do We Want School or Education?’and ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

So if we are going to address the fundamental driver of both the destruction of Earth’s wildlife and the biosphere generally, we must address this cause. For those adults powerful enough to do this, there is an explanation in ‘Putting Feelings First’. And for those adults committed to facilitating children’s efforts to realize their potential and become self-aware (rather than delusional), see ‘My Promise to Children’and ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

Beyond this cause, however, we must also resist, strategically, the insane elite-controlled governments and corporations that are a key symptom of this crisis – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – by manufacturing and marketing a vast range of wildlife (and life)-destroying products ranging from weapons (conventional and nuclear) and fossil fuels to products made by the destruction of habitat (including oceans, rainforests, grasslands, wetlands, mangroves, lakes and coral reefs) and the chemical poisoning of agricultural land (to grow the food that most people eat) while also using geoengineering and deploying 5G technology worldwide. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

But we can also undermine this destruction, for example,by refusing to buy the products provided by the elite’s corporations (with the complicity of governments) that fight wars (to enrich weapons corporations) to steal fossil fuels (to enrich energy, aircraft and vehicle-manufacturing corporations) or those corporations that make profits by destroying habitats orproducing poisoned food, for example. We can do this by systematically reducing and altering our consumption pattern and becoming more locally self-reliant as outlined in‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’or, even more simply, by committing to The Earth Pledge (below).

In a nutshell, for example, if we do not travel by car or aircraft, NATO governments will have much less incentive to invade and occupy resource-rich countries to steal their resources and corporations will gain zero profit from destroying wildlife habitat as they endlessly seek to extract the resources necessary to manufacture and fuel these commodities thus saving vast numbers of animals (and many other life forms besides) and easing pressure on the biosphere generally.

You can also consider joining those working to end violence in all contexts by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

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, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not buy rain forest 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.

Conclusion

Perhaps the key point to be learned from the evidence cited above is that just as we have triggered a series of self-reinforcing feedback loops that ‘lock in’ an ongoing deterioration of Earth’s climate which we are now virtually powerless to halt (if we were even trying to do so), we have also precipitated a biodiversity crisis that is self-reinforcing because the loss of each and every species has an impact on those species that are dependent on it, precipitating chains of events that make further extinctions inevitable. This is one of the ‘negative synergies’, for example, contributing to the Amazon rainforest’s rapid approach to the tipping point at which it will collapse. See ‘Amazon Tipping Point’.

Hence, we are approaching the final act of a tragedy that had its origins in the Cognitive Revolution some 70,000 years ago and which we have not been able to contain in any way. The earlier acts of this tragedy were the countless species of plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles that Homo sapiens has driven to extinction.

Now, in the final act, we will drive to extinction 200 species today. 200 species tomorrow. 200 species the day after….

Until, one day very soon now, unless you and those you know are willing to commit yourselves wholly to the effort to avert this outcome, the human assault on life on Earth will reach its inevitable conclusion: the extinction of Homo sapiens.

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.

On Nov. 12, Veneto, Italy’s regional council was debating climate policy in its Venice offices. Minutes after a majority voted against budget amendments to address climate disruption, the chambers were inundated with water. Venice is known for flooding, but it’s getting worse, and the timing in this instance felt like a message.

Our existence is a marvelous phenomenon. We live on a spinning ball of water and rock at just the right distance from the sun for natural cycles to have developed to create ideal conditions for life as we know it. But exploding human populations and hyperconsumption-driven societies have, in a relatively brief time, knocked these natural systems out of balance. We’ve upset the carbon cycle so rapidly by indiscriminately burning fossil fuels and destroying natural carbon sinks like forests and wetlands that consequences are hitting much faster than predicted.

Australia is on fire. Parts of Europe are flooding. Melting permafrost in Northern Canada is raising fears that naturally stored methane will escape, accelerating heating. Refugees are fleeing homelands as climate disruption makes farming and living in many areas difficult. Entire villages in India are being abandoned for lack of water and temperatures too high for crops to survive.

Canada’s North is heating at close to triple the global average rate, and the country overall at twice the average.

The recent Lancet Countdown, an international academic review of climate impacts on human health by 120 experts from 35 institutions, found people in Canada face a range of health risks, including the many effects of increasing wildfires and pollution, such as asthma and other respiratory illnesses. It found pollution from land-based transportation alone caused more than 1,000 deaths in 2015.

In Canada and worldwide, as well as committing our children, grandchildren, and those yet to be born to an uncertain future, we’ve made conditions worse for young people today. The Lancet report found children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to climate disruption, as are the least well off.

Global heating is creating a range of health problems. Illness and death are increasing from climate-driven wildfires and smoke, insects carrying diseases such as Lyme and dengue are moving into new territory, malnutrition is on the rise as droughts and flooding cause crop failures and food scarcity, and deadly diarrhea from bacteria like cholera is spreading, with children bearing the brunt of the problems.

“Children’s bodies and immune systems are still developing, leaving them more susceptible to disease and environmental pollutants,” said Lancet Countdown executive director Nick Watts. “The damage done in early childhood lasts a lifetime. Without immediate action from all countries climate change will come to define the health of an entire generation.”

You’d think we’d do everything in our power to protect our children, but we aren’t. Governments here and elsewhere are still putting the fossil fuel industry’s interests ahead of citizens’, while downplaying the climate crisis. Climate science deniers are as vocal and uninformed as ever. Oil industry executives claim to take climate seriously while arguing that fossil fuel demand is rising so we might as well get some money.

With all the knowledge and solutions available, why are we stalling and putting humanity at risk?

As my friend, UBC professor emeritus of human ecology and ecological economics William Rees argued in a two-part Tyee article, we’re still addicted to fossil fuels. Echoing my sentiments, Rees writes, “A rational world with a good grasp of reality would have begun articulating a long-term wind-down strategy 20 or 30 years ago.”

But we didn’t act rationally, and many still aren’t. Rees offers 11 strategies to deal with the crisis, which he argues must go beyond the current “green new deal.” Included are “formal recognition of the end of material growth and the need to reduce the human ecological footprint,” and reducing production and consumption.

We can’t go back to former conditions. But with great effort and human ingenuity, we can learn to better live in balance with nature. We can get through the climate crisis. But it’s too late for half measures. We need an all-out effort as great as or greater than mobilizations for the “great” wars. We need to kick our fossil fuel addiction now, for our sake and the children’s.

David Suzuki Foundation senior editor and writer Ian Hanington contributed to this post.

The turmoil at JNU and other universities demand certain introspections regarding the institutions of higher education across the country. When there is a massive paradigm shift happening in our social discourses, the movement towards a neoliberal economy and culture, student community ought to be an informed and educated one. Apart from these premier institutions, how are the student communities responding to these changes? How awakened are they to the current social realities? How are their responses shaped? Who addresses them and shapes their political sensibilities?  This large community of students will play a significant role in nation building. So how are we equipping them in this world of fake news and sensationalism?

In this scenario, should classrooms provide a space for political discussions? Should sensitive topics be discussed within classrooms in the presence of an informed educator?

We live in a deeply polarized world, where the politics of identities is cleverly exploited by neoliberal structures and hegemonic power centres to their benefit. Often common man plays into their hands, imagining himself to be wielding power, when in reality, he is being exploited and manipulated by the power hierarchy. Indian society is no different and the presence of varied media spaces worsen this situation. Now that we have several platforms for discussions, one would expect more conversations and awareness on social issues, but instead we have regressive worldviews and arrogant opinions, casually conversed, with a diminishing interest in research or intellectual pursuit.

How can classrooms become proactive spaces for discussions and debates?

For teachers, uncomfortable conversations within classrooms are always better than assuming a stance of being apolitical and staying clear of sensitive issues that students encounter in life.  Of course, students should learn to identify fake news, but they should also be equipped to comprehend and respond to social issues, especially in contemporary India. Politically ignorant population can be easily swayed through rhetoric that borders on melodrama, with exaggerated gestures, to create a visual impact on the audience.

Ignoring, sidelining issues, sensitive ones, does not alter the reality of their existence. They are avoided for fear of causing friction, or because of the incompetence of the teacher. Students, on the other hand, are constantly being bombarded by the same issues, outside the classroom, through social media, television and other mass media. Often, they are left to choose for themselves, a stance which they might feel to be right.  In an age of affective politics, young minds can be easily swayed by emotional appeals and clarion calls for patriotism or nationalism, often invoking age-old traditions or a mythical past when the ‘nation’ reigned over others, economically and politically.

So, who moderates these discussions? There are teachers who claim to be apolitical. Since knowledge is shaped by power hegemonies, the claim to being apolitical is a sham, a hypocrisy that ought to be challenged. Since classrooms and curricula are political, are part of an ideological apparatus, as prescribed by a politically defined nation, every statement made, every lecture delivered in a classroom is also political.

In this environment, at least language classes, along with humanities and social sciences, should provide the golden opportunity for teachers and students to be critically active in classrooms, learn to use polite language in debates and arguments. In a world where our words can be heard through various social media, it is vital to be trained to stay on topic without being offensive or personal and participate in discussions.

In a democracy, citizen’s participation is active and decisive, and teachers have the freedom to express their choices and positions on various media, along with the students. Since these platforms are to a large extent unmonitored, these opinions can be damaging and detrimental to the students who are shaping their sensibilities, as youngsters. In a classroom, in a closely monitored environment, the teacher gets to create the environment for vibrant discussions and allows a glimpse into the world of constructive criticism and critical thought processes.

American Educational Research Journal conducted a study on political neutrality in classrooms and the lead researcher Alyssa Dunn made some interesting observations. She said that since education is inherently political, the stance of political neutrality only hurts the cause of neutrality. It validates social divides, through avoidance of sensitive topics, while the students remain ill-equipped to confront the real social evils. (neatoday.org) In another instance, ten former state and national ‘teachers of the year’winners in the US, wrote a letter in 2016, protesting against the election campaign of Trump where he repeatedly used xenophobia and racism and arrogant nationalism to win the elections. They wrote:“We are supposed to remain politically neutral. For valid reasons, we don’t want to offend our students, colleagues or community members. But there are times when a moral imperative outweighs traditional social norms. There are times when silence is the voice of complicity”.(Washington Post)

How do you equip your student to have public deliberations? How does she learn about constructive interventions?   How do you help students identify radical ideologies that are founded on unverified myths? How do you prepare students to tackle the onslaught of thought processes that threaten the core values that build a humane and civil society?

Then comes the crucial question, how equipped are our teachers? Apart from a few institutions, especially higher educational institutions which have teachers who are willing and are empowered to actively intervene, challenge and demand social changes, how many of our teachers across the country have clarity of vision to permit students to argue and debate in class, about social issues that are of relevance in contemporary India?

I recently saw a female teacher post the picture of a pepper spray bottle accompanied by a sarcastic comment on the Sabarimala issue. A man had used the spray on a woman who was in front of the police station seeking help from the authorities to enter the shrine. The teacher expressed her glee at the act of violence and endorsed it in clear terms. Students liked and commented on it, asserting that they supported the act of barbarity on a woman in a civil society. In another instance a young female teacher denounced the same incident and posted on Facebook. Several students responded to it and there was a discussion where her colleagues too intervened and created a platform for a constructive discussion on the topic.

Our higher education system has teachers in various systems, at the level of central universities, state universities, private and self-financed universities, and then the whole network of government and government-aided colleges where the focus is on teaching rather than on research. As per the MHRD statistics published in 2018, there are39071 colleges in India, as against 799 universities,  which also suggests the large number of students who graduate every year through these colleges. So shouldn’t we focus on these institutions and the role of teachers in imparting an education that creates responsible adults? Rather than assuming a dishonest position of being ‘politically neutral’, teachers should be bold enough to create a learning environment where students are encouraged to debate and discuss social issues and encourage them to explain their positions, challenge them and encourage them to rise above obstinate prejudices and evolve, as human beings. Being ‘apolitical’ is a crime when teachers are the easily available source of insightful observations and opinions for a large majority of students who complete their higher education through the innumerable colleges in this country.

Allegations of indoctrination may arise, but what do we want from our youngsters? An educated, rational youth-driven democracy, or a confused, violent and ignorant mobocracy?

Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch, I’ve been arguing against America’s forever wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities ruined. And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of America’s wars that they never end? Why do our leaders persist in such repetitive folly and the seemingly eternal disasters that go with it?

Sadly, there isn’t just one obvious reason for this generational debacle. If there were, we could focus on it, tackle it, and perhaps even fix it. But no such luck.

So why do America’s disastrous wars persist? I can think of many reasons, some obvious and easy to understand, like the endless pursuit of profit through weapons sales for those very wars, and some more subtle but no less significant, like a deep-seated conviction in Washington that a willingness to wage war is a sign of national toughness and seriousness. Before I go on, though, here’s another distinctive aspect of our forever-war moment: Have you noticed that peace is no longer even a topic in America today? The very word, once at least part of the rhetoric of Washington politicians, has essentially dropped out of use entirely. Consider the current crop of Democratic candidates for president. One, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, wants to end regime-change wars, but is otherwise a self-professed hawk on the subject of the war on terror. Another, Senator Bernie Sanders, vows to end “endless wars” but is careful to express strong support for Israel and the ultra-expensive F-35 fighter jet. The other dozen or so tend to make vague sounds about cutting defense spending or gradually withdrawing U.S. troops from various wars, but none of them even consider openly speaking of peace. And the Republicans? While President Trump may talk of ending wars, since his inauguration he’s sent more troops to Afghanistan and into the Middle East, while greatly expanding drone and other air strikes, something about which he openly boasts.

War, in other words, is our new normal, America’s default position on global affairs, and peace, some ancient, long-faded dream. And when your default position is war, whether against the Taliban, ISIS, “terror” more generally, or possibly even Iran or Russia or China, is it any surprise that war is what you get? When you garrison the world with an unprecedented 800 or so military bases, when you configure your armed forces for what’s called power projection, when you divide the globe — the total planet — into areas of dominance (with acronyms like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) commanded by four-star generals and admirals, when you spend more on your military than the next seven countries combined, when you insist on modernizing a nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion) already quite capable of ending all life on this and several other planets, what can you expect but a reality of endless war?

Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise) path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn’t an “exceptional” belief system, what is?

If we’re ever to put an end to our country’s endless twenty-first-century wars, that mindset will have to be changed. But to do that, we would first have to recognize and confront war’s many uses in American life and culture.

War, Its Uses (and Abuses)

A partial list of war’s many uses might go something like this: war is profitable, most notably for America’s vast military-industrial complex; war is sold as being necessary for America’s safety, especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that “freedom isn’t free.” In our politics today, it’s far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right.

As the title of a book by former war reporter Chris Hedges so aptly put it, war is a force that gives us meaning. And let’s face it, a significant part of America’s meaning in this century has involved pride in having the toughest military on the planet, even as trillions of tax dollars went into a misguided attempt to maintain bragging rights to being the world’s sole superpower.

And keep in mind as well that, among other things, never-ending war weakens democracy while strengthening authoritarian tendencies in politics and society. In an age of gaping inequality, using up the country’s resources in such profligate and destructive ways offers a striking exercise in consumption that profits the few at the expense of the many.

In other words, for a select few, war pays dividends in ways that peace doesn’t. In a nutshell, or perhaps an artillery shell, war is anti-democratic, anti-progressive, anti-intellectual, and anti-human. Yet, as we know, history makes heroes out of its participants and celebrates mass murderers like Napoleon as “great captains.”

What the United States needs today is a new strategy of containment — not against communist expansion, as in the Cold War, but against war itself. What’s stopping us from containing war? You might say that, in some sense, we’ve grown addicted to it, which is true enough, but here are five additional reasons for war’s enduring presence in American life:

• The delusional idea that Americans are, by nature, winners and that our wars are therefore winnable: No American leader wants to be labeled a “loser.” Meanwhile, such dubious conflicts — see: the Afghan War, now in its 18th year, with several more years, or even generations, to go — continue to be treated by the military as if they were indeed winnable, even though they visibly aren’t. No president, Republican or Democrat, not even Donald J. Trump, despite his promises that American soldiers will be coming home from such fiascos, has successfully resisted the Pentagon’s siren call for patience (and for yet more trillions of dollars) in the cause of ultimate victory, however poorly defined, farfetched, or far-off.
• American society’s almost complete isolation from war’s deadly effects: We’re not being droned (yet). Our cities are not yet lying in ruins (though they’re certainly suffering from a lack of funding, as is our most essential infrastructure, thanks in part to the cost of those overseas wars). It’s nonetheless remarkable how little attention, either in the media or elsewhere, this country’s never-ending war-making gets here.
• Unnecessary and sweeping secrecy: How can you resist what you essentially don’t know about? Learning its lesson from the Vietnam War, the Pentagon now classifies (in plain speak: covers up) the worst aspects of its disastrous wars. This isn’t because the enemy could exploit such details — the enemy already knows! — but because the American people might be roused to something like anger and action by it. Principled whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning have been imprisoned or otherwise dismissed or, in the case of Edward Snowden, pursued and indicted for sharing honest details about the calamitous Iraq War and America’s invasive and intrusive surveillance state. In the process, a clear message of intimidation has been sent to other would-be truth-tellers.
• An unrepresentative government: Long ago, of course, Congress ceded to the presidency most of its constitutional powers when it comes to making war. Still, despite recent attempts to end America’s arms-dealing role in the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen (overridden by Donald Trump’s veto power), America’s duly elected representatives generally don’t represent the people when it comes to this country’s disastrous wars. They are, to put it bluntly, largely captives of (and sometimes on leaving politics quite literally go to work for) the military-industrial complex. As long as money is speech (thank you, Supreme Court!), the weapons makers are always likely to be able to shout louder in Congress than you and I ever will.
• America’s persistent empathy gap. Despite our size, we are a remarkably insular nation and suffer from a serious empathy gap when it comes to understanding foreign cultures and peoples or what we’re actually doing to them. Even our globetrotting troops, when not fighting and killing foreigners in battle, often stay on vast bases, referred to in the military as “Little Americas,” complete with familiar stores, fast food, you name it. Wherever we go, there we are, eating our big burgers, driving our big trucks, wielding our big guns, and dropping our very big bombs. But what those bombs do, whom they hurt or kill, whom they displace from their homes and lives, these are things that Americans turn out to care remarkably little about.

All this puts me sadly in mind of a song popular in my youth, a time when Cat Stevens sang of a “peace train” that was “soundin’ louder” in America. Today, that peace train’s been derailed and replaced by an armed and armored one eternally prepared for perpetual war — and that train is indeed soundin’ louder to the great peril of us all.

War on Spaceship Earth

Here’s the rub, though: even the Pentagon knows that our most serious enemy is climate change, not China or Russia or terror, though in the age of Donald Trump and his administration of arsonists its officials can’t express themselves on the subject as openly as they otherwise might. Assuming we don’t annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons first, that means our real enemy is the endless war we’re waging against Planet Earth.

The U.S. military is also a major consumer of fossil fuels and therefore a significant driver of climate change. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, like any enormously powerful system, only wants to grow more so, but what’s welfare for the military brass isn’t wellness for the planet.

There is, unfortunately, only one Planet Earth, or Spaceship Earth, if you prefer, since we’re all traveling through our galaxy on it. Thought about a certain way, we’re its crewmembers, yet instead of cooperating effectively as its stewards, we seem determined to fight one another. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out so long ago, surely a spaceship with a disputatious and self-destructive crew is not likely to survive, no less thrive.

In other words, in waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet.

Spaceship Earth should not be allowed to remain Warship Earth as well, not when the existence of significant parts of humanity is already becoming ever more precarious. Think of us as suffering from a coolant leak, causing cabin temperatures to rise even as food and other resources dwindle. Under the circumstances, what’s the best strategy for survival: killing each other while ignoring the leak or banding together to fix an increasingly compromised ship?

Unfortunately, for America’s leaders, the real “fixes” remain global military and resource domination, even as those resources continue to shrink on an ever-more fragile globe. And as we’ve seen recently, the resource part of that fix breeds its own madness, as in President Trump’s recently stated desire to keep U.S. troops in Syria to steal that country’s oil resources, though its wells are largely wrecked (thanks in significant part to American bombing) and even when repaired would produce only a miniscule percentage of the world’s petroleum.

If America’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything, it’s that every war scars our planet — and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life.

Despite all of war’s uses and abuses, its allures and temptations, it’s time that we Americans showed some self-mastery (as well as decency) by putting a stop to the mayhem. Few enough of us experience “our” wars firsthand and that’s precisely why some idealize their purpose and idolize their practitioners. But war is a bloody, murderous mess and those practitioners, when not killed or wounded, are marred for life because war functionally makes everyone involved into a murderer.

We need to stop idealizing war and idolizing its so-called warriors. At stake is nothing less than the future of humanity and the viability of life, as we know it, on Spaceship Earth.

William Astore, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor. His personal blog is Bracing Views.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Originally published by TomDispatch

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Magaret Flowers

On December 2, the 25th two-week long United Nations climate conference begins in Madrid, Spain. The stated task of the conference, referred to as COP 25 (Conference Of Parties), is to make sure there are plans to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. The goals of that agreement, which are nonbinding, are:

1. Reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030;
2. Achieve a net zero global carbon footprint by 2050; and
3. Stabilize the global temperature increase at 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Last week, prominent scientists issued a warning that significant changes related to the climate crisis are already happening and could create a cascading effect that locks in catastrophic levels of temperature and sea-level rise. They view the pledges made by countries to take climate action as insufficient and leading to a three degrees Celsius temperature rise by the end of the century.

It is this reality that is spurring people around the world to take action in the growing global climate emergency movement. Many people are asking what they can do about the climate crisis.

Young activists take part in a rally to protest against Climate change outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC on November 29, 2019. (AFP/Nicholas Kamm).

Too little, too late

Each new climate report is direr. The climate crisis is here now. Oceans are heating up and acidifying as they absorb carbon dioxide. This is slowing ocean circulation and killing coral reefs. Ocean circulation impacts the weather – slowing is already changing weather patterns and worsening storms. Coral reefs are necessary for providing habitat and protecting coastlines.

According to a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, ice is melting at an unprecedented pace and sea-level rise is accelerating. This is leading to more frequent and chronic flooding. The world has already warmed to 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels causing droughts and frequent wildfires.

Of great concern is the fact that these changes are not isolated. They feed into and feed off of each other causing a cascading impact that is leading us to a point of no return, at least for thousands of years. For example, as the land thaws, stored methane is being released. Methane is the most potent greenhouse gas in the short term causing more warming and more thawing. The prominent scientists cited above explain this:

“…as science advances, we must admit that we have underestimated the risks of unleashing irreversible changes, where the planet self-amplifies global warming. This is what we are seeing already at 1°C global warming…”

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are failing. Levels are rising even though we need at least a 7.6 percent reduction each year to reach the Paris Agreement goals. Growing energy demand is the biggest culprit. Colder winters and warmer summers mean more energy used to heat and cool our homes and other buildings. In the United States, gas consumption increased by ten percent in 2018 after years of decline. The increase in renewables is not even meeting new energy demands, let alone replacing polluting forms of energy production.

Even though the United Nations admits that not enough is being done to address the climate crisis and that there is no time to waste, it does not wield its power to make sure that effective actions are taken. Instead, as we wrote in 2014, the UN is dominated by global finance and corporations and their subservient governments pushing financial schemes and green technology to enrich themselves even when those projects don’t solve the problem.

In this year’s meeting, the major focus will be the rules for the newest form of a global carbon trading market mandated by the Paris Agreement. Carbon trading has been in existence since the Kyoto Protocol and has not reduced carbon emissions. California’s cap and trade system, one of the largest in the world, is being copied by other countries, but ProPublica found that carbon emissions in California have risen by 3.5 percent under the program as it allows big polluters to purchase credits and even increase their emissions.

There have already been mass protests around the world leading up to the COP meetings. In expectation of more protests at the meetings in Spain, more than 5,000 police have been called out. Thousands of anti-capitalist activists, environmental defenders, and concerned citizens are arriving from all over the world to demand that countries take concrete measures to halt global climate change. The police are on high alert throughout the COP meetings until December 14.

This is the last year that the United States will participate in the United Nations COP meetings as Trump formally withdraws from the Paris Agreement. What are activists in the US to do?

Climate Demonstrators in Cologne on November 29, 2019, before the UN climate summit. Source DPA

Action for the climate

The United States is the second-largest total GHG emitter in the world and the third-largest per-capita GHG emitter behind Saudi Arabia and Australia. The US is the largest producer of new fossil fuels. People in the US have a critical responsibility and role to play in the solution to the climate crisis.

There are lots of discussions going on right now about what people need to be doing and the answer is that we need to be using all the tools available. We cannot count on institutions such as the United Nations, governments and corporations to take appropriate actions without outside pressure. We need to organize resistance and build the solutions in our communities.

A core requirement of effective social movements is to have a clear vision of what they are working to achieve. To be transformational, this vision must embody not only the goal (for example, reducing GHG emissions) but also the structure of the system that will achieve that goal. Two major components of that structure are the ways decisions will be made and how the system will be financed. For more information on social transformation, visit the Popular Resistance School.

Currently, it is the powerholders who make and profit from the decisions. A new system, such as the Green New Deal, could be structured in a way that puts those who are most impacted by the decisions in control and could be financed in a way that reduces the wealth divide. The Ecosocialist Green New Deal, developed by Howie Hawkins, a candidate running for the Green Party presidential nomination, is the strongest proposal. It has the fastest timeline, includes a transition to a peace economy with 75 percent cuts to the military, an Economic Bill of Rights and a Green Economy Reconstruction Program. It would transform multiple sectors of the economy to put in place a clean energy economy by 2030 as well as transitioning to public or worker-controlled ownership.

The next requirements are a strategy to achieve the vision and tactics to serve that strategy. There are a broad range of actions to take and a number of roles to play. Here is a partial list of current actions:

1. Pushing agencies to address the climate crisis in their policies – When the Trump administration announced it would allow more oil and gas drilling on federal lands, advocacy groups came together and sued the Bureau of Land Management to make sure GHG emissions are assessed in considering oil and gas leases. A court recently sided with the groups and hundreds of thousands of acres of leases are being suspended. Another example is the Beyond Extreme Energy campaign to transform the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which grants permits for energy projects, to the Federal Renewable Energy Commission.
2. Direct action to prevent new fossil fuel infrastructure – Major campaigns to stop pipelines, fracking and new oil and gas infrastructure are going on across the country. Oil and gas corporations cite this resistance as their biggest obstacle. Last week, activists in Wingdale, NY shut down construction of the Cricket Valley Fracked Gas Power Plant. They are pressuring Governor Cuomo to shut it down for good. And in Clearbrook, Minnesota, activists blocked construction of the Line 3 Pipeline. You don’t have to lock down or climb a tripod to participate. There are many roles required for direct actions such as media support, legal observers, jail support and more.
3. Driving disinvestment in dirty energy – Students, faculty and supporters took action last week to disrupt the Harvard-Yale football game with a message to their schools to divest from fossil fuels and cancel Puerto Rico’s debt. This was one action in an ongoing divestment campaign. The European Investment Bank took a positive step recently by promising to phase out investment in dirty energy over the next two years. Though it is promising to be the first climate bank, activists will still need to watchdog what the bank supports to make sure it is not investing in more false solutions.
4. Protecting the right to protest – We know our actions are having an impact when the state tries to criminalize them. A new law was signed by the governor of Wisconsin making it a felony to protest fossil fuel infrastructure. This is the tenth state to pass such a law. In South Dakota, their anti-protest law was successfully fought in the courts this year.
5. Pressuring lawmakers (and candidates) – During the Extinction Rebellion Global Hunger Strike, which started Nov. 20, a group of activists sat-in House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office calling for her to hold a public meeting with them. Two of them continued their hunger strike through this weekend. The Sunrise Movement has organized actions targeting lawmakers, candidates and the Democratic Party throughout the year. They, along with Fridays for Future, will target lawmakers with a climate strike on December 6.
6. Constructive programs to build alternatives – There are many programs to build positive alternatives from developing regenerative agriculture to a resurgence of small farmers and urban gardens to expanded public transportation, walkable communities, and bike lanes, to incentives for clean energy installation and the formation of worker-owned cooperative green businesses. Recently a new law was passed requiring new roofs in Brooklyn, NY to either have solar panels or greenery. Visit the CREATE section of Popular Resistance for more information.

These are a few examples of many activities for the climate that are being organized. Here are a few final thoughts and observations. First, while changing our personal habits to reduce consumption and emissions is important for transitioning to the world we are working to create, we must remember that the drivers of the crisis are systemic and require systemic solutions. Second, activists often struggle with the issue of activism versus electoral politics. Our view is that in the manipulated US election system, we can’t elect our way out of these crises. Throughout history, it has been mass popular movements that have forced powerholders to either make necessary changes or to lose their power. Electoral politics is a useful tool when it is used to raise awareness for our issues and expose the failings of the current political system but the major focus of our work must be movement building.

Perhaps one of the most exciting developments is the rise of anti-capitalist protests around the world against neoliberalism, a model that drives privatization of land, water, services and more. We can’t solve the climate crisis using capitalist economic models because capitalism is fundamentally about extracting profits at all costs and is based on the overconsumption of a consumer-oriented economy.

Another promising development is the work to make connections between the many crises we face. We cannot solve the climate crisis in isolation because it requires a major restructuring of our entire society. This is the opportunity the climate crisis provides. Over the next decade, with a clear vision of where we want to go, we can shape the world to be one that respects self-determination, human rights and sustainability. That will only come about through organization, planning, and action to create a mass movement.

The seeds of that mass movement are growing. The opportunity has never been so great and the stakes have never been so high.

Kevin Zeese and Magaret Flowers are directors of Popular Resistance

Residents brave the floods in Mazive, southern Mozambique, on April 28, 2019, just weeks after the country suffered one of the worst storms in its history. (Photo: Emidio Josine/AFP via Getty Images)

As world leaders convened in Madrid for COP25 amid surging grassroots demands for radical action, the charitable organization Oxfam released new research Monday showing that climate-related disasters were the leading cause of internal displacement over the past decade, forcing an average of over 20 million people to flee their homes per year.

That, according to Oxfam, amounts to one person every two seconds being forced from their home due to hurricanes, wildfires, cyclones, and other extreme weather.

“Our governments are fueling a crisis that is driving millions of women, men, and children from their homes and the poorest people in the poorest countries are paying the heaviest price,” Chema Vera, acting executive director of Oxfam International, said in a statement.

According to Oxfam’s analysis (pdf), which relied on data Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, the last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of extreme weather disasters that have forced people from their homes.

“Today, you are seven times more likely to be internally displaced by extreme weather disasters… than by geophysical disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and three times more likely than by conflict,” the organization found. “There was a five-fold increase in the reported number of extreme weather disasters that resulted in people being displaced over the last decade.”

Emphasizing that small island nations such as Tuvalu and Cuba face far higher risk of internal displacement due to extreme weather than rich European nations, Oxfam condemned the wealthy nations of the world for making “little progress towards the provision of new funds to help poor countries recover from loss and damage resulting from the climate emergency.”

“Rich donor countries have largely left poor countries to cover the rising costs of extreme weather disasters themselves,” Oxfam said.

To help vulnerable nations recover from previous disasters and prepare for future extreme weather, Oxfam called on world leaders at COP25 to commit to establishing an international “Loss and Damage” fund to assist displaced people and communities.

Oxfam also urged nations to commit to deeper emission cuts and more rapid phase-outs of fossil fuels to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2030.

“People are taking to the streets across the globe to demand urgent climate action,” Vera said. “If politicians ignore their pleas, more people will die, more people will go hungry and more people will be forced from their homes.”

“Governments can and must make Madrid matter,” Vera added. “They must commit to faster, deeper emissions cuts and they must establish a new ‘Loss and Damage’ fund to help poor communities recover from climate disasters.”

Originally published in CommonDreams.org

The impunity with which the US aggresses Hong Kong is insane. Equally or more insane is western media coverage of what is going on in Hong Kong. Not one word on how the incredible “pro-democracy” vote of the rather unimportant District Council Elections was achieved. Of the 18 District Councils, 452 of 479 seats (71%) went to “pro-democracy” candidates. Such an extreme anti-Beijing vote could only be obtained by massive western propaganda at the cost of millions of dollars, targeted with algorithms, developed on the principles of the now (apparently) defunct Cambridge Analytica. And this with 70% of eligible voters going to the polls.

None of this practically non-realistic result was analyzed by the west and reported on. In reality, the vast majority of Hong Kongers is sick and tired of the western inspired violence, but are very much proud of being Chinese citizens. They were told by the propagandists that voting for ‘democracy’ candidates was the way to bring peace. And Peace is what everyone wants. After all, integrated into China in 1997, they have enjoyed much more freedom than under British colonialism, where they were not even allowed to vote for their district councils.

The absurdity does not stop here. The US Congress has recently passed legislation that would allow the US monitoring ‘democracy’ and human rights in Hong Kong, the so called “Human Rights and Democracy Act”, with the caveat of imposing sanctions, if Beijing would transgress on the US imposed rules. Can you imagine? Can anyone imagine this all-overarching arrogance?

The US Congress passing legislation to control another foreign territory? And the west goes along with it. It may happen soon in Europe too that the US dictates what sovereign nations are allowed to do and not to do. It is already happening. The US prohibits Europe to do business with whom they want – i.e. Iran, if not, they are being punished. No comments. It’s just the new normal. In the case of Hong Kong, Beijing has protested, called the US Ambassador twice to discuss the matter – to no avail.

It gets even more ludicrous. Madame Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, has published in the Saturday issue of the South China Morning Post an article seeking full and “independent and impartial judge-led investigation” into police conduct at protests as part of confidence-building measures. The statement in itself already takes sides, as it does in no way address the foreign-inspired violence of protesters, who, for example,are using a university campus to build Molotov-type bombs and other incendiary devices.  The Chinese Government immediately rebuked the article accusing Ms. Bachelet of further inflaming ‘radical violence’.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Chen Yaou, spokesman for China’s permanent mission to the UN, launched a scathing attack on what he called an “erroneous article” by Michelle Bachelet. Chen emphasized that China “strongly opposed” Bachelet’s article, saying she had interfered in the internal affairs of China and would only encourage protesters to use more radical violence. Mr. Chen added that “the protesters were seeking to create chaos in the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region), paralyze the HK SAR government and seize the administrative power of the Hong Kong SAR with the aim of rendering the ‘one country, two systems’ principle defunct.”Cheng also said that his government stands fully behind Ms. Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive.

Despite the overwhelming pro-democracy vote on 24 November 2019, protests continue. Thousands took to the streets on Saturday afternoon assembling before the United States Consulate in Central, to “express gratitude” for passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. They were waving US flags, chanting the Star-Spangled Banner and are asking for more support. They pledge not to let go until all their demands are met.

Essentially, they want total independence from Beijing and become a US colony. They should look at Puerto Rico, what it means to be a US colony, what Washington has in store for its colonies. Or closer to their own history, they should look at their UK colonial past – and remember their state of oppression, the almost zero rights they had then.

What does this all mean for Hong Kong? At the time of the UK handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong contributed about 18% to China’s GDP. Already before the protests began some 6 months ago, it had shrunk to a mere 3%. Within the last few months HK’s economic output has further declined, as key financial institutions want stability and therefore are leaving Hong Kong for safer venues, i.e. Singapore, and, indeed, for Shanghai which is rapidly becoming the financial hub of the east.

The real purpose of the 50-year special status of Hong Kong that the UK (and US) negotiated with Beijing, was to keep this unregulated eastern financial paradise alive for western oligarchs’ often illicit and tax-evading financial transactions of which the western – UK and US – bankers and financiers were the key beneficiaries and profiteers. These US-inspired violent protests are meant to destabilize the Government of Beijing – which is, of course, a pipedream – when in fact, they are committing slowly suicide. Washington and London are disabling Hong Kong of her west-serving money-laundering capacity.

And if it comes really down to the level of intolerant crime and violence against the majority of HK citizens by this foreign-inspired and funded disruption of SAR, Beijing could in less than 24 hours put an end to it. So simple. The west could just gape, but say nothing, because it is in Beijing’s full right to restore law and order in their territories.

Now, let’s look again at the US arrogance to pass legislation to control a foreign territory. Could anyone imagine the logical opposite? China passes legislation to ban any foreign interference in their territories with the threat of sanctions. These could include outright import bans for certain US goods, for example agricultural produce, or stopping crucial exports to the US (iPhones, computers, other US-outsourced manufactured-in-China goods), barring certain US citizens from entering China – or, god forbid, building a military base in Venezuela and / or Mexico; Mexico being the latest Latin American country being harassed by the US for Mexico’s left-leaning government.

It is only by equals facing equals that maybe, just maybe can achieve harmonious and peaceful coexistence. This applies politically as much as it does economically – and in economics, China is the unspoken front-runner with a strong and stable currency backed by her economic output and by gold, versus an entire not only US, but western economy based on fiat money.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organizationaround the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

A paper co-authored by some eminent climate scientists and just published in the prestigious scientific journal  Nature, analyses critical tipping points impacted by man-made climate change, and  concludes: “Act now… the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute…  The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action — not just words — must reflect this”.

A climate change-related “tipping point” for a particular phenomenon (e.g. loss of Arctic summer sea ice)  is the point  at which the change is irreversible. Successive IPCC reports   over past decades warned of the likelihood of tipping points being reached  at various degrees of global warming. However the authors provide a Figure showing that IPCC-estimated “High” to “Very High” risk of rapid and irreversible changes in the climate system has progressively occurred at lower average warming over the last 20 years.   Thus an approximate simplification of this Figure is that IPCC-perceived “High” to “Very High” risk occurred at +5.5C (2001), +5C (2007), +4C (2013) and +2C (2018) [1].

The authors conclude that “If current national pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are implemented — and that’s a big ‘if’ — they are likely to result in at least 3 °C of global warming. This is despite the goal of the 2015 Paris agreement to limit warming to well below 2 °C… if tipping points are looking more likely, then the ‘optimal policy’ recommendation of simple cost–benefit climate-economy models aligns with those of the recent IPCC report [2]. In other words, warming must be limited to 1.5 °C. This requires an emergency response” [1].

Noting a “Moderate” risk of tipping points exceedances in the range of + 1-2C and that the global warming is now about +1C above the pre-industrial,  one can well ask whether  a sane individual would board a plane that had a “Moderate” risk of crashing.

The authors then considered some key tipping points and their assessments are summarized below (with global  consequences and amplifications in brackets).

(1). West Antarctica (Amundsen Sea embayment): the tipping point may have been exceeded  (this  could destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet leading to circa 3 metres of sea-level rise on a timescale of 100s to 1000s of years, noting that this has happened in the past).

(2). East Antarctic ice sheet (Wilkes Basin):  approaching a tipping point ( 3-4 metres in sea level rise on a timescale of 100s of years).

(3). Greenland ice sheet:  melting at an increasing  rate and the tipping point may be the circa +1.5C expected in about 2030 ( 7 metres sea level rise over 1000s of years).

(4). Arctic sea ice:  massive sea ice loss already ( at +2C there is a  10–35% probability of near-total summer sea ice loss).

(5). Coral reefs: mass coral bleaching worldwide and loss of 50% of the coral of  Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef due to warming, ocean acidification, pollution and Crown of Thorn predator  population explosion (99% of tropical corals are predicted to be  lost at +2C with massive loss of  marine biodiversity and fisheries).

(6). Amazon rain  rainforest:  estimated tipping point at 20% – 40% deforestation with about 17% lost since 1970 ( the world’s largest rainforest, contains 1 in 10 known species, has a continent-scale  climate impact, and is presently burning on a huge scale).

(7). North American boreal forest: warming in the sub-Arctic has led to insect pest population explosion, boreal (high latitude) tree die-off and fires ( some boreal forest regions are converting from being carbon sinks to a carbon sources).

(8). Arctic permafrost:  irreversible thawing and release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) with Arctic warming about  2 times bigger than  the global average (CH4 has an estimated Global Warming Potential (GWP) as low as 21 relative to the same mass of CO2 on a 100 year time-scale, but on a 20 year time scale and with aerosol impacts included it is 105).

(9). Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC): a key salt- and heat-conveying Atlantic Ocean circulation system subject to a 15% slow-down since the mid-20th century  (Arctic sea-ice loss is increasing  regional warming;  Arctic warming and Greenland melting are putting  fresh water into the North Atlantic; slowdown in the AMOC is destabilizing the West African monsoon, impacting drought in the Sahel region,  drying the Amazon, disrupting the East Asian monsoon and warming the  Southern Ocean with increased  Antarctic ice loss).

The authors  provide a further Figure that dramatically summarizes how the key changes summarized above can variously impact on each other,  with AMOC having a key centrality. The authors comment: “We argue that cascading effects might be common. Research last year analysed 30 types of regime shift spanning physical climate and ecological systems, from collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet to a switch from rainforest to savanna. This indicated that exceeding tipping points in one system can increase the risk of crossing them in others. Such links were found for 45% of possible interactions” [1].

The authors adduce paleo-climatological  evidence that: “Atmospheric CO₂ is already at levels last seen around four million years ago, in the Pliocene epoch. It is rapidly heading towards levels last seen some 50 million years ago — in the Eocene — when temperatures were up to 14 °C higher than they were in pre-industrial times. It is challenging for climate models to simulate such past ‘hothouse’ Earth states. One possible explanation is that the models have been missing a key tipping point: a cloud-resolving model published this year suggests that the abrupt break-up of stratocumulus cloud above about 1,200 parts per million of CO₂ could have resulted in roughly 8 °C of global warming” [1].

Finally, the paper provides a compelling mathematical analysis: “We define emergency (E) as the product of risk and urgency. Risk (R) is defined by insurers as probability (p) multiplied by damage (D). Urgency (U) is defined in emergency situations as reaction time to an alert (τ) divided by the intervention time left to avoid a bad outcome (T). Thus: E = R × U = p × D × τ / T . The situation is an emergency if both risk and urgency are high. If reaction time is longer than the intervention time left (τ / T > 1), we have lost control” [1].

The authors conclude: “Act now. In our view, the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute… We argue that the intervention time left to prevent tipping [T] could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions [τ] is 30 years at best. Hence we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens. A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping — and hence the risk posed — could still be under our control to some extent. The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action — not just words — must reflect this”.

Final comments.

The authors considered the Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget for a 50% chance of not exceeding  +1.5C: “ The world’s remaining emissions budget for a 50:50 chance of staying within 1.5 °C of warming is only about 500 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO₂. Permafrost emissions could take an estimated 20% (100 Gt CO₂) off this budget, and that’s without including methane from deep permafrost or undersea [CH4-H2O] hydrates. If forests are close to tipping points, Amazon dieback could release another 90 Gt CO₂ and boreal forests a further 110 Gt CO₂. With global total CO₂ emissions still at more than 40 Gt per year, the remaining budget could be all but erased already” [1].

In 2018 the  IPCC issued a Report that detailed the numerous bad outcomes of a global +1.5 degree Centigrade (+1.5C) of warming versus the catastrophic outcomes from a +2C e.g. a further 70-90% decline of coral reefs at +1.5C versus more than 99% loss at +2C. Crucially, the IPCC Report says that for less than +1.5C  coal burning must cease by 2050 but also declares that the Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget for a 66% chance of avoiding +1.5C (420 Gt CO2) will be used up in 10 years at a rate of 42 Gt Co2 per year [2-4].

Indeed the IPCC in its  Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)  stated (2014): “Emissions ranges for baseline scenarios and mitigation scenarios that limit greenhouse gas concentrations to low levels (about 450 ppm CO2-eq, likely to limit warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels) are shown for different sectors and gases in Figure SPM.14” [5]. However  according to Professor Ron Prinn (from100-Nobel-Laureate MIT) we may have already reached 478 ppm CO2-equivalent in 2013  [6-10] ( it is presently at nearly 500 ppm CO2-equivalent).

The German WBGU (2009) and the Australian Climate Commission (2013) have estimated that no more than 600 billion tonnes of CO2 can be emitted between 2010 and zero emissions in 2050 if the world is to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic +2C temperature  rise [11, 12]. However a revised global annual GHG pollution of 64 Gt CO2-equivalent (properly taking  land use and CH4 in to account) [13] means that this Terminal Carbon Pollution  Budget was exceeded in 2019.

Australia (0.3% of world population, but with Domestic GHG pollution 2.1% of global GHG pollution and 4.5% with its huge Exported GHG pollution included) has a climate criminal policy (supported by both the ruling Coalition and the Labor Opposition)  of unlimited coal, gas and iron ore  exports,  and it can be estimated that complete exploitation  of Australia’s huge resources in these areas would mean exceeding the  whole world’s  2009 Terminal  Carbon Pollution Budget by a factor of 3 [14]. Similarly, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CH4 on a 20 year time frame and with aerosol impacts considered is 105 times that of CO2 [15] and the 50 Gt (billion tonnes) CH4 in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf that is predicted to be released in coming decades [16] is thus equivalent to 50 billion tonnes CH4 x 105 tonnes  CO2-equivalent/tonne CH4 = 5,250 tonnes CO2-equivalent or about nine (9) times more than the world’s Terminal  Carbon Pollution Budget. We are doomed unless we can stop this massive Arctic CH4 release [4, 8-10].

Humanity and the Biosphere are existentially threatened by nuclear weapons and climate change [17]. Eminent physicist Professor  Stephen Hawking has stated the problem and solution very succinctly : “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [18, 19]. A paper co-signed by over 11,000 scientists  has detailed trends in 24 climate-related  areas over the last 40 years.  Scientists became aware of the climate change threat from greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in the 1980s,  but in 21 of these 24 areas the trends are (a) huge, (b) in the wrong direction, and (c) linear or quasi-linear functions of time , with this allowing extrapolation from the present climate emergency to a climate catastrophe in 2030 [20-23] .

What can decent people do? It is effectively too late to avoid a catastrophic +2C temperature rise but decent people are obliged to do everything they can to make the future “less bad” for future generations. Decent people must  act individually or better still act collectively (e.g. I am the secretary of the climate action group  Banyule Climate Action Now (BCAN) that is based in Melbourne in the City of Banyule that has recently declared a Climate Emergency) [24].

Decent folk must   (a) inform everyone they can  about the worsening Climate Emergency, Climate Genocide and Intergenerational Inequity, (b) urge a climate revolution (peaceful and non-violent  of course) with hundreds of millions out in the streets inspired by the likes of teenage activist Greta Thunberg, and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all  people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries disproportionately  involved in the worsening Climate Genocide that is presently set to kill 10 billion people this century en route to a sustainable human population of merely 0.5-1.0 billion in 2100 [25].  There is no Planet B.

Loving care for our children

We give our children loving care, but it makes no sense to do so unless we do everything in our power to give them a future world in which they can survive. We also have a duty to our grandchildren, and to all future generations.

Today we are faced with the threat of an environmental megacatastrophe, of which the danger of catastrophic climate change is a part. We also face the threat of an all-destroying nuclear war.

Finally, because of population growth, the effect of climate change on agriculture, and the end of the fossil fuel era, there is a danger that by the middle of the present century a very large-scale famine could take the lives of as many as a billion people.

We owe it to our children to take urgent action to prevent these threats from becoming future realities. We must also act with dedication to save our children from other social ills that currently prevent their lives from developing in a happy and optimal way, for example child labor, child slavery, starvation, preventable disease and lack of education. These, too, are threats to our children’s future.

The climate emergency: Urgent action is needed

The annual Emissions Gap report from the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP), released on November 26, 2019,  warned that nations’ commitments under the Paris climate accord – from which U.S. President Donald Trump began formally withdrawing this month – are not nearly sufficient to bring about the widespread changes needed to avert climate catastrophe.

The report stated that global temperatures are on track to rise as much as 3.2$^o$C by the end of the century, meaning only drastic and unprecedented emissions reductions can stave off the most devastating consequences of the climate crisis. What is needed, according to the report, is a complete halt in the production of fossil fuels.

Renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels, so the transition to renewables could be driven by economic forces alone, if governments worldwide would stop their sponsorship of fossil fuel industries, to which they currently give enormous tax benefits and other subsidies.

Other urgently needed actions are a halt to deforestation, combined with massive reforestation, substitution of other building materials for cement, better climate coverage in the mass media, abandonment of growth-oriented economic goals, shift to more plant-based diet, and deep cuts in military activities.

We must rid the world of nuclear weapons

A Treaty banning nuclear weapons was adopted by an overwhelming majority vote on the floor of the UN General Assembly, following the precedent set by the Arms Trade Treaty. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was passed on 7 July, 2017. It prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as assistance and encouragement to the prohibited activities. For nuclear armed states joining the treaty, it provides for a time-bound framework for negotiations leading to the verified and irreversible elimination of its nuclear weapons programme.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) campaigned vigorously for the adoption of the Treaty, and was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts. Although bitterly opposed by nuclear weapons states, the Treaty has great normative value, and one fervently hopes that the force of public opinion will eventually force all governments to give their citizens what the vast majority long for: a nuclear-weapon-free world.

It is generally agreed that a full-scale nuclear war would have disastrous effects, not only on belligerent nations but also on neutral countries. As long as there are nations that possess nuclear weapons, there is a danger that they will be used, either deliberately or through a technical or human error, or through unconcontrollable escalation of a conflict. Only a nuclear-free world will be safe for our children and the biosphere.

We must address the threat of widespread famine

As glaciers melt in the Himalayas, depriving India and China of summer water supplies; as sea levels rise, drowning the fertile rice fields of Viet Nam and Bangladesh; as drought threatens the productivity of grain-producing regions of North America; and as the end of the fossil fuel era impacts modern high-yield agriculture, there is a threat of wide-spread famine. There is a danger that the 1.5 billion people who are undernourished today will not survive an even more food-scarce future.

People threatened with famine will become refugees, desperately seeking entry into countries where food shortages are less acute. Wars, such as those currently waged in the Middle East, will add to the problem.

What can we do to avoid this crisis, or at least to reduce its severity? We must urgently address the problem of climate change; and we must shift money from military expenditure to the support of birth control programs and agricultural research. We must also replace the institution of war by a system of effective global governance and enforcible international laws.

We must eliminate child labor and child slavery

Worldwide 10 million children are in slavery, trafficking, debt bondage and other forms of forced labor, forced recruitment for armed conflict, prostitution, pornography and other illicit activities, according to the International Labor Organization, (ILO). 151.6 million are estimated to be in child labor (ILO). 114 million child laborers are below the age of 14 (ILO). 72 million children are in hazardous work that directly endangers their health, safety and moral development (ILO). More than 700 million women alive today were married before their 18th birthday. More than one in three (about 250 million) entered into union before age 15 (UNICEF). 300,000 children are estimated to serve as child soldiers, some even younger than 10 years old (UNICEF). 15.5 million children are in domestic work worldwide – the overwhelming majority of them are girls (ILO).

Child labor is undesirable because it prevents children from receiving an education. Furthermore, when parents regard their children as a source of labor or income, it motivates the to have very large families, and our finite earth, unlimited growth of population is a logical impossibility. Population growth increases the threat of large-scale famine as well as ecological catastrophe.

Child slavery is unacceptable, as is any form of slavery. Forced marriage, and very early marriage of girls as young as 9 in some countries are also unacceptable practices. The international community has a duty to see that existing laws against these practices are enforced.

We must reduce starvation and preventable disease

According to a recent report published by the World Health Organization, in 2018 alone, 15,000 children died per day before reaching their fifth birthday. A WHO spokesman said, “It is especially unacceptable that these children and young adolescents died largely of preventable or treatable causes like infectious diseases and injuries when we have the means to prevent these deaths,” the authors write in the introduction to the report. The global under-five mortality rate fell to 39 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018, down from 76 in 2000 – a 49% decline.

“Despite advances in fighting childhood illnesses, infectious diseases remain a leading cause of death for children under the age of 5, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia,” says the report. Pneumonia remains the leading cause of death globally among children under the age of 5, accounting for 15% of deaths. Diarrhoea (8%) and malaria (5%), together with pneumonia, accounted for almost a third of global under-five deaths in 2018. “Malnourished children, particularly those with severe acute malnutrition, have a higher risk of death from these common childhood illnesses. Nutrition-related factors contribute to about 45 per cent of deaths in children under 5 years of age,” warns the report. The estimates also show vast inequalities worldwide, with women and children in sub-Saharan Africa facing a higher risk of death than in all other regions. Level of maternal deaths are nearly 50 times higher for women in sub-Saharan Africa compared to high-income countries. In 2018, 1 in 13 children in sub-Saharan Africa died before their fifth birthday – this is 15 times higher than the risk a child faces in Europe, where just 1 in 196 children aged less than 5 die.

We must provide universal reformed education

Illiteracy in the less developed countries exceeded that of the developed ones by a factor of ten in 1970. By 2000, this factor had increased to approximately 20. As our economies become more knowledge-based, education has become more and more important.

Besides universal education, educational reforms are urgently needed, particularly in the teaching of history. As it is taught today, history is a chronicle of power struggles and war, told from a biased national standpoint. Our own race or religion is superior; our own country is always heroic and in the right.

We urgently need to replace this indoctrination in chauvinism by a reformed view of history, where the slow development of human culture is described, giving adequate credit to all who have contributed.

The teaching of other topics, such as economics, should be reformed. Economics must be given both a social conscience and an ecological conscience. The mantra of growth must be abandoned, and the climate emergency must be addressed.

Childhood should be a time of joy

Children’s play is not a waste of time. Children at play are learning skills that they will use later in their lives. Let us allow our children to play and learn, while we work to give them a secure future world. Let us give our children, not predominantly material goods, but rather the love, happiness and future that they deserve.

A new freely downloadable book

I would like to announce the publication of a book, which examines the steps that we must take to give our children and their children a world in which thet can survive. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:

http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Our-Childrens-Future-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf

Other books and articles about  global problems are on these links

http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/

https://wsimag.com/authors/716-john-scales-avery

I hope that you will circulate the links in this article to friends and contacts who might be interested.

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/

Exceptional global heat driven by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions mean this decade will most likely go down as the warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which released its provisional statement on the State of the Global Climate on Tuesday.

The WMO also finds that 2019 is on track to be the second or third warmest year in history, with the global average temperature during January through October, roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era.

“If we do not take urgent climate action now, then we are heading for a temperature increase of more than 3°C by the end of the century, with ever more harmful impacts on human wellbeing”, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“We are nowhere near on track to meet the Paris Agreement target,” he added, referring to the 2015 international accord to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The closing decade has been the warmest on record, with negative impacts on human health, data collected by the WMO and the World Health Organization (WHO) shows.

The new reports were presented on December 3, 2019 at the 25th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid.

According to WMO, global average temperatures for the five-year (2015-2019) and 10-year (2010-2019) periods will be the highest ever recorded. With temperature above the pre-industrial period around 1.1°C between January and October 2019 is set to be the second or third warmest year on record.

Concentrations of GHG in the atmosphere, which hit a record level of 407.8 parts of CO2 per million in 2018, continued to rise this year. Ocean heat is also at record levels and seawater is 26% more acidic than at the start of the industrial era, as daily sea-ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctica saw record lows in recent months.

CO2 and sea levels on the rise

The report finds that concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which hit record levels last year, also continued to rise in 2019.

The WMO said: Sea level rise has increased due to melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, while ocean heat is at record levels, with vital marine ecosystems being degraded.

Several UN agencies provided input to the report, which also details how weather and climate have an impact on health, food security, migration, ecosystems and marine life.

Climate variability and extreme weather events are among key drivers of the recent rise in global hunger, which now affects more than 820 million people.

“On a day-to-day basis, the impacts of climate change play out through extreme and “abnormal” weather. And, once again in 2019, weather and climate related risks hit hard”, said Taalas.

“Heatwaves and floods which used to be “once in a century” events are becoming more regular occurrences. Countries ranging from the Bahamas to Japan to Mozambique, suffered the effect of devastating tropical cyclones. Wildfires swept through the Arctic and Australia.”

Health at risk

Record-setting temperatures are increasingly putting health at risk, according to input provided by the WHO. Major heatwaves in Japan in late July to early August caused more than 100 deaths and some 18,000 hospitalizations, for example.

About half the global population is now threatened by dengue as changes in climatic conditions are making it easier for the Aedes mosquito species to transmit the dengue virus.

Southern Africa has experienced extensive dry periods due to a delay in the start of the seasonal rains, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports. As cereal output is forecasted to be around eight per cent below the five-year average, some 12.5 million people in the region will face food insecurity.

Climate-related disasters are also increasing displacement. Figures from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reveal more than 10 million new internal displacements were recorded during the first half of the year, with seven million forced to move as a result of disasters such as cyclones and flooding. New displacements associated with weather extremes could more than triple, to around 22 million by the end of the year.

The provisional report was released as governments meet in Madrid COP25.

WMO will publish the final Statement on the State of the Climate, with complete 2019 data, in March.

Key messages from the report

Global atmospheric concentrations of GHG reached record levels in 2018 with carbon dioxide (CO2) reaching 407.8±0.1 parts per million, 147% of pre-industrial levels.

Measurements from individual sites indicate that concentrations of CO2 continued to increase in 2019.

Methane and nitrous oxide, both important greenhouse gases, also reached record levels in 2018.

Global mean temperature for January to October 2019 was 1.1±0.1°C above pre-industrial levels. 2019 is likely to be the 2nd or 3rd warmest year on record.

The past five years are now almost certain to be the five warmest years on record, and the past decade, 2010-2019, to be the warmest decade on record. Since the 1980s, each successive decade has been warmer than any preceding decade since 1850.

The ocean absorbs over 90% of the heat trapped in the Earth system by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. Ocean heat content, which is a measure of this heat accumulation, reached record levels again in 2019.

As the ocean warms, sea levels rise. This rise is further increased by melting of ice on land, which then flows into the sea. Short-term trends in sea level are modulated by transitions between La Niña and El Niño, a cooling and warming, respectively of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean surface temperature.

Sea level has increased throughout the altimeter record, but recently sea level rose at a higher rate due partly to melting of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. In autumn 2019, the global mean sea level reached its highest value since the beginning of the high-precision altimetry record (January 1993).

Over the decade 2009-2018, the ocean absorbed around 22% of the annual emissions of CO2, attenuating atmospheric concentrations. However, CO2 reacts with seawater and decreases its pH, a process called ocean acidification. Observations from open-ocean sources over the last 20 to 30 years show a clear decrease in average pH at a rate of 0.017–0.027 pH units per decade since the late 1980s.

2019 saw low sea-ice extent both in the Arctic and Antarctic. The daily Arctic ice extent minimum in September 2019 was the second lowest in the satellite record and October has seen further record low extents.

In Antarctica, variability in recent years has been high with the long-term increase offset by a large drop in extent in late 2016. 2019 saw record low extents in some months.

Tropical cyclone Idai was one of the strongest known cyclones to make landfall on the east coast of Africa. There was widespread destruction from wind damage and storm surge in coastal Mozambique, especially in the city of Beira, whilst severe flooding extended to inland regions of Mozambique and parts of Zimbabwe. Tropical Cyclone Idai played a role to the destruction of close to 780 000 ha of crops in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, further undermining a precarious food security situation in the region. The cyclone also resulted in at least 50 905 displaced persons in Zimbabwe, 53 237 in southern Malawi and 77 019 in Mozambique.

Extreme heat conditions are taking an increasing toll on human health and health systems. Greater impacts are recorded in locations where extreme heat occurs in contexts of aging populations, urbanization, urban heat island effects, and health inequities.

In 2018, a record 220 million vulnerable persons over age of 65 were exposed to heatwaves, compared with the average for the baseline of 1986-2005.

In addition to conflicts, insecurity and economic slowdowns and downturns, climate variability and extreme weather events are among the key drivers of the recent rise in global hunger and one of the leading causes of severe food crises. After a decade of steady decline, hunger is on the rise again –over 820 million people suffered from hunger in 2018. The situation is most severe in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of undernourished people increased by more than 23 million between 2015 and 2018, particularly in countries affected by conflict.

Among 33 countries affected by food crises in 2018, climate variability and weather extremes were a compounding driver together with economic shocks and conflict in 26 countries and the leading driver in 12 of the 26.

More than 10 million new internal displacements were recorded between January and June 2019. Of these, 7 million were triggered by hydrometeorological events including Cyclone Idai in southeast Africa, Cyclone Fani in south Asia, Hurricane Dorian in the Caribbean, and flooding in Iran, the Philippines and Ethiopia, generating acute humanitarian and protection needs.

Among natural hazards, floods and storms have contributed the most to displacement recorded so far in 2019, followed by droughts. Asia and the Pacific remain the regions most prone to disaster displacement due to both sudden and slow-onset disasters. For instance, more than 2 million people were evacuated in Bangladesh, the second most disaster-prone country in the region, due to Cyclone Bulbul in November, and more than 2 million in China due to Typhoon Lekima in August.

The global mean temperature for the period January to October 2019 was around 1.1 ± 0.1 °C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900). 2019 is likely to be the second or third warmest year on record. The WMO assessment is based on five global temperature data sets, with four of the five global temperature data sets putting 2019 in second place. The spread of the five estimates is between 1.04 °C and 1.17 °C.

The IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C (IPCC SR15) concluded that “Human-induced warming reached approximately 1°C (likely between 0.8°C and 1.2°C) above pre-industrial levels in 2017, increasing at 0.2°C (likely between 0.1°C and 0.3°C) per decade (high confidence)”. An update of the figures to 2019 is consistent with continued warming in the range 0.1-0.3°C/decade.2016, which began with an exceptionally strong El Niño, remains the warmest year on record. Weak El Niño conditions in the first half of 2019 may have made a small contribution to the high global temperatures in 2019, but there was no clear increase in temperature at the end of 2018/early 2019 as was seen in late 2015/early 2016.Based on the year-to-date figures, the past five years, 2015 to 2019, are almost certain to be the five warmest years on record. The five-year (2015-2019) and ten-year (2010-2019) averages are, respectively, almost certain to be the warmest five-year period and decade on record5. Since the 1980s, each successive decade has been warmer than any preceding decade since 1850.

I often remember the female protagonist of the novel – Milkman by Anna Burns (Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2018). She was sexually harassed by a man when she would be walking while reading. A woman, with a book is an image that is one of the most infuriating sights to patriarchy. In that case, we can only imagine the irritation that is caused by the sight of so many women reading, writing, and expressing their views, opinions and anger; inside the classrooms and beyond.This is what patriarchy fears – educated women, because they will challenge it with their voice, with their words.

The India in which we live today is moving rapidly towards making education an accessory of the privileged; privileged by caste, class, gender, religion. It is appalling but not surprising to see how the JNU movement that supports subsidized education is being frowned upon. The core of such criticism arises from the realization or rather the fear that free or subsidised education would empower the marginalized and the vulnerable sections of our society to raise their own voices and fight back the system that has been suppressing them for centuries. The ones who have historically gained much benefits of an unequal patriarchal, casteist, elitist and racist Indian society fear that they would be stripped off their benefits and the entitlement they have acquired to oppress the one who are forced to stay at the lower rungs of this society and ‘serve’ them. In such a scenario, the neo-liberal market that believes in ‘merit’ and which has perpetually sold us the idea of education as competition is a friend that the upper caste, upper class patriarchal mind-set needs. Affordable education is not a system that is favourable for any of these privileged entities;because they will be questioned, challenged and resisted.

Women in thehierarchical societal order are burdened further more due to their gender and belonging to marginalized communities based on caste, class, religion, location etc. Even today, even when, there has existed public funded institutes and universities, the ones perceived to be out of the gender binary of heteronormativity do not find a place to receive education. They are the most invisibilsed, unacknowledged group when it comes to education. However, education that is given without any fees or minimal fees serves as a ray of hope.

‘Women in Power’ is a myth, both in the public and private sphere. Just because a woman is making decisions on what should be cooked for lunch and dinner do not put her in any empowered position although phrases such as ‘women are queens of the kitchen/home’ have been used too often to blind them towards the oppression that they suffer at the hands of patriarchy. Education has the potential to remove that blindfold. I need not mention the ‘chaos’ that removal of the blind fold would create. The kitchen no longer remains the place of solace for such women. And this makes a society steeped with patriarchal norms tremble. For instance, a Dalit woman asserting her rights to get educated and justicebroadly, is something that is unwelcomed and mostly feared.

It is sadly not unusual to come across words blaming a women’s education as the cause of her inability to get married, getting divorced, not looking after kids/in-laws, wearing ‘exposing’ clothes etc. Education begets independence and independence in women is certainly not a virtue that is preferred. Women are getting brutally raped and killed because of being independent enough to venture into an otherwise male dominated public sphere. In such a scenario can we even fool ourselves to think that the state, market, our society and families would prefer to provide education to its girls paying a huge sum of money? Of course, there are the ones who ‘buy’ education for their daughters to make them a desirable product for the marriage market that adds to their status. But for most, paying huge money for quality education is a discomforting proposition, also because paying a dowry to get their daughters married is quite an usual phenomenon in India. If not an explicit dowry, there is always a burden to get a girl married in a grand manner showering the in-laws with gifts. In a society where marriage is still perceived as the final solace for a girl, parents would rather spend on a wedding than a degree. Thus, demanding free education is a need and not a choice.Feminism calls for it.

Moreover, the stark realities of poverty, malnutrition, caste discrimination, child-labour, female foeticide and infanticide (to name a few)indicates why education for so many women is a distant dream. Free education is not the only solution to these issues but is significant if we have to protest against them. For most women who can still afford the ‘luxury’ of education, sitting with a pen and a paper to write on might seem too mundane to reflect any further. But at this very juncture when education is becoming a commodity in the hands of those who believe in ‘buying’ degrees with hefty fees, we need to remind ourselves that it is at the heart of the feminist movement that brought the pen and paper to those (especially women) whose lives would not have ever known what it means to write. Voices of women still struggle to get heard because they are considered trivial/ banal/ hyper-emotional/ irrational and thus ‘unsalable’. To overturn these very notions, we need free education – to read, learn, understand, reflect, introspect and write; and write till it is a revolution to get our freedoms.

Pooja Kalita is a PhD candidate with the Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi (India).

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – and its two predecessor organizations, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM) – emerged in the early 1970s, during a long-term rightist movement in the United States.

The DSA’s contribution to the American Left was its new founded identity as a radical organization born out of a merger between the DSOC and NAM. DSA also sought to become a democratic,socialist party, which fostered the inclusion members, similar to that of the Bernie Sander’s presidential campaigns (2016, 2020). Nevertheless, it was under the leadership of DSA Michael Harrington’s penetrating critique of American culture in The Other America (1963), that catalyzed the nascent civil rights movement, its leaders and the Kennedy Administrations to prioritize combating racism, poverty and inequality.This in turn set the stage for Martin Luther King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” and eventually King’s denunciation of American global hegemony. These events thus presaged the Johnson Administration’s Great Society War on Poverty.

The foundations of democratic socialism, and in root the DSA, have its origins in the eighteenth century during the breakdown of feudal Europe, specifically England, where the medieval guilds and the protection of workers’ rights was subsequently replaced as a “commodity” or as Marx describes as “commodity fetishism”. The emergence of capitalism during this period further reinforced the domination of capital over labor and the horror this unleashed on labor in the Industrial Revolution. Confronting this crisis were religious leaders Bishop Joseph Butler and Reverend John Wesley, philosophers and economic reformers, John Locke and Adam Smith, arguing that labor creates profit and value, not capital.Moreover, they argued that workers possess a property right to the profits and value they create.This implied that labor, rightfully, must direct the control of capital since this determines how and to whom surplus value will be distributed in a democratic manner.

Robert Owen and the Industrial Revolution

The origins of this position can be traced to such reformers as Robert Owen. I argue that Owen’s model represents the initial development of what today has become known as “democratic socialism.”The injustices and oppression of the Industrial Revolution provided the context for a democratic socialist economy movement. Led by Robert Owen (1771–1858) and the utopian socialists, private property, understood as the exclusive right of industrialists, was identified as the source of existing exploitation and inequality. While the Industrial Revolution brought about unprecedented wealth, it is without question that only capitalists received the lion’s share. Though labor created massive profits (surplus value) for the capitalist class, labor received a subsistence wage, barely enough to survive. Owen and the utopian socialists sought to counter this injustice by opting for labor’s democratic ownership of capital and the surplus value labor produced.Put in other terms, labor had a “property right” to the profits they created.

The Industrial Revolution that gathered momentum in eighteenth century Europe and the United States created the historical context for democratic socialism. Utopians argued that private property (capital) was the source of existing inequalities, but the framework of their thought, based on conceptions of a preindustrial society, is today remote. The extensive development of factory production and the social conditions that ensued – and the laissez-faire interpretation of these events favored by conventional economists – created the conditions in which modern socialism was born. Nonetheless, the Industrial Revolution brought about unprecedented increases in productivity based on the development of factories and the widespread use of machinery.

The major cost of these innovations was borne by society’s least powerful – the working class – or, for all intents and purposes, the vast majority of poor. In 1750 the working class in Europe, specifically England and the United States, lived near subsistence levels, and the purchasing power of wages deteriorated considerably during the second half of the eighteenth century. National income grew over this period, so that workers’ relative living standards fell and the potential consumption they involuntarily sacrificed financed the investment required for industrialization. Had working-class incomes kept in step with national income, the average worker would have been approximately 50 percent richer in 1840 than thirty years earlier.

The Industrial Revolution replaced traditional occupations – typically rural farming or guild status as an artisan in various crafts. This change resulted from the breakdown of the old feudal societies of Europe and the industrialization of those same economies due to mechanistic innovations in the means of production. Mechanization facilitated the division of labor, creating tasks that women and children could perform. Entire families often worked to achieve subsistence. The conditions under which labor was performed were unregulated and dangerous and involved long hours in dehumanizing conditions. Moreover, the growth of factory production stimulated urbanization in Europe and the United States. As a result, roads, water, sewage, waste management, public health, and provisions for open spaces failed to keep pace with urban migration, while housing was concentrated in crowded slums. The inevitable result manifested itself in air and water pollution, epidemics of typhoid and cholera, and widespread respiratory and intestinal disease, with a consequent low expectation of life.

Successive administrations in England, specifically during the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, were slow to intervene and remedy social problems and maintain the price of bread and impeded, or subverted, the development of trade unions. Within this context it can be asserted that the period of Napoleonic war and the subsequent economic crisis constituted the bleakest chapter in British labor history, precisely because the foundations of modern industry were erected on the suffering of workers denied access to the fruits of an expanding economy. By contrast, capitalists enjoyed absolute power over their labor force. Thus the Industrial Revolution created the modern working class, nominally free but able to live only by selling their labor power. Suffice it to say, Britain witnessed a considerable development of radical economic doctrines in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The Radical Response

Owen’s prestige was based on his reputation as a businessman, an economic theorist, and a social reformer. From the age of ten he served as a draper’s apprentice, but at twenty he was the manager of a large cotton factory at New Lanark, which became renowned throughout Britain for its conditions of work. Owen was a benevolent autocrat who insisted on strict industrial discipline, but in combination with living wages, a decent work environment, abolition of child labor and compulsory education for workers’ children. The profitability of New Lanark demonstrated the shortsightedness of other capitalists’ notion that profit maximization is best achieved through the alienation and exploitation of labor. New Lanark provided a viable moral counter strategy to neoliberal market rationality.

Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century industrialization rested on three sets of institutional principles: (1) the absolute nature of private property, (2) a self-regulating laissez-faire market economy, and (3) the transformation of labor into a commodity. While Owen accepted industrial innovations he did not agree with the unrestrained rule of private capital, self-regulating markets, and the exploitation of human labor. He argued these three economic “truths” were the ultimate causes of contemporary inequalities and social injustice and thus urged their elimination. Owen believed that an industrial economy, if it is to be moral, must be created based on the principles that every person must be treated with dignity and the proceeds of production were divided equitably. The operation of any economy was then to be criticized and evaluated according to such principles.Owen believed that a more just and efficient economy should be focused on his experimental model at New Lanark. Thus Owen’s political economy was based on three important “radical” tenants.

The first tenant is based on what Owen described as an “Economy of High Wages.” Owen held the view that a wage increase – or higher labor costs – leads to: (1) an improvement in the living standards of workers, (2) which then leads to greater efficiency and production by workers. In other words, increased wages generate additional revenue for both company and workers. Yet Owen’s theory conflicted with the prevailing orthodoxy, which argued that any wage increase occurred at the expense of profits and hence led to a diminution in employment and economic activity. Nevertheless, by extending the “Economy of High Wages” from an individual firm to the nation, Owen embraced an embryonic under-consumption theory of depressions. He advocated a high-wage policy that maintained purchasing power as a cure for unemployment and promotion of economic growth.

The second tenant on which Owen based his political economy was a belief that an individualistic economy is inequitable, irrational, and antisocial. Moreover private ownership is an institution whereby one class gains power over the rest in order to maximize profits. In contrast, Owen did not attack industry or new technology as it manifested itself in the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. Rather, he denounced private ownership of the means of production, the spread of unfettered and unregulated economic competition, and elements of narcissistic individualism propagated through Enlightenment liberalism. Owen argued to the contrary that private ownership and unrestrained competition destroys social cohesion. Furthermore, he argued that individuals by themselves cannot simply improve their own lot in life. Rather it was within the context of a community and its many support networks that the betterment of individuals was realized.

The third tenant is based on Owen’s labor theory of value premised upon the priority of labor. He viewed human labor as “the natural standard of value” and that this concept required capital and machinery to become the servant of labor. Owen believed that capital and profit are designed to serve the human person and community as its first moral priority. Public policy and not the “market” should determine the amount of labor expended on commodities, and workers ought to be compensated based on both human needs and effort. Owen argued for economic cooperation, rather than competition, through a network of self-governing communes, where private ownership of the means of production was transformed into a democratic alliance eliminating any labor-ownership conflict. Owen argued that capital and profit should never come at the expense of labor.

Owen as Social Reformer

Owen’s career as a national reformer can be understood in different stages. Between the publication of Towards a New View of Society in 1813 and A Report to the County of Lanark in 1821, he concentrated on ameliorating existing social problems such as poverty, child labor, inhumane work hours and unemployment. He thought that these social injustices could be avoided if other manufacturers replicated New Lanark on grounds of “enlightened self-interest.” Indeed, his arguments applied to capitalists more concerned with long-term profitability than with immediate gains, but he found that his appeals met with little response. He then attempted to persuade government to alleviate poverty and inequality and was popular in official circles after 1815, only by virtue of the fact that he focused on the importance of environmental improvements more than his personal brand of socialism. As he advanced beyond the role of wealthy philanthropist to structural reforms that threatened the establishment power centers, he became decreasingly influential in elite circles.

Between 1824-1835, Owen established what he described as “communist” communities. The cities of Orbiston (near Glasgow), Tytherley (in Hampshire) and New Harmony in Indiana were three of the most prominent. The aim was to settle unemployed laborers on the land in self-governed “Villages of Unity and Cooperation.” Such schemes reflected his conviction that society as then constituted would permit cooperatives to supplant existing institutional structures. Owen did this by attempting to persuade the rich and influential about his ideas for social and economic transformation. Nevertheless the Owenite settlements were challenged partly because of the hostile external environment of the business community and the agricultural depression, which generated an influx of unemployed workers which exceeded capacity. Consequently, an excess supply of labor to the villages of cooperation proved counterproductive to the communist communities yet not insurmountable.

Owen persisted in his collectivist experimentations. In 1824 the London Co-operative Society was formed as a store for cooperative trading, designed to supersede competitive distribution and allow craftsmen to exchange goods without capitalist intermediaries. It aimed to sell at trade prices and use the savings accumulated through elimination of retailers’ profits to financially bolster socialist communities. The next envisaged stage of development involved members’ cooperation to produce directly for each other rather than choosing between capitalist goods sold in their stores.For example, the London Society opened an Exchange Bazaar for societies and individuals to engage in mutual exchange. Owen returned from the United States in 1829, after establishing more than three hundred cooperative societies, in the United States and England. This figure rose to almost five hundred by 1832, although many pursued solely educational objectives.

Cooperative stores bought wholesale and sold retail, the commodities demanded by their members, but cooperative producers faced the difficult problem of obtaining a market for all their products. This problem stimulated development of labor exchanges where workmen and producers’ cooperatives could exchange products directly and thus dispense with both employers and merchants. The most important such institution, the National Equitable Labor Exchange, was established by Owen in 1832 and stimulated the formation of similar exchanges in provincial cities. They sought to secure a wider market for cooperative groups and to enable them to exchange their products at an equitable valuation resting on labor time.

Owen appointed trade union “valuers” to price goods on the basis of the cost of raw materials plus the amount of labor time expended on them. A new currency of labor notes was issued for the conduct of transactions. Crucial weaknesses emerged, however. Labor and commercial prices coexisted; goods the exchanges offered more cheaply were soon disposed of, while the more expensive remained unsold. Exchanges would not control their stocks to demand levels and movements in the manner of capitalist retailers, since they had to take what members brought them. Consequently, they became overstocked where there were many cooperative producers and understocked in trades where there were few.

In particular their supplies were concentrated on goods that could be produced by craftsmen possessing little capital. Despite this major weakness, they enjoyed considerable success for a time but collapsed in the general crash of the movement in 1834. Even then some exchanges balanced their books while the National Equitable Labor Exchange incurred a heavy debt, which then fell to Owen. When Owen returned to England in 1829, he found that a trade-union movement had emerged after the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824, and in 1829 he witnessed the formation of the first modern national union, the Operative Spinners.

While this was happening, the next two years saw much social unrest in the form of agricultural riots and a wave of strike activity in the northern textile towns as a means of achieving the eight-hour workday. Then, by 1832 several distinct but related bodies, such as, the Owenite societies, cooperative stores, cooperative producers, labor exchange, and trade unions, looked to Owen for leadership. Most were growing rapidly as workers, disillusioned by the terms of the 1832 Reform Act, swung away from political mobilization toward organized labor action. Owen sought the fusion of these groups into one national organization, centrally directed and under worker control, which would challenge and transform economic relations through its practice of cooperative production.

By 1833 the Operative Builders’ Union (OBU) was the largest in the country, with a membership of sixty thousand. The OBU adopted an Owenite agenda to take over the construction industry and reorganize it as a national guild. To implement this program none of its members would work for capitalist builders who refused to join the guild. The owners attempted to destroy the OBU by a lockout by forcing those reemployed to sign a document (i.e., a written pledge not to join a union, which gives the employer the right to fire them if they violate the pledge). The workers lost as the OBU simultaneously fought the lockout and attempted to launch the guild with inadequate financial resources. Its members were then forced back to work by various regions during 1834, and by the end of that year the OBU ceased to exist. It split into craft sections with a greatly reduced membership.

Owen, nevertheless, sought to unite all the associations intended for the improvement of the working class. To this end he inspired the formation of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (GNCTU) which was intended to be a single inclusive union aiming to supersede capitalism by a cooperative system based on workers’ control of production. It sought to implement on an economy-wide basis a plan similar to the OBU guild for construction. Ultimately the GNCTU would control, through its constituent members, all industry, thereby taking over the functions of capitalists, parliament, and local government. It would become the locus of economic, and ultimately political, power. The GNCTU’s formation was followed by feverish organization by discounting cooperative retail and producer societies; unions alone attracted over one million members.

As with the OBU, owners reacted to the GNCTU by presenting the document to workers, with the threat of a lockout if not signed. This response originated in Derby; it was imitated in other towns, but Derby remained the test struggle. The workers lost, being forced back to work after a lockout lasting four months. Given the repeal of the Combination Acts, the case was pursued under the 1797 Naval Mutinies Act, which was never intended to apply to trade unions. Nonetheless, this opportunity for the government to deter union organization arose because many unions adopted secret initiation ceremonies under the threat of employer retaliation. As a result, the GNCTU encountered severe administrative problems. The recruits it made and the disputes it faced were so abundant that urgent problems of management were inevitably ignored.

Internal dissention developed, and Owen became disillusioned; he hoped to initiate bloodless revolution by providing examples of the benefits derived from cooperation. Accordingly he dissolved the GNCTU in August 1834, arguing for a return to education and the need for an ethical appeal in preference to coercion. The GNCTU faded away, but some of its constituent groups and elements of its cooperative ideology remained. Owen returned to establishing villages of cooperation (e.g., Queenswood in 1839), and in 1844 the Rochdale Pioneers’ Cooperative Society developed from a local Owenite body. However, after 1834 the thrust of working-class agitation moved from industrial to political arenas, focusing on the demands of the Chartists.

The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union was undoubtedly a failure in its implementation, yet it was attempting an impossible task that no leadership could have achieved. This is because trade unions were still learning the art of organizing into a cohesive, effective unit. At the time, workers were only able to accomplish sporadic results from organizing into unions and cooperatives. However, they were unable to achieve any sustained action. By contrast, having just won a significant political victory in the 1832 Reform Act, factory owners and burgeoning industrialists were determined in their resolve to counter any form of organized-labor movement or cooperative-based industry. They also possessed the support of a Whig government determined to show that the Reform Act would not destroy property rights. Against such power, workers were poorly paid, uneducated, and only beginning to understand the importance to organized efforts to seek improved working conditions and living-wage salaries.

Although Owen’s innovations beyond the sphere of New Lanark failed during his lifetime, he left an enduring legacy to the future of radical theory. The influence of Owen’s would be: (1) he established a personal example of one who cast aside his personal wealth in an endeavor to secure a more just future for others, (2) the economic measures at New Lanark illustrated that a policy of high wages and improved conditions need not destroy profitability, (3) many of Owen’s theoretical innovations (e.g., labor value to replace money as an Equitable Labor Exchange) are not inherently impractical, (4) his theories of, and attempts to establish, workers’ cooperatives made Owen the instigator of a significant movement of later times, as developments from the Rochdale Pioneers of 1844 demonstrate, and (5) Owen’s appreciation of the role of trade unions in replacing individual worker motivations by collective policy provided a clue to improving quantitative and qualitative living standards and also pointed to a force that could potentially be harnessed for achieving a future transformation of just and productive economic relations.

Owen’s approach to resolving economic injustice epitomized the Utopian approach to resolving exploitation. He hoped for individual conversion, then government action. Yet this was an unrealistic ambition given the existing power structure at the time. What Owen lacked was a theory of class struggle, believing instead that the transition to socialism, or a more democratic economy, would occur through the influence of reason and persuasion. Nevertheless, the idea of reconciling capital and labor and Owen’s worker co-operatives, represents what is, arguably, the initial stages of democratic socialism in the tradition of Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialists of America and the radical legacy of Bernie Sanders, Cornel West and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Notes

Marx, in Capital, discusses the expropriation of agricultural land from the poor who are dependent on that very land for their basic needs. The historical context of the enclosure movement was based on a policy measure initiated by the aristocracy and wealthy land owners in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. The movement was aimed at confiscating land that was owned in common by a village or at least available to the village for grazing animals and growing food. The enclosure movement was designed to expropriate village land and redistribute it to the aristocracy and wealthy for their ownership. In 1845 British Parliament passed the Enclosure Act of 1845, in which the British government started “enclosing” land (walls, fences, or hedges) and awarding this land to the aristocracy and wealthy land owners who, arguably, knew how to make more efficient use of it. The consequence for the people who were using this land was often eviction, sending many of them to slums in the cities in hopes of finding work in low-paying jobs such as factory work spawned by the Industrial Revolution. The most well-known enclosure movements were in the British Isles, but the practice had its roots in the Netherlands and caught on to some degree throughout Northern Europe and elsewhere as industrialization spread.

Edward J. Martin, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration, California State University, Long Beach

For tens of thousands of years the Arctic’s carbon sink has been a powerful dynamic in functionality of the Earth System. However, that all-important functionality has been crippled and could be permanently severed. According to new research based upon field observations conducted from 2003 to 2017, a large-scale carbon emission shift in the Earth System has occurred.

The “entire Arctic” now emits more carbon than it absorbs, a fact that can only be described as worse than bad news. “Given that the Arctic has been taking up carbon for tens of thousands of years, this shift to a carbon source is important because it highlights a new dynamic in the functioning of the Earth System,” says Susan Natali at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts (Source: Thawing Permafrost Has Turned the Arctic Into a Carbon Emitter, New Scientist, Oct. 21, 2019)

The 14-year study showed annualized 1.66 gigatonnes CO2 emitted from the “entire Arctic” versus 1.03 gigatonnes absorbed. It’s a major turning point in paleoclimate history, a chilling turn for the worse that threatens 10,000 years of the wonderful Holocene era of“not too hot, not too cold.” Alas, that spectacular Goldilocks climate, a perfect environment for life on the planet, is now a remembrance of the past.

In time, it’ll bring in its wake difficult/challenging lifestyles across the board, across the planet,as life turns onerous and quite possibly worse.

When scientists researched permafrost over the years, they found a few isolated regions that flipped from carbon sinks to sources of emissions, but this new “research now shows the phenomenon has happened across the region as a whole,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, 25,000 people gather, as of December 2-13, in Madrid for the 2019 UN Climate Change Conference known as COP25. Only recently, the conference was forced to scramble in a move from Chile because of uncontrollable, unprecedented “protests in the streets.” The Chilean protests are mega-numbers of extremely angry citizens sparked into action by a simple increase in transport rates, proving that the world is once again a tinderbox similar to July of 1914.

The 25,000 attendees of COP25 should take heed of an entire city Santiago shut down by angry citizens one million strong. That nagging scenario may be as important as the climate data they analyze because Chilean mass demonstrations are merely a reflection of a worldwide phenomenon that has everything to do with the failure of neoliberalism, as it casts its dark shadow over climate mitigation.

According to Amnesty International: The past few months have seen a seemingly massive surge in protests globally. From the streets of Hong Kong to La Paz, Port-au-Prince, Quito, Barcelona, Beirut and Santiago, we have witnessed a huge wave of people taking to the streets to exercise their right to protest and demand change from those in power.Amnesty International has documented signs of abuse and violations at protests in Bolivia, Lebanon, Chile, Spain, Iraq, Guinea, Hong Kong, the UK, Ecuador, Cameroon, and Egypt in October alone.

Increasingly, people are frustrated by the abject failure of neoliberalism’s austerity measures that destroy social programs, including near total collapse and/or avoidance of proactive climate policies. Contrariwise: “Global governments plan to produce 120 percent more fossil fuels by 203o,” according to a new report by leading research organizations and the UN. (Source: Stephen Leahy, Dangerous Levels of Warming Locked in by Planned Jump in fossil Fuels Output, National Geographic, Nov. 20, 2019)

Interestingly, one of the most celebrated crowning achievements of neoliberalism, Chile, the paragon of neoliberalism,has only served to emblazon in the mindset of the world a vast chasm of inequality as Chile is featured having one of the world’s worst levels of income inequality (OECD Economic Survey of Chile). A stark reminder that neoliberalism splits societies into “haves” and “have-nots” almost as effectively as monarchial precepts dating back 5,000 years to Egypt and Sumer.

The continuing failure of neoliberalism works against the best intentions of COP25 and the Paris climate accord of 2015. This failure is explained in a paper entitled “Globalization, Neoliberalism and Climate Change” by professor Liu Cheng, a world renown labor expert, professor of law and politics at Shanghai Normal University, to wit:

“For thirty years, global and national economies have been guided by policies of neoliberal deregulation, often known as the “Washington Consensus.” Neoliberalism has been disastrous for workers in most countries, pitting workers against each other in a race to the bottom and making it all but impossible to protect working class interests. There is now a growing consensus that the Washington Consensus has been a failure.” (Cheng)

“There is also a growing global recognition that we are in the midst of an unprecedented climate crisis. Ready or not, that crisis is affecting every nation, every locality, and every worker. Its effects are already serious, and unless decisive global action is taken to counter it, they will soon be catastrophic. Neoliberal deregulation, by dismantling the means for public steering of society to meet social needs, has also made it nearly impossible to correct global climate crisis.” (Cheng)

“These twin realizations, the failure of neoliberalism and the climate crisis, will define the struggle for the interests of poor and working people for the next century. At the same time, the necessity to counter climate change may provide an opportunity to address the broader problems of neoliberal deregulation.” (Cheng)

“This article argues that it is only by rolling back neoliberalism that we can protect the rights of workers globally and solve the crisis of climate change.” (Cheng)

As massive protests continue around the world, COP25 opens with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declaring the negotiations the “launchpad for significantly more action,” emphasizing the fact that the world’s largest emitters “are not pulling their weight.”

However, maybe COP25 needs to study the impact of neoliberalism as an overriding disincentive for climate change mitigation. After all, according to professor Cheng: Neoliberal deregulation, by dismantling the means for public steering of society to meet social needs, has also made it nearly impossible to correct the global climate crisis.

Therefore, COP25’s hundreds and thousands of scientific data and climate models are held hostage to neoliberalism’s scorched earth tactics. The only way for COP25 to dig out of this deep neoliberal hole is by open condemnation, thus alerting the world’s attention to the originator of climate change with a message “fix it.”

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.

“Without quick action to curb CO2 emissions, global warming is likely to increase by 4 degrees Centigrade (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above today’s normal during the 21st century and that is dangerously close to the temperature of 6 degrees Centigrade above normal that initiated the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago when 96%* of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates were wiped out.”  *(current estimate 81%)

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We will begin with a quote from Christopher Clugston in his book Blip.  (reference below)

“Our species Homo sapiens is exceptional, but not exemptional, and is subject to the same natural laws that apply to other Earth species.”

The 2012 World Bank report captioned above confirms his observation. Because of our CO2 emissions, recent temperatures in the Arctic have been the highest in recorded history. Methane release there has begun. Ocean waters throughout the planet are warming. Ice is melting at a record rate in the Antarctic.

These last words from my new book: Overcoming the Threat to Our Future speak to our conundrum.

“Can we change? Do we psychologically neurologically have the ability by means of some sort of ‘Religious Experience’ to overcome this thinking imperfection and replace it with a new form of synchronous thought and behavior that can establish for Homo sapiens coexistent unity and interactive equilibrium with all life and nonlife on the planet?“

Many are beginning to understand the seriousness of this question. They are beginning to recognize that our continuance on Planet earth will require recognition of an underlying “implicate” planetary/cosmic order. (David Bohm) And they are beginning to understand that we are not now living in an integrative harmonious relationship with that order.

These many are also beginning to understand that Homo sapiens survival on Planet earth will call for a transition into a new form of thought and behavior that will call for change in those presuppositions underpinning the validity of past and present political, economic, social, religious and philosophical thought.

This essay will further define the problem and offer a new way of thinking through it. First a geologic reality:

Massive methane reserves exist below the Arctic land areas and Arctic Ocean floor. Scientists say combined they represent more than the amount required to cause another Permian extinction event. These reserves exist in the form of methane hydrates trapped in a frozen state. As temperatures there rise from CO2 emissions, the Arctic surface ice is melting and darkening Arctic land mass is being exposed to the warming sun. (Albedo effect) Methane gas is now beginning to bubble up. As adjacent Arctic waters (Trenches) there warm, temperatures are rising beyond the in-water methane hydrate freezing point. Methane is now beginning to bubble up. (In October 2019 Russian scientists studying Arctic waters found the most powerful ever methane jets shooting up from the seabed to the water’s surface) Both on land and in the trenches this will soon cause a “methane hydrate feedback loop” to kick in. After a 2 C degrees (3.6 F) rise, it will accelerate. (Our civilization is approaching that 2 C figure) Many scientists are telling us that there will then be a runaway increase in methane as a result a feedback loop. Global temperatures will rise rapidly. During the Permian extinction, after 6 C degrees was reached the ocean surface waters throughout the planet reached more than 40 degrees Celsius. (104 degrees Fahrenheit) That led to near total planetary life extinction.

Now to David Bohm’s “Implicate Order” vs “Human Disorder’” The Bohm theory is that nature inherently tends toward implicate order and a higher form of inseparable quantum interconnectedness. Our species these last several thousand years has been moving progressively in a direction toward a higher level (form) of consciousness and we among all species have been singularly enfolding into some sort of inseparable quantum interconnectedness. However, the reality today is that we are now living at odds with inseparable quantum interconnectedness.

The good news is that many today are aware of the need to move away from the danger lurking before us and they are now demanding change. Also, our civilization at this stage has the technical ability to make the necessary change.

The worrisome news is that there is confusion intellectually as to an understanding of the political, economic, social, religious and philosophical reconfiguration required. Also worrisome is that among academically perceptive intellectuals and the general public there is no uniformity of thought as to methodology of achieving end result, no broad all-inclusive world-wide reconstructive cohesive thought. All discussion becomes stuck in the mire of the narrowness of endless scientific and other debate obscured by optimism bias argumentation. As a result, desire for change has only limited political power.

Even in areas of academia there is narrowness from endless debate. This has become most obvious in the social sciences of psychology, sociology and economics. Many of these academicians lean toward what is called “social Darwinism.” It places humanity in societal motion that becomes an explanation and even justification for the release of our neurotic psychotic impulses. Human behavior is all social mechanical. Deeper universal meaning and purpose as a controlling force is left out of the equation. David Bohm’s “implicate” cosmic and planetary order has no meaning. Leave that to the religionists and philosophers they say. Let them argue back and forth as to what is or what is not beyond the brain cage, what is morally right or morally wrong, what is cosmic. Here on earth it is all simply a matter of biological and social survival of the fittest.

These social scientists dismiss any greater purpose for the existence of man/woman. They say that socially we are the way we are because we are the way we are. We are no different than wind-up clocks. Find the faulty part and you have found the problem. Fix that part and you have solved the problem.

And as for the economists, strangely enough there is a hint among some, even to include those in the atheist camp, of Adam Smith’s market forces being “the hand of God” working its beneficence on all of human society. This faux religious spirituality can be found in prominent economists teaching in business schools in America the likes of Harvard, Wharton and the University of Chicago; also among prominent economic journalists. For these “Economic Social Scientists” the Capital Market system is given close to inherent godly status. The dark psychotic/neurotic side of human behavior is given limited or no recognition. The need for economic activity to align itself with a cosmic and planetary order is given no recognition.

This failure in the social sciences to respond is now being exacerbated in America where there is a “Hard Paranoid Right” turning its back on biosphere reality. At the extreme are the Christian evangelicals who say: Not to worry, the Apocalypse is soon to come, it is all in GOD’s plan. And that “plan” they say even includes sinful Donald Trump, our American President. Their reasoning; after the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great (like Trump sinful) freed exiled Judeans and allowed them to return to Judah. Trump they say is another Cyrus the Great. He is GOD’s plan; divine intervention.

A passage from Ephesians might be helpful to them:

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

(Paul, Ephesians 6:12, NRSV)

Then we have the American nonreligious others captivated by alternative meta-narratives grounded on “climate conspiracy theory.” And then we have those Americans who are not sucked in by any of the above. They simply have no interest.Even more worrisome is the fact that power in America remains in the hands of a capitalist neo-liberal autocracy in control of the echo chamber. These Americans have chosen not to comprehend the need for an Homo sapiens integrative planetary cosmic relationship. Their sole objective is to keep a firm grip on their power. It is clear to them that an acknowledgement of ecological reality would lead to political, economic, social and religious institutional changes that will spell their end.

All of this has left America entrapped in a social stalemate unable to envision a broad political understanding of solutions to the ecological problem.

It is not just an American problem. It has been a human problem from the beginning of our Sumerian Egyptian Age. The configuration was then and continues to be is autocratic. At its core is a fixed political, economic, social, religious and philosophical template consisting of a small number of people with wealth and power at the top and a very large number of disenfranchised under them.

That template leaves humanity today facing a harsh reality: Without world-wide change in thought and behavior at all levels of society Homo sapiens will soon be facing, as outlined in the World Bank Report, irreversible Biosphere tipping points that could lead to a sixth extinction.

So here are the questions humans throughout the planet should be asking: Can we find a way of thought and behavior that respects Nature and the Planet and assures our continuance? Can we accomplish this within the next ten or at most twenty/thirty years?

It is not clear that humanity in a unified form is capable of a social/geo-political response to these questions.

So if the answer is NO, here is the turn of the turn of the century scenario:

Vast quantities of methane having been released in the Arctic will continue. Oceans will have risen six feet or more placing major coastal population centers under water. Acidification will have destroyed much of the fish and crustacean food stock. Weather patterns will have devastated much of world agricultural production. Deindustrialization will continue in steep decline due to depletion of the earth’s nonrenewable natural resources. (metals and nonmetallic minerals) There will be massive starvation and death throughout the globe bringing down population to less than one billion. Those economically and politically advantaged humans who have been able to escape the contagion will be living away from the harsh climatic conditions in areas of the planet that remain temperature and resource habitable. In the marginal areas survivors will be left living in isolated communities. Some will be living in self-contained enclosed structures like Buckminster Fuller tetrahedron domes.

Even space stations just above the earth housing humans and capturing the Sun’s energy are a possibility, although they remain in the realm of science fiction with inherent problems of their own. We must keep in mind the fact that biologically we are earth creatures gravitationally.

By the turn of the century, irreversible tipping points will have begun. Homo sapiens extinction will be under way.

Bio

David Anderson brings together a wide range of interests in his writings, namely; theology, history, evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, geopolitics, and economics. He has written four books. The fourth just published is about a necessary geo political, social, religious, economic paradigm shift for human survival.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government at the centre is all set to introduce the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) in the Parliament on December 9. The existing Citizenship Act was enacted in 1955 which along with articles 5 to 11 of the Constitution of India determines Indian citizenship.

The original Citizenship Act of 1955 has been amended several times in the past but it had never attracted such media and public galore as it has received this time. It is intriguing to explore as to what makes the current CAB so controversial. Is there anything serious in the proposed CAB that Muslims should be worried about? How CAB is linked with the National Register of Citizens (NRC) which BJP is planning to carry out at the national level?

The government had first introduced the CAB in 2016 after 2014 general elections but due to lack of a requisite number in the upper house it could not get through that time. This time, however, the government seems to be visibly more confident after Parliament’s nod to the triple talaq bill and abrogation of Article 370 with support from crucial alliance partners like Janata Dal (United) and some regional parties like AIADMK, BJD, TRS, YSRCP and some Independents.

The main provision which has made CAB a controversial legislation is the promise to grant citizenship on the basis of religion. The proposed CAB seeks to grant citizenship to all Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, Jains and Parsis illegal migrants fleeing religious persecution from Muslim majority states of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan if they had entered India on or before December 31, 2014. The existing laws debar illegal migrants from applying for Indian citizenship.

The CAB, however, palpably excludes Muslim migrants of these countries from acquiring Indian citizenship even if they had suffered similar religious persecution. There is no clear answer from the government as to why the CAB discriminates against Muslims.

If anyone wishes to understand the true motives behind the CAB one have to view it against the backdrop of recently concluded National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam wherein at least 19 lakh people, mostly Hindus, have been excluded from the final list.

Upset with NRC’s final list, BJP’s Assam unit quickly rejected it. Its leader and Assam’s Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma explained that his government had decided to reject it because it “included many who should not have been and excluded many who are genuine Indian citizens”.

The Assam NRC has exposed the BJP which has been falsely propagating that after the 1971 War a large number of Muslims, ranging between 4 million to 10 million, had illegally migrated to India from Bangladesh. This, according to BJP, has not only changed the demography of the some north eastern States particularly Assam but also seriously undermined the right of the local people over resources.

During the 2019 election campaign the Home Minister Amit Shah had even described the illegal immigrants as ‘termites’ who were eating the grain that should go to the poor, and are taking our jobs. Stoking the communal passion he also pledged that every single infiltrator from this country would be removed, except Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs.

This narrative has helped the BJP to gain power in the region but the Assam NRC has come as a huge disappointment to the party. Its bogey of illegal Muslims infiltration has not only fallen flat but has even backfired. The party is now being blamed for this humanitarian catastrophe of making 19 lakh people as stateless.  The BJP is facing stiff resistance in the region both from within and from the opposition parties after the NRC in Assam.

Upset with the developments in Assam, the BJP now wants to correct its political folly through CAB which it thinks will prove as a two–edged sword. Through CAB, BJP wants to give citizenship to all Hindus illegal migrants who have been excluded from the Assam’s final NRC list but at the same time, it can easily exclude Muslims out of it. It will help boost BJP’s image of a party that cares Hindus not only living in the country but also outside the state.

The RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had already announced that Hindus need not be apprehensive irrespective of whether their names feature in the NRC or not in Assam and elsewhere. The BJP president and the Home Minister, Amit Shah has also echoed the same view. Recently he stated that “I assure all Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain refugees they won’t have to leave the country, they will get Indian citizenship and enjoy all the rights of an Indian national.”

With the government’s proposal to conduct a nationwide NRC after CAB, Muslims seem to be worried. They fear that if their names are left out in this exercise, due to one reason or the other, they would eventually lose their citizenship but if non-Muslims are somewhat excluded they would always have a chance to get the citizenship back through proposed CAB.

While refuting the allegation of the opposition that the proposed CAB is communal legislation specifically targeting Muslims, the BJP has come out with the following arguments: Firstly, it claims that religion is not the basis of the grant of citizenship under CAB rather religious persecution. Secondly, BJP argues that while Muslims have many countries to seek refuge, Hindus have no other place to go except India. It further considers all Hindus as the natural citizens of India.

But it has no answer to the inclusion of Christians, Buddhists and Parsis as like Muslims they do have many alternative places to seek refuge. The rationale that BJP has given for the exclusion of Muslims from CAB is not only flawed and devoid of logic but also constitutionally impermissible and must be rejected in its present form.

……………………………………………………………………

The writer is a Professor, Department of Political Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.

The publication from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) shows how the problem known as ocean deoxygenation, driven by global warming and human-caused nutrient pollution, is expanding, with impacts on humans and marine ecosystems alike.

“With this report, the scale of damage climate change is wreaking upon the ocean comes into stark focus. As the warming ocean loses oxygen, the delicate balance of marine life is thrown into disarray,” said IUCN acting director general Dr. Grethel Aguilar.

Representing the expertise of over five dozens scientists across 17 countries, the report is framed as “the largest peer-reviewed study conducted so far on ocean deoxygenation.”

Driving the problem is climate change, both directly, as oxygen is less soluble in warmer waters, and indirectly by affecting ocean dynamics. Deoxygenation is also being fueled by nutrient pollution, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, from sewage, agriculture, and aquaculture. Those factors are summed up in an infographic from IUCN:

A four-minute video entitled “A Breathless Ocean” released by the IUCN explains the process further:

 Recently, I was in Homer, Alaska, to talk about my book The End of Ice. Seconds after I had thanked those who brought me to the small University of Alaska campus there, overwhelmed with some mix of sadness, love, and grief about my adopted state — and the planet generally — I wept.

I tried to speak but could only apologize and take a few moments to collect myself. It’s challenging for me, even now, to explain the wash of emotions and thoughts that suddenly swept over me as I stood at that podium on a warm, windy, rainy night on the southern Kenai Peninsula among a group ready to learn more about what was happening to our beloved Earth.

“Sorry for that,” I finally said after a few more breaths, as my voice cracked with emotion, “but I know you’ll understand. You live in this state and you know as well as I do that once Alaska gets in your blood, it stays there. And I love this place with all my heart.” Most of the listeners in that room were already nodding and at least one person had begun to cry.

I lived in Alaska for a decade, starting in 1996, and it’s been in my blood since the year before that when I first laid eyes on Denali National Park and the spectacular Alaska Range. In fact, five of the nine chapters of my new book are set in Alaska and its mournful title is a kind of bow to my abiding love for this country’s northernmost state. That moment in 1995 when the clouds literally parted to reveal Denali’s lofty summit and its spectacular spread of glaciers proved to be love at first sight. In fact, most summers thereafter I would visit that range as well as others in Alaska, volcanoes in Mexico, the Karakorum Himalaya of South Asia, or the South American Andes.

Then, in the summer of 2003, several months after the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, I listened to radio reports on the beginning of the grim American occupation of that land from a tent on Denali while volunteering with the Park Service. It was there as well, strangely enough, that I first felt the pull of Iraq — or rather of the gaping void in the mainstream media when it came to what that occupation was doing to the Iraqi people. I then decided to travel from ice to heat, from Denali to the Middle East, to find out what was happening there and report on it.

That strange mountainside call led me into a career in journalism that pulled me away from my beloved Alaska whose vastnesses, largely devoid of a human presence, I’ve never experienced elsewhere. And as far as I traveled from its unique landscape, the feeling that the climate was already being disrupted in dramatic ways there stuck with me through my years of war reporting. The thought of the ever-receding glaciers in my former home state pained me and somehow drew me from America’s forever wars to another kind of war — on the planet itself — and into nearly a decade of climate reporting.

I told the audience all of this, occasionally pausing so as not to cry again thanks to a sadness born in part from the convulsions of wildfires, droughts, rapidly thawing permafrost, native coastal villages melting into the seas, and fast-shrinking glaciers. And don’t forget a Trumpian lapdog of a governor who, just like his darling president, seems unable to cut services fast enough or work hard enough to open yet more of this great state to drilling, logging, and pollution (despite his growing unpopularity).

The evening before, November 20th, I’d spoken at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and it was 48 degrees Fahrenheit (and raining, not snowing), a full 20 degrees warmer than the normal high temperature for that month. And that’s a reality that has become ever more the new normal there, even though the top third of the state lies inside the Arctic Circle. That, in turn, reflects another new reality: “Arctic amplification,” which means that the higher latitudes of this planet are warming roughly twice as fast as the mid-latitudes. In other words, Alaska is in the crosshairs of climate disruption.

Put another way, the audiences I was speaking to that month and all of my friends in Alaska are now living in what feels like a chronic state of shock as things unravel in their state at warp speed.

Alaska, the New Norm

It’s no secret that vast numbers of climate scientists are now grieving for the planet and humanity’s future, with some even describing their symptoms as a climate-change version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Several of the scientists I interviewed for my book said as much. Dan Fagre, who works for the United States Geological Survey at Glacier National Park, was typical. When I asked him what he felt like while watching the glaciers (for which that park was named) disappear — they are expected to be gone by 2030 — he responded, “It’s like being a battle-hardened soldier, but on a philosophical basis, it’s tough to watch the thing you study disappear.”

And it’s not just climate scientists like him. Others living near areas where the changes are happening most dramatically seem to be experiencing such symptoms as well. “You wouldn’t believe what it was like to be in Anchorage last summer,” my friend Matt Rafferty told me when we met in that city on the morning I returned from Homer. “We saw 90 degrees on July 4th and then, later in the summer, the wildfire smoke was so thick on some days you literally could not see across the street downtown.”

An environmentalist who has long been working to protect Alaska from the extraction vultures, Matt is, like me, in love with the natural beauty of the place. I’ve traveled with him to the remote Alaskan backcountry and think of him as upbeat and indefatigable when it comes to his work, whatever the odds of success. But listening to him describe the climate convulsions wracking his home state recently, I couldn’t help but think of interviews I had done with family members in Iraq who had lost loved ones to U.S. military attacks. People with PTSD — and I know this from my own personal experience with it — tend to repetitively tell stories about the trauma they’ve experienced. It’s our way of trying to process it.

And this was exactly what Matt, normally not a guy given to overemphasis, was doing that morning, which shocked me. “We had rivers in south-central Alaska that were so warm the salmon were dying of heart attacks,” he continued, barely stopping to take a breath. “The river water reached 80 degrees in some of them! The water was 80 degrees! Can you believe that? There were literally tens of thousands of dead salmon floating belly up in many of the rivers. I did a pack-raft trip in the Talkeetna Mountains wearing nothing but a t-shirt and shorts! That is absurd! You know how cold the water usually is in the rivers here. It literally got so hot in the sun we had to pull out and sit underneath a tree in the shade!”

He recounted much that I already knew, including that Arctic sea ice had melted away at record speed and that, by the fall, permafrost was thawing at rates not predicted for another 70 years. On the coast of the Arctic Ocean in northern Alaska, whaling towns that traditionally used permafrost cellars to store, age, and keep their subsistence food cool throughout the year — the Inupiat use them for tons of whale and walrus meat — now find them pooling with water and sprouting mold thanks to the thawing permafrost.

By that September, Matt told me, he was struggling with depression. “I lost all hope, as it truly felt apocalyptic here,” he continued more slowly and quietly now, rubbing one of his arms in what I imagined was a sort of self-consoling gesture. Spending more time meditating, doing yoga, and finding helpful spiritual podcasts has, he added, become mandatory for him — and he’s far from alone in that among Alaskans as southern weather is visibly migrating north.

That day in Anchorage, I stopped at my favorite bookstore to check out the latest volumes on the state. One of them, Alone at the Top: Climbing Denali in the Dead of Winter, caught my eye. Arctic explorer Lonnie Dupre had made history in 2015 by summiting Denali in January… solo. It was an incredible feat that he writes about in his book, but the moment I won’t forget was when he described being trapped in his tent on that mountain at 11,200 feet during a storm that raged for days. At one point, he heard what sounded like small rocks pelting the tent, unzipped the door, poked his head out, and was shocked to find that, on December 31st, it was sleeting, not snowing. We’re talking about a moment when the average temperature for that elevation should have been something like 35 degrees below zero.

It hurt my heart to know that such weather paroxysms were afflicting even Denali, a mountain, standing so high and so near the Arctic Circle, that changed my life by drawing me to Alaska when I was in my twenties. Despite everything I now know, it still stunned me.

And here I am, like my close friends in that state, telling this story to anyone who will listen. I know this will sound over the top to non-Alaskan readers, but even writing this brings tears to my eyes. It’s simply not supposed to be this way. Just about nothing that’s happening there, climatologically speaking, today is what we once would have thought of as “natural,” even though it’s now the new norm.

Hearing so many of these stories while visiting proved too much to take in, as did knowing what’s now starting to happen to salmon, bears, moose, and other wildlife of all sorts. Thanks to chaotic climatic shifts, such creatures are beginning to migrate from what once were their home territories due to lack of familiar food. And all of it is, in its own way, traumatizing.

During a recent lecture at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, presented a grim overview of radically changed conditions across our northernmost state. In his 30 years with the National Weather Service in Alaska, Thoman has watched as the climate in his home state was disrupted by the anthropogenic climate crisis. Originally from Pennsylvania, he told the audience how reading about such a different world in works that ranged from Jack London’s turn-of-the-twentieth-century short story “To Build a Fire” to Barry Lopez’s book Arctic Dreams had led him to Alaska. London, for instance, had written about a place in which minus 70 degree temperatures were part of everyday life. “But the fact of the matter is,” he told us grimly, “the environment described in these books doesn’t exist anymore.” He added, “That’s really hard. But it’s what we’ve got, it’s what we live in.”

Thoman spoke of how, thanks to radically warming waters, the Bering Sea is literally experiencing a mass exodus of marine life, while the state itself is, like a beloved friend, in the midst of a health crisis that no one in power is truly trying to treat.

No wonder all of this leaves me with a feeling of utter impotence. Each new weather shock feels like another body blow. Or yet further evidence of how I’m losing a loved one. Alaska, in other words, is suffering climate death by a thousand cuts, while I struggle daily to accept the new reality: that the state is already irreparably changed.

Rainbow Peak

Deep waves of love and sadness had already begun coursing through me as my flight descended into Anchorage when this trip began. And such feelings only continued during the time I spent there. Time with old climbing buddies proved bittersweet, as it was never long before we couldn’t help but speak of the changes already occurring, even as we planned future forays into Alaska’s mountains.

The last full day, I knew I needed to be alone in those mountains. I’d brought the necessary gear with me for late-November hiking temperatures, or at least for the way I remembered them from the years when I lived there: crampons, an ice axe, extra layers of warm clothing for deep snow and mountain temperatures that should have been in the teens (even without taking the wind-chill factor into account).

Before sunrise that day, I headed south from Anchorage on the Seward highway as it dropped down beside the waters of Turnagain Arm. I was heading for a trail that would take me into the Chugach Mountains, one of my old stomping grounds.

Delicate pastel blues and soft buttery yellows illuminated the sky ahead as the lazy winter sun rose. While snow still covered the tops of the surrounding mountains, lower down the colors on them faded from bright whites to browns and greens — hardly a surprise, since temperatures here have been so warm and snow so scarce in this year’s disrupted lead-up to winter.

I passed several areas where, in the mid-1990s, I would already have been ice-climbing atop frozen waterfalls at this time of year. Now, they were visibly bone dry with temperatures too warm for ice to form.

After arriving at my trailhead, I hiked alone toward a nearby peak. Out of habit, I began with a heavy jacket on, but soon removed it, along with my gloves, in temperatures well above freezing. I wasn’t used to this and it felt abidingly strange to alter my old habits as I climbed.

I gained elevation quickly. Within a couple of hours, I was in something that finally seemed Alaskan to me, genuine winter conditions as I post-holed through the snow — which means having your legs regularly break through the surface snow to perhaps knee- or mid-thigh-height — making my way toward the summit. I paused from time to time to breathe in the smell of the trees and watch the occasional snow flurry flutter down into the valley below.

The summit ridge was blanketed in snow. As I arrived there, I suddenly realized that I had been chasing winter — that is, my own past life and dreams — up these mountains on this last full day of my visit, seeking to find an Alaska that no longer was.

I marveled at the grand 360-degree view, taking photos of the snowy peaks around me, drinking it all in, before I had to descend and head back to my home in Washington State and back to a climate-changed present on a burning planet where I would continue to dream of the Alaska I had once known. I knew I would be planning future ascents here, while at least some of it remains as it once was.

Shortly before boarding my flight home from the Anchorage airport, the cloud cover to the north cleared, revealing Denali’s still majestic white silhouette against a dark blue backdrop. I stood there, transfixed, for nearly half an hour unable to take my eyes off that mountain. Only when it began to grow dark and Denali was no longer visible could I allow myself to walk off, even as I wiped away more tears.

Dahr Jamail, a TomDispatch regular, is a recipient of numerous honors, including the Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism for his work in Iraq and a 2018 Izzy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Media. His newest book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, was published this year. He is also the author of Beyond the Green Zone and The Will to Resist.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Originally published in TomDispatch.com

Carbon, the essential element underpinning photosynthesis and life, is transformed into toxic substances in the remnants of plants and organisms buried in sediments. Once released to the atmosphere (Fig. 1) in the form of CO₂, CO and methane, in large quantities these gases become lethal and have been responsible for mass extinctions of species (Fig. 2).

Given amplifying feedbacks from land and oceans triggered by rising temperatures, the concept of an upper limit of warming determined by limitation on carbon emissions alone is unlikely, since, under a rising high greenhouse gas concentration, amplifying feedbacks triggered by methane release (Fig. 1), bushfires, warming oceans and loss of reflectivity of melting ice, temperatures would keep rising. Recent findings show that warmer ocean water is melting crystallized methane and releasing it into the sediment and waters off the coast of Washington state, at levels that reach the same amount of methane from the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

Attempts at CO₂ down-draw (sequestration), if urgently applied on a global scale, may conceivably be able to slow down further warming. This article refers to natural methane reservoirs and human induced methane emissions, indicating that, once temperatures supersede a critical level, a further rise in methane release would result regardless of restrictions of emissions.

According to Kelley (2003) a planetary “runaway greenhouse event” may be triggered when a planet overheats due to absorption of more solar energy than it can give off to retain equilibrium. As a result the oceans may boil filling its atmosphere with steam, which leaves the planet uninhabitable, as Venus is now. Planetary geologists think there is good evidence that Venus was the victim of a runaway greenhouse effect which turned the planet into the boiling hell we see today. According to Hansen (2012)“if we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there’s a substantial chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse”. In a critical review of the theory of the runaway greenhouse syndrome Goldblatt and Watson (2012) state:  “We cannot therefore completely rule out the possibility that human actions might cause a transition, if not to full runaway, then at least to a much warmer climate state than the present one.”

Fig 1. A methane explosion crater in the Yamal region of Siberia

The concentration of fossil carbon deposits in the form of coal, oil, natural gas, coal seam gas, permafrost methane, ice clathrates, shale oil, and oil sands, once released to the atmosphere in large quantities, generates powerful feedbacks from land and ocean. This includes further release of greenhouse gases, warming oceans, loss of reflectivity of melting ice, and bushfires, pushing temperatures further upward. With greenhouse gas concentration rising at a rate of 2–3 parts per million (ppm) per year[1] and the Earth heating-up by 0.98^oC since 1936, the ultimate consequences of this trend belong to the unthinkable.

Fig. 2Relations between CO₂ levels in the atmosphere and mass extinctions of genera. Data cited from Royer et al. 2002 and from Keller 2005 and Wignall and Twitchett 2002

By 2012 total emissions are estimated to have reached 384 GtC, with an annual amount of 41.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2018. According to the IPCC (2013) no more than 275 GtC of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels of 746 GtC can be emitted if global temperature rise is to be restricted to 2^oC above pre-industrial temperatures, an impossible target since amplifying carbon feedbacks would push temperatures upwards.

According to Hansen et al. (2013) recoverable fossil fuel reserves include ~120 GtC gas, ~80 GtC oil, >10,000 GtC coal, >2000 GtC unconventional gas, ~700 GtC unconventional oil, totaling ~13,000 GtC (Fig. 3). According to Heede and Oreskes (2016)global reserves of oil (~171 GtC), natural gas (~95) and coal (479 GtC) totaling 746 GtC, are below Hansen et al.’s estimates.

Fig 3. Estimates suggest the possibility of near-or above 13,000 GtC of fossil fuel reserves (Hansen et al. 2013).

The amount of unstable methane deposits in permafrost (Fig. 4) and methane hydrates (clathrates) in ocean sediments (Fig. 5) is of a similar order of magnitude as the amount of fossil fuel reserves. This includes methane hydrates in sediments (~10,000 GtC), solubility and biological pump (~6000 GtC), Permafrost methane (~900 GtC), tropical peatlands and vulnerable vegetation (~750 GtC) (Fig. 4). Unoxidized metastable deposits of methane and methane hydrates, accumulated during the Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles and vulnerable to temperature rise, are already leaking as indicated by atmospheric concentration which have risen from 1988 (~1700 ppb CH₄ ) to 2019 (~1860 ppb CH₄ ) at a rate of ~5.2 ppb/year, which for radiative equivalent of X25CO₂ reached more than 40 ppm CO₂-equivalent.

Fig 4.Vulnerable carbon sinks. ( a ) Land permafrost ~ 600 GtC; High-latitude peatlands ~ 400 GtC; tropical peatlands  ~100 GtC; vegetation subject to fire and/or deforestation  ~ 650 GtC; ( b ) Oceans methane hydrates ~10,000 GtC;Solubility pump ~2700 GtC; Biological pump ~3300 GtC; total ~17,750 GtC

Fig 5a. Global distribution of methane hydrate deposits on the ocean floor.

Fig. 5b plumes of methane bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean.

Fig 5c. Frozen methane bubbles at Abraham Lake, Alberta

Meinshausen et al. (2011) estimated global-mean surface temperature increases, applying a climate sensitivity of 3°C per doubling of CO₂, affecting by 2100 a temperature rise between 1.5°C to 4.5°C relative to pre-industrial levels. By 2300, under constant emissions, CO₂ concentration would rise to ~2000 ppm, methane to 3.5 ppm and nitrous oxide to 0.52 ppm (Fig. 6). Amplifying feedbacks are taken into account, but the effects of tipping points and of cold ice-melt pools formed in the oceans near Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets are unclear.

Fig 6.GHG concentrations recommended for the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project) to the year 2300. Shown are:  (a) atmospheric CO₂; (b) methane; (c) nitrous oxide. Methane levels of 3500 ppb = 3.5 ppm x25_forcing = 87.5 ppm CO_2equivalent; N₂O of 500 ppb = 0.5 ppm x298_forcing = 149 ppm CO_2equivalent.

Given the estimated total of exploitable hydrocarbon resources (~13.000 GtC) and of unstable methane deposits (~17,750 GtC), the amount released under different future climate conditions is subject to estimates:

A. Assuming mean global temperature of +2^oC (above pre-industrial), with allowance made for the masking effects of sulphur aerosols, the combustion of ~2 percent of the fossil fuel reserves (13,000 GtC), i.e. ~260 GtC, would raise CO₂ concentration by ~130 ppm (100 GtC = 50 ppm CO₂) ( 3). Combustion of ~5 percent of the fossil fuel reserve would raise CO₂ concentration by ~325 ppm.

B. Under +2^oC above pre-industrial, release of CO₂ from fires and other feedback effects such as melting of permafrost and release of methane would raise atmospheric carbon by at least 1 percent of natural unstable carbon deposits(~17,750 GtC).

C. The flow of ice melt water from Greenland and Antarctica into the oceans would create large regions of cold water capable of absorption of atmospheric CO₂.

According to the Hansen et al. (2013)“If we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there’s a substantial chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty”. Stephen Hawking (2017) appears to agree with Hansen’s warning, stating: “if the US pulls out of the Paris climate agreement it may lead to runaway global warming, eventually turning Earth’s atmosphere into something resembling Venus”.  Goldblatt and Watson (2012) wrote “The ultimate climate emergency is a ‘runaway greenhouse’: a hot and water-vapor-rich atmosphere limits the emission of thermal radiation to space, causing runaway warming … This would evaporate the entire ocean and exterminate all planetary life … We cannot therefore completely rule out the possibility that human actions might cause a transition, if not to full runaway, then at least to a much warmer climate state than the present one … However, our understanding of the dynamics, thermodynamics, radiative transfer and cloud physics of hot and steamy atmospheres is weak.”

An analysis by Carana (2013) suggests accelerated release of methane from permafrost and methane hydrates (clathrates) could trigger runaway global warming  (Fig. 7). A polynomial trend for the Arctic shows temperature anomalies of +4°C by 2020, +7°C by 2030 and +11°C by 2040, threatening major feedbacks, further albedo changes and methane releases leading to global temperature anomalies of 20°C+ by 2050.

Fig 7.A polynomial[2] trend line points at global temperature anomalies (Carana 2013).

The magnitude of a runaway greenhouse effect is constrained by evidence from the geological record. For example, the 55 million years-old PETM event (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), lasting for about 100,000 years, driven by high CO₂ level of 1700 ppm, does not appear to have triggered a runaway greenhouse process. The PETM is attributed to ¹³C-depleted methane (Zeebe et al. 2009), reaching 5 – 8^oC and leading to a mass extinction of 35-50% of benthic foraminifera. By sharp contrast the current Anthropocene hyperthermal event, commencing with the industrial age and re-accelerating since about 1975, constitutes a temporally abrupt development exceeding the rate of geological hyperthermal events (Fig. 8), a rate which does not allow biological adaptation and thereby enhances a mass extinction of species (Barnosky et al. 2011).

Fig 8. A comparison of Cenozoic CO₂ rise rates and temperaturerise rates, highlighting the extreme rise rates in the Anthropocene.

[1]; October 2018:  406.00 ppm;October 2019: 408.53 ppm

[2] A polynomial function is a function such as a quadratic, a cubic, a quartic, and so on, involving only non-negative integer powers of x.

Andrew Glikson, Earth and climate scientist, Australian National University, geospec@iinet.net.au

Ouch! PISA, OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment has released their global results for 2018 (https://www.oecd.org/pisa). Started in 2000, they run the test every three years for 15-year-olds in the OECD, which has mainly richer, developed nations.

In 2009, to compare the OECD’s educational outcomes with the rest of the world, PISA began to invite other countries to participate. To date, over 90 countries have taken the tests. China was not included in the first three rounds, 2000, 2003 and 2006, but has been joining every time starting in 2009, maybe to OECD’s chagrin.

The results speak for themselves, which can be seen at the end of this article, back to 2006. In general, Asia outperforms the rest of the world, and within Asia, predominantly Chinese territories usually top the list.

For 2018, China, Singapore, Macao and Hong Kong took the first four places.

Over the years, I’ve heard all the excuses you can pin to a wall: the Chinese have a higher IQ, they cheat, they only allow their best students to take the tests, they cram and prepare, etc.

Does the US send students from drugged out, inner city hellholes to take PISA? Does France take kids from bombed out, minority enclaves that encircle most of their cities? United Kingdom and their violent, starving projects? I doubt it. Nor does China probably pick students from backwater rural villages either.  China does pick students from two metro areas, Beijing and Shanghai, and two provinces with smaller cities, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In any case, there is an inherent bias in all countries to avoid their at-risk students. All countries chosen have the opportunity to prepare their students for the PISA tests, by taking past versions, which are readily available for the whole world, on the OECD’s website. No country has an inside advantage there. Cheating? I doubt that is the case for any countries, since the OECD administers and monitors the exams around the world. No country would want to be called out for doing it anyway. The risk of international opprobrium would be too great.

While there are statistics that show the Chinese having a three- to five-point advantage in IQ over the West, I’m always a little skeptical of the cultural bias that intelligence tests may have.  When Africans, Asians and Latin Americans get questions about tennis, technical topics and telecommunications in daily life – yet they may not even have electricity or internet/libraries in their towns and villages – that is tying one arm behind their proverbial backs. Wealthier countries can develop IQ tests in their own national languages based on their cultural norms, like China, but less wealthy Latin Americans, Asians and Africans likely have to accept tests developed in the West, in French, Portuguese, Spanish and English.

Even if the stats show the Chinese scoring higher in IQ, results in any socio-economic situation are usually predominately determined by environmental factors, not genetics. You can be born with an IQ of 200, but if you are stunted during childhood from a lack of food, poisoned by chemicals, sickened by chronic diseases and have to cope with daily violence or insecurity, your ability to excel academically is seriously challenged. Likewise, if you are of average intelligence, grow up safe, healthy and well-fed, chances are you are going to do well in school and life.

Which brings me to China. My wife and I taught in the US for several years in typical public schools, then for nine years in “elite” private international ones in China. During that time, our younger daughter went to those fancy, international schools and this coming June, will have spent four years at a Chinese university, getting her Bachelor of Science. Before that, our two daughters went to French and US public schools, and then our older daughter graduated from a very good private American university. Living in China a total of 16 years, we also have an excellent understanding of China’s national public education system. Thus, we are knowledgeable on the subject.

Both our daughters got a great education and both are doing very well in life. But I learned through all this that the way the Chinese approach for going to school, compared to France and the United States is very different. This probably goes back to the civil service exams that candidates have been taking, for the last 2,000 years.  These morphed into the modern day gaokao, the big national exam that millions of Chinese take every year, to get accepted into university. All of these millennial tests are rigorous, challenging and not for the unprepared. I can tell you that Chinese students work much harder than French students, who work much harder than US ones. For the last generation in the West in general and the US in particular, there is this idea that students have to “have fun” and “be entertained”, in order to learn. Positive encouragement is only allowed and criticism has to be nuanced and sanitized into irrelevance. Teachers sure can’t offend families and students with the harsh truth.

This is not the case in China. The central focus of going to school is to bust your butt and yes, you are in competition with your classmates and results do count, both good and bad. As I explained in The China Trilogy, Chinese civilization has mostly been an uncompromising meritocracy going back 5,000 years. Going to school and graduating are very much a part of that hard-nosed culture.

Is it any wonder that the Chinese have the best merit-based academic system in the world? The Chinese do well in these international tests because they work their asses off in the classroom, where there are positive incentives for doing well (getting to go to the best public schools and universities) and negative consequences, if you are a slacker (not getting to go to university, thus moving into the vocational-technical system for eventual lower paying blue collar and technical jobs).

Another number that jumps out from the 2018 list is Taiwan, called Chinese Taipei, to respect the One China policy. If genetics were key, then why do these Chinese rank well below the top four? Obviously, environmental factors are at play, since they are the same people. Maybe, after 70 years of being Americanized, they are “having fun” in class and “being entertained” in school too much. Those notions don’t cut it on the Mainland, where elbow grease and focused commitment are king and queen.

The PISA results are a good overall indicator of academic accountability, but not the final word. Russia scores quite low on the 2018 list, and in past tests has been just average, but is known for having one of the most rigorous and demanding education systems around. It cranks out world class engineers, IT experts, mathematicians, scientists, researchers and doctors. Maybe their 15-year-olds think PISA is a waste of time, or Russia could be using a different system to assess their students.

Parents, politicians, teachers and students have been complaining about their schools for thousands of years. Just ask Socrates and Confucius. Education has also been a millennial ideological battlefield for just as long, between rich and poor, elites and commoners and cities versus the countryside. Mao Zedong rallied his people for ten years, during the Cultural Revolution, to overcome this exact same conundrum.

Over time, schools become a mirror into the soul of the people, a reflection of a culture’s socioeconomic values. In communist-socialist China, it’s all about hard work, merit and sacrifice.

In the imperial-capitalist West, it’s more and more about being entertained, political correctness and identity politics, which mask the rapidly widening economic gulf between the 1% and the 99%.

Trend-lines since World War II between China and Eurangloland paint a vivid picture for 21^st century’s winners and losers, survivors and the extinct. But then again, maybe I’m wrong.

Since PISA started in 2000, the US has always been average at best, with Western European countries generally outperforming humanity’s globocop bully. However, in 2018, the US leapfrogged perennial rivals like Germany, the UK and France.

Hey, I think I know who deserves all the glory and I can promise you he will take full credit.

The man in the White House, President Donald Trump!

Jeff J. Brown is the author of The China Trilogy (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/06/30/praise-for-the-china-trilogy-the-votes-are-in-it-r-o-c-k-s-what-are-you-waiting-for/), blogs and podcasts at www.chinarising.puntopress.com. His forthcoming book, Faster than a Speeding Bullet – the Chinese People’s Unstoppable Socialist Dream for Global Leadership into the 22^nd Century, will be released in December 2020.

My contact email is jeff@brownlanglois.com.

Creative Commons:  This article by Jeff J. Brown is available for re-publication free of charge under Creative Commons.

How to live a more sustainable life? This question generates a lot of debate that is focused on what individuals can do in order to address problems like climate change. For example, people are encouraged to shop locally, to buy organic food, to install home insulation, or to cycle more often.

But how effective is individual action when it is systemic social change that is needed? Individuals do make choices, but these are facilitated and constrained by the society in which they live. Therefore, it may be more useful to question the system that requires many of us to travel and consume energy as we do.

Climate Change Policies

Policies to address climate change and other environmental problems are threefold: decarbonization policies (encouraging renewable energy sources, electric cars, heat pumps), energy efficiency policies (decreasing energy input/output ratio of appliances, vehicles, buildings), and behavioral change policies (encouraging people to consume and behave more sustainably, for instance by adopting the technologies promoted by the two other policies).

The first two strategies aim to make existing patterns of consumption less resource-intensive through technical innovation alone. These policies ignore related processes of social change, which perhaps explains why they have not led to a significant decrease in energy demand or CO2-emissions.

Advances in energy efficiency have not resulted in lower energy demand, because they don’t address new and more resource-intensive consumption patterns that often emerge from more energy efficient technologies.[1][2] Likewise, renewable energy sources have not led to a decarbonisation of the energy infrastructure, because total and per capita energy demand are increasing faster than renewable energy sources are added.[3]

Consequently, the only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to focus more on social change. Energy efficiency and decarbonization policies need to be combined with “social innovation” if we want energy use and carbon emissions to go down. This is where behavioral change policies come in. The third pillar of climate change policy tries to steer consumer choices and behaviors in a more sustainable direction.

Behavioral Change Policies

Instruments and policy packages designed to achieve behavior change vary greatly, but most can be categorized either as “carrots, sticks, or sermons”.[4] They can be economic incentives (such as grants for “green” products, energy taxes, soft loans), standards and regulations (such as building codes or vehicle emission standards), or the provisioning of information (more detailed energy bills, smart meters, awareness campaigns).

All these policy instruments are focused on what are thought to be the determinants of individual behaviors.[5] They assume that either individuals take rational decisions based on product price and information (the homo economicus model), or that behaviors are the outcomes of beliefs, attitudes and values (various value-belief models). According to these dominant social theories, people engage in pro-environmental behavior for self-interested reasons (because it is enjoyable or saves money), or for normative reasons (because they think it’s the right thing to do).

However, many pro-environmental actions involve a conflict between self-interested and normative reasons. Pro-environmental behavior is often considered to be less profitable, less pleasurable, and/or more time-consuming. Consequently, people need to make an effort to benefit the environment, and this is why, according to behavioral change researchers, pro-environmental values and attitudes are not necessarily matched by individuals’ behaviors – a phenomenon they call the “value-action gap”.

To close this gap, two strategies are proposed. The first is to make normative goals more compatible with self-interested goals, either by decreasing the costs of pro-environmental actions, or by increasing the costs of harmful actions. The second strategy is to strengthen normative goals, in the hope that people will engage in pro-environmental behavior even if it is more expensive or effortful. This is usually pursued through awareness campaigns.

Individual Choice

However, the results of behavioral change policies have been disappointing so far. Two decades of climate-change related awareness campaigns have not decreased energy demand and carbon emissions in a significant way. The reason for this limited success is that existing attempts to change behavior rest on a very narrow view of the social world.[6]

Behavioral change policies are based on the widespread agreement that what people do is in essence a matter of individual choice.[7] For example, whether people pick one mode of travel or another, is positioned as a matter of personal preference.[8] It follows that agency (the power to change) and responsibility for energy demand, consumption, and climate change are ultimately thought to lie within individual persons.

It is this concept of choice that lies behind strategies of intervention (persuasion, pricing, advice). Given better information or more appropriate incentives, “badly behaving” individuals are expected to change their minds and choose to adopt pro-environmental behaviors.[9]

Obviously, individuals do make choices about what they do and some of these are based on values and attitudes. For example, some people don’t eat meat, while others don’t drive cars, and still others live entirely off-the-grid. However, the fact that most people do eat meat, do drive cars, and are connected to the electric grid is not simply an isolated matter of choice. Individuals do not exist in a vacuum. What people do is also conditioned, facilitated and constrained by societal norms, political institutions, public policies, infrastructures, technologies, markets and culture.[10]

The Limits of Individual Choice

As individuals, we may have degrees of choice, but our autonomy is always limited.[11] For example, we can buy a more energy efficient car, but we can’t provide our own cycling infrastructure, or make car drivers respect cyclists. The Dutch and the Danish cycle a lot more than people in other industrialized nations, but that’s not because they are more environmentally conscious. Rather, they cycle in part because there’s an excellent infrastructure of dedicated cycle lanes and parking spaces, because it is socially acceptable to be seen on a bike, even in office wear, and because car drivers have the skills and culture to deal with cyclists.

For example, Dutch drivers are taught that when they get out of the car, they should reach for the door handle using their right hand – forcing them to turn around so that they can see if there is a cyclist coming from behind. Furthermore, in case of an accident between a car driver and a cyclist, the car driver is always considered responsible, even if the cyclist made a mistake. Obviously, an individual in the UK or the US can decide to go cycling without this supporting infrastructure, culture, and legal framework, but it is less likely that large numbers of people will follow their example.

People in industrialized countries are often locked into unsustainable lifestyles, whether they like it or not. Without a smartphone and always-on internet, for example, it is becoming difficult to take part in modern society, as more and more daily chores depend on these technologies. Once the connected smartphone is established as a ‘necessity’, an individual can still choose to buy an energy efficient device, but he or she can’t do anything about the fact that it will probably stop working after three years, and that it cannot be repaired.

Neither do individuals have the power to change the ever increasing bit rates on the internet, which systematically add to the energy use in data centers and network infrastructure because content providers keep “innovating”.[12] An individual can try to consume as little as possible, but he or she shouldn’t expect too much help because the dominant economic system requires growth in order to survive.

Blaming Each Other

In sum, individuals can make pro-environmental choices based on attitudes and values, and they may inspire others to do the same, but there are so many other things involved that focusing on changing individual “behavior” seems to miss the point.[13] Trying to persuade people to live sustainably through individual behavior change programs will not address the larger and more significant structures and ideas that facilitate and limit their options.

In fact, by placing responsibility – and guilt – squarely on the individuals, attention is deflected away from the many institutions involved in structuring possible courses of action, and in making some very much more likely than others. [14] The discourse of sustainable “behavior” holds consumers collectively responsible for political and economic decisions, rather than politicians and economic actors themselves.

This makes pro-environmental “behavior” policies rather divisive – it is the other individuals (for example meat eaters or car drivers) who are at fault for failing to consume or behave in line with particular values, rather than politicians, institutions and providers which enable unsustainable food and transport systems to develop and thrive.

As this example makes clear, individual behavior change is not just a theoretical position, it is also a political position. Focusing on individual responsibility is in line with neoliberalism and often serves to suppress a systemic critique of political, economic and technological arrangements.[15]

Beyond Individual Behavior

If significant societal transformations are required, it makes more sense to decenter individuals from the analysis and look at the whole picture. Other approaches in social theory suggest that rather than being the expression of an individual’s values and attitudes, individual behavior is in fact the observable expression of the social world, including socially shared tastes and meanings, knowledge and skills, and technology, infrastructure and institutions. As such, behavior is just the “tip of the iceberg”, and the effects of intervening in behavior are limited accordingly.

A much better target for sustainability is the socially embedded underpinning of behavior – the larger part of the iceberg that is under water.[16] This might entail focusing not on individuals and choices but on the social organization of everyday practices such as cooking, washing, shopping, or playing sports. How people perform these practices depends not only on individual choice, but also on the material, social and cultural context. [17]

For example, the practice of car driving requires “stuff” (cars, roads, parking spaces, gasoline stations, oil refineries), competences (driving skills, knowledge of traffic rules), and meanings (ideas of freedom, car driving is the “normal” thing to do, not having a car means you have failed in life). It makes little sense trying to convince people to drive less (or not drive at all) when these systemic issues are overlooked.

If social practices are taken to be the core units of analysis, rather than the individuals who perform them, it becomes possible to analyze and steer social change in a much more meaningful way.[18] By shifting the focus away from individual choice, it becomes clear that individual behavior change policies only represent incremental, minimal or marginal shifts at the level of a practice. At the same time, it reveals the extent to which state and other actors configure daily life.

For example, the idea that a car equals personal freedom is a recurrent theme in car advertisements, which are much more numerous than campaigns to promote cycling. And because different modes of transport compete for the same roadspace, it is governments and local authorities that decide which forms get priority depending on the infrastructures they build.

When the focus is on practices, the so-called “value-action gap” can no longer be interpreted as evidence of individual ethical shortcomings or individual inertia. Rather, the gap between people’s attitudes and their “behavior” is due to systemic issues: individuals live in a society that makes many pro-environmental arrangements rather unlikely.

The New Normal

In conclusion, although individual behavioral change policies purport to address social and not just technological change, they do so in a very limited way. As a result, they have exactly the same shortcomings as the other strategies, which are focused on efficiency and innovation.[19] Like energy efficiency and decarbonization policies, behavior change policies don’t challenge unsustainable social conventions or infrastructures.

They don’t consider wider-ranging system level changes which would radically transform the way we live – and that could potentially achieve much more significant reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. For example, recycling garbage does not question the production of waste in the first place, and even legitimizes it. By diverting attention away from systemic issues that drive energy demand, behavioral change policies frequently reinforce the status quo.[20]

In contrast to policies aimed at individuals, policies that frame sustainability as a systemic, institutional challenge can bring about the many forms of innovation that are needed to address problems like climate change. Relevant societal innovation is that in which contemporary rules of the game are eroded, in which the status quo is called into question, and in which more sustainable practices take hold across all domains of daily life.[21]

Social change is about transforming what counts as “normal” – as in smoke-free pubs or wearing seat belts. We only need to look back a few decades to see that practices are constantly and often radically changing. A systemic approach to sustainability encourages us to imagine what the “new normal” of everyday sustainability might look like.[22]

A sustainability policy that focuses on systemic issues reframes the question from “how do we change individuals’ behaviors so that they are more sustainable?” to “how do we change the way society works?” This leads to very different kinds of interventions.

Addressing the sociotechnical underpinnings of “behavior” involves attempting to create new infrastructures and institutions that facilitate sustainable lifestyles, attempting to shift cultural conventions that underpin different activities, and attempting to encourage new competences that are required to perform new ways of doing things. As a result of these changes, what we think of as individual “behaviors” will also change.

Originally published in Low-Tech Magazine. Reprinted on the Economics of Happiness Blog.

—

References

[1] Shove, Elizabeth. “What is wrong with energy efficiency?.” Building Research & Information (2017): 1-11.

[2] Labanca, Nicola, and Paolo Bertoldi. “Beyond energy efficiency and individual behaviours: policy insights from social practice theories.” Energy Policy 115 (2018): 494-502.

[3] De Decker, Kris. “How (not) to resolve the energy crisis.” Low-tech Magazine, 2009

[4] Shove, Elizabeth, Mika Pantzar, and Matt Watson. The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes. Sage, 2012.

[5] Martiskainen, Mari. “Affecting consumer behaviour on energy demand.” (2007); Steg, Linda, et al. “An integrated framework for encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: The role of values, situational factors and goals.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 38 (2014): 104-115; Evans, Laurel, et al. “Self-interest and pro-environmental behaviour.” Nature Climate Change 3.2 (2013): 122; Turaga, Rama Mohana R., Richard B. Howarth, and Mark E. Borsuk. “Pro‐environmental behavior.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1185.1 (2010): 211-224; Kollmuss, Anja, and Julian Agyeman. “Mind the gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior?.” Environmental education research 8.3 (2002): 239-260.

[6] Hargreaves, Tom. “Practice-ing behaviour change: Applying social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change.” Journal of consumer culture 11.1 (2011): 79-99.

[7] Shove, Elizabeth. “Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change.” Environment and planning A 42.6 (2010): 1273-1285; Southerton, Dale, Andrew McMeekin, and David Evans. International review of behaviour change initiatives: Climate change behaviours research programme. Scottish Government Social Research, 2011. Shove, Pantzar and Watson, op cit.

[8] Shove, Pantzar and Watson, op cit.

[9] Shove, Elizabeth 2017, op cit.

[10] Spurling, Nicola Jane, et al. “Interventions in practice: Reframing policy approaches to consumer behaviour.” (2013); Mattioli, Giulio. “Transport needs in a climate-constrained world. A novel framework to reconcile social and environmental sustainability in transport.” Energy Research & Social Science 18 (2016): 118-128.

[11] Ibid.

[12] De Decker, Kris. “Why we need a speed limit for the Internet.” Low Tech Magazine. (2015).

[13] Shove, Pantzar and Watson, op cit.

[14] Shove, Elizabeth 2010, op cit.

[15] ibid; Shove, Pantzar and Watson, op cit; Hargreaves, Tom, op cit;

[16] Spurling et al, op cit.

[17] ibid; Hargreaves, op cit.

[18] ibid.

[19] Labanca et al, op cit.

[20] Shove 2010, op cit; Southerton et al, op cit; Spurling et al, op cit.

[21] Shove 2010, op cit.

[22] Spurling et al, op cit.

—

 Kris De Decker is a freelance journalist and the creator of Low-Tech Magazine, which “refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution.”

It was Monday, March 1, 2032, and the top uniformed officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps were poised, as they are every year around this time, to deliver their annual “posture statement” on military readiness before the Senate Armed Services Committee. As the officers waited for the committee members to take their seats, journalists covering the event conferred among themselves on the meaning of all the badges and insignia worn by the top brass. Each of the officers testifying that day — Generals Richard Sheldon of the Army, Roberto Gonzalez of the Marine Corps, and Shalaya Wright of the Air Force, along with Admiral Daniel Brixton of the Navy — sported chestfuls of multicolored ribbons and medals. What did all those emblems signify?

Easy to spot were the Defense Distinguished Service and Legion of Merit medals worn by all four officers. No less obvious was the parachutist badge worn by General Sheldon and the submarine warfare insignia sported by Admiral Brixton. As young officers, all four had, of course, served in the “Forever Wars” of the earlier years of this century and so each displayed the Global War on Terror Service Medal. But all four also bore service ribbons — those small horizontal bars worn over the left pocket — for campaigns of more recent vintage, and these required closer examination.

Although similar in appearance to the service ribbons of previous decades, the more recent ones worn by these commanders were for an entirely new set of military operations, reflecting a changing global environment: disaster-relief missions occasioned by extreme climate events, critical infrastructure protection and repair, domestic firefighting activities, and police operations in foreign countries ruptured by fighting over increasingly scarce food and water supplies. All four of the officers testifying that day displayed emblems signifying their engagement in multiple operations of those types at home and abroad.

Several, for example, wore the red-black-yellow-and-blue ribbon signifying their participation in relief operations following the staggering one-two punch of Hurricanes Geraldo and Helene in August 2027. Those back-to-back storms, as few present in 2032 could forget, had inundated the coasts of Virginia and Maryland (from whose state flags the colors were derived), causing catastrophic damage and killing hundreds of people. Transportation and communication infrastructure throughout the mid-Atlantic region had been shattered by the two hurricanes, which also caused widespread flooding in Washington, D.C. itself. In response, more than 100,000 active-duty troops had been committed to relief operations across the region, often performing heroic measures to clear roads and restore power.

Also displayed on their heavily decorated uniforms were patches attesting to their membership in elite units and squadrons. General Sheldon, for example, had spent part of his military career as a member of the Army’s Rangers and so wore that unit’s distinctive insignia. But Sheldon, along with General Wright of the Air Force, also sported the bright red patch signifying membership in the military’s elite Firefighting Brigade, established in 2026 to counter the annual conflagrations erupting across California and the Pacific Northwest. Similarly, both General Gonzalez and Admiral Brixton sported the dark-blue patch of the Coastal Relief and Rescue Command, created in 2028 for military support of disaster-relief operations along America’s increasingly storm-ravaged coastlines.

Medal Mania

The media, politicians, and the general public have always been fascinated by the medals and badges worn by the nation’s military leaders. This obsession intensified in November 2019 when two events received national attention.

The first was the testimony on President Donald Trump’s possible impeachable offenses before the House Intelligence Committee by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the top expert on Ukraine at the National Security Council. During that testimony — which confirmed some of the claims made by an unnamed whistle-blower that the president had conditioned the release of U.S. military aid to Ukraine on an investigation of the alleged financial wrongdoing of his presumed electoral rival, Joe Biden (and his son) — Vindman wore a full-dress uniform. It bore a purple heart (awarded for a combat wound received in Iraq) and other ribbons signifying his participation in the war on terror and the defense of South Korea. Following his appearance, Trump supporters promptly challenged his patriotism, while many other observers affirmed that his calm assertions of loyalty in response to such charges and all those medals on his uniform accorded him unusual credibility.

The second episode occurred just a few weeks later when President Trump intervened in a formal Navy proceeding to allow Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher — once on trial for serious war crimes — to retain his “Trident” pin, the symbol of his membership in the Navy’s elite SEAL commando unit. Gallagher had served multiple tours of duty in the country’s twenty-first-century “forever wars.” He had also been accused by fellow SEALs of murdering a wounded and unconscious enemy combatant and then having himself photographed while proudly holding the dead body up by the hair.

When tried by fellow officers last June, Gallagher was acquitted of the murder charge after a key witness changed his story. He was, however, found guilty of taking a “trophy” photo of a dead enemy, a violation of military rules. When, on this basis, the Navy sought to eject Gallagher from the SEALs and strip him of his Trident pin, President Trump, egged on by conservative pundits, overruled the top brass and allowed him to keep that insignia. “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin,” Trump tweeted on November 21st.

Like Lt. Col. Vindman, Chief Petty Officer Gallagher wore numerous service ribbons in his courtroom and public appearances and, in his case, too, they signified participation in the forever wars of the twenty-teens. A quick look at the badges borne by most other senior officers today would similarly reveal participation in those conflicts, as almost every senior commander has been obliged to serve several tours of duty in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.

By 2019, however, public support for engagement in those conflicts had largely evaporated and — to again peer into the future — during the 2020s, U.S. military involvement in such seemingly endless and futile contests would diminish sharply. Defense against China and Russia would remain a major military concern, but it would generate relatively little actual military activity, other than an ever-growing investment in high-tech weaponry. Instead, in those years, on a distinctly changing planet, the military mission would begin to change radically as well. Protecting the homeland from climate disasters and providing support to climate-ravaged allies abroad would become the main focus of American military operations and so the medals and ribbons awarded to those who displayed meritorious service in performing such duties would only multiply.

Medals for a Climate-Wracked Century

I can only speculate, of course, about the particular contingencies that will lead to the designation of special military insignia for participation in the climate battles of the decades ahead. Nevertheless, it’s possible, by extrapolating from recent events, to imagine what these might look like, even though the Department of Defense (DoD) does not yet award such ribbons.

Consider, for example, the Pentagon’s response to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, all of which hit parts of the United States between August and September 2017. In reaction to those mega-storms, which battered eastern Texas, southern Florida, and virtually all of Puerto Rico, the DoD deployed tens of thousands of active-duty troops to assist relief operations, along with a flotilla of naval vessels and a slew of helicopters and cargo aircraft. In addition, to help restore power and water supplies in Puerto Rico, it mobilized 11,400 active-duty and National Guard troops — many of whom were still engaged in such activities six months after Maria’s disastrous passage across that island. Given the extent of the military’s involvement in such rescue-and-relief operations — often conducted under hazardous conditions — it would certainly have been fitting had the Pentagon awarded a special service ribbon for participation in those triple-hurricane responses, using colors drawn from the Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rican flags.

Another example would have been Super Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, which pulverized parts of the Philippines, a long-time ally, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying a million homes. With the Filipino government essentially immobilized by the scale of the disaster, President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military to mount a massive relief operation, which it called Damayan. At its peak, it involved some 14,000 U.S. military personnel, a dozen major warships — including the carrier USS George Washington — and 66 aircraft. This effort, too, deserved recognition in the form of a distinctive service ribbon.

Now, let’s jump a decade or more into the future. By the early 2030s, with global temperatures significantly higher than they are today, extreme storms like Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Haiyan are likely to be occurring more frequently and to be even more powerful. With sea levels rising worldwide and ever more people living in low-lying coastal areas around the globe, the damage caused by such extreme weather is bound to increase exponentially, regularly overwhelming the response capabilities of civilian authorities. The result: ever increasing calls on the armed forces to provide relief-and-rescue services. “More frequent and/or more severe extreme weather events… may require substantial involvement of DoD units, personnel, and assets in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) abroad and in Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) at home,” the Pentagon was already informing Congress back in 2015.

Historically, it has viewed such activities as a “lesser included case”; that is, the military has not allocated specific troops or equipment for HA/DR and DSCA operations ahead of time, but used whatever combat forces it had on hand for such missions. Typical, for instance, was the use of an aircraft carrier already in the region to deal with the results of Super Typhoon Haiyan. As such events only grow in intensity and frequency, however, the Pentagon will find it increasingly necessary to establish dedicated units like the hypothetical “Coastal Relief and Rescue Command” (whose insignia General Gonzalez and Admiral Brixton were wearing in “2032”).

This will become essential as multiple coastal storms coincide with other extreme events, including massive wildfires or severe inland flooding, creating a “complex catastrophe” that could someday threaten the economy and political cohesion of the United States itself.

“Complex Catastrophes”

The DoD first envisioned the possibility of a “complex catastrophe” in 2012, after Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast that October. Sandy, as many readers will recall, knocked out power in lower Manhattan and disrupted commerce and transportation throughout the New York Metropolitan Area. On that occasion, the DoD mobilized more than 14,000 military personnel for relief-and-rescue operations and provided a variety of critical support services. In the wake of that storm, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta commanded his staff to consider the possibility of even more damaging versions of the same and how these might affect the military’s future roles and mission.

The Pentagon’s response came in a 2013 handbook, Strategy for Homeland Defense and Defense Support of Civil Authorities, warning the military to start anticipating and preparing for “complex catastrophes,” which, in an ominous breathful, it defined as “cascading failures of multiple, interdependent, critical, life-sustaining infrastructure sectors [causing] extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, environment, economy, public health, national morale, response efforts, and/or government functions.” While recognizing that civil authorities must remain the first line of defense in such calamities, the handbook indicated that, if civil institutions are overwhelmed — an increasingly likely reality — the armed forces must be prepared to assume many key governmental functions, possibly for an extended period of time.

In the future, in other words, all senior commanders and other officers can expect to participate in major HA/DR and DSCA operations during their careers, possibly involving extended deployments and hazardous missions. In 2017, for instance, many soldiers were deployed in Houston for rescue operations after Hurricane Harvey had drenched the region and, in the process, were exposed to toxic chemicals in the knee-deep floodwaters because some of the area’s petrochemical plants had been inundated. Looting has also been a recurring feature of major weather disasters, sometimes involving gunfire or other threats to life.

Increasingly frequent and savage wildfires in the American West are another climate-related peril likely to impinge on the military’s future operational posture. As temperatures rise and forests dry out, fires, once started, often spread with a daunting rapidity, overpowering firefighters and other local defenses. California and the Pacific Northwest are at particular risk, as severe drought has been a persistent problem in the region, while people have moved their homes ever deeper into the forests. In recent years, the National Guard in those states has been called up on numerous occasions to help battle such fires and active-duty troops have increasingly been deployed on the fire lines as well.

The proliferation of ever more severe wildfires in the American West — combined with similar devastating outbreaks in Australia and the rainforests of Indonesia and the Amazon — have led to a global shortage of the giant air tankers used to fight them. In November 2019, for example, Australia was pleading for the loan of water tankers still needed in California to cope with a deadly fire season that had lasted far longer than usual. It’s easy to imagine, then, that the U.S. Air Force will one day be compelled by Congress to establish a dedicated fleet of water tankers to fight fires around the country — what I chose to call the U.S. Firefighting Brigade in my own futuristic imaginings.

Foreign Climate Wars

Yet another climate-related mission likely to be undertaken by U.S. forces in the years ahead will be armed intervention in foreign civil conflicts triggered by severe drought, food shortages, or other resource scarcities. American military and intelligence analysts believe that rising world temperatures will result in widespread shortages of food and water in crucial areas of the planet like the Middle East, only exacerbating preexisting hostilities to the breaking point. When governments fail to respond in an efficient and equitable manner, conflict is likely to erupt, possibly resulting in state collapse, warlordism, and mass migrations — outcomes that could pose a significant threat to global stability. (Keep in mind, for instance, that the horrific Syrian civil war, still ongoing, was preceded by an “extreme drought,” the worst in modern times and believed to be climate-change induced.)

“Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security,” the DoD stated in its 2015 report to Congress, “contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water.”

One area where these forces can be witnessed today is the Lake Chad region of northern Nigeria, where severe drought conditions have produced widespread hardship and discontent that a variety of insurgent groups have sought to exploit. Once a thriving locale for fishing and irrigated agriculture, Lake Chad has shrunk to less than a fifth of its original size due to global warming and water mismanagement. With people’s livelihoods in jeopardy and the central government providing little reliable assistance, the terror group Boko Haram has been able to attract significant local support.

“Economic conditions in the region have become increasingly dire, creating resentment, grievances, and tensions within and among populations,” the CNA Corporation, a Pentagon-funded think tank, noted as early as 2017. “Boko Haram exploits this situation to recruit followers, offering them economic opportunity and secured livelihoods.”

Given Nigeria’s strategic importance as a major oil producer and bulwark of African Union peacekeeping forces, the United States has long assisted the Nigerian military with arms and training support. Were Boko Haram to begin to attack Abuja, the capital, or pose a threat to the survival of the Nigerian government, it’s entirely plausible that the Pentagon would be called upon to deploy forces there.

Were such a thing to happen, a service ribbon for participation in “Operation Yanci” (Hausa for “freedom”), the 2024 mission to crush Boko Haram and save the Nigerian state, might have the green and white bands of the Nigerian flag and be worn — at least in my imaginings — by two of the generals present at that hearing in 2032.

Another plausible future mission for the U.S. military: to help the government of the Philippines reassert control over its southern island of Mindanao after a typhoon even more destructive than 2013’s Haiyan struck the region in 2026. With the government in nearly complete disarray, as after Haiyan’s landfall, militant separatists that year seized control of the country’s second largest island. Unable to overcome the rebels on its own, Manila called on Washington to bolster its forces. Mindanao has long experienced revolts focused on a central government widely viewed as prejudiced against the island’s 20 million people, a significant number of them Muslim. In May 2017, for instance, radical Islamist groups seized control of Marawi, a Muslim-majority city of about 200,000 in western Mindanao. Only after five months of fighting in which 168 government soldiers died and 1,400 were wounded was the city completely retaken. The United States aided Filipino forces with arms and intelligence during that struggle and has continued to provide them with counterinsurgency training ever since.

As global warming advances and Pacific typhoons grow more intense, the Philippines will be hit again and again by catastrophic, Haiyan-level storms like Kammuri this December. So it’s not hard to envision a future storm severe enough to completely paralyze government services and provide an opening for another Marawi-style event on an even larger scale. For those American soldiers who will participate in Operation Kalayaan (Tagalog for “Liberty”), the 2026 campaign to liberate Mindinao from rebel forces, there will undoubtedly be a ribbon of red, blue, white, and gold, the colors of the Filipino flag.

The Military on a New Planet

All this, of course, is speculation, but given how rapidly the planetary environment is being altered by global warming and its disruptive effects, climate change will become a major factor in U.S. strategic planning. That, in turn, will mean the setting up of specialized commands to deal with such contingencies and the earmarking of specific resources — troops and equipment — for domestic and foreign disaster-relief missions.

The Department of Defense will similarly have to step up its efforts to harden its own domestic and foreign bases against severe storms and flooding, while beginning to develop plans to relocate those that will be inundated as sea levels rise. In a similar fashion, count on fire protection becoming a major concern for base commanders across the American West. Efforts now under way at significant installations to reduce the U.S. military’s prodigious consumption of fossil fuels and to increase reliance on renewables will undoubtedly be part of the package as well. And with all of this will surely go plans to devise new medals and honors for military personnel who exhibit meritorious service in protecting the nation against the extreme climate perils to come. In a world in which all hell is going to break loose, everything will change and the military will be no exception.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, including the just-published All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (Metropolitan Books), on which this article is based.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Originally published by TomDispatch

Copyright 2019 Michael T. Klare

Climate crisis is causing chaos in the Bering Sea, home to one of America’s largest fisheries, said the U.S. federal government agency’s scientists in the 2019 ARC on Tuesday. The Bering Sea chaos is an example of how rising temperatures can rapidly change ecosystems important to the U.S. economy.

Scientists said warming in the Arctic, which functions as a global air conditioner, could lead to rapid changes far away from the region.

Rising temperatures in the Arctic have led to decreases in sea ice, record warm temperatures at the bottom of the Bering Sea and the northward migration of fish species such as Pacific cod, said the ARC.

While the changes are widespread in the Arctic, the effect on wildlife is acute in the eastern shelf of the Bering Sea, which yields more than 40% of the annual U.S. fish and shellfish catch.

The warning was the latest from a U.S. government agency about climate crisis even as U.S. President Donald Trump has voiced skepticism about global warming and pushed to maximize production of oil, gas and coal. Last month the Trump administration filed paperwork to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change.

The report identified a decrease in recent years in the Bering Sea “cold pool,” which used to be a dependable mass of very salty frigid water down to the sea floor that functioned as a natural fence separating fish species. That has likely caused a shift in distribution of walleye Pollock and Pacific cod, the report said.

No cold pool was found in 2018 and this year it was smaller than normal, it said.

Fish stocks are scrambled, with some species moving north. Crab fishermen in Nome have reported catching more cod than crabs, as Pacific cod are not doing as well south of there.

Last week, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council shut down the 2020 Pacific cod harvest in the Gulf of Alaska.

The report also said the melt of the ice sheet over Greenland this year rivaled that of 2012, the previous year of record ice loss.

It also detailed a shift of Arctic permafrost regions from being a sink for carbon dioxide emissions to a source of them, as warming uncovers soil, triggering microbes to emit the main gas linked to global warming.

The wide ecosystem changes also affect the 70 communities of indigenous people in the Bering Sea, with hunters seeking seals, walrus, whales and fish having to travel much farther offshore as the ice melts.

According to the ARC, the Arctic has experienced its second warmest year since 1900, raising fears over low summer sea ice and rising sea levels.

The North Pole has been warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet since the 1990s, a phenomenon climatologists call Arctic amplification, and the past six years have been the region’s warmest ever.

The average temperature in the 12 months to September was 1.9 degrees Celsius higher than the 1981-2010 average, according to the ARC.

The end-of-summer sea ice cover measured that month was the second lowest in the 41-year satellite record, tied with 2007 and 2016, the report said.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Simon Kinneen, the chairperson of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Cod stocks have been hard hit by successive heat waves in the Gulf of Alaska, fishery scientists say.

“Our hunters are finding it more difficult to navigate on the land and are moving out to sea,” Mellisa Johnson, the executive director of the Bering Sea Elders, told a meeting in San Francisco of the American Geophysical Union, where the report was released.

“The changes going on have the potential to influence the kinds of fish products you have available to you, whether that’s fish sticks in the grocery store or shellfish at a restaurant,” said Rick Thoman, a meteorologist in Alaska and one of the report’s authors.

“Two years ago nobody was talking about a wholesale shift in the Bering Sea ecosystem,” Thoman said.

“2007 was a watershed year,” Don Perovich, a Dartmouth engineering professor who co-authored the report, told AFP.

“Some years there’s an increase, some years there’s a decrease, but we’ve never returned to the levels we saw before 2007,” he added.

The year up to September has been surpassed only by the equivalent period in 2015-16 – the warmest since 1900, when records began.

In the Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska, the last two winters have seen maximum sea ice coverage of less than half the long-term average.

The ice is also thinner, meaning airplanes can no longer land with supplies for the residents of Diomede, a small island in the Bering Strait, who now depend on less reliable helicopters.

Thick ice is also vital for locals who travel by snowmobile and stow their boats, or hunt seals and whales.

As the ice forms later in the fall, the inhabitants are isolated for a greater part of the year.

The “shorefast ice,” anchored to the sea floor, is increasingly rare, and it is on this ice that fishermen and hunters store their equipment.

“In the northern Bering Sea, sea ice used to be present with us for eight months a year. Today, we may only see three or four months with ice,” indigenous residents wrote in an essay included in the ARC.

“We are seeing coastal landslides, large sinkholes and methane bubbling up through our ponds in summer,” the indigenous authors write. It’s that last part, methane release, or greenhouse gases in general, that extends far beyond the Arctic.

That’s because permafrost soils, composed partially of carbon-rich organic matter, contain at least two times the amount of carbon than there is currently in the atmosphere. Because of warming, permafrost is no longer a net sink for carbon; it has become a net emitter of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The ARC makes clear that what happens in the Arctic will not stay in the Arctic — the changes reverberate all around the world and will only accelerate as the globe continues to heat. But the ones most at risk right now are the indigenous people who count on knowledge passed through the generations.

“The world from our childhood is no longer here. Our young children today are seeing so much change, but it is difficult for them to understand the pace. We are losing so much of our culture and connections to the resources from our ocean and lands,” they write.

Dr. Ted Schuur is the author of the permafrost section of the report. He says these emission signals are “kind of like a ‘canary in a coal mine’ telling us that permafrost ecosystems are out of historical balance, and are starting to cause climate change to happen faster.” This is yet another feedback, which accelerates Arctic amplification.

Greenland ice losses rising faster than expected

That acceleration is vividly illustrated by melting water cascading into the ocean from Greenland.

According to another study released Tuesday, Greenland is shedding ice seven times faster than in the 1990s. This pace is on the high end of the warming scenarios laid out by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As a result, the study estimates that 40 million more people worldwide will be exposed to coastal flooding by 2100, for a total of 400 million.

Greenland ice melt in 2019 (in red), compared to the record year of 2012 (in purple). NOAA

It is not just sea ice that is receding, according to the report: ice on Greenland is also melting.

For the rest of the world this melt is measured by rising sea levels. Each year ice melting from Greenland alone raises global sea levels by 0.7 millimeters.

The snow reflects the sun’s rays back to space, but when it melts, it uncovers more area for the sun’s heat to be absorbed and melts the permafrost, the soil that remains constantly frozen.

Greenland has the world’s second largest ice sheet after Antarctica, which is melting at a slower pace. Scientists noted Tuesday that Greenland is struggling too, however.

It has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992, enough on its own to add 10.6 millimeters (1.06 centimeters, 0.4 inches) to sea levels, according to a study report – “Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992-2018” – by the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) team in the journal Nature on December 10, 2019

If all of Greenland’s ice melted, or were diverted into the ocean as icebergs, the world’s oceans would rise by 7.4 meters, scientists say.

A team of 96 polar scientists from 50 international organizations has produced the most complete picture of Greenland ice loss to date. The IMBIE team combined 26 separate surveys to compute changes in the mass of Greenland’s ice sheet between 1992 and 2018. Altogether, data from 11 different satellite missions were used, including measurements of the ice sheet’s changing volume, flow and gravity.

The findings show that the rate of ice loss has risen from 33 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 254 billion tonnes per year in the last decade, which is a seven-fold increase within three decades.

The assessment, led by Professor Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds and Dr Erik Ivins at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, was supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

In 2013, the IPCC predicted that global sea levels would rise by 60 centimeters by 2100, putting 360 million people at risk of annual coastal flooding.

Professor Shepherd said: “As a rule of thumb, for every centimeter rise in global sea level another six million people are exposed to coastal flooding around the planet.” “These are not unlikely events or small impacts; they are happening and will be devastating for coastal communities.”

The team also used regional climate models to show that half of the ice losses were due to surface melting as air temperatures have risen. The other half has been due to increased glacier flow, triggered by rising ocean temperatures.

Ice losses peaked at 335 billion tonnes per year in 2011 – ten times the rate of the 1990s – during a period of intense surface melting. Although the rate of ice loss dropped to an average 238 billion tonnes per year since then, this remains seven times higher and does not include all of 2019, which could set a new high due to widespread summer melting.

It should be mentioned that 360 billion tonnes of ice is roughly equivalent to 1 millimeter of global sea level rise.

Dr Ivins said: “Satellite observations of polar ice are essential for monitoring and predicting how climate change could affect ice losses and sea level rise.”

“While computer simulation allows us to make projections from climate change scenarios, the satellite measurements provide prima facie, rather irrefutable, evidence.”

“Our project is a great example of the importance of international collaboration to tackle problems that are global in scale.”

Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir, Professor of Glaciology at the University of Iceland and lead author of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, who was not involved in the study, said: “The IMBIE Team’s reconciled estimate of Greenland ice loss is timely for the IPCC. Their satellite observations show that both melting and ice discharge from Greenland have increased since observations started.”

“The ice caps in Iceland had similar reduction in ice loss in the last two years of their record, but this last summer was very warm here and resulted in higher loss. I would expect a similar increase in Greenland mass loss for 2019.”

“It is very important to keep monitoring the big ice sheets to know how much they raise sea level every year.”

Satellite missions providing data

The satellite missions providing data for this study are European Space Agency’s ERS-1, ERS-2, Envisat, and CryoSat-2, the European Union’s Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Advanced Land Observatory System; the Canadian Space Agency RADARSAT-1 and RADARSAT-2; the NASA Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite; the NASA / German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment; the Italian Space Agency COSMO-SkyMed, and the German Aerospace Center TerraSAR-X.

Arctic Report Card: Update for 2019

Arctic ecosystems and communities are increasingly at risk due to continued warming and declining sea ice

Highlights of the ARC report

• The average annual land surface air temperature north of 60° N for October 2018-August 2019 was the second warmest since 1900. The warming air temperatures are driving changes in the Arctic environment that affect ecosystems and communities on a regional and global scale.

On the land

• The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing nearly 267 billion metric tons of ice per year and currently contributing to global average sea-level rise at a rate of about 0.7 mm yr.
• North American Arctic snow cover in May 2019 was the fifth lowest in 53 years of record. June snow cover was the third lowest.
• Tundra greening continues to increase in the Arctic, particularly on the North Slope of Alaska, mainland Canada, and the Russian Far East.
• Thawing permafrost throughout the Arctic could be releasing an estimated 300-600 million tons of net carbon per year to the atmosphere.

In the oceans

• Arctic sea ice extent at the end of summer 2019 was tied with 2007 and 2016 as the second lowest since satellite observations began in 1979. The thickness of the sea ice has also decreased, resulting in an ice cover that is more vulnerable to warming air and ocean temperatures.
• August mean sea surface temperatures in 2019 were 1-7°C warmer than the 1982-2010 August mean in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, the Laptev Sea, and Baffin Bay.
• Satellite estimates showed ocean primary productivity in the Arctic was higher than the long-term average for seven of nine regions, with the Barents Sea and North Atlantic the only regions showing lower than average values.
• Wildlife populations are showing signs of stress. For example, the breeding population of the ivory gull in the Canadian Arctic has declined by 70% since the 1980s.

Focus on the Bering Sea

• The winter sea ice extent in 2019 narrowly missed surpassing the record low set in 2018, leading to record-breaking warm ocean temperatures in 2019 on the southern shelf. Bottom temperatures on the northern Bering shelf exceeded 4°C for the first time in November 2018.
• Bering and Barents Seas fisheries have experienced a northerly shift in the distribution of subarctic and Arctic fish species, linked to the loss of sea ice and changes in bottom water temperature.
• Indigenous Elders from Bering Sea communities note that “[i]n a warming Arctic, access to our subsistence foods is shrinking and becoming more hazardous to hunt and fish. At the same time, thawing permafrost and more frequent and higher storm surges increasingly threaten our homes, schools, airports, and utilities.”

Storms are savaging East Africa where rainfall in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania is now over 300 mm (about a foot) higher than the 30-year mean tallied since 1981.  The subsequent flooding and landslides have affected 2.8 million people displacing many and reportedly killing 300 according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Thousands of miles away at the other end of the Indian ocean, there is extreme dry heat across Australia with an 80 percent chance of exceeding the median maximum temperature for the October-February summer period.  It has led to an early start to the bushfire season as about 140 are already raging in New South Wales.  Among the worst is a vast and so far uncontrollable fire about 40 miles outside Sydney, with evacuation warnings along its perimeter.

The cause of such extreme weather at the two ends of the Indian Ocean is described by weather scientists as the dipole effect — a sea surface temperature difference between the Arabian Sea western end and the south of Indonesia eastern end.  A positive dipole means warmer ocean temperatures in the west end and cooler in the east.  A negative dipole is the opposite; and a neutral dipole, means even temperatures and normal weather in the adjacent land areas.

This year’s warmer Indian Ocean temperatures in the western section have led to more storms and cooler, much wetter weather in East Africa, while cool waters pooling off Indonesia mean dry weather, causing extreme heat in Australia.  At a 2C temperature difference, this positive dipole is one of the strongest Indian Ocean dipoles on record.  Such a rare event occurring once in about 17 years in the past is now expected once in 6 years.  Why?  The culprit is climate change.

It projects a future of more frequent, more extreme weather unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions and begin to eliminate the record high CO2 levels already in the atmosphere.

The rest of the world is not immune from extreme weather events.  In a historic flood not too long ago this year, Venice’s iconic St. Mark’s square lay hip-deep in water threatening the frescoes in the church itself.  And in the US, coastal flooding on the east coast has been featured by the New York Times (As Sea Levels Rise, So Do Ghost Forests, October 8, 2019). The ‘ghost forests’ refer to trees in coastal areas dying off due to frequent incursions of saltwater; it kills them from the roots up.

An excellent estimate of coastal flooding on the East and Gulf coasts, Encroaching Tides, was prepared by the Union of Concerned Scientists a five years ago.  Sober reading, the report’s prognosis of coastal inundation and sea level rise over the next three decades is of concern to communities from Maine to Texas.  Adaptation to new norms, protective sea walls, economic consequences, the responsibilities of Municipalities, States and the Federal Government, and a retreat from heavily impacted areas are the conclusions. Is anybody listening?

The US is also not immune from fires. California’s Kincade fire lasting two weeks through November 6 this year burnt almost 78,000 acres. The largest 2019 wildfire in the state, it was the largest ever for Sonoma county—evacuation orders and warnings covered almost everyone living in it.  For the first eleven months of 2019 there have been 46,706 wildfires compared to 47,853 for all of 2018.  Blame the downslope Santa Ana winds for fanning them.

If such is the state of our earth in extremis, COP25 the UN Climate Change Conference, is endeavoring to mitigate the major cause: climate change. It concludes in Madrid, Spain this week (Dec 13) having been displaced from Chile due to riots by an unhappy populace.  And celebrity climate activist Greta Thunberg was obliged to hitch a yacht ride back across the Atlantic arriving just in time to demonstrate.  Everything helps.

COP25’s ambitious aim is to up the ante from the 2C temperature rise limit of the Paris agreement, adopted by COP24 last year in Poland, to only 1.5C.  A laudable aim perhaps, yet the worst polluters since the industrial revolution are comfortably ensconced, enjoying their wealth, without bearing a heavier burden — in the case of the US very little as Donald Trump has withdrawn from the Paris agreement. Indeed a vexing state of affairs for the world when major players shirk their responsibilities.

Why their failure? This metaphor can give us an answer:

In those few minutes after takeoff as we all lean back in our assigned seats in an American Boeing 737 Max (Donald Trump is our pilot and Bill Barr is our copilot) neither we or they are aware that the plane is about to crash. Bad engineering, inadequate quality controls, overemphasis on Boeing profit margins mean nothing to us. Our thoughts are in some other direction. And then suddenly…

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Greta Thunberg appearing before the UN General Assembly this year said that we are facing the possibility of extinction. Here are her words:

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth how dare you.”

As it was with the Boeing aircraft, our planet is about to crash. Why is it that we in our modern world are unable to comprehend this?

Why cannot we comprehend that Carbon emission into the biosphere at present pace is unsustainable, that livestock Methane emission into the biosphere at present pace is unsustainable, that nonrenewable natural resource utilization at present pace is unsustainable? Why cannot we comprehend that hundreds of millions of tons of highly toxic chemical waste, much of it non-biodegradable, dumped on land and into our oceans at present pace is unsustainable?

The reality is that the set of beliefs and values that affect the way we perceive our place in the planetary biosphere and respond to that perception have become ecologically unsustainable.

Now to the core of this essay: Driving much of public intransigence to the above is the social science of economics as it was formed during the Industrial Revolution. It needs to change. It needs to mold itself into a new form of human endeavor within a framework of planetary geological and biosphere Homo sapiens sustainability.

(Click below for my essay “American’s Existential Problem ‑ and the World’s”)

my Countercurrents.org essay)

Economists both in and out of academia continue to operate without ecological planetary conscience, without social conscience. In the profession there is little evidence of desire for change.

Responsibility for this in American rests largely in Universities the likes of Harvard, Wharton and the University of Chicago. In them and the others the Capital Market system in its original 1760 Industrial Revolution form is given inherent godly status. Faux belief in Adan Smith’s invisible hand working its beneficence on all of human society dominates. For the economists at these “Business Schools” it is like a religion.

Religious belief originates from the inner neurological depths of the human brain. As it unfolds, it becomes the source of conviction on matters relating to the “Ultimate,” expressed as an attachment to the ultimate. This can be described as an oceanic feeling in terms of awe, wonder and presence of God. One feels connected to “all that there is.” It is an awe experience that can be so profound as to totally encompass and overpower all rational thought. For many of today’s economists this describes the power within of Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

That invisible hand energy field has become our marketplace problem. The dark psychotic/neurotic side of human behavior is given limited or no recognition. As for Nature, it is something to be harnessed and controlled by ingenious human beings able to exploit the earth’s renewable and nonrenewable resources as needed. And as for population growth, it is good. More people mean more consumers.

So for those American economists in the universities, (and those gainfully employed but out of them) – and the same in nations abroad, here is your existential question and your challenge:

Do you have the courage to come forward with a form of economic thought and practice that can overcome our human vs planet economic imperfection, that can establish synchronous coexistent unity and interactive equilibrium between humanity and all other life as well as nonlife on our planet?

Your previous attempts have failed. (Marxism Leninism et al.) This time you have to get it right. The stakes are high.

We are facing the possibility of extinction.

Bio

David Anderson brings together a wide range of interests in his writings, namely; theology, history, evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, geopolitics, and economics. He has written four books. The fourth just published is about a necessary geo political, social, religious, economic paradigm shift for human survival.

http://inquiryabraham.com/new-book.html

SOURCES

My new book: Overcoming the Threat to Our Future

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Dr Andrew Glikson, December 9, 2019 Global warming and the habitability of planet Earth in Climate Change by

https://countercurrents.org/2019/12/global-warming-and-the-habitability-of-planet-earth

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“Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.” Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.“We’ve reached a point where we have a crisis, an emergency, but people don’t know that. There’s a big gap between what’s understood about global warming by the scientific community and what is known by the public and policymakers” Prof. James Hansen

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2012 World Bank Report

“Without quick action to curb CO2 emissions, global warming is likely to increase by 4 degrees Centigrade (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above today’s normal during the 21st century and that is dangerously close to the temperature of 6 degrees Centigrade above normal that initiated the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago when 96%* of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates were wiped out.”

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Prior to the UN Convention on Climate Change talks held in Madrid, the sense that tradition would assert itself was hard to buck.  Weariness and frustration came in the wake of initial high minded optimism. Delegates spent an extra two days and nights attempting to reach a deal covering carbon reduction measures before the Glasgow conference in 2020.  The gathering became the longest set of climate talks in history, exceeding the time spent at the 2011 Durban meeting by 44 hours.

As Climate Home News noted, Durban still stood out as being worthier for having “produced a deal between countries that laid the foundations for the Paris Agreement.”  In stark contrast, “Madrid produced a weak gesture toward raising climate targets and failed to agree for the second year in a row on rules to govern carbon markets.”

The UN Secretary General António Guterres was all lament.  “The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaption and finance to tackle the climate crisis.”  He hoped that the next year would see “all countries commit to do what science tells us is necessary to reach carbon neutrality in 2050 and no more than 1.5 degree temperature rise.”

The wisdom of COP25 remains similar to that of previous gatherings on climate: politics and environment do not mix well.  Big powers and heavy polluters stuck to their stubborn positions, stressing the merits of loose, open markets to solve the problem, notably in terms of reducing carbon emissions; smaller states more concerned by their actual disappearance lobbied European, Latin American and African allies for firmer commitments and pledges.

Australia was also confirmed as one of the chief spoilers, if not outright saboteurs, at the show, noted for its insistence that it be allowed to claim a reduction of its abatement for the 2021-30 Paris Accord.  This, went the argument, was due to its own excelling in meeting the 2012-20 Kyoto Protocol period.  Previous good conduct could justify current bad and future behaviour.  What Canberra offered the globe was an accounting model of deception, exploiting a regulatory loophole in place of lowering emissions.  It lacked legal plausibility, given that both Kyoto and Paris are separate treaties.

Former French environment minister Luciana Tubiana was clear about the implications of this idea.  “If you want this carryover,” she told the Financial Times, “it is just cheating.  Australia was willing in a way to destroy the whole system, because that is the way to destroy the whole Paris agreement.”

Other states were also noted in performing roles of obstruction, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil and the United States.  These parties were particular keen to push their differences with other states over Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, a provision dealing with mechanisms and models of trading in emission reductions.  Such trade can have a habit of losing validity when put into practice; the issue of transparency remains a considerable problem in such markets.

The US statement at the conference emphasised realism and pragmatism “backed by a record of real world results.”  (Real world results tend to exclude environmental ruination for unrepentant polluters.)  Market results were primary; environmental matters were subordinate to such dictates.  Usual mantras were proffered: innovation and open markets produced wealth, but also “fewer emissions, and mores secure sources of energy.”  Despite leaving as a party to the Paris Agreement, “We remain fully committed to working with you, our global partners, to enhance resilience, mitigate the impacts of climate change, and prepare for and respond to natural disasters.”

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro reconfirmed his climate change scepticism, claiming that the entire issue of COP25 could be put down to commerce.  “I don’t know why people don’t understand that it’s just a commercial game.”  The Europeans, he suggested, were merely being irksome about cash and meddling.  “I’d like to know,” he posed rhetorically to journalists, “has there been a resolution for Europe to be reforested, or are they just going to keep bothering Brazil?”

Brazil’s environment minister Ricardo Salles, known to some as Minister for Deforestation, was similarly keen to place the blame elsewhere.  He had demanded, bowl in hand, some $10 billion under the Paris Climate deal to combat deforestation in 2020.  All in all, he was not optimistic. “Rich countries did not want to pay up.”

Like Australia, Brazil’s environmental ploy is driven by creative accounting, an attempt to leverage previous supposed good conduct in the climate change stakes, playing accumulated carbon credits from Kyoto to meet those under the Paris arrangements.  Using open market rationales, Salles condemned the “protectionist vision” that had taken hold: “Brazil and other countries that could provide carbon credits because of their forests and good environmental practices came out losers.”  In an act of some spite, the minister would subsequently post a tweet featuring a photo of a platter heavy with meats.  “To compensate for our emissions at COP, a vegetarian lunch!”

Madrid will be remembered for its stalemate on carbon credits and the botched rule book on carbon trading.  An effort spearheaded by Costa Rica, including Germany, Britain and New Zealand, to convince states to adopt the San Jose principles, with a prohibition on the use of carbon credit carryover along with other Kyoto gains, was rejected.

COP25 again exposed that degree of prevalent anarchy, if not gangsterism, in global climate change policy.  The emphasis, then, is on attempts and arrangements made within regional areas: EU policy on de-carbonised economies (albeit resisted within by such states as Poland), and bilateral arrangements (the EU and China).  As these take place, the apocalyptic message led by activists such as Greta Thunberg will become more desperate.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

The longest ever UN climate talks on record – Conference of Parties (COP)25 – have finally ended in Madrid with nothing, but a compromise deal. Many of those in attendance were unhappy with the overall package, feeling it did not reflect the urgency of the science. A disappointment has overwhelmed many COP25 delegates.

Exhausted delegates reached agreement on the key question of increasing the global response to curbing carbon.

All countries will need to put new climate pledges on the table by the time of the next major conference in Glasgow next year.

After two extra days and nights of negotiations, the COP25 delegates finally agreed a deal that will see new, improved carbon cutting plans on the table by the time of the Glasgow conference next year.

All parties will need to address the gap between what the science says is necessary to avoid dangerous climate change, and the current state of play which would see the world go past this threshold in the 2030s.

Supported by the European Union and small island states, the push for higher ambition was opposed by a range of countries including the US, Brazil, India and China.

However, a compromise was agreed with the richer nations having to show that they have kept their promises on climate change in the years before 2020.

Spain’s acting Minister for the Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera said the mandate was clear.

“Countries have to present more ambitious NDCs [nationally determined contributions] in 2020 than what we have today because it is important to address science and the demands of people, as well as commit ourselves to do more and faster.”

Next year’s big climate conference will be held in Glasgow, Scotland. Decisions on many important issues including the thorny question of carbon markets have been delayed until Glasgow.

“Thankfully the weak rules on a market based mechanism, promoted by Brazil and Australia, that would have undermined efforts to reduce emissions has been shelved and the fight on that can continue next year at COP26 in Glasgow,” said Mohamed Adow, with the group Power Shift Africa.

However, negotiators will be satisfied to have kept the process alive after these difficult and complex talks in Madrid.

After two weeks of talks, many issues remain unresolved.

Countries failed to agree on many of the hoped for outcomes, including rules to set up a global carbon trading system and a system to channel new finance to countries facing the impacts of climate change.

Australia and Brazil continued to push for a system with loopholes, which allowed initial double counting of emissions reductions and trading of Kyoto-era credits – explained below.

But other countries say this would undermine the entire market. As tensions peaked on Saturday, a group of 31 countries led by Costa Rica signed up to the “San Jose Principles”, a set of minimum standards for ensuring the integrity of the global carbon market.

Some countries, including Australia, Brazil and India, want to be able to use old, unspent CDM credits in the new system. Australia openly plans on using its 370 million CDM credits to meet its emission reduction goals.

But many countries are concerned allowing CDM carryover could flood the market with cheap credits that don’t represent real emissions reductions, undermining the integrity of the entire system. This is because CDMs represent emissions cuts made well before 2020, the year the Paris Agreement formally begins, and there serious doubts over whether many CDM-registered projects have even driven real emissions cuts.

Little consensus was found on this at the talks. The draft text proposes that Kyoto-era credits could be accounted against climate pledges until 2025, a view that many countries find unacceptable. Much of the rest of the text remains vague.

Guterres disappointed

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was disappointed by the result of the COP.

“The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis,” he said, quoted by AFP.

“A far cry”

Laurence Tubiana from the European Climate Foundation, and an architect of the Paris agreement, described the result as “really a mixed bag, and a far cry from what science tells us is needed.”

“Major players who needed to deliver in Madrid did not live up to expectations, but thanks to a progressive alliance of small island states, European, African and Latin American countries, we obtained the best possible outcome, against the will of big polluters.”

The pledge that was made in Paris

Countries agreed in Paris in 2015 to revisit their climate pledges by 2020. But many countries were pushing this year for a clear call for all countries to submit more ambitious climate pledges next year. This is seen as a key means of ensuring countries put a focus on improving their current pledges, as well as empowering civil society to hold them to account.

But countries such as China and Brazil opposed placing any obligation on countries to submit enhanced pledges next year, arguing it should be each country’s own decision. They instead argued the focus should be on pre-2020 action by developing countries to meet their previous pledges.

Countries such as China and India made it clear they would not support strong language on raising ambition without a similar call for rich countries to provide the finance and support promised to developing countries.

They called for the creation of a “work program” to close the gap of commitments made by rich countries before 2020.

But the EU opposed this, saying the focus needs to be on future ambition under the Paris Agreement, which applies to all countries.

Other poorer developing countries made it clear that, while they support pre-2020 action, higher ambition for the future from all countries should not be conditional on it.

As talks reached their final days, tensions grew after a draft decision removed any call for countries to “update” or “enhance” their climate plans by 2020. Instead, it only invited them to “communicate” them in 2020 – far weaker language, which put no obligation on enhanced ambition.

Reacting to this, a high ambition coalition, led by the Marshall Islands and backed by the EU Commission and a number of European countries, made it clear that final COP25 decision text must include a clear call for enhanced ambition in 2020.

Some ambitious words only

In the end, the final text added some more ambitious wording back in, pointing directly to the emissions gap between what country pledges currently add up to and what is needed to keep global temperature rise well below 2C.

It also “recalls that new climate pledges should “represent a progression” beyond previous pledges and represent the highest possible ambition. This text was an improvement on previous drafts but “still weak”, according to Naoyuki Yamagishi of WWF Japan.

In the final text, countries agreed to hold pre-2020 roundtables. The outcomes of these pre-2020 roundtables will also be rounded up in a report in 2021, which will in turn feed into a review on progress towards meeting the Paris Agreement’s “well below 2C” goal.

It did not specifically say whether the results of these roundtables would feed directly into the global stock take set to occur in 2023 under the Paris agreement.

In the end a mere two paragraphs summed up plans to continue talks in 2020. This did acknowledge the draft texts from this year’s negotiations as a basis for future talks, meaning countries will not have to start from scratch. However, none of these texts have found consensus.

“The current text preserves the possibility of carry over, which should certainly be avoided next year,” said Li.

Human rights

Indigenous and human rights groups have pushed for the new carbon market rules to require projects to respect human rights, protect indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups, consult meaningfully with local communities and set up an independent grievance program for projects gone awry.

The current draft text has no mention of human rights, asking only that projects shall “avoid negative environmental and social impacts”. It says consultations should take place “where consistent with applicable domestic arrangements” and that further safeguards could be reviewed by 2028.

Several countries voiced support for human rights protections during the final plenary on Sunday morning.

The texts are ”woefully inadequate” in regards to protecting people on the ground from harm caused by activities under the new market mechanisms,” says Erika Lennon, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). “Delaying the decision to Cop26 was the only responsible decision.”

Loss and damage

Some developed countries are extremely wary of language around loss and damage finance. The US was particularly resistant to any discussion about new areas of work even for existing funds. Other developed countries are more willing to engage.

A newly formed “Santiago network” will lead more work on how to minimize, avoid and recover from loss and damage.

But Sven Harmeling, climate change lead for Care International, called the loss and damage outcome “disappointing”, in particular pointing to the vague mandate for the Green Climate Fund on whether and how it should incorporate loss and damages into its remit.

A last minute fight about long-term finance meant there was no outcome on this, though talks will continue next year.

The UK is one of several European countries, which yesterday supported the ‘San Jose principles’ for environmental integrity of the new carbon market. It is also a member of the high-ambition coalition of countries, which pushed hard this year for a clear call for enhanced climate plans in 2020.

“Disastrous”

Kenyan climate campaigner Mohamad Adow called the Madrid outcome “disastrous, profoundly distressing”.

“We cannot just copy and paste the text from four years ago. We need to recognize that since then the climate emergency has got worse and public anger has got fiercer,” he said.

Strengthen political will

Carolina Schmidt, Chilean environment minister and conference president said: “The consensus is still not there to increase ambition to the levels that we need. Before finishing, I want to make a clear and strong call to the world to strengthen political will and accelerate climate action to the speed that the world needs. The new generations expect more from us.”

“Missing in action”

Alden Meyer, strategy chief at the Union of Concerned Scientists said: “Never have I seen such a disconnect between what the science requires and what the climate negotiations are delivering in terms of meaningful action. Most of the world’s biggest emitting countries are missing in action and resisting calls to raise their ambition.”

“It is extraordinarily difficult”

Sir David King, British government representative at the 2015 Paris climate talks said: “If the United States is not backing an agreement that is meaningful it is extraordinarily difficult for the rest of the world to come to an agreement. And I’m afraid as long as we have Trump in the United States with President Bolsonaro in Brazil it is extraordinarily difficult to get all of those countries to agree.”

There’s a well-known story, often included in children’s story anthologies, about the legendary wisdom of King Solomon. Once a dispute between two women was brought to him to resolve. Both of them were mother’s of two small babies, and they lived in the same house. One morning one of the babies was found dead, smothered in bed. Then each of them claimed that the living baby was hers and the dead one was the other’s. The king listened to both carefully. Then he called for a soldier to draw his sword, saying he would divide the baby into two halves and give one to each. At this solution, one woman agreed at once. The other objected and said, “No, let her have the baby, don’t kill it”. King Solomon then handed the baby to the second woman. No mother would want any harm to come to her baby, even if it meant losing it. That’s because she isinvested in the baby as its mother.

The events of the past six months in India has shown a similar trajectory. Elements who have never invested in the freedom and democratic traditions of this country have acquired, bydint of various devious schemes, the power to run this country. Now they have no compunction at all in dividing up the country. It’s the original root of the “divide and rule” that they have always blamed on the British colonisers. In fact it is this Trojan horse force within Indian society which has divided us, a colourful and plural society, along the lines of gender, caste, occupation, class, religion, language and ethnicity, and taken over the reins of political and state power.

The flames that have engulfed the north and east of the country and protests being organised by students all over the country, and being met with the full force of state machinery, who are in fact being violent and thuggish, barging into university campuses and shooting teargas into libraries, setting vehicles on fire themselves to give them the excuse to set upon the students – are proof positive that they are the impostors claiming the ownership of a country they have never invested in building or, nurturing.

It’s we, the working classes, the lowered castes, farmers, workers, freedom fighters, tribals, Dalits, indigenous population, economic migrants, internally displaced, struggling to build our lives and our country who are invested in its strength and stability. Schemers who have come into power on false pretences and killings of the innocent,  are now looting the country of its wealth and enabling the flight of capital abroad, travelling abroad on official tours while arranging to enrich their crony capitalist friends.  They are attacking students and activists who are defending our human rights and democratic institutions.

These infiltrators have packed every important research institution, financial decision making body, policy body, and university with yes men and women with no knowledge, experience or.commitment except to the shadowy RSS, the ideological fountainhead of all the division, violence and lawlwssness which is trying to tear apart the sound secular, democratic, constitutional fabric of the country. These Machiavellian operators keep referring to the Emergency as an example of the abuse of political power in the past. The fact is the Emergency was brought in to prevent the Jan Sangh ( the precursor of today’s BJP) from perpetrating just the kind of lawlessness that we are seeing today. These RSS inspired operators managed to hoodwink the venerable, ageing and ailing Jayaprakash Narayan who later died of his ailments but not before the  hindutva forces gained political legitimacy from his legacy.

These chickens arenow coming home to roost. The auto drivers, taxi drivers, street vendors, construction workers, farmers, landless agricultural labourers, students, indigenous and tribal populations, the internally displaced due to Infrastructure projects – all those who struggle are dubbed Maoists by the facists who have now packed all the democratic institutions and hollowed out their value base. But the test ox the robustness of our “ largest democracy in the world” is now. The mainstream media has almost entirely crossed over and undermined their own voice and credibility. It remains for citizens  journalists, independent media working on the social media, and informal networks to continue to I form and empower. The time is now, like none other. It’s a call to all hands to come on deck to protect the superstructure of.our country, it’s foundational principles and our common freedoms and future.

Cynthia Stephen is a social activist

Notwithstanding China being Australia’s biggest trading partner, the Sinophobic and US lackey Australian Government and Mainstream media are publicly highly critical of China  and the Chinese for asserted wrongs in many areas from human rights abuse and subversion to territorial occupation,  but in stark contrast   are utterly silent over horrendous crimes in the same areas by the US, UK, traitorous Zionists and by nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide, neo-Nazi  and Australia-subverting Apartheid Israel.

This extraordinary silence over Apartheid Israel by the US lackey Australian Coalition Government and Labor Opposition,  and by mendacious and cowardly Mainstream Australian journalist , politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes,  is testament to the extraordinarily pervasive subversion and perversion of racist White Australia by One Percenters, racist Zionists, Apartheid Israel,  Zionist-subverted America and Zionist-subverted Britain.

In a decent world it really should not be required, but in Zionist-subverted, US lackey Australia it is necessary to declare whether  you belong to the decent 50% (who vote to support human rights for all, including the right to a modestly decent life, and are opposed to racism and war) or to the indecent, neoliberal Trumpist  50% (who variously vote for One Percenter interests, human rights abuse,  war, racism, bigotry, corruption, environmental destruction  and deadly inequity).

While cowardly, mendacious, Zionist-subverted, US lackey Australian Mainstream presstitutes  endlessly demand “respectful conversation” this isn’t really possible with the indecent, Trumpist 50% who are well-described by the Nazi era- and Dr Strangelove-reminiscent  acronym SIEG (Stupid, Ignorant  and Egregiously Greedy) and who wittingly or unwittingly vote for SCUMM (Socially Conservative, Unforgivable Mass Murderers).  If you think that this is just a teensy-weensy bit strong just consider that the conservative Coalition that presently rules Australia has committed Australia to all post-1950 US Asian wars (atrocities  that have been associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence or from war-imposed deprivation) [1], to the Zionist-promoted, endless US War on Terror (aka the War on Muslims, Muslim Genocide and Muslim Holocaust involving 32 million Muslims deaths from violence, 5 million, or from imposed deprivation , 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people) [2, 3], and to the Global Avoidable  Mortality Holocaust (15  million avoidable deaths from deprivation each year, and 1,500 million such deaths since 1950) [1].

Of course none of these atrocities are reported by the mendacious Australian Mainstream media, politician, academic and commentariat  presstitutes and accordingly things are getting even worse – history ignored yields history repeated  [4].  Thus Australia is among world leaders in 15 areas related to climate criminality, specifically  (1) annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution, (2) methanogenic livestock exports,  (3) natural gas exports, (4) recoverable shale gas reserves that can be accessed by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), (5) coal exports, (6) land clearing, deforestation and ecocide, (7) speciescide or species extinction, (8) coral reef destruction , (9) whale killing  and extinction threat through global warming impacting on krill stocks, (10) terminal carbon pollution budget exceedance,   (11) per capita Carbon Debt, (12) ultimately GHG generating iron ore exports, (13) climate change inaction,  (14) Climate Genocide (its coal exports ultimately kill 75,000 people per year), and (15) increasing GHG pollution post-Paris (contrary to the Paris Agreement demand to decrease GHG pollution)  [5, 6] .

Australia with 0.3% of the world’s population contributes 2.0% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution  and 4.5% if one includes Australia’s huge Exported GHG pollution via exports of coal, gas, iron ore and methanogenically-derived meat [7] (Australian Labor Leader of the Opposition, Anthony “Albo” Albanese , thinks that this is “double dipping” [8] but others  differ –  Australia clearly massively and inescapably contributes to  global GHG pollution via its world-leading coal and gas exports). Indeed while the Coalition Government is held hostage by climate change denialist troglodytes,  Labor is far more positive about renewable energy and a Green Economy. However the horrible reality is that the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Government and the Labor Opposition (aka the Lib-Labs) have a common climate criminal  policy of unlimited export of coal, gas, iron ore and methanogenically-derived meat. Australia makes a disproportionately huge contribution to a worsening Climate Genocide that is set to kill 10 billion people en route to a sustainable human population of only 0.5-1.0 billion by 2100 [9].

Presently about 1 million people die from climate change each year,  about 20 million people are displaced as refugees annually due to climate change, and environmentally-displaced people now total about 200 million [10-12]. 8 million people die annually from air pollution with this including 10,000 Australians and 75,000 people who die annually from the long-term effects of pollutants from the burning of Australian coal exports [13]. Further,  the myopia, mendacity and neoliberal “values” of the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition and Labor (the Lib-Labs) and consequent egregious inequity, ignorance and inaction  mean that 85,000 Australians die preventably each year from “life-style” or “political choice” reasons, the breakdown (including some overlaps) being as follows:  (1) 26,000 annual Australian deaths from adverse hospital events, (2) 17,000 obesity-related Australian deaths,  (3) 15,500 smoking-related Australian deaths, (4) 10,000 carbon burning pollution-derived Australian deaths, (5). 4,000 avoidable Indigenous Australian deaths, (6). 5,600 Australian alcohol-related deaths, (7) 2,900 Australian suicides (circa 80  being veterans) , (8) 1,400 Australian road deaths, (9) 630 Australian opiate drug-related deaths with 570 linked  to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry, and (10) 300 Australian homicides (80 being of women killed domestically) [6, 14-17]. Australian voters are like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed manure) and have an uninformed  “democratic” choice between an Australian-killing Coalition and a more assertedly altruistic but nevertheless  horribly complicit Labor [6].

Indeed I recently precipitated violent argument at a dinner party by declaring “There’s bestiality, paedophilia and incest and then there’s voting for the Coalition”. In short, while all of these 4 perversions are repugnant, the neoliberal and racist Coalition policies are immediately deadly for Australians at home (85,000 preventable  Australian deaths annually) and  Australian subjects abroad (e.g.  7 million Occupied Afghan deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation   in gross violation of the UN Genocide Convention and of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War) [18, 19]. Articles 55 and 56  of this  Geneva Convention unequivocally demand that an Occupier must provide  its conquered Subjects with  life-sustaining food and media requisites to the “fullest extent of the means available to it” – an imperative  grossly ignored by successive Australian Coalition and Labor Governments [20-22].

French economist Thomas Piketty [23, 24] has recently analysed the rise of xenophobic Trumpism. In short,  economist Thomas Piketty has analysed the rise of inequality-driven Trumpist  populism and increasing support by ignorant and xenophobic  poor people for the Right that serves the interests of the wealthy and opposes the Centre-Left that is paradoxically increasingly supported by high education and high income voters. Piketty’s “Brahmin Left versus the Merchant Right” analysis deals with France, the US and the UK but is relevant to Trumpist Brazil, Eastern Europe, BJP-ruled  India, and Australia. At this critical time of existential threat to Humanity  from nuclear weapons and anthropogenic climate change, Piketty has an extremely important message for progressive, science-informed, Left politics: “Without a strong and convincing egalitarian-internationalist platform, it is inherently difficult to unite low-education, low-income voters from all origins within the same party” [25, 26]. A recent survey  found that only 25% of Australian voters trust people in government   [27] but this  trust would largely evaporate if they were apprised of the massive lying by omission and lying by commission of mendacious Australian Mainstream media, politician, academic and commentariat  presstitutes.

Unlike France, the US and the UK, Australia, has an excellent,  compulsory, preferential voting system for the House of Representatives in which if a candidate does not receive 50% of the vote then second preferences of other parties are taken into account. In an unexpected result in the May 2019 Federal Election the Right-Far Right   Liberal Party-National Party Coalition was returned   to  power  with 52% of the “two-party preferred vote” to whit 41.4 % of the primary vote plus most second preferences  from the racist, bigoted and populist One Nation Party   (3.1%) and the populist United Australian Party of a mining billionaire Clive Palmer (3.4%),  with the remainder from preferences from other parties. The ostensibly “Centre-Left” but Rightist-dominated Labor Party received  48% of the “two-party preferred vote”, to whit 33.3% of the primary vote plus most second preferences from the pro-peace, pro-equity, pro-environment and pro-human rights Greens (10.4%), with the remainder from preferences from other parties [28].

The Coalition and Labor have many common policies, notably almost blind support for the US and Apartheid Israel, highly abusive and indefinite  imprisonment of refugees without charge or trial on remote , off-shore concentration camps, commitment to deadly neoliberal economics,  and climate criminal support for unlimited exports of coal, gas, iron ore and methanogenically-derived meat. The big difference between the feral Coalition and an aspirational Labor is that the war criminal, climate criminal ,  extreme neoliberal and Australian-killing Coalition fervently believes in these policies, whereas Labor,  while espousing them, at least knows that they are utterly wrong. “Wedged”, cowardly, immoral,  conflicted and US lackey Labor reminds one of the 1953  song “Be Prepared” by anti-racist Jewish American mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer: “ Don’t solicit for your sister, that’s not  nice/ Unless you get a good percentage of her price”  [29]. Nevertheless,  the high education professionals and informed proletariat of the “Left” support the Greens or Labor , and see a well-intentioned  but  pragmatic and morally flawed Labor as vastly better than the present troglodytic , anti-science, bigot-backed, and heartless  Right-Far Right Coalition Government that  outstanding human rights advocate Professor Gillian Triggs described as : “Ideologically opposed to human rights” [30].

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Racism is vile and Apartheid in particular  is regarded by the UN as a crime against  Humanity. War is the penultimate in racism and genocidal war is the ultimate in racism. While the presently dominant Neoliberalism demands maximal freedom for the smart and advantaged to exploit human and natural resources for private profit, altruistic Social Humanism (socialism, eco-socialism, the welfare state) seeks to sustainably maximize human happiness, opportunity and dignity for everyone through pragmatic, culturally-sensitive and evolving intra-national and international social contracts [31-36].  However neoliberalism remains the dominant ideology in rich and racist Australia.

White Australia has been deeply racist since the war criminal British  invasion in 1788 and commencement of a 2-century and indeed ongoing Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide ( 2 million Indigenous  deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from deprivation and disease; of 350- 750 Indigenous languages and dialects pre-Invasion, only 150 survive and all but 20 are endangered) [37]. War is the penultimate in racism and as a UK or US lackey  Australia has invaded 85 countries with 30 of these invasions being genocidal [38].  Presently Australia is helping the US occupy Afghanistan and the joint US-Australia electronic spying base at Pine Gap in Central Australia is a crucial part of US nuclear terrorism and also targets illegal US drone strikes in 7 countries from Libya to Pakistan [39].  From the 19th century onwards  White Australia has had deep fears about Asia and China in particular. Australia is linked to the US via the ANZUS Treaty (the Australia New Zealand and US  Treaty) that despite the best desires and efforts of Australia does not guarantee US protection – the US will do what is in the interests of America [40]. Nevertheless, a cravenly US lackey Australia has participated in all post-1950 US Asian wars (conflicts associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation [1]) in the hope that such complicities will somehow guarantee US protection.

China is now Australia’s biggest trading partner  and Australia clearly needs to balance this economic dependence on China with its alliance with an increasingly anti-China US.  However the US lackey  Australian Government and  US-entwined Australian Intelligence have chosen to adopt the aggressive American anti-China stance in various areas despite expert advice to be more balanced. Thus former Coalition PM Fraser (2010): “Slavish devotion to the US a foreign policy folly for Australia… To participate in a conflict with China is totally contrary to our interests” [41]. Former Labor PM Paul Keating was even blunter (May 2019): “When the security agencies are running foreign policy, the nutters are in charge. They’ve lost their strategic bearings, these organisations” and (November 2019): “My concern is that what passes for the foreign policy of Australia lacks any sense of strategic purpose. The whispered word of ‘communism’ of old is now being replaced by the word ‘China’. The reason that we have ministries and cabinets is that a greater and eclectic wisdom can be brought to bear on complex topics… this process is not working in Australia. The subtleties of foreign policy and the elasticity of diplomacy are being supplanted by the phobias of a group of security agencies which are now effectively running the foreign policy of the country… The [US dominated] Australian media has been recreant in its duty to the public in failing to present a balanced picture of the rise and legitimacy and importance of China, preferring instead to traffic in side plays dressed up with the cosmetics of sedition and risk”  [43].

Philipp Ivanov (CEO, Asia Society Australia) sensibly argues for a frank and multi-faceted government, business,  educational institutional and community engagement with China (2019): “Today’s China is more global, more powerful, more willing to project its power, and more sensitive to criticism, and just as hard-working and dynamic as it has been for centuries. The big guy is making his presence felt, sometimes in ways we find admirable – in the global economy, science and technology – but also in ways that make us uncomfortable: on the streets of Hong Kong, the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, and China choosing to silence or ban those critical of its government from visiting the country… Living with China will not be easy. But a co-ordinated and long-term policy development effort led not only by government but business, educational institutions and the community can safeguard Australian interests as China continues to grow in power and influence, while preserving – and if possible, expanding – the very real benefits gained through engagement” [44].

China can be praised for its huge technological and economic advances and for  bringing 800 million people out of dire poverty. Thus annual avoidable deaths from deprivation total zero (0) in authoritarian China  as compared to 4 million in “democratic” India [1]. However China must also be legitimately  criticized for the death penalty, urban pollution, a one-party state, and the maltreatment of Uighurs and dissidents. Indeed the great successes of  China derive from science and altruism  which  are based on finding the best models for reality and society, respectively. Just as genetic diversity was required for Darwinian natural selection, so diversity of ideas  is required for selecting the best models for reality and society . One hopes that China will perceive this and find a way to maximize human rights,  free expression and diversity of ideas.

Australia is in the grip of US-promoted Sinophobic hysteria  that posits Chinese espionage, subversion, perversion and indeed military threat to Australia and the region. A detailed account of this threat thesis is “Silent invasion. China’s Influence in Australia” by Clive Hamilton  (professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, Canberra) [45, 46], and this position has been taken up vigorously  by the Mainstream Right.  As a result there is greatly increased Sinophobia  and criticism of China. Federal legislation has been passed (with anti-Chinese intent) that constrains foreign purchase of Australian real estate, other foreign commercial activity (e.g. by Huawei) , foreign donations to political parties  and other foreign engagement in Australia, including collaborative research at Australian universities.

However US-inspired  anti-Chinese xenophobia in Australia invites critical assessment of some good things that China is doing and some bad things that the US Alliance is doing i.e. those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. With this background we can consider the  present Sinophobic hysteria of US lackey and pro-Apartheid Israel Australia, and  succinctly  compare these China-bashing claims with actual realities in China versus realities in the US Alliance countries of   Apartheid Israel, the US, the UK, France and  Australia.

(1). Apartheid – China firmly opposes Apartheid but Australia and the US Alliance fervently support Apartheid Israel and hence Apartheid.

The UN describes Apartheid  as a crime against Humanity and has promulgated an “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the crime of Apartheid” [47, 48]. Nuclear terrorist, serial war criminal, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel determines that 72% of its now circa 50% Indigenous Palestinian subjects who are Occupied  Palestinians  cannot vote for the government  ruling them i.e. egregious Apartheid [48-55]. The UN regards Apartheid as one of the worst of human rights violations [47, 48]. The 2016 UN Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning illegal Israeli settlements and other Israeli war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories was passed unanimously (except for an Obama America abstention rather than veto) [56-58]. A former Coalition Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop,  disgracefully disputed the illegality of Zionist West Bank settlements [59] and the same position has now been adopted by the US Trump administration. Bishop notoriously  threatened to withhold any Federal funding from Australians  supporting Boycotts Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)  against Apartheid Israel [60, 61] (noting that anti-racist Jews are prominent among those supporting BDS) {62].

China and the UK supported the  UN Security Council Resolution 2334 but Trump America and US lackey Australia subsequently vehemently opposed the resolution, this making them number 1 and number 2, respectively, as supporters of Apartheid Israel and hence  of race-based, neo-Nazi Apartheid [56-58].  Indeed Professor Ben Saul quotes  a Coalition Foreign Minister boasting that Australia is more pro-Israel than 99 per cent of the world [61]. Political candidates who support Apartheid Israel and hence Apartheid are utterly unfit for public life and being a member of Parliament in a in a one-person-one-vote democracy.

(2). Climate  change & intergenerational equity – China leads the  world in renewables but Australia and US are among world leaders in climate change inaction.

The world is existentially threatened by nuclear weapons and man-made climate change [62-85]. The solutions have been succinctly stated by eminent physicist Stephen Hawking:  “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [62, 63]. Australian MPs and media frequently describe China as the biggest greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter in the world but this must be considered on a per capita basis (“all men  are created equal”).

Per capita GHG pollution (taking land use and CH4 into account and in units of tonnes CO2-equivalent  per person per year) are as follows (2016 analysis): Australia (52.9; 116 if including its huge GHG-generating  exports), United States (41.0), UK (21.5), ` Apartheid Israel (20.2), China (7.4),  and India (2.1)[86,  87]. China is indeed the world’s biggest greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter but on a per capita ranks far below Australia, Apartheid Israel, and the US on a per capita basis [86, 87].

For some poor countries exporting GHG pollution is their only option. Accordingly, a fairer measure of climate criminality is per capita GHG pollution weighted for GDP per capita,  and  on this scale the scores are as follows:   Qatar (924.3), United Arab Emirates (337.0), Australia (306.8; 672.8 if including its huge GHG-generating  exports), Canada (234.0), New Zealand ( 218.7), United States ( 207.1), UK (92.9), Apartheid Israel (71.9), China (5.2) and India (0.3) [87]. Further, China leads the world in terms of renewable energy installation (728 GW power capacity as of 2018, twice that of the US) [88].

Australian politicians and media harp on China’s world leading GHG pollution, China’s  use of Australian coal and iron ore, and Australia’s asserted global insignificance. However while  Australia has only  0.3% of the world’s population it is responsible for  4.5% of  global greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution (with its Exported GHG pollution included ) [86, 87]. Further, Australia is among world leaders in 15 areas of climate criminality, specifically  environmental vandalism driven by  remorseless neoliberal greed, namely (1) annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution, (2) live methanogenic livestock exports,  (3) natural gas exports, (4) recoverable shale gas reserves that can be accessed by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), (5) coal exports, (6) land clearing, deforestation and ecocide, (7) speciescide or species extinction, (8) coral reef destruction, (9) whale killing  and extinction threat through global warming impacting on krill stocks, (10) terminal carbon pollution budget exceedance,   (11) per capita Carbon Debt, (12) ultimately GHG generating iron ore exports, (13) climate change inaction, (14) climate genocide and approach towards omnicide and terracide, and (15) increasing GHG pollution despite Paris commitments to lower GHG pollution [89-91].

The German Climate Performance Index has the following rankings for climate change action (1 is best, 58 the worst): Sweden (1), India (6),and  China (27), with the bottom rankings assigned to Australia (53), Iran (54), Korea (55), Chinese Taipei (56), Saudi Arabia (57), and the US (58) [92]. While China is leading the world in uptake of  renewable energy, the US has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement, and  Australia is flouting  the Paris Climate Agreement demand to decrease GHG pollution – Australia’s Domestic GHG pollution has been steadily increasing since the climate criminal Coalition came to power in 2013 [93, 94].

(3). Democracy –  an altruistic Chinese One-Party State versus corrupt Australian and US neoliberal Corporatocracies.

At the most fundamental level of understanding, democracy means practical realization  of the basic wishes of the people e.g. a long life, a long life for children and grandchildren, and modest but good employment, housing, health, education, opportunity and dignity. In bringing 800 million people out of dire poverty and through massive economic advances,  One-Party State China has  satisfied these  basic, “democratic” wishes  of the Chinese people.  Annual avoidable deaths from deprivation total zero (0) for One-Party State China as compared to 4 million for ostensible “democracy” India in which these fundamental demands have not been met [1].

Australia has an excellent compulsory and preferential voting system. Australia   claims to be a democracy but in reality is a  One Percenter-, US- and Zionist- subverted and perverted Kleptocracy, Plutocracy, Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy, Corporatocracy and Dollarocracy in which Big Money purchases people, parties, policies, public perception of reality, votes, political power and thence more private profit. Indeed 70% of Australian daily newspaper readers have been captured by the right-wing US Murdoch media empire,  and in the May 2019 Federal Election  a right-wing billionaire, Clive Palmer, spent an extraordinary (for Australia) $60 million on nation-wide anti-Labor advertising (Labor lost). Australia has a democratic House of Representatives in which the members are elected from equal-sized electorates (noting that  Indigenous  Australians could only vote since 1967),  but in  the Senate the small state of  Tasmania (population 0.5 million) has the same numbers of  senators (12)  as New South Wales (population 7.5 million) – no wonder former Australian Labor PM Paul Keating famously described the Senate as “unrepresentative swill”.  

Now we all love democracy because it enables largely untrammelled dissent and 3-5 year changes in government without bloodshed and trauma. However perversion of democracy by the Big Money of One Percenters and big corporations (Corporatocracy) has had the consequence of cowardly political short termism. Thus scientists have been publicly warning of the threat of global warming from GHGs since the 1980s,  but as set out in 2017 and 2019 analyses by Ripple et al. and co-signed by 15,000 and 11,000 scientists, respectively, trends in several dozen key areas over this period have been quasi-linear and heading in the wrong direction [64-67]. Under successive,  anti-science, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-oil, climate criminal  Coalition Governments Australia’s Domestic GHG pollution has been increasing rather than decreasing as demanded by the 2015 Paris Agreement [93, 94].

Professor Jorge Randers (an author of the “The Limits to Growth in 1972, the Report to the Club of Rome”, has commented on this deadly political stasis and climate change inaction in democratic countries: “I am a climate pessimist. I believe (regrettably) that humanity will not meet the climate challenge with sufficient strength to save our grandchildren from living in a climate-damaged world. Humanity (regrettably) will not make what sacrifice is necessary today in order to ensure a better life for our ancestors forty years hence. The reason is that we are narrowly focused on maximum well-being in the short term. This short-termism is reflected in the systems of governance that we have chosen to dominate our lives: Both democracy and capitalism place more emphasis on costs today that on benefits forty years in the future…  What can be done? Can democratic society be modified to solve the climate challenge? …  I predict, it will be the Chinese who solve the global climate challenge – singlehandedly. Through a sequence of 5-year plans established with a clear long term vision, and executed without asking regular support from the Chinese. They are already well on the way, for the benefit of our grandchildren” [95].

US- and Zionist-subverted Mainstream Australia routinely and falsely  describes Apartheid Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East” when (a) there are other democracies in the Middle East (Cyprus, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon) and (b) Apartheid Israel is only  a democracy-by-genocide – of 14 million Palestinians, 7 million are Exiled and cannot step foot in what has been the land of their forebears for millennia, 5 million Occupied Palestinians have zero human rights and cannot vote for the government governing them (Apartheid), and about 2 million “lucky” Israeli Palestinians  can vote but exist as Third Class citizens under over 60 race-based, neo-Nazi discriminatory laws that invite them to leave  if they don’t like it [96, 97]. Pro-Apartheid Australia is second only to Trump America as a supporter of Apartheid Israel. In the sense of “democracy as satisfaction of fundamental popular wishes” , Apartheid Israel also fails because of the horrendous and deadly  deprivation imposed on  millions of Exiled Palestinians in Middle East refugee camps, 5 million Occupied Palestinians and indeed many  of the 2  million “lucky” Palestinian Israelis. Thus the GDP per capita is $36,000 for Israelis as compared to a deadly $4,000 for Occupied Palestinians  whose life expectancy is 10 years less than for Israelis. Each year about 5,000 Occupied Palestinians die from Israeli violence (550) or from Israeli-imposed deprivation (4,200) [51-55].

China is routinely and falsely lambasted by right-wing Australian politicians and Mainstream media as an authoritarian state that is not democratic.   The falsehood of this claim is apparent when one considers that most basically democracy is about expression of the will of the people. Thus the most fundamental  wishes of the people are surely to live,  for their children and grandchildren to live, and for a modestly happy life for all with reasonable economic security, health and education.  The Chinese system has brought about 800 million  people out of the direst poverty and has been able to satisfy these fundamental desires for 1.4 billion people. China has  a democratic system in this fundamental sense of satisfying the basic wishes of the people. Thus annual avoidable deaths from deprivation total zero (0) for China as compared to 4 million for the ostensible democracy India [1].

Australia is one of the world’s oldest parliamentary democracies,  but since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity [2, 3] successive Australian governments have introduced over 70 anti-terrorism  laws with bipartisan (Coalition and Labor) support that egregiously violate Australian civil rights to the extent that Australia has become a “pre-police state”  [98-102]. In this neo-fascist and racist Australia the disabled, the sexually abused, poor and Indigenous Australians have a life expectancy about 10 years less than that of White Australians [37, 52].  While the GDP per capita is $55,000 for Australia, about the same number of Indigenous Australians die avoidably each year on a global comparative scale (4,200 out of an Aboriginal population of 0.7 million ) as do Indigenous  Palestinians  (4,200 out of an Occupied Palestinian population of 5 million) [37, 52]. In the sense of “democracy as satisfaction of fundamental wishes”, One Percenter-dominated Australia fails to deliver – 3 million Australians live in poverty and about 85,000 Australians die preventably each year from deadly “life-style” and “political  choice” reasons. Ditto Corporatocracy and Lobbyocracy America where money buys votes, civil liberties have been grossly eroded, the voters have to choose between the Republican billionaires or the Democrat billionaires, and 1.7 million Americans die preventably every year from “lifestyle’ or “political choice” reasons.

 (4). Free speech – China censors and bans Google but Google censors and holocaust-ignoring US Alliance countries ban “effective free speech”.

Free speech is vital for science, scholarship and for an  informed public that is vital for democracy (whether of the One Percenter-dominated parliamentary democracy kind as in Australia  or the more general “satisfaction of fundamental popular wishes” kind as in China and Cuba). Indeed just as genetic diversity is required for natural selection and evolution of better adapted organisms, so diversity of ideas is required for societal selection of  more useful “memes” or ideas.

China evidently restricts free speech by (a) persecuting and imprisoning dissidents, (b) intimidation  as a result of such persecution of dissidents, and (c) other censorship . This is a mistake and one hopes that modern China, having made such spectacular advances (e.g. peace and security, equal rights for women, population control, taking 800 million people out of dire and deadly poverty, world leading adoption of renewable energy, fantastic technological and economic advances, and abolition of avoidable mortality from deprivation), will also rapidly achieve major progress in the  areas of human rights and free speech..

MPs and other public commentators  in general  in US lackey Australia are torn between supporting  the anti-China rhetoric and actions of America or watching their tongues (self-censorship) because China is Australia’s  biggest trading partner. Indeed 2 right-wing, China-bashing  MPs have recently been banned from entry to China for criticizing human rights abuses in China [103]. However Australian MPs and other commentators while legitimately  criticizing the widely reported detention of 1 million Uighurs in  Chinese re-education  camps , they have absolutely nothing to say about the highly abusive, over 50 year  imprisonment by Apartheid Israel of (presently) 5 million Occupied Palestinians  without charge or trial in the Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) or in West Bank ghettoes (3 million) [49-55, 104].

Just as China censors over its Uighur re-education policies (evidently aimed at stopping a potentially very bloody Uighur independence  or separatist movement), so  Mainstream Australian  heavily censors  legitimate criticism   of past and present  genocidal crimes of the US, UK and Apartheid Israel. Thus in the 1942-1945 WW2 Bengali Holocaust the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons in Bengal and the neighbouring provinces of Assam, Bihar and Orissa [105-107],  but   Searches of the ABC (Australia’s mendacious and taxpayer-funded equivalent of the UK BBC)  for the terms “Bengali Holocaust” or “Indian Holocaust” yield zero (0) results. Similarly, 35 million Chinese died in the WW2 Chinese Holocaust  under  the Japanese (1937-1945) [108, 109] , but a Search of the ABC for “Chinese Holocaust “ again yields zero (0) results.  The ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the British invasion of the Middle East in 1914) [51]  is similarly unreported – a Search for the term “Palestinian Genocide” yields zero (0) results. Similarly,  deaths from violence or imposed deprivation total 4.6 million (1990-2011 Iraqi Genocide and Iraqi Holocaust), 7.0 million (2001 onwards Afghan Genocide and Afghan Holocaust ) and 32 million (the ongoing, post-9-11  Muslim Genocide and Muslim Holocaust since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity) [2, 3, 18, 19, 110],  all atrocities in which  a serial war criminal and deeply racist Australia has been involved. Yet ABC Searches for the terms “Iraqi Genocide”, “Afghan Genocide”,  “Muslim Genocide” and “US did 9-11”all yield zero (0) results.

In contrast,  an ABC Search for “The Holocaust”  – synonymous in the West for the WW2 Jewish Holocaust  (5-6 million Jews killed by violence or deprivation and  to the near-total exclusion of the WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slavs, Jews and Roma killed, 1941-1945) – yields 375 results. An ABC Search for “Aboriginal Genocide” actually yields 3  results but none actually immediately mention the Australian Aboriginal Genocide, the  231-year atrocity in which about 2 million Indigenous  Australians were killed by violence (0.1 million) or through imposed dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease [37].

Google has been effectively  banned in China by the Great Firewall [111]. However Google itself is engaged in massive censorship of progressive  media sites so that items ranking high on Page 1 of a Bing Search are totally “disappeared” or “effectively disappeared”  by the Google Robot (noting that 92% and 95%  of Google Searches stop after  page 1 and page 2, respectively ) [112]. Numerous examples can be given but, for example, the carefully documenting website  “Climate Genocide” is about the acute and existential threat of climate change to Humanity and the Biosphere [72]. Whereas a Bing Search for “Climate Genocide” yields a website of this name as result #2 on page #1, a Google Search fails to find the site on exhaustive searching  – however repeating “the [Google] search with omitted results included” finally finds this important site as item #6 on page #1.   For the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-subverted Western Mainstream presstitutes, the greater the atrocity the more assiduously do they attempt to bury it.

(5). Human rights and freedom from child abuse – China “little emperor syndrome” versus horrendous child abuse in the US, Australia and Apartheid Israel.

White Australian journalists, politicians and commentators  legitimately complain about human rights abuses in China e.g. censorship, the death penalty (as in the US), constraints on freedom of speech, the one-party system, maltreatment of dissidents, and mass detention of Uighurs. However pro-Apartheid Australia should also examine   what is happening to the human rights abuse of children within the US, Australia, in  Apartheid Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in comparison   with treatment of children in China.

In China the former one-child policy addressed the urgent and indeed global problem of over-population in the interests of future generations. Several recent reports collectively endorsed by thousands of expert scientists have warned the world that time is running out to save Humanity and the Biosphere from further catastrophic climate change and further massive biodiversity loss [5-7, 12]. Massive harm has already occurred due to continuing carbon pollution, population growth and economic growth and it is clear that zero growth in these areas is insufficient .  Thus using coral reefs as a canary in the mine, coral experts have determined that world coral reefs started dying when CO2 reached 320 ppm, at which time (1963) the human population was 3.3 billion or about half of that today (7.4 billion). There must be negative carbon pollution (atmospheric CO2 draw-down to 300 ppm CO2), negative population growth (population decline by about 50%), and negative economic growth (degrowth by about 50% ) to halt and reverse this worsening disaster [113].

The former one-child policy of China  has meant especially kind  treatment of children by parents and grandparents (the “little emperor syndrome”)[114]. Children in China as in other countries are schooled in “patriotism” but have the benefit of a non-religious education system which means that they escape the horrendous religion-based intellectual child abuse that is widespread in US Alliance countries. Thus only 15% of Americans have been educated to accept the Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection whereas the remainder have been evilly brainwashed into believing unsubstantiated religious fairy tales [115, 116].  The same evil of intellectual child abuse is massive in Australia, the UK and Apartheid Israel.  About 25% of Australian children suffer child sexual abuse as compared to 18% of American children and 17% of Apartheid Israeli children [117]. Nearly 50% of Apartheid Israeli children   suffer from  physical, sexual or emotional abuse [117-119]. Apartheid Israel has a shocking record of over 70 years of horrendous maltreatment of Indigenous Palestinians  who presently number 14 million and of whom about 50% are children. 5 million Occupied Palestinians (half of them children, three quarters women and children) continue to be indefinitely  imprisoned  without charge or trial  and deprived of all human rights  in West Bank ghettoes (3 million) or in the blockaded, shelled, rocketed and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) [120].  Apartheid Israel abusively imprisons, abuses, tortures and blackmails  Palestinian children in Israeli prisons, attempting by these evil means to force them to spy on friends and relatives  [121].

(6). Human rights and  the right to life – 800 million Chinese out of deadly poverty versus US Alliance passive mass murder of Muslims.

The great China success of bringing 800 million people out of poverty was associated with a huge decrease in infant mortality (in under-5 infant  deaths per 1,000 live births) from 195 (1950) to 12 (2017).   The “GDP per capita” (2017) and “infant mortality per thousand live births” (2017) are $500  and 94.8 (US Alliance-occupied Somalia), $1,900 and 110.6  (US- and Australia-occupied Afghanistan),  $4,300 and 15.4  (Occupied Palestinian Territories ),  $16,600 and 12 (China),  $49,900 and 4.3  (Australia),  $43,600 and 4.3 (UK), $59,500 0.055 and 5.8 (US), and  $36,200 and 3.4 (Apartheid Israel) [115, 116].   Annual avoidable deaths from deprivation total 110,000, 92,000 and 4,200  in Occupied Somalia, Occupied Afghanistan,  and Occupied Palestine, respectively, but total zero in China, Australia, the UK and the US [1]. The horrendous poverty, annual infant deaths and annual avoidable deaths from deprivation in Occupied Somalia,  Occupied Afghanistan and other countries invaded by the US Alliance is evidence of war criminal violation by the US Alliance of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that unequivocally state that the Occupier must supply its Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical services “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [20, 21].

The most fundamental human right is the right to life. While legitimately criticized for the one party state, the death penalty, censorship, urban air pollution and harsh treatment of dissidents, China has been hugely successful in radically reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality in Tibet and in China as a whole. In stark contrast, the war criminal US Alliance occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan continues to be associated with an under-1 infant mortality and maternal mortality incidence that is 7 times higher and 4-12 times higher, respectively, than that in Tibet – evidence of gross violation of the Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention by the US Alliance including Australia [20, 21].

While China can be and must be properly criticized over human rights issues (“power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”) , it has respected the fundamental right to life of its subjects by bringing 800 million people out of poverty with attendant huge decreases in infant mortality, maternal mortality and avoidable deaths from deprivation. In stark contrast, the rich and serial war criminal US Alliance, the US, UK, Apartheid Israel  and Australia have been involved for decades in passive mass murder of their overseas Muslim subjects in gross violation of the Geneva Convention [1].

(7). Human rights and the right to live peaceably in your own country – observed by China but grossly violated by the genocidal US Alliance.

China is heavily criticized in the West for the rigor of its application of its laws and sovereignty in Xinjiang and Tibet, regions that were  incorporated into China about 900 years ago at roughly the same time as the English were variously conquering the Celtic entities of Cornwall,  Wales, Scotland  and Ireland [1, 124-126].   Realistically, China is no more going to surrender these economically and strategically vital regions than the US is going to surrender  Alaska, ethnically cleansed Diego Garcia, or ethnically cleansed Guantanamo.  Indeed the US subverts all countries in the world ,  has nearly 800 military bases located in over 70 countries [127], and has invaded over  70 countries (over 50 since WW2) [1, 128-130].  By way of example, in the Korean War the US killed 28% of the North Korean population [131]. There are over 70 million refugees in the world today and they are mostly derive from US Alliance wars on non-European and Muslim countries.

US Alliance, US-, UK-, Australia- and Canada- backed Apartheid Israel has ethnically cleansed 90% of Palestine. Of 14 million Indigenous Palestinians, 7 million  Exiled Palestinians are violently excluded from the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for thousands of years, 5 million Occupied Palestinians are excluded from all human rights and are highly abusively confined under Israeli guns to West Bank ghettoes (3 million) or to the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) , and nearly 2 million “lucky” Palestinian Israelis are Third Class citizens of Apartheid Israel under over 60 Nazi-style, race-based laws [48-55, 96, 97].

As UK lackeys or US lackeys Australians have invaded 85 countries as compared to the  British 193 countries, France 82, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25,  Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2 [128, 129, 132-134]. Of these 85 invasions by Australians about 30 have been genocidal [38]. In the last millennium the English have invaded 193 countries (nearly every member of the present UN) and many of these invasions have been genocidal. Thus from a qualitative perspective the UK-imposed Australian Aboriginal Genocide was the worst in human  history (2 million deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation and disease, and of 350-750 unique languages and dialects in in 1788 only 150 survive today and of these all but 20 are endangered) [37]. However from a quantitative  perspective the 2 century British-imposed Indian Holocaust was the world’s  worst genocide (1,800 million Indian deaths from imposed deprivation [135].

(8). International  rules-based order – largely observed by China but grossly violated by US Alliance, Apartheid Israel  and US lackey Australia.

US lackey Australia echoes the US position that Chinese island building on uninhabited atolls in the South China Sea is illegal and against the “International  rules-based order”. Of course the South China Sea is named thus because it is off the southern coast of China and not off the coast of California or Australia. The serial war criminal US Alliance absurdly argues that the Chinese are threatening commerce in this region,   commerce that is overwhelmingly dominated by Chinese commerce – is China going to destroy its own commerce? Iranian-origin Australian senator Sam Dastyari was forced  to resign from the Australian Parliament for receiving gratuities from the Chinese and expressing an opinion on the South China Sea sympathetic to that of China and contrary to the official line laid down in US lackey Australia by the serial war criminal Americans [136].

The US Alliance, including US lackey Australia, fervently supports a nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, serial invader, serial war criminal, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel that grossly violates the following  key elements of International law: the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War [20],  International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the crime of Apartheid [47], Convention on the Rights of the Child [137], UN Charter [138], UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People [139],   Universal Declaration of Human Rights [140], Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees [141], and the UN Genocide Convention [141]. With the fervent support of the US Alliance including US lackey Australia, Apartheid Israeli exceptionalism means  that it simply ignores resolutions and determinations of the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council (notably and most recently UNSC Resolution 2334) , the UN Human Rights Council, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

US lackey Australia and the other democratic and European US Alliance countries legitimately  criticize China as an authoritarian , one-party state but ignore the reality that in fervently supporting Apartheid Israel they are fervently supporting the abomination of Apartheid that is utterly condemned by the UN as a crime against Humanity  [47].

(9). Nuclear weapons.

Eminent physicist Stephen Hawking has bluntly declared “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [62, 63]. The upper  estimates of stored  nuclear weapons  are as follows: US (7,315), Russia (8,000), Apartheid Israel (400), France (300), UK (250), China (250), Pakistan (120), India (100), and North Korea (circa 10). India , Pakistan, Apartheid Israel and North Korea have not ratified the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) [75].

One can well understand why China believes it needs a nuclear deterrent to genocidal American militarism. In short, China has suffered 3 centuries of devastation from imperialist invaders. From the mid-18th century onwards India and China (that had both led the world economically in the 18th century  with each the contributing  about a quarter of world GDP [143])  were progressively and rapidly devastated by genocidal European imperialism.  Thus India’s percentage of world GDP was 24% (1750), 17% (1820),  5% (1950) and 7% (2008),  and China’s percentage of world GDP was 22% (1700), 33% (1820), 5% (1950) and 18% (2008) [143, 144]. The economic strangulation of India and China was deadly – thus 1,800 million Indians died avoidably from deprivation under the British  (1757-1847) [135], 20-100 million Chinese died from violence and deprivation during the British-imposed Opium Wars and the linked Tai Ping Rebellion [1], and 35 million Chinese died in the WW2 Chinese Holocaust under the Japanese (1957-1945) [108, 109]. The mass starvation of about 30 million people in China during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) [145] is attributed in the complicit West to policy failures by Mao Zedong but the active military  and economic hostility of the US Alliance and slow recovery from imperialist devastation were clearly also major contributors. I.F. Stone’s brilliant “The Secret History of the Korean War” exposes a hidden US strategy  of engineering an excuse for nuclear devastation of China and the Soviet Union [146]. Likewise Christopher Hitchens’ “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” details the real US nuclear threat to India in 1971 when India was forced to intervene to stop the Pakistan-imposed Bangladeshi Holocaust (Bengali Holocaust, Bengali Genocide)  [147]. The US destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons, threatens to use nuclear weapons, and indeed has recently threatened North Korea and Iran with total annihilation.

Australia is critically involved in US nuclear terrorism   through electronic spying bases (notably Pine Gap) ,  the hosting of nuclear weapons-carrying US warships and its degenerate opposition to a nuclear weapons ban [40, 75].  Australia was also involved in UK nuclear terrorism through the testing of British nuclear weapons and delivery systems [40] . The mendacious and traitorous US lackeys running Australia (“nutters’ according to former PM Paul Keating [42, 43]) have made Australia a key nuclear  target in any tit-for-tat  escalating nuclear exchange. Thus after a limited US first strike on a nuclear-armed opponent, any escalating nuclear response would initially target Australia rather than US bases or cities.

Apartheid Israel has up to 400 nuclear warheads together  with missile delivery systems including Germany-supplied submarines. Zionist domination of US foreign policy dates from Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons (with US and French assistance) in 1967. Indeed Apartheid Israel was prepared to use nuclear weapons on a “demonstration basis” when it invaded all of its neighbours in 1967 (Israeli Brigadier General Itzhak Yaakov was in charge of this program but was imprisoned for revealing the existence of this secret plan) [148, 149]. While non-nuclear weapons Iran is subject to deadly sanctions by the US [150], the Zionist-subverted Mainstream media don’t breathe a word about Apartheid Israeli nuclear weapons. The World cannot afford to have any nuclear weapons – and certainly not  400 – in the hands of a mere several million genocidally racist Zionist psychopaths.

(10). Scholarly research – Sinophobic Australia and the Zionist-subverted US constrain university research in the interests of foreign nuclear terrorist powers.

China and India were a world leaders in science and technology before the Enlightenment and liberalism paradoxically unleashed European high technology wars on these countries in the 18th century [1].  In my biochemical scientific career I had little occasion to refer to Chinese or Indian researchers but this changed in the 1990s as Chinese and Indian students flocked to Western universities and science in China and India escalated. Thus, for example, the  2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Professor Youyou Tu for her key role in the discovery of the extremely important anti-malarial natural product  artemisinin that I necessarily referred to in my encyclopaedic 2003 book “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” [151].

The international and collaborative  scientific culture is one of the great outcomes of the Enlightenment but is now being constrained through the militarization and politicization of academic research by nuclear terrorists rogue states, notable the US and Apartheid Israel. Thus US lackey Australia passed the  Australia-United States  Defence Trade Cooperation Treaty-related Defence Trade Controls  Bill that makes it an offence punishable by 10 years in prison for an academic without a permit to inform non-Australians  (in conversation, tutorials, lectures, conference papers, scientific papers etc) about numerous  technologies and thousands of chemicals and organisms  listed in a presently circa 400-page Defence and Strategic Goods List [152, 153]. The Australian Review has commented: “Since 1998 Chinese collaboration has soared from zero to 15 per cent of Australian scientific research” [154]. However, impelled by the present hysterical Sinophobia,  the present US lackey Australian Coalition Government has set out “Guidelines to counter foreign interference in the Australian university sector” that is aimed squarely at China to the detriment of the international collaborative scientific  research ethos [155].  This all adds to a Sinophobic and McCarthyist ambience in Australia (indeed  I used to say “China is getting more like Australia  and Australia is getting more like China”). It also adds to massive censorship and self-censorship in Australian  universities that have become increasingly “corporate” and driven by censorial “corporate brand” considerations [156]. Of course the current Sinophobia in Australia masks massive military-related collaborative research involving Australia and the nuclear terrorist and serial war criminal  rogue states of Apartheid  Israel [157, 158 ] and the US [152, 153].

The incoming Coalition Government suggested in 2013 that it would stop Federal funding of people supporting  Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel [159], noting that leading figures in the BDS movement are anti-racist Jewish scholars and writers [61, 160]. The degenerate , pro-Apartheid Trump Administration is reported to be moving to withhold Federal funding by executive  order  from universities  deemed insufficiently supportive of Apartheid Israel e.g. by permitting BDS activism on campus [161, 162]. Indeed a significant reason (in addition to the overwhelming pro-Brexit reason) for Jeremy Corbyn’s unpopularity and the Labour loss in the UK elections was the utterly false defamation by the Zionists, Mainstream media and Tories of anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn,  the anti-racist  Labour Party and a large body of anti-racist  Jewish humanitarians as “anti-semitic”  simply because they support human rights for Palestinians. Of course (a) those   falsely defaming anti-racist   Jews are most certainly  racists and anti-Jewish anti-Semites, (b) those opposing human rights for Palestinians are most certainly  racists and anti-Arab anti-Semites, and (c) false defamation of  anti-racist Jews ultimately led to the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed by the Nazis) just as denial of Palestinian human rights led to the ongoing Palestinians Genocide (90% of Palestine ethnically cleansed with more adumbrated and 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the UK invasion of the Middle East in 1914).

(11). Subversion and security threat – minimal Chinese influence despite massive trade versus massive subversion of Australia by the US, UK, Apartheid Israel and traitorous Israel Lobby.

“Silent invasion. China’s Influence in Australia” by the otherwise very progressive and admirable Professor Clive Hamilton (professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, Canberra) explores increasing Chinese influence in Australia but does so in an excited, polemical  fashion that crosses the boundary between critical academic discourse and the xenophobia, paranoia, jingoism and Sinophobia that are now dominant in a China-bashing Australia. Of course Australia should be concerned about its sovereignty and security but  China is now Australia’s biggest trading partner and it is quite expected for legitimate Chinese influence to increase in Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy Australia, the more so as the world becomes increasingly disenchanted with racism, bullying and serial genocidal violence from Australia’s military ally, Zionist-subverted America [45, 46]. The Australian Government has reacted to the Sinophobia of the US-dominated Australian Mainstream media by (sensibly) legislating for abolition of foreign political donations and prohibition of foreign purchase of old housing while conversely  smearing Chinese Australians, implicitly smearing Australians seeking engagement with China, excluding involvements of  a major Chinese telecommunications company (Huawei) and bullying universities over research collaborations with China.

Former Palestinian Ambassador,  Ali Kazak: “There is nothing ASIO [Australian Security and Intelligence Organization] suggests any Chinese lobby of doing that the Israeli lobby has not been doing for over 30 years. Any Chinese lobby is child’s play in contrast to the well-established Israeli lobby. No country has more interfered, spied and endangered Australia’s security, sovereignty and the integrity of its national institutions than Israel and its powerful lobby. By their own admission, the lobby receives funds from Israeli institutions, coordinates and cooperates with the Israeli government and embassy, and has “established a long tradition of strong public advocacy on behalf of Israel” to shape the opinion of members of the Australian public, media organisations and government officials in order to advance [Apartheid] Israel’s own political objectives” [163]. Indeed the very absence of any public discussion  of the massive Zionist, Israeli, UK and US  subversion of Australia is evidence of the massive degree of that subversion (see [163-167]).

A huge book could be written about  Zionist, Israeli, UK and US  subversion of Australia but it would never be published. Indeed any new revelations about  such subversion involving Australian Intelligence operations would result  in up to 10 years in prison. Brian Toohey’s excellent book “Secret. The making of Australia’s security state” [40] details secret dealings of Australia with the UK and US but only mentions Apartheid Israel once: “Israel is the only country to have successfully demanded that it be allowed to operate key [weapons] systems independently of the US”  (page 190 [40]).  Australia passed legislation mandating acquisition of all metadata (who speaks to whom and when) with acquisition of what they actually say requiring a judge’s permission. However Australia belongs to the White Anglosphere  5-eyes intelligence-sharing club (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and the US shares such bulk intelligence  information on  Australians  with nuclear terrorist, serial war criminal Apartheid Israel [168].

The result of this is that there is comprehensive silence by Australian media  about Zionist and Apartheid Israeli subversion of Australia. Thus 2 patriotic and anti-racist Jewish Australians  have written about the pro-Zionist-led coup that removed PM Kevin Rudd in 2010 [169, 170] but this is resolutely ignored by Australian media .   Indeed the US- and UK-complicit, CIA-backed  coup that removed the progressive Whitlam Government in 1975 (see John Pilger [171]) is presented by Mainstream media as a democratically-endorsed action to save the Australian economy from asserted mismanagement. The profound legacy of the 1975 Coup was blind, cowardly, traitorous  and  bipartisan agreement on “All the way with the USA” from the  Liberal Party-National Party Coalition and the Labor Party (aka the Lib-Labs).

Meanwhile the Cold War slogan of “Reds under the bed” has returned with “Chinese under the bed”, Sinophobia and China-bashing in a xenophobic,  fearful and pre-police state Australia that will swallow anything  about the dreaded Chinese that is sourced to US lackey Australian Intelligence [45, 46, 164, 172-175]. While ailing Australian  and world hero Julian Assange has been deserted by the US lackey Lib-Labs, his   WikiLeaks news organization revealed that former PM Rudd had suggested war with China to Hillary Clinton if China did not play ball: “[Help integrate China] while also preparing to deploy force if everything goes wrong”  [176, 177],  and that former Australian Ambassador to the US, Kim Beazley, promised that Australian forces would be involved in the event of a US war on China [41, 178]. In contrast, back in the 1950s PM Robert “Pig Iron Bob” Menzies (who had permitted pig iron exports to Japan  when it was devastating China) had declared that Australia would have nothing to do with a US war on China over Taiwan [41] .

The bottom line is that China is Australia’s biggest trading partner and without  compromising any of its asserted pro-human rights values, Australia should engage with China in  a frank, informed, polite and sensible fashion, as advised by former Coalition PM Malcolm Fraser [41] and former Labor PM Kevin Rudd  [179].

(12). Racism – China opposes Apartheid and has only invaded 2 countries in 900 years whereas the US Alliance  is pro-Apartheid and has invaded  numerous countries.

As outlined in (1) Apartheid above, China is implacably opposed to Apartheid whereas Australia, the US, UK, France, Canada and Australia are fervently pro-Apartheid Israel and hence fervently pro-Apartheid. Apartheid is regarded by the UN as a crime against Humanity [47].

War is the penultimate expression of racism and genocide is the ultimate in racism. Xinjiang and Tibet were  incorporated into China about 900 years ago at roughly the same time as the English were variously conquering the Celtic entities of Cornwall,  Wales, Scotland  and Ireland [1].    Border spats with India and Vietnam aside, China has effectively  only invaded 2 countries in a millennium, a remarkable record noted by former Australian Labor PM Kevin Rudd [179]. In stark contrast, in a mere 230 years as UK or US lackeys  Australians have invaded 85 countries (with 30 of these invasions being genocidal [38]), as compared to  the  British 193, France 82, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25,  Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2 [128, 129, 132-134].

(13). South China Sea.  

The South China Sea is called thus because it is off the coast of South China and not off the coast of California or Australia. Setting aside arguments about the legality or otherwise of China’s  island building on uninhabited coral atolls, China clearly has a major security threat from an exceptionalist, serial invader and nuclear terrorist America that is surrounding China in a war-like fashion and threatens the huge commerce to and from China via the South China Sea. [180]. China has been engaged in ship-borne trade and fishing in the South China Sea for thousands of years whereas the invasion-, colonization- and genocide-based entities of the USA and Australia date back to a little over 2 centuries [1] (see also (14)”Territorial occupation of uninhabited areas”).

(14). Territorial occupation of uninhabited areas.

China has built islands on uninhabited coral reefs in the South China Sea to protect China and its gigantic ship-borne commerce from an aggressive, serial war criminal  and nuclear terrorist US Alliance. With the Arctic sea ice melting, and the  Northwest Passage opening up, the exceptionalist and endlessly bullying US rejects Canada’s claim to the passage [181]. Australia lays claim to about 40% of the uninhabited continent of Antarctica in a claim dating back to the British Empire in 1841 and recognized only by New Zealand, the UK, France, and Norway [182].

(15). Territorial occupation of  inhabited areas- China stay home policy versus ongoing European US Alliance imperialism.   

Xinjiang and Tibet were  incorporated into China about 900 years ago at roughly the same time as the English were variously conquering the Celtic entities of Cornwall,  Wales, Scotland  and Ireland [1].    As  UK or US lackeys  Australians have invaded 85 countries (with 30 of these invasions being genocidal [38]), as compared to the  British 193 countries, France 82, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25,  Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2 [1, 38, 128, 129, 132-134].

The US has about 800 military bases in over 70 countries [127]. The US Alliance is presently violently  occupying Somalia and Afghanistan, and is engaged in warfare in 20 countries.  US lackey Australia is involved in Occupied Somalia and Occupied Afghanistan,  and via the joint Australia-US electronic spying base at Pine Gap in Central Australia targets illegal and war criminal US drone strikes in 7 countries. Apartheid Israel occupies the territory of 4 countries (Palestine, Libya, Syria and Jordan), and routinely bombs Lebanon, Syria,  Iraq and the Gaza Concentration Camp.

Mighty China  has only 1 overseas military base, specifically in Djibouti which one supposes is to help ensure the safety of its huge trade with Europe via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. China’s last military action was a brief border spat with Vietnam in 1979, 40 years ago [1].

(16). Treatment of protesters – none killed by police in Hong Kong protests versus 250 Palestinians killed and 20,000 wounded in ongoing Gaza Concentration Camp massacres by Apartheid Israel.

This year marked the 30th anniversary of the massacre of about 3,000 protesters in Beijing (deliberately not named in this article in an attempt to evade automatic, robot-based, Chinese  censorship of this atrocity as reported by the Australian ABC). However while, for example,  British and Australian media report the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre by the British in Amritsar (400 Sikhs killed) [183] and the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre by South African security forces (69 Africans killed )[184, 185],   there is an almost complete British and Australian censorship of the 1942-1945 Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine, WW2 Indian Holocaust) in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death in Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Assam for strategic reasons (Australia was complicit through withholding food from its huge wartime grain stocks from starving India that provided 2.4 million soldiers towards the Allied war effort) [105-107]. Racist White Australia has a thing about Asians and almost completely  censors out the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (35 million Chinese killed under the Japanese, 1937-1945) [108, 109].

However things have changed for the better by 2019. Thus in the huge , repeated, million-strong democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong over the last 6 months only 2 people have  been killed (none by the police) [186]. In stark contrast, according to the Palestine Chronicle (January 2019): “The Great March for Return began on March 30 [2018]. Since then, over 255 [unarmed] Palestinians have been killed and over 20,000 injured“ [187].  Yet an anti-Arab anti-Semitic and US lackey Australia remains  second only Trump America as a supporter of serial war criminal Apartheid Israel,  and the cowardly, racist,  mendacious and Zionist-subverted Australian ABC (the taxpayer-funded equivalent of the UK BBC) overwhelmingly ignores the increasingly desperate plight of the Palestinians while (quite properly) giving nightly  coverage of the Hong Kong protests. Palestinian  deaths from violence or imposed deprivation in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide total 2.2 million [51], this now being of the same order of magnitude as deaths in  the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed through violence or imposed by the Nazis) [188, 189]. The crimes of Apartheid Israel exceed those of Apartheid South Africa [184] and likewise demand comprehensive  Boycotts and Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters until a secular, unitary state  is achieved as in post-Apartheid South Africa.

(17). War and  invasion of other countries – unlike the serial war criminal US, UK, US Alliance and Australia, China has been remarkably peaceful and non-aggressive internationally.

To reiterate, Xinjiang and Tibet were  incorporated into China about 900 years ago at roughly the same time as the English were variously conquering the Celtic entities of Cornwall,  Wales, Scotland  and Ireland [1].    As  UK or US lackeys  Australians have invaded 85 countries (with 30 of these invasions being genocidal [38]), as compared to the  British 193 countries, France 82, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25,  Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2 [1, 38, 128, 129, 132-134]. China has a millennial record of extraordinary peacefulness and non-aggression in relation to other countries.

Final comments.  

This essay has been written in attempt to balance the Sinophobic hysteria coming from Australia and the US. No doubt China as a major power plays hard in its own interests at home and abroad. China raises major human rights concerns , specifically in relation to an being authoritarian one party state, abuse of police powers (“power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”),  the death penalty, maltreatment of dissidents, censorship, constraints on free speech,  and  the short-term mass imprisonment of a reported 1 million Uighurs in re-education camps. However China must be given great praise for bringing 800 million people out of poverty, massive improvements in health, education, economic security and human dignity, opposition to Apartheid, a remarkable historical record of non-aggression, and a world-leading uptake in renewable energy.

In contrast,  US lackey Australia, the US and the European US Alliance countries are ostensibly libertarian in comparison with China but manage to minimize effective free speech in the interests of their neoliberal  One Percenter rulers,  and have appalling records of war criminal violence against scores of impoverished countries that reached genocidal depths in the 21st century and continue unabated. Zionist-subverted Australia is second only to Zionist-subverted Trump America as a supporter of nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, serial war criminal, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel  that denies all human rights for its 5 million horribly abused and impoverished Occupied Palestinian subjects.  People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.  Please tell everyone you can.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is estimated that the total number of passenger pigeons in the United States was about three billion birds. The bird was immensely abundant, as illustrated by this passage written by the famous ornithologist, naturalist and painter John James Audubon:

‘I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose… Before sunset I reached Louisville, distance from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession.’See ‘Passenger Pigeon’.

So numerous was this bird that, in the nineteenth century, the passenger pigeon was one of the most abundant birds on Earth.

In 1914 it was extinct.

While new settlements kept reducing the bird’s habitat, more importantly, it was literally hunted from the sky. Shot for its meat.

So I have two questions for you? When is the last time that you saw a flock of birds so vast that ‘the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse’? And when did you last see a flock of just 20 birds?

Sobering to ponder, isn’t it?

The origin of birds

Birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic and in the 65 million years since the extinction of the rest of the dinosaurs, this ancestral lineage diversified into the major groups of birds alive today. See ‘The origin of birds’.

Because they did not exist during the first five mass extinction events on Earth, birds have been spared the widespread extinctions suffered by those species that did exist in earlier eras.

Extinctions of birds in prehistory and history

Nevertheless, the fossil record tells us of the existence of prehistoric birds that became extinct before the Late Quaternary (that is, the past half to one million years) and thus occurred in the absence of significant human interference – see ‘List of fossil bird genera’ – while various sources tell us of both prehistoric and historic bird species, including flightless megafauna birds, that became extinct between 40,000 BCE and 1500 AD and ‘was coincident with the expansion of Homo sapiens beyond Africa and Eurasia, and in most cases, anthropogenic factors played a crucial part in their extinction, be it through hunting, introduced predators or habitat alteration’. See ‘List of Late Quaternary prehistoric bird species’.

Of course, there is an even wider range of evidence of bird extinctions since 1500. See ‘List of recently extinct bird species’. Most notably perhaps, given the symbolism it has since acquired, the dodo, a flightless bird of Mauritius, was driven to extinction by 1681 but not before it was carefully drawn. See ‘Dodo’.

How many bird species are there on Earth now?

While one recent estimate – see ‘Scaling laws predict global microbial diversity’– indicates that Earth may be the home to one trillion species (the vast bulk of which are microorganisms such as bacteria, archaea and microscopic fungi), of which only an estimated 8.7 million species fall into the usual andsimpler categories of plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles, the most recent research conducted by George F. Barrowclough, Joel Cracraft, John Klicka and Robert M. Zink and published in 2016 indicated that there are just18,043 species of birds worldwide. See ‘How Many Kinds of Birds Are There and Why Does It Matter?’

Somewhat controversially – see ‘New Study Doubles the World’s Number of Bird Species By Redefining “Species”’ – this figure is nearly twice as many as previously thought becausethe study focused on ‘hidden’ avian diversity: birds that look similar to one another or were thought to interbreed but are actually different species. In any case, whether there are just 10,000 species of birds, 11,000+ as estimated by the recognized international authority BirdLife International – see ‘Introducing the IUCN Red List’ –  or even18,000, just like other species of life on Earth, birds are now under siege in a way they have never been before.

Killing birds in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries

More than 100 years have passed since the passenger pigeon became extinct. However, while one might have hoped that humans had become more adept at nurturing populations of birds, the reality is that we arecontinuing to drive bird populations to extinction. Moreover, we are now doing this with breathtaking efficiency, slaughtering birds by the millions in ever-shortening timeframes.

As a result, the fate of the passenger pigeon has been replicated many times over with a vast number of bird species passing through the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s eight preliminary categories – Not Evaluated, Data Deficient, Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild – before reaching the ninth and final category: Extinct. See ‘IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria’. At the moment, the ‘IUCN Red List of Threatened Species’ identifies 14% of remaining bird species as ‘threatened with extinction’. Also see ‘Introducing the IUCN Red List’.

Of course, this ongoing assault on birds is well documented in the scientific literature, along with descriptions of long-standing causes as well as those that are more recent.

In recently published research on the status of birds in North America, Dr. Kenneth V. Rosenberg led an international team of scientists from seven institutions in analyzing the population trends of 529 bird species on the North American continent. Their study quantified, for the first time, the total decline in bird populations in the continental U.S. and Canada: a loss of 2.9 billion breeding adult birds, with devastating losses among birds in every biome, since 1970. Moreover, their research revealed that ‘declines are not restricted to rare and threatened species – those once considered common and widespread are also diminished’. See ‘Decline of the North American avifauna’ and ‘Vanishing: More Than 1 in 4 Birds Has Disappeared in the Last 50 Years’.

Like scholars researching dramatic declines and extinctions of other species, such as insects, Rosenberg and his colleagues stress that their results have ‘major implications for ecosystem integrity, the conservation of wildlife more broadly, and policies associated with the protection of birds and native ecosystems on which they depend’. While species extinctions ‘have defined the global biodiversity crisis’, extinction ‘begins with loss in abundance of individuals that can result in compositional and functional changes of ecosystems’. Hence, the staggering loss of bird abundance ‘signals an urgent need to address threats to avert future avifaunal collapse and associated loss of ecosystem integrity, function, and services’. See ‘Decline of the North American avifauna’.

In more blunt language ‘the most comprehensive inventory ever done for North American birds, points to ecosystems in disarray because of habitat loss and other factors that have yet to be pinned down’. See ‘Billions of North American birds have vanished’. And, yet more bluntly: ‘The scale of loss portrayed in the [Rosenberg et.al.] study is unlike anything recorded in modern natural history.’ See ‘Vanishing: More Than 1 in 4 Birds Has Disappeared in the Last 50 Years’.

Even more importantly, however, pointing out that the study results ‘transcend the world of birds’, Rosenberg explained that ‘These bird losses are a strong signal that our human-altered landscapes are losing their ability to support birdlife’ and ‘that is an indicator of a coming collapse of the overall environment.’ See ‘Vanishing: More Than 1 in 4 Birds Has Disappeared in the Last 50 Years’.

Is North America alone in its decimation of bird populations? Far from it. Other research and data have revealed that ‘farmland birds in Europe have declined by over 50 per cent collectively in the last 30 or 40 years’ according to Professor Richard Gregory, head of species monitoring and research at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) in the UK where, according to Martin Harper, director of conservation at the RSPB, ‘Our beleaguered farmland birds have declined by 56 per cent between 1970 and 2015 along with declines in other wildlife linked to changes in agricultural practices, including the use of pesticides’.

And, Professor Romain Julliard, a conservation biologist at France’s National Museum of Natural History, confessed his ‘shock’ when the latest research revealed that France has lost one-third of its birds in the past 15 years in what is being labeled a ‘dramatic collapse’ and ‘ecological catastrophe’ particularly because the decline has accelerated dramatically in recent years. See ‘“Shocking” decline in birds across Europe due to pesticide use, say scientists’.

In Germany, bird populations are vanishing with scientists using words like ‘decimated’ and ‘collapse’ to describe the enormity of the problem. In a recent study of government data, the German environmental organization Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) estimated ‘that more than 25 million birds [15% of the country’s total bird population] disappeared from Germany over the past 12 years’. See ‘Über zwölf Millionen Vogelbrutpaare weniger in Deutschland’, ‘Insect and bird populations declining dramatically in Germany’ and ‘“Decimated”: Germany’s birds disappear as insect abundance plummets 76%’. But why?

While habitat destruction and other factors played roles, scientists have also long linked pesticide use to insect decline – a reasonable assumption given that killing insects is the purpose of pesticides – and research clearly demonstrates that pesticides are killing more than target insects. For instance, a 2008 study demonstrated low but persistent levels of a common neonicotinoid pesticide in aquatic ecosystems can kill off or reduce the growth of insects (such as mosquitoes) that have an acquatic phase. See ‘Acute and Chronic Toxicity of Imidacloprid to the Aquatic Invertebrates Chironomus tentans and Hyalella azteca under Constant- and Pulse-Exposure Conditions’and ‘“Decimated”: Germany’s birds disappear as insect abundance plummets 76%’.

In essence, the problem is that killing the insects is tantamount to killing the birds that feed on them.

Another recent study came to the same conclusion. The study, conducted in the Lake Constance area in southern Germany, found that the population of six of the most common birds had ‘declined massively’. According to Hans-Guenther Bauer of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Biology: ‘These are truly shocking figures, especially when you consider that the decline in birds began decades before our first data collection in 1980.’ Why is it happening? According to Bauer, a key reason for the decline is the loss of food. ‘This confirms what we have long suspected. The death of insects caused by humans has a massive impact on our birds.’ To stem the tide of losses, scientists are calling for a rethink in agricultural and forestry policy including ‘drastic restrictions on insecticides and herbicides in agriculture, forestry, public areas and private gardens’ and significantly less fertilization. See ‘Scientists fear “collapse” of bird populations in Germany’.

As is the case elsewhere around the world, birdsin Africaalso face a wide variety of threats, the most significant of which are habitat fragmentation, degradation and destruction as well as direct impacts including hunting and trapping (mainly for meat and trafficking). See ‘Multiple threats are driving threatened birds towards extinction in Africa’.

But nowhere is safe with the killing of migratory birds in China – see ‘Market trade is fuelling the killing of migratory birds in Northern China’ – and various factors adversely impacting penguins in Antarctica – see ‘Climate-driven reductions in krill abundance have caused Adélie penguin declines’ – just two more of many examples that could be cited.

Illegal hunting and trapping of birds

According to Birdlife International, the organization responsible for monitoring the welfare of birds for the IUCN’s Red List, ‘The illegal killing and taking of wild birds remains a major threat on a global scale’ with recent examples including the illegal poisoning of vultures in Sub-Saharan Africa, the illegal shooting of raptors in Europe and North America, the illegal trapping of passerines (perching birds) in Asia and theillegal capture for the bird trade in South America.

For example, based on extensive research over many years in relation to bird killing during migratory flights across the Mediterranean and through Northern and Central Europe and the Caucasus, BirdLife International has compiled a series of reports. These reports document massive illegal killing of birds, often in ways that constitute torture, and totaling in excess of 25 million birds annually, including birds of species that are threatened with extinction. For recent reports, see ‘The Killing 2.0: A View to a Kill’, ‘Assessing the scope and scale of illegal killing and taking of birds in the Mediterranean, and establishing a basis for systematic monitoring’ and ‘Review of illegal killing and taking of birds in Northern and Central Europe and the Caucasus’. For a more detailed scientific report on this issue, see ‘Preliminary assessment of the scope and scale of illegal killing and taking of birds in the Mediterranean’.

But if you would simply prefer to be revolted, then watch BirdLife’s one minute video: ‘Help us STOP illegal #birdkilling’.Or read a straightforward account of how ‘innocent’ human behaviours can be deadly for birds, in this case by ‘vacuuming’ millions of sleeping birds into oblivion each year during olive harvesting at night. See ‘Millions of Birds Killed by Nighttime Harvesting in Mediterranean’.

Unfortunately, if you think the descriptions and video of birdkilling above are bad, you won’t be impressed with the sheer insanity that militarized humans can display: ‘The Farmagusta area of Cyprus comes out as the worst place for illegally killing birds in the Mediterranean, while the British Territory in Cyprus is also affected, with the Dhekelia UK military base seeing hundreds of thousands of birds killed each autumn. The Ministry of Defence has started a programme to remove illegally planted trees and shrubs in the area, which trappers use for cover and to lure birds in.’ See ‘Millions of Birds Killed in the Mediterranean’. So, instead of ordering soldiers to stop shooting birds while using a combination of education and law enforcement measures to prevent civilians doing so, they removed ‘illegally planted trees and shrubs’!

Wild Bird trafficking

Another major killer of birds is the wildlife trade. Birds are often killed as a ‘byproduct’ of the trade in exotic birds, most of which is illegal, but which is a multi-billion dollar a year industry along with human, weapons, currency and drug trafficking. Equally importantly, however, once traded, birds no longer form part of their original habitat and hence they are lost as contributing and breeding members of that ecosystem. According to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), species listed in Appendix I of the Convention are considered to be threatened with extinction and are not allowed to be traded commercially. There are currently 161 bird species on Appendix I. However, birds included on Appendix II are allowed to enter international trade ‘under specific controlled circumstances’; there are 1,300 bird species on this appendix. See ‘Wild Bird Trade and CITES’ and ‘CITES Appendices I, II and III’.

In theory, state parties are obliged to develop national legislation effectively implementing the obligations of the Convention including setting sustainable quotas for Appendix II species. But I am sure that you can imagine how well this regime works given the incredibly profitable wildlife trafficking industry, in which birds are a crucial component. In fact, ‘one third (3,337) of living bird species [that is, 2,000 species more than those that are “legal”] have been recorded as traded internationally for the pet trade and other purposes’. Of these species, 266 (that is, 8% of those internationally traded) are considered globally threatened. See ‘The Red List Index for internationally traded bird species shows their deterioration in status’.

And if the domestic trade in birds is taken into account as well, then ‘Nearly 4,000 bird species involving several million individuals annually are subject to domestic or international trade with finches, weavers, parrots and raptors being some of the most heavily affected groups.’ See ‘Wild Bird Trade and CITES’.

For a candid account of bird trafficking at its origin which describes the fate of macaw chicks being stolen from their forest nests in Ecuador, see ‘Wildlife Trafficking’.

Seabirds

In relation to seabirds, one recent study found that the global population of these birds declined by 70% between 1950 and 2010 as a result of a multiplicity of threats. These threats included ‘entanglement in fishing gear, overfishing of food sources, climate change, pollution, disturbance, direct exploitation, development, energy production, and introduced species (predators such as rats and cats introduced to breeding islands that were historically free of land-based predators)’. See ‘Population Trend of the World’s Monitored Seabirds, 1950-2010’.

Another study concluded just recently, was ‘the first objective quantitative assessment of the threats to all 359 species of seabirds’ and identified the main threats to their survival while outlining priority actions for their conservation.Using the standardized ‘Threats Classification Scheme’ developed for the IUCN Red List to objectively assess threats to each species, a team of ten scientists identified the top three threats to seabirds – in terms of number of species affected and average impact – to be as follows: invasive alien species (particularly rats and cats) which affected 165 species across all of the most threatened groups; bycatch in fisheries which ‘only’ affected 100 species but with the greatest average impact; and the climate catastrophe which affected 96 species. ‘Overfishing, hunting/trapping and disturbance were also identified as major threats to seabirds.’ The study emphasized that 70% of seabirds, especially those that are globally threatened, face multiple threats. For the three most threatened groups of seabirds – albatrosses, petrels and penguins – it is essential to tackle both terrestrial and marine threats to reverse declines. See ‘Threats to seabirds: A global assessment’.

In addition, however,another problem that has been getting insufficient attention is the result of the expanding impacts of the rapidly increasing levels of ocean acidification, ocean warming, ocean carbon flows and ocean plastics. Taken in isolation each of these changes clearly has negative consequences for the ocean. All these shifts taken together, however, result in a rapid and serious decline in ocean health and this, in turn, adversely impacts all species dependent on the ocean, including seabirds. Moreover, on top of these problems is the issue of oxygen availability given that oxygen in the air or water is of paramount importance to most living organisms. As the recently released report ‘Ocean deoxygenation: Everyone’s problem. Causes, impacts, consequences and solutions’ describes in some detail, oxygen levels are currently declining across the ocean.

But to graphically illustrate just one of the threats to seabirds, consider the impact of our chronic overfishing which is depleting the oceans of fish. In November 2019, thousands of short-tailed shearwater birds migrating from Alaska were washed up dead on Sydney’s iconic beaches in Australia. Moreover, thousands more shearwaters died out at sea in clear confirmation of the incredible fish shortages in the Pacific Ocean. After spending the summer in Alaska, the shearwaters were migrating back to southern Australia to breed: a 14,000km trip over the Pacific that requires the birds to be at full strength.

Unfortunately, vast numbers died due to lack of food because the krill and other fish they feed on have vanished. But if you think the problem only occurred along or at the end of their journey, in fact there had been ‘a series of catastrophic die-offs’ before and shortly after the birds departed to head south with thousands of shearwaters (along with puffins, murres and auklets too)lying dead from starvation on the beaches of Alaska and on Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula back in mid-year as well. The overall ‘large die-off’ pattern has been repeating since 2015 with little knowledge of the full extent of the crisis because millions of the birds ‘die at sea’. See ‘Fish all gone!… Millions of small sea birds died since 2015’.

Tragically though, as touched on above, an ocean emptied of fish is not the only hazard that seabirds have no choice but to attempt to navigate. An ocean full of plastic – with concentrations up to 580,000 pieces per square kilometer – is also deceiving many seabirds into attempting to eat pieces of plastic and this only complicates efforts by seabirds to get adequate nutrition. See ‘Threat of plastic pollution to seabirds is global, pervasive, and increasing’ and ‘Nearly Every Seabird on Earth Is Eating Plastic’. This is graphically illustrated in this photo of a dead albatross – see ‘Laysan Albatrosses’ Plastic Problem’– although, tragically, plastic is not the only non-food item that is consumed by and is killing these majestic birds, with an abandoned US military base on Midway Atoll – where 65% of the global albatross population breeds – playing a vital role too. See ‘Study shows lead-based paint is poisoning albatross chicks at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge’.

But why do seabirds eat plastic instead of correctly identifying food? Well, one recent research project provided ‘the first evidence that, in addition to looking like food, plastic debris may also confuse seabirds that hunt by smell’. See ‘Marine plastic debris emits a keystone infochemical for olfactory foraging seabirds’and ‘The oceans are full of plastic, but why do seabirds eat it?’

Other threats to birds

Another threat faced by birds in the nuclear age is the outcome of the radioactive contamination of the Earth in many places. For example, while there are ‘severe reductions in species richness and density’ in the regions surrounding the sites of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear catastrophes, surviving birds display a wide range of deformities and dysfunctionalities, notably including impaired brain development as reflected by head volume with its negative implications for cognitive ability and hence viability. See ‘Chernobyl Birds Have Smaller Brains’ and ‘Bird populations near Fukushima are more diminished than expected’.

Yet another threat to birds is posed by the deployment of 5G. ‘Typical effects of radiation from cellular communication antennas on resident, breeding, and migratory birds [include] site abandonment, feather deformation, locomotion problems, weight loss, weakness, reduced survivorship and death.’ Moreover, it can ‘blot out a bird’s perception of the earth’s field, causing the bird to fly in the wrong direction, and also disrupt a bird’s internal clock based on the sun’s changing position’. See ‘5G to Kill the Birds, Bees and Your Loved Ones?’ and ‘Western Insanity and 5G Electromagnetic Radiation’.

Finally, without elaboration, vast numbers of birds are also killed each year by warfare and other military activities – see, for example, ‘The impact of the 1991 Gulf War oil spill on bird populations in the northern Arabian Gulf – a review’ – by industrial activity and accidents – see, for example, ‘Effects of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill on Birds: Comparisons of Pre- and Post-spill Surveys in Prince William Sound, Alaska’ – by road and air traffic, the spread of certain avian diseases to previously unaffected species – see ‘Avian diseases are spreading to impact hitherto unaffected populations’ – wind turbines, cats, windows and communication towers, with 7 million birds losing their lives each year in the United States alone to the ‘web-like traps of wire and metal’ used for communication. See ‘Communication Towers Are Death Traps for Threatened Bird Species’. Other birds are now being killed in response to conflict generated between birds. See ‘Climate Change Leading to Fatal Bird Conflicts’. And, of course, ‘domesticated’ birds such as chickens and turkeys are farmed and consumed in prodigiously huge quantities, including for Christmas.

Sadly, too, millions of birds of many species are imprisoned in cages as ‘pets’ denied the freedom that all humans crave for themselves.

So, in essence,if you were a bird, here is a survival strategy that should work. Only live in a habitat that will not be impacted, in any way, by human beings and their activities. That is, don’t live on Earth.

Saving the birds

Given the vast range of threats posed to birdlife by humans – see a straightforward summary of ‘The greatest threats facing Important Bird & Biodiversity Areas today’which doesn’t mention all threats and those that are emerging – it is clearly going to take a monumental effort on many fronts to contain the killing of birds and avert the ongoing extinction of bird species on Earth.

And, unless you are naive enough to believe that elite-controlled governments or international organizations and processes are going to do something that is actually effective – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – then it is up to us to make the difference. Of course, we can do a few things that are specific to saving birds but the bulk of what must happen is really about saving the biosphere (which includes birds) generally. The biosphere is, after all, one deeply-interconnected living entity.

This is why, according to some biologists, laws that focus on the protection of rare species miss the big picture.Joel Cracraft,  for example, argues that ‘We’re losing the battle because we’re fighting over single endangered species’. Species protection tends to focus on charismatic species – beautiful birds and mammals – and doesn’t value rare ecosystems or collections of species. See ‘New Study Doubles the World’s Number of Bird Species By Redefining “Species”’. Nor does it value the biosphere as a whole.

Still, some superlative efforts have been made on behalf of birds. For example, you can read someinspirational success stories by BirdLife International: ‘10 vital bird habitats saved through conservation action’.

And for one man’s initiative 120 years ago that is having ongoing impact, see ‘How one man changed a Christmas tradition forever – to save birds’.

So you can, of course, support the efforts of Birdlife International and the local, national and other organizations like it. See ‘Welcome to BirdLife’s Globally Threatened Bird Forums’ and, for example, ‘Stop Wildlife Trafficking’.

Separately from initiatives that focus specifically on birds, if you wish to fight powerfully to save Earth’s biosphere 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 local self-reliance over a period of years. Among many other beneficial environmental outcomes, this will reduce the ongoing destruction of bird habitat to produce the products we all consume.

But given the fear-driven violent parenting and education models that drive all violence in our world and which, among a multitude of other adverse outcomes, 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’ – then 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 birds against particular threats, such as the climate catastrophe, military violence or the deployment of 5G, for example, consider joining those campaigning to halt these and other threats as well. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategywhich already includes a comprehensive list of strategic goals necessary to achieve these outcomes in two key contexts in ‘Strategic Aims’.

But, whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of fearfully begging elites to act on your behalf as, for example, the antiwar and climate movements are doing (with climate ‘activists’ marginalized at the latest COP25 gathering in Madrid). If we do not focus our efforts on engaging all people who are powerful enough to do so to respond strategically, then we will fail. And our failure will not only be the result of the elite refusing to take the requisite action despite your entreaties but also because the elite, as a group,is powerless to make sufficient difference: only a massive response from the wider population can produce the outcome we now need. For explanations of this, see‘Why Activists Fail’,‘The Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why?’and ‘The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War’.

Moreover, in those cases where corrupt or even electorally unresponsive governments are leading the destruction of the biosphere – 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’ and ‘Doomsday by 2021?’

Conclusion

Birds are being killed with ruthless efficiency by human beings and their activities all over the world. Obviously, this is an unmitigated tragedy for Earth’s birds, the biosphere as a whole and those humans who love life generally. But what are the practical implications of this ongoing bird killing for us?

Well just as the death of one canary in a coal mine warned miners about their dangerous environment, the mass death of birds is yet another warning that we are destroying the planetary biosphere.

However, in this case,we are not treating the canary’s death as a warning and, even if we were, it does not mean that we can escape because there is nowhere else to go.

In short, if we don’t save the birds, we won’t save ourselves.

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.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 was brought as a Citizenship Amendment Bill for the purpose of amending the Citizenship Act of 1955 to make illegal migrants who are
 Hindus,
 Sikhs, 
Buddhists, 
Jains,
 Parsis 
and Christians from 
Afghanistan, 
Bangladesh 
and Pakistan, who entered India on or before 31 December 2014, eligible for Indian citizenship. It also seeks to relax the requirement of residence in India for citizenship by naturalisation from 11 years to 5 years for these migrants.  Immediate beneficiaries of the Act, according to IB records, will be just over 30,000 people, but how far is it true when the local population of Nagaland and other neighbouring states have been surrounded by millions of Illegal Bangladeshi Immigrants?

Moreover, under NRC both Hindu and Muslim illegal migrants from 3 notified countries (majority of them from Bangladesh) have been trapped, but now, due to Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, Hindu illegal immigrants will be able to escape and apply for citizenship citing grounds of ‘persecution’ which they can never ever be able to prove and government has neither devised any machinery to do background check of such applicants nor to verify the persecution stories that they would come up with. On the other hand, Muslim Illegalimmigrants will still be trapped in the LAW and face prosecution under Foreigners Act and Passport Act. If it is not discrimination, then what it is? This nation was not built for Hindus, each one of us have equal right over this land and nation. Also, we people from the northeast do not know this Hindu-Muslim game, what we know is we are suffering from illegal immigrants and their ever increasing population which is threatening to our culture, language, life and overall survival as people of this free nation.

Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) that is now an Act; is perhaps another one of the contentious and controversial bill like GST, Demonetisation, Art. 370, Triple Talaq and also the Uniform Civil Code (Which I am sure is kept hidden the pipeline). Considering the nature of Bill presented before the parliament by the present government clearly indicates its social and political agenda. On the fateful day of 11^th of December, 2019 this Citizenship Amendment Bill was given FREE passage by the Rajysabha. The Bill was passed amidst the sorrows, cries, protests in different parts of the northeast India. This is how I learned how democracy can be murdered.

This demonic Act is nothing but a smart conspiracy to divide the citizens of India on religious grounds. It is in the sense of modern day that this Act propagates the two nation theory. The rise of Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 has a potential to destroy the very core foundation that the nation was built on i.e Equality, fraternity and secularism. It will have adverse impact on the demographics, social, cultural and economic life of the local indigenous of the North-eastern States. No state will be able to escape from the wrath of the Act. It will also strain the age long Hindu-Muslim relation and last but not the least it would also strain the bilateral relations of India with the three aforementioned States Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh on the issue of an unsubstantiated allegations of Religious persecution taking place in their respective Countries, hence, a threat to the international image of India.

Whilst Understanding that this is a Hindu Majority nation, we should also delve deeper in the history of modern India and understand that the great visionary leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B.R Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru to name few who stood firm and strong on the principles of a free India that believed in emancipating the people from all social evils and who worked tirelessly for a united India.  Sadly this is an era of Bhakts (blind devotees who surrendered their ability to see, to think, to listen, to speak and to question) and not the era of ushering peace, prosperity and development that the founders of this great nation envisaged upon. Now we can understand why we say there’s a flaw in “DEMOCRACY”, now I know why Socrates hated Majoritarian Democracy.

“Majority Always Wins” Is what we have learnt since our childhood and when it comes into effect in the political realms that’s when we realise that this is a great threat to fragile unity of the nation. The BJP under the wings of The RSS which has an ultimate dream to build a Hindu Rashtra on the principles of ONE NATION, ONE LEADER, ONE RELIGION, ONE LAW, ONE CULTURE, ONE LANGUAGE have done nothing great for the betterment of the common good. They hampered the country’s economic growth, unemployment rates are ever increasing, high rise in the prices of goods and commodities, ever rising of crimes perpetuated against the Women, downtrodden communities, religious minorities and so on. Now in this dark hour the nation stands divided. Will BJP repeal this bill under the pressure of ‘Public Mandate’ that nulls the Constitutional values, BEFR 1873 and true spirit of Citizenship Act 1955 which never ever extended citizenship rights based on ‘Religion’ ?  Or Will BJP Divide the Nation? Future is unknown, however this Act now will be challenged in the Supreme Court. What will be the mandate? I don’t wish to think, however, as a human being and a citizen of free and secular India the constitution of which guarantees me the Right to Free Speech under Art. 19, I will keep on recording my dissent, I will keep on asking questions, in the interest of today and future of generations to come. My ancestors fought for what they believe in, they fought for land, fought for Nagas, fought for Justice, this is what I learnt from my forefathers. Today the battle grounds might have been changed, but the ‘spirit’ of awakened Nagas is the same.  KUKNALIM!

K KALUTO CHISHI, BA 2ND SEM , POLITICAL SCIENCE (HON) TETSO COLLEGE, DIMAPUR, NAGALAND.

Time and again, students have shown the way to dissent peacefully and demand change. And, Friday, the 13th was no different.

Three to four teachers were giving a speech about NRC and CAB inside the campus while a number of students (around fifty) listened. It was peaceful inside the campus on that rainy December afternoon. We heard that there’s going to be a non-violent protest against CAB inside the campus followed by a long march. Some scholars joined them. Meanwhile some of us went to our departments to carry out our examination hall duties. As the students wrote their exams, blasts were heard. In a few minutes, the classroom started filling up with an acidic smell burning our eyes, noses and throats. Many of us started coughing and gasping. While we were flummoxed by these noises and gases, it was the Kashmiri students who pointed out to us that tear gas shells were being blasted outside. We realized that the cops had already entered the campus to stop the unarmed march with weapons.

The staff members, the faculty present and the invigilating scholars sprang into action. We first closed the windows of the exam hall and shifted the more affected students to relatively safer air. We closed the gates of the department, manned continuously by staff members who decided not to allow groups inside to avoid any situation which may endanger the students by putting them at the receiving end of frenzied mob. At the same time, affected persons were helped out with a continuous supply of drinking water. Also, some heavily affected individuals were brought inside despite the risk because, for us, in that moment, humanity came before safety.

While students were writing their exams, we could hear tear gas was being shelled. We were terrified. The uncontrollable tears and the shaking hands of some students who resolutely managed to finish their paper in a panic-ridden state are the images that one experiences in a siege. These images remain elusive amongst the visuals of abject brutalities which surface and are played on loop on primetime media. The spectacle often makes up for dinnertime entertainment.

But not all Jamia students were out on the streets protesting. Many students, up until Friday, earnestly believed that education can give them entry into the system for an opportunity to bring about positive changes from within. And there were so many who continued to do their jobs despite the situation outside. The university and its scholars did not stop functioning when the police came in on Friday. It was forced to postpone exams after Friday because the cops came in.

In the recent times, many progressive, educated voices have asked the need for a university catering specifically to minority groups. Some of us non-Muslim students, when we mention Jamia as our alma mater, we notice faint change in the facial expressions of the most progressive and politically correct individuals. No amount of argument convinces them that minority institutions such as JMI provide a space to the marginalised to feel at ease in their pursuit of knowledge. This is more relevant in a country where the dominant groups are steeped in prejudice, bigotry, suspicion and vitriolic hatred towards the minorities.

The JMI campus, up until Friday, was a safe space for its students. Many students from remote villages and marginalized sections are enrolled in the university, who aspire for socio-economic mobility. It provides a safe space to its female scholars from diverse sections without placing restrictions on their movement, day or night. In the context of minorities, a safe space is the cornerstone for their representation and facilitates communication, critical dialogue and sharing of learning experiences. Critical thinking and speech raises difficult questions and a university is supposed to provide space for diverse dialogue through which such questions can be addressed. A bi-product is the ability to quickly identify socio-political undercurrents which shape state policies. Naturally, student protests are the vehicles through which these alternative thoughts have any chance of reaching the masses. These protests (which are largely peaceful and constitutional) become the medium of communicating dissent.

Jamia, on account of its minority status, also voices the concerns of the repeatedly silenced and marginalized groups. Its contribution to India’s commitment to secularism and inclusivity cannot be overlooked. Moreover, it also provides a platform for students from these communities who want to engage in purely academic endeavours but have limited access and resources to enter the mainstream academia otherwise. On Friday, the 13th, it was the violation of this safe space which shocked the academic community.

Is this what new India looks like for us students? Why terrorise students out of education and critical thinking? The current crisis in our safe space has left us shattered. How, then, do we assure students that their safe space will be restored. Moreover, how do we continue with our tradition of inclusivity without feeling threatened?

The role of a university goes beyond education; it is also a conscience keeper. And the library is at the heart of it. It is representative of a meditative space where students can escape to, for the pleasure of reading. Vandalizing the library, thus, symbolises an attack on students’ safe space. Seemingly, all of a sudden, the library has become a greater threat than protestors on the street.

Ushosee Pal is a doctoral scholar and a UGC fellow at the Department of sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia. She is currently working on housing policies and participatory planning shaping slum redevelopment in Delhi. She is an alumnus of Hindu College and Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.

Sanchari Basu Chaudhuri is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She has pursued Masters in Sociology from Ambedkar University Delhi and was awarded Junior Research Fellowship by the UGC. Her research interests intersect between popular culture, gender studies, and media.

Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s high-end climate warming scenario, which would see 40 million more people exposed to coastal flooding by 2100.

A team of 96 polar scientists from 50 international organizations has produced the most complete picture of Greenland ice loss to date. The Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) Team combined 26 separate surveys to compute changes in the mass of Greenland’s ice sheet between 1992 and 2018. Altogether, data from 11 different satellite missions were used, including measurements of the ice sheet’s changing volume, flow and gravity.

The findings, published on December 10, 2019 in Nature, (Shepherd, A., Ivins, E., Rignot, E. et al. “Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018”, Nature, 2019)

“Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018”) show that Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992 – enough to push global sea levels up by 10.6 millimeters. The rate of ice loss has risen from 33 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 254 billion tonnes per year in the last decade – a seven-fold increase within three decades.

The assessment, led by Professor Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds and Dr Erik Ivins at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, was supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that global sea levels will rise by 60 centimeters by 2100, putting 360 million people at risk of annual coastal flooding.

But this new study shows that Greenland’s ice losses are rising faster than expected and are instead tracking the IPCC’s high-end climate warming scenario, which predicts 7 centimeters more.

The team also used regional climate models to show that half of the ice losses were due to surface melting as air temperatures have risen. The other half has been due to increased glacier flow, triggered by rising ocean temperatures.

Ice losses peaked at 335 billion tonnes per year in 2011 – ten times the rate of the 1990s – during a period of intense surface melting. Although the rate of ice loss dropped to an average 238 billion tonnes per year since then, this remains seven times higher and does not include all of 2019, which could set a new high due to widespread summer melting.

Changes to the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are of considerable societal importance, as they directly impact global sea levels, which are a result of climate crisis. As glaciers and ice sheets melt, these add more water to the ocean.

IMBIE is an international collaboration between polar scientists from 50 scientific institutions supported by the European Space Agency and NASA.

The scientists-team found that half of the loss is tied to surface ice melting in warmer air. The rest of the loss is the result of factors such as warmer ocean temperatures, iceberg calving and the ice sheet shedding ice into the ocean more quickly.

Greenland is home to the only permanent ice sheet outside Antarctica. The sheet covers three-fourths of Greenland’s land mass. But in the last 26 years, Greenland’s melting ice has added 11 millimeters to sea level rise. Its cumulative 3.8 trillion tons of melted ice is equivalent to adding the water from 120 million Olympic-size swimming pools to the ocean every year, for 26 years.

“As a rule of thumb, for every centimeter rise in global sea level, another 6 million people are exposed to coastal flooding around the planet,” said Andrew Shepherd, lead author and scientist from the University of Leeds in the UK. “On current trends, Greenland ice melting will cause 100 million people to be flooded each year by the end of the century, so 400 million in total due to sea level rise.”

In addition to storm surges and high tides that will increase flooding in many regions, sea level rise exacerbates events like hurricanes. Greenland’s shrinking ice sheet also speeds up global warming. The vast expanse of snow and ice helps cool down Earth by reflecting the Sun’s rays back into space. As the ice melts and retreats, the region absorbs more solar radiation, which warms the planet.

The new study will contribute to the evaluation and evolution of sea level rise models used by the IPCC in evaluating risks to current and future populations. The results of the study currently appear consistent with the panel’s worst-case projections for sea level rise in the next 80 years.

This is the third IMBIE study on ice loss as a result of global warming. IMBIE’s first report in 2012 measured both Greenland and Antarctica’s shrinking ice sheets, finding that the combined ice losses from Antarctica and Greenland had increased over time and that the ice sheets were losing three times as much ice as they were in the early 1990s. Antarctica and Greenland continue to lose ice today, and that rate of loss has accelerated since the first IMBIE study.

Dr Ivins said: “Satellite observations of polar ice are essential for monitoring and predicting how climate change could affect ice losses and sea level rise.”

“While computer simulation allows us to make projections from climate change scenarios, the satellite measurements provide prima facie, rather irrefutable, evidence.”

“Our project is a great example of the importance of international collaboration to tackle problems that are global in scale.”

Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir, Professor of Glaciology at the University of Iceland and lead author of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, who was not involved in the study, said:

“The IMBIE Team’s reconciled estimate of Greenland ice loss is timely for the IPCC. Their satellite observations show that both melting and ice discharge from Greenland have increased since observations started.”

“The ice caps in Iceland had similar reduction in ice loss in the last two years of their record, but this last summer was very warm here and resulted in higher loss. I would expect a similar increase in Greenland mass loss for 2019.”

“It is very important to keep monitoring the big ice sheets to know how much they raise sea level every year.”

Deforestation on protected Indigenous lands in the Amazon was almost three times higher than the loss of trees in the region as a whole and the highest since 2008, finds a new study based on satellite imagery.

The data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) studied by the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), a group working with Indigenous people, show that between August 2018 and July 2019 deforestation on reservations reached 42,600 hectares.

That represents only four percent of overall loss of forest in the Amazon in the same period (totaling 9,762 square kilometers or 976,200 hectares), but it is a dramatic increase over previous years and the highest since this data was first collected in 2008.

November marked the highest recorded rates of Amazon deforestation in years, finds Brazilian government data – INPE data.

The INPE found that in November 2019, 563 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest were destroyed — more than double what was destroyed in November 2018.

Moreover, the Amazon saw a lot more destruction overall this year than it did last year — a total of 8,934 square kilometers were destroyed in January through November of 2019, which is 83 percent more than what was destroyed in January through November of 2018. It is an area almost the size of Puerto Rico.

According to Phys.org, deforestation rates in indigenous areas of the Amazon actually had an even higher incline this year than last year, increasing 74.5 percent between 2018 and 2019.

Other media reports said:

There has also recently been notable violence towards indigenous people who live in the Amazon. Last week, gunmen in a moving car opened fire in Brazil’s Maranhao state, killing two indigenous leaders of the Guajajara tribe; this weekend, someone stabbed a 15-year-old indigenous boy (also from the Guajajara tribe) to death while he was traveling to a city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.

Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro is not protecting the Amazon. Developers and farmers are constantly destroying the rainforest for agribusiness. Bolsonaro has loosened regulations related to the Amazon.

The WWF reported, 80 percent of the Amazon that has been cut down is for cattle ranching, with the remainder for palm oil plantations and soy fields (about two-thirds of the world’s soy is grown to feed livestock, such as the cows being raised for meat and dairy in the Amazon).

The ISA study said: Land grabbers and illegal loggers and miners are the main drivers of deforestation on Indigenous reservations, where the rainforest has been protected by law.

“Indigenous lands are a strong barrier to deforestation. Where there are tribes there are trees,” said Antonio Oviedo, ISA’s researcher who authored the study report.

The expert warned: Year’s deforestation has surged above the recent trend due to increased outside pressure on protected lands.

Invasions of tribal lands have increased since last year, leading to killings of Indigenous people and ranchers deliberately setting fires aimed at clearing forest for cattle pastures, according to environmentalists, who accuse Bolsonaro of destroying the Amazon.

Deforestation in Indigenous areas had been falling steadily since 2008, to a low point of just over 5,000 hectares in 2014, but then began to rise again.

In 2017, it reached 11,000 hectares, and jumped to almost 25,000 hectares in 2018, but this year it surged by 174 percent over the average for the decade.

ISA said: The vast majority of the 424 reserves studied have lost less than 10 percent of their native forests, but 20 percent have lost almost half of their forest cover and five percent have virtually no trees left.

The worst recent deforestation was detected on the Ituna-Itata reservation south of Altamira in Para state, followed by the Apyterewa reservation in São Felix do Xingu, where the government had to send troops this year to remove invaders.

The data released by INPE was collected through the DETER database, a system that publishes alerts on fires and other types of developments affecting the rainforest.

The DETER numbers are not considered official deforestation data. That comes from a different system called PRODES, also managed by INPE.

PRODES numbers released last month showed deforestation rose to its highest in over a decade this year, jumping 30% from 2018 to 9,762 square km.

Deforestation usually slows around November and December during the Amazon region’s rainy season. The number for last month was unusually high.

Brazil’s Environment Ministry had no immediate comment on Friday on the DETER data for November.

The increasing rate of deforestation and fires could have dire consequences for the rainforest and the world, especially as global temperatures continue to rise.

“The Amazon is extremely important to our global environment,” said Dr. Josh Gray, an assistant professor at NC State’s Center for Geospatial Analytics and Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. “Our lives would be very different without it.”

Spanning more than 2 million square miles across northern South America, the Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest and is home to millions of plants and animals, ranging from poison dart frogs to jaguars. This abundance of life is vital to the survival of human societies, providing everything from raw materials to functioning ecosystems.

The Amazon evolved for millions of years without fire, meaning unlike some other forests where fire is a natural and necessary part of the ecosystem, its plants and animals simply lack the necessary adaptations to survive the heat.

The Amazon plays a crucial role in regulating the climate, with its trees absorbing and storing millions of tons of carbon dioxide — a key greenhouse gas that drives global climate crisis. Deforestation releases this trapped carbon into the atmosphere.

“Trees release their stored carbon back into the atmosphere when they die,” Gray said. “Burning releases it immediately though.”

Not only does the Amazon encompass the single largest remaining tropical rainforest in the world, it’s also home to the largest river system on Earth.

The Amazon is home to more than 30 million people, including 350 indigenous and ethnic groups, who rely on the rainforest for food, shelter, clothing and even medicine.

Deforestation can also trigger changes in rainfall patterns and lead to longer dry seasons, putting agricultural productivity at risk as the warmer and drier conditions make it harder for the Amazon’s communities to grow crops and raise livestock.

Five years ago: Nations of the world met in Paris to draft a climate agreement that was subsequently accepted by nearly every country in the world, stating that global temperatures must not exceed +2C pre-industrial. Global emissions must be cut! Fossil fuel usage must be cut!

Today: Following Paris ’15, global banks have invested $1.9 trillion in fossil fuel projects.

Not only that, global governments plan to increase fossil fuels by 120% by 2030, including the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Canada, and Australia.

Additionally, over that past 18 months China has added enough new coal-based power generation (43GW) to power 31 million new homes. China plans on adding another 148GW of coal-based power, which will equal the total current coal generating capacity of the EU.

India increased coal-fired power capacity by 74% over the past 7 years. The country expects to further increase coal-generated capacity by another 22% over the next 3 years.

China is financing 25% of all new worldwide coal plant construction outside of its borders, e.g., South Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Meantime,China, kissing goodbye to its commitment to cut emissions,cuts renewable power subsidies by 30%.

Likewise in the United States, Trump proposes slashing renewable budget items, as his administration rebrands fossil fuels “Molecules of U.S. Freedom.” (Forbes, May 30, 2019) (Obviously, somebody in the WH scoffs at the general pubic as horribly gullible, simple-minded,ignorant, and just plain stupid to fall for that one!)

Meanwhile in America’s most northerly town, Barrow, Alaska is experiencing an unprecedented “massive spike in methane emissions” ongoing for the past 4 months, as monitored by Dr. Peter Carter (see more below).

And, in Madrid, COP25 (Conference of the Parties25) was underway Dec. 2nd-13th with 25,000 participants from countries of the world gathered to hammer out the latest details on global warming/climate change. The question arises whether the conference had “legs.” By all appearances, it did not. Rather, it was another repeat climate sideshow.

Making matters even more surreal, because of the above-mentioned death-defying global plans to accelerate fossil fuels by 120% to 2030, the Stockholm Environment Institute claims the world is on a pathway to 3C pre-industrial, probably “locked-in” because of fossil fuel expansion across the globe.

But caution-caution-caution,the IPCC has already informed the world that 2C brings the house down, not only that, scientists agree 1.5C is unbearably unlivable throughout many regions of the planet.

In short, the world is on a colossal fossil fuel growth phase in the face of stark warnings from scientists that emissions must decline to net zero. Otherwise, the planet is destined to turn into a hot house. As things stand today, it appears “Hot House” is baking into the cake. And, Hot House implies too much heat disrupting, and destroying, too many ecosystems for the planet to support 7.8 billion people.

For an insider’sview of the goings-on at COP25, Dr. Peter Carter, an IPCC expert reviewer,was interviewed on December 10th: (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa13KrOvE2s&feature=share&
fbclid=IwAR373OicrvEDUTIvqsx_Zohj9sV0WCl
EaBNidcEqEA6unjVYqwsQgikowlM)

The following is a synopsis of that interview:He first mentioned the fact that 11,000 scientists have signed a paper stating: “We are definitely in a climate emergency.”

“At COP a couple of years ago, there was a lot of media given to the terrible fact that four of the countries had gotten together to block the most important IPCC report ever. Which was the 2018 IPCC 1.5C report, showing that 2C, the old target since 1996, is total catastrophe, and 1.5C is still disastrous, but that is still where we must aim.” (Carter)

Scientists today agree 1.5C is possible only if we reduce emissions by 7% every year from next year so that we can reduce global emissions 50% by 2030. (Comment: “That’s laughable” – Check out global fossil fuel growth plans, bursting at the seams!)

COP has always been set up to fail. However, the first COPs were hopeful. Ever since then, things have gone down, down, down. The reason why they are set up to fail is because when the Convention was signed in 1992, it was stated that major decisions would be by “consensus,” but “we still don’t have a definition of consensus under the Convention.” That is absurd.

The entire COP set up provides for one or two countries to veto any major decision, and that’s what we’ve seen happen. The US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait “block the science from the negotiations.”

“In COP25 the science has been blocked completely.” (Carter)

“Right now all three major greenhouse gas concentrations, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are accelerating. It means we are on a trend for total planetary catastrophe. We are on a trend for biosphere collapse. Carbon dioxide is on a rate exceeding anything over the past millions of years. We are at 412 ppm. To put that into context, we have an ice core that goes back 2.2 million years. The highest CO2 over that period is 300 ppm.” (Carter)

The latest IPCC assessment requires holding temps to 1.5C, meaning emissions must be cut by 50% by 2030, which means emissions have to decrease rapidly from 2020 (Comment: That’s an impossibility because of global fossil fuel plans of +120% growth by 2030).

We’ve had four separate reports this year on the status of countries meeting, or not meeting, their mitigation targets to avoid catastrophe. Result: “It’s basically the end for humanity. We’re looking at biosphere collapse. The richness of life is being destroyed by deforestation and by catastrophic climate change. Africa is in severe drought. Chile is in a mega drought. Australia is in a drought expected to become a mega drought within the next two years.” (Carter)

Absolutely nothing is happening to mitigate global warming. Furthermore, nothing will come out of COP25 to mitigate the issue. On the very first day of meetings Carter was told nations would not be looking at improving their national mitigation targets, which are a joke anyways.

“It is unbelievable what these high emitting fossil fuel producing countries are doing. Countries that are blocking any progress on emissions are acting in the most evil way imaginable. We’re looking at the destruction of Earth, oceans and land.” (Carter)

Furthermore, and chillingly, according to Dr. Carter: Currently, there has been a massive ongoing eruption of methane in the Arctic. It’s gone practically unreported. The only report of it was by the Engineering and Technology Journal.

Barrow, Alaska registered the aforementioned massive bursts of methane into the atmosphere, starting in August of this year. “We’ve never seen anything like it! And, it has stayed at elevated levels to the present week. Looking at the 2.2 million year ice core, the maximum methane concentration ever was 800 ppb. In Barrow, Alaska it is 2,050 ppb and staying there. It’s been up there for 4 months.” (Carter)

Which is an ominous warning that has the potential to be a precursor to runaway global warming, burning-off mid-latitude agriculture and categorizing the Tropics as“way too hot for life.”

We (Carter and the scientific community) know that really bad things are happening in the Arctic. We also know that the land permafrost is emitting a lot of methane, CO2, and nitrous oxide (12xs more than scientists estimated).

Conclusion: COP25 is a farce as major countries ignore the threat of global warming by upping the ante on fossil fuels, adding nearly $2 trillion worth of new fossil fuel infrastructure since Paris’15 warned of dangers associated with too much carbon in the atmosphere, a surefire recipe for Hot House Earth.

Lest we forget, Venus, our sister planet, has 96.5% CO2 by volume in the atmosphere. On average, temperatures run 864°F.

Carbon matters!

Postscript: “Accelerating heating of the Arctic Ocean could make global temperatures skyrocket in a matter of years” (Source: Arctic Ocean Overheating, Arctic News, September 8, 2019)Since the start of the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago, that’s the worst possible news ever.

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.

The protests against Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed NRC is spreading in many parts of India. Six protesters were killed in clashes that erupted across Uttar Pradesh over the Citizenship Amendment Act on Friday, the state police confirmed. This has taken the total number of protest-related deaths in the state so far to seven. However, Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police OP Singh claimed that none of the protesters were killed in police firing. “We did not shoot even a single bullet,” he said, even as another officer claimed that “if any firing happened, it was from the protesters’ side”.

In yesterday’s protests, 3 persons were killed in police firing. One person was killed in Lucknow and two in Mangaluru.

Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad escaped police custody and ran after leading a huge protest against the citizenship law at Jama Masjid in the old quarters of Delhi on Friday. He had been detained after a protest along with hundreds of supporters, during which he shouted slogans and waved flags from the steps of the historic mosque, dramatically defying the police. Chandrashekhar Azad had managed to dodge the police and had surfaced suddenly inside the gates of Jama Masjid just after Friday prayers, holding up a copy of the constitution and a photo of BR Ambedkar. He was detained soon after.

The Delhi Police had denied permission to Chandrashekhar Azad’s protest march against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act from Jama Masjid to Jantar Mantar in the heart of Delhi. But he tweeted that he would make it to the area anyway, and he did. “Please ignore the rumors of my arrest. I am reaching Jama Masjid,” he tweeted.

Slogans of “Jai Bhim” rang out from the steps of Jama Masjid as Azad, whose blue hoodie covered his face, emerged on the steps. Scores of policemen, prepared to push back against the protests, stayed on the other side of the gates, keeping a cautious eye on the rapidly swelling crowds. Drones were also deployed to monitor the situation.

Azad, 31, read out the preamble to the constitution, the crowd chanting alongside. Protesters inside the mosque complex then spilled over to the road, shouting slogans and wearing black bands.

Azad, 31, read out the preamble to the constitution, the crowd chanting alongside. Protesters inside the mosque complex then spilled over to the road, shouting slogans and wearing black bands.

The police had been prepared for potential trouble but appeared hopelessly outnumbered.

Police personnel were seen engaging with religious leaders to try and get the situation within control. When they finally got hold of Azad by his collar, they detained him.

But as the police were about to take him in their vehicle, Azad slipped away and vanished into the crowds.

Journalists Detained in Mangaluru

Journalists and crew from at least three Kerala-based news channels – News 24, Media One and Asianet – have been stopped from reporting in Mangaluru in Karnataka, where two people died yesterday in police firing amid protests against the new citizenship law. In a video of the incident, a senior police officer stops a reporter while he is on-air and demands to see identification. On being shown what appears to be a company-issued ID, the cop can be heard shouting: “No, that is not accreditation… not government-issued… Out!”The four news channels were reportedly in Mangaluru to interview the relatives of those who were killed during massive nationwide protests against the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA, on Thursday

In the video, a senior police officer, accompanied by at least a dozen colleagues – at least two of whom are armed – walks out of a compound guarded by a yellow-coloured gate; the reporter, who appears to be from Media One, was standing with his back to the gate.

“Where is it? No… no. Please switch it off. Show your accreditation card… prove that you are a genuine media person. Switch it off (to the cameraperson),” the senior officer says.

As the camera continues rolling the reporter continues reporting and shows the officer what appears to be an ID card. The police officer says: “No, that is not accreditation…it is not government-issued. You don’t have access… only accredited journalists,” adding, “Out!”

At this point another police officer places his hand on the microphone and makes a warning noise before the cops herd the reporter and the cameraperson away.

This morning Mangaluru Police Commissioner PS Harsha issued a statement: “Few people not having any accreditation cards issued by any authority, not from any formal media and in possession of many things unconnected to reporting are being questioned”. The statement also says “further action” will be initiated once verification is complete.

Karnataka Home Minister Baswaraj Bhomai has blamed the violence in the city on groups from Kerala who have been staying in Mangaluru for over a week.

In the video, a senior police officer, accompanied by at least a dozen colleagues – at least two of whom are armed – walks out of a compound guarded by a yellow-coloured gate; the reporter, who appears to be from Media One, was standing with his back to the gate.

“Where is it? No… no. Please switch it off. Show your accreditation card… prove that you are a genuine media person. Switch it off (to the cameraperson),” the senior officer says.

As the camera continues rolling the reporter continues reporting and shows the officer what appears to be an ID card. The police officer says: “No, that is not accreditation…it is not government-issued. You don’t have access… only accredited journalists,” adding, “Out!”

At this point another police officer places his hand on the microphone and makes a warning noise before the cops herd the reporter and the cameraperson away.

This morning Mangaluru Police Commissioner PS Harsha issued a statement: “Few people not having any accreditation cards issued by any authority, not from any formal media and in possession of many things unconnected to reporting are being questioned”. The statement also says “further action” will be initiated once verification is complete.

Karnataka Home Minister Baswaraj Bhomai has blamed the violence in the city on groups from Kerala who have been staying in Mangaluru for over a week.

Hours after journalists from three Kerala-based news channels were detained while covering the Citizenship Amendment Act protests in Mangaluru, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday expressed regret over the “unfortunate incident” and asked his Karnataka counterpart — BS Yediyurappa — to ensure that all of them are freed at the earliest.

“The Government of Kerala expresses its deep concern at this turn of events. I request your kind intervention for issuing directions to the police authorities so that the mediapersons are freed at the earliest and be allowed to discharge their duties in a free manner without being intimidated,” Mr Vijayan said in his letter.

Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad led a massive protest at the Jama Masjid in Delhi, and was detained before he managed to escape. Protests turned violent at some places in Uttar Pradesh.

In Tamil Nadu, police filed a case against 600 people, including actor Siddharth, musician TM Krishna, Lok Sabha MP Thol Thirumavalavan and former MLA MH Jawahirullah, for protesting against the new legislation in Chennai on Thursday. In Delhi, Congress leaders who were protesting near Home Minister Amit Shah’s residence were detained.

Delhi Police used “water cannon and absolutely minimum force to push” protestors at Daryaganj, reports ANI. “Private car parked at Subhash Marg, Darya Ganj was set ablaze,” they add. “The police staff immediately doused the fire. Some police personnel including senior officers were injured in stone-pelting. Around 40 persons have been detained.” Police are refusing to let lawyers enter Daryaganj station to meet those detained.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has issued advisory to all television channels to desist from broadcasting content that could incite violence and cause law and order problems. The advisory also extends to the broadcast of any content that “promotes anti-national attitudes and/or contains anything affecting the integrity of the nation”.

The I&B Ministry has issued an advisory to all TV Channels that they abstain from showing any content which is likely to instigate violence. #CitizenshipAmendmentAct pic.twitter.com/poir7aiQKq

— Prasar Bharati News Services (@PBNS_India) December 20, 2019

Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi accused the Bharatiya Janata Party government of showing “utter disregard” for people’s voices in the protests against citizenship law. “In a democracy people have the right to raise their voice against wrong decisions and policies of the govt and register their concerns…BJP govt has shown utter disregard for people’s voices & chosen to use brute force to suppress dissent,” she said.

In a democracy people have the right to raise their voice against wrong decisions & policies of the govt & register their concerns… BJP govt has shown utter disregard for people’s voices & chosen to use brute force to suppress dissent: CP Smt. Sonia Gandhi #IndiaAgainstCAA pic.twitter.com/5AKOpn76Dx

— Congress (@INCIndia) December 20, 2019

People protested against Citizenship Act in Delhi’s India Gate. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joined the protest. She said “Citizenship Act and NRC are against the poor. Government wants every Indian to stand in line to prove citizenship, as it did after note ban.”

Police baton-charged protestors in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, reports News18. Clashes reported from Hapur too.

#JustIn | Security personnel lathi charge protesters at Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh.#CAAshowdown pic.twitter.com/2ezfUk9ZlT

— News18 (@CNNnews18) December 20, 2019

#WATCH | Police personnel clash with angry protesters at Hapur in Uttar Pradesh. #CAAshowdown pic.twitter.com/9TrnXReJZr

— News18 (@CNNnews18) December 20, 2019

Protestors and police throw stones at each other in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, reported ANI.

Gorakhpur: Protestors & police personnel pelt stones at each other during demonstration against #CitizenshipAmendmentAct and National Register of Citizens (NRC). pic.twitter.com/cpVxuCr6Pf

— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) December 20, 2019

Protest occured outside Hari Masjid in Mumbai

Maharashtra: Protest outside Hari Masjid in Mumbai, against #CitizenshipAmendmentAct and National Register of Citizens (NRC). pic.twitter.com/n7pq3RmRFE

— ANI (@ANI) December 20, 2019

In Hyderabad, protestors staged a demonstration near Charminar against the new legislation

Hyderabad: People hold protest near Charminar against Citizenship Amendment Act. #Telangana pic.twitter.com/pho9sYZiE1

— ANI (@ANI) December 20, 2019

The UP Police conduced a flag march in Varanasi.

Police conducts flag march in Varanasi. #CitizenshipAmendmentAct pic.twitter.com/2InWyIqbsg

— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) December 20, 2019

Delhi Police detained Delhi Mahila Congress chief Sharmistha Mukherjee and other party workers. They were protesting near Home Minister Amit Shah’s residence.

Delhi: Police detain Delhi Mahila Congress President Sharmistha Mukherjee & other Congress workers who were protesting against #CitizenshipAct near the residence of Home Minister Amit Shah. pic.twitter.com/Qt4Ndatp7u

— ANI (@ANI) December 20, 2019

.⁦@DelhiPMC⁩ staged a flash protest against CAA outside ⁦@AmitShah⁩s’ residence. We’ve been detained & brought at Mandir Marg police station pic.twitter.com/iYfqhDpwUZ

— Sharmistha Mukherjee (@Sharmistha_GK) December 20, 2019

Here are some visuals of the overseas protests

Students in Paris read the preamble & stand in solidarity with our fellow citizens protesting against #CAA #NRC, suppression of dissent and police brutality.They will not divide us. @NoopurTiwari @bfgdhrubo @maitreyeesk @SaagnikPaul @kartiksoni23 @thewire_in @scroll_in @TheQuint pic.twitter.com/uL53eV5IqJ

— Hina Fathima (@hina_fathima) December 19, 2019

Hundreds of students, mainly from India, gathered outside the India High Commission in London to protest the CAA, NRC and condemned Indian police for brutalising peaceful Muslim students in Ne Delhi & elsewhere #JamiaProtests #ModiGovt #MuslimLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/woK2BhaVjq

— Murtaza Ali Shah (@MurtazaViews) December 18, 2019

#Malayalam sloganeering in front of the Indian Embassy, London. The agitators are protesting against the controversial #CAA_NRC #CAAProtest #KeralaLeads pic.twitter.com/TkmPpEsHxc

— Rohit Thayyil روہت تیل (@RohitThayyil) December 19, 2019

“Dum hai Kitna Daman Mein Tere, Dekh Lia hai,
Dekhenge.. Abhi Toh Ye Angdai Hai, Aage Aur Ladai hai” Not just in various parts of India, But big protest outside Indian High commissions in London Agst CAA!! #CAAProtests pic.twitter.com/RdOn4odjAR

— Meenakshi.B 🏹 (@minakshibhanja1) December 19, 2019

Over 300 students & alumni gathered at #Harvard University to protest against #CitizenshipAmendmentAct2019.

'They read out sections of the Constitution to remind each other of the secular and democratic principles India was built on,' read their statement. @TheQuint #CAAProtest pic.twitter.com/DxYxdqYDQk

— Smitha T K (@smitha_tk) December 18, 2019