Dear Friend,
Throughout the world, mega droughts are hitting hard with a ferocity not seen in decades and in some cases not seen in centuries. It’s not merely coincidental that as global warming accelerates droughts turn more vicious than ever before. All of which begs the logical question of when will world leaders wake up with a unified plan of action to mitigate carbon emissions, or is it already too late?
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Incendiary Extinctions: Australian Fires and the Species Effect
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
The management of biodiversity and ecosystems, involving measures taken to bolster and buffer against the next catastrophe – for they will be more – matter far more. The discussion, as it stands, remains asphyxiated by the smoke and rage, with an overwhelming focus on human suffering, the calls for donations to human survivors, the search for compensation. The earth and its non-human inhabitants remain the statistics of silent suffering and, after this event, some will go the way of their doomed ancestors. As ever, Australia remains, as Dickman claims, the canary in the coal mine in terms of climate effects and human response. And the canary is not looking too good.
Cocooned as it is from the world of science scepticism, the handling of the bush fire catastrophe unfolding in Australia is going to one of the more notable (non)achievements of the Morrison government. They were warned; they were chided; they were prodded. But the measures lagged and the flames came.
To a certain extent, this remains unfair. Australian governments, across colours and persuasions, have found managing the environment a problematic, and inconvenient affair. Being a country rich in resources readymade for digging and export, environment ministers have become the executing tribunes of mining rights and interests before the preservation of flora and fauna species. Miners, rights, not Earth rights, are what counts. Talk of climate change responses is heavily weighted in favour of pro-emission and polluting measures; greening projects look like acts of ecological pantomime. Australia remains a country transfixed and terrified by Nature, even as it mangles or ignores it.
With that in mind, the flames that continue to consume Australia have not merely destroyed agriculture, property and human life; they have had an impact on animal species that remains hard to measure. As a general rule, these events now have the makings of the unprecedented, at least in terms of human records. There are fire fronts that stretch like scars of battle across terrain. Smoke plumes half the size of Europe have been noted.
Updates on the progress of the flames resemble a relentless disaster narrative. Over 25.5 million acres of land, or territory the size of South Korea, is a figure that has caught the eye of news outlets. Images from NASA’s Earth Observatory, its Suomi-NPP satellite and the Himawari 8 Japanese satellite of the Japanese Meteorological Agency, have shown the international print being left by the fires.
Little wonder that the more terrestrial assessments of impacts have turned their focus on species extinction, a point that was bound to happen given Australia’s already unflattering honour of having the highest rate of mammal extinction on the planet. They are far more than the shrieks and howls of pain coming from koalas as they are incinerated to death, or the charred remains of kangaroos left in a funereal silver-ash landscape. It is the post-apocalyptic aftermath, when species find themselves in a world of ash and remains, with food and shelter miserably scarce.
The extinction literature, speculative and more solidly grounded, is burgeoning. Six Australian professors have stuck to the safe, if dark premise by claiming in The Conversation that “most of the range and population of between 20 and 100 threatened species will have been burnt. Such species include the long-footed potoroo, Kangaroo Island’s glossy black cockatoo and the Spring midge orchid.”
Another unnerving estimate from January 3, and applicable to the state of New South Wales alone, put the toll of birds, mammals and reptiles affected by the conflagrations at 480 million. (The number did not include insects, bats or frogs.) “Many of the affected animals are likely to have been killed directly by the fires, with others succumbing later due to the depletion of food and shelter resources and predation from introduced feral cats and red foxes.”
Within five days, an updated assessment from Professor Chris Dickman almost doubled the initial NSW figures. Across the continent, a billion animals are said to have perished. In an interview with National Public Radio in the US, Dickman suggested that the figures were exceptionally staggering. “I think there’s nothing quite to compare with the devastation that’s going on over such a large area so quickly. It’s a monstrous event in terms of geography and the number of individual animals affected.”
The disaster for such species is one of ongoing affects; the fire leaves the initial destructive mark, with these being particular savage. According to wildlife rescue volunteer Sarah Price, “We are not seeing the amount of animals coming into care or needing rescuing that we would normally anticipate.” The implication is hard to avoid: “We think a lot perished in the fires.”
Some animals might well survive the scorching, but insatiable and uninterrupted land clearing coupled with the busyness of introduced fauna varieties does the rest. The impacts of fire events also remove habitat sanctuaries for wildlife, be they layers of fallen leaves, specific shrubs important as food sources, or log and tree hollows.
Should there ever be an ecological tribunal vested in powers to assess government actions over the years on the subject, the failure to put in measures to protect species from calamity may well have to top the list. A reckless, occasionally malicious stupidity might count as motivation, but by then, not much will be left to protect. Any punishment will be left without a purpose.
The management of biodiversity and ecosystems, involving measures taken to bolster and buffer against the next catastrophe – for they will be more – matter far more. The discussion, as it stands, remains asphyxiated by the smoke and rage, with an overwhelming focus on human suffering, the calls for donations to human survivors, the search for compensation. The earth and its non-human inhabitants remain the statistics of silent suffering and, after this event, some will go the way of their doomed ancestors. As ever, Australia remains, as Dickman claims, the canary in the coal mine in terms of climate effects and human response. And the canary is not looking too good.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Mega Droughts Engulf Countries
by Robert Hunziker
Throughout the world, mega droughts are hitting hard with a ferocity not seen in decades and
in some cases not seen in centuries. It’s not merely coincidental that as global warming accelerates droughts turn more vicious than ever before. All of which begs the logical question of when will world leaders wake up with a unified plan of action to mitigate carbon emissions, or is it already too late?
Throughout the world, mega droughts are hitting hard with a ferocity not seen in decades and in some cases not seen in centuries. It’s not merely coincidental that as global warming accelerates droughts turn more vicious than ever before. All of which begs the logical question of when will world leaders wake up with a unified plan of action to mitigate carbon emissions, or is it already too late?
Nobody knows for sure if and when it is too late, but the evidence is crystal clear that extraordinarily powerful droughts are decimating regions of the planet like there’s no tomorrow.
An Australian research paper addressed the issue: Multi-century Cool-and Warm-Season rainfall Reconstructions for Australia’s Major Climatic Regions, European Geosciences Union, Vol. 13, Issue 12, Nov. 30, 2017 by Mandy Freund and Benjamin Henley.According to The University of Melbourne headline about the article: “Recent Australian Droughts may be the Worst in 800 Years.”
That study, which identified the “worst droughts in 800 years,” was published two years prior to the recent drought period accompanied by massive fires across the entire continent… these are unprecedented conditions… never before recorded or seen! Thus sending a strong signal that the world’s normalized climate system is broken, caving-in to a new era of “torrid breakaway climate extremes.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology: “The data is in and 2019 has topped the charts for average and maximum temperatures as well as the lowest annual rainfall across the country.”
According to the report, Australia’s annual mean temperature was 1.52°C above the 1961-90 average of 21.8°C. Results: A dried-out continent ignited into torrid breakaway fires. Curiously enough, 1.5°C above pre-industrial is the guardrail danger zone reported at the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meetings.
Meanwhile,severe droughts are hitting throughout the world, e.g., according to NBC News: “Ravaged by drought, farmers in rural Honduras and Guatemala live on the edge of hunger… Central America’s Choice: Pray for Rain or Migrate.”
Based upon activity at the U.S. border, Central Americans have selected the migration option, giving up hope, heading north. As the Trump administration rejects the legitimacy of climate change/global warming,forces of climate change drive eco migrants to the States.
According to the UN World Food Program, as for Central America: “Five years of recurring droughts have destroyed maize and bean harvests, leaving poor subsistence farmers in the so-called Dry Corridor that runs through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua struggling to feed their families.”
Farther south, central Chile is in the midst of what scientists have labeled a “Mega Drought,” an uninterrupted period of dry years since 2010. Half of the country has been designated “Emergency Status.” Farmers are going out of business.
According to Felipe Machado, director of Chile’s Resilience Institute: “We are talking about a process of desertification rather than a temporary drought or absence of rain problem.” (Source: Chile Declares Agricultural Emergency as Extreme Drought Hits Santiago and Outskirts, Santiago Times, August 26, 2019)
As it happens, the classification of “desertification” is an advanced stage of radical climate change and convincing evidence that global warming is beyond the scope ofall expectations by world leaders. Otherwise, they’d already have in place a Marshall Plan generic to combat global warming, but they do not.
Furthermore, in South America’s Brazil, “The SPI-12 time series showed that from 2011 to 2019, excluding the south region, the other Brazilian regions have been exposed to the most severe and intense drought events in almost the last 60 years.” (Source: Ana Paula M.S. Cunha, et al, Extreme Drought Events Over Brazil from 2011 to 2019, Atmosphere, October 24, 2019)
Regrettably, the Amazon rain forest is also a victim to Brazil’s worst drought in 60 years, which in and of itself should be alarming enough for the major leaders of the world to call an emergency UN session, but no, that carillon call is dead silent. Hmm. Is it possible that all the leaders of the world are so unenlightened as to ignore the Amazon rain forest’s transition from “carbon sink” to “carbon emitter,” same as their coal-powered plants but without as much soot?
And, along the way, according to NASA, the Middle East’s drought cycle from 1998-2012 was the most severe in 900 years. According to Ben Cook of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the drought has continued “in parts of the Middle East.” Meanwhile, the entire Middle East and southern Mediterranean regions are drying out faster than anywhere else in the world, which is one more source of eco migrants searching for sustenance.
Furthermore, according to The New Humanitarian (June 2019), a severe drought in Africa “leaves 45 million in need across 14 countries, feeling the compound effects of years of drought.”
A CNN World report dated Dec. 14, 2019 says the once mighty Victoria Falls, where water thundered over the precipice on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia, is nearly dry. A multi-year drought has slowed the enormously powerful waterfalls to little more than a weak stream. That is astonishingly disheartening and representative of massive droughts hitting regions of Africa hard, very hard; one of the world’s great waterfalls turned parched says it all.
Throughout much of Asia drought is becoming the norm rather than the exception. This year alone, according to data from the Manila-based Asia Development Bank, drought has been severe in Laos, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, while Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar have all seen moderate drought. (China Daily News, August 12, 2019)
The Mekong River, known in China as the Lancang (aka: the Danube of the East) which cuts through five countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, turning into the Mekong River 2,703 miles long, has seen water levels drop dramatically. In northeastern Thailand, the river is at its lowest level in 100 years. According to Chinese scientists the glacial headwaters that feed the Lancang River are down 80% because of global warming.
Remarkably, the impact of global warming is just now starting to strut its stuff so visibly and so perceptibly that average people are recognizing its threat.
Whereas, in the past global warming was apparent to scientistsover a period of decades. Today, it’s unmistakably apparent year-by-year, as entire countries and populations experience its relentlessness and utter devastation.
Postscript: Global governments plan to increase fossil fuels by 120% by 2030, including the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Canada, and Australia.
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.
Climate crisis: Is there a Savitri to Save the World from Climate Catastrophe?
by Sagar Dhara
The Savitri-Satyavan story is being played out in real life in the ongoing climate change saga. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), playing the role of Narada, has issued a strong warning of the possible demise of the earth (read Satyvan) as we know it today. UNEP has just published the “Emissions Gap Report 2019” (EGR2019). The report states, “We are on the brink of missing the opportunity to limit global warming to 1.5°C.”
In the days of yore, Savitri saved Satyavan
The legend of Savitri and Satyavan in the Hindu mythological epic, the Mahabharat, is a love story. Savitri, a beautiful princess, marries Satyavan, a penniless woodcutter, despite Sage Narada warning her that Satyavan, is a dead man walking. A year later, on the day of reckoning, Yama, the God of death, comes to collect Satyavan’s soul. Savitri pleads with Yama to take her too, but Yama declines. Yama, touched by Savitiri’s love for Satyavan, grants her a boon. Savitri asks for children, which Yama grants. He then realizes the implication of his boon and gives Satyavan his life back so that he and Savitri can have children.
Savitri pleads with Yama for her husband’s life, Satya.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London
Credit: Wellcome Library, London
The Savitri-Satyavan story is being played out in real life in the ongoing climate change saga. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), playing the role of Narada, has issued a strong warning of the possible demise of the earth (read Satyvan) as we know it today. UNEP has just published the “Emissions Gap Report 2019” (EGR2019). The report states, “We are on the brink of missing the opportunity to limit global warming to 1.5°C.”
Scientists warn that a warming exceeding 1.5oC above pre-industrial times would result in catastrophic consequences—rapid glacier melt, rising sea levels, acidifying oceans, greater rainfall and temperature unpredictability, frequent extreme weather events, rise in species extinction rates, decrease in food and water security and consequent rise in malnutrition and disease.
The EGR is published annually every November just before the inter-governmental body, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), meets to decide the future course of global action to tackle climate change. The EGR makes an assessment of the gap between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions today and what they should be for us to remain within 1.5oC temperature rise redline.
UNEP also recently published another report, “Lessons from a Decade of Emissions Gap Assessment” (EGR10). The EGR10 compares the emission gap predictions it made 10 years ago with today’s, and concludes that “Despite a decade of increasing political and societal focus on climate change and the milestone Paris Agreement, the global GHG emissions have not been curbed, and the emissions gap is larger than ever.”
The writing on the wall is clear—climate change poses a clear and present danger. Together both reports tell us that the yawning gap between climate science and climate policy has never been wider, and that to avoid descending into an apocalypse, drastic corrective measures must be taken immediately.
Two decades of global climate agreements …. and we are still highly unsustainable
Inter-governmental cooperation to tackle climate change began in 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol (KP) was drafted. The KP granted preferential emission rights to 42 North nations, but obliged them to reduce their collective emissions by 5.2% by 2012 over the base year 1990 (the KP period). In 2013, the emission reduction of North nations for the KP period was estimated at 16%, and the KP was hailed as a “runaway success.” The KP did not bind the South nations with any emission reduction targets.
The KP required computation of territorial emissions, i.e., all GHG emissions emitted from a territory were attributed to that country. This is at variance with consumption emissions of a territory, which is the true reflector of the emissions of a territory. To compute consumption emission, embedded carbon emissions of imports are added, and those of exports are subtracted (net trade emissions) to territorial emissions.
Consumption emissions of North nations for the KP period increased by 14.5%, which questions the validity of the 16% emission reduction computed by the territorial emissions method. Outsourcing of goods and services consumed by North nations to South nations, particularly to India and China, which was in vogue by 1990, helped the North nations in two ways—reduced prices of many products and shifted the crediting of a significant amount of trade emissions from North to South nations.
Gap between territorial and consumption emissions of major GHG emitters (Source EGR2019)
Secondly, clubbing emissions of all North nations hid the real performance of their bad performers, particularly large emitters. During the KP period, the emissions of USA, Canada and Australia increased by 6% instead of decreasing by their 6% target. West European countries fared better. As against their target of an 8% emissions reduction, they reduced by 7%. During the KP period, East European and Russian emissions reduced by 55% as their economies shrank drastically after the 1990 Soviet bloc collapse. This more than compensated for the poor emission reduction performance of large emitters such as the US.
The KP was a “runaway failure.” Instead of retarding emissions growth, it transferred the crediting of consumption emissions from North to South nations, primarily China and India, and allowed the North nations to blame them for their rapid emissions growth.
KP’s successor, the Paris Agreement, drafted in 2015, aims to strengthen global response to climate change to limit warming to 2oC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue effort to limit it to 1.5oC. The agreement will also help countries adapt to climate change impacts, foster low carbon development pathways and steer global financial flows to enable these processes.
As of November 2019, 195 countries had signed the agreement. Under the agreement, each country may determine, plan, and regularly report any non-binding contribution (known as nationally determined contributions or NDC) it wishes to pledge to mitigate global warming. Each new NDC that a country pledges must be more ambitious than the previous one.
An inter-governmental meeting, known as the Conference of Parties (COP) # 25 is underway in the first fortnight of December 2019 in Madrid to take stock of the progress made by the Paris Agreement, and prepare for the next COP meeting to be held in 2020. Major course changes are expected to be attempted in COP 26, to be held in Glasgow in November 2020.
…. the gap between “what we say we will do and what we need to do” has widened
In the last decade, GHG emissions rose by 1.5% per annum, reaching a record high of 51.8 GtCO2e (without LUC), 55.3 (with LUC) in 2018. The early years of the Paris Agreement do not indicate any significant reduction in emissions growth.
Global GHG emissions from all sources (Source: EGR2019)
To have a fighting chance of restricting global warming to 1.5oC, the EGR2019 indicates that GHG emissions must tumble down to 25 GtCO2e by 2030, i.e., half of what it is today. If emissions reduction had begun a decade back, the reduction rate would have been a mere 3.3% per annum. If it starts today, GHG emissions must decrease by a stiff 7.6% every for the next 10 years. A 5 year delay, i.e., a 2025 start for an emissions reduction to begin will increase the GHG reduction rate climb to a virtually unattainable 15.4% per year.
To move from a GHG emission growth rate of +1.5% to -7.6% is Herculean task, a shift of 9% in one year. To do that requires all countries to have the will, wherewithal and willingness to be on the same page. This has not happened in the past. In fact, it is the reverse that has happened. The emissions gap computed in EGR2015 and EGR2018 for a 1.5oC warming almost doubled from 17 GtCO2e in 2015 to 32 GtCO2e in 2018, i.e., the Paris Agreement is failing.
For the first time UNEP has used tough language to make the COP 25 delegates and the world sit up and reflect on the business-as-usual way in which climate change happening. The EGR2019 states that, “Today our report card says we are failing to close the ‘commitment’ gap between what we say we will do and what we need to do to prevent dangerous levels of climate change.”
…. US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement makes it worse
Following up on Donald Trump’s earlier promise, in November 2019 the US announced its intention to pull out of the Paris Agreement. In the last decade US emissions, which are 13.2% of global emissions, remained constant at ~6.8 GtCO2e per annum. Assuming that that they remain flat till 2030, and other countries made deeper emissions cuts to compensate for US intransigence, they would have to reduce their GHG emissions by an almost impossible 9.5% per year till 2030. However, if US emissions creep upwards, as they did in 2018 to 3.4% per year, the biggest spike in 8 years, the other countries may not make any further cuts and the 1.5oC temperature ceiling would be busted.
There is a yawning gap between the Paris Agreement’s aim to reduce emissions and their unabated increase in GHG emissions.
Missing element in the discourse–Climate justice and development
North nations (Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan), with 17% of the world’s population today, are have emitting over 60% of the 2,200 GtCO2 of historic emissions (cumulative emissions 1751-2017). The per capita historic emissions of North and South nations are 1,200 and 85 t/person[2], respectively. The rich in South nations, though small in number and asset holding, also share a small fraction of the responsibility for causing climate change.
Climate justice requires that per capita historic emissions, or at least per capita current emissions, for all people of the world be more or less the same. Else, those with less per capita emissions—historic or current, will feel short changed, and will argue for increasing their emissions to catch up with the level of development of the “privileged” by burning more fossil fuels. This argument gets further lift by the considerable doubt there exists regarding renewable energy’s ability to replace fossil fuels completely.
So, what should a South nation do? Let us take the case of India. It has emitted only 3% of world’s historic emissions. With 17% of the world’s population, its current emissions are 7% of global emissions. Its per capita GHG emissions are only ~42% of the global average per capita emissions of 6.6 GtCO2e. India aspires to have its GDP grow at 8-10% per annum. Its emissions growth in the last decade was 3.7% per annum, and its emissions in 2018 grew at 5.5%. Seventy five percent of its commercial energy comes from fossil fuels. Its population below the national poverty line and multi dimensional poverty index are 29.5% and 44%, respectively.
If India allows its GHG emissions to grow, it will contribute to shooting down the 1.5oC temperature rise redline. Further growth by any of the large emitters, including India, is virtually not possible without running the risk of crossing the 1.5oC redline as the world’s remaining emissions budget for staying under 1.5°C warming is all but gone. Decreases emissions by reducing fossil fuel use implies allowing GDP growth to flag; and that condemns 30-40% of its population to remain under the poverty line as India has chosen to use the flawed trickle-down theory of development.
The North nations have forced the South nations into a Catch-22 situation where they are damned if they reduce emissions and they are damned if they do not. Moreover, South nations are far more vulnerable to climate change than North nations—because of their geography and their lower capacity to meet disasters. And India, as part of South Asia, whose historic emissions are 3.5%, is in one of two regions that will suffer the most from climate change impacts.
India will be subject to internal stresses such as extreme weather events, sea rise, floods, droughts, decreasing food and water security, internal migration. It will also be subject to external stresses as almost all of the Maldives and a quarter of Bangladesh will be under the sea by 2100. More than 5 crore Bangladeshi climate refugees may well walk into India by as early as 2050. Nepal and Bhutan will reel under frequent glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and consequent devastating flooding. Pakistan and Afghanistan will become severely water stressed countries as their rivers are highly dependent on glacial melt, and as glaciers melt, their rivers will run dry.
…. is there a Savitri who can save the world, and India
At the current global GHG emission growth rate of 1.5% pa, the world will warm by 1.5-2oC in a few short decades. In the EGR10 and EGR2019 UNEP warns, “Unless mitigation ambition and action increase substantially and immediately, exceeding the 1.5°C goal can no longer be avoided” and “If we rely only on the current climate commitments of the Paris Agreement, temperatures can be expected to rise to 3.2°C this century.” In other words, the average temperature in future may be nearly as high as what meteorological departments currently classify as heat waves.
Recent scientific findings are noteworthy. The first is the study of Antarctica ice sheets that made scientists conclude that abrupt and irreversible changes in the climate system have become a higher risk at lower global average temperatures. The second is new evidence that climate systems separated by thousands of kilometers, e.g., the Arctic sea ice and the Amazon forests, may be inter-connected and that exceeding tipping points in one system can increase the risk of crossing them in others. The third is that new climate models being used for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, to be released in 2021, predict that temperature rise by 2100 may be as high as 6.5-7oC. Climate change has put the earth’s environment and human society at the risk of drastic and permanent damage.
It will take time for these findings to be verified. But scientific uncertainty is no longer a good reason for procrastination, as earth, like Satyavan, has become a dead man walking. If policy makers continue to play “fiddler on the roof,” as they have till now, someone else has to play the role of Savitri and save the earth. It is only people who can do that, and save their environment and themselves. That has already started in some North nations with mass action, and must now spread to South nations.
So what should people do? They should form national rainbow coalitions of people of all walks of life—workers, farmers, fisher folk, youth, women, scientists, and link up with one another. Next they should ask national governments and the UN to declare a climate crisis and implement stringent measures immediately in the following five areas:
Sustainability: North nations emissions must become net carbon zero by 2030, and South nations by 2040. Gross global consumption should be reduced to sustainable levels and a sustainability index should be agreed upon to measure efficacy of sustainability objectives. These measures include leaving 80% of the remaining fossil fuel reserves in the ground and every nation sequestering its consumptive emissions within its territory.
Taking responsibility: All nations should take responsibility for climate change related injury, displacement and property loss to people, and damage to the environment, in proportion to their historic emissions. And within each nation, the same principle should be applied to individuals with regard to their current emissions.
Equity: By 2040, global per capita energy consumption and emissions equity should be achieved.
Governance: Decentralized and autonomous local self governing bodies of communities must have oversight powers over provincial and national governments, and international cooperation agencies. Decisions at all governance levels must be democratic and transparent.
Environmental restoration: Air, water, land, soil, and to the extent possible biodiversity, should be restored to their earlier quality.
People should also take the initiative and themselves implement such programmes that do not require government intervention or help, e.g., organic farming, dispensing with private transport, etc. After all it is the future of their children and grandchildren that is at stake.
Published in Firstpost, 13.12.2019: https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/climate-crisis-is-there-a-savitri-to-save-the-world-from-its-climate-catastrophe-7774451.html
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Sagar Dhara is an environmental engineer specialized in risk analysis. He had worked earlier as a consultant with UNEP, as Director, Envirotech Consultants, and faculty, BITS Pillani
[2] Per capita historic emissions are computed by dividing the historic emissions (1751-2017) of a country/region divided by the current population
10 Ways Trump’s
Actions Against Iran Hurt Americans and the Region
Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies
The U.S. assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has not yet plunged us into a full-scale war with Iran thanks to the Iranian government’s measured response, which demonstrated its capabilities without actually harming U.S. troops or escalating the conflict. But the danger of a full-blown war still exists, and Donald Trump’s actions are already wreaking havoc.
Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies
The U.S. assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has not yet plunged us into a full-scale war with Iran thanks to the Iranian government’s measured response, which demonstrated its capabilities without actually harming U.S. troops or escalating the conflict. But the danger of a full-blown war still exists, and Donald Trump’s actions are already wreaking havoc.
The tragic crash of the Ukranian passenger jet that left 176 dead may well be the first example of this, if indeed it was shot down by a jittery Iranian anti-aircraft crew who mistook the airliner for a U.S. warplane.
Trump’s actions make the region, and the American people, less safe in at least ten important ways.
1) The first result of Trump’s blunders may be an increase in U.S. war deaths across the greater Middle East. While this was avoided in Iran’s initial retaliation, Iraqi militias and Hezbollah in Lebanon have already vowed to seek revenge for the deaths of Soleimani and the Iraqi militia. US military bases, warships and nearly 80,000 U.S. troops in the region are sitting ducks for retaliation by Iran, its allies and any other group that is angered by U.S. actions or simply decides to exploit this U.S.-manufactured crisis.
The first U.S. war deaths after the U.S. airstrikes and assassinations in Iraq were three Americans killedin by Al-Shabab in Kenya on January 5th.
Further escalation by the U.S. in response to Iranian and other attacks on Americans will only exacerbate this cycle of violence.
2) U.S. acts of war in Iraq have injected even more volatility and instability into an already war-torn and explosive region. The U.S. close ally, Saudi Arabia, is seeing its efforts to solve its conflicts with Qatar and Kuwait thrown into jeopardy, and it will now be harder to find a diplomatic solution to the catastrophic war in Yemen–where the Saudis and Iranians are on different sides of the conflict.
Soleimani’s murder is also likely to sabotage the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Shiite Iran has historically opposed the Sunni Taliban, and Soleimani even worked with the United States in the aftermath of the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. Now the terrain has shifted. Just as the United States has been engaging in peace talks with the Taliban, so has Iran. The Iranians are now more apt to ally with the Taliban against the United States. The complicated situation in Afghanistan is likely to draw in Pakistan, another important player in the region with a large Shiite population. Both the Afghan and Pakistani governments have already expressed their fears that the US-Iran conflict could unleash uncontrollable violence on their soil.
Like other short-sighted and destructive U.S. interventions in the Middle East, Trump’s blunders may have explosive unintended consequences in places most Americans have not yet even heard of, spawning a new string of U.S. foreign policy crises.
3) Trump’s attacks on Iran may actually embolden a common enemy, the Islamic State, which can take advantage of the chaos created in Iraq. Thanks to the leadership of Iran’s General Soleimani, Iran played a significant role in the fight against ISIS, which was almost entirely crushed in 2018 after a four-year war.
Soleimani’s murder may be a boon to the ISIS remnants by stoking anger among Iraqis against the group’s nemesis, the Americans, and creating new divisions among the forces–including Iran and the United States–that have been fighting ISIS. In addition, the U.S.-led coalition that has been pursuing ISIS has “paused” its campaign against the Islamic State in order to get prepared for potential Iranian attacks on the Iraqi bases that host coalition troops, giving another strategic opening to the Islamic State.
4) Iran has announced it is withdrawing from all the restrictions on enriching uranium that were part of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement. Iran has not formally withdrawn from the JCPOA, nor rejected international supervision of its nuclear program, but this is one more step in the unraveling of the nuclear agreement that the world community supported. Trump was determined to undermine the JCPOA by pulling the U.S. out in 2018, and each U.S. escalation of sanctions, threats and uses of force against Iran further weakens the JCPOA and makes its complete collapse more likely.
5) Trump’s blunders have destroyed what little influence the U.S. had with the Iraqi government. This is clear from the recent Parliamentary vote to expel the U.S. military. While the U.S. military is unlikely to leave without long, drawn-out negotiations, the 170-0 votes (the Sunnis and Kurds didn’t show up), along with the huge crowds that came out for Soleimani’s funeral procession, show how the general’s assassination has rekindled enormous anti-American sentiment in Iraq.
The assassination has also eclipsed Iraq’s burgeoning democracy movement. Despite savage repression that killed more than 400 protesters, young Iraqis mobilized in 2019 to demand a new government free of corruption and of manipulation by foreign powers. They succeeded in forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, but they want to fully reclaim Iraqi sovereignty from the corrupt U.S. and Iranian puppets who have ruled Iraq since 2003. Now their task is complicated by U.S. actions that have only strengthened pro-Iranian politicians and parties.
6) Another inevitable consequence of Trump’s failed Iran policy is that it strengthens conservative, hard-line factions in Iran. Like the U.S. and other countries, Iran has its own internal politics, with distinct points of view. President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, who negotiated the JCPOA, are from the reform wing of Iranian politics that believes Iran can and should reach out diplomatically to the rest of the world and try to resolve its long-standing differences with the U.S. But there is also a powerful conservative wing that believes the U.S. is committed to destroying Iran and will therefore never fulfill any commitments it makes. Guess which side Trump is validating and strengthening by his brutal policy of assassinations, sanctions and threats?
Even if the next U.S. president is genuinely committed to peace with Iran, he or she may end up sitting across the table from conservative Iranian leaders who, with good reason, will not trust anything U.S. leaders commit to.
The killing of Soleimani has also stopped the popular mass demonstrations against the Iranian government that began in November 2019 and were brutally repressed. Instead, people now express their opposition toward the U.S.
7) Trump’s blunders may be the last straw for U.S. friends and allies who have stuck with the U.S. through 20 years of inflammatory and destructive U.S. foreign policy. European allies have disagreed with Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and have tried, albeit weakly, to save it. When Trump tried to assemble an international naval task force to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in 2019, only the U.K., Australia and some Persian Gulf states wanted any part of it, and now 10 European and other countries are joining an alternative operation led by France.
At a January 8 press conference, Trump called on NATO to play a greater role in the Middle East, but Trump has been blowing hot and cold on NATO–at times calling it obsolete and threatening to withdraw. After Trump’s assassination of Iran’s top general, NATO allies began withdrawing forces from Iraq, signaling that they do not want to be caught in the crossfire of Trump’s war on Iran.
With the economic rise of China, and Russia’s renewed international diplomacy, the tides of history are shifting and a multipolar world is emerging. More and more of the world, especially in the global south, sees U.S. militarism as the gambit of a fading great power to try to preserve its dominant position in the world. How many chances does the U.S. have to finally get this right and find a legitimate place for itself in a new world that it has tried and failed to smother at birth?
8) U.S. actions in Iraq violate international, domestic and Iraqi law, setting the stage for a world of ever greater lawlessness. The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) has drafted a statement explaining why the U.S. attacks and assassinations in Iraq do not qualify as acts of self-defense and are in fact crimes of aggression that violate the UN Charter. Trump also tweeted that the U.S. was ready to hit 52 sites in Iran, including cultural targets, which would also violate international law.
Members of Congress are incensed that Trump’s military attacks violated the U.S. Constitution, since Article I requires congressional approval for such military actions. Congressional leaders were not even made aware of the strike on Soleimani before it occurred, let alone asked to authorize it. Members of Congress are now trying to restrain Trump from going to war with Iran.
Trump’s actions in Iraq also violated the Iraqi constitution, which the U.S. helped to write and which forbids using the country’s territory to harm its neighbors.
9) Trump’s aggressive moves strengthen the weapons makers. One U.S. interest group has a bipartisan blank check to raid the U.S. Treasury at will and profits from every U.S. war and military expansion: the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned Americans against in 1960. Far from heeding his warning, we have allowed this behemoth to steadily increase its power and control over U.S. policy.
The stock prices of U.S. weapons companies have already risen since the U.S. assassinations and airstrikes in Iraq and the CEOs of the weapons companies have already become significantly richer. U.S. corporate media have been trotting out the usual line-up of weapons company lobbyists and board members to beat the war drums and praise Trump’s warmongering – while keeping quiet about how they are personally profiting from it.
If we let the military-industrial complex get its war on Iran, it will drain billions, maybe trillions, more from the resources we so desperately need for healthcare, education and public services, and only to make the world an even more dangerous place.
10) Any further escalation between the U.S. and Iran could be catastrophic for the world economy, which is already riding a roller-coaster due to Trump’s trade wars. Asia is especially vulnerable to any disruption in Iraqi oil exports, which it has come to depend on as Iraq’s production has risen. The larger Persian Gulf region is home to the greatest concentration of oil and gas wells, refineries and tankers in the world. One attack already shut down half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production in September, and that was only a small taste of what we should expect if the U.S. keeps escalating its war on Iran.
Conclusion
Trump’s blunders have placed us back on the path to a truly catastrophic war, with barricades of lies blocking every off-ramp. The Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have cost millions of lives, left the U.S.’s international moral authority in the gutter and exposed it as a warlike and dangerous imperial power in the eyes of much of the world. If we fail to haul our deluded leaders back from the brink, an American war on Iran may mark the ignominious end of our country’s imperial moment and seal our country’s place among the ranks of failed aggressors whom the world remembers primarily as the villains of human history.
Alternatively, we, the American people, can rise up to overcome the power of the military-industrial complex and take charge of our country’s destiny. The anti-war demonstrations that are taking place around the country are a positive manifestation of public sentiment. This is a critical moment for the people of this nation to rise up in a very visible, bold and determined groundswell to stop the madman in the White House and demand, in one loud voice: NO. MORE. WAR.
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK, and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
Iraq – Why Doesn’t the US Move Out Despite the Iraqi Parliament’s Decision?
by Peter Koenig
Why doesn’t the U.S. respect the decision made by the Iraqi Parliament and move out of Iraqi territory? – The short answer is, because the US doesn’t respect anybody’s – any country’s – decision or
sovereignty, as long as it doesn’t meet their objectives.
Why doesn’t the U.S. respect the decision made by the Iraqi Parliament and move out of Iraqi territory? – The short answer is, because the US doesn’t respect anybody’s – any country’s – decision or sovereignty, as long as it doesn’t meet their objectives.
Now, the US is steadfast and will not leave the region. Already President Assad has requested that the US leave Syrian territory. They didn’t. The stakes are too immense for the US. It has all to do with their move towards world hegemony by territory and by finance – meaning by the US dollar.
The conflict with Iran is not over. By any means. We are just experiencing a respite for regrouping – and subsequently continuing and escalating the conflict. US bases in Iraq and military presence, at present more than 5,000 troops, are the most convenient means of force against Iran.
Other than controlling the rich and highly strategic territory of the Middle-East as an important step towards world hegemony, the US continuous presence in the region also has to do with profits for the war industry and with the price and control of hydrocarbons, especially gas.
We have seen, soon after the cowardly murder of General Qassem Suleimani, the share values of the war industry jumped up, of course in anticipation of a hot war – and huge weapons sales. The war industry profits insanely from killing. Wars and conflicts are increasingly what drives the western economies. Already in the US the war industry and related industries and services make up for about half of the country’s GDP. The US economy without war is unthinkable. Therefore, the Middle-East is a perfect eternal battle ground – a sine qua non for the west. War is addictive. The western economy is already addicted to it. But most people haven’t realized that – yet. Revolving and renewed conflicts and wars is a must. Imagine, if the US were to leave the Middle-East, PEACE might break out. This is not admissible. Soon, your job my depend on war – if you live in the west.
Then there is the Iranian gas. Daily 20% to 25% of all the energy consumed to drive the world’s economy – including wars – transits through the Golf of Hormuz which is controlled by Iran. Immediately after the heinous murder on General Suleimani, the oil and gas prices spiked by about 4%, later declining again. This, in anticipation of a major conflict which could have Iran reduce her gas production, or block the passage of Hormuz. In either case a collapse of the world economy could not be excluded.
As a parenthesis – it is so absolutely necessary that the world frees itself from this nefarious source of energy – hydrocarbons – and converts to other, cheaper, cleaner and FREER sources of power to drive our industries and activities. Like solar energy of which Mother Earth receives every day more than 10,000 time what it needs for all her industrial and creative activities on every Continent.
The US, with a flailing multi-trillion fracking industry which just failed the European market, due Russian gas via Nord Stream2, and just inaugurated Turkstream, would like to control the price of hydrocarbon, so as to revive the highly indebted fracking industry. What better way than to control Iran, and her enormous reserves of gas, shared with Qatar?
Then there is the close alliance between Iran and China – China being Iran’s largest customer of gas. China is perceived by Washington as a deadly competitor, and barring her from the energy that makes China’s economy thrive, is one of those devilish objectives of the United States. They are unable to compete on an even playing field. Cheating, lying and manipulating has become part of their, and the western life style. It is deeply ingrained in western history and culture.
Of, course there are other ways of supplying China with the hydrocarbons she needs. Russia with the world’s largest gas reserves, could easily increase her supplies.
In brief, the US is unlikely to leave the Middle-East, although some generals – and even some high-ranking Pentagon brass – believe this would be the smartest thing to do – they see the light, and the light is not war, but PEACE.
What could Iraq do to get the US out of Iraq and eventually out of the Region? After all, the Iraqi Parliament has taken a majority decision to regain Iraq’s sovereignty and autonomy, without foreign troops. Most countries with troops stationed in Iraq respect that decision. Denmark, Australia, Poland and Germany are preparing to move their troops out of Iraq. Only the UK with her 800 military men and women decided for now to stay alongside the US.
Iraq may want to strengthened her alliance with Russia and China, hereby increasing the pressure on the US to honor Iraq’s sovereign request for the US to leave. How much that would take to materialize, if at all, is a difficult question to answer. Maybe ‘never’. Except, if the US-dollar hegemony over western economies can be broken. And at the moment, a strong down-turn of the dollar’s role in the world economy is showing, as the western world is increasingly seeking ways to de-dollarize her economy and to associate with the East, led by China and Russia, where de-dollarization is advancing rapidly.
When that happens, chances are that the US of A’s dictates over the nations of the world will be mute, will not be listened to anymore, and that Washington will have to rethink its future – and very likely a US presence in the Middle-East will be history.
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 Organization around 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 21st 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.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
From Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, A Call to Catholics: Let Us End Our Complicity in War
by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton
Once again, information has surfaced regarding United States governmental efforts to mislead and misinform people about disgraceful, cruel destruction caused by a United States war of choice against people who meant the U.S. no harm. In the Afghanistan Papers, the United States government officials acknowledged, privately, their own uncertainty about why they were going to war against Afghanistan in 2001. The trove of newly released documents about the 18-year war unmasked years of high-level deceit and deliberate efforts to obfuscate realities on the ground in Afghanistan.
Embracing Palestine: How to Combat Israel’s Misuse of “Antisemitism”
by Dr Ramzy Baroud
https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/embracing-palestine-how-to-combat-israels-misuse-of-antisemitism
For the Palestinians to “liberate themselves”, they have to claim their centrality in the struggle for Palestinian rights everywhere, to articulate their own discourse and to be the champions of their own freedom. Nothing else will suffice.
GM in India: Faking it on the Astroturf
by Colin Todhunter
According to a recent report in The Hindu Business Line, India’s intelligence agencies are investigating the role of a global investment company and international seed companies in supporting farmers organisation Shetkari Sanghatana (SS) in the distribution of illegally procured genetically modified (GM) herbicide tolerant (HT) cotton seeds. The planting of such seeds is an offence under the Environment Protection Act and Seeds Act.
Why RSS/BJP Hate JNU And Social Sciences?
by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
The attack by masked forces, who were freely allowed to enter the JNU campus and injured teachers and students tell a new story of the BJP rule in Delhi. It is likely that they want to dismantle JNU and some other universities in the country. Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) have major issues with universities that teach social science courses seriously.
JNU violence must be investigated by a judicial commission
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
How can a party or a leadership be so crude to term their own countrymen as anti national ? Time has come to stop uttering these words and listen to the voices protesting and take back all the cases against students and other activists who protesting against the act. Government has to take initiative and not dictate and dominate through its
ministers and administration. Withdraw all the cases JNUSU leaders and file cases against those who spread goondaism and terror in the campus and damaged the property. Will the police has the courage and independence to do so ?
University Campus or Cantonment?
by Dr Prem Singh
In the mid-seventies, when I came to Delhi University (DU) from a small village in Haryana, the deployment of police or private security guards either in the college or university campus was unheard of. There used to be university watchmen at the gate of college, hostel and faculty, who were generally befriended by the students. In the entire north campus, only one man from intelligence used to be seen from time to time
Jammu Kashmir Continues to be A Ministry of Fear
Co-Written by Rajendran Narayanan and Sandeep Pandey
For a purportedly democratic
country, it is a matter of shame and condemnation that Kashmir continues to be haunted while some other parts of the country are rapidly degenerating into a quasi Kashmir situation.
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