30 December 2015, Climate News Network, El Niño and war drive aid agencies to the brink. Governments must act immediately to end conflicts and counter the impact of climate disruption so as to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe affecting millions. The global humanitarian system, designed to save those at risk of dying because of human or natural disasters, faces unprecedented demands in 2016 from levels of strain it has never before had to face, a leading development agency says. With more than 10 million people in a single African country expected to need international help next year, Oxfam says the effects of a super El Niño will intensify the pressures on a system already struggling to help people devastated by conflict.If governments act now, Oxfam says, relief can reach those in the greatest need while there is still time. But if they don’t the crisis will overwhelm it and its counterparts who provide relief, and they will not be able to save those at risk.Oxfam estimates the El Niño weather system could leave tens of millions of people facing hunger, water shortages and disease next year, and says it is already too late for some regions to avoid a major emergency.In Ethiopia the government estimates that 10.2 million people will need humanitarian assistance in 2016, at a cost of US$1.4 billion, because of a drought which is being exacerbated by El Niño. Read More here
Category Archives: People Stress
28 December 2015, Climate News network, Markets cannot solve the climate crisis. How did we get to where we are now? “Free range” capitalism could be the explanation for climate change, and needs taming, says one writer. It may not be polite to mention Karl Marx in America, but leading thinkers on the left think that capitalism may be the cause of climate change, and that to save the planet the system needs fundamental reform. According to a new book the profit motive, which drives capitalism above all other considerations, forces it to extract everything from the planet that will generate a surplus, at the expense of real benefits to humans and ecosystems. Fossil Capital: the Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, by Andreas Malm, out in hardback from Verso in January 2016, analyses capitalism’s role in global warming by delving into its past. The book builds on the work of Naomi Klein’s 2014 This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate. Both ask whether catastrophic climate change can be averted without at least a major makeover – or the outright elimination – of capitalism. Malm, a professor of human ecology at Sweden’s Lund University, starts with James Watt’s patenting of the rotating steam engine in 1784. This was also the first year that rising carbon dioxide and methane levels were observed in polar ice. First Malm attacks the accepted theories of David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. who developed and reinforced the capitalist notion that markets are the cure for all social ills. He shows that mills adopted coal power instead of water only because it enabled mill owners to move to populated areas to find docile and skilled workers, who were in short supply in the countryside. More biddable Coal enabled this move because, once out of the ground, it is highly portable. The machines, of course, eliminated many jobs and made others both simpler and more difficult. Owners started hiring women and children because they were easier to control than adult men. Read more here
18 December 2015, Climate News Network, Climate swells tide of migrants. A new report coinciding with the UN’s International Migrants Day says that climate change is one of the many factors increasing the flow of refugees worldwide. Thousands of people – old, young and babies –struggle to reach the coasts of Europe, many dying en route. In south-east Asia, dozens of Rohingya refugees from Burma suffocate on packed boats, locked by people traffickers below deck while trying to escape their homeland. Children from Central America die of thirst in the desert, trying to cross into the US. Some of these refugees are escaping persecution or warfare back home. Others are fleeing from gang violence, or simply searching for a better life. And some have seen their lands degraded by climate change and their livelihoods threatened by floods or drought. A new report produced by the UK-based Ethical Journalism Network (EJN), and partly authored by journalists from the Climate News Network, concludes that much needs to be improved in the way the world’s media reports on migration issues. Read more here
18 December 2015, Marlborough Express, The human side of the climate debate. OPINION: United Nations global-warming talks have taken place in Paris. The world’s most senior politicians have debated ways to combat accelerated climate change. But it’s voluntary and besides it’s a sticking plaster approach – treat symptoms but ignore the cause. There seemed one very important undebated factor – people. The population factor in global warming is sadly being ignored. Politicians and bureaucrats will use any scapegoat. In 2007 director general of the Department of Conservation Al Morrison, bizarrely tried to incriminate wild deer alleging they were guilty of farting and belching. Animals can’t argue back in defence, people do. Deer and cows don’t vote but people do. Therein lies the cause of the problem – people and politics. Furthermore people drive cars which belch emissions, coal-fired power stations belch and jet planes fart “gases and particles — which contribute to climate change.” Humans demand resources, flush toilets, use chemical insecticides and pesticides and throw away garbage. Deer and cows don’t. Humans or more particularly numbers of people, are the primary cause of environmental degradation and global warming. The more people, the more demand for resources. More people require more meat and milk – more cows. More people means more cars which means more emissions. Gimme more, more and more. Read More here