Climate change, poverty and human rights: an emergency without precedent

Julia Aylen wades through waist-deep water carrying her pet dog as she is rescued during Hurricane Dorian in Freeport, Bahamas. , AP Photo/Tim Aylen

 

 Hurricane Dorian has devastated communities in the Bahamas, putting the human dimensions of climate change at the forefront of the news as the world grapples with the ongoing failure of many governments to effectively decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Two recently released climate reports by the United Nations Human Rights Council provide insights into future challenges. 

The July 2019 Safe Climate report by David Boyd, the special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, clarifies the obligations of states to protect human rights from climate harms. The report also confirms the existing responsibility of businesses to respect human rights, especially as they pertain to climate change.

An earlier report on climate change and poverty, released in June 2019, was written by Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. This report draws attention to the disproportionate and devastating impact of unmitigated climate change on those living in poverty.

Both reports point out that urgent action is needed by governments. Our research suggests that international human rights law may already offer useful tools to prevent and remedy climate injustice, including the responsibilities of business enterprises as reinforced in the Boyd report. Read More 

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Masses of seaweed invade Cayman shores | Cayman Compass

Sargassum in South Sound

 Weeks after government workers cleared 200 tons of sargassum from Grand Cayman’s coastlines, the invasive seaweed has returned to the island.

Fresh masses of the plant began accumulating this week in West Bay, with thick mats gathering around the West Bay Dock and Cemetery Beach. Lesser quantities were observed in Prospect.

The impact was also felt in Cayman Brac, where large masses began to build up around the southwest side of the island. http://bit.ly/2UsZQmx

Leaves of Seagrass: A Potential Fix For Sargassum [Please read from beginning of article]

BURN: Using Fire to Cool The Earth

A Dutch research vessel has been accompanying an 8000 km island that regurgitated from the mouth of the Amazon in July and could reach Tulum this winter. That plume contains 20 million metric tons of sargassum and it is still expanding in the warming waters of the Caribbean. The most sargassum removed from the Mayan Riviera in one year, 2018, was less than 1 million tons. Can the marines hope to remove 20 times that? And if they can’t, what becomes of Mexico’s $23 billion tourism industry? 

Biochar to the Rescue

Here is where questions of right and wrong start to get fuzzy. As environmental activists, we all struggle with ethical dilemmas. Is it right to solve hunger or energy challenges if, by doing so, you spur human population to new heights, with all the ecological consequences that result portends for other species and eventually our own? 

Is it right to view seaweed as manna from heaven, if by pyrolyzing it at a profit we save a tourism industry that lives and breathes by cruise ships and international air travel, jetting us toward climate Armageddon?

I have come to think it is likely to do more good than harm to close the deforestation-to-seaweed cycle by reforming that decaying biomass in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, and Seychelles that, left alone, would waft vast new quantities of methane and carbon dioxide skyward. As an Emergency Planetary Technician, I am attempting to stabilize the patient in situ. We can worry about their insurance later. 

By enlisting the financial clout of the hotel owners, tour operators, and governments, reversing climate change becomes just a little more possible. If we can transform that stinking red tide into terra preta’d forests, water filters, or new coral reefs, we can store megatons of carbon for thousands of years. That would be something. Might even be as big as, say, replanting the Amazon rainforest (which is not to say we shouldn’t do that, too, and while we are at it, replace the Ohio Valley and Californian forests before we criticize Brazil). http://bit.ly/34bGqXU Read More 

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Norway Is The First Country In The World To Ban Deforestation, More Countries Need To Follow Suit

Norway Bans Deforwatation

The Norwegian government made a pledge with Germany and the UK back in 2014, at the UN Climate Summit in New York, that they would “promote national commitments that encourage deforestation-free supply chains, including through public procurement policies to sustainably source commodities such as palm oil, soy, beef and timber.”

So far, Norway is the only country to do something towards this pledge that’s drastic enough to make a difference. They have become the first country in the world to ban deforestation. 

The Norwegian Parliament pledged that the government’s public procurement policy will be deforestation-free. 

By becoming the first country in the world to make such a large-scale move against deforestation, Norway is setting an example for other countries to consider similar policies.  Read More

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Leaves of Seagrass

Sargassum

A Dutch research vessel has been accompanying an 8000 km island that regurgitated from the mouth of the Amazon in July and could reach Tulum this winter. That plume contains 20 million metric tons of sargassum and it is still expanding in the warming waters of the Caribbean. The most sargassum removed from the Mayan Riviera in one year, 2018, was less than 1 million tons. Can the marines hope to remove 20 times that? And if they can’t, what becomes of Mexico’s $23 billion tourism industry? 

Biochar to the Rescue

Here is where questions of right and wrong start to get fuzzy. As environmental activists, we all struggle with ethical dilemmas. Is it right to solve hunger or energy challenges if, by doing so, you spur human population to new heights, with all the ecological consequences that result portends for other species and eventually our own? 

Is it right to view seaweed as manna from heaven, if by pyrolyzing it at a profit we save a tourism industry that lives and breathes by cruise ships and international air travel, jetting us toward climate Armageddon?

I have come to think it is likely to do more good than harm to close the deforestation-to-seaweed cycle by reforming that decaying biomass in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, and Seychelles that, left alone, would waft vast new quantities of methane and carbon dioxide skyward. As an Emergency Planetary Technician, I am attempting to stabilize the patient in situ. We can worry about their insurance later. 

By enlisting the financial clout of the hotel owners, tour operators, and governments, reversing climate change becomes just a little more possible. If we can transform that stinking red tide into terra preta’d forests, water filters, or new coral reefs, we can store megatons of carbon for thousands of years. That would be something. Might even be as big as, say, replanting the Amazon rainforest (which is not to say we shouldn’t do that, too, and while we are at it, replace the Ohio Valley and Californian forests before we criticize Brazil). http://bit.ly/34bGqXU

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What is happening to the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest is no accident

Capitalism’s Premise

Capitalism is premised on ‘Profit Over People’. 

Therefore People Must Dictate to Capitalism to ensure ‘People over Profit.’

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As the global far right rises, the SNP is offering an inclusive nationalism

Scottish Nationalism

• What is 21st century nationalism doing to us? Across the world, the rise of demagogues who play on the worst fears and basest instincts of national populations is leading to outcomes and policies that are deeply unpalatable to the liberal mind.

In the US, Donald Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have upped the ante with a draconian crackdown on illegal immigrants. American immigration officials say 2,342 immigrant children have been separated from 2,206 parents in the past month. Distressing images of young children crowded together in cages have raced around the world, corroding America’s reputation and leading to comparisons between Trump’s “tender age” holding centres and Nazi concentration camps. http://bit.ly/347myoQ

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St. Catherines Monastery

But the monastery, declared a world heritage site by UNESCO, also holds other places of honor. For example, it accommodates the oldest continuously operating active library in the world. 

From the day it was founded in the 6th century (between 548 and 565, according to chronicles), the library of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai has never closed its doors. Built during the reign of Justinian I, the monastery was originally sponsored by the mother of Constantine the Great, Empress Helena. Its walls are still home to ancient Roman scrolls dating back to the days when the monastery itself was founded, which makes St. Catherine’s the second largest collection of codices and manuscripts in the world, right after the Vatican Library in Rome. In fact, from this monastery comes the famous Codex Sinaiticus, the biblical text dated to the year 345

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Britains Second Empire

The Raj

At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance. 

The Spiders Web: Britains Second Empire – The Documentary

The Spider’s Web Documentary was substantially inspired by Nicholas Shaxson’s book Treasure Islands you can read an extract of it here: Read More

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The truth about tax havens 

Jersey

As the river of money flowing into Jersey became a tide, he expressed unease about the origins of some of it, much of it from Africa, but he was brushed aside.

The concentration of extremist attitudes in Jersey was self-reinforcing, as Christensen explains. “Most liberal people like myself left,” he said. “My socially liberal friends from school, almost all of them left Jersey to go to university, and almost all of them didn’t go back. I can’t tell you how dark it felt.” He almost left, but was persuaded to stay by academic researcher Mark Hampton, who was putting together a framework for understanding tax havens and convinced him how important it was to understand the system from the inside. “I went undercover,” Christensen said, “not to dish the dirt on individuals and companies, but because I couldn’t understand it – and none of the academics I spoke to could either. There was no useful literature.”

Jersey is riddled with elite, secretive insider networks, typically linked to the financial sector. Read More 

Read in conjunction with The Spiders Web: Britiains Second Empire

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White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change is “possibly catastrophic.” The move came after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to federal scientific findings on climate change.

Rapid melting at Glacier National Park

The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the prepared testimony by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the fact that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued to warn that climate change could undermine the United States’ national security — a position President Trump rejects.

Officials from the White House’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council all raised objections to parts of the testimony that Rod Schoonover, who works in the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues, prepared to present on the bureau’s behalf for a hearing Wednesday.

The document lays out in stark detail the implications of what the administration faces in light of rising carbon emissions that the world has not curbed. https://wapo.st/30ehMmW

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