Sunday Roundup - December 14, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at the U.S. Senate's torture report, Ebola, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, John Lennon, the Lima Climate Conference, Mars, and in brief, China's economy, Brazil's torture report, and Hong Kong.

U.S. Senate's Torture Report
The Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on torture carried out by the CIA in the years after the 9/11 attacks.  The report concludes that the CIA repeatedly misled the public, Congress and the White House about the agency’s aggressive questioning of detainees — including waterboarding, confinement in small spaces and shackling in stress positions — after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, minimizing the severity of the interrogations and exaggerating the usefulness of the information produced.  [Politico, Dec. 9]  Just about every media outlet has a summary of the key findings or a list of the "most shocking" revelations:  "The Most Gruesome Moments in the CIA ‘Torture Report’ " [Daily Beast], "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture" [Rolling Stone], "America’s Shame: What’s in the Senate Torture Report?" [The New Yorker], etc.  The Guardian had this lead in its December 10 post on world reaction to the report's findings:  The UN has led international condemnation of the CIA’s interrogation and detention programme laid bare by the Senate’s intelligence committee. Its special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights has called for the criminal prosecution of Bush-era officials involved.  

This is not what the United States is supposed to be about.  The report is an indictment of what happens when we allow fear to cloud our reasoning.  It's what happens when we allow a distorted sense of exceptionalism to destroy our democratic ideals and to refuse to grant "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."  It looks like, for now at least,  there will be no prosecutions for these crimes. Thanks to Congressional interference, the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison remains open nearly six years after President Obama pledged to close it.  Nearly all of the 136 remaining prisoners are being held without charges.   And extrajudicial killings by US drones continue. Torture may have been stopped when Obama came into office but we have a long way to go.  Let's hope that making the report public will be seen as a beginning, a return to our country's true values.  This may require legislation from a soon-to-be-even-more-dysfunctional Congress since a future President would be able to reverse Obama's executive order.
Related
"From Bush to Obama, Eyes Wide Shut: the same memo Bush used to wall himself off from the details of CIA torture is keeping Obama’s drone war alive." [Foreign Policy, Dec. 12]
Sunday Round-Up - May 19, 2013  "Guest Op-Ed"

Ebola
The number of probable, confirmed and suspected deaths from the Ebola virus stood at 6,388 as of December 7.  The World Health Organization has declared the outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal officially over. The number of reported cases is slightly increasing in Guinea but falling in Liberia, the country reporting the most deaths from the outbreak.  Health officials in Sierra Leone have discovered scores of bodies in a remote diamond-mining area, raising fears that the scale of the Ebola outbreak may have been underreported.  The World Health Organization said they uncovered a "grim scene" in the eastern district of Kono.  A WHO response team had been sent to Kono to investigate a sharp rise in Ebola cases.  [BBC News, Dec. 11]
Related
Time Magazine announced its person of the year award - very rightfully given to the local and international Ebola fighters, the men and women with "the hero's heart" who are fighting the disease at great personal risk.

Occupied Palestinian Territory
With the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks earlier this year and after the widespread devastation and civilian death toll in Gaza during the Israeli attacks this summer, European states are beginning to seriously debate recognition of a Palestinian State.  As Richard Youngs writes in a post for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Considerable momentum has built up behind the idea that giving formal recognition to a Palestinian state is now the only way forward in attempts to reach some form of peace settlement.  The advantages of recognition would be many.  With formal recognition, the Palestinians could have the possibility of taking legal action against Israeli human rights abuses. Support could be given for the Palestinian Authority to join the International Criminal Court as a means of bringing legal cases against Israeli soldiers. Yet, crucially, debates on recognition will not be sufficient and we should not expect that they can address all current challenges.  One key area for Europe to rethink its current policy is that the EU must start to engage with Hamas. The EU appears to be counting on the Palestinian Authority regaining control of Gaza, but Hamas cannot simply be side-lined without risking major instability – that would set back the Palestinian cause even if formal statehood were recognised. Some form of engagement is necessary if the EU is to help the fragile unity government merge the different institutional structures of Gaza and the West Bank into a single political space.  Youngs warns that the EU must also focus on short-term imperatives to prevent another period of violence.  Recognition cannot become a pretext for European governments pulling back from a stronger engagement on the ground in the Occupied Territories.  

John Lennon
Last Monday marked the anniversary of the death of John Lennon.  Hard to believe it's been 34 years since the life of this peaceful, creative genius was snuffed out by a crazed gunman.  I was a young father then and remember well the huge gathering on the campus of Louisiana State University.  Our sons wandered through the friendly crowd while my wife and I listened to the musical tributes and remembered this great man who meant so much to our generation. "Imagine all the people living life in peace."  We could use some political leaders today that have the insight, consciousness and compassion of John Lennon.  We miss you, John.
Related
Hong Kong protesters to rebuild 'Lennon Wall' [Daily Mail, Dec. 12]

Lima Climate Conference 
Negotiators went into overtime and worked through Friday night trying to work out differences among the 195 countries attending the climate change conference in Lima, Peru, for the past two weeks.  As negotiations continued, National Geographic presented 5 takeaways:
1. The big question of whether the agreement will be binding is still unresolved.
2. Vulnerable countries want to be compensated for damage from global warming.
3. Environmental groups want a 100 percent phaseout of fossil fuels by 2050.
4. Many cities will start measuring their emissions.
5. The UN's Green Climate Fund has raised ten billion dollars.  The US commitment to the fund is 3 billion dollars but Republicans in Congress have attached a rider to the recently passed $1.1 trillion budget that would block the government from spending the money.
One of the key areas of contention is the divide between industrialized and developing nations.  The US and other industrialised countries require all countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  That would be a departure from the original UN classification of the 1990s – which absolved China, India and other developing countries which are now major carbon polluters – of cutting their emissions. Developing countries are suspicious that the text being developed in Lima is an attempt to rewrite those old guidelines.  [The Guardian, Dec. 12]  Times change and as countries become major carbon polluters, they need to recognize their obligations to join in the fight against global warming.  The recent bilateral agreement between the United States and China should serve as a model for a way forward.  This is the last major climate conference before the critical Paris conference in December, 2015 and the frustration with the draft text is widespread.  The proposals, still under discussion on Saturday, a day after the talks were scheduled to end, were too weak to keep global warming to the agreed limit of two degrees above preindustrial levels, setting the world on course to a climate disaster...“We are on a path to three or four degrees with this outcome,” said Tasneem Essop, international climate strategist for WWF.  She said the final draft text, a five-page document put forward for approval on Saturday, offered little assurance of cutting emissions fast enough and deeply enough to curb warming. [The Guardian, Dec. 13]

Mars

Depiction of a lake partially filling Mars' Gale Crater
Image Credit:NASA/JPL/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

Was life present on ancient Mars?  NASA’s Curiosity rover has found the strongest signs yet that the surface of Mars, roughly 4 billion years ago, had conditions that would’ve been almost ideal for the genesis of life. NASA says that Curiosity has found evidence to suggest that Gale Crater was once filled with lakes, rivers, and deltas that contained water for tens of millions of years — long enough that some small organisms could have emerged....The next step in the hunt for life on Mars is getting a better grip on the prevalence (or lack thereof) of organic compounds on the surface and in the atmosphere — and then actually digging down into the crust of the Red Planet, to look for actual signs of life, either in the form of fossils or actual living microorganisms.  [Extreme Tech, Dec. 9]
Related

"Could Ancient Mars Have Supported Life? Water Isn't the Only Key" [space.com, Dec. 11]

In Brief/Links

"China's Overhyped Debt Problem" [CEIP, Dec. 3]

"Brazil's President, Herself a Victim, Cries While Addressing Past Regime's Use of Torture" [Slate, Dec. 11]

"Hong Kong Occupy Protests Wind Down as Police Clear Camps" [Slate, Dec. 11]

Other Image Credits
John Lennon Quote is from the InkTank website.
Imagine Peace Tower, Reykjavick, Iceland is from the Imagine Peace website.

Sunday Roundup - November 9, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media. Today we look at the US midterm elections, Brussels austerity protests, Ukraine, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and, in brief, China's slowdown, Ebola, and Syria.

US Midterm Elections
Republicans made gains across the board in Tuesday's midterm elections.  Most importantly, with their gains in the Senate, they now control both houses of Congress.  The Democrats' get-out-the-vote effort failed to overcome the dark money, the voter suppression laws, and their own inadequate and defensive explanations of their policies.

Democrats failed to motivate their base, particularly the young.
Voter turnout was 36.6% - 4 points lower than in the 2010 midterms and 21 points lower than in the 2012 Presidential elections.  In exit polls from Tuesday's midterms, only 13 percent of voters were under 30.  Nonvoters are also more racially diverse than the voting population....More than 40 percent of likely nonvoters in the 2014 elections identified as Hispanic, black or other racial/ethnic minorities, compared with 22 percent of likely voters...On average, the populations who are likely to avoid the polls are also the populations likely to vote for a Democrat. [US News & World Report Data Mine, Nov. 5]

Voter suppression played a key role in close races.
The voter restrictions passed in Republican-controlled states were aimed to reduce the minority and youth vote.  For the most part, the restrictions worked.  The Brennan Center for Justice examined the results from North Carolina, Kansas, Virginia and Florida and concluded The Republican electoral sweep in yesterday’s elections has put an end to speculation over whether new laws making it harder to vote in 21 states would help determine control of the Senate this year. ...A quick look at the numbers shows that in several key races, the margin of victory came very close to the likely margin of disenfranchisement.  [Brennan Center for Justice, Nov. 5]

Republicans controlled the political conversation and framed the terms of the election.
Stirring up their base with a vigorous anti-Obama campaign, Republicans motivated them to come out and vote.  Democrats did nothing to counteract it and, for the most part, "ran away" from the President.  Jeff Schweitzer, blogging at the Huffington Post, has one of the best analyses of the election . Speaking of Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell's absurd statement that the way to end gridlock was to put Republicans in control of the Senate, Schweitzer writes: This story highlights the major failure of the left. Democrats have not defined the agenda or narrated the story. This capitulation creates a void of reason such that absurdities like McConnell's claim can take hold without everybody doubling over in laughter. Like frightened children Democrats run from Obama's record, as defined by the right, rather than championing his amazing successes as defined by fact. 
Although the rampant, fact-free antagonism to the Affordable Care Act was a major factor, the economy was the issue most on people's minds.  In spite of a recovering economy (unemployment down to 5.8% in October), exit polls indicated that 45% of the voters chose this as the #1 issue.  What's the deal, then? As President Obama alluded to in Wednesday's press conference and the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien explained Tuesday on Wonkblog, the recovery of the economy as a whole has not created wage or income gains for most people. In fact, those gains have gone almost exclusively to the "1 percent" folks you might have heard about.  The beauty of the Republican campaign was that they somehow convinced the American public that this uneven recovery was Obama's fault!  Voting for a party whose representatives in Congress are proud of opposing every Obama proposal to increase public-service spending or raise taxes on high-income individuals isn't necessarily the obvious way to address this issue.  [Slate, Nov. 6]  But then, as H. L. Mencken said many years ago, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Money wins elections.  
SCOTUS's Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions unleashed virtually unlimited money to be spent on the elections - much of it in the form of dark money (i.e., money from undisclosed sources) . The combined totals for both parties for the most expensive midterms in history was nearly $3.7 billion.   Even in some places where Democrats had an advantage in donations, they lost - although in some states voter suppression may have played a part.  Counting all forms of spending — by candidates, parties and outside groups — Team Red is projected to have spent $1.75 billion, while Team Blue’s spending is projected to ring in at $1.64 billion. CRP’s analysis of last night’s results finds that in House races, the candidate who spent the most prevailed 94.2 percent of the time; the Senate figure is slightly lower, 81.8 percent. [OpenSecrets.org, Nov. 5]

In Brief / Related Links - What will Republican control of the Senate look like?

"Republicans Just Took Over the Senate—Here’s Why That Sucks" From staffing the executive branch through keeping the government open, The Nation describes eight reasons why this new alignment is going to be hugely problematic for progressive governance—perhaps for governance, period. [The Nation, Nov. 4]

"The Pressure to Escalate: The Phantasmagoric World of Washington"  Tom Englehardt asks us to think of this otherwise drab midterm campaign as the escalation election.  Republican candidates will arrive in Washington having beaten the war and disease drums particularly energetically, and they’re not likely to stop. [TomDispatch, Nov. 4]

"A Red Tide Swamps the US Political Landscape"  What do we have to look forward to from this extremist Congress and a ham-strung moderate President in the next two years? [The Left Bank Cafe, Nov. 5]

"How a Republican Congress could Entangle the US further in the Middle East" [Informed Comment, Nov. 5]

Brussels Austerity Protests
Europe's recovery from the Great Recession of 2008 has been much slower than that in the US. Unemployment remains above 10% for the region as a whole, ranging from a low of  5% in Germany to a high of 26% in Greece.  One of the reasons for the slower recovery has been the austerity (deficit reduction) measures demanded by the European Central Bank.  The Guardian reported on Thursday's labor protests in Brussels:  About 100,000 workers marched across Brussels on Thursday to protest against government free-market reforms and austerity measures, and the demonstration ended in violence when people set fire to cars and threw cobblestones and police responded with tear gas and water cannons.  About 50 people were injured and 30 detained, police said, in one of biggest postwar labour demonstrations in Belgium, a country long vaunted as a shining example of an efficient welfare state.  The violence overshadowed a raucous but largely peaceful march for better protection of workers during the economic crisis. The workers were angry at government policies that will raise the pension age, freeze wages and cut into public services.

Ukraine
Elections were held in the separatist Donbass region in eastern Ukraine on Sunday November 2 - two weeks after the general election in the rest of Ukraine.  Kiev refuses to recognize the elections in eastern Urkaine – but has not provoked any hostilities either.  The Donbass elections resulted in a predictable outcome, bringing victory to Alexander Zakharchenko, head of the Oplot battalion, who scooped more than 70 percent of the votes. Turnout varied from 65 percent to 100 percent at 350 polling stations, where 1,148,000 people had registered to vote...Not a single shot has been fired in Donbass since November 2 – a situation unseen since spring, including the ceasefire declared in early September after the Minsk talks.  [Russia Times, Nov. 3]  Russia has backed the vote and called on the elected representatives "to hold negotiations with central Ukrainian authorities."  Russia has given cautious backing to a vote in separatist regions of east Ukraine, which local rebels said proved they would never again be ruled by Kiev. Russia has not recognised the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” as independent, but said the vote should be respected.  Kiev said it would open criminal cases against the organisers. Most other countries have dismissed the vote as illegitimate and there were no recognised international observers present. Nevertheless, the poll was one more step in the de facto separation of the region from the rest of Ukraine.  Moscow’s talk of negotiations between the separatists and Kiev, however, was at odds with comments from the separatists' electoral committee. [The Guardian, Nov. 3]

Occupied Palestinian Territory
East Jerusalem remains tense, and the International Criminal Court ruled on the Gaza Flotilla incident.

In an Al Jazeera op-ed, Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris professor of journalism at Princeton University, describes how "a silent intifada" is taking place in Jerusalem due to Israel's policy of denying Palestinians their natural rights.  After forty seven years of occupation, physical isolation, and weakening of leadership structures, the Palestinians of Jerusalem are totally stateless. The few Palestinians holding any sort of symbolic leadership position, such as members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, or religious leaders are regularly hauled to the Israeli police station for questions, short-term arrests and are sometimes forbidden to enter Islam's third holiest mosque, Al-Aqsa Mosque....Palestinians seeking housing permits are routinely denied because the requests are not based on an approved zoning plan. Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhoods have purposely not been planned, leaving the local communities to build illegally and then to suffer regular house demolitions for violating city laws. At the same time, Israel builds settlements in East Jerusalem in violation of international law.This has led to the rise of groups trying to fill the political void.  In several locations around Jerusalem,  local groups have sprouted attempting to organise their own community in defence of the Israeli onslaught that attempts to move them out of their homes and city with the goal of making Jerusalem an even more Jewish city.  While Israel regularly denies it, these Judaisation attempts are synchronised by the Israeli government, police, courts, Jewish settlers, radical groups and Knesset members, with each group doing its part.

The Guardian reported on November 6 of the International Criminal Court's decision on the Gaza Flotilla incident of 2010.  The international criminal court (ICC) will not prosecute over Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in 2010, in which 10 Turkish activists died, despite a “reasonable basis to believe that war crimes were committed”.  The chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said there would be no investigation leading to a potential prosecution because the alleged crimes, including the killing of 10 activists by Israeli commandos, were not of “sufficient gravity”....Nine Turkish nationals died when Israeli commandos staged a botched raid on a six-ship flotilla seeking to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip on 31 May 2010. A 10th activist later died of his wounds.  The air-land-sea blockade, now more than seven years old, has devastated the economy of Gaza, and combined with Israeli sieges since 2007 have commentators warning that Gaza will be "unlivable" by 2020.

Gaza photo appeared in Al Jazeera/photo credit AFP

Let's just hope the ICC takes a much closer look at the war crimes committed in Gaza during this summer's Israeli siege.  More than 2000 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians, were killed during the 50 day assault.  Inger Andersen is responsible for World Bank strategy and operations throughout the Middle East and North Africa region.  In an op-ed piece, Andersen reports on her recent visit to Gaza: Throughout my career at the World Bank, and at the United Nations or even before, I have come across many war zones but none compare to what I have just seen in Gaza: no scene of destruction, desolation and despair I have witnessed is equal to the tragic stage of Gaza.  Today, I feel obliged to add my voice for the voiceless and to plead that none of us forget the Palestinian people. It is our collective and historic responsibility to step up support and mobilise a response commensurate to the needs of the Palestinian people....For the Palestinians struggling daily, the access to water, electricity and municipal services [is critical]. I saw the destroyed water reservoir in Al Monttar area (Shujayea) which would have serviced 250,000 people. I walked into the shell-struck electricity storage facility that now resembled a lunar landscape. While visiting al-Shifa hospital, I discussed with doctors the dire need for medical equipment and supplies, staff and fuel, all severely strained by shortages and outages.  Numbers fail to capture the human realities of the daunting scenes I witnessed at the hospital. As winter sets in, the partial or total destruction of 60,000 housing units has led to 100,000 people without shelter. [Al Jazeera, Nov. 6]

In Brief/Links
China
China's gross domestic product grew 7.3 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the weakest rate since the first quarter of 2009, adding to concerns the world's second-largest economy is becoming a drag on global growth.  [Reuters, Oct. 21]

Ebola
WHO released its data for the period up to Nov. 2 saying that Ebola has now been blamed for 4,818 reported deaths.  The group said that the weekly incidence of Ebola seems to be stable in Guinea, rising in Sierra Leone, and declining in Liberia   [NPR, Nov. 5]

Syria
"Syria: Mapping the conflict" According to the Syria Needs Analysis Project (Snap), IS jihadists are now in full control of the eastern region of Raqqa and hold significant swathes of territory in Aleppo to the north and Hassakeh and Deir al-Zour in the east. [BBC News, Nov. 7]
"US plan for proxy army to fight Isis in Syria suffers attack": Syrian opposition leader blames Washington for rout as air strikes on Isis seen as aiding Assad crackdown [The Guardian, Nov. 2]
"US Dilemma in Syria: Moderate Stronghold Falls to al-Qaeda, Fighters desert to Extremists" - Juan Cole analyzes the chaotic situation in Syria and potential consequences of arming and training so-called moderate rebels: a present Syrian moderate is all too often a future al-Qaeda member; many of these affiliations are not particularly ideological, but have to do with who is winning and who has more money. [Informed Comment, Nov. 3]

BBC News map of areas of control:

Map sources: areas of control and border crossings from the Syria Needs Analysis Project; all other geographical detail from humanitarian organisations and Google

Sunday Round-Up - November 24, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at the European Space Agency's SWARM project, cleanup at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Scandinavian countries' offer to help in the removal of Syrian chemical weapons, China's efforts to reduce its air pollution, and the final draw of the 2014 World Cup. 



"The European Space Agency on Friday launched three satellites it hopes will help understand why the magnetic field that makes human life possible on Earth appears to be weakening." [New Straits Times]  The ESA's Swarm project will collect data to "improve scientists' relatively blurry understanding of the magnetic field that shields life on Earth from deadly solar radiation and helps some animals migrate. Scientists say the magnetosphere is weakening and could all but disappear in as little as 500 years as a precursor to flipping upside down."  The last time the magnetic poles flipped was 800,000 years ago.  We are apparently long overdue for another flip - previous flips occurred about once every 250,000 years.

Reuters reported Thursday on a "rare success in the often fraught battle to control the [Fukushima nuclear reactor] site."  The first batch of fuel rods were successfully removed after a four-day operation - a difficult key step in the decommissioning of the nuclear facility destroyed by the earthquake/tsunami in March 2011.  "The batch of 22 unused fuel assemblies, which each contain 50-70 of the fuel rods, was transferred by a trailer to a safer storage pool, the last day of a four-day operation, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said in a statement.  The company must carefully pluck more than 1,500 brittle and potentially damaged assemblies from the unstable reactor No.4....Tepco estimates removing the damaged assemblies from reactor No.4 alone will take a year."

Denmark announced that it would provide major support in the removal of Syria's chemical weapons.  Denmark told the United Nations that "it is prepared to provide maritime help and bodyguards in connection with the removal of chemical weapons from Syria.  Following a meeting of the Foreign Policy Committee [on November 8], Defence Minister Nicolai Wammen said Denmark would agree to a request from the United Nations to provide shipping and warship support to remove Syrian chemical weapons. At the same time Denmark would provide a military bodyguard unit to protect the UN’s weapons inspector in Syria." [Politiken website]  Sweden and Norway have also offered to help in the removal.


In a week with some frustrating news on the UN Climate Change talks in Warsaw, there has been at least one glimmer of hope.  "The latest Climate Change Performance Index published by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe suggests that China is taking action to clean up its act as it tries to deal with its hazardously high levels of air pollution."  This is good news since rapidly developing China was responsible for 27% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions last year.  The report indicates both a slower growth rate in the emissions and a decoupling of emissions growth from GDP growth.  China's slower growth of emissions is linked to its attempts to combat its air pollution.  The report notes that China's "heavy investments in renewable energies and a very critical debate on coal in the highest political circles, resulting from the heavy smog situation in many towns, give hope for a slower emission growth in the future."   [The Guardian, Nov 21]

Finally, in the world of sports, the final draw has been completed for the FIFA 2014 World Cup to be held in Brazil.  Of the 32 qualified teams, Bosnia-Herzegovina is represented for the first time and Colombia returns for the first time since 1998.  I can't say how soccer crazy Bosnia-Herzegovina is, but I am sure people in Colombia are very, very happy.  I was in Colombia at the time of the 1998 World Cup and saw my colleagues suffer as the Colombian team was eliminated at the group stage - managing just a single win against two losses.  Other 2014 qualifying sides that were not in the field of 32 in 2010 are Ecuador, Costa Rica, Belgium, Croatia, Iran, and Russia.  Here's the complete field from the FIFA website.  Congratulations, all!

 

  

Images
The Russian Rokot lifting the three SWARM satellites into orbit is from the ESA website.
Tepco provided the handout image of the fuel rod removal operation at Fukushima.
The photo of Chinese wind turbines is by Yi Lu/Corbis and is taken from The Guardian article.

Sunday Round-Up: October 6, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we cover world reaction to the IPCC report on climate change.  Sources include the Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog, China.org.cn, Times of India, Hindustan Times, Pravda, The Guardian, Climate Central.org, The Japan Times, U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the East Asia Forum.

Millennium Island, Kiribati (Photo:AP)

 

The first part of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report on global warming was released last week.  The remaining parts, which will examine the socioeconomic impacts of climate change and ways to mitigate its effects, will be released in 2014.  Scientists stated with more certainty than ever that the global warming is caused primarily by human activities.  (See October 2 post.)  The implications are ominous if the nations of the world do not act in a coordinated, meaningful and intense manner to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The world's five leading emitters of carbon dioxide in 2011 were China (8715 M metric tons), the United States (5491), Russia (1788), India (1726), and Japan (1181) - a function of the population of these countries, the strength of their economies, and their reliance on fossil fuels.  If the European Union were a nation, it would rank third, behind the United States. (Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration)

China's official reaction (China.org.cn, Sept. 27) is unequivocal: "Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident in most regions of the globe, a new assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes."  The US-based Natural Resources Defense Council adds: "China's own 710-page Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change, released to the public last year, warns that China itself faces extremely grim ecological and environmental consequences from global warming.  These impacts, including increasing droughts and floods, threaten China's already vulnerable food and water supplies, and rising sea levels will affect millions of people in Shanghai and other highly populated coastal cities."  China and the United States as the world's largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions know they must act and pledge to do so in their Joint Statement on Climate Change.  Besides the joint efforts with the United States, China is "is closing heavily polluting factories, prohibiting new coal-fired power plants in major industrial regions, and investing more in renewable energy than any other country in the world." [NRDC]

The Times of India and the Hindustan Times both drew sobering conclusions from the IPCC report.  The Times of India in an October 2 web article notes that the entire Indian subcontinent can expect longer rainy seasons: "...the report clearly points at 'enhanced summer monsoon precipitation and increased rainfall extremes of landfall cyclones on the coasts of the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea'.  Temperature rise and rainfall variations are expected to have an impact on the region's agriculture.  The IPCC report on "impact, adaptation and vulnerability" will be finalized and released next year.  On October 1, The Hindustan Times reported the preliminary conclusion of the effect on agriculture: "Higher rainfall will not mean more rainy days. It would amount to higher incidence of extreme rainfall events like what happened in June in Uttarakhand this June. With loss of green cover, the annual runoff will be more than 40% of the total rainfall.  Another paradox emerging from the report is that despite more rainfall there would be more water stress areas in the region, especially north and central India. The report also says that agriculture production would fall by about 9 to 25% in South Asia."

Russia is urging the IPCC to include geo-engineering solutions to the crisis in its reports.  Climate Central.org posted a piece by Guardian writer Martin Lukacs on September 24: "Geoengineering aims to cool the Earth by methods including spraying sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, or fertilizing the oceans with iron to create carbon-capturing algal blooms.  Such ideas are increasingly being discussed by western scientists and governments as a plan B for addressing climate change, with the new astronomer royal, Professor Sir Martin Rees, calling last week for such methods to buy time to develop sources of clean energy. But the techniques have been criticized as a way for powerful, industrialized nations to dodge their commitments to reduce carbon emissions."  Anatoly Miranovsky writing for Pravda on September 10  notes that although a Stanford University study concluded that using "only one fifth of the wind energy available in the world, mankind can increase the amount of the consumed electricity seven-fold, ... Russia is [at] 64th place in the world in terms of generating electricity from wind (16.8 MW)."  China, the US, and the countries of the European Union are all developing wind projects.  The situation differs though in Russia.  "Wind power in Russia is not developed because there is virtually no support from the government" according to the co-chairman of the Russian environmental group Ekozaschita" Vladimir Spivyak.

Japan's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was thrown into chaos by the tsunami that wrecked the Fukishima nuclear plant in 2011.  A July 2013 article in the East Asia Forum notes: "At the 2010 UN climate change conference Japan committed to reducing its emissions by 25 per cent (relative to 1990 levels) by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050. While these reductions were, in part, to be achieved through an emphasis on clean energy, the lynchpin of the program was to be its reliance on nuclear energy and the introduction of a price on carbon at the national level."  These plans were scuttled when Japan shutdown its nuclear industry after the Fukishima incident and Japan announced that it could not meet its commitments.  An even greater surprise was their withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, which "grew from both a frustration with the inadequacies of the program, especially the lack of global commitment, and a realisation that Japan could no longer continue to meet its emissions reduction commitments."  Japan's current approach is called "the Bilateral Offset Crediting Mechanism (BOCM). Under this regime the Japanese government is to recognise credits for investments in emissions reduction projects in developing countries."  The Japan Times reported on September 29 that this fifth IPCC report, which is to be concluded next year, may be the last of its kind.  As useful as these reports have been in gaining public attention and putting pressure on politicians to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, "some critics say these mega-reviews spanning thousands of pages belong to the past.  The process is agonizingly slow at a time when both climate change and the science used to evaluate it are leaping ahead, they say. And the need for consensus makes these comprehensive judgments worryingly conservative."  An October 3 article in The Japan Times (from the AP) reports on the ongoing court battles of a Kiribati man seeking asylum in New Zealand as a climate refugee.  "Kiribati, an impoverished string of 33 coral atolls about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, has 103,000 people and has been identified by scientists as among the nations most vulnerable to climate change.  In a transcript of the immigration case, the Kiribati man, whose name was withheld, describes extreme high tides known as king tides that he says have started to regularly breach Kiribati’s defenses — killing crops, flooding homes and sickening residents."

 

The Guardian (U.K.) has had many excellent climate articles over the past several weeks.  Michael Mann takes on climate change skeptics in a September 28 post.  (The Guardian webpage that presents Mann's article has a half-dozen or so links to informative articles on climate change and the IPCC report. The Guardian's September 27 Sustainable Business blog asks what about the private sector? What does the IPCC report mean for business and investors?  The head of HSBC's Climate Change Centre of Excellence notes: "India, China, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil [have been identified as] the five G20 nations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Together, they represent 31% of projected global GDP in 2050."  In a September 27 post reporting on the IPCC document, Guardian journalist Fiona Harvey pulls no punches in coming to the bottom line of the IPCC report:
"If people continue to emit greenhouse gases at current rates, the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere could mean that within as little as two to three decades the world will face nearly inevitable warming of more than 2C, resulting in rising sea levels, heatwaves, droughts and more extreme weather."

Calved icebergs, Qaqortoq, Greenland (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)