It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, August 15, 2021
AFGHAN NEWS
The fall of Kabul: why didn’t the Americans leave ten years ago?
On 8 July President Joe Biden was questioned at a press conference about the assessment of his own intelligence experts that the Afghan government would most likely collapse. Biden denied it outright. Yet just a few weeks later the Taliban has taken 20 of the 34 provincial capitals including Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. On Friday it was thought that it could conquer Kabul in a couple of months. Now, on Sunday, the Taliban are on the outskirts of the capital. President Ashraf Ghani is reported to have fled Kabul, apparently for Tajikistan. After over $1 trillion spent by the US and the loss of more than 2,400 American and 450 British service personnel, many are questioning what this loss of blood and treasure was for.
The withdrawal of US troops was agreed in principle last year by the then US President, Donald Trump, after talks with the Taliban at Doha, in which assurances were given that it would no longer provide a safe haven for terrorists. That decision is now being implemented by his successor Joe Biden, much to the chagrin of his political supporters and opponents alike. Condemnation has come thick and fast. Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwood, who chair the Foreign Affairs and Defence select committees respectively and are both former army officers, lament that the US has made an egregious strategic error by vacating the field. Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, has openly stated that that he does not agree with the US decision and that a redeployment of troops could be required to prevent the country becoming a breeding ground for terrorism, a proposition which has been firmly rejected by Downing Street. The reality of the UK ’ s military impotence without the umbrella of American military support is stark.
The fundamental question is, however, not whether the US was right to pull out its forces after 20 years, but why it did not do so a decade ago. The Bush administration ’ s initial rationale for the invasion of Afghanistan was clear, in marked contrast to the premise offered for the scandalous misadventure in Iraq. After 9/11, the worst atrocity committed on US territory since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, which resulted in almost 3,000 civilians being killed, the US was not simply going sit on its
It demanded that Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, who masterminded the attack on the Twin Towers and was being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, be handed over. The Taliban — who are ethnically Pashtun and adhere to a strict code of honour in which the hospitality and the protection of guests is sacrosanct and to be paid for with one’s life if necessary — refused to give him up. The US invaded, principally with the support of its key ally the UK, and toppled the Taliban government in short order. It was in May 2011, in an operation authorised by the then President Barack Obama, that bin Laden was found to be hiding in a house in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad and killed by US Special Forces. That would have been the optimal time to exit Afghanistan, with the core aim of the mission accomplished.
But hubris is seductive and the Americans succumbed to it. It is with good reason that Afghanistan, which has been the epicentre of great power struggles for centuries, is known as the “ graveyard of empires”. It was a source of tension between the Russian and British empires in the nineteenth century and of Soviet interference for a decade from 1979, during which period it became a frontier in a proxy war between the two superpowers. The Soviet occupation was resisted by the Mujahideen, including one Osama bin Laden, w ho were covertly funded and supported by the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, which in turn received funds from the CIA in line with the Reagan doctrine to subvert Russian influence. The USSR incursion failed and within a couple of years of their departure the puppet regime of Mohammad Najibullah was deposed.
F ar from heeding the lessons from the Soviet humiliation, the US under George Bush engaged in mission creep, with the goal expanded to democratise and reform Afghanistan. This certainly provided security to Afghans and increased education and work opportunities for young girls and women. But the domino-like fall of successive provincial capitals shows that the enterprise of establishing an alternative government was built on sand and has highlighted once again that state-building by outside powers is a fool ’ s errand. Change within a warlord-riven country like Afghanistan, where combat is ingrained, has to be organic. When Biden says that the Afghans must fight for the future of their own country, he is right.
Unfortunately they have not been well-served by the government of Ashraf Ghani, which is notoriously corrupt and has failed to pay swathes of police and army officers for months. Many of them are stationed away from their families in locations they have no affiliation to and faced with a fearsome Taliban have opted to throw in the towel. I met Ghani in 2005 over an elaborate dinner at a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the outskirts of Lisbon. The Columbia University-educated Professor of Anthropology and former World Banker was engaging and thoughtful. But while adept at charming international donors at Davos, he lacks credibility with his own people. His pronouncement on Saturday that remobilising the Afghan National Security forces was a “ top priority” was laughable. The view of the Afghan owner of my local pizza takeaway in East London, who fears for his family and friends on the ground in his erstwhile homeland, is that President Ghani will have already negotiated his own route to exile.
While the US and UK are hastily sending in forces to help evacuate their consular staff and other nationals, given the gravity of the situation, there remains no appetite on the part of American and British electorates for a prolonged presence in the country. Several Western commentators and politicians, including the former Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and the former International Development Secretary, Rory Stewart, fret about the message it sends potential allies about the West ’ s commitment to its purported interests. In an era of great power competition between the US and China in which the West will need regional supporters in Asia, there is consternation over the reliability of US support.
But this is irrelevant, as the US ’ lack of commitment to its foreign policy pursuits is already priced in. When Pakistan ’ s President General Pervez Musharraf, who himself assumed power in a coup, visited London after the US invasion in 2001, he told me directly that Pakistan was stuck between a rock and a hard place and had no choice but to support the US-led invasion. But he was also unequivocal that Pakistan would extract as much bounty from the Americans as possible before “ they ditch us again”, a reference to the hasty evaporation of support for Pakistan once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989.
So the US decision is pragmatic and to many of those observing it the message will be a confirmation of what they already know. If you live in a dangerous neighbourhood, you had better pursue a realist foreign policy based on self-interest and a recognition that ultimately you are on your own. The real tragedy is that the people of Afghanistan, who have enjoyed relative peace for two decades, will now be displaced from their homes and have to once again live under a tyrannical and brutal regime that claims to be guided by Islamic theology. Interesting, then, that when the Taliban regime was previously in power, it obtained a significant chunk of its revenue from the taxation of opium, hardly a practice compatible with the religion they claim to follow.
The tragic future of Afghanistan may be that it once again becomes a centre for regional power struggles to be played out by those in relentless pursuit of their own interests including Russia, Iran, China and Pakistan. Provided the Taliban, which craves international recognition, does not provide a breeding ground for terrorists the West will consider its job done. It will be the people of Afghanistan that will have to fight for a more hopeful future. It will be a gruelling, bloody and unenviable task.
FALL OF SAIGON 2.0
Taliban fighters entering Kabul 'from all sides' as US begins embassy evacuation The United States started evacuating its diplomats and was sending more troops to help secure Kabul airport and the embassy. Source: AFP
“The Biden administration is preparing for the fall of Kabul and a retreat from any U.S. diplomatic presence in Afghanistan — a stunning reversal of expectations,” Axios reports.
“It’s looking increasingly likely to high-ranking aides to President Biden that the U.S. will have no enduring diplomatic presence in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31 — the date Biden has promised the full troop withdrawal will be complete.”
“It’s a major reversal from even a few weeks ago.”
“The working assumption in Biden’s inner circle had been that Kabul could hold for the short term, allowing the U.S. to stay diplomatically engaged and help Afghan women secure their rights beyond the U.S. withdrawal.”
Taliban fighters entering Kabul
With Afghanistan's second and third-largest cities having fallen to the Taliban, Kabul has effectively become the besieged, last stand for the government forces.
This article contains references to suicide.
Taliban insurgents entered the Afghanistan capital Kabul on Sunday, an interior ministry official said, as the United States evacuated diplomats from its embassy by helicopter.
The senior official told Reuters the Taliban were coming in "from all sides" but gave no further details.
A tweet from the Afghan Presidential palace account said firing had been heard at a number of points around Kabul but that security forces, in coordination with international partners, had control of the city
With the country's second and third-largest cities having fallen into Taliban hands, Kabul has effectively become the besieged, last stand for government forces who have offered little or no resistance elsewhere.
The United States started evacuating its diplomats and was sending more troops to help secure Kabul airport and the embassy after the Taliban's lightning advances brought the Islamist group to the door of the capital in a matter of days.
Heaving fighting was also reported around Mazar-i-Sharif, an isolated holdout in the north where warlord and former vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum had gathered his virulently anti-Taliban militia.
The only other cities of any significance not to be taken yet were Jalalabad, Gardez and Khost - Pashtun-dominated and unlikely to offer much resistance now.
President Joe Biden on Saturday doubled down on his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan despite the Taliban's rapid advances, but pledged to send more troops to evacuate civilians and warned the insurgents not to threaten that mission.
After consultations with his national security team, Mr Biden said a total of "approximately 5,000" US soldiers - up from 3,000 - will now help organise evacuations and the end of the US mission after 20 years on the ground.
He warned the Taliban that any action "that puts US personnel or our mission at risk there, will be met with a swift and strong US military response".
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani pledged on Saturday not to let the "imposed war on people cause more deaths", and said consultations were taking place to try to help end the war, without offering details.
Earlier, US Central Command said more American military personnel had arrived in Kabul to ensure the safe evacuation of American embassy employees and Afghan civilians who worked for US forces.
The Pentagon estimates it will need to evacuate about 30,000 people before it completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan by 31 August, a deadline set by Mr Biden.
Mr Biden's decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan has come under increased scrutiny given the implosion of the country's armed forces, but he said he had no other choice - and laid some of the blame at the feet of Donald Trump.
"When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor... that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021, deadline on US forces," Mr Biden said.
"I faced a choice - follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies' forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country's civil conflict," he added.
"I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan - two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth," Mr Biden said.
A host of European countries - including Britain, Germany, Denmark and Spain - all announced the withdrawal of personnel from their respective embassies on Friday.
Afghan woman Yalba Siddiqui (left) marched in Adelaide on Saturday SBS News/Peta Doherty
On Saturday in Adelaide, hundreds of members of South Australia’s Afghan community rallied to condemn the Taliban and call for international action to halt the insurgents.
“What is happening [in Afghanistan] is horrible at the moment,” marcher Yalba Siddiqui told SBS News.
Ms Siddiqui’s husband is still in Kabul and waiting for an Australian visa.
“Day and night I worry about his safety,” she said.
“I would like the Australian government to do something and hear our voice.
'Crying day and night'
For Kabul residents and the tens of thousands who have sought refuge there in recent weeks, the overwhelming mood was one of confusion and fear.
Muzhda, 35, a single woman who arrived in the capital with her two sisters after fleeing nearby Parwan, said she was terrified for the future.
"I am crying day and night," she told the AFP news agency.
"I have turned down marriage proposals in the past ... If the Taliban come and force me to marry, I will commit suicide."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "deeply disturbed" by accounts of poor treatment of women in areas seized by the Taliban, who imposed an ultra-austere brand of Islam on Afghanistan during their 1996-2001 rule.
"It is particularly horrifying and heartbreaking to see reports of the hard-won rights of Afghan girls and women being ripped away," Mr Guterres said.
The scale and speed of the Taliban advance have shocked Afghans and the US-led alliance that poured billions into the country after toppling the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 attacks nearly 20 years ago.
Days before a final US withdrawal ordered by Mr Biden, individual Afghan soldiers, units and even whole divisions have surrendered - handing the insurgents even more vehicles and military hardware to fuel their lightning advance. 'No imminent threat'
Despite the frantic evacuation efforts, the Biden administration continues to insist that a complete Taliban takeover is not inevitable.
"Kabul is not right now in an imminent threat environment," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday, while acknowledging that Taliban fighters were "trying to isolate" the city.
The Taliban offensive has accelerated in recent days, with the capture of Herat in the north and, just hours later, the seizure of Kandahar - the group's spiritual heartland in the south.
The Taliban on Friday took control of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-biggest city. AAP Image/EPA/AKHTER GULFAM
Kandahar resident Abdul Nafi told AFP the city was calm after government forces abandoned it for the sanctuary of military facilities outside, where they were negotiating terms of surrender.
"I came out this morning, I saw Taliban white flags in most squares of the city," he said.
Pro-Taliban social media accounts have boasted of the vast spoils of war captured by the insurgents - posting photos of armoured vehicles, heavy weapons, and even a drone seized from abandoned military bases.
With Peta Doherty.
Fall of Afghanistan: Taliban enter Kabul as residents flee 15 Aug, 2021
AP
An Afghan official says troops have surrendered Bagram Airbase to the Taliban. The base is home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates.
Taliban fighters entered the outskirts of Kabul on Sunday as panicked workers fled government offices and helicopters began landing at the US Embassy in the Afghan capital, further tightening the militants' grip on the country.
Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital.
The militants later pledged not to take Kabul "by force" as sporadic gunfire could be heard in the capital.
"No one's life, property and dignity will be harmed and the lives of the citizens of Kabul will not be at risk," the Taliban said.
A man sells Taliban flags in Herat province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP
A Taliban spokesman said "we are awaiting a peaceful transfer of Kabul city", AP reported.
Taliban negotiators were heading to presidential palace to prepare for a "transfer" of power, AP reported.
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The insurgents issued the statement on Sunday as their fighters entered the outskirts of Kabul.
The militants themselves didn't acknowledge the advance, though they earlier took Jalalabad, near a major border crossing with Pakistan, the last major city other than Kabul not under their control.
In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban has defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swathes of the country, even with some air support by the US military.
The rapid shuttle-run flights of Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters near the embassy began a few hours later as diplomatic armoured SUVs could be seen leaving the area around the post.
The US State Department did not immediately respond to questions about the movements.
However, wisps of smoke could be seen near the embassy's roof as diplomats urgently destroyed sensitive documents, according to two American military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.
Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, which typically carry armed troops, later landed near the embassy as well.
The Czech Republic also approved a plan to begin withdrawing their Afghan staff from their embassy after earlier taking their diplomats to Kabul International Airport.
A US Chinook helicopter flies over the city of in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP
President Ashraf Ghani, who spoke to the nation Saturday for the first time since the offensive began, appears increasingly isolated as well.
Warlords he negotiated with just days earlier have surrendered to the Taliban or fled, leaving Ghani without a military option. Ongoing negotiations in Qatar, the site of a Taliban office, also have failed to stop the insurgents' advance.
Thousands of civilians now live in parks and open spaces in Kabul itself, fearing the future. Some ATMs stopped distributing cash as hundreds gathered in front of private banks, trying to withdraw their life savings.
Gunfire erupted at one point, though the Afghan presidency sought to downplayed the shooting.
"The defense and security forces along with the international forces working for the security of Kabul city and the situation is under control," the presidency said amid the chaos.
Militants posted photos online early Sunday showing them in the governor's office in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province.
Abrarullah Murad, a lawmaker from the province told The Associated Press that the insurgents seized Jalalabad after elders negotiated the fall of the government there.
Murad said there was no fighting as the city surrendered.
Members of the Taliban drive through the city of Herat, Afghanistan, west of Kabul. Photo / AP
Members of Joint Forces Headquarters get prepared to deploy to Afghanistan to assist in the draw down from the area in this handout photo taken on Friday. Photo / AP
The militants took also Maidan Shar, the capital of Maidan Wardak, on Sunday, only some 90km from Kabul, Afghan lawmaker Hamida Akbari and the Taliban said.
Another provincial capital in Khost fell later Sunday to the Taliban, said a provincial council member who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The fall on Saturday of Mazar-e-Sharif, the country's fourth largest city, which Afghan forces and two powerful former warlords had pledged to defend, handed the insurgents control over all of northern Afghanistan.
Atta Mohammad Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two of the warlords Ghani tried to rally to his side days earlier, fled over the border into Uzbekistan on Saturday, said officials close to Dostum.
They spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorised to publicly speak about his movements.
Writing on Twitter, Noor alleged a "conspiracy" aided the fall of the north to the Taliban, without elaborating.
"Despite our firm resistance, sadly, all the government and the Afghan security forces equipment were handed over to the Taliban as a result of a big organised and cowardly plot," Noor wrote.
"They had orchestrated the plot to trap Marshal Dostum and myself too, but they didn't succeed."
A Taliban flag flies from the clocktower of the Herat provincial official office, in Herat. Photo / AP
In his speech on Saturday, Ghani vowed not to give up the "achievements" of the 20 years since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.
The US has continued holding peace talks between the government and the Taliban in Qatar this week, and the international community has warned that a Taliban government brought about by force would be shunned.
But the insurgents appear to have little interest in making concessions as they rack up victories on the battlefield.
"We have started consultations, inside the government with elders and political leaders, representatives of different levels of the community as well as our international allies," Ghani said.
"Soon the results will be shared with you," he added, without elaborating further.
Many Afghans fear a return to the Taliban's oppressive rule. The group had previously governed Afghanistan under a harsh version of Islamic law in which women were forbidden to work or attend school, and could not leave their homes without a male relative accompanying them.
Plumes of smoke rise into the sky after fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel in Kandahar, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul on Thursday. Photo / AP
Salima Mazari, one of the few female district governors in the country, expressed fears about a Taliban takeover on Saturday in an interview from Mazar-e-Sharif, before it fell.
"There will be no place for women," said Mazari, who governs a district of 36,000 people near the northern city. "In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes."
In a statement late Saturday, however, the Taliban insisted their fighters wouldn't enter people's homes or interfere with businesses. They also said they'd offer an "amnesty" to those who worked with the Afghan government or foreign forces.
"The Islamic Emirate once again assures all its citizens that it will, as always, protect their life, property and honour and create a peaceful and secure environment for its beloved nation," the militants said.
Passengers trying to fly out of Kabul International Airport amid the Taliban offensive wait in line in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday. Photo / AP
"In this regard, no one should worry about their life."
Despite the pledge, those who can afford a ticket have been flocking to Kabul International Airport, the only way out of the country as the Taliban took the last border crossing still held by the government Sunday at Torkham.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told local broadcaster Geo TV that Pakistan halted cross-border traffic there after the militants seized it.
Taliban seize Bagram military prison 25 km north of Kabul, free inmates The Taliban have taken control of Bagram Prison, located on Bagram air base, and set free the inmates, mostly Taliban fighters, who were imprisoned there.
Taliban took control of a biggest US-controlled prison in Afghanistan. (Image: India Today)
The Taliban have taken control of Bagram Prison, located on Bagram air base, and set free the inmates, mostly Taliban fighters, who were imprisoned there.
The Bagram air base, which used to be the largest US military base in the country, is now under the Taliban's control.
The Bagram Prison was controlled by the US forces who were stationed in Afghanistan. Following the decision to withdraw American troops from the country, control of the prison was passed on to the Afghan Armed Forces on July 1.
Afghan forces at Bagram air base, home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, surrendered to the Taliban, according to Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi. The prison at the former US base held both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters, news agency AP reported.
In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban have defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swaths of the country, even though they had some air support from the U.S. military.
On Sunday, they reached Kabul. Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital and awaiting a “peaceful transfer” of the city after promising not to take it by force.
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera English satellite news channel that the insurgents were in the process of negotiating with the government.
But when pressed on what kind of agreement the Taliban wanted, Shaheen acknowledged that they were seeking an unconditional surrender by the central government.
Taliban negotiators headed to the presidential palace Sunday to discuss the transfer, said an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. It remained unclear when that transfer would take place.
(With inputs from AP)
VIDEOS show Taliban fighters lounging in luxurious ex-home of US-backed warlord as pundits blame grift for collapse of Afghan army
15 Aug, 2021 09:09
The Taliban has shown off a lavish home that belonged to Afghan army marshal and close US ally Abdul Rashid Dostum, prompting pundits to opine that the decadent abode illustrated why the country’s military had wilted so quickly.
In videos resembling an episode of MTV’s iconic house tour program ‘Cribs’, Taliban fighters can be seen lounging in the ostentatious interior of former vice president Dostum’s residence in Mazar-i-Sharif. The northern city was captured by the militants on Saturday, after government forces there allegedly surrendered shortly after fighting broke out.
Dostum, a seasoned warlord who aligned himself with the US-backed Northern Alliance during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, had vowed to defend Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban onslaught. But he reportedly fled the city after government forces handed over their weapons and equipment to the Taliban as part of a “cowardly plot,” Atta Mohammad Noor, the former governor of Balkh province, told the media. Noor, who was commanding local militiamen when the city’s defenses collapsed, said both he and Dostum had escaped and were safe.
However, what Dostum left behind has both amused and angered social media observers. Footage shows cross-legged militants relaxing in overstuffed armchairs as others admire the mansion’s glitzy decor. One clip shows them examining what appears to be a gold tea set.
The videos represent a “searing propaganda victory” for the Taliban, one pundit argued, noting that Dostum was a “near-mythic” figure who had once controlled vast swathes of Afghanistan.
Others expressed dismay that the Taliban fighters had enjoyed a “tea party” in a “castle” allegedly built using US tax dollars.
“Whilst General Dostum lived in opulence, many of his soldiers went unpaid. One of the reasons for the army’s collapse,” British politician and former soldier Henry Bolton complained.
Political pundit and MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan said the footage served as a reminder that the “corrupt warlords we allied with in Afghanistan all these years have been pretty awful.”
During his years of cooperation with the United States, Dostum has faced repeated accusations of corruption and human rights abuses. He spent part of 2018 in exile, following accusations that he had ordered a political opponent to be sexually assaulted.
The Taliban didn’t linger long in Dostum’s sumptuous lodgings, however, beginning an assault on Kabul on Sunday.
Alberta nurses union plans meeting with little progress made in bargaining
Author of the article: Ashley Joannou, Kellen Taniguchi Publishing date: Aug 13, 2021 • Nurses demonstrate against government rollbacks and short staffing levels outside of the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, on Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021. PHOTO BY IAN KUCERAK /Postmedia Article content
The head of the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) says it’s “beyond insulting” that Alberta Health Services (AHS) is considering hiring contract nurses to fill staffing gaps, saying they’re being offered more money than current nurses facing pay cuts.
UNA president Heather Smith says some union members have been contacted by Greenstaff Medical Canada based in Toronto asking if they want to work on contract at AHS facilities
AHS says there have been preliminary discussions with the company but no deal has been signed.
Nurses and AHS have been in contract negotiations for more than a year. The government is asking nurses to take a three per cent pay cut arguing that the province needs to get its finances back on track.
The union says nurses recruited by Greenstaff have been offered $55 per hour for general acute care and up to $75 an hour for ICU and emergency, while current AHS nurses are paid between $36.86 and $48.37 per hour. They would also get shift differentials, weekend premiums, health-care benefits and a housing allowance, according to the union. “It certainly brings into question the whole demand by the government to reduce nurses’ wages when Alberta Health Services seems to be willing to enter into contract to pay above, way above in some cases, the current wage rate,” Smith said Friday.
In a statement, AHS spokesman James Wood said Greenstaff Medical approached AHS.
“Our goal is to always cover shifts by using existing bargaining unit members, and to fill our vacancies in areas hard to recruit to by hiring qualified candidates rather than relying on agency nurses,” he said.
“While staffing agencies provide support in remote and rural locations at times, it is only as a last resort to prevent disruption of services due to vacancies or needs resulting from illness or vacation time.”
Wood did not confirm the wages contract nurses would be offered or say how many AHS would need.
Alberta has seen hospital bed closures across the province, but AHS says the vast majority of beds are open.
Smith said beds are remaining open because of “current staff working a herculean number of hours” and that’s not sustainable.
“Our members are exhausted and are calling out for resources, our government is saying you are worth less,” she said.
“And to hear that, in fact, our government and the employers are involved in negotiations to secure resources from other locations and pay them more than nurses are paid in Alberta — it’s beyond insulting.”
The UNA says it will hold a meeting later this month to discuss negotiation options.
EXCLUSIVE INCELS The Radicalised Extremist Community of White Male Supremacists Sian Norris 13 August 2021
Photo: emjhCreative / Stockimo/Alamy
As news reports suggest that the man behind the mass shooting in Plymouth identified as an “incel”, Sian Norris reveals the extremist misogynistic ideology that fuels the movement
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains violent misogynistic and racist language
The horrific shootings that took place in Plymouth have shocked the nation, as it was revealed that six people – including the killer and a very young girl – were shot dead on Thursday evening.
It is too early to say what the motivations were behind the worst mass shooting in the UK since 2010. However, videos created by the perpetrator, Jake Davison, on YouTube suggest that he appears to affiliate with the ‘incel’ community – a misogynistic online sub-culture of men who identify as ‘involuntary celibates’ because they feel sexually rejected by women.
Davison also apparently identified as ‘Black Pill’ – a common status among incels. Black Pill is a spin-off of the Red Pill men’s rights community that encourages men to become ‘alpha males’ via gaming women into sex and by getting fit. In contrast, Black Pills share a fatalistic outlook in which they believe that success with the opposite sex is determined by genetics.
In one shocking outburst, Davison said: “Why do you think sexual assaults and all these things keep rising? The reality is that women don’t need men no more and they certainly don’t want and don’t need average men and below average, you have to go abroad to fund [sic] a woman.”
If it is indeed the case that Davison identified with the incel sub-culture, the murders form part of a growing and terrifying pattern of attacks by men from this community who have killed an estimated 50 people in the US and Canada.
However, these killings are rarely categorised as terrorist incidents – despite evidence that members of this community are being radicalised and committing violent acts to advance their misogynistic, white supremacist ideology.
The Toxic Relationship Between White Supremacy and Misogyny CJ Werleman
Who Are Incels?
The incel community initially blossomed on the Reddit website, before being banned and moving onto independent forums where men swap memes, discuss whether to have the Coronavirus vaccine, and share violent and hateful views about women and women’s sexuality.
The driving force behind the movement is a belief that men are entitled to women’s bodies – both as a sex object and a reproductive vessel.
Initially, men who identified as incels claimed to believe that they had been sexually rejected by women in favour of popular jocks known as ‘Chads’. In contrast, the incels saw themselves as good guys, who had been “friendzoned” by women – i.e. seen as a platonic friend not a potential sexual partner.
However, this is potentially a simplification of what is ultimately an extremist misogynistic space riddled with white, male supremacy, violent ideology and even paedophilic fantasies.
It is a sub-culture in which men are radicalised to hate women, and where far-right conspiracies such as the ‘Great Replacement’ are shared and promoted.
The language used by incels dehumanises women – commonly recognised as the first step towards violence and even mass killings or genocide. They talk about women and girls as ‘foids’ – short for ‘femoids’ – as well as referring to women as ‘toilets’. One post referred to “toilets riding the Chad c**k carousel”. Women are known as toilets because they are seen as receptacles of bodily fluids.
Other incels refer to putting vaginas ‘on leashes’; sending women to ‘the slaughterhouse’; and imagine putting grenades up women’s anuses. They refer to women as ‘rape fuel’ and ‘scum’, and fantasise about having a ‘prime white virgin harem’. One man, in a thread about expressing fantasies, wrote that “every man would be guaranteed a wife”; while another put it succinctly: “Women shouldn’t have rights anyway.”
Many discussions on the forums involve men fantasising about ‘jail bait’, i.e. sex with girls under the age of consent. Girls who are categorised in this way are considered desirable because ‘they are still innocent before they ruin themselves’.
One poster said that he wasn’t attracted to “jail bait until I became an incel”. Another wrote that he “slowly but surely found myself attracted to JB foids” after joining the incel community, suggesting men are being radicalised to accept abuse of girls as normal.
The incel sub-cultures, and wider men’s rights activism spaces, are also often a gateway to white supremacist movements. Journalist Aja Romano wrote in 2016 how, for these communities of angry young men “who ultimately feel threatened and rejected by women, the movement promotes a sense of male entitlement that is easily radicalised into white nationalism and white supremacy”.
Incels discussing ‘jail bait’ on a popular forum
Posters often use graphically racist and anti-Semitic language, and there is an obsessive focus on ‘foids’ having sex with black and ‘Arab’ men.
The racialised nature of much incel content fits into conspiracist narratives that the West or Global North is apparently in decline and degenerating as a result of women’s sexual and reproductive freedoms, along with migration from the Global South.
In this respect, incel culture is close to the baseless far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which posits that feminism is colluding with Western elites to repress the white birth rate and encourage immigration in order to create a ‘white genocide’.
For example, on a thread titled “women destroying cultures and countries”, one incel synthesises the Great Replacement, misogyny and racism by writing “the antifa and femoids support the invasion of africans and arabians [sic] in ALL Europe. In 50 years, thanks to the ‘diversity’… agenda, all Europe will turn into a third world s**t hole full of wars and Sharia law everywhere”.
Incels and Terrorism
The first mass shooting explicitly linked to the incel community occurred in 2014, when Elliot Rodger posted a misogynistic manifesto online railing against women before shooting dead six people, injuring 14 more.
Four years later in Canada, Alek Minassian killed 10 people by driving into a pavement. He said that he drew inspiration from the incel movement and posted on Facebook “all hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger” – the moniker given to the mass shooter and other men admired by the community, including Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
The incel movement has now killed an estimated 50 people in the US and Canada, including a mass shooting in a massage parlour in Georgia; a machete attack at a Toronto massage parlor; and a shooting at an Arizona mall which injured three people.
In June, US President Joe Biden laid out his formal strategy to combat domestic terrorism – including threats from emerging extremist movements such as incels and the followers of the QAnon movement. A Californian man who confessed to killing his children referred to the conspiracy, while a pattern of violence is linked to the theory.
Incels responded on a thread about “creepy Uncle Joe”, criticising Biden’s move as “incelophobia” and claiming that feminists “are using violence to spread their message” while “us incels are pretty tame”.
How Abortion Became aTool of White Supremacists Sian Norris
“In a world full of w****s the virgin is frowned upon”, posted one individual.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service – the body that decides which criminal cases are prosecuted in England and Wales and conducts the prosecutions – for an offence to be classed as terrorism in the UK, it must be designed to “influence any international Government organisation or to intimidate the public”. It must also “be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”.
The latter point has often meant that misogynistic and incel-related violence is not classed as terrorism. But this is to miss the point that incels are driven by a white, male supremacist ideology that positions men as superior to women and promotes the belief that men have sexual and reproductive entitlement to women’s bodies. This is a belief linked to fascism.
Further, as is evidenced by the posts about ‘jail bait’ and the Great Replacement theory, incel websites are spaces of radicalisation to this male supremacist and ultimately violent ideology.
As one man put it: “I’ve learned to hate women, feminism and their sexual choices so much.”
Climate scientist on UN report: Just as bad as we expected
Melting icebergs and the retreating ice cap are visible in Ilulissat, Greenland, where climate change is causing irreversible damage. Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via AP
Peter Huybers of SEAS says global response should include satellites, alternative-fuels research, and a commitment to food security, education
BY Ryan Mulcahy
Harvard Staff Writer DATE August 12, 2021
In a major United Nations report released Monday, the more than 230 scientists who make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described “unprecedented” climate change over the past century and warned in similarly unambiguous language that the world will descend further into catastrophic warming absent rapid and aggressive action to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. We asked Peter Huybers, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences, about the research behind the report, the panel’s first since 2013, and the harrowing details contained within it. The interview was edited for clarity and length.
Q&A Peter Huybers
GAZETTE: Can you talk first about the climate effects the report identifies as irreversible?
HUYBERS:Irreversibility means that even if other conditions were returned to a baseline condition, the system would not recover. An example is tipping a table until your soup bowl spills, and the fact that returning the table to level doesn’t put the soup back in the bowl.
Studies indicate that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is irreversible in the sense that, after the ice sheet melts, it would not regrow even if we otherwise returned the climate to pre-industrial conditions. The ice sheet is a vestige of a colder climate deeper in Earth’s past that is maintained, crucially, by high rates of accumulation on its flanks and cold temperatures atop that its own height affords. In this sense, the melting of Greenland and the consequent rising of sea level are irreversible.
The IPCC report also uses the term “irreversible on centennial to millennial time scales” in describing melting of permafrost as well as the warming, acidification, and deoxygenation of the ocean. Permafrost is slow to regrow and the deep ocean adjusts over centuries to millennia, so in this sense these systems will not fully recover over societal timescales even under the optimistic scenario of returning the atmosphere to a pre-anthropogenic state.
“Every year since 2013 has been warmer than it was in 2013 and every year prior in a record that dates back to 1880," said Peter Huybers of the Harvard John. A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Eliza Grinnell/SEAS
GAZETTE: The Sixth Assessment Report uses stronger language than previous assessments to address the influence of human activity on climate change: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land.” Are there specific findings, historical or otherwise, that have made this connection even clearer than it was eight years ago?
HUYBERS: Yes, this report uses language that is more strident and confident. One contributing reason for this change in tone, I suspect, is the simple fact that in the eight years that elapsed between AR5 and AR6, the climate continued to change, in keeping with predictions for warming, loss of ice, rates of sea level rise, and changes in storms. I’ve seen more than one news piece suggesting that climate change is worse than we expected, and perhaps that is the case with regard to certain consequences, but with regard to overall physical changes, they are as the scientific community generally expected, and which to me seem plenty bad enough to motivate action.
This situation can be contrasted with AR5, which was released at a time when it wasn’t clear if the climate had warmed in the preceding 10 years at rates that were consistent with our predictions. This so-called hiatus in global warming turns out to have been exaggerated by artifacts in how global temperature trends were estimated — for example, excluding much of the fastest warming regions in the Arctic. Moreover, every year since 2013 has been warmer than it was in 2013 and every year prior in a record that dates back to 1880. It’s clear that the warming trends expected in response to rising greenhouse gases are materializing at the expected rates.
Another factor is that there were several studies that the scientific community was contemplating around the time of AR5 that suggested rather low values of equilibrium climate sensitivity, a measure of how much the Earth would ultimately warm in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Very low ranges have been ruled out now, along with some tightening on the higher end, giving a likely sensitivity range of 2.5°C to 4°C as compared with 1.5°C to 4.5°C in AR5.
GAZETTE: With an eye on the clock, are there certain areas of climate research and/or policymaking where global leaders should concentrate resources?
HUYBERS: Sometimes climate change is treated like the sky is falling, which implies a final crash. In fact, the composition of the sky is being steadily altered to trap more heat, and we need both short- and long-term strategies for bringing the climate back into equilibrium. The imperative to act doesn’t go away if — and, I’m afraid, when — we allow Earth’s surface temperature to warm by more than 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius. For example, widespread electrification of ground vehicles is plausible in the near term because price and performance are competitive with fossil fuel-based alternatives, but we also need a longer-term solution for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from air travel. Alternative ways of making jet fuel and capturing CO2 from the atmosphere are currently costly possibilities — can we make these cheaper or find another way?
Additional research to improve prediction of climate change is also still warranted because, for example, there are big differences in the consequences of 2.5 versus 4°C per doubling of CO2 concentrations. There are notable opportunities to increase our rate of learning about the climate system by developing a constellation of satellites to monitor the flow of energy in and out of the Earth system. Another constellation of satellites could monitor greenhouse gas fluxes for purposes of better holding nations accountable for their emissions.
Experts tease out the scientific, legal, economic, political, and philosophical costs and benefits of the problem — and the solutions
Let me also highlight a broader issue: that no one can be expected to prioritize reducing greenhouse gas emissions absent a just standard of living. In some places that means helping adapt to the consequences of climate change, such as rising sea level, but more often it means things like ensuring food security, providing access to education, and working for peace.
GAZETTE: What is the best-case scenario for humankind if leaders were to start acting tomorrow on the findings in the assessment?
HUYBERS: Many world leaders, to their credit, are attempting to address the issues raised in the assessment. One best-case scenario is for world leaders to agree to policies that will substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference, scheduled for November in Scotland. Another, more general best-case outcome is for world leaders to build upon our shared interests in stabilizing climate to promote greater well-being and stability generally. Of course, political leaders can only get so far out ahead, such that any best-case scenario implies ample foresight and willingness on the part of people generally.
What Does National Security Mean in a +2 Celsius World?
The new U.N. climate report confirms that significantly higher global temperatures are now a near-term certainty. National security planning needs to take a warmer, less stable world into account.
This week, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest summary report. As expected, the report is not exactly suffused with optimism. It finds that the Earth is now virtually guaranteed to warm at least 1.5 degrees Celsius over the preindustrial baseline in the coming decades, even if a massive global effort succeeds in reducing emissions over the next few decades. By itself, that will create more extreme weather events, and it may also precipitate other unpredictable but severe systemic collapses, like the shutdown of the Gulf Stream.
At this point, a significantly altered global climate is not a theoretical impossibility (though certainly if meaningful action is taken in the next few years it might limit the extremity of the change). The IPCC report is only confirming what has become painfully obvious from observing current events. The last few months have seen numerous, simultaneous extreme weather events: catastrophic flooding in China and Germany, overwhelming heat waves in normally temperate Western Canada, record-setting drought and wildfires in the American West, and more.
In short, the environment upon which virtually all human activity depends is undergoing severe and potentially irreversible change. It is changing the world that we will live in, and the world that national security policies must be made for. Any strategy that does not at least recognize this truth is useless.
In a previous column, I explored the challenges and contradictions of adapting the U.S. military for climate change. This is a different and more strategic question: How should a country’s leadership think about continuing to secure its national interest while the ground shifts under its feet?
The short answer is that it will be much harder world to plan and prepare for. The climate is an intensely complex system, and though we know in broad terms what types of impacts to expect from 1.5 C or more of warming, we do not know many of the specifics of timing and localization; nor is it possible to predict the complex interactions of climate with agriculture, trade, patterns of migration, and other crucial human systems.
There are two basic models for thinking about how a radically hotter world will change geopolitics. The first is fundamentally Hobbesian. As rising waters and extreme weather simultaneously push populations out of critically endangered areas and create access to new trade routes or resources, whatever limitations that states have accepted on their behavior since World War II could largely be abandoned. The wave of nationalism that has seen such an upsurge over the last decade will be accelerated by the perception that the correct exercise of national power on a warming planet is to secure the biggest possible piece of a shrinking pie for the nation. That mindset leads almost axiomatically to violent struggle.
The other is model is collaborative. Realizing that the threat to lives, livelihood, and prosperity posed by a rapidly warming and transforming planet exceeds the danger of national competition, states could collaborate on reducing emissions, responding to extreme climatic events, and any more extreme measures, such as geoengineering, that may become necessary in order to stabilize the climate. But this mindset requires nations to profoundly reconsider their strategic priorities and make common cause with rivals, which is anathema to strategic establishments focused on competition. DIPLOMAT BRIEF WEEKLY NEWSLETTERN
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That suggests that the fundamental challenge is one that will be familiar to anyone who has studied the Prisoner’s Dilemma: cooperate or defect. But like the climate itself, geopolitics is complex; neither of these models is likely to fully encompass how the world will respond over the coming decades. States, after all, can generally walk and chew gum at the same time; it should be broadly possible for the better-resourced ones, at least, to maintain a robust national defense while also reconfiguring toward climate harm reduction and resilience measures.ADVERTISEMENT
Nor are things necessarily better elsewhere; the middle powers have made some commitments – and some have made substantial progress since the Paris Accords – but probably not enough to change the overall trend. Meanwhile, there is a fundamental question of fairness to be resolved: How to limit climate harm without cutting off opportunities for growth and development for the billions of people in the developing world, who did not benefit from carbon-intensive economic growth.
The way these different incentives interact with the speed of change in the climate makes an overly prescriptive strategy virtually impossible to put into practice. But the change in the environment must be baked into any national strategic analysis of the coming decades; a strategy that does not do so is worse than useless.
AUTHORS CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR Jacob Parakilas Jacob Parakilas is an author, consultant, and analyst working on U.S. foreign policy and international security.
Communicating climate change has never been so important, and this IPCC report pulls no punches
Condensing the IPCC report to its highlights, such as in this graphic, is an effective way to engage time-poor readers. Credit: Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub/IPCC
On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first installment of their sixth assessment report. As expected, the report makes for bleak reading.
But the report also makes for dry reading. Even the Summary for Policymakers, at 42 pages, is not a document you can quickly skim.It found all regions of the world are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, and its warming projections range from scary to unimaginable.
Local governments, national and international policymakers, insurance companies, community groups, new home buyers, you and me: everyone needs to know some aspects of the IPCC's findings to understand what the future might look like and what we can do about it.
With climate action more crucial than ever, the IPCC needs to communicate clearly and strongly to as many people as possible. So how is it going so far?
The most assertive report in 30 years
The grueling IPCC process and an extensive author list of 234 scientists make IPCC reports the world's most authoritative source of climate change information. Every sentence is powerful because each one has been read and approved by scientists and government officials from 195 countries.
So when the report states "it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land," there is absolutely no denying it. In fact, the IPCC has become progressively more assertive in the 30 years it has been assessing and summarizing climate science.
In 1990, it noted global warming "could be largely due to natural variability." Five years later, there was "a discernible human influence on global climate." By 2001, "most of the observed warming […] is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
This week's reference to "unequivocal" human influence pulls no punches.
Why has this language changed? Partly because the science has progressed: we know more about the complexities of the Earth's climate than ever before.
But it's also because the report's authors understand the urgency of communicating the message effectively. As this week's report makes clear, limiting warming to the most ambitious 1.5℃ goal of the Paris Agreement may be (at least temporarily) out of reach within decades, and the goal of keeping warming below 2℃ is also at risk.
As the IPCC's scientific assessment reports are only published every seven years or so, this may be the authors' last chance to warn people.
Climate change communication isn't easy
Communicating any science is hard, but climate science has particular challenges. These include the complexities of the science and language of climate change, people's misunderstanding of risk management, and the barrage of deliberate misinformation.
The IPCC has standardized the language they use to communicate confidence: "likely," for example, always means at least a 2-in-3 chance. Unfortunately, research has shown this language conveys levels of imprecision that are too high and leads to readers' judgements being different from the IPCC's.
The grueling report approval process also means IPCC statements can be conservative to the point of confusion. In fact, a 2016 study showed IPCC reports are getting harder to read. In particular, despite the IPCC's efforts, the Summaries for Policymakers have had low readability over the years, with dense paragraphs and too much jargon for the average punter.
There has also been a rise in communication barriers since the final part of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report was released in 2014, including more fake news, and climate news fatigue.
The IPCC's complex results can appear controversial and hotly debated, because of politicization and a well-funded disinformation campaign from fossil fuel giants. And with news so often passed through social media, it's easy for people to turn to someone they trust, even if that person's information is wrong.
While there has been an increase in communication imperatives, including the urgency for action and the increase in science information, these are all taking place during a headline-stealing global pandemic.
Also, people are exhausted. Eighteen months of living with a pandemic has probably shriveled everybody's ability to take on more big problems.
On the other hand, hunger for COVID-19 information has raised familiarity with exponential curves, model projections, risk-benefit calculations, and urgent action based on scientific evidence to combat a global threat.
Remaining hopeful
To address the challenges of communicating the science, climate communicators should aim for consistent messages, draw on credible information, focus on what is known rather than the uncertainties, offer tangible action, use clear language that avoids despair, connect locally, and tell a story.
To a large extent, Australian contributors to the IPCC release this week have done just that, chiseling relevant facts from the IPCC's brick of a report into blogs and bites.
To its credit, the IPCC has also provided a plethora of communication resources in different formats. This includes videos, fact sheets, posters and, for the first time, an interactive atlas enabling you to explore past and possible future climate changes in any region.
However, there's (so far) less focus on information for different audiences, such as students, young people, managers and planners rather than just politicians and scientists.
And the atlas, while a great tool, still requires users to have some climate science literacy. For example, average users looking for future climate information may not understand that CMIP6 and CMIP5 are the next, and previous, generations of climate models used by the IPCC.
This is a positive approach because feeling that humanity cannot, or will not, respond adequately can lead to a lack of engagement and action, and eco-anxiety.
As Al Gore pointed out 15 years ago in An Inconvenient Truth: "There are a lot of people who go straight from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem."
Early next year, the IPCC will release two volumes about ways to adapt to, and reduce, climate change. After the confronting results of this first volume, the next two must provide messages of hope if we're to keep fighting for our planet.
Sustainable Beauty: The Beauty Industry’s Role in Mitigating Climate Change
How are beauty companies taking action against climate change and what does the future hold?
08.12.21
Earlier this week, leading scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a landmark report warning that global climate change is accelerating—and human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases are the overwhelming cause.
Heatwaves, extreme rain and intense drought are on the rise, but the extent of future disasters will be determined by how fast governments can adapt and evolve, the report argues.
“From a physical science perspective, limiting human-induced global warming to a specific level requires limiting cumulative CO2 emissions, reaching at least net zero CO2 emissions, along with strong reductions in other greenhouse gas emissions. Strong, rapid and sustained reductions in CH4 emissions would also limit the warming effect resulting from declining aerosol pollution and would improve air quality,” the report reads.
Beauty Brands That Have Taken Action
While the diagnosis may seem dire, scientists say there is still time to prevent catastrophic climate change. Many global beauty companies have already taken steps to reduce emissions and halt the use of fossil fuels, including the following examples:
Building upon this achievement, the company also met its goal to set science-based emissions reduction targets for its direct operations and value chain, positioning the company to take even more decisive action against climate change in the coming decade.
“Setting ambitious targets in line with the latest climate science is testament to our values and commitment to managing our business for the long term,” said Fabrizio Freda, president and CEO of ELC. “In this decisive decade for climate action, we will continue to accelerate efforts to ensure a healthy, beautiful planet for generations to come.”
Arbonne
Arbonne is another company that understands that reducing energy demand and moving to renewable energy is crucial to doing its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. By 2025, Arbonne expects to:
Divert over 90% of its waste, globally
Reduce water consumption by 20% compared to a 2019 baseline
Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% compared to 2019, and then 75% by 2030
Since 2005, the Group has reduced the CO2 emissions of its plants and distribution centers by 81% in absolute terms, exceeding its initial target of 60% by 2020, while production volume increased by 29% over the same period.
These companies and many more are making progress to reduce the impact and severity of climate change. They have set ambitious goals for themselves and acted on them, but it will likely take an effort from the whole industry to limit global warming.
Working Together to Make a Difference
“The cosmetics industry produces more than 120 billion units of packaging annually—the problem is larger than any individual brand, vendor or corporation,” explains Jess Abrams, executive director, sustainable development, Shiseido Americas. “It’s all about industry alignment. This is where I see the future of sustainable beauty heading—becoming an industry that brings together vendors, suppliers, and competitors alike.”
This process of rallying the industry together for a common goal will be challenging, and is certainly easier said than done, but the good news is that according to the results of a representative population survey commissioned by the German Packaging Institute (Deutsches Verpackungsinstitut), the multitude of innovations in the field of sustainable packaging in recent years are being well received by consumers.
Nearly half of respondents – 44% – perceived clear progress in environmental friendliness of packaging, and only 15.7% saw it as having regressed. Moreover, three out of four respondents, 74.6%, confirmed that this progress has been achieved either with no compromise in functionality and convenience – or even enhancing it.
Business as Usual Won’t Cut It
The IPCC report emphasizes that many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level. That means that the time for actions is now. There is hope for the future, as exemplified by the companies that are already making a difference, but it is debatable whether the global Beauty Industry as a whole has done enough to reduce its impact on our planet.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thurnberg had this to say during a recent interview for Democracy Now: “This report doesn’t tell us what to do. It doesn’t say you have to do this, and then you have to do this. It doesn’t provide us with such solutions or tell us that you need to do this. That’s up for us. We are the ones who need to take the decisions, and we are the ones who need to be brave and ask the difficult questions to ourselves, like: What do we value? Are we ready to take action to ensure future and present living conditions?”
The facts about climate change and global warming are available and clear. The question is whether the Beauty Industry can be the positive influence that it has the potential to be.
Emissions from Russian Permafrost Could Spike Tenfold if Leaders Ignore UN Climate Report Warning
Aug. 12, 2021
Experts believe that as permafrost melts, it will release an increasing amount of carbon, setting off a cycle of warming nearly impossible to stop.Taken / pixabay
Russia’s permafrost could deteriorate fast and spark an accelerating loop of warming if world leaders don’t heed UN climate scientists’ call to drastically cut global carbon emissions, an expert told The Moscow Times.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published Monday shows unequivocally that climate change is progressing more quickly than feared — with temperatures already 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels — and that time is running out to prevent catastrophic warming. It expands upon the IPCC’s 2013 climate assessment, which came two years before nearly 200 countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement in hopes of keeping warming below 1.5 C.
“This IPCC report studies climate feedback effects in much more detail than the previous report,” the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) Russia’s head of climate and energy research Alexei Kokorin said.
Large amounts of carbon are stored within permafrost, the layer of soil that stays frozen year-round and covers nearly 65% percent of Russia’s territory.
While this permafrost doesn’t currently emit much carbon, Kokorin said its emissions could increase tenfold by 2100 if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their current pace.
Experts believe that as permafrost melts, it will release an increasing amount of carbon, leading to warming that in turn melts even more permafrost — setting off a cycle of warming nearly impossible to stop.
Kokorin also said Russia can expect to see extreme weather events with increasing frequency, with once-in-a-decade heat waves happening every five years if global temperatures rise 2 C beyond pre-industrial levels and happening nearly every year if the planet warms by 4 C.
“That could affect whether people will choose to live in Moscow. If a heatwave like the current one happens every five years, you can see it as bearable. But what if it happens almost every year? Would we have to move the Russian capital to another location?” Kokorin said.
More detailed information will be available when Russia’s national climate assessment comes out sometime next year, Kokorin said.
While the IPCC report relied mostly on scientific articles published in English, the Russian report will also include a lot of material that hasn’t been translated into English yet, potentially offering a deeper understanding of Russia’s unique climate dynamics.
Siberian Wildfire Could Become Biggest in Recorded History – Greenpeace
Updated: Aug. 12, 2021
The republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia’s largest and coldest region, has been devastated by unprecedented wildfires this summer.
Ivan Nikiforov / TASS
A wildfire raging in northeastern Siberia could become the largest in recorded history, experts from Greenpeace Russia told The Moscow Times on Wednesday.
The republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia’s largest and coldest region, has been devastated by unprecedented wildfires that are now larger than the rest of the world's blazes combined. Residents have been under a state of emergency for weeks as thick, acrid smoke blankets settlements and reaches cities thousands of kilometers away, while thousands of volunteers have been recruited to fight the fires
The largest of these fires has exceeded 1.5 million hectares in size, the Greenpeace environmental group's forestry head Alexey Yaroshenko told The Moscow Times.
“This fire has to grow by about 400,000 hectares to become the biggest in documented history,” Yaroshenko said. “It is impossible to contain this fire through human efforts. ... Firefighters would have to put out a line of fire 2,000 kilometers long.”
Only rain could stop or significantly slow down this fire, Yaroshenko said, but current rainfall is too weak to do so.
“In the best-case scenario we could save settlements and infrastructure that lies in the fire’s path,” he said.
Yaroshenko’s comments come days after a landmark United Nations climate report rang the alarm on global warming and called for more ambitious measures to prevent the climate from spiraling out of control.
Experts say Sakha’s fast-warming climate — the region has seen its annual average temperature rise by 3 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the 20th century — combined with a 150-year record drought and high winds has turned its vast taiga forest into a tinderbox.
Harmful forestry practices are a key factor behind the fires’ unprecedented spread, Greenpeace expert Yulia Davydova told The Moscow Times, as regional authorities aren’t required to extinguish fires in so-called “control zones” – areas far from human settlements. Logging, both illegal and legal, is another common cause, according to new data acquired by Greenpeace.
With weeks left to go in the wildfire season, the European Union’s Copernicus satellite monitoring service said that the Siberian forest fires have already emitted a record 505 megatons of carbon dioxide.
And satellite observations by NASA’s Earth-monitoring tool MODIS showed that smoke from the wildfires reached the North Pole for what is believed to be the first time in known history last week.
Nationwide, over 13.4 million hectares of land have been burned by wildfires — an area roughly the size of Greece — so far in 2021, Greenpeace says, citing official data.
Putin Alarmed Over 'Unprecedented' Natural Disasters in Russia
President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said the scale of natural disasters that have hit Russia this year is "absolutely unprecedented" as local officials ask for Moscow's help to tackle fires and floods.
A former skeptic of man-made climate change, the Russian leader called on authorities to do everything possible to help Siberians affected by the region's gigantic wildfires, as well as Russians living in the flood-hit south of the country.
Speaking at a video conference with the leaders of the affected eastern and southern regions, Putin said he received daily reports on the climate situation in the country.
"In the south (of Russia), the monthly norm of rainfall now falls in a few hours and in the Far East on the contrary, forest fires in drought conditions are spreading rapidly," Putin said.
In Russia's largest and coldest region of Yakutia, this summer's forest fires have already burned through an area larger than Portugal.
Russian weather officials and environmentalists have linked the increasing intensity of Siberia's annual fires to climate change.
"All of this once again shows how important it is for us to deeply and systematically work on the climate and environment agenda," he said.
He called on authorities to be ready to evacuate more people living in areas affected by the fires — especially the elderly — as well as provide economic support for them.
He also asked officials to calculate the effects of the fires and make plans to reconstruct houses.
The Russian leader said it was important to do everything to "save the forest riches" and "minimise damage for animals of the taiga", a word used to describe northern Russian forests. Hundreds evacuated
Local officials pleaded for reinforcements and Moscow's economic help to deal with the human cost of damage caused by extreme weather.
Aysen Nikolayev, the head of Yakutia, said firefighters were able to save 230 houses from flames.
He said evacuated villagers had received psychological help, with local children being sent to holiday camps.
He called the scale of the fires a first "in history" and asked for help after the region's harvest was severely affected.
"We will continue to save more houses," he said, thanking Putin for his support.
This week Russia launched a national response centre and deployed additional firefighters to battle the devastating Siberian fires.
The governor of the southern Krasnodar region Veniamin Kondratyev said 132 people — mostly holidaymakers — had been evacuated in the Black Sea resort of Anapa last night amid rising floods.
"We could not predict what would happen at night," he said, adding that the region had "the same rainfall in a day as we usually get in a year."
Kondratyev said that despite difficult climate conditions, the holiday season in resort areas is "continuing and under control."
The head of Moscow-annexed Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that two people have died as a result of floods on the peninsula and that over 3,000 have asked authorities for help.
Heavy smog hung over the regional capital of Yakutsk on Friday, which was declared a non-working day in much of the region over health concerns due to wildfire smoke.
For years Putin was notorious for his scepticism about man-made global warming and saying Russia stands to benefit from it.
But in recent months he has also made statements to the effect that climate change is not just a boon to Moscow.
The Russian leader this year participated in a summit hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden and said Moscow is interested in "stepping up international cooperation" on climate change.
Smog from the wildfires in Yakutsk. Vadim Skryabin / TASS In Photos: Life Amid Siberia's Devastating Wildfires
Aug. 13, 2021 - 15:32 Russia’s largest, coldest region is blanketed by thick smoke from wildfires that have torn across the Siberian taiga at an unprecedented scale.
Authorities the republic of Sakha (Yakutia) have declared a state of emergency over the rapidly advancing fires and hazardous smoke.
Here’s a closer look at the scene from the ground that locals have described as “apocalyptic”:
In Yakutsk, the regional capital of the republic of Sakha, fine particle concentrations in the air are now more than 70 times the maximum recommended safe level. Vadim Skryabin / TASS
The wildfires have reached the Lena Pillars Nature Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Vadim Skryabin / TASS
The head of the region ordered a non-working day on Friday in Yakutsk and 10 other municipalities, urging residents to stay at home due to the harmful effects that the smoke can have on human health. Vadim Skryabin / TASS
A Russian emergencies ministry employee battles a wildfire. The Siberian wildfires are now larger than the rest of the world's fires combined. Russian Emergencies Ministry / TASS
Flights to and from Yakutsk have been canceled or delayed due to poor visibility. Vadim Skryabin / TASS
Earlier this week, President Vladimir Putin ordered to send reinforcements to the region, but experts say the largest fires will be impossible for humans alone to extinguish. Russian Emergencies Ministry / TASS
The Moscow Times
Canadian finance industry has “an obligation” to act on climate change Global Risk Institute says there are five key takeaways for financial institutions from the IPCC report
This week’s report from the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has sent shockwaves through industries and governments.
Its clear message that it’s not an option to delay significant measures to meet the targets set by the Paris Agreement has sparked renewed calls for action, and the financial services industry has an important role to play.
The Toronto-based think tank, Global Risk Institute (GRI) in Financial Services, has published its top five takeaways from the IPCC report that Canada’s financial institutions (FIs) can use to seize the opportunities from building a greener economy.
"Now is the time for Canada to come together across government, industry and academia and punch above our weight," says Sonia Baxendale, President and CEO, Global Risk Institute.
Canada in the cross-hairs
The urgency for Canada to lower carbon emissions in the short term is one of the biggest calls to action and the first of the GRI’s takeaways.
With modelling projecting larger-than-average temperature increases for the country, the prospect of more catastrophic storms, droughts, and wildfires is a rallying call.
With global pressure to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels, this will impact those lenders that are most exposed to the sector. Better data
The second takeaway is that the better data available to FIs offers greater insights into the risk and gives the industry enhanced ability to manage and price risk.
It also allows for the development of products that meet the needs of the low carbon economy, such as new insurance products; and for potentially higher premiums to reflect the risk.
Liability risk
With the IPCC report clearly linking certain specific weather events to human-made climate change, a rise in liability risk is expected.
Financial firms could face litigation if they have financed known polluting industries that lead to weather incidents.
GRI likens the potential outlook to that of the tobacco industry where exposed industries face court cases and legal suits, which may increase market and credit risk. Financing the transition
Of course, Canada’s financial sector will continue to play a major role in financing the transition to a greener economy.
Specifically, GRI sees a doubling down on transition finance and the move to a low carbon economy.
“Financing and underwriting of fossil fuels must support energy diversification toward renewables, and transparency from firms about net zero portfolio alignment and climate-related financial risk must increase,” the report says. Investing in the planet
The fifth takeaway is that investment in Mother Earth must be at the heart of climate change action.
With a scramble for financial resources to adapt, build resilience and invest in nature-based solutions to buffer the impacts, GRI says the financial sector should develop 'climate adaptation finance' as a tool within the sustainable finance umbrella.
"Industry must pick up the pace. We have an obligation to our stakeholders, shareholders and future generations to face an unprecedented challenge and drive the innovation needed to create a sustainable low-carbon economy today – not in the distant future,” concluded Baxendale.
Climate change can't be ignored in Calgary's civic election, advocates say
Author of the article: Madeline Smith
Publishing date:Aug 12, 2021 •
It was another smoke shrouded day in the city as Calgarians exercised on the Bow River pathway on Monday, July 19, 2021. PHOTO BY GAVIN YOUNG/POSTMEDIA
Advocates say climate change should be a central issue in this year’s municipal election as a new UN report sounds a “deafening” alarm about the future.
Environmental advocacy group Calgary Climate Hub is calling for city council candidates to pursue policies directly aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions, from setting reduction targets for city-owned utility Enmax to increasing access to public transit.
Monday’s report from the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says human-caused emissions are “unequivocally” driving average global temperatures up, and some changes are already irreversible and will cause more extreme weather.
A temperature increase of 1.5 C is generally seen as the maximum the planet can withstand without widespread social upheaval. The report says that target will arrive within 20 years, and emissions need to be drastically slashed over the next decade to ensure warming doesn’t get even worse
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Be The Change YYC Street Outreach team members distribute water, hats and other supplies to vulnerable Calgarians in the downtown core during a heat wave on June 28, 2021. PHOTO BY GAVIN YOUNG/POSTMEDIA
Calgary Climate Hub director-at-large Rob Tremblay said it’s clear that the impacts of climate change are already here, pointing to this summer’s devastating heat waves and wildfires as just the latest example. The City of Calgary’s climate team says climate change means the city will see more severe and frequent extreme weather like flooding, drought and the effects of wildfires.
“It’s not just something that’s uncomfortable. It’s something that’s deadly. There’s a big, big cost to just doing nothing when it comes to climate change,” Tremblay said.
The group recently published its platform for the Oct. 18 municipal vote, and is urging Calgarians to ask council candidates about tackling climate change locally. The Climate Hub won’t be endorsing any candidates ahead of the vote, but has published a questionnaire on climate and equity issues sent to mayoral candidates throughout July.
“The traditional policy levers aren’t necessarily the city’s jurisdiction, but I want to make sure council candidates aren’t using that as an excuse not to address climate change,” Tremblay said.
“The city needs to say, ‘What can we do?’ and not just cede that (responsibility).”
Smoke from wildfires obscured downtown Calgary beyond the teepees of the Calgary Stampede Elbow River Camp on July 18, 2021. PHOTO BY GAVIN YOUNG/POSTMEDIA
University of Alberta urban and regional planning faculty lecturer Neal LaMontagne echoed that cities are limited in some of the options they have for addressing climate change. But they also have a huge hand in transportation and development, which can be critical to the state of emissions.
“One of the courses I teach is planning history, and that’s the trajectory I’ve seen: from ‘How do we reduce our greenhouse gases?’ to ‘Let’s not think about urban environments and nature in opposition,'” he said.
“We know what a sustainable and a climate-resilient city can look like. We’re learning more what that can look like on the prairies in a meaningful way,” he said.
Cities also have the power to mandate things like sustainable building standards, which can make a big difference. The majority of Calgary’s carbon footprint comes from the energy required to heat and power buildings, adding up to slightly more than two-thirds of emissions.
LaMontagne said strengthening regulations is one step, but it’s also important to build sustainability into a city in a way that people directly feel the benefits — like ensuring quick access from neighbourhoods to shops and services without having to drive there.
“The big move, which is on all of our collective behaviour, comes from making a city that’s just really wonderful to live sustainably in.”
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