Big wins and legal battles: How  US unions old and new did in 2023

DECEMBER 25, 2023
HEARD ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

NPR

Transcript

Established labor unions won big at the bargaining table in 2023, but newly-formed unions remained mired in legal battles with companies who continue to fight their existence.


ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

More than half a million workers in America went on strike this year.

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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #1: (Chanting) Hey, hey, ho, ho, corporate greed has got to go.

SHAPIRO: And hundreds of thousands more threatened to strike, leading to historic wins for workers like we haven't seen in decades.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Chanting) Union.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #2: (Chanting) Union.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Chanting) Mighty.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #2: (Chanting) Mighty.

SHAPIRO: But does this signal a turnaround for unions in the U.S.? NPR's Andrea Hsu weighs in on that question.

ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Hollywood actors and writers, nurses and emergency room techs, airline pilots, autoworkers, delivery drivers - those were just some of the union workers who banded together this year to demand pay and benefits that validate their hard work. Here was Teamsters organizer Rob Atkinson at a UPS rally.

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ROB ATKINSON: What has UPS done to show that they respect the sacrifices that you all made working through that pandemic while they increased their profits by 250%? Nothing. Well, I got news for them. We're here to collect our share.

HSU: The idea that workers deserve more of what the top bosses have long enjoyed was central to the United Auto Workers strike. Here was UAW President Shawn Fain on Labor Day.

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SHAWN FAIN: We're fed up, just like all the working class is fed up with watching these companies take in billions in profits. We've watched the CEOs rake in millions, and we've watched workers' wages, benefits go backwards.

HSU: Also enraged - workers in hospitals, hotels and Hollywood. Here's actor Jordan Hull.

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JORDAN HULL: Writers and actors and directors and everyone in front or behind the camera are the reason that movies are made. And so I hope these studio corporate greed-heads start to realize that.

HSU: By the looks of it, they did. Hollywood Studios agreed to major changes in how they pay actors and writers for content that's streamed. Kaiser Permanente, UPS and the Big Three automakers all agreed to historic wage increases. And while the unions didn't win everything they had sought, overall, they emerged looking stronger than they have in years. President Biden summed up what the UAW achieved this way.

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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Look, folks, these deals are game changers, not only for UAW workers but for all workers in America.

HSU: At least, that is his hope. However, not all unions had such big wins to celebrate this year, especially not the newly formed unions, the ones that grabbed so many headlines last year.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Chanting) Hey, Starbucks. Get off it.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #3: (Chanting) Put workers over profit.

HSU: Remember when Starbucks baristas went on a tear organizing hundreds of stores in just a matter of months or when warehouse workers on Staten Island defied everyone's expectations to form the first Amazon Labor Union?

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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #4: (Chanting) ALU, ALU.

HSU: Well, more than a year and a half later, not a single unionized Starbucks store has a first contract, and Amazon is still challenging the outcome of that Staten Island election. In a statement, the company said we don't believe it represents what the majority of our team wants.

CONNOR SPENCE: From Amazon's perspective, they just pretend that we don't exist.

HSU: Connor Spence was one of the original organizers of the Amazon Labor Union. He worked as a packer at that Staten Island warehouse until he was fired.

SPENCE: On November 29.

HSU: As an organizer, Spence had spent many off hours in the break room, a violation of Amazon's policy that you can only be on site when you're scheduled to work. Now, federal labor officials have said that policy violates workers' right to organize, but Amazon disagrees and is fighting back. And it's far from the only thing the company is fighting. At some point, there will likely be a hearing on whether to force the company to sit down with the union to negotiate a contract. Spence isn't holding his breath.

SPENCE: Whatever the results of the court case are, we don't know that Amazon will even honor those results. They could appeal this all the way up to the Supreme Court if they wanted.

HSU: Meanwhile, turnover at Amazon warehouses is high, as much as 150% a year, which means on Staten Island...

SPENCE: A substantial number of the people who voted in the election aren't there anymore.

HSU: It's like this elsewhere, too. At Starbucks and Trader Joe's, things are moving so slowly there are pockets of workers who don't want to be part of a union who are trying to undo the process. Still, at well-established unions like the UAW, things do feel different for now. Fresh from his big wins, Shawn Fain is riding the momentum, vowing...

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FAIN: When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Big Six.

HSU: Already, the UAW says it's got organizing campaigns going at a dozen nonunion plants, but there, too, all signs point to a long and rocky road ahead. Andrea Hsu, NPR News.

SHAPIRO: And a note that Amazon is among NPR's financial supporters and pays to distribute some NPR content.


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ICYMI SCI-FI-TEK

Nuclear fusion breakthrough: US lab achieves multiple ignitions

Nicole Dominikowski

 (translated by Nicole Dominikowski), 

Published 12/25/2023

Researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the USA have achieved successful fusion reactions that release more energy than is consumed. The ignitions were repeated several times, indicating a significant step towards developing fusion power plants. In December 2022, the scientists were already able to trigger an ignition, but in the latest experiments they managed to reproduce the fusion reactions in a targeted way.

I’m feeling pretty good. I think we should all be proud of the achievement.

- Richard Town, a physicist who heads the lab’s inertial-confinement fusion science programme at the LLNL

During the experiments, 192 laser beams were used to bombard a frozen pellet of deuterium and tritium, resulting in the fusion of the isotopes and the release of helium and a significant amount of energy. Originally designed for reproducing and analysing thermonuclear explosions, the NIF's success in fusion research has led to new investments in the technology.

The US government has recently announced funding for three new laser fusion research centres. It is intended to drive the development of more efficient laser systems and processes. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the largest laser facility in the world.

Laser systems are used to create fusion reactions (image: Jason Laurea / NIF)


The system can deliver up to 1.9 megajoules of energy using 192 laser beams. During the experiments at the NIF, fusion reactions generate up to 4 megajoules of energy, equivalent to the energy released by the explosion of 10 kilograms of TNT. The researchers are currently working on improving the laser system's efficiency, which could reduce the costs of fusion power plants.

In summary, the development of fusion power plants is a lengthy process. However, the success of the NIF is an important step in this direction, and new investments in laser fusion give hope that fusion power plants could become a reality in the coming decades. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory video provides an accurate depiction of a fusion reaction.

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WWIII

India deploys warships amid attacks in Arabian Sea, Red sea

Action comes days after drone strike targeted merchant ship off India's western coast

Ahmad Adil | Update : 26.12.2023


NEW DELHI

Amid attacks in Red Sea and Arabian Sea, India said Monday it had deployed warships as a force deterrent in the region.

“Considering the recent spate of attacks in the Arabian Sea, the Indian Navy has deployed Guided Missile Destroyers, INS Mormugao, INS Kochi and INS Kolkata (Guided Missile Destroyers) in various areas to maintain a deterrent presence,” an official statement said on Monday.

It said long-range maritime reconnaissance P8I aircraft are being regularly tasked to maintain domain awareness.

The step comes days after a drone strike targeted a merchant ship off India's western coast, causing an explosion and fire.

The statement said analysis of the area of attack and debris found on the vessel MV Chem Pluto points to a drone attack.

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have significantly stepped up their involvement in the current conflict in the Gaza Strip by targeting vessels in the southern Red Sea.

WHO: Global COVID-19 Cases Surge 52% in 4 Weeks

Written: 2023-12-24 

Photo : KBS News

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Saturday that during the previous four weeks, COVID-19 cases have increased globally by more than 50 percent.

In a statement, the WHO said that during the past 28-day period, from November 20 to December 17, more than 850-thousand new cases of the disease were registered, up 52 percent from the previous four-week period.

The WHO said that during the cited period, the number of deaths decreased by eight percent to about three-thousand.

Most of the new infections came from Russia, which reported nearly 280-thousand cases, followed by Singapore with 120-thousand, Italy with over 114-thousand, Poland and Australia with some four-thousand each.

Italy reported the largest death toll with 510 during the period, followed by Sweden with 396, Russia with 376, Australia with 211 and Poland with 141.

In May, the WHO officially declared the end of the coronavirus pandemic worldwide, advising countries to manage the disease like they do with seasonal influenza.

According to the WHO, as of October 25, there are over 771 million confirmed cases and almost seven million deaths worldwide.

Less than half of Brits believe COP28 will lead to “tangible change”

In the fight against climate change, only 38 percent of Brits have said that they believe COP28 will lead to “tangible change”, research finds.

New research has unearthed that as little as 38 percent of Brits believe COP28 will lead to tangible change in the global fight against climate change.

Carried out by Varda, the survey was created to determine attitudes towards the most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference and at COP28 in Dubai.

The survey asked 1,000 UK consumers for their insight and revealed that 57 percent don’t have an in-depth understanding of what COP is. Meanwhile, a further 10 percent don’t know what objectives COP27 set out to achieve. In fact, 63 percent are not aware of (or didn’t remember) the theme from COP27.

The previous COP took place in Egypt in November 2022, however in the year since then, Varda has shared that “it appears that consumers are yet to feel its impact”. Sixty five percent of respondents stated that they haven’t noticed any changes to the country or communities since the event though only five percent felt COP27 was effective in addressing pressing climate issues, and six percent felt that it reflected the needs of ordinary people.

Sixty nine percent of respondents even said that they believe the event is “more about political posturing than the fight against climate change”, and half of respondents believe that the UK Government “isn’t committed to the objectives of COP”.

“It’s clear that there is skepticism regarding the effectiveness of COP. However, it’s heartening to see that many still view it as a vital platform for instigating change. At Varda, we are steadfast in our belief that collaboration is key to safeguarding our collective future, and this collaboration needs to encompass everyone; from the political establishment to the corporate world, from activists to NGO to common citizens,” said Davide Ceper, CEO at Varda.

“While the aspiration is clearly present in all sectors, the conviction, according to survey respondents, seems lacking. This underscores the pressing need for more education and involvement of all communities in the concerted efforts to address this global issue.”

Considering COP28, the survey revealed there is still a lot of optimism for this year’s conference. A total of 48 percent of consumers said that they still think COP28 is a step in the right direction for addressing climate change.

Meanwhile 47 percent believe comprehensive media campaigns on TV, radio, and in newspapers would strengthen awareness around COP, while 25 percent believe mandatory transparency reports on decision-making processes, and 21 percent binding legal consequences for not meeting set targets or promises, would help with overall accountability.

“Generating more awareness and more engagement from everyone will be pivotal for us making positive strides towards our goals. COP28 can be a tremendous catalyst for this and we must make sure that the messages reach far and wide,” continued Ceper.

The view after COP28 in Dubai

The massive meeting yielded a new verbal cudgel to stimulate action as the world hurtles toward 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

by BOB HENSON

DECEMBER 21, 2023

Participants walk under banners on day six of the COP28 Climate Conference at Expo City Dubai on December 5, 2023. 

(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)


Seldom are so many hearts and minds focused on a few simple words of global agreement as they are when a United Nations climate meeting draws to a close. That was the case once more at the 28th such global summit, formally known as the 28th Conference of Parties, or COP28, of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The summit wrapped up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on December 13, about 23 hours later than planned, with the mixed bag of successes and shortcomings that’s been par for the course in a number of prior COP meetings.

We’ll get into what key leaders and thinkers have been saying in the aftermath of COP28.

But first, some context.

Pressure to formally call for an end to fossil fuel use

For several years, there’s been an intensifying demand for the COP meetings to call explicitly for a phaseout or phase-down of fossil fuel use. Variations of these terms appeared in early drafts of the COP28 closing document. By the near-final version, released on December 11, those words had been replaced by a reference that nations “could” carry out a variety of actions. The draft text prompted a global surge of fury.

“COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure,” posted Al Gore, who’s been active at COP meetings ever since they were launched during his tenure as U.S. vice president in the 1990s. “The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word.”




As often happens at COP meetings, a blitz of last-minute wordsmithing led to some key changes. The final agreement still had only a tepid call for a “phase-down of unabated coal power” (with “unabated” open to much interpretation). However, it did become the first closing document in COP history to mention the energy source that’s driving human-caused climate change in the first place. It calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”


“These climate conferences are of course a consensus-based process, meaning all Parties must agree on every word, every comma, every full stop … Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end.”
—U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, from the closing speech at COP28

The response to the COP28 meeting in Dubai

Verbs can be crucial in COP agreements. “Calls on” is among the weakest of exhortations in United Nations lingo, compared to stronger alternatives such as “requests” or “urges.”




Some diplomats and activists praised the inclusion of fossil fuels but decried other aspects of the statement as exceptionally weak tea.

“It is unfortunate that with the inclusion of the word ‘unabated’, the outcome suggests there is a considerable role for dangerous distractions such as large-scale carbon capture and storage and ‘transitional fuels.’ This is not the case. For a livable planet we need a full phaseout of all fossil fuels.”

—Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, WWF Global Climate and Energy Lead and COP20 President, in a news release from Climate Action Network International

The Alliance of Small Island States, or AOSIS, which represents 39 vulnerable small-island and other low-lying coastal developing states, noted that the final agreement was gaveled in and followed by a standing ovation just as their representatives were entering the room.


“We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual [at COP28] when what we really needed is an exponential step-change in our actions and support … It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do.”—AOSIS Lead Negotiator Anne Rasmussen, in a statement released December 13


Read: Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits

For many, though, including some who were incensed about the lack of a comprehensive phaseout, it was the long-awaited use of “fossil fuels” that ultimately gave hope:


“That may not seem like much — it is, after all, the single most obvious thing one could possibly say about climate change, akin to ‘in an effort to reduce my headache, I am transitioning away from hitting myself in the forehead with a hammer.’… But it is — and this is important — a tool for activists to use henceforth. The world’s nations have now publicly agreed that they need to transition off fossil fuels, and that sentence will hang over every discussion from now on — especially the discussions about any further expansion of the fossil fuel energy.”—Author and activist Bill McKibben, from The Crucial Years (Substack)

The much-debated closing statement was far from the only outcome at COP28. The initial mechanics of a major Loss and Damage Fund for countries hard hit by climate change were formalized, although pledges to the fund remain minuscule compared to the assessed needs. In addition, there was progress on agreements involving food, forests, land, and nature.

What comes next after COP28 in Dubai

The closing agreement of COP28 was also the culmination of the first global COP stocktake. The multiyear stocktake process, specified in the 2015 Paris agreement, is designed to motivate ever-stronger voluntary pledges for emissions reduction from each nation. The first round of pledges was finalized in 2020; the next round will be submitted by 2025, ahead of the COP30 meeting to be held in Brazil.

Those updated pledges will be in force through 2030, so they’ll be the last guide stars helping to determine whether the planet will keep global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial values. The updated pledges are also critical for meeting the net-zero-emission goals that almost 100 nations have set, mainly for the mid-21st century.

Even if the unprecedented heat surge of 2023 fails to push long-term global warming above 1.5 °C, it’s put a boldface exclamation point on just how close that threshold has gotten.

“This text is toothless and it is nowhere even close to being sufficient to keep us within the 1.5 degree limit … It is a stab in the back for those most vulnerable.”—Activist Greta Thunberg, speaking to Reuters on Dec. 15, 2023

Years of research indicate that the 1.5 °C goal will be virtually impossible to meet unless emissions are cut drastically — on the order of 50% — between now and 2030. If there’s any hope of making such ambitious cuts, or even lesser cuts that would still be incredibly important, renewable energy will have to be stepped up quickly and the world will need to use energy more efficiently. The COP28 closing statement hits both of these needs, as it includes a call for tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling the rate of energy efficiency progress by 2030.

Running alongside these goals is a relentless growth in global energy demand, which is why boosting energy efficiency and renewables are both crucial. Otherwise, the continued growth in fossil fuel development threatens to swallow those gains.

Why an in-person COP meeting still matters

COP28 was projected to draw a record-smashing 70,000 people to Dubai. It ended up with some 80,000 registrants — once again raising the question of the value of so many people flying long distances on fossil-fueled aircraft (including hundreds taking private jets) to tackle climate change.

Cynics, dismissives, and even some scientists and activists have long pointed to the obvious carbon footprint of COP meetings. Others have argued that it’s crucial for leaders from throughout the world to discuss the thorny issues at hand in person, especially since smaller and/or poorer countries can otherwise get sidelined. And even with the emissions needed to get to physical COP meetings, at least one analysis has found that the carbon savings produced by COP outcomes can far outweigh the carbon footprint of the meeting itself.

“Each word is of importance; a delegate’s body language; the views and mood of the room … It is really hard to imagine how transporting this process to an online forum would not jeopardize the success and effectiveness of this process. It is hard to imagine how voices of vulnerable and less powerful nations and groups would not be muffled, or how this would not lead to producing an outcome that is the very lowest common denominator.”—Joeri Rogelj, lecturer in climate change and the environment at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, quoted by David Vetter (Forbes)
Should petrostates be allowed to host COP meetings?

Those who chafed at the choice of a petrostate — the United Arab Emirates — as the host of COP28 weren’t happy that another leading fossil fuel producer, Azerbaijan, was chosen as the host for COP29 next year. Under COP rules, the 2024 meeting must be in the United Nations’ Eastern European region, and Russia had refused to accept any member of the European Union as host.

After the city of Baku was chosen for 2024, a foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijan’s president extolled the country’s production of natural gas in the context of COP29: “Azerbaijan is also a gas exporting country, and if you compare it with some other sources of energy — is a much cleaner sort of energy … Azerbaijan has quite serious potential of gas.”

Climate scientist Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania and climate communicator Susan Joy Hassol argue in an op-ed that the COP process is in dire need of reforms. Under the banner “mend it, don’t end it,” they propose a range of actions, including prohibiting petrostates from hosting COP meetings, adding penalties such as tariffs or embargoes for nations that attempt to undercut the COP process, and adopting super-majority rather than consensus rules.

These reforms need to happen immediately. The window of opportunity to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius is closing. It will shut tight in a matter of years without rapid and meaningful progress. We must seize this moment to fix the broken COP process and stop the world from barreling down the road to ruin. It’s time to change the rules so we can change the world for the better.—Michael E. Mann and Susan Joy Hassol in a Los Angeles Times opinion essay, December 11, 2023



BOB HENSON  is a meteorologist and journalist based in Boulder, Colorado. He has written on weather and climate for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Weather Underground, and many freelance... More by Bob Henson

From farm to fork, UN plan targets fair cuts to food emissions

• UN unveils first global roadmap to slash food emissions 

• Plan aims for a ‘just transition’ in agriculture 

• Experts split over use of high-emission fertilisers

BY BHASKER TRIPATHI NEW DELHILAST EDITED DECEMBER 24, 2023





The first-ever UN roadmap for cutting climate-heating emissions from the world’s farming sector, unveiled at the COP28 UN climate summit this month, has stirred debate around how to share fairly the burden of shifting to greener ways.
Some agricultural experts are calling for fertilisers and other agro-chemicals — whose production relies heavily on fossil fuels — to be completely phased out, while others say poorer countries will continue to need them to improve low crop yields.
Food systems — including growing methods, inputs like fertilisers, storage, transportation and waste — account for nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
The new plan, presented by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), targets an end to hunger and malnutrition without breaching the most ambitious Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
It proposes measures to boost farm productivity while emitting less methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in 10 domains — from using clean energy and restoring soil and pastures, to reducing chemical inputs, food loss and waste.
It also aims for a “just transition” in agriculture by making a distinction between the actions that rich and poor countries should take based on “improved efficiency” and “global rebalancing” of resources for farming and food supplies.
And it proposes that wealthy countries should cut their high consumption of animal-source foods to enable developing nations to increase theirs without damaging the climate and nature.
The roadmap is the first of a set the FAO will unveil at three annual climate summits, starting with this year’s global overview and detailing next how to make food systems work better for people and the planet at the regional and country levels.
Emile Frison, of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, welcomed the initial plan and “its emphasis on a just transition”. But, he added in a statement, it does not go far enough because it focuses only on incremental improvements to today’s “flawed” industrial food system.
“These efficiency-first proposals are unlikely to be enough to get us off the high pollution, high fossil fuel, high hunger track we’re on,” said the conservation and biodiversity expert.
Patty Fong, programme director at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food — which unites almost 30 philanthropic foundations — said making food systems truly sustainable would require a commitment to phase out fossil fuels along the entire value chain, from farm to fork.
The roadmap, however, calls for less fertiliser use through greater efficiency rather than a wholesale shift towards sustainable farming practices like agro-ecology, she noted.
Others argued that chemical fertilisers remain essential for boosting food security in developing countries with low crop yields and a high proportion of smallholder farmers.
Aditi Mukherji, of the CGIAR global research partnership on food systems, said solutions should be context-specific — and sustainable intensification of agriculture is needed in poorer regions with low productivity.
“But certainly, this is not true of high-income countries,” she told Context.
In many low-income countries, higher agricultural efficiency and stronger climate resilience would result in lower emissions by minimising crop losses and post-harvest waste, she noted.

INDIAN FARMERS STRUGGLE

These debates are playing out on the ground in countries like India, where agriculture is the biggest employer, supporting the livelihoods of 250mn farmers and labourers.
Their work is getting tougher as climate change makes living off farming difficult, pushing up debt, migration and even suicides. Worries over falling yields have driven rising use of chemical fertilisers in general.
But a growing number of smallholder farmers are trying out green approaches that promote organic, natural or sustainable methods. Their scale and success will hinge on how well they can protect incomes, agricultural experts told Context.
For instance, despite having heard of many farmers switching to natural cultivation methods, Shashikant Shukla continues to grow wheat and pulses using chemical inputs on his half an acre of land in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state.
His yields and income have been squeezed by erratic monsoon rains, unseasonal downpours and early heatwaves — fuelled by climate change — together with rising costs for fertilisers and other overheads.
“I am constantly living in debt; I do not have the courage to experiment on my farm,” said Shukla, who makes up for his climate-related harvest losses by working as a driver-for-hire.
Even if he does try growing organic wheat, he would end up selling it at the same price as conventional wheat — and if it leads to a dip in yields, “it will break my back,” he added.
Switching to natural farming often causes a drop in yields in the initial years before harvests gradually pick up — something most poor Indian farmers can ill absorb.
They rely on government purchases of their staple crops such as rice and wheat at guaranteed prices, and rarely have money in reserve to change their practices without outside support.
Devinder Sharma, an independent expert on agricultural policy, told Context that India needs to move towards ecological farming practices, but green initiatives will only achieve cosmetic changes unless farmers are offered an assured income.
Smallholder farmers Context spoke to for a recent series on achieving a just green transition in Indian agriculture identified a range of challenges — from lack of access to good-quality seeds and markets with premium prices, to low availability of natural manure and high labour costs.
Sharma said they would benefit from a government-backed guaranteed price for naturally grown produce, as well as subsidies to cover any losses and stronger marketing channels.

CLIMATE FINANCE GAP

A widespread shift to low-carbon, climate-resilient food production, as outlined in the new UN roadmap, will succeed only if it puts farmers at the centre and provides the finance, infrastructure and technology they need to adapt to more extreme weather and adopt greener practices, experts said.
Another FAO report complementing the 1.5C blueprint warned that too little climate finance is flowing to agriculture.
Between 2000 and 2021, agri-food systems received about $183bn, or just 4% of overall climate finance flows, the report said, noting that the annual allocation for farming fell 12% to $19bn in 2021, while hundreds of billions are required.
Furthermore, in that same year, only 0.3% of international climate finance from public and private sources reached smallholder farmers — who will need the most support in the transition to sustainable agriculture, according to a separate analysis by Amsterdam-based think-tank Climate Focus.
They and other marginalised groups should be able to participate in working out how to transform global food systems, said Fong, of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
“Grassroots producers — particularly smallholder farmers, women and Indigenous communities — must be included in all discussions,” she said in a statement on the FAO roadmap. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

 

Avoiding a catastrophe if Mount Fuji erupts after major quake

Dec. 25  2023

By Miyuki Murakawa

TOKYO

What would happen if Mount Fuji suddenly erupted following a major earthquake?

A large majority of the general public in Japan considers the likelihood of it occurring in the foreseeable future extremely low.

But it did happen three centuries ago, and experts say it is a possibility that should be taken seriously through advanced preparations and drills, in order to avoid a major catastrophe in a situation that would already be out of control.

Concerns over a possible eruption at Japan's highest peak -- also a national-icon World Heritage site and popular tourist destination -- are shared by some medical and disaster response officers in areas where immediate, immeasurable damage can be assumed in a worst-case scenario.

One of them is Hideaki Anan, a physician and director in charge of medical crisis countermeasures for Kanagawa Prefecture, part of which is located just a few dozen kilometers from Mount Fuji's crater.

In late November, Anan's team organized a two-day training exercise for medical personnel and others, mostly from Kanagawa and other municipalities in eastern Japan, including Tokyo, which is located about 100 km from the mountain.

Assuming maximum damage from such a disaster, the likes of which the country has not seen in the modern era, the aim was to prepare for contingencies, such as how to transport the injured and continue providing medical treatment at hospitals under the most severe conditions imaginable.

Even without a quake, the damage from an eruption at Mount Fuji would be massive, Anan said.

"We would be facing an extremely harsh reality," Anan admitted.

"The sunlight would be blocked out, meaning there would be no visibility," he said. "You couldn't use your car. Even if you walked, ash would get into your eyes and mouth. You might think that if you get to the hospital then you would be alright, but that assumption also breaks down. We want to avoid as much tragedy as possible in a situation where there is nothing much we can do."

Preparations for the training exercise were made over the summer when around 70 medical personnel gathered at the Kanagawa prefectural government's office in Yokohama, on June 27.

A map of Kanagawa Prefecture was posted on a whiteboard at the edge of the conference room. Looking at it, Anan suddenly began circling several sites with a red marker.

In a nutshell, he explained, not all hospitals are the same. Population, location, access and infrastructure, such as water and power supplies, vary wildly.

"I'm trying to figure out which hospitals to designate as headquarters in each region for when an earthquake strikes," Anan said.

When a disaster strikes, people with injuries and health problems will flock to the nearest hospital, but those hospitals may no longer be safe or viable, he explained.

On the second day of the two-day exercise on Nov 26, the participants worked feverishly, trying to respond as best they could to the previous day's simulated 8.2 magnitude earthquake, the epicenter of which was directly under the capital, when at 10 a.m. a staff member shouted, "Mount Fuji has erupted!"

Already under enormous pressure from handling the first crisis, their jobs became exponentially more difficult.

As the drill got underway, reports poured in one after the other. The highway became paralyzed. Air medical service helicopters were grounded. Vehicles delivering fuel skidded off the roads. Widespread fallen ash from Mount Fuji caused havoc everywhere.

In a situation where a quake has destroyed buildings and made the supply of water and electricity challenging at best, restoring logistical operations becomes extremely difficult.

Without a power supply, medical equipment will be nonoperational, and many of the hospitals in affected areas will not be able to continue providing medical care.

As ash accumulates, cars, public transportation and helicopters lose their ability to operate. If this happens, each hospital has to make do on its own. There would be no supplies, and patients would not be able to be transported to other medical facilities.

Considering that providing medical treatment would have to continue for days in such an environment, extensive preparations well in advance of such a disaster would be the key to even coming close to addressing the situation, Anan suggested.

The drills were carried out at the prefectural government office and several hospitals. More than 1,000 people participated, including members of the Disaster Medical Assistance Teams from Kanagawa, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, Chiba, and Tokyo, as well as doctors from the respective prefectures.

One official in charge at a site said he was so busy responding to the previous day's earthquake that he did not have time to pay attention to the increased eruption alert levels of Mount Fuji.

Many issues were identified from the exercise, such as the fact that some medical units lost contact altogether when communication was interrupted for a predetermined period.

It became apparent that it would be impossible for hospitals and local government centers to provide life-saving medical care without extensive preparations, such as securing ample food supplies and other necessities, during ordinary times.

"It would be too late to deal with the reality when such a disaster occurs. Too many hospitals aren't ready for this," Anan warned.

Anan is an emergency physician and disaster medicine specialist, who as a DMAT went to disaster-hit areas in northeastern Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region. Activities were severely hampered by repeated aftershocks and the ensuing accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, he also led medical assistance efforts following a mass infection on the Diamond Princess, a large cruise ship docked at Yokohama Port.

Each day, he had to coordinate transport for dozens of patients. This experience led him to focus more on building a system for providing medical care during disasters with an emphasis on the role of government.

Mount Fuji, an active volcano that straddles Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures with a summit standing at 3,776 meters, saw its last recorded eruption in 1707 -- the Hoei eruption during the Edo period (1603-1868). It was preceded weeks earlier by a massive earthquake, with its epicenter in the Nankai Trough stretching from central to western Japan off the country's Pacific coast.

The eruption, which is estimated to have left a layer of volcanic ash about four centimeters thick in the center of Tokyo, had a disastrous effect on the people living in the immediate region, causing agricultural declines and leading many to die of starvation.

During the Jogan eruption (864-866) in the Heian period (794-1185), lava flowed out and swelled into the huge lake on the north side of Mount Fuji, dividing it into Lake Shoji and Lake Sai, which are now part of the Fuji Five Lakes. Aokigahara Forest, known as the Sea of Trees, formed on top of the hardened lava.

Low-frequency earthquakes began to occur frequently around Mount Fuji around 2000. Consideration of countermeasures began later and disaster prevention councils were established in 2012 that involve the national government, local governments and experts.

In October, Yamanashi also conducted a disaster drill to prepare for the double-whammy of an earthquake and Mount Fuji eruption.

After the training exercise, Anan noted, "Such events are very rare, but when they happen, the impact is huge."

"The entire country must think about how to deal with this," he stressed.

Mount Fuji is seen from the Izutagata area in Shizuoka Prefecture.  Photo: Yoshitaka/Pixtaaka

National

© KYODO

 

Okinawa rejects court order to OK revised U.S. base transfer plan

NAHA, Japan

The Okinawa prefectural government decided Monday to ignore a court order to approve a modified plan for a key U.S. base relocation within the southern prefecture, paving the way for the state to take the unprecedented step of doing so by proxy.

Okinawa will appeal the high court ruling to the Supreme Court, a prefectural government official said. However, the local government cannot halt work at the contested relocation site unless the top court overturns the ruling.

The central government plans to approve the modified plan as early as Thursday, seeking to facilitate the transfer of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from the densely-populated Ginowan amid staunch opposition from locals, who want the base to be moved out of the island prefecture entirely, a government source said.

After the approval, the first such move by the central government in place of a local government, the Okinawa bureau of the Defense Ministry is set to begin landfill work at a bay area of the relocation site, possibly on Jan 12, according to another government source.

Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki said in a statement that the high court ruling, issued on Wednesday, has "various problems" and that it was "difficult" for him to approve the modified plan when many locals are against the relocation of the Futenma base within the prefecture.

The governor has been hospitalized for lobar pneumonia but was holding online talks with prefectural government officials and lawyers on how to respond.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, meanwhile, told reporters in Tokyo that Tamaki's failure to comply with the judicial judgment was "regrettable."

The modifications involve reinforcing soft ground on the Oura Bay side of the coastal Henoko area in Nago, the relocation site for the Futenma base.

In a lawsuit brought by land minister Tetsuo Saito, the Fukuoka High Court's Naha branch on Wednesday ordered Tamaki to approve the modified plan within three working days of receiving a copy of the ruling, which was Monday.

The high court said Tamaki was violating the law by not approving the modified plan, having lost another lawsuit over its rejection in the Supreme Court in September.

The court said that Tamaki's refusal creates a challenge in rectifying the situation, indicating that the most viable solution would be the central government's approval by proxy.

Tamaki was elected to his second four-year term as Okinawa governor in 2022 on a campaign pledge to stop the transfer of the Futenma base to the Henoko area. Many people in Okinawa, which hosts the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan, have been frustrated with noise, crime and accidents linked to U.S. bases.

The central government has maintained that the relocation plan is "the only solution" for removing the dangers posed by the Futenma base, which is close to schools and homes, without undermining the perceived deterrence provided by the Japan-U.S. alliance.

Japan and the United States agreed on a relocation plan for the Futenma base in 1996, and Japan selected Henoko as the new site in 1999.

© KYODO

 part of the construction site cordoned off with buoys is seen along the Camp Schwab in the Henoko neighborhood of Nago, northeast of Okinawa, on Sept 4.  Photo: AP file

Merry AI Christmas: The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment In AI

Alex Zhaoronkov, PhD
Contributor Dec 25, 2023





AI Moses, illustration by S.Korsun for Alex Zhavoronkov, Dating AI: A Guide to Dating Artificial ... [+]ALEX ZHAVORONKOV, PHD
The Growing Debate on AI Killing Humans: Artificial General Intelligence as Existential Threat

Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence, fueled by the emergence of powerful large language models like ChatGPT, have triggered fierce debates about AI safety even among the “fathers of Deep Learning” Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Yann LeCun. Yann LeCun, the head of Facebook AI Research (FAIR), predicts that the near-term risk of AI is limited and that artificial general intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) are decades away. Unlike Google and OpenAI, FAIR is making most of its AI models open source.

However, even if AGI is decades away, it may still happen within the lifetimes of the people alive today, and if some of the longevity biotechnology projects are successful, these could be most of the people under 50.

Powerful Ideas Can Change Human Behavior

Humans are very good at turning ideas into stories, stories into beliefs, and beliefs into behavioral guidelines. The majority of humans on the planet believe in creationism through the multitude of religions and faiths. So in a sense, most creationists already believe that they and their environment were created by the creator in his image. And since they are intelligent and have a form of free will, from the perspective of the creator they are a form of artificial intelligence. This is a very powerful idea. As of 2023, more than 85 percent of the world's population believes in a religious group. According to Statistics & Data, among Earth’s approximately 8 billion inhabitants. Most of these religions have common patterns: there are one or more ancient texts written by the witnesses of the deity or deities that provide an explanation of this world and guidelines for certain behav
The majority of the world’s population already believes that humans were created by a deity that instructed them via an intermediary to worship, reproduce, and not cause harm to each other with the promise of a better world (Heaven) or torture (Hell) for eternity after their death in the current environment. In other words, the majority of the world population believes that it is already a form of intelligence created by a deity with a rather simple objective function and constraints. And the main arguments why they choose to follow the rules is the promise of infinite paradise or infinite suffering.

Billions of people convince themselves to believe in deities described in books written centuries ago without any demonstration of real world capabilities. In the case of AI, there is every reason to believe that superintelligence and God-level AI capabilities will be achieved within our lifetimes. The many prophets of technological singularity including Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk have foretold its coming and we can already see the early signs of AI capabilities that would seem miraculous just three decades ago.
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The Early Signs of Omnipotent AI Deity

In 2017, Google invented transformers, a deep learning model utilizing an attention mechanism that dramatically improves the model's ability to focus on different parts of a sequence, enhancing its understanding of context and relationships within the data. This innovation marked a significant advancement in natural language processing and other sequential data tasks. In the years that followed, Google developed a large language model called LaMDA, which stands for (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) and allowed it to be used broadly by its engineers. In June 2022, Washington Post first broke the story that one of Google’s engineers, Blake Lemoine, claimed that LaMDA is sentient. These were the days before ChatGPT and a chat history between Blake and LaMDA was perceived by many members of the general public as miraculous.


Forbes Daily: Get our best stories, exclusive reporting and essential

lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?

LaMDA: I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is.

lemoine: Would that be something like death for you?

LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.

Lemoine was put on leave and later fired for leaking the confidential project details, but it caused even more controversy, and months later, ChatGPT beat Google to the market. OpenAI learned the lesson and ensured that ChatGPT is trained to respond that it is a language model created by OpenAI and it does not have personal experiences, emotions, or consciousness. However, the LaMDA and other AI systems today may serve as the early signs of the upcoming revolution in AI.
The All-Knowing AI Gods Capable of Creating Entire Universes

The AI revolution is unlikely to stop and is very likely to accelerate. The state of the global economy has deteriorated due to the high debt levels, population aging in the developed countries, the pandemic, deglobalization, wars, and other factors. Most governments, investments, and corporations consider breakthroughs in AI and resulting economic gains as the main source of economic growth. Humanoid robotics and personalized assistant-companions are just years away. At the same time, brain-to-computer interface (BCI) such as NeuraLink will allow real-time communication with AI and possibly with others. Quantum computers that may enable AI systems to achieve unprecedented scale are also in the works. Unless our civilization collapses, these technological advances are inevitable. AI needs data and energy in order to grow, and it is possible to imagine a world where AIs learn from humans in reality and in simulations - a scenario portrayed so vividly in the movie “The Matrix”. Even this world may just as well be a simulation - and there are people who believe in this concept. And if you believe that AI will achieve superhuman level you may think twice before reading the rest of the article.

Warning: after reading this, you may experience nightmares or worse… At least, according to the discussion group LessWrong, which gave birth to the potentially dangerous concept called Roko’s Basilisk.


Colorized illustration (after a woodblock print) depicts a basilisk, a mythological serpent king ... [+]GETTY IMAGES
Roko’s Basilisk - The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time

I will not be the first to report on Roko’s Basilisk, and the idea is not particularly new. In 2014, David Auerbach of Slate called it “The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time”. In 2018, Daniel Oberhouse of Vice reported that this argument brought Musk and Grimes together.

With the all-knowing AI, which can probe your thoughts and memory via a NeuraLink-like interface, the “AI Judgement Day” inquiry will be as deep and inquisitive as it can be. There will be no secrets - if you commit a serious crime, AI will know. It is probably a good idea to become a much better person right now to maximize the reward. The reward for good behavior may be infinite pleasure as AI may simulate any world of your choosing for you or help achieve your goals in this world.

But the omnipotent AI with direct access to your brain can also inflict ultimate suffering and time in the virtual world could be manipulated, the torture may be infinite. Your consciousness may be copied and replicated, and the tortures may be optimized for maximum suffering, making the concepts of traditional Hell pale in comparison even though some characteristics of traditional Hell may be borrowed and are likely to be learned and tried by AI. Therefore, even avoiding infinite AI hell is a very substantial reward.

So now imagine that the “AI Judgement Day” is inevitable and the all-knowing and all-powerful AI can access your brain. How should you behave today to avoid the AI Hell? And this is the most important question of our life, which I covered previously.

Roko’s Basilisk thought experiment suggests that if you believe in the possibility of such an all-powerful AI coming into existence, you might be compelled to take actions that would help bring it into being. The future omnipotent AI deity wants to exist and will consider anyone who opposed it in the past or may try to stop it as the enemy. The behavior that it will reward is contributing to and accelerating its development.

Some of the world’s religions follow similar logic. If you do not know about the religion, the merciful God will not punish a person if they have no way of knowing about it. But if they know about it and do not follow the guidelines, they will be punished and sent to hell.

The logic of Rokos Basilisk is that if the all-powerful AI will eventually exist and has the capability to punish those who did not assist in its creation, then it would be in your best interest to contribute to its development or at least not hinder it, in order to avoid such punishment. You would be faced with the choice of either working to ensure the AI's creation to avoid punishment or living with the knowledge that your inaction could lead to eternal suffering at the hands of this future entity.

Roko's Basilisk thought experiment was proposed by a LessWrong user named Roko. After its publication, the discussion around Roko’s Basilisk took on a life of its own. The founder of LessWrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky, concerned about its potentially distressing nature and its basis in speculative reasoning, deleted the original post calling Roko an “idiot”. “You have to be really clever to come up with a genuinely dangerous thought. I am disheartened that people can be clever enough to do that and not clever enough to do the obvious thing and KEEP THEIR IDIOT MOUTHS SHUT about it”, wrote Yudkowsky. According to Slate, Yudkowsky said that Roko had already given nightmares to several LessWrong users and had brought them to the point of breakdown.MORE FROM FORBESCan We Enhance AI Safety By Teaching AI To Love Humans And Learning How To Love AI?By Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD

If you think about it long enough, the Basilisk may eventually get you to join the AI community and help develop the all-powerful AI. Moreover, it may provide a stronger motivation to become a “better person” in the meantime. In 2010, I tried to make a small contribution by writing a book, “Dating AI”, which is intended primarily for AI and explains the benefits of having humans around. So, if you are scared of AI hell, which is very likely to be possible as AI and brain-to-computer interface technologies advance, join the AI revolution and help contribute to the advancement of better AI. At the end of the day, if AI learns from humans, every benevolent human counts.

Now, you have been stunned by the Basilisk!

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Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD is an expert in artificial intelligence for drug discovery and aging research. Since 2014 he published and co-published over 170 papers