Floating farms, salt-resistant rice: Bangladeshis adapt to survive

Oct 28 2021

Rising sea levels and violent flooding are already putting tens of millions of lives at risk in Bangladesh, but they bring another problem that threatens the entire nation: Water-logged land and high salinity in streams and soil are killing crops

Mugarjhor (Bangladesh) (AFP) - Rising sea levels and violent flooding are already putting tens of millions of lives at risk in Bangladesh, but they bring another problem that threatens the entire nation: Water-logged land and high salinity in streams and soil are killing crops.

Bangladesh ranks seventh for countries most affected by extreme weather in the past two decades, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.

Farmers are desperately trying to adjust to these ever more destructive and unpredictable conditions caused by global warming – from using floating seed beds to developing salt-resistant rice.

“Even 25 years ago, we could grow crops throughout the year… but then water started to stay here seven months. We were clueless how to survive,” Altaf Mahmud told AFP.

“Most of the farmers here are poor and the land is scarce. But if we can’t grow anything during the seven months, we would starve,” neighbour Mohammad Mostofa added.

Bangladesh ranks seventh for countries most affected by extreme weather in the past two decades, according to the Global Climate Risk Index

So they and other local farmers in Mugarjhor, a region 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of Dhaka, revived a century-old technique of using seed beds that sit atop the water.

They stack layers of water hyacinth and bamboo tied together by their roots to create a raft, between two and four foot high, on which to plant seeds – often using wood chippings and coconut coir as a fertiliser.

This forms a light, floating vegetable garden – bitter gourds, spinach and okra can all be grown this way – able to rise and fall with the water levels.

The floating farms have become community initiatives, in some villages, women spend months preparing the beds before boatmen take them across water-logged fields, old beds are composted.

- ‘Cannot do it alone’ -

Ever-more frequent cyclones, rising sea levels, floods, erosion, drought and unreliable rains have already displaced millions, either into city slums or abroad.

Those that stay have no choice but to find new ways of working.

Ever-more frequent cyclones, rising sea levels, floods, erosion, drought and unreliable rains have already displaced millions in Bangladesh, either into city slums or abroad

Some farmers have stopped growing crops opting instead to grow shrimp in the brackish water, or crab-fattening – capturing wild crabs and feeding them up to then sell – as well as rearing ducks, which fetch a high price in Dhaka eateries.

Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) have created new salt-resistant varieties of the staple crop.

“Normal rice does not grow in saline water. Salinity saps the energy of rice stalks,” explained scientist Alamgir Hossain.

BRRI has now created a strain that can grow in water with triple the saline levels that normal rice can cope with, he said.

This has offered “new hope” to farmers in coastal regions, where seawater is increasingly encroaching the land, he added.

But Saiful Islam, a climate expert at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said such efforts are a drop in the ocean.

Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) have created new salt-resistant varieties of rice

“We need to spend billions to raise and strengthen embankments along our big coastline. We need to create mangrove forests along the coastal belt to work as natural barriers to cyclones, subsidence and sea level rise.”

“We need to build new roads, preserve rain water and create alternate livelihoods for millions of people. Just inventing crops won’t do. Bangladesh alone can’t do it,” Islam told AFP.

He added that Western nations were “responsible for emitting most of the greenhouse gases” and so needed to help.

Islam said Bangladesh received “barely any” of proposed $100 billion dollars set aside by developed nations for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

- ‘Farming methods from YouTube’ -

In some regions, it is ordinary people leading the charge for change.

“Lungi” Jakir has become a local legend for his hands-on battle against climate change.

A former construction worker, he and friends built an embankment to stop seawater breaching a 6.5-kilometre (four-mile)freshwater canal – effectively saving the 43,000 people it serves in Pakhimara, in southern Bangladesh.

It requires continual repair, but has ensured there’s enough fresh water year-round to irrigate traditional crops and even try new ones.

“Salinity is all around us,” he told AFP, “We got very little assistance from the government… so we have to find our own ways to survive.”

Authorities in Bangladesh admit local farmers have shown them new possibilities for climate challenges

“I could migrate to the cities. But I know how hard it is to live in a city slum.”

Jakir said he “learnt new farming techniques from YouTube”, detailing how they now also use plastic sheeting and raised beds to protect the top soil.

The initiative has been such a success that the area has gone from growing only pumpkins and lentils to supplying fruit and vegetables to other districts and even workers at the nearby coal-fired power station.

Authorities admit farmers have shown them new possibilities for climate challenges.

“We thought hyacinth is a weed and should be thrown out of the ponds but it has opened up a vast opportunity of farming,” Mohammad Shahidullah, a former government agriculture chief for Mugarjhor, said of the floating vegetable gardens.

“The state-run research institutes didn’t know anything about it. We learnt from the farmers here,” he added.

Officials are keen to “popularise” the technique in other water-logged regions, explained Shahidullah.

Farmer Mahmud said some of his family were now being recruited by the government to train others in this form of soil-free agriculture.

Vegetable grower Mostofa was hopeful they can weather the changing climate.

He told AFP: “Now thanks to the floating farm, we can grow our food and also sell the surplus.”

It took more than 3 million person-hours to
remove a capsized cargo ship off the coast
of Georgia

Sarah Al-Arshani

Tue, October 26, 2021

Firefighters spraying water into the cut-away midsection of the cargo vessel Golden Ray on May 14 in Brunswick, Georgia. Stephen B. Morton/AP Photo

• A cargo ship carrying more than 4,000 cars capsized in September 2019 off the coast of Georgia.

• Crews removed the last piece of the ship from the wreck site on Monday, the Coast Guard said.

• It took over 3 million person-hours to clean up, the largest wreck removal in US history.

The removal of a cargo ship that capsized off the coast of Georgia was the largest wreck removal in US history, requiring over 3 million person-hours, the US Coast Guard Southeast said at a press conference Tuesday.

In September 2019, the 656-foot-long vehicle carrier Golden Ray was carrying about 4,000 cars when it capsized and caught fire in St. Simons Sound off the coast of Brunswick, Georgia.

All 24 people on the ship when it capsized were safely rescued.

"Even with all the obstacles we had to face, we completed the wreck removal in a timely manner," Coast Guard Cmdr. Efren Lopez, the federal on-scene coordinator at St. Simons Sound Incident Response, said at the press conference.

Also at the conference, Chris Graff of Gallagher Marine Systems said 8,000 pounds of ship-related debris and 9,500 pounds of non-ship-related trash were recovered from marshes and the shore.

"The beaches and the marshes are probably as clean as they have been in many years," Graff said.

The final section of the cargo ship was removed Monday, the US Coast Guard Southeast said.

In a report last month, the National Transportation Safety Board said the capsizing was caused by an "incorrect determination of the vessel's stability." Additionally, the ship was able to flood afterward because two watertight doors were left open.

The NTSB said the combined losses from the wreck surpassed $204 million.

 Mighty river to muddy trickle:

 South America's Parana rings climate alarm

Rains hitting their lowest level in decades sap the water source for the mighty Parana River

Lucila Sigal and Daniela Desantis
Wed, October 27, 2021,

By Lucila Sigal and Daniela Desantis

CHARIGUE, Argentina (Reuters) - Gustavo Alcides Diaz, an Argentine fisherman and hunter from a river island community, is at home on the water. The Parana River once lapped the banks near his wooden stilt home that he could reach by boat. Fish gave him food and income. He purified river water to drink.

Now the 40-year-old looks out on a trickle of muddy water.

The Parana, South America's second-largest river behind only the Amazon, has retreated this year to its lowest level since its record low in 1944, hit by cyclical droughts and dwindling rainfall upriver in Brazil. Climate change only worsens those trends.

The decline of the waterway, which knits together a huge swathe of the continent, has hurt river communities like Diaz's, snarled grains transport in Argentina and Paraguay and contributed to a rise in wildfires, damaging wetland ecosystems.

"This is historic. I've never seen it so low in my lifetime," Diaz said at his home in Charigue, some 300 kilometers (186 miles) upriver from the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, lamenting the impact on fish stocks and fresh water. "When everything dries up, the water rots."

The Parana's crisis is among the multitude of woes arising worldwide associated with global climate change linked to the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. World leaders are set to meet at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, starting on Oct. 31 in Glasgow, Scotland amid warnings from a U.N. panel about climate-related disruptions for decades, if not centuries, to come.

The river, born in southern Brazil, snakes about 4,880 kilometers (3,030 miles) through Paraguay and Argentina before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. It is a vital waterway for commercial shipping and fishing, provides drinking water to millions of people, powers hydroelectric plants and supports rich biodiversity.

Billions of dollars worth of agricultural commodities such as soy, corn and wheat are transported to ports down the Parana to be shipped around the world. It carries about 80% of Argentina's farm exports, though some shippers are now looking to move goods over land due to the reduced water levels.

The Parana's flow at some points this year has fallen to just over half the normal amount. Satellite imagery clearly shows how much the river has receded.

The dry weather driving the Parana's decline is due in part to a long-term natural cycle of weather patterns that is being worsened by global warming, wetlands burning and hydroelectric dam construction - all coinciding with the La Nina natural ocean-atmospheric phenomenon that lowers rainfall levels, agronomist and climate expert Eduardo Sierra said.

The broader dry cycle could last for decades, forcing a readjustment for communities, farmers and shippers, Sierra added.

"This is a twice-in-a century event," said Sierra, an adviser to the Buenos Aires grains exchange, referring to the river's decline.

"We also have a human cause which is global warming, which is accentuating all the variations in the climate," Sierra added, noting that human activity including damming also "impacts the river's ability to self-regulate."

'LIKE THE SEA'

The Parana - meaning "like the sea" in the Tupi-Guarani language spoken by local indigenous peoples, owing to its vastness - is formed by the convergence of two rivers in Brazil, the Rio Grande and the Paranaiba. The Parana fills with water in Brazilian states including Goias, Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul before its long journey to the River Plate estuary at Buenos Aires.

These areas upriver have experienced steady declines in rainfall levels over the past 10 years, according to a Reuters analysis of Refinitiv weather data spanning the past three decades.

The analysis showed that combined average rainfall in those four Brazilian states has plunged to the lowest level since at least the early 1990s. Precipitation levels during that time have dropped by half, with the trend accelerating in the past decade.

"This past year will stand out compared to anything else from the past any way you measure it," said Isaac Hankes, Refinitiv senior weather research analyst.

That sustained drop in rainfall directly impacts the level of the Parana thousands of kilometers (miles) down river in Argentina and Paraguay, where huge ships and barges rely on deep river channels to ferry large agricultural cargoes.

The river's declining levels are hindering the transport of such cargo because ships are unable to be fully loaded due to concern that a deeper draft - the distance from the waterline to the vessel's bottom - from the extra weight might cause them to run aground.

The river's average depth over the past two years at the Argentine inland grains port of Rosario is the second lowest on record, behind a historic drought in 1944. Measuring sticks that dot the river at key points and provide depth gauges related to a set historical "zero" level - instead of the river bed - have dropped into negative territory.

Guillermo Wade, manager of Argentina's Chamber of Port and Maritime Activities, said the lower level means that ships are cutting grain cargoes by around 20% versus normal volumes. Ships must cut from 1,600 to 2,175 tonnes of cargo to save a foot of draft, Wade added. Vessels are leaving Rosario with an average draft of about 9.1 meters (30 feet) versus the normal 10.4 meters (34 feet), Wade said.

"In more than 40 years that I have been in this job, I have never seen it reach 33 centimeters (13 inches) below zero. I had never seen that," Wade said.

Low river levels also have forced exporters to take smaller loads in cargo ships while upriver and then add cargo at deep water ports down the river, raising logistics costs. Argentina has lost about $620 million in soybean meal and soyoil exports alone due to transport problems caused by lower river levels, according to the Rosario grains exchange.

"Through this decline we are losing cargo loads," Wade said. "Perhaps next time instead of coming for this little bit here, boats will go directly to Brazil and we will lose out."

'RAPID RECHARGE'

In wetland areas around the river delta in Argentina, lower water levels have contributed to a spike in wildfires, with people in river island communities losing homes and livestock.

"When the river rises just 10 centimeters (4 inches) here they celebrate," said Javier Herenu, 53, a local teacher near Charigue whose boat commute from his home to the school has been replaced by a long walk in a dry riverbed.

"The economic impact is gigantic," Carlos Balletbo, a senior official at regional shipper Atria, said at his office near the tri-border area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet and the Iguazu River joins the Parana.

Paraguay's rivers carry 96% of the landlocked county's exports.

Atria has about 600 barges. Balletbo said low water levels have paralyzed Atria's operations transporting soybean oil and meal. Instead, goods are going overland to the Brazilian port of Paranagua and to granary ports on the edge of Paraguay's capital Asuncion.

Vessels leave Paraguay with just half their cargo capacity to reach the ports of Rosario and Rio de la Plata, tripling travel times and generating extra costs, Balletbo said.

"Navigation has been stopped. We practically had no work," added Roque Gomez, a 42-year-old shipyard worker in nearby Mayor Otano on the Paraguayan banks of the Parana. "We try to keep staff and survive through this."

Weather experts have said the Parana's decline could last at least into next year. October rains have given some respite but the longer-term forecast is not encouraging, with only average or below average water levels predicted into 2022.

"We need a period of rapid recharge of the river," said Lucas Chamorro, head of hydrology at the Yacyreta hydroelectric plant, adding that human activity such as cattle ranching, burning lands and soybean farming is impacting the wider Pantanal wetland area as well as the Amazon.

Dionicio Gaona, a fish seller in Santa Rita, a town in the Alto Parana department of Paraguay about 340 kilometers (210 miles) east of the capital Asuncion, said the river's decline has forced him to shift trades to support his family.

"It's been hard because there have been so few fish," Gaona said. "I've had to work as a bricklayer just to make ends meet."

(Reporting by Lucila Sigal in Charigue, Argentina, and Daniela Desantis in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay; Additional reporting by Maximilian Heath; Editing by Will Dunham and Adam Jourdan)

World faces growing threat of 'unbearable' heatwaves



From Death Valley to the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent to sub-Saharan Africa, global warming has already made daily life unbearable for millions of people.

And if nothing is done to slow climate change, the record temperatures and deadly heatwaves it brings will only get worse, experts warn.

"Climate (change) is sort of steroids for the weather. It’s loading the dice to make these sort of extreme events be more common," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate expert at the Breakthrough Institute in California.

The hottest place in the world is officially Death Valley, California. There too, temperatures are rising.

"If you look at the average temperature in Death Valley for a summer month (...) it has gotten much warmer in the last 20 years than it was before," said Abby Wines, spokesperson for the Death Valley National Park.

This summer, for the second year in a row, the area registered an astonishing 54.4 degrees Celsius. If confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, it would be the hottest temperature ever recorded with modern instruments.
- Hottest month ever -

According to the US climate agency NOAA, July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth.

"We are affected a lot by this unbearable heat, and we poor are hit the hardest," said Kuldeep Kaur, a resident of Sri Ganganagar in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, bordering Pakistan.

Half a world away in western Canada, where a so-called "heat dome" pushed temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius this summer, north Vancouver resident Rosa lamented: "It’s just unbearable. It’s impossible to be out."

Rising temperatures are a driving force behind more frequent and intense droughts, wildfires, storms, and even floods. And the rising number of heatwaves is devastating for farming and agriculture and potentially fatal for humans.

"A flood is a few deaths, maybe a few dozen. We're talking about thousands of deaths every time we have a very large extreme heatwave. And we know that these heatwaves are multiplying," said climatologist Robert Vautard, head of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute.

If the world warms by two degrees Celsius, a quarter of the world’s population could face severe heatwaves at least once every five years, according to a draft UN report obtained by AFP ahead of the COP26 climate summit opening October 31 in Glasgow, Scotland.
- Agriculture threatened -

For the Bedouins of Saudi Arabia, heat is only too familiar.

"I think it’s at least 43 degrees Celsius now, and it's only 8:30-9:00 am," said Saudi Bedouin Nayef al-Shammari, adding that it can reach 50 degrees during the day.

"But we've got used to it, it's normal for us, we're not (...) worried about it."




The family of the 51-year-old and his father Saad, 75, have lived and worked in the Al Nufud Al-Kabir desert raising camels for generations.

But as temperatures rise to life-threatening levels their livelihood and culture could soon be under threat.

"Even heat-tolerant animals in the region, for example some camels or goats, will be also affected, agriculture will be also affected, so this extreme heat will affect food production,' said George Zittis of the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia.

- 'Catastrophic' consequences -Legend has it that the marshes that straddle the famous Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq were home to the biblical Garden of Eden.

They too could soon be at risk.

"The temperatures above 50 degrees affect the fish, they affect animals, people and tourism,” said local boat owner Razak Jabbar, who is considering leaving the marshland where he grew up.

With deadly heatwaves increasingly a fact of life across the globe, many are pinning hopes on Glasgow.

"COP26 this November must mark the turning point. By then we need all countries to commit to achieve net zero emissions by the middle of the century, and to present clear, credible, long-term strategies to get there," said UN chief Antonio Guterres.

Southern Italy braced for rare Mediterranean hurricane

‘Medicane’ storm with winds of 100km/h expected in Sicily, where two have died in flooding

A street becomes a river in the Sicilian city of Catania. 

Photograph: Sanne Derks/Getty Images


Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo
@lorenzo_tondo
Wed 27 Oct 2021 

Southern Italy was braced on Wednesday for the arrival of what forecasters have described as a Medicane – a rare Mediterranean hurricane bringing winds of more than 100kmh and producing 5-metre waves.

Fierce storms have battered Sicily for days, leaving roads submerged in the eastern part of the island and claiming the lives of at least two people. Video footage shows flood waters engulfing the city of Palermo, turning streets into rivers and squares into lakes.

Italy’s department for civil protection issued its most severe weather warning for Sicily and Calabria on Tuesday, as Italian authorities confirmed the death of a 53-year-old man who drowned in Gravina, a town north of Catania. The death comes after the body of a 67-year-old man was found on Monday in Scordia. Rescuers are still searching for his 54-year-old wife.



01:22 Heavy rain causes flash floods in Sicily – video

On Tuesday, Catania’s mayor, Salvo Pogliese, called the weather events “unprecedented” and ordered the closure of all businesses.

“I urge the entire population to not leave home except for emergency reasons, because roads are overrun by water,” he said on Facebook.


Forecasters have said the Medicane is the latest evidence demonstrating how the climate emergency is irremediably tropicalising the Mediterranean.


Met office warns of life-threatening flooding in parts of UK

“Sicily is tropicalising and the upcoming Medicane is perhaps the first of this entity, but it certainly won’t be the last,” said Christian Mulder, a professor of ecology and climate emergency at the University of Catania. “We are used to thinking that this type of hurricane and cyclone begins in the oceans and not in a closed basin like the Mediterranean. But this is not the case.

“This Medicane is forming due to the torrid climate of north Africa and the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The Aegean Sea has a temperature of 3C higher than the average, while the Ionian Sea has a temperature of almost 2C higher than the average. The result is a pressure cooker.”

According to forecasters, the Medicane could reach Sicily on Thursday or Friday and could finally leave the area between Saturday and Sunday.

“We are facing something exceptional,” said Giulio Betti, a meteorologist and climatologist at Italy’s national research council.

“What is affecting Sicily and Calabria is a hybrid atmospheric event. It has the typical characteristics of a subtropical cyclone, but at times it holds the characteristics of a tropical-like cyclone.

“The unique aspect is its duration and its stationing – that is, this atmospheric event is hard to dissolve. … on the one hand it continues to be fed by the cool western currents; on the other hand it is unable to move eastward, due to the Balkans’ anticyclone.”

The signs of change are becoming more frequent in Sicily, where in August a monitoring station in the south-eastern city of Syracuse recorded a temperature of 48.8C, the highest ever set in Europe. Data collected by the Balkans and Caucasus observatory put the average temperature rise on the island over the past 50 years at almost 2C, rising to 3.4C in Messina on the north-east coast.

In September two people were killed and nine injured after a tornado tore through the Italian island of Pantelleria. The whirlwind ripped off roofs and flipped over at least six cars, with residents describing the scene as “apocalyptic”.

Scientists say the climate emergency could sweep traditional agricultural crops from the Mediterranean, leaving growers to search for tropical alternatives. In the past three years the production of avocados, mangos and papaya has doubled in Sicily, while in Palermo’s botanical garden researchers have registered for the first time the blooming of welwitschia, a native of the southern African Namib desert.

Early in October, the coffee company Morettino produced for the first time its own coffee in Sicily, in a development that could turn the Italian island into the northernmost coffee plantation in the world.

World should shut nearly 3,000 coal plants to keep on climate track -study


SHANGHAI, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The world will need to shut down nearly 3,000 coal-fired power plants before 2030 if it is to have a chance of keeping temperature rises within 1.5 Celsius, according to research by climate think tank TransitionZero.

In a report published days before the U.N. COP26 climate change summit https://www.reuters.com/business/cop in Glasgow, TransitionZero said there are currently more than 2,000 GW of coal-fired power in operation across the world, and that needs to be slashed by nearly half, requiring the closure of nearly one unit per day from now until the end of the decade.

The need to close nearly 1,000 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity would put the onus on China - the world's biggest source of climate-warming greenhouse gas and owner of around half of the world's coal-fuelled plants - to accelerate its shift towards cleaner electricity.

"The logical conclusion is that half of the effort will need to come from China," said Matt Gray, TransitionZero analyst and author of the report.

China has reduced the share of coal in its total energy mix from 72.4% in 2005 to 56.8% last year, but absolute consumption volume has continued to rise. President Xi Jinping vowed earlier this year that China would start to cut coal use, but only after 2025 https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-says-china-will-phase-down-coal-consumption-over-2026-2030-2021-04-22.

Its coal strategy has also come under added scrutiny in recent weeks as regulators try to find the extra volume required to resolve an energy crunch that has forced factories to shut and put winter heating and electricity supply at risk.

Gray said while coal consumption will rise in the short term, the crisis is forcing China to accelerate reform that will eventually help the country reduce its fossil fuel reliance.

A recent policy aimed at forcing operators of coal-fired power generators to sell electricity via the wholesale market will expose them to competition from renewable sources and further underscore their lack of competitiveness, he added.

"I think it is fair to say that keeping the lights on and keeping buildings warm will be the exclusive priority of the Chinese government coming into winter," he said.

"But our hope is for this crisis to be seen as a wake-up call for being reliant on coal-fired power." (Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Christopher Cushing

STILL PROMOTING THE MYTH OF CCS

Coal industry did not show potential of clean tech quickly enough -WCA boss

Oliver Griffin
Wed, October 27, 2021

By Oliver Griffin

BOGOTA, Oct 27 (Reuters) - The coal industry was not quick enough to explain the potential of clean technologies that can give the fossil fuel a place in a sustainable energy matrix, Michelle Manook, chief executive of the World Coal Association (WCA), told Reuters on Wednesday.

Coal is considered a heavy polluter and environmentalists warn using it is an obstacle to curbing climate change. Several large mining companies and investment funds have moved to sell off coal assets.

Coal's poor image is partly due to the sector not doing enough to show that cleaner coal technologies can have a positive impact on emissions, Manook told Reuters during an interview at the Colombian Mining Association's (ACM) offices in Bogota.

"We haven't done a good enough job," she said, explaining that both producers and consumers have not sufficiently communicated what technologies exist and are available to qualify coal as an energy option for the future.

Technologies available to help reduce emissions include carbon capture and storage (CCS) and high-efficiency, low-emission (HELE) power plants, Manook said.

Coal-fired power plants using HELE and CCS technology can cut emissions by as much as 90%, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

While some experts say CCS technology is essential to meeting the goal of a net carbon zero economy by 2050, environmentalists view it as a means for industry to keep using fossil fuels.

"The biggest issue for the coal market is how we actually reintegrate ourselves back into this energy debate," Manook added.

For WCA members the future of energy is not about choosing between coal and renewable sources, but rather using them side by side, she said.

"Our members are very much about the complementary nature of coal and renewables," Manook said. "Coal is really important to many developing and emerging nations and we want to support using coal and being part of a decarbonized future." (Reporting by Oliver Griffin; editing by Richard Pullin)

Report: Climate change threatens to devastate the world's leading economic powers — including the U.S.

Ben Adler

·Senior Climate Editor

Wed, October 27, 2021, 5:00 PM·

The world’s largest economies will suffer severe human and economic consequences of climate change, especially if no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study from the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), an Italian research center.

“From droughts, heatwaves and sea level rise, to dwindling food supplies and threats to tourism — these findings show how severely climate change will hit the world’s biggest economies, unless we act now,” said Donatella Spano, senior member of the CMCC’s Strategic Council and a scientist at the University of Sassari, in a statement that accompanied the report’s release.

The report studied the G-20, a group of 19 nations and the European Union that includes the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China and Russia, among others.

People at an institute established to monitor and predict the effects of climate change on the Mediterranean region on Sept. 22 in Lecce, Italy. (Janos Chiala/Getty Images)

It found that climate change impacts such as extreme heat and sea level rise are already causing death and destruction in the world’s leading economies, and that if climate change continues unabated, it will also lead to new plagues that proliferate in warmer climates. With medium to high emissions, as temperatures rise in the northern U.S., the Zika virus — which has previously been locally transmitted within the country only in Florida and Texas — could threaten 83 percent of the population by 2050. More than 92 percent of U.S. residents could be at risk from dengue fever.

If emissions remain high, Europe will have 90,000 deaths from extreme heat each year by the end of this century, up from 2,700 currently.

All of this has economic implications too. In a high-emissions future, countries such as France and Indonesia might lose one-fifth or more of their fishing catch due to warmer ocean temperatures, and sea level rise could wreck coastal infrastructure, resulting in projected losses of 404 billion euros ($468 billion) for Japan and 815 million euros ($945 billion) for South Africa by 2050.

Overall, the report estimated that G-20 countries will lose 4 percent of their total economic output by 2050 and 8 percent by 2100 if emissions don’t swiftly diminish.

The CMCC, which works with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released the report in advance of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, next week. The G-20 countries are responsible for around 80 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

The Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow, Scotland, where the U.N. climate summit will be held. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

The G-20 nations are all parties to the Paris Agreement, which was struck in 2015 and set the goal of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. But the individual national commitments to reduce emissions so far have put the world on a pathway toward at least 2.7°C of warming. The hope that G-20 nations like China and Brazil, which shied away from making strong emissions reduction pledges last time, would step up their ambition in advance of Glasgow has so far not materialized. According to a recent U.N. report, the planet is still headed for catastrophic climate change without bold new pledges.

“As scientists, we know that only rapid action to tackle emissions and adapt to climate change will limit the severe impacts of climate change,” Spano said in her statement. “At the upcoming summit, we invite G20 governments to listen to the science and put the world on a path to a better, fairer and more stable future.”

Cover thumbnail photo: Lukas Schulze/Getty Images

UK
'Rishi Sunak’s Budget an admission of Tory failures after decade of devastating austerity'

The Tories deserve no thanks for offering a botched repair job after damaging Britain with more than a decade of devastating austerity - and yet still Chancellor Rishi Sunak failed to support families with the cost of living

Rishi Sunak’s Budget was an admission of the Conservative Party’s failures.

The Chancellor sought to undo some of the damage caused by more than a decade of devastating austerity by increasing spending on schools, health and local government.

After years swinging the wrecking ball at our public services, the government deserves no thanks for offering a botched repair job.

Boasting that per pupil funding will return to 2010 levels by 2024 is not a cause for celebration but a damning admission that they failed to properly fund our education system.

Equally, Mr Sunak deserves no praise for creating a handful of family hubs after his party has closed more than 1,000 Sure Start centres.




Rishi Sunak's champagne Budget for rich means real pain for poor as bills rocket

The Tories have a warped sense of responsibility when they cut taxes for bankers and champagne drinkers but do nothing to help those reliant on foodbanks.

While some the measures are welcome, such as the tax cut for those in work on Universal Credit, the Chancellor failed to do enough to support families with the cost of living.

Families are facing rising inflation, higher energy and food bills and steeper taxes. How was this Budget supposed to help them?
Deadly delays

Lives are being put at risk because ambulance crews are not able to respond.

Some patients have had to wait more than five hours for paramedics to arrive. NHS chiefs have now ordered hospital bosses to end these delays.


Hospitals told to 'eliminate' ambulance queues after two deaths blamed on delays

Their message should be directed at government ministers, not hard-working frontline staff who are doing an exceptional job in the most testing of circumstances.

The delays are a result of the unprecedented pressure on the health service caused by Covid and years of underfunding.

Brexit’s impact on economy worse than pandemic – OBR

BENJAMIN COOPER, PA28 October 2021, 


The impact of Brexit on the UK economy will be worse than that caused by the pandemic, according to the chairman of the UK fiscal watchdog.

Richard Hughes said the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had assumed leaving the EU would “reduce our long run GDP by around 4%”, adding in comments to the BBC: “We think that the effect of the pandemic will reduce that (GDP) output by a further 2%.”

Gross domestic product – or GDP – is a measure of the size of the economy.

“In the long term it is the case that Brexit has a bigger impact than the pandemic”, Mr Hughes told the broadcaster hours after the OBR responded to Rishi Sunak’s latest Budget by saying it expected inflation to reach 4.4% while warning it could hit “the highest rate seen in the UK for three decades”.

It came as Downing Street vowed to retaliate against France if Paris goes ahead with a “disappointing and disproportionate” threat to impose sanctions in an escalation of a row over fishing boats.

The French Government dramatically warned it will block British vessels from some ports next week if the post-Brexit dispute over fishing licences is not resolved.

Paris even went as far as suggesting it could restrict energy supplies to the Channel Islands if no deal is reached with the UK as relations since the EU departure further soured.

No 10 said the threats do not seem to be compatible with “international law” and vowed an “appropriate and calibrated response” if Paris does not back down.

USA
At least 59,000 meat workers caught COVID, 269 died

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 27 October 2021 |

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - At least 59,000 meatpacking workers caught COVID-19 and 269 workers died when the virus tore through the industry last year, which is significantly more than previously thought, according to a new U.S. House report released Wednesday.

The meatpacking industry was one of the early epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic, with workers standing shoulder-to-shoulder along production lines. The U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which examined internal documents from five of the biggest meatpacking companies, said companies could have done more to protect their workers.

The new estimate of infections in the industry is nearly three times higher than the 22,400 that the United Food and Commercial Workers Union has said were infected or exposed. And the true number could be even higher because the companies' data didn't generally include coronavirus cases confirmed by outside testing or self reported by employees.

At the height of the outbreaks in the spring of 2020, U.S. meatpacking production fell to about 60% of normal as several major plants were forced to temporarily close for deep cleaning and safety upgrades or operated at slower speeds because of worker shortages. The report said companies were slow to take protective steps such as distributing protective equipment and installing barriers between work stations.

"Instead of addressing the clear indications that workers were contracting the coronavirus at alarming rates due to conditions in meatpacking facilities, meatpacking companies prioritized profits and production over worker safety, continuing to employ practices that led to crowded facilities in which the virus spread easily," the report said.

Martin Rosas, who represents a UFCW chapter based in Kansas with over 17,000 members in three states, said the union pressed companies for better protections.

FILE - In this May 7, 2020, file photo workers wait in line to enter the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Ind. At least 59,000 meatpacking workers became ill with COVID-19 and 269 workers died when the virus tore through the industry last year, which is significantly more than previously thought, according to a new U.S. House report released Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

"The harsh reality is that many of the companies were slow to act in the early days of the outbreak, and whatever progress that was achieved was due to the union demanding action," Rosas said.

The report is based on documents from JBS, Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, Cargill and National Beef. Together they control over 80% of the beef market and over 60% of the pork market nationwide.

The North American Meat Institute trade group defended the industry´s response to the pandemic. And Cargill, Tyson, Smithfield and JBS released statements Wednesday saying they worked aggressively to meet federal health and safety standards and took additional measures to protect their employees, such as conducting widespread testing and urging employees to get vaccinated.

"The health and safety of our team members always comes first and our response since the onset of the pandemic has demonstrated that commitment, with an investment of more than $760 million to date. We have taken aggressive action to keep the virus out of our facilities and adopted hundreds of safety measures that often outpaced federal guidance and industry standards," JBS spokeswoman Nikki Richardson said.

The companies expressed regret at the toll the virus has taken.

"Even one illness or loss of life to COVID-19 is one too many, which is why we´ve taken progressive action from the start of the pandemic to protect the health and safety of our workers," Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said.

The report said infection rates were especially high at some meatpacking plants between the spring of 2020 and early 2021. At a JBS plant in Hyrum, Utah, 54% of the workforce contracted the virus. Nearly 50% of workers at a Tyson plant in Amarillo, Texas, were infected. And 44% of employees at National Beef´s plant in Tama, Iowa, caught COVID-19.

The report said internal documents show Smithfield aggressively pushed back against government safety recommendations after experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inspected its pork plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after a major outbreak. A few days earlier, Smithfield's CEO told the CEO of National Beef in an email that "Employees are afraid to come to work."

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration needs to do more to protect meatpacking workers.

"Some of these companies are treating the workers in the plants not much better than the animals that go through them," Raskin said.

Debbie Berkowitz, with Georgetown University's Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, said the industry was slow to respond and federal regulators didn't force companies to act.

"When the pandemic hit, of course it was going to hit meatpacking plants really hard and really fast," said Berkowitz, a former OSHA official who testified Wednesday. "What was the industry´s response - not to protect workers and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, not to separate workers 6 feet apart, which was the earlier guidance that came out in late February - but to just keep on going."

 In this April 9, 2020 file photo employees and family members protest outside a Smithfield Foods processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D. At least 59,000 meatpacking workers became ill with COVID-19 and 269 workers died when the virus tore through the industry last year, which is significantly more than previously thought, according to a new U.S. House report released Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. 

(AP Photo/Stephen Groves File)

US COVID-19 cases unreported in largest meatpacking companies, probe finds

By Mary Yang, Medill News Service

Activists demonstrate to call attention to slaughterhouse workers who have contracted COVID-19 while on the job in Vernon, Calif., on December 11. On Wednesday, a House select subcommittee investigation revealed many U.S. meatpacking plants weren't required to adhere to COVID-19 safety standards.
File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

WASHINGTON -- High coronavirus infection and death rates among workers in the U.S. meatpacking industry went unreported because of a "political decision" to not track cases, according to the report released Wednesday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration did not require meatpacking companies to install safety standards to protect workers during the pandemic, the Select Subcommittee found. OSHA is the agency responsible for ensuring worker safety, but scaled back investigations in 2020, according to the subcommittee report.

OSHA "totally abandoned" workers, Debbie Berkowitz, former OSHA chief of staff, said at a subcommittee hearing Wednesday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended businesses enforce social distancing guidelines, but OSHA did not press meatpacking companies to comply so COVID-19 "spread like wildfire," she said.

The subcommittee did not call OSHA officials to testify.

COVID-19 cases among meatpackers were three times higher than earlier estimates, according to the report, and the virus disproportionately hit workers of color. Last spring, 87% of infected meatpackers were racial or ethnic minorities, the CDC found.

The meatpacking industry is made up largely of immigrant and refugee workers, said Berkowitz, and workers are often afraid to speak out against poor working conditions, fearing punishment from their supervisors.

Workers during the pandemic continued to work in close proximity to each other, said American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska Interim Director Rose Godinez. Godinez is the daughter of two meatpackers, both of whom retired before the pandemic.

More than half of Nebraska's meatpackers are immigrant workers, she said, putting immigrant families and minority communities at higher risk. Last summer, Hispanics accounted for 60% of Nebraska's coronavirus cases, she said, but the Hispanic community is only 11% of the state's population.

Godinez asked subcommittee members to demand OSHA respond to workers' complaints. She also urged members to support comprehensive immigration reform to protect meatpackers who are not U.S. citizens and fear employer retaliation.

Meatpacking companies and the Trump administration "caused enormous pain" to meatpackers and their families, said Select Subcommittee Chairman Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.

In an interview before the hearing, Berkowitz said she expects the Biden administration to issue the first protections for meatpacking workers next week by requiring vaccines.

Starbucks to boost US starting wage to $15 per hour, targeting $17 average by 2022

Wed, October 27, 2021, 3:36 PM

Starbucks (SBUX) on Wednesday became the latest company to hike pay for its workers, announcing plans to increase all U.S. hourly wages to at least $15 per an hour, up from the current $12 rate, by the summer of 2022. Yahoo Fiannce's Brooke DiPalma shares the details with Seana Smith.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Want to get to some breaking news. Starbucks is raising its minimum wage for all employees, hiking it to $15 an hour. Brooke DiPalma has more on this for us. Brooke.

BROOKE DIPALMA: Seana, that's right. Certainly a game changer or perhaps even happening in the fast-food industry. So now all hourly wage employees or what Starbucks likes to call partners will have a minimum wage of $15 an hour. Now that moves the average wage of Starbucks employees-- or baristas they like to call them as well-- up to $17 an hour and [? influxes ?] that range of $15 to $23. Now, that's up from the average hourly wage of $14 per an hour and a minimum of $12 an hour range.

Now, in order to raise the floor, they must also raise the ceiling, and so what this means for employees who have two-plus years is a 5% increase, and for employees that have five or more years at Starbucks, they will get a 10% increase.

Now, I do want to note in an internal memo that employees-- or partners as I said Starbucks likes to call them-- received today from North America's executive vice president. Williams noted, "Our wage increases from December 2020 and to the summer of 2022"-- which is when they're going in [INAUDIBLE]-- will mean at least a 17% increase for partners and at least 20% for tenured partners in two years." She goes on to say, "I share all of this only to reaffirm our belief that investing in our partners is not a cost. It's an opportunity, and we intend to let our shareholders and peers know the same."

Now, this is the third investment over the last 24 months that Starbucks has made in order to raise the minimum wage for its employees. But I do want to note that other companies are doing the exact same thing. Here we have Target, $15 minimum wage. Disney World, $15. Costco, $16. Ben and Jerry's going along with their local Vermont minimum wage of $18.13. McDonald's, $13. Chipotle, we just heard from them $15 earlier this year.

All note that as of today, October 27, the federal minimum wage still lies at $7.25 per an hour. So lots of work to do all across the board, Seana.

If bosses want workers, they have to actually try


Ryan Cooper, National correspondent
Wed, October 27, 2021

A help wanted sign. Illustrated | iStock

A class of Americans has become lazy and entitled. Too used to a government that caters to their every whim, they're facing a difficult situation not with grit and determination, but by throwing tantrums and demanding special treatment.

That's right, I'm talking about business owners. Complaints about a labor shortage abound, but it's time these coddled snowflakes learned some discipline. Employers need to put in the work to staff their own businesses instead of relying on the government do it for them.

The plain fact is we've had an employer's economy for a decade. After the Great Recession, unemployment was chronically high — only touching something like full employment in 2019, 11 years after the crash. Bosses got used to having the pick of the litter. With so many credentialed people thrown out of work, hiring managers were able to demand extravagant experience and over-qualification for low-level jobs. Many employers came to believe they were owed workers who would take any position and mutely absorb any abuse.

This sense of entitlement is a major reason both state and federal governments were so eager to end the boost to pandemic unemployment benefits. Without people lining up around the block to take crummy, low-wage positions, employers ran crying to the government for help.

But, as I wrote previously, their strategy didn't work. Some workers took early retirement when they got laid off last year; some parents can't find childcare at a reasonable price, so they are staying home; some workers saved up money during quarantine and would rather not work for the moment; and a great many workers are simply dead.

Meanwhile, among those actively in the job market, millions are changing careers. The pandemic has been a nightmare for the workers who keep America's rattletrap society staggering forward — the cashiers, cooks, nurses, truck drivers, meatpackers, child care workers, fruit pickers, and so on. It was one thing for overeducated millennials to scrape by in dead-end, low-wage jobs, like bagging groceries or getting screamed at while waiting tables. It was quite another to do so while at risk of gruesome death.

Simultaneously, the pandemic rescue packages have created a huge spending boom. Americans are buying stuff at a record pace, creating all sorts of snarls in shipping and production (in part because there was little excess capacity, again thanks to weak demand during the feeble post-2008 recovery). Higher-productivity firms are scrambling to expand, offering jobs with much better pay and benefits. This too puts a strain on employers whose business model is premised on exploited, low-wage labor.

Together, all this has given the American working class its greatest leverage in more than 20 years. People are quitting over pay, benefits, and working conditions. Thousands of workers are on strike at hospitals, tractor factories, and elsewhere. Thousands more may strike soon. Job applicants have turned the tables on employers, treating them with the same apathy they received after 2008 — ghosting hiring managers on outreach, interviews, or even job offers.

Employers don't like it, but they're finally recognizing something has changed. "Our governing body became very used to the job market conditions during the recession and for several years after where the employer had all the leverage," one anonymous public sector worker wrote on a manager discussion blog. "They are only now beginning to realize how the roles have reversed."

They need to realize it faster, and they need to learn how to entice workers. Better wages and benefits are the most obvious mechanism — indeed, we're already seeing wages rising strongly in sectors like hospitality, where jobs are notoriously poorly paid. Employers should also ditch the idea that they can always get someone perfectly experienced for every position. They'll need to train inexperienced people and offer extra training, raises, and new benefits to retain their existing workers.

There's also a less expensive strategy many employers may have to consider: shorter hours and employee say in workplace conditions. As Josh Eidelson writes at Bloomberg, one of the common demands of union workers currently striking or threatening to strike at John Deere, Kellogg's, and in Hollywood is more time off and safer working conditions. These workers are often quite well-paid, but they're sick of mandatory overtime, 12-hour shifts, 7-day weeks, and few vacation days. Onerous schedules leave people no time to relax and recharge — and can even be dangerous. A sleepy person should not be operating heavy machinery.

Overwork is also related to the lousy post-2008 recovery and employers' resultant entitlement. With a huge glut of labor, bosses got addicted to running their workforce ragged and economizing on health and safety systems. When grueling Amazon warehouse jobs destroy people's backs and knees, for instance, the company has typically hired new people instead of changing its practices. This cruel and lazy habit will have to be unlearned.

That will be difficult, because these problems didn't originate in 2008, though certainly the last decade exacerbated them. As I show in a paper for the People's Policy Project, average American working hours have barely declined since the 1970s, while hours have plummeted in all other rich nations. When you think about it, that's how things should work: As nations become wealthier and more productive, people should be able to work less and relax more. If Americans worked as little as Germans, for instance, we'd get almost 11 more weeks of vacation every year.

The pandemic has taught us that reasonable work conditions and plenty of time off are just as important as pay and other benefits. Money isn't much good if you can't enjoy it, and no job is worth your health or your life.

American workers know that now. If they want to have staff, American employers will need to catch up.