It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, November 06, 2021
NOT A CAREER A JOB, POORLY PAID Private cleaning companies are turning down business and canceling regular customers because they don't have enough staff
At Maid to Sparkle, a small residential cleaning service in Richmond, Virginia, the workforce has roughly halved and many applicants aren't turning up to job interviews, Bergstein said.
He said that the company was cleaning a third fewer houses than pre-pandemic, causing its gross profit to drop by between $1,000 and $2,000 each week.
Insider also spoke to Andrea Ponce, Michelle Reed-Spitzer, and Kathryn Boyce, all MaidPro franchisees in Florida, who all said they'd had to cancel and reschedule both new and existing customers. This comes as demand is set to boom during the holiday season.
Ponce said that that more than half of her workers left during the pandemic, and that she'd simply stopped marketing to new clients "because we could not service our current customers, much less new customers. We just didn't have the personnel."
Boyce said that she had used her company's client marketing budget to advertise for more staff instead. Two of her long-term employees had left to work at Amazon, she said.
Boyce added that her company was missing out on between $10,000 and $20,000 in revenue because of its lack of staff.
Reed-Spitzer said her September revenues were down 29% year-over-year. She said she had 51 cleaning staff, down from around 85 pre-pandemic.
The business owners seemed unsure what was causing their labor shortages, but suggested that some workers had left because of childcare or to swap industries.
"I don't know why they're not working," Reed-Spitzer said. Ponce said that she was now at full staffing levels again, which she attributed to two things - raising starting pay to $14 an hour in May, up from $11 pre-pandemic, and Florida cutting off the $300 weekly supplemental unemployment benefits in June. Raising her prices by between 5% and 10% to fund the higher wages hadn't deterred customers, she said.
But elsewhere in Florida it's a different story. Reed-Spitzer and Boyce said they were still struggling to hire, even after their MaidPro franchises hiked up wages and the state ended extra unemployment benefits.
He said that the company was "going above and beyond" what it paid staff in the past, with starting wages reaching $12 an hour and $300 hiring bonuses, but that it couldn't offer benefits like a 401K or paid maternity leave.
"It would eat into our bottom line," Bergstein said. "We're trying everything we possibly can, but there's also a limit as to what a small business can offer ... There's a fine line between getting employees and making enough profit to cover all your expenses."
BLUE H2 MADE FROM NAT GAS Alberta government unveils road map with goal of becoming hydrogen export superpower
EDMONTON — The Alberta government has released its road map to reach a goal of becoming a world leader in hydrogen exports by the end of the decade.
Premier Jason Kenney says Alberta is well-positioned with its existing energy infrastructure to become a global supplier of choice for hydrogen.
And he calls it a “game changer” in the climate change fight, given that hydrogen emits no greenhouse gases when burned.
He says the global hydrogen market is expected to become worth up to $2.5 trillion within the next 30 years.
The plan calls for catching up on clean hydrogen technologies in the short term before moving to growth and commercialization in the long term.
Alberta is already the largest hydrogen producer in Canada at 2.4 million tonnes per year.
Dale Nally, the associate minister for natural gas and electricity, compares the hydrogen revolution to the breakthrough energy boom brought on by the oilsands.
“Hydrogen can absolutely be a game changer for our province on many levels,” Nally told a news conference Friday.
“We have the natural advantages to make hydrogen that is both clean and affordable.”
Along with export potential, the report identifies four leading domestic markets for clean hydrogen, which is hydrogen produced with minimal greenhouse gas emissions.
They include home and business heating, power generation, transportation and hydrogen for industrial use. Opposition NDP critic Kathleen Ganley says the United Conservative government's plan builds on proposals from the former NDP government but lacks concrete goals, objectives and details.
“This strategy lacks detail and thoughtfulness that would be required to actually attract investment,” she said.
“It sets targets, but it doesn’t actually provide a pathway to achieve those targets.
“It doesn’t even give a commitment to how much investment they are willing to contribute at the provincial level.”
The government said the plan will be revisited in 2025.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2021.
Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press
Setting the table for hydrogen economy to grow
S&P PLATTS. Aug 05, 2021
From the raft of hydrogen projects unfolding in the Middle East and around the world, the importance of infrastructure readiness is becoming clear: setting the table for the hydrogen economy through development of ports, shipping lanes and storage will be critical in the months and years ahead.
The Middle East is rich in sunlight and has ample access to natural gas, which makes clean hydrogen and its derivatives such as ammonia potentially cost competitive compared with conventional fuels, in a decarbonization landscape. Opportunities exist to export either into Europe through the Suez Canal or into Asia.
Scaling up of both production and consumption of hydrogen is increasingly seen as a vital part of the achieving global decarbonization. Evidence of that scaling on the production side is seen in several key projects of Middle East origins, which are already looking at commercializing hydrogen, including the UAE’s recently announced $1 billion green ammonia facility in Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi, or KIZAD. The project has access to Khalifa Port, the main export hub of Abu Dhabi, and will start production in the second quarter of 2024 with exports targeted mainly to Europe and the US.
A second $1 billion green ammonia project at KIZAD, a unit of state-owned Abu Dhabi Ports, would be powered by a 2 GW solar power plant. The plant would supply ships using ammonia as a bunker fuel and for export via gas carriers.
Partnerships, including offtake agreements, will power these developments, such as the cooperation agreement reached with German utility Uniper to secure green ammonia from Oman’s Hyport Duqm renewable hydrogen project. The project will be built in the Arabian seaport of Duqm in Oman, and will work well with the company’s global hydrogen strategy, Uniper said.
Other end-users, such as Japan’s largest refiner ENEOS, see the Middle East as a region with some of the world’s lowest levelized costs of electricity, which gives producers within the region an advantage and offers the operators of these new sites the potential to deliver cost-competitive hydrogen or its derivatives, such as green ammonia, to Europe and Asia.
As large projects are announced and developed, port developers will have to examine where they have the biggest bottlenecks to allow production of clean hydrogen from renewable sources or where they have the capacity to add carbon capture and storage.
Conversion of gas shipping lines for H2, ammonia
With production on the way, cooperation agreements are being drawn up with end-users. Companies such as Italy’s Eni aim to develop renewable and low-carbon hydrogen in Egypt using depleted gas fields to store CO2 produced from conventional hydrogen production. The agreement allows Eni to work with their suppliers to investigate potential local demand for hydrogen, as well as explore export opportunities.
Shipping from the Middle East to Europe and Asia takes advantage of existing supply lines for natural gas and LNG—via the Suez Canal into Europe and around to Asia.
From the customer’s perspective, deciding whether to buy domestic or imported hydrogen will largely depend on production and transportation costs, including terminal and other fees. Project developers must weigh the cost of producing decarbonized hydrogen or ammonia domestically against the cost of producing it with cheap electricity in the Middle East plus transportation costs.
In Japan, S&P Global Platts launched calculated cost of production assessments Feb. 3, 2020. The costs are based on fixed values such as capital costs and plant efficiency along with daily variable inputs, including gas and electricity.
The Platts cost of production prices show that the cost of producing hydrogen conventionally through a Steam Methane Reforming unit without carbon capture and sequestration averaged $2.61/kg since the assessments were launched.
In comparison, producing hydrogen through electrolysis averaged $7.24/kg. This difference between the two production routes is largely driven by a surge in electricity costs at times of peak consumption during winter, which drove up the cost of production via electrolysis.
On an MMBtu basis, hydrogen production costs are far more expensive than spot shipments of LNG delivered into the JKTC (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China) region. Platts JKM LNG prices averaged $6.86/MMBtu since Feb. 3, 2020. Electrolytic hydrogen production costs minus transportation and storage averaged roughly eight times that amount over the same period and conventional hydrogen around three times higher than delivered LNG.
However, while shippers might be focused on costs, end-users could be focused on how many tons of CO2/kg H2 are saved. Pressure continues to mount on industry and governments to reduce carbon emissions amid rising challenges of climate change.
The World Energy Council’s Hydrogen on the Horizon: Ready, Almost Set, Go? report released July 27 also stresses the need to move beyond traditional supply-centric energy perspectives to focus more on the demand-side and the role of consumers, given their potential for disruptive innovation.
Better understanding of hydrogen demand has proved particularly challenging in the early stages of its development, the report said.
In the early stages of the development of the hydrogen market in the Middle East, this chicken-and-egg question around the costs of decarbonization will need to be resolved. It is likely that cooperation between industry and government will be an essential part of finding a solution to developing the necessary infrastructure. However, as investment decisions come under closer scrutiny, transparency around current and future hydrogen pricing will also become increasingly important.
A version of this article was first published on Zawya.com on Aug. 2, 2021
America's deadly synthetic opioid epidemic is being driven by free market capitalism insider@insider.com (Paul Constant)
A supervisor in recovery uses a fentanyl strip to test for drugs in the urine of a fellow resident at a halfway house in Huntington, West Virginia in 2019.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images
Paul Constant is a writer at Civic Ventures and cohost of the "Pitchfork Economics" podcast.
He and cohost David Goldstein recently spoke with journalist Sam Quinones about his new book on synthetic opiates.
"Certain corporations behave like drug traffickers, and drug traffickers behave like corporations," said Quinones.
If you asked me to name the best journalists working in the country today, Sam Quinones would be in the top five. His meticulously researched book "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic" helped draw attention to Purdue Pharma and the super-wealthy Sackler family's role in creating the opioid crisis that has overwhelmed America for most of the 21st century.
According to Quinones, the question of who profits from the spread of meth and synthetic opioids like fentanyl isn't as clear-cut as it was in his previous book. "Certainly there's an enormous population of people in Mexico that are profiting from it," he said. Producers get the chemicals to manufacture synthetic drugs from China and then they make the drugs in Mexico.
It's a synthetic-drug gold rush, "very much kind of a wild west," Quinones continued, with multiple competing drug-makers forcing the price of meth and fentanyl down in a ferocious competition. "It's like a constant glut economy down there right now," he said. "That's why you're seeing prices so low over the last few years, and why meth has come to areas that never ever had it all across the country."
Goldstein interjected to say that the system Quinones is describing "sounds to me like free market capitalism."
"That's absolutely what it is," Quinones confirmed. "The underworld is the most imitative, and at times the most innovative, fast-moving part of our economy."
When one producer found an affordable way to mix their drugs, for instance, everyone followed: "Pretty soon everybody is mixing these powders, one of which is extraordinarily deadly to human beings, in a Magic Bullet blender that you could buy for $29.95 at Target," Quinones said.
For the last five years, law enforcement officials have been raiding drug manufacturing facilities only to find production lines of dozens of Magic Bullet blenders bought at local Bed, Bath, and Beyond stores. The problem is, Quinones said, Magic Bullets "are uniformly bad at mixing powders, and that's why we got a lot of those cluster deaths early on," with nearly two hundred overdoses happening in a matter of days in places like Cincinnati and West Virginia.
"Absolutely, it's all part of unfettered, free market capitalism," Quinones said. "We live in a time when certain corporations behave like drug traffickers, and drug traffickers behave like corporations."
From sugary sodas to processed foods to social media and video games, "we are bombarded by legal addictive products from a whole array of corporations we can all probably name," Quinones said, and then illegal drug manufacturers are learning from those addictive behaviors and adapting their systems accordingly.
"Purdue and the Sacklers are small potatoes, almost, in this larger story of all these ways in which companies prod our brains to use their products, to buy them constantly," Quinones said.
In his book, Quinones offers a variety of reforms to the criminal justice system that in pilot programs have already shown great success in getting people off addictive substances and back into society. Keeping people struggling with addiction out of jail and in healthy rehabilitation programs is vital, as is establishing programs that help those who have already been imprisoned re-enter society on a positive footing.
But the first step, he says, is in acknowledging that addiction isn't a personal failure - it's a systemic one. That's why Quinones called his new book "The Least of Us." "We're all as vulnerable and as strong as the least of us - that grocery store clerk who may not have health insurance but still comes to work in the middle of a pandemic, who all of a sudden we discover is an essential worker but who doesn't have any safety net to speak of at all."
Wisconsin Solves Labor Shortage With…Child Labor!
International Sustainability Standards: Levelling the Disclosure Playing Field
Thu, November 4, 2021
“A vital step to consolidate the patchwork of voluntary guidance around climate change disclosures into one single set of norms”
All eyes are on COP26. At the highest possible level, world leaders are discussing how best to tackle climate change and hold each other accountable for their efforts to reduce global warming, writes Andromeda Wood, VP of Regulatory Strategy, .
But underneath the global discourse, there are equally critical discussions going on about where impact can be made at a grassroots level. One announcement with the potential to mobilise private finance everywhere in order to help reach climate goals is the imminent creation of a new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).
Swapping patchwork policies for global standards
For some time, there has been widespread acceptance of the need for sustainability to be integrated into accounting and reporting systems. This aims to enhance business decision-making and accountability as well as stakeholder trust.
Given the plethora of ESG measurement methods, frameworks and standards that exist, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation consulted in September 2020 on whether there was a need for globally accepted sustainability reporting standards. The answer was a resounding yes.
Now, the composition of this new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is due to be announced at COP26. It marks a vital step to consolidate the patchwork of voluntary guidance around climate change disclosures into one single set of norms globally for all companies reporting the impact of climate change on their business – eventually extending to ESG factors beyond the environment too. And this will act as a catalyst for the mobilisation of private finance globally.
The ability to understand, compare, and contrast a company’s sustainability performance with that of others (and to determine how that company’s performance relates to its value creation), is crucial for investors and other participants in the world’s capital markets. Without this transparency, it becomes much harder to make business and investment decisions which align with, for example, the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement.
A number of existing frameworks, such as the well-established work of the Task Force on Climate related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), will form the building blocks of these international standards. Yet while the ISSB plans to initially focus its efforts on climate-related reporting – due to the urgent need for better information about climate-related matters – its longer-term plans involve meeting investors’ information needs on other ESG matters too.
The ability to understand, compare, and contrast a company’s sustainability performance with that of others (and to determine how that company’s performance relates to its value creation), is crucial for investors and other participants in the world’s capital markets. Without this transparency, it becomes much harder to make business and investment decisions which align with, for example, the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement.
A number of existing frameworks, such as the well-established work of the Task Force on Climate related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), will form the building blocks of these international standards. Yet while the ISSB plans to initially focus its efforts on climate-related reporting – due to the urgent need for better information about climate-related matters – its longer-term plans involve meeting investors’ information needs on other ESG matters too.
The dangers of a lack of standardised reporting
Meeting the Paris Agreement objective to limit global temperature increases will require a whole economy transition. In fact, thinking beyond climate change, achieving any of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will demand changes not just within the UN member states but at an organisational and individual level everywhere. Every company, bank, insurer, and investor will have to do their part – adjusting business models, developing credible plans for the transition, implementing them, and measuring their progress against ESG criteria.
While many companies have the appetite to transform their business processes for the greater good, it can be difficult to know where to start. The first challenge for any ESG exercise is navigating today’s deluge of measurement frameworks, guidance, protocols, rankings, indices, and standards. Faced with this chaos, it’s all too easy for organisations to waste valuable time or end up with “analysis paralysis” when trying to decide on a first step.
Beyond causing delay or even inaction, the profusion of reporting frameworks and standards do not enable consistent and comparable disclosures. This is a major issue. Investors and stakeholders do not have clear visibility into how a company’s performance against ESG criteria compares with competitors, or even tracks against the company’s initial ESG promises. This makes it difficult to hold businesses to account or choose where best to invest.
From the company’s perspective, a lack of ‘apples to apples’ comparison can also leave them in the dark. Without the ability to set up a peer comparison, the board may feel the business is reporting healthy progress against ESG criteria, even if that is not the case.
The ISSB: a global level playing field
Companies require consistent, transparent, accurate reporting to both meet their regulatory obligations, and to get the true picture of their progress towards ESG objectives. After all, what gets measured gets managed.
With the ISSB in place, no longer will companies judge their progress differently, but instead they can move towards consistent, comparable reporting. With this transparency, businesses can more accurately adjust their business models and drive credible, SDG-aligned corporate sustainability strategies, while investors will have a clearer view into where investments will help unleash the potential of corporate finance for the realization of the SDGs.
In short, taking a more forward-looking, data-driven and standardised approach can enable greater scrutiny and comparability. The ISSB should level the playing field – acting as a yardstick of each business’ commitment to long-term, sustainable value creation.
Mobilising private finance
The reality is that real progress against the climate change goals won’t happen fast enough if organisations rely on public financing alone. Yes, it plays an important role, but to reach net zero, private companies will need to come together and state that they will spend money where it matters, link their own goals to sustainability and make real changes to their business decision-making.
The way in which businesses operate has been transformed by climate change, nature loss, social unrest, and the changing expectations of the role of corporations. Companies are under more pressure to act responsibly.
This pressure is coming from many directions, from regulation to stakeholder demand. Mandates must be met; vendors want to be doing business with companies that are prioritising ESG; customers want to buy from socially responsible businesses; and the best talent wants to work for organisations that act as a force for good. All of these forces are acting on companies, and making ESG an increasing priority.
In response to both this increasing pressure from stakeholders and the need for urgent action on climate change, global baseline sustainability standards are crucial. By creating more comparability, the ISSB will make it easier for businesses to show how they are supporting the goals of COP26 and help the decision-making required to ensure private finance becomes a real catalyst for change.
World’s Top Wind Turbine Makers Expect Another Difficult Year William Mathis Sat, November 6, 2021,
(Bloomberg) -- Some of the world’s largest wind-turbine producers expect another tough year ahead.
Surging commodity prices and supply-chain headwinds are set to last into next year, according to Vestas Wind Systems A/S and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA. That’s making it harder for a business that’s so key to delivering the world’s climate goals to keep profitable.
The challenges come at an awkward time. Just as world leaders are gathering in Glasgow, Scotland, to try to hash out ambitious plans to avoid the worst consequences of global warming, installing more renewable sources of energy is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive.
“We are operating in a very difficult environment with challenging short-term market dynamics and low visibility on supply chain normalization,” said Siemens Gamesa Chief Executive Officer Andreas Nauen. “However, the current difficulties should not overshadow the bright future for wind energy, driven by its role in the decarbonization of our planet.”
The turbine industry is facing adversity at nearly every point in the supply chain. Components are hard to get, there isn’t enough shipping capacity to move finished products, and in some markets workers can’t get to building sites because of restrictions to contain the global pandemic.
“Everyone’s fighting against everyone to get both the raw materials and the components, which leads to very adverse price stability,” Vestas’s Chief Executive Officer Henrik Andersen said in an interview earlier this week.
Commodity prices surged this year as global economies rebounded from the pandemic, boosting the price of everything from oil to natural gas and steel. The metal is the single biggest input for manufacturers, making up about 84% of a turbine’s weight.
Vestas lowered its earnings outlook on Wednesday. It now expects full-year margin on earnings before interest and tax and before special items of 4%. That’s down from previous range of 5% to 7% and about half of what the company expected at the beginning of the year.
On Friday, Siemens Gamesa posted a second year of losses. The world’s largest maker of offshore wind turbines lost 627 million euros ($725 million) in the year ended in September. That’s on top of a loss of 918 million euros a year earlier. Still, the company expects profits to recover next year, with margins forecast to turn positive.
Shares in both companies plunged this week, adding to billions of dollars already shaved off their market value this year.
“The market is expecting the situation will change and go back to normal but we truly don’t know when this will happen,” Nauen said in a call with analysts on Friday.
For Siemens Gamesa, the impact has been particularly acute. Even before the current slate of problems, the company had already been trying to turn its struggling business around. It appointed Nauen as chief executive last year as part of an overhaul meant to return its onshore turbine business to profitability.
This isn’t the first time the wind turbine business has faced difficulties. Companies have been locked in stiff competition as project developers fought to cut costs in order to win auctions to build wind farms.
“Margins have been squeezed pretty heavily for quite a few years now,” said Oliver Metcalfe, wind industry analyst at BloombergNEF. “These supply chain issues are making things worse.”
If turbine makers can weather the current storm, the future still looks bright. Demand for their products is set to surge in the coming years as the world increasingly relies on wind power to generate electricity. More renewables are also needed to reduce dependency on fossil fuels, with prices of everything from coal to power and oil surging this year.
“What is needed now is to ensure we have a high push on developing more renewable energy worldwide, including Europe,” Christian Rynning-Tonnesen, chief executive officer of Norwegian electricity producer Statkraft AS, said in an interview this week. “That’s needed for supply reasons, but it’s also needed to fight climate change. That’s the long-term solution.”
FILE - Police stand guard in October 2021 near the office of top community Rohingya leader and activist Mohib Ullah, who was killed by gunmen in late September, at Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia.
KUTUPALONG, BANGLADESH —
Bloodstains still mark the spot where assassins gunned down Mohib Ullah, an activist who was a leading voice for the 850,000 Rohingya living in fear in Bangladeshi refugee camps.
In the weeks since the murder, a senior member of the now-shell-shocked volunteer group that Ullah headed has received phone calls telling him he'll be next. And he's not alone.
"They can hunt you down the way they have brazenly shot dead our leader and so many people," Noor, too frightened to give his real name or be filmed, told AFP.
"They," he believes, are members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an insurgent group fighting the Myanmar military but also thought to be behind a wave of killings and criminal activity in the camps. ARSA has denied it killed Ullah.
Most of the Rohingya have been in the camps since 2017 when they fled a brutal military offensive in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where the predominantly Muslim minority are reviled and seen as illegal immigrants.
Refusing to go back until they are assured of security and equal rights, the refugees remain stuck in bamboo-and-tarp shacks with no work, poor sanitation and little education for their children.
Overflowing latrines fill narrow mud lanes with excrement in monsoon season, and fires can rip through the flimsy homes in minutes during the hot summers.
By day the Bangladesh authorities provide some security. But at night the camps become the domain of gangs -- allegedly linked to ARSA -- that traffic millions of dollars' worth of methamphetamine from Myanmar.
"The scenario is different as soon as the sun sets," Israfil, a Rohingya refugee who goes by one name, told AFP.
"The dark time is the long hours when they do whatever they want to do," he added.
'Brutal carnage'
Working among the chaos and unease in the camps, Ullah and his colleagues quietly documented the crimes that his people suffered at the hands of the Myanmar military, while pressing for better conditions.
FILE - A member of the Armed Police Battalion stands guard in October 2021 near the office of top community Rohingya leader and activist Mohib Ullah, who was shot dead by gunmen in late September, at Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia.
The former schoolteacher shot to prominence in 2019 when he organized a protest of around 100,000 people in the camps to mark two years since their exodus.
That year he met U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House and addressed a U.N. meeting in Geneva.
But his fame appears to have gone down badly with ARSA.
They saw Ullah as threatening their place as the sole voice representing the Rohingya -- one who was opposed to their violence, his colleagues and rights activists say.
"He became a thorn in ARSA's side," said Nur Khan Liton, a top rights activist in Bangladesh. "ARSA was also frightened by his enormous popularity."
Three weeks after Ullah's murder in late September, gunmen and machete-wielding attackers slaughtered seven people in an Islamic seminary that had allegedly refused to pay protection money to ARSA.
"The brutal carnage bore all the marks of ARSA. The group previously slaughtered at least two top Islamic clerics because they didn't back ARSA's violent struggle," said a top expatriate Rohingya activist.
"ARSA has carried out the murders to establish its full control in the camps. After the latest carnage, everyone seems to be silenced," he added, asking to remain anonymous. 'No presence'
After the attack on the seminary, the U.N. refugee agency urged the Bangladesh authorities "to take immediate measures to improve the security in the refugee camps."
FILE - Police stand guard Oct. 5, 2021, near the office of top community Rohingya leader and activist Mohib Ullah, who was shot dead by gunmen, at Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia.
Blood stained office carpet.
A series of turf war killings in 2019 prompted the Bangladesh army to erect barbed-wire fences around the camps. The elite Armed Police Battalion was tasked with patrolling the area.
Police have also carried out a series of security operations that have killed dozens of alleged Rohingya drug traffickers.
But although they have arrested dozens of people over Ullah's killing, they are in denial about ARSA's activity, blaming instead "rivalries" in the camps.
"ARSA has no presence in the camps," Naimul Haque, the commanding officer of the Kutupalong camp, insisted to AFP. 'Extreme fear'
Members of Ullah's group are far from reassured, saying that their security concerns fall on deaf ears.
Some even mutter that ARSA and the Bangladesh security forces are in cahoots -- something Dhaka vehemently denies.
Kyaw Min, a top Rohingya leader, said police assist ARSA to "reign" at night by "conveniently" not being around when they operate.
A month before he died Ullah sent a letter, seen by AFP but which could not be independently verified, to the Bangladesh authorities.
He named 70 men in the camps he said were ARSA members and said he and his colleagues feared for their lives.
Bangladesh's refugee commissioner Shah Rezwan Hayat and camp-in-charge Atiqul Mamun denied receiving any such letter.
Family members of senior Rohingya leaders told AFP that Bangladesh security forces have since relocated at least six families including Ullah's, fearing they will be targeted.
"We thought we would be safe in Bangladesh. But now we don't know when the killers will knock on our doors," activist Sa Phyo Thida told AFP.
"Just like those genocide days in Myanmar in 2017 when we were living in fear of the military death squad, we now live in extreme fear."
COP26: Thousands rally in Glasgow to demand climate action
Issued on: 06/11/2021
A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest as the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) takes place, in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 6, 2021.
Thousands of climate protesters braved torrential rain in Glasgow on Saturday to take part in worldwide demonstrations against what campaigners say is a failure of crunch UN talks to bring about the radical action needed to tame global warming.
Dozens of events are planned worldwide to demand cuts in fossil fuel use and immediate help for communities already affected by climate change, particularly in the poorer countries in the South.
In Glasgow, organisers and police said they ultimately expected up to 50,000 people to parade through the streets of the Scottish city.
Demonstrators began gathering on Saturday morning in a park near the COP26 summit venue, chanting: "Our world is under attack, stand up fight back!"
"I think a lot of politicians are scared of the power of this movement," said a 22-year-old Norwegian protester who gave her name as Jenny.
She said it was important to fight for people from smaller nations who could not travel to the conference, which has been beset by accusations of exclusion.
Delegates from nearly 200 countries are in Glasgow to hammer out how to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting temperature rises to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.
At the halfway stage of the COP26 negotiations, some countries have upgraded their existing pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while there have been separate deals on phasing out coal, ending foreign fossil fuel funding, and slashing methane.
Widespread demos
The promises followed a pre-COP26 estimate from the UN that said national climate plans, when brought together, put Earth on course to warm 2.7C this century.
With just 1.1C of warming so far, communities across the world are already facing ever more intense fire and drought, displacement and economic ruin wrought by global heating.
And a major assessment last week showed global CO2 emissions were set to rebound in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg said the summit had gone nowhere near far enough in a speech at Friday's youth march in Glasgow, where she labelled the conference "a failure".
In Australia on Saturday, protesters in Sydney and Melbourne -- some dressed as lumps of coal or Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a vigorous defender of the mining industry -- echoed that sentiment, calling the talks "a sham" and their national leader "an absolute embarrassment".
"No more blah, blah blah. Real climate action now," read one sign at a protest in Sydney.
South Korean capital Seoul saw roughly 500 take to the streets demanding immediate action for communities already hit by the fallout of a heating planet.
About 1,000 people gathered in London outside the Bank of England with placards reading "Less talk more action" and "No More COP outs".
But others have urged critics not to rush to judgement about the UN-led climate process.
"COP26 has barely started," tweeted Michael Mann, director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center.
"Activists declaring it dead on arrival makes fossil fuel executives jump for joy." 'Words not enough'
Security has been boosted in Glasgow and many city-centre shops closed for Saturday's march, which is expected to draw a variety of groups including Extinction Rebellion.
"Many thousands of us are marching right across the world today to demand immediate and serious action," said Scottish activist Mikaela Loach.
"We're clear that warm words are not good enough -- and that the next week of talks must see a serious ramping up of concrete plans."
COP26 negotiations will continue on Saturday before pausing on Sunday ahead of what is shaping up to be a frantic week of shuttle diplomacy, as ministers arrive to push through hard-fought compromises.
Countries still need to flesh out how pledges made in the Paris deal work in practice, including rules governing carbon markets, common reporting timeframes and transparency.
Brianna Fruean, a Samoan member of the Pacific Climate Warriors, who addressed a world leaders' summit at the start of COP26, said it was time for leaders to take note of protesters' demands.
"It can't go on like this," she said.
"We refuse to be just victims to this crisis. We are not drowning, we are fighting and on Saturday the world will hear us."
(AFP)
Climate march keeps up pressure on leaders at U.N. summit
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, FRANK JORDANS and SETH BORENSTEIN
Climate activists hold up banners during a protest organized by the Cop26 Coalition in Glasgow, Scotland, Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021 which is the host city of the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit. The protest was taking place as leaders and activists from around the world were gathering in Scotland's biggest city for the U.N. climate summit, to lay out their vision for addressing the common challenge of global warming. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — The public pressure that helped spur more world action on global warming is due to be on full display outside the U.N. climate summit Saturday, when thousands of demonstrators are expected to march through the rainy grey streets of Glasgow to demand leaders move faster to cut fossil fuels that are wrecking the climate.
Police helicopters buzzed over Glasgow early Saturday as authorities prepared for a second day of protests by climate activists. Scots are accustomed to inclement weather, and turnout for the march was expected to be strong despite stiff gusts and a drizzle that turned to cold rain.
Inside the more than half-mile-long (kilometer-long) conference venue, negotiators knuckled down for a seventh straight day of talks to finish draft agreements that can be passed to government ministers for political approval next week.
Among the issues being haggled over at the talks by almost 200 countries are a fresh commitment to the goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), getting countries to review their efforts more frequently in a way that would increase pressure for deeper cuts, and financial support for poor nations.
A Democratic and Republican delegation of U.S. senators was scheduled to visit the summit on Saturday. Off-year Republican victories that have unsettled members of President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party gave the bipartisan visit more impact.
The summit’s daily bustle of side events on Saturday also saw British actor Idris Elba bring his star power to the U.N. talks, highlighting the importance of helping small farmers cope with global warming.
Elba, known for roles such as the HBO series “The Wire,” BBC One’s “Luther” and this year’s Western film “The Harder the Come,” attended with Sabrina Dhowre Elba, a model and producer and his wife. They took the stage Saturday in support of the U.N.’s International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Elba said he wanted to highlight the dangers of global food chains being disrupted as small farmers in particular are hit by erratic seasonal rains, drought and other impacts of climate change.
“This conversation around food is something that needs to be really amplified, and one thing I’ve got is a big mouth,” said Elba, adding that 80% of the food consumed worldwide is produced by small-scale farmers.
Speaking on the same panel, Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, 24, said global warming is already causing hunger for millions around the world, including in her country.
She said a shift from meat to plant-based diets could help prevent millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year while freeing up more land for food farming that’s currently used for animal feed.
Saturday’s march was expected to draw a range of participants and ages, after tens of thousands of young people in the Fridays for Future movement protested Friday outside the conference’s steel fences and turnstiles.
Speaking at the Fridays for Future rally, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 18, branded the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow so far “a failure,” accusing leaders of purposefully creating loopholes in the rules and giving misleading pictures of their countries’ emissions
“World leaders are obviously scared of the truth, yet no matter how hard they try, they cannot escape it,” Thunberg said. “They cannot ignore the scientific consensus, and above all they cannot ignore us - the people, including their own children.”
Thunberg’s mix of school strikes, blunt and impatient talk about government excuses, and mass demonstrations have galvanized climate protests since 2018, especially in Europe but to a lesser extent around the world.
The climate protest movement, and worsening droughts, storms and other disasters that brought home to many the accelerating damage of global warming, has kept pressure on governments for stronger and faster action to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
The Fridays For Future protest was part of a series of demonstrations being staged around the world Friday and Saturday to coincide with the Glasgow talks.
Greta Thunberg slams COP26 as 'greenwashing' failure
The 18-year-old Fridays For Future mainstay said that the world needed "immediate drastic annual emission cuts." She called world leaders to action instead of "profiting from this destruction."
Climate activist Greta Thunberg hit out at the lack of leadership against climate change
"They cannot ignore the scientific consensus and they cannot ignore us," said Thunberg.
"Our leaders are not leading. This is what leadership looks like," she said, pointing to the crowd.
The founder of Fridays for Future said leaders of the global north seemed to be trying to prevent any real change.
"They are actively creating loopholes and shaping frameworks to benefit themselves and to continue profiting from this destruction," she said. "We need immediate drastic annual emission cuts unlike anything the world has ever seen."
What's been achieved so far?
The COP26 started with real hope as over 100 countries committed themselves to cutting emissions by at least 30% this decade.
But environmental groups doubted the pledge, suggesting that especially richer countries often fail to live up to their promises.
"Youth have brought critical urgency to the talks," Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan said. "They have emphasized what is at stake for young people if the gap to 1.5 C is not closed."
Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at a Fridays for Future march during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), in Glasgow, Scotland, on November 5, 2021.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg on Friday branded the UN climate summit in Glasgow a “failure” during a mass protest in the Scottish city demanding swifter action from leaders to address the emergency.
Thunberg said pledges from some nations made during COP26 to accelerate their emissions cuts amounted to little more than “a two-week long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah”.
“It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure,” she told the thousands of people at the protest.
“This is no longer a climate conference. This is now a global greenwashing festival.”
Delegates from nearly 200 countries are in Glasgow to hammer out how to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting temperature rises to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.
The first week of talks saw countries announce plans to phase out coal use and to end foreign fossil fuel funding, but there were few details on how they plan the mass decarbonisation scientists say is needed.
The promises followed a major assessment that showed global CO2 emissions are set to rebound in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels.
“They cannot ignore the scientific consensus and they cannot ignore us,” said Thunberg.
“Our leaders are not leading. This is what leadership looks like,” she said gesturing to the crowd.
Two days of demonstrations are planned by activist groups to highlight the disconnect between the glacial pace of emissions reductions and the climate emergency already swamping countries across the world. Some progress
Onlookers to Friday’s march lined the streets and hung out of windows to watch the stream of protesters, who held banners reading “No Planet B” and “Climate Action Now”.
“I’m here because the world leaders are deciding the fate of our future and the present of people that have already been impacted by climate crisis,” said 18-year-old Valentina Ruas.
“We won’t accept anything that isn’t real climate policy centred on climate justice.”
Students were out in force, with some schools allowing pupils to skip lessons to see the march and one young green warrior holding a placard that read: “Climate change is worse than homework”.
But environmental groups pointed out that governments, particularly wealthy polluters, have a habit of failing to live up to their promises.
Vanessa Nakate told the crowd that people in her native Uganda were “being erased” by climate change.
“People are dying, children are dropping out of school, farms are being destroyed,” she said.
“Another world is necessary. Another world is possible.” ‘Take responsibility’
Countries came into COP26 with national climate plans that, when brought together, put Earth on course to warm 2.7C this century, according to the UN.
With just 1.1C of warming so far, communities across the world are already facing ever more intense fire and drought, displacement and economic ruin wrought by the Earth’s heating climate.
“Scientists have done what they need to do, they’ve told us about the problem. Young people have done what they need to do by calling attention to this issue,” said Natalie Tariro Chido Mangondo, a Zimbabwean climate and gender advocate.
“And it’s just up to our leaders to get their act together.”
Campaigners say they expect up to 50,000 demonstrators in the Scottish city on Saturday as part of a global round of climate protests.
A spokesman from Police Scotland said there were “fewer than 20 arrests made” as of Friday night, mainly for public disorder offences.
(AFP)
COP26: Lobbying threat to global climate action
Lobbyists are pushing the climate to dangerous extremes by blocking or diluting policies that would reduce the burning of fossil fuels.
Lobbyists for oil giant ExxonMobil told undercover reporters that the company was supporting a carbon tax in order to stall more serious carbon pollution cuts
As world leaders meet for a landmark summit to cut carbon pollution, scientists and environmental groups are sounding alarm bells that businesses and governments are lobbying to keep burning fossil fuels.
"Every time there's a climate policy being proposed — which basically entails control of fossil fuels — the industry is there mobilizing against it," said Benjamin Franta, a science historian at Stanford University who studies how the fossil fuel industry has blocked climate action. "Sometimes it defeats it entirely. Sometimes it merely weakens it."
Often overlooked as an obstacle to climate action, lobbying has come into the spotlight as world leaders gather to seek compromise on the fate of the planet at the annual UN climate conference, which is being held this year in Glasgow, Scotland. The UK organized the COP26 summit in partnership with businesses like Boston Consulting Group, which consults for oil and gas companies. Unlike at previous COPs, however, the hosts have banned fossil fuel companies from sponsoring the event itself.
An investigation by The Ferret, a cooperatively owned newsroom in Scotland, found that 35 side events at the summit are being organized by — or feature — big polluting companies and groups that represent them. They include banks like Goldman Sachs, which invests in fossil fuels, and lobby group, the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers.
Ahead of the conference, campaign group Transparency International (TI) wrote a letter to COP26 President Alok Sharma to address conflicts of interest that undermine climate action. "We have already seen the impact of this," said Delia Ferreira Rubio, chair of TI, in a statement. "Undue influence and illicit lobbying from the industry even extends to the very meetings where progress on climate crisis is meant to be discussed." What does lobbying look like?
Lobbying can range from secretive meetings with government officials to influencing narratives through public advertising and the funding of third-party groups.
"The tricky part is that lobbying is most effective if nobody knows that you're doing it," Franta said.
This can stretch to science. Documents leaked in October to Unearthed, an investigative journalism outlet from environmental group Greenpeace, revealed that some of the world's biggest coal, oil, beef and animal feed-producing countries tried to strip a landmark UN climate report of findings that could hurt their industries.
Oil producing nations wanted to cut references to fossil fuels in IPCC reports, according to one investigation
Saudi Arabia, Australia and Japan pushed to remove a conclusion that the world needs to rapidly phase out fossil fuels from an upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report scheduled to be published next year, according to Unearthed. Brazil and Argentina tried to delete passages highlighting the climate benefits of plant-based diets. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), meanwhile, wanted to cut several mentions of fossil fuel lobbying — including a reference to "powerful interest groups who have vested interest in maintaining the current high carbon economic structures."
Climate scientists involved in the report said they were under no obligation to accept comments and routinely rejected those that are not grounded in science. But such pressure from governments has raised fears of self-censorship. A landmark IPCC report in August, for instance, contained a 40-page summary for policymakers that did not use the words "fossil fuels." While two such mentions in the draft had been removed at Saudi Arabia's request, they were both only in figure captions, and had not been written into the body text.
How does corporate lobbying hold back climate action? Powerful companies continue to fight policies that would make it harder for them to sell fossil fuels. A report by UK think tank Influence Map in 2019 found the five largest publicly traded oil and gas majors — ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP and Total — invested more than $1 billion (€860 million) of shareholder funds into "misleading climate branding and lobbying" in the three years following the Paris Agreement. In many cases, oil and gas companies try to change public perception using the same messages with which they lobby politicians, said Faye Holder, a climate expert at Influence Map. This includes portraying themselves to the public as part of a solution to climate change, rather than a cause, and highlighting their investments in clean energy while funneling far more money into dirtier fuels. "Advertising becomes really important [because it] socializes these concepts before you even reach the policymakers." In May, lobbyists for oil giant ExxonMobil told an undercover reporter from Unearthed that the company's support for a carbon tax was a move to stall serious measures to cut carbon pollution. Former senior executive Keith McCoy also admitted that Exxon funded "shadow groups" that distorted climate science to stall regulation. "We were looking out for shareholders," McCoy told the reporters, who were posing as recruitment consultants. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods distanced the company from the tactics, describing the comments as "entirely inconsistent with our commitment to the environment." Experts say it fits a broader trend, though it is hard to quantify exactly how much of an impact lobbying has had in slowing climate action. "It stands to reason that it has been impactful since the companies spend quite a bit of money on it," Franta said. "A for-profit business is not going to spend a lot of money on something unless they perceive that it has some beneficial outcome for them."
SOLAR ENERGY IN UNUSUAL PLACES
Solar catamaran on a world tour
The catamaran Race for Water is the largest solar yacht in the world and runs completely without fossil fuels. Modules on deck power the electric motors and charge the batteries for the night. Instead of masts and sails, the yacht also uses a steering kite.
Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer turns 100 German Jewish Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, who moved back to Berlin at the age of 88, celebrates her 100th birthday on Friday. Her late years of education and reconciliation are being honored this week.
Margot Friedländer turned 100 on Friday
Margot Friedländer says she has lived four different lives in her 100 years, but it was the moment when her first life became her second that marked her forever. That was when her early, mainly happy years in Berlin turned into 15 months of hiding in various houses in Berlin, evading the Nazi authorities as long as she could, and then another year of surviving the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
In her 2008 memoir, Friedländer recounts an incident on January 20, 1943, in the apartment of a couple she barely knew in Berlin's Kreuzberg district. She knew that her mother had recently been there.
The acquaintance told Friedländer, who was 21 years old and had the last name Bendheim at the time, that her mother had left. She had gone to report herself to the authorities to join her son, Margot's brother Ralph, who had been arrested that afternoon by the Gestapo. The woman then handed Margot her mother's handbag containing her last connection with her family: An address book and an amber necklace. And there was a message, passed on verbally: "Try to make your life."
"These words shaped my life," Friedländer told DW this week at one of the events taking place in Berlin to mark her 100th birthday on Friday — this one the opening of an exhibition of portraits of her. "I feel that I have accomplished something, not just for my mother, not just for six million Jews, but for the many million people who were killed because they didn't want to do what they were told to do."
Friedländer with her friend Thomas Halaczinsky, who has made three films about her later life in Berlin
'Try to make your life'
Though she was not to find out until decades later, Friedländer's mother and brother were murdered in Auschwitz within weeks of that January day. Her father, who had fled to Belgium years before, had already been gassed, too.
Sixty-five years later, her mother's hastily delivered final message became the title of Friedländer's memoir, a book that began the work of remembrance and education that has taken up the last decade in Berlin, where she moved back for good in 2010.
It wasn't an easy move to make, and there were many people who tried to dissuade her. Other Holocaust survivors she knew in New York, including her cousin Jean, objected to her visits to Germany. Her husband Adolf Friedländer, another Holocaust survivor who she had met in Theresienstadt and who died in 1997, had always rejected the occasional invitations that had arrived over the years from the Berlin government.
"I often ask myself if coming back here was the right thing to do," Friedländer said in "A Long Way Home," a 2010 documentary co-produced by DW. In the same film, Margot admitted to uncomfortable feelings around some Berliners: "I'm still very guarded about the people of my generation whom I meet here. They were the ones who cheered the Nazis back then. And did nothing to put a stop to what was going on. Everybody knew about it, and they looked away. Although I came back, it's still something that affects me very deeply."
For the next generation
But those doubts were answered in the work she undertook after the age of 87, when her memoirs were published, and she began to give readings around Germany, especially in schools. "They listen to me intently," she says now of the students. "I have received — I don't know — a thousand letters. I tell them: What happened can't be changed, but this is for you. That became my mission."
Friedländer's journey in Berlin has been documented in a loose trilogy of documentaries made by Thomas Halaczinsky, a German filmmaker living in New York. The first of them, "Don't Call It Heimweh," became the occasion for her first visit to Berlin in 2003.
Friedländer speaking to the likely next mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, on Tuesday
Halaczinsky said he was interested in the crisis Friedländer experienced when he first met her in the early 2000s. "I was seeing how the effects of German history, of fascism, of oppression, of the Holocaust, actually continue to exist in the lives of people like Margot, who were struggling to come to terms with their lives and their own identity," he told DW.
Friedländer's specific situation contained a peculiar conflict: She had spent 15 months in hiding in Berlin, being protected by non-Jewish Germans, while at the same time other Germans were murdering her family. "She was struggling with exactly that, and she was trying to find some way to figure out how she could balance that," he said. "How does somebody at that age actually find the center point of herself?"
In the second of Halaczinsky's films, "A Long Way Home," Friedländer answers the question herself: "How can I possibly feel homesick for Germany, after the Germans killed my parents?" she says.
"To that, I'd have to reply: This is precisely why I've come here — I've come here to meet the young people who had nothing to do with it."
A service for Germany
Those early struggles seem a long way away 18 years later. Friedländer has since been showered with state awards and honorary citizenships. Portraits have been painted, busts cast, her story told in exhibitions, films, books, and a graphic novel. The Schwarzkopf Foundation, set up to empower young people to engage in politics, founded an annual prize in her honor in 2014, the latest of which was presented by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Politicians have lined up to laud her, among them Berlin's likely next mayor, Franziska Giffey, who was also at Tuesday's exhibition opening. "I think she's a model for all of us," she told DW. "She goes to children and young people and people of all ages and shares her life. And this act of commemoration is very, very important for our political education today. To hear this voice, in her 100th year, is very important for all of us defending a free and open society." Friedländer has spent the last decade telling her story and presenting readings of her memoir, 'Try to Make Your Life'
The last of Halaczinsky's films, which covers these last few years of her work, has recently been aired by public broadcaster ARD. It is entitled "Angekommen" ("Arrived"), and its very last scene catches Friedländer in an unusually uncertain moment.
"I don't make many presumptions that very much will remain after I have died," she says. "There are great people who have done something. But my contribution is after all, very, very small. Perhaps the generation now that hears me in schools will say something to their children. I have no idea how far that will go, because so many people keep saying we don't want to talk about it anymore."
Pessimistic as this may sound, Halaczinsky sees the ending as a call to action, because soon we won't be able to rely on Holocaust survivors for first-hand accounts of the real horrors of fascism.
"Even though her work is being acknowledged, this is not a work that can be finished. It's a process, it continues," Halaczinsky said. "Her doubts are a warning to all of us."
A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest as the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) takes place, in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 6, 2021. 
