Hong Kong issues arrest warrants for eight overseas democracy activists


Amy Hawkins and Daniel Hurst
Mon, 3 July 2023

Photograph: Joyce Zhou/Reuters

Hong Kong police have issued arrest warrants for eight overseas activists days after the third anniversary of the introduction of a national security law that granted authorities sweeping extraterritorial powers to prosecute acts or comments made anywhere in the world that it deems criminal.

Supt Steve Li Kwai-wah, a police officer, told a press conference on Monday that Nathan Law, Anna Kwok, Finn Lau, Dennis Kwok, Ted Hui, Kevin Yam, Mung Siu-tat and Yuan Gong-yi, high-profile pro-democracy activists, former lawmakers and legal scholars, “have encouraged sanctions … to destroy Hong Kong”.

The eight, who are based in various places including the UK – where at least three of them are thought to be – the US and Australia, are accused of continuing to violate the national security law while in exile. The charges carry a maximum life sentence.

Police have offered a reward of HK$1m (£100,700) a person.

The national security law, which is widely seen as a Beijing-backed tool of suppression in Hong Kong, was imposed on 30 June 2020 after months of pro-democracy protests had engulfed the city. Chinese and Hong Kong authorities say the law was necessary to restore stability to the territory but critics say that it violates free expression. All left Hong Kong after the introduction of the law.

The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, described the decision by Hong Kong police to issue the arrest warrants as an example of “the authoritarian reach of China’s extraterritorial law.”

Writing on Twitter, Law, who has been granted asylum in the UK, said: “These charges are classic examples of abusing the concept of ‘national security’, pushing its definition to an extreme to suppress dissident voices.

“If meeting foreign politicians, attending seminars & hearings are ‘colluding with foreign forces’, a lot of [Hong Kong] officials should be in legal trouble.”

Yam, a legal scholar who is now based in Australia, said: “I can’t say I’m surprised because whenever you speak out overseas about Hong Kong you never know what might happen. I feel no joy from being congratulated I just feel sad for Hong Kong.”

The Australian government said it was “deeply disappointed” by the arrest warrants.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said Australia had “consistently expressed concerns about the broad application of the national security law to arrest or pressure pro-democracy figures and civil society”.

“Freedom of expression and assembly are essential to our democracy, and we will support those in Australia who exercise those rights,” she said on Monday.

In its latest report on the situation in Hong Kong, the UK’s Foreign Office said that the law, along with the use of a colonial-era sedition law against government critics, “continues to damage Hong Kong’s way of life”.

Mung, a trade union organiser who is based in the UK, said: “From the very beginning [that] I embarked on the road of exile and committed to international advocacy against dictatorship, I have been prepared that this might happen one day.

“However, I strongly believe that the regime cannot deter people from fighting for justice and democracy.”

Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, said: “These arrest warrants are not an indictment of these activists, but of Hong Kong’s once well-regarded law enforcement and judiciary. Democracies should not only flatly reject the warrants, which authorities want upheld internationally, but they should also increase protections to those threatened by Beijing.”

A provision in the law that criminalises acts deemed to violate national security anywhere in the world has meant that even people who flee overseas can be targeted.

Lau, a political activist who is now based in the UK, said that while he welcomed the fact that the UK suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong after the national security law, some arms of the government failed to understand the level of threat against Hongkongers in the UK. “There are so many instances in the past few years, most recently in Southampton and in the Manchester consulate where they dragged people in, where the UK government is not taking proactive measures to counter transnational repression.

“The risk of abduction and even physical assault has escalated a lot … while I try to be more cautious I won’t stop advocating for Hong Kong people.”

In June Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators were allegedly attacked by pro-Beijing activists in Southampton. Last year Chinese diplomats brawled with Hong Kong protesters at the Chinese consulate in Manchester, leading to six diplomats being recalled.

Hong Kong police reportedly told the press conference that 260 people had been arrested as a result of the national security law, with 79 of them convicted.

DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS
How the Taliban launched the ‘most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history’

WITH BRUTALITY AND VIOLENCE

Samuel Lovett
Mon, 3 July 2023 

Afghanistan’s farms account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s opium production - ATIF ARYAN/AFP via Getty Images

America’s “war on drugs,” launched by President Richard Nixon in 1971, raged for more than half a century but hardly put a dent in the Afghan opium trade.

The country’s farms account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s opium production but even the American invasion in 2001 did little to disrupt the flow of drugs out of the nation.

But now, where the world’s drug enforcement community has failed, the Taliban themselves are succeeding.

In April last year, the group’s religious leaders issued an edict prohibiting poppy farming across Afghanistan. More than 12 months on, the ban is being described by experts as “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history”.

The impact on the ground has been dramatic. Afghan poppy production has plummeted by an estimated 80 per cent in the last year as Taliban enforcers move from farm to farm destroying crops and punishing offenders.

Cultivation in Helmand province, which once produced around four-fifths of Afghanistan’s poppies and was the centre of British operations in the country from 2001 to 2015, fell to around 2,500 acres this year, down from 320,000 the year before, according to estimates based on satellite imagery.

The Taliban issued an edict prohibiting poppy farming across Afghanistan last April - Simon Townsley

Taliban guards destroy a poppy plantation in Argo district of Badakhshan province - OMER ABRAR/AFP via Getty Images

Now, experts are warning of profound and unpredictable consequences if the ban on poppy production holds – consequences that will reach far beyond Afghanistan’s borders.

Opiate production in countries like Myanmar and Mexico could boom to fill the void created by Taliban, with all sorts of attendant impacts on trafficking routes, gangs and supply chains.

Meanwhile, Afghan farmers and others who rely on the poppy trade could be driven to leave the country, further undermining the domestic economy and exacerbating irregular migration pressures on large parts of Europe, Asia and America.

It’s also possible that the gap left by the collapse of the world’s largest opium market could be filled by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids – substances that, through overdose, are killing more young and middle-aged Americans (18-45) than cancer, heart disease or guns.

“I think the concern would be that if heroin supplies diminish significantly – and we won’t get a flavour of that until next year – a lot of fentanyl will come into the system,” said Harry Shapiro, a UK-based expert with 45 years of experience in the narcotics field and director of DrugsWise.

“And if there was a lot of fentanyl, or similar, in the system, then the likely outcome of that is more deaths, rather than a longer cycle of addiction. People don’t get addicted to heroin after a few days, but your first hit of fentanyl could be your last.”

It is not the first time that the Taliban attempted to clamp down on poppy production in Afghanistan, which itself has long struggled with heroin addiction. A similar ban was imposed in 2000, the last time the group was in power, but it was effectively ended by the US-led invasion the following year.

That experience showed an interruption in supply can take some time to make itself felt internationally. Opium is relatively easy to store and it will take another year to 18 months for hoarded supplies along the trafficking route out of Afghanistan to be exhausted, experts say.

Following the last ban on production, international opium prices surged and, in the UK, the purity of heroin sold on the streets fell from 55 to 34 per cent.

“Back then the ban was fairly short-lived,” said Mr Shapiro. “But the poppy trail is so long from Afghanistan to the UK, that you never know how much heroin is in transit at any one time. The actual ban didn’t really impact supply.”

This time around, experts are waiting to see if the Taliban’s edict will last beyond one season, which starts each November with the planting of poppy seeds.

It is not the first time that the Taliban attempted to clamp down on poppy production in Afghanistan, which itself has long struggled with heroin addiction - Simon Townsley

Drug addicts at the Pul-e-Sukhta bridge, Kabul - Simon Townsley

In religious terms at least, the ban certainly sounds like it may be permanent.

“All Afghans are informed that from now on cultivation of poppy has been strictly prohibited across the country,” said the edict, issued in April 2022 by the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

“They will not plant poppy on their land. If anyone plants poppy on his land, then the poppy will be destroyed and he will face legal action.”

Yet the economics of the ban make little sense.

In a recent briefing to the UK parliament Dr David Mansfield, author of “A State Built on Sand: How opium undermined Afghanistan,” estimated the ban has wiped out the equivalent of 450,000 full-time jobs in agriculture – a major hit to an economy still reeling from drought, conflict and cuts to development programmes.

By itself, the Afghan opiate economy, including domestic consumption and exports, accounted for between 9 and 14 per cent per cent of the country’s GDP in 2021.

One senior analyst at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crimes, who recently travelled to Afghanistan and asked not to be named for fear of endangering his contacts in the country, said the picture on the ground is “quite complicated”.

“The idea that the Taliban is uniformly enforcing the edict, we need to analyse and properly evaluate,” the analyst said. “We have to be a little bit sceptical. Because of the complex political economy, they can’t upset local communities.”

The analyst suggested the ban had been enforced to court Western diplomatic recognition, a view echoed by local Afghans. “The ban on poppies by the Taliban is not a Sharia decision, but rather a political interaction with the international community,” said one tribal leader from Helmand’s Nad-e Ali district, who declined to be named in case of reprisal.

Others, however, are convinced the ban is absolute – for now, at least. Graeme Smith, an Afghanistan expert at Crisis Group, said the crackdown has so far been “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history, according to the volume of drugs taken off the market”.

Farmers sell off assets

Mohammadullah, a farmer in Nawazd district, said: “The Taliban are definitely implementing the decisions of their leaders. They have kept an eye on the lands of all the people who planted even a little opium. They destroyed their fields and imprisoned some farmers.”

Stripped of their income, men like Mohammadullah may leave Afghanistan in search of new opportunities. Already, there have been reports of “distress sales” among farmers who don’t have poppy stocks to fall back on, according to Dr Mansfield.

“So they are selling off the family gold, the wife’s dowry and selling off some land,” he told MPs last month. “There is also out-migration … one of the viable coping strategies, in the absence of poppy, over an extended period will be to leave the country.”

For now, it’s too early to say how the global market will respond to the ban, but there are early indications of what could happen next.

Instability in Myanmar has led to a boom in poppy cultivation – with the junta and many of their opponent militias tacitly supporting growers because it is an important source of income and alternative options are limited.

In 2022, the first full growing season since the junta’s takeover, the amount of land used to grow opium poppies jumped by 33 per cent to 40,100 hectares, while production almost doubled to 795 metric tonnes, according to a UN report published in January.

Tom Kean, a Myanmar expert at Crisis Group, said Myanmar’s opium boom was not sparked by Afghanistan’s drought but could end up being fueled by it.

“As to whether Myanmar will become the world’s biggest producer, it is starting from a long way back,” said Mr Kean. “However, if the ban is as strict as in 2000/01, then it could happen.”

More generally, the long-term imposition of the ban would likely increase opium prices, especially as international stockpiles are exhausted, incentivising new actors to enter the market.

In an analysis published last month, Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a UK-based charity, said opium production could expand in several countries and regions with the appropriate climate, including India, Turkey, and central Asia.

However, it said that the sheer scale of new or diverted production needed to replace Afghan opium, set up laboratories to convert it to heroin, and increase capacity in trafficking routes from other areas would not happen overnight.

“If the stocks dry up, then there will be adjustments in the market,” said Martin Jelsma, Programme Director for Drugs and Democracy at the Transnational Institute, a Dutch-based think tank. “But it would probably take a few years before trafficking routes are re-established.”

More harmful than heroin

Perhaps the most worrying prospect of all is a sudden increase in the availability of synthetic opioids if the Taliban’s ban eventually drives a heroin shortage.

In a 2022 report, the UN said the crackdown “may lead to … [the] replacement of heroin or opium by other substances at the user level, some of which may be even more harmful than heroin or opium (such as fentanyl and its analogues).”

Easily manufactured in make-shift laboratories and 50 times more potent than heroin, fentanyl would make for an appealing alternative to organised crime groups: one kilo of the drug would be far easier to smuggle into a market than 50 kilos of heroin, yet would generate the same revenue.

At the same time, appetite for heroin is now fading in markets, says Paul Griffiths, scientific director at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that the wave of addiction seen in the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s has largely passed.

Against this backdrop, the Taliban’s ban may push criminal groups away from the drug entirely and encourage them to establish new illicit markets instead.

The Taliban’s ban may push criminal groups away from heroin entirely - Simon Townsley

The experience of the 2001 “heroin drought” – and the reaction of the European market, which receives 95 per cent of its opium from Afghanistan – gives some illustration of what could happen, says Mr Griffiths.

Then, there were “profound changes in the opioid-using market which persisted over time, particularly in the Baltic states,” he said. In countries like Estonia, fentanyl replaced heroin as the drug of choice for opioid addicts. This remains the case to this day.

“We know from previous experience this disruption can change the equilibrium of the drug market and once new products have become established, they can persist over time,” Mr Griffiths added. “So it’s certainly a potential threat that synthetic opioids take off.”

Western Europe’s superior health systems and harm reduction services should insulate the region against the sudden availability of fentanyl, but this may not be the case in the east of the continent, where such infrastructure is “non-existent,” said Mr Jelsma.

“There’s more of a risk to the old Soviet Union countries,” he added.

Like many other experts, though, Mr Jelsma agrees it’s impossible to say with any certainty what will unfold over the next two years. But should the Taliban’s ban endure, he says, there could be serious consequences “which we will need to be ready for”.

UK’s hottest June on record caused ‘unprecedented’ deaths of fish in rivers

Sami Quadri
Mon, 3 July 2023 

Dead chub floating on the polluted waters of the once thriving River Ray in Wiltshire (PA )

The record hot weather in June helped cause a dramatic spike in fish deaths, environmental groups have warned.

The UK experienced its hottest June on record last month after temperatures exceeded the previous high of 14.9C set in 1940 and 1976.

The sweltering heatwave in the early weeks of June led to heat-health alerts, water shortages and caused an unprecedented number of fish deaths in rivers.

“The reports of the number of fish death incidents in rivers for this time of year has been unprecedented. I would normally expect rivers to be affected later in the summer when it’s hotter and drier,” Mark Owen, from the Angling Trust, told BBC News.

In one incident, hundreds of dead fish were found floating on the surface of the River Cam near Ditton Meadows in Cambridge.

High temperatures lead to algal blooms which cause low oxygen levels, killing fish as a result. The Environment Agency received more reports of dead fish than the same time last year.

Ali Morse, from the Wildlife Trusts, said the scorching temperatures caused plants to wilt, which restricted the food supply for insects that feed on nectar and pollen.

“Every month seems to be the hottest, the driest, the wettest, or whichever record-breaking event it is. If we have a one-off pollution event or a wildfire, then there is normally time for nature to bounce back, but now it seems to be continually pounded by extreme weather,” she added.

Meanwhile, drought plans have been stepped up in England after water demand shot up during the hot weather.

Simon Hawkins, chair of the National Drought Group, said: “The recent heatwave has served as a reminder that we need to prepare for weather extremes and act now to ensure resilient water supplies.

“The Environment Agency, water companies and partners are working collaboratively to handle drought risk across the country; with our staff managing abstraction licences to balance need, ensuring water companies implement their drought plans, working with farmers to manage resources, and rescuing fish in areas where river levels are extremely low.”

South West Water customers in Cornwall have been subject to a hosepipe ban since August last year, which has since been extended to others in Devon.

Along with parts of East Anglia, the region has not left drought status since the extreme heat last summer, which saw 40C bring destructive grassfires and more than 3,000 excess deaths during the heatwaves.

The Enviornment Agency has been contacted for comment.

UK

Tighter limit on industrial, power and aviation emissions from 2024


John Besley, PA
Mon, 3 July 2023

A new limit on emissions for the power sector, energy intensive and aviation industries will come into force from next year, it has been announced.

Under the limit, the industries will be required to bring their emissions down at the rate needed to reach net zero goals.

The announcement forms part of a package of reforms unveiled by the UK Emissions Trading System Authority (UK ETS), the joint body comprising the UK Government, Scottish Government, Welsh Government and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland that runs the emissions trading scheme.

The UK ETS incentivises decarbonisation through a process of buying and selling emissions allowances, which companies must obtain for every tonne of emissions they produce each year.

To help ease the transition to the new limit, the UK ETS Authority said the cap will be set at the highest level of the range consulted on, in line with net zero, in order to allow maximum flexibility for industries.

Extra allowances will also be made available to the market between 2024 and 2027, while the current levels of free allocation of allowances for industry has been guaranteed until 2026 in a bid to protect from international pressures.

The aviation sector is also affected (Steve Parsons/PA)

In a joint statement, UK ETS Authority Ministers, including Lord Callanan, Julie James, Mairi McAllan and Gareth Davies, said: “With the recent rises in energy prices, it is more important than ever that we accelerate the transition away from costly fossil fuels, towards greener and more secure energy.

“Our UK Emissions Trading Scheme, along with other interventions, forms part of a wider strategy to provide a long-term framework to incentivise UK industries to decarbonise – seizing the huge opportunities that are arising from a rapidly expanding clean energy sector, and providing the certainty that industries need to invest in new green technologies.

“The decisions taken here will not only put us on the path to net zero, but will also support crucial industries on their path to long term sustainability.”

EU official sees 'contradiction' between China's climate goals, coal plants

AFP
Mon, 3 July 2023

European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans delivers a speech about climate change to students at Tsinghua University in Beijing on July 3, 2023. 

(GREG BAKER)

A top EU climate official said Monday there is a "contradiction" between China's ambitious goals to combat global warming and its continued building of coal-fired power plants.

European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said in Beijing he was "convinced that China is willing to go in the right direction".

"But at the same time, it's also true that... more coal-fired power plants are opened," Timmermans said in a speech at Tsinghua University.

"And that seems to be in contradiction."

China is also the biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases driving climate change, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), and its emissions pledges are seen as essential to keeping global temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius.

However, China relied on coal for nearly 60 percent of its electricity last year.

Greenpeace said in April that China has approved a major surge in coal power so far this year, accusing it of prioritising energy supply over its pledge to reduce emissions from fossil fuels.

The jump in approvals for coal-fired power plants has added to concerns that China will backtrack on its goals to peak emissions between 2026 and 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060.

Timmermans' comments come on the heels of record-setting heatwaves and flooding across China in recent weeks that have underscored the potential impacts of continued upticks in global temperatures.

He also warned of the consequences of not restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, saying this would lead to a "significant and widespread increase in adverse impacts of climate change, including in extreme weather events".

China's top climate centre announced at the weekend that 2023 has seen a record number of high-temperature days over a six-month period.

Beijing logged its hottest June day ever recorded, the national weather service said last month, as swaths of northern China sweltered in 40-degree heat.

Heavy sustained rainfall in central and southern China has also led to severe flooding in recent days, with more than 14,000 people forced to evacuate in Hunan Province, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The United Nations has warned it is near-certain that 2023-2027 will be the warmest five-year period ever recorded, as greenhouse gasses and the El Nino climate phenomenon combine to send temperatures soaring.

Beijing has repeatedly urged developed nations in recent years to honour their climate finance pledges.

China has rejected the idea that it should no longer be considered a developing country, even though it is now the world's second-biggest economy.

pfc/oho/pbt

Could Yevgeny Prigozhin’s ‘rebellion’ against Russia be just an illusion?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR----THE GUARDIAN

Mon, 3 July 2023 

Photograph: AP

Maybe China’s view that current divisions in Russia are an “illusion” is right (China downplays Wagner rebellion as Russia’s ‘internal affairs’, 26 July). Could we have just witnessed an incredible sleight of hand by the Russian president? What if Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup was not intended for Russia, but Belarus?

Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his desire to reunify the old USSR. Former member Belarus shares long land borders with other former USSR states, specifically Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. And while Belarus has shown itself to be a reliable Russian ally, Alexander Lukashenko is weak and Belarusian people have shown a preference for closer ties to Europe rather than Russia. With this in mind, it would be no surprise if Putin views the country as unreliable.

However, even if Russia’s forces were not already fully engaged, the invasion of a staunch ally would be hard to justify. So maybe Putin decided that Belarus needed to be brought under Russian control from within. And what better way than to install someone with a private army of at least 25,000 battle-hardened troops, and complete loyalty, into Belarus, ready to take over the country on command?

Having created the fiction that Prigozhin is acting independently and against elements of the Russian establishment and then duping the Belarusian leader into taking him in (Trojan Horse-style), the setup would be complete, with the added beauty that Putin has full deniability in the case of a failure in execution. It would also cast the earlier stationing of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus in a new light.
Anthony Walbran
Dee Why, New South Wales, Australia

• Before we crow too loudly over Putin’s supposed difficulties with the Prigozhin “rebellion”, shouldn’t we at least be alert to the possibility that this whole episode has been a feint to get him and his troops into position in Belarus so that they can attack Kiev from the north, catching Ukraine in a pincer movement? We’ve been caught off-guard before.
Sue Joiner
London

UK

How heating your home fuels climate change – and why government measures are failing to stop it


Ned Lamb, Research Associate on Low-Carbon Energy Systems, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

The Conversation
Mon, 3 July 2023 


Heat pumps are three times more energy-efficient than boilers. 

Virrage Images/Shutterstock

The UK’s housing stock is old, energy inefficient and heavily reliant on fossil fuel heating systems – mainly gas boilers. With heating responsible for 17% of the UK’s carbon emissions, homes and their central heating must transform if the country is to achieve net zero by 2050.

While there isn’t a single solution that will suit every home, government advisers on the Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimate that 8 million heat pumps need to be installed in existing homes by 2035.

The CCC recently published a damning assessment of the UK’s progress towards its 2030 climate goals, saying annual emission reductions outside the power sector must nearly quadruple. Home heating is of particular concern, as heat pumps are being rolled out at one-ninth the rate they need to be by 2028, alongside falling rates of energy efficiency improvements.

Heat pumps extract heat either from the air, ground or nearby water and transfer it into a building, providing heating and hot water through pipes and radiators. Some heat pumps can even work in reverse to cool homes during the summer.

Heat pumps run on electricity and use energy three times more efficiently than gas boilers.

Better still, UK homeowners are becoming more comfortable with this technology. A survey of 2,500 households in May 2023 revealed that more than 80% that had installed a heat pump were satisfied.

Air-source heat pumps like these are effective in most weather conditions. Nimur/Shutterstock

UK trails European neighbours

Only 59,862 heat pumps were installed in the UK in 2022. Although this is an increase of 40% on 2021, it’s far from the government’s target of 600,000 a year by 2028. To fully replace all of its gas boilers, the UK would need to be installing 1.7 million heat pumps annually by 2036.

Heat pumps are being rolled out faster elsewhere. In Norway, 60% of buildings have heat pumps; in Sweden, over 40%. Meanwhile, less than 1% of UK buildings had a heat pump in 2021. And compare the UK’s 2022 record with other countries in Europe: France installed 462,672 heat pumps (up 20%), Germany 236,000 (up 53%) and the Netherlands 123,208 (up 80%).

European governments support heat pump installations in various ways. The Netherlands has gradually raised taxes on homes burning natural gas for heating and offered subsidies for heat pumps. France has combined a 30% tax credit on improvements to heating and home insulation costing up to €16,000 with a 0% interest loan of up to €30,000 for energy efficiency upgrades.

These measures address two things which prevent people from getting a heat pump: the upfront cost of installation and the renovations required to prepare a home. Heat pumps are becoming cheaper but they are still more expensive than gas boilers and many UK homes lack the double-glazed windows, insulated walls and lofts, and pipework and radiators that help them perform optimally.

The CCC estimates that fewer homes were insulated in 2022 than the year before. 

Irin-K/Shutterstock

Since 2012, government policy has failed to drastically improve home energy efficiency or encourage low-carbon heating.

The carbon emissions reduction target introduced by Gordon Brown’s Labour government in 2008 required energy suppliers to cut emissions by helping customers make their homes more energy efficient. When it closed in 2012, it had beaten its target of saving 293 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. 41% of these savings came from installing insulation, in turn making homes more suitable for a heat pump.

The green deal followed in 2013 and the renewable heat incentive in 2014 under David Cameron’s Conservative-led coalition government.

Green deal loans for energy-efficiency upgrades attracted just 14,000 applicants as homeowners baulked at the relatively high cost of borrowing and were unconvinced by the projected energy savings. The scheme was scrapped in 2015.

The renewable heat incentive paid homeowners quarterly over seven years for installing a heat pump but asked them to fund the installation upfront. In 2018, the government blamed high upfront costs, poor awareness and complex installations for the poor uptake. The incentive ended in 2022.

Ban the boiler?

Launched in 2022 under Boris Johnson, the boiler upgrade scheme offers homeowners a £5,000 grant to replace their gas boiler with an air-source heat pump (£6,000 for a ground-source heat pump) and aims to lower the cost difference between the two. Installing a new combi-boiler costs between £600 and £2,150 whereas a heat pump is £5,000 to £8,000 after the government subsidy.

The government also plans to implement a clean heat market mechanism that will ask boiler manufacturers to sell four heat pumps for every 100 gas boilers in 2024/25, or pay for the equivalent in heat pump credits if they can’t (one heat pump credit is worth £5,000).

These measures may improve on earlier failures if the rules for industry are clear and the incentives are generous enough for consumers to consider investing in a heat pump, as examples with other low-carbon technologies have shown.

For instance, evidence suggests carmarkers are already selling more battery-electric vehicles in anticipation of a law requiring them to sell a rising proportion of zero-emission vehicles each year from 2024. And the feed-in-tariff scheme requiring energy suppliers to buy electricity from homeowners at an agreed price for 10 to 25 years helped nearly a million households install solar panels.

Beyond targets for boiler manufacturers, the UK government will ban natural gas boilers in new buildings from 2025. While Germany’s governing coalition is implementing a ban on installing gas boilers in existing properties from 2028.

Gas boilers remain relatively cheap and convenient to install in the UK. 

Andrzej Wilusz/Shutterstock

Before such a ban is tabled in the UK, there are policies that could raise the dismal heat pump installation rate. First, like the Dutch, the UK could gradually lower taxes on residential electricity and increase them on gas.

Second, the government could ensure energy performance certificates more accurately assess the energy efficiency of homes and their readiness for heat pumps. And third, the government should dismiss opposition from boiler manufacturers and implement the clean heat market mechanism.

Decarbonising heat and encouraging heat pumps is essential for achieving net zero. Tighter rules and targets for industry must sit alongside attractive incentives for consumers if the UK is to reach 600,000 installations a year in five years’ time.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ned Lamb is funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council's Low Temperature Heat Recovery and Distribution Network Technologies (LoT-NET) programme.

Staff strike will hit troubled Glasgow bar over busiest part of the week

Amanda Keenan
Mon, 3 July 2023 

STAFF at a troubled Glasgow bar have revealed the dates when they will strike - the first industrial action of its type anywhere in the UK for over 20 years.

Workers at the 13th Note in Merchant City will walk out on Friday July 14 - and will then continue to withdraw their labour every weekend until August 6.

Unite Hospitality, which represents 95 per cent of the workers employed at the venue, exclusively shared details of the plan with the Glasgow Times this morning.

It says the strike will go ahead unless drastic improvements are made by the owners of the King Street bar.

Glasgow Times: Staff at 13th Note (Image: Newsquest)

The escalating dispute, which has been rumbling on since March when workers lodged an official grievance, centres on the trade union’s campaign to secure better wages, improvements to health and safety and trade union recognition for those employed by the iconic music venue.

Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham said: “Unite’s members at the 13th Note bar in Glasgow are united in taking a stand in what could be the first bar workers’ strike across the UK in over 20 years. That says a lot about them, their strength of feeling and the stage this dispute has now reached.

Unite says it represents 95 per cent of the workers at the bar.

Bryan Simpson, lead organiser for Unite Hospitality, said that a breakdown is negotiations had brought the workforce to break point.

He added: “Unless the owners of 13th Note get back around the negotiating table to propose improvements to wages, health and safety as well as union recognition, the rift between the owner and workers will only grow wider.”

Nick Troy, who works as a chef at the venue, said: "We've tried for 17 weeks to resolve this and we have been trying to reason with the management. This is not a decision we have taken lightly, or a step that we wanted to take but from wages to hygiene and understaffing, and our demands have not been properly listened to. People are worried about the ramifications of a strike because we all want the 13th Note to succeed, but we hope this will send a message to management that we have had enough.

"We want them to get back around the table for meaningful negotiations to try and reach a resolution."

The venue’s owner, Jacqueline Fennessy, denied that the strike action is backed by all of the staff who work there.

In a statement to the Glasgow Times she said: “Unite the Union do not have 100% support for strike action from 13th Note staff.

“Only 10 union members actually voted in the ballot, out of 17 union who were eligible, and I will state again, there are no health and safety issues in the venue.

“Any issues raised by Environmental Health were dealt with immediately and we were authorised to reopen within 72 hours.

“I would reiterate there are no staff at the 13th Note on zero-hour contracts and all staff are being paid above the Living Wage.”

ABOLISH GOLF (COURSES)

Extinction Rebellion plugs holes on 10 Spanish golf courses in water protest

GOOD FOR THEM

Sam Jones in Madrid
Mon, 3 July 2023

Photograph: Extinction Rebellion/AFP/Getty Images

Climate activists in Spain have filled in holes on 10 golf courses to draw attention to the huge amounts of water the “elitist leisure pursuit” uses as a nationwide drought continues in the first heatwave of the year.

Members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) revealed their latest direct action campaign in a video released on Sunday, saying they had targeted courses in locations including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, the Basque country, Navarra and Ibiza.

Footage showed activists plugging holes with soil and planting seedlings alongside signs reading: “Drought alert. Golf course closed for climate justice.”

In a statement, XR said it had carried out the action to “denounce the wasting of water by golf in the midst of one of the worst droughts in history”. It said golf courses in Spain used more water than the cities of Madrid and Barcelona combined, with each hole requiring more than 100,000 litres of water a day to maintain the greens.

“We cannot allow this kind of elitist leisure pursuit to continue,” the statement said. “Spain is drying up and the rural world is suffering losses running into millions because of the lack of water for crops – all because of an entertainment enjoyed by scarcely 0.6% of the population. Rich people and their leisure activities that gobble up essential resources are a luxury we cannot afford.”

While all of Spain has been in drought since January 2022, some parts of the country are more gravely affected by the lack of rain than others. Authorities in Catalonia, which has been in drought for more than three years, have introduced laws including a 40% reduction in water to be used for agriculture, a 15% reduction for industrial uses, and a cut in the average daily supply per inhabitant from 250 litres to 230 litres.

In May, the Spanish government approved a €2.2bn (£1.9bn) plan to help farmers and consumers cope with the drought, which has been exacerbated by the hottest and driest April on record.

“Spain is a country that is used to periods of drought but there’s no doubt that, as a consequence of the climate change we’re experiencing, we’re seeing far more frequent and intense events and phenomena,” said the environment minister, Teresa Ribera.

“And we need to prepare for that by taking advantage of all the technical capacity that Spain has accrued and developed over many years. We need to deal with episodes such as the present one – and that requires planning, structural measures and also, obviously, short-term and immediate help plans.”

Pro-choice Catholics fight to seize the narrative from the religious right

Maya Yang
Mon, 3 July 2023 




Since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade a year ago, reproductive rights have become an even more contentious issue in an already polarized landscape. With more than 1,500 politicians – mostly men – helping ban abortions since Roe fell, Catholic and pro-choice organizations are increasingly trying to carve out space for themselves in the nationwide dialogue to center their own messaging: that being Catholic and pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.

One organization trying to dismantle religious stigma surrounding abortions is Catholics For Choice, a Washington-DC based Catholic abortion rights advocacy group. For CFC, the belief in individual reproductive rights comes as a result of the Catholic faith, not in spite of.

Speaking to the Guardian shortly after president Joe Biden – a Catholic – said at a recent fundraiser in Maryland that although he is “not big on abortion, he believes that Roe v Wade “got it right”, CFC president Jamie Manson said that despite Biden’s “good model of not imposing one’s religious beliefs on civil law”, his message echoed rightwing sentiments.


“President Biden is playing into a narrative that says, in spite of my faith, I support this. It’s a rightwing narrative that we should not give any energy to. It also creates shame and stigma around abortion,” said Manson.

In the US, 63% of Catholic adults say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Additionally, 68% say that Roe v Wade should have been left as is. In a separate survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, 24% of abortion patients identified as Catholic.

“Catholics overwhelmingly support abortion is because their faith taught them the values of social justice, of the power of individual conscience and of religious freedom… Catholic women who participate richly in the life of the church are having abortions and they have to hear from an all-male hierarchy that when they choose abortion, they’re participating in homicide,” said Manson.

Catholics overwhelmingly support abortion is because their faith taught them the values of social justice … and of religious freedom

“That message is profoundly spiritually violent,” she said, adding, “This is a real pastoral crisis in the church that Catholics don’t want to look at. Every time a high-profile Catholic says, ‘Even though in spite of my faith I support abortion,’ it reinforces that stigma… We need to dismantle this narrative.”

To Manson, there are three important ideas deeply embedded in the Catholic tradition which help fuel her organization’s pro-choice beliefs.

“The first one is this notion of individual conscience. The catechism says explicitly in all that we say and do, our individual conscience is what tells us what is just and right, not the church. So even if what our conscience tells us to be just and right conflicts with church teaching, we have to go with our conscience,” she said.

The next idea is the tradition of social justice, said Manson, which contradicts with the profoundly negative impacts that abortion bans have on already marginalized communities.

“Abortion bans and restrictions disproportionately harm people who are already suffering injustices like racism, poverty, immigration laws and domestic violence. The very people that we as Catholics are supposed to prioritize – the marginalized – are the ones who have their suffering exacerbated by abortion bans and restrictions. So there is a deep conflict with our social justice tradition,” Manson said.

The third and perhaps the most oft-repeated idea to Manson and other pro-choice faith leaders is religious pluralism.

“Catholic teaching supports and respects religious pluralism. And what rightwing Catholics are trying to do is have their theological ideas codified into civil law. By doing that, they’re infringing on the religious freedom of everyone else. Our religious freedom guarantees not only our right to practice our beliefs, but our right to be free of the beliefs of others and so abortion bans and restrictions take away religious freedom,” she said.

With far-right Catholic lawmakers continuing to double down on their anti-abortion stances and conservative Christian legal nonprofits funding anti-abortion organizations, the communities that CFC tries to focus on are those that are silent about their support for abortion.

“We focus on that population because the majority already are there with us. They’re just afraid to speak about it publicly and that’s because again, of the shame, stigma and punishment that comes from the church when you dare to question this teaching,” Manson explained.

“We prefer to cater to that population and we give them information that they need to strengthen their own arguments from a place of faith,” she added.

The other focus group of CFC is what Manson calls the “movable middle”, which consists of people who do not know how they feel about abortion and do not feel welcome in the two polarized populations within the abortion debate.

“There’s a lot of disinformation that the right wing has put out about abortion over the last 50 years and so we provide them with actual facts. We give them a space to discern how they feel about abortion and make a safe place for people for whom it is a complex issue,” Manson said.

We really need to counter religious narratives and people who can do that best are religious people

Another challenge for organizations like CFC is dismantling certain narratives that automatically enmesh the Catholic faith with anti-abortion stances.

“We have to have progressive pro-choice, faithful voices speaking back and centered in the movement now… We really need to counter religious narratives and people who can do that best are religious people. People have to bear in mind the five justices that struck down Roe last year were all Catholic,” said Manson. “We really are fighting a religious force so we have to center religious voices…and take back the narrative that we’ve ceded to this Christian right wing and say, ‘No, because of my faith, I support abortion’ and welcome people who feel conflicted about it rather than making them feel like they’re creating stigma.”

Manson added that she doesn’t think the pro-choice movement has done this well “and really needs to if we’re going to transform hearts and minds around this issue”.

“I think that they have to center faith voices [because] right now, faith voices are marginalized,” she said. “We need to widen our circle in the pro-choice movement and not create these absolutes and gate-keep each other on messaging.”