California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

If the Planet Goes Down, It Will Be Irrelevant Whether a Woman Has the Right to Choose or Not

by John Lawrence

Democrats will fail at codifying Roe vs Wade, but Republicans will succeed in codifying anti-abortion rights if a Republican President is elected in 2024. But that's the least important thing that will happen. If Republicans take over the House and Senate in 2022, and a Republican President is elected in 2024, forget the US and the world doing anything about climate change. It will be full steam ahead for fossil fuels, and full steam ahead for the death of the planet. We don't have that much time any more to prevent irreversible change due to global warming. All the deadlines here have past or soon will be past. The relevant headline is Greenhouse Gases Must Begin to Fall by 2025, Says U.N. Climate Report. We are continually being bombarded with political and cultural trivia when the giant in the room is climate change. The prevailing attitude is we'll get around to that eventually, but eventually is almost here, folks. If not much is happening before 2025, we might as well forget it and spend our few remaining years enjoying the human past times of war and trivial pursuits. Eos reported:

"The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report on climate mitigation since the Paris Agreement was released today. This is likely the IPCC’s last word before the window of opportunity to stop warming at 1.5°C disappears, after which scientists said life-threatening climate consequences and feedbacks will intensify.

"Led by hundreds of scientists convened by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization, the summary of the report was approved by 195 governments after 16 days of discussions and one 40-hour marathon session that stretched into Sunday night.

"The report gives the world a failing grade. International policies implemented by the end of 2020 will miss the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming well below 2°C. Current trends suggest that by 2100, the world will warm 3.2°C compared to preindustrial average temperature, with a spread of 2.2°C to 3.5°C possible.

"“Reaching 3.2°C will be nightmarish,” said Andrea Simonelli, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University who was not involved in the report. “The threshold for habitable is already being pushed to the limit in many places.”"

Despite these dire warnings the human species is still on a binge of colossal pettiness. This means that wars and in particular resource wars will become more severe and common. Already the whole world is in a food crisis due to drought and lack of water for crop irrigation. War also plays a part. Russia and Ukraine together supply more than a quarter of the world’s wheat, and coming disruptions could fuel higher food prices and social unrest. When people start fighting over food, wars will take on proportions that will make the war in Ukraine seem like a minor aberration. Russia and Ukraine together export more than a quarter of the world’s wheat, feeding billions of people in the form of bread, pasta and packaged foods. The countries are also key suppliers of barley, sunflower seed oil and corn, among other products. Food prices have already risen globally as a result of pandemic-related shipping disruptions, rising costs for farmers and adverse weather, and wheat is no exception. Between April 2020 and December 2021, the price of wheat increased 80 percent, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. That was on a par with rising costs for corn and higher than increases for soybeans or coffee.

Now we're talking some serious stuff, not just the future of NATO. The brunt of the food crisis just like the brunt of climate change in general will be felt most by the poorer nations. As a consequence, whatever immigration crisis that is being felt today will be magnified 1000 times at least as starving people seek to come across borders not only in the US but all over the world where prosperous nations border on poverty stricken ones. So crises based on real world problems, rather than on national borders between Russia and Ukraine, will become more severe. Already in California, the water supply for crop irrigation is likely to be turned off by 2025 as Lake Mead and Lake Powell go dry. California supplies about a quarter of the US' fruits and vegetables so the American diet is shortly to be seriously affected and not just by supply chain issues. Recently, a fire in Laguna Niguel destroyed 20 multi-million dollar homes on a day that was not particularly windy or hot. One 10,000 square foot mansion recently was on the market for almost $10 million.

They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Now the human species is fiddling while the whole damn planet is about to go up in smoke. Oh well, it was a nice planet while it lasted. Scientists assure us that there are trillions of other habitable planets out there, but they're so far away.

Off the Top of My Head

The Relationship Between Poverty and Pandemic

by John Lawrence, July 20, 2020

Some people think these are 2 independent phenomena that have nothing to do with each other. In fact they're interrelated. The viruses spill over from animal host reservoirs into human beings when humans are in close contact with animals. As farms, villages, agricultural and mining operations encroach on animal habitat, spillover is not far behind. Many poor people get their only protein from 'bush meat', that is wild animals of all sorts. Especially in China but elsewhere as well people eat all kinds of exotic species. This makes it more likely that there will be a transfer of animal viruses to humans. The virus probably originated from a bat in Wutan's so-called 'wet market' where they sell all kinds of animals both wild caught and farm raised.

Sanitation in many parts of the world leaves a lot to be desired. Diseases of all kinds are rampant. Some of these are confined to local areas, but some like COVID-19 can spread to the rest of the world and cause a pandemic. An estimated 2.5 billion people, more than 35% of the world’s population, lack access to adequate sanitation. Disease started in these areas can spread to the rest of the world in a pandemic so the more the developed world can do to improve these conditions in poor areas of the world, the more the developed world is protecting itself from potential future pandemics. Unsafe drinking water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene, and lack of access to sanitation together contribute to about 88% of deaths from diarrheal diseases.

Water, sanitation and hygiene has the potential to prevent at least 9.1% of the global disease burden and 6.3% of all deaths. The impact of clean water technologies on public health in the U.S. is estimated to have had a rate of return of 23 to 1 for investments in water filtration and chlorination during the first half of the 20th century. Over half of the global population or 4.2 billion people lack safely managed sanitation services. (WHO/UNICEF 2019).

Furthermore, the strain on the world's potable water supply is being exacerbated by climate change. Glaciers store about 70% of the world's fresh water. They release this water gradually during summer months as the glaciers melt. Since the climate is getting warmer, glaciers are releasing water earlier in the year and much of it is just running off never to be productively used. Then when water is really needed later on, the glaciers are spent for the year. Glaciers are receding because of climate warming so that they are containing less and less fresh water each year in the first place. The cold season in which glaciers add more ice to the glaciers is getting shorter each year so there is less ice to begin with. More than 1.4 billion people depend on water from the rivers of the Himalaya. The main rivers are the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Yellow River. The first 3 drain through India, the last through China.

As earth's population increases there are not only more mouths to feed, there is a greater need for fresh water the supply of which is diminishing. This leads to less crop production, starvation and even worse sanitation and personal hygiene. There is more pressure to trap and eat bush meat which can contain deadly viruses which can spread to the rest of the world as the current pandemic did. Therefore, if we want to live in a safe, habitable world we need to start thinking about sustainable water and food supplies for everyone on the planet and better hygiene and sanitation for all the world's people, not just the few in developed countries. It is more important to spread the knowledge of safe water and sanitation systems as well as sustainable agricultural practices. Population control in one form or other is also necessary because the planet can only support a limited number of people especially if they are all living middle class lifestyles. We need to rethink what a sustainable lifestyle is and not consume a disproportionate percentage of earth's resources.

How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food

From the New York Times:

By ANDREW JACOBS and MATT RICHTEL

Photographs by WILLIAM DANIELS for The New York Times

SEPT. 16, 2017

 

 Mrs. da Silva and other vendors like her make regular deliveries for Nestlé to a quarter of a million households in Brazil.

FORTALEZA, Brazil — Children’s squeals rang through the muggy morning air as a woman pushed a gleaming white cart along pitted, trash-strewn streets. She was making deliveries to some of the poorest households in this seaside city, bringing pudding, cookies and other packaged foods to the customers on her sales route.

Celene da Silva, 29, is one of thousands of door-to-door vendors for Nestlé, helping the world’s largest packaged food conglomerate expand its reach into a quarter-million households in Brazil’s farthest-flung corners.

As she dropped off variety packs of Chandelle pudding, Kit-Kats and Mucilon infant cereal, there was something striking about her customers: Many were visibly overweight, even small children.

“What we have is a war between two food systems, a traditional diet of real food once produced by the farmers around you and the producers of ultra-processed food designed to be over-consumed and which in some cases are addictive,” said Carlos A. Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo.

She gestured to a home along her route and shook her head, recalling how its patriarch, a morbidly obese man, died the previous week. “He ate a piece of cake and died in his sleep,” she said.

Mrs. da Silva, who herself weighs more than 200 pounds, recently discovered that she had high blood pressure, a condition she acknowledges is probably tied to her weakness for fried chicken and the Coca-Cola she drinks with every meal, breakfast included.

Nestlé’s direct-sales army in Brazil is part of a broader transformation of the food system that is delivering Western-style processed food and sugary drinks to the most isolated pockets of Latin America, Africa and Asia. As their growth slows in the wealthiest countries, multinational food companies like Nestlé, PepsiCo and General Mills have been aggressively expanding their presence in developing nations, unleashing a marketing juggernaut that is upending traditional diets from Brazil to Ghana to India.

A New York Times examination of corporate records, epidemiological studies and government reports — as well as interviews with scores of nutritionists and health experts around the world — reveals a sea change in the way food is produced, distributed and advertised across much of the globe. The shift, many public health experts say, is contributing to a new epidemic of diabetes and heart disease, chronic illnesses that are fed by soaring rates of obesity in places that struggled with hunger and malnutrition just a generation ago.

The new reality is captured by a single, stark fact: Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.

Conflicts and Climate Change Fueling Rise in World Hunger

Published on Friday, September 15, 2017 by Common Dreams

"This has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore," according to U.N. report

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

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A rise in armed conflicts has led to an explosion in the world's refugee population, many of whom live in a state of food insecurity at refugee camps like the one seen here in Uganda. (Photo: UNMISS/Flickr/cc)

Armed conflicts and climate change are key factors being blamed for a rise in worldwide hunger—the first in over a decade, according to a new United Nations report.

Malnutrition and food insecurity affected 815 million people around the world in 2016—up from 777 million the previous year. Many of the countries where people suffer the most from hunger have been affected by armed conflicts. Conflicts between armed groups has gone up by 125 percent since 2010, often growing into larger wars and affecting countries including Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan, where the situation spiraled into a famine for several months earlier this year.

The report casts doubt on the U.N.'s stated aim to eradicate hunger by 2030—a theoretically achievable goal, considering, as the U.N. stressed when it announced the goal, the amount of food in the world is more than enough to feed the global population.

"This has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore," said the authors of the report, who represent five U.N. agencies. "We will not end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 unless we address all the factors that undermine food security and nutrition. Securing peaceful and inclusive societies is a necessary condition to that end."

A rise in armed conflicts since 2005 has led to an explosion in the worldwide refugee population, leading to greater food insecurity for 64 million people.

The report also names the destruction of wheat and barley fields in Iraq, damage to infrastructure in Syria, and the loss of livestock and crops in South Sudan as effects of conflict which are linked to hunger.

Climate change has led to chronic hunger around the world as well, especially in places impacted by drought and flooding. Even in places not currently impacted by ongoing fighting, according to the report, climate change can have a domino effect on the region—creating conflict over scarce fertile land and water, and in turn leading to food insecurity:

Competition over productive land and water has been identified as a potential trigger for conflict...Sources estimate that over the past 60 years, 40 percent of civil wars have been associated with natural resources.

"The concurrence of conflict and climate-related natural disasters is likely to increase with climate change," the report says, "as climate change not only threatens food insecurity and malnutrition, but can also contribute to further downward deterioration into conflict, protracted crisis and continued fragility."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

6 Facts About Hunger That Demonstrate the Shameful Excesses of American Capitalism

By Paul Buchheit From Alternet

 

Children, seniors and disabled citizens going hungry is a stain on humanity.

 

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

June 23, 2013  |  

Of all the miseries placed on human beings in their everyday lives, the lack of food may be the most inexcusable. Even in a world controlled by unbending attitudes of self-reliance and individual responsibility, the reality of children and seniors and disabled citizens going hungry is a stain on humanity, a shameful testament to the capitalist goal of profit without conscience.

The facts presented here all touch on the lives of human beings, in the U.S. and beyond, who lack food or the means to pay for it.

1. Congress wants to cut a food program that feeds low-income children.

According to the Department of Agriculture, 48% of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in 2011 were children. Either unaware or indifferent to this, Congress is considering a new farm bill that would cut food assistance by $2 billion a year while boosting the farm subsidies of big agriculture.

2. Some individuals make enough in two seconds to pay a SNAP recipient's food bill for an entire year.

Americans Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, two Kochs, and four Waltons made an average of $6 billion each from their stocks and other investments in 2012. A $6 billion per year person makes enough in two seconds (based on a 40-hour work-week) to pay a year's worth of benefits to the average SNAP recipient. Just 20 Americans made as much from their 2012 investments as the entire SNAP budget for 47 million people.

Capitalism encourages an individual to make as much money as possible, even without producing anything. Most Americans accept that. But questions should be raised about a system that allows the yearlong needs of a hungry person to flash by in two seconds of an investor's life.

3. McDonald's profits are double the total wages of all its food servers.

McDonald's has 440,000 employees, most of them food servers making the median hourly wage of $9.10 an hour or less, for a maximum of about $18,200 per year. The company's $8 billion profit, after wages are paid, works out to the same amount: $18,200 per employee.

As noted by MSN Money, the company pays its front-line workers minimum wage or very close to it. But instead of passing along part of its profits to employees, McDonald's just announced plans for increased dividends and share repurchases.

4. Just 10 individuals made as much as all the fast-food counter workers in the U.S.

The 10 richest on the Forbes list increased their combined wealth by almost $60 billion from 2011 to 2012. That's approximately equivalent to the total annual salaries of 3,378,030 fast-food counter employees if they were all able to work 40-hour weeks, 50 weeks a year.

5. Apple avoided enough in taxes to mount a global attack on malnutrition.

The World Bank estimates the total cost for "successfully mounting an attack on malnutrition" would be about $10.3 to $11.8 billion annually. Apple alone underpaid its 2012 taxes by $11 billion, based on a 35% rate on total global income. (The company paid $8,443 current taxes on $55,763 total income, or a little over 15%.)

6. Speculation on food prices has contributed to the impoverishment of 115 million people.

From 1996 to 2011 the portion of speculative wheat market trades by Goldman Sachs and other players went from 12 percent to 61 percent. The price of wheat went from $105 a ton in 2000 to $481 a ton in 2008.

Food prices dropped after the recession, but the World Bank notes that they've jumped 43 percent since 2010. The World Food Program reported that since 2008, high prices have pushed 115 million more people into hunger and poverty.

Speculation hasn't hurt the speculators. According to the World Wealth Report 2013, the number of high net worth individuals ($1 million or more in investable assets) increased by 11.5% in North America in 2012, the highest rate in the world.

Billionaires are on the rise, and a billion people are without adequate food. The speculators should be ashamed.

Paul Buchheit teaches economic inequality at DePaul University. He is the founder and developer of the Web sites UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org and RappingHistory.org, and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at [email protected].