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Editor’s Word
Whereas media consideration focuses on the associated fee in human lives on the bottom in Europe, the direct and oblique results are additionally resulting in many extra lives misplaced all over the world, not least in weak international locations on the African continent, in accordance with a report issued on April 13 by the United Nations. The direct results alone are projected to devastate the world financial system (https://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-impact-war-ukraine-food-energy-and-finance-systems).
“Preliminary evaluation recommend that as many as 1.7 billion folks in 107 economies are uncovered to at the very least one in every of three dangers, principally in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. When mixed with the already devastating impacts of the COVID-19 disaster and local weather change, the publicity to only one danger is dire sufficient to trigger debt misery, meals shortages and blackouts.’
Not least of these results is the diversion of consideration from the nonetheless quickly menace of the local weather disaster. Among the many best dangers, already evident, is that policymakers and vitality corporations are deepening reliance on fossil fuels. Whereas such actions could also be wanted quickly, the report stresses, it’s important to not delay investments in renewable vitality and actions to cut back fossil gasoline manufacturing.
This AfricaFocus highlights various current stories analyzing the present state of affairs of that impact, which continues in lots of locations regardless of open opposition and delays by the fossil fuels {industry} and their allies in positions of political energy.
Significantly important was the discharge on April 4 of the landmark report on mitigation by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC)–part of the U.N.’s sixth complete local weather evaluation since 1992, which was compiled by 278 researchers from 65 international locations. The authors, who synthesized 1000’s of peer-reviewed research revealed up to now a number of years, clarify over the course of almost 3,000 pages that “with out speedy and deep emissions reductions throughout all sectors, limiting world warming to 1.5°C is past attain.”
Over 400 lifeless this week in devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa
Included on this concern is the article by Kate Aronoff within the New Republic for April 5. Aronoff’s report could be very clear, and her protection is all the time price following.
In the meantime, a 64-page Abstract for Policymakers (SPM) of the report–a key reference level for governments–required the approval of all 195 member states of the IPCC and was edited with their enter. Following a contentious weekend of negotiations during which rich governments tried to weaken statements about inexperienced financing for low-income nations and fossil fuel-producing international locations objected to unequivocal language about the necessity to shortly get rid of coal, oil, and gasoline extraction, the IPCC doc was revealed a number of hours later than anticipated.
As Scientist Rebel, a global alliance of teachers who’re advocating for systemic political and financial adjustments according to scientific findings, mentioned in an announcement the subsequent day, “Regardless of the escalating local weather emergency and the full absence of emissions cuts, the framing of the ultimate model of the SPM remains to be alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative.”
“The IPCC [has] averted naming the most important culprits for 30 years, which is one purpose for the absence of actual emissions cuts,” the group added. “Information detailing the complicity of the world’s richest international locations in fueling the local weather disaster have been watered down by the IPCC’s political evaluate course of.”
[For more on the Scientist Rebellion statement and direct action, see https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/04/06/rebellious-climate-scientists-have-message-humanity-mobilize-mobilize-mobilize.]
For a big selection of assets for college kids and academics instructing in regards to the disaster, see https://www.zinnedproject.org/campaigns/teach-climate-justice
Further current articles of associated curiosity are listed under on the finish of this Bulletin.
For earlier AfricaFocus Bulletins on local weather and the surroundings, go to http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php
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Editor’s Picks
[This section is for links to additional updates and resources picked by AfricaFocus editor William Minter as of likely interest to readers.]
Visitor Column by Daniel Volman revealed earlier this week
“Russia and China and Biden’s Safety Coverage towards Africa https://allafrica.com/tales/202204190001.html
Simply weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in March, Basic Stephen J. Townsend – commander of the U.S. Africa Command, referred to as Africom – testified earlier than the Home and Senate Armed Providers Committees. . . . Townsend advised the Senate Armed Providers Committee in 2022 that his primary concern “is making certain that the U.S. maintains strategic entry and affect, and I believe, for me, the first considerations there are China, and to slightly lesser diploma, Russia.’
Third Age: Substack Weblog by Cathy Sunshine
This Substack weblog, launched in November 2021 by my spouse Cathy Sunshine, covers a variety of matters in accessible and well-crafted brief posts. It’s “a mirrored image on the political and the private for girls in life’s third age.’ The matters vary from observations about our neighborhood to present progressive electoral activism to reflections on her years in Senegal and Niger within the Nineteen Seventies. https://thirdage.substack.com/
Developing tomorrow is an interview with our good friend Daphne Muse entitled “5,000 letters: Daphne Muse’s assortment displays 5 many years of Black lives and cultures.’
For a sampling of earlier posts, test these out. https://thirdage.substack.com/p/buy-nothing-read-everything?s=w https://thirdage.substack.com/p/introducing-nope?s=w https://thirdage.substack.com/p/silver-and-saddles?s=w https://thirdage.substack.com/p/pathways-to-activism?s=w https://thirdage.substack.com/p/virginias-election-notes-from-the?s=w
AI’s information starvation is consuming the world
Introduction and case research on South Africa and Venezuela are the primary in a brand new MIT Know-how Evaluate sequence on how the AI {industry} is getting richer by retreading the previous paths of colonial extraction and exploitation.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/19/1049592/artificial-intelligence-colonialism/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/19/1049996/south-africa-ai-surveillance-digital-apartheid/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/20/1050392/ai-industry-appen-scale-data-labels/
—–end editor’s word
Why Is the U.N.’s Local weather Panel Tiptoeing Round Fossil Fuels?
The total report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change says we have to cease burning fossil fuels proper now. However that actuality was excluded from a abstract for the individuals who want to listen to it most: policymakers.
by Kate Aronoff
https://twitter.com/KateAronoff
https://newrepublic.com/authors/kate-aronoff
Between the yr when Robert Pattinson starred in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and the yr he starred in The Lighthouse, the planet emitted an quantity of carbon dioxide that–if it is emitted again–will possible push it to heat by 1.5 levels Celsius (2.7 levels Fahrenheit). So within the time it takes one other teen heartthrob to rework right into a rakish indie darling, the world could have sped previous the edge between life and demise for the folks and locations already bearing the brunt of the local weather disaster. That is one takeaway from the newest installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change’s Sixth Evaluation Report, coping with local weather mitigation.
However there is a distinction between what’s within the full, almost 3,000-page report crafted from 18,000 peer-reviewed papers by the IPCC’s Working Group III and what made it into the 63-page Abstract for Policymakers. Particularly, you would be laborious pressed to search out direct language about the necessity to part out coal, oil, and gasoline within the synopsis account, gruelingly edited by authorities representatives through the longest approval plenary in IPCC historical past.
The total report paints a stark image of the implications of continued fossil gasoline use: “If current fossil-fuel infrastructure would proceed to be operated as traditionally, they might entail CO2 emissions exceeding the carbon price range for 1.5°C.’ Authors add that 30, 50, and 80 p.c of confirmed oil, gasoline, and coal reserves (respectively) should stay unburned to restrict warming to 2 levels Celsius, and “considerably extra’ to restrict warming to 1.5 levels Celsius. Reaching that aim, they add, would entail closing coal- and gas- fired energy vegetation 30 years forward of schedule. The report cites a 2018 examine discovering that even when each pipeline at the moment deliberate had been canceled, one-fifth of current fossil fueled technology capability would nonetheless have to be shut down, as effectively.
The Abstract for Policymakers contains some references to that. Limiting warming to 2 levels, it notes, might wipe out between $1 and $4 trillion price of fossil gasoline property by 2050 and “considerably extra’ to fulfill a 1.5 diploma aim. Both “will depart a considerable quantity of fossil fuels unburned and will strand appreciable fossil gasoline infrastructure,’ per the abstract. However the subsequent sentence supplies a handy out: “Relying on its availability, [carbon capture and sequestration] might enable fossil fuels for use longer, lowering stranded property.’ As in different sections, the Abstract for Policymakers envisions a rosier image for coal, oil, and gasoline than the report itself.
Within the Monday press convention saying the report, the one who most clearly urged international locations to ditch fossil fuels was U.N. Secretary Basic António Guterres. “Local weather activists are generally depicted as harmful radicals. However the really harmful radicals are the international locations rising the manufacturing of fossil fuels,’ he mentioned in opening remarks. “Investing in new fossil gasoline infrastructure is ethical and financial insanity.’ However amid rising gasoline costs and Russia’s struggle in Ukraine, america and the European Union–governments that needs to be transitioning the fastest–are investing in new fossil gasoline infrastructure that would lock in emissions for many years to come back. Because the report was launched Monday, progressive Democrats had been coming round to the thought of boosting fossil gasoline manufacturing and infrastructure, too, so as to strike a deal for momentary clean-energy tax credit with Senator Joe Manchin.
Like vitality coverage within the U.S., the IPCC’s summaries for policymakers are topic to political pressures from fossil gasoline pursuits. Summaries are initially drafted in bite-size 300-word increments by subject-area consultants who then battle for house about what might be included. Within the two weeks earlier than the report is launched, governmental delegations go line by line by way of that textual content and negotiate over what will get included and what would not. Because of haggling by a few of the world’s largest polluters, the newest abstract presents a broad and euphemistic menu of routes towards a “substantial discount in fossil gasoline use,’ a lot of which contain applied sciences that stay infeasible. For instance, this most up-to-date abstract closely emphasizes carbon seize and sequestration, or CCS, arguing that “decommissioning and lowered utilization of current fossil gasoline based mostly energy sector infrastructure, retrofitting current installations with CCS, switches to low carbon fuels and cancellation of recent coal installations with out CCS are main choices’ for assembly emissions targets. That is regardless of ample proof that carbon seize is not as straightforward or as efficient as many need it to be.
So which governments pushed for these modifications? “To me the extremes are the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and India,’ somebody concerned in drafting the report who attended the approval plenary and requested to stay nameless advised me. Saudi Arabia was notably lively this yr, pushing to excise clear language about phasing out fossil fuels and criticisms of carbon dioxide removing. As Local weather Residence Information’s Chloé Farand reported, the oil-exporting nation fought to incorporate a number of references to commercially unproven applied sciences that would lengthen the lifetime of coal, oil, and gasoline property. “The Saudis tried to take away the phrase ‘carbon’ from virtually all sections’ and substitute it with ‘greenhouse gases,’ the supply mentioned.
One other notable wording tweak entails the phrase “unabated,’ as in “unabated’ coal or gas-fired energy vegetation that do not seize some section of the emissions they produce. The phrase “unabated’ seems sporadically within the full report and under no circumstances within the 145-page technical abstract. It is foregrounded within the Abstract for Policymakers, nevertheless, the place references to the necessity to part out fossil fuels had been certified to call solely “unabated’ fossil fuels or these with out CCS as the issue. Critics argue that leaves the door open to continued fossil gasoline improvement, by implying that current and new infrastructure might be simply outfitted with expertise that–per the IPCC’s definition–eliminates at the very least 90 p.c of its carbon emissions. These capacities do not but exist at any significant scale, and fossil fuel-producing governments have consistently fought to exclude recognition of the appreciable challenges they face from the abstract; just one sentence on this appeared in its closing model, though there’s an prolonged dialogue about it within the full textual content.
Specialists warning that using unfavorable emissions applied sciences, whereas very possible mandatory, needs to be restricted principally to industrial sectors during which low- carbon alternate options are far off, like metal and cement. Within the energy sector, renewables are less expensive and extra viable choices for decarbonization. “That phrase [“unabated’] is inserted exactly to perpetuate the parable that the world nonetheless can hold utilizing fossil fuels with out harming folks and the planet, which does not sq. with the science,’ mentioned Nikki Reisch, director of the Local weather and Power Program on the Heart for Worldwide Environmental Regulation.
The U.S. despatched a big delegation to barter the Abstract for Policymakers textual content, led by the State Division and together with veteran U.N. Framework Conference on Local weather Change negotiator Trigg Talley and International Affairs Officer Farhan Akhtar. In line with U.S. positions in U.N. local weather talks, the place the U.S. has tried to maintain discuss of rich nations’ duty for the local weather disaster off the desk, this delegation sought to take away distinctions between developed and creating nations, in addition to references to the $100 billion in local weather finance wealthy international locations have but to furnish. A graphic illustrating the hole between offered and pledged financing was stripped out of the abstract after being included in an earlier draft, Farand reported.
Insiders say the U.S. delegation was comparatively quiet about fossil fuels on this spherical of abstract modifying however did not appear to have raised many objections to the adjustments pushed by Saudi Arabia. “The U.S. could be very pushy for technological options,’ the supply mentioned. “Per capita emissions are very excessive within the U.S. They do not need wording that exhibits this type of factor.’
Focusing solely on the debates in regards to the Abstract for Policymakers, although, can overlook longer-standing challenges inside the IPCC course of itself. Lower than a 3rd of Working Group III members on this evaluation spherical, as an illustration, are girls, and illustration is weighted closely towards teachers from wealthy nations. “It is very North-centric; Anglo-Saxon white males,’ the supply mentioned. Compounding these points is the truth that IPCC proceedings happen virtually fully in English. The approval plenary for the Abstract for Policymakers–translated into “4 or 5 languages,’ the supply said–was the primary time any translation help had been offered. That is a problem, as effectively, for sure subfields the place educational literature is not primarily written in English.
There are additionally structural difficulties which have much less to do with the IPCC course of itself than the challenges of educational analysis. Some Working Group III authors and editors are straight employed both by industry-friendly teams or precise fossil gasoline corporations, like Saudi Aramco, Chevron, and the Worldwide Chamber of Commerce. However required conflict-of-interest disclosures do not preclude {industry} funding for tutorial analysis, which may inform each authors’ views and the analysis compiled within the report. Scientists have lengthy criticized the truth that the situations the IPCC considers place an outsize emphasis on unfavorable emissions applied sciences. Economists additionally proliferate in Working Group III, coming from a area that is notoriously exclusionary and hostile to new pondering and incessantly criticized for taking a slim method to the local weather disaster that prioritizes financial progress above all else. The IPCC, the supply mentioned, is “solely a spot the place you summarize the literature. If the overwhelming majority of the analysis is neoliberal pondering, then that is what’s reported within the IPCC. It is not the IPCC’s fault.’
As struggle rages on in Europe, the IPCC’s report barely registered. One of many world’s largest emitters–the United States–is shifting in the wrong way from the IPCC’s suggestions. Over the previous couple of weeks, the White Home has indicated that it needs to have two contradictory issues: completely low gasoline costs and a world the place warming is proscribed to 1.5 levels Celsius. Final week Biden introduced that he’ll launch a million barrels per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for six months, a transfer that may enable the administration to spice up manufacturing by guaranteeing that it’s going to buy barrels from drillers to refill the SPR at extra steady costs than they’ll fetch available on the market. He additionally mentioned he’d prefer to tremendous producers who aren’t drilling sooner. “I do not suppose the objectives are mutually unique,’ EPA head Michael Regan mentioned not too long ago of boosting oil manufacturing and Biden’s local weather objectives. The IPCC’s newest report strongly means that they’re.
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Further Latest Local weather Hyperlinks learn and advisable by AfricaFocus
https://www.dailyposter.com/the-pipeline-trap/
4/20/2022
https://www.commondreams.org/information/2022/04/19/another-loss-big-oil-ca-lawsuits-against-fossil-fuel-giants-head-state-court
4/19/2022
Study: Climate change is worsening extreme weather conditions in Africa
4/13/2022
4/13/2022
https://newrepublic.com/article/166073/lithium-clean-energy-biden
4/12/2022
IPCC Report’s Analysis of Fossil Fuel Industry Excluded From Policymakers’ Brief
4/9/2022
4/9/2022
https://www.levernews.com/midweek-brief-its-now-or-never-says-new-un-climate-report/
4/7/2022
https://newrepublic.com/article/166011/ipcc-climate-fossil-fuels
4/7/2022
https://www.commondreams.org/information/2022/04/07/mass-action-planned-heart-joe-manchins-coal-empire
4/7/2022
https://theconversation.com/south-africa-could-achieve-economic-recovery-and-lower-emissions-heres-how-179122
4/7/2022
https://information.belief.org/merchandise/20220407171338-7bv95/
4/7/2022
https://www.commondreams.org/information/2022/04/06/rebellious-climate-scientists-have-message-humanity-mobilize-mobilize-mobilize
4/6/2022
https://priceofoil.org/content material/uploads/2022/03/Banking-on-Local weather-Chaos-2022.pdf
3/31/2022
https://www.cascades.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/CASJ9418-MENA-Abstract-220311.pdf (Local weather dangers within the Center East and NorthAfrica)
3/11/2022
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an unbiased digital publication offering reposted commentary and evaluation on African points, with a selected give attention to U.S. and worldwide insurance policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter. For an archive of earlier Bulletins, see http://www.africafocus.org,
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