Why the climate crisis and the global rise of fascism are inextricable.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 15^th June 2023

Round the cycle turns. As millions are driven from their homes by climate disasters, the extreme right exploits their misery to extend its reach. As the extreme right gains power, climate programmes are shut down, heating accelerates and more people are driven from their homes. If we dont break this cycle soon, it will become the dominant story of our times.

A recent paper in Nature identifies the human climate niche: the range of temperatures and rainfall within which human societies thrive. We have clustered in the parts of the world with a climate that supports our flourishing, but in many of these places the niche is shrinking. Already, around 600 million people have been stranded in inhospitable conditions by global heating. Current global policies are likely to result in about 2.7C of heating by 2100. On this trajectory, some 2 billion people may be left outside the niche by 2030, and 3.7 billion by 2090. If governments limited heating to their agreed goal of 1.5C, the numbers exposed to extreme heat would be reduced fivefold. But if they abandon their climate policies, this would lead to around 4.4C of heating. In this case, by the end of the century around 5.3 billion people would face conditions that ranged from dangerous to impossible.

These conditions include extreme disruption, morbidity and death through heat-shock, water stress, crop failure and the spread of infectious disease. The figures do not take into account the effect of rising sea levels, which could displace hundreds of millions more.

Already, weather stations in the Persian Gulf have recorded wetbulb measurements a combination of heat and humidity beyond the point (35C at 100% humidity) at which most human beings can survive. At other stations, on the shores of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of California and the western side of south Asia, measurements have come close. In large parts of Africa there is almost no monitoring of extreme heat events. People are likely to have been dying of heat stress in high numbers already, but their cause of death has not been registered.

India, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and central America face extreme risk. Weather events such as massive floods and intensified cyclones and hurricanes will...

Warm welcome for National GE, ag policies Neal Wallace :

Primary industry leaders and scientists have welcomed the policies the National Party is taking to this years election: to allow the use of genetic technology and delay the pricing of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

Citing shortcomings in the current emissions pricing proposal, farming leaders welcomed the partys proposal linking it to the availability of technology.

DairyNZ chair Jim van der Poel said delaying agriculture emissions pricing would be a step in the right direction.

If a NZ Government is going to price agricultural emissions, then the pricing system must be fair and practical for dairy farmers, he said. . . 

Golden opportunity lost Marvin Tort :

The Philippines has been host-country to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) since 1960, or for about 63 years now, with its Los Baos, Laguna headquarters as the base for many of the scientific studies that aim to develop high-yielding and more disease-resistant rice varieties. And IRRIs work here has been doing a lot of good for many rice-producing and rice-eating nations.

We are even hosting in October the 6^th International Rice Congress touted to be the worlds largest rice congress with the theme Accelerating Transformation of Rice-Based Food Systems: From Gene to Globe. The international meet aims to bring together scientists, experts, farmers, and decision-makers from the government, private, and public sectors all over the world to help shape a more inclusive, sustainable, and secure future for global food systems.

It is ironic that as we continue to host the IRRI headquarters, and prepare for the rice congress in October, we also await the result of a lawsuit initiated by our own farmers and scientists involving the propagation of Golden Rice, a variety that IRRI itself helped develop. The Philippine lawsuit is now before the Supreme Court.

The petitioners, which were granted a temporary restraining order by the court in April through a Writ of Kalikasan, want to stop the commercial release of Golden Rice and Bt eggplants. They claim these are genetically modified organisms...