News Feeds | ecology.iww.org (2024)

Utility Dive - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 07:08

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Biofuel Watch - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 06:53

Gemeinsame Pressemitteilung von NABU, DUH, Robin Wood, biofuelwatch, BUND Berlin, Greenpeace Berlin, BBK und PowerShiftAusweitung der Holzverbrennung in Berlin geplant – Umweltorganisationen veröffentlichen Infopapier und fordern Absage an geplante Holzheizkraftwerke

In Berlin soll die Verbrennung von Frisch- und Altholz zur Fernwärmeerzeugung stark ausgeweitet werden, was bei den Umwelt- und Verbraucherschutzorganisationen NABU, Deutsche Umwelthilfe, Robin Wood, Biofuelwatch, BUND Berlin, BBK und PowerShift auf massive Kritik stößt. Im Mittelpunkt der Debatte steht die Berliner Landesregierung, die derzeit von Vattenfall die Fernwärmenetze und Kraftwerke zurückkauft und nun auch die schmutzigen Pläne des Energiekonzerns erbt. Dem im Sommer 2023 vorgestellten „Dekarbonisierungsfahrplan“[1] zur Folge soll Biomasse bis 2030 den größten Anteil am Ersatz von Kohle einnehmen. Hierfür sollen zusätzlich zum bestehenden Holzheizkraftwerk Märkisches Viertel zunächst an den Standorten Reuter West und Klingenberg neue Holzheizkraftwerke errichtet werden. Weitere Kraftwerke müssten folgen, wenn wie geplant ab 2030 17 Prozent der Fernwärme aus Holzverbrennung stammen sollen. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, müssten pro Jahr bis zu 1,6 Millionen Tonnen Holz in Berlin verheizt werden. Die Berliner Stadtreinigung plant zudem ein neues Altholzkraftwerk in der Gradestraße in Berlin Neukölln.

Die Umweltverbände rufen die Stadt Berlin auf, sich von den Holzverbrennungsplänen Vattenfalls zu verabschieden und die vereinbarte Übernahme der Berliner Fernwärmeversorgung als Chance für wirklich klimafreundliche Energien zu nutzen. In einem heute veröffentlichten Infopapier stellen sie die schwerwiegenden Folgen der Pläne Vattenfalls zur Ausweitung der Holzverbrennung in Berlin dar und verweisen auf die klima- und umweltschädliche Wirkung solch eines Vorhabens. Im Infopapier heißt es hierzu:

„(…) die Klimakrise ist längst zu weit fortgeschritten, als dass wir uns eine „Übergangsphase“ mit anderen CO2-intensiven Energieformen wie Erdgas und Holzbiomasse noch leisten könnten. Letztere zu verbrennen schadet doppelt, da Raubbau an Ökosystemen betrieben wird, die neben der Minderung von Klimaextremen und dem Erhalt der Artenvielfalt noch unzählige weitere wichtige Ökosystemfunktionen erfüllen.“

Das von Vattenfall genutzte Holz stammt bereits jetzt überwiegend direkt aus dem Wald. Auf Grund der großen zukünftigen Menge müsste Waldholz überregional beschafft werden. Zum Vergleich: 1,6 Millionen Tonnen Brennholz entspricht einem Großteil des gesamten Jahreseinschlags an Holz in Brandenburg.

Mit der Übernahme der Kraftwerke und des Fernwärmenetzes ist der Berliner Senat nun gefordert, die Wärmeversorgung der Stadt endlich auf einen grünen Pfad zu bringen. In ihrem Infopapier fordern die Umweltverbände hierzu:

„Die Berliner Regierung muss von der geplanten irrsinnigen Expansion der Holzverbrennung abrücken und sicherstellen, dass die Wärmeversorgung tatsächlich dekarbonisiert wird. Keine neuen Biomassekessel dürfen gebaut werden. Vattenfalls „Dekarbonisierungsfahrplan“ darf auf keinen Fall übernommen werden.“

Die Stadt ist nun gefordert, im Rahmen der kommunalen Wärmeplanung, die Weichen zu stellen für eine Wärmeversorgung aus erneuerbaren Wärmepotenzialen ohne kohlenstoffreiche Brennstoffe. Anknüpfungspunkte bietet eine Studie des Fraunhofer Instituts, die aufzeigt, wie die Wärmeversorgung in Berlin bis 2035 erneuerbar werden kann.

[1] Dekarbonisierungsfahrplan – Vattenfall Wärme Berlin AG, 30. Juni 2023 https://xn--wrme-loa.vattenfall.de/binaries/content/assets/waermehaus/startseite/allgemein/dekarbonisierungsfahrplan—vattenfall-warme-berlin-ag.pdf

Das Infopapier ist abrufbar unter:

240220-nabu-holzverbrennung-infopapier-berlin.pdf

Die Studie des Fraunhofer Institutes ist abrufbar unter:

Fraunhofer IEE (2021) „Potenzialstudie klimaneutrale Wärmeversorgung Berlin 2035“: https://relaunch.buerger-begehren-klimaschutz.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Potenzialstudie_Berlin.pdf

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

Pittsburgh Green New Deal - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 06:30

สล็อตเว็บตรงวอเลท ฝากถอนเงินไม่ผ่านแอดมิน มั่นคงปลอดภัย

สล็อตเว็บตรงวอเลท ฝากถอนเงินไม่ผ่านแอดมิน มั่นคงปลอดภัย ลงเดิมพันเล่นเกมได้อย่างมั่นใจ ชนะรางวัลได้ไม่อั้น ไม่มีประวัติในการโกง ให้อิสระในการลงเดิมพันเล่นเกม พร้อมทั้งยังไม่มีการล็อคผลรางวัลอีกด้วย เพลิดเพลินไปพร้อมกับความสนุก ความมันส์ และความบันเทิงของเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ รับเงินรางวัลสุดคุ้มได้อย่างจุใจ ทำกำไรง่าย ไม่ผิดหวัง ไม่มีขาดทุน กับเว็บไซต์คุณภาพดี การันตีได้เงินจริง 1688upx เว็บตรง ถูกกฎหมาย ไม่ผ่านเอเย่นต์ และยังมีฐานการเงินที่มั่นคง ปลอดภัยสูงอีกด้วย

สำหรับเว็บตรง 1688upx เป็นเว็บไซต์ที่เปิดให้บริการมาอย่างยาวนาน และยังเป็นเว็บไซต์ยอดนิยม รายใหญ่ในเอเชีย ที่ผู้เล่นไว้วางใจ และเข้ามาร่วมสนุกลงเดิมพันเล่นเกมกันอย่างต่อเนื่อง รับเงินรางวัลในการเล่นเกมไปใช้ได้แบบไม่อั้น เป็นผู้เล่นมือใหม่ ก็สามารถชนะรางวัลได้อย่างผู้เล่นมืออาชีพ โดยไม่ต้องใช้สูตร ไม่ต้องใช้เทคนิคในการเล่นเกมให้ยุ่งยาก มีทุนในการเล่นน้อย ก็สามารถสะสมเงินรางวัลในการเล่นเกมได้อย่างต่อเนื่อง ไม่มีการล็อคยูสเซอร์

โดยในปัจจุบัน เราได้พัฒนาระบบการฝากถอนให้ดียิ่งขึ้น และเพื่อให้อิสระในการเข้าใช้งานเล่นเกมของผู้เล่นอย่างเต็มที่ เข้ามาร่วมสนุกลงเดิมพันเล่นเกมกันได้อย่างครอบคลุม ไม่จำเป็นต้องมีบัญชีธนาคารในการฝากถอน ก็สามารถแจ้งทำรายการฝากถอนเงิน เข้ามาร่วมสนุก ลงเดิมพันได้อย่างเพลิดเพลิน มีการบริการ มีการดูแลผ่านเจ้าหน้าที่แอดมินอย่างครอบคลุม และใส่ใจตลอดในการเข้าใช้งานอย่างสม่ำเสมอ

เข้าใช้งาน ลงเดิมพันได้อย่างสะดวก เล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ ทำไรสูง อยู่ที่ไหนก็ร่วมสนุกกันได้อย่างเพลิดเพลิน รองรับหลายภาษา รองรับการเข้าใช้งานทุกแพลตฟอร์ม เล่นเกมได้อย่างมั่นใจ ได้เงินรางวัลสูง เลือกเว็บตรง 1688upx

แหล่งรวมเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ทุกค่าย สล็อตเว็บตรงวอเลท ฝากถอนเงินไม่ผ่านแอดมิน มั่นคงปลอดภัย

1688upx เว็บดังชั้นนำ ไม่ผ่านเอเย่นต์ เราคือเว็บตรงอันดับ 1 ในเอเชีย ที่มาพร้อมการบริการความสนุกของเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ ให้ผู้เล่นทุกท่าน ได้ร่วมลงเดิมพันกันมากที่สุด คัดสรรเกมดังน่าเล่น เกมใหม่ได้เงินง่าย เกมสล็อตออนไลน์สุดฮิต จากทุกค่ายเกมออนไลน์ทั่วโลก ไม่ว่าจะเป็นค่าย PG SLOT , SLOTXO , JILI , JOKER , PP ให้ผู้เล่นทุกท่าน ได้ร่วมสนุก ร่วมลงเดิมพัน รับเงินรางวัลสุดคุ้มกันได้อย่างจุใจ มากกว่า 1000+ เกม

การันตีเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ลิขสิทธิ์แท้ ชนะรางวัลง่าย โอกาสในการรับเงินรางวัลสูงสุดคุ้ม จ่ายเงินรางวัลตอบแทนที่คุมค่า กับการลงเดิมพัน ได้กำไรง่าย ไม่ขาดทุน ไม่มีการล็อคผลรางวัล ไม่มีการล็อคยูสเซอร์ พร้อมทั้งยังมีการอัพเดทความสนุกของเกมใหม่ๆ มาบริการ ให้ผู้เล่นทุกท่าน ได้ร่วมลงเดิมพัน รับเงินรางวัลสุดคุ้ม ในการเล่นเกมใหม่ๆ ไปใช้ได้ก่อนใครทุกวันแบไม่อั้น

เข้าใช้งานเล่นเกมได้อย่างมั่นใจ เล่นผ่านระบบออนไลน์ได้ง่ายมากยิ่งขึ้น กับเว็บตรง ไม่มีประวัติการโกง 1688upx เว็บไซต์คุณภาพดี มาตรฐานสากล ระบบเกมไหลลื่น ภาพสวยงามคมชัด เล่นได้อย่างเพลิดเพลินไม่มีเบื่อ พร้อมทั้งยังเป็นเว็บตรง ที่มีความน่าเชื่อถือ มั่นคง ปลอดภัย สำรองเงินเพื่อจ่ายรางวัล ให้กับผู้เล่นทุกท่านแบบไม่อั้น พร้อมทั้งยังมีการดูแล การบริการ ผ่านเจ้าหน้าที่แอดมินอย่างครอบคลุม ตลอดในการเล่นเกม การเข้าใช้งาน

สำหรับผู้เล่นท่านใด ที่มีปัญหาในการเล่นเกม การเข้าใช้งาน ฝากถอน ท่านสามารถแจ้งข้อมูล ผ่านเจ้าหน้าที่แอดมิน เพื่อให้ตรวจสอบ และแก้ไขปัญหาต่างๆ ได้ทันที มีการบริการตลอด 24 ชั่วโมง โดยเจ้าหน้าที่แอดมิน บนเว็บไซต์ 1688upx ของเรา จะคอยแก้ไขปัญหา ให้คำปรึกษา แจ้งข้อมูลข่าวสาร อัพเดทเกมใหม่ อัพเดทกิจกรรม อัพเดทช่วงเวลาโบนัสแตกดี ให้กับผู้เล่นทุกท่านอย่างสม่ำเสมอ

ไม่ต้องมีทุนสูง ไม่ต้องมีทุนหนา ก็สามารถทำกำไรในการเล่นเกมได้อย่างง่ายดาย บนเว็บไซต์ 1688upx ที่ให้อิสระในการลงเดิมพัน ให้ผู้เล่นทุกท่าน สามารถเข้ามาร่วมสนุกกันได้อย่างครอบคลุม รับเงินรางวัลได้อย่างจุใจ กับเบทเดิมพันในการเล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ ที่เริ่มต้นเพียงแค่ 1 บาทเท่านั้น ผู้เล่นทุกท่าน จะสามารถปรับเพิ่มลดเบทเดิมพันในการเล่นเกม ปรับเพิ่มลดเบทเดิมพันในการร่วมสนุกได้อย่างสม่ำเสมอตามต้องการ

ฝากถอนผ่านระบบออโต้ ใช้เวลาไม่เกิน5วินาที

ระบบการเข้าใช้งานสุดทันสมัย ฝากถอนเงินในการเล่นเกมได้อย่างรวดเร็วทันใจ กับเว็บไซต์คุณภาพดี 1688upx การันตีได้เงินจริง เว็บตรง ที่ได้พัฒนาระบบการฝากถอน เพื่อให้ผู้เล่นได้เข้ามาร่วมสนุก ลงเดิมพันกันได้อย่างครอบคลุม ทำรายการฝากถอนเงินได้ง่ายๆ ด้วยตนเองได้อย่างอิสระ ไม่ต้องรอคิว ไม่ต้องรอแจ้งการฝากถอนไปที่เจ้าหน้าที่แอดมิน

โดยสามารถทำรายการได้ง่ายๆ ผ่านหน้าเว็บไซต์ ด้วยระบบออโต้ได้อย่างง่ายดาย สะดวกต่อการเข้าใช้งาน ใช้เวลาในการทำรายการฝากถอนที่รวดเร็วมากยิ่งขึ้น โดยในการฝากถอน จะรองรับทั้งบัญชีธนาคารทั่วโลก และบัญชีทรูวอเลท ไม่มีขั้นต่ำ ไม่ต้องทำยอดเทิร์น แจ้งทำรายการได้ตลอด 24 ชั่วโมง ไม่จำกัดจำนวนครั้ง รับเงินรางวัลได้เต็มจำนวน เข้าใช้งานได้ทุกวันอย่างต่อเนื่อง ได้เงินจริง100%

Credit สล็อตเว็บตรง

อ่านบทความน่าสนใจเพิ่มเติม

The post สล็อตเว็บตรงวอเลท ฝากถอนเงินไม่ผ่านแอดมิน มั่นคงปลอดภัย appeared first on climateworkers.org.

Categories: B3. EcoSocialism

Extinction Rebellion - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 06:28

Pictures: https://show.pics.io/xr-global-media-breaking-news/search?collectionIds=65e093e6ea790334d61fac5f

A team of Extinction Rebellion activists today (Thursday) infiltrated the London HQ of global advertising and media agency McCann Worldgroup to protest about the company’s reported bid for another stint as top greenwasher for fossil fuel giants Saudi Aramco. [1]

The activists gained access to the lobby of the building where they unfurled banners saying “McCann Say No to Aramco” and “Ditch The Pitch” and called upon agency staff to rebel against their bosses’ decision to repitch for oil company Aramco’s advertising account.

Wearing grinning masks of worldwide CEO Daryl Lee, the XR team occupied the lobby while employees arrived for work, welcoming them with fistfuls of “petrodollars”. They also distributed leaflets explaining how devastating Aramco’s business is for the climate and called on McCann to say ‘no’ to providing more greenwashing for them.

As the Police arrived, the activists were still distributing intricately-designed petrodollars with the message to employees: “Ask your bosses to stop greenwashing Aramco and ruining your reputations”.

One of the XR activists, Alexandra Considine, 55, a therapist from London, said: “McCann trades on their founding motto of ‘Truth Well Told.’ But where’s the truth when it comes to working for climate-wrecking Saudi Aramco? The truth is that the agency’s bosses are happy to take Big Oil’s dirty money to greenwash Aramco’s business. And that business is speeding up the climate and nature emergency. We desperately need McCann’s people to stand up for what they know is right and say they don’t want to work on the Saudi Aramco account.”

Another activist, Katie Burrell, 51, a communications consultant from London, said: “McCann is a well-respected agency and the people who work here are highly skilled in what they do. I can’t believe most of its people want to work for a company that misleads people about the climate crisis and their so-called sustainable ambitions.

“Instead of contributing to positive change, Saudi Aramco is investing heavily in new oil and gas business and lobbying against action that would protect a liveable planet for us all. Ad agencies should be a force for good in fixing the climate crisis but McCann is trashing its reputation by supporting clients that are trashing the planet. It’s bizarre to me that McCann called the Police for our small group of nonviolent protesters who just want a world where everyone can flourish but are happy to do business with climate criminals.”

Saudi Aramco is no stranger to bad press about greenwashing. Last week, it was in the news accused of ‘misleading’ claims about sustainable fuel and their Formula 1 team in a complaint lodged with the Advertising Standards Authority. [2]

Despite running token sustainability programmes for its PR, Saudi Aramco is investing most heavily in its oil and gas business including investing $100 billion in fracking.[3] Aramco claims to be pausing expansion plans, but this does not actually restrict its future output whatsoever [4] and the company is playing a major role in resisting action on the climate crisis. [5].

The action at the McCann’s London HQ was XR’s latest strike against the advertising and media agencies who are still greenwashing the worst fossil fuel crooks in the world. XR activists have repeatedly protested and disrupted media agency Havas who recently became Shell’s greenwashers-in-chief to the horror of many of its staff.

The action came against a background of a week of major protests by XR in the City of London that involved high-profile office occupations and marches targeting the major insurance companies who are greenlighting climate-wrecking oil, gas and coal projects by continuing to insure them.

Notes to editors
[1] McCann and its work for Saudi Aramco
[2] Saudi Aramco is accused of “misleading” fans around its ‘sustainable fuel’ drive, 21 February 2024
[3] Despite running token sustainability programmes for its PR, Saudi Aramco is investing most heavily in its oil and gas business including investing $100 billion in fracking
[4] Aramco claims to be pausing expansion plans, but this does not actually restrict its future output whatsoever
[5] Saudi Aramco major role in resisting action on the climate crisis

About Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.

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Time has almost entirely run out to address the climate and ecological crisis which is upon us, including the sixth mass species extinction, global pollution, and increasingly rapid climate change. If urgent and radical action isn’t taken, we’re heading towards 4˚C warming, leading to societal collapse and mass loss of life. The younger generation, racially marginalised communities and the Global South are on the front-line. No-one will escape the devastating impacts.

The post Don’t greenwash the climate wreckers! Extinction Rebellion occupies top ad agency McCann over their plans to keep working for Saudi Aramco appeared first on Extinction Rebellion UK.

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Mining.Com - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 06:06

An international team of researchers has developed a nickel-based electrode material that opens new avenues to cobalt-free batteries for electric vehicles.

In a paper published in the journal Energy Storage Materials, the scientists explain that the limited, fraught supply chain of cobalt creates a bottleneck for large-scale battery production, including for manufacturing the ones used in electric vehicles. In addition to this, cobalt extraction generates toxic waste.

To address these issues, lithium nickel oxide (LiNiO2) — which is similar in structure to the widely used lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) — often serves as a cobalt-free alternative for electrode material. However, key instability issues plague the compound, specifically a gradual loss of capacity at the high-voltage region, which is associated with nickel-ion migration.

To improve electrode reversibility, nickel ions have been partially substituted by other metal ions, including reintroduced cobalt ions as well as manganese, aluminum and magnesium. This creates “nickel-enriched layered materials” to serve as positive electrode materials.

“So far, 10-20% cobalt ions were necessary for nickel-based electrode materials,” Naoaki Yabuuchi, senior author of the study and a researcher at Yokohama National University, said in a media statement.

In Yabuuchi’s view, such a percentage is still too high and is the result of not having established a unified understanding of how metal substitution can improve the process.

A migration issue

To address this knowledge gap, he and his collaborators dug deeper into the problematic phase transition. When lithium ions leave the cathode under the influence of an external field, nickel ions migrate to specific sites within the lithium layers. Although this process is reversible, the reversibility gradually degrades through continuous cycles until the capacity is completely lost — a phenomenon not seen in cobalt-ion migration.

Previous studies reported that tungsten doping in LiNiO2 is an efficient approach to suppressing the detrimental phase transitions at high-voltage regions. Thus, Yabuuchi’s group tested the hypothesis that heavy, expensive tungsten ions could be substituted with other elements, specifically phosphorous — a lighter, more abundant element.

After a detailed analysis of LiNiO2 integrated with nanosized lithium phosphate (Li3PO4), the researchers observed that, under certain conditions, problematic nickel-ion migration was effectively suppressed due to repulsive electrostatic interaction from the extra nickel ions within the Li layers. Moreover, from these findings, Li-deficient LiNiO2, Li0.975Ni1.025O2, with the extra nickel ions in Li layers, was also synthesized using a simple methodology without phosphorus integration.

The results also showed how Li0.975Ni1.025O2 can effectively mitigate unfavourable nickel-ion migration, and deliver consistent reversibility without cobalt ions.

“These findings open a new direction to develop high-performance and practical cobalt-free nickel-based electrode materials with an extremely simple and cost-effective methodology,” Yabuuchi said. “This material achieved the ultimate goal for high-performance nickel-based electrode materials.”

In future endeavours, the researchers plan to investigate the feasibility of a nickel-free material to support lithium-ion batteries.

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

Utility Dive - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 05:59

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Utility Dive - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 05:53

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Utility Dive - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 05:48

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Yale Environment 360 - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 05:05

The Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas was once a major oil producer. Now, companies hope to extract lithium — a key metal for electric vehicle batteries — from its underground brines using technologies they say could reduce mining’s carbon emissions and water use.

Read more on E360 →

Categories: H. Green News

Extinction Rebellion - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 04:53

In his directions to the jury in the JPMorgan window breakers case yesterday, Judge Reid cast doubt on the existence of the climate crisis.

Judge Silas Reid, giving directions to the jury ahead of their deliberations yesterday (28 February 2024), said: “It is important to note that the circ*mstances which are relevant are those of the damage and not other circ*mstances… The circ*mstances of the damage do not include any climate crisis which may or may not exist in the world at the moment nor does it include whether nonviolent direct action can prompt change. Whether climate change is as dangerous as each of the defendants may clearly and honestly believe or is not, is irrelevant and does not form any part of the circ*mstances of the damage.”

Judge Reid famously imprisoned one of the defendants currently on trial, Amy Pritchard, along with others, for mentioning the words ‘climate change’ whilst on trial last year. The report references UK courts’ attitudes to climate and environmental activists:: “They have forbidden protesters from mentioning climate change, thereby preventing them from explaining the reasons for their protest. Courts have held convicted environmental defenders who disregarded this prohibition in ‘contempt of court’ and imprisoned them for up to eight weeks.”

The UN report goes on to say: “The environmental emergency that we are collectively facing, and that scientists have been documenting for decades, cannot be addressed if those raising the alarm and demanding action are criminalised for it.

“The only legitimate response to peaceful environmental activism and civil disobedience at this point is that the authorities, the media, and the public realise how essential it is for us all to listen to what environmental defenders have to say.”

The five women have one remaining legal defence, referred to as a belief in consent, which is currently under review by the Court of Appeal. [6]

The defendants on trial at Inner London Crown Court are:

• Stephanie Aylett, 29, a former medical device representative from St Albans
• Pamela Bellinger, 66, a vegetable grower from Leicester
• Amy Pritchard, 38, a student from Liverpool
• Adelheid Russenberger, 32 PhD student from Richmond, London
• Rosemary (Annie) Webster, 67, a retired cook and beekeeper from Dorchester, Dorset

The trial continues at Inner London Crown Court from midday today in Courtroom 4, with closing addresses of four more women, two self-representing, still to come before the jury go out.

Contact: press@extinctionrebellion.uk | +44(0)7756136396

Images FREE TO USE available here: https://show.pics.io/xr-global-media-breaking-news/search?collectionIds=612f22cd49d6920012aa40e5

Notes to Editors
[1] UN Special Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders; State repression of environmental protest and civil disobedience: a major threat to human rights and democracy: https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/UNSR_EnvDefenders_Aarhus_Position_Paper_Civil_Disobedience_EN.pdf

[2] European nations must end repression of peaceful climate protest, says UN expert, The Guardian, Wednesday 28 Feb 2024: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/28/european-nations-must-end-repression-of-peaceful-climate-protest-says-un-expert

[3] 12.02.24 Press Release (pre-trial): https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2024/02/12/three-trials-of-people-who-took-action-to-defend-lives-to-begin-next-week/

[4] 01.09.21 Press Release: IN CASE OF CLIMATE EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2021/09/01/in-case-of-climate-emergency-break-glass-extinction-rebellion-women-break-windows-at-worlds-worst-bank-jp-morgan/

[5] JP Morgan pour $434 billion into Fossil Fuels since 2016 Paris Agreement: https://www.desmog.com/2023/04/12/banks-fossil-fuels-finance-climate-chaos-royal-bank-canada-jpmorgan-chase/

[6] Criminal Damage Act 1971 Section 5(2)(a): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/48

About Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.

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Time has almost entirely run out to address the climate and ecological crisis which is upon us, including the sixth mass species extinction, global pollution, and increasingly rapid climate change. If urgent and radical action isn’t taken, we’re heading towards 4˚C warming, leading to societal collapse and mass loss of life. The younger generation, racially marginalised communities and the Global South are on the front-line. No-one will escape the devastating impacts.

The post Judge trying climate defenders questions existence and severity of climate crisis as UN urges courts “to listen to what environmental defenders have to say” appeared first on Extinction Rebellion UK.

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Resilience - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 03:47

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Green European Journal - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 03:15

Cooperatives and social enterprises represent an alternative to capitalist profit-seeking in times of ecosocial crisis. But how can the social and solidarity economy scale up and go mainstream without reproducing unsustainable models of infinite growth?

Despite the social and solidarity economy (SSE)’s emphasis on social and environmental objectives, those of us who identify with it still form part of a capitalist, growth-obsessed society.1 There seems to be no limit to how much bigger things can get, and the word “enough” has apparently all but disappeared from our vocabulary. Capitalism and growth, after all, are inseparable – the accumulation of capital is a process of infinite growth.

This normalisation of growth frequently tricks us into thinking that entities in the SSE – cooperatives, social enterprises, mutual societies and the like – should also pursue it. Growth is perceived as an inherent good, if not an inevitable consequence of doing business. The International Cooperative Alliance, for example, publishes a ranking of its top 300 cooperatives in the world. But those are the 300 largest,implying that the bigger the cooperative, the greater its importance. The most widely respected are meanwhile absent. Therein lies a shortcoming in this system of evaluation.

There is no doubt that the SSE must grow if it is to become both a benchmark model and part of a nascent post-capitalist economy that meaningfully contributes to the urgently needed ecosocial transition. For this to happen, we need many more entities that follow a cooperative model, especially in life-sustaining sectors such as agriculture or pharmaceuticals. We also need many more cooperativist workers, meaning more people who demonstrate cooperative values in their economic practices, be they migrant workers or employees in the industrial and technological sectors. Without these, we may well end up with plenty of cooperatives but few cooperativists.2

Despite the social and solidarity economy’s emphasis on social and environmental objectives, those of us who identify with it still form part of a capitalist, growth-obsessed society.

One strategy to promote the SSE could indeed be to foster internal growth within each organisation. Yet there are other alternatives that are just as promising, if not more so. We could instead increase the number of entities, focus them on certain essential activities in all grassroots sectors and territories, grant them greater autonomy from the state and the capitalist market (by structuring them in a kind of socially oriented proto-market and establishing communal resources), convert SSE entities into transitional communities, and so on. Thus, it is one thing to say that the SSE must grow, and another to say that its individual entities must themselves grow. The former assertion is certainly true, while the latter leaves much room for doubt.

In reality, entities of the SSE – cooperatives in particular – rarely tend to exhibit indefinite growth, at least on a structural level. When they do, it is either an attempt to compete with large capitalist companies through reactive or defensive measures, or to acritically imitate those entities.

There are at least two factors that explain cooperatives’ tendency towards moderate or stationary growth. The first is that, as democratic organisations, their members can decide to allocate all or a portion of their profits to things other than reinvestment in the cooperative itself. Members might, for example, dedicate any surplus towards offsetting the drop in sales resulting from a decision to reduce working hours. The second is that, once the cooperative reaches a point where increasing the scale of production neither yields additional benefits nor reduces costs, members are not likely to earn much more.

Obviously a cooperative can draw in a lot of profit, but it might choose to set itself up as a non-profit organisation and reinvest this profit, meaning it will then not be able to redistribute it among members. On the other hand, if it chooses a conventional model and allocates returns back to its members – assuming that increased profits were earned by onboarding more workers – these will be distributed among more members, yielding a largely unchanged profit share for each member. That is, of course, unless the cooperative had few members and many employees, in which case the cooperative could indeed squeeze a surplus profit out of its employees and share it among members. However, such a business could not really be considered a cooperative.

An appropriate scale

Each entity has its own optimal size. As Aristotle stated, “There is a due measure of magnitude for a city-state as there also is for all other things – animals, plants, tools; each of these if too small or excessively large will not possess its own proper efficiency.”3 The same can apply to organisations. According to their activities and the ecosystem they operate in, there will be certain dimensions that are more appropriate than others. “For every activity there is an appropriate scale,” statistician and economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher said, “and the more active and intimate the activity, the smaller the number of people that can take part in it, and the greater the number of relationships that will need to be established.”4

Turning now to entities in the SSE, it is obvious that an industrial cooperative does not need to be the same size as a services-focused cooperative, or one dedicated to more basic activities. For example, the scale needed to compete in the IT services market of one city, where an organisation of 10 people might suffice, is far removed from the scale needed to survive in the global household appliance market. There, a business would require several thousand workers.5

Therefore, before deciding to expand their business, each specific entity should analyse external conditions (average scale of companies in the sector, expertise level, strategic options, and so on), as well as their own internal situation and willingness to grow. They can then weigh up the pros and cons of internal growth against other options, such as inter-cooperation or shifting to a less competitive market niche. After all, taking advantage of a new market opportunity is often just an option, not an obligation. Even if a company opts for internal growth, it will mean “growing along with the project, not the demand,” as Spanish green consumer association BioAlai put it.6

Necessary growth

Sometimes there is a definite need for internal growth. Many cooperatives and organisations created in recent years have no more than five workers; some are made up of only two or three. It is clear that most of these entities need to grow two, three, or even four times larger in order to increase their capacity, diversity, resilience, and economy of scale. Doing so would enable them to escape precarity and generate a surplus to then allocate to reproductive, sociopolitical and solidarity-based tasks, to inter-cooperative endeavours, and to exploring new projects.

On the other hand, every organisation in the SSE needs to have a business and management model that suits its size, the product or service that it offers, and the market in which it is active. This structure should not feel like a burden; well-oiled business operations and management will, in fact, result in more productivity and increased margins for the organisation. Maintaining staff that are dedicated to these tasks requires a greater number of workers that focus on explicitly productive work, often bringing the total number of cooperative members to around ten.

Likewise, there are markets in which SSE entities need to be bigger in order to compete with large capitalist businesses, such as in the industrial, technological and distribution sectors. However, these are precisely the sectors that are controlled by a handful of corporations, often as an oligopoly, that engage in many unsustainable practices that will have to be cut back or simply done away with during the ecosocial transition process.7 In a state of emergency, such as the one we are currently experiencing, it makes no sense to form SSE entities around sectors or businesses that are unsustainable. Moreover, in certain essential life-sustaining industries that are controlled by corporations but which will need to become sustainable (processed foods, furniture, textiles, pharmaceuticals, certain free digital hardware and software technologies), we could take advantage of this pivotal moment to promote an alternative: SSE initiatives created on a human scale (workers, small factories, workshops) that would use limited (renewable) energy, readily available local materials, and appropriate technologies.

A problem of scale

Large companies (250 people or greater) tend to have advantages over smaller or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): higher productivity, greater capacity for investment and research, more market power, political influence, and so on. SMEs may try to compensate with greater flexibility, closer contact with their clientele, and more specialised services. Furthermore, when these SMEs are part of the SSE, they offer a fundamental intangible asset: participation. The participation of members is not only a defining feature of SSE entities, but also a comparative advantage that enables them to counterbalance other shortcomings, such as a lack of capital. However, the bigger an entity, the more it costs to make it truly democratic and to have its members participate and make it their own.

The bigger an entity, the more it costs to make it truly democratic and to have its members participate and make it their own.

As the number of members grows, it becomes more difficult to have face-to-face interactions. There are also more decisions to be made, and these decisions become more complex. This type of situation often results in focusing on the division of labour as well as increased bureaucracy and hierarchies, in turn leading to an ever increasing wage gap. The frustration that this creates for many cooperative members takes its toll on the work environment, as commitment and productivity begin to wane. The result is a process of institutional isomorphism, whereby the SSE entity looks more and more like a capitalist enterprise.

In order to avoid this and preserve unity and participation, large scale growth necessitates a complete transformation of the organisational model. Broadly speaking, this change should focus on turning the SSE entity into a confederation of small semi-autonomous groups and creating a governance model that combines direct democracy with representative democracy, and member participation with operative (related to daily work decisions), strategic, and community participation.

For this to happen, power must be distributed among individuals, teams, departments, coordination and management, the governing board and the assembly, and so on. Periodic processes to redefine the entity’s collective purpose and strategy must be held. Information and communication systems must be improved, and the establishment of local groups must be encouraged in larger consumer cooperatives. Furthermore, processes must be followed to onboard new members gradually and with care, and wage gaps must be kept to a minimum. As a final cooperative principle, a strong feminist approach must be adopted.8

However, largeness of scale presents another problem: the difficulty of downsizing in times of internal crisis, or during a more general economic crisis. Making the decision to let go of members is always traumatic. While this is part for the course in commercial enterprises, given that they externalise the dramatic effects felt by such downsizing, in the case of a cooperative or SSE entity the trauma of “amputating” a part of the collective, as well as the loss of capital involved in the departure of any number of members, may very well lead to the closure of the business. The bigger the entity, the greater the risk of needing to carry out such traumatic changes.

Alternative forms of growth

Every entity in the SSE, no matter its size, should engage in economic, political or solidarity-based inter-cooperation. In the case of economic inter-cooperation, it must be based on shared needs and objectives, as well as a common culture. It should take shape by creating products, services, initiatives or campaigns together, by sharing some kind of productive element (supplies, technology, training, commercial initiatives), and/or by jointly distributing any profits. Depending on the complexity and duration of said inter-cooperation, a private verbal or written agreement may suffice, or it may be necessary to make the collaboration official by establishing a UTE (Spanish: Unión Temporal de Empresas, Temporary Union of Enterprises), a secondary cooperative or association, a service cooperative, or similar.

Economic inter-cooperation can happen on many different levels. Operating as a simple provider is not the same thing as coordinating production among several entities to offer a joint final product – or in other words, setting up an SSE production chain. Likewise, sporadic collaboration with another entity to offer a joint service is entirely different from offering this same joint service on a permanent basis, or even offering several joint services. Moreover, cooperating exclusively with another organisation is not the same as doing so with various organisations, each in different ways and with different needs and objectives. When used to its fullest, inter-cooperation can serve as an alternative strategy to internal growth.

Obviously, inter-cooperation is not without risks either. These include the risk of imbalances in terms of who contributes the most to the joint project and who reaps the most benefit, or the risk that members of each entity who are not directly involved in the inter-cooperative project will see the alliance as something external that takes away their decision-making power. Measures must therefore be put in place to avoid such situations.

Finally, there are other forms of growth such as replication and division. Replication means using mentorship or resources to help collectives who want to carry out a similar project in other areas. This is a form of political or solidarity-based inter-cooperation. We help others create a similar entity to ours, whether out of solidarity with the other project’s leaders, to increase the social impact of our initiative, or a mix of the two. A good example of replication is illustrated by Agintzari, a socio-educational cooperative in Biscay (in the Spanish Basque Country), which helped to create two other cooperatives (Zabalduz and Hirube). Agintzari is now engaged in a process of inter-cooperation with these two cooperatives via Bogan, a secondary cooperative made up of these three entities.

Division works similarly to the growth of an amoeba. Once the SSE entity has reached a certain scale, a part of the cooperative that has specialised in a certain product or service in a specific region will separate from the larger structure and, with the support of the latter, form a new entity. Both in replication and division, the usual strategy is that both the parent and child entities end up creating a kind of new, shared instrument of cooperation, as we have just seen.

An SSE for ecosocial good

Internal growth is not an absolute and universal imperative for entities in the SSE. There is an appropriate size for every market and every business model. Internal upsizing may sometimes be needed, as is the case with many small worker cooperatives or large supply cooperatives (energy, telecommunications, credit, etc.), while in other instances it is merely an option, and an often dangerous one at that.

However, SSE entities can also grow through inter-cooperation, which may even include replicating or dividing the project. These strategies are not mutually exclusive over the course of an entity’s lifespan, and may even complement each other well.

In a state of ecosocial emergency like the one we are currently experiencing, and with the need to transition towards economic systems that are simpler, self-sufficient and local, it makes particular sense to promote SSE entities of only a few dozen members (though not micro-enterprises) that practise extensive inter-cooperation.

Conversely, it makes no sense to build large organisations, except in the case of very specific initiatives and sectors that are essential for sustaining life and that would not be viable on a smaller scale. Implementing the kind of organisation needed to ensure that large cooperatives can also be participative, feminist, sustainable, and socially committed could serve as an example of how large capitalist enterprises could be managed cooperatively in the future. Many of these enterprises will need to move towards a social model if we want to embark on an ecosocial transition that keeps the planet inhabitable.

This article was originally published in Spanish by Alternativas Económicas. It is republished here with their permission. Translated by Guerrilla Media Collective.

1. Regarding the ideological and mythological use of the concept of growth, which has appeared and continues to appear within the SSE, see: Garcia Jané, Jordi. “Mite i realitat del creixement”, enNexe, 19,FCTC, enero de 2008.https://nexe.coop/sites/default/files/descarregables/revistes/pdf/nexe19.pdf ︎
2. Jesús Mari Astigarriaga, President of Danobat, one of Mondragón’s most important cooperatives, producing high-precision grinding machines and lathes, observed the following in 2009: “So far we have made many cooperatives, but I’m not sure if we’ve made cooperativists.” (“Los presidentes de las cooperativas”, atTU Lankide. September 2009. Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa,https://www.tulankide.com/es/revista/septiembre-2009/embed/septiembre-2009). To that we could add the following: if there are no cooperativists, then there aren’t really any cooperatives either. ︎
3. Politics, VII, 4 132a,Aristotle. ︎
4. Cited inLa dimensión perdida.Manfred Max-Neef, page 68. Icaria Editorial, 2008. ︎
5. When fa*gor Electrodoméstico, part of Spanish cooperative corporation Mondragón, had to close its doors in autumn of 2013, 5,600 employees worked in the cooperative worldwide. Of these, some 1,900 were based in the Basque Country, and only they were coop members. ︎
6. BioAlai is agreen consumer association in Gasteiz with around 10 workers and 1,300 individual members. ︎
7. By ecosocial transition, I mean all of the economic, social, political, and cultural changes that reconfigure the consumption of materials and energy in order to meet the biophysical limits of the planet, redistributing said consumption such that everyone in the world can live a dignified life. ︎
8. Employing a feminist approach means, for example, avoiding specialisations along gender lines and the invisibility of reproductive work; making space for people to express discomfort and talk about conflict; creating spaces for togetherness outside of the daily routine; tracking the balance between work, personal, and family life; improving the work-life balance laid out in the work contract; adapting work spaces to accommodate children; and so on. ︎

Categories: H. Green News

Resilience - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 02:53

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Resilience - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 02:31

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Global Tapestry of Alternatives - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 02:26

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

This story was produced in partnership with Atlanta News First.

The bruises on Alexandria Pittman’s body wouldn’t go away. Nor would the aches that plagued her at her new job at a distribution center in Lithia Springs, a small town 17 miles west of Atlanta, sorting and repackaging boxes containing medical devices. She was convinced the symptoms were connected to the job.

Pittman had applied to the position at the warehouse, run by the medical supply company ConMed, after learning about the opening from her fiancé, Derek Mitchell, who delivered products there. Every day she’d come home and complain to him about the mysterious aches and marks. At first, Mitchell tried to reassure her, guessing that the bruises were probably from bumping up against something. “I really didn’t think nothing of it,” he recalled.

Then, in the spring of 2019, came a surprising revelation. ConMed managers announced that the seemingly innocuous products in the boxes they were packaging had been sterilized with ethylene oxide, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers a carcinogen and is linked to lung and breast cancers as well as diseases of the nervous system. Suddenly, Pittman began connecting the dots between her symptoms and those of her colleagues. It would later emerge that at least 50 warehouse workers experienced a slew of health effects tied to ethylene oxide exposure, including seizures, vomiting, and trouble breathing. Ambulances were routinely called to the facility after workers collapsed, convulsed from seizures, or broke out in hives. Several — including Pittman — developed cancer.

Since ConMed came clean about the workers’ exposure to ethylene oxide, Pittman has suffered four strokes and had brain surgery. She’s currently undergoing chemotherapy for myeloma, according to multiple claims she has filed with the Georgia State Board of Workers’ Compensation for help paying her medical bills. After the second stroke, Mitchell was unable to care for her, and she moved in with her mother where she now lives. Mitchell and Pittman had planned to marry, but the $5,000 ring Mitchell purchased now sits collecting dust.

“It just corrupted everything that she ever wanted to do in life,” said Mitchell. “She can’t talk, and she’s being fed through a tube.”

The ethylene oxide that Pittman and dozens of her coworkers were exposed to wasn’t supposed to have made it to the warehouse at all. At a sterilization plant 12 miles down the road, the chemical had been used to fumigate products before they were sent to the warehouse, a standard procedure for making sure that medical equipment is antiseptic and safe to use in hospitals across the country. More than 50 percent of all U.S. medical supplies are sterilized by ethylene oxide, due to the chemical’s unique ability to penetrate porous surfaces without causing damage.

Ethylene Oxide Facts

What is ethylene oxide? Ethylene oxide is a colorless and odorless toxic gas used to sterilize medical products, fumigate spices, and manufacture other industrial chemicals. According to the Food and Drug Administration, approximately half of all sterile medical devices in the U.S. are disinfected with ethylene oxide.

What are the sources of ethylene oxide exposure? Industrial sources of ethylene oxide emissions fall into three main categories: chemical manufacturing, medical sterilization, and food fumigation.

What are the health effects of being exposed to ethylene oxide? Ethylene oxide, which the EPA has labeled a carcinogen, is harmful at concentrations above 0.1 parts per trillion if exposed over a lifetime. Numerous studies have linked it to lung and breast cancers as well as diseases of the nervous system and damage to the lungs. Acute exposure to the chemical can cause loss of consciousness or lead to a seizure or coma.

How is the EPA regulating ethylene oxide? The EPA is in the process of finalizing regulations for ethylene oxide emissions from the sterilization industry. The new rule requires companies to install equipment that minimizes the amount of the chemical released into the air. However, it does not address emissions from other parts of the medical device supply chain, such as warehouses and trucks.

But over the past few years — beginning with findings by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, in 2019 and Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division, or EPD, in 2020 — regulators have learned that some amount of ethylene oxide travels out of sterilization facilities on the treated products. In the hours and weeks following application, the chemical evaporates, or off-gasses, turning the buildings where these products are stored into potentially significant sources of toxic air pollution — particularly for workers like Pittman who handled the boxes directly.

The dangers came as a surprise to warehouse workers and regulators alike. Georgia EPD officials had originally only set out to monitor ethylene oxide levels around the industrial sterilization facilities fumigating medical equipment. The EPA had just published modeling that suggested high levels of cancer risk around the country’s medical sterilization facilities, and Georgia regulators wanted to assess the plants in their jurisdiction. (The modeling incorporated the results of a 2016 study that found ethylene oxide to be 30 times more toxic to adults and 60 times more toxic to children than previously known.)

After finding elevated levels of ethylene oxide outside of a Becton Dickinson sterilization plant in Covington, a city southeast of Atlanta, officials asked a state judge to temporarily shut the operation down while further testing took place. As part of a consent decree reached in October 2019, the company would not only have to install new technology at its sterilization plants to reduce its emissions, but also test the air coming from its warehouse to ensure that emissions were below the legal limit there as well. The results of this testing showed that the warehouse was emitting nearly 5,600 pounds of ethylene oxide per year — about nine times as much as the sterilization facility when it was still operational, and higher than almost a third of all sterilizer plants in the country. (Georgia requires an industrial facility emitting more than 4,000 pounds of a hazardous air pollutant per year to obtain a permit from the state allowing it to do so.)

Officials found elevated levels of ethylene oxide in this Becton Dickinson medical sterilization facility in Covington, Georgia, seen here in 2020. John Bazemore / AP Photo

“We basically cited the facility for failure to have an air permit, and we required them to control their air emissions,” recalled Jim Boylan, head of the air protection branch at the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, in an interview. “That’s how it all started.”

When he realized that Becton Dickinson couldn’t be the only company storing medical products recently sterilized with ethylene oxide, Boylan assigned several engineers in the EPD’s inspection program to search for similar operations. They had their work cut out for them — because the risk of exposure at these warehouses is such a new concern, there is no comprehensive public or government data on the identity, location, or number of these facilities in Georgia or any other state, let alone any kind of risk assessments. Inspectors scoured the internet and made in-person visits to warehouses to identify potential sources of emissions. Their research revealed that in some cases, warehouse operators were aware that the medical devices they stored were releasing a carcinogen that could be poisoning their workers.

All told, interagency emails obtained by Grist through a Freedom of Information Act request show that inspectors initially identified seven warehouses in Georgia storing products that had been sterilized with ethylene oxide; four emitted enough of the chemical to require air permits and the installation of emission-reduction equipment. Those facilities are on track to receive their permits in the coming months. While these measures may protect residents who live near the warehouses, they don’t guarantee the protection of the workers who may be experiencing exposure day in and day out. The responsibility of safeguarding workers falls to OSHA, which has not investigated ethylene oxide levels at three of the four warehouses that Georgia regulators have identified as requiring permits.

Court documents include photos of a ConMed warehouse allegedly containing rows of packages of medical devices sterilized with ethylene oxide. PeachCourt According to court documents, cardboard and wood absorb ethylene oxide. The more dense the material, the slower it is to evaporate. PeachCourt

Frances Alonzo, a spokesperson for the federal Department of Labor, said that OSHA evaluates employers “on a case-by-case basis based on OSHA standards, employer records, interviews, observations on a walk-through, measurements, and air sampling.” (In a follow-up email, Alonzo told Grist that OSHA’s ethylene oxide standards were established in 1984 and that the agency does not have plans to update it.) The agency focuses its resources on workplaces where employees are in imminent danger and conducts follow-up investigations to ensure any previously identified violations have been addressed.

In the ConMed case, after an initial investigation in 2019 identified a slew of violations, OSHA conducted two follow-up investigations. Those inspections revealed “no violations of OSHA standards or serious hazards,” Alonzo said. In 2020, Pittman and dozens of her coworkers filed a lawsuit against ConMed and the sterilization company that shipped products to the warehouse, but the claims were later dismissed by the judge.

Despite all the work still to be done by regulators, Georgia is relatively far ahead of the curve on addressing ethylene oxide emissions from warehouses. Most other states have yet to examine whether warehouses in their jurisdiction are storing sterilized products — and if emissions from the facilities put workers and nearby residents at risk. A review of public records submitted to the EPA and state regulators revealed that there are dozens of such warehouses across the country, suggesting there are thousands of workers like Pittman, unknowingly and routinely exposed to ethylene oxide. These nondescript facilities are hiding in plain sight in places as disparate as Quincy, Massachusetts; Richmond, Virginia; and Tempe, Arizona.

Warehouses that store products sterilized with ethylene oxide pose “a deep threat to communities, and unfortunately, because we don’t really know or have as much information as we should about where those warehouses are, it’s an unknown source of major ethylene oxide emissions,” said Marvin Brown, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice.

Grist contacted the environmental agencies of 10 states that are home to multiple medical supply sterilization facilities. Most agencies said that they did not regulate warehouses that stored products sterilized with ethylene oxide and pointed to federal regulations that require them to oversee sterilization and manufacturing facilities — but not warehouses or distribution centers. Apart from Georgia, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, a regulator that serves a portion of Southern California, is a lone outlier. The agency is currently in the process of finalizing a rule requiring warehouses that store ethylene oxide products to conduct air quality monitoring.

The federal government, for its part, hasn’t yet addressed major loopholes that exempt warehouses from emissions rules. Because ethylene oxide is toxic in such small amounts, officials have had trouble regulating emissions from the sterilization facilities themselves, in many cases permitting emissions that they later discover generate levels of cancer risk that exceed federal public health standards.

While the EPA introduced regulations to reduce ethylene oxide emissions from sterilization facilities last year, its rules only apply to warehouses when they are located on the same property as sterilization facilities. But not only do many companies store their products at warehouses tens or even hundreds of miles away, they also often contract third-party logistics providers to do the job for them. That means products may be warehoused at facilities owned by subsidiaries or entirely separate logistics firms. Some companies have reported using FedEx facilities to store sterilized products. To make matters more complicated, sterilizers have largely been unwilling to disclose the locations of their storage facilities, citing those details as “confidential business information” not subject to public disclosure, according to records submitted to the EPA.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael Regan speaks at a news conference in May 2022. The EPA warned residents in 13 states and Puerto Rico about health risks from ethylene oxide emissions. Patrick Semansky / AP Photo

Environmental advocates and public health experts interviewed for this story worried that these informational gaps as well as the findings in Georgia could indicate a substantial and invisible public health threat affecting communities across the country — and one that the EPA should take greater effort to regulate.

“Four years after the stunning discovery of warehouse emissions in Georgia, the EPA has failed to propose standards to address this source of uncontrolled emissions,” read a comment letter submitted to the EPA last year and signed by 16 environmental, public health, and labor groups, including Earthjustice and the Union of Concerned Scientists. It is also concerning, they wrote, that most sterilization companies fail to publicly disclose the locations of these warehouses.

“If [warehouses] are significant sources of ethylene oxide, we believe they should be covered by the [EPA’s sterilizer] rule,” Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Grist. “I don’t think that the EPA provided a strong enough rationale for why that wouldn’t be considered.”

The agency is expected to finalize its sterilizer rule in early March. Environmental attorneys said the EPA’s reasoning for overlooking warehouses may come down to legalese. The agency issues regulations based on categories of pollution sources defined in amendments to the Clean Air Act in the 1990s. Since off-site storage facilities weren’t clearly defined in the law decades ago, whether the EPA can regulate them with a rule targeting sterilization facilities is an open question.
A spokesperson for the EPA did not comment on why the agency isn’t including warehouses in its current sterilizer rule but said that it has already determined the levels of ethylene oxide that would be harmful to workers and plans to address emissions in a separate pesticide rule before the end of the year.

Ira Montgomery takes 26 pills a day. There’s one to calm the spasms that ripple through his muscles, another to lower his blood pressure, and yet another to make sure his body doesn’t reject a liver that doctors transplanted after diagnosing him with cancer.

The 51-year-old traces his problems to the years he spent working at the ConMed warehouse. The facility sprawls out over an area the size of five football fields and has rows of shelves that store wooden pallets, each containing medical devices sterilized at a facility owned by Sterigenics about 30 minutes away in Smyrna, Georgia. The products are stored anywhere from a few weeks to several months before they are shipped off to hospitals for use in life-saving procedures.

Ira Montgomery lies in the hospital after surgery. He was diagnosed with cancer and needed a liver transplant. Courtesy of Ira Montgomery Ira Montgomery shows a scar from his liver transplant. He believes his health problems are linked to his time working at the ConMed warehouse. Courtesy of Ira Montgomery

In records submitted to the EPA, Sterigenics responded “No” to a question about whether products sterilized at its facilities are shipped to a warehouse, since ConMed contracts with Sterigenics to sterilize products. Given this, the presence of ethylene oxide emissions at the ConMed warehouse only became public knowledge due to Georgia regulators’ efforts. The 7-acre warehousing facility in Lithia Springs had neither state permits nor any protective gear for workers between 2008 and 2019, when Montgomery worked there.

Until an inspection by OSHA in 2019, the 3,500 workers at the warehouse were unaware that the products had been sterilized with a dangerous chemical. Dozens of Montgomery’s and Pittman’s coworkers mysteriously developed rashes, had trouble breathing, and fainted; many had seizures. When Nick Jackson began experiencing seizures in 2007 and eventually died in 2013, ConMed managers told his wife the fluorescent lights at the warehouse were to blame. They later informed his doctors that there were no occupational hazards at his workplace.

Similarly, when Essence Alexander opened a box containing products sterilized with ethylene oxide, her right arm broke out in hives and her body began to itch. Warehouse managers called an ambulance, but when paramedics arrived they were not informed that products at the warehouse were emitting a toxic chemical that could have triggered the reaction. In another case, when a worker broke out in hives all over her body, a manager told paramedics the worker had “an allergic reaction to a cookie,” according to legal filings.

Pallets and boxes are seen are stacked outside the Sterigenics facility in Smyrna, Georgia. Atlanta News First

Michael Yeh was working as a medical toxicology fellow at Emory University’s School of Medicine in 2021 when a dozen ConMed workers visited the center. As he got to know these patients better, Yeh began to notice certain patterns in their symptoms. Many felt fine on the weekends, but as soon as the work week rolled around, they developed headaches in the afternoon. Once they got home, the pain would subside. There were other common complaints as well: an irksome cough, itchy eyes, and inflamed nasal passages. These workers weren’t looking for a cure for their conditions, Yeh recalled, but an opportunity to understand how their exposure to ethylene oxide may have affected their health.

“There is no antidote to inhaling ethylene oxide,” Yeh said in an interview. “But they wanted us to hear their story and to document in a medical record what they were experiencing so that there’s documentation of what happened to them.”

ConMed warehouse managers attributed these health effects to a range of unrelated issues, according to a lawsuit filed by about 50 workers in 2020. In filings with the court, the company has argued that the workers did not provide sufficient evidence about their individual exposures and subsequent ailments. Since Pittman, Montgomery, and the other plaintiffs submitted multiple claims to the Georgia Workers’ Compensation Board, ConMed has also claimed that the workers have foregone other avenues to air their grievances. The workers are attempting an “end run around the Workers’ Compensation Act … based on a smattering of vague factual allegations interspersed among a series of legal conclusions,” the company claimed in filings.

In total, the lawsuit counts approximately 50 instances of ambulances being called to the warehouse between 2007 and 2019. A Grist review of 911 call records shows that since 2016, ambulances were dispatched to the ConMed warehouse to treat employees on at least 22 occasions. Multiple workers reported similar health effects: seizures, losing consciousness, vomiting, and trouble breathing. All of these symptoms are triggered by high-dose exposure to ethylene oxide. According to medical management guidelines developed by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which develops profiles for hazardous substances, ethylene oxide is a central nervous system depressant, and acute exposure to it “can result in diverse neurologic manifestations including seizures, loss of consciousness, and coma.” Exposure to lower concentrations can cause nausea and vomiting, while exposure via skin may cause “inflammation with redness of the skin, blisters, and crusted ulcerations.”

Ambulances were called to this ConMed warehouse approximately 50 times between 2007 and 2019. Courtesy of Atlanta News First. Atlantic News First obtained 911 audio for one of those calls, which has been de-identified and edited for length.

Due in part to these risks, OSHA has set acceptable ethylene oxide exposure limits for workers. The federal agency requires companies to inform workers if they are exposed to more than 0.5 parts per million, or ppm, of ethylene oxide and take measures to reduce exposure when levels are above 1 ppm.

OSHA’s efforts to investigate ConMed’s storage center in Lithia Springs in 2019 point to the warehouse owners’ anxieties over the possibility of being regulated. Grist reviewed OSHA complaint records about the facility and found that federal inspectors’ efforts to sample the indoor air were repeatedly rebuffed.

“The employer was not forthcoming in providing the requested documentation,” the complaint read, adding that two subpoenas had been issued to the company to request information about working conditions, but that the company lawyer rejected both. The initial complaint alleged that airborne ethylene oxide inside the warehouse was causing workers to experience “headaches, burning eyes, itching eyes, cough, and chest pains.” It took five months for regulators to get access to the facility and take air samples and another two months to publish the results.

Those results ultimately indicated that ethylene oxide was present in the air at ConMed, but not at levels that breach federal standards. In handwritten notes attached to the complaint file, an OSHA inspector noted that managers instructed workers not to open packages during the inspection, raising the possibility that managers altered operating procedures on that day. “They didn’t know I can see them,” the inspector wrote.

“Did they change their practices when they knew the inspectors were coming?” Yeh wondered, noting that it would be easy for the company to make adjustments if it knew the inspection date in advance.

The investigation also found that warehouse managers had removed an indoor air quality monitor because it routinely recorded levels between 3 and 5 ppm and beeped loudly. The levels of ethylene oxide were so high, the workers claimed, that the cardboard packages wrapped in plastic shrink-wrap became wet. (Ethylene oxide converts into ethylene cholohydrin and ethylene glycol when it interacts with plastic, and the lawsuit claims that the wet boxes were evidence of the high levels of ethylene oxide that the products were off-gassing.)

OSHA fined ConMed $7,800 for failing to inform workers of their high exposure to ethylene oxide and required the company to install equipment that reduced levels of the chemical. ConMed complied by opening bay doors for better ventilation and installing a stationary air quality monitor, but the monitor continued to detect high ethylene oxide levels.

The workers’ lawsuit claims that the products were off-gassing dangerous levels of ethylene oxide in part because Sterigenics, the sterilization company that shipped products to the ConMed warehouse, was using a sterilization method that requires overapplication of the chemical. Ethylene oxide is an effective disinfectant because even at low levels it can eliminate microbes effectively, but different volumes of the chemical may be required to properly disinfect different products. (The amount of ethylene oxide required to sterilize a product is based on regulations by the Food and Drug Administration.)

Because companies often sterilize different types of products all in one fell swoop, they end up gassing them with more ethylene oxide than is required. The lawsuit claims that Sterigenics used this process — called “overkill” in industry parlance — to sterilize more products quickly. The sterilized products are supposed to be held for several hours to days to allow the ethylene oxide to off-gas before they are sent to warehouses for storage, but the lawsuit claims that Sterigenics rushed this process to increase profits. As a result, the products that were trucked to the warehouse had higher levels of ethylene oxide than anyone would have had reason to suspect at the time.

“The method of sterilization has been to over sterilize,” said Brown, the Earthjustice attorney.

“The result for communities is that they are exposed to higher amounts of ethylene oxide, because more ethylene oxide is being used than necessary.”

Sterigenics did not respond to specific questions about its sterilization methods. In an emailed statement, Kristin Gibbs, a spokesperson for the company, noted that Sterigenics sterilized products provided by ConMed on a contract basis “as required by FDA regulations and standards.”

“The facility in Lithia Springs belongs to ConMed — not Sterigenics — and as such, the facility, the employees working in that facility, and those employees’ working conditions are under the control of and are the responsibility of ConMed,” she added.

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In 2019, after OSHA investigated and the EPA identified the Sterigenics facility as a major source of ethylene oxide emissions, workers at the ConMed warehouse began trying to take precautions. Pittman asked her fiancé to buy her a mask, but when she wore it at work, the lawsuit alleges that managers told her not to because she was “scaring” others. Several workers were fired after they began raising concerns about the levels of ethylene oxide at the facility.

Since the EPA hasn’t proposed specific regulations for warehouses, Boylan, the Georgia EPD air chief, said states “should work closely with their warehouses to gather site-specific information on ethylene oxide emissions and try to calculate the risk associated with those emissions.”

“Georgia has done kind of above and beyond, because we thought there were possible risks to nearby communities, and we thought the risks were too great,” said Boylan.

In January, the workers elected to drop ConMed from the lawsuit in part because some of their claims were dismissed in 2022 by the judge presiding over the case. Since the workers had filed claims with the Georgia Workers’ Compensation Board, they were barred from seeking redress through the courts. The judge also dismissed certain claims against Sterigenics, but the company remains a party to the lawsuit. “Sterigenics is vigorously defending the limited surviving claims against it,” said Gibbs, the Sterigenics spokesperson.

Since the lawsuit was filed in 2020, four workers who signed up as plaintiffs have died. Mitchell, Pittman’s fiancé, said that working at the ConMed facility completely changed the trajectory of her life. She was a friendly person, always smiling, but the health complications have dimmed the light in her eyes.

“She was proud of her job and how she had moved up,” said Mitchell. “She always talked about how sad it was and how it hurt her. She was just trying to earn a living and do her job.”

Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline An invisible chemical is poisoning thousands of unsuspecting warehouse workers on Feb 29, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the federal agency that monitors diseases and establishes guidelines to protect human health — published a paper last month that shows cases of Lyme disease jumped nearly 70 percent nationwide in 2022. But what looked like an alarming spike in disease was actually the result of smarter disease surveillance that better reflects what’s happening on the ground.

The CDC revised its Lyme reporting requirements in 2022, making it easier for states with high infection rates to report those cases. The report, the first published analysis of the new data collection guidelines, demonstrates the crucial role efficient surveillance plays in better understanding the scope of infectious disease in the U.S. — and what more must be done to safeguard public health as climate change fosters the proliferation of ticks.

“Disease surveillance that is interpretable and is standardized is integral to being able to understand how disease frequency is changing, and if it’s changing,” said Kiersten Kugeler, a CDC epidemiologist and lead author of the paper. She noted that climate change will complicate the already difficult task of monitoring and controlling diseases such as Lyme. Cases in some areas will continue rising while declining in others as parts of the U.S. become more amenable, or hostile, to ticks. “It’s not going to be straightforward,” Kugeler said. “It’s going to be incredibly important to have good surveillance to be able to understand how climate is affecting risk of disease.”

Blacklegged ticks are known vectors for the zoonotic spirochetal bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, which is the pathogen responsible for causing Lyme disease. Photo by CDC/ James Gathany; William L. Nicholson, Ph.D.

Studies have documented significant shifts in Lyme trends across the country. The illness is caused by the bite of a black-legged tick and causes symptoms that range from flu-like and mild to neurological and debilitating, depending on how quickly the disease is diagnosed. Cases doubled in the three decades between 1990 and 2020. Many researchers, including CDC employees, say climate change is one factor behind that precipitous rise. Environmental changes such as urban sprawl and swelling populations of white-tailed deer, among other drivers, also play a role.

Warmer winter temperatures have coaxed black-legged ticks into regions that have historically been too harsh for the blood-sucking arachnids. Meanwhile, milder spring and fall seasons have given the pests more time to breed. Lyme is a portent of climate-driven diseases to come. But, as it has spread into new areas and infected more people, the CDC has struggled to capture the full impact.

In 2022, the agency redoubled its disease surveillance efforts, with a special emphasis on vector-borne disease. As part of that push, the CDC loosened its Lyme disease reporting requirements in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper-Midwest, where cases are high. Public health departments in those areas no longer have to track down the clinical details of each positive Lyme test, such as a patient’s symptoms and when they began, and doctors can skip the labor-intensive process of recording and reporting them. Now, a positive laboratory test is sufficient. Eliminating these steps takes the onus off doctors and local public health authorities and puts it on state health departments, which are typically better equipped to handle it.

“We have a lot of behind-the-scenes data management that’s new with this Lyme disease surveillance system,” Rebecca Osborn, a vector-borne disease epidemiologist at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. But overall, she said, “it has gotten quite a bit less burdensome.”

The new system runs the risk of including information on people who no longer show symptoms but are still testing positive for the bacteria, which can linger in the blood for years after the infection has gone. But those cases likely comprise a small fraction of the overall data, the CDC said. In areas where Lyme remains rare, providers must continue reporting clinical information for each case.

These relatively modest changes to the case definition requirements unearthed 62,551 cases of Lyme nationwide. That’s 1.7 times the annual average reported from 2017 to 2019.

Chuck Lubelczyk, a vector-borne ecologist with Maine Medical Center, collects ticks at a site in Cape Elizabeth. John Ewing / Portland Press Herald/Getty Images

Still, most cases of Lyme disease in the U.S. go unreported. Studies based on health insurance records estimate that roughly 500,000 cases are diagnosed every year. Those reported by states to the CDC in 2022 comprise less than one-fifth of that. Elizabeth Schiffman, an epidemiologist with the Vector Borne Diseases Unit at the Minnesota Department of Health, said figuring out how to capture every case is nearly impossible and perhaps besides the point.

“No system is ever perfect,” she said, “we’re always going to miss something, we’re always going to count something that probably shouldn’t be counted.” If the CDC could use the data it collects every year under its new system to measure the overall impact of Lyme, Schiffman said, then the number of cases it already knows about may be enough.

“If what we are able to capture is able to give us an idea of where things are happening, how things are changing, and inform good public health actions, then it could be argued that we don’t need to count every case.”

The data deficit and lack of standardization among states becomes more of a problem when researchers try to tease out the impacts of climate change on the disease. The CDC argues that in regions where Lyme incidence is still relatively rare, the updated surveillance system doesn’t make sense. Doctors and local health departments in those areas still need to collect clinical information on every potential Lyme patient, because each case is a revealing datapoint rather than a statistic in a larger trend. But the burdensome requirements in low-incidence areas muddy efforts to detect the role of climate change in how black-legged ticks may be migrating, said Richard Ostfeld, a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies who researches tick-borne illnesses.

A tick bite on the forearm of a man in Toronto. Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto via Getty Images

The prevalence of Lyme disease typically falls along geographic lines. Counties in the upper Midwest and Northeast report tens of thousands of cases each year, while those in the Southeast and South report hundreds. Although the CDC’s revised reporting guidelines more accurately revealed the extent of Lyme disease in areas with a high prevalence, the implementation of the system over time may obscure growth of the disease elsewhere. The new guidelines “would tend to bias your estimate of geographic trends toward more growth in incidence in northern parts of the country as opposed to southern parts of the country where you’re still being very conservative,” Ostfeld said. “It complicates matters for those trying to understand the role of climate change.”

North Carolina, for example, a state long classified as low-incidence, was among five states with the highest number of Lyme disease-related insurance claims in 2016, according to one analysis. But the disease reporting there, said Noah Johnston, director of the Lyme awareness group Project Lyme, still isn’t where it needs to be. “There’s an expectation that tick populations in North Carolina are not as high as they are in the Northeast,” he said.

The benefits and drawbacks of the CDC’s updated surveillance highlight the difficulties of tracking and controlling infectious diseases under climatic conditions that are rapidly shifting the distribution of disease carriers. Incremental adjustments to the status quo might not be enough to keep up with the growing scale of disease risk. “We’re likely going to see more and more cases of these diseases and more and more diseases that are going to affect not just our population in the U.S., but globally,” said Osborn. “Public health in general needs to become a little more proactive in our responses. We’re still working on that as a field.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As ticks spread, the US is getting closer to understanding the true extent of Lyme disease on Feb 29, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News

La Via Campesina : International Peasant Movement - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 00:30

Reportedly, on the 26th February, farmers staged protests against the World Trade Organization at over 400 district centers across India. They handed over petitions to the officials of the State urging the Indian government to protect domestic support programs and food stockholding programs at the 13th Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in Abu Dhabi.

Over the course of history, India’s agricultural movements have consistently stood as significant opponents to the globalization and market liberalization efforts championed by Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organization. Particularly since the early 1980s, India’s farm unions have rallied against the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a precursor to the World Trade Organization. They stepped up their agitation in the late 1980s and early 1990s with vehement opposition to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. Peasant unions perceived TRIPS as a direct threat to their sovereignty over seeds, sparking protests and direct-action campaigns that propelled them onto the global stage.

During this period, India’s capital and other major cities witnessed widespread mobilizations by small-scale farmers against the Dunkel Draft, a legal document authored by Arthur Dunkel, the then Director-General of GATT. This draft addressed issues such as market access in agriculture and intellectual property rights. In 1992, both the Bhartiya Kisan Union and the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, representing significant memberships of small and medium-scale farmers, demanded the rejection of the TRIPS draft. They also insisted that any free trade agreement India considered be thoroughly discussed, debated, and agreed upon by both houses of Parliament before ratification.

The policies unleashed by the World Trade Organization on the developing world aimed at implementing market reforms through deregulation and the privatization of public services. These measures pressured governments in the Global South, including India, to reduce public investments and welfare programs, mirroring the broader trend of liberalization.

Fast forward to 2024, a national call by protesting farm unions to observe February 26th as ‘Quit WTO Day’ harked back to this history of resistance against globalization and its institutional frameworks. Three decades later, the state of Indian agriculture underscores the validity of these concerns. Half of all farm households are burdened by debt, grappling with rising input costs, inadequate remuneration, and a litany of environmental challenges such as droughts, declining groundwater levels, erratic weather patterns, pest infestations, and soil degradation. As a result, agriculture has become an increasingly precarious endeavor for small-scale and subsistence farmers.

Since 2004, Indian agricultural movements have consistently pushed for an inflation-adjusted minimum support price (MSP) for their crops. They have organized numerous protests, advocating for the implementation of the Swaminathan Commission Report, which recommended setting the MSP at a minimum of 50% above the weighted average cost of production. This demand reached its zenith in 2021, marked by a historic and possibly the longest farmers’ agitation lasting 13 months. Their primary demands were the repeal of three contentious farm laws and the enactment of a legal guarantee for the Minimum Support Price.

India’s price support mechanism, covering 23 crops, has frequently faced scrutiny from both domestic critics and international bodies like the World Trade Organization. Critics among the neoliberal economists, often label these domestic support programs as trade-distorting, echoing sentiments from Western governments and export-oriented economies. The major agricultural exporting countries, has proposed a 50% cut in the global level of WTO members’ entitlements to support agriculture by the end of 2034. Within India, proponents of market reforms argue that since only a fraction (their estimates ranging from 7% to 14%) of farmers benefit from these programs, the government should open up procurement and distribution to market forces. However, farmers challenge this perspective, using the same data to make their case.

In a recent interview, Devinder Sharma, a trade and policy analyst, poses a pointed question. “Even if we accept that only 14% of farmers access the price support mechanism, it highlights that 86% of farmers are already subject to market whims. If markets were truly efficient, why are so many of us in debt? Why do our input costs continue to rise while incomes decline?”

The Situational Assessment Survey for Agricultural Households in 2021 computed the average monthly income of a farm household at Rs 10,218 (~$123 USD at current exchange rates). This includes income from wages, leasing out land, receipts from crop production, income from farming of animals, and other non-farm incomes. For a country that is still largely agrarian, these income levels are staggeringly low.

While most farmers agree that the current public procurement system requires reform, they emphasize the need for mechanisms to enhance access to public markets, improve governance, transparency in trading, pricing, trader and distributor margins, and bolster supporting infrastructure such as transportation and storage. However, they disagree with the blind faith in market forces to address India’s agrarian crisis. Farmers contend that implementing legislation to set a minimum price would discourage private buyers from buying below the production cost, representing a crucial measure to ensure farmers stay in agriculture and sustain the nation’s food supply.

In this context, the ‘Quit WTO’ call issued by Indian farmer unions gains significance.

These unions unanimously believe that the WTO aims to eliminate farm subsidies. Farmers organized tractor rallies in Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and elsewhere, burning effigies and demanding the exclusion of the agriculture sector from WTO agreements.

Protesting farmers in the Southern State of Karnataka, submitted petitions to various District Officials. Protesting farmers in Mysore, KarnatakaFarmers stage a strike in Mysore, Karnataka

The national coalition of protesting farmers, Samyukt Kisan Morcha, stated in a press release, “India’s food stocking program for the Public Distribution System is currently protected from WTO challenges under the temporary peace clause. However, this protection is likely to be overturned. If so, India needs to withdraw from the WTO to safeguard its food security programs and agricultural production.”

Video Source: WION/BKU (The video has been edited for length)Images by BKU – Ekta Ugrahan

Agronomists and policy analysts also challenge the mainstream media narrative that all farmer produce under this system are to be procured by the government. Farmers seek a legally guaranteed remunerative price that provides them with a decent margin above the cost of production. They advocate for uniform application of this law across the country to prevent interstate trading anomalies. A legally guaranteed Minimum Support Price serves as a safeguard against low prices for farmers, especially by private companies.

In a letter sent to the Minister for Trade and Commerce, the Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Movements has asked the Government of India to defend the price support program at the WTO “These crucial subsidies, including input subsidies which are given as a policy tool for supporting agricultural development under special and differential treatment and the de minimis allowances which include Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) and Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP), ensure our survival and ability to invest in seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs. Without them, many farmers will be pushed into further poverty and despair,”

The post ‘Quit WTO Day’: Indian peasant unions agitate against the World Trade Organization appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Categories: A1. Favorites, A3. Agroecology

Red Pepper - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 00:09

With his insights as a historian of the modern UK, David Edgerton looks at Labour’s new affinity with the Tories

The post Keir Starmer’s bad history appeared first on Red Pepper.

Categories: F. Left News

Red Pepper - Thu, 02/29/2024 - 00:08

Labour’s spending plans are inadequate to rebuild public services. We need to new movements for more radical change, argue John McDonnell MP and Andrew Fisher

The post The economic crisis facing Labour appeared first on Red Pepper.

Categories: F. Left News