Omnicrisis, devastating, hottest, fastest, largest, historic, highest, lowest, catastrophic.
HI,
It was almost 30 years ago when I started teaching ‘organization change’ in the University of Toronto’s master of health administration program. This new topic was in response to huge changes in society and, for me, in the health system. After years of status quo, momentum built to the point where managers were having a hard time dealing with all the change. New books, new research and new teaching was the result. Now, today, we don’t even blink at change, it being such a common denominator in pretty well all aspects of life. We are now always on the brink of some new problem or conflict, some new monumental research, some new aspect of life that we now so willingly adopt and move on with with relative ease.
I heard the other day that we are living in a time of ‘omnicrisis’, that everyday when you wake up and turn on the news or open a website there is something new shaking the world, something that bothers us immensely, something that we must adapt to or be left behind. We have the environmental and biodiversity crises which we in this newsletter pay crucial attention to, and there is certainly no shortage of change to report on, as all readers can attest. Adding to the list of of crisis events in the last few previous week’s editorials, we now have horrendous flooding in several Nigeria states and in Central America, claiming many lives and destroying livelihoods. And of course there are all the continuing crises like in the Poles, Pakistan, Bangladesh, East Africa, SE Asia, China, California, Cuba, Florida and Maritime Canada. The record high temperatures in western Canada giving them a beautiful extended Autumn (but nothing like we're having in Ontario!! See ENDSHOTS) while enjoyable is also worrying.
Then there are so many other crises like inflation and the almost daily bad news about currencies (especially the Canadian dollar) contributing to food inflation, persistent and rising food insecurity the world over, staffing shortages, disease outbreaks (including Covid-19 and now speculation on how it will evolve), and the late to the party green energy transition, including an illogical push for more LNG to get us there. Then there is terrorism and various conflicts, including in Mozambique where huge LNG projects hang in the balance in the fight against poverty induced terrorism. And, of course, there’s the most senseless one of all, a vain person’s miscalculated invasion and take over attempt of his neighbour resulting in daily deaths of innocent people, including as I write with vast revenge missile attacks.
It really is a world of omnicrisis, affecting everyone, everywhere, without pause. It demands action by strong national and multilateral institutions and cooperation, both of which are also under constant attack both for their credibility and ability, including that fabricated by conspiracy theories and liars (good bye Alex Jones). We here in Canada at least enjoy a history of strong democratic governance, despite some inequity and injustice at times, but it achieves in providing a safe and prosperous moment. While this additional crisis of deniers, liars and cheats get considerable airplay we can openly counter it and do our best to stop their destructive ambitions.
In today’s Planetary Health Weekly (#41 of 2022)
you’ll read about this turmoil, the conflicts, and the glimmers of hope which must be keep burning strong, especially for our youth - many of whom have known nothing but omnicrisis, which got a boost and gained momentum on 9/11, 2001, at about which time the climate crisis got rolling. The need for change management certainly has not fallen to the side. Read on for:
- CLIMATE and BIODIVERSITY UPDATES:
- COP27: Coca-Cola sponsorship ‘undermines’ climate objectives say campaigners,
- How fossil fuel corporations are trying to sue their critics into silence,
- Indonesia and Norway plan to launch new pact to curb deforestation,
- Climate change–drylands–food security nexus in Africa: technical advances, challenges and opportunities,
- Pakistan floods: impact on food security and health systems,
- Searching for ghosts: ghost gear research, retrieval and prevention, and
- Climate Crisis Advocacy from Leadnow,
- CORONAVIRUS UPDATES:
- Pandemic delays cause ‘largest drop in childhood immunization in a generation,’
- How many times will you get Covid?
- Here’s how coronavirus may actually be acting more like flu,
- A wave of anti-vaccine legislation is sweeping the United States,
- From BQ.q.q to XBB and beyond: how the splintering of Omicron variants could shape Covid’s next phase, THEN
- Uganda’s Ebola outbreak raises fear in other countries,
- The future of progress,
- The inflation factor: how rising food and energy prices impact the economy,
- Goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 out of reach says report,
- Consumer Report's fight for safe and sustainable food packaging,
- Community teams are helping climate-hit Bangladeshis resettle,
- Hello and welcome to the Offsets Hall of Shame,
- The case for paying carbon taxes on unsustainable food,
- Canora Composite School presentation details residential school ‘cultural genocide,’
- Quote on the importance of building codes in a time of climate crisis,
- New event added: Oct. 31 – Nov. 2 Planetary Health Alliance Annual Meeting,
- Job function action guidelines (for climate solutions in the workplace and beyond),
- All about stress,
- Residential solar power systems: soaking up the sun is rewarding but it isn’t all plain sailing,
- Canadian federal organizations fail to link planned actions and to provide clear reporting under target for species at risk,
- New book: “An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity” by Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen,
- How to become a subject expert, and lastly
- ENDSHOTS of Glorious Autumn in Seguin, Ontario.
I hope you’ll keep reading. Best, david
David Zakus, Editor and Publisher
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WHITEFISH LAKE IN ALL ITS AUTUMN SPLENDOUR |
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IN COMPLETE SOLIDARITY WITH UKRAINE SEEKING PEACE AND VICTORY |
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CLIMATE & BIODIVERSITY CRISES UPDATES |
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Credit: Unsplash
Climate activists have been left “baffled” by Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the COP27 climate conference. This year’s talks will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and the country’s government announced the deal last week. But since then, there has been growing opposition from environmental campaigners who point out that the company is a major plastic polluter. Read more at EuroNews
See More:
At World News: UN Chief Urges Rich Countries to Pay Pledges on Climate Action
The U.N. Secretary-General appealed to developed nations to make good on their promise of $100 billion a year to support climate action in developing countries, ahead of a November climate review conference in Egypt. “Funding for adaptation and resilience must represent at least half of all climate finance,” Antonio Guterres told reporters.
At ExxonNews: How Fossil Fuel Corporations Are Trying to Sue Their Critics Into Silence
This week, ExxonKnews digs deeper into one of the fossil fuel industry's nefarious strategies to silence and intimidate its critics — and how officials and activists are pushing back. This is a special collaboration with DeSmog, one of the leading outlets working to expose misinformation from fossil fuel interests.
At Reuters: Indonesia And Norway Plan To Launch New Pact To Curb Deforestation
Indonesia and Norway have agreed to start a new partnership to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation in the Southeast Asian country, after Jakarta ended a similar pact last year citing a lack of payments. Indonesia, home to a third of the world's rainforests, has lost large swathes of forest due to the expansion of crops such as palm oil but the government has said the deforestation rate has slowed and that balance is needed to allow development.
At Research Gate: Climate Change–Drylands–Food Security Nexus In Africa: From The Perspective Of Technical Advances, Challenges And Opportunities
Climate change impacts on drylands pose more vexing risks to socio-ecological systems, resulting in food security issues, biodiversity loss, and livelihood shifts in Africa. This study critically reviewed relevant literature to evaluate the complexities and feedback loops between the climate–drylands–food security (CDF) nexus, which helps assess tactics to attain sustainable dryland ecosystem management under the changing environment.
At The Lancet: Pakistan Floods: Impact On Food Security And Health Systems
Rainfall caused by climate change has put more than 6·4 million people in need of humanitarian help and exacerbated ongoing challenges in food security and health-care systems. Pakistan is experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis with more than a third of the country still under flood water, affecting 33 million people (15% of the population), says the UN. “The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids; the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,” said António Guterres, UN Secretary-General.
At Nature: Searching for Ghosts: Ghost Gear Research, Retrieval, and Prevention
The ocean is a powerful and mysterious place that doesn’t adhere to anthropogenic rules. As a result of the sea’s strength, in combination with human error, the ocean has become haunted by ghosts. These ghosts live in the depths of the ocean and float on the surface, trapping and entangling marine species on a global scale, and threatening the long-term health and habitat of ocean creatures.
“Ghost gear”, also known as abandoned, lost, and discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) makes up roughly 58% of macro marine debris by weight and harms both the environment and the economy. There are many ways fishing gear can end up in marine environments, such as through storm events, gear conflicts, and illegal dumping, which makes ghost gear difficult to address and prevent. Once ghost gear enters the water, it can degrade habitat, entangle species, decrease catches for the industry, cause vessel damage, and pose at-sea safety hazards.
As our global oceans are shared and cross international borders, gear can also be lost on the ocean floor due to issues with other industries. These sources of ghost gear often work simultaneously, increasing the volume of ghost gear in the marine environment and causing detrimental economic and environmental impacts.
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SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 UPDATES |
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Globally, nationally and locally, the pandemic continues in many countries, especially in Western Europe, North America, Singopore and Australia. Many erroneously feel it's over, whereas it continues, even hospitalizing more in Canada than before, though it is slowing down and many are protected from serious harm by being vaccinated and/or having had the disease. Collective action and leadership, though, has all but disappeared.
Over the last week, cases are up about 50% to 600,000/day (though reporting is under-reported); deaths are up about 10% to 1600/day; and vaccinations are down with way too many not getting their boosters. The anti-vaccination movement cannot be allowed to dictate the demise of public health's greatest intervention ever.
Vaccination, despite ongoing concerns about waning immunity and huge slander and lies about deaths and ineffectiveness by conspiracy folks, along with other proven public health measures, remain the best ways to keep yourself and others safe from serious consequences. Get all the shots/boosters you can and practise other public health measures especially indoors with crowds.
See below for a few global stats and current hotspots:
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Note the high death rate this week in Finland, Saint Lucia, Estonia, Sweden and Taiwan
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"It is the plague in seemingly all sincerity." Bob Woodward |
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Credit: ASIF HASSAN/AFP via Getty Images
Pandemic related disruptions have caused the largest backslide in childhood vaccinations in 29 years, in what experts say is a “red alert” warning for health.
For the first time in the 21st century, the number of unimmunised children worldwide has risen sharply for the second year in a row, according to a UN report published on Friday.
The decline has been driven by misinformation, Covid-19 and humanitarian emergencies, which have hampered vaccination rollouts across the globe.
The data, collected by Unicef and the World Health Organization, found that 24.7 million children missed their first measles dose in 2021 – 5.3m more than in 2019 – while 14.7m did not have their second shot.
Meanwhile, the percentage of children who received three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) – a core marker for immunization coverage within and across countries – fell by five percentage points over two years, to 81%. Coverage for polio and HPV also dropped. Read more at The Telegraph
SEE ALSO
At NewYorker: How Many Times Will You Get COVID?
The specialists consulted for this story shared a conviction that, despite the relentlessness of reinfections, our Covid woes are slowly starting to recede. They said that, although coronavirus infections will always carry risks, and we may still suffer periodic surges and new variants, infections should get less serious and less frequent as our immunity grows. Vaccines and therapeutics will also continue to improve, helping to lessen the worst effects of reinfection. But the duration and severity of this transitional period matters, too. How many times will we have to sit through quarantines and ride out symptoms, worrying how bad this one might be? How many more surprises could the coronavirus have in store?
At Stat News: Here's How Coronavirus May Actually Be Getting More Like Flu
Hours after a U.S. federal judge struck down the federal mask mandate covering air travel and other public transportation last month, Delta Airlines celebrated the move in a statement saying that Covid-19 “has transitioned to an ordinary seasonal virus.” By the next day, after an intense backlash from public health experts, Delta had taken the offending language down.
“‘Ordinary viruses don’t cause 1 million deaths in one country in just 2 years,” tweeted epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera, a senior adviser at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute. SARS-CoV-2 remains a long way from being ordinary. It has not yet found seasonal cadence — take the recent surge in Europe and the U.K., which comes just weeks after the initial Omicron wave subsided — and it’s still capable of inflicting mass death and disability (see Hong Kong’s lethal last few months).
At Vox: A Wave Of Anti-Vaccine Legislation Is Sweeping The United States
Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, does not mince words when describing the scientific legacy of the Covid-19 vaccines: The mRNA shots, he said, are “the greatest scientific achievement in my lifetime.”
Yet as the weather starts to turn cold and as officials push for more people to get their new booster shot before an expected winter coronavirus surge, public health leaders are battling skepticism and apathy toward the vaccines. Worse, experts fear the politicized backlash to the Covid-19 vaccines is already fostering skepticism about routine vaccinations generally, from childhood immunizations to flu shots.
Across the U.S., Republican lawmakers have drafted a pile of anti-vaccine mandate bills this year, chipping away at a foundational health practice for the last half-century. More than 80 anti-vaccine bills have been introduced in state legislatures, according to academics tracking the phenomenon, dwarfing the number of countervailing pro-vaccine bills. Public health experts are preparing for an all-out war on school mandates and other vaccine measures in states like Texas.
At Stat News: From BQ.1.1 To XBB And Beyond: How The Splintering Of Omicron Variants Could Shape Covid’s Next Phase
The United States is in a (relative) Covid-19 lull, with cases and hospitalizations falling as the wave driven by the BA.5 lineage of the Omicron variant recedes. But as if we needed a portent of an anticipated fall and winter wave, Covid is on the rise in some European countries.
What’s different, at least for now, is that there’s not one variant pushing the wave. Rather, scientists are tracking a bevy of new forms of Omicron, which are jockeying with each other as they compete to become the next dominant strain. Scientists are monitoring more than 300 sublineages of Omicron, World Health Organization officials said this week.
To get a sense of what’s happening right now with the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, STAT spoke with Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London.
The strains virologists are tracking — from BA.2.75.2 to BQ.1.1 to XBB and beyond (“The names are getting ridiculous,” Peacock said) — are themselves descendants of earlier forms of Omicron, such as BA.2 and BA.5. It’s an example of how, since Omicron emerged nearly a year ago, the coronavirus’s evolution has been more akin to the “drift” seen with influenza, rather than the earlier succession of very different variants, from Alpha to Delta to the original Omicron.
“It’s a little bit like what we would expect to see over a couple years of flu, but crammed into about three months with SARS-CoV-2,” Peacock said.
But even as the Omicron lineages continue to splinter, scientists have found the different sublineages are picking up some of the same mutations — what’s called “convergent evolution.” That pattern suggests that those mutations confer an evolutionary advantage, one that would allow the virus to continue to spread among people who have different layers of protection, from vaccination and infections from earlier Omicron lineages.
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MILNER ON BIODIVERSITY BLOG #7: BEYOND FOREST LOSS (Part One) |
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Greenpeace UK building an underwater boulder barrier Credit: Greenpeace UK
By Edward Milner
Please excuse the perhaps heavier-than-usual tone of this blog, but we are dealing with very serious issues; indeed, our children and grandchildren’s futures depend on them. As I am about to become a grandfather, I am more aware than ever of our failures in respecting nature across the world.
The much-delayed UN Biodiversity Conference will finally meet at Montreal in December this year, about three weeks after the conclusion of COP27 in Egypt The notification for the Biodiversity Conference claims it will ‘provide the global community with further opportunities to galvanize efforts at all levels to build a better future in harmony with nature, and to continue efforts to achieve the Aichi Biodiversity Targets’. The hint of desperation in this wording is entirely appropriate. As the UN has had to admit, following an official report, not one of the biodiversity targets set for the decade 2010 to 2020 were met. The idea that these vast international conferences obsessed with setting unlikely global targets will achieve anything except a confection of pious hopes is a joke. What is the point of targets if you have no planned means of getting there? It’s like setting a target of cycling a hundred miles a week before you own a bike. Several of the governments represented have no conceivable interest in taking any action that might constrain their business-as-usual, but announcing ‘pledges’ gains politicians positive headlines. You may think I’m being unduly pessimistic, that it is cynics like me that are hindering progress, but my feeling is that other approaches might be more productive.
These unwieldy conferences where every National Government with a seat at the UN is represented, irrespective of approach or legitimacy, are not a solution – they are part of the problem. (Of course some, like Taiwan or Western Sahara, aren’t even allowed to attend - excluded for political reasons which have nothing to do with climate change or the global need to conserve biodiversity.) In giant conferences like this, any resulting treaty text can only be literally the lowest common denominator. Recent attempts at an International Plastics Treaty, and an International Oceans Treaty have foundered for this reason – to get any general agreement the texts become so weak as to be meaningless, in any case even the minimal goals they aspire to are rarely observed. The problem is not the ‘pledges’ but the implementation, and it would be more sensible to concentrate on mechanisms rather than targets. Celebrating best practice and encouraging more countries to commit to change would be more productive.
At COP26 in Glasgow (last November) a new initiative called BOGA (Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance) was launched by 11 like-minded national and subnational administrations (led by Costa Rica and Denmark and including France, Ireland, Greenland and the Canadian province of Quebec). It aims to act as an international pressure-group acting to improve performance – a sort of international ginger group. Could this approach work to conserve biodiversity?
Some progress in championing biodiversity has been made; here are a few examples. The Great Green Wall project in eleven countries across the Sahel region of Africa has already spearheaded restoration in the hands of rural communities; these experiences could be built on. Greenpeace dropped large boulders on the shallow Dogger Banks in the North Sea to discourage destructive bottom-trawling – and effectively shamed the British Government to respond by banning the practice in a number of so-called ‘protected marine areas’ (though others remain ravaged by destructive fishing techniques). Mangroves are being replanted in countries as far apart as Egypt, Vietnam and Nigeria, with considerable success for coastline erosion protection, carbon sequestration, promotion of inshore fish stocks and the involvement of local communities. A new approach to protection of the Amazon has been proposed by COICA (Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon) with enormous potential based on sustainable extractive use involving local communities and supported by local governments. There are even ways of growing oil palm without first destroying the forests, working with nature instead of against it.
As with all threatened ecosystems, in the long run some sort of balance between loss and restoration of tropical forests and the oceans will have to be established. The question is, will there be any primary forest still standing and in healthy condition by that time? Or will we be left with a few impoverished specimens – a few unrepresentative hectares here and there, kept alive like miserable animals in a zoo, the last specimens of a long-lost heritage? I will suggest how a BOGA-like initiative might make a start to confront some of the key issues in my next blog.
Read more of Milner's Blogs at PHW BLOGS
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Credit: COURTESY
Another health worker in Uganda has succumbed to the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) as the country struggles to contain the spread of the virus, the Health Ministry has reported.
Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng announced the death of Ms Margaret Nabisubi, an anaesthetic officer.“The 58-year-old succumbed to Ebola at 4.33am this morning at Fort Portal Hospital (JMedic) after battling the disease for 17 days,” Dr Aceng said in a tweet.“ The late Margaret is the 4th health worker we have lost in the current Ebola outbreak after the probable case of the midwife, Dr Mohammed Ali and the health assistant in Kagadi District. May their souls rest in eternal peace.” Read more at The East African
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Credit: Gates Archive/Alissa Everett
We (at the Gates Foundation) are data people, and this is a data report. Sort of. In 2015, leaders from 193 countries agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals—the SDGs. These were big, bold objectives we wanted to achieve by 2030, everything from ending poverty to achieving gender equality. And each year, this report attempts to answer the question, “How is the world doing?” We want people to grasp what the numbers say about the trajectory of human progress.
But this year, we think it’s just as important that people understand what the numbers cannot say about progress. Because there are two important things no data point in this report fully reflects: crisis and innovation. When development experts around the world hammered out the SDGs seven years ago, they had no idea that in four years’ time, a novel virus would jump into the human population, sparking a once-in-a-century pandemic. They didn’t anticipate that wars would begin in Ukraine or Yemen—or that from Afghanistan to the United States, the rights of women would be hurled back decades. As it stands now, we’d need to speed up the pace of our progress five times faster to meet most of our goals—and even that might be an underestimate, because some of the projections don’t yet account for the impact of the pandemic, let alone the war in Ukraine or the food crisis it kicked off in Africa. Read more at Gates Foundation
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Credit: Visual Capitalist
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the effects of energy supply disruptions are cascading across everything from food prices to electricity to consumer sentiment.
In response to soaring prices, many OECD countries are tapping into their strategic petroleum reserves. In fact, since March, the U.S. has sold a record one million barrels of oil per day from these reserves. This, among other factors, has led gasoline prices to fall more recently—yet deficits could follow into 2023, causing prices to increase.
With data from the World Bank, the above infographic charts energy shocks over the last half century and what this means for the global economy looking ahead. Read more at Visual Capitalist
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Credit: Christian Hartmann/Reuters
The world is unlikely to meet a longstanding goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, the World Bank has said, citing the effects of “extraordinary” shocks to the global economy, including the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
In a new report, the World Bank said higher food and energy prices had hindered a quick recovery after COVID-19 dealt the “biggest setback” to global poverty in decades. It added it expected the pace of poverty reduction to further stall this year as global growth prospects fade following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an economic slowdown in China and rising inflation.
“Given current trends, 574 million people – nearly 7% of the world’s population – will still be living on less than $2.15 a day in 2030, with most in Africa,” the Poverty and Shared Prosperity report said.
In a statement, World Bank President David Malpass called for major policy changes to boost growth and help jumpstart efforts to eradicate poverty. “Progress in reducing extreme poverty has essentially halted in tandem with subdued global economic growth,” he said, blaming inflation, currency depreciations and broader overlapping crises for the rise in extreme poverty. Read more at Aljazeera
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Credit: Article
You can’t see, smell, or taste them. Yet, PFAS chemicals are used in hundreds of products to make them resistant to heat, water, oil and corrosion. Sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they are resistant to breaking down naturally in the environment, PFAS can remain in people’s bodies for years. PFAS from food wrappers can seep into the food we eat and contaminate soil and water when packaging is tossed in the landfill. These chemicals have been linked to a growing list of health problems, including immune system suppression, lower birth weight, and increased risk for some cancers.
In 2022 Consumer Reports led an investigation into PFAS in food packaging. This built on CR’s 2021 work to examine the presence of PFAS in drinking water across the United States. Their findings contributed to the U.S. House of Representatives passing the PFAS Action Act in 2021, which requires the Environmental Protection Agency to enact limits on PFAS chemicals in drinking water and other measures to reduce public exposure to the dangerous chemicals. Read more at Shorty Awards
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Credit: YPSA
Whether physical, emotional or financial support, community members often understand what their neighbours need. Young Power in Social Action (YPSA) is helping families in Bangladesh navigate the complexities of relocation after cyclones, rising sea levels, and other detrimental effects of climate change. To do so, they’re leveraging the power of community knowledge and expertise.
“Community Teams help people ‘move’ together,” said Mohammed Shahjahan, deputy director of YPSA. “They help stand beside displaced people to mobilize them. They support them through transitional times.”
YPSA’s Community Teams include people who have lived through the tragic experience of relocating after a cyclone destroys their home or sea-level rises and ruins farmland and crops. Local leaders and students also join these teams as volunteers to support community members facing challenges.
These Community Teams lead project activities, including helping to connect people to available services and assessing the needs of climate-forced displaced people to better identify what responses to addressing loss and damage will be most effective. Read more at Climate Change News
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Credit: Article
Honestly, I (Ketan Joshi) am pretty late to the whole offsets thing. People in the climate movement have been writing about it for a while now. But I have only really recently delved into it, and holy hell, has my mind been blown. It is a fundamentally absurd system that has settled and calcified into being accepted as normality. It isn’t just absurd, though. I think it’s clear now that it is actively destructive.
What follows is a list of examples of companies or people deciding to buy their way out of strong, immediate climate action. They purchase “carbon offsets”, services that claim to either physically (by removing carbon) or morally (by paying someone else to be less bad) neutralise the act of emitting greenhouse gases and causing climate change.
Carbon offsets have often be touted as limited to “hard to abate” things, like cement production, but in reality they’re used to justify continued or worsened emissions from essentially any activity, no matter how wasteful, avoidable or egregious.
Often, the defense is “It’s a start!” and/or “Something is better than nothing!”. The thing is, the unstoppable and growing availability of offsets means companies are avoiding taking real actions in favour of cheap permission-slips. That is to say; it’s often worse than nothing. I elaborate underneath the hall of shame, in an explanation section at the bottom.
I hope you enjoy some examples of awful use-cases for offsets that I’ve been informally collecting over the past few months. You should feel free to submit examples to me, specifically on the ‘demand side’, rather than the supply side, on Twitter or email. I’ll update this list as I find more and more of these.
Anyway……………………………welcome to offsetting hell! It sucks so much here! Among various examples:
Bitcoin Offsets: This is complicated, because there is a close and ever-closening relationship between the world of crypto and the world offsetting. They’re both rapidly inflating bubbles based on extremely false pretences, cultures of extreme credulity and hype, and a strong culture of enforced ignorance of massive internal problems.
For this though, here’s a simple sub-component: bitcoin mining is one of the most stunningly horrifically wasteful and pointless ways you can use country-sized volumes of electrical energy, and its advocates are trying to greenwash it by buying up carbon offsets. There are many, many examples of this. One particularly horrific example is a gas plant in New York ressurected from the dead by Bitcoin miners, and justified using carbon offsets.
Climate change is ultimately a narrative of oil, coal and gas. It is the story of humanity’s plundering of the earth’s fossil carbon, burning it and releasing it into the active carbon cycle, in turn disrupting the balance of carbon in air, soil and seas. If we were to succeed in harvesting all the ‘locked’ carbon in fossil fuels and setting it free to circulate in the atmosphere, we’d render the earth inhospitable to life as we know it.
Unless we want to live on Venus, our task therefore is to leave that fossil carbon in the ground. This basic requirement, however, is precisely what the carbon market (of which offsets are a part) has been set up to avoid. Rather than stop the flow of oil, coal and gas, the offset industry tells us that we can continue as normal. We can drive as much as want, fly as much as we want, and eat our non-organic Coldplay mangoes in the Canadian winter. We need not reduce; in fact we can now consume our way out of the problem.
Now we can buy offsets on top of our Caribbean holiday and thus ‘neutralize’ our impacts. It is a seductive argument. But it is a falsehood – a con. That flight to Bermuda has an immediate impact on the climate. Aircraft emissions are of particular concern as not only do they release carbon dioxide and other pollutants, but also trail water vapour which has a significant heat-trapping effect in the atmosphere. Aircraft are also the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions as more of us are flying – and more frequently. If aircraft emissions are not reduced significantly, climate change will only accelerate. Read more at Word Press
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The Case For Paying Carbon Taxes On Unsustainable Food |
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Credit: Greta Hoffman on Pexels
Minimizing the risk of living on an unlivable planet requires significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through various means, like shifting to renewable energy and electrifying sectors that rely on fossil fuels. In countries like Finland and Sweden, taxes play a key climate role, especially when it comes to policies that charge a fee based on the carbon content of fossil fuels.
However, emissions caused by agriculture must be addressed, too. “The food we eat is the biggest cause of biodiversity loss in the world and the second biggest source of greenhouse gasses, so it’s very difficult to address those problems without considering the food system,” says Ian Bateman, co-director of the Land, Environment, Economics and Policy Institute (LEEP) at the University of Exeter. Read more at Popsci
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SPOTLIGHT ON INDIGENOUS WELLNESS |
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CCS Presentation Details Residential School 'Cultural Genocide' |
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Credit: Canora Composite School
Canora Composite School (CCS) students completed an array of projects including artwork, individual projects, posters, song writing, and novel studies in the week leading up to Truth and Reconciliation Day (Sept. 30). It's one thing to observe Truth and Reconciliation Day. It's something quite different to actually learn what happened to residential school students.
For more than 100 years, the Canadian government supported residential school programs that forcefully isolated Indigenous children from their families and communities. Under the guise of educating and preparing Indigenous children for their participation in Canadian society, the federal government and other administrators of the residential school system committed what has since been described as an act of cultural genocide. As generations of students left these institutions, they returned to their home communities without the knowledge, skills or tools to cope in either world. The impacts of their institutionalization in residential schools continue to be felt by subsequent generations. This is called intergenerational trauma.
It is estimated that over 6,000 Indigenous children may have died at residential schools. Many of the children died from diseases such as tuberculosis and malnourishment, but also from abuse, neglect, accident, suicide, drowning, or trying to run away. Many of the children who died in residential schools were far from home. The long distances meant that families weren’t always notified when their children died. The official policy on burials was: "Ordinarily the body will be returned to the reserve for burial only when transportation, embalming costs and all other expenses are borne by next of kin.” Most indigenous families couldn't afford these costs. When children couldn’t be returned to their parents, responsibility for their burial fell to the schools, which didn’t always have the money to make proper funeral arrangements. Those that were given funerals were often placed in plots with no markers. These are the graves that are just being found now at former residential school sites. Read more at SaskToday
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Credit: Vox Hurricane Ian may cause wider ranging economic impacts due to
“fragile capital markets, on the tail end of the housing bubble,” Watson added.
“Reconstruction values may be significantly higher than market values,” he
said, adding that it could cost $400,000 to rebuild a $200,000 beach house due
to having to meet new flood regulations.
Emily Wilkinson, a senior researcher and specialist in global
risks and resilience at ODI think tank (formerly the Overseas Development
Institute), told Climate Home News that the building regulations are
struggling to keep pace with the intensifying impact of hurricanes in the
region.
“Every time the building codes get updated they become out of
date because of the impacts of climate change,” said Wilkinson. The number of
properties damaged by Hurricane Ian suggests that “a lot of housing wasn’t
built to code, but also that the building codes may not be sufficient,” she
said.
Read more at Climate Change News
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- On-going until October 31: International Health Trends and Perspectives (IHTP, a new journal based at Toronto Metropolitan University, (formerly Ryerson University, Toronto) is dedicating a special issue to the topic of Planetary Health to highlight research, theoretical and community based contributions of scientists, scholars and activists globally. It is inviting manuscripts that are solutions and equity-focused. See the call for papers and details here: https://bit.ly/3tDixHT
- October 13-15, 2022: IUCN Leaders Forum – Call for Youth Change Makers (Jeju, South Korea)
- October 22-25 (virtual) and October 28-30 (in-person) StellenboschU-CUGH African Global Health Conference, 2022 (Cape Town, South Africa)
- October 31- November 2: Planetary Health Alliance Annual Meeting (Boston and Virtual)
- October 31 - November 4, 2022: 7th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (Bogotá, Colombia)
- November 6-18, 2022: COP 27 UN Climate Change Conference (Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt)
- November 21-23, 2022: Canadian Conference on Global Health Join us in Toronto for the 28th Canadian Conference on Global Health (CCGH). This year's hybrid event will explore the theme of: "Inclusive Global Health in Uncertain Times: Research and Practice".
- December 7-8, 2022: The 4th International Conference on Rare Diseases (Vienna, Austria)
- December 7-19, 2022: COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference (Montreal, Canada)
- April 14-16, 2023: CUGH's Annual Global Health Conference - Global Health at a Crossroads: Equity, Climate Change and Microbial Threats
- May 23-25, 2023: The Battery Show Europe (Stuggart, Germany).
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FYI#1 SPOTLIGHT ON MEDIA |
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Job Function Action Guides (For Climate Solutions In The Workplace And Beyond) |
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Credit: Drawdown.org
The Drawdown Labs Job Function Action Guides are practical and shareable resources that highlight specific, high-impact climate actions employees in common corporate professions can take at work. Each guide includes why your role and skills are needed in addressing climate change, tangible actions you can take to make your job a climate job, and key considerations and resources to help you get started. Each guide is also accompanied by a simplified Climate Action Checklist—something you can print and keep at your desk to keep you motivated and organized as you implement climate action at work.
While the guides are job function-specific, avoid working in isolation. It’s important to not only engage your own job and team, but also coordinate across all company functions and roles—to ensure lasting and effective climate action.
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Credit: AMA Victoria
Stress has become a standard feature of our lives. Information overload and multiple demands can cause a heavy mental load, increasing our sense of being out of control. We are more available than ever before due to technology. Due to our constant connectivity, it seems harder for us to take time out and participate in activities which help to relieve stress. However not all stress is bad and we do need a certain level to keep us activated and enhance our performance. Getting the balance right is challenging and we do need to protect our wellbeing by reducing stress and safeguard our health.
Finding a clear definition of stress is challenging. It can be described as a form of psychological pain. We know the physiological response to a stressor is the release of adrenaline and cortisone. When we experience a perceived danger, our amygdala takes over to produce the flight or fight response through signals to the hypothalamus with activation of the sympathetic nervous system with adrenaline release and the pituitary and adrenal glands releasing cortisone.
In an acute situation, our frontal lobe may be impacted and our capacity for reasoning and problem solving can be impaired. This is known as amygdala hijack which is a basic survival response to danger. This can be responsible for emotional outbursts, poor memory recall and an inability to think clearly in an acutely stressful situation such as when we are dealing with an aggressive patient. In addition, stress increases our pulse, blood pressure, blood glucose and our respiratory rate in response to adrenaline and cortisone release. While this is necessary in an acute situation, when stress is chronic the continued activation of the hypothalamic pituitary axis contributes to health problems. Other symptoms of stress include rapid heartbeat, muscular tension, headaches, gastrointestinal upset, and insomnia.
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FYI #3 |
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Residential Solar Power Systems: Soaking Up The Sun Is Rewarding But It Isn’t All Plain Sailing |
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Credit: Sukasha Singh
Going solar isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, particularly if the people living with you don’t understand the experimental nature of installing a grid-tied solar power system.
Do the research
When I started researching solar power systems, I found the whole process daunting. We’re being asked to spend as much money as we would on a car, yet there is little in the way of regulatory authorities or a sunny ombudsperson ensuring we’re not all buying the equivalent of skorokoros with a Ferrari badge glued on to the bonnet.
So, I’m going to explain what I did and why, in the hope that it will help you make a more informed decision about residential solar power systems. But I’m not an expert in this field and I, therefore, encourage you to spend several hours doing your own research.
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FYI #4 |
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Canadian Federal Organizations Fail To Link Planned Actions And To Provide Clear Reporting Under Target For Species At Risk |
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Credit: Environment Canada
On October 4, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Jerry V. DeMarco released an audit of selected Canadian government organizations’ reporting on their actions to implement sustainable development strategies. This year, the Commissioner audited how three organizations contributed to meeting the species at risk target under the Healthy Wildlife Populations goal in the 2019–2022 Federal Sustainable Development Strategy and the related United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 15: Life on Land.
Overall, the audit found that Environment and Climate Change Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Parks Canada contributed to the federal species at risk target by identifying in their individual departmental strategies actions that they planned to take and aligning those intended actions with the federal strategy. However, it was unclear how these intended actions would support meeting the species at risk target and the related United Nations’ goal because the organizations’ plans did not include some conservation and recovery activities that are needed to track and demonstrate progress.
In addition, there were significant gaps in the reporting of planned actions, and none of the three organizations reported how their actions helped to achieve the United Nations’ goal, even though they are required to provide this information in their corporate reporting.
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FYI #5: OCTOBER READING - NEW BOOK |
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"An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, And The Fate Of Humanity" by Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen |
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Credit: Book Cover
Confronting harsh ecological realities and the multiple cascading crises facing our world today, An Inconvenient Apocalypse argues that humanity’s future will be defined not by expansion but by contraction.
For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse―and yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue that we must reconsider the origins of the consumption crisis and the challenges we face in creating a survivable future. Longstanding assumptions about economic growth and technological progress―the dream of a future of endless bounty―are no longer tenable. The climate crisis has already progressed beyond simple or nondisruptive solutions. The end result will be apocalyptic; the only question now is how bad it will be.
Jackson and Jensen examine how geographic determinism shaped our past and led to today’s social injustice, consumerist culture, and high-energy/high-technology dystopias. The solution requires addressing today’s systemic failures and confronting human nature by recognizing the limits of our ability to predict how those failures will play out over time. Though these massive challenges can feel overwhelming, Jackson and Jensen weave a secular reading of theological concepts―the prophetic, the apocalyptic, a saving remnant, and grace―to chart a collective, realistic path for humanity not only to survive our apocalypse but also to emerge on the other side with a renewed appreciation of the larger living world.
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FYI#6: SPOTLIGHT ON EDUCATION |
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"How To Become A Subject Matter Expert In Your Field" |
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Credit: WikiJob
A subject matter expert (SME) is someone who has a deep mastery and specialized knowledge of a specific subject. This might be a technology, a process, computer software or a specific role.
SMEs could be internal employees who have been hired specifically for their knowledge, or they can work as a consultant.
Uniquely qualified and known as the authority on a specific subject, an SME can function as a resource for other team members, from leadership down to assistants.
As a rule, there are no specific people management duties that a subject matter expert is responsible for. They focus on their specific niche and provide services that relate to that.
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AUTUMN BEAUTY IN SEGUIN, ONTARIO |
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WHITEFISH LAKE, HAWKRIGG LANE, SEGUIN TRAIL & TALLY-HO SWORDS ROAD
October 7-11, 2022
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THANKSGIVING WEEKEND ON THE SEGUIN TRAIL |
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Photo Credits: David Zakus |
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THANKS FOR READING THE FREE
PLANETARY HEALTH WEEKLY
Current News on Ecological Wellness and Global Health
To Subscribe and access Archives of all Past Issues & Yearly Indexes GO TO: planetaryhealthweekly.com
AND PLEASE PASS IT ON TO FAMILY & FRIENDS
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