When discussing with a good friend the other day about the Russian war on Ukraine he suggested that all war should be illegal, and not just specific war crimes, which are bad enough. I wholeheartedly agreed not knowing that inciting war can also be a legal crime.
According to international criminal prosecution expert Alex Whiting “The International Criminal Court (born 2002) has jurisdiction over four types of crime: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression. And there is no doubt that this is an act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine. However, the crime of aggression has a particular requirement, which is different from all the other crimes. It can only be prosecuted by the court if one member state commits an act of aggression against another. Since neither Russia nor Ukraine is a member, the crime of aggression here does not apply. So, the International Criminal Court is focusing on war crimes, and it will also consider crimes against humanity if they arise.”
Closer to home our Canadian federal government, last week, also incited aggression on the Canadian people (and the world) by approving a huge new oil extraction project, Bay du Nord, off the east coast of Newfoundland. For entirely local domestic issues, yes jobs and income for the province, they are setting in motion a hugely expensive decades long plan of contributing to and increasing Canada’s already super high per capita greenhouse gas emissions. This will imperil not only Canada but the rest of the world as we all share the atmosphere. Why isn't that money being targeted on green solutions to our energy needs?
By giving the go-ahead to such infrastructure we are plainly heading in the wrong direction and totally out of step with the Paris Agreement, and totally deaf to the latest IPCC report of nine days ago - which made it clear that unless we make drastic cuts (not additions) to GHG emissions as soon as possible we will easily shoot past climate crisis targets. It projected that carbon dioxide emissions “over the lifetime of existing and currently planned fossil fuel infrastructure” would ensure the world overshoots the 1.5°C target.
The world’s top civil servant, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in discussing the report said it well: "Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness."
Canada, instead of starting to immediately decrease GHG emissions which everyone knows is the right thing to do, will be adding even more to its already outsized share of the remaining global carbon budget; it will lock us in to hugely more emissions for decades to come. It is “moral and economic madness.” By not increasing green energy sources to meet demand we are wasting resources, time and money on technology that the world doesn’t need nor want, and diverting away from proven and more cost-efficient replacement technologies that don’t emit greenhouse gases.
What a complete joke and irony: not only is our government trying to fool Canadians into thinking that we can decrease GHGs by increasing them, but also by a betrayal by a minister of environment and climate change who presents himself as a climate advocate. He along with the rest of the government has drunk the oil laced kool-aid by making such a foolish decision, adding more disgust to Canada’s already tarnished reputation as a global citizen and giving us no claim to any sense of climate leadership. What a horrible example of governance to show the world on behalf of all Canadians. Such an act of aggression also needs investigation. Whose oil is lacing their kool-aid?
Lots more to safely satisfy your thirst, curiosity, and rankle your ire and indignation in today’s Planetary Health Weekly (#15 of 2022) with:
CLIMATE CRISIS UPDATES:
We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe,
Citizens need to take the jump on climate,
Why climate denial is still happening,
Nuclear power used to seem like the future – now its fate in the U.S. is in question,
Canada’s climate plans and targets,
More solar panels need to be made in Europe to cut dependency of Russian gas, says EU,
Still time to act: but world needs emergency response to stop dangerous climate,
Global warming must be limited to 1.5C to avoid ‘climate
The rights of nature: some thoughts on the Biodiversity crisis (by our new blogger, welcome Edward Milner)
CORONAVIRUS UPDATES:
Buyers turn down Moderna’s Covid vaccine as pandemic demand wanes,
Estimates of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant severity in Ontario, Canada,
Worried about new COVID variants? Here’s what to expect,
A new Covid variant called Omicron XE has been discovered in the UK,
New Covid-19 variant XE identified: what to know and why experts say not to be alarmed,
Cardiac complications after SARS-CoV-2 infection and mRNA vaccination,
The 1918 pandemic mistake that changed medicine forever, THEN
Tackling the global food crisis,
Global food prices hit record levels amid Ukraine conflict,
East Africa faces worst hunger crisis in decades,
Nearly every single person on Earth breathes air that’s bad to them,
Russian military reportedly panics, flees Chernobyl after radiation poisoning,
Inside Chernobyl: we stole Russian fuel to prevent catastrophe,
Air-purifying Dyson Zone headphones are as wild as they sound,
New generation of cancer-preventing vaccines could wipe out tumours before they form,
New crop of Covid-19 mRNA vaccines could be easier to store and cheaper to use,
‘Easiest thing to help the planet’: how grocery startups are tackling food waste,
How to make an impact with We Don’t Have Time,
Catholic Church must ‘address deniers’ following apology says Murray Sinclair,
Reconciliation in Rome: All the stories from Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network (APTN),
Quote from a Caribbean leader on the importance of adherence to international law,
Connective action, digital engagement and network-building: a year in the life of Canadian climate Facebook,
Interactive map: crude oil pipelines and refineries of the U.S. and Canada,
Ukrainian researchers flee trauma and terror of war,
Sustainable eating is cheaper as well as healthier,
New book: “Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse” by Dave Goulson,
Russian site peddles paper authorship in reputable journals for up the $5000 a pop, and lastly
ENDSHOTS of "Finding Beauty in the Early Spring"
Always lots to read, including a piece from our new blogger on 'biodiversity,' Edward Milner. WELCOME EDWARD. Best, david
David Zakus, Editor and Publisher
Hoping for an end soon to Russia's war against Ukraine
“Instead of hitting the brakes on the decarbonization of the global economy” amid Russia’s war on Ukraine, “now is the time to put the pedal to the metal towards a renewable energy future,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. But instead, we are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe.
“The 1.5-degree goal is on life support. It is in intensive care.”
So said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres [recently], as he stressed that a swift and just transition to clean energy is necessary to meet the Paris agreement’s objective of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—and warned against using Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine as an excuse to ramp up fossil fuel production worldwide.
“The science is clear. So is the math,” the U.N. leader said during a speech delivered at a Sustainability Summit hosted by The Economist. “Keeping 1.5 alive requires a 45% reduction in global emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by mid-century.” And yet, “according to present national commitments, global emissions are set to increase by almost 14% in the 2020s.” Read more at Below 2C
Individuals can make a huge difference when it comes to action on climate. New research shows that “government and industry do have the most responsibility, but citizen and community action is meaningful, impactful, and urgently needed.” We’re all in the war on climate together. Citizens have to take the jump and be part of the solution.
Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas is warming our planet and driving climate change. It’s throwing natural systems out of balance – to often devastating effect.
These are fairly basic facts. The reality of the human-caused climate crisis is settled science.
But you don’t even need to be a climatologist to know that something is up. From increasingly extreme weather events to record-breaking heat, the evidence of how our climate is changing is right in front of us – all you have to do is look out the window.
Yet, some people still won’t see these signs for what they are.
There are numerous reasons why this is the case. Because climate denial in many cases doesn’t start with what people do or do not believe about the science, per se – but what they believe about themselves and who they are.
Why We Deny
Denial is based on one very specific desire – for something to not be true.
“If you’re in denial, you’re trying to protect yourself by refusing to accept the truth about something that’s happening in your life,” the Mayo Clinic writes. “Denial is a coping mechanism that gives you time to adjust to distressing situations — but staying in denial can interfere with treatment or your ability to tackle challenges.”
Bingo.
In the short-term, denial can be a good thing, offering us a period of time to adjust to a difficult or stressful circumstance or learn new information. But when denial progresses, like a tumour, it can become malignant, inspiring people to seek out misleading information that refutes broadly held consensus and supports what they already believe they know.
Selective Hearing – Hearing What You Want
With denialism pervasive in any number of spaces, it’s valuable to know that, in general, a person’s political, religious, or ethnic identity has been found to impact their willingness to accept an expert’s take on a given issue.
So what happens when scientific consensus conflicts with someone’s established ideological worldview? They don’t want to believe it – and often seek out information to disprove it. And the Internet being the Internet, they often find exactly what they are looking for.
Social scientists have even given the process of deciding what evidence to accept based on the conclusion one prefers a name: “motivated reasoning.”
When people come to a conclusion based not just by examining facts but also driven by an unconscious bias, their view of what’s “true” may be skewed – but it doesn’t make it any less true to them.
Remember, more than 99% of publishing, peer-reviewed climate scientists agree that our climate is changing, and they know those changes are the result of our burning of fossil fuels for energy.
With that in mind, it’s hard to not believe that those in denial really do know the truth at some level. But what if that fact about overwhelming scientific consensus never reached your ears?
“We have to get past this fake debate about whether the problem exists because that is an unworthy debate, and anyone who adheres to the notion that climate change is a hoax or that it isn’t caused by us or even that it’s not creating problems already is on the wrong side of science and the wrong side of history,” he continued.
But they didn’t get there on their own. A sprawling network of talking heads, “think tanks,” and front groups telling everyone who will listen that they have nothing to worry about helped them along.
It’s not easy to shape public opinion when the facts are against you. So, the fossil fuel industry simply began attacking the facts, creating an alternate universe where decades of rising CO2 and rising temperatures had nothing to do with each other and scientists who claimed otherwise were alarmists or had ulterior motives – and were not to be trusted.
As the Washington Post explains, “in the 1990s, oil companies, fossil fuel industry trade groups and their respective PR firms began positioning contrarian scientists such as Willie Soon, William Happer and David Legates as experts whose opinions on climate change should be considered equal and opposite to that of climate scientists.”
Thus, in denial, people find a world where nothing can be taken for granted as true. If “they” – the grand “they” – can’t be trusted and you are being constantly lied to, or at the very least people really aren’t 100% sure about the problem, perhaps there is nothing to acknowledge at all.
When nuclear power started feeding electricity into the grid in the 1950s, there was a sense of heady optimism. We could harness cutting-edge physics to generate cheap electricity!
Public support for nuclear power faded, however. The accidents at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) showed that even though the tech worked perfectly most of the time, it also had the potential for rare and dangerous catastrophes. Though the United States still gets about 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear fission, it’s built few new reactors since the 1980s. The average nuclear plant in the U.S. is now nearly 40 years old.
How we feel about technology is often as important to its adoption as anything intrinsic about it. Nuclear power used to feel like the future, but now it keeps getting easier to imagine an era without it.
The transition to a cleaner, prosperous economy needs to be both an immediate priority and a sustained effort over the years and decades ahead. Canada must keep innovating to meet this long-term goal, strengthening and building on existing measures that fight climate change and transform the economy.
To avert the worst impacts of climate change, the Government of Canada is committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
This goal will require support and engagement from all parts of society, including provinces and territories, cities, Indigenous Peoples, youth, and businesses.
Canada’s plan to reach Net-Zero
The Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, which became law on June 29, 2021, enshrines in legislation Canada’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The Act ensures transparency and accountability as the government works to deliver on its targets. The Act requires public participation and independent advice to guide the Government of Canada’s efforts.
The Minister of Environment and Climate Change established the country’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan in March 2022. The plan reflects input from provinces, territories, Indigenous Peoples, the Net-Zero Advisory Body, and interested Canadians on what is needed to reach Canada’s more ambitious climate target of 40-45% emissions reductions by 2030.
The European Commission has said that it will do "whatever it takes" to rebuild Europe's solar manufacturing industry.
China (way ahead), United States, India, Japan, and Vietnam rank as the top five solar producers.
There are only a small amount of panels made in Europe. The countries currently producing solar cells are Italy, France and Slovenia. Solar panels generated a record 10% of EU electricity in June-July 2021, up from the same period in 2018.
Seven EU countries generated over a tenth of their electricity from solar panels in June-July 2021, with the Netherlands (17%), Germany (17%), Spain (16%), Greece (13%) and Italy (13%) leading the way, according to energy thinktank Ember.
Hungary has also quadrupled its solar share since June-July 2018, while the Netherlands and Spain have doubled. Estonia and Poland have gone from near-zero solar in 2018 to 10% and 5%, respectively, in June-July 2021.
Only a massive, dramatic cut in emissions across the globe and across all sectors of the economy—from the way we travel, power our communities, feed ourselves, consume and heat and cool our buildings—can reverse the threat of dangerous climate change, says the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its new report out last week (April 5).
The clock is ticking so fast that swift and rapid emissions cuts must now be supplemented by removing carbon pollution from the air and the atmosphere, say the scientists.
Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, responded to the report with unprecedentedly tough and impatient remarks, aimed at governments but also sectors of the business world for their lack of urgency and accused them of “lying”.
“The jury has reached the verdict and it is damming. This report is a litany of broken climate promises. It is a file of shame, cataloging the empty pledges that put us firmly on track to an unliveable world,” he said.
“We are on a fast track to climate disaster. This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies…this is a climate emergency,” said The UN Secretary General.
Despite the commitments made at COP26, current climate pledges are still on track to rise greenhouse gas emissions by 14% - a far cry from the 45% decrease we need by the end of the decade.
“We left COP26 in Glasgow with a naïve optimism, based on new promises and commitments,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in response to today’s publication. He adds that the main issue is the enormous emissions gap which has been all but ignored. The science is clear but most major emitters aren’t taking the steps needed to fill the “inadequate” promises they have already made.
With a nod to the war in the Ukraine and the responses of many governments, he accused too many of adding fuel to the crisis by investing in fossil fuels and failing to take their climate targets seriously when renewables are cheaper, generate jobs and provide greater security.
WE WELCOME TODAY A NEW BLOGGER: EDWARD MILNER (from LONDON, ENGLAND)
As the latest IPCC report takes the headlines, the equally urgent biodiversity crisis is once again pushed down the agenda below the Ukraine War, the cost of living crisis, and global heating due to uncontrolled carbon emissions. The UN Biodiversity Conference – now, finally due to take place in Kunming China in a few weeks’ time -- constantly struggles for attention, though this is perhaps unsurprising. As with other COP meetings the general thrust of these international conferences seems to be to ‘hammer out’ unrealistic ‘pledges’ for future decades. One such pledge is the 30-30 scheme of ‘protecting’ 30% of land and sea by 2030. And what is to happen in the other 70%? As Greta Thunberg so memorably said at COP26 - ‘blah-blah-blah.’
To my mind the first thing that needs attention is how to curtail and, as soon as possible, terminate some of the main activities which have led to the present biodiversity crisis - on both land and sea. I am referring to continuing deforestation and wild ‘development’ schemes in untouched wildernesses such as the western Amazon basin, Papua New Guinea, and the more intact parts of central Africa. Not forgetting the unremitting pollution of every watercourse by chemicals and discarded plastic, so that it ends up dumped in the ocean. These things need to change, rapidly. Somehow funds have to be made available to compensate the Governments concerned; it seems a great pity that ‘debt for nature’ swaps seem to have gone out of fashion. If the UN was serious about the biodiversity crisis there would be moves to produce a UN Declaration on the Rights of Nature to match that on Human Rights, so that not just individual vulnerable species, or particular selected sites, but the whole range of ecosystems could be included. Polluters of air and water need to be held to account; an economic system which fails to do this is clearly unsustainable. Unfortunately, as with global heating, powerful interests continue to oppose major changes. I fear that it will take major shocks to the system to concentrate political minds, and if that is our future then we should all be ready for a pretty bumpy ride. See this and more at PHW BLOGS
(Edward Milner is an Environmental Consultant and Associate Professor at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of East London. He was formerly a BBC TV Producer winning a number of International Awards for documentaries and news reports including 'Vietnam after the Fire' about the ecological and human effects of the American War. He is also Spider Recorder for London, novelsit and author of 'Trees of Britain and Ireland" (Natural History Museum, London. 2011).
Globally, nationally and locally, the pandemic continues. It remains far from being over. Please remember that and take care, especially as we head into a holiday long weekend.
Over the last week there were about 7 million new cases (down ~10%, though testing is sorely insufficient and this is likely a huge underestimation) and 24,000 deaths (down again ~10%), and about 130 million people received a Covid-19 vaccine (down ~7%).
In Canada cases are spiking, especially in Ontario, where today it's estimated at about 100,000 are getting infected each day. Nationally there continues to be about 30 deaths/day over the last week and hospitalizations are increasing.
Some countries currently have very high daily case rates, including: South Korea, which is beginning to recover, Greece, Slovakia, Britain, Cyprus, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Estonia and Germany. Most Canadian provinces and territories continue to report higher case rates than their U.S. counterparts.
Two buyers of Covid-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries have declined options to purchase hundreds of millions of additional doses from Moderna Inc., a sign of waning demand as the pandemic eases.
The African Union and Covax, the World Health Organization-backed group, decided not to obtain more of the vaccine as developing nations struggle to turn supplies into inoculations. Lower-income countries left behind in the global rollout are now grappling with a lack of funds, hesitancy, supply-chain obstacles and other factors that are hampering distribution. Read more at Bloomberg
A misunderstanding about the microbe that actually causes the flu created a ripple effect that changed the future of U.S. drug development, clinical trials and pandemic preparedness.
The Director-General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Dr. Manuel Otero, said that the rise in the price of food commodities would be a hard blow for countries where malnutrition is prevalent, such as Haiti, Grenada, St Lucia, as well as Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
“Rising energy prices are also having a multiplier effect on the costs of inputs, products and services throughout agrifood chains. Meanwhile, Russia and Belarus, traditional leading suppliers of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium-based fertilizers, have now been hit by trade sanctions,” he wrote in an opinion article.
The IICA director-general said that the world is in a state of unrest amidst a headlong collision of monumental crises, with no end in sight. Read more at NYCarib News
Millions of people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia face starvation due to delayed rains and a lackluster growing season. Aid organizations warn of a catastrophe if urgent action isn't taken.
An aerial view of vehicles driving near downtown Los Angeles. Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Virtually everyone on Earth is breathing polluted air, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO). In a report released Monday, the U.N. agency stated that 99% of the global population “breathes air that exceeds WHO air quality limits, and threatens their health.”
That startling fact can be attributed in part to improved monitoring of air quality. An all-time high of more than 6,000 cities in 117 countries now monitor air pollution. That’s 2,000 more cities than the last update to the WHO’s air quality database, and six times as many as when it launched in 2011. The WHO is also now able for the first time to measure ground-level average annual concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, and it can track smaller sizes of particulate matter than ever before. (Exposure to nitrogen dioxide can cause respiratory disease such as asthma, symptoms such as coughing, and emergency room visits.) Read more at Yahoo
Maxar satellite imagery closeup of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on March 10, 2022. Credit: Maxar Technologies via G
In yet another dramatic twist to the saga of the Russian invasion of Ukraine’s impact on nuclear power infrastructure, Ukraine officials are now saying that the Russian military made a hasty retreat from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site after troops suffered radiation poisoning there.
Ukraine state-owned utility outfit Energoatom said that Russian forces had been exposed to “significant doses” of radiation at the site, according to The Guardian, and “panicked at the first sign of illness” which had “showed up very quickly.”
To be clear, it remains somewhat hazy exactly what has gone down at Chernobyl since Russia seized it during the early days of the invasion, with Ukraine likely trying to craft a narrative of maximum incompetence on behalf of Russian authorities. But the ongoing spectacle — as well as the uncertainty surrounding it — does represent a sobering reminder of the liability posed by aging and derelict infrastructure when two nuclear powers become entangled in an armed conflict. Read more at Futurism
Dyson's new Zone air-purifying headphones look like something you'd expect to see in a dystopian sci-fi movie, maybe even on the head of a Batman villain. But the company says it's actually a real device you'll be able to buy sometime this fall.
For Dyson -- a company that's best known for its high-end vacuum cleaners -- it's the first foray into wearable technology. The Zone is a set of noise-canceling, over-ear headphones that "simultaneously deliver immersive sound to the ears and purified airflow to the nose and mouth," addressing the "urban issues of air quality and noise pollution." No word yet on pricing, but it seems safe to assume that these will cost more than your typical premium noise-canceling headphones from Bose and Sony, and maybe even more than Apple's AirPods Max headphones.
There've been rumours that Dyson was working on such a device for years. Back in 2018, Bloomberg reported that Dyson was working on an air purifier-headphone combo and in 2020, Dyson applied for a patent for a new pair of headphones with a built-in air filter. Read more at CNET
Zach Dubin (left) and Dave Dubin hope for vaccines that could prevent cancer in families like theirs. Credit: KRISTON JAE BETHEL
Vaccines to prevent certain types of cancer already exist. They target viruses: hepatitis B virus, which can trigger liver cancer, and human papillomavirus, which causes cervical and some other cancers. But most cancers are not caused by viruses. The Lynch vaccine trial will be one of the first clinical tests of a vaccine to prevent nonviral cancers.
The idea is to deliver into the body bits of proteins, or antigens, from cancer cells to stimulate the immune system to attack any incipient tumors. The concept isn’t new, and it has faced skepticism. A decade ago, a Natureeditorial dismissed a prominent breast cancer advocacy group’s goal of developing a preventive vaccine by 2020 as “misguided,” in part because of the genetic complexity of tumours. The editorial called the goal an “objective that science cannot yet deliver.” But now, a few teams—including one funded by the same advocacy group, the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC)—are poised to test preventive vaccines, in some cases in healthy people at high genetic risk for breast and other cancers. Their efforts have been propelled by new insights into the genetic changes in early cancers, along with the recognition that because even nascent tumours can suppress the immune system, the vaccines should work best in healthy people who have never had cancer. Read more at Science
Bridget Choi, her husband Ray and their children (L-R) Norah, Remy and Hazel with their weekly Your Food Collective grocery delivery at home in Sydney’s Lane Cove. Credit: :JAMES BRICKWOOD
For about $150 each week, Bridget Choi gets to have a direct relationship with the farmers who grow her food. The Lane Cove (Australia)-based mother-of-three is a long-time customer of Your Food Collective, a female-founded farmer-focused grocery delivery service, and every week she teaches her children about where their food comes from.
“You’re able to shop locally, seasonally; you’re supporting [the founders’] young families; you’re supporting the farmers; and, most importantly, it’s great food for my family,” she says. “You’re getting groceries anyway, so why not do it in a way that supports all of these people?” Read more at the Age
We Don't Have Time is a review platform for climate solutions. By working together, we can speed up the transition to a fossil-free future. Our growing community of more than 60,000 members is a diverse crowd of business leaders, scientists, academics, journalists, activists and engaged citizens from over 100 countries. We Don't Have Time invites companies, governments, organizations, startups, and NGOs around the world to join as partners to engage in a climate dialogue on our platform. We regularly invite our partners and members to join our solution-oriented broadcasts and global no-fly summits that reach millions of viewers on social media. All this content, as well as a great news feed containing climate news from more than 200 sources, is available to all members for free on our platform, which is ad-free and powered by renewable energy. Thanks to our amazing network of members and followers that help us share and spread our content, we have a monthly social media reach of over 75 million. And we continue to grow. Read more at We Don't Have Time
The former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is urging the Catholic Church to tackle residential school denialism following Pope Francis’s apology on Friday morning.
Church leaders who refuse to accept survivors’ truths are, right now, “the biggest source of resistance to reconciliation,” says Murray Sinclair.
“Denialism was allowed to flourish because of the silence that was coming from the Pope,” said the retired senator in an interview. “With this statement, those denying within the church — or denying in public because of the church being able to support denialism — will no longer have that ladder upon which they can stand.”
On the final day of an Indigenous delegation’s Vatican visit, the pontiff uttered a long-awaited and much-anticipated sorry “for the role that a number of Catholics” had in abusing children forced to attend Canada’s residential schools.
“All these things are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis said. “For the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church, I ask for God’s forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart: I am very sorry.” Read more at APTN News
"Small countries, such as mine, are especially troubled because we are militarily and economically powerless. The only defence we have is respect for adherence to international law. When international law is violated, our defences are breached and we are exposed to aggression, in all its forms, that we have little capacity to resist."
Sir Ronald Saunders- Antigua and Barbuda Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States
Upcoming Events
International Health Trends and Perspectives (a new journal based at Ryerson University, Toronto) is dedicating a special issue to the topic of Planetary Health to highlight research and theoretical contributions of scientists and scholars globally. It is inviting manuscripts that are solutions and equity-focused. See the call for papers and details here: https://bit.ly/3tDixHT
November, 2022: Canadian Conference on Global Health Join us in November 2022 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". Stay tuned for more information.
FYI#1 SPOTLIGHT ON MEDIA
Connective Action, Digital Engagement And Network-Building: A Year In The Life Of Canadian Climate Facebook
Credit: Facebook
This article explores how competing discursive and political formations about climate change structure and circulate in social media by mapping a year of climate-related Facebook posts and links by Canadian civil society actors. Drawing upon the concept of connective action, it traces the efficacy and impact of the social media strategies of actors favoring stronger climate action against those aiming to delay or block such action.
Distinguishing between self-referential vs network-building connective action and active vs passive types of user engagement, it finds the most significant use of Facebook by Canadian civil society actors was the sharing of mainstream and alternative news sources. Such activity plays a key role in building networked publics around shared perspectives on climate change as well as generating audience subsidies through which users are mobilized to amplify particular news stories, columnists and media outlets. In Canada, conservative actors tend to be more focused upon network building and more effective in producing these subsidies, especially for right-leaning commercial news organizations and alt-right digital outlets.
Pipelines are the primary method of transporting crude oil around the world, delivering oil and its derivative products swiftly to refineries and empowering reliant businesses.
And North America is a major oil hub. The U.S. and Canada alone are home to more than 90,000 miles of crude oil and petroleum product pipelines, along with more than 140 refineries that can process around 20 million barrels of oil every day.
This interactive graphic uses data from Rextag to map out crude oil pipelines and refineries across the U.S. and Canada, showcasing individual pipeline diameter and daily refinery throughput.
Ukrainian Researchers Flee Trauma And Terror Of War
Ukrainian civilians evacuate from the embattled town of Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv. Many scientists have joined the exodus to western Ukraine and other European nations. Credit: GIANLUCA CECERE/LAIF/REDUX
At this time of year Maryna Kravchenko, a population ecologist at Kharkiv National University (KNU), normally heads into the forests of eastern Ukraine to track frogs and toads emerging from hibernation. Instead, after one week sheltering from bombs in a basement, she fled with her young children to Germany, where colleagues at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich had found them an apartment. Her husband, KNU zoologist Dmitry Shabanov, stayed to defend Kharkiv. “We’ve all stopped wishing each other good morning,” Kravchenko says. “Instead, it’s now ‘How are you?’ to both check whether the other person is still alive and show that you still care about them.”The humanitarian toll of an increasingly brutal war is rising. More than 4 million refugees have fled since Russia began its invasion on 24 February, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Scientists like Kravchenko are among the dispossessed. Others are staying put, hunkering down or taking up arms in the war zone. The upheaval is touching the Russian science community as well. Cut off from
many international collaborationsand, in some cases, opposed to the war, some Russian scientists are fleeing their own country.
Sustainable Eating Is Cheaper And Healthier, Reveals New Study
Credit: Getty Images Adopting a vegan, vegetarian or flexitarian diet in countries like the US, UK, Australia and across Western Europe could slash your food bill by one third, research conducted by the University of Oxford has revealed.
Silent Earth: Averting The Insect Apocalypse. By Dave Goulson
Credit: Book Cover
“A terrific book…A thoughtful explanation of how the dramatic decline of insect species and numbers poses a dire threat to all life on earth.” (Booklist, Starred Review)
In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival, and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.
Drawing on thirty years of research, Goulson has written an accessible, fascinating, and important book that examines the evidence of an alarming drop in insect numbers around the world. “If we lose the insects, then everything is going to collapse,” he warned in a recent interview in the New York Times—beginning with humans’ food supply. The main cause of this decrease in insect populations is the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides. Hence, Silent Earth’s nod to Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring which, when published in 1962, led to the global banning of DDT. This was a huge victory for science and ecological health at the time.
Yet before long, new pesticides just as lethal as DDT were introduced, and today, humanity finds itself on the brink of a new crisis. What will happen when the bugs are all gone? Goulson explores the intrinsic connection between climate change, nature, wildlife, and the shrinking biodiversity and analyzes the harmful impact for the earth and its inhabitants.
Meanwhile we have all read stories about hive collapse syndrome affecting honeybee colonies and the tragic decline of monarch butterflies in North America, and more. But it is not too late to arrest this decline, and Silent Earth should be the clarion call.
Russian Site Peddles Paper Authorship In Reputable Journals For Up To $5000 A Pop
Credit: VALERII MINHIROV/ISTOCK.COM; ALIAKSEI BROUKA/ISTOCK.COM; OKSANA SAZHNIEVA/ISTOCK.COM, ADAPTED BY C. AYCOCK/SCIENCE
Since 2019, Anna Abalkina has been monitoring a website that offers an illicit way for scientists to burnish their CVs. The site, operated from Russia, openly offers to sell authorship slots on soon-to-be-published scientific papers, for fees ranging from several hundred dollars to nearly $5000.
Abalkina, a sociologist at the Free University of Berlin, has documented what appears to be a flourishing business on the site, www.123mi.ru. Since it debuted in December 2018, she has analyzed more than 1000 advertisements posted there and found at least 419 that appeared to match manuscripts that later appeared in dozens of different journals, she reported in a preprint posted on arXiv in March.
More than 100 of these identified papers were published in 68 journals run by established publishers, including Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wolters Kluwer, and Wiley-Blackwell, although most of these were specialized publications. Russian authors outnumbered any other nationality on the website’s tally of recent contracts.
Publisher and Editor: Dr. David Zakus Production: Julia Chalmers and Aisha Saleem Social Media: Mahdia Abidi, Shalini Kainth and Ishneer Mankoo Website, Index and Advisory: Eunice Anteh, Gaël Chetaille, Evans Oppong, Jonathan Zakus, Dr. Aimée-Angélique Bouka & Elisabeth Huang Blogs: Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, Aisha Saleem and Dr. Jay Kravitz