Is the world focused enough on climate change? | Inside Story
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
- A state of emergency in Zimbabwe, extreme drought putting millions of people in danger.
As wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, the battle against climate change continues - but arguably makes fewer headlines.
Is the world paying enough attention to the threat the entire planet faces?
Presenter:
Mohammed Jamjoom
Guests:
John Sweeney, Professor Emeritus at Maynooth University, Ireland. contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Maurice Onyango, Regional Head of Disaster Risk Management at Plan International, Nairobi, Kenya
Carlo Buentempo is Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Bonn, Germany.
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#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #Drought #Famine #ElNino #Zimbabwe #ZimbabweDrought #ZimbabweHunger #ZimbabweFamine #AlJazeeraEnglish
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Is the world paying enough attention to climate change? .... That's a resounding NO! ... Politicians are too busy worrying about lining their pockets with your money.
The sky will have to turn red before anything drastic is done - this is a sad fact .... I feel like I'm in the back seat of a slow moving car headed towards a cliff.
Dont be this delusional. We fell off that cliff decades ago. Currently were falling. The question is: when will the sudden stop at the end kill us?
We are absolutely screwed it wont be long before before there is mass chaos
I am doing my part. I recycle all plastic bottles.
@@recordrabbit Don't buy them in the first place.
A SLOW moving car???
Look at these images. This is the entire world in a few decades if nothing changes.
Many trees dying in Western Australia, it’s beyond depressing what we have become.
we all know who is causing the problem of climate catastrophy, we in the rich world are just choosing not to listen, not to react
Nah, it is because trees were shading and concrete doesn't. Tropical forests were plundered, that is the difference. And overgrazing and overpopulation. Hardly our making, no no.
It's like we are living in that movie " don't look up". The ones with desire for money will die just the same as us though, when will they realise this fact. When it's too late is the answer!
from1770 not 1850 we are already over 2c
Not quite, but 1.8C. In any case 10th of a digit would become more and more irrelevant as the pace picks up.
I think it was 0.2C over that time but since 1770 we have almost definitely reached 1.5C+.
This is the most frustrating part of the global warming messaging. Corporate entities interfere with scientific information; manipulating peer-reviewed results before showing what they want their sucker consumers to believe. Corporate fascism has been doing this for decades because they have for at least half a century known where we are heading with the business-as-usual model. But they simply refuse to give up profit for life. They are this era's extinction-level event. It's like the meteorite which knocked off the dinosaurs but with its own defence system.
I did some quick math a few years ago ( please fact-check) and the amount of heat we are holding in the atmosphere via thermal forcing is equal to the energy released by a Chixilub event every ten years. If that isn't true or scary enough then the fact that an extra 8 Hiroshima-sized nukes worth of energy is being added to the atmosphere just by anthropogenic GHGs every single second ( that is 'second' as in 1/60 of a minute).
@@yetao5801 February 2024 was 3.3C above average for Europe!!!
As long as governments and corporations can profit from other people's misery, nothing will change!!
Politicians are thinking more along the lines of the profit they would lose now instead of the apocalypse of tomorrow.
No one is paying attention. Even this video although posted a while ago, look at the views
2k views is supremely depressing
sadly most people would rather watch inane 10 second videos made by dumbasses
I think if your algorithm registers you as a BBC or CNN viewer it will be rare that AL Jazeera is promoted on your thread.
Because climate change is a non issue. The dumbest part is believing that politicians will change the climate if you give them more money 😂
@@pauld.b7129 It isn't extra money being given to them. It's the administration's responsibility to transfer budget reserves to programmes focussed on a renewable tech business model
You pauld.b, are just fearmongering. And the only people who benefit from such fear are the oil companies.
To answer the question before watching, the world is not in the slightest paying enough attention to the converging crises.
In Jamaica a small island we are feeling it serious drought
The science was clear 30 years ago and has just become more so since and yet big business carries on as usual.....Its already to late to avoid a whole lot of ugly and until if effects their earning potential nothing will change
your being very generous, it's been over 100 years since the science was clear (more co2 in atmosphere = warmer global temp) and over 50 since we knew WE were adding enough to make a difference.
It won't really effect their earning potential. Say they only make 1% of what they used to make....that's compared to a large amount of humanity starving to death.
It's not about how much they make - it's about how much MORE than everyone else they make.
Wealth = Power
Power = Wealth
Nothing will change until one of those is no longer equal.
Humanity is already past the point of no return.
The short answer? No. We're not paying enough attention at all to Climate Change.
Any mention of human overshoot? Didn't think so.
Just as we all fade individually so too will this species.
You mean human race?
And we are happily dragging most of the rest of the spectacular menagerie of species that make up this Earth into extinction along with us.
@@freeheeler09That’s the worst part - all the wildlife & natural habitats wantonly destroyed who never stood a chance. We’re destroying our life support system in the process. Humans - not a wise species and therefore will go extinct very soon.
In a way, I don't care what happens to humanity any more. We don't deserve this lovely planet.
In many places, it has changed beyond recognition through our clumsy intervention, building, mining, warring, felling forests, changing waterways.
While a few individuals 'really' try, and fewer still have succeeded in making a positive impact in some tiny spots on the planet, the vast majority are too busy soaked up with their own lives, own wants, own debts, own money making ambitions, own difficulties to care what happens to these people in this video (who will soon be hopping on a boat straight to Europe).
Then you have all those who are so soaked up in their religious beliefs, they only want to convert or war, having developed that useless, commonplace, apathetic religious attitude that it's all the will of an imaginary being (when it couldn't be clearer that environmental damage is absolutely the fault of humans), and so they do nothing positive either.
If humans die out, I'll not care. But I do despair that we kill the planet for the greater number of animals and plants, leaving behind only the very resilient forms: the vermin, some insects, some sea life as can survive the pollution, and microbes.
What a legacy we leave, what a waste of a species that was the first to set foot on another world.
I can’t get a paper bag at the grocery store anymore -ONLY EXTRA THICK PLASTIC BAGS AVAILABLE AT MY GROCERY.?!?! Who is in charge of that, I can’t do anything about that… HELLO LAWMAKERS!!!!???
The correct term is "Southern Africa" and it is the name given to the region. South Africa is a country (which i am from) and it is not affected by the droughts in the region. Thanks.
I have never been a climate denier.
The problem with action on climate change is that it is one big prisoners' dilemma. We can all agree that everyone is best of if we all made big and rapid changes right now. However, each and every nation has an incentive not to make those changes and get a competitive advantage from the cheap energy and lower cost or they simply don't have the resources to make the big changes if they wanted. So in the end, everyone is dragging their feet.
I don't agree. Everyone is not best off if we all made big, rapid changes. People and institutions with money in the fossil fuel industry would lose out big time. Also, the economic advantage of continuing to use fossil fuels is offset by the damage that would do to people's respiratory health, so much so that one study concluded that Britain should still decarbonize its energy, even if the rest of the world did nothing. I think the world is dragging its feet because the fossil fuel business doesn't want action.
@@robertcartwright4374 Well, it is very simple, fossil fuel is very cheap energy, even far more so if other countries decide they don't want to buy it anymore! Cheap abundant energy is how a country can get a competitive advantage. For the UK it is just expensive since it pays for all healthcare, most countries don't, they don't care about the health of its citizens.
It's the instinct of the human species that they sleep until the flames reach their house !
We need just one country to follow the Science and prepare society structures to adapt to these conditions!!!
They are. Alot of European countries are rapidly transitioning. Even China has been building EV's at a massive rate but the US is leading the way in putting up a commercial embargo on China goods claiming it's a threat to the economy. Unfortunately, the big players, the American and English gov, are still, in one way or another, backing the Koch and Friends club. And commercialists/capitalists will go where they think the easy cash can be made thus siphoning it away from where the cash would undoubtedly truly help. It is exactly what Marx warned us about.
@@bluegold21 CHINA is the biggest co2 emitter, and it has the fastest growth in co2 emissions.
China builds EV's, just to say "we build the most"....then they are dumped, by the millions, into fields to rot.
Same with the chinese solar / wind farms - built to say "we built the most", but not connected to anything, or nothing inside the shell.
You think the UK gov is still a big player ? that did make me chuckle.
The party of gov in the uk atm, is of the same mind as the republicans in the US, some 'leftist' govs of South America, and a whole slew of other autocratically minded gov's around the world -
Left / Right - makes no difference - the Chinese model is what they want. The blending of unfettered capitalism with totalitarian gov control.
Only thing china is doing to combat climate change is to produce so much pollution along with the co2 that they are probably masking another 0.5c of warming, all by themselves.
Those who have seen draught and hunger never tell and want their children from getting scared so they don't realize and keep wasting resources and water. We have huge size oceans but they can't fulfill clean /fresh water requirement that is only less than five percent of total water in planet. This is for all plants and animals lives not just for humans. It also has to be shared with future generations yet to come too.
Great program. But, the primary problem driving the degradation of our Earth’s life support systems is human overpopulation. Climate change is a massive problem, but it is the the threat multiplying the overuse of our surface and groundwater and the degradation of our farm soils. Raise temperatures another degree and agriculture and water supplies will collapse and food prices will rise. Those food price hikes will soon be driving tens of millions and then billions of people into starvation and war and mass migration. Climate change is a huge problem. But if we don’t stress family planning and lower birth rates, even if we solve the climate crisis, a large portion of humanity will still die of hunger.
We have several existential problems to solve at once, right now! If we ignore the horrors of human overpopulation and the degradation of the Earth’s life support systems through conversion to cities and farmland and pollution and over fishing and hunting, etc., then why bother addressing climate change?
"Have you ever noticed people who believe in overpopulation write more op eds than suicide notes?" - My anonymous comedian friend.
Unfortunately, you have a large portion of the population who truly believe that it pleases their imaginary god to keep on breeding more people to worship him.
So they see no evil in constantly pumping out kids like aphids, each one to impose its impact on the world's dwindling resources and create tons of rubbish in its wake.
And just because the world is clearly dying, and that their children will suffer and perish while still young, they don't care - because they want to believe that kid going to an imaginary heaven, or that a god is going to magically appear, magically clean everything up, and magically bestow the earth on the followers of *insert relevant religion here.
It's why I don't like religious types. They are content to push every problem they have into a mystical being's hands as an excuse to do nothing. They don't even try, too busy fixated on hating everyone else of a different religion or those who have their eyes open and follow nothing but their own clear common sense.
This world needs action, not stupid words, hopeless thoughts, powerless prayers.
And it takes everyone with even a moderate use of their limbs to stop making excuses, to go out there today, and make a difference.
Pick up some litter.
Go beach cleaning.
Rescue a tree seedling along on the road verge and plant it somewhere safe, look after it.
Join a tree planting/rewilding scheme this Autumn.
Join a local environment group and see what schemes you want to be a part of.
Don't buy that, when you don't really need it (that's our biggest impact on the planet).
Plant some fruit trees and bushes in your garden, in pots on your balcony or doorstep, take up an allotment, start proceedings towards the creation of a city farm, or secretly plant fruit plants within an undisturbed corner of your neighbourhood - and at least save yourself from having to buy some of that expensive supermarket produce for a minimum of a few weeks a year (this negating some of the necessary transport, packaging too).
We all have the opportunity to be more self sufficient if we could be bothered. A bit more self sufficiency takes the pressure off supermarkets to always be there to provide when clearly some countries are suffering, and more are yet to suffer, eventually impacting what we can buy.
I make sure I'm out there doing something positive for the environment 4-7 times a week (extreme weather excepting). I feel like I'm bashing my head against a wall sometimes - most of the time actually. But I keep going regardless, because I want to ensure that at least I can go out of this world with a clear conscience and the world is no worse off for my having lived in it.
Mankind has long, long, LOOONNNG passed the point of no return regarding a myriad of things contributing to scarcity of water, food, ethics, logic, science, etc. Enjoy whatever hours, weeks, months, or years you have, and GL;HF!
This is for all those parents to figure out
La la la….I don’t hear you.
NO because GREED is more important to the ruling elite!
perhaps there needs to be some inter african cooperation to start digging canals between the flood prone and drought prone areas. a canal can double as a transport hub and solar panel location.
You only need a shovel to dig a trench. a million people with shovels... The whole world is going to need to do the same, but Africa is uniquely suited to it by having minimal infrastructure and concrete in the way.
You do not even need to shore it up, let the water leak... it will create a living corridor and help the water table along the entire routes
Are you unfamiliar with the climate of South Africa?
ALL THIS CAN BE AVOIDED AND HAS BEEN FOR DECADES. WE JUST NEED TO USE OUR HEADS, FOR RIGHT NOW BILLIONS OF TONS OF FRESHWATER ARE FLOWING INTO THE SEA THAT CAN BE HARVESTED AND SHIPPED HERE!!!!
The water being wasted by big tech and others would satisfy the needs, but AI, server farms and etc (only one part of the extra water demands by the way) take priority. When did the value of machines exceed the value of life?
S T O P S H O P P I N G ! ! !
And pushing
Note to Africa, and the world at large: you CAN do something: CONTRACEPTION.
Hello anti-human, why do you embrace change in humans, and not our industry? It should be an easy choice.
@@christiansrensen1733 Hello clueless human, why do you only embrace the manufacture of endless copies of yourself at the expense of all the rest of life in Nature? The only human "industry" is replicating ourselves, now that we have entered the sedentary agriculture era and can feed far more humans than the land could possibly support us as Hunter-Gatherers. What could go wrong? Everything? CONTRACEPTION is the only courageous, ecologically sound choice to save the future survivors from the unnecessary suffering that climate collapse is sure to bring, now, and increasingly in the dark future before us.
Says the person from the country with a huge carbon foot print.
Economic Contraception against billionaires . There were too many irresponsible sociopathic women who gave birth to billionaires in 'wall street 'places, outside Africa.
Stupid really
It's too late.... Road of no return
0:24 Geoingering climate destruction..
Doesn't "blowing it off" count as action?
Especially if it will have the same effect of removing many more low users of energy first, then the relatively few high users.
As opposed to what? People act like we could just change the climate of the entire planet if we felt like it. They can't even predict the weather with accuracy more than a week in advance. They definitely can't change the climate
There does not exist a definition by which what is currently occurring in Gaza can be called a "war". What is wrong with you?
It is, just a very one sided one, started by Hamas terrorists who are ill equipped to fight an actual war
we sould do what exactly?
Many solutions have been suggested countless times. Many have been tried and found to make a difference.
Go vegan, stop having kids, use public transport
it is not the job of Maurice to make people in the rich nations more aware, it is the job of news agencies
This is why the Murdoch empire was given free riegn over bullshitting the public when big oil decided to start lying to the public back in the 80s'.
Self interest is supposed to make you more aware.
@@mikepotter5718 Eh? That is a blatant contradiction in terms?
Warming all over the ocean IS NOT El Niño related.
El Niño is making warmer water over one part of Pacific ocean, but these other heating areas are way out of El Niño.
Most climate scientist does not have explanation why this has happened. But James Hansen has found that shipping SO2 bans in 2015 and 2020 has strong correlation for these new warming patterns. SO2 emissions works as cloud creating particles that cools the surface below and the reductions in SO2 emissions has diminished this cloud formation leading rapid warming.
So....your solution is keep burning MORE polluting fuels to keep the temperature rise slow instead of fixing the problem and dealing with what's already happened temperature wise (even though we haven't directly felt it due to asking effects)?
Maybe artificial areosols could be a big hit. Blocking out the sun in desertified areas.
Control control😂😂❤❤🎉🎉😢😢😮😮😅😅
"do Something now" ? We are well past that Point. Get used to it, people will die in droves. Thanks boomers.
We can still do something to make it less horrible. This is still the time to not give up, doomerism is dangeous.
We in bad shape in Canada with Trudeau government
The aliens warned them at Ariel. 🛸👽✨
So you ask for a loan yet your also paying interest on debt..
Under the ground there are caverns and caves that were created to store fresh water. Deployment of beaver 🦫 like measures and allowing the water from streams to soak or percolate into the earth insted of running off into the oceans is critical . Simple concept but key dynamics for benefiting humanity
Zimbabwe has had Droughts since the 1970s this is not unusual weather is different to Climate
The Zimbabwe Governme😢 ruined Farming in the former Bread Basket of Africa, they laid waste to the farms and murdered white farmers cut down all the trees and burnt the vegetation , now they go hungry when the weather changes ,
Because the primary beneficiaries of Zimbabwe land reform were members of the Government and their families, despite the fact that most had no experience in running a farm, the drop in total farm output has been tremendous and has even produced starvation and famine, according to aid agencies. This has to be factored in. Not simply jump on the Climate Change bandwagon
Whatever. Irrelevant.
This is very true, the Government ruined farming and reduced the amount of Dams being constructed to offset droughts which have been a regular feature since before the 1970s
What about the record cold and flooding all over the world too. Or do we just pick what suits us?
Same reason. As the climate warms it causes instability in things like the jet stream and ocean currents. This means that some places get hotter, some drier, some wetter and some colder. That's why it's called climate change
Climate Change is also different from place to place.
I live in the arctic, and if - as some say, the arctic is a showcase for what future will look like, it doesn't look especially..promising.
Where I live the normal/average temp has changed a lot. Much more than the average world wide changes.
Looks grim, if you ask me.
Our descendants will never forgive us. Never.
@oneshothunter9877 it definitely has even NASA has admitted how fast the polar ice-cap is growing! Almost as fast as when it doubled in size during the 70s, but it is just part of the normal cycle. And as the pole shifts, the warm spot caused by the hole in the ozone layer shifts with it
She said “Droughts, floods and other extreme weather”.
@CT-vm4gf my point exactly what about the record cold temperatures and flooding all over the world or are we just cherry picking the data we like? They have had vineyards in BC for 500 years, and the bitter cold winters the last 2 years have frozen off 90 percent of them! Spain and Italy have lost huge vineyards to the cold, and they were over 1,000 years old.
The people in wealthy countries need a catastrophic climate disaster of their own before they wake up- - when it happens to 'the-other-guy,' they just don't care. There's no talk of rationing carbon-footprints on a personal level; i.e., hit your carbon limit for the month? Well, then, no vacation for you, no new clothes or you, no imported food for you, no new gimmicky widget for you! Every dollar we spend has a carbon footprint but no one talks about personal responsibility.
I will not let som multi billion corporation or government guilt trip me for my decisions.
Not entire planet. Europe can only benefit, for example. Tropical paradise better than frozen wastelands. We have had both extremes before, no big deal. Africa was a tropical paradise in both cases. I am surprised it is only Europeans who fight global warming. At our own expense. How pathetic.
Europe is the fastest warming continent. It might become a tropical paradise is the future but there won’t be anyone around to see it.
“Tropical paradises” don’t grow grain at scale to supply the extant population level.
@@christinearmington Antarctica was also tropical, and I would rather if we all did well than if we in Europe froze, which, after 13 glaciars, seems more thretening desipite rising temperatures. And the overpopulation won't solve itself by feeding those who are causing it.
We'll send aid as long as you accept lgbtq. Nkt im starting to have a very intensive resistance for the west.
Africa has no food, yet grain from Ukraine is going to waste because of EU stupid politics.
The most important part of this program was the one speaker who said that because of climate change, countries in Africa that until relatively recently were food exporters now are begging for increasingly scarce donations from the rapidly shrinking pool of food exporters. How many billions of people will starve in a few years when Canada, Brazil, the US, Russia, and Ukraine can no longer export grain?
no, it is Putins fault alone
Oi! It's not EU politics. It's Putin's greed. Get it right ffs!
Europe, Russia and especially America are fortunate as summers aren't bad there.
Wrong. The heat is too bad in the US. Three days this week it was so hot, I had to use a fan to cool down. Spring has barely started & it's June weather. Spring sux. Summer sux. I'm ready for autumn. Winter didn't even exist.
Russia benefits indeed ☺
Free Palestine. Save Earth.
Palestine is not self sustaining, they contribute almost nothing useful to the global community, but they have a gross birthrate & toxic indoctrination… not much of a strategy to replicate.
2 Million People at risk in gaza, but 20 Million at risk in Zimbabwe, and what is more shown in the media? and why?
Palestine definitely isn't going to solve climate change that's just straight up delusional.
Earth with be fine. It's all the starving people who need to be saved.
@@thatfatman6978 we will need a stable climate to grow food.
Please someone tell me who Elon Musk has to write a cheque to so that we have nice weather for the Tesla Picnic in June.
Tell me who I need to pay so I can have good weather for my daughters wedding in July.
Please tell me who we have to give money to so that we have nice weather when we want.
USE YOUR HEADS PEOPLE
Outlandish speculation like yours requires actual evidence. Just who, other than the companies that burn fossil fuels is controlling our climate?
What part of the Bible addresses climate change?
Havent read the bible, but i guess there should be something about the end of days. There was some other parts about heavenly flooding, drought for like seven years and some bearded guy declaring that some god whould bring different calamities to egypt.
@@melisboregard Yes but not "God's Plan," rather human stupidity that's got nothing to do with anybody's fairy tales.
@@melisboregard
You rock, brother.
Made me laugh.
Agreed, btw.
What about the "Christian" theory of climate change, i.e., "God's Plan"?
Rapture?
@@melisboregard No.
That's why I love India 🇮🇳 😊
India is a leader in coal burning, gross birth rates, and Kremlin suckling.
India is burning in this summer heat. You think we are better off? Ask farmers. It's awful .
@@sudhakar7889 we have big dams 😊
@@RAHULGANDHI-pr9op not everywhere.
India just declared record drought this year and India will not be exporting wheat - despite India having been the world's 2nd largest wheat exporter. oops. Last year India cut off rice exports.
Look at that US food aid. Guess were not the great satan huh guys?
The US is blamed for every problem by spiteful & indoctrinated fools, we are criticized for too much meddling and for not doing enough. We all need to demand better of our governments & institutions.
yes you are because you caused this problem, and continue to cause it with burning fossil fuels
Is that not just treating the symptoms rather than curing the disease?
@@melisboregard I don’t see Chinese or Russian flags on that aid is all I’m saying.
You don't know how US "food aid" work!! You've been mind-controlled. Cargill: Our taxes, global destruction
Minnetonka-Minnesta-based Cargill is often noted as the world’s largest private corporation, with reported annual sales of over $50 billion and operations at any given time in an average of 70 countries. The “Lake Office” of Cargill is a 63-room replica of a French chateau; the chairman’s office is part of what was once the chateau’s master-bedroom suite.
A family empire, the Cargills and the MacMillans control about 85 percent of the stock. Not only the largest grain trader in the world, with over 20 percent of the market, Cargill dominates another 12 sectors, including destructive speculative finance, according to “Invisible Giant: Cargill and its Transnational Strategies,” by Brewster Kneen.
Taking advantage of the capitalist speculative collapse of 1873, Cargill quickly bought up grain elevators. After vast cooperation with the state-sponsored railroad robber barons, central grain terminals averaged extremely high annual returns on investments of 30 to 40 percent between 1883 and 1889. Cargill hired a Chase Bank vice president to secretly help the corporation through the Depression, writes Dan Morgan in “Merchants of Grain.”
“There are only a few processing firms,” and “these firms receive a disproportionate share of the economic benefits from the food system,” states William D. Heffernan, professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri. Details of Cargill’s price manipulations at the expense of farmers worldwide was documented in the classic study, “Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity” by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins. They report that Cargill has had a history of receiving elite government price information that should be told to U.S. farmers.
That secrecy, along with tax-subsidized market control, enables Cargill to buy from U.S. farmers at extremely low prices and then sell abroad to nations pressured under the same destructive elite corporate control. See the Institute for Food and Development Policy’s Web Site
Between 1985 and 1992, the legal entity called Cargill received $800.4 million in tax subsidies via the Export Enhancement Program, a continuation of the infamous “Food for Peace” policy, writes Kneen. Promoted by Hubert H. Humphrey and instituted as PL 480, food became a Cold War tool, i.e. “for Peace.” If we can induce people to “become dependent on us for food,” then “what is a more powerful weapon than food and fiber?” Humphrey declared, according to “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies” by Noam Chomsky.
Actually, most of the nation recipients of tax-subsidized Cargill food dumping were, and are, net exporters of food already - policies imposed by colonial trading patterns. The food (for Peace) has been bought cheaply by neocolonial regimes, and then sold at a huge discount on the local market - in Somalia, for example, at one-sixth of the local prices. Many examples of these misguided policies can be found in “Betraying the National Interest: How US Foreign AID Threatens Global Security by Undermining the Political and Economic Stability of the Third World,” by Frances Moore Lappe, et al.
Cargill’s undercutting wipes out the local farmers’ self-reliance, while the revenues (going to the elite) are tied to required purchases of U.S. weapons, writes Chomsky, citing “The Soft War” by Tom Barry, 1988. But the main beneficiary of “Food for Peace” has been Cargill. Keen writes, “From 1954 to 1963, just for storing and transporting P.L. 480 commodities, the heavily subsidized giant Cargill made $1 billion.”
Indian lawyer N.J. Nanjundaswamy reports that a Cargill motto is, “One who controls the seed, controls the farmer, and one who controls the food trade, controls the nation.” Yudof’s recently stated support of federal foreign policy Title XII is another public promotion of the University of Minnesota-Cargill partnership’s raiding of sustainable agricultural cultures.
Cargill is such a damaging threat that in Dec. 1992, 500,000 peasants marched against corporate-controlled trade, and the irate farmers ransacked Cargill’s operations. Fifty people were arrested at the partially completed - and subsequently destroyed - seed-processing plant in Bellary, India. In 1996, 1,000 Indian farmers gathered at Cargill’s office and destroyed Cargill’s records.
Cargill has been doing bio-piracy, stealing traditional products. For instance, it used Basmati, a rice from India, as its trade name, and the company continues to be one of the main promoters of corporate-driven intellectual property rights. The U.S. Trade Act, Special 301 Clause, allows the United States to take unilateral action against any country that does not open its market to U.S. corporations.
The United States, for example, has threatened to use trade sanctions against Thailand for its attempt to protect biodiversity. A bill that has been before parliament in India and promoted by Cargill, “takes away all the farmers’ rights, which they have enjoyed for generations - they will no longer be able to produce new varieties of seed or trade seed amongst themselves,” writes Nanjundaswamy.
The research center, Rural Advancement Foundation International, found that “fifteen African states, among them some of the poorest countries in the world, are under pressure to sign away the right of more than 20 million small-holder farmers to save and exchange crop seed. The decision to abandon Africa’s 12,000-year tradition of seed-saving will be finalized at a meeting in the Central African Republic. The 15 governments have been told to adopt draconian intellectual property legislation for plant varieties in order to conform to a provision in the World Trade Organization.”
Cargill, with extensive funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, is also destroying the world’s largest wetland - the Pantanal, in South America - in order to dredge a channel that’s designed for convoys of up to 16 soybean- and soymeal-carrying barges, according to the Institute on Food and Development Policy.
Cargill has been on the Council of Economic Priorities’ list of worst environmental offenders. Mother Jones magazine and Earth Island Journal report that Cargill is responsible for 2,000 OSHA violations, a 40,000-gallon spill of phosphoric solution into Florida’s Alafia River, poor air pollution compliance and record-high releases of toxic waste.
With help from the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, states have recently begun to respond to citizen pressure and revoke corporate charters. The assets of Cargill should be revoked, allowing the citizens of the United States to give farmers the benefits of fair trade instead of Cargill’s secretive policy of tax-subsidized global destruction.
Stop genocide of Palestinian people😢
We’ve got bigger problems.
There's aleayd droughts in Africa and now they blame climate change ffs 😂
Real dangers such as cosmic impacts earthquakes , savages and woke polices are better to focus . What happens if the cllimate stops changing?
it's the RATE of change that is the issue.
This climate hysteria leading up to to a new religion (climate hysteria's), which is only a media made religion, is brain washing too many humans, which is dangerous! This is a major problem. The climate is ok, I worry about humans mental sickness though .
Mee too, you seem to suffer from really bad delusions
Troll
Yes true, I worry about your mental sickness and others like you.