Responding to Rishi Sunak’s extensive cabinet reshuffle today, co-leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay, said:
“This reshuffle looks desperate and is a sign that Rishi Sunak has run out of talent. David Cameron started the programme of cuts to our public services which has now brought the NHS to near breaking point. Since his disastrous exit he has cashed in on dodgy lobbying for global oligarchs. And on the odd occasion where Cameron did take a principled stand – such as on maintaining the international aid budget – the government has since reneged.
“As to the departure of Therese Coffey as Environment Secretary, nature can at least temporarily breathe a sigh of relief as we await to see who replaces her. She put in place a subsidy system which is not working for farmers or the environment, and she has failed to tackle the blight of sewage in our rivers – a situation she herself described as ‘a scandal’ when I challenged her on it at a public meeting in Suffolk last month.
“We need a fresh start on the environment, with real action to stop the water companies profiting from failure and a proper system of nature-friendly farming payments which are easy for farmers to access.
“This chaotic and unprincipled government has reached the end of the road. It is doing great harm to the country. We need a general election now.”
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has rowed back on UK net-zero targets, incurring the wrath of industry, charities and academics.
Rishi Sunak offers to dance
The UK will water down policies aimed at achieving its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 following Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision, announced on 20 September, to push back the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK from 2030 to 2035.
Sunak also announced an easing of energy efficiency targets for rental properties and backtracked on plans to make homeowners replace gas boilers with heat pumps.
“We can adopt a more pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach to meeting net zero” that would bring the UK in line with countries such as France and Germany, he said.
Reacting to the news, Halima Begum, CEO of ActionAid UK, told our sister site Investment Monitor that the UK Government’s sudden reversal of its net-zero commitments “is reckless and irresponsible”.
“Climate action is not a political bargaining chip that can be taken on and off the table to satisfy party political squabbles, but a global imperative,” she added. “The climate crisis is not a future event, it is happening now. People are facing flash floods, droughts, rising sea levels and irreversible damage that has already led to tragic deaths around the world this year alone.”
Meanwhile, Nick Kirsop-Taylor, an expert in environmental governance from the University of Exeter, joined a chorus of other academics in saying it is “truly disappointing news” since time is running out for the global action required to keep global temperatures to below 1.5°C, let alone 2°C.
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The State Department and USAID staffers denounced the president’s “unwillingness to de-escalate” Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza, which have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians.
One hundred U.S. foreign service officials have signed a “scathing” internal memo blasting President Joe Biden’s “unwillingness to de-escalate” Israel’s assault on Gaza and his failure to stop Israeli “war crimes and/or crimes against humanity” in the embattled Palestinian enclave.
Axios reported Monday that the five-pageinternal dissent memo was signed by officials at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The memo was reportedly organized by Sylvia Yacoub, a foreign affairs officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Middle East Affairs who earlier this month accused Biden of being “complicit in genocide” as Israeli forces indiscriminately bombarded the Gaza strip by air, land, and sea—killing thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children.
“Members of the White House and [the U.S. National Security Council] displayed a clear disregard for the lives of Palestinians, a documented unwillingness to de-escalate, and, even prior to October 7, a reckless lack of strategic foresight,” the memo states.
The missive accuses Biden of “disregarding the lives of Palestinians,” over 40,000 of whom have been killed, wounded, or gone missing since Israel launched its retaliatory war that has also displaced over 1.5 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people.
Israel’s relentless attacks and its cutting off of electricity, food, and fuel supplies to the already besieged territory “all constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity under international law,” the memo asserts. “Yet we have failed to reassess our posture towards Israel. We doubled down on our unwavering military assistance to the [Israeli government] without clear or actionable red lines.”
More unprecedented dissent from within the State Department: An internal State Department dissent memo accuses President Biden of "spreading misinformation" and says that Israel is committing "war crimes" in Gaza https://t.co/Cm52hgAadr
Responding to the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel that killed around 1,200 people, Biden has repeatedly proclaimed his “unwavering” support for Israel and requested another $14 billion in U.S. armed assistance to the key Middle East ally—which already receives nearly $4 billion from Washington annually.
The president has dismissed calls to cut or place conditions on U.S. aid, while Biden administration officials have been derided for claiming they have no leverage over Israel.
Biden has also rebuffed widespread and growing calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, instead advocating for a so-called “humanitarian pause” to allow civilians to flee and aid to enter the strip.
The signers of the memo denounce Biden for “questioning the number of deaths” in Gaza by saying he had “no confidence” in Palestinian health officials’ casualty reports—figures deemed reliable by United Nations agencies, human rights groups, international and Israeli mainstream media, and even the State Department.
Biden was accused of “genocidal denial” following his remarks. Directly contradicting the president, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf warned last week that the death toll in Gaza may be “even higher” than reported, as thousands of bodies lie unrecovered beneath the rubble of bombed buildings.
The memo’s signers also accused the president of “spreading misinformation” about the war.
Axios said the memo was sent to the State Department’s policy office on November 3 through the official dissent channel established during the Vietnam War era to allow diplomats to express their disapproval of U.S. policies and practices. Dissent memos are meant to stay within the agency, but are sometimes leaked to the public.
Multiple dissent memos about the Gaza war are currently being circulated within the State Department, according toPolitico.
A State Department spokesperson told Axios that the agency “is proud there is an established procedure for employees to articulate policy disagreements directly to the attention of senior department leaders without fear of retribution.”
“We understand—we expect, we appreciate—that different people working in this department have different beliefs about what United States policy should be,” the spokesperson added.
This photo released by Dr Marawan Abu Saada shows prematurely born Palestinian babies in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on November 12, 2023
AS THE death toll in Gaza approaches 12,000, including nearly 5,000 children, the Al-Shifa hospital came under fierce attack from Israeli forces yesterday.
While thousands have fled the bombardment of Gaza’s largest hospital, hundreds of patients, including dozens of babies, remain in the bombed out building at risk of dying because of a lack of electricity as well as a lack of medical and food supplies.
The Israeli military said that it had placed gallons of fuel near the hospital to help power its generators, but Hamas fighters had prevented staff from reaching it.
The Health Ministry in Gaza disputed that and said the fuel would have provided less than an hour of electricity.
World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on social media that Shifa has been without water for three days and “is not functioning as a hospital anymore.”
If all oil-producing nations followed the United Arab Emirates’ strategy, the world’s carbon budget for 1.5°C would be exceeded many times over.
COP28 host the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has plans in place to extract 38 billion barrels of oil and gas between now and 2085 – with significant further reserves that could also be extracted in that time.
If all oil producing nations followed such a strategy, the world’s carbon budget for 1.5°C would be exceeded many times over. As one of the wealthiest petrostates in the world – with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of $44,000 (Dh161,590) – the “common but differentiated responsibility” clause of the 2015 Paris Agreement could arguably mean that the UAE should end oil and gas production sooner than other, less wealthy nations – but as yet the UAE has no such plans.
According to exclusive data from Energy Monitor’s parent company, GlobalData, there are some 28.3 billion barrels of oil remaining in active fields in the UAE, with a further 1.5 billion barrels in fields that are currently planned.
Active fields in the UAE also have some 38.2 trillion cubic feet (trcf) of gas remaining, while planned fields contain 10.5trcf of gas. The combined volume of hydrocarbons in active and planned oil and gas fields in the UAE adds up to 38.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
The UAE is continuing to develop new oil and gas fields despite the International Energy Agency (IEA) repeatedly warning that for the world to meet its target of net zero by mid-century, oil and gas use must go into managed decline, with no new oil and gas fields approved for development beyond those already in existence.
The UAE’s oil plans are in the spotlight right now given the country’s high-profile role hosting the next annual UN climate conference, COP28, which is taking place in Dubai at the end of November.
Given that the burning of fossil fuels is by far the largest contributor to global warming, the UAE’s position as the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, and 14th-largest gas producer, is a major point of concern among climate experts.
