“Instead of tackling this injustice, the Chancellor chooses to balance the books on the backs of ordinary people rather than taxing people like us who can afford it.”
Raise taxes on big polluters and the super-rich to tackle the climate crisis, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has been told by a new coalition of leading charities and campaigners.
Ahead of the Autumn Statement on Wednesday, 19 organisations have written an open letter to the Chancellor calling for a fairer tax system to address ‘rampant’ inequality and to redirect wealth to fund climate action.
There is ‘no lack of money’ to tackle the cost of living and climate crisis, only a government that requires ‘common sense’ to make those responsible for the most carbon emissions pay more, the coalition has argued.
Greenpeace, Christian Aid, Patriotic Millionaires, Global Justice Now, Common Wealth and Friends of the Earth are among the 19 signatures which have highlighted that an estimated £22 billion could be raised by a 1-2% wealth tax on assets over £10 million.
And it seems the public agree, as a recent poll by Survation showed 82% of people in Great Britain supported a wealth tax on the richest 1% to fund climate change action.
It comes as The Guardian’s latest investigation has revealed how the ‘polluter elite’ richest 1% account for more carbon emissions that a whopping 66% of the poorest, highlighting extreme inequality when it comes to responsibility for climate damage.
Carbon emissions from the luxurious lifestyles of the super-rich mean only 12 of the richest people produce more emissions than two million homes a year, while Oxfam has said a 60% tax on the incomes of the wealthiest 1% would cut the equivalent of the 2019 carbon emission of the UK.
An injured child is brought to al-Shifa Hospital after Israeli attacks in Gaza City, Gaza on October 21, 2023. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff, and all civilians must override all other concerns,” said Martin Griffiths, the United Nations’ emergency relief coordinator.
The head of the United Nations’ emergency relief operations said Wednesday that he was “appalled” by news of the Israeli military’s raid of Gaza’s largest hospital, where hundreds of patients and healthcare workers and thousands of displaced people are sheltering.
“The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff, and all civilians must override all other concerns,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, wrote on social media. “Hospitals are not battlegrounds.”
Israeli forces’ raid of al-Shifa Hospital early Wednesday came days after they encircled the facility and began bombarding it, accusing Hamas of using the hospital and tunnels beneath it for military operations.
The U.S. backed Israel’s assertion on Tuesday, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby telling reporters that “we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and support their military operations and to hold hostages.”
Asked to provide specific evidence, Kirby cited “a variety of intelligence sources” but declined to publicize “a whole lot of granular detail on that.”
Hospitals are protected from military attack under international law and can only lose their protected status if they are shown to have been used for “an act harmful to the enemy.” Human Rights Watch argued in a report released ahead of Wednesday’s raid that the Israeli government has not provided sufficient evidence to justify its attacks on al-Shifa and other northern Gaza hospitals, most of which have ceased functioning due to a lack of fuel and other supplies.
An emergency room employee at al-Shifa toldAl Jazeera that during their raid, Israeli soldiers “detained and brutally assaulted some of the men who were taking refuge at the hospital.”
“Israeli forces took the detained men naked and blindfolded,” the worker added. “[They] did not bring any aid or supplies, they only brought terror and death.”
Here’s a recorded conversation between a doctor working inside al-Shifa Hospital and Israeli forces just before Gaza’s largest medical complex was raided. pic.twitter.com/O0Il2VjQaX
On Tuesday, according to Gaza officials, around 170 bodies were buried in a mass grave in the courtyard of al-Shifa, as there was no other way to safely bury them outside the hospital compound because of Israeli attacks and firefights with Hamas. A surgeon at the hospital toldReuters that, due to lack of refrigeration, the bodies “were generating an unbearable stench and posing a risk of infection.”
“The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday,” The Associated Pressreported Wednesday. “Another 36 babies are at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators, according to the ministry.”
Israel’s bombing campaign, ground invasion, and siege have killed more than 11,000 people across the Gaza Strip, but the recent attacks on the enclave’s hospitals have made it impossible for Gaza health officials to reach the facilities to count the dead and wounded. Thousands more are believed to have been killed since the death toll was updated last week.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said early Wednesday that “we’ve lost touch again with health personnel” at al-Shifa amid Israel’s raid.
“We’re extremely worried for their and their patients’ safety,” he added.
Facing growing accusations of war crimes, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) called its raid on al-Shifa a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas.” In the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel last month, the IDF has claimed repeatedly that it is targeting militants even as it has decimated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, bombing homes, medical facilities, schools, bakeries, and the strip’s largest refugee camp.
A confidential memo from the Dutch Embassy in Tel Aviv states that Israel is “deliberately causing massive destruction to the infrastructure and civilian centers” of Gaza in an effort to “showcase credible military force” to “Iran and its proxies,” according toPolitico.
Israel’s strategy, the memo states, violates “international treaties and laws of war.”
Fresh emissions targets from Saudi Arabia and Australia – two of the world’s largest fossil-fuel producers – are due to arrive just in time for global climate talks in Glasgow. These would commit the two countries to reducing domestic emissions to net zero by around mid-century – though both are expected to continue exporting fossil fuels for decades to come.
You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here.
For the leaders of countries and governments that produce fossil fuels, UN climate summits are a public relations boon. They get to talk up their commitments to a green and clean future without being held to account for their disproportionate role in fuelling the problem. It’s hard for experts, let alone the average citizen, to tell fact from fiction.
Because it’s only domestic greenhouse gas emissions that are counted for the purpose of the UN climate negotiations, burning exported fossil fuels counts towards the emissions of the importing country. Accordingly, the role that major fossil fuel exporters like Saudi Arabia (oil and natural gas) and Australia (coal and natural gas) play in stoking global heating is not accurately reflected in the talks.
Unlike some areas of international cooperation, like limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, climate-change summits aim to control something which evades easy calculation. Nuclear weapons and their production facilities are tangible, chunky and relatively few in number. Greenhouse gases are everywhere, invisible and caused by lots of different processes – from cow digestion to steel production.
These gases are also in constant flux. Emissions are produced from ubiquitous sources, but there are also natural systems – especially forests and soil – that suck carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere. These natural removals of carbon are known as sinks. That is why scientists and governments speak of net greenhouse gas emissions: emissions minus removals.
It’s relatively easy to monitor aggregate levels of CO₂ in the global atmosphere. This is why scientists have a clear picture of how badly off-track the world is with tackling the climate crisis. But all this complexity concerning sources and sinks makes it easy for governments and corporations to obfuscate their real contribution to climate change.
For example, countries with lots of uninhabited land, like Australia, have become especially adept at gaming the systems of accounting for net emissions of CO₂. Australia effectively gets credited for large amounts of carbon stored in forests, which make it look like overall emissions have been falling, even though emissions from burning fossil fuels have been growing for decades.
The Australian government claims the country’s natural sinks offset its emissions elsewhere. Norman Allchin/Shutterstock
One sure-fire way of telling whether a government official is hoodwinking you when lauding their government’s climate credentials is to look upstream and see whether they’re producing the coal, oil or gas that ultimately causes about three-quarters of global emissions, and if so, what they’re doing about it.
Extracted fossil fuels are much easier to monitor and verify than greenhouse gas emissions. They come from a relatively small number of sources and are already measured by multiple parties for a range of purposes. Customers need proof that the shipments they receive reflect their contracts with suppliers. Governments collect production information to assess a company’s compliance with licensing requirements, tax liabilities and customs obligations.
Fossil-fuel infrastructure and projects are even easier to monitor. Oil rigs, gas pipelines and coal mines are large, making them easy to see both on the ground and via satellite. These features make it simpler to hold fossil fuel-producing countries to account for their contribution to global heating, compared with the more slippery measure of net emissions.
The fossil fuel production gap
In a new report, the UN Environment Programme and other research institutions found that governments plan to produce more than twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – the goal of the Paris Agreement. Countries’ fossil-fuel production plans and projections in aggregate even exceed, by close to 10%, the levels of global fossil-fuel production implied by their own climate pledges.
Shockingly, governments are pouring fuel on the fire. G20 countries have directed more than US$300 billion (£218 billion) in new funds towards supporting fossil-fuel production, such as subsidies and tax breaks, since the beginning of the pandemic – about 10% more than they have invested in clean energy.
The report echoes recent calls for greater transparency around fossil-fuel production and the support – financial and otherwise – governments provide at home and abroad. Research by various organisations has provided a better understanding of this, but the information is incomplete, inconsistent and scattered.
Governments could help by disclosing plans, funding and projections for fossil-fuel production, and how they intend to manage a just transition away from coal, oil and gas. Fossil-fuel companies should disclose their spending and infrastructure plans, as well as all the greenhouse gas emissions their product is responsible for, and financial risks to their business from climate change.
Numerous environmental organisations are working to build a global picture of the sources and flows of fossil fuels. So even if governments fail to illuminate the activities of fossil-fuel companies and their role in it, they can still be named and shamed.
Talking only about a country’s net greenhouse gas emissions gives fossil fuel-producing companies and governments a free pass to bullshit their way through the climate negotiations. If we want to force the PR managers to really earn their money, we should turn the conversation to fossil-fuel production.
This story is part of The Conversation’s coverage on COP26, the Glasgow climate conference, by experts from around the world.
Amid a rising tide of climate news and stories, The Conversation is here to clear the air and make sure you get information you can trust. More.
Fergus Green, Lecturer in Political Theory and Public Policy, UCL
I need to write an article about how our recent ancestors fought a war and the United Nations was established in opposition to the realization of an evil, racist, apartheid ideology pursuing genocide and how it has failed. Associations between the classic Nazism and Zionism e.g. justifying, rationalising, excusing genocidal actions by claiming the victims to be less than human, etc, the UN and failures of democracy in preventing war crimes and genocide, failures of democracy in USUK and European countries encouraging, participating and complicity in war crimes, etc.
Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green Party and parliamentary candidate for Waveney Valley spent the weekend talking to people affected by the flooding in Eye, Suffolk. He said “The scenes and stories of flooding I’ve been seeing and hearing from Suffolk and Norfolk residents have been deeply shocking. This is not the first time East Anglia has been flooded, and it certainly won’t be the last. Climate change experts are shouting from the rooftops that these so-called ‘once in a generation’ events will become increasingly frequent.”
“The Conservative government is letting us down badly. Not only are they not taking the issue of climate change seriously – reigning in on existing commitments – but they, and private water companies, are also failing appallingly when it comes to flood risk management. ”
“Before privatisation, public water bodies were responsible for flood defences. Now defences are at best piecemeal. This is another good reason to take our water industry back into public control.”
“We urgently need a long term and coordinated approach. This can only be achieved with a water industry focussed on investing in plugging leaks and protecting communities, not on syphoning off millions of pounds in dividends to shareholders. And rather than bulldozing planning laws, as Labour proposes, we need to reassess planning regulations which still allow for new buildings on flood plains.”
“It is clear we will need Green MPs in parliament after the next general election making the case for climate action and protecting communities.”
