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.”
Trauma surgeons treat an injured man after Israeli bombardment, at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 21, 2023 (Photo: Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)
Fresh demands for a major increase in humanitarian aid and an end to the bombing came as Gaza’s only cancer hospital shut down due to a lack of fuel.
As the World Health Organization warns of an “imminent public health catastrophe” in Gaza amid Israeli attacks on medical workers and infrastructure, doctors and other frontline medics said Wednesday that only an immediate cease-fire would give them a fighting chance to save countless lives.
Responding Wednesday to the shutdown of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital—Gaza’s only cancer treatment center—due to lack of fuel and damage from Israeli airstrikes, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “no words can describe our concern for the patients who have just lost the only possibility to receive lifesaving cancer treatment or palliative care.”
Tedros added: “I urge and I plead—for full medical and fuel aid access NOW! The more we wait, the more we put these fragile lives at risk.”
The WHO chief’s plea came a day after Christian Lindmeier, a spokesperson for the Geneva-based United Nations agency, warned that “an imminent public health catastrophe… looms with the mass displacement, the overcrowding, the damage to water and sanitation infrastructure.”
Meanwhile, James Elder, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said Tuesday that “child deaths due to dehydration, particularly infant deaths due to dehydration, are a growing threat.”
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called Gaza a “graveyard” for children, more than 3,600 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombardment, with another 1,000 minors reported missing, according to Palestinian and other officials.
Israeli forces have attacked numerous hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and medical workers, including the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital and al-Hilu Hospital. The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that the bombardment that damaged al-Hilu “endangers the lives of women in the maternity wards and medical staff.”
According to an “urgent call for protecting healthcare workers in Gaza” published Tuesday in the British medical journal The Lancet, Israeli forces have attacked 57 medical facilities since launching the war on Gaza on October 7, killing 73 workers—including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and others—as of October 24. Sixteen of the medical personnel were killed while on duty.
We spoke with @GhassanAbuSitt1, a doctor who is operating inside Gaza – he's fearful of what is to come if fuel runs out in hospitals.
As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza exacts a heavy toll on overwhelmed medical workers and infrastructure in the besieged strip, frontline medics like Dr. Noureddein al-Khateeb—a 38-year-old resident doctor in the emergency department at the Nasser Medical Center in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis—say they are living “in a constant state of threat and fear.”
“It’s constant fear on top of the exhaustion we’re experiencing,” al-Khateeb toldThe New Humanitarian on Wednesday. “But one shouldn’t think of that too much. I can’t. If I do, I won’t get any work done.”
Al-Khateeb added that “we’re also afraid for our families’ safety, but what can we do?”
Inside Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, healthcare workers suffer trauma, burnout, and loss Medical staff must wrestle with the fear of not knowing if it will be their own loved-ones who are the next victims of Israeli airstrikes. https://t.co/PkxItCBDNl
Dr. Mohamed Abu Mousa, a radiologist at Nasser, said one of the few trips he’s made outside the hospital since Israeli bombardment began was to bury his 7-year-old son after he was killed in an October 15 Israeli airstrike on their family home.
“We don’t have the luxury of pausing to grieve,” he told The New Humanitarian. “The heartache is immense, but the wounded are endless. We have to keep going.”
Conditions are dire inside Gaza’s hospitals, which are running out of or low on fuel, medicines, equipment, and other essential services and supplies.
“We’re operating on children without anesthetics,” Léo Cans, who heads the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) mission in Palestine, toldCNN Tuesday. “We don’t have morphine for them.”
"Doctors are distressed. They are calling us crying…by the horror they are seeing…This has to stop. We're operating on children without anesthetics. We don't have morphine for them."
On Wednesday, MSF international president Dr. Christos Christou said in a video published on social media that “we’ve seen and heard the stories of the hell being unleashed on Gaza” as “helpless people are being subjected to horrific bombing” and “families have nowhere to run or hide.”
Christou continued:
So many people need help. What medical staff can do is just a drop in the ocean compared to the immense needs. Our teams working in Gaza are exhausted and terrified. Our staff tell us that pregnant women can’t get to hospitals to deliver. People are stuck under the rubble of shelled-out buildings. Children are having limbs amputated while lying on the floor.
“An immediate cease-fire is the only way the people of Gaza can find safety and the essential aid they urgently need,” Christou asserted. “The bombing, the all-out assault, needs to stop now… As a human being, I beg—stop the bombing and allow people in Gaza to live.”
The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday afternoon that at least 8,796 Palestinians—including nearly 2,300 women and over 3,600 children—have been killed in Israeli attacks, while around 23,000 other people have been injured.
People in Gaza City begin moving to the south following an Israeli military evacuation order on October 13, 2023. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Israeli military on Friday ordered the entire population of northern Gaza—roughly 1.1 million people—to evacuate to the southern half of the occupied territory within 24 hours, prompting fears of an even worse humanitarian catastrophe as Israel readies a ground invasion and continues its disastrous bombing campaign.
The order, initially issued to the United Nations, impacts nearly half of Gaza’s population and comes after hundreds of thousands of the enclave’s residents were already displaced by Israeli airstrikes, which have killed more than 1,500 people.
U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement that the organization “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
Dujarric added that the order must be “rescinded” to avert “a calamitous situation.”
News of Israel’s directive sparked alarm and confusion on the ground in northern Gaza, which includes densely populated Gaza City—home to the territory’s primary hospital.
Al Jazeera reported that one of its journalists in Gaza City “saw residents packing up whatever belongings they could as they began evacuating towards the south in cars, vans, and any other vehicle that was available.”
“In northern Gaza, residents early in the morning of Friday said the streets were empty as people stayed inside their homes trying to decide what to do next following Israel’s evacuation orders,” the outlet noted. “There were no cars on the road except for ambulances. Because of the internet outages and collapse of phone networks, Palestinians said information was scant and most still had not heard direct orders from the army to evacuate.”
“We fear that Israel may claim that Palestinians who could not flee northern Gaza can be erroneously held as directly participating in hostilities, and targeted.”
Aid groups and human rights organizations expressed horror in response to the Israeli military’s evacuation order, which observers warned is a prelude to “mass atrocities.”
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said that without “any guarantees of safety or return,” the order “would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer.”
“The collective punishment of countless civilians, among them children, women, and the elderly, in retaliation for acts of horrible terror undertaken by armed men is illegal under international law,” said Egeland. “My colleagues inside Gaza confirm that there are countless people in the northern parts who have no means to safely relocate under the constant barrage of fire.”
“We fear that Israel may claim that Palestinians who could not flee northern Gaza can be erroneously held as directly participating in hostilities, and targeted,” Egeland continued. “The United States, the U.K., the European Union, and other Western and Arab nations who have influence over the Israeli political and military leadership must demand that the illegal and impossible order to relocate is immediately rescinded.”
B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said in response to the order that “a million people in northern Gaza are not guilty.”
“They have nowhere else to go,” the group added. “This is not what fighting Hamas looks like. This is revenge. And innocent people are being hurt.”
That's obviously impossible. Israel is preparing for mass atrocities. https://t.co/QKVpiuOQjA
The order was delivered amid warnings that Gaza’s healthcare system is on the verge of total collapse, overwhelmed by the influx of thousands of airstrike victims and hampered by Israel’s total blockade, which has cut off the enclave’s supply of electricity, food, fuel, and other necessary supplies.
Gaza’s lone power plant has stopped operating due to a lack of fuel, forcing already-strained hospitals to operate on generators. The International Planned Parenthood Federation said Friday that “over 37,000 pregnant women will be forced to give birth with no electricity or medical supplies in Gaza in the coming months, risking life-threatening complications without access to delivery and emergency obstetric care services.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that “time is running out to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe if fuel and lifesaving health and humanitarian supplies cannot be urgently delivered to the Gaza Strip amidst the complete blockade.”
“Hospitals have only a few hours of electricity each day as they are forced to ration depleting fuel reserves and rely on generators to sustain the most critical functions,” the WHO said. “Even these functions will have to cease in a few days, when fuel stocks are due to run out. The impact would be devastating for the most vulnerable patients, including the injured who need lifesaving surgery, patients in intensive care units, and newborns depending on care in incubators.”
Despite such dire warnings, the U.S.—Israel’s largest supplier of weaponry and military aid—has thus far not called for a cease-fire or an end to the siege.
As The Associated Press reported Friday, “A visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with shipments of U.S. weapons, offered a powerful green light to Israel to drive ahead with its retaliation in Gaza after Hamas’ deadly attack on civilians and soldiers, even as international aid groups warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis.”
If we have not been warned of the dangers of climate change this summer, we never will be. Extreme heat, forest fires and floods have been all over news reports. Yet the oil and gas industry remains largely in denial.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) says steep cuts in oil and gas production are necessary to reach the Paris (COP 21) goal of keeping global warming at 1.5℃. However, only a tiny fraction of the industry, accounting for less than 5% of oil and gas output, has targets aligned with the IEA’s “net zero” requirements.
The current secretary general of production cartel Opec, Haitham al-Ghais, expects global oil demand to rise by about 10% to 110 million barrels a day by 2045, a volume incompatible with the Paris goals. The UK government has just offered a helping hand, granting around 100 new North Sea licences. What are we to make of this mismatch?
The new denialism
Typical of the new breed of climate denialism is a recent report by the Energy Policy Research Foundation (ERPF), a body funded by the US government and various undisclosed corporate interests and foundations. It sees the IEA’s requirements as a “seal of approval … to block investment in oil and gas production by western companies”. The report views meeting the targets as too costly, too harsh on poor countries and too bad for the energy security of the west.
In fact, it is wrong on each account. Many eminent economists and scientists use the concept of the social cost of carbon (SCC), which is defined as the cost to society of releasing an additional tonne of CO₂. Expert estimates from 2019 put this at between US$171 and US$310 (£133 to £241). If we go with, say, US$240 per tonne, the social cost of continued carbon equivalent emissions comes out at almost US$8.5 trillion every year.
A recent study has factored into the calculation climate feedback loops. This is where one problem caused by global warming leads to others, such as melting permafrost unleashing stores of methane.
When the study estimated the economic damage that this could cause, it produced an SCC in excess of US$5,000. That implies annual costs of more like US$170 trillion a year, which makes the US$4 trillion investment into clean energy that the IEA thinks necessary to meet the Paris climate goals look like a drop in the ocean.
It may help to break this down to one barrel of oil. A special IEA report for COP28 estimates that on average, each barrel of oil emits 0.53 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in greenhouse gas across its life cycle, 20% of which comes from production.
Going back to our average SSC per tonne of US$240, that points to a social cost of US$126 per barrel. With oil currently at US$85 per barrel, the societal damage from producing, transporting, refining and consuming it is far greater – and that’s before including climate feedbacks.
Meanwhile, the arguments by the EPRF and like-minded supporters about energy security are laughable. The history of the oil and gas industry is a history of wars and geopolitical tensions. Transitioning to cleaner fuels can only increase our energy security and reduce the need to police remote autocracies.
The argument that poor countries need to continue burning carbon for development reasons is no better. In its latest report from 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said climate change would probably see an increase in “losses and damages, strongly concentrated among the poorest vulnerable populations”.
Equally, the World Health Organization estimates that: “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.”
How to respond
The denialists offer no alternatives to cutting carbon emissions, and often simply ignore climate change altogether. The recent ERPF report mentions climate change only four times. It is as if heatwaves, forest fires, flooding, rising sea levels and the demise of natural habitat caused by climate inaction were happening on another planet.
We still have time to limit global warming below 1.5℃. It is true that we will need oil and gas for many years, and that there are currently no alternatives for certain sectors such as air travel, shipping and some industries. Nonetheless, there is still much that can be done now to make a substantial difference.
To incentivise the transition to cleaner energy, governments need to end fossil fuel subsidies, which the IMF estimates amounted to US$5.9 trillion in 2020 alone. We also need to put a proper price on carbon – only 40 countries have attempted this so far, and none has it anywhere near the estimated social cost of emitting carbon.
Countries that resist charging their own polluters should face a carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is a tariff that effectively puts the polluter on the same footing as local players. If all the actors in the fossil fuel supply chain had to face the cost of the damage they cause, the need to phase out long-term investments in fossil fuels would become more obvious.
The IEA requirements for “net zero” are just one of the pathways towards meeting the Paris goal of 1.5℃ warming. Others are explored by some of the more credible actors in the petroleum industry, such as Shell, BP and Norway’s Equinor, but all require a substantial decline in oil demand and production by 2050.
Required production cuts
I left the IEA’s scenario off the graph because it published so few datapoints, but it is broadly in line with the others. Meanwhile, the Opec data is for reference and not a net zero scenario. BP, Shell, Equinor and Opec
Instead of criticising efforts to slow climate change and sponsoring ridiculous reports calling for more fossil fuels, the oil industry should eliminate leakages, venting and flaring of methane, and electrify as many processes as possible using renewable power. It should also employ carbon capture, usage and storage technologies over the next ten years – yes this will increase the price of fossil fuels, but that is exactly what we need to make clean sources of energy competitive across the board and speed up the energy transition.
The sooner the industry starts facing up to the realities of climate change, the more chance it has to survive. The companies and even countries that produce fossil fuels will have to face and pay the cost for the damage they cause. Those costs are already massive and will grow. Those that survive will do so only as a provider of clean and sustainable energy.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
