Brazil: huge rise in Amazon destruction under Bolsonaro, figures show

Reuters. July 3, 2019

Deforestation in Brazil's portion of the Amazon rainforest rose more than 88% in June compared with the same month a year ago, the second consecutive month of rising forest destruction under the rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro.

According to data from Brazil's space agency, deforestation in the world's largest tropical rainforest totaled 920 sq km (355 sq miles).

The data showing the 88.4% deforestation increase is preliminary, but indicates the official annual figure, based on more detailed imaging and measured for the 12 months to the end of July, is well on track to surpass last year's figure.

In the first 11 months, deforestation has already reached 4,565 sq km (1,762 sq miles), a 15% increase over the same period in the previous year.

Environmentalists have warned that Bolsonaro's strong support for development in the Amazon and criticism of the country's environmental enforcement agency for handing out too many fines would embolden loggers and ranchers seeking to profit from deforestation.

"Bolsonaro has aggravated the situation," said Paulo Barreto, a researcher at Brazilian non-governmental organization Imazon.

The surge in deforestation comes as Brazil faces more pressure to protect its environment under the terms of the free trade deal between the European Union and South American bloc Mercosur agreed to last week.

The rainy season through April appeared to have held off a spike in deforestation that subsequently came with the dry season starting in May.

Deforestation rose 34% in May compared with the same month a year ago.

Bolsonaro's office declined to comment, saying questions would be addressed by the environment ministry. "We are adopting all measures to combat illegal deforestation," said the environment minister, Ricardo Salles.

Brazil is home to 60% of the Amazon, which is the world's largest tropical rainforest and is seen as vital to the global fight against climate change.

While the final text of the EU-Mercosur deal has not been released, an outline from the EU states the agreement includes a provision that the Paris agreement on climate change must be effectively implemented along with other commitments to fight deforestation.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had warned last week before agreement on the deal that he would not sign off on it if Brazil leaves the Paris accord.

Paulo Adario, a Greenpeace forest strategist, said "all indications" were that deforestation will worsen under Bolsonaro, but he hoped news of a large increase would put pressure on the government to take action.

"When they have the final numbers, if it is really a lot, this will be a nightmare for Bolsonaro," Adario said. "This is something that is really important from an international and Brazilian point of view because the Amazon is an icon.

Stop building a spaceship to Mars and just plant some damn trees

By Jackie Flynn Mogensen on Jul 5, 2019

https://grist.org/article/stop-building-a-spaceship-to-mars-and-just-plant-some-damn-trees/

When it comes to climate change research, most studies bear bad news regarding the looming, very real threat of a warming planet and the resulting devastation that it will bring upon the Earth. But a new study, out Thursday in the journal Science, offers a sliver of hope for the world: A group of researchers based in Switzerland, Italy, and France found that expanding forests, which sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, could seriously make up for humans’ toxic carbon emissions.

In 2018, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s foremost authority on climate, estimated that we’d need to plant 1 billion hectares of forest by 2050 to keep the globe from warming a full 1.5 degrees Celsiusover pre-industrial levels. (One hectare is about twice the size of a football field.) Not only is that “undoubtedly achievable,” according to the study’s authors, but global tree restoration is “our most effective climate change solution to date.”

In fact, there’s space on the planet for an extra 900 million hectares of canopy cover, the researchers found, which translates to storage for a whopping 205 gigatons of carbon. To put that in perspective, humans emit about 10 gigatons of carbon from burning fossil fuels every year, according to Richard Houghton, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, who was not involved with the study. And overall, there are now about 850 gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere; a tree-planting effort on that scale could, in theory, cut carbon by about 25 percent, according to the authors.

In addition to that, Houghton says, trees are relatively cheap carbon consumers. As he put it, “There are technologies people are working on to take carbon dioxide out of the air. And trees do it — for nothing.”

To make this bold prediction, the researchers identified what tree cover looks like in nearly 80,000 half-hectare plots in existing forests. They then used that data to map how much canopy cover would be possible in other regions — excluding urban or agricultural land — depending on the area’s topography, climate, precipitation levels, and other environmental variables. The result revealed where trees might grow outside of existing forests.

“We know a single tree can capture a lot of carbon. What we don’t know is how many trees the planet can support,” says Jean-François Bastin, an ecologist and postdoc at ETH-Zürich, a university in Zürich, Switzerland, and the study’s lead author, adding, “This gives us an idea.”

They found that all that tree-planting potential isn’t spaced evenly across the globe. Six countries, in fact, hold more than half of the world’s area for potential tree restoration (in this order): Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and China. The United States alone has room for more than 100 million hectares of additional tree cover — greater than the size of Texas.

The study, however, has its limitations. For one, a global tree-planting effort is somewhat impractical. As the authors write, “it remains unclear what proportion of this land is public or privately owned, and so we cannot identify how much land is truly available for restoration.” Rob Jackson, who chairs the Earth System Science Department and Global Carbon Project at Stanford University and was not involved with the study, agrees that forest management plays an important role in the fight against climate change, but says the paper’s finding that humans could reduce atmospheric carbon by 25 percent by planting trees seemed “unrealistic,” and wondered what kinds of trees would be most effective or how forest restoration may disrupt agriculture.

“Forests and soils are the cheapest and fastest way to remove carbon from the atmosphere — lots of really good opportunities there,” he said. “I get uneasy when we start talking about managing billions of extra acres of land, with one goal in mind: to store carbon.” Bastin, though, says the study is “about respecting the natural ecosystem,” and not simply planting “100 percent tree cover.” He also clarified that planting trees alone cannot fix climate change. The problem is “related to the way we are living on the planet,” he says.

Caveats aside, Houghton sees the study as a useful exercise in what’s possible. “[The study] is setting the limits,” says Houghton. “It’s not telling us at all how to implement it. That what our leaders have to think about.”

MeRA25 as the only ray of hope on the day the recalcitrant Greek Right returned to office – Election Night message

Yanis Varoufakis

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2019/07/08/mera25-as-the-only-ray-of-hope-on-the-day-the-recalcitrant-greek-right-returned-to-office-election-night-message/

Greece’s Tories, the New Democracy party and its leader, Mr Kyriakos Mitsotakis, today are the victors in our general election. However, their victory that was set in motion on the night of the referendum (5th July 2015) by Mr Tsipras, the outgoing Prime Minister.

Lest we forget, it was immediately after the Greek people’s magnificent NO vote that Mr Tsipras invited the leaders of New Democracy and pro-austerity forces to help him convert the NO vote into a YES. Thus, a referendum that had the capacity to confine New Democracy to the dustbin of history was annulled and the people overthrown by an alliance of Mr Tsipras and New Democracy. Is it any wonder, once Mr Tripras passed every austerity measure and privatisation bill demanded of him by the troika with the implicit and explicit support of New Democracy, that New Democracy is back?

Today, on 7th July, the Greek people did what they have always done since their incarceration in our vast debtor’s prison: they overthrew a government that imposed a new troika bailout along with its poisonous preconditions. And so it is that another chapter of our debt bondage ends while another, darker one, is about to begin.

The only ray of hope in this bleak setting is the entry of MeRA25 into Parliament. DiEM25’s electoral wing in Greece was the pleasant surprise, entering Parliament with 9 MPs despite a total lack of funds and a sustained campaign of demonisation by the establishment and Mr Tsipras’ government.

Our commitment to the people of Greece, to the people of Europe is unwavering. We shall continue with a combination of constructive policy proposals and total disobedience to all those policies that hurt the many.

As of today, we embark upon a steadfast campaign against the most parasitic and cruel form of oligarchy that New Democracy will strive to erect upon the foundation of Mr Tsipras bailout agreement with the troika of Greece’s lenders.

Together with our comrades across Europe, and also as part of the Progressive International that DiEM25 co-founded, we shall fight both types of rising authoritarianism (that of the establishment and that of the racist ultra-Right), while connecting our resistance to the crucial campaign for a European and, indeed, an International Green New Deal.

Today, MeRA25’s share of the vote was a small number. But it was large enough to make a crucial difference – just like a small candle whose light is capable of penetrating the darkness.

Economists give insights on what’s next for the economic giant in the East

What to expect from China’s economy

By CHEN JIAHUI

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/what-to-expect-from-chinas-economy/

As frictions with the rest of the world pile up, China is actively turning to development of its domestic economy to find growth potential. Thanks to structural optimization, the economy is expected to expand. In the second half of the year, new and old structural components that curbed consumption will be eliminated. Tax cuts are expected to guide corporate profits and stabilize investment. While the total amount of real estate investment will decrease, its pressure on economic growth may end up being less than the market expects.

In terms of internal development, the Chinese economy is expected to hold the growth bottom line in external shock. Economic restructuring and upgrading will continue to progress. The dual-mainline of “big consumption & new economy” will be pushed to highlight the comparative advantage in the midst of trade conflicts, which will attract foreign capital to gradually return to the Chinese market.

In the first of this year, China’s economic trend fluctuated under external factors, which further highlighted the dependence of internal growth for the second half of the year. From a static standpoint, consumption, manufacturing and real estate investment don’t seem to have any shortage of problems. However, in a dynamic point of view, China’s economic endogenous growth does not lack solutions either. The downward pressure on the above three cores will not spiral out of control and will display resilience. In 2018, the total growth rate of total consumer retail sales is expected to reach 8.5% and the rate for fixed asset investment is expected to stay stagnant at 6.3%.

China’s consumption growth was less than expected in the first half of the year. From the beginning, residents’ rate of disposable income has remained stable while the growth rate of consumption spending per capita showed a downward trend with an expansion of the gap between the two.

The aforementioned phenomenon shows that the trend of consumption has not been hindered by external risks but is in the stage of structurally alternating between old and new. The old part is the traditional consumption of high-value goods such as automobiles. The new is the shift from high-end to mid-range consumer goods. The current supply structure and methods have not successfully matched this structural change, resulting in a rapid decline of the old power and the failure to realize the new potential. Consumer spending has passively transformed into a saving act.

The current lack of consumption growth is a structural thing and will improve once the structure collapses. In response to this problem, policy regulation in the second half of 2019 is expected to promote a rise in consumption growth. A new round of infrastructure development is expected to improve consumption of low-tier cities and towns. At the same time, the loss of old power should be avoided with strategies to subsidize large consumer goods, which will drive automobile sales out of the current drought.

Manufacturing investment is expected to stabilize gradually. Tax cuts and fee reductions have been implemented and will truly enter the dividend distribution period, which will stabilize corporate profits.

According to the calculations by China Chief Economist Forum, 51% of the 865.7 billion yuan generated by tax cuts will go to consumers and the remaining 49% will directly benefit the corporate sector. A dividend of 314.5 billion yuan will go to industrial enterprises. This is expected to have a positive impact of 4.7% on the year-on-year growth rate of industrial enterprises’ profits in 2019, slowing the downward trend of corporate profits.

No need for pessimism

There is no need for pessimism in the real-estate sector. The tightening of housing policies in 2018 gave way to high turnover strategies to accelerate the return of funds. The gradual withdrawal of the high-turnover strategy gradually produced downward pressure on the real estate investment market. On paper, it may seem to be a worrying risk but its real effect on economic growth is projected to be lower than market expectations.

In the second half of the year, the biggest uncertainty is still Sino-US trade frictions. Trade talks have resumed since the G20 meeting and the current round of trade negotiations will transition into a long game. The US economy will enter a cycle inflexion point in 2019, meaning the US economy will be unable to bear an extreme escalation of the trade conflicts.

Any extension of the global trade conflicts will exert external pressure on the Chinese economy but the change in global policies has also given China a new space for economic policies internally.

Fiscal policies have replaced monetary policies, becoming the new protagonists of countercyclical regulation. The remaining special debt quotas will be used and other debt types are expected to enter the policy menu to further strengthen the role of infrastructure in the economy. The social safety net is expected to improve in the second half of the year as well.

Due to the high probability of the US Federal Reserve cutting interest rates in the second half, China will follow suit as well. The People’s Bank of China is expected to lower interest rates of OMO and MLF in a timely manner but the possibility of lowering the benchmark interest rate for deposits and loans remains small. The current dual goals of “steady growth” and “promoting reform” will be taken into account. RRR will be reduced depending on the situation as well. As a result of these policies, the M2 growth rate and other indicators are expected to moderately rebound in the remaining six months.

At a time when global recovery is weak, the comparative advantage of China’s economic growth is expected to be highlighted further. The continued expansion of financial openness international capital will gradually return to the Chinese market in the form of first-receiving assets and post-equity assets in the second half of 2019.

This article was first written by Cheng Shi and Qian Zhijun from the China Chief Economist Forum before being published on ATimesCN.com and translated by Kamaran Malik.

Nakba Day: Palestinians mark the expulsion from homeland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQQG2qUz-IQ

Institute for New Economic Thinking: A Brief History of Doom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytSeKoYRfyI&feature=youtu.be

Bernie Sanders vs Elizabeth Warren

ELIZABETH WARREN IS NOT PROGRESSIVE. 

SHE SAID LAST YEAR THAT SHE IS "CAPITALIST TO HER BONES."












https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9u0-1DLWmg