Tuesday, November 5, 2019
The world is getting wetter, yet water may become less available for North America and Eurasia
Plants will demand more water
in the future making less water available for people
November 4, 2019
Dartmouth College
With climate change, plants of
the future will consume more water than in the present day, leading to less
water available for people living in North America and Eurasia, according to a
new study. The research suggests a drier future despite anticipated precipitation
increases for places like the United States and Europe, populous regions
already facing water stresses.
With climate change, plants of
the future will consume more water than in the present day, leading to less
water available for people living in North America and Eurasia, according to a
Dartmouth-led study in Nature Geoscience. The research suggests a drier
future despite anticipated precipitation increases for places like the United
States and Europe, populous regions already facing water stresses.
The study challenges an
expectation in climate science that plants will make the world wetter in the
future. Scientists have long thought that as carbon dioxide concentrations
increase in the atmosphere, plants will reduce their water consumption, leaving
more freshwater available in our soils and streams. This is because as more
carbon dioxide accumulates in our atmosphere plants can photosynthesize the
same amount while partly closing the pores (stomata) on their leaves. Closed
stomata means less plant water loss to the atmosphere, increasing water in the land.
The new findings reveal that this story of plants making the land wetter is
limited to the tropics and the extremely high latitudes, where freshwater
availability is already high and competing demands on it are low. For much of
the mid-latitudes, the study finds, projected plant responses to climate change
will not make the land wetter but drier, which has massive implications for
millions of people.
"Approximately 60 percent
of the global water flux from the land to the atmosphere goes through plants, called
transpiration. Plants are like the atmosphere's straw, dominating how water
flows from the land to the atmosphere. So vegetation is a massive determinant
of what water is left on land for people," explained lead author Justin S.
Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth and adjunct research
scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. "The
question we're asking here is, how do the combined effects of carbon dioxide
and warming change the size of that straw?"
Using climate models, the
study examines how freshwater availability may be affected by projected changes
in the way precipitation is divided among plants, rivers and soils. For the
study, the research team used a novel accounting of this precipitation partitioning,
developed earlier by Mankin and colleagues to calculate the future runoff loss
to future vegetation in a warmer, carbon dioxide-enriched climate.
The new study's findings
revealed how the interaction of three key effects of climate change's impacts
on plants will reduce regional freshwater availability. First, as carbon
dioxide increases in the atmosphere, plants require less water to
photosynthesize, wetting the land. Yet, second, as the planet warms, growing
seasons become longer and warmer: plants have more time to grow and consume
water, drying the land. Finally, as carbon dioxide concentrations increase,
plants are likely to grow more, as photosynthesis becomes amplified. For some
regions, these latter two impacts, extended growing seasons and amplified
photosynthesis, will outpace the closing stomata, meaning more vegetation will
consume more water for a longer amount of time, drying the land. As a result,
for much of the mid-latitudes, plants will leave less water in soils and
streams, even if there is additional rainfall and vegetation is more efficient
with its water usage. The result also underscores the importance of improving
how climate models represent ecosystems and their response to climate change.
The world relies on freshwater
for human consumption, agriculture, hydropower, and industry. Yet, for many
places, there's a fundamental disconnect between when precipitation falls and
when people use this water, as is the case with California, which gets more
than half of its precipitation in the winter, but peak demands are in the
summer. "Throughout the world, we engineer solutions to move water from
point A to point B to overcome this spatiotemporal disconnect between water
supply and its demand. Allocating water is politically contentious,
capital-intensive and requires really long-term planning, all of which affects
some of the most vulnerable populations. Our research shows that we can't
expect plants to be a universal panacea for future water availability. So,
being able to assess clearly where and why we should anticipate water
availability changes to occur in the future is crucial to ensuring that we can
be prepared," added Mankin.
Researchers from
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Richard Seager, Jason
E. Smerdon, Benjamin I. Cook, who is also affiliated with NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, and A. Park Williams, contributed to this study.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Dartmouth College. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Justin S. Mankin, Richard
Seager, Jason E. Smerdon, Benjamin I. Cook & A. Park Williams. Mid-latitude
freshwater availability reduced by projected vegetation responses to climate
change. Nature Geoscience, 2019 DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0480-x
Elizabeth Warren unveils her “Medicare for All” electoral gimmick
By Kate Randall
5 November 2019
5 November 2019
Democratic presidential
candidate Elizabeth Warren released details of her “Medicare for All” plan on
Friday. The senator from Massachusetts has been pressed by her rivals for the
Democratic Party nomination to show how her plan would be financed without
increasing taxes on the middle class. Warren posted a lengthy explanation on
her campaign website, headlined “Ending the Stranglehold of Health Care Costs on
American Families.”
The plan is her version of the
Medicare for All Act, which she co-sponsored with Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont. The act would gradually do away with private insurance and end
employer-sponsored coverage. It would make the federal government the sole
insurer, creating what is called a “single payer” system.
Warren bases her plan’s cost
estimate on an analysis by the Urban Institute, which calculated that a plan
similar to Medicare for All would cost $59 trillion over a decade and require
$34 trillion in new federal spending. She says total costs could be held to $52
trillion and that $20.5 trillion in new funding would be necessary after other
savings are taken into account.
Warren’s plan has nothing in
common with socialism. It would not provide high-quality, universal health
care. The government would take on the role of insurer, but it would not do
away with private health care providers or the giant pharmaceutical industry.
It would not build or run new and upgraded facilities.
Medicare itself is a poorly
funded program that provides substandard care to seniors, who must purchase
supplemental coverage to subsidize office visits, prescriptions and other basic
medical needs. Medicare for All could be expected to be of even poorer quality.
Building on provisions of the
Affordable Care Act (ACA) implemented under the Obama administration, Warren’s
plan would seek to cut costs and ration care for the vast majority of
Americans. While the ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, forced individuals to
obtain insurance from a private insurer or pay a penalty, the insurer would now
be the government, which, at the behest of the ruling establishment and its
political representatives, would be under pressure to slash costs on the backs
of the working families Warren claims to champion.
Warren’s Medicare for All
would be financed through a combination of tax increases and “savings” obtained
by means of cutbacks to health care provision.
The cost estimate for Warren’s
plan was carried out by Don Berwick, a former director of the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services under Obama, and Simon Johnson, the former chief
economist at the World Bank. Berwick was an advocate for the Independent
Payment Advisory Board, which was envisioned as a body to cut Medicare costs
and ration care under the ACA.
In the course of a decade,
Warren’s Medicare for All would achieve savings on the following basis:
• Private insurers currently
consume about 12.2 percent for “administrative costs” and profits. Warren
assumes this would fall to 2.3 percent, saving $1.8 trillion.
• Warren proposes cutting
payment rates for brand-name drugs by 70 percent, saving $1.5 trillion.
• All physicians would be paid
at current Medicare rates, and hospitals would be paid at 110 percent of that
rate, saving an estimated $600 billion.
• ACA-era payment “reforms”
would be implemented across the single-payer system, moving away from
fee-for-service. This would save an estimated $2 trillion.
• $1.1 trillion could be saved
by holding health spending growth to 3.9 percent over the next decade.
Additional funding would be
generated by raising taxes, including:
• A financial transactions tax
of 0.1 percent of the value of every stock, bond or derivatives transaction,
raising $800 billion.
• A 35 percent minimum tax on
foreign earnings, bringing in $2.9 trillion.
• A 6 percent wealth tax on
assets over $1 billion, generating $1 trillion.
• Taxing capital gains for the
top 1 percent at the same rate as normal income, and doing so annually, would
raise $2 trillion.
Another major source of
revenue would result from private employers paying to the government the $9
trillion they would have spent on private health insurance for their employees.
There are many other
convoluted details, but it is the proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy that
have generated outrage on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms. The ruling
elite is hostile to any infringement, however minimal, on its ability to
accumulate wealth at the expense of the working class. It will not willingly
relinquish any portion of its wealth. Nor will private insurance companies
voluntarily close up shop, or the pharmaceutical companies accept a cut in their
profits.
An editorial in the Wall
Street Journal, after bemoaning Warren’s plan to “raise the corporate tax rate
back to 35 percent from 2 percent and extend it to income earned worldwide with
no deferrals for foreign taxes,” claims that the scheme “doubles down on her
plans to soak the rich, assuming there are any left after her other tax
proposals.”
Similarly, the New York
Times notes in an article on Warren’s gains in the Democratic race for the
presidential nomination, “From corporate boardrooms to breakfast meetings,
investor conferences to charity galas, Ms. Warren’s rise in the Democratic
primary rolls is rattling bankers, investors and their affluent clients, who
see in the Massachusetts senator a formidable opponent who could damage not
only their industry but their way of life ” [emphasis added].
Warren’s Medicare for All plan
and railing against the corporate elite have also generated opposition from her
fellow candidates and other Democratic Party figures. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi told Bloomberg Friday, “I’m not a big fan of Medicare for All,” adding,
“It’s expensive.” She said, “There is a comfort level that some people have
with their current private insurance.”
Pelosi is well aware that the
private insurance industry is reviled by the majority of the American
population, and that medical bills are a leading cause of personal bankruptcy.
Skyrocketing premiums, deductibles and co-pays are causing people to forgo
medical care, posing grave risks to health and premature death. It is this growing
opposition in the working class to social inequality and the bloated profits of
the rich that strikes fear in the hearts of Pelosi, Warren’s fellow candidates,
and Warren herself.
Elizabeth Warren and her
various plans to supposedly cut taxes, improve health care, and tackle student
debt do not pose a challenge to the ruling elite. She is a highly conscious and
self-declared advocate of the capitalist market economy—“a capitalist to the
bone,” as she told one interviewer—and an opponent of socialism.
She is a solid member of the
top 1 percent, with an adjusted gross combined income with her Harvard Law
School professor husband of $846,394. She espouses economic nationalism and
embraces the national security doctrine outlined by the Pentagon, in which great
power competition with China and Russia has displaced terrorism as the
principal concern of US imperialism.
Warren’s claim that she will
impose tax increases to improve health care for ordinary Americans is a fraud.
She and her fellow Democrats are well aware that her Medicare for All plan has
no chance of being passed by either big business party or signed into law by
any president.
Her hope is that such
proposals will appeal to working class voters and hoodwink them into believing
that she and the Democratic Party represent a genuine alternative to the Trump
administration’s policies.
The reality is that a
genuinely progressive and democratic overhaul of the health care system in
America requires a revolutionary socialist policy, which expropriates the
private health care industry—the insurers, drug companies and giant health care
chains—along with the banks and the parasitic financial industry, and places
health care under the control of a democratically elected workers government as
a social right. Anything short of a revolutionary solution is an empty promise
and deception.
Britain: the Corbyn surge begins – we can win!
This general election is going
to mark a fundamental turning-point in Britain. It will have colossal
ramifications internationally.
The political ground has begun
to shift as a result of Corbyn taking Labour’s election campaign out into the
country, raising the class issues and attacking capitalism.
A recent YouGov survey
for The Sunday Times found that Labour gained six points within a
matter of days into the campaign, slashing the Tory lead. The Liberal Democrats
slipped three points, demonstrating the sharp polarisation that is taking
place. And this is just the beginning.
It is clear that people are
beginning to see the election contest as one between Boris Johnson, the
Eton-educated multi-millionaire, and Jeremy Corbyn, who stands for a radical
left-wing programme.
The people vs the billionaires
Labour has hit the ground
running, correctly denouncing Johnson’s hidden plans to hand the NHS over to
the clutches of American pharmaceutical corporations.
Corbyn has highlighted the
staggering wealth of the super rich, with the top 10 percent of people owning
44 percent of the wealth. The giant corporations are getting away with murder,
with the likes of Amazon paying only £220m tax on £10.9bn profits last year.
At Labour’s campaign launch
meeting, Corbyn attacked the billionaires and promised that a Labour government
would go after the wealthy elite who exploit a “rigged system” to amass their
fortunes.
This has a big impact. Britain
has around 150 billionaires – 0.0002 percent of the population – who flaunt
their wealth and ill-gotten gains. Meanwhile, 14 million people live in
poverty.
These billionaires have
amassed their wealth and power by waging a relentless class war against working
people.
We have the example of Jim
Ratcliffe, Britain’s third-richest man, who is worth £18bn as head of Ineos –
the petrochemicals group that employs 17,000 people. He has slashed the wages
of his workforce, cut holidays, and driven down conditions to boost his
profits.
Or take Mike Ashley, the owner
of the Sports Direct empire, which employs almost 30,000 people. Ashley’s
employees are subjected to Victorian conditions in his warehouses, all to boost
his obscene wealth.
Even if they didn’t spend a
penny of their wages, it would take the average British worker more than 40,000
years to become a billionaire. This period is equivalent to the entire
existence of Homo sapiens in Britain.
Boris Johnson has tried to
frame this election as “Parliament vs People”. But Labour has correctly
responded by posing it as a contest of the “people vs the billionaire elite”.
The spectre of Blairism
A sneering Tony Blair recently
lamented the demise of the “middle ground”, arguing for “tactical voting” (i.e.
not voting Labour). He shows his true Tory colours when he says “Parliament
would be worse without the Conservative independents”.
Blair goes on to say that
Labour’s attack on poor old “dodgy landlords”, “billionaires” and a “corrupt
system” is “textbook populism”. This snake in the grass then continues, saying
that: “It is no more acceptable in the mouth of someone who calls themselves
leftwing than in the mouth of Donald Trump’s right.”
This is rich coming from the
mouth of a multi-millionaire, warmonger, and poodle of US imperialism.
It is only with radical
policies – aimed against what Blair cynically describes as the “pantomime
villains of capitalism” – that Labour can win the election.
Tory campaign stalls
Ironically, this has been made
easier by the decision of Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party to fight all the
seats in this election. This will take more votes away from the Tories than
Labour, handing victory to Labour in many seats. In fact, Labour estimates that
it could gain an extra 40 seats as a result. This has provoked panic in the
Johnson camp.
With the Brexit Party entering
the fray, the road to Number 10 is narrowing by the hour for Boris Johnson.
Furthermore, after ten years of Tory austerity, people are very wary of voting
Conservative, despite Johnson’s bluff and bluster.
This will certainly cut across
Tory hopes of winning Labour seats in the North, Midlands and Wales. No matter
how much they promise to increase spending, it all sounds rather hollow after
years of Tory cuts.
Tory strategists can see that
their tactic of running a “parliament versus people” campaign has already
largely flopped. “Getting Brexit done” is also wearing thin as a slogan.
For these reasons, Johnson
could end up having the most short-lived tenure of Downing Street in history.
Preparing for power
We can envisage a repeat of
the 2017 election. At this point two years ago, Labour was 24 points behind the
Tories. But by polling day Labour had gained 30 seats, almost gaining the keys
to Number 10.
Labour is starting from a much
better position this time round. Hundreds of thousands of people – particularly
young people – have registered to vote. Corbyn is likely once again to
overwhelmingly win the youth vote.
Given all this, Corbyn could
easily be propelled into power. Even if Labour does not win an outright
majority, it could still be the biggest party in Parliament. The SNP, who are
likely to take a big majority of seats in Scotland, would support a Labour
government from the outside. And Swinson, who hates Corbyn, will nevertheless
have great difficulty in supporting a Johnson Tory government. Corbyn would
therefore still become prime minister.
Of course, Labour could gain
enough seats to not have to rely on the support of other parties. That would be
the best option. Whatever the outcome, Labour must not enter into any
coalitions or pacts. Instead, it should stand by its promises, challenging the
other parties to vote against the radical and popular demands on offer.
We can’t take things for
granted. There are weeks to go before the polls close. The political situation
is very volatile. We must still mobilise and fight for every vote.
Big business sabotage
A Corbyn Labour government
will be faced by many obstacles – including from the Fifth Column of Blairites
in the Parliamentary Labour Party. These Tories in disguise will attempt to
sabotage all attempts to carry out radical policies.
In the words of Tony Blair:
“There is a core of good Labour MPs who will not be whipped into supporting policy
they do not believe in.” They will act as the reliable representatives of big
business. When the time comes, they will stab Corbyn in the back.
The bosses and bankers will
also attempt to undermine the government in every way they can. They not only fear
Corbyn, but also the millions of workers behind him, desperate for real change.
They fear that a Labour government will be pushed even further than it intends.
And they are right.
“I want you to know,” stated
John McDonnell to Labour conference last year, “that the greater the mess we
inherit, the more radical we have to be.”
Well, Britain has been ravaged
by a decade of capitalist crisis and Tory austerity. No amount of tinkering is
going to turn this around. Only a bold programme of socialist policies can
offer a way out of this great mess.
For a socialist Labour
government!
Furthermore, the whole world
economy – including Britain – is facing a new slump. Mervyn King, the former
head of the Bank of England, when addressing a recent meeting of the IMF,
stated that we are “sleepwalking with our eyes closed into another crisis”.
King warned that we are facing
a new “financial Armageddon”. And he should know – after all, he was at the
helm when the bankers “sleepwalked” into the 2008 crash.
Such a catastrophe can only be
solved by clear socialist measures. Labour will need to take control of the
economy out of the hands of the billionaires. This means taking over the
commanding heights of the economy, the banks, finance houses, the land, and
giant monopolies, all under workers’ control and management.
A Corbyn government will have
to mobilise the working class in response to the sabotage of big business, in
order to carry through the socialist transformation of society. That is the
only answer to the crisis of capitalism.
Only in this way can Labour
carry through its programme and radically transform the lives of the majority
in Britain. This is what we must fight for.
Map of CO2 emissions per capita by country
November 5, 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_emissions_per_capita,_2017_(Our_World_in_Data)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_emissions_per_capita,_2017_(Our_World_in_Data)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)