For the first time, scientists have linked climate change to the mass migration flows that followed the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East a few years ago.

According to scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, water shortages and droughts contributed to the Arab Spring conflicts, particularly in Syria, which remains mired in a civil war.

“People started not being able to produce agricultural production, and that was the start of migration from the rural areas to urban areas, which were already quite crowded. And the resources in the urban areas were also scarce. So with that kind of tension, fighting for limited resources, and on top is the ethnic polarization in Syria. So, it’s sort of all that combination,” said Raya Muttarak, of the University of East Anglia in Britain. She co-authored a report on the subject.

The researchers used United Nations’ data on asylum applications and conflict-related deaths. They combined this with data on drought and rainfall, plus other variables like population size and measures of democracy and ethnic diversity. All the figures were combined in a mathematical model. 

“So, let’s look at how climate affects the probability of conflict. And once we estimate that we use the number that we got from that to estimate the next step. So, the countries that experience conflict from climate variation — are they likely to send out the refugee flows or not?” explained Muttarak.

She said that climate change would not cause conflict and subsequent asylum-seeking flows everywhere.

“The effect of climate on migration, through conflict, is quite specific to certain time periods and to certain countries. So, climate-induced conflict, it’s a bit more likely in a country with a medium level of democracy.”

The results of this study are specific to the western Asia region. However, researchers say they hope the study will contribute to the global debate on how migration flows will be affected by increasingly severe climate change.
…

The mass migration flows that followed the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East were partly caused by climate change, according to new research. Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria say that in certain circumstances, climate conditions can lead to conflict, which drives increased migration. Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

A Tuesday tweet from a U.S. government scientific agency seems relatively innocuous: “Winter storms do not prove global warming is not happening.”

The message from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is devoted to climate science and information, includes a link citing research that severe snowstorms may be even more likely in a warming global climate because higher ocean temperatures appear to create more moisture.

Many are viewing Tuesday’s post as a rebuttal to President Trump’s tweet late Monday noting an approaching deep freeze for the American Midwest and asking “What the hell is going on with Global Waming (sic). Please come back fast, we need you.”

A polar vortex has returned this week to the Midwest bringing extremely low temperatures that could break records.

NOAA denies any connection between the president’s comment and its social media posting.

 

“We routinely put this story out at these times,” the agency said in a statement. “Our scientists weren’t responding to a tweet.”

Most scientists say there is little valid research to counter the prevailing view climate change is real and note research also demonstrates that with global warming there will be more frequently extreme temperatures at both ends of the thermometer.

 

With a forecast of icy roads around the nation’s capital, one item of unanimous consent throughout the Trump administration Tuesday is non-emergency federal workers – just two days back on the job after a record-long shutdown – could leave early because of the weather.

 

“Employees of Federal offices in the Washington, D.C., area are authorized for early departure,” according to a notice from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. “Employees should depart 2 hours earlier than their normal departure times and may request unscheduled leave to depart prior to their staggered departure times.”

 

The notification is intended, in part, to alleviate congestion on streets that could soon become hazardous.

 

The ability of a mere dusting of snow or sheets of ice on roadways and sidewalks to create pandemonium in the U.S. center of power frequently puzzles those who have migrated to this part of the country from harsher winter climates.

 

A January 2016 snowstorm paralyzed the region, although only 2.5 centimeters of snow fell on Washington, D.C. roadways. There were hundreds of traffic accidents and many motorists abandoned their vehicles on highways after untreated roads became impassible with black ice.

 

The mess and lack of preparedness prompted a public apology by the mayor of Washington, D.C.

Muriel Bowser was taking no such chances on Tuesday, three years after the so-called Snowzilla (not to be confused with the area’s December 2009 Snowpocalypse).

 

Mayor Bowser, on Tuesday announced she had requested an additional $1 million from the city’s contingency fund “to cover higher costs than anticipated for salt/de-icing as a result of Winter Storm Gia.”

The city also issued a hypothermia alert, which will keep shelters open during daylight hours so the estimated 7,000 homeless people in Washington will have a warm and safe place to stay.

 

A member of Congress from Utah, as government employees began packing up early in the afternoon, on Tuesday threw his own virtual snowball at the threat of another approaching winter storm appearing to panic politicians, bureaucrats and lobbyists inside the Beltway.

 

“People in DC love to show how tough they are and call their opponents ‘snowflake,’” wrote Congressman Ben McAdams on Twitter. “Unless the weather forecast includes snowflakes, and then they cancel meetings, leave work early and buy all of the bottled water at the grocery store. Snowflakes.” He then tossed a promotional hashtag for a top winter recreational activity in his state that includes the Wasatch Mountain range: #SkiUtah.
…

South Africa’s coal mining heartland has the worst air quality in the world, according to a recent study by environmental group Greenpeace. The 12 large coal mines in this area make it the world’s hotspot for toxic nitrogen dioxide emissions. Residents and health experts say the effects are ruining their health and their lives.

Patrick Mdluli, 35,  considered himself healthy until he moved two years ago to Mpumalanga province – South Africa’s coal mining heartland.

He developed breathing problems, including tuberculosis and nasal issues.

“The mines, the dust, pollution — you go to doctors, they tell you the very same thing. ‘Are you living next to a mine?’ Yes, I am. ‘Are you living next to a dumping site?’ Yes, I am,” said Mdluli.

A large coal mine operates, literally, in Mdluli’s backyard.

The mine has conducted blasts every day, shaking his small home to its foundation and causing a large crack in the wall. 

 

This sunny swath of South Africa last year earned the unfortunate distinction of having the world’s worst air quality, says the environmental group Greenpeace.

 

And it shows, said the head of one of Middelburg’s main clinics, Dr. Mohammed Tayob.  

 

Tayob has lived in the area his entire life and says the emissions from the mines have made many of his patients sick.  

 

“Children and adults are paying the ultimate price. When we say ultimate price, it’s the neurocognitive, loss of neurocognitive development, children’s infant mortality rate is higher in our area than other areas, adults, heart attacks and respiratory diseases are much higher. So people are paying with their lives, across the board, because of these pollutants in the air,” he said.

 

Tayob blames the coal mining industry and poor governance. 

 

Although mines are big money, locals say the coal companies have done little to improve the community.  

 

Middelburg is poor and many people lack basic services like electricity and running water. 

 

Tayob said the government is also failing to enforce environmental laws and crack down on the mines.  

 

“One cannot be faulted in thinking, ‘Is there some level of corruption operating in this area as well, where these big boys are getting away with murder, literally?’ They’re literally getting away with murder. It’s just the reality. I’d like someone to come up and dispute this fact and challenge me on that,” he said.

 

VOA contacted three of the larger mines in the area for comment. None of them responded to our request.

 

Environmental activist Bafana Hlatshwayo said he and other activists are preparing to lobby decision-makers at an upcoming mining industry gathering in Cape Town. 

 

They want the coal industry to shift to a cleaner resource: the region’s abundant sunshine.  

 

Bringing solar panel production to the area, said Hlatshwayo, would also create jobs.

 

“We are not saying we want to close down the mines…We must go the renewable energy way, we are saying, people will manufacture solar panels inside South Africa, and they are the ones who are supposed to install the solar panels and they are the ones who are supposed to maintain the solar panels,” he said.  

 

But that is a faraway dream for people like Mdluli and his neighbors, who complain unemployment is high and all of them – including the children – have health problems.

 

This province, said longtime resident and environmental activist William Jiyane, used to be beautiful.

 

“It’s endless agony, now, Mpumalanga. It’s not bread and butter anymore. It’s endless agony,” he said.

 

South Africa is the continent’s largest coal producer and relies on coal to power much of the economy.  

 

But for the poor communities that live in the shadow of coal mines – it just makes them sick.
…

The U.N. Children’s Fund is launching its largest-ever appeal for $3.9 billion in life-saving assistance for 73 million people, including 41 million children affected by conflict, natural disasters and other emergencies in 59 countries. 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  The U.N. Children’s Fund says 2019 also marks a year of heightened conflict, with more countries at war than at any time in the past three decades.

Among the greatest victims are more than 34 million children affected by conflict or disaster.  UNICEF says they are suffering horrific levels of violence, deprivation and trauma with little access to protection and life-saving assistance.

UNICEF Director of Emergency Operations Manuel Fontaine says 88 percent of this year’s appeal is for humanitarian crises driven by conflict.  He says the single biggest operation is to help Syrian refugees, the largest displacement crisis in the world, and the host communities in five neighboring countries of asylum.

“The 2nd largest appeal is for Yemen, which over the past year has seen conditions, unfortunately, that were already catastrophic for children get even worse, if that is possible” Fontaine said. “Eight out of 10 children, which is over 11 million, now require humanitarian assistance in Yemen.” 

UNICEF’s biggest operations traditionally have been in Africa.  But this year the Democratic Republic of Congo places third, followed by Syria and South Sudan.

Fontaine says Africa unfortunately is the continent with the biggest gap in funding.  He tells VOA African countries are not getting the attention they need, and that has serious consequences for humanitarian operations.

“In a country like Cameroon, which is one of the countries for which we have concerns, particularly in northwest and southwest region at the moment.  We had aimed to immunize 61,000 children against measles and because of lack of resources, we could only immunize a bit more than 2,000,” Fontaine said. “So, obviously, we are far behind what we need to do.” 

Fontaine says UNICEF has had to drastically cut back services for gender-based violence in Central African Republic because it only has received 36 percent of the money it needs.  In all cases, he says funding shortfalls have very direct implications on the lives of children and women.
…

As rescuers in Brazil search for survivors of a dam collapse, questions abound about the health and environmental risks of the thick, brown, metal-laden mine waste that flowed over buildings. The accident comes after the United Nations and others warned that dam failures in the mining industry are becoming increasingly catastrophic because the structures are growing larger and more numerous around the globe.

A look at some of the hazards:

 

What Are Mine Tailings and How Are They Stored?

 

Mine tailings are large volumes of waste rock and other material left behind after companies dig up mineral-bearing ore and run it through mechanical and chemical processes to remove the most valuable components. The tailings are disposed of in ponds or other “impoundments,” often in a mud-like mixture of water and rock known as slurry.

 

A single large mine can produce hundreds of thousands of tons of tailings each day that are typically pumped into a massive holding area behind a dam, where the waste can remain for decades. Tailings piles can be dry enough on the surface to allow people to walk on them, but the inside is often wet, with a jelly-like consistency. A breach can release a runny, muddy material.

 

In Friday’s disaster in Brumadinho, Brazil, the dam that failed was 282 feet (86 meters) high and held more than 400 million cubic feet (11.7 million cubic meters) of waste material, according to its owner, Brazilian-mining company Vale.

 

Are the Tailings Toxic?

 

The composition of tailings varies from mine to mine, with some containing radioactive material, heavy metals and even cyanide, which is used in silver and gold extraction.

 

Vale representatives have insisted that the slow-moving mud spreading down the Paraopeba River following Friday’s collapse is composed mostly of silica, or sand, and is non-toxic. But environmental groups contend the iron ore mine waste contains high levels of iron oxide that could cause irreversible damage.

 

A similar disaster in 2015 at a Vale-operated mine in the same region of Brazil killed 19 people and released 78 million cubic feet (60 million cubic meters) of mud that polluted hundreds of miles of rivers and streams. In that case, a U.N. report found that the waste “contained high levels of toxic heavy metals.”

 

Beyond the chemical dangers, a huge rush of muddy water into a river system can have long-lasting environmental effects, plastering the riverbed with silt that kills fish and vegetation.

 

The 2015 accident in Samarco, Brazil, left 250,000 people without drinking water after downstream supply systems were tainted or otherwise disrupted by mud.

 

Another danger from a tailings dam breach is that the sudden release can overtop a river’s normal channel and deposit contaminants on normally dry land, said Ellen Wohl, a geology professor at Colorado State University.

 

Those contaminants can later wash back into the river, re-polluting the water, she said. The contaminants can also become airborne if floodwaters deposit them on the riverbank, where they can dry out and blow away, said Marco Kaltofen, who is also a nuclear and chemical engineering researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

 

How Often Do the Dams Fail and What Happens When They Do?

 

These types of dam failures are increasingly devastating because mines operate on a much larger scale than in the past, producing more tailings that require bigger dams.

 

There are an estimated 18,000 tailings dams worldwide, according to David Chambers with the Center for Science in Public Participation, which consults with government agencies and private groups on mining pollution issues.

 

A 2017 U.N report identified 40 significant dam failures over the prior decade — including in Canada, China, Brazil and Chile. A compilation of dam failures by Chambers and others tallied 435 people killed over the same time period.

 

“We can’t tell you where a failure is going to occur, but statistically we can tell you they are going to happen,” Chambers said.

 

What is Being Done to Prevent Tailings Dam Failures?

 

The dams can be threatened by earthquakes, undiscovered geologic faults and heavy rainstorms, and each of those threats has many unknowns, said Dermot Ross-Brown, a longtime mining consultant and a part-time professor at the Colorado School of Mines.

 

Mining companies use the best science and consultants they can find, he said. “It’s just that the problem is so big, and they have imperfect knowledge of what the geology is.”‘

 

Last year’s report from the U.N. recommended that governments and mining companies adopt a “zero-failure” goal for mining impoundments.

 

In 2016, in the wake of the Samarco spill, the International Council on Mining and Metals said instances of catastrophic mine waste impoundment failures were unacceptable. The organization issued new safety guidelines, and called on companies to use construction methods and operating practices that minimize the chances of accidents.

 

But the industry’s critics say such calls for reforms have yielded few changes and more dam failures are inevitable without stepped-up construction practices and inspection regimes. They say more also needs to be done to make sure that people are not living or working just downstream of the dams, where they are at the greatest risk in a failure.

 

“We have the technology and we have the expertise, and the mining industry frankly has fought making those changes,” said Payal Sampat with the U.S.-based environmental group Earthworks.
…

Food shocks, or sudden losses of crops, livestock or fish, due to the combination extreme weather conditions and geopolitical events like war, increased from 1961 to 2013, said researchers at The University of Tasmania in a report released Monday.

Researchers saw a steady increase in shock frequency over each decade with no declines.

The report, published in Nature Sustainability, said that protective measures are needed to avoid future disasters.

The authors studied 226 shocks across 134 countries over the last 53 years and, unlike previous reports, examined the connection between shocks and land-based agriculture and sea-based aquaculture.

“There seems to be this increasing trend in volatility,” said lead author Richard Cottrell, a PhD candidate in quantitative marine science at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “We do need to stop and think about this.”

Extreme weather events are expected to worsen over time because of climate change, the report said, and when countries already struggling to feed their populations experience conflict, the risk of mass-hunger increases.

The researchers found that about one quarter of food resources are accessed through trade, and many countries could not feed their populations without imports, making them particularly vulnerable to food shocks of trading partners.

As the frequency of shocks continues to increase, it leaves what Cottrell called “narrowing windows” between shocks, making it nearly impossible to recover and prepare for the next one.

The report said trade-dependent countries must find ways to store food in preparation for inevitable shocks elsewhere.

Countries must invest in “climate-smart” practices like diversifying plant and animal breeds and varieties and enhance soil quality to speed recovery following floods and droughts, the report said.

“We need to start changing the way we produce food for resiliency,” Cottrell said, adding that he had yet to see much action being taken by wealthy food-producing countries. “Because we are going to see a problem.”

The report was released the same day the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported findings on conflict and hunger.

That report stated that around 56 million people across eight conflict zones are in need of immediate food and livelihood assistance.
…

It might seem counterintuitive, but the dreaded polar vortex is bringing its icy grip to parts of the U.S. thanks to a sudden blast of warm air in the Arctic.

 

Get used to it. The polar vortex has been wandering more often in recent years.

 

It all started with misplaced Moroccan heat. Last month, the normally super chilly air temperatures 20 miles above the North Pole rapidly rose by about 125 degrees (70 degrees Celsius), thanks to air flowing in from the south. It’s called “sudden stratospheric warming.”

 

That warmth split the polar vortex, leaving the pieces to wander, said Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside Boston.

 

“Where the polar vortex goes, so goes the cold air,” Cohen said.

 

By Wednesday morning, one of those pieces will be over the Lower 48 states for the first time in years. The forecast calls for a low of minus 21 degrees (minus 29 Celsius) in Chicago and wind chills flirting with minus 65 degrees (minus 54 Celsius) in parts of Minnesota, according to the National Weather Service.

 

The unusual cold could stick around another eight weeks, Cohen said.

 

“The impacts from this split, we have a ways to go. It’s not the end of the movie yet,” Cohen said. “I think at a minimum, we’re looking at mid-February, possibly through mid-March.”

 

Americans were introduced to the polar vortex five years ago. It was in early January 2014 when temperatures dropped to minus 16 degrees (minus 27 Celsius) in Chicago and meteorologists, who used the term for decades, started talking about it on social media.

This outbreak may snap some daily records for cold and is likely to be even more brutal than five years ago, especially with added wind chill, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private weather firm Weather Underground.

 

When warm air invades the polar region, it can split the vortex or displace it, usually toward Siberia, Cohen said. Recently, there have been more splits, which increase the odds of other places getting ultra-cold, he said. Pieces of the polar vortex have chilled Europe, Siberia and North America this time. (It’s not right to call the frigid center of cold air the polar vortex because it is just a piece or a lobe, not the entire vortex, said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado.)

 

When the forces penning the polar vortex in the Arctic are weak, it wanders, more often to Siberia than Michigan. And it’s happening more frequently in the last couple decades, Furtado said. A study a year ago in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society looked at decades of the Arctic system and found the polar vortex has shifted “toward more frequent weak states.”

 

When the polar vortex pieces wander, warmth invades the Arctic, Alaska, Greenland and Canada, Masters said. While the Midwest chills, Australia has been broiling to record-breaking heat. The world as a whole on Monday was 0.7 degrees (0.4 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1979-2000 average, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer.

 

Some scientists — but by no means most — see a connection between human-caused climate change and difference in atmospheric pressure that causes slower moving waves in the air.

 

“It’s a complicated story that involves a hefty dose of chaos and an interplay among multiple influences, so extracting a clear signal of the Arctic’s role is challenging,” said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. Several recent papers have made the case for the connection, she noted.

“This symptom of global warming is counterintuitive for those in the cross-hairs of these extreme cold spells,” Francis said in an email. “But these events provide an excellent opportunity to help the public understand some of the ‘interesting’ ways that climate change will unfold.”

 

Others, like Furtado, aren’t sold yet on the climate change connection.

 

Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, who has already felt temperatures that seem like 25 degrees below zero, said there’s “a growing body of literature” to support the climate connection. But he says more evidence is needed.

 

“Either way,” Gensini said, “it’s going to be interesting being in the bullseye of the Midwest cold.”
…

When Danny Reagan was 13, he began exhibiting signs of what doctors usually associate with drug addiction. He became agitated, secretive and withdrew from friends. He had quit baseball and Boy Scouts, and he stopped doing homework and showering.

But he was not using drugs. He was hooked on YouTube and video games, to the point where he could do nothing else. As doctors would confirm, he was addicted to his electronics.

“After I got my console, I kind of fell in love with it,” Danny, now 16 and a junior in a Cincinnati high school, said. “I liked being able to kind of shut everything out and just relax.”

Danny was different from typical plugged-in American teenagers. Psychiatrists say internet addiction, characterized by a loss of control over internet use and disregard for the consequences of it, affects up to 8 percent of Americans and is becoming more common around the world.

“We’re all mildly addicted. I think that’s obvious to see in our behavior,” said psychiatrist Kimberly Young, who has led the field of research since founding the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995. “It becomes a public health concern obviously as health is influenced by the behavior.”

Psychiatrists such as Young who have studied compulsive internet behavior for decades are now seeing more cases, prompting a wave of new treatment programs to open across the United States. Mental health centers in Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and other states are adding inpatient internet addiction treatment to their line of services.

Some skeptics view internet addiction as a false condition, contrived by teenagers who refuse to put away their smartphones, and the Reagans say they have had trouble explaining it to extended family.

Anthony Bean, a psychologist and author of a clinician’s guide to video game therapy, said that excessive gaming and internet use might indicate other mental illnesses but should not be labeled independent disorders.

“It’s kind of like pathologizing a behavior without actually understanding what’s going on,” he said.

‘Reboot’

At first, Danny’s parents took him to doctors and made him sign contracts pledging to limit his internet use. Nothing worked, until they discovered a pioneering residential therapy center in Mason, Ohio, about 22 miles (35 km) north of Cincinnati.

The “Reboot” program at the Lindner Center for Hope offers inpatient treatment for 11 to 17-year-olds who, like Danny, have addictions including online gaming, gambling, social media, pornography and sexting, often to escape from symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.

Danny was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder at age 5 and Anxiety Disorder at 6, and doctors said he developed an internet addiction to cope with those disorders.

“Reboot” patients spend 28 days at a suburban facility equipped with 16 bedrooms, classrooms, a gym and a dining hall.

They undergo diagnostic tests, psychotherapy, and learn to moderate their internet use.

Chris Tuell, clinical director of addiction services, started the program in December after seeing several cases, including Danny’s, where young people were using the internet to “self-medicate” instead of drugs and alcohol.

The internet, while not officially recognized as an addictive substance, similarly hijacks the brain’s reward system by triggering the release of pleasure-inducing chemicals and is accessible from an early age, Tuell said.

“The brain really doesn’t care what it is, whether I pour it down my throat or put it in my nose or see it with my eyes or do it with my hands,” Tuell said. “A lot of the same neurochemicals in the brain are occurring.”

Even so, recovering from internet addiction is different from other addictions because it is not about “getting sober,” Tuell said. The internet has become inevitable and essential in schools, at home and in the workplace.

“It’s always there,” Danny said, pulling out his smartphone.

“I feel it in my pocket. But I’m better at ignoring it.”

Is it a real disorder?

Medical experts have begun taking internet addiction more seriously.

Neither the World Health Organization (WHO) nor the American Psychiatric Association recognize internet addiction as a disorder. Last year, however, the WHO recognized the more specific Gaming Disorder following years of research in China, South Korea and Taiwan, where doctors have called it a public health crisis.

Some online games and console manufacturers have advised gamers against playing to excess. YouTube has created a time monitoring tool to nudge viewers to take breaks from their screens as part of its parent company Google’s “digital wellbeing” initiative.

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said internet addiction is the subject of “intensive research” and consideration for future classification. The American Psychiatric Association has labeled gaming disorder a “condition for further study.”

“Whether it’s classified or not, people are presenting with these problems,” Tuell said.

Tuell recalled one person whose addiction was so severe that the patient would defecate on himself rather than leave his electronics to use the bathroom.

Research on internet addiction may soon produce empirical results to meet medical classification standards, Tuell said, as psychologists have found evidence of a brain adaptation in teens who compulsively play games and use the internet.

“It’s not a choice, it’s an actual disorder and a disease,” said Danny. “People who joke about it not being serious enough to be super official, it hurts me personally.”

   

 
…

Confidential information of 14,200 people diagnosed with HIV in Singapore has been leaked, the city-state’s government said Monday.

In a statement posted on their website, Singapore’s Ministry of Health said that information about 5,400 Singaporeans and 8,800 foreigners diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has been leaked online by an American with a previous record of fraud.

“While access to the confidential information has been disabled, it is still in the possession of the unauthorized person, and could still be publicly disclosed in the future. We are working with relevant parties to scan the Internet for signs of further disclosure of the information,” the statement read.

The health ministry named the suspect behind the leak as U.S. citizen Mikhy K. Farrera Brochez, who was living in Singapore on an employment pass before he was deported after finishing a jail sentence for fraud last year.

Brochez was a partner of Ler Teck Siang, a Singaporean doctor who has been charged under the Official Secrets Act for failing to adequately secure confidential information of HIV-positive patients. The charge is currently pending before the courts.

The health ministry was notified last week by police that confidential information from the HIV registry was disclosed.

 
…

To defeat the intertwined pandemics of obesity, hunger and climate change, governments must curb the political influence of major corporations, said a major report Monday calling for a ‘global treaty’ similar to one for tobacco control.

But this will not happen unless ordinary citizens demand a “radical rethink” of the relationship between policymakers and business, nearly four dozen experts from The Lancet Commission on Obesity concluded.

“Powerful opposition from vested interests, lack of political leadership, and insufficient societal demand for change are preventing action,” they said in a statement.

Nearly a billion people are hungry and another two billion are eating too much of the wrong foods, causing epidemics of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Unhealthy diets account for up to 11 million premature deaths every year, according to the most recent Global Disease Burden report.

“Malnutrition in all its forms — including undernutrition and obesity — is by far the biggest cause of ill-health and premature death globally,” said Commission co-chair Boyd Swinburn, a professor at the University of Aukland. 

“Both undernutrition and obesity are expected to be made significantly worse by climate change.”

The way in which food is currently produced, distributed and consumed not only fuels the hunger and obesity pandemics, it also generates 25 to 30 percent of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Cattle production alone accounts for more than have of those gases, in the form of methane-laden flatulence and CO2 when forests — especially in Brazil — are cleared to accommodate livestock.

A transport system dominated by cars contributes another 15 to 25 percent of emissions, and supports a sedentary lifestyle.

• Triple pandemic –

“Underpinning all of these are weak political governance, the unchallenging economic pursuit of GPD growth, and the powerful commercial engineering of overconsumption,” the report said.

“Undernutrition is declining too slowly to meet global targets, no country has reversed its obesity epidemic, and comprehensive policy responses to the threat of climate change have barely begun.”

Despite 30 years of warnings from science about the dire impacts of global warming, CO2 emissions hit record levels in 2017 and again last year.

Because all these problems are interwoven, the answers must be too, the researchers emphasized.

“Joining three pandemics” — hunger, obesity, climate — “together as ‘The Global Syndemic’ allows us to consider common drivers and shared solutions.”

Another Lancet Commission report published last week calling for a dramatic shift in global diet to improve health and avoid “catastrophic” damage to the planet.

“Until now, undernutrition and obesity have been seen as polar opposites of either too few or too many calories,” said Swinburn.

“In reality, they are both driven by the same unhealthy, inequitable food systems, underpinned by the same political economy.”

The report calls for a Framework Convention on Food Systems — similar to global conventions for tobacco control and climate change — to restrict the influence of the food industry.

• How we eat, live, move –

The experts also argue that economic incentives must be overhauled. 

Some five trillion dollars (4.4 trillion euros) in government subsidies for fossil fuels and large-scale agribusiness should be rechanneled toward “sustainable, healthy and environmentally friendly activities,” they said.

To sharply reduce red meat consumption, for example, the report favors high taxes, abolishing subsidies, along with transparent health and environment labeling.

In addition, they favor the creation of a one billion dollar philanthropic fund to support grassroots action.

“Tackling ‘The Global Syndemic’ requires an urgent rethink of how we eat, live, consume and move,” said Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet.

The two Lancet reports are not the only urgent appeal from science in recent months. In October, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change likewise called for an economic and social “paradigm shift” to avoid global chaos. 

Reaction to the Lancet recommendations has been sharply divided. Health advocates and climate experts hailed its sweeping call for deep change.

“For too long we have been day-dreaming our way to a diseased future,” said Katie Dain, CEO of the Noncommunicable Disease Alliance.

“A food system that secures a better diet for this and the immediate next generations will save millions of lives and, at the same time, help save the planet.”

Industry representatives and libertarians slammed the findings as overwrought and an assault on free choice.

“This is the final vindication for those of us who have warned about the slippery slope of regulation,” said Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs.

“Nanny-state zealots are no longer hiding their intention to use the anti-tobacco blueprint to control other areas of our lives.”
…