'Unseen' News and Views
Credit: United Nations
Every day she hesitates to go to school, tries different routes on the public bus, walks miles in the hot sun, to avoid the sexual harassment that has become a daily occurrence in public spaces.
A multifaceted response from Europe has so far prevented its energy woes from creating widespread social and economic destabilization. But with winter approaching, the crisis is far from over and risks are getting worse.
John P. Ruehl
While European energy prices have eased slightly in recent months, stress continues to build across a continent that has long been dependent on access to cheap Russian energy.
Protests related to high energy costs have been held from Belgium to the Czech Republic in Europe. Fuel shortages have led to long queues to buy petrol at gas stations in France. The Don’t Pay UK movement has urged British citizens to enter a “bill strike” by refusing to pay energy bills until gas and electricity prices are reduced to an “affordable level.”
Europe’s remarkably high energy prices have also fueled climate change protests across the continent.
(UN News)* — National pledges to reduce harmful emissions offer little hope of avoiding climate disaster, UN climate experts said on Thursday [], in an urgent appeal for a radical transformation of the energy sector, before it’s too late.
(UN News)* — In west and central Africa, some 3.4 million people need help after destructive flooding, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday [28 October 2022].
The alert comes amid the worst floods in a decade, which have swept across Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroon.
UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado said that hundreds of people had died in Nigeria, where floodwaters in the northeast swept through sites for internally displaced people and host communities in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe States.
WMO records biggest increase in methane concentrations since start of measurements.
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Geneva/New York, 26 October (WMO)* – In yet another ominous climate change warning, atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide all reached new record highs in 2021, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
(UN News)* — Israel’s occupation is illegal and indistinguishable from a “settler-colonial” situation, which must end, as a pre-condition for Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination, the UN’s independent expert on the occupied Palestinian territory said on Thursday [].
“For over 55 years, the Israeli military occupation has prevented the realisation of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, violating each component of that right and wilfully pursuing the ‘de-Palestinianisation’ of the occupied territory,” said Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, in her report to the UN General Assembly.
One third of all plastic waste ends up in soils or freshwater. Most of this plastic disintegrates into particles smaller than five millimetres, known as microplastics, and these break down further into nanoparticles. Credit: UN Environment
Now, new facts about such depletion come to add to the already reported ones regarding the unstopped, man-made dangers threatening the present and future of indispensable natural resources.
These are some of the biggest reasons explaining how the web of life is unrelentlessly agonising:
(UN News)* — Heatwaves have become an unavoidable health hazard for many nations, but new data indicates that they are set to affect virtually every child on earth by 2050, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, warned on Tuesday [].
European Union leaders struggle to find solutions for the energy crisis. Credit: Bigstock
– Preoccupied with enhancing their own ‘credibility’ and reputations, central banks (CBs) are again driving the world economy into recession, financial turmoil and debt crises.
Anis Chowdhury
Wall Street ‘cred’
Most CB governors believe ‘credibility’ is desirable and must be achieved by fighting inflation at any cost. To justify their own more harmful policies, they warn inflation is ‘damaging’.
They argue CBs need ‘independence’ from governments to pursue ‘credible’ monetary policy. Inflation targeting to ‘anchor’ inflation expectations is supposed to generate desired ‘confidence’. But CBs have been responsible for many costly failures.
The US Fed deepened the 1930s’ Great Depression, the 1970s’ stagflation and the early 1980s’ contraction, besides contributing to the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC). Hence, CB notions of ‘credibility’ and ‘independence’ need to be reconsidered.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 