The "science" in 2020 "THE YEAR OF TRUTH"

Q. Are female leaders more successful at managing the coronavirus crisis?

So, Jon Henley and Eleanor Ainge Roy asked and answered on behalf of the Guardian (Sat 25 Apr 2020).

A. While women are “disproportionately represented to a rather startling degree” among countries managing the crisis well, dividing men and women heads of state and government into homogenous categories is not necessarily useful.

The report concludes:

Complicating factors may be at play. Kathleen Gerson, a professor of sociology at New York University, notes, for example, that women leaders are more likely to be elected in “a political culture in which there’s a relative support and trust in the government – and that doesn’t make stark distinctions between women and men. So you’ve already got a head start”.

In addition, it may be harder for men to escape “the way they are expected to behave” as leaders, Gerson told The Hill website. And since the very best leaders are both strong and decisive and capable of displaying feeling, women could, perhaps, “lead the way in showing that these are not competing and conflicting attributes, but complementary – and necessary for good leadership”, she said.

Nevertheless, this report, or article, makes several points that prompts Re:LODE Radio to ask a different question, a question about leadership in a crisis. And, more particularly, how do successful leaders make their decisions in a crisis, when scientific analysis, knowledge and expertise, plays a role in the formation and execution of successful policy decisions?

In Germany, along the LODE Zone Line, Angela Merkel has been able to draw on her science background in her Covid-19 explainer. With a doctorate in quantum chemistry, Merkel’s clear, calm expositions – a clip of her explaining the scientific basis behind the government’s lockdown exit strategy was shared thousands of times online – have also helped propel public approval of the fourth-term chancellor’s handling of the crisis above 70%.

Lothar de Maiziére, the last East German premier who recommended Merkel for her first role in politics, has said her scientific background made her an outsider in a political arena dominated by men with law degrees, but also enabled her rise.

“She knows that for every effect there has to be a cause and maybe also ideal conditions,” he told the Merkel biographer Evelyn Roll. “She knows the laws of formal logic and is therefore capable of building logical chains with speed and determination.”

Asked why she decided to study physics as a young woman, Merkel has said it helped her to keep an independent mind in an overtly ideological system: “Basic mathematical calculations and the laws of nature cannot be suspended, even in the GDR [East Germany]. Two and two makes four, even under [the former East German leader Erich] Honecker.”

Was there anything politicians could learn from scientists, one German journalist once asked her. “Gravity,” Merkel responded. “Without mass, no depth.”

In Germany, Angela Merkel has been hailed for direct but uncharacteristically personal public interventions, warning that up to 70% of people would contract the virus – the country’s “greatest challenge” since 1945 – and lamenting every death as that of “a father or grandfather, a mother or grandmother, a partner …”

Thanks to extensive testing from the outset, plenty of intensive care beds, and the chancellor’s periodic forthright reminders that Covid-19 was “serious – so take it seriously”, Germany has so far recorded fewer than 5,000 deaths, a far lower figure than most EU countries.

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s premier, has held Kiwis’ hands through the lockdown, delivering empathetic “stay home, save lives” video messages from her couch and communicating daily through non-combative press conferences or intimate Facebook Live videos, her favourite medium.

Her insistence on saving lives and her kindness-first approach – urging New Zealanders to look after their neighbours, take care of the vulnerable, and make sacrifices for the greater good – has won her many fans, while her emphasis on shared responsibility has united the country.

Choosing to “go hard and go early”, Ardern imposed a 14-day quarantine on anyone entering the country on 14 March and implemented a strict lockdown two weeks later, when fewer than 150 people had been infected and none had died. New Zealand has recorded just 18 deaths; public trust in Ardern’s government is greater than 80%. 

Comparisons have been made between New Zealand and Australia . . .

A story comparing how these two countries, both of them situated on the LODE Zone Line, was published today on the Guardian, and makes interesting reading on policy decision making processes to be taken in a crisis.

Looking across the Tasman at their nearest neighbour’s Covid-19 elimination measures during their own strict lockdown of the past month, New Zealanders were torn: some complained that Australians were allowed to buy takeaway coffees and get haircuts under some more permissive lockdown measures. Others shuddered at pictures on social media of Sydney beachfronts thronged with people, saying the images made them “stressed” and “anxious”.

Either way, the topic of Australia’s more relaxed lockdown – and whether it would prove an economic saviour or a breeding ground for the virus – has never been far from the lips of opposition politicians, commentators or New Zealanders stuck at home.

“I’m pleased New Zealand did the experiment,” said Peter Collignon, a professor of microbiology at Australian National University in Canberra, referring to New Zealand’s strident lockdown. “I think it actually shows that when you compare it to Australia, you can achieve the same result but without the same economic and social hardship that a complete lockdown involves.”

Both countries have been lauded internationally for their efforts to squash the coronarvirus curve, with a similar number of cases per capita (Australia’s is very slightly lower, with higher hospitalisation rates). New Zealand’s death toll from the virus is 19 compared with Australia’s 88, but it has a fifth of its neighbour’s population of 25 million.

The two countries appear to have suppressed community transmission – which was never rampant – and both have case-fatality rates for Covid-19 (the number of people who catch the virus and then die) of just above 1%, compared with 6% in the US and 13.5% each for Italy and the UK, according to the World Economic Forum. The South Pacific’s relative isolation, and the late arrival of Covid-19 to both countries’ shores – late January in Australia; late February in New Zealand – gave both a head start.

Both have closed their borders to foreigners, with returning citizens and residents quarantined by the government for a mandatory two weeks.

But for those watching from New Zealand’s side of the Tasman, that was where the similarities ended – and the differences in the two countries’ approaches at times seemed significant. During the past month of New Zealand’s strict, so-called “level 4” lockdown, people could only leave the house for groceries, medical help or local exercise. Takeaway food or meal deliveries were barred, and all shops except supermarkets and pharmacies closed.

In most Australian states, meeting a friend for a coffee was permitted, and partners or babysitters could make home visits – both verboten in New Zealand. Australian retail and construction largely remained open.

While New Zealand dropped to marginally looser “level 3” restrictions on Monday, the Australian allowances for haircuts and meeting friends remain off-limits. Takeaway food is back on the menu, and retailers can open for online and contactless transactions, but most people are still required to remain home most of the time.

Some commentators said the New Zealand restrictions would take a starker toll on the economy and mental health.

“I’m sure many Kiwis feel frustration that we still can’t do many things Australians have done through the entire lockdown period, at great cost in terms of jobs and livelihoods, with similar health outcomes,” said Simon Bridges, the parliamentary opposition leader from the National party, in a statement last week, as New Zealand’s daily case rate fell into the single digits.

“The severe lockdown clearly has a much wider impact because people can’t trade,” said Shamubeel Eaqub, an economist with Sense Partners in Auckland. Figures collated by his firm suggested that electronic card spending in New Zealand has halved during the strictest four weeks of lockdown measures, while the number of people claiming unemployment has already risen to just above its peak following the 2008 global financial crisis.

Australia has been “more generous in terms of support” such as “access to money” and “cash handouts” to businesses and the unemployed, he said. But it was too early to know which country would fare better, and there were factors other than the strictness of lockdown measures at play.

“It really depends on the health outcome,” Eaqub said. “If there are future waves of infections, then any further shutdown is going to have a really damaging effect. Businesses might be able to survive one shutdown but I don’t think they could survive two.”

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, agreed, telling voters she did not want to see them “lose any of the gains we have made” by coming out of restrictive lockdown measures too early.

Ardern did not face the same situation Australia’s leader Scott Morrison did when deciding what level of lockdown was appropriate, said Brian Cox, an epidemiologist from the University of Otago in Dunedin. New Zealand’s “clusters” of the virus were larger, relative to population size, and tracing contacts of those infected was, initially, taking several days longer for New Zealand’s officials than those in Australia.

“You can’t compare today in Australia with today in New Zealand,” he said. “The epidemic in Australia has essentially been going for another two weeks and our epidemic was taking off a lot faster than Australia’s. We had to do a serious correction to get anywhere near where we’ve got to now.”

Analysts say both countries, in their attempt to stave off another wave of the illness, could face the same foe.

“Winter is coming,” said ANU microbiologist Peter Collignon, referring to the faster spread of the virus during the northern hemisphere’s colder weather and flu season.

“We will potentially be keeping quite significant restrictions on when we see the US and Europe relaxing them because it’s summer. That’s going to be an issue about convincing people to in fact keep on what we’re doing now until at least September,” he added.

“That’s why I don’t think a complete lockdown is an option.

Move over culture wars . . .

This opinion piece by Bryce Edwards (Wed 29 Apr 2020) reflects on how the coronavirus crisis has reset the political debate in New Zealand, in the run up to the next post-virus election:

 When New Zealand holds its post-virus general election later this year, the country will go through a fiercely ideological debate about economics and resources.

On 19 September, New Zealanders are scheduled to go to the polls. By then, the country is likely to have eliminated Covid-19, providing an enormous boost for Jacinda Ardern’s government, which is blitzing the immediate health crisis.

However, at the election New Zealanders will also be evaluating the contrasting left-and rightwing prescriptions for dealing with a severe economic depression. And that could see a fiercely-ideological election debate based around economics and resources.

Bryce Edwards continues:

Recreating the old order won’t be good enough. After all, the looming depression will come on top of huge pre-existing problems of inequality, poverty, a housing affordability crisis, and a creaking welfare state.

If Labour is to embody the spirit of the times, it will embrace radical new economic policies. This means proposing new progressive income taxes, a wealth tax, a universal basic income, a massive state housing programme, and an overhaul of the public health system. And that’s just for starters.

If National is to keep to its conservative impulses, then it will campaign on being “better economic managers”, cutting regulations, reducing taxes on business, and generally letting the private sector lead the recovery.

However, it’s unlikely that a traditional austerity sales pitch will be welcome in 2020. The landscape has changed dramatically, with traditional rightwing economic prescriptions now jettisoned by governments of all colours. Instead of a small state being the answer, the crisis has required huge state intervention. As a number of economists have noted, we’re all socialists now.

The state has even bailed out of the most rightwing voice in New Zealand politics – the Taxpayers Union. For this neoliberal lobby group to apply for, and be given, $60,000 of subsidies in order to keep operating is testament to the fact that the old order of pro-market politics has died.

National will have to do better than recycle policies from the neoliberal era. In fact, to be truly competitive it is very likely, come September, they will be proposing their own big-spending statist economic interventions. On issues such as infrastructure, National has the potential to be an even bigger party of government than Labour.

Policies such as a universal basic income – once relegated to the political fringes – could even be adopted by the right. 

Back to "the science" . . .

Not all the women who have excelled in the corona crisis are national leaders. Jeong Eun-kyeong, the unflappable head of South Korea’s centre for disease control, has become a national icon after overseeing a “test, trace, contain” strategy that has made the country the world’s coronavirus role-model, with daily infections in single digits and a death toll of less than 250.

Jeong, a former rural doctor dubbed “the world’s best virus hunter”, has delivered no-nonsense daily press conferences, including demonstrating the ideal way to cough. While these have won praise, her work ethic – she has left an emergency operations bunker only for quick visits to a food truck – has prompted concern for her health.

Back to leadership and gender . . .

Around the world, authoritarian leaders are exploiting, exacerbating or grossly mishandling the response to the pandemic, placing selfish interest ahead of public good.

They are mostly male. Their behaviour is frequently appalling.

According to Simon Tisdall in the Observer (Sun 26 Apr 2020) . . 

 . . they are a modern incarnation of T.S. Eliot’s “hollow men”.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas!

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.

Simon Tisdall asks:

Yet do the worst-performing leaders share dysfunctional characteristics beyond mere maleness? A war fixation is one. Poverty of imagination is another. They routinely trot out tired martial metaphors and cliches such as “wartime president”, “blitz spirit”, and “fighting the invisible enemy”.

Lack of empathy also seems to be a common denominator, even among self-styled “man of the people” populists. This may be a product of class, culture or elite upbringing.

A more decisive factor is a man’s political orientation. Broadly speaking, illiberal leaders who run authoritarian regimes, refuse democratic and legal constraints, abuse civil and women’s rights, reject media scrutiny, tolerate corruption, and believe that they, personally, know best are the worst-behaved, least effective pandemic performers.

Donald Trump ticks all the boxes. He is the Covid champ of chumps. His advice last week to inject disinfectant hit new heights of toxic idiocy, even for him. But there are plenty of challengers for the world title.

The "science" . . .

President Trump responded to a presentation by Bill Bryan from the Department of Homeland security on how to fight COVID-19 by suggesting that injecting the body with disinfectant could serve as treatment. In Bryan’s presentation, he explained isopropyl alcohol can kill the virus in 30 seconds.

. . . and the scientist?

Donald Trump prompted a backlash from medical experts after floating the idea that they could look into heat, light and injections of disinfectants as a cure for Covid-19. His public health advisers immediately played down the idea, and medics warn that trying such ideas could be fatal. Coronavirus response coordinator Dr Deborah Birx appeared caught off guard when Trump asked her directly if heat and light would cure the deadly disease. ‘Not as a treatment,' Birx replied.

According to this report by Oliver Laughland for the Guardian (Sun 26 Apr 2020):

Birx made a number of appearances on the Sunday morning TV news shows, where she was asked about Trump’s outlandish comments made at a White House briefing on Thursday, which prompted immediate backlash from medical experts and industrial manufacturers who cited the potentially fatal outcome of such a process. Trump has falsely claimed the comments were sarcastic.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Birx was asked if she was bothered by the fallout from the president’s remarks.

“It bothers me that this is still in the news cycle, because I think we’re missing the bigger pieces of what we need to be doing as an American people to continue to protect one another,” Birx said. “As a scientist and a public health official and a researcher, sometimes I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night.”

In a later appearance on NBC News, Birx also responded to a suggestion from the vice-president, Mike Pence, in which he claimed that the US would “largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us” by Memorial Day, on 25 May.

Birx said that while downward trends in infections and deaths in certain locations such as Houston and Detroit “gives us great hope”, she said “social distancing will be with us through the summer”.

She added that the US required a “breakthrough innovation in testing” to speed up the reopening, by testing for those who have already had coronavirus but displayed little to no symptoms, in order to track the virus’s spread.

Entr'acte

Politics and electioneering before following the "science" . . .

Simon Tisdall continues:

Take Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s “strongman” president. His initial response to a growing Covid-19 threat was to put the economy before lives. Erdogan is accused, like Trump, of politicising the crisis, for example by banning fundraising efforts by opposition-controlled city councils in Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara. The impressive performance of Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, a possible 2023 presidential rival, is said to worry him more than the disease.

Rushed curfews and protective measures have caused confusion and panic-buying. And Erdogan fumbled a chance to foster unity of purpose when an early release of prisoners excluded jailed political opponents, journalists and human rights activists.

The world expects better of Turkey. In the Philippines, the macho antics of Rodrigo Duterte, a president notorious for celebrating extrajudicial murder, are par for the course. Like right-wingers elsewhere, Duterte minimised the Covid-19 threat, then over-reacted.

A typically heavy-handed clampdown has followed belated lockdown measures. Duterte ordered the police and military to kill those who did not comply. “Shoot them dead,” he urged. “Instead of causing trouble, I’ll send you to the grave.”

Duterte’s assumption of emergency powers mirrors power-grabs in other countries with weak systems of democratic accountability. Hungary’s rightwing populist leader, Viktor Orbán, says his new power to rule indefinitely by decree can be revoked any time. Opponents fear a tame parliament may never do so.

Some of the world’s most authoritarian leaders have reacted with a morbid mix of crass irresponsibility and calculation. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, appears to hope, Trump-like, that he can turn the poor’s hostility to job-destroying lockdowns to political advantage.

“Bolsonaro has compared the coronavirus to a mild flu, incited his supporters to oppose lockdown measures adopted by local governments, [and] promoted unproven drugs on social media as miracle cures,” wrote Eduardo Mello, a Sao Paulo professor. If Brazil’s economy implodes, Bolsonaro, weirdly, could be the gainer – unless he is impeached first.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is also using the pandemic for political ends, as evidenced by the opportunistic arrest last week of 15 veteran Hong Kong pro-democracy figures. Virus-related security and economic fears are being exploited to justify an ever tighter crackdown after last year’s failure to halt anti-Beijing protests.

But the hard men are not having it all their own way. Xi’s carefully nurtured reputation for quasi-celestial infallibility has taken a knock in the wake of the Wuhan disaster. The shine is also coming off India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Modi seemed to carry all before him last year, especially following the Kashmir crackdown. A brutal anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi barely dented his domestic standing. But self-inflicted economic and social damage arising from clumsy, chaotic anti-virus measures are painting a less flattering portrait of incompetence and irrelevance.

How all this is being reported in the Indian media is a very different story.

The headline: World is lauding India’s fight against Covid-19: PM Modi gets back at Congress criticism on preparedness, is absurd, the subheading is just a pretence of media independence. The upshot of the report is that criticism of the Modi and his government is "unpatriotic".

In March 2019, Quartz India was reporting on: 

How Narendra Modi has almost killed the Indian media

This article is by Nikhil Inamdar (March 2 2019):

The long-simmering crisis of credibility in the Indian news media reached a boiling point in the weeks following the deadly terrorist attack in Pulwama, Jammu & Kashmir last month.

India’s television stations dispensed with even basic journalistic rules, as seasoned reporters declared unequivocal allegiances and experienced editors parroted exaggerated claims. Theatrics abounded, with toy-gun totting warrior anchors in army fatigues drumming up an atmosphere of hate and violent jingoism.

Accuracy, corroboration, and neutrality pipped editorial discretion.

Yet, Pulwama, in some sense, only capped what have been five profoundly disquieting years for the Indian media under the Narendra Modi regime—a period in which its capacity to chase stories of consequence has greatly diminished.

So how did things get to this point?

Unless things change in the next few weeks, it would be the first time in the history of independent India that a prime minister will have spent an entire tenure without addressing a single press conference.

Modi effectively cut off all communication with the media after coming to power in 2014, choosing instead to direct his messaging through tweets, radio programmes like Mann Ki Baat and fluffy staged interviews with pliant journalists.

This was ironic given the “silent PM” jibes he took at former prime minister Manmohan Singh during the national election campaign in 2014. It was also a shrewd strategy that allowed him to build an image of being an effective communicator, while only delivering a one-way series of monologues.

Restrictions on access aside, the disenfranchisement of India’s press is a consequence of other important structural shifts in technology and press ownership over the past five years.

The Modi era coincided with an exponential rise in the use of social media in India, a medium that this government exploited to the hilt to target critics, mobilise public opinion, and use tags like “anti-national,” to discredit anyone showing a hint of circumspection with the state narrative.

It is estimated that between 2016 and 2018 alone, the number of Indians using social networks grew from 168 million to 326 million, making it a handy tool for the ruling party to spread half-truths and fake news through a cobweb of unofficial accounts and unleash trolls to attack journalists who tried to counter them.

As a result, reporters in India have over the past five years regularly had their mobile numbers circulated on WhatsApp groups, and been subjected to a deluge of sexually explicit messages, death and rape threats, and other forms of online intimidation.

“The pattern of trolling has led many to speculate whether there is an organising hand at work. There is. The BJP has a wide network of volunteers and paid workers scattered across the country and in their offices in Delhi’s Ashoka Road which sends daily instructions on WhatsApp. Each troll has a contact point in the Ashoka Road central cell,” Swati Chaturvedi, journalist and author of I Am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Digital Army, wrote in the Gulf News.

But the government hasn’t always hidden behind the smokescreen of social media. There have been more blatant attempts to arm-twist media proprietors.

Raiding news channels, boycotting prime-time debates, and stopping government advertising—a significant source of revenue for the industry—have been among the common tactics used by the Modi regime.

Unwillingness to toe the line has often led to high-profile editorial sackings.

Last August, ABP News anchor Punya Prasun Bajpai wrote an exposé for The Wire’s Hindi website, detailing the grave degree to which the situation had deteriorated in India’s newsrooms.

Writing about the circumstances of his ouster from the channel, Bajpai said he was asked not to make any mention of Modi on his programmes. He also revealed that the government had employed 200 staff to monitor the media and send directions to editors on how they must report on the prime minister’s activities.

A year earlier, Bobby Ghosh, editor of the Hindustan Times, resigned from the newspaper as the government was purportedly unhappy with a tracker that was launched under his leadership to chronicle hate crimes in India.

Since his exit, that tracker has been pulled down.

The BJP has also been brazenly selective in handing out TV licences to new applicants, controlling who enters the fray.

So, Republic TV, partly owned by its own parliamentarian Rajeev Chandrasekhar and helmed by Arnab Goswami, a popular, pro-establishment anchor known for his filibustering style, was given immediate permission last year to launch a channel. At the same time, Bloomberg Quint, a collaboration between Bloomberg LP and media entrepreneur Raghav Bahl, known to be critical of the government, has been waiting for over two years to go on air.

Bahl, who sold his news empire to Mukesh Ambani in 2014, now runs Bloomberg Quint as a digital live-streaming service. Meanwhile, Ambani himself has emerged as one of India’s most prominent media barons, owning large swathes of news space across TV, print, and online media.

With varied business interests straddling oil & gas to telecom, he or several others like him, who now hold big stakes in the country’s news business, can ill-afford to rub the government on the wrong side.

While the use of proxy businessmen and online intimidation tactics has allowed the government to closely control the narrative, what’s even more worrying is the willingness India’s top media houses have shown in these years to do the government’s bidding.

Last May, a sting operation by an outfit called Cobrapost showed that some 25 of India’s leading media organisations, including giants like The Times of India, The New Indian Express, and the India Today Group were willing to participate in propaganda for the BJP. Other outlets recorded in the sting, even agreed to spread communal hate in return for cash from the ruling party.

The sting was in some sense reflective of the extent to which the institutional nexus between mainstream media and the government had strengthened under this regime and possibly a harbinger of what was to come post-Pulwama.

But that’s not to say that we’ve reached a point of no return.

Within the mainstream, there continue to be honourable exceptions such as New Delhi Television (NDTV) or The Hindu that soldier on despite the pressures.

Over the past few years, there has also been the rise of several small, but fiercely independent, online portals, fact-checking websites, and investigative outlets in the country: The Wire, Scroll*, BOOM Live, The NewsMinute, and Alt News to name a few.

Despite facing defamation suits and court cases, they have been responsible for some of the most important news breaks that have kept this government in check—and India’s democracy alive.

With no viable financial model yet emerging for online media portals, though, the question is how long can they keep going?

When it comes to the "science" . . .

Modi’s Government Has Botched Its Response to India’s Pandemic

By Somdeep Sen

With its economic resources and geopolitical strength, India should be in a better position to face COVID-19 than most countries in the Global South. But its people are paying the price for incompetent policymaking and years of neglect under Narendra Modi.

India is no stranger to pandemics. The first cholera pandemic began in the subcontinent in 1817. By 1930, the third major outbreak of bubonic plague had killed 12 million Indians. The tragedy of the Spanish flu may feature prominently in the collective cultural memory of the West. But it claimed most of its victims in India, where 18.5 million people lost their lives.

Admittedly, today’s India — often considered an economic powerhouse — is a far cry from the way things were at the time of the Spanish flu. Acche din aane waale hain (“good days are coming”) was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign promise in 2014. Yet the country remains dangerously ill-prepared and vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic under Modi’s leadership.

This is partly because of the government’s lethargic response to the crisis. On January 30, just a few hours before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus outbreak to be a global public health emergency, Indian authorities announced the first confirmed COVID-19 case in the country. This was after a week of media reports speculating that the outbreak had already begun in India. At the time, China had reported 7,711 cases.

The authorities had taken few preventive measures at this point. Until late January, only three airports in India were carrying out thermal screenings, even though there had been confirmed cases of the outbreak outside China.

When the first Indian case was reported, there was just one laboratory in the whole country conducting tests on coronavirus samples. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare didn’t launch its COVID-19 awareness campaign until March 6.

In the meantime, the only government advice on preventive measures had come from the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and Homoeopathy). On January 29, it issued an advisory notice that listed Ayurvedic practices and Unani medicines as recommended remedies.

In the weeks that followed, there were a handful of confirmed COVID-19 cases for individuals with a travel history. The government responded by increasing the number of screenings at airports; by mid-March, it had suspended the issuing of tourist visas. All travelers — including Indians — from countries hardest hit by the pandemic had to go into quarantine for fourteen days after their arrival.

On March 3, Modi’s first tweet on the subject assured people that there was “no need to panic.” The prime minister stressed that there had been “an extensive review regarding preparedness on the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus. Different ministries & states are working together, from screening people arriving in India to providing prompt medical attention.”

A study prepared by the University of Southampton listed India as one of the thirty “high-risk” countries for an outbreak, because of the number of visitors from highly vulnerable cities in China, so a focus on incoming travelers was justified.

However, India’s high population density, poor sanitation infrastructure, and high rates of internal migration also meant that the virus was bound to spread quickly among those who came into contact with infected travelers, inevitably leading to a much wider community transmission of the virus, where the original source of infection could not be traced.

In 2008, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), operating under the Government of India’s National Disaster Management Authority, had drawn up plans to prepare for “large-scale biological catastrophes.” These plans included “community preparedness for social distancing and lockdowns, the creation of state-level stockpiles of critical medical equipment and protective clothing, and ensuring all hospitals were prepared for biological disasters that could involve sudden mass casualties.”

But the NDRF faced resistance from several government ministries, and its powers were curtailed under Modi’s watch. This time around, the NDRF didn’t finalize its contingency plan until March 19. By that stage, there were already confirmed cases of the outbreak among individuals without a travel history.

On March 24, Modi announced a nationwide lockdown that would last for three weeks, with a “total ban” on trips outside the home, applying to “every state, every district, every lane, [and] every village.” He made the announcement at 8 PM for a lockdown that was due to begin at midnight. With just four hours’ notice, panicked citizens flouted social distancing norms and rushed to buy essential goods.

Modi subsequently urged people not to panic and assured them that vital commodities would be available. However, with widespread reports of police brutality against individuals buying or selling essential goods, there was little clarity about the practicalities of ensuring an uninterrupted supply of such items.

The sudden announcement also meant that millions of migrant workers, who play an indispensable role in the economies of India’s major cities, were left in a double bind, without any source of income, yet unable to return home. Thousands of people thronged city bus depots and train stations, while others walked for hours to reach their villages.

The government established the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund — the “PM CARES Fund” for short — to help the country’s poorest. But many people have questioned the need for a new relief fund when $500 million still remains unused from the preexisting Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund established in 1948.

There is much speculation that corporate donors are simply using the new fund to channel the money they have already allocated to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Large corporations are required by law to allocate 2 percent of their net profits toward CSR activities. If confirmed, this would mean that no additional funding was made available: the companies would be using the “PM CARES Fund” to seek favor with Modi, while smaller NGOs that might otherwise have benefited from CSR donations lost out.

The world’s biggest lockdown hasn’t flattened the curve, either. By March 24, there were officially 536 cases, but that number was artificially low, because of India’s poor testing rate. With an increase in the number of tests, the number of active cases had gone up to 11,487 by April 14, when Modi announced an extension of the lockdown until May 3.

As of April 23, there have been 21,700 cases. The head of New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr Randeep Guleria, believes that community transmission has already begun, although the government vehemently denies it.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that the new relief fund is directly linked to the prime minister, even in the name that it carries. With Modi’s government facing widespread criticism for its response to the pandemic, it has engaged in a public relations campaign to boost his profile as a leader who cares about his people.

Following the prime minister’s call, the country observed a “Janata curfew” (people’s curfew) between 7 AM and 9 PM on March 22, with citizens banging pots and pans for five minutes at 5 PM in support of health workers fighting the pandemic. His daylong curfew, while it may have been ineffective against the outbreak, was supposed to test the country’s readiness for a longer lockdown and — as Modi himself tweeted — “add tremendous strength to the fight against COVID-19.”

Bollywood Stars Light Candle Diya's Kangana, Karan, Amitabh, Ananya, Madhuri #9Pm9Mins

On April 5, Modi called on Indians to switch off their lights and light up candles and lamps at 9 PM for nine minutes in a show of solidarity against “the darkness of the pandemic.” Hashtags like #9pm9mins and #IndiaFightsCorona — along with the prime minister’s handle @narendramodi — trended across the social media platforms of India’s rich and famous.

More recently, the Indian lockdown scored “100” on a Stringency Index developed by the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hailed this as a vindication: “The ‘full marks’ underline [the] Modi government’s proactiveness, seriousness and swiftness in implementing [an] effective lockdown.”

The Blavatnik School of Government responded tersely to the BJP’s tweet:

Thanks for your interest in our tracker, which simply records the number and strictness of government policies. The related stringency index should not be interpreted as measuring the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country’s response — there are no “marks” as such.

In other words, the fact that a lockdown is especially strict does not mean it will be effective in countering the spread of the pandemic.

With the COVID-19 pandemic coming hard on the heels of an uptick in misinformation stories, heightened Islamophobia, and a period of widespread communal violence, there have also been ongoing efforts to blame Muslims for the outbreak. This began when a group of Muslim missionaries who were infected with the coronavirus unknowingly spread it to communities across the country after a meeting in Delhi in March.

Later, images from Pakistan went viral across social media platforms as supposed “evidence” of Muslim communities in India openly flouting the lockdown. There are now reports of hospitals refusing to admit Muslim patients unless they have test results proving that they are not infected with COVID-19.

But none of this can erase the fact that neither India’s public health care system, nor its wider economy, is ready to cope with a major outbreak. A 2019 study exposed the dire state of the health care sector: with only 1.4 percent of India’s GDP allocated for health spending, public infrastructure was already severely under-resourced when the pandemic began.

India only has one doctor in the public health system for every 10,189 people. In total, there is a shortfall of 600,000 doctors and 2 million nurses. Furthermore, an estimated 42 percent of doctors in urban India don’t have a medical degree. In rural areas the picture is even worse: only 19 percent of “doctors” have medical qualifications, and a third is reported to have no more than secondary school education.

Add a pandemic to the mix and the results could be catastrophic. In mid-March, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare estimated that there was one isolation bed available for every 84,000 people, and one quarantine bed for every 36,000. There were also just 40,000 respiratory systems in the entire country.

Access to affordable COVID-19 testing kits has also been a significant concern. While testing at government facilities was free, the public health care system had reached the limits of its capacity by late March, and the government allowed private facilities to conduct tests. It capped the cost of testing at such facilities at 4,500 rupees ($56), still a relatively high figure for most Indians, which meant that many people couldn’t afford the test.

The Indian Council of Medical Research called for “free or subsidized testing in this hour of national public health emergency.” However, it was up to private health care providers to decide whether they would follow this recommendation.

On April 9, the Supreme Court ordered the government to provide free testing even at private facilities. Later, the court modified its order, declaring that the test should be free for the country’s poorest while leaving it for the government to define who was eligible.

Ostensibly, this decision would enable higher rates of testing. But that’s easier said than done since there is only one approved domestically produced testing kit. Due to the rise in global demand, the Indian authorities have had difficulty acquiring imported kits and protective gear.

The Indian economy is equally vulnerable. When Modi rose to power in 2014, he promised to reproduce the economic development that the western state of Gujarat had seen under his leadership at the national level.

However, India under the Modi government has not been an economic success story. In fact, a 2019 Harvard University study found that the Indian economy was experiencing a “Great Slowdown,” because of diminishing exports and investments.

Of course, the most prominent stain on Modi’s economic policy-making record was the haphazardly implemented demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes in 2016. This policy was supposed to undermine the black market and funding for illegal activities.

Yet 90 percent of all the currency in circulation was demonetized as a result, and the main victims were ordinary citizens who had been blindsided by the measure and were left desperately short of cash. The Reserve Bank of India reported that demonetization led to the loss of 1.5 million jobs, and there was a 2 percent drop in the country’s GDP.

As all economic activities came to a standstill after the lockdown, the growth rate of 5 percent for the 2020–21 financial year that had been projected earlier — already dismal — had to be revised downward to 2 percent, which would be the lowest in three decades. This is a worrying sign for a country with massive infrastructural needs, where almost five million people join the workforce every year.

In a bid to stimulate the economy — and partly in response to protests by migrant workers against the extension of the lockdown — the Indian government allowed some sectors to restart operations from April 20.

These sectors include agriculture and construction, both of which are heavily reliant on migrant workers, who will now be allowed to move within a state for purposes of employment. The effect of these measures on the economy (or the spread of the virus) is thus far unclear.

It is too early to determine the long-term effects of India’s ongoing tryst with its latest pandemic. Nonetheless, the country already stands as a cautionary tale. The full spectrum of vulnerabilities exposed by the outbreak shows the extent to which countries in the Global South — many of which lack the kinds of resources that India has at its disposal — are susceptible to the pandemic.

However, the Indian experience also has broader implications. From the obvious parallel between the downgrading of the NDRF by Modi and Trump’s gutting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to the glaring weakness of public health care systems and policies in countries of the North and South alike, this pandemic has revealed issues of universal concern.

Just as the race to find a vaccine for COVID-19 has galvanized efforts across the world, this crisis should also be an opportunity to collectively address these wider concerns and devise global solutions.

Simon Tisdall continues in his "hollow men" article:

Faced by all this bad behaviour, despair is an option. As Eliot wrote in The Hollow Men, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but with a whimper”. And yet, perhaps not.

Progressives can take comfort from the way autocrats and rightwing populists have mostly flunked the Covid-19 challenge. Maybe people around the world, shocked by all the high-handed bungling, will begin to resist and reverse the recent trend towards authoritarianism.

It would be reassuring to think so. On the whole, democracies have behaved better during the crisis. But the UK and US responses have been dismal. Maybe that’s because, in both cases, a certain kind of shallow, arrogant man is in charge. 

We just need to follow the science . . .

. . . and start squeezing the oil out of this latest shipment of snake legs!

John Crace, in his Sketch for the Guardian print edition today, ends his account of the previous day's proceedings in the UK parliament: "The government had always stockpiled exactly the amount of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) the scientists had recommended, Gove said, citing a hitherto unknown advisory group. It didn't tally with with anything we had heard about Exercise Cygnus, the 2016 pandemic plan, but maybe this new scientific panel is the only one on which Dominic Cummings isn't thought to have sat in the past few years. It's not hard to see that it's the scientists that are being lined up for the show trial when the dust finally settles." This comment is made in the light of the story that broke on the front page of the Guardian last Saturday 25 April 2020:

Revealed: Cummings sits on secret science advisory group

Severin Carrell, David Pegg, Felicity Lawrence, Paul Lewis, Rob Evans, David Conn, Harry Davies and Kate Proctor broke this story (Fri 24 Apr 2020 18.27 BST):

Their report begins:

The prime minister’s chief political adviser, Dominic Cummings, and a data scientist he worked with on the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit are on the secret scientific group advising the government on the coronavirus pandemic, according to a list leaked to the Guardian.

It reveals that both Cummings and Ben Warner were among 23 attendees present at a crucial convening of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) on 23 March, the day Boris Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown in a televised address.
Who's who on secret scientific group advising UK government?

Multiple attendees of Sage told the Guardian that both Cummings and Warner had been taking part in meetings of the group as far back as February. The inclusion of Downing Street advisers on Sage will raise questions about the independence of its scientific advice.

There has been growing pressure on Downing Street in recent days to disclose more details about the group, which provides scientific advice to the upper echelons of government during emergencies. Both the membership of Sage and its advice to ministers on the Covid-19 outbreak is being kept secret.

Warner, a data scientist, was reportedly recruited to Downing Street last year by Cummings after running the Conservative party’s general election campaign model. He is also said to have worked closely with Cummings on the data modelling used in the Vote Leave campaign for the UK to leave the European Union.

Q. So, what's the problem?

A. Because it politicizes what should be an impartial scientific process.

Felicity Lawrence, Severin Carrell, and David Pegg, followed up last Friday's revelation of UK government advisers political involvement in what should be a scientific process (Sun 26 Apr 2020):

The involvement of the prime minister’s chief political adviser, Dominic Cummings, in meetings of the scientific group advising the UK government’s response to the coronavirus has left other attendees shocked, concerned and worried for the impartiality of advice, the Guardian can reveal.

One attendee of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said they felt Cummings’ interventions had sometimes inappropriately influenced what is supposed to be an impartial scientific process.

A second Sage attendee said they were shocked when Cummings first began participating in Sage discussions, in February, because they believed the group should be providing “unadulterated scientific data” without any political input.

Scientists suffer from confirmation bias and groupthink, just like the rest of us, which is why the presence and involvement of these advisers is so dangerous. The securing of political decisions based on possible scenarios, backed by scientific analysis, is being undermined. The dangers of groupthink is a common psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which "the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome". An unconscious desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs, and where there is an interlocutor with a political agenda, this may cause the group to minimize potential conflict by reaching a consensus decision with a political slant. Such decision making processes that proceed without acknowledging and including uncomfortable realities, in a necessary critical evaluation of the "science", leads to dysfunctional decision-making outcomes. 

Furthermore, the scientific community is not immune from the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms or strengthens individual's or group's prior beliefs, assumptions or hypotheses. This is confirmation bias, a type of cognitive bias, and something we are usually, although unconsciously, involved in doing all of the time. "People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position."

Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO, had this opinion piece published in the Guardian (Mon 27 Apr 2020), under the headline and subheading:

The government's secret science group has a shocking lack of expertise

Sage has no molecular virologists, immunologists or intensive care experts. This could have cost thousands of lives

The success of any advisory group of scientists surely depends on a culture of openness, independence and diversity of opinion. Unfortunately this culture of openness has been conspicuous by its absence when it comes to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies. It’s only through the persistence of Guardian journalists that we can now identify 23 participants in Sage. Of these, 13 are paid government employees, working as ministerial, health or civil service advisers. As such, the presence of their bosses, Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty, to say nothing of the prime ministers’s most senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, might well influence their ability to speak freely.

Beyond that, what does the membership of this committee actually tell us? We’ve learned from the list of attendees at a crucial Sage meeting on 23 March, leaked to the Guardian, that the group includes seven clinical academics, three microbiologists, seven modellers, two behavioural scientists with backgrounds in disasters and terrorism, one geneticist, one civil servant and two political advisers, one of which is the most powerful prime ministerial lieutenant in recent memory.

The makeup of Sage reflects an oddly skewed and overwhelmingly medical view of science. Indeed, there are many other perspectives that could bring value to a pandemic crisis team. Did Sage consult public health epidemiologists at the frontline of the response to coronavirus in China or Hong Kong, such as Prof Gabriel Leung? Did the group get input from infectious experts at the World Health Organization, such as the epidemiologist Mike Ryan, who leads the team responsible for containing of Covid-19 across the world?

The group includes no molecular virologists who could explain detailed pathogenic differences between Covid-19 and influenza, not one intensive care expert or nursing leader, and no immunologist to examine whether this virus produces lasting and protective immunity. There are no social scientists who could work on community engagement, nor a logistician, who would have expertise in planning for the delivery of supplies and resources during a pandemic. A balanced scientific advisory group would at the minimum include experts working at the frontline of the pandemic, such as those in public health, primary care and intensive care.

As to other measures of diversity, the gender balance of Sage is predictably skewed, with 16 men to seven women and only one ethnic minority person. Given that coronavirus has been shown to disproportionately affect people from black and ethnic minority communities, the comparative lack of black and ethnic minority experts seems a troubling omission.

In the absence of meeting minutes, we may never know whether, despite these deficiencies, a culture of openness exists within Sage. The lack of a paper trail also makes two of the group’s most important decisions particularly difficult to understand. At its first meeting on 28 January, Sage didn’t ask its mathematical modellers to model a community testing programme. Community testing and contact tracing reportedly wasn’t included as a possible strategy in the original modelling because not enough tests were available. The UK had been among the first countries to develop a Covid-19 test in mid-January, approved by the WHO, and has an exceptional national research infrastructure. Yet our national capacity to respond to a pandemic challenge appears to have been ignored. The basic principles of public health, and the daily mantra of the WHO – to find the virus, test, trace and isolate, to promote social distancing, and to do it all at speed – appear to have been effectively disregarded.

Whatever was discussed by Sage during February led to an alternative strategy, laid out by Boris Johnson, Vallance and Whitty at the beginning of March: to move from containing the virus to delaying its spread, allowing it to move through the population so that we eventually acquire “herd immunity” at a delayed speed.

So at a moment when the UK had fewer than 10 deaths from Covid-19 and less than 500 confirmed cases of coronavirus, the government, informed by Sage, decided to stop all community testing and tracing. The public health community were perplexed. It is difficult to think of other severe viral epidemics managed in this way, apart from influenza, which differs from coronvirus in important ways.

Six weeks later, the approach favoured by the WHO – testing, tracing and isolating the virus – is ostensibly back on the agenda. Matt Hancock has pledged that the UK will deliver 100,000 tests a day by the end of this week, with the army, Deloitte, Serco and Boots setting up test centres across the country. Health workers and their families can sign up for tests immediately. All hospital patients will be tested. Yet the government is bypassing the local authority public health teams and GPs who are at the forefront of routine screening and testing in the NHS and local communities. Its strategy still appears to be about flattening the curve, rather than finding every case of coronavirus.

Without testing, tracing those who have come into contact with infected people and isolating these clusters, the virus will flare up again. Future lockdowns will be necessary, and economic recovery extremely difficult. In a month’s time, we could be heading towards 60,000 deaths or more. It’s impossible to tell whether things would have played out differently had Sage included people from public health and primary care backgrounds. But had its membership and details of its decisions been revealed earlier, there would have been a chance for the wider scientific community to offer constructive criticism, maybe in time to save thousands of lives.

With the challenge of a completely new viral infection in Covid-19, there is bound to be a learning curve and contending hypotheses. This is in contrast to consensus among the scientific community and expertise, regarding the body of scientific knowledge that supports the current view of the need for extreme urgency, in formulating both policy and action, to tackle the climate emergency.

The "science" denial machine continues, and in ever new forms . . .

. . . but climate experts hit back!

Oliver Milman reporting for the Guardian (Tue 28 Apr 2020) writes:

A new Michael Moore-produced documentary that takes aim at the supposed hypocrisy of the green movement is “dangerous, misleading and destructive” and should be removed from public viewing, according to an assortment of climate scientists and environmental campaigners.

The film, Planet of the Humans, was released on the eve of Earth Day last week by its producer, Michael Moore, the baseball cap-wearing documentarian known for Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine. Describing itself as a “full-frontal assault on our sacred cows”, the film argues that electric cars and solar energy are unreliable and rely upon fossil fuels to function. It also attacks figures including Al Gore for bolstering corporations that push flawed technologies over real solutions to the climate crisis.

Planet of the Humans has provoked a furious reaction from scientists and campaigners, however, who have called for it be taken down. Films for Action, an online library of videos, temporarily took down the film after describing it as “full of misinformation”, though they later reinstated it, saying they did not want accusations of censorship to give the film “more power and mystique than it deserves”. A free version on YouTube has been viewed more than 3m times.

A letter written by Josh Fox, who made the documentary Gasland, and signed by various scientists and activists, has urged the removal of “shockingly misleading and absurd” film for making false claims about renewable energy. Planet of the Humans “trades in debunked fossil fuel industry talking points” that question the affordability and reliability of solar and wind energy, the letter states, pointing out that these alternatives are now cheaper to run than fossil fuels such as coal.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist and signatory to Fox’s letter, said the film includes “various distortions, half-truths and lies” and that the filmmakers “have done a grave disservice to us and the planet by promoting climate change inactivist tropes and talking points.” The film’s makers did not respond to questions over whether it will be pulled down.

Planet of the Humans has been shown at Moore’s Traverse City film festival, where the producer said it was “perhaps the most urgent film we’ve shown in the 15-year history of our film festival”. Jeff Gibbs, who wrote and directed the film, has suggested that unrestrained economic and population growth should be the target of environmentalists’ efforts rather than technological fixes.

Climate activist Bill McKibben, one of the targets for the film for allegedly being influenced by corporate money and for supporting the burning of biomass such as wood chips for energy, said the characterisations are untrue. McKibben has previously changed his views on biomass energy, which he now sees as being detrimental to climate action, and claims he has “never taken a penny in pay” from any environmental group.

“I am used to ceaseless harassment and attack from the fossil fuel industry, and I’ve done my best to ignore a lifetime of death threats from rightwing extremists,” McKibben said. “It does hurt more to be attacked by others who think of themselves as environmentalists.”

Renewable energy has long been portrayed as expensive and unreliably intermittent by oil and gas companies and their lobby groups, which have spent several decades questioning the veracity of climate science and undermining efforts to radically reduce planet-heating emissions.

In fact, the technology used for wind and solar energy has improved markedly in recent years, while the costs have plummeted. While electric cars often require fossil fuel-generated energy to produce them and provide the electricity to fuel them, research has shown they still emit less greenhouse gas and air pollutants over their lifetime than a standard petrol or diesel car.

Generating all power from renewables will take significant upgrades of grid infrastructure and storage but several researchers have declared the goal feasible, most likely with carbon-capture technology for remaining fossil fuel plants. Scientists say the world must reach net zero emissions by 2050 to head off disastrous global heating, which would likely spur worsening storms, heatwaves, sea level rise and societal unrest.

Manufacturing dissent . . .

Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore is a 2007 documentary film.

Michael Moore does have a track record, according to this documentary film by two of his former admirers. The film asserts that filmmaker Michael Moore has used misleading tactics, primarily using on-camera statements by interviewees with personal grievances against Moore as proof. The documentary attempts to expose what the creators say are Moore's misleading tactics and mimics Moore's style of small documentary makers seeking and badgering their target for an interview to receive answers to their charges. 

The film was made over the course of two years by Canadians Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine after they viewed Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore's controversial film that attacked the Bush administration and its policies. Melnyk and Caine have stated that when they first sought to make a film about Moore, they held great admiration for what he had done for the documentary genre and set out to make a biography of him. During the course of their research, they became disenchanted with Moore's tactics. The title of this documentary is a parody of the title of the book Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, and the film it inspired.

While Moore depicted an evasive Roger Smith, then Chairman of General Motors, in his breakout documentary Roger & Me, the filmmakers of Manufacturing Dissent allege that Moore spoke with Smith twice. Moore had a lengthy exchange with Smith at a May 1987 GM shareholders meeting yet never included it in his piece. The filmmakers found this shocking, as it appeared to contradict what they say is one of the central premises of Moore's film, that corporate CEOs refuse to answer questions or acknowledge any wrongdoing. Another one of their assertions is that in Moore's Academy Award winning film Bowling for Columbine, Moore misleads the audience in describing the safety Canadians feel in their homes. In the film, Moore goes door-to-door in Sarnia, Ontario testing to see if the front doors are locked or unlocked. Moore edits the film to show every home he tries with an unlocked door. According to Manufacturing Dissent's filmmakers (but not the film itself), Moore's producer for the segment told them that in reality about 40 percent of the homes had unlocked doors.

The film also presents extended footage of the Al Smith annual memorial dinner from which Moore, in Fahrenheit 9/11, took a clip of President George W. Bush greeting the guests as the "haves and have-mores", insinuating that President Bush views the elite upper-class as his constituency, not the average American. The extended footage shows each speaker at the dinner poking fun at himself, including a clip of Al Gore joking that he invented the Internet. It is argued that the extended footage shows Moore to have taken the quote from President Bush out of context.

The filmmakers were unable to land their sit-down interview with Moore, just as Moore said he was unable to have done with Roger Smith in Roger & Me. They assert their attempts to interview Moore were consistently dodged and obstructed by Moore and the people surrounding him.

Moore rejected allegations he successfully managed to interview Roger Smith and then left that footage on the cutting room floor, telling the Associated Press: "Anyone who says that is a fucking liar." The filmmaker accepted having had a "good five minutes of back-and-forth" with Smith about a tax abatement issue after ambushing him at a shareholders' meeting in 1987, but maintained this specific questioning occurred before work began on Roger & Me and was not connected to the film. "Any exchange with Roger Smith would have been valuable," said Moore, before suggesting that if he truly had landed an interview with Smith during production and then suppressed the footage, General Motors would have publicized the details to discredit him. "I'm so used to listening to the stuff people say about me, it just becomes entertainment for me at this point. It's a fictional character that's been created with the name of Michael Moore."

Melnyk and Caine were invited to appear on a number of Fox News programs to discuss the film. They accepted an invitation to the show The Live Desk, with Martha MacCallum, fearing that their comments would be edited if they appeared on a taped program. When the pair refused to direct their criticism solely at Michael Moore, but also at mainstream U.S. media and George W. Bush, the interview was cut short. Caine told the Canadian Press, "I could hear a person in New York screaming into my earpiece: 'Get that asshole off the air.' They cut us off."

Meanwhile . . .

. . . the big polluters "make hay" while, for them, "the sun shines"!

Damian Carrington, Environment editor of the Guardian, takes a global view of the big polluters, and how they operate, opportunistically, to use the Covid-19 crisis to roll back environmental policy (Fri 17 Apr 2020):

Polluting industries around the world are using the coronavirus pandemic to gain billions of dollars in bailouts and to weaken and delay environmental protections.

The moves have been described as dangerous and irresponsible by senior figures. They say the unprecedented sums of money being committed to the global recovery are a historic opportunity to tackle the climate crisis, but such action has not been taken to date.

Fossil fuels

The fossil fuel industry, which already benefits from a $5tn-a-year subsidy, according to the IMF, has had the biggest wins during the coronavirus pandemic in the US and Canada.

• The controversial Keystone XL pipeline to transport tar sands oil from Canada to the US got the go-ahead, with $5bn in financial support from the Alberta government. US president Donald Trump called the move “GREAT news”. Other pipelines continued construction despite the lockdown.

• To “alleviate financial hardship” to the US fossil fuel industry, Trump directed the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to be filled to its maximum capacity.

• The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws, three days after a request from the American Petroleum Institute, and extended the period that the more polluting winter gasoline can be sold.

• Three US states passed laws criminalising fossil fuel protests – South Dakota, Kentucky and West Virginia.

• Republican senators asked the US federal government to “reduce, delay or suspend” taxes due on oil, gas and coal, while the National Mining Association lobbied to cut $220m in taxes intended to support coal miners affected by black lung disease.

In China, as the worst impacts of the virus outbreak passed, there was a surge in permits for new coal-fired power plants. From 1 to 18 March, more coal-fired capacity was approved than in the whole of 2019. In South Korea, the major coal plant builder Doosan Heavy Industries got a $825m government bailout; green groups say the company was in deep financial trouble before the pandemic. In Australia, lobbyists welcomed the South Australia government’s move to defer taxes and other commitments to oil and gas explorers.

Renewable energy

In the US, assistance for the green energy sector was not included in the $2tn support package on 26 March, three days after 24 rightwing thinktanks, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said they were “deeply disturbed” by possibility of funding for “unreliable ‘green’ energy programs”. However, New York state did pass new laws to speed up clean energy projects.

In Brazil, the energy regulator has indefinitely postponed green power auctions scheduled for 2020 and in South Africa, the state-owned power giant Eskom, which relies heavily on coal, said it will cut the wind power it had committed to buy.

Motor industry

In the US, the EPA finalised its rollback of Obama-era rules that made cars less polluting. In the EU, lobby groups argued for a delay in emissions reduction laws, although VW, BMW and Daimler say they are aiming to comply regardless of the virus crisis.

Aviation

A leaked letter from the International Air Transport Association describes its “aggressive” lobbying approach and includes a call for relief from corporate taxes, sales taxes, employer-paid payroll taxes and passenger ticket taxes.

In the US, aviation got a $60bn bailout package and the suspension of many taxes. In the UK, major carrier easyJet got a £600m soft loan, weeks after its biggest shareholder received almost £60m in dividends.

Farming

In the EU, the farmers’ association Copa-Cogeca called for a further postponement of the “farm to fork” strategy, which is aimed at making agriculture less polluting. The call is backed by the rightwing EPP bloc, the largest group in the European parliament.

In Germany, its farming lobby pushed for an easing of environmental standards, particularly those restricting fertiliser use, which are intended to reduce pollution. In the US, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association lobbied heavily and won a $23.5bn bailout package. Agricultural pollution is the cause of a huge “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.

Plastics and chemicals

In the US, the plastic industry lobbied to remove bans on single-use plastic bags, citing hygiene concerns, and saw bans lifted in Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and Massachusetts. The EPA also weakened the Toxic Substances Control Act for many chemical and petrochemical manufacturers.

In the EU, plastic industry lobbyists asked the European commission to postpone implementation of the single-use plastic directive, intended to cut plastic pollution. However, the commission rejected this call. In England, a ban on plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds that was due in April has been postponed.

Timber

In Indonesia, the trade ministry revoked rules requiring basic certification that wood exports were legally produced in response to lobbying from the furniture and logging industries, according to campaign group Mighty Earth.

Green shoots

The Covid-19 crisis has seen some backing for a sustainable recovery and rejections of polluter lobbying. G20 finance ministers committed to an “environmentally sustainable and inclusive recovery” and EU leaders backed “measures necessary to get back to a normal functioning of our societies and economies and to sustainable growth”.

The European commission has not delayed its consultation on a new green finance strategy and is now considering imposing new requirements on firms to reduce the risk of biodiversity loss and pandemics. This is despite coal-heavy states including Poland and the Czech Republic urging the bloc to abandon its Green Deal plan and emissions trading scheme.

In France, the government has approved 288 wind and solar energy projects and has relaxed deadlines and cancelled a planned withdrawal of rooftop solar subsidies. Germany rejected calls to ease the planned shutdown of its coal industry, while in Canada prime minister Justin Trudeau rejected the call from Albertan companies to postpone an increase in the federal carbon tax.

The fallout from the pandemic is also delaying a number of big fossil fuel projects, from LNG terminals in Australia to coal plants in Indonesia.

Q. Following the "science"?

A. Yes, apparently, but only when it is too late!

On the same front page of the Guardian, apposite to the story revealing surreptitious political involvement in the SAGE meetings, another story, even more significant in the view of Re:LODE Radio, was published under the headline:

Ministers were warned last year of risk of pandemic

The National Security Risk Assessment document

Nick Hopkins covers the story on this leaked report (Fri 24 Apr 2020):

Ministers were warned last year the UK must have a robust plan to deal with a pandemic virus and its potentially catastrophic social and economic consequences in a confidential Cabinet Office briefing leaked to the Guardian.

The detailed document warned that even a mild pandemic could cost tens of thousands of lives, and set out the must-have “capability requirements” to mitigate the risks to the country, as well as the potential damage of not doing so.

It comes as the UK’s hospital death toll from coronavirus heads towards 20,000. Less than a month ago, the medical director at NHS England, Prof Stephen Powis, said the country would “have done very well” to stay below this grim milestone.

Marked “official, sensitive”, the 2019 National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) was signed off by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, as well as a senior national security adviser to the prime minister whom the Guardian has been asked not to name.

The recommendations within it included the need to stockpile PPE (personal protective equipment), organise advanced purchase agreements for other essential kit, establish procedures for disease surveillance and contact tracing, and draw up plans to manage a surge in excess deaths.

Having plans for helping British nationals abroad and repatriating them to the UK was also flagged as a priority.

All of these areas have come under relentless scrutiny since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with the government accused of being too slow to react to the crisis. It is now under sustained pressure to provide answers about what was done nationally and locally to provide the support that planners have long called for, amid growing fears ministers were “caught out” by the crisis and have been playing catchup ever since.

The Cabinet Office document, which runs to more than 600 pages, not only analysed the risk of a viral flu pandemic but also specifically addressed the potential for a coronavirus outbreak (the earlier Sars and Mers were both coronaviruses), though it regarded this as potentially much less damaging. In reality, the UK is dealing with a hybrid of the two, raising further questions about whether ministers were quick enough to recognise the dangers and were able to rely on whatever preparations were already in place.

Drawing on previous security assessments and health risk registers, the document implicitly warned ministers they could not afford to be complacent. “A novel pandemic virus could be both highly transmissible and highly virulent,” it said. “Therefore, pandemics significantly more serious than the reasonable worst case … are possible.”

The government declined to provide specific details of the preparations that had been made prior to the pandemic, but said it would be unfair to say they were “starting from scratch”, pointing to planning exercises carried out in recent years.

“This is an unprecedented global pandemic and we have taken the right steps at the right time to combat it, guided at all times by the best scientific advice,” a government spokesman said.

“The government has been proactive in implementing lessons learned around pandemic preparedness. This includes being ready with legislative proposals that could rapidly be tailored to what became the Coronavirus Act, plans to strengthen excess death planning, planning for recruitment and deployment of retired staff and volunteers, and guidance for stakeholders and sectors across government.”

But one source with knowledge of the Cabinet Office document said the UK had not properly focused on the pandemic threat, and had been caught flat-footed.

“The really frustrating thing is that there were plans. But over the last few years emergency planning has been focused on political drivers, like Brexit and flooding.

“There was a national plan for dealing with a pandemic that should have been implemented. But who took control of that? And who was responsible for making sure that plans were being made at a local level? The truth is, I am not sure anyone was doing this.”

The source added: “We have been paying for a third-party fire and theft insurance for a pandemic, not a comprehensive one. We have been caught out.”

The shadow Cabinet Office minister, Rachel Reeves, said the revelations were “alarming … and raised serious questions about the government’s planning and preparedness for a coronavirus-style pandemic”.

She demanded her opposite number, Michael Gove, give a statement to parliament on Monday to explain “whether this report was read and what actions were taken”.

The NSRA sets out a series of potential reasonable worst case scenarios (RWCS) for the spread of a flu-like viral pandemic, which emergency planning experts regard as the benchmark for its preparedness in the current crisis.

It also included predictions that offer insights into how planners believe a crisis like this current emergency might evolve.

The document said:

• A pandemic would play out in up to “three waves”, with each wave expected to last 15 weeks … “with the peak weeks occurring at weeks 6 and 7 in each wave”.

• 50% of the population would be infected and experience symptoms of pandemic influenza during the one or more waves. The actual number of people infected would be higher than this, as there would be a number of asymptomatic cases.

• A pandemic of moderate virulence could lead to 65,600 deaths.

• The potential cost to the UK could be £2.35tn.

• Even after the end of the pandemic, it is likely that it would take months or even years for health and social care services to recover.

• There would be significant public outrage over any perceived poor handling of the government’s preparations and response to the emergency.

Whitehall sources concede that turning “plans on the page to real life” was always proving a challenge, but said that in some respects the Brexit planning had helped.

The government spokesman said its response to the emergency had protected lives and businesses: “Our response has ensured that the NHS has been given all the support it needs to ensure everyone requiring treatment has received it, as well as providing protection to businesses and reassurance to workers.”

But political pressure is mounting on the government. On Wednesday, the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, demanded ministers explain why “we were slow into lockdown, slow on testing, slow on protective equipment”.

In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Dame Deirdre Hine, who produced a report for government on the swine-flu pandemic, said she feared the government had not implemented the plans for a pandemic. “I think they have been complacent,” she said.

Guided by the scientific advice . . .


. . . in an unprecedented pandemic!

The repeated use by UK government ministers of the mantra, "unprecedented", is a ploy, to cover up the fact of the UK government being "unprepared", despite a specific "science" based WARNING

During this "unprecedented" crisis, politicians in governments of the UK, the USA, India, Iran and Brazil, are avoiding taking responsibility;

"as if it were the plague."

Entr'acte

Here's another WHO too!

Global endorsement of WHO and sign of Trump's isolation on the world stage

Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor writes (Fri 24 Apr 2020):

Global leaders have pledged to accelerate cooperation on a coronavirus vaccine and to share research, treatment and medicines across the globe. But the United States did not take part in the World Health Organization initiative, in a sign of Donald Trump’s increasing isolation on the global stage.

The cooperation pledge, made at a virtual meeting, was designed to show that wealthy countries will not keep the results of research from developing countries.

The meeting also represented a symbolic endorsement of the United Nations body in the face of Trump’s decision to suspend US payments and condemn its leaders as subordinates of the Chinese Communist party. China and the US have accused each other of bullying and disinformation over the coronavirus outbreak, damaging efforts to secure cooperation at the G20, the natural international institution to handle global health outside the UN.

Instead an ad hoc grouping of 20 world leaders and global health figures were on the call, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the American philanthropist Bill Gates. Britain will co-chair a joint coronavirus global response summit on 4 May aimed at raising funds for vaccine research, treatments and tests.

Macron told the meeting: “We will continue now to mobilise all G7 and G20 countries so they get behind this initiative. And I hope we will be able to reconcile around this joint initiative both China and the US, because this is about saying the fight against Covid-19 is a common human good and there should be no division in order to win this battle.”

The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “We are facing a common threat that we can only defeat with a common approach. Experience has told us that even when tools are available they have not been equally available to all. We cannot allow that to happen.”

More than 100 potential vaccines are being developed, including six already in clinical trials, according to Seth Berkley, the chief executive of the Gavi vaccine alliance, a public-private partnership that leads immunisation campaigns in poor countries.

Berkley said it was critical that there was not a repeat of the experience in 2009, when the H1N1 vaccine did not reach developing countries until very late.

The US mission in Geneva confirmed there would be no official US participation, but said it looked forward to the outcome of the WHO meeting.

Five pledges were agreed on the call:

• Provide access to new treatments, technologies and vaccines across the world.

• Commit to an unprecedented level of international partnership on research and coordinate efforts to tackle the pandemic and reduce infections.

• Reach collective decisions on responding to the pandemic, recognising that the virus’s spread in one country can affect all countries.

• Learn from experience and adapt the global response.

• Be accountable, to the most vulnerable communities and the whole world.

The heavily multilateral tone of the pledges contrasts with many countries’ immediate reaction to the outbreak, when countries banned the export of their medical equipment, closed borders and even tried to steal equipment from one another. The degree of cooperation over the vaccine research has also been patchy at best.

The meeting also agreed to appoint two new special envoys to lead global cooperation on vaccine research and to help ensure equal access to any successful vaccines. Sir Andrew Witty, the British former head of the global drugs giant GSK, was appointed alongside Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the chair of Gavi.

Britain has been one of the biggest supporters of the global effort to find a coronavirus vaccine, providing £250m for international research on the disease at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

Clean recovery . . .

Fiona Harvey, Environment correspondent for the Guardian writes (Tue 28 Apr 2020) under the headline and subheading:

UN chief: don't use taxpayer money to save polluting industries

António Guterres calls for coronavirus aid to be directed at firms with green credentials

Governments should not use taxpayer cash to rescue fossil fuel companies and carbon-intensive industries, but should devote economic rescue packages for the coronavirus crisis to businesses that cut greenhouse gas emissions and create green jobs, the UN secretary general has urged.

“Where taxpayers’ money is used to rescue businesses, it must be creating green jobs and sustainable and inclusive growth,” said António Guterres, speaking at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a virtual meeting of more than 30 governments on the climate crisis, which concluded on Tuesday. “It must not be bailing out outdated, polluting, carbon-intensive industries.”

His call was echoed by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who led the meeting, which was also attended by the UK and China. “The coronavirus shows us that international cooperation is crucial and that the wellbeing of one nation always depends on the wellbeing of others,” she said. “There will be a difficult debate about the allocation of funds. But it is important that recovery programmes always keep an eye on the climate. We must not sideline climate, but invest in climate technologies.”

She confirmed German support within the EU for a target of cutting emissions by 50-55% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. The target is currently the subject of debate within the bloc.

Many countries are planning big investments in fossil fuel industries as part of their economic rescue packages. For instance, in the US the bailout of the airline industry is set to go ahead without conditions attached on their emissions, while the White House has moved to weaken a raft of environmental regulations. In China, subsidies for fossil fuel vehicles and the easing of permits for coalmining are also likely to raise emissions.

While greenhouse gas emissions are set to fall this year, perhaps by as much as a tenth, any beneficial impact on the climate is likely to be short-lived and could quickly be outweighed by increased emissions if the economic recovery resumes on a high-carbon path. Low oil prices mean producers are running out of economic ways to store their excess.

Campaigners and experts have been calling for economic rescue packages to be directed towards environmentally sustainable ends and for sectoral stimulus cash to come with green strings attached.

Dominic Raab, the UK’s foreign secretary, said: “It will be the duty of every responsible government to see that our economies are revived and rebuilt in a way that will stand the test of time. That means investing in industries and infrastructure that can turn the tide on climate change and doing all we can to boost resilience by shaping economies that can withstand everything nature throws at us.”

However, he failed to set out any measures on how the UK government would ensure that its rescue packages – for instance, those called for by the airline and car manufacturing industries – were balanced with conditions that would ensure benefiting companies had to take action to reduce carbon use in the future.

Richard Black, the director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said it was time for such measures. “Backing for a clean recovery is now widespread, led by governments and major businesses,” he said. “For actions to match rhetoric, concrete policies are going to be needed very soon – for example, the UK government delivering new policies that get the nation on track to its legally binding net-zero target, and making sure the world doesn’t bounce back into high-polluting ways as soon as the lockdown eases.”

Guterres called for tougher action on cutting emissions, as well as more investment. “Public funds should invest in the future by flowing to sustainable sectors and projects that help the environment and climate. Fossil fuel subsidies must end, and carbon must have a price so polluters will pay for their pollution,” he said.

Guterres also called for developing countries to receive $100bn (£82bn) a year, a longstanding goal under the global climate negotiations, to help them curb emissions and cope with the impacts of climate breakdown, and he hinted at moves to reduce the debt on many developing countries, which has been mooted as a way to help them during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We cannot allow the heavy and rising debt burden of developing countries to serve as a barrier to their ambition [on the climate],” he said.

Rich countries must all commit to zero-carbon emissions by 2050, added Guterres, with a particular nod to the US and China. “The Paris agreement was largely made possible by the engagement of the US and China. Without the contribution of the big emitters, all our efforts will be doomed.”

Helen Clarkson, the chief executive of The Climate Group, a set of businesses accelerating action on the climate, said companies were still committed to climate action. “With the right green stimulus policies that ramp up investment in long-term sustainable solutions from electric transport to clean efficient energy, we can deliver on the goals of the Paris agreement without compromising on economic growth,” she said.

The UK will host global climate talks next year, after the UN’s Cop26 summit had to be postponed from its original date of this November. No date has yet to be set for the rearranged meeting, but work is continuing on diplomatic engagement aimed at encouraging countries to come forward with more ambitious climate plans, according to the UK government.

 One Month Later . . .

Over a month ago, Fiona Harvey, Environment correspondent for the Guardian, reported on environmental campaigners efforts to reshape the agenda for post pandemic economic recovery plans (Tue 24 Mar 2020).

Fiona Harvey reports under the headline:

Covid-19 economic rescue plans must be green, say environmentalists

The economic rescue packages to deal with the impact of the coronavirus must also be green, a growing chorus of environmental campaigners have urged, concerned that hasty measures will lock the world into a high-carbon future.

“Governments need to put huge amounts of money into trying to sustain jobs and livelihoods,” said Mary Robinson, a former Irish president and UN high commissioner for human rights, who served twice as UN climate envoy. “But they must do it with a very strong green emphasis. The threat from climate change is as real as the threat from Covid-19, though it seems far away.”

“Money has poured into the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement [of 2015],” she said. “That can’t continue.”

But she said the changes wrought in societies around the world by dealing with Covid-19 would also demonstrate to people that the changes needed to achieve a low-carbon future were much less drastic and far more palatable. As far as the climate was concerned, “we must not go back to bad habits afterwards”, she said. “It will be easier to persuade people, as we have had to change so dramatically because of this threat.”

Economic plans worth trillions of dollars in public money are being rolled out to stave off the immediate collapse of some badly hit businesses, such as airlines and tourism – and to protect the incomes of workers in danger of redundancy as normal life becomes impossible across Europe and large parts of the US, as it already has in many parts of east Asia.

But while people’s health and the immediate welfare of workers caught up in the crisis are paramount, campaigners and experts fear that if the longer-term packages are not carefully designed they will only entrench fossil fuel dependence across the global economy.

“Governments are drawing up stimulus plans to counter the economic damage from coronavirus,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency. “These stimulus packages offer an excellent opportunity to ensure that the essential task of building a secure and sustainable energy future doesn’t get lost amid the flurry of immediate priorities.”

The Bank of England is resuming its quantitative easing programme of buying up assets to create liquidity in the financial system, as it did after the 2008 crash, but there are concerns that the programme has previously been used to buy bonds from fossil fuel companies including Shell, BP and Total.

There have been calls in some areas, such as eastern Europe and in Asia, to ignore climate concerns and pour stimulus money into existing high-carbon businesses and fossil fuels, rather than seeking a balance with a longer-term view that includes the need to curb emissions.

John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, said governments must act urgently to protect people’s livelihoods, which could be done without directing the money to prop up ailing sectors whose long-term future was already threatened by the climate crisis.

“Decisions are being made now about whether to spend billions rescuing airlines, cruise ships, the oil and gas industry, among many others,” he said. “Bailing out the shareholders of dirty industries to continue businessasusual rather than protecting workers and their families means we would have learnt nothing from the bank bailout during the financial crisis.”

Green campaigners have long talked about a “just transition” that would enable workers to move away from fossil fuel-dependent jobs and into skilled jobs with long-term low-carbon prospects. They argue this is compatible with tackling the coronavirus, too – but only if governments resist calls to downgrade environmental aims in light of the new crisis.

“Diluting or doing away with environmental regulations to get a quick economic hit, as China and Poland are suggesting, would be misplaced – out of the frying pan, into the fire, even if the fire seems a few years away,” said Shaun Spiers, the executive director of the Green Alliance thinktank. “It is striking that the ruling party in South Korea has not let coronavirus deter it from proposing a green new deal election manifesto. But I would expect the UK to prioritise the immediate economic impact while also applying a climate lens and thinking about the longer term.”

In the US, campaigners are concerned that Donald Trump’s hostility to climate science and wooing of fossil fuel industries will skew the economic rescue packages in harmful ways. The planned bailout for airlines and the cruise industry’s request for cash are an immediate worry.

“Given that airlines produce a very large and growing amount of climate pollution, any financial assistance should include requirements that these companies take action to reduce their emissions,” said Annie Petsonk of the US-based Environmental Defense Fund. “The cruise industry, which has also requested billions in aid, has serious environmental impacts as well, and should meet new standards in exchange for government funding.”

She said that in return for public money, companies should give firm commitments on carbon. “[That] would be a major step in the fight against climate change. Taxpayers, many of whom are now struggling financially, have the right to expect responsible behaviour in exchange for bailouts. They should not be funding private businesses only to see them create more costs for the public – in the form of climate impacts – in the future.”

For many experts, the vital point is that the lessons from the stimulus following the financial crisis more than a decade ago are learned. Then, as now, global greenhouse gas emissions paused as the crisis hit. But after the immediate impact, emissions began their steady rise again and have continued to do so since, partly because the chance was missed to use the vast amounts of public money to set the world on a green path.

“Given the state will never again play such a powerful role in our economy, and more broadly the global economy, if there was ever a time to join the dots between responding to the health emergency and the climate and nature emergency then this is it,” said Sauven. “The worst case would be that you haven’t used this awful crisis to reorientate the economy to achieve a much better outcome for people and the environment globally.”

Governments across our planet need to act on the climate emergency now. 

Sadly, many politicians in the most powerful nations of the world, prefer delaying tactics.

The human race cannot wait until it is too late. The time to act is now, and be informed by the "science"!

The Madhouse Effect!

Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State Michael Mann and Washington Post  editorial cartoonist and blogger Tom Toles offer insight into this question. In their timely book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, the pair use science, cartoons and satire to examine the science behind global warming and then tackle denialist attempts to refute it, including the financial, ideological and political institutions fueling the climate denial movement.

To quote Michael Mann and Tom Toles from this Belfer Center article: The Madhouse Effect: A Climate Scientist and an Editorial Cartoonist Team Up to Tackle Climate Change Denial, by Jonathan Edel-Hänni, with Cristine Russell (Mar. 01, 2018):

“The good news is that 2017 was not the warmest year on record - it was the second warmest,” quips Mann. The joke is that 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively have each broken the record for highest global temperature. “The impact of climate change is no longer subtle,” he finishes. Evidence may be piling up, but resistance to meaningful policy change remains stiff, particularly in the polarized climate of Washington. Some have called President Trump the “denier in chief,” under whose leadership cabinet appointments have gone to many opponents of climate science and action. The Republican Congress continues to fight hard against meaningful legislation to curb greenhouse emissions from fossil fuels. As Mann puts it, “The foxes have taken over the hen house, and are renting out rooms to more foxes in the EPA and other agencies.”

“I prefer the word ‘crisis’ but it is definitely a fight that we have to get on the right side of,” says Toles.

Meanwhile . . .

Jonathan Watts, writing for the Guardian (Mon 27 Apr 2020) reports:

This year is on course to be the world’s hottest since measurements began, according to meteorologists, who estimate there is a 50% to 75% chance that 2020 will break the record set four years ago.

Although the coronavirus lockdown has temporarily cleared the skies, it has done nothing to cool the climate, which needs deeper, longer-term measures, the scientists say.

Heat records have been broken from the Antarctic to Greenland since January, which has surprised many scientists because this is not an El Niño year, the phenomenon usually associated with high temperatures.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculates there is a 75% chance that 2020 will be the hottest year since measurements began.

The US agency said trends were closely tracking the current record of 2016, when temperatures soared early in the year due to an unusually intense El Niño and then came down.

The US agency said there was a 99.9% likelihood that 2020 will be one of the top five years for temperatures on record.

A separate calculation by Gavin Schmidt, the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, found a 60% chance this year will set a record.

The Met Office is more cautious, estimating a 50% likelihood that 2020 will set a new record, though the UK institution says this year will extend the run of warm years since 2015, which is the hottest period on record.

Abnormal weather is increasingly the norm as temperature records fall year after year, and month after month.

This January was the hottest on record, leaving many Arctic nations without snow in their capital cities. In February, a research base in the Antarctic registered a temperature of more than 20C (68F) for the first time on the southern continent. At the other end of the world Qaanaaq, in Greenland, set an April record of 6C on Sunday.

In the first quarter, the heating was most pronounced in eastern Europe and Asia, where temperatures were 3C above average. In recent weeks, large parts of the US have sweltered. Last Friday, downtown Los Angeles hit an April high of 34C, according to the National Weather Service. Western Australia has also experienced record heat.

In the UK, the trend is less pronounced. The daily maximum UK temperature for April so far is 3.1C above average, with records set in Cornwall, Dyfed and Gwynedd.

Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, said global warming was nudging closer to 1.2C above pre-industrial levels. He said his online tracker showed a relatively conservative level of 1.14C of warming due to gaps in the data, but that this could rise to 1.17C or higher once the latest figures were incorporated.

Although the pandemic has at least temporarily reduced the amount of new emissions, he said the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere remains a huge concern.

“The climate crisis continues unabated,” Haustein said. “The emissions will go down this year, but the concentrations keep on rising. We are very unlikely to be able to notice any slowdown in the built-up of atmospheric GHG levels. But we have the unique chance now to reconsider our choices and use the corona crisis as a catalyst for more sustainable means of transport and energy production (via incentives, taxes, carbon prices etc).”

This was echoed by Grahame Madge, a climate spokesman for the Met Office: 

“A reliance and trust in science to inform action from governments and society to solve a global emergency are exactly the measures needed to seed in plans to solve the next crisis facing mankind: climate change.”