UN raises serious human rights concerns over Australia’s India travel ban

Daniel Hurst

‘Nobody’s going to be jailed … at this time,’ deputy PM Michael McCormack says

The UN has questioned whether Australia’s India travel ban is consistent with the country’s human rights obligations. Photograph: Matt Jelonek/Getty Images

UN human rights officials have raised “serious concerns” about the Morrison government’s ban on Australians returning from India, and the severe penalties attached to breaches.

The office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has questioned whether the controversial temporary measure – which can attract maximum penalties of five years’ imprisonment or $66,600 – is consistent with Australia’s human rights obligations.

“We have serious concerns about whether the Biosecurity Determination – and the severe penalties which can be imposed for its breach – meets Australia’s human rights obligations,” a spokesperson for the office, Rupert Colville, said early on Wednesday.

“In particular, article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which is binding on Australia, provides that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.”

In response to a request for comment from Guardian Australia, Colville said the UN human rights committee “has emphasised the narrow authority to refuse nationals’ return, and considers that there are few, if any, circumstances in which deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable.

“In assessing the issue of arbitrary deprivation, key factors to be taken into account are its necessity to achieve a legitimate end and its proportionality, including whether it is the least intrusive approach to accomplish its public health objectives.

“We note that the measure is scheduled to be reconsidered on 15 May.”

The determination – criminalising the return to Australia of anyone who has been in India in the past 14 days – was put in place by the health minister, Greg Hunt, late last Friday night, using existing biosecurity laws, but has triggered a backlash.

Amid mounting pressure over its hardline approach, including from within Coalition ranks, the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, is scheduled to meet community leaders on Wednesday to discuss the ban that is blocking 9,000 people, including 650 who are considered vulnerable, from returning to Australia.

Scott Morrison and senior ministers have said they are acting in the interests of keeping Australians safe and have played down the prospect that the harsh penalties would actually be imposed.

The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said the prime minister had “made it quite clear yesterday that nobody’s going to be jailed”.

“Obviously, there needs to be a hardline taken as far as the overall act being in place, but nobody’s going to be jailed ... at this time,” McCormack told ABC News Breakfast on Wednesday. “The prime minister made it clear.

“We have taken this pause. We have made it in the national interests. We have done it, based on the best possible medical advice. It’s until May 15. We review it constantly, as you’d expect us to do.”

The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, described the government’s handling of the issue as “a shambles”, asking: “Why do you make an announcement in the middle of the night about threats of five years’ jail and considerable fines and then days later say that we won’t implement the law?”

In April the UN human rights committee requested that Australia promptly allow the return of two vaccinated citizens from the US, as the body prepared to consider their complaints about the impact of Australia’s strict caps on international arrivals.

Assisted by the leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, the citizens argue that the implementation of those caps clashes with the ICCPR.

Campaigners have previously described the situation as “dire” for a lot of Australians who were unable to return home, and say there is a sense of “losing hope”.

Revealed: 2,000 refugee deaths linked to illegal EU pushbacks

Lorenzo Tondo

A Guardian analysis finds EU countries used brutal tactics to stop nearly 40,000 asylum seekers crossing borders

Migrant rescue patrol in the Aegean Sea by the Turkish coastguard. A case has been filed against the Greek state that claims patrol boats towed migrants back to Turkish waters and abandoned them. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA

EU member states have used illegal operations to push back at least 40,000 asylum seekers from Europe’s borders during the pandemic, linked to the death of more than 2,000 people, the Guardian can reveal.

In one of the biggest mass expulsions in decades, European countries, supported by EU’s border agency Frontex, systematically pushed back refugees, including children fleeing from wars, in their thousands, using illegal tactics ranging from assault to brutality during detention or transportation.

The Guardian’s analysis is based on reports released by UN agencies, combined with a database of incidents collected by non-governmental organisations. According to charities, with the onset of Covid-19, the regularity and brutality of pushback practices has grown.

The findings come as the EU’s anti-fraud watchdog, Olaf, has launched an investigation into Frontex over allegations of harassment, misconduct and unlawful operations aimed at stopping asylum seekers from reaching EU shores.

According to the International Organization for Migration, in 2020 almost 100,000 immigrants arrived in Europe by sea and by land compared with nearly 130,000 in 2019 and 190,000 in 2017.

Since January 2020, despite the drop in numbers, Italy, Malta, Greece, Croatia and Spain have accelerated their hardline migration agenda. Since the introduction of partial or complete border closures to halt the outbreak of coronavirus, these countries have paid non-EU states and enlisted private vessels to intercept boats in distress at sea and push back passengers into detention centres. There have been repeated reports of people being beaten, robbed, stripped naked at frontiers or left at sea.

In 2020 Croatia, whose police patrol the EU’s longest external border, have intensified systemic violence and pushbacks of migrants to Bosnia. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) recorded nearly 18,000 migrants pushed back by Croatia since the start of the pandemic. Over the last year and a half, the Guardian has collected testimonies of migrants who have allegedly been whipped, robbed, sexually abused and stripped naked by members of the Croatian police. Some migrants said they were spray-painted with red crosses on their heads by officers who said the treatment was the “cure against coronavirus”.

According to an annual report released on Tuesday, the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), a coalition of 13 NGOs documenting illegal pushbacks in the western Balkans, abuse and disproportionate force was present in nearly 90% of testimonies in 2020 collected from Croatia, a 10% increase on 2019.

In April, the Guardian revealed how a woman from Afghanistan was allegedly sexually abused and held at knifepoint by a Croatian border police officer during a search of migrants on the border with Bosnia.

“Despite the European Commission’s engagement with Croatian authorities in recent months, we have seen virtually no progress, neither on investigations of the actual reports, nor on the development of independent border monitoring mechanisms,” said Nicola Bay, DRC country director for Bosnia. “Every single pushback represents a violation of international and EU law – whether it involves violence or not.”

Since January 2020, Greece has pushed back about 6,230 asylum seekers from its shores, according to data from BVMN. The report stated that in 89% of the pushbacks, “BVMN has observed the disproportionate and excessive use of force. This alarming number shows that the use of force in an abusive, and therefore illicit, way has become a normality […]

“Extremely cruel examples of police violence documented in 2020 included prolonged excessive beatings (often on naked bodies), water immersion, the physical abuse of women and children, the use of metal rods to inflict injury.”

In testimonies, people described how their hands were tied to the bars of cells and helmets put on their heads before beatings to avoid visible bruising.

A lawsuit filed against the Greek state in April at the European court of human rights accused Athens of abandoning dozens of migrants in life rafts at sea, after some had been beaten. The case claims that Greek patrol boats towed migrants back to Turkish waters and abandoned them at sea without food, water, lifejackets or any means to call for help.

BVMN said: “Whether it be using the Covid-19 pandemic and the national lockdown to serve as a cover for pushbacks, fashioning open-air prisons, or preventing boats from entering Greek waters by firing warning shots toward boats, the evidence indicates the persistent refusal to uphold democratic values, human rights and international and European law.”

According to UNHCR data, since the start of the pandemic, Libyan authorities – with Italian support since 2017, when Rome ceded responsibility for overseeing Mediterranean rescue operations to Libya – intercepted and pushed back to Tripoli about 15,500 asylum seekers. The controversial strategy has caused the forced return of thousands to Libyan detention centres where, according to first hand reports, they face torture. Hundreds have drowned when neither Libya nor Italy intervened.

SOS Méditerranée operates the Ocean Viking, one of the few remaining NGO rescue boats in the Mediterranean. Photograph: Flavio Gasperini/SOS Mediterranee

“In 2020 this practice continued, with an increasingly important role being played by Frontex planes, sighting boats at sea and communicating their position to the Libyan coastguard,” said Matteo de Bellis, migration researcher at Amnesty International. “So, while Italy at some point even used the pandemic as an excuse to declare that its ports were not safe for the disembarkation of people rescued at sea, it had no problem with the Libyan coastguard returning people to Tripoli. Even when this was under shelling or when hundreds were forcibly disappeared immediately after disembarkation.”

In April, Italy and Libya were accused of deliberately ignoring a mayday call from a migrant boat in distress in Libyan waters, as waves reached six metres. A few hours later, an NGO rescue boat discovered dozens of bodies floating in the waves. That day 130 migrants were lost at sea.

In April, in a joint investigation with the Italian Rai News and the newspaper Domani, the Guardian saw documents from Italian prosecutors detailing conversations between two commanders of the Libyan coastguard and an Italian coastguard officer in Rome. The transcripts appeared to expose the non-responsive behaviour of the Libyan officers and their struggling to answer the distress calls which resulted in hundreds of deaths. At least five NGO boats remain blocked in Italian ports as authorities claim administrative reasons for holding them.

Malta, which declared its ports closed early last year, citing the pandemic, has continued to push back hundreds of migrants using two strategies: enlisting private vessels to intercept asylum seekers and force them back to Libya or turning them away with directions to Italy.

“Between 2014 and 2017, Malta was able to count on Italy to take responsibility for coordinating rescues and allowing disembarkations,” said De Bellis. “But when Italy and the EU withdrew their ships from the central Mediterranean, to leave it in Libya’s hands, they left Malta more exposed. In response, from early 2020 the Maltese government used tactics to avoid assisting refugees and migrants in danger at sea, including arranging unlawful pushbacks to Libya by private fishing boats, diverting boats rather than rescuing them, illegally detaining hundreds of people on ill-equipped ferries off Malta’s waters, and signing a new agreement with Libya to prevent people from reaching Malta.”

Last May, a series of voice messages obtained by the Guardian confirmed the Maltese government’s strategy to use private vessels, acting at the behest of its armed forces, to intercept crossings and return refugees to Libyan detention centres.

In February 2020, the European court of human rights was accused of “completely ignoring the reality” after it ruled Spain did not violate the prohibition of collective expulsion, as asylum applications could be made at the official border crossing point. Relying on this judgment, Spain’s constitutional court upheld “border rejections” provided certain safeguards apply.

Last week, the bodies of 24 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were found by Spain’s maritime rescue. They are believed to have died of thirst and hunger while attempting to reach the Canary Islands. In 2020, according to the UNHCR, 788 migrants died trying to reach Spain.

The Guardian has approached Frontex for comment. Previously the agency has said it will be “cooperating fully” with Olaf.

Bill Gates says more than 50% of business travel will disappear in post-coronavirus world

Noah Higgins-Dunn

The coronavirus will fundamentally alter the way people travel for and conduct business, even after the pandemic is over, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said Tuesday.

“My prediction would be that over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away,” Gates told Andrew Ross Sorkin during the New York Times’ Dealbook conference.

Moving forward, Gates predicted that there will be a “very high threshold” for conducting business trips now that working from home is more feasible. However, some companies may be more extreme with their efforts to reduce in-person meetings than others, he said.

Source: CNN

Gates, whose foundation has been working to deliver a coronavirus vaccine to people most in need, said during a new podcast, “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions,” that he’s had a “simpler schedule” due to the pandemic now that he doesn’t travel for business.

The philanthropist and tech executive, who appeared alongside Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the livestreamed conference on Tuesday, said he’s already held five virtual roundtables this year with pharma executives — a meeting that’s usually held in person in New York.

“We will go to the office somewhat, we’ll do some business travel, but dramatically less,” Gates said.

The pandemic has devastated air travel demand, particularly for lucrative business trips. Business travelers before the virus accounted for half of U.S. airlines’ revenue, but just 30% of the trips, according to Airlines for America, an industry group that represents most U.S. carriers.

However, Microsoft executives have predicted that business trips will make a rebound, even as the company moves to make air travel more sustainable.

“We believe that as we return to the skies, the travel routes we’ve had ... will resume at the level they had been before,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s worldwide commercial business, said in October.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

Pfizer, BioNTech say Covid vaccine is more than 90% effective — ‘great day for science and humanity’

Pfizer and BioNTech announced Monday their coronavirus vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing Covid-19 among those without evidence of prior infection, hailing the development as “a great day for science and humanity.”

“I think we can see light at the end of the tunnel,” Pfizer Chairman and CEO Dr. Albert Bourla told CNBC’s Meg Tirrell on “Squawk Box.” “I believe this is likely the most significant medical advance in the last 100 years, if you count the impact this will have in public health, global economy.”

The announcement comes as drugmakers and research centers scrambled to deliver a safe and effective vaccine to help bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed over 1.2 million lives worldwide.

Scientists are hoping for a coronavirus vaccine that is at least 75% effective, while White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has said one that is 50% or 60% effective would be acceptable.

U.S. stock futures skyrocketed as investors cheered the news. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 1,646 points, implying an opening gain of more than 1,630 points. By late morning, the Dow was up more than 1,000 points, a rise of 3.7%.

Airline and cruise company stocks jumped in premarket trading — with some stocks rising by 20% and 30%. Both industries have been significantly affected by the global health crisis as travel restrictions and a resurgence in outbreaks continue to hurt demand. 

Pfizer’s results were based on the first interim efficacy analysis conducted by an external and independent Data Monitoring Committee from the phase three clinical study. The independent group of experts oversees U.S. clinical trials to ensure the safety of participants.

The analysis evaluated 94 confirmed Covid-19 infections among the trial’s 43,538 participants. Pfizer and the U.S. pharmaceutical giant’s German biotech partner said the case split between vaccinated individuals and those who received a placebo indicated a vaccine efficacy rate of above 90% at seven days after the second dose.

It means that protection from Covid-19 is achieved 28 days after the initial vaccination, which consists of a two-dose schedule. The final vaccine efficacy percentage may vary, however, as safety and additional data continue to be collected.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner and a member of Pfizer’s board, told CNBC the vaccine could be available in limited use as early as late December and widely available by the third quarter of 2021.

“The first set of results from our Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial provides the initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent COVID-19,” Bourla said in a statement.

“We are reaching this critical milestone in our vaccine development program at a time when the world needs it most with infection rates setting new records, hospitals nearing over-capacity and economies struggling to reopen,” Bourla continued.

“With today’s news, we are a significant step closer to providing people around the world with a much-needed breakthrough to help bring an end to this global health crisis. We look forward to sharing additional efficacy and safety data generated from thousands of participants in the coming weeks.”

Distribution challenges

Roughly 42% of the trial’s global participants had racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds, Pfizer and BioNTech said, adding that there haven’t been any serious safety concerns reported yet.

The companies said they planned to submit for emergency use authorization to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration soon after they have two months of data, which is currently on track for the third week of November.

Based on current projections, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020, and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021. The vaccine requires two doses per person. Though the companies didn’t take any money from the federal government for research and development for the drug, they reached a nearly $2 billion agreement in July to supply 100 million doses to the U.S. government as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed. That money is helping with manufacturing and distribution.

Plans to deliver hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccines around the world raise questions about logistics and distribution in part because of the need to store and transport them in supercooled containers.

Pfizer’s vaccine requires a storage temperature of minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit. By comparison, Moderna has said its vaccine must be stored at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

The company reportedly plans to load suitcase-sized boxes from distribution sites in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Puurs, Belgium, onto as many as two dozen trucks per day, allowing for the daily transit of roughly 7.6 million doses to nearby airports.

The companies said they plan to submit data from the full phase three trial, which began on July 27, for scientific peer-review publication.

‘Let’s take a deep breath’

“The U.S. FDA set a threshold of 50% effectiveness for a Covid-19 vaccine to merit approval. A 90% effective vaccine would be extraordinary,” Dr. Peter Drobac, a global health physician and director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford, said via email.

“We’ll need to see the full results subjected to independent review. Let’s take a deep breath, but this is very promising news,” he added.

U.S. officials and scientists are hopeful a vaccine to prevent Covid-19 will be ready in the first half of 2021 — 12 to 18 months since Chinese scientists first identified the coronavirus and mapped its genetic sequence.

It’s a record-breaking time frame for a process that normally takes about a decade for an effective and safe vaccine. The fastest-ever vaccine development, mumps, took more than four years and was licensed in 1967.

A more than 90% effective coronavirus vaccine would be roughly on par with one dose of a measles vaccination, which is about 93% effective, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Comparatively, the CDC says a vaccine for influenza reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population.

— CNBC’s Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.

Revealed: Covid recovery plans threaten global climate hopes

Exclusive: analysis finds countries pouring money into fossil fuels to fight recession

The prospect of a global green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is hanging in the balance, as countries pour money into the fossil fuel economy to stave off a devastating recession, an analysis for the Guardian reveals.

Meanwhile, promises of a low-carbon boost are failing to materialise. Only a handful of major countries are pumping rescue funds into low-carbon efforts such as renewable power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency.

A new Guardian ranking finds the EU is a frontrunner, devoting 30% of its €750bn (£677bn) Next Generation Recovery Fund to green ends. France and Germany have earmarked about €30bn and €50bn respectively of their own additional stimulus for environmental spending.

On the other end of the scale, China is faring the worst of the major economies, with only 0.3% of its package – about £1.1bn – slated for green projects. In the US, before the election, only about $26bn (£19.8bn), or just over 1%, of the announced spending was green.

How a Biden presidency plans to lead a global green recovery

Guardian graphic. Source: Vivid Economics

In at least 18 of the world’s biggest economies, more than six months on from the first wave of lockdowns in the early spring, pandemic rescue packages are dominated by spending that has a harmful environmental impact, such as bailouts for oil or new high-carbon infrastructure, outweighing the positive climate benefits of any green spending, according to the analysis.

Only four countries – France, Spain, the UK and Germany – and the EU have packages that will produce a net environmental benefit.

“The natural environment and climate change have not been a core part of the thinking in the bulk of recovery plans,” said Jason Eis, chief executive of Vivid Economics, which compiled the index for the Guardian. “In the majority of countries we are not seeing a green recovery coming through at all.”

Even countries that have boasted of green recovery plans are frequently spending much more on activities that will maintain or increase greenhouse gas emissions. South Korea set out plans for a green new deal in July, worth about $135bn. But its continued spending on fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries means it ranks only eighth in the world for the greenness of its stimulus.

Canada similarly is spending C$6bn (£3.5bn) of its infrastructure funding on home insulation, green transport and clean energy, but its total rescue package is worth more than $300bn and contains measures such as a massive road expansion and tax relief for fossil fuel companies. India is spending about $830m on its green economy, but plans to prop up coal have dragged down its performance.

But the election of Joe Biden as US president has the potential to transform the green recovery globally, the Vivid analysis shows. Although he may face a Republican majority in the Senate, if Biden’s plans for a $2tn green stimulus were implemented in full the US would overtake the EU as the biggest investor in a low-carbon future.

“That would be a transformative shift,” said Eis. “These are very bold plans from Biden, and it would be a huge signal to other countries. They would mean the US could start a race-to-the-top dynamic globally, especially with China, for a green recovery.”

Biden wants to boost renewable energy, powering the US entirely through clean energy by 2035 and reaching net zero emissions by 2050, investing $1.7tn over the next decade, with the expectation of private investment taking the total to $5tn. However, his plans must pass a hostile Republican Senate and will face opposition and possible legal challenges from sections of US business, and potentially some states.

Yet even if only a portion of Biden’s green plans survived intact, that could still have a powerful transformative effect, both on the US economy and around the world, said Eis. “You would expect there to be some compromise, but compared with where the US is now there would be a huge shift [in green spending] under a Biden presidency,” he said. “Many other countries are influenced by the perception of US leadership. Having the US at the G20 table pushing a green recovery would certainly help.”

Countries failing to initiate a green recovery were missing out on the potential to create millions of jobs, added Ed Barbier, professor of economics at Colorado State University, whose landmark study of the 2008 financial crisis pegged that recovery as about 16% green. “There is huge potential for boosting employment, particularly in construction,” he said, pointing to measures such as installing home insulation, solar panels and electric car charging infrastructure, which are labour-intensive and often “shovel-ready”.

While countries fail to muster a green recovery, they are also falling behind on their obligations under the Paris climate agreement. The International Energy Agency has calculated, exclusively for the Guardian, that countries are planning emissions cuts that amount to only 15% of the reductions needed to fulfil the Paris agreement. The IEA has also found that China’s emissions, which dipped sharply in the initial phases of the pandemic, have already rebounded to 2019 levels and are likely to exceed them.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said: “China has not yet started on a green recovery. But they have not yet missed the opportunity for a Chinese reset, if China changes its next five-year plan [due to be settled next March]. Whatever China builds now should be green.”

Without China, a global green recovery looks impossible. “If China does not come up with green recovery packages, putting a new five-year plan in line with the target of net zero, then the world’s chances of reaching its climate targets will be close to zero,” Birol warned.

Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis, found that governments in many countries, far from prioritising low-carbon growth, were bolstering carbon-intensive industries and loosening environmental regulations. Niklas Höhne, of the NewClimate Institute, one of the partner organisations behind CAT, warned: “What we’re seeing more of is governments using the pandemic recovery to roll back climate legislation and bail out the fossil fuel industry, especially in the US, but also in Brazil, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other countries.”

However, Lord Nicholas Stern, the climate economist, said countries still had time to move into a new phase of recovery, where green spending could be prioritised. Most of the initial $12tn in rescue packages around the world has gone to increase liquidity, prop up wages and stop companies going bust, which offers little opportunity for greening.

When it comes to the next stage, in a few months’ time, countries must have green plans ready, said Stern. “The green recovery has been delayed because we are still dealing with the virus, except in countries such as China,” he said. “Had we done better at managing the virus in Europe, I would have said we should be doing better by now [at a green recovery]. But we are still in the lockdown and rescue phase. The recovery can’t kick in until we are doing better at managing the virus.”

Rising temperatures will cause more deaths than all infectious diseases – study

Poorer, hotter parts of the world will struggle to adapt to unbearable conditions, research finds

The growing but largely unrecognized death toll from rising global temperatures will come close to eclipsing the current number of deaths from all the infectious diseases combined if planet-heating emissions aren’t constrained, a major new study has found.

Rising temperatures are set to cause particular devastation in poorer, hotter parts of the world that will struggle to adapt to unbearable conditions that will kill increasing numbers of people, the research has found.

The economic loss from the climate crisis, as well as the cost of adaption, will be felt around the world, including in wealthy countries.

In a high-emissions scenario where little is done to curb planet-heating gases, global mortality rates will be raised by 73 deaths per 100,000 people by the end of the century. This nearly matches the current death toll from all infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, HIV/Aids, malaria, dengue and yellow fever.

The research used an enormous global dataset of death and temperature records to see how they are related, gathering not only direct causes such as heat stroke but also less obvious links such as a surge in heart attacks during a heatwave.

“A lot of older people die due to indirect heat affects,” said Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “It’s eerily similar to Covid – vulnerable people are those who have pre-existing or underlying conditions. If you have a heart problem and are hammered for days by the heat, you are going to be pushed towards collapse.”

Poorer societies that occupy the hottest areas of the world are set to suffer worst. As already baking temperatures climb further this century, countries such as Ghana, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sudan face an additional 200 or more deaths per 100,000 people. Colder, richer countries such as Norway and Canada, meanwhile, will see a drop in deaths as fewer and fewer people perish due to extreme cold.

“You see the really bad impacts at the tropics,” said Jina. “There’s not one single worldwide condition, there’s a lot of different changes with poorer people much more affected with limited ability to adapt. The richer countries, even if they have increases in mortality, can pay more to adapt to it. It’s really the people who have done the least to cause climate change who are suffering from it.”

Huge heatwaves have roiled the US, Europe, Australia, India, the Arctic and elsewhere in recent years, while 2020 is set to be hottest or second hottest on record, in line with the longer-term trend of rising temperatures. The deaths resulting from this heat are sometimes plain enough to generate attention, such as the that 1,500 people who died in France from the hot temperatures during summer last year.

Within richer countries, places already used to the heat will have an adaptation head start on areas only now starting to experience scorching conditions. “A really hot day in Seattle is more damaging than a really hot day in Houston because air conditioning and other measures are less widespread there,” said Bob Kopp, a co-author and climate scientist at Rutgers University.

“It’s not going to be free for Seattle to get the resilience Houston has. Obviously in poorer countries the situation is much worse. Climate change is a public health issue and and equality issue.”

The economic cost of these deaths is set to be severe, costing the world 3.2% of global economic output by the end of the century if emissions aren’t tamed. Each ton of planet-warming carbon dioxide emitted will cost $36.60 in damage in this high-emissions world, the researchers calculated.

This worst-case scenario would involve emissions continue to grow without restraint, causing the average global temperature increase to surpass 3C by 2100. The world has heated up by about 1C, on average, since the dawn of mass industrialization, an increase scientists say is already fueling increasingly severe heatwaves, wildfires, storms and floods.

A more moderate path, where emissions are rapidly cut, will see temperature-related deaths less than a third of the more severe scenario, the researchers found. The economic costs will be significantly lower, too.

“It’s plausible that we could have the worst case scenario and that would involve drastic measures such as lots of people migrating,” said Jina. “Much like when Covid overwhelms a healthcare system, it’s hard to tell what will happen when climate change will put systems under pressure like that. We need to understand the risk and invest to mitigate that risk, before we really start to notice the impacts.”

COVID-19 provides rare opportunities for studying natural and human systems

Stanford University

Like the legendary falling apple that hit Isaac Newton and led to his groundbreaking insight on the nature of gravity, COVID-19 could provide unintended glimpses into how complex Earth systems operate, according to a new Stanford-led paper. The perspective, published July 29 in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, hypothesizes outcomes of unprecedented changes in human activity wrought by worldwide sheltering orders, and outlines research priorities for understanding their short and long-term implications. Getting it right could revolutionize how we think about issues as broad as greenhouse gas emissions, regional air quality, and the global economy's connection to poverty, food security and deforestation, according to the researchers. It could also help ensure an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic while helping prevent future crises.

"Without distracting from the most important priority -- which is clearly the health and well-being of people and communities -- the current easing of the human footprint is providing a unique window into the impacts of humans on the environment, including a number of questions that are critical for effective public policy," said lead author Noah Diffenbaugh, the Kara J Foundation Professor at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

For example, the question of how much electrifying the vehicle fleet will improve air quality has until now relied heavily on theoretical arguments and computer models. The scale of recent emissions reductions, however, provides an opportunity to use atmospheric observations to check just how accurate those models are in simulating the impact of pollution-reduction interventions such as electric vehicle incentives.

Predicting pandemic outcomes

The researchers note that although many of the initial impacts of COVID sheltering, such as clear skies resulting from reduced pollutant emissions, could be perceived as beneficial to the environment, the longer-term impacts -- particularly related to the economic recession -- are less clear. To understand the impacts across both short and long timescales, they propose focusing on cascading effects along two pathways: (1) energy, emissions, climate and air quality; and (2) poverty, globalization, food and biodiversity.

Given the complex interactions along these pathways, the researchers emphasize the need for techniques that can bring together multiple lines of evidence to reveal causes and effects. This includes bolstering and expanding coordinated efforts to study the impacts of the pandemic, including safe deployment of environmental sensors that can track changing conditions, computer models that simulate Earth's response to the sheltering measures and solutions-oriented research trials that lend insight into human behavior and decision making. The authors also call for a coordinated data repository where many different kinds of data can be made openly available to the public in a uniform format.

"Almost overnight, people across the world had to change the way they live, the way they work -- with many facing loss of income -- commute, buy food, educate their children and other energy-consuming behaviors," said Inês Azevedo, an associate professor of energy resources engineering in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. "It's critical for us to better understand how future societal disruptions and catastrophes could affect interactions among energy systems and other systems that serve society."

Understanding the human response

A key factor in understanding how the pandemic's effects play out is its influence on human behavior and decision making.

"Human behavior contributes to, but is also affected by, changes in the Earth system, and COVID-19 is creating new challenges for ensuring people and corporations act to protect the planet," said co-author Margaret Levi, the Sara Miller McCune Director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a professor of political science. "While government was not a central focus in this paper, it clarifies the roles that laws, regulations and investments play in the safety of the food supply and food workers, emissions controls and many other aspects of the health of the Earth and its inhabitants."

Some of the pandemic's most lasting impacts on climate and air quality could occur via insights it provides into the calculation of policy parameters that measure the value that individuals and society place on different environmental trade-offs. The COVID-19 crisis is making these tradeoffs more explicit, the researchers point out. This is because governments, communities and individuals are making historic decisions reflecting underlying preferences for current and future consumption, as well as the tradeoff between different types of economic activity and individual and collective risk.

These decisions can help quantify the parameters that are routinely used in environmental policymaking (such as the cost of human lives lost to air pollution or of climate change associated with carbon dioxide emissions). As those updated parameters are incorporated into actual policy decisions, they will have lasting effects on the regulations that impact the long-term trajectory of climate and air quality.

Studying policy interventions designed to prevent socio-environmental damage -- such as the role of poverty in driving deforestation -- could also help vulnerable people weather poverty shocks from COVID-19 by providing a deeper understanding of how and where poverty and environmental degradation are most tightly linked. The researchers propose using the kinds of solution-oriented research trials that were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Economics to study whether interventions such as payments for protection of natural resources are effective in staving off deforestation, over-fishing and other environmental damages.

"COVID-19 poses some of the biggest challenges we have faced in the last century," said paper co-author Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies. "With every challenge, there are opportunities for learning, and this paper provides a map for expanding the set of opportunities."

A coronavirus vaccine would be a triumph, but the worst human impulses threaten its success

Polly Tynbee
Guardian columnist

An anti-lockdown protester in Hyde Park, London, in May. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

The world has moved a step closer to ending the Covid-19 horror as researchers from Oxford University, among the 200 global teams working on vaccines, published promising results in The Lancet. The UK has already ordered 90m doses, in breath-holding hope.

A vaccine would mark another feat of astonishing human brilliance. But expect the usual human bad behaviour too. Vaccine researchers pledge to make them available to all as cheaply as possible, but we should brace ourselves for nationalists everywhere to fight for their country first, just as Donald Trump plundered other countries’ personal protective equipment and tried to corner the market in remdesivir. Countries agreed a framework from the World Health Organization (WHO) to share all vaccine information, but few expect an orderly queue: calls for solidarity and cooperation risk being swept away by those with the sharpest elbows, deepest pockets and crookedest swindling.

If the first successful vaccine turns out to be British, wait for the demand that every Briton gets it before the rest of the world, despite the fact that to end the pandemic scientists need to get it fastest to the places where the contagion is most rampant. But if the worst-affected nations are first in line this will include Brazil and the US, where presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump bear personal responsibility for their countries’ high infections and death tolls due to their Covid-19 denials and lockdown refusals. Trump will seize the chance to boast he got vaccines early to boost his election campaign. If a British vaccine succeeds, wait for Boris Johnson’s cock-crows boasting of a world-beating triumph as it if were his own invention, hoping to wipe clean memories of his errors and the UK’s shameful death rate. Science must be blind to politics, plead the global vaccinators.

A vaccine will be held up as an emblem of rational human scientific success, but be prepared for an explosion of human unreason. The idiotic and criminal are already surging across the web spreading toxic anti-vaccine messages. A recent poll suggests one in six Britons would refuse a vaccine. Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, accuses Facebook of profiting from websites promoting bogus wellness gurus’ alternatives to vaccines and anti-vax conspiracy theories that Bill Gates created the pandemic deliberately.

In the US the anti-vaxxers are far-right conspiracists, but in the UK the spread of this anti-vax brain failure finds a home among the “wellness” folk peddling naturopathic junk. The Society of Homeopaths is under investigation by the Professional Standards Authority, which regulates health professionals, as a member of its staff posted messages on social media calling vaccines “poison”, claiming homeopathy had a “great track record of success in epidemics” including Spanish and bird flu. Celebrities including Novak Djokovic and Robert F Kennedy Jnr add their names to anti-vaxxing conspiracies.

No surprise that anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield has resurfaced to claim Covid-19 is a hoax and people must fight to the death to refuse vaccination, as he told a Health Freedom event. Covid-19 was “no more deadly than seasonal flu” and its death toll was “greatly exaggerated”, he said. Wakefield was struck off the medical register and disgraced when his research purporting to show the MMR vaccine caused autism, heavily promoted by the Daily Mail, was exposed as fraudulent. His pernicious influence continues: in 2018 Britain lost its WHO “measles elimination” status, bracketing us with Albania, as vaccination rates fell for the fifth successive year, now at 90%, when the WHO requires 95% of under-fives to be covered. Cases of measles and mumps among teenagers rose after parents failed to vaccinate them as babies due to the Wakefield scare.

However, the fall in take-up of vaccines now is more likely to be caused by government negligence than anti-science homeopaths or anti-vax conspiracists. The austerity decade stripped away services that helped to get babies vaccinated – health visitors, school nurses, social workers, community midwives, Sure Start centres and district nurses. GP appointments are in short supply. The help young parents need is depleted or nonexistent: the fall in vaccination rates is just another sign of neglect that has seen infant mortality rise for the first time in my life.

Britain’s Covid-19 experience has shown how bad policies and confused messaging from government can cause a large number of deaths, particularly in vulnerable groups. If a new vaccine works, if large batches are manufactured fast, will this government be capable of delivering vaccinations to everyone, after austerity has destroyed so much of the basic community health infrastructure?

Herd immunity requires a high vaccination rate, but if one in six is refusing, it will take a herculean effort in persuasion to shift those deep fears. Prof Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says: “Trust is key. But the UK has not done well and that will be a problem.” Political polarisation is a danger: leavers tend to dismiss the danger presented by the virus, remainers are more obediently mask-wearing and cautious. “Compulsion can backfire. Reasoning with people is all there is,” says McKee.

Mixed, muddled, contradictory advice has spread confusion and an increasingly petulant resistance. Senior doctors are pleading with the public to keep to the social distancing rules for fear the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter.

Rightwingers, ever eager to make a culture war out of anything, are losing their absurd mask wars: polling shows that seven out of 10 support mandatory mask-wearing in English shops, with only 13% opposed. The public is more cautious than Johnson: they know it’s not over, lifting lockdown has not led to a spike in cases, but local and national lockdowns remain a risk.

On Monday the prime minister was at a school, oddly emphasising that: “We’ve got to continue with our current approach, maintaining social distancing measures … washing hands … wearing face masks in confined spaces like on public transport or in shops. And then we will continue to drive the virus down by our own collective action.” Yet only last week his “return to normality” message urged everyone back to stuffy offices on crowded public transport, bribing them with a tenner to cram into town centre restaurants and cafes.

Where will absolute trust come from when so much has been blown away by Johnson, and by the unapologetic Barnard Castle jaunt by his adviser Dominic Cummings? Failure in care homes and a track and trace system unfit for purpose will make it hard for any government figure to convince all doubters to follow best scientific advice.

The official scientists are now distancing themselves from the politicians moving dangerously fast towards “back to normal”. But will they be trusted enough after standing so long at their lecterns while Johnson made wrong and late decisions? If not, then who? Archbishops? The Queen? Internet influencers? Captain Tom? In persuading people to vaccinate, the most powerful influencers will be local: nurses and doctors, the only people who emerge from this national disaster still carrying public respect.

Six nature facts related to coronaviruses

Did you know that around 60 per cent of all infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic, as are 75 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases, in other words they come to us via animals?

Zoonoses that emerged or re-emerged recently are Ebola, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), the Nipah virus, Rift Valley fever, sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus, Zika virus disease, and, now, the coronavirus. They are all linked to human activity.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa was the result of forest losses leading to closer contacts between wildlife and human settlements; the emergence of avian influenza was linked to intensive poultry farming; and the Nipah virus was linked to the intensification of pig farming and fruit production in Malaysia.

Scientists and specialists working at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have been pulling together the latest scientific facts about the coronavirus—what we know about the virus and what we don’t know.

While the origin of the outbreak and its transmission pathway are yet to be discovered, here are six important points worth knowing:

1. The interaction of humans or livestock with wildlife exposes them to the risk of spillover of potential pathogens. For many zoonoses, livestock serve as an epidemiological bridge between wildlife and human infections.

2. The drivers of zoonotic disease emergence are changes in the environment—usually the result of human activities, ranging from land use change to changing climate; changes in animals or human hosts; and changes in pathogens, which always evolve to exploit new hosts. 

3. For example, bat-associated viruses emerged due to the loss of bat habitat from deforestation and agricultural expansion. Bats play important roles in ecosystems by being night pollinators and eating insects.

4. Ecosystem integrity underlines human health and development. Human-induced environmental changes modify wildlife population structure and reduce biodiversity, resulting in new environmental conditions that favour particular hosts, vectors, and/or pathogens.

5. Ecosystem integrity can help regulate diseases by supporting a diversity of species so that it is more difficult for one pathogen to spill over, amplify or dominate.

6. It is impossible to predict where the next outbreak will come from or when it will be. Growing evidence suggests that outbreaks or epidemic diseases may become more frequent as climate continues to change.

“Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people, says UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen. “Our continued erosion of wild spaces has brought us uncomfortably close to animals and plants that harbour diseases that can jump to humans.”

Nature is in crisis, threatened by biodiversity and habitat loss, global heating and toxic pollution. Failure to act is failing humanity. Addressing the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and protecting ourselves against future global threats requires sound management of hazardous medical and chemical waste; strong and global stewardship of nature and biodiversity; and a clear commitment to “building back better”, creating green jobs and facilitating the transition to carbon neutral economies. Humanity depends on action now for a resilient and sustainable future.