March, 23 2015, 11:45am EDT
Global Health Experts say Glyphosate "Probably Carcinogenic" to Humans, Raising Significant Concerns About Widely Used Herbicide
Finding highlights risks of “pesticide treadmill” created by GE crops
WASHINGTON
On March 20th, a scientific working group consisting of seventeen experts from eleven countries released their evaluation of the herbicide glyphosate and four organophosphate insecticides for the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The group classified Monsanto's glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world, as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
The finding gives new urgency to questions about the impacts of genetically engineered (GE) crops that are designed to tolerate herbicide applications. In the fifteen years following the introduction of Monsanto's signature "RoundUp Ready" corn and soy crops in 1996, more than 500 million additional pounds of glyphosate and other herbicides have been used in the U.S.
Emily Marquez, Ph.D., staff scientist at PAN, released the following statement:
"Given glyphosate's widespread usage with crops genetically engineered to tolerate herbicides, IARC's finding comes none too soon. The working group found 'convincing evidence' that glyphosate can cause cancer in laboratory animals. This, combined with more than a decade of studies documenting human exposure to the herbicide, gave IARC sufficient evidence to make the 'probable human carcinogen' classification.
It should be noted that in well over a decade's use of glyphosate in GE crops, hundreds of millions of pounds of this chemical have been released into the environment. USGS surveys document widespread water contamination, and -- as documented in a recent Consumer Reports study -- residues of glyphosate also show up in our food. Even though glyphosate is so widely used, the U.S. does not currently conduct biomonitoring for glyphosate residues, and USDA conducts only minimal testing for food residues.
The U.K.'s Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF) program has consistently found glyphosate residues in starchy foods in their quarterly survey. Though Monsanto's 'RoundUp Ready' GE crops are not widely grown in Europe, glyphosate is used as a wheat dessicant prior to harvest. PRiF reported glyphosate residues in samples taken of cereal bars and bread.
The dramatic growth in herbicide use in the U.S. driven by GE technology has resulted not only in increased human exposure to these chemicals, but also in the development of herbicide-resistant 'superweeds.' Farmers are offered more toxic mixes of herbicides as a so-called solution to this new problem. Dow's recently approved Enlist seeds -- designed for use with a mixture of glyphosate and the antiquated, highly toxic herbicide, 2,4-D -- offer a case in point.
This increasingly dangerous pesticide treadmill calls into question the logic of genetically engineered herbicide technologies that rapidly lose their utility to farmers and -- as IARC's recent finding makes clear --put human health at risk."
PANNA (Pesticide Action Network North America) works to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five autonomous PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens' action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to ensure the transition to a just and viable society.
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'An Affront to the World': Shell Posts Billions in Profits as Planet Burns
"The grotesque wealth that this Earth-wrecking company continues to accumulate is something we cannot allow ourselves to accept as normal," one campaigner said.
May 02, 2024
Oil major Shell announced $7.7 billion in profits during the first quarter of 2024 on Thursday, as well as a $3.5 billion share buyback program.
The news comes as every month covered by the period was the hottest of its kind on record. The three-month period also saw the second-largest wildfire in Texas history, extreme heat in West Africa and the Sahel, and the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef's fifth mass bleaching event in eight years. Scientists have clearly linked global heating, and the weather disasters it exacerbates, to the climate crisis driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
"As extreme weather accelerates and the cost-of-living crisis rumbles on, Shell's latest billion-pound profits are an affront to the world," Izzie McIntosh, climate campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said in a statement. "The grotesque wealth that this Earth-wrecking company continues to accumulate is something we cannot allow ourselves to accept as normal."
"This is the sad irony of the global energy system in which those causing chaos are the ones getting rich."
Shell's profits for the first three months of 2024 were around 20% lower than for the same time in 2023, CNBC reported. However, the company brought in $1.2 billion more than analysts had predicted. The world's largest oil firms, including Shell, saw record profits in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that followed.
"Shell has beaten expectations by a reasonable margin, despite the impact of lower gas prices during the first quarter," Stuart Lamont, an investment manager at RBC Brewin Dolphin, said in a statement shared by CNBC.
Global Witness pointed out that Shell's earnings to date amounted to over $58,000 a minute, more than the average U.K. nurse makes in a year.
"Shell continuing to rake in huge sums of money shows us that huge polluter profits were not a one-off but are the twisted reality of an energy system that benefits climate-wrecking companies to the cost of everyone else," Global Witness fossil fuel campaigner Alexander Kirk said in a statement.
Shell announced its profits one day after the U.S. Senate held a hearing on how large oil and gas companies, including Shell, have continued to deceive the public about the dangers of their products, moving from outright climate denial into making commitments they don't intend to keep or touting false solutions like carbon capture and storage that they then fail to develop. Shell, according to the testimony of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), spent only 11% of its capital on low-carbon technologies between 2009 and 2023.
The hearing sparked calls for accountability from the fossil fuel industry—such as mechanisms to make climate polluters pay for the transition to renewable energy—and the news of Shell's profits generated more.
In the U.K., Labor Shadow Energy and Climate Minister Ed Miliband proposed increasing the tax on energy company profits. Shell paid the U.K. government around $1.4 billion in taxes in 2023, of which around $300 million went to the Energy Profits Levy, according toThe Guardian. Also last year, it paid its shareholders $23 billion, nine times more than it invested in its "Renewables and Energy Solutions" program.
"These results show yet again why it is so damning [that Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak refuses to bring in a proper windfall tax on the oil and gas giants," Miliband said. "These are companies that have made record profits at the expense of working people. Labor says tax these companies fairly so we can invest in clean homegrown energy that will end the cost of living crisis and make Britain energy independent."
Greenpeace U.K. called Shell's latest profits "shameless."
"Their reckless hunt for profits needs to end," the environmental advocacy group wrote on social media. "When will world leaders find their backbone and make polluters pay?"
When one commenter suggested governments held back out of desire to keep collecting Big Oil's taxes, Greenpeace fired back, "What taxes?" and noted that Shell avoided paying U.K. taxes for years.
"At the end of the day we want clean, cheap renewable energy not to face the worst impacts of climate change," Greenpeace continued. "Solutions exist, we just need the political and industrial will to get them in place."
Global Witness and Global Justice Now also took the opportunity to call for an energy transition.
"This is the sad irony of the global energy system in which those causing chaos are the ones getting rich," Kirk said. "This spiral won't stop until we make the urgent switch to a fairer renewable energy system that puts both people and planet first."
McIntosh concluded: "We urgently need to bring a fair and organised end to the fossil fuel era, and that means companies like Shell must stop trying to extract new oil and gas, and start paying what they owe for the loss and damage they've caused. Profit announcements like this for a corporate dinosaur like Shell need to become a thing of the past."
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"The Global Day of Action must serve as a wake-up call to states that continue to supply arms to all parties to the conflict in Gaza that they are at risk of being complicit in war crimes," said one campaigner.
May 02, 2024
The straightforward demand consistently made by human rights experts, a top European Union official, and college students across the U.S. and in a growing number of countries formed the basis for a Global Day of Action on Thursday, with 250 groups organizing direct actions to call on governments around the world to "Stop Sending Arms" to Israel.
Groups including Amnesty International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the Center for Jewish Nonviolence helped organize actions in at least 12 countries, "with a strategic emphasis on countries with significant arms exports" and an "aim to resonate globally."
Protest events including rallies, "die-ins," and the projection of messages and images on government buildings were organized in countries including the United States—the top supplier of arms to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—Canada, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Slovakia.
"The Global Day of Action must serve as a wake-up call to states that continue to supply arms to all parties to the conflict in Gaza that they are at risk of being complicit in war crimes and other violations of international law," said Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns at Amnesty International.
The groups and their supporters amplified the global campaign on social media using the hashtags #StopSendingArms and #CeasefireNOW.
The day of action comes a day after dozens of universities in the United Kingdom were warned by a legal group that they could be criminally liable for investing in weapons manufacturers that provide arms to Israel, and days after Amnesty International filed a report with the U.S. government detailing specific attacks on Palestinian civilians by the IDF in which Israel used weapons provided by the United States.
Dozens of U.S. and international lawyers, including some from President Joe Biden's own administration, have warned the White House that Israel's actions in Gaza—which have killed at least 34,596 Palestinians since October, the majority of whom have been women and children—violate international law.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) in the U.S. noted that calls for divestment from Israel have spread across U.S. college campuses in recent weeks, despite violent crackdowns by police forces.
"While students have been calling on their universities to divest from Israel, FCNL is urging our government to stop military aid," said the group. "It's clear there's a growing demand to end U.S. complicity in the war in Gaza."
Organizers in Australia displayed signs reading, "Every F-35 [fighter jet] contains some Australian parts and components."
"Around the world, people are demanding their governments end complicity in [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's war," said Heather McPherson, a member of the Canadian Parliament representing the New Democratic Party. "In Canada, the NDP calls on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to impose a two-way arms embargo. End the suffering!"
Organizers called on arms experts, journalists, academics, and legal professionals to join the Global Day of Action and call for a "comprehensive arms embargo" on Israel "to stop the transfer of weapons, parts, and ammunitions being used to fuel violations of international law in the occupied Gaza Strip."
Guevara Rosas said that "following the conclusion by the International Court of Justice that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and in light of the obligation under international law of all states to prevent genocide, governments that continue to supply arms to Israel may find themselves in breach of the Genocide Convention."
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'Their Blood Is on Gene Block': UCLA Students Injured in Violent Police Raid
Officers in military gear fired flash-bang munitions and used batons to clear a nonviolent encampment calling for an end to Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza.
May 02, 2024
Los Angeles police wearing riot gear launched a violent attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA early Thursday, using flash bangs and firing impact munitions at students demanding an end to their university's complicity in Israel's war on Gaza.
Video footage posted to social media by reporters present at the scene shows officers firing multiple "less lethal" munitions and sound-concussive devices at student demonstrators as they closed in on the encampment, which UCLA's leadership has declared unlawful.
Police reportedly arrested dozens of students as they advanced on the encampment.
"They'd rather shoot kids than stop this genocide," said one observer.
Police fire multiple impact munitions at protestors. 4:38am pic.twitter.com/960I4iVMtt
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) May 2, 2024
Graeme Blair, an associate professor of political science and member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, told the university's student newspaper early Thursday that police officers "violently dragged" students from the Gaza solidarity encampment and that some demonstrators were "visibly injured."
"Their blood is on Gene Block and the UC administration's hands for a series of catastrophic decisions over the last two days," said Blair, referring to UCLA's chancellor. "It did not need to be this way."
Blair said UCLA professors inside the encampment "plan to be arrested alongside students who have done nothing but talk about a genocide taking place in Palestine."
Matt Barreto, a professor of Chicano studies and political science, told the Los Angeles Times that "our job is to stand up for their First Amendment rights, their rights on their own campus."
Police arrest protestor 4:55am pic.twitter.com/udgS0Terc9
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) May 2, 2024
The police raid came 24 hours after Los Angeles officers and campus security stood by as a pro-Israel mob violently attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Dozens of students were reportedly taken to hospitals for treatment following the assault.
The Daily Bruin, whose student journalists were on the scene, reported Thursday that police "continued to detain protesters in the encampment as the clock struck 4:00 am, marking one week since the initial erection of the solidarity encampment by the UC Divest Coalition and Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA."
"At 4:05 am, a slew of loud noises presumed to be flash bangs went off," the newspaper added. "Dozens of protesters exited the encampment by climbing through the bushes near Powell Library onto the Janss Steps lawn. Protesters chanted, 'Gene Block, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide' and, 'We are students' as smoke from the presumed flash bangs thickened above Dickson Plaza."
The police crackdown at UCLA is part of a broader wave of police repression on campuses nationwide as universities refuse to grant their student's calls for divestment from companies profiting off Israel's assault on Gaza. More than 1,000 student demonstrators have reportedly been arrested across the U.S. so far.
"It is no accident that this indefensible police crackdown comes in service of an indefensible war," The Intercept's Natasha Lennard wrote in a column Wednesday following the violent police raid at Columbia University in New York. "The very extremity of protest repression speaks to desperation on the part of institutions of the American establishment."
"Israel's decimation of Gaza has—at least for millions more people—given lie to the redemptive myths of the post-World War II political liberal order," Lennard added. "Young people, even the children of the elite, even children of Zionists, are standing with Palestine. Their peaceful acts of protest count as disruptive because they count as un-American—which should be a badge of honor amid a U.S.-backed genocide."
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