sunglasses
25.05.2021 7:45:29
Photograph: Guardian Design here
See full version: Boris Johnson urged to speak out against climate deniers
Photograph: Guardian Design here
Boris Johnson should publicly declare climate deniers as wrong in order to secure the UK’s standing in vital UN climate talks this year, campaigners have urged, as climate deniers with links to the Tory party prepare for a new battle.
Other countries would be watching closely, warned Adow: “It is a problem that the Conservatives are so closely linked to discredited organisations like the GWPF. If Britain is going to be taken seriously by the rest of the world, [the Conservative party] should distance itself from these shady groups who try to undermine efforts to address the climate crisis.” here
“Well-connected climate sceptics must be called out by ministers, from the prime minister down,” said Shaun Spiers, the executive director of the Green Alliance thinktank. “We have seen the damage that well-funded rightwing campaigns against climate action have done in the US, Australia and Brazil. Conservative environmentalism is stronger than ever, with the party officially recognising the seriousness of the climate emergency. It should disassociate itself from the deniers.” more
“The GWPF have shown themselves to be tremendous opportunists,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on climate change at the London School of Economics. Ward claims the thinktank has been fundraising heavily in the US – as well as spreading its views to ministers and across Whitehall – to raise money for a major campaign to influence the Johnson government.
An Amazon spokeswoman said the company was aware of the employee actions. She added that the external communication policy had been updated in spring 2019 but was not directed at any one group of employees. Amazon has pledged to reach net-zero carbon by 2040 and 100% renewable energy by 2030. more
Hundreds of Amazon employees defied corporate policy to publicly criticize the company for failing to meet its “moral responsibility” in the climate crisis. more
In January, at least three employees said they were threatened with termination for speaking publicly about environmental issues, stoking further protests against the new policy.
The employee activism is part of a broader trend in the tech industry of employee walkouts and protests against corporate policies. Google workers staged internal protests over sexual harassment policies in 2018 that continued into 2019 and gig workers at Instacart and Uber have organized strikes to fight for better pay and benefits. In June 2019, workers at the online furnishings retailer Wayfair walked off the job to oppose the company’s contracts with detention centers for immigrants. here
“Every person who shared a statement had to decide for themselves that whatever the consequences, they needed to stand up for what they felt was right,” Victoria Liang, a software development engineer at Amazon who joined the public action, said. “The climate crisis is just that urgent. We just couldn’t be silenced by these policies on issues of such moral weight.”
Modi failed to hold a single press conference in five years. more
Not surprisingly, India’s media compares unfavorably to those of other countries. According to Reporters Without Borders, India ranks 140 out of 180 countries for press freedom, behind violence-ridden Afghanistan and South Sudan. And things are getting steadily worse: In 2002, India had ranked 80 of 139 countries surveyed. more
After an emphatic electoral victory in May, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces important challenges in his second term. Growth has slowed to a five-year low, with Modi’s own former top economic advisor publishing research in June that showed India’s GDP growth was likely overestimated by 2.5 percentage points. Unemployment is at its highest since the 1970s; hundreds of car dealerships have closed amid a shortage of liquidity in the country’s credit sector; and many promises from Modi’s first term remain unfulfilled, such as his proposals to launch sweeping infrastructure projects across the country.
The question then is how Sultanpur’s newspapers fill their pages. Wire or agency copy helps, but increasingly editors aggregate news articles from social media—a process that eliminates basic reporting and fact checking. A few remaining journalists file stories but for no financial return. here
On the other hand, it’s hardly as if Murdoch is beating a retreat from the world of politics. Having spent years nurturing the media power that gave him direct access to Downing Street and, more recently, to the White House, he is far from ready to abandon his decades-long crusade for the politics of a poisonous conservatism. The ink was hardly dry on the deal (and months before regulators and shareholders will have had the opportunity to agree to it) before Donald Trump phoned him up to congratulate him on such a wonderful job-creating initiative. Which is pretty ironic considering that one of the main motives for Disney in acquiring Fox assets is to take advantage of ‘cost synergies’ – in plain speak, that means we’re going to see plenty of redundancies. [links]
Image: Rupert Murdoch, who this week sold his entertainment empire - but not his news empire - to Disney
We are now faced with a digital landscape in which any remaining ‘pebbles’ are likely in the coming years to be hit with inflated prices if they want to be afforded the same treatment as the ‘boulders’ of the online world (who have rather deeper pockets). Indeed, we are seeing the very opposite of levelling. The scrapping of net neutrality is no more than a land grab by corporate giants relying on some very familiar factors: a captured regulator (in the shape of the FCC), a heavily marketised political discourse and more than $25 million of lobbying by the biggest internet service providers.
This week’s events have shown that the new digital media landscape is every bit as monopolistic as the old one. And what’s Murdoch up to now?
The overturning of net neutrality strikes at the very heart of the principles of non-discrimination and universality that were essential to the growth of the internet. It will allow giant companies like Comcast to ensure that, despite the hopes of people like Leadbeater, the digital world just looks more and more like the worst of the analogue world: riven by inequality and opacity and engineered to suit shareholders more than ordinary citizens.