Remco van de Pas @rvandepas.bsky.social

How can we achieve a just transformation for climate and health? UNU-IIGH’s Remco van de Pas (@Rvandepas) reflects on COP29 in Baku, where health equity was sidelined in global climate negotiations. While a new climate finance target was agreed upon, vulnerable nations perceived the main outcome of the summit as a betrayal, with inadequate grants and loans to meet urgent needs. To achieve true climate and health equity, we must address inequities in the global financial system and engage with alternative economic and development proposals. 🔗Read more: go.unu.edu/YbvTB #UNU #GlobalHealth #ClimateJustice #COP29 #HealthEquity

New blog post! What is needed for a just climate and health transformation? And how are the two connected? Collective member Remco van de Pas (@rvandepas) gives his three main takes from the COP29 Climate summit. Read the blog here: sum.uio.no/english/resear…

Western govts & docile press have stopped defending and promoting universal international law and human rights. It’s all about Western interests and utter racism based on new identity constructs. Arming both victim Ukraine (legitimate) and criminal Israel proves that. Big mistake

Sadly, this is not a surprise. #famine is likely happening in northern #Gaza This is man made. Hunger has been weaponized by the State of Israel. This deprives people in Gaza of the basics including food to survive. What is being allowed into Gaza is not enough, an average of just over 30 trucks/ day. This is just over six per cent of the daily needs. The way forward and most urgently: - Political will to increase the flow of humanitarian + commercial supplies into Gaza. - Political decisions to allow convoys to Northern Gaza on a regular + uninterrupted basis. - Political will to reverse & address hunger. It is not too late. 👇 ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user…

2024 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded. This year, we’ve suffered the hottest day, and the hottest seas, in the history books. The climate crisis is here. We can’t postpone protection. We must adapt – now.

as someone who actually walked the streets of Amsterdam last night, i can tell you with confidence that Bari & Aviva are liars, inciting fear n hatred, n further propagating the fiction that the attackers are the victims. they are also sitting in the USA. .

Even in the face of the fiercest disagreements, attacks such as those we have recently seen against the Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory - where her safety, that of her family members and colleagues is threatened - are unacceptable. As @volker_turk has said, aggressive verbal attacks, threats and reprisals against Special Procedures mandate holders must stop.

Ursula von der Leyen has now expressed more outrage over racist hate-spewing Israeli football hooligans than over the Palestinian children whose deaths these hooligans were celebrating. History will remember this.

I am so profoundly touched by this expression of support from Jewish organisations worldwide. The minions out there will be livid. Let's stay strong, altogether.

Funny how a foreign lobbying group spending $100 million to influence 80% of the 469 seats up for reelection in 2024 doesn’t get labeled as “election interference,” “rigged elections,” or “foreign intervention.”

It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.

And just like that, #GHAC2024 has come to an end! 🌍 Some highlights from the final day: 🌿 Plenary and Parallel Sessions on Health Leadership and Advocacy 🌿 Closing Ceremony What an incredible journey! Stay tuned for more photos from the #ClimateHealthCon2024—coming soon! 📸

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point. Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this. But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned. Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future. Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development. The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital. And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative. So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

@jasonhickel Billions of economically unnecessary #bullshitjobs and "clever" algorithms only exist to fight over money. Wasting most of our resources, energy and fossil fuels in the process. Impoverishing and baking the whole world. bigissue.com/opinion/david-…

Every year, we perform 9.6 trillion hours of labour for the world economy. But the vast majority of this is controlled by capital and deployed to produce whatever is most profitable to capital. As a result we languish in conditions of mass deprivation and ecological breakdown. Under conditions of economic democracy, by contrast, we could deploy our massive productive capacities instead toward improving human well-being, social progress, green transition, and ecological regeneration. We could address our social and ecological crises in very short order. We live in a mere shadow of the world we could have.

Last month, the GH-Solidarity Project @officailghsn, alongside @sridhartweet and @Simon Rushton, organised an insightful and engaging workshop with a small group of UK-based academic leaders in global health #governance and #justice to ask how can we achieve a better and more just world order centred on health/wellbeing #equity.

Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent, and local communities are guardians of our nature. Their traditional knowledge is a living library of biodiversity conservation. They must be protected. And they must be part of every biodiversity conversation. #COP16Colombia

44 scientists have issued a stark warning about the threat of a major ocean circulation change, causing a detrimental disruption of climate patterns lasting for centuries to come. Check out this short video explaining what this is all about.

From Germany: Thank you, Francesca Albanese, for summarising it so well! "Human rights are good to be taught in school and universities, but don't dare you trying to exercise freedom of expression and freedom of assembly in your streets."

The Bloomberg report shows that capital is massively shorting green energy. It's an actual catastrophe. Anyone who thinks capital will deliver on green transition needs a reality check. The game is up.