Postcard from Central America - Newsletter #128

“It is difficult to get a person to understand something when their salary depends upon them not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair

The time to act is NOW!

More than half the world’s food production will be at risk of failure within the next 25 years as a rapidly accelerating water crisis grips the planet, unless urgent action is taken to conserve water resources and end the destruction of the ecosystems on which our fresh water depends, experts have warned in a landmark review.

Half the world’s population already faces water scarcity, and that number is set to rise as the climate crisis worsens, according to a report from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water published on Thursday.

Demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40% by the end of the decade, because the world’s water systems are being put under “unprecedented stress”, the report found.

The critical challenges facing our global food system

As we mark World Food Day, it is imperative to confront the critical challenges facing our global food system. The combined impacts of the climate crisis and ongoing conflicts are undermining agriculture, which is essential for our sustenance. Extreme weather events like droughts, floods, and temperature fluctuations are wreaking havoc on food production.

A clear example of how climate change impacts food systems is the recent volatility in rice prices. Rice, a staple for over half the world’s population, is highly sensitive to supply disruptions. In 2022, severe flooding in Pakistan led to a sharp fall in the global rice supply. As a major producer, Pakistan’s production drop led to higher rice prices worldwide. For consumers, this price increase means more expensive rice in supermarkets, straining household budgets, particularly in countries that heavily rely on this staple.

Human-caused climate change has a cost

Monstrous hurricanes Helene and Milton caused so much complex havoc that damages are still being added up, but government and private experts say they will likely join the infamous ranks of Katrina, Sandy and Harvey as super costly $50-billion-plus killers.

Making that even more painful is that most of the damage — 95% or more in Helene’s case — was not insured, putting victims in a deeper financial hole.

Storm deaths have been dropping over time, although Helene was an exception. But even adjusted for inflation, damages from intense storms are skyrocketing because people are building in harm’s way, rebuilding costs are rising faster than inflation, and human-caused climate change are making storms stronger and wetter, experts in different fields said.

The EU's immigration policy is getting harsher

While no European leader or bureaucrat has threatened to deport 20 million people or ban Muslims —?except, perhaps, former President Donald Trump’s favorite European, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán — the European Union and Trump are closer on the issue of migration than words may suggest.

EU countries have individually pushed to crack down on migration after substantial surges in support for anti-immigrant parties in various European elections this year.

While they mostly eschew the racist, xenophobic rhetoric Trump uses to describe immigrants, in the cold, hard light of policy their positions are not all so different. At a meeting in Brussels, EU leaders spent hours discussing migrant processing centers, speedier deportations and “hybrid warfare” by hostile powers using migrants to destabilize EU countries.

The bigger concern, for some critics, is that harsh rhetoric and measures on migration will open the door to other policies.

“Migration has really become a Trojan horse for conservative forces to then push an agenda that goes beyond migration,” said the European Policy Centre’s Neidhardt.

Unpacking the secret world of Zara

Zara is one of the world’s most successful retailers and widely considered the creator of fast fashion. But it operates unlike traditional brands, which is part of the reason for its success. As competition intensifies and environmental concerns in the industry grow, can it keep up its momentum?

The tensions coming with activist employees

Condé Nast’s high-profile head of diversity quietly stepped down in June amid bitter internal tensions over alleged antisemitism and divisive arguments about the war in Gaza.

The moves earlier this year at the magazine giant, which publishes the New Yorker, Vogue, Wired, GQ, and Vanity Fair, among others, went nearly unnoticed outside its 1 World Trade Center headquarters. But they closely mirror the more public flare-ups this year in US media, most recently at CBS, and were an explicit example of the uncomfortable underlying tensions along generational, ideological, and sometimes ethnic lines.

A recommendation from the Emerald Peak Book Club:

From a global star and International Booker Prize finalist, a razor-sharp, unforgettable novel about a maid who's seen too much and a family at a breaking point

A young girl has died and the family's maid is being interrogated. She must tell the whole story before arriving at the girl's death.

Estela came from the countryside, leaving her mother behind, to work for the se?or and se?ora when their only child was born. They wanted a housemaid: "smart appearance, full time," their ad said. She wanted to make enough money to support her mother and return home. For seven years, Estela cleaned their laundry, wiped their floors, made their meals, kept their secrets, witnessed their fights and frictions, raised their daughter. She heard the rats scrabbling in the ceiling, saw the looks the se?or gave the se?ora; she knew about the poison in the cabinet, the gun, the daughter's rebellion as she grew up, the mother's coldness, the father's distance. She saw it all.

After a series of shocking betrayals and revelations, Estela stops speaking, breaking her silence only now, to tell the story of how it all fell apart. Is this a story of revenge or a confession? Class warfare or a cautionary tale? Building tension with every page, Clean is a gripping, incisive exploration of power, domesticity, and betrayal from an international star at the height of her powers.