Economy
Mexico pushes to reopen economy while reporting over 2K coronavirus cases a day – Globalnews.ca
Mexico issued guidelines on Monday for restarting operations in the automotive, mining and construction sectors, pushing ahead with reopening the economy despite a growing national toll from the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about unsafe work sites.
With Mexico’s coronavirus death toll having surged past 5,300, and with 51,633 known cases, officials are wrestling with how to restart key industries without triggering a greater spread of the highly contagious respiratory virus.
The moves to loosen restrictions follow growing pressure from the United States to reopen factories that are vital to supply chains of U.S.-based businesses, especially in the vast automotive sector.
Mexico’s reopening plans have drawn criticism from some politicians worried that the still-rising pandemic tide in Latin America makes it unsafe to send more people to work.
Mexico’s guidelines, published overnight, require companies to submit to authorities health protocols for exiting the coronavirus lockdown. Firms will then be told within 72 hours if they can resume operations.
General Motors Co, which operates one of its most important plants in the city of Silao in central Mexico, told workers there to prepare to return to work on Wednesday. GM also told Mexican suppliers the company expected to comply quickly with the new regulations.
Activists composed of former GM workers called on Monday for an independent committee elected by workers to inspect the company’s plants for proper sanitary measures.
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“We think they are measures that they are not really going to take seriously,” said Israel Cervantes, who says he was unjustly fired from the company last year after trying to create an independent union.
In a video sent to Silao employees, GM said workers would be spaced apart, screened for COVID-19 symptoms on entering each day and be given masks and glasses to be worn at all times.
In response to queries from Reuters, GM said its protocols were in line with or tougher than guidelines from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and that Mexican authorities would be responsible for monitoring companies.
In the United States, the auto industry slowly returned to life on Monday, with some vehicle assembly plants reopening after the coronavirus lockdown, while suppliers geared up to support a sector that accounts for about 6% of U.S. economic activity.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said companies would have to answer an extensive questionnaire as part of efforts to protect workers.
“Today they can start doing the paperwork so that companies in the construction, transport and mining industries can start their activities, beginning with their health protocols,” Lopez Obrador told his daily news conference.
The government said the guidelines would lead to a gradual reopening that follows a so-called traffic light system put in place by authorities.
‘Municipalities of hope’ begin reopening
Some 300 municipalities with no coronavirus cases and bordering others with no cases – called “municipalities of hope” – were also due to start lifting the lockdown on Monday, although Mexican media reported some states did not allow the relaxation.
Last Tuesday, Mexico reported a record number of deaths in a single day, with 353 fatalities. That grim news was followed on Friday by a reported 2,437 new coronavirus infections, a one-day record rise in cases since the start of the pandemic.
A poll by newspaper Reforma showed on Monday that 67% of Mexicans believed the worst of the pandemic was still to come, while only 20% thought the worst was over. The poll surveyed 400 adults from last Tuesday to Thursday.
(Reporting by Sharay Angulo, Raul Cortes Fernandez and Daina Beth Solomon; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Tom Brown, Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)
© 2020 Reuters
Economy
Climate Change Will Cost Global Economy $38 Trillion Every Year Within 25 Years, Scientists Warn – Forbes
Topline
Climate change is on track to cost the global economy $38 trillion a year in damages within the next 25 years, researchers warned on Wednesday, a baseline that underscores the mounting economic costs of climate change and continued inaction as nations bicker over who will pick up the tab.
Key Facts
Damages from climate change will set the global economy back an estimated $38 trillion a year by 2049, with a likely range of between $19 trillion and $59 trillion, warned a trio of researchers from Potsdam and Berlin in Germany in a peer reviewed study published in the journal Nature.
To obtain the figure, researchers analyzed data on how climate change impacted the economy in more than 1,600 regions around the world over the past 40 years, using this to build a model to project future damages compared to a baseline world economy where there are no damages from human-driven climate change.
The model primarily considers the climate damages stemming from changes in temperature and rainfall, the researchers said, with first author Maximilian Kotz, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, noting these can impact numerous areas relevant to economic growth like “agricultural yields, labor productivity or infrastructure.”
Importantly, as the model only factored in data from previous emissions, these costs can be considered something of a floor and the researchers noted the world economy is already “committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years,” regardless of what society now does to address the climate crisis.
Global costs are likely to rise even further once other costly extremes like weather disasters, storms and wildfires that are exacerbated by climate change are considered, Kotz said.
The researchers said their findings underscore the need for swift and drastic action to mitigate climate change and avoid even higher costs in the future, stressing that a failure to adapt could lead to average global economic losses as high as 60% by 2100.
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How Do The Costs Of Inaction Compare To Taking Action?
Cost is a major sticking point when it comes to concrete action on climate change and money has become a key lever in making climate a “culture war” issue. The costs and logistics involved in transitioning towards a greener, more sustainable economy and moving to net zero are immense and there are significant vested interests such as the fossil fuel industry, which is keen to retain as much of the profitable status quo for as long as possible. The researchers acknowledged the sizable costs of adapting to climate change but said inaction comes with a cost as well. The damages estimated already dwarf the costs associated with the money needed to keep climate change in line with the limits set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the researchers said, referencing the globally agreed upon goalpost set to minimize damage and slash emissions. The $38 trillion estimate for damages is already six times the $6 trillion thought needed to meet that threshold, the researchers said.
Crucial Quote
“We find damages almost everywhere, but countries in the tropics will suffer the most because they are already warmer,” said study author Anders Levermann. The researcher, also of the Potsdam Institute, explained there is a “considerable inequity of climate impacts” around the world and that “further temperature increases will therefore be most harmful” in tropical countries. “The countries least responsible for climate change” are expected to suffer greater losses, Levermann added, and they are “also the ones with the least resources to adapt to its impacts.”
What To Watch For
The fundamental inequality over who is impacted most by climate change and who has benefited most from the polluting practices responsible for the climate crisis—who also have more resources to mitigate future damages—has become one of the most difficult political sticking points when it comes to negotiating global action to reduce emissions. Less affluent countries bearing the brunt of climate change argue wealthy nations like the U.S. and Western Europe have already reaped the benefits from fossil fuels and should pay more to cover the losses and damages poorer countries face, as well as to help them with the costs of adapting to greener sources of energy. Other countries, notably big polluters India and China, stymie negotiations by arguing they should have longer to wean themselves off of fossil fuels as their emissions actually pale in comparison to those of more developed countries when considered in historical context and on a per capita basis. Climate financing is expected to be key to upcoming negotiations at the United Nations’s next climate summit in November. The COP29 summit will be held in Baku, the capital city of oil-rich Azerbaijan.
Further Reading
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Article content
Growth in gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of all goods and services produced in the economy annually, is one of the most frequently cited indicators of economic performance. To assess Canadian living standards and the current health of the economy, journalists, politicians and analysts often compare Canada’s GDP growth to growth in other countries or in Canada’s past. But GDP is misleading as a measure of living standards when population growth rates vary greatly across countries or over time.
Article content
Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland recently boasted that Canada had experienced the “strongest economic growth in the G7” in 2022. In this she echoes then-prime minister Stephen Harper, who said in 2015 that Canada’s GDP growth was “head and shoulders above all our G7 partners over the long term.”
Article content
Unfortunately, such statements do more to obscure public understanding of Canada’s economic performance than enlighten it. Lately, our aggregate GDP growth has been driven primarily by population and labour force growth, not productivity improvements. It is not mainly the result of Canadians becoming better at producing goods and services and thus generating more real income for their families. Instead, it is a result of there simply being more people working. That increases the total amount of goods and services produced but doesn’t translate into increased living standards.
Let’s look at the numbers. From 2000 to 2023 Canada’s annual average growth in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) GDP growth was the second highest in the G7 at 1.8 per cent, just behind the United States at 1.9 per cent. That sounds good — until you adjust for population. Then a completely different story emerges.
Article content
Over the same period, the growth rate of Canada’s real per person GDP (0.7 per cent) was meaningfully worse than the G7 average (1.0 per cent). The gap with the U.S. (1.2 per cent) was even larger. Only Italy performed worse than Canada.
Why the inversion of results from good to bad? Because Canada has had by far the fastest population growth rate in the G7, an average of 1.1 per cent per year — more than twice the 0.5 per cent experienced in the G7 as a whole. In aggregate, Canada’s population increased by 29.8 per cent during this period, compared to just 11.5 per cent in the entire G7.
Starting in 2016, sharply higher rates of immigration have led to a pronounced increase in Canada’s population growth. This increase has obscured historically weak economic growth per person over the same period. From 2015 to 2023, under the Trudeau government, real per person economic growth averaged just 0.3 per cent. That compares with 0.8 per cent annually under Brian Mulroney, 2.4 per cent under Jean Chrétien and 2.0 per cent under Paul Martin.
Recommended from Editorial
Canada is neither leading the G7 nor doing well in historical terms when it comes to economic growth measures that make simple adjustments for our rapidly growing population. In reality, we’ve become a growth laggard and our living standards have largely stagnated for the better part of a decade.
Ben Eisen, Milagros Palacios and Lawrence Schembri are analysts at the Fraser Institute.
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