Etikett: Theconversation.com

Anecdotal reports from some professionals have prompted concerns about young people using prescription benzodiazepines such as Xanax for recreational use.

Border force detections of these drugs have almost doubled in the past five years, further fuelling the worry.

So why do young people use them, and how do the harms differ to those used as prescribed by a doctor?

What are benzodiazepines?

You might know this large group of drugs by their trade names. Valium (diazepam), Xanax (alprazolam), Normison (temazepam) and Rohypnol (flunitrazepam) are just a few examples. Sometimes they’re referred to as minor tranquillisers or, colloquially, as “benzos”.

They increase the neurotransmitter gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA reduces activity in the brain, producing feelings of relaxation and sedation.

Unwanted side effects include drowsiness, dizziness and problems with coordination.

Benzodiazepines used to be widely prescribed for long-term management of anxiety and insomnia. They are still prescribed for these conditions, but less commonly, and are also sometimes used as part of the treatment for cancer, epilepsy and alcohol withdrawal.

Long-term use can lead to tolerance: when the effect wears off over time. So you need to use more over time to get the same effect. This can lead to dependence: when your body becomes reliant on the drug. There is a very high risk of dependence with these drugs.

When you stop taking benzodiazepines, you may experience withdrawal symptoms. For those who are dependent, the withdrawal can be long and difficult, lasting for several months or more.

So now they are only recommended for a few weeks at most for specific short-term conditions.

How do people get them? And how does it make them feel?

Benzodiazepines for non-medical use are typically either diverted from legitimate prescriptions or purchased from illicit drug markets including online.

Some illegally obtained benzodiazepines look like prescription medicines but are counterfeit pills that may contain fentanyl, nitazenes (both synthetic opioids) or other potent substances which can significantly increase the risk of accidental overdose and death.

When used recreationally, benzodiazepines are usually taken at higher doses than those typically prescribed, so there are even greater risks.

The effect young people are looking for in using these drugs is a feeling of profound relaxation, reduced inhibition, euphoria and a feeling of detachment from one’s surroundings. Others use them to enhance social experiences or manage the “comedown” from stimulant drugs like MDMA.

There are risks associated with using at these levels, including memory loss, impaired judgement, and risky behaviour, like unsafe sex or driving.

Some people report doing things they would not normally do when affected by high doses of benzodiazepines. There are cases of people committing crimes they can’t remember.

When taken at higher doses or combined with other depressant drugs such as alcohol or opioids, they can also cause respiratory depression, which prevents your lungs from getting enough oxygen. In extreme cases, it can lead to unconsciousness and even death.

Using a high dose also increases risk of tolerance and dependence.

Is recreational use growing?

The data we have about non-prescribed benzodiazepine use among young people is patchy and difficult to interpret.

The National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2022–23 estimates around 0.5% of 14 to 17 year olds and and 3% of 18 to 24 year olds have used a benzodiazepine for non medical purposes at least once in the past year.

The Australian Secondary Schools Survey 2022–23 reports that 11% of secondary school students they surveyed had used benzodiazepines in the past year. However they note this figure may include a sizeable proportion of students who have been prescribed benzodiazepines but have inadvertently reported using them recreationally.

In both surveys, use has remained fairly stable for the past two decades. So only a small percentage of young people have used benzodiazepines without a prescription and it doesn’t seem to be increasing significantly.

Reports of more young people using benzodiazepines recreationally might just reflect greater comfort among young people in talking about drugs and drug problems, which is a positive thing.

Prescribing of benzodiazepines to adolescents or young adults has also declined since 2012.

What can you do to reduce the risks?

To reduce the risk of problems, including dependence, benzodiazepines should be used for the shortest duration possible at the lowest effective dose.

Benzodiazepines should not be taken with other medicines without speaking to a doctor or pharmacist.

You should not drink alcohol or take illicit drugs at the same time as using benzodiazepines.

Benzodiazepines shouldn’t be taken with other medicines, without the go-ahead from your doctor or pharmacist.
Cloudy Design/Shutterstock

Counterfeit benzodiazepines are increasingly being detected in the community. They are more dangerous than pharmaceutical benzodiazepines because there is no quality control and they may contain unexpected and dangerous substances.

Drug checking services can help people identify what is in substances they intend to take. It also gives them an opportunity to speak to a health professional before they use. People often discard their drugs after they find out what they contain and speak to someone about drug harms.

If people are using benzodiazepines without a prescription to self manage stress, anxiety or insomnia, this may indicate a more serious underlying condition. Psychological therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy, including mindfulness-based approaches, are very effective in addressing these symptoms and are more effective long term solutions.

Lifestyle modifications – such as improving exercise, diet and sleep – can also be helpful.

There are also other medications with a much lower risk of dependence that can be used to treat anxiety and insomnia.

Read more:
I think my child has anxiety. What are the treatment options?

If you or someone you know needs help with benzodiazepine use, Reconnexions can help. It’s a counselling and support service for people who use benzodiazepines.

Alternatively, CounsellingOnline is a good place to get information and referral for treatment of benzodiazepine dependence. Or speak to your GP. The Sleep Health Foundation has some great resources if you are having trouble with sleep. Läs mer…

Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks was built between 1817 and 1819 to house male convicts.

The barracks is World Heritage Listed for its convict history, but is equally important for the story of 19th century Australian immigration.

After the end of convict transportation to New South Wales, the Hyde Park Barracks became home to the Female Immigration Depot (1848–87) and the Female Destitute Asylum (1862–86).

The depot housed newly arrived unmarried women and girls who came to New South Wales on subsidised tickets. The asylum was for women who couldn’t support themselves because of age, illness or disability.

Official records for the two female institutions suggest the women who stayed there ate a monotonous diet of bread, tea and meat (roasted or boiled into soup) in the dining rooms.

My new archaeological research published in Antiquity tells a different story. Dried plant materials found under the floorboards of the upstairs dormitories show inhabitants were eating a range of fresh fruits, nuts, vegetables and even spices.

This research sheds new light on the diets of settlers in 19th century Sydney and the importance of combining documentary research with archaeology to understand the history of institutions where official records alone can’t tell the whole story.

More than a monotonous diet

The women and girls who stayed in the Female Immigration Depot and the Female Destitute Asylum found a safe place to stay, with a bed and three meals a day.

But they also had to live by strict rules under the supervision of a matron, and had to do most of the cooking and cleaning to keep the institutions running.

Eyewitness accounts, government reports and official records tell us the meals served in the dining rooms were monotonous: bread and tea for breakfast and supper, and a soup made of boiled meat and vegetables with yet more bread for dinner (served at lunch time), the main meal of the day.

The daily ration in both the Female Immigration Depot and the Female Destitute Asylum.
Kimberley Connor

On special occasions, such as Christmas, the meat might be roasted and supplemented with puddings, fresh fruit and extra tobacco. But if that was what inhabitants were eating, why did archaeologists find thousands of fruit seeds and nut shells under the floorboards?

In the 1980s, archaeologists excavated parts of the courtyard as well as inside the building itself. As renovations started on the floorboards on the second and third floors of the building, archaeologists found tens of thousands of objects dropped or hidden beneath floorboards.

Like much of the archaeological collection, the botanical remains were not analysed systematically at the time of excavation. Now, my new analysis of the dried plant remains in the Hyde Park Barracks museum’s collection reveals women who stayed in these institutions supplemented the bland meals they were served.

An archaeologist recovering items from under the floorboards at the Hyde Park Barracks in the 1980s.
Hyde Park Barracks & Mint archaeology and restoration archive, Museums of History NSW.

Maybe they foraged fresh peaches on the way back from church, or bought peanuts from peddlers at the gates, or worked within the asylum for an extra ration of tobacco.

In an environment where everyone ate the same thing at the same time, these off-menu items were probably a way of expressing personal preferences and building relationships through sharing or bartering.

Food from home and away

Many of the foods the women were acquiring would have been familiar to immigrants from Britain.

The most common items I found were pits from stone fruit including peaches or nectarines, plums, cherries and apricots. There was also evidence for apples or pears, grapes, dates, hazelnuts, walnuts and citrus fruit.

Other foods introduced from South America, the Pacific and Southeast Asia, like an annonaceous fruit (like a modern custard apple), Brazil nuts, coconut, and lychees might have been unfamiliar to the British migrants. These plants, alongside pumpkin, chili pepper and corn originally from the Americas, highlight how Australia was part of global networks of plant exchanges.

The seed pod of a woody pear labelled with the botanical name Xylomelum pyriforme.
Kimberley Connor

The women were also learning about native Australian plants. A single fragment of macadamia shell is probably the only direct evidence of consumption of a native plant, but the women were collecting bottlebrush and tea tree.

The most interesting example is a complete woody pear, the seed pod of a shrub native to Australia’s east coast. Someone at Hyde Park Barracks carefully collected this specimen and labelled it with the botanical name Xylomelum pyriforme, revealing an interest in Australian botany.

A look at the lives of women

While we can’t connect individual people to individual plant remains at Hyde Park Barracks, we can catch glimpses of the lives of the women who stayed there.

A beautifully preserved rose must have been special to somebody who carefully kept it safe by placing it under the floorboards.

Groups of citrus peel or the seeds from something like a cherimoya hint at illicit meals, with the evidence hidden away from the matron’s watchful eye.

And maybe a whole chili pepper, still bright red, tells us about someone who liked to spice up their meals.

Each seed gets us a little bit closer to the lives of the women of Sydney 150 years ago. Läs mer…

It’s been a significant day for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the United States.

Such initiatives are about providing equality of opportunity and a sense of being valued for all members of an organisation. But a backlash has been brewing for years, led by some familiar, newly emboldened voices on the right.

Now, freshly inaugurated US President Donald Trump has begun to dismantle them, announcing:

This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.

Trump has just signed a raft of executive orders that will end DEI programs within the federal government. He has also taken actions to proclaim as official US policy that there are only two genders, male and female.

Anticipating Trump’s return to office, many high-profile companies in the US had already announced a rollback of DEI initiatives – including retail giant Walmart.

Could this backlash spill over into Australia? We are seeing some signs of resistance to such initiatives already. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton certainly isn’t a fan of DEI.

There are, however, reasons to believe DEI will remain an important focus in Australian workplaces. Some major achievements have already been made, many now enshrined in law.

What is DEI?

It’s worth briefly explaining what we mean when discussing DEI’s three key components of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Broadly speaking, when we talk about diversity, we’re referring to the wide range of human differences.

DEI initiatives are about creating an environment where everyone feels valued and has the opportunity to contribute.
Geber86/Shutterstock

In a work setting, that means focusing on the ways people are “different and yet the same” and ensuring different perspectives are heard.

Equity is about enhancing fairness of opportunity to achieve equal outcomes for everyone.

Inclusion is the degree to which people of all identities feel a sense of belonging and are valued for their uniqueness.

Collectively, DEI initiatives aim to maximise the benefits from diversity, remove barriers to equality of opportunity, and help individuals feel valued for who they are.

Why is DEI important?

There are two main schools of thought on why organisations should invest in DEI: the social justice case and the business case.

From a social justice perspective, proponents argue these investments have already made progress on many issues by providing employment and other opportunities for individuals from historically marginalised backgrounds.

The business case is that DEI initiatives are actually good for profit and performance. This has been the most prominent argument in the Australian corporate world.

The Diversity Council of Australia (DCA) makes a case that investments in DEI have brought a wide range of benefits.

Every two years, the DCA’s Inclusion@Work Index surveys 3,000 nationally representative workers in Australia. Its findings suggest that improving diversity and inclusion can tangibly increase innovation, enhance customer service, and improve employees’ wellbeing.

There are also significant reputational – and potentially financial – risks that may come with failing to address DEI concerns.

Proponents make a case that investment in DEI is good for business.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

The push to dismantle it

The US backlash to DEI is nothing new, but came to a crescendo last year with Trump’s election victory.

Trump’s close ally, the billionaire Elon Musk, has also been unequivocal in his disapproval. Last year, Musk posted on his own platform X:

DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.

While Musk and Trump are some of the loudest detractors, the backlash has also been fueled by the authors of “Project 2025” and other influential voices on the right.

Project 2025 is a conservative policy wish list released in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing US think tank.

Its authors argue that by empowering those facing disadvantage, the “DEI revolution” has discriminated against conservatives and other groups.

They advocate for removing DEI’s influence in workplaces, educational institutions and society more broadly. They also want enforcement actions against organisations that engage in DEI.

US President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk have been loud detractors of DEI initiatives.
Will Oliver/EPA

Could there be backlash here?

Australia doesn’t suffer the same level of political polarisation as the US. But we could be headed in a similar direction.

One recent survey, for example, found 17% of Australians aged 16 and over believe gender equality is a “non-issue”.

Separately, an independent review commissioned by Rio Tinto into its workplace “Everyday Respect” agenda found that despite progress having been made, there was still some backlash to the social changes being undertaken in the organisation.

Written into law

In Australia, the significant progress we’ve already made could drive a sustained focus on DEI initiatives.

Respect@Work is one such example. This is a government initiative – backed by legislation – that supports individuals and organisations to better understand, prevent and address workplace sexual harassment.

Similarly, a focus on reducing psychosocial hazards (anything that could cause psychological harm) is now embedded in the work health and safety laws of all states and territories except Victoria.

Safe Work Australia’s code of practice specifically lists harassment due to personal characteristics as a potential psychosocial hazard.

These include age, disability, race, nationality, religion, political affiliation, sex, relationship status, family or carer responsibilities, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.

In 2022, the federal government also introduced a new positive duty on organisations and businesses under the Sex Discrimination Act.

This requires them to actively foster a culture that is safe, respectful and inclusive, valuing both diversity and gender equality.

US President Donald Trump has already taken sweeping executive actions against DEI.
Evan Vucci/AP

Merit or opportunity?

In his inauguration speech, Trump promised to “forge a society that is colour blind and merit-based”.

DEI practitioners and academics have long had concerns about “the myth of merit”, which is considered to perpetuate gender and other social inequalities.

The premise of the “myth of merit” is that what we perceive as merit is often the product of unequal opportunity. Those who miss out on such opportunities, due to systemic barriers and other life circumstances, will be decried as lacking in merit and denied its rewards.

In Australia, where important progress has already been made, organisations should resist the backlash and continue to focus on making workplaces safer and more respectful.

DEI is ultimately about making sure everyone has the opportunity to add value and belong, regardless of their individual identity. Läs mer…

Canada faces a major contradiction in its immigration policies. Thousands of international students, once celebrated as “ideal immigrants,” are now turning to the asylum system. As a migration policy researcher and former international student, I have watched this predicament unfold with growing concern.

Federal immigration data reveal a surge in asylum claims by international students. The claims rose from 1,810 in 2018 to nearly 12,000 in 2023, with another 13,660 filed in the first nine months of 2024.

There are multiple reasons why international students in Canada may end up seeking asylum. Some experts suggest heightened costs of living have forced some students to drop out of school, while others point to the influence of immigration consultants or others advising them to apply for asylum.

As Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) acknowledged in a statement in September 2024, some “temporary residents come to Canada as genuine visitors, students or workers, and then make an asylum claim because of developments in their country of origin.”

While the stories behind individual asylum claims remain unclear, research on international student integration demonstrates how sudden policy shifts can force students to seek alternative paths to remain in the host country, even through systems not designed for their circumstances.

Canada’s abruptly shifting policies have exposed a breach of trust at the heart of Canada’s immigration system. The rise in asylum claims reflects Canada’s systemic de-prioritization of support for those it actively encouraged to invest in futures here.

People take part in a rally in May 2021 calling on the federal government to expand the permanent status program to include all refugees, international students, undocumented migrants and temporary foreign workers near Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s constituency office in Montréal.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Decades-long policy

For decades, Canada has cultivated an environment where transitioning from study permits to permanent residency felt achievable. This was not merely implied, it was actively encouraged. As a result, students have invested savings, uprooted their lives, acquired jobs and built communities in Canada, only to find themselves facing an uncertain future.

This breach of trust highlights what is in effect an unwritten pact with international students. By encouraging them to invest in Canada as a gateway to permanent residency, the country created expectations it is now failing to fulfil.

How Canada built expectations

Canada’s immigration system has long positioned international students as ideal candidates for permanent residency. For decades, policies and public messaging have framed education in Canada as a pathway to a permanent future, encouraging students to see their time here as an investment in long-term settlement. This messaging has been echoed across government initiatives and public statements.

For instance, in 2021, then Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino declared: “Your status may be temporary, but but your contributions are lasting — we want you to stay.”

The comments were made as Canada rolled out a program to grant permanent residence to 90,000 recent international graduates and some temporary foreign workers.

Similarly, official documents like the 2024 IRCC Deputy Minister Transition Binder explicitly frame international students as a vital “pool of talent” for addressing demographic and economic needs.

This sentiment was also central to the International Education Strategy 2019–24, which described international students as “excellent candidates for permanent residency,” citing their Canadian education and work experience as key advantages.

The Peace Tower on Parliament Hill is framed by leaves in Ottawa in August 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Educational institutions reinforced this messaging. Colleges and universities marketed programs as pathways to permanency, persuading students to invest heavily in tuition and their futures in Canada.

Statistics supported this narrative: Global Affairs Canada valued international students’ contributions at $30.9 billion annually, including more than 360,000 jobs. High rates of successful transitions to permanent residency further validated the belief that education in Canada was the first step to building a life here.

The broken pact

In recent years, Canada has systematically dismantled the enabling environment it once cultivated. Tightened Post-Graduation Work Permit eligibility, rising financial requirements and the reduction in the temporary resident population have created significant barriers to permanent residence.

It would appear that the surge in asylum claims reflects the severe disruption faced by international students caused by these policy changes. Their lives have been derailed by a government that encouraged students to invest in Canada, only to shift the rules mid-course.

For many students, returning home is not an option — return is financially and personally untenable. International students invest years and significant resources in Canada. They have established budding careers and key relationships. They’ve built communities in Canada, and made substantial financial investments through international student fees.

A policy and moral failure

This issue is not merely a policy failure — it is a moral one. Canada’s unwritten pact with international students created a bond of trust. Breaking that trust jeopardizes not only the futures of thousands of people but also Canada’s reputation as a fair and welcoming destination.

The stakes are high. Canada faces pressing demographic challenges, including an aging population and labour shortages in key sectors like health care and skilled trades.

International students, already integrated into Canadian society, are essential to solving these problems. Alienating them undermines both economic goals and the moral credibility of Canada’s immigration system.

At a crossroads: From crisis to reform

Canada must decide whether to honour the commitments it made, explicitly and implicitly, to international students or to continue down a path of short-sighted policy shifts. Restoring trust and creating transparent, predictable pathways to permanent residency is essential.

Aligning Post-Graduation Work Permit durations with permanent residency application timelines is a critical first step. Standardizing processing times and tailoring immigration streams to meet labour market needs will provide needed stability. Above all, future reforms must be clear, consistent and aligned with the promises Canada has historically made.

It is time to honour the pact and rebuild the trust that international students placed in this country. The future of Canada’s immigration system depends on it. Läs mer…

A team of academic researchers, lawyers and journalists from 16 European countries has exposed a huge lobbying campaign aimed at gutting a proposed EU-wide restriction on the use of “forever chemicals”. This campaign saw significant increases in the lobbying expenditure of major producers of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as forever chemicals for their persistence in the environment.

This expenditure supported many high-level meetings with European Commission officials, as well as efforts to mobilise other industry players in the lobbying campaign to promote voluntary alternatives and substantial exceptions to this proposed restriction. One result was that the European Chemical Agency’s public consultation on the restriction was buried under a deluge of responses to its proposal.

PFAS are a family of thousands of synthetic chemicals that are implicated in a growing number of illnesses and health complications – ranging from liver damage to compromised immune systems. They share a common characteristic: a carbon-fluorine bond – one of the strongest in organic chemistry – which makes PFAS highly persistent, meaning they can bioaccumulate within plants and animals over time.

The sheer number of PFAS means that restricting them as a class, as is being considered by the EU, is regarded as vital by a growing number of scientists . If this proposed restriction fails and PFAS emissions remain unrestricted, the cost of cleaning up ongoing contamination in Europe is estimated to run to €2 trillion (£1.7 trillion) over the next 20 years – an annual bill of €100 billion.

Read more:
PFAS ’forever’ chemical laws need an overhaul – recent court rulings highlight the loopholes

Without a class restriction, the alternative is a case-by-case approach to assessing toxicity. This would not only be very slow, it would increase the risk of just swapping banned PFAS for other ones that haven’t yet been proven to cause harm – known as “regrettable substitution”.

Historically, banning individual PFAS chemicals has led to their replacement with structurally similar compounds that pose similar or unknown risks. A class-based restriction would reduce the likelihood of such substitutions.

As part of a Europe-wide investigation into PFAS called the Forever Lobbying Project, I have been collaborating with 18 academic researchers and lawyers plus 46 investigative journalists, including Stéphane Horel and Raphaëlle Aubert at French newspaper Le Monde, which coordinated the project. By working together, we can reach a much larger audience across Europe and increase awareness of the costs of PFAS to public health and the environment.

Revelations of the major lobbying campaign and the clean-up costs – the first estimate of its kind for Europe – have come out of this collaboration. Our work has been an inventive combination of investigative journalism and social and applied science methodologies, which aim to extend and underpin existing reporting techniques.

A new investigation drew on approaches used to measure lobbies in the fossil fuel and tobacco industry.
Ian Hayhurst/Shutterstock

In 2023, many members of the current team had previously mapped PFAS contamination across Europe, making “unseen science” available to the public for the first time. This first investigation, which identified over 23,000 confirmed contaminated sites, was hugely influential, strengthening calls for the current class-based, EU-wide restriction.

But resistance from chemical manufacturers quickly proved to be fierce. And it was the realisation among journalists within the consortium that the chemical industry might defeat the proposed class-based restriction that kickstarted the idea for this latest investigation into the lobbying campaign.

The cost of policy failure

Two questions are central to making sense of the lobbying campaign for the public. What would the bill be for cleaning up ongoing PFAS pollution if the campaign is successful? And how had the PFAS manufacturers and plastics industry been able to make so much headway with European officials?

The annual cost estimate of €100 billion was one of several calculated – it relates to ongoing clean-up costs in Europe in the absence of effective restrictions and source control. The process of calculating the costs was overseen by environmental engineer Ali Ling and environmental chemist Hans Peter Arp, who developed a methodology with data journalist Aubert. Together, they advised journalists within the team on which data to look for and actively checked datasets.

The annual cost figure is large – roughly the GDP of Bulgaria – yet represents a conservative estimate, reflecting the difficulties in addressing PFAS decontamination. PFAS chemicals escape most traditional remediation techniques and require highly specialised, energy-intensive technologies to eradicate them. This annual cost will continue as long as PFAS are not phased out and continue to accumulate in the environment.

The lobbying campaign essentially rested on three contentions: that most PFAS were not harmful to health so there was no need for a broad restriction; that there were few practical alternatives to PFAS; and that a broad restriction on their manufacture and use would effectively hollow out the European economy, killing the European green transition.

If the chemical industry were being taken seriously by EU officials, EU policymakers would be more likely to be persuaded by these arguments. So, our consortium decided to look at them more closely and “stress-test” them.

To do this, the team – organised by Horel – adapted approaches used to explore the validity of industry arguments used in tobacco and food policy conflicts. Our results are telling.

Interview with American lawyer Rob Billott, a legal advisor for the Forever Lobbying Project.

The industry association that represents European polymer producers, Plastics Europe, for instance, emphasised the concept of “polymers of low concern” to claim that most fluoropolymers were in fact perfectly safe, or at least highly likely to be safe.

But, as one Le Monde article states: “Plastics Europe declined to share the data, assumptions and methods that underpin its dire predictions.” Plastics Europe also declined interview requests from Le Monde.

Plastics Europe had implied that the concept of polymers of low concern encapsulated criteria developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To the casual observer, this association with a respected international policy organisation gave it a measure of validity.

So, we traced the origins of the concept. Yes, there had been an OECD expert group which had “engaged in discussions on criteria for identifying polymers of low concern” between 1993 and 2009. But there had never been enough reliable data for the OECD to commit to the idea as an institution. The OECD confirmed to Horel that “no agreed-upon set of criteria at the OECD level was finalised”.

Other arguments we stress-tested exhibited different weaknesses, but they typically worked to the same effect. Facts and observations were twisted and exaggerated to present a lose-lose or “dystopian” characterisation of the EU proposals – terrible economic losses globally, with no appreciable health or environmental benefits.

As things stand, the EU restriction is finely balanced. Officials within the European Commission have been reported to be “offering reassuring indications to corporate interests about future decision-making”.

By raising important questions about the consequences of not regulating, and highlighting the dubious arguments put forward to justify doing nothing, we hope our latest investigation has shifted the language and focus of public debate. But whether this will displace the current short-termist emphasis on competitiveness and deregulation being pushed by some members of the European Commission remains to be seen.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far. Läs mer…

For a superpower like the US, free trade is, in practice, an invitation to partake in its wealth. But it also implies an obligation, including political support (or at least non-opposition) and an expectation that the poorer nation will give back part of its new riches by buying the superpower’s exports. This, in essence, is the system that has worked wonders for the US for nearly 75 years.

From 1978, the People’s Republic of China signalled its acceptance of this invitation by opening its first “economic free zones” in several of its provinces, which began to open up the Chinese economy to the outside world. It was an extraordinary moment, when former enemies the US and China willingly chose a new path focused on trade.

Then in 2001, after more than two decades of a relationship characterised by mutual admiration, mistrust and suspicion, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) – and over the next 11 years, further built up its relations with the US.

But China did not play completely fairly. It subsidised and protected its nascent industries, manipulated its currency and forced technological transfer (meaning that foreign companies had to enter joint ventures with local firms, sharing their technology and intellectual property).

At the same time, China did not abandon its communist system as the US would have liked. Nonetheless, it was getting richer – and companies from other advanced economies were in turn benefiting from its new wealth.

But between 2012 and 2015, China made some serious mis-steps from the the US’s point of view. The Chinese government made clear it had ambitions to surpass the US both economically and militarily. As such, the “obligation” that arose when it accepted the US’s free trade offer was effectively voided.

On top of this, China was shutting down its market to some of the most innovative, fast-growing and strategic US companies – namely Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) – shattering the expectation of reciprocity that free trade implies.

A new order

Donald Trump’s first election win in 2016 was symptomatic of the breakdown of this old order as the president denounced trade agreements like Nafta, started trade wars with China and the EU, and imposed tariffs. His re-election marks the definitive transition to a new order.

Trump’s vision for international trade is highly transactional, where countries fight for market share and access to resources. Economic gains for some nations spell losses for others. This, arguably, is the definition of unfettered mercantilism – a protectionist system where countries try to maximise exports while minimising imports.

Trump’s proposals to integrate Canada and Greenland, and reintegrate the Panama Canal, into the US – as he mentioned again in his inaugural address – exemplify this vision of global trade. Danish sovereignty over Greenland now appears less acceptable to the US, in a world where China is a formidable economic adversary. Resources, in particular the rare earth minerals used in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles, might be a large motivating factor.

Trump’s play for Greenland is part of a changing world order.
Hadrian/Shutterstock

Capturing more market share for China’s exports has long been an aim for its manufacturers. China did this very well in a rule-based trade system where the country was able to defend itself at the WTO from accusations of dumping (selling its goods abroad below the cost of production) and other unfair trade practices. But it’s far less clear how the country will sustain this in a more protectionist world.

Pursuing greater market share through short-term dumping might become self-defeating. Foreign markets could close completely to Chinese exports when governments – at least, those powerful enough to resist diplomatic pressure from China – realise their local industries are being hit. Recent data showing Chinese trade increasing while its corporate profits are declining points in this direction.

Unless there is a major political breakthrough in relations with the US under Trump, China is likely to be pushed to retaliate by putting up even more trade barriers, such as tariffs and regulations.

Historical lessons from the last mercantilist era – from the end of the Spanish Golden Age to the French Revolution – tell a story of ever-changing alliances and ruthless political and economic competition between nations, as well as constant conflicts. Now, too many contemporary signals – including trade wars, challenges to long-term alliances and trade agreements, and the stockpiling of key materials – point towards this pattern for the world to ignore them.

For business leaders, this will have important consequences. Concepts like comparative advantage, economies of scale and the flexibility of being able to manufacture in various parts of the world – which have driven the rapid growth of international trade in the last four decades – are likely to become less important.

Instead, security, strategic sectors such as energy and mineral mining, and industrial policy will take precedence. This could change business leaders’ perceptions of risk, how trade networks are structured, and the flow of global investments. And for consumers, higher prices and reduced choice might also become more apparent as the consequences of this new trade order begin to materialise. Läs mer…

Donald Trump said he’d be a “dictator for a day” when he returned to the Oval Office for a second term. And he certainly hit the ground running, signing scores of executive orders within hours of being inaugurated.

One of the measures he had telegraphed throughout the campaign was that on “day one”, he would “launch the largest deportation program in American history”. He also announced his intention to end “birthright citizenship”, pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement (again), and impose a tranche of tariffs.

All these declarations meant Trump’s first day was going to be busy. Now, after his inauguration speech and the announced executive orders, we can start to identify Trump’s priorities. Three themes stand out: partisan politics, isolationism, and foreign policy disruption.

As with his first term, Trump has entered office and immediately broken from the “normal” conduct of an incoming president. In his inaugural address, Trump continued his attacks on the legal cases he faced, pronouncing that: “The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the justice department and our government will end.”

Trump even attempted to lump what he clearly sees as the Democrats’ attempts to use the legal systems as a form of character assassination against him with the actual attempted assassination from the 2024 campaign trail, declaring: “Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom – and indeed, take my life.”

The 47th US president didn’t refer to the January 6 rioters in the speech itself. But later, he delivered on his promises from the campaign trail, signing pardons for over 1,500 people who were prosecuted for their actions on that infamous day. This was a direct appeal to his Maga (Make America Great Again) base.

Joe Biden’s controversial issuing of pre-emptive pardons to his family members and key targets of angry Trump attacks shows Biden anticipated that the new president is unlikely to be as magnanimous with his political opponents.

How Trump responds to this, and how he treats people he has previously fallen out with – such as his pandemic tsar, Dr Anthony Fauci, and his former head of US joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley – are likely to have a big role to play in setting the political tone in Washington.

From his inauguration speech and from what we know about his first day back in power, it seems clear that politics in the US will be just as partisan and polarised as when he was last in the White House. While this is no surprise, having it confirmed in this way sets the tone for the conduct of American politics going forward.

Isolationism

While US foreign policy during Trump’s first term was arguably the most chaotic policy area of an especially chaotic presidency, there was a strong theme of isolationism. Entering office in January 2017, Trump almost immediately began the process of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, an action he has now repeated.

He also took steps to begin to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) – at the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Entering the Oval Office again, Trump has followed through on this promise, issuing an executive order starting the process of withdrawing the US from the WHO.

All eyes are now on how he deals with Nato, an organisation he dismissed as “obsolete” in 2017. On the campaign trail last year, Trump repeatedly said he would tell Russia they could do “whatever they hell they want” to any Nato members not paying their bills. There are now clear concerns about US commitment to the North Atlantic alliance.

The Putin question

There was nothing about Russia, Ukraine or Vladimir Putin in Trump’s inaugural. But given his past comments about the war, there has been a lot of speculation about his approach to dealing with his Russian counterpart. Trump had said he would achieve a peace deal for Ukraine in “one day”. But now his administration has conceded that a deal is “months away”.

Dynamic relationship: Trump with Russian president Vladimir Putin at their summit in Geneva in July 2018.
EPA-EFE/Anatoly Maltsev

Putin issued Trump the typical congratulations on his inauguration, and added that: “Moscow is open for dialogue with the United States that will be built on an equal and mutually respectful basis”. But despite a widespread perception that the reelected president would be equally respectful of Putin as he’d seemed in 2022, when he said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “genius” and “savvy”, Trump has now decided to take a completely different tone.

Putin is, Trump said after his inauguration, “destroying Russia” with his approach to the war. Going further, the US president added: “He can’t be thrilled, he’s not doing so well. I mean, he’s grinding it out, but most people thought that war would have been over in about one week, and now you’re into three years, right?”

Whether this assessment of Putin’s conduct of the war acts as a stumbling block in the path to potential peace talks between Russia and Ukraine remains to be seen. But it’s of a piece with Trump’s image as “disruptor-in-chief”.

Whether or not he maintains this distance from Putin, many of the themes of his second inauguration show a degree of continuation from Trump’s first term. His aggressive approach to politics and isolationist policies align with what we already knew about Trump. But his first day in office demonstrates how much more confident and prepared he is in 2025 than eight years ago.

However, more than anything else, the biggest takeaway from day one of Trump 2.0 is his willingness to go after controversy – and his flamboyant showmanship in doing so. Läs mer…

Dame Joan Plowright, who has died aged 95, was an actress of enormous and wide-ranging talent across a 60-year stage and screen career. Plowright was “perhaps the greatest Anglophone actor of the 20th century”, in Variety’s words. She was certainly a leading pioneer in post-war British theatre’s modernisation – particularly in terms of her theatrical style, as well as her geographic and class origins.

Raised in a middle-class family in Scunthorpe, northern England, Plowright’s theatrical credentials were already dubious according to snobbish metropolitan attitudes of the time, and were weakened further by her unfashionably plump face. “You’re no oil painting,” her mother commented, “but you’ve got the spark. Just thank God you’ve got my legs, and not your father’s.”

An early agent disparaged the name “Plowright” as sounding like “trade… ploughs and agriculture”, and suggested an alternative like Desiree Day. Plowright kept her name and changed her agent.

She trained at the Old Vic Theatre School in London, where instruction was classical – shaped by William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov. But it was also, importantly, rigorous and modernising, drawing on the pioneering work of Konstantin Stanislavski – a Russian actor and theatre maker who developed a method of acting based on “experiencing a role”.

The richness and innovation of her training meant that, even when playing classical parts like the title role of William Wycherley’s restoration comedy The Country Wife at London’s recently launched Royal Court Theatre in 1957, Plowright was admired for the funny and unpretentious “earthy vitality” of her character’s naïve, lusty enjoyment of city delights. She also shone in a range of radical new international works such as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Eugène Ionesco’s The Chairs.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

As she put it, “I was trained in classical theatre and made my name in contemporary theatre”, especially post-war British theatre’s kitchen sink realism. These were thoroughly modern dramas that revealed the disillusionment of Britain’s working class youth in the 1950s and 60s.

She starred in West Midlands-born John Osborne’s The Entertainer at the Royal Court in 1957 and its screen adaptation in 1960. In 1959, she played the lead in Roots by east London’s Arnold Wesker at Coventry’s Belgrade and London’s Royal Court and West End.

Joan Plowright and Laurence Olivier rehearsing for The Entertainer in 1960.
Keystone Press/Alamy

In 1960, she starred in the award-winning Broadway run of A Taste of Honey by Salford’s Shelagh Delaney. In this play, Plowright reported, for “apparently the first time […,] a white girl had kissed a black boy on stage”. To these plays, Plowright brought crucial cultural understanding from beyond the glamorous upper-class drawing rooms that dominated 1930s and 40s British drama.

In 1961, aged 31, Plowright married Sir (later Baron) Laurence Olivier, 22 years her senior and the de facto king of the British theatre establishment. He became the National Theatre’s (NT) first director the following year.

Her outsider spirit and links to the home of modern theatre writing, the Royal Court, facilitated the modernisation of the theatre establishment as she helped bring extensive expertise to the NT, right up to the level of Olivier’s assistant directors. She also helped persuade Olivier to hire the Observer newspaper reviewer Kenneth Tynan, a great advocate for new drama and against censorship, and a vocal critic of some of Olivier’s work.

While Plowright helped forge epochal aesthetic and class-based progress in post-war British theatre, that progress contrasts with enduring gender inequalities also illustrated by her career.

As an actress, Plowright acknowledged her rare privilege in being able to take time out to raise children. “By the time I married Larry […] I’d won my awards. […] Only then was I ready to have babies.” Acting in repertoire, she could balance part-time work with childcare and afford to pay for help with the house and children. “I was enormously lucky”, she said. But as the advocacy organisation Parents and Carers in Performing Arts makes clear, the inequalities Plowright recognised then persist today.

While Plowright wanted children, pregnancies meant, as she put it, “I missed out on one of the best roles you could ever have, in Happy Days” by Samuel Beckett. Some see her time out as especially detrimental to her film career.

Also, while Plowright had some influence on Olivier, she had to negotiate around him and concede to him too. “He has extremes of behaviour”, she said. “You just find a way not to be swept overboard by his demons.”

During his tenure as NT Director, she turned down work there to avoid criticisms of nepotism. But even during the NT’s subsequent directorship by his rival Peter Hall, she declined work there when Olivier threatened divorce, reportedly declaring, “No wife of mine will appear at Peter Hall’s National Theatre.”

Plowright’s career also demonstrates that the theatre industry’s progress on diversity is still limited in relation to disability. She reports first having acute problems with macular degeneration in 1992, but she continued to act and only announced retirement due to blindness in 2014.

Negotiating acting with increasing visual impairment required some reasonable adjustments but also “discretion” and downright subterfuge. “There comes the time,” she says, “when you think, ‘Do I let people know about this or not?’ And in our profession, of course, it’s better not to if you can manage because then you still get more parts to play.”

Advocacy for necessary change around gender and disability as well as race will continue with future generations of actors. Joan Plowright’s legacy as one of the most subtly powerful inventors of the class revolution of post-war British theatre is secure. Läs mer…

With California poised for more fires and a climate-change denying plutocrat back in the White House, the London opening of Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s play Kyoto – dramatising the intense negotiation of the world’s first climate change treaty – could hardly be more pertinent.

Scaling up from the intimate Swan theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to the chrome chic of the West End’s Soho Place, the RSC’s show is exemplary in its immersiveness. As we enter, we’re given conference lanyards – NGO delegate for me – and the actors sit among us, hopping up to take their place on Miriam Buether’s ovoid stage.

It’s politics as glossy spectacle, but then so, increasingly, is the Cop (Conference of the Parties) process it presents to us. And the climate elite were in attendance: UK energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband two rows in front of me; co-leader of the Greens, Carla Denyer, peering from the circle.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

At the close, the audience rose to its feet to offer the same euphoric applause that greeted the signing of the eponymous Kyoto protocol in 1997. I left on a high; only when I got outside did I wonder what we were actually applauding.

The play’s producer Good Chance Theatre’s trump card is making its lens on climate diplomacy Don Pearlman, a former attorney for US president Ronald Reagan. We witness him fashioning the climate-sceptic, doubt-sowing “Climate Council”, and glove-puppeting Saudi interventions to stall mitigating action.

Played with rangy energy by Stephen Kunken, Pearlman is a charismatic compere, evoking from the beyond the grave the 1990s as a blissful era of consensus compared with our polarised present. Prowling closed conferences with gleeful America First nihilism, he’s a horribly likeable Mephistopheles.

Indeed, the play is a fine entertainment all round, given its complex source material, and leans into a genre – the closed-conference drama – which carries political presumptions. Think of Edward Berger’s hit film Conclave, adapted from Robert Harris’s novel; while there’s less swearing in Rome than Kyoto, the gathered international cardinals and their opaque voting procedures mirror Kyoto’s diplomats wrangling over the intricacies of climate science.

This genre offers set-piece debates, carpet-chewing parts, and an inbuilt sweaty tension reaching back to Reginald Rose’s deathless 1954 classic, 12 Angry Men. As in the subsequent examples, Rose’s jurors are sealed off from influence, locked in a room with only rhetoric and reason to hand.

In Sidney Lumet’s classic film version (1957), the naturalism of this is belied by Henry Fonda’s Christ-like protagonist: the all-American liberal in a white suit, undermining the certainties of his fellow angry men. As if in a sporting fixture, the action is punctured by voting – and ultimately, reason and light prevail over ignorance and prejudice.

Kyoto is less programmatic than this and more of a revue, with the actors furiously multi-rolling, and Pearlman subject to the whims of a mysterious chorus of black-clad Big Oil – boo!

Aping the broad vivacity of Enron and This House (a play about the 1974-79 Labour government’s battle for survival), it turns diplomacy into contact sport. As delegates rant about emission trading schemes and cap-and-trade mechanisms, the audience remains behind the curve.

Kyoto is an immersive experience with actors sitting among the audience.
Manuel Harlan

The effect is satiric, with gales of laughter greeting the semantic quibbling, the open or closed brackets, the conditional or future tenses. Yet diplomacy can be life and death stuff, as we see in the painful back and forth of the belated “ceasefire” in Gaza. At times I missed the tragic weight beneath the sparring, more apparent in the conference plays of David Edgar – a master of the genre.

In plays like The Prisoner’s Dilemma or The Shape of the Table, Edgar makes dazzling procedural capital out of the painstaking work of peacebrokering. Words, commas, colons and brackets all means carbon reduced, borders redrawn and lives ultimately saved.

Kyoto celebrates the potent power of consensus through Pearlman’s indefatigable foe, Argentinian diplomat Raul Estrada. The moving climax of his gavel smashing the world’s first carbon reduction protocol into existence renders our anti-hero apparently irrelevant.

Like Conclave, the play becomes a celebration of politics itself, giving us a nostalgic sugar-rush of liberal avatars Angela Merkel or the late John Prescott at work – wonderfully impersonated by Kristin Atherton and Ferdy Roberts respectively.

Yet, after the applause died out and I stepped into a weirdly muggy January night, the drama’s consolations fell away. After all – pace Conclave – outside the Vatican, it’s the hard-right which holds the ring; and in the years to come, Pearlman’s denialist descendants will be calling the shots, not Estrada’s.

Are we addicted to tales of the benevolence of our political class, just as the “rules-based world order” founders? Are we hooked on 1990s nostalgia despite it being the era of the great acceleration, driving the current fires towards the hills of Hollywood? In short, are we looking back fondly because consensus politics is now firmly consigned to history?

One thing’s for sure: elite policymaking will face a tougher crowd than the one that greeted Kyoto on its opening night. Läs mer…

The Los Angeles wildfires have exposed a controversial practice that starkly illustrates the divide between the city’s wealthy elite and the general population. As public firefighters struggle to cope, affluent residents and businesses have turned to private firefighting services to protect their properties.

This trend has ignited a heated debate about inequality, the allocation of finite disaster defence resources, and the ethics of privatising essential emergency services. We already see the effects of privatisation of water and food in times of drought, with life-supporting items being unevenly distributed between rich and poor.

As climate breakdown continues, further privatisation could, for example, see sandbags be bought up in bulk and deployed by corporate rescue teams, leaving poorer areas of cities flooded. Or even extreme measures such as private aircraft creating artificial clouds through a process known as cloud seeding to induce rain over affluent areas.

Demand for private firefighting services in California has been steadily increasing for a while, as the rich get richer and more frequent and intense wildfires put unprecedented pressure on public fire departments.

Owners of expensive properties in fire-prone areas seek additional layers of protection for their investments, including round-the-clock monitoring and preventative measures that go beyond public services.

Additionally, many insurance providers now offer private firefighting services as part of premium policies or hire private firms directly to protect insured properties, viewing these as cost-effective ways to minimise their potential losses (by one estimate, the recent LA fires will cost more than US$200 billion).

A growing divide

The contrast between areas protected by private firefighters and those relying on public services is stark and troubling. In some affluent LA neighbourhoods, private firefighters stand guard in front of untouched mansions, while thousands of homes nearby have been reduced to ash and rubble.

This disparity was brought into sharp focus when one real estate developer took to social media begging for private firefighters to protect his home “at any cost”. His pleas attracted widespread criticism and were ultimately not successful, with his multimillion-dollar property succumbing to flames in the days following his post.

The price of private firefighting services varies widely, ranging from US$2,000 to US$15,000 per day (£1,600 to £12,000). Some companies offer annual retainers, such as the US$7,500 yearly fee for All Risk Shield.

The cost of private firefighting services, or even fire protection insurance, is beyond the reach of many citizens. This creates a significant gap to the risks faced by the poorest members of the population, who are also the most vulnerable to climate change-related extreme weather. The privatisation of responses to disasters will only increase this vulnerability.

Ethical concerns and public backlash

The proliferation of private firefighting services has sparked public outcry. Critics argue this trend exacerbates existing inequalities and potentially undermines the principle of community-wide protection during emergencies.

It’s not hard to envisage the creation of a fully two-tiered system, where access to safety becomes a privilege of wealth rather than a universal right, and where certain homes would be protected over others based solely on financial means.

The relationship between private fire crews and public fire departments is also complex and often tense. While private crews can alleviate some of the burden on overwhelmed public services, there are valid concerns about coordination, jurisdiction, and potential interference with public firefighting efforts.

Firefighters take on the Palisades fire in Los Angeles, January 2025.
Allison Dinner / EPA

To keep this in check, California passed a law in 2018 that limits how private firefighters can operate. They are not allowed to use flashing lights or badges similar to those of public firefighters, and must coordinate with them.

Since this legislation came into force, some companies have refused to serve individual people, and instead are hired by cities or insurance companies. The 2025 fires are likely to see LA’s wealthy lobby for a change to this law to make access to private help easier.

Privatising the response

The rise of private firefighting raises critical questions about the future of disaster response in an increasingly unequal society. The January 2025 fires have also underscored the growing divide between LA’s wealthiest residents and those who will struggle to ever rebuild.

While private firefighting services offer undeniable benefits to those who can afford them, their increasing prevalence raises important questions about equity, resource allocation, and the very nature of community safety.

As climate change continues to exacerbate extreme weather events around the world, it is clear that innovative solutions are needed to protect all residents, regardless of their economic status. The challenge lies in finding a balance between allowing individuals to protect their properties, and ensuring essential emergency services remain accessible to all members of society.

Ultimately, the debate serves as a stark reminder of the broader inequalities that persist in our society. As we grapple with the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, it is crucial that we work towards solutions that prioritise the safety and wellbeing of all community members, not just those who can afford to pay for additional protection. Läs mer…