body
stringlengths 6
42.2k
| labels
int64 0
6
|
|---|---|
Copenhagen, Dec 18 (Reuters/bdnews24.com)-- World leaders tried to rescue a global climate agreement on Friday but the failure of leading greenhouse gas emitters China and the United States to come up with new proposals blocked chances of an ambitious deal. U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders are trying to reach consensus on carbon emissions cuts, financial aid to poor nations, temperature caps and international scrutiny of emissions curbs. There has been progress in some areas, but gaps remain over emissions targets and monitoring, delegates said. "We are ready to get this done today but there has to be movement on all sides, to recognize that it is better for us to act than talk," Obama told the conference. "These international discussions have essentially taken place now for almost two decades and we have very little to show for it other than an increase, an acceleration of the climate change phenomenon. The time for talk is over." At stake is an agreement for coordinated global action to avert climate change including more floods and droughts. Two weeks of talks in Copenhagen have battled suspicion between rich and poor countries over how to share out emissions cuts. Developing countries, among them some of the most vulnerable to climate change, say rich nations have a historic responsibility to take the lead. The environment minister of EU president Sweden, Andreas Carlgren, said the United States and China held the key to a deal. The United States had come late to the table with commitments to tackle climate change, he said. China's resistance to monitoring was a serious obstacle. "And the great victims of this is the big group of developing countries. The EU really wanted to reach out to the big group of developing countries. That was made impossible because of the great powers," Carlgren said. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Copenhagen on Thursday with a promise that the United States would join efforts to mobilize $100 billion a year to help poor nations cope with climate change, provided there was a deal. But there were no such new gestures from Obama. He stuck to the target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. That works out at 3-4 percent versus 1990, compared with an EU target of 20 percent. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also reiterated existing targets, although he said the world's top carbon emitter may exceed them. "We will honor our word with real action," Wen said. "Whatever outcome this conference may produce, we will be fully committed to achieving and even exceeding the target." Obama and Wen then met for nearly an hour in what a White House official described as a "step forward." "They had a constructive discussion that touched upon ... all of the key issues," the official told reporters. "They've now directed their negotiators to work on a bilateral basis as well as with other countries to see if an agreement can be reached." Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, urged China and the United States, which together account for 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, to act. "The U.S. and China account for almost half the world's emissions. They simply must do their part. If they don't, we will not be able to meet the 2 degree target," he told the conference. 'NOT GREAT' Speaking after Obama's speech a British official said: "The prospects for a deal are not great. A number of key countries are holding out against the overall package and time is now running short." Negotiators failed in overnight talks to agree on carbon cuts. Obama and other leaders failed to achieve a breakthrough in talks on Friday morning. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Chinese resistance to monitoring of emissions was a sticking point. "The good news is that the talks are continuing, the bad news is they haven't reached a conclusion," he said. A draft text seen by Reuters called for a "goal" of $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations cope with climate change. It also supported $30 billion for the least developed countries from 2010-2012, and said the world "ought to" limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius versus pre-industrial levels. Scientists say a 2 degrees limit is the minimum to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change including several meters sea level rise, extinctions and crop failures. The aim of the two weeks of talks in Copenhagen is to agree a climate deal which countries will convert into a full legally binding treaty next year, to succeed the Kyoto Protocol whose present round ends in 2012. The United States never ratified Kyoto, and the pact doesn't bind developing nations. Friday's draft text foresees "continuing negotiations" to agree one or more new legal treaties no later than end 2010. | 0 |
WASHINGTON, Tue Mar 24,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The US Environmental Protection Agency found that climate-warming greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, pose a danger to human health and welfare, a White House website showed on Monday. EPA's proposed "endangerment finding," sent to the Obama administration on Friday, could pave the way for US limits on emissions that spur climate change. The substance of the proposal was not immediately made public, but the White House Office of Management and Budget showed EPA sent a proposed rule for an "Endangerment Finding for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act." An endangerment finding is essential for the US government to regulate climate-warming emissions like carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. The environment agency had no comment on the endangerment finding, but such a finding is only sent to the White House when the EPA determines that human health and welfare are threatened. "I think it's historic news," said Frank O'Donnell of the environmental group Clean Air Watch. "It is going to set the stage for the first-ever national limits on global warming pollution." Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat who heads the House climate change committee, also offered praise while slamming the Bush administration's record. "This finding will officially end the era of denial on global warming," Markey said in a statement. "Instead of allowing political interference in scientific and legal decisions, as was the case in the previous administration, the Obama administration is letting the sun shine in on the dangerous realities of global warming." US BUSINESS SEES 'DANGEROUS GAME' William Kovacs of the US Chamber of Commerce was wary of the possible changes. "They're playing a very dangerous game with the way they're moving forward. The regulated community, if carbon dioxide is regulated, swells from about 15,000 to 1.5 million entities. That's the risk." EPA's move could spur Congress to cap carbon emissions, said Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs repeated President Barack Obama's support for a market-based system to limit carbon emissions and allow companies that emit more than the limit to trade allowances with those that emit less. Congressional Democrats also favor this kind of cap-and-trade plan to cut emissions. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to make these regulations if human health is threatened by global warming pollution, but no regulations went forward during the Bush administration. Carbon dioxide, one of several so-called greenhouse gases that spur global warming, is emitted by natural and industrial sources, including fossil-fueled vehicles, coal-fired power plants and oil refineries. An internal EPA document made public last year showed the agency's scientists believed greenhouse pollution posed a health threat, but no official finding was ever accepted by the Bush White House. On March 10, the EPA proposed a comprehensive US system for reporting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, a step toward regulating pollutants that spur climate change. | 0 |
China led calls by developing nations for deeper emissions cuts from the United States, Japan and Europe at UN climate talks on Tuesday, as a study showed that this decade will be the warmest on record. The first decade of this century was the hottest since records began, the World Meteorological Organisation said, underscoring the threat scientists say the planet faces from rising temperatures. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are trying to seal the outlines of a climate pact to combat rising seas, desertification, floods and cyclones that could devastate economies and ruin the livelihoods of millions of people. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said the Dec 7-18 talks in Copenhagen were "off to a good start." The EU said it was positive that no one had walked out of negotiation sessions. But a rich-poor rift continued to cloud negotiations on finance and emissions cuts. Recession-hit rich countries have not yet made concrete offers to aid developing nations who also want the industrialised world to act faster to curb emissions. China and many other developing nations urged the rich to make deeper cuts in emissions and Beijing scoffed at a fast-start fund of $10 billion (£6.1 billion) a year meant to help developing countries from 2010 that rich countries are expected to approve. China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, criticised goals set by the United States, the European Union and Japan for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Su Wei, a senior Chinese climate official at UN climate talks in Copenhagen, said the targets broadly fell short of the emissions cuts recommended by a U.N. panel of scientists. The panel has said cuts of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 were needed to avoid the worst of global warming. He said a US offer, equal to 3 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, "cannot be regarded as remarkable or notable." An EU cut of 20 percent was also not enough and Japan was setting impossible conditions on its offer of a 25 percent cut by 2020. "LIFE AND DEATH" "This $10 billion if divided by the world population, it is less than $2 per person," he said, adding it was not even enough to buy a cup of coffee in Copenhagen or a coffin in poorer parts of the world. "Climate change is a matter of life and death," he said. Brazil's climate change ambassador said his country did not want to sign up for a long-term goal of halving global emissions by 2050 unless rich nations took on firm shorter-term targets -- which the Danish hosts view as a core outcome for the talks. Copenhagen was meant to seal a legally binding climate deal to broaden the fight against climate change by expanding or replacing the Kyoto Protocol from 2013. While that now looks out of reach, host Denmark wants leaders to at least agree on a "politically binding" deal. The Danish government has said this would be 5 to 8 pages with annexes from all countries describing pledged actions. Negotiators are also trying to whittle down almost 200 pages of draft text that is expected to form the basis of an eventual post-2012 climate treaty. While negotiators have made progress refining the text, it is still full of blanks and options. African civil groups led a protest inside the main conference centre in Copenhagen, urging more aid to prepare for global warming. "Africans are suffering. We will not die in silence," said Augustine Njamnshi of Christian Aid. "PLEASING THE RICH" A draft 9-page Danish text with annexes seen by Reuters last week drew criticism by environmental activists, who said it undermined the negotiations. "Focus on the Danish text right now is a distraction from the negotiations," said Kim Carstensen, head of conservation group WWF's global climate initiative, adding the text did not lay out what would happen to the Kyoto Protocol. He called the Danish text a weak attempt to accommodate the United States. De Boer described the text as an informal paper for the purposes of consultation and not an official part of the negotiations. Much is riding on what US President Barack Obama can bring to the table in Copenhagen when he joins more than 100 other world leaders during a high-level summit on Dec 17-18. Washington's provisional offer is to cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, or 3 percent below the UN's 1990 baseline. The US Environmental Protection Agency ruled on Monday that greenhouse gases endanger human health, allowing it to regulate them without legislation from the Senate, where a bill to cut US emissions by 2020 is stalled. Delegates cautiously welcomed the step as a boost for Obama. | 0 |
Britain's Prince Charles has offered to team up with Norway in projects to save forests around the world, Norwegian officials said on Thursday. The Prince of Wales's offer to Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg followed Norway's announcement earlier this month that it aimed to provide about 3 billion crowns ($541.2 million) per year to prevent deforestation in developing countries. Charles, who has said saving the world's rainforests is key to combating global warming, sent a letter to Stoltenberg suggesting that his Rainforests Project send representatives to Norway to discuss ways to cooperate, a spokesman at the prime minister's office said. Stoltenberg said Norway would be glad to receive them and is willing to work with all who want to put systems and regulations in place to halt deforestation. Norway has said that fighting deforestation is a quick and low-cost way to achieve cuts in greenhouse gas emissions blamed by scientists for global warming, in addition to maintaining biodiversity and securing people's livelihoods. The Labour-led government has said that deforestation in developing countries is releasing carbon dioxide corresponding to about a fifth of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Norway has said that commitments to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing nations should be included in a global climate change regime from 2012 and that it will work to develop funding and certification systems to promote the effort. In April, Stoltenberg announced a goal to make Norway carbon neutral by 2050 by reducing emissions at home and by offsetting Norwegian greenhouse gas emissions by investing in environmental projects in the developing world. | 0 |
A 29-page draft by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will also outline many ways to adapt to rising temperatures, more heatwaves, floods and rising seas."The scientific reasoning for reducing emissions and adapting to climate change is becoming far more compelling," Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, told Reuters in Beijing.Scientists and more than 100 governments will meet in Japan from March 25-29 to edit and approve the report. It will guide policies in the run-up to a UN summit in Paris in 2015 meant to decide a deal to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions.The 29-page draft projects risks such as food and water shortages and extinctions of animals and plants. Crop yields would range from unchanged to a fall of up to 2 percent a decade, compared to a world without warming, it says.And some natural systems may face risks of "abrupt or drastic changes" that could mean irreversible shifts, such as a runaway melt of Greenland or a drying of the Amazon rainforest.It said there were "early warning signs that both coral reef and Arctic systems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts". Corals are at risk in warmer seas and the Arctic region is thawing fast.Climate change will hit growth. Warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels could mean "global aggregate economic losses between 0.2 and 2.0 percent of income", it says.Almost 200 governments have agreed to limit warming to less than 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, mainly by curbing emissions from burning fossil fuels.Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 Celsius (1.4F).Rising risks"A wide range of impacts from climate change are already happening," said Chris Field of Stanford University and a co-chair of the IPCC report. "Risks are much greater with more warming than less warming.""And it doesn't require 100 percent certainty before you have creative options for moving forwards ... there are compelling adaptation options," he told Reuters by telephone.The report points to options such as improved planning for disasters such as hurricanes or flooding, efforts to breed drought- or flood-resistant crops, measures to save water and energy or wider use of insurance.Field said the IPCC will have to take account of thousands of comments since the draft was leaked to a climate sceptic's website late last year.And the findings will be under scrutiny, especially after the previous IPCC assessment in 2007 wrongly projected that Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035, affecting water supplies for millions of people from China to India.This time, a sub-chapter projects Himalayan ice will range from a 2 percent gain to a 29 percent loss by 2035. "It is virtually certain that these projections are more reliable than an earlier erroneous assessment," it says.The study is the second part of a mammoth three-part report.The first, in September, raised the probability that human activities, rather than natural variations, are the main cause of warming since 1950 to at least 95 percent from 90 in 2007.But many people in big emitting nations are unconvinced.Only 40 percent of Americans and 39 percent of Chinese view climate change as a major threat, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 39 nations in 2013.A third instalment, due in Berlin in mid-March, will show solutions to climate change such as more renewable energy. | 0 |
OSLO, Mon Oct 27, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The world could eliminate fossil fuel use by 2090 by spending trillions of dollars on a renewable energy revolution, the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and environmental group Greenpeace said on Monday. The 210-page study is one of few reports -- even by lobby groups -- to look in detail at how energy use would have to be overhauled to meet the toughest scenarios for curbing greenhouse gases outlined by the U.N. Climate Panel. "Renewable energy could provide all global energy needs by 2090," according to the study, entitled "Energy (R)evolution". EREC represents renewable energy industries and trade and research associations in Europe. A more radical scenario could eliminate coal use by 2050 if new power generation plants shifted quickly to renewables. Solar power, biomass such as biofuels or wood, geothermal energy and wind could be the leading energies by 2090 in a shift from fossil fuels blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel for stoking global warming. Needed energy investments until 2030, the main period studied, would total $14.7 trillion, according to the study. By contrast, the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises rich nations, foresees energy investments of just $11.3 trillion to 2030, with a bigger stress on fossil fuels and nuclear power. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. Climate Panel which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with ex-U.S. Vice President Al Gore, called Monday's study "comprehensive and rigorous". DANGEROUS CHANGE "Even those who may not agree with the analysis presented would, perhaps, benefit from a deep study of the underlying assumptions", he wrote in a foreword to the report. EREC and Greenpeace said a big energy shift was needed to avoid "dangerous" climate change, defined by the European Union and many environmental groups as a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) since before the Industrial Revolution. The report urged measures such as a phase-out of subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy, "cap and trade" systems for greenhouse gas emissions, legally binging targets for renewable energies and tough efficiency standards for buildings and vehicles. The report said renewable energy markets were booming with turnover almost doubling in 2007 from 2006 to more than $70 billion. It said renewables could more than double their share of world energy supplies to 30 percent by 2030 and reach 50 percent by 2050. The projections are far more optimistic for renewables than the IEA, which foresees just 13 percent of energy from renewables in 2030 with fossil fuels staying dominant. Sven Teske, Greenpeace's leading author of the report, said the recommendations would involve big job-creating investments that could help counter the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. "The current unstable market situation is a strong argument for our energy [r]evolution concept," he told Reuters in an e-mail. He said investments would be repaid by savings in fuel costs. "We had a 'dot.com bubble' and a 'finance bubble' - but I'm confident that we will not have a renewables bubble - as the need for energy is real - and growing especially in developing nations," he said. | 0 |
European Union ministers tackle controversial proposals to shake up power companies and set targets for renewable fuels on Thursday in a step towards forming a common EU energy policy and fighting climate change. The European Commission in January proposed measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions, boost the production of energy from environmentally-friendly sources and separate distribution networks from the generation activities of big gas and electricity companies. But EU states are divided over whether to make targets for renewable energy sources binding. They are also split on how far to go in separating, or "unbundling", utilities' generation and distribution businesses. EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs reiterated late on Wednesday the Commission's preference for full "ownership unbundling," which would require companies to separate the two activities by selling off one business. In a nod to EU governments that oppose such a shake-up, the EU executive has also proposed a second option in which utilities hand over management of their distribution grid operations while retaining ownership. Piebalgs said the Commission was open to a third proposal by France for "regulated unbundling", similar to the French system. Britain describes that option as maintaining the status quo. Draft conclusions prepared for the energy ministers' meeting and obtained by Reuters do not endorse a specific plan. They call on the Commission to elaborate on its proposed measures. Separately, the Commission has proposed that less-polluting renewable energy sources, such as wind, should make up 20 percent of the bloc's energy mix by 2020 and that biofuels account for at least 10 percent of fuel used by vehicles by the same year. Ministers will discuss whether to make those targets binding or not. The draft conclusions leave that question open. The Commission says non-binding targets do not work. Germany, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, supports a mandatory target. But Britain says mandatory goals would prevent EU nations from determining their own energy mix and could be counterproductive. At present the European Union has a non-binding goal to increase renewable fuels to 12 percent of the energy mix by 2010, but that is likely to be missed. The Commission has also proposed to cut EU greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, with the possibility of raising that to 30 percent if other developed nations join in. EU environment ministers will address those goals at a meeting next week. | 0 |
SINGAPORE Nov 15, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US President Barack Obama and other world leaders on Sunday rallied around plans to avert a failure at next month's climate summit in Copenhagen that would delay legally binding agreements until 2010 or even later. "Given the time factor and the situation of individual countries we must, in the coming weeks, focus on what is possible and not let ourselves be distracted by what is not possible," Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told the leaders. "The Copenhagen Agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion," said the Copenhagen talks host, who flew into Singapore overnight to lay out his proposal over breakfast at an Asia-Pacific summit. Rasmussen's two-step plan would pave the way for a political accord at the Dec. 7-18 talks, followed by tortuous haggling over legally binding commitments on targets, finance and technology transfer on a slower track, though still with a deadline. In particular, it would give breathing space for the US Senate to pass carbon-capping legislation, allowing the Obama administration to bring a 2020 target and financing pledges to the table at a major UN climate meeting in Bonn in mid-2010. Analysts say it needs to pass through the Senate early next year to avoid becoming pushed aside in the run-up to mid-term elections. "There was an assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full, internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days," senior U.S. negotiator Michael Froman told reporters after the meeting, which was attended by leaders of the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Australia and Indonesia. "We believe it is better to have something good than to have nothing at all," Chilean Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez said. "TIME FOR LEADERS TO STEP IN" Copenhagen was seen as the last chance for countries to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol and put in place painful measures needed to fight a rise in temperatures that would bring more rising sea levels, floods and droughts. The aim of the summit is to set ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gases, but also to raise funds to help poor countries tackle global warming. However, negotiations have been bogged down, with developing nations accusing the rich world of failing to set themselves deep enough 2020 goals for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. "Leaders ... were clear in their view that the current officials-led process is running into all sorts of difficulties, and therefore it is time for leaders, politically, to step in," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters after the meeting with Rasmussen. It was not clear if China, now the world's biggest carbons emitter, had lined up behind the two-stage proposal in Singapore. Chinese President Hu Jintao instead focused his remarks at the breakfast meeting on the need to establish a funding mechanism for rich nations to provide financial support to developing countries to fight climate change. He was echoed by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who said that if an agreement could be reached on a mechanism for global financing at Copenhagen it would be "much easier to achieve clear and pragmatic measures". Their comments came a day after the presidents of France and Brazil, in a joint document, called for "substantial" financial help from richer countries to help them tackle emissions. NEW DEADLINE COULD SLIP Despite the talk in Singapore of urgent action on climate change, a statement issued after the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit dropped an earlier draft's reference to halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Environmental lobby group WWF voiced disappointment. "At APEC, there was far too much talk about delay, and what won't be accomplished in Copenhagen," spokesperson Diane McFadzien said in a statement. "This does not look like a smart strategy to win the fight against climate change." "In Copenhagen, governments need to create a legally binding framework with an amended Kyoto Protocol and a new Copenhagen Protocol. Legally binding is the only thing that will do if we want to see real action to save the planet." Rasmussen said a two-step approach would not mean a "partial" agreement in Copenhagen and insisted that it would be binding. However, analysts said a new deadline could slip if Washington's political will to agree on emissions targets and carbon cap-and-trade fades, which would be a particular risk if the US economic recovery falters. There is also a risk of growing frustration from developing countries which accuse rich nations of not doing enough to fight climate or help poorer states adapt to its impacts. | 0 |
The deadline for a new global accord on climate change should be extended if Washington is not ready to make commitments on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by December, the head of a major environmental funding agency said on Monday. More than 190 governments agreed in 2007 to forge a climate treaty by the end of 2009 at UN talks in Copenhagen, after scientists warned that rising emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, would bring more droughts, floods and rising seas. Monique Barbut, chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility, told Reuters the administration of US President Barack Obama wanted to tackle global warming but might not have time to pass legislation on carbon trading in time to sign an international pact by December. "I really think what is very important is not so much that we do it in Copenhagen, what is very important is that we get real good commitments," she said in an interview on the sidelines of an event on financing climate change. "So if it needs six more months for the US to be totally ready, I think it is much more important that we wait for those few months than that we take commitments that are going to anger many people." President Bill Clinton agreed in 1997 to the UN's Kyoto Protocol, aimed at cutting greenhouse gases in the period to 2012, but did not try to get a hostile Senate to ratify it. In December, US Senator John Kerry predicted the Senate would let Obama sign up to a UN pact to fight global warming in late 2009 even if US climate laws were not yet in place. Barbut noted other obstacles to reaching a deal in Copenhagen, including the European Union's reluctance to pledge billions of dollars in funding for poorer countries until it can see what other nations are prepared to put on the table. "I do not honestly see European countries agreeing today to massively scale up their level of international solidarity to tackle climate change unless they get something in return," she told the event organized by the Overseas Development Institute. EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said on Friday the bloc could move no further until other rich countries spelled out their targets for cutting emissions. Success at Copenhagen will likely depend on whether agreement is reached on a fund worth tens of billions of dollars annually to help poor countries limit their emissions and cope with the impacts of global warming. But Barbut, whose Washington-based agency is the financial arm for international conventions on environmental issues including climate change, said this would not happen unless a global deal on targets for reducing emissions was also reached. "For me, and for plenty of reasons, this story is not a likely scenario, which means that in spite of the impressive and authoritative figures of funding needs that are floated around, the financial architecture will probably only change gradually, and its means will certainly not increase 10-fold overnight," she said. | 0 |
Grown in-vitro from cattle stem cells at a cost of 250,000 euros ($332,000), the burger was cooked and eaten in front of television cameras to gain the greatest media coverage for the culmination of a five-year science experiment.Resembling a standard circular-shaped red meat patty, it was created by knitting together 20,000 strands of laboratory-grown protein, combined with other ingredients normally used in burgers, such as salt, breadcrumbs and egg powder. Red beet juice and saffron were added to give it colour.The two food tasters were reserved in their judgement, perhaps keen not to offend their host at the London event, noting the burger's "absence of fat".Pressed for a more detailed description of the flavour, food writer Josh Schonwald said the cultured beef had an "animal protein cake" like quality to it, adding that he would like to try it with some of the extras often served with traditional burgers - salt, pepper, ketchup and jalepenos.Even the scientist behind the burger's creation, vascular biologist Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, was relatively muted in his praise of its flavour."It's a very good start," he told the hundreds of reporters who had gathered to watch the meat being cooked and served.The Dutch scientist's aim was to show the world that in the future meat will not necessarily have to come from the environmentally and economically costly rearing and slaughtering of millions of animals."Current meat production is at its maximum - we need to come up with an alternative," he said.Massive ScaleThe World Health Organization (WHO) says meat production is projected to rise to 376 million tonnes by 2030 from 218 million tonnes annually in 1997-1999, and demand from a growing world population is expected to rise beyond that.According to a 2006 report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), industrialised agriculture contributes on a "massive scale" to climate change, air pollution, land degradation, energy use, deforestation and biodiversity decline.The meat industry contributes about 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a proportion expected to grow as consumers in fast-developing countries such as China and India eat more meat, the report said.Chris Mason, a professor of regenerative medicine at University College London, who was not involved in the research, said it was "great pioneering science" with the potential to ease environmental, health and animal welfare problems.But, he added: "whilst the science looks achievable, the scalable manufacturing will require new game-changing innovation".Post said he was confident his concept can be scaled up to offer a viable alternative to animal meat production, but said it may be another 20 years before lab-grown meat appears on supermarket shelves.He also conceded that the flavour of his meat must be improved if it is to become a popular choice.Post resisted requests from journalists from all over the world eager to try a morsel of the world's first cultured beef burger, saying there was not enough to go around.Instead, he said, his children would be offered the leftovers. | 0 |
The flattened remains of her house and those of her
neighbours in Haat village lay scattered around, buried in construction waste
from a nearby hydroelectric power plant. Between the village and the plant, an important Hindu temple
stands surrounded by debris. "This is where the remains of my house lie, under the
muck," Devi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "What kind of
development is this, when you rob poor people of their homes to supply
electricity to others?" Devi's family is among the more than 240 households in the
village who lost their homes during the construction of the 444-megawatt (MW)
hydropower project on the Alaknanda river. The World Bank-financed power plant is one of dozens of
hydroelectric projects either being built or already operating across India's
Himalayan states, in a bid to cut down the country's carbon emissions. The government has said hydropower, along with solar and wind,
is vital to meeting India's pledge to get half of its energy from non-fossil
fuel sources by 2030. As countries look for ways to curb global warming, backers
of hydropower note that it provides massive amounts of clean electricity and
can be ramped up quickly when more weather-dependent solar and wind projects
fail to meet demand. But green groups and communities affected by hydroelectric
projects say the high environmental and social costs are hard to justify. Devi, 63, said that when officials from government-owned
power company Tehri Hydro Development Corporation (THDC) came last year asking
to buy locals' land, anyone who refused was "bundled into a truck"
and taken to a police station for several hours while their homes were
demolished. Those who had earlier agreed to sell up were given
"nominal" compensation of 1 million Indian rupees ($12,887) each,
said homemaker Devi, who now lives with her family in a nearby village. Sandeep Gupta, assistant general manager of the THDC
project, said Haat residents had all agreed to voluntarily resettle themselves
and were fairly compensated, adding that the project was being monitored by
government agencies for any environmental damage. "No adverse impact has been reported by the agencies to
date," Gupta said. UNTAPPED POTENTIAL In a June 2021 report, the International Energy Agency
called hydropower "the forgotten giant of clean electricity" and
urged countries to include it in their energy mix to have a chance of reaching
net-zero emissions. India currently has 46 gigawatts of installed hydropower
capacity - only a third of what it could potentially generate, according to
government figures. To boost capacity, the government in 2019 officially
declared hydroelectric projects of over 25 MW a renewable energy source, and
made it obligatory for power companies to use hydro for a share of their
supply. Before then, only smaller hydropower plants had been classed
as renewable. Arun Kumar, a professor of hydropower and renewable energy
at the Indian Institute of Technology-Roorkee, said that expanding India's
hydropower sector was about more than generating electricity. Hydroelectric dams can also provide a reliable water supply
for homes, businesses and farmers, said Kumar, who sits on the board of the
London-based International Hydropower Association. In addition, big projects can attract tourists and bring
jobs, electricity, roads and railways to nearby communities, improving
"the quality of life in backward areas", Kumar said. But building more hydropower plants makes little economic
sense when India can get cheaper clean energy from solar and wind projects,
said Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers
and People, an advocacy group. He said installing 1 MW of hydroelectric capacity in India
costs more than 100 million rupees, about double the amount for the same solar
or wind-based capacity. Corruption and lax regulation, he added, are the only
reasons India's authorities are so focused on hydropower. "There is huge scope for padding up the costs in the
absence of credible regulatory oversight," Thakkar said. RISING DISASTER RISK As for hydropower's reputation as a green energy source,
some environmentalists say the sector does more harm than good. Hydro projects can clear forests, divert rivers, slow or
stop groundwater recharge and shift huge amounts of earth, all of which make
nearby communities more vulnerable to the effects of increasingly destructive
extreme weather, they say. S.P. Sati, who teaches environmental science at the College
of Forestry-Ranichauri in Uttarakhand, pointed to devastating floods in the
state in 2013 that killed about 6,000 people, according to state government
estimates. A committee appointed by India's Supreme Court concluded
that hydroelectric projects had exacerbated the flood damage, as the rushing
water carried mountains of excavated boulders, silt and sand downstream,
burying low-lying communities. The committee also noted in a report that digging and use of
explosives while building the plants "can trigger landslides or slope
failure". "If you don't care about the sensitivity, fragility and
carrying capacity of the terrain, (hydropower) is bound to trigger big
disasters," Sati said. Haat village head Rajendra Prasad Hatwal said residents
would keep on holding protests and lobbying the local government until the
hydropower plant developers stopped using their home as a dumping site and
properly compensated displaced families. He also questioned why India is leaning so heavily into
hydropower, when countries like the United States, Brazil and China have
suffered huge disruptions in hydropower generation due to climate change-driven
droughts in the past few years. Another concern is the clearing of thousands of trees for
the power plant, he said, when "we hear so much about saving forests to
fight climate change". "It is so confusing and frustrating," he added.
| 2 |
Smoke from bushfires burning hundreds of kilometres away blanketed Australia's second largest city Melbourne on Saturday, delaying flights and setting off fire alarms at the city's airport. Water-bombing aircraft intended to help contain some of the 24 bushfires burning out of control in the southern state of Victoria were grounded because of the thick smoke. Ambulance officials urged people with respiratory problems such as asthma to stay indoors and aviation officials warned pilots that visibility was down to five kilometres (three miles). "The conditions for today with all the smoke in the atmosphere are absolutely terrible for people with asthma. It is imperative that they stay inside," said an ambulance official. The bushfires, most sparked by lightning strikes, have blackened almost 180,000 hectares (450,000 acres) of land, mostly in rugged, inaccessible mountains in the northeast of the state. Firefighters fear the fires could sweep through some small country towns in Victoria's highlands on Sunday as northerly winds pick up strength ahead of a forecast cool change. Blazes stretching 150 kilometres (93 miles) from the central King Valley to the Victorian coast could destroy more than 600,000 hectares (1.4 million acres) in coming days as fires merge in the face of strong northerly winds, authorities have said. "The whole (weather) system has slowed down over the past 24 hours, but we're expecting it to hit tomorrow and when it does it will be severe," said Stuart Ord from Victoria's department of sustainability and environment. "There is no doubt the fire will hit settlements tomorrow, the question is which ones," Ord told local media. Army reinforcements have been sent to Victoria state to help more than 2,000 local and New Zealand firefighters. Firefighters say Australia faces an extreme fire danger this summer after a drought that has turned many rural areas into tinder boxes. Scientists fear climate change will bring more frequent higher temperatures and less rainfall to the country. Bushfires are a regular feature of Australia's summer. In January 2005, the deadliest bushfires in 22 years killed nine people in South Australia. Four people were killed and 530 homes destroyed in Canberra in 2003. That same year, bushfires fuelled by drought ravaged a slice of Australia three times the size of Britain. Over the past 40 years, more than 250 people have been killed in bushfires in Australia. | 0 |
That favourite is President Emmanuel Macron, 44, who has
opted to stay above the fray, delaying his decision to declare he is running
until sometime close to the March deadline, yet another way to indulge his
penchant for keeping his opponents guessing. Comfortable in his lofty centrist perch, Macron has watched
as the right and extreme-right tear one another to shreds. Immigration and
security have largely pushed out other themes, from climate change to the
ballooning debt France has accumulated in fighting the coronavirus crisis. “To call your child ‘Mohammed’ is to colonise France,” says
Éric Zemmour, the far-right upstart of the election who has parlayed his
notoriety as a TV pundit into a platform of anti-immigrant vitriol. Only he, in his telling, stands between French civilization
and its conquest by Islam and “woke” American political correctness. Like
former President Donald Trump, to whom he spoke this week, Zemmour uses
constant provocation to stay at the top of the news. Still, Macron has a clear lead in polls, which give him
about 25% of the vote in the first round of the election on April 10. Zemmour
and two other right-wing candidates are in the 12%-18% range. Splintered
left-wing parties are trailing and, for now, seem like virtual spectators for
the first time since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958. France generally leans right; this time it has lurched. “The
left lost the popular classes, many of whom moved to the far right because it
had no answer on immigration and Islam,” said Pascal Bruckner, an author and
political philosopher. “So it’s the unknowable chameleon, Macron, against the
right.” The beneficiary of a perception that he has beaten the
coronavirus pandemic and steered the economy through its challenges, Macron
appears stronger today than he has for some time. The economy grew 7% in the
last quarter. Unemployment is at 7.4%, low for France. The lifting of COVID-19
measures before the election, including mask requirements in many public
places, seems probable, a step of potent symbolism. It is a measure of the difficulty of attacking Macron that
he seems at once to embody what is left of social democracy in France — once
the preserve of a Socialist Party that is now on life support — and policies
embraced by the right, like his tough stand against what he has called
“Islamist separatism.” “He is supple,” said Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister.
Macron’s predecessor as president, François Hollande, a Socialist who feels
betrayed by the incumbent’s shift rightward, put it less kindly in a recent
book: “He hops, like a frog on water lilies, from one conviction to another.” The two leading candidates in the first round go through to
a second Apr 24. The crux of the election has therefore become a fierce
right-on-right battle for a second-place passage to a runoff against Macron. Marine Le Pen, the perennial anti-immigrant candidate, has
become Zemmour’s fiercest critic, as defections to him from her party have
grown. She has said his supporters include “some Nazis” and accused him of
seeking “the death” of her National Rally party, formerly called the National
Front. Zemmour, whose extremist view is that Islam is “incompatible”
with France, has ridiculed her for trying to distinguish between extremist
Islamism and the faith itself. He has attacked her for not embracing the idea
of the “great replacement” — a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian
populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants, leading to
what Zemmour calls the “Creolization” of societies. The president would be confident of his chances against
either Le Pen, whom he beat handily in the second round in 2017, or Zemmour,
even if the glib intellectualism of this descendant of an Algerian Jewish
family has overcome many of the taboos that kept conservative French voters
from embracing the hard right. France is troubled, with many people struggling to pay
rising energy bills and weary from the two-year struggle against the pandemic,
but a blow-up-the-system choice, like the vote for Trump in the United States
or Britain’s choice of Brexit, would be a surprise. Paulette Brémond, a retiree who voted for Macron in 2017,
said she was hesitating between the president and Zemmour. “The immigration
question is grave,” she said. “I am waiting to see what Mr Macron says about
it. He probably won’t go as far as Zemmour, but if he sounds effective, I may
vote for him again.” Until Macron declares his candidacy, she added, “the
campaign feels like it has not started” — a common sentiment in a country where
for now the political jostling can feel like shadow boxing. That is scarcely a concern to the president, who has
portrayed himself as obliged to focus on high matters of state. These include
his prominent diplomatic role in trying to stop a war in Ukraine through his
relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and ending, along with
allies, the troubled French anti-terrorist campaign in Mali. If Mali has been a conspicuous failure, albeit one that
seems unlikely to sway many voters, the Ukraine crisis, as long as it does not
lead to war, has allowed Macron to look like Europe’s de facto leader in the
quest for constructive engagement with Russia. Zemmour and Le Pen, who between
them represent about 30% of the vote, make no secret of their admiration for
Putin. One member of Macron’s putative reelection team, who
insisted on anonymity per government practice, said the possibility of a runoff
against the centre-right Republican candidate, Valérie Pécresse, was more
concerning than facing either Le Pen or Zemmour in the second round. A graduate of the same elite school as Macron, a competent
two-term president of France’s most populous region and a centrist by instinct,
Pécresse might appeal in the second round to centre-left and left-wing voters
who regard Macron as a traitor. But a disastrous performance in her first major campaign
speech in Paris this month appears to have dented Pécresse’s chances, if
perhaps not irretrievably. One poll this week gave her 12% of the vote, down
from 19% in December. Pécresse has been pushed right by the prevailing winds in
France, the European country arguably worst hit by Islamist terrorism over the
past seven years, to the point that she chose to allude to “the great
replacement” in her campaign speech. “Stop the witchcraft trials!” she said in a television
interview Thursday, in response to an outcry over her use of a term once
confined to the extreme right. “I will not resign myself to a Macron-Zemmour
duel,” because “voting for Le Pen or Zemmour is voting for Macron in the end.” There have been two Macrons. The first sought a reinvention
of the state-centric French model through changes to the labyrinthine labour
code that made it easier to hire and fire, suppression of the tax on large
fortunes, and other measures to attract foreign investment and free up the
economy. Then came revolt, in the form of the Yellow Vest movement
against rising inequality and globe-trotting financiers — Macron was once one —
seen as blind to widespread social hardship. No sooner had that quieted, than the coronavirus struck,
turning the president overnight into a “spend whatever it takes” apostle of
state intervention from a free-market reformer. “We have nationalised salaries,” Macron declared in 2020,
not blinking an eye. The cost of all that will come due some day, and it will be
onerous. But for now the “at the same time” president, as Macron has become
known for his habit of constantly changing position, seems to bask in the glow
of the pandemic tamed. “He got lucky,” said the member of his campaign team. “COVID
saved him from more unpopular reforms.” Anything could still happen — a European war, a new variant
of the virus, another major terrorist attack, a sudden wave of renewed social
unrest — but for now, Macron’s aloof-from-the-melee waiting game seems to be
working. “Absent a catastrophe, I don’t see how Mr Macon is not
reelected,” Bruckner said. Then again, the real campaign will only start when
the incumbent descends at last into the turbulent arena.
©2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
NEW DELHI, Nov 27, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Environment minister Jairam Ramesh said the country may have to be more flexible over climate change talks after China unveiled its first firm targets to cut carbon emissions, a newspaper reported on Friday. On Thursday, China pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each yuan of national income by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels, a move hailed as a vital to rekindling UN talks to tackle global warming. "China has given us a wake-up call," Ramesh was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times newspaper. "We have to think hard about our climate strategy now and look for flexibility." "Now the pressure is even from the advanced developing countries on us to declare targets on emissions which are not legally binding," Ramesh said ahead of a trip to Beijing. India and China have said they would work towards a common position in talks on a climate deal. China is the world's top greenhouse gas emitter and India is the fourth largest. The United Nations is aiming for a comprehensive political agreement at climate talks in the Danish capital that start in little over a week, covering tougher emissions targets, climate financing for poorer nations and the transfer of clean-energy technology. The troubled talks have run out of time to settle a legally binding deal after rancorous arguments between rich and poor nations about who should cut emissions, by how much and who should pay. New Delhi has so far refused to accept internationally legally binding emission reduction targets, though it is prepared to discuss and make public periodically the status of its domestic climate action. In October, a newspaper reported Ramesh had suggested India accept curbs on its rising emissions without insisting they should hinge on new finance and technology from rich nations. But Ramesh retreated after being accused by media and opposition of hurting Indian interests. China's position comes after the United States said it would commit to cut its greenhouse gas emissions roughly 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, a drop of about 3 percent below the 1990 benchmark year used in UN treaties. Many countries have been unwilling to commit to cuts before knowing the position of the United States, the world's second largest greenhouse gas emitter. | 0 |
Climate change threatens the human rights of millions of people who are at risk of losing access to housing, food and clean water unless governments intervene early to counter its effects, experts said on Tuesday. At a conference on climate change and migration, United Nations officials said rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods could force scores of people from their homes and off their lands -- some permanently. "Global warming and extreme weather conditions may have calamitous consequences for the human rights of millions of people," said Kyung-wha Kang, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights. "Ultimately climate change may affect the very right to life of various individuals," she said, pointing to threats of hunger, malnutrition, exposure to disease and lost livelihoods, particularly in poor rural areas dependent on fertile soil. Kang, a South Korean, said countries had an obligation "to prevent and address some of the direst consequences that climate change may reap on human rights." This may include providing safe housing, ensuring good sanitation and water-drinking supplies, and making sure citizens have access to information and legal redress, and take part in decision-making, she said. Environmental disasters and natural resource scarcity have long been seen as contributors to displacement, for instance in Sudan's Darfur region where 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes by conflict rooted in part in access to water. But the United Nations has not yet expressly tackled climate change as a human right, for instance by enshrining the right to protection from its effects in an international convention. Michelle Leighton, director of human rights programs at the University of San Francisco's law school, told the conference pressures from global warming could also force would-be migrants into the hands of criminals. Some three quarters of sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural drylands are now degraded to some degree, she said, pointing to West African countries such as Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria as most acutely vulnerable to climate change-related damage. Many people in Somalia, Mali and Cape Verde will also have little option but to leave their lands in coming years, and many are likely to turn to human smugglers for help in accessing more prosperous countries in Europe and elsewhere, she said. "This is a big business now," Leighton said. "If the climate change predictions come true, and we see much more pressure on agricultural lands in sub-Saharan Africa, we are likely to see an increase in illegal smuggling as well." Gordon Shepherd of WWF International told the session that such pressures must be addressed by the international community as well as governments. "None of us will escape the effects of the disasters that are facing the future generations," he said. | 0 |
BEIJING, Nov 29,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A clutch of major emerging economies including China and India have forged a united front to put pressure on developed countries at next month's climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. Over two days of quietly arranged talks in Beijing, the countries said they had reached agreement on major issues, including the need for the West to provide finance and technology to help developing nations combat global warming. The meeting was attended by senior officials from China, India, Brazil and South Africa as well as Sudan, the current chairman of the Group of 77 developing countries. China is the world's top greenhouse gas emitter and India is the fourth largest, while Brazil is also a leading emitter, mainly through deforestation. All three, along with South Africa, have come under pressure to curb the pace of their carbon pollution and have announced plans to achieve this. They say steps by rich nations to fight climate change are, collectively, not good enough. "The purpose of the meeting was to prepare for and contribute to a positive, ambitious and equitable outcome in Copenhagen," according to a statement released after the talks, which took place on Friday evening and Saturday. "We believe that this work represents a good starting point and we will continue to work together over the next few days and weeks as our contribution towards a consensus in Copenhagen," the statement said. The meeting in Copenhagen was supposed to yield the outlines of a broader and tougher legally binding climate agreement to expand or replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012. But the troubled negotiations launched two years ago in Bali have failed to bridge the divide between rich and poor nations on efforts to curb emissions, how to measure and report them and who should pay. Talks host Denmark and a number of rich nations have instead backed a plan to seal a comprehensive political deal at Copenhagen and agree the legally binding details in 2010. But some developing nations are demanding a stronger outcome. CALL TO BACK KYOTO PACT Developing nations have also expressed alarm at efforts to try to ditch the Kyoto Protocol by creating an entirely new agreement or cherry-picking from the existing pact and placing the provisions into another agreement. The European Union has said Kyoto has failed in its intended aim of cutting rich nations' emissions and that a new agreement was needed. The Beijing statement said the Kyoto Protocol should remain in force, with rich countries taking responsibility to cut emissions in accordance with the protocol's second commitment period from 2013. Developing economies in return would pledge to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions. The participants, who included Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, worked off a 10-page draft negotiation strategy outlined personally by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the Hindustan Times reported. The newspaper said that Beijing's top climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, would present the strategy in Copenhagen on Tuesday. Global conservation group WWF said the Beijing statement appeared to be a rejection of Denmark's proposal to aim for a political agreement in Copenhagen. "We are not surprised the emerging economies have laid down this challenge for the developed world," said Kim Carstensen, leader of WWF's Global Climate Initiative, in a statement. "Quite frankly the Danish proposal is incredibly weak and the developing world governments aren't stupid." | 1 |
WASHINGTON, Thu May 28, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Tree-munching beetles, malaria-carrying mosquitoes and deer ticks that spread Lyme disease are three living signs that climate change is likely to exact a heavy toll on human health. These pests and others are expanding their ranges in a warming world, which means people who never had to worry about them will have to start. And they are hardly the only health threats from global warming. The Lancet medical journal declared in a May 16 commentary: "Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century." Individual threats range from the simple to the very complex, the Lancet said, reporting on a year-long study conducted with University College London. As the global mean temperature rises, expect more heat waves. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects 25 percent more heat waves in Chicago by the year 2100; Los Angeles will likely have a four-to-eightfold increase in the number of heat-wave days by century's end. These "direct temperature effects" will hit the most vulnerable people hardest, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, especially those with heart problems and asthma, the elderly, the very young and the homeless. The EPA has declared that carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. is a danger to human health and welfare, clearing the way for possible regulation of emissions. At the same time, the U.S. Congress is working on a bill that would cap emissions and issue permits that could be traded between companies that spew more than the limit and those that emit less. RISING SEAS, SULTRY AIR People who live within 60 miles of a shoreline, or about one-third of the world's population, could be affected if sea levels rise as expected over the coming decades, possibly more than 3 feet (1 meter) by 2100. Flooded homes and crops could make environmental refugees of a billion people. As it becomes hotter, the air can hold more moisture, helping certain disease-carriers, such as the ticks that spread Lyme disease, thrive, the EPA said. A changing climate could increase the risk of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever and various viral causes of encephalitis. Algae blooms in water could be more frequent, increasing the risk of diseases like cholera. Respiratory problems may be aggravated by warming-induced increases in smog. Other less obvious dangers are also potentially devastating. Pine bark beetles, which devour trees in western North America will be able to produce more generations each year, instead of subsiding during winter months. They leave standing dead timber, ideal fuel for wildfires from Arizona to Alaska, said Paul Epstein of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. "TREMENDOUS" HEALTH COSTS Other insects are spreading in the United States, and while immediate protection is possible, the only real solution is to curb climate change, Epstein said in a telephone interview. "You can tuck your pants into your socks and be very vigilant, but ultimately, if we don't stabilize the climate, it's going to continue to increase ... infectious diseases," Epstein said. Carbon dioxide emissions, from coal-fired power plants, steel mills and petroleum-fueled cars, trucks and boats, among other sources, do more than modify climate, Epstein said. They also stimulate ragweed, some pollen-bearing trees and fungi, extending the spring and fall allergy and asthma seasons. It is hard to quantify the potential financial cost of US climate-change-related health problems, said Dr. Chris Portier of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Some costs might actually decline if programs are put in place to cut greenhouse emissions from fossil fuels, which would also reduce some types of toxic air and water pollution. Without cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, that pollution will remain, and the other unhealthy effects of climate change will continue, including more severe floods, droughts, heat waves and storms. "You'll get more extreme weather events that will occur more frequently ... and so it just piles on in terms of the human health effects," Portier said. "And the cost will be tremendous, there's little doubt of that." | 0 |
But there is a disconnect between what Trump says at home and what his government does abroad. While attention has been focused on Trump’s rhetoric, State Department envoys, federal agencies, and government scientists remain active participants in international efforts to both research and fight climate change, according to US and foreign representatives involved in those efforts. “We really don’t detect any change with the Americans,” said one of the officials, Aleksi Härkönen of Finland, who chairs the eight-nation Arctic Council’s key group of senior officials, who are charged with protecting a region warming faster than any other on Earth. Over the past year, the United States has helped draft the rulebook for implementing the Paris climate accord, signed international memoranda calling for global action to fight climate change, boosted funding for overseas clean energy projects, and contributed to global research on the dangers and causes of the Earth’s warming. While the United States’ participation in international forums – including the Paris accord and the Arctic Council - has been reported, its continued, broad and constructive support for climate change efforts in these gatherings has not. This business-as-usual approach has surprised some of America’s foreign partners, along with some of Trump’s allies, who had expected the new administration to match its rhetoric with an obstructionist approach to combating climate change. “I am concerned that much of our climate policy remains on autopilot,” complained Trump’s former energy adviser Myron Ebell, now a research director at the right-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute, who said it reflects a failure by the administration to fill key positions and replace staffers who oppose the president’s agenda. The US efforts abroad to tackle climate change have been counter-balanced by Trump’s aggressive push at home to increase production of the fossil fuels scientists blame for global warming. He has also ordered a wide-ranging rollback of Obama-era climate regulations and appointed a self-described climate skeptic, Scott Pruitt, as the nation’s chief environmental regulator. And to be sure, none of the US dealings in international climate efforts since last year have committed the United States to any emissions cuts that would undermine Trump’s domestic energy agenda. The State Department – which handles the bulk of US climate policy abroad - told Reuters it was still developing its global warming policy under Trump. “The State Department is working with the White House and the interagency to further develop our approach to international climate change diplomacy,” State Department spokesman Ambrose Sayles said in a statement before Trump sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday. “In the meantime, we will continue to participate ... to ensure a level playing field that benefits and protects US interests, and to keep all options open for the President,” Sayles said. Tillerson’s departure leaves a question mark over the future of US climate policy abroad. Tillerson was in favor of the Paris accord, while his successor, Mike Pompeo, has expressed doubts about the science of climate change. Climate advocates say they hope Pompeo will be too distracted by tensions with Iran and North Korea to change the State Department’s approach to climate change. White House spokeswoman Kelly Love declined to comment. Trump announced last year that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement to fight global warming, raising concerns among other parties to the deal that Washington might attempt to torpedo the accord or disengage from it completely. That hasn’t happened. Washington sent a 40-strong delegation to talks in Bonn in November to help draft a new rulebook that will provide rules of the road for the 200 participating nations. It was a smaller delegation than Washington had sent to past meetings, but it still won praise from fellow delegates for its work. For example, Andrew Rakestraw – a climate negotiator for the State Department since 2013 - co-chaired discussions on how to ensure that the pledges by signatories are comparable and use the same accounting standards - a point seen as critical to the success of the accord. Nazhat Shameem Khan, chief negotiator for Fiji, which presided over the talks, said the United States delegation was “constructive and helpful.” The UN’s climate chief, Patricia Espinosa, also called the US role constructive. Thomas Shannon, the State Department’s chief climate negotiator in Bonn, did not respond to requests for comment. Rakestraw also did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment. A US source familiar with the US position at the talks, who asked not to be named, said that US delegates in Bonn were pushing an agenda that resembled those of past administrations – stressing that emerging economies like China follow the same rules as developed nations and meet international standards for monitoring and reporting emissions. There was one jarring note: Washington sponsored a side event to promote “clean coal.” Some other delegates said they were unhappy with this, as they wanted the talks to focus on renewable energies. Under the details of the accord, the United States cannot formally withdraw until 2020. ARCTIC MELTING AND SOLAR POWER The State Department’s delegations to the Arctic Council are also continuing their work in much the same way they did under President Barack Obama - acknowledging that warming is real and should be countered in planning everything from new shipping routes to the protection of indigenous peoples. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which seeks to advance US policy by financing foreign business ventures, doubled its support for solar projects in 2017 under a climate-friendly policy last updated by the Obama administration. And NASA, the US space agency, continues to research climate change, publish climate change data, and contribute to international reports, spokesman Stephen Cole said. Both OPIC and NASA are independent of the State Department, so would not be under Pompeo’s sway. ‘NO CHALLENGE’ Scientists representing the United States in international research say they have also been unfettered by the Trump administration, despite concerns early in the Trump presidency that the White House would seek to silence them or restrict their work. “There has been no pressure on US authors,” said one US scientist, who is now helping to write a United Nations report that will call for coal to be “phased out rapidly” to limit global warming - a direct clash with Trump’s pro-coal agenda. The scientist asked not to be named because the draft report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to be released in October, is confidential. “Our US colleagues know that climate change is not a hoax,” said one of the non-US authors of the same report, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. Christopher Field, a professor of environmental studies at Stanford University who co-chaired a 2014 IPCC report on the impacts of climate change, agreed: “I’ve not seen any indication that the climate denialism from Trump and other members of the administration has had any influence ... on the alignment of the US scientific community with the scientific consensus around the world.” Still, scientists worry that while the Trump administration is not interfering with their research it is ignoring it. The Trump administration made no move to block an assessment by 300 experts last year that outlined the threats and causes of warming in the United States and concluded there is “no convincing alternative explanation” for climate change than human activity. “But then they haven’t acknowledged the findings, nor changed their climate science denying stance,” said the US scientist involved in drafting the UN coal report. | 0 |
President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday he was determined to shape France's economic landscape, regardless of the international environment, and expressed hopes that 2008 would see the demise of the iconic 35-hour work week. At a time when high oil prices and financial turmoil sparked by problems in the U.S. subprime market are casting clouds over the economic outlook, Sarkozy told a news conference the real brakes on French growth were homemade. "The international situation is less good than you could have hoped for. But if it wasn't this problem it would be another, and anyway, what can we do about it," he said. "What do we want to do, subprime crisis or not, a mediocre international climate or not? Liberate the forces of work in France. France's problem is known, we don't work enough while others work more... What's subprime got to do with that?" Sarkozy's economic strategy has been founded on a drive to encourage people to work more and while his poll ratings have fallen in recent weeks, he did not flinch from traditionally taboo subjects, such as scrapping the 35-hour work week. Asked whether he hoped 2008 would mark the end of a flagship measure introduced a decade ago when the opposition Socialists were in power, Sarkozy gave his clearest indication he wants to dismantle fully the work time limit: "To say what I think, yes." Plans are already in the pipeline to continue the piecemeal erosion of the 35-work week implemented by successive centre-right UMP governments, for example with a proposal to make some firms exempt from the limit in return for wage rises. ACTION ON ALL FRONTS The opposition Socialists criticised the two-hour news conference for being skimpy on concrete proposals to address the French public's prime concerns, such as purchasing power. But with recent polls showing voters' growing disenchantment with government action on such issues, Sarkozy was at pains to pre-empt such attacks. "Purchasing power is an expectation but that's not the only thing. Reducing political debate to the sole question of purchasing power is absurd," he said. Fielding a wide range of questions, including on whether he planned to marry former model Carla Bruni, African representation in international organisations, and the health service, Sarkozy sought to burnish his image as a man of action. Vowing to help French firms defend themselves from sovereign wealth funds and private speculators, he said state bank Caisse des Dépôts would play a role in implementing the strategy. "There is no question of France not acting... France will make the political and strategic choice to protect its companies, to give them the means to defend themselves and to develop," Sarkozy said in comments that echoed the economic patriotism championed by the last centre-right UMP government. He also proposed scrapping advertising on public television channels and imposing a levy on the advertising revenue of private television channels to help fund the shortfall -- an idea which lifted shares of France's main commercial channels. The proposal comes at a time when an overhaul of French broadcasting rules is already planned to allow the emergence of bigger domestic media groups that could compete with global telecoms and Internet giants. Sarkozy also showed he had no qualms about changing the rules if they did not suit, unveiling plans to ask a high-level committee of experts headed by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to look into a new way of measuring growth. "If we want to favour another type of growth, we must change our instrument for measuring growth," he said. | 0 |
Cronutt, a 7-year-old sea lion, had to be rescued so he didn’t drown. His veterinarian and the caretakers at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom began discussing whether it was time for palliative care. “We’d tried everything,” said Dr. Claire Simeone, Cronutt’s longtime vet. “We needed more extreme measures.” On Tuesday morning, Cronutt underwent groundbreaking brain surgery aimed at reversing the epilepsy. If successful, the treatment could save increasing numbers of sea lions and sea otters from succumbing to a new plague of epilepsy. The cause is climate change. As oceans warm, algae blooms have become more widespread, creating toxins that get ingested by sardines and anchovies, which in turn get ingested by sea lions, causing damage to the brain that results in epilepsy. Sea otters also face risk when they consume toxin-laden shellfish. The animals who get stranded on land have been given supportive care, but often die. Cronutt may change that. “If this works, it’s going to be big,” said Mariana Casalia, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, who helped pioneer the techniques that led to a procedure that took place a vet surgery centre in Redwood City, California. That procedure was done by three neurosurgeons at UCSF, who ordinarily operate on humans. During the operation, they bored a small hole in Cronutt’s skull, inserted an ultrathin needle into the hippocampus of the sea lion’s brain, then implanted embryonic brain cells extracted from a 35-day-old pig. These so-called “inhibitory cells” tamp down the electrical activity in the brain that leads to seizures, a process identified by Scott Baraban, a professor of neurosurgery who runs the lab where Casalia works. Over a decade, their technique has proved effective in curing epilepsy in mice.
A photo provided by Shawn Johnson shows Dr. Claire Simeone monitoring Cronutt as he is prepared for a CT scan before undergoing brain surgery. Cronutt, like a growing number of ocean mammals, developed seizures because of toxins in the water. Scientists hope the pioneering procedure he underwent this week could help. (Shawn Johnson via The New York Times)
Cronutt, the first higher mammal to get the treatment, emerged from the surgery and anaesthesia midday and was breathing on his own, a first step. Whether the surgery successfully reverses his condition won’t be known for several weeks. A photo provided by Shawn Johnson shows Dr. Claire Simeone monitoring Cronutt as he is prepared for a CT scan before undergoing brain surgery. Cronutt, like a growing number of ocean mammals, developed seizures because of toxins in the water. Scientists hope the pioneering procedure he underwent this week could help. (Shawn Johnson via The New York Times) Pig cells are important because they have properties of higher mammal species, including the sea mammals succumbing to epilepsy. And sea lions and sea otters are increasingly at risk for the disease. The widely documented phenomenon, first discovered in 1998, led to a surge in beaching of sea lions in 2002, another in 2015, and annual summer beachings. By now, thousands of sea lions have been poisoned by the toxin, called domoic acid. It depletes inhibitory cells that ordinarily help offset excitatory cells in the brain’s electrical system. When those cells get out of balance, seizures result. The same phenomenon has led to the closure of crab fisheries to prevent people from eating domoic acid-laden crabs and contracting a condition called amnesic shellfish poisoning. In sea lions, scientists have used brain imaging to document how the toxins also lead to degradation to a part of the brain called the hippocampus that is involved in memory, navigation and other functions. When sea lions show up on Pacific coast beaches in the summer, some exhibiting seizures get rescued and are given supportive care, but they often die. Researchers first discovered Cronutt after he ran aground in November 2017 in San Luis Obispo, California, and walked into a parking lot where he was deemed a “traffic hazard.” He didn’t seem sick. They tagged him for future reference and released him a few weeks later. Shortly after, a bit further north in Marin County, he was identified on a beach where he walked up to several residences, and climbed on porches and tables. This time, he took himself back out to the water, and then a week later was found on Ocean Beach in San Francisco, disoriented. “A member of the public reportedly tried to feed him a burrito,” according to a written chronology provided by Dianne Cameron, the director of animal care at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Cameron would ultimately become his caretaker after Cronutt — named for the pastry that is a combination of croissant and doughnut — showed up again on a beach in January 2018, this time in Sonoma County. He stood in front of a public beach bathroom, blocking access. Shortly after, at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, he was deemed un-releasable because he wasn’t eating, and had showed up multiple times on land. Then he had a grand mal seizure. The researchers couldn’t find a zoo home for the damaged animal. The National Marine Fisheries Service called Cameron at Six Flags and asked if she’d take him in because the park has facilities to care for rescues and a history of adopting animals with medical issues. She didn’t hesitate. “He’s such a sweet boy,” she said. At Six Flags, he didn’t perform as most of the others sea mammals there do, like Pirate, a harbour seal, or the 500-pound Wyland and Shark Bite, both sea lions. Cronutt kept having seizures and intensifying and more frequent cycles where he’d just stop eating for a while and grow particularly inattentive, behaviour that the vets attributed to damage to his brain. His weight fell from a high of 255 to 175 pounds. After his latest terrible bout, on Sept. 18, Cameron “went home and prayed that he’d make it through the night.” In the ensuing days, she and Simeone began discussing whether it was time to euthanize Cronutt. “Then my husband said: you’ve got to call Scott!” Simeone said. Her husband, Dr. Shawn Johnson, also a vet, was referring to Baraban, the researcher at UCSF. His lab had previously been in contact with the couple and the Marine Mammal Center because they knew about the problem in sea lions and felt they were ready to move up the food chain with their experiments. Baraban said the surgery, even if successful, wouldn’t help people with epilepsy anytime soon because of the challenges of using pig cells in human brains as well as other factors. “My immediate hope is to help the sea lions and sea otters,” he said. On Monday, the day before the surgery, Cronutt appeared to be entering another difficult phase. His appetite had fallen sharply, despite energetically throwing his red ball, and splashing in the water.
Cronutt, a 7-year-old sea lion, in his enclosure at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif., on Oct. 5, 2020. Cronutt, like a growing number of ocean mammals, developed seizures because of toxins in the water. Scientists hope the pioneering procedure he underwent this week could help. (Christie Hemm Klok/The New York Times)
Cameron occasionally approached him with a herring that had his anti-seizure medications stuffed inside its dead maw. “C’mon, Cronutt,” she implored. But the sea lion just took the fish into his mouth and spat it out again. Cronutt, a 7-year-old sea lion, in his enclosure at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif., on Oct. 5, 2020. Cronutt, like a growing number of ocean mammals, developed seizures because of toxins in the water. Scientists hope the pioneering procedure he underwent this week could help. (Christie Hemm Klok/The New York Times) The damaged brain tissue appeared to be interfering with the signal telling him to eat. Cameron could see a dull tint to his dark-walnut eyes, not bloodshot and droopy as they sometimes get, but ominous. She reflected on the upcoming surgery, the results of which won’t be known for 30 days when researchers see if his behaviour bounces back as it has with mice and rats in prior work. “Even if it doesn’t work, and there’s a chance it won’t work,” Cameron said, pausing and starting to cry before gathering herself, “maybe Cronutt’s purpose is to educate that there are toxins in our water and our ocean needs our attention.” On Wednesday morning, the day after surgery, Cronutt still seemed to have no appetite at first. Then he started barking. Cameron approached with food, and Cronutt devoured 2 pounds of herring over the course of the morning. “He ate, followed me all around, was super engaged, and really alert. I think he feels really good, considering he had a drill in his brain just yesterday,” Cameron said. “His eyes look beautiful.” © 2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, caps three years of brainstorming and negotiations with input from nearly every corner of the world, organisers say, and provides a roadmap for countries to finance and create change. The 15-year objectives aiming to create conditions for sustainable growth and shared peace and prosperity replace the previous UN action plan, the Millennium Development Goals. Addressing the United Nations on Friday, Pope Francis called the adoption of the SDGs "an important sign of hope." "Solemn commitments, however, are not enough, even though they are a necessary step toward solutions," said the Pope as the Vatican flag flew for the first time outside the United Nations headquarters. He said world leaders must follow through with "a will which is effective, practical, constant, with concrete steps and immediate measures" to protect the environment and end social and economic exclusion. "The simplest and best measure and indicator of the implementation of the new Agenda for development will be effective, practical and immediate access, on the part of all, to essential material and spiritual goods," he said. The United Nation's 193 member nations were scheduled to adopt the SDGs on Friday after an opening ceremony with performances by Colombian singer Shakira and Benin's Angelique Kidjo, both of whom are UN goodwill ambassadors. Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai will also speak. Supporters say the SDGs go much further than the previous UN goals plan by addressing root causes of issues such as poverty and looking at means as well as ends. They also are intended to be universal and not just for the developing world. The adoption of the goals is far from a rubber-stamp event, said Amina Mohammed, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor on Post-2015 Development Planning. Rather, she and other UN officials will be listening intently to world leaders speaking during the three-day SDG summit which wraps up on Sunday. "My greatest worry is that we don't get clarity in terms of the commitments from leaders to this agenda," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The problems are huge so the response has got to be huge." Once the summit ends, the task is getting the goals, along with their 169 accompanying targets, incorporated into programmes, policies and parliaments in member nations. "Now implementation is everything," said Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and former New Zealand prime minister. "These goals will or won't happen depending on whether governments decide to take them seriously." But Clark added that she sees the goals as "a sign of hope for the world". Much is riding on the SDGs and their future, Mohammed said. "If we miss this opportunity, it's not the end of the world but it's going to be a far more miserable world, and nobody's going to be very happy with that," she said. Implementation of the new goals, requiring trillions of dollars in investment, will be monitored and reviewed using a set of global indicators to be agreed by March 2016. | 0 |
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is on course for an election win in an August 21 vote after support for her Labor Party jumped since it dumped unpopular premier Kevin Rudd in late June, a fresh poll showed on Monday. Support for Gillard's Labor rose to 55 percent from 53 percent in late June, while support for the conservative opposition slipped to 45 percent from 47 percent, according to a Newspoll survey in the Australian newspaper. It also found voters considered Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, more capable, with 57 percent saying she would be a better leader, over opposition leader Tony Abbott's 27 percent. The poll figures were taken after Gillard negotiated a compromise with big mining firms over a controversial new tax just over two weeks ago. Labor's fortunes have turned around rapidly since Gillard took over as leader. The party had been seen losing an election before the leadership swap, as voters grew increasingly unhappy with policy errors, particularly on the mining tax and a backflip on climate change. Monday's poll is in slight contrast with a Galaxy survey on Sunday which found Labor with a slim, 52 percent-48 percent lead over the opposition. Financial markets are not expected to react much to the fresh poll numbers given slim differences between the two sides on core economic policy. The new poll figures also showed a turnaround in the public's perception of Labor's handling of the economy with 42 percent saying Gillard party was best placed to handle the economy, just ahead of 41 percent for the opposition. | 0 |
Hundreds of snakes, forced out of their pits by flood waters, have entered villagers' homes in eastern India creating panic and adding to the torment caused by monsoon flooding, officials said on Friday. Around 1,850 people have been killed -- scores of them due to snake bites -- since July when swollen rivers burst their banks, inundating huge areas in eastern India and Bangladesh. The others have been killed by drowning, diarrhoea and in house collapses. In India's impoverished state of Orissa, poisonous snakes like kraits and cobras slithered into homes across dozens of villages in Balasore district after nearby forest areas were inundated, forcing villagers to flee with their cattle. "We might survive the floods but there are numerous snakes crawling all over the place," said Bijoy Pradhan, a villager who fled his home to dry land, on Friday. Two children died from snake bites overnight in the area as close to a million people remained marooned across the state. Authorities in Orissa said they were also battling an outbreak of diarrhoea that has killed six children since Thursday. Millions of people are living in miserable conditions across eastern India, drinking polluted water as taps and wells have been submerged by flood waters, officials said. In Bihar state, one of India's poorest and most badly governed areas, authorities found 19 more bodies since Thursday, pushing the death toll to 420 since floods started in mid-July. Authorities used loudspeakers to order villagers to evacuate homes in Muzaffarpur district as swelling rivers breached mud embankments in many places. Angry villagers in Samastipur district stopped a train, fearing its movement could damage a weak embankment along the track, and assaulted officials who tried to stop them, witnesses and officials said. "We are very afraid of more floods," said Kalavati Devi, a flood victim, justifying stopping the train. In neighbouring West Bengal state, two children drowned as fresh flooding forced thousands of people into relief camps. Across the border in Bangladesh, hundreds have died over the past few weeks due to massive flooding, with thousands of people suffering from diarrhoea. Monsoon flooding occurs in the region each year but this year's particularly heavy rainfall has led to some experts blaming climate change as one possible cause. | 0 |
In particular, they will not be able to pump water from the sea and store it as ice on the continent of Antarctica. That is because, unless they pump it enormous distances, that will only accelerate the flow of the glaciers and it will all end up back in the sea again, a study in the journal Earth System Dynamics says. Geoengineering is sometimes produced as the high-technology solution to the environmental problems of climate change: if humans don’t change their ways and start reducing greenhouse gas emissions, say the proponents of technofix, human ingenuity will no doubt devise a different answer.
But, repeatedly, closer examination has made such solutions ever less plausible. Scientists have dismissed the idea that the melting of the Arctic can be reversed, have only tentatively conceded that technology could dampen the force of a hurricane, and have found that – instead of cooling the Earth – attempts to control climate change could either make things worse or seriously disrupt rainfall patterns. On balance, scientists believe that most of the big geo-engineering ideas won’t work. Deep freeze And now a team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has poured cold water on the idea of pouring cold water onto the ice cap. The idea is a simple one. Are sea levels rising 3mm a year because the world is warming? Then pump the sea high onto the Antarctic landmass where it will freeze and stay frozen for a millennium. But to be sure of that, say the Potsdam team, at least 80% of the water would have to be pumped 700 km inland. That would take more than 7% of the annual global primary energy supply just to balance the current rate of sea level rise.
But even in a world recently committed to a warming of less than 2°C, the seas are going to go on rising. Sea levels could rise at least 40cms by the end of the century – or possibly 130cms, with devastating consequences for low-lying coastlines: rich megacities might be able to build defences, but the poorest communities would be swept away. Coastlines redrawn “We wanted to check whether sacrificing the uninhabited Antarctic region might theoretically enable us to save populated shores around the world. Rising oceans are already increasing storm surge risks, threatening millions of people worldwide, and in the long run can redraw the planet's coastlines,” said Katja Frieler, the Potsdam scientist who led the study. The Antarctic ice sheet rises to 4,000 metres above sea level. In theory wind power could deliver energy to take the water far enough inland that it would not simply precipitate glacial discharge back into the sea. But that would mean engineers would have to build 850,000 wind energy plants on Antarctica, which could hardly be good for the ecosystem of the only landmass and coastline on Earth still more or less in the condition nature intended. Nor is it technically or economically plausible. The implicit message from such studies is: start preparing to adapt to higher sea levels, and take steps to stop them getting any higher.“The magnitude of sea-level rise is so enormous, it turns out it is unlikely that any engineering approach imaginable can mitigate it,” said co-author Anders Levermann, who heads Global Adaptation Strategies at Potsdam and is a scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “Even if this was feasible, it would only buy time – when we stop the pumping one day, additional discharge from Antarctica will increase the rate of sea-level rise even beyond the warming-induced rate. This would mean putting another sea-level debt onto future generations.” As so often after such studies, the scientists do have an answer: reduce the hazard by reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that fuel global warming. That means a drastic cut in the use of fossil fuels and a massive switch to wind and solar power worldwide. “If we'd continue to do business as usual and churn out emissions, not even such an immense macro-adaptation project as storing water on Antarctica would suffice to limit long-term sea-level rise – more than 50 metres in the very long term without climate change mitigation,” said Professor Levermann. “So either way, rapid greenhouse gas emission reductions are indispensable if sea-level rise is to be kept manageable.” | 0 |
Toilets that take on a life of their own, eco-cars coming sooner than you might think and security on Segways have cast this year's G8 summit in a decidedly green hue. Japan has made climate change awareness the overarching theme of this year's meeting of rich nations and reminders to be environmentally aware are everywhere, down to the summit logo depicting a sprouting plant.
LET'S CARBON OFFSET! Environment-related booths dominate the entrance to the international media centre, including a bank of computer screens headlined "Let's carbon offset!" With a few keystrokes, you can calculate your emissions from attending this week's summit in northern Japan, then choose a project to contribute to in order to stay "carbon neutral". A reporter coming from Singapore, flying from Tokyo to Hokkaido and staying in a hotel for five nights, for example, needs to offset 2.72 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. A little more than $250 of investment in a forestation project in Hokkaido will pay for three carbon offsets, in this case three trees that will reduce three tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 30 years. "Not so many" people have stopped by to erase their carbon footprint, admitted Ai Kimura of KPMG AZSA Sustainability, which is running the project on the Japanese government's behalf. She said Japan plans to offset the entire summit once all the emissions are calculated, with preliminary estimates at around 25,000 tonnes of CO2.
BIRTHDAY BOY U.S. President George W. Bush, who was initially sceptical of the link between human activity and global warming, arrived in Hokkaido on Sunday. White House staff gathered in the conference room on Air Force One just before arrival to celebrate his birthday -- Bush turned 62 on Sunday -- with a coconut cake carrying one candle. "We all said 'surprise' and he dutifully pretended to be surprised," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. Senior staff gave Bush a wooden box made from a scarlet oak that fell on White House grounds in October 2007, Perino said.
EASY SEGWAY RIDER With as many as 22 world leaders due to attend different days of this year's G8, security has been no joke and 21,000 police have been deployed in Hokkaido alone. But even security guards got into the spirit at the press centre, riding around the sprawling complex on two-wheel scooter Segways. "We are using this because it's environmentally friendly," said security man Mitsugu Kubo, though how a scooter could be better for the environment than two feet was not so clear. The true reason may well have been more pedestrian. "Usually, we have to walk, so we get tired, but we don't get tired with this," said Kubo, an employee of Rising Sun Security Service.
ECO-FRIENDLY AUTOS A fleet of electric plug-ins, hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell cars await those attending the summit for use or test drives, supplied by Japan's top seven car makers. Many fuel cell cars are still prototypes available only for lease, but commercial sales of some other summit autos, like Mitsubishi Motors' pure electric i-MiEV or Subaru's plug-in Stella, are coming as soon as 2009. Honda FCX Clarity sedans are ferrying summit delegates after the hydrogen fuel cell sedan's debut this week ahead of a programme to lease a fleet of the cars in the United States starting this month, mainly in California. But the water-emitting cars face the reality of only about 60 U.S. hydrogen stations, compared with about 180,000 gas stands. Even in Toyako, the closest hydrogen stand is about 20 km away, due to safety concerns.
MORE SURPRISES, IN THE TOILETS Japanese toilet technology is always a marvel to the uninitiated, with its rows of incomprehensible buttons and artificial flushing sounds and heated seats. But even by local standards, the Toyako summit toilets ("designed exclusively for this site") are special and sure to give you a start when they pop open at the wave of a hand. Aside from its futuristic look, this "hybird ecology system" promises water savings of up to 31 percent compared to a conventional toilet, employing a combination of "tornado" and "jet" flushing systems. Just watch out for that bidet -- but that's another story. | 0 |
Britain's relationship with Europe will not change under Gordon Brown, Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday, predicting London would remain "pro-Europe" and in favour of reform in the European Union. "The basic position of the government will remain unchanged, I think it'll be pro-reform and pro-Europe," Blair told a meeting of European business leaders in London. Blair, will hand over power to Finance Minister Brown on June 27, after 10 years as premier. "The most important thing for us is to have a strong position in Europe but use it to argue the case for all the reforms and changes in Europe that are necessary and I'm very confident that will remain the position of the new prime minister," he said. Brown is widely held to be more eurosceptic than Blair. He kept Britain out of the euro currency on economic grounds, despite Blair's belief it was the country's destiny to join. Brown attended EU finance ministers meetings episodically and often issued admonitions for Europe to reform its economic policies and free up its markets. Aides say Brown is not against Europe, however, and that he believes EU cooperation is essential to tackle issues like climate change and terrorism. Analysts, though, expect him to drive a harder bargain than Blair. Blair said political change in a number of countries meant that Europe had a great opportunity to push for economic reform. "There is every possibility I think with the new leadership in Germany and in France and also here, where we'll continue the policies we've been pursuing as a government ... of getting the right attitude towards the economy of the future," he said. But he said strong protectionist forces still existed in the EU and called on business to argue for reform. "I sometimes think that business in Europe does not make its voice heard vigorously and robustly enough," he told top executives from companies including British Airways, Rio Tinto, Telefonica and Repsol YPF. "There's a very good opportunity for business at this point of change, and where there are these possibilities for the future, it's important that business ... gives a clear statement of where it thinks the European economy should go," he said. As Blair met with the business leaders, the opposition Conservative Party said his presence as prime minister was pointless given he would soon hand control to Brown. | 0 |
DiCaprio released a statement after Bolsonaro falsely accused him of bankrolling fires recently set in the Amazon. “At this time of crisis for the Amazon, I support the people of Brazil working to save their natural and cultural heritage,” DiCaprio posted on Instagram. “They are an amazing, moving and humbling example of the commitment and passion needed to save the environment.” The statement comes a day after the Brazilian president appeared to allude to disputed social media posts claiming that the World Wildlife Fund, an international environmental organisation, paid for images taken by volunteer firefighters during the catastrophic blazes and then used the images to ask for donations, including a $500,000 contribution from DiCaprio. Bolsonaro, standing in front of the presidential residence, said of DiCaprio: “Cool guy, right? Giving money to torch the Amazon.” The Brazilian president’s remarks about nongovernmental organisations came after four members of the Alter do Chão fire brigade were arrested Tuesday, the BBC reported. They were accused of setting fires for the purpose of taking photos to solicit donations. The arrests were widely condemned by politicians and other organisations, who saw them as another move by the far-right president to persecute these groups. In his statement Saturday, the Hollywood star wrote, “While worthy of support, we did not fund the organisations targeted.” He also said he was proud to stand by the groups protecting “these irreplaceable ecosystems.” DiCaprio, who has played a leading man in movies such as “Titanic” and “The Revenant,” said he remains “committed to supporting the Brazilian indigenous communities, local governments, scientists, educators and general public who are working tirelessly to secure the Amazon for the future of all Brazilians.” In a statement Wednesday, the World Wildlife Fund denied receiving a contribution from DiCaprio and obtaining photos from the firefighters. Bolsonaro has frequently railed against activist and environmentalist groups over their concern for the Amazon fires. In a Facebook Live post in August, he said “everything indicates” that nongovernmental organisations were setting fires in the Amazon but offered no evidence to back up his assertion, Reuters reported. DiCaprio, whose foundation is dedicated to “protecting the world’s last wild places,” has spoken at length, both online and in person, about combating climate change and other environmental issues, including the deforestation of the Amazon as well as the fires. The Amazon, often called the Earth’s “lungs,” stands as a bastion against climate change, but the raging fires could reach a tipping point for the rainforest, leading to a process of self-perpetuating deforestation known as dieback. In December 2018, DiCaprio announced that his foundation would match recurring donations to the Amazon Frontlines group for the entirety of 2019. “Defending the Amazon has never been more urgent for our planet,” he posted on Twitter at the time. In August, DiCaprio was one of several high-profile people who shared inaccurate or misleading photos of the blazes. As fires were then consuming the Amazon, celebrities and politicians shared images urging support for the rainforest, but many of the photos were old or from places far from the Amazon. © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
Take Belize, Fiji and Mozambique. Vastly different countries, they are among dozens of nations at the crossroads of two mounting global crises that are drawing the attention of international financial institutions: climate change and debt. They owe staggering amounts of money to various foreign lenders. They face staggering climate risks, too. And now, with the coronavirus pandemic pummelling their economies, there is a growing recognition that their debt obligations stand in the way of meeting the immediate needs of their people — not to mention the investments required to protect them from climate disasters. The combination of debt, climate change and environmental degradation “represents a systemic risk to the global economy that may trigger a cycle that depresses revenues, increases spending and exacerbates climate and nature vulnerabilities,” according to a new assessment by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and others, which was seen by The New York Times. It comes after months of pressure from academics and advocates for lenders to address this problem. The bank and the IMF, whose top officials are meeting this week, are planning talks in the next few months with debtor countries, creditors, advocates and ratings agencies to figure out how to make new money available for what they call a green economic recovery. The goal is to come up with concrete proposals before the international climate talks in November and ultimately to get buy-in from the world’s wealthiest countries, including China, which is the largest single creditor country in the world. Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, said in an emailed statement that green recovery programs had the potential to spur ambitious climate action in developing countries, “especially at a time they face fiscal constraints because of the impact of the pandemic on their economies.” One of the countries at the crossroads of the climate and debt crises is Belize, a middle-income country on the Caribbean coast of Central America. Its foreign debt had been steadily rising for the last few years. It was also feeling some of the most acute effects of climate change: sea level rise, bleached corals, coastal erosion. The pandemic dried up tourism, a mainstay of its economy. Then, after two hurricanes, Eta and Iota, hit neighbouring Guatemala, floods swept away farms and roads downstream in Belize. Today, the debt that Belize owes its foreign creditors is equal to 85% of its entire national economy. The private credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its creditworthiness, making it tougher to get loans on the private market. The IMF calls its debt levels “unsustainable.” Belize, said Christopher Coye, the country’s minister of state for finance, needs immediate debt relief to deal with the effects of global warming that it had little role in creating. “How do we pursue climate action?” he said. “We are fiscally constrained at this point.” “We should be compensated for suffering the excesses of others and supported in mitigating and adapting to climate change effects — certainly in the form of debt relief and concessionary funding,” Coye said. Many Caribbean countries like Belize do not qualify for low-interest loans that poorer countries are eligible for. The United Nations said on March 31 that the global economic collapse endangered nearly $600 billion in debt service payments over the next five years. Both the World Bank and the IMF are important lenders, but so are rich countries, as well as private banks and bondholders. The global financial system would face a huge problem if countries faced with shrinking economies defaulted on their debts. “We cannot walk head on, eyes wide open, into a debt crisis that is foreseeable and preventable,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said last week as he called for debt relief for a broad range of countries. “Many developing countries face financing constraints that mean they cannot invest in recovery and resilience.” The Biden administration, in an executive order on climate change, said it would use its voice in international financial institutions, like the World Bank, to align debt relief with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, though it has not yet detailed what that means. The discussions around debt and climate are likely to intensify in the run up to the climate talks in November, where money is expected to be one of the main sticking points. Rich nations are nowhere close to delivering the promised $100 billion a year to help poorer countries deal with the effects of global warming. Low- and middle-income countries alone owed $8.1 trillion to foreign lenders in 2019, the most recent year for which the data is available — and that was before the pandemic. At the time, half of all countries that the World Bank classified as low-income were either in what it called “debt distress or at a high risk of it.” Many of those are also acutely vulnerable to climate change, including more frequent droughts, stronger hurricanes and rising sea levels that wash away coastlines. (The fund said Monday that it would not require 28 of the world’s poorest countries to make debt payments through October, so their governments can use the money on emergency pandemic-related relief.) Lately, there’s been a flurry of proposals from economists, advocates and others to address the problem. The details vary. But they all call, in one way or another, for rich countries and private creditors to offer debt relief, so countries can use those funds to transition away from fossil fuels, adapt to the effects of climate change, or obtain financial reward for the natural assets they already protect, like forests and wetlands. One widely circulated proposal calls on the Group of 20 (the world’s 20 biggest economies) to require lenders to offer relief “in exchange for a commitment to use some of the newfound fiscal space for a green and inclusive recovery.” On the other side of the world from Belize, the low-lying Pacific island nation of Fiji has experienced a succession of storms in recent years that brought destruction and the need to borrow money to rebuild. The pandemic brought an economic downturn. In December, tropical cyclone Yasa destroyed homes and crops. Fiji’s debts soared, including to China, and the country, whose very existence is threatened by sea level rise, pared back planned climate projects, according to research by the World Resources Institute. The authors proposed what they called a climate-health-debt swap, where bilateral creditors, namely China, would forgive some of the debt in exchange for climate and health care investments. (China has said nothing publicly about the idea of debt swaps.) And then there’s Mozambique. The sixth-poorest country in the world. It was already sinking under huge debts, including secret loans that the government had not disclosed, when, in 2019, came back-to-back cyclones. They killed 1,000 people and left physical damages costing more than $870 million. Mozambique took on more loans to cope. Then came the pandemic. The IMF says the country is in debt distress. Six countries on the continent are in debt distress, and many more have seen their credit ratings downgraded by private ratings agencies. In March, finance ministers from across Africa said that many of their countries had spent a sizable chunk of their budgets already to deal with extreme weather events like droughts and floods, and some countries were spending a tenth of their budgets on climate adaptation efforts. “Our fiscal buffers are now truly depleted,” they wrote. In developing countries, the share of government revenues that go into paying foreign debts nearly tripled to 17.4% from 2011 to 2020, an analysis by Eurodad, a debt relief advocacy group, found. Research suggests that climate risks have already made it more expensive for developing countries to borrow money. The problem is projected to get worse. A recent paper found climate change will raise the cost of borrowing for many more countries as early as 2030 unless efforts are made to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Modi and Sharif resumed high-level contact
with a brief conversation at climate change talks in Paris late last month, That little tête-à-tête was part of an
effort to restart a peace dialogue plagued by militant attacks and distrust. Modi, who inaugurated a new Parliament
complex built with Indian help in the Afghan capital, Kabul, spoke with Sharif
on Friday to wish him a happy birthday. Nawaz Sharif is 66. "Looking forward to meeting PM Nawaz
Sharif in Lahore today afternoon, where I will drop by on my way back to
Delhi," Modi tweeted. Mistrust between India and Pakistan runs
deep and in Afghanistan many believe that Islamabad sponsors the Taliban
insurgency to weaken the Kabul government and limit the influence of India. Pakistan rejects the accusation but it has
struggled to turn around perceptions in Afghanistan, where social media users
sent out a stream of glowing commentary on Modi's visit, contrasting the
parliament building with the destruction wrought by Taliban suicide bombers. Nalin Kohli, a spokesman for Modi's
Bharatiya Janata Party, said India was ready to take two steps forward if
Pakistan took one to improve ties between the countries that have fought three
wars since 1947, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which both
claim in full but rule in part. The opposition Congress Party called Modi's
visit irresponsible and said that nothing had changed to warrant warming of
ties between the nuclear-armed rivals that only in August cancelled scheduled
high-level talks after ceasefire violations across the border. "If the decision is not preposterous
then it is utterly ridiculous," Congress leader Manish Tewari said. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj went to
Pakistan this month - the first such visit in three years - after Modi and
Sharif's meeting in Paris. Kabul competition
Opening the Parliament building in Kabul,
Modi pledged India's support for the Afghan government and urged regional
powers including Pakistan to work together to foster peace. The building is the latest symbol of a
longstanding diplomatic effort by New Delhi to cultivate its links to
Afghanistan. Besides the parliament building, India is
also supplying three Russian-made Mi-35 helicopters to Afghanistan's small air
force, adding badly needed capacity to provide close air support to its
hard-pressed security forces. Without referring directly to Pakistan,
India's traditional rival in the region, Modi said that some had seen
"sinister designs in our presence" in Afghanistan. "India is here to contribute, not to
compete; to lay the foundation of future, not light the flame of
conflict," he told lawmakers in Kabul, adding that Afghanistan could never
"serve the designs of others". Modi said that regional support would be
vital to bring peace and control terrorism. "We know that Afghanistan's success
will require the cooperation and support of each of its neighbours," he
said. "And all of us in the region - India,
Pakistan, Iran and others – must unite in trust and cooperation behind the
common purpose and in recognition of our common destiny." | 0 |
Japan thinks 2005 would be a 'fair' base year for calculating cuts in greenhouse gas emissions under a post-Kyoto climate pact, a senior trade and industry official said on Monday. Japan has rejected the idea of keeping 1990 as the base year for emissions cuts for a new global pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, saying it was unfair to Japanese industry, which had made energy efficiency investments two decades ago. But Tokyo had not specified what the new base year should be. Takao Kitabata, vice minister at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) told a news conference that 2005 would be 'fair', a spokesman for the ministry said. The proposed change in the base year would likely be opposed by the European Union, which has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. About 190 countries agreed at UN-led talks in Bali last year to launch two-year negotiations on a replacement for Kyoto, which binds only rich nations to emissions cuts by an average of five percent between 2008 and 2012 from 1990 levels. All nations would be bound under Kyoto's successor and under the "Bali roadmap," nations recognised that deep cuts in global emissions were needed. But there are wide gaps over the size of binding targets and the base year for such targets. | 0 |
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, meeting in Hobart, Australia, said the Ross Sea marine park would be protected from commercial fishing for 35 years. The Ross Sea is seen as one of the world's most ecologically important oceans. The sanctuary will cover more than 12 percent of the Southern Ocean, which is home to more than 10,000 species including most of the world's penguins, whales, seabirds, colossal squid and Antarctic tooth fish. Fishing will be banned completely in 1.1 million square km (425,000 square miles) of the Ross Sea, while areas designated as research zones will allow for some fishing for krill and sawfish. Scientists and activists described the agreement as a historic milestone in global efforts to protect marine diversity. "The Ross Sea Region MPA will safeguard one of the last unspoiled ocean wilderness areas on the planet – home to unparalleled marine biodiversity and thriving communities of penguins, seals, whales, seabirds, and fish," US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement, referring to the marine park authority. Scientists said the marine park would also allow a greater understanding of the impact of climate change. Russia agreed to the proposal, after blocking conservation proposals on five previous occasions. The 25-member commission, which includes Russia, China, the United States and the European Union, requires unanimous support for decisions. "They all have diverse economic, political interests and to get them all to align - especially in the context of there are divergent economic interests - is quite a challenge," Evan Bloom, director at the US Department of State and leader of the US delegation, told Reuters. | 0 |
Burnout, the psychological term for an all-consuming exhaustion and detachment, floated around the popular lexicon in reference to work for years, but became even more of a buzzword as it seeped into all the corners of people’s lives during the pandemic. “When you’re dealing with long and unending uncertainty and trauma, there’s only so much you can handle,” said Thea Gallagher, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at NYU Langone Health. In the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters, Dr Gallagher said, acute stress often leads to exhaustion and hopelessness over time. Australia, for example, has experienced more and more climate-related natural disasters, but scientists identified a pervasive sense of “issue fatigue” about climate change in the population there from 2011 to 2016: The Australians surveyed became less likely to report that they had thought about climate change or talked about it with their friends. That kind of all-consuming exhaustion during extreme stress is normal and expected, said Dr Srijan Sen, director of the Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg and Family Depression Center at the University of Michigan. In the first two months of the coronavirus pandemic, he personally observed an unexpected, significant drop in depression among health care workers, which he attributed to them having a sense of community and purpose. But as the pandemic has dragged on, he said, they have become more anguished and fatigued, as they wrestle with “a level of vigilance and concern that maybe was sustainable for two weeks or two months, but not for two years,” he said. We spoke to experts about the signals and symptoms of “worry burnout” — and ways to combat it. WHAT CAUSES WORRY BURNOUT? We experience emotions for a reason, said Jeffrey Cohen, a clinical psychologist and psychiatry professor at Columbia. Fear is an evolutionary tool to respond to threats; anxiety sends an alarm through our brains, alerting us that we need to get ourselves to safety. But at this stage of the pandemic, he said, we’ve dealt with the constant threat of Covid-19 for so long that we no longer trust our brains when they tell us we’re under attack. “It’s like, is this even a real alarm anymore?” Dr Cohen said. The physiological symptoms of stress wear on us, he added. Our nervous system reacts to worry: Cortisol levels shoot up, heart rates rise. We end up in a heightened, chronically exhausted state. “Your body can’t sustain high levels of anxiety for long periods of time without fatiguing,” said Michelle Newman, a psychology professor at Pennsylvania State University who researches depression and anxiety. That fatigue, and how it pushes us to detach from worry, might have a positive effect on people; it could signal radical acceptance of the new normal. Anxiety drives us to solve problems, Dr. Cohen said, but we cannot strategise or plan our way out of the pandemic, no matter how much mental energy we expend. “With radical acceptance, we’re just acknowledging the facts of the world are what they are,” he said, and we’re becoming more comfortable with the unending uncertainty. When does acceptance become complacency though? And is it still a positive condition if you’re exhausted and depleted? WHY YOU WANT TO BREAK THE ‘WORRY BURNOUT’ CYCLE. Refusing to worry might be a protective impulse, experts said, a coping mechanism to shield your mind from added stress. But when we’re so burned out we stop caring about measures that might beat back the virus, we put ourselves in danger. People in a state of chronic stress become despondent and defiant, said Angela Neal-Barnett, a psychology professor at Kent State University and the author of “Soothe Your Nerves: The Black Woman’s Guide to Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic and Fear.” “People say, ‘It just doesn’t matter to me anymore,’” she said. “When you’re at that level, that suggests you’re just overwhelmed, you feel helpless, you feel hopeless. You say, ‘Do what you may, I don’t care.’” This apathy could affect public health at a global scale. The World Health Organization released a policy framework last year citing “pandemic fatigue” as a key obstacle to getting people to comply with Covid precautions. In January of this year, researchers found that, as the pandemic wore on, people reported less adherence to social distancing measures. SPOT THE SIGNS OF ‘WORRY BURNOUT.’ — YOU AVOID THE NEWS: You might feel like you can’t handle another ominous headline or hear one more update on the virus, said Dr Gallagher. She herself felt this recently when she stumbled on a news broadcast and immediately changed the channel. “I was like, I’m going to find a ‘Seinfeld’ rerun instead,” she said. — YOU FEEL NUMB: Worry burnout might be associated with what psychologists call “learned helplessness,” a sense of overwhelming powerlessness after trauma, said Dr Judson Brewer, an associate professor at Brown University and the author of “Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind.” Stress might have motivated us in the early days of the pandemic to scramble for solutions to make lockdown more tolerable; now, he said, many of us have learned that we cannot control much beyond our individual behaviour. “If we spend all of our time worrying, it’s like turning our engine on, putting our car in neutral, slamming on the gas and wondering why we don’t go anywhere,” he said. Grappling with that incessant uncertainty makes us wonder, consciously or subconsciously, what the point of caring is and why we should bother paying attention to the news at all. This emotional numbing has also appeared in victims of natural disasters and in health care workers. — YOU’RE TIRED ALL THE TIME: After an intense period of anxiety, people often feel depressed and depleted, Dr Newman said. Whether the source of the worry is a global disaster or the day-to-day stress over work or family, anxiety causes us to constantly scan for threats until we reach a point of exhaustion, she said. — YOU’RE HOPELESS: People can feel like they’ve done “everything right” in the pandemic, Dr Neal-Barnett said — they social distanced for months, they got vaccinated, they followed the official guidelines — and they’re still stuck in a slow-moving disaster. “You find yourself thinking more and more negatively,” she said. — YOU’RE ANGRIER THAN USUAL: Anger can also crop up when we’re emotionally expended, Dr Neal-Barnett said — we might lose our temper more quickly or find ourselves more impatient. Putting together an action plan — to speak with a therapist, to safely socialise with friends, to take moments for mindfulness — can help us feel rested and restored. “The days of trying to push through the tiredness are over,” Dr Neal-Barnett said. “That’s just not in our best interests anymore.” Experts suggested starting a meditation practice — even just a few minutes a day — to tap back into our emotions and feel present. Dr Brewer developed a simple, on-the-go breathing exercise; the Times also has a beginner’s guide to meditation. These techniques won’t make the pandemic go away, but they can help us back away from the edge. If you’re suffering from worry burnout, aim for the basic building blocks of a healthy daily routine, Dr Sen suggested — a full night’s sleep, a balanced meal plan, consistent exercise — and pay attention to the elements of your life that make you feel recharged. Do non-virus-related conversations with friends boosts your mood, or are social interactions more draining than healing? Is immersing yourself in a book a more effective distraction than spending time on social media? Recognise when you feel like you’re expending too much of your energy following the news, he said, especially when you find yourself focusing on events beyond your control. If you still gravitate back to worry, the best thing you can do, she said, is to try to cut off the cycle as soon as possible and look for activities and routines that help you relax. “A lot of people have this myth that worrying is helpful in some way, and it’s just not,” she said. ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
DURBAN, Dec 11(bdnews24.com/Reuters)— UN climate change talks has agreed on a pact that for the first time would force all the biggest polluters to take action to slow the pace of global changing. The deal on Sunday follows years of failed attempts to impose legally-binding, international cuts on emerging giants, such as China and India. The developed world had already accepted formal targets under a first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the end of next year, although the United States had never ratified its commitment. After days of emotional debate, the chairwoman of the United Nations climate talks urged delegates to approve four packages, which have legal force. "We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come," South African foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said. "We have made history," she said, bringing the hammer down on more than two weeks of sometimes fractious talks in the South African port of Durban, the longest in two decades of UN climate talks. The deal was welcomed by Brazil, one of the globe's emerging economic powers. "I am relieved we have what we came here to get. We have a robust outcome, an excellent text about a new phase in the international fight against climate change. It clearly points to action," said Brazil's climate envoy Luiz Alberto Figueiredo. The Durban talks had been due to wrap up on Friday, but dragged into a second extra day on Sunday because of disputes over how to phrase the legal commitment. The European Union pushed for strong wording and the three biggest emitters the United States, China and India resisted. "We've had very intense discussions, we were not happy with reopening the text, but in the spirit of flexibility and accommodation shown by all, we have shown our flexibility, we have agreed to the words you just mentioned and we agree to adopt it," India's environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan said. But environmentalists and small island states, which fear they literally could sink under the rising sea levels caused by climate change, have said it is still not strong enough. | 0 |
The Commonwealth said on Saturday climate change threatened the existence of small island members faced with rising sea levels but it failed to back binding targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A statement issued on the second day of a summit of the club of mostly former British colonies said the Commonwealth was gravely concerned about climate change, which was "a direct threat to the very survival of some Commonwealth countries, notably small island states." It said the cost of inaction would be greater than taking early measures to counteract global warming. But the declaration by the Commonwealth summit (CHOGM) contained only vague language and lacked binding targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, prompting Greenpeace Executive Director John Sauvan to condemn it as inadequate. "There is a complete lack of urgency, given the need to get climate changing emissions under control ... and the disproportionate impact of climate change on the world's poorest Commonwealth members," he said. The Commonwealth secretary-general, Don McKinnon, called the agreement "quite a leap forward" although it stopped short of the major statement that many countries had said they wanted. Before the summit, Britain had called for an "unequivocal message" and had urged developed nations to make binding commitments before an environment conference in Bali next month. The Kampala declaration stopped short of that, but did say developed countries should take the lead in cutting emissions. "No strategy or actions to deal with climate change should have the effect of depriving developing countries of ... sustainable economic development," it said. BALI SUMMIT The Bali meeting will discuss an agreement to succeed the Kyoto protocol which aims to reduce emissions of the gases that cause global warming but which expires in 2012. Kyoto exempts developing nations, including major emitters India and China, from commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. Canada's conservative government said on Friday it would not sign an agreement in Kampala unless it called for all countries to reduce emissions. The Commonwealth traditionally reaches agreement by consensus and the need to compromise between Canada's position and the demands of developing nations, especially island states, may explain the vague nature of Saturday's declaration. The Commonwealth Climate Change Action Plan called for a post-Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases but spoke only of "a long term aspirational global goal for emissions reduction to which all countries would contribute." Environmentalists sharply attacked similar non-binding language after recent summits by the G8 industrial nations and the APEC Asia-Pacific group. A British official said the statement "does what we wanted which is to continue ...to build momentum ahead of Bali." But he added: "there is a question over whether CHOGM is the right place to commit people to binding targets when we have Bali around the corner. Some participants felt Bali was the right place to discuss commitments." Australia has been one of the Commonwealth states most reluctant to combat climate change, but Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd said after winning a general election on Saturday that Australia would now sign up to Kyoto. Ex-Prime Minister John Howard government's refusal to ratify Kyoto angered Pacific island nations, including Commonwealth members, who could be submerged by rising sea levels. | 1 |
Apocalyptic scenes like these in Mallacoota, a vacation destination between Sydney and Melbourne, came on the last day of the warmest decade on record in Australia. The country is in the grip of a devastating fire season, with months of summer still to go, as record-breaking temperatures, strong winds and prolonged drought have ignited huge blazes across the country. The government prepared to deploy navy vessels and military helicopters to help fight the fires and evacuate people. The devastation is immense. In the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, more than 900 homes have been destroyed and 9 million acres have burned since November. About 90 fires were still raging in the state Tuesday, with about three dozen more across the border in Victoria. At least 12 people have died. Australia is normally hot and dry in summer, but climate change, which brings more frequent and longer periods of extreme heat, worsens these conditions and makes vegetation drier and more likely to burn. The country recently concluded its driest spring on record. That was followed in mid-December by the hottest day on record, with average highs across the country of 41.9 degrees Celsius (107.4 degrees Fahrenheit). Polls show a large majority of Australians view climate change as an urgent threat and want stronger government action to combat it. The catastrophic fire conditions have put an intense focus on the Australian government’s failure to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, which traps heat when released into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a conservative, has made it clear that Australia’s economic prosperity comes first. Even as his country burned, he has said repeatedly that it is not the time to discuss climate policy. “We have stood up to these terrible disasters before, and we have come through the other side,” he said in his New Year’s Eve address. “We will rebuild and we will stay strong.” As Australia has seen a surge of climate activism in recent months, Morrison has gone so far as to suggest that the government should outlaw efforts by environmental groups to pressure businesses with rallies and boycotts. Other members of Morrison’s government have answered calls for action with insults; the deputy prime minister called people who care about global warming “raving inner-city lunatics.” More recently, Morrison has been in damage control mode over his decision to vacation in Hawaii even as authorities raised emergency fire warnings across the country. He cut the trip short after two volunteer firefighters died. Those deaths raised new questions about Australia’s reliance on an overwhelmingly volunteer firefighting force. The physical and emotional toll on the thousands of unpaid firefighters has been mounting as some have worked shifts of 12 hours or more. After initially resisting calls to compensate firefighters, Morrison announced limited daily payments. The fires have been a constant presence in Australia for weeks, but the eerie images that emerged on social media on Tuesday cast them in a new light, and seemed to be a harbinger for the new decade that the country rang in hours later. So heavy was the smoke, it even drifted over to neighbouring New Zealand, 1,300 miles away, who woke up to a blood-red sun on New Year’s Day. In Mallacoota, residents in boats shared footage of themselves wearing masks and life vests as they waited under the blazing red sky. Others opted to stay and defend homes, likening burning trees to “exploding infernos” and describing the roar of the blazes. In Batemans Bay, four hours north, residents sat on folding chairs along the beach, life rafts at the ready, as a fire encircled the town and burned homes. To the south, in Cobargo, a father and son died in a blaze as they tried to protect the family home. With several blazes burning out of control, thousands were stranded in evacuation centres in other towns along the coast as firefighters told people to stay put. Tens of thousands of people were without power, the Australian military was authorised to deploy aircraft and naval vessels, and the government requested firefighting help from Canada and the United States. Telecommunications remained down Wednesday in a 200-mile stretch of threatened area on the southeast coast. In Sydney, where heavy smoke from fires has obscured the sun many days this summer, officials rejected calls to cancel the city’s signature New Year’s Eve fireworks display after the Rural Fire Service in New South Wales approved the celebration. One blaze reached the western part of Sydney, threatening homes. The fires have been so fierce that they have created their own weather systems. On Monday night, a volunteer firefighter died after a phenomenon called a fire tornado — turbulence caused by extreme rising heat — in New South Wales caused a 10-ton fire truck to roll over. The firefighter, Samuel McPaul, 28, was expected to become a father in May. He was the third volunteer firefighter to die this fire season; the other two, who also died in an accident involving a fire truck, were fathers of young children. In Mallacoota, just over the border in the state of Victoria, residents had spent Monday night preparing to evacuate. As the fire approached, some gathered at a community center, while others climbed into boats in bodies of water. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said one man filming his escape on a boat. Ida Dempsey of Melbourne, who spends Christmas every year in the area with her family, also took refuge on the water. “We couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch black,” Dempsey said. “We had face masks; the smoke was very bad.” She commended fire officials for keeping people calm. “If we didn’t have a plan, I would have panicked a bit more,” she said. In Batemans Bay, said James Findlay, who grew up there, the fire came so quickly that there was no hope to save his family home. “Everything’s gone,” he said. His parents, Findlay said, were in shock. “People have lost their homes, their farms, and people have lost their lives,” he said. “If this isn’t some kind of a sign that more should be done, then I don’t know what is.” © 2019 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Australia switched on its first utility-scale solar farm on Wednesday, bringing the country a small step closer to achieving ambitious renewable energy use targets that traditional coal and gas power producers are now fighting to soften. The Greenough River Solar project, just outside the small town of Walkaway in Western Australia state, is a joint-venture between Western Australian state-owned Verve Energy and U.S. conglomerate General Electric. It is expected to generate 10 megawatts, enough to power 3,000 homes. "The Greenough River Solar Farm demonstrates that renewable technologies can contribute to meeting Australia's future energy needs on a sustainable, cost-competitive basis," Jason Waters, chief executive of Verve Energy said on Wednesday. Australia has committed to getting 20 percent of its power from renewables by 2020 but big coal and gas-based utilities are arguing for generation targets to be cut. The plant is General Electric's first investment in Australian renewable energy, and plans are already underway to eventually expand it to 40 megawatts. The electricity generated by the plant will be purchased by Western Australia Water Corporation to power a nearby desalination plant. Australia is one of the world's most ideal places for solar projects. It has the highest average solar radiation per square meter of any continent in the world, according to government, and a population the size of New Delhi spread over an area the size of the contiguous United States. Australia currently gets about 10 percent of its electricity supply from renewable energy, about two-thirds of which comes from hydro power. RENEWABLE ENERGY REVIEW But the plant opens as the future of renewables is clouded by a campaign by some utilities and energy companies to cut Australia's mandatory renewable energy targets. The renewable energy targets (RET) are currently undergoing a routine review by Australia's Climate Change Authority which will be wrapped up by the end of the year. Champions of renewable energy say a cut in the targets, which would require Australia to produce 41,000 gigawatt-hours of its energy requirements by 2020, or 20 percent of its total energy requirement from renewables, would devastate the fledgling industry. "If the RET was to be reduced or, in fact, to be removed then essentially the business case for renewable energy just would not stack up and the industry would fall off a cliff. It would stop dead in its tracks," Kane Thornton, Director of Strategy, Clean Energy Council. AGL Energy, one of the few utilities that has called for the RET to remain the same, arguing the investment certainty is key for the more than the several billion dollars worth of solar and wind projects it has underway. "Amendments of the renewable energy target would certainly not be well received by investors who've got potential new projects that they'd be looking to develop," Tim Nelson, head of economics and policy for AGL in Sydney, said. BILLIONS IN SAVINGS? But critics of the targets say that the 41,000 GWh goal by 2020 will amount to around a quarter of Australia's total electricity supply by then, due to slower than expected growth in electrify demand, more than the intended 20 percent. Origin Energy, Australia's largest energy retailer and an investor in renewables, said the RET target should be re-evaluated. Another leading utility, TRUenergy, which recently rebranded itself as EnergyAustralia, said adjusting the targets to take account of lower energy use projections could save $25 billion or $840 for each electricity customer. The Australian Coal Association has argued that the RET should be abolished completely because it unfairly picks winners in the electricity market. Proponents of leaving the RET unchanged, however, hold that those who advocate changes in the RET, including getting rid of it, are those who stand to profit from an energy mix with fewer renewables. | 0 |
NORFOLK, Va. Wed Oct 29, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The next US president will face a daunting list of foreign policy challenges, from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the global financial crisis to the need to shore up the country's frayed international image. Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have sparred over taxes, health care and other domestic issues as the Nov. 4 presidential election approaches, pushing subjects like the Iranian nuclear standoff and Middle East peace to the background. But whoever wins the White House on Tuesday will confront an overwhelming number of national security issues when President George W Bush hands over power. "The mantra for the next administration has to be, 'Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it,'" said James Lindsay, who was a foreign policy aide to President Bill Clinton and is now with the University of Texas, Austin. "The new president-elect is going to have a full foreign policy inbox and decisions to make with enormous consequences for American security," added Lindsay, who is now with the University of Texas in Austin. A week and a half after the election, Bush will convene a summit in Washington to look at the global economic crisis and begin negotiations among world leaders on financial reforms. His successor, who takes office on Jan. 20, will inherit the Iraq and Afghan wars and an intensifying effort to pursue al Qaeda militants on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and holding North Korea to its promise to dismantle its nuclear weapons program are also pressing issues. Both candidates have vowed a reinvigorated effort toward Middle East peace and promise staunch support of Israel. Obama foreign policy adviser Mark Lippert said fighting terrorism, dealing with militants along the Afghan-Pakistan border and killing or capturing Osama bin Laden are top national security priorities. Obama has pledged to end the Iraq war and bolster the US troop presence in Afghanistan. The ability to tackle deteriorating security in Afghanistan and pursue militants is "linked to the ability to make progress on political reconciliation in Iraq and the ability to draw down there," Lippert said. McCain agrees on the need for more forces in Afghanistan. He opposes a timetable in Iraq, saying US troops should remain there as long as they are needed. Obama's willingness to talk directly to US adversaries such as Iran and Syria is another major point of disagreement. TOUGH TALK Obama, an Illinois senator, says the Bush administration's resistance to engaging foes has limited its diplomatic options, but McCain has attacked the Democratic candidate's call for dialogue at the highest levels as naive. McCain has called for Russia's ouster from the elite Group of Eight club of rich nations in response to Moscow's August war with Georgia. Obama opposes that step. Both men condemned the Russian invasion, triggered by Georgia's bid to reimpose control over breakaway South Ossetia, but McCain has spoken more harshly. One foreign policy priority Obama and McCain share is repairing ties with traditional allies, including many European countries, that became strained under the Bush administration. Some analysts believe Obama's huge popularity abroad could give him an initial advantage, although it will not be a panacea for challenges such as persuading Europe to contribute more troops in Afghanistan. Lippert said strengthening European alliances would help on many fronts, including providing more leverage with Russia. "Sen. Obama has spelled out many times that the strength of the transatlantic relationship, for example, impacts our ability to help advance our interests in dealing with countries like Russia but also better tackle a number of transnational threats such as nonproliferation, terrorism, climate change, energy and democracy promotion," he said. While McCain has taken a tougher line than Bush on Russia and once jokingly sang about bombing Iran, he has promised a break with the current administration's "cowboy diplomacy." Randy Scheunemann, top foreign policy adviser to McCain, said it is a caricature that McCain, an Arizona senator and former prisoner of war, would be more inclined to use force than past US presidents. "He understands the consequences of ordering men and women in uniform into harm's way," Scheunemann said in an interview last month. Bush's Nov. 15 economic summit will bring together leaders of the G20, which includes major industrialized nations and large emerging economies like China, Brazil and India. The president-elect will have input, but it is unclear whether he would attend. McCain and Obama have both talked of the importance of the US economy to the country's global role. Obama's stance on trade is more cautious, but both promise to move quickly to try to strengthen the financial regulatory system. | 1 |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Nov 24 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A nuclear-powered rover as big as a compact car is set to begin a nine-month journey to Mars this weekend to learn if the planet is or ever was suitable for life. The launch of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory aboard an unmanned United Space Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set for 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT) on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the Kennedy Space Center. The mission is the first since NASA's 1970s-era Viking program to directly tackle the age-old question of whether there is life in the universe beyond Earth. "This is the most complicated mission we have attempted on the surface of Mars," Peter Theisinger, Mars Science Lab project manager with NASA prime contractor Lockheed Martin, told reporters at a pre-launch press conference on Wednesday. The consensus of scientists after experiments by the twin Viking landers was that life did not exist on Mars. Two decades later, NASA embarks on a new strategy to find signs of past water on Mars, realizing the question of life could not be examined without a better understanding of the planet's environment. "Everything we know about life and what makes a livable environment is peculiar to Earth," said astrobiologist Pamela Conrad of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and a deputy lead scientist for the mission. "What things look like on Mars are a function of not only the initial set of ingredients that Mars had when it was made, but the processes that have affected Mars," she said. NEW MARS ROVER Without a large enough moon to stabilize its tilt, Mars has undergone dramatic climate changes over the eons as its spin axis wobbled closer or farther from the sun. The history of what happened on Mars during those times is chemically locked in its rocks, including whether liquid water and other ingredients believed necessary for life existed on the planet's surface, and if so, for how long. In 2004, the golf cart-sized rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of Mars' equator to tackle the question of water. Their three-month missions grew to seven years, with Spirit succumbing to the harsh winter in the past year and Opportunity beginning a search in a new area filled with water-formed clays. Both rovers found signs that water mingled with rocks during Mars' past. The new rover, nicknamed Curiosity, shifts the hunt to other elements key to life, particularly organics. "One of the ingredients of life is water," said Mary Voytek, director of NASA's astrobiology program. "We're now looking to see if we can find other conditions that are necessary for life by defining habitability or what does it take in the environment to support life." The spacecraft, which is designed to last two years, is outfitted with 10 tools to analyze one particularly alluring site on Mars called Gale Crater. The site is a 96-mile (154-kilometer) wide basin that has a layered mountain of deposits stretching 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) above its floor, twice as tall as the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon. Scientists do not know how the mound formed but suspect it is the eroded remains of sediment that once completely filled the crater. SKY CRANE DELIVERY Curiosity's toolkit includes a robotic arm with a drill, onboard chemistry labs to analyze powdered samples and a laser that can pulverize rock and soil samples from a distance of 20 feet (6 meters) away. If all goes as planned, Curiosity will be lowered to the floor of Gale Crater in August 2012 by a new landing system called a sky crane. Previously, NASA used airbags or thruster jets to cushion a probe's touchdown on Mars but the 1,980-pound (900-kilogram) Curiosity needed a beefier system. "There are a lot of people who look at that and say, 'What are you thinking?'" Theisinger said. "We put together a test program that successfully validated that from a design standpoint it will work. If something decides to break at that point in time, we're in trouble but we've done everything we can think of to do." The rover, which is twice as long and about three times heavier than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, also needed more power for driving at night and operating its science instruments. Instead of solar power, Curiosity is equipped with a plutonium battery that generates electricity from the heat of radioactive decay. Similar systems have been used since the earliest days of the space program, including the Apollo moon missions, the Voyager and Viking probes and more recently in the Cassini spacecraft now circling Saturn and NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons mission. Radiation monitors have been installed through the area around the Cape Canaveral launch site in case of an accident, though the device has been designed to withstand impacts and explosions, said Randall Scott, director of NASA's radiological control center at the Kennedy Space Center. Meteorologists were predicting good weather for Saturday's launch. Earth and Mars will be favorably aligned for launch until Dec. 18. | 0 |
“We are now facing a perfect storm that
threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries,” said
Antonio Guterres, the secretary general of the UN. In its first official report on the war’s impact,
the UN said the war in Ukraine was having “alarming cascading effects” on a
global economy already “battered” by the COVID-19 crisis and climate change. The report said that up to 1.7 billion
people — one-third of whom are already living in poverty — now face food,
energy and finance disruptions. With energy prices rising by as much as 50% for
natural gas in recent months, inflation growing and development stalled, many
countries risk defaulting on their debts, according to the report. “These are countries where people struggle
to afford healthy diets, where imports are essential to satisfy the food and
energy needs of their populations, where debt burdens and tightening resources
limit government’s ability to cope with the vagaries of global financial
conditions,” the report said. It said that 107 countries have severe
exposure to at least one of the three dimensions of the crisis, and that of
those nations, 69 have severe exposure to all three dimensions. Ukraine and Russia provide about 30% of the
world’s wheat and barley, according to the report. The war has sent commodity prices to record
highs — with food prices 34% higher than this time last year, according to the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and crude oil prices up by
around 60%. “Vulnerable populations in developing
countries are particularly exposed to these price swings,” the report said,
adding that “the rise in food prices threatens knock-on effects of social
unrest.” But the report said that swift action,
coupled with political will and existing resources, could soften the blow —
recommending that countries not hoard food supplies, offer help to small
farmers, keep freight costs stable and lift restrictions on exports, among
other things. The report called on governments to make
strategic fuel reserves available to the global market and reduce the use of
wheat for fuel. © The New York Times Company | 0 |
Yet even these prickly survivors may be
reaching their limits as the planet grows hotter and drier over the coming
decades, according to research published Thursday. The study estimates that, by
midcentury, global warming could put 60% of cactus species at greater risk of
extinction. That forecast does not take into account
the poaching, habitat destruction and other human-caused threats that already
make cactuses one of the world’s most endangered groups of organisms. Most cactus species “are in some way
adapted to the climates and the environments that they live in,” said Michiel
Pillet, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology at the
University of Arizona who led the new study, which was published in the journal
Nature Plants. “Even a slight change may be too much for them to adapt over shorter
time scales.” For those who think of cactuses either as
stoic masters of all-weather endurance or as cute, low-maintenance houseplants,
the enormous variety within the cactus family might come as a jolt. For starters, not all cactuses are desert dwellers.
Some live in rainforests or in cool climes at high altitudes. Some store little
water in their stalks, relying instead on rainwater and dew. Some occupy highly
specific environments: limestone cliffs in Mexico, hills of pink granite in
Brazil, a sandy patch of less than 1 square mile in Peru. In the Amazon, the
moonflower cactus spirals around a tree trunk, high above the ground, so that
it is above the water line when the forest floods and the water can disperse
its seeds. In part, it is this narrow taste for
particular settings that makes certain cactuses vulnerable not only to climate
change but to threats of all kinds. “If you only find it in a very small area,
and someone comes and plows it out to grow whatever they want to grow, the
whole population disappears,” said Bárbara Goettsch, another author of the new
study and a chair of the Cactus and Succulent Plants Specialist Group at the
International Union for Conservation of Nature. The study looks at 408 cactus species, or
roughly one-quarter of all known cactus species, and how their geographic range
could shift under three different trajectories for global warming in this
century. To the researchers’ surprise, their results did not vary much between
different pathways for climate change, Pillet said: Even if the planet heats up
only modestly, many types of cactus could experience declines in the amount of
territory where the climate is hospitable to them. Overall, 60% of cactus species are expected
to suffer declines of any magnitude, the study found, and 14% could suffer
steep declines. Only one species, the Xique-Xique in Brazil, is projected to
experience a substantial increase in range. According to the study, the places where
the largest numbers of species could become threatened are generally those with
the richest diversity of species today, including Florida, central Mexico and
large swaths of Brazil. Cactuses that live on trees seem to do especially
poorly, perhaps because their lives are so intertwined with those of other
plants. The outlook does not seem to be as bleak
for the American Southwest, home to the iconic saguaro, Pillet said. But
scientists still do not know enough about certain rarer cactuses to predict how
they might respond to more punishing climates, he said. That means the study’s
projections might not paint a complete picture for some parts of the world. Cactuses, by their nature, do not give up
their secrets readily. Scientists examining other plants’ sensitivity to
environmental changes might look, for instance, at the size and thickness of
their leaves. “Most cacti don’t have leaves, so what would you be measuring?”
Pillet said. The study’s predictions also do not account
for extreme events such as droughts and wildfires, Pillet said. In the Sonoran
Desert, rapid infestations of buffelgrass, a drought-resistant plant native to
Africa, Asia and the Middle East, have made the landscape highly flammable.
Wildfires there have killed thousands of saguaros in recent years. “It’s a popular image of cacti,” said David
Williams, a professor of botany at the University of Wyoming who was not
involved in the new research. “‘Ah, we don’t have to worry about cacti. Look at
them, they’ve got spines, they grow in this terrible environment.’” But
cactuses, like most plants, exist in delicate balance with the ecosystems
around them, he said. “There are a lot of these tipping points and thresholds
and interactions that are very fragile and responsive to changes in the
environment, land use and climate change.” The new study is “pivotal,” Williams said,
for showing how broadly such changes could affect cactus communities. Around a decade ago, when Goettsch was
preparing a comprehensive global assessment of the threats to cactuses, there
were only a few scientific studies looking at climate change’s potential
impacts specifically on cactuses, she said. But, she said, other cactus experts kept
telling her during their field visits, “You know, we go back now, and a lot of
plants are dead. There’s no real reason, so we think it might be climate
change.” The evidence has only piled up further since then, she said. Brazil is a hot spot for cactus diversity.
As the country’s northeastern drylands experience hotter temperatures, more
intense droughts and desertification, that plant wealth is in jeopardy, said
Arnóbio de Mendonça, a climate and biodiversity researcher at the National Institute
for Space Research in Brazil who did not work on the new study. “Species either adapt or they will go
extinct,” he said. “As adaptation is a slow process and current climate change
is occurring rapidly, it is likely that many species will be lost.” ©2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Democrats wrested control of the US House of Representatives from Trump's Republicans in midterm elections seen as a referendum on his two-year-old presidency and closely watched around the world. The outcome gives the opposition party new powers to block Trump's domestic agenda and step up inquiries into the former real estate mogul's business dealings and suspected links between his presidential campaign and Russia. But on foreign policy Trump's ability to set the agenda remains largely intact. And while House Democrats could push for a tougher approach towards Saudi Arabia and Russia, they are unlikely to move the dial on his biggest agenda items: the trade conflict with China and hardline course with Iran. "The formidable executive powers of the president, notably in foreign policy, remain untouched," Norbert Roettgen, head of the foreign affairs committee in the German Bundestag, told Deutschlandfunk radio. "We need to prepare for the possibility that Trump's defeat (in the House) fires him up, that he intensifies the polarisation, the aggression we saw during the campaign." Peter Trubowitz, director of the United States Centre at the London School of Economics, said: "I would look for him to double down on China, on Iran, on the Mexican border." "I think that the incentive structure now has changed for him and he will invest even more time on the foreign policy front as we move forward to 2020," he added. NO REBUKE Trump's first two years in office deeply unsettled traditional US allies in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, lambasted allies like Germany for running trade surpluses and not spending more on defence, and cosied up to authoritarian leaders in North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Although few European politicians said so openly, the hope in Berlin, Paris and Brussels was that US voters would deliver a clear rebuke to Trump's Republicans in the midterms, forcing a change of tack and bolstering hopes of regime change in 2020. Some European politicians hailed Democratic gains in the House as proof of a shift. Frans Timmermans, first vice president of the European Commission, said Americans had chosen "hope over fear, civility over rudeness, inclusion over racism". But the outcome fell short of the "blue wave" some had hoped for. Republicans were able to strengthen their majority in the Senate, the chamber that has traditionally played the biggest role on foreign policy. And in several high-profile House, Senate and governor races - in states such as Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Texas - Republicans closely allied with Trump emerged victorious. Roettgen said he saw the outcome as a "normalisation" of Trump and confirmation that his "hostile takeover" of the Republican Party has been successful. One area where Democrats could rein in Trump is on Saudi Arabia, whose killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month has fuelled a backlash in Congress and threats to block arms sales. A more intense focus on Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 election will limit Trump's ability to work with President Vladimir Putin. Democrats in the House could also push for more sanctions against Moscow, including measures that would punish European firms involved in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. "We can say with a large amount of confidence that of course no bright prospects for normalising Russian-American relations can be seen on the horizon," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. TRADE RISK Trade is one area where presidents can act without congressional approval. And several European diplomats and analysts said they expected Trump to keep the conflict with China alive, or even intensify it, as his domestic agenda stalls. Troubles at home also increase the likelihood that Trump follows through on his threats to confront Europe on trade, including punishing Germany with tariffs on car imports. A visit to the White House in June by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker brought a ceasefire. But last month, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross accused the EU of holding up progress on trade and said Trump's patience was "not unlimited". "Trump deeply believes that the EU and especially the Germans are taking US to the cleaners," said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official who is research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "I fully expect that if he is encountering political problems at home he will look for new confrontations." | 2 |
Two decades after a landmark report sounded alarm bells about the state of the planet and called for urgent action to change direction, the world is still in dire straits, a U.N. agency said on Thursday. While the UN Environment Programme's fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4) says action has been successfully taken in some regions and on some problems, the overall picture is one of sloth and neglect. "The global trends on climate, on ozone, on indeed ecosystem degradation, fisheries, in the oceans, water supplies ... are still pointing downwards," UNEP head Achim Steiner said in a short film accompanying the report's release. The 540-page report calls for emissions of climate warming greenhouse gases to be cut by between 60 and 80 percent, and notes that 60 percent of the world's ecosystems have been degraded and are still being used unsustainably. "We are facing an escalating situation. Partly because we have been very slow in reversing the degradation that we have documented and secondly because the demands on our planet have continued to grow during this period," Steiner said. "That equation cannot hold for much longer. Indeed, in parts of the world it is no longer holding," he added. The report is a litany of planet-wide death and degradation. Two decades after former Norwegian premier Gro Harlem Brundtland warned that the survival of humankind was at stake, GEO-4 finds that three million people die needlessly each year from water-borne diseases in developing nations -- mostly children under five.
EXTINCTIONS Fishing capacity is nearly four times more than is sustainable, species are becoming extinct 100 times faster than fossil records show, and 12 percent of birds, 23 percent of mammals and over 30 percent of amphibians face extinction. UNEP deputy head Marion Cheatle told a London news conference the world had suffered five mass extinctions in its history and was now undergoing a sixth. The report, drawn together by 388 scientists and vetted by 1,000 others, praises international treaties on saving the ozone layer, desertification and biodiversity and actions in some cities on urban atmospheric pollution. But it describes as "woefully inadequate" the global response to problems such as cutting emissions of carbon gases from power and transport that scientists say will boost average temperatures by up to four degrees Celsius this century. "We do have solutions but we are just not applying them at the speed we need," said Cheatle. "Time and again we see not enough effort being put in." Region by region the report highlights the good and the bad -- and in most cases the bad is winning. In Africa it is land degradation exacerbated by climate change and conflicts, while in the Asia and Pacific air pollution is the major threat to life and in Europe it is profligate consumption and overuse of carbon-based energy. In Latin America it is massive social inequality and deforestation, while in North America it is rising carbon emissions and urban sprawl and in the Middle East it is wars, poverty and growing water scarcity. But all is not gloom and doom. This year has been the one in which a combination of politics, natural events and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change established a momentum to fight global warming. Steiner hopes that his report will have the same effect on the fight to save the planet's ecosystems. "Our hope is that with this GEO-4 report UNEP can in a sense help to bring about a tipping point, just as we are seeing in 2007 with climate change," he said. | 0 |
Michael Szabo Copenhagen, Dec 20 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)—The enormous white globe that hung in Copenhagen's Bella Centre, the site of the world's largest ever summit on climate change, could be an unintended yet chilling sign of things to come. An observant attendee made it clear by scribbling on the giant model of the earth that its designers forgot to paint on small, low-lying Pacific island nations like Tuvalu and the Cook Islands. Antarctica was also missing from the colossal sphere. Scientists say rising global temperatures are melting the world's polar icecaps and this will lead to higher sea levels by the end of the century. Still, as island nations pleaded for major economies like China and the United States to agree a new climate agreement over the 12-day talks, was this an embarrassing mistake on the part of the organisers? The UN climate talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement on Saturday when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that falls so short of the conference's original goals that many observers have termed the talks a failure. A long road lies ahead. The accord -- weaker than a legally binding treaty and weaker even than the 'political' deal many had foreseen -- left much to the imagination. It set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times -- seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas. But it failed to say how this would be achieved. It held out the prospect of $100 billion (62 billion pounds) in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations but did not specify precisely where this money would come from. And it pushed key decisions such as emissions cuts into the future. Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November 2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what they failed to achieve in Copenhagen -- a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. But there are no guarantees. | 0 |
Politicians need to address problems such as pollution and accelerating urbanisation to ensure sustainable wealth creation in Asia, the United Nations said. "Vulnerabilities arising from environmental pressures, economic insecurity, shortcomings in governance and unequal income distribution pose a threat to the region's future development,"the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO) said in a report for a conference in Beijing on Aug. 13-15. "Growth and sustainable development ... could be seriously undermined by environmental degradation, depletion of natural resources and climate change." Further risks included an ageing population, increasing migration, rising income inequalities and long working hours. The continent's labour force, now estimated at 1.8 billion, included vast numbers of working poor and will grow by more than 200 million people by 2015, the ILO said. In 2006, there were 900 million people in the region working for $2 a day, or 51.9 percent of the employed, down from 68.5 percent in 1996. More than 300 million people had income of only $1 a day, the report showed. It was unlikely there would be a rapid drop in the number of people working in the informal economy, now 61.9 percent, the report said. The report is called "Visions for Asia's Decent Work Decade: Sustainable Growth and Jobs to 2015" and will be discussed at an ILO meeting of senior government, labour and employer officials from some 20 countries in Asia and the Pacific. The report surveyed developed economies in the region -- Japan, Australia and New Zealand -- as well as the regions east Asia, southeast Asia and the Pacific, and south Asia. | 0 |
Scattered rain brought some relief to parts of the baking US Midwest on Wednesday, but most of the region remained in the grips of the worst drought in half a century as the outlook for world food supplies and prices worsened. The US Agriculture Department forecast that food prices would now out-pace other consumer costs through 2013 as drought destroys crops and erodes supplies. "The drought is really going to hit food prices next year," said USDA economist Richard Volpe, adding that pressure on food prices would start building later this year. "It's already affecting corn and soybean prices, but then it has to work its way all the way through the system into feed prices and then animal prices, then wholesale prices and then finally, retail prices," Volpe said in an interview. The USDA now sees food prices rising between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent in 2012 and another 3-4 percent in 2013. Food prices will rise more rapidly than overall U.S. inflation, the USDA said, a turnabout from the usual pattern. U.S. inflation is estimated at 2 percent this year and 1.9 percent in 2013. Food inflation was 3.7 percent last year but only 0.8 percent in 2010. On Wednesday, the USDA added another 76 counties to its list of areas designated for disaster aid, bringing the total to 1,369 counties in 31 states across the country. Two-thirds of the United States is now in mild or extreme drought, the agency said. Forecasters said that after weeks of hot, dry weather the northern Corn Belt from eastern Nebraska through northern Illinois was likely to see a second day of scattered rain. But in the southern Midwest, including Missouri and most of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, more hot, dry weather was likely. "Most of these areas need an excess of 10 inches of rain to break the drought," said Jim Keeney, a National Weather Service meteorologist, referring to Kansas through Ohio. "This front is not expected to bring much more than a 1/2 to 1 inch in any particular area. It's not a drought buster by any means." The central and southern Midwest saw more temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday, with St Louis at 101 F. "There's no change in the drought pattern, just thunderstorms shifting around," said Andy Karst, a meteorologist for World Weather Inc. "There are no soaking rains seen through August 8." The outlook sent Chicago Board of Trade grain markets higher after prices had come down from last week's record highs. Chicago Board of Trade corn for September delivery closed 4-1/2 cents higher at $7.94-1/2 a bushel, compared to the record high of $8.28-3/4 set last week. August soybeans ended 45 cents higher at $16.94-1/4, compared to last week's record of $17.77-3/4. September wheat rose 24-1/2 cents at $9.03-1/4, compared to last week's 4-year high at $9.47-1/4. The prices have markets around the world concerned that local food costs will soar because imports will be expensive, food aid for countries from China to Egypt will not be available, and food riots could occur as in the past. The United States is the world's largest exporter of corn, soybeans and wheat. Major losses in the massive U.S. corn crop, which is used for dozens of products from ethanol fuels to livestock feed, have been reported by field tours this week. Soybeans, planted later than corn, are struggling to set pods, but if rain that has been forecast falls, soybeans may be saved from the worst effects of the drought. A Reuters poll on Tuesday showed that US corn yields could fall to a 10-year low, and the harvest could end up being the lowest in six years. Extensive damage has already been reflected in declining weekly crop reports from Corn Belt states. "Monday's crop ratings showed losses on par with the damage seen during the 1988 drought if these conditions persist," said Bryce Knorr, senior editor for Farm Futures Magazine. "Weather so far has taken almost 4 billion bushels off the corn crop, so a lot of demand must still be rationed." In Putnam County, Indiana, this week, crop scouts did not even stop to inspect corn fields since a glance convinced them that farmers would plow crops under rather than trying to harvest anything. On Wednesday, scouts in central Illinois reported that some corn fields were better than expected, having benefited from early planting and pollination after a warm winter and spring. Tom Womack of the Tennessee Department of Agriculture said some recent rains had helped soybean prospects, but "the damage that has been done to the corn has been done. No amount of rainfall will help us recover what we lost in the corn crop." Ohio Governor John Kasich signed an order on Wednesday that will allow farmers to cut hay for their livestock from grass growing along highways adjacent to their properties. Fire threats were growing in portions of the Plains. On Wednesday, firefighters from three north-central Nebraska counties and the National Guard battled expanding wildfires that have consumed more than 60,000 acres in the last week. On Wednesday, helicopters dumped water on wildfires, ignited by lightning, that have been burning since the weekend in the Niobrara River Valley. "We are making progress, but continued support is needed," Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman said. In Missouri, one of the nation's driest states, the highway patrol said smoke from grass and brush fires was creating "very dangerous driving conditions." Discarded cigarettes were cited as a factor in those fires. Across the Midwest, cities and towns restricted water use for gardens and lawns and tried to save stressed trees with drip bags. Reservoir and river levels were low and being carefully watched, and restrictions were placed on barge movements along the Mississippi River and recreational boating. SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME? The U.S. drought has been blamed on the El Nino phenomenon in the western Pacific Ocean, a warming of sea temperatures that affects global atmosphere and can prevent moisture from the Gulf of Mexico from reaching the U.S. Midwest breadbasket. Some scientists have warned that this year's US drought, already deemed the worst since 1956, is tied to climate factors that could have even worse effects in coming years. Dangerously hot summer days have become more common across the Midwest in the last 60 years, and the region will face more potentially deadly weather as the climate warms, according to a report issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists (USC) on Wednesday. The report looked at weather trends in Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Minneapolis and St. Louis and smaller cities such as Peoria, Illinois, and Toledo, Ohio. The report found that the number of hot, humid days has increased, on average, across the Midwest since the 1940s and 1950s, while hot, dry days have become hotter. Finding relief from the heat has become more difficult, as all the cities studied now have fewer cool, dry days in the summer and night-time temperatures have risen. "Night-time is typically when people get relief, especially those who don't have air conditioning," said Steve Frenkel, UCS's Midwest office director. "The risks of heat-related illness and death increase with high nighttime temperatures." In Chicago, more than 700 deaths were attributed to a heat wave in July 1995. With more extreme summer heat, annual deaths in Chicago are projected to rise from 143 from 2020-2029 to 300 between 2090-2099, the report said. | 2 |
Biden is unveiling the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in Tokyo on his first trip in office to Asia. The White House says the deal offers no tariff relief or market access to the countries that join but provides a way to sort through key issues from climate change to supply chain resilience and digital trade. And it is critical to Biden's approach to counter what he sees as Washington's greatest competitor abroad, China. Washington has lacked an economic pillar to its Indo-Pacific engagement since former President Donald Trump quit a multinational trans-Pacific trade agreement, leaving the field open to China to expand its influence. "The launch," said US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, "marks an important turning point in restoring US economic leadership in the region, and presenting Indo-Pacific countries an alternative to China's approach to these critical issues." Biden wants the deal to raise environmental, labour and other standards across Asia. But the actual terms of any agreement will have to be negotiated by the initial countries joining talks: Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States. Those countries will work together to negotiate what standards they wish to abide by, how they will be enforced, whether their domestic legislatures will need to ratify them and how to consider potential future members, including China, which is not taking part, officials told reporters. Also left out of the initial talks is Taiwan, which wanted to join. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One that Taiwan would not be a part of the IPEF launch but that Washington is still looking to deepen its economic relationship with the self-governing island, which China claims. In a later briefing, Sullivan said the process to include new members "will be part of those initial discussions" in the coming weeks. "On China, broadly speaking, what I just said would apply to that case." The IPEF is an attempt to salvage some part of the benefits of participation in a broader trade agreement like the one Trump quit, which is now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and then known as TPP but without the US domestic political opposition to a deal that some fear would cost jobs. "TPP, as it was envisioned, ultimately was something that was quite fragile," said US Trade Representative Katherine Tai. "The biggest problem with it was that we did not have the support at home to get it through." Beijing appeared to take a dim view of the planned IPEF. China welcomes initiatives conducive to strengthening regional cooperation but "opposes attempts to create division and confrontation," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a statement. "The Asia-Pacific should become a high ground for peaceful development, not a geopolitical gladiatorial arena." | 0 |
Former US President Bill Clinton's philanthropic summit was the most popular venue for chief executives in 2009, with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, tumbling to No. 4 from the top spot, a survey found on Monday. Davos, due to start on Wednesday, suffered as executives at some of the world's most admired multinational companies chose to speak at US forums during last year's recession, the study by public relations firm Weber Shandwick found. The fifth Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), held every September in New York, narrowly edged out the Chief Executives Club of Boston in the "Five-Star Conference" study with the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council coming in at No. 3. Experts said Clinton had an unrivaled mix of power and celebrity that pushed his annual summit, which coincides with the United Nations General Assembly in New York, to the top of chief executives' speaking agendas. "He's got a wonderful mix of both celebrity status and he is a former American president. And, at least for the moment, he is married to the Secretary of State," said Barbara Kellerman, a professor of public leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. "It helps that the Clinton Global Initiative is associated with doing good much more than the World Economic Forum, which has been the subject of protests in recent years," she said. CGI was born out of Clinton's frustration while president from 1993 to 2001 at attending conferences that were more talk than action. Business leaders, humanitarians and celebrities are brought together to address problems in education, energy and climate change, health and economic empowerment. The World Economic Forum, which began in 1971, which meets Jan. 26-31, brings together movers and shakers to discuss and seek solutions to the world's problems. Jennifer Risi, executive vice president of Weber Shandwick's Global Strategic Media Group, said the CGI had been pushed to No. 1 by its location, its philanthropic focus and Clinton's ties to President Barack Obama's new administration. When the last study was done in 2007, reviewing conferences between 2005 and 2007, the Clinton Global Initiative failed to rank among the top five summits for chief executives. "The Clinton Global Initiative has become the gold standard in terms of CEO participation so business executives have shifted their focus to that event," said Darrell West, vice president and director of Governance Studies at the Washington, DC-based think tank the Brookings Institute. | 0 |
More cities were inundated and crops destroyed as the severe weather spread northwards, with the official Xinhua news agency reporting direct economic losses of 1.22 billion yuan ($189 million) so far. The provincial weather bureau on Thursday raised the storm alert for four cities in the north of Henan - Xinxiang, Anyang, Hebi and Jiaozuo - to red, the highest tier of a four-step colour-coded weather warning system. The fatalities included 12 people who were killed when the subway in the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, about 650 km (400 miles) southwest of Beijing, was flooded earlier this week. Eight people are listed as missing across the province. More than 73,000 people were being evacuated from the city of Anyang, on Henan's border with Hebei province, after being swamped by more than 600 mm of rainfall since Monday, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Xinxiang, a small city north of Zhengzhou, recorded 812 mm of rainfall between Tuesday and Thursday, shattering local meteorological records, Xinhua reported. Seven medium-sized reservoirs in the city had overflowed, affecting scores of nearby villages and towns. As of late Wednesday, more than 470,000 people and over 55,000 hectares of crops have been affected by the Xinxiang downpours, Xinhua said, adding the local government had deployed a more than 76,000-strong search and rescue team. In neighbouring Hebei, two people were killed when a tornado struck the city of Baoding. The fatal flooding of the Zhengzhou subway prompted the government to order local authorities to immediately improve urban transit flood controls and emergency responses. Media images showed commuters immersed in chest-deep waters in lightless cabins. One underground station was reduced to a large churning pool. The Ministry of Transport said local authorities must immediately re-examine and rectify all hidden risks on rail transit. "They must take emergency measures such as suspending trains, evacuating passengers, and closing stations in atypical situations such as excessively intense storms," the ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Some 617.1 mm (24.3 inches) of rain fell in Zhengzhou from Saturday to Tuesday, almost the equivalent of the city's annual average of 640.8 mm (25.2 inches). Public scrutiny has also fallen on the timeliness of weather bulletins provided by local meteorological services. The provincial weather bureau told state media it had issued a report warning of the coming torrential rains two days in advance. Since Monday evening, meteorological departments from the provincial down to the county level have sent out 120 million text messages to mobile phone users warning them of the storms, the Henan weather bureau said. | 1 |
All times are local (GMT). 8:15 p.m. After a last-minute drama over the words phase "down" or "out" regarding coal use, the talks ended with a global agreement that aimed to keep alive hopes of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, and so maintain a realistic chance of saving the world from catastrophic climate change. Mixed reviews over the deal rolled in. “Whether COP26 was a success will only be known some time down the road. The test will be whether Glasgow marks the transition from promises made on paper to turning those promises into reality," said Kaveh Guilanpour, Vice President of International Strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. 7:40 p.m. COP26 President Alok Sharma looked like he was about to cry. India's environment minister Bhupender Yadav interrupted the adoption process for the Glasgow pact before it had barely begun, proposing new language in the deal that would request governments "phase down" coal use, rather than phase it out. Several countries expressed disappointment but said they would still support the deal to ensure the negotiations do not collapse in failure. Sharma apologised to the plenary for the way the process was handled and got choked up. 7:23 p.m. COP26 President Alok Sharma opens the formal plenary: "It is now decision time." 7:04 p.m. We have a deal. According to China, that is. Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua gave Reuters the thumbs up when asked on the plenary floor if the Glasgow pact was going to pass. Then he said "we have a deal" through his translator. He did have a critique, though. "The voice of developing countries hasn’t been heard enough," he said through his translator. 6:51 p.m. Samuel Adeoye Adejuwon, a technical adviser on Nigeria's delegation, said his country was aligned with India in its opposition to strong language targeting fossil fuels in the Glasgow pact. "This argument is about special circumstances. You cannot ask us to phase out the process of development," he told Reuters as delegates milled about on the plenary floor. He said that the US discussion with China and India about coal was an attempt to find common ground. 6:42 p.m. Observers at the UN climate talks got a bit nervous when representatives of the United States and the EU went into a meeting with their counterparts from China and India to discuss some of the deal's language around phasing out coal. They came out of the meeting about 30 minutes later. The meeting, confirmed to Reuters by a member of the Indian delegation, suggested last-minute negotiations were underway as the UK conference hosts pressed urgently for an accord. Immediately before the meeting, US special envoy John Kerry was overheard by Reuters telling his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua "You’re supposed to be phasing out coal over the next 20 years, you just signed an agreement with us." 5:36 p.m. "We will reconvene very, very shortly," COP26 President Alok Sharma says, after country delegations finish up their speeches. Once they reconvene, a vote on the deal is likely. 4:40 p.m. The United States could see not everyone was happy about the draft deal in front of the UN talks in Glasgow. "If it is a good negotiation, all the parties are uncomfortable," US special climate envoy John Kerry told the plenary. "This has been, I think, a good negotiation." He spoke after a series of poor and island nations expressed disappointment the draft did not do more to support them. Maldives Environment Minister Aminath Shauna put it bluntly: “It will be too late for the Maldives.” India's environment and climate minister, Bhupender Yadav, had earlier also blasted the draft deal, saying he disagreed with language requesting countries unwind fossil fuel subsidies. "How can anyone expect that developing countries can make promises about phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies when developing countries have still to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication?" he said. 4:08 p.m. Swiss Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga told the plenary her country did not like the deal because of how it dealt with rules governing global carbon markets, but would live with it anyway. "We are concerned that we are leaving this COP with everybody feeling more than a little unhappy," she said. Lee White, Gabon's Minister of Water, Forests, Sea and Environment, meanwhile, told the plenary he had some unfinished business, regardless of the passage of a deal. "Before I leave, I need some more reassurance from our developed country partners - and note that I don't say donors - before boarding the electric train leaving the Glasgow COP." 3:58 p.m. "It's not perfect." That was the common refrain from poor and small island nations commenting to the plenary about the draft climate deal. Each of them said, however, they would support it. The low-lying island countries and small economy blocs had been pushing hard for more money from rich nations to help them deal with everything from transitioning to clean energy to recovering from climate-driven disasters. Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege said the existing deal did not go far enough to do that, but marked progress, and that she would back it because she could not go home to her island with nothing. 3:52 p.m. Tuvalu's climate envoy Seve Paeniu held up a photo of his three grandchildren and told the plenary he has been thinking of what he can tell them upon his return to the low-lying island nation: "Glasgow has made a promise to secure their future," he said. "That will be the best Christmas gift I could bring back to them." 3:44 p.m. EU climate chief Frans Timmermans drew a rousing round of applause for his comments to the plenary, in which he asked countries to unite around the deal for the sake of "our children, our grandchildren." "They will not forgive us if we fail them today," he said. He opened his comments by saying the conference risked "stumbling in this marathon" a few steps before the finish if country delegations demanded new changes to the texts. 3:30 p.m. In a potentially positive sign, China negotiator Zhao Yingmin tells the plenary that the current draft of the deal is not perfect but that his team has no intention to reopen it. Representatives of Tanzania and Guinea, meanwhile, said they were disappointed that the draft did not do more to ensure poor, climate-vulnerable nations like theirs were getting adequate financial help to deal with global warming issues. 3:12 p.m. COP26 President Alok Sharma opened up an informal plenary to take stock of the latest proposals, saying the conference had reached the "moment of truth for the planet, for our children, for our grandchildren". While differences on the final deal remained, Sharma appeared to be saying time was up on negotiations and that an accord needed to be finalized. 2:40 p.m. In the minutes before the official plenary was set to start, US special envoy John Kerry stood with his counterpart from China, Xie Zhenhua, holding a paper and going over it line by line together. Days earlier, the two men surprised the summit with a U.S.-China joint declaration in which China agreed to ramp up its ambition to fight climate change by phasing down coal use, curbing methane and protecting forests. 2:30 p.m. As negotiators met behind closed doors to try to overcome last-minute hurdles to a deal, delegates from three countries said they had no idea what was going on. "I don’t know, man, it’s chaos,” said one negotiator about the last minute friction over a deal. China’s No. 2 negotiator Zhao Yingmin, while entering his country’s offices, said he had no updates. Nearby, representatives from Brazil could be seen entering a meeting of the G77 group of developing countries. 1:45 p.m. After an hour and 45 minutes, Sharma finally came back up to the microphone to announce a slightly new schedule: everyone can be excused, but please return at 2:30 p.m. when the official plenary will begin. The delay was to allow parties to finalize some of their negotiations, he said. He also insisted: there will be a deal this afternoon. 1:06 p.m. COP26 President Alok Sharma, who was in the plenary room on time at noon, tried twice to get delegates from other nations to sit down. An hour later, he was still unsuccessful. Large huddles of discussions persisted on one side of the stage. US climate envoy John Kerry was working the room, going from group to group. 12:30 p.m. Delegates were anxious for updates on the negotiations, but were taking the delays in their stride. "Well, it's classic that the COP goes over time, so no surprise whatsoever," said Axel Michaelowa, an advisor to the Honduras delegation. In the cafeteria, views were mixed on what the delays meant for the final deal - did they suggest a strong accord that keeps 1.5C within reach, or a soft one that doesn't? "I think the fact that they didn't close it at 6 o'clock, 8 o'clock last night shows that they might be committed to a sort of deal that works for everybody," said Emily Wright, a representative from Save the Children International. Naja Moretro, the head of the Norwegian Church Aid Youth Organisation, had a different view: "The texts have been getting weaker and weaker when it comes to clear language." 12:02 p.m. Danish Climate Minister Dan Jorgensen, heading into the summit's plenary room, explained his support for language in a final deal pushing for a phase-out of coal. "I think it's fair to say that this isn't about shaming those countries (reliant on fossil fuels)," he said. He said the text should acknowledge that some countries need help to move away from coal. "So this is why I said one improvement in the text is that it now also refers to 'just transition'," he said. 11:35 a.m. Nellie Dokie, 37, has been taking a two-hour trip each way to the conference center to work as a chef. She has been preparing meals for VIPs and delegates and finally stepped out into the main conference area to check out the scene. Dokie lives in Glasgow but is from Liberia. "I want to be a part of history. I played a small part," she said. 11:20 a.m. US Special Climate Envoy John Kerry appeared to be in a cheery mood. "It's a beautiful day in Scotland," he said, walking alongside his top negotiators Sue Biniaz, Jonathan Pershing and Trigg Talley as reporters trailed him through the hallway. It was unclear if his assessment was fueled by the state of negotiations at the conference, or the unusually sunny weather in Glasgow. 11:02 a.m. The action shifted over the last 24 hours to "bilateral" meeting rooms scattered around the conference site. Delegates huddled in windowless rooms guarded by security. They were reviewing the draft text ahead of the noon stocktaking session. 8:53 a.m. A dozen Greenpeace staffers sat together in the COP26 conference halls, hunched over laptops and with some sitting on the floor, as they prepared a new statement on the latest draft revisions. Spanish Energy and Environment Minister Teresa Ribera was seen rushing from her delegation's office, as the UK COP26 Presidency dropped what many hope is the final draft of an overall Glasgow agreement. Technical crews were boxing up flat-screen displays and carrying them out of meeting rooms, as they continued taking down parts of the venue. 8:21 a.m. After tense overnight deliberations, delegates were poised for the release of another draft agreement. The delegation pavilions, where countries had showcased their climate-friendly initiatives, were all dismantled, but coffee stands were still serving. Civil society groups who have been closely watching the deliberations were scouring documents released in the early morning for clues about what might go into the final deal. Friday 9:30 p.m. The UK hosts of the conference issued a statement confirming there will be no deal tonight. "I envisage formal plenary meetings in the afternoon to adopt decisions and close the session on Saturday," Alok Sharma, the UK summit president said in a statement. Delegations and the media appeared to be headed back to their hotels for some rest before what promises to be a long day tomorrow. 8:40 p.m. The COP26 conference halls grew quiet with small groups of negotiators, including a dozen or so EU delegates, moving along the halls to and from meetings. This "shuttle diplomacy," as diplomats shuttle between rooms, is how most of the work gets done in the final hours of climate negotiations, Felipe De Leon Denegri, Costa Rica's carbon markets negotiator, told Reuters. But this year may be particularly quiet as much of the shuttling is now done over the messaging app WhatsApp, he said. "One of the perhaps weird things about COP in the 21st century is that shuttle diplomacy sometimes happens on WhatsApp," De Leon said. He said the pandemic and increasingly common virtual work probably means more exchanges than ever are being held on the Facebook-owned app. "It's not that people aren't working, it's that they are working through their phone and they don't seem to be moving anywhere." 8:15 p.m. Tuvalu's Finance Minister Seve Paeniu, head of the island nation's delegation, said he was up most of last night negotiating the part of the draft agreement dealing with "loss and damage". Low-lying Tuvalu and other vulnerable countries dealing with impacts from climate change want rich countries responsible for most emissions to pay up. He said his team is working to push the United States and Australia to support a "standalone" loss and damage fund. More broadly, he said he will not be satisfied leaving Glasgow without a strong collective agreement that can keep alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C. "We do not see sufficient commitment made by countries to reduce emissions to achieve that 1.5 degree target," he said. "In terms of adaptation, there is insufficient focus on additional financing." Former UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband stopped in the hallway to compliment Paeniu on a speech he gave earlier. 7:38 p.m. The delegation offices at the summit complex are mainly quiet. Two of China's leading negotiators were seen milling about in their office, while not far away a pair of US negotiators walked down the hall with sandwiches. All expectations were for a very long night as several major differences around ratcheting up emissions cuts pledges and how to deal with carbon markets and funding for poor countries remained. | 1 |
The Maldives, one of the world's most renowned tourist destinations, installed a new president after the man credited with bringing democracy to the Indian Ocean islands resigned, apparently under military pressure following a police mutiny. His party called it a bloodless coup. On Wednesday, just 24 hours after police joined opposition protesters in attacking the military headquarters and seizing the state TV station, the streets of the capital island, Male, were calm as people went to work and children to school. The political tumult, like most of everday Maldivian life, was far from the tourists who stream to the chain of desert islands, seeking sun-and-sand paradise at luxury resorts that can command $1,000 a night. Former President Mohamed Nasheed resigned on Tuesday and was later freed from military custody. His deputy, Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik, was sworn in by the speaker of the People's Majlis, or parliament. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement he hoped the "handover of power, which has been announced as a constitutional step to avoid further violence and instability, will lead to the peaceful resolution of the political crisis that has polarized the country". Nasheed's order to the military to arrest a judge, whom he accused of blocking multi-million dollar corruption cases against members of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's government, set off three weeks of opposition protests that peaked with Tuesday's police revolt. "FORCED TO RESIGN" In the end, elements of the same military marched him into his own office to order his own resignation, a close aide told Reuters in the first witness account of Nasheed's exit. "The gates of the president's office swung open and in came these unmarked vehicles we've never seen before and Nasheed came out with around 50 soldiers around him, and senior military men we'd never seen before," said Paul Roberts, Nasheed's communications adviser. Nasheed was brought to his office, met his cabinet, and then went on television to announce his resignation, Roberts said from an undisclosed location. "He was forced to resign by the military," said Roberts, a 32-year old British citizen. "He could have gone down shooting, but he didn't want blood on his hands. The security forces moved against him." Amnesty International urged the new government to avoid persecuting people based on political affiliation, amid opposition calls for Nasheed's prosecution and rumours his senior allies would not be allowed to leave the islands. The new president, Waheed, was expected to run a coalition national unity government until the presidential election in October 2013. On Tuesday, he said it was wrong to characterise the change of leadership as a coup and pledged that tourists were at no risk. Tourism is estimated to account for two-thirds of the Maldives' gross domestic product of about $1 billion. Although there were some travel advisories, including from Britain, against travel to Male, most of the Maldives' nearly 1 million annual visitors never reach the capital. Instead, they are taken straight from the airport island by speedboat or seaplane to their resorts. Flights on Wednesday were arriving as usual. "FIDELITY TO DEMOCRACY" Disparately minded opposition parties eyeing position for next year's poll found common ground against Nasheed amid the constitutional crisis and protests, and had begun adopting hardline rhetoric to criticise his Islamic credentials. The country is wholly Sunni Muslim. Analyst N. Sathiya Moorthy, writing in Wednesday's Hindu newspaper, said Nasheed would be remembered for being the Maldives' first democratically elected president but also for "avoidable constitutional and political deadlocks". "Rather than allowing events to drift towards a political or even military showdown ... Nasheed has shown great fidelity to democratic principles in a country where none existed before him by stepping down from office with grace and poise." In a sign that the era before Nasheed had returned, the state broadcaster MNBC was rebranded TV Maldives and it streamed interview after interview with opposition figures. It had that name under the 30-year reign of former president Gayoom, Nasheed's rival who was criticised for his authoritarian style. Nasheed spent a total of six years in jail, spread over 27 arrests, while agitating for democracy against Gayoom. Nasheed beat his nemesis in a 2008 poll, the first multi-party democratic election in the history of the former British protectorate, home to about 330,000 people and for centuries a sultanate. He won further acclaim for his passionate advocacy about climate change and rising seas, which threaten to engulf the low-lying nation. | 1 |
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told her peers from the Group of Seven rich democracies that Washington was committed to multilateralism and "places a high priority on deepening our international engagement and strengthening our alliances." Yellen spoke to the G7 in a virtual video meeting, chaired by Britain, at which she called for continued fiscal support to secure the recovery, saying "the time to go big is now." Britain said officials discussed giving help to workers and businesses hit by the pandemic while ensuring sustainability of public finances "in the long term." As well as the United States and Britain, the G7 includes Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Canada. Italian Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri said the group had committed to continuing coordinated action to support the economy. "The withdrawal of policy support is premature," he wrote on Twitter. Biden has proposed a further $1.9 trillion in spending and tax cuts on top of more than $4 trillion of coronavirus relief measures enacted by his predecessor Trump. British finance minister Rishi Sunak is expected to say next month that he will extend his economic rescue programs and that reining in public finances will have to be addressed later. Britain said G7 officials also agreed that making progress on reaching "an international solution to the tax challenges of the digital economy" was a key priority. Countries have been trying to revive attempts at a global approach to taxing giant digital firms - many of them American, such as Amazon and Alphabet's Google - after progress was blocked by Trump's administration. Britain called on G7 countries to agree a joint approach to taxing internet giants by mid-2021, a deadline agreed by the wider Group of 20 nations. NEW IMF RESOURCES Some G7 countries are keen to back a new issuance of the International Monetary Fund's own currency, known as special drawing rights (SDRs), to help low-income countries hit by the coronavirus crisis, a step last taken in 2009. Officials from the United States, the IMF's biggest shareholder, had signalled they were open to a new issuance of $500 billion, sources said on Thursday - another Biden shift away from Trump administration opposition. A G7 source, who asked not to be named, said the United States told other countries it needed a few weeks to finalise the SDR increase. The move is politically tricky for Yellen because it would provide new resources to all IMF members, including rich countries, China, and US adversaries such as Iran and Venezuela, drawing Republican opposition. "Over the last year, the G7 has not even spoken about special drawing rights, so considering that was part of this agenda, it certainly is progress," said Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a charity group that focuses on reducing poverty. "In terms of getting to a strong global stimulus, SDRs have to be a part of the equation." IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva did not mention SDRs in a tweet about the meeting, but said that G7 members were in "full alignment" on vaccines, fiscal stimulus, climate and "comprehensive support for vulnerable countries." Sunak called on private creditors to give debt help to the poorest countries and said climate change and nature preservation would be priorities for Britain's G7 presidency. Britain is due to host the first in-person summit of G7 leaders in nearly two years in June. Yellen said the G7 should expect to see the US Treasury's engagement on climate change to "change dramatically relative to the last four years." The Treasury declined comment on a Wall Street Journal report that Yellen is considering Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former deputy Treasury secretary, for a new high-level climate "czar" position at the department. | 0 |
A local man from Pellestrina, one of the many islands in the Venetian lagoon, died when he was struck by lightning while using an electric water pump, the fire brigade said.
The flooded crypt of St Mark's Basilica is pictured during an exceptionally high water levels in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters
City officials said the tide peaked at 187 cm (6ft 2ins) at 10.50 p.m. (2150 GMT) on Tuesday, just short of the record 194 cm set in 1966. The flooded crypt of St Mark's Basilica is pictured during an exceptionally high water levels in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters Night-time footage showed a torrent of water whipped up by high winds raging through the city centre while Luca Zaia, governor of the Veneto region, described a scene of “apocalyptic devastation”.
The Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro walks on St Mark's Square during an exceptionally high water levels in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said the situation was dramatic. “We ask the government to help us. The cost will be high. This is the result of climate change,” he said on Twitter. The Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro walks on St Mark's Square during an exceptionally high water levels in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters He said he would declare a disaster zone and ask the government to call a state of emergency, which would allow funds to be freed to address the damage. Saint Mark’s Square was submerged by more than one metre of water, while the adjacent Saint Mark’s Basilica was flooded for the sixth time in 1,200 years - but the fourth in the last 20.
A flooded shop during a night of record high water in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters
A flood barrier was designed in 1984 to protect Venice from the kind of high tides that hit the city on Tuesday, but the multi-billion euro project, known as Mose, has been plagued by corruption scandals and is still not operative. A flooded shop during a night of record high water in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters Brugnaro said the basilica had suffered “grave damage”, but no details were available on the state of its mainly Byzantine interior, famous for its rich mosaics. Its administrator said the basilica had aged 20 years in a single day when it was flooded last year.
Damages in a hotel after a night of record-high water levels are pictured in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters
‘ON ITS KNEES’ Damages in a hotel after a night of record-high water levels are pictured in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters Some tourists appeared to enjoy the drama, with one man filmed swimming across Saint Mark’s Square wearing only shorts on Tuesday evening. “Venice is on its knees.. the art, the basilica, the shops and the homes, a disaster.. The city is bracing itself for the next high tide,” Zaia said on TV.
People walk outside during an exceptionally high water levels in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters
The luxury Hotel Gritti, a landmark of Venice which looks onto the Lagoon, was also flooded. People walk outside during an exceptionally high water levels in Venice, Italy November 13, 2019. Reuters On Wednesday morning the tide level fell to 145 cm but was expected to rise back to 160 cm during the day. Local authorities and the government’s civil protection unit will hold a news conference at 1100 GMT. | 0 |
Rich and poor nations must get over their disagreements about how to fight climate change and forge a new pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Monday. Speaking at a United Nations conference on global warming, Schwarzenegger urged countries to stop blaming each other for rising temperatures and work together to solve the problem. "The current stalemate between the developed and the developing worlds must be broken," Schwarzenegger said. "It is time we came together in a new international agreement that can be embraced by rich and poor nations alike." Schwarzenegger, a former movie star and body builder, has made reducing emissions a key policy goal of his governorship of California, the world's seventh largest economy. Wearing a green tie, the governor told delegates that rich and poor nations have different responsibilities in fighting climate change, but said it was time to stop the blame game. "The time has come to stop looking back at the Kyoto Protocol," he said. "The consequences of global climate change are so pressing ... it doesn't matter who was responsible for the past. What matters is who is answerable for the future. And that means all of us." U.N. climate change negotiations will take place in December in Bali to try to forge a way to cut emissions after Kyoto expires. Schwarzenegger, who backed a landmark 2006 California law to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020, urged leaders to stop talking and start acting. "California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action," he said. "I urge this body to push its members to action also." Schwarzenegger has sharply criticized the Bush administration for not doing enough on the issue, while praising European countries for showing leadership and developing an emissions-trading system . President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto treaty, which requires 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Bush says Kyoto unfairly burdens rich countries while exempting developing countries like China and India. Developing nations say rich states built up their economies without emissions restraints and argue that less-developed countries should have the same opportunity to establish their economies now. But as emissions from developing nations such as China and India grow, environmentalists say action by the developed world alone will not be enough to stop the warming trend. | 0 |
The UN panel of climate scientists said on Monday it was reviewing a report containing a little-known projection that Himalayan glaciers might vanish by 2035, a finding trenchantly criticised by the government. The 2007 UN panel report says global warming could cause the Himalaya's thousands of glaciers to vanish by 2035 if current warming rates continue. "We are looking into the issue of the Himalayan glaciers, and will take a position on it in the next two or three days," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters in an e-mail. Other experts have said the 10 major Asian rivers the glaciers feed could go dry in the next five decades. Hundreds of millions of people in India, Pakistan and China would be affected. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday questioned the findings of the 2007 report. "They are indeed receding and the rate is cause for great concern, Ramesh said of the glaciers, but he told reporters the 2035 forecast was "not based on an iota of scientific evidence". Other experts have said the 2035 projection was not based on peer-reviewed science. In London, The Times newspaper said the Indian scientist who first made the Himalayan thaw projection in 1999 now acknowledged it was "speculation". Flaws in IPCC reports can be damaging since the findings are a guide for government policy. The IPCC's core finding in 2007 was that it was more than 90 percent sure that mankind is the main cause of global warming, mainly by using fossil fuels. Ramesh said he had been accused of "voodoo science" in questioning the IPCC findings about the Himalayas in the past. The IPCC's 2007 report said: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate." However, the report also said of the glaciers: "Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 sq km (193,000 to 38,600 sq miles) by the year 2035." At the Copenhagen climate summit last month, Pachauri strongly defended the IPCC's core findings after a scandal over emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in England. In the email scandal, climate change sceptics accused researchers of colluding to suppress others' data. Ramesh had said in November that a paper commissioned by the government had found no conclusive evidence to link the retreat of Himalayan glaciers to climate change. He said many of India's 9,500 Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, but some are shrinking at a slower rate or even increasing. | 0 |
French-American Duflo becomes only the second female economics winner in the prize's 50-year history, as well as the youngest at 46. She shared the award equally with Indian-born American Banerjee and Kremer, also of the United States. The Academy said the work of the three economists had shown how the problem of poverty could be tackled by breaking it down into smaller and more precise questions in areas such as education and healthcare, making problems easier to tackle. "As a direct result of one of their studies, more than five million Indian children have benefited from effective programmes of remedial tutoring in school," the Academy said in a statement. "Another example is the heavy subsidies for preventive healthcare that have been introduced in many countries." The 9 million Swedish crown ($915,300) economics prize is a later addition to the five awards created in the will of industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, established by the Swedish central bank and first awarded in 1969. Economics is the last of the awards to be announced with the winners for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace having been unveiled over the course of last week. The 2018 Nobel Economics Prize was jointly awarded to U.S. economists William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, pioneers in adapting the western economic growth model to focus on environmental issues and sharing the benefits of technology. Nordhaus' recognition has proved controversial, with critics arguing the model he created to describe the interplay between the economy and the climate seriously underestimated climate change-related risks. | 2 |
Scientists are outfitting elephant seals and self-propelled water gliders with monitoring equipment to unlock the oceans' secrets and boost understanding of the impacts of climate change. Oceans regulate the world's climate by soaking up heat and shifting it around the globe. They also absorb huge amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide, acting as a brake on the pace of climate change. But scientists say they need to ramp up a global monitoring network, with the Southern Ocean between Australia and Antarctica playing a key role. The Southern Ocean is a major "sink" of mankind's carbon emissions and an engine of the world's climate. "To understand the rate of climate change, we need to understand these ocean processes, like how fast it can sequester heat and carbon," said oceanographer Susan Wijffels, a group leader for Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System, or IMOS. "So what the ocean does affects how fast the system can move and the regional patterns of climate change," she told Reuters on Friday by telephone from a climate conference in Hobart, Tasmania. Scientists also need to better understand natural ocean cycles that affect weather on land to improve long-term forecasts for crops and water management for cities. IMOS groups researchers across Australian universities and research bodies and also links scientists in the United States, Asia and Europe. A recent funding boost means the team can outfit about 100 elephant seals to collect data from the depths around Antarctica. A small device with an antenna is attached to the heads of the seals to measure temperature, salinity and pressure as the animals dive for food. BLIND SPOT Self-propelled gliders about 2 meters (six feet) long will also be deployed in the seas around Australia to a depth of up to 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) to take measurements. Fitted with wings and a rudder, the gliders can stay at sea for months and can be controlled remotely. A key focus is the area of sea ice around Antarctica where existing self-propelled measurement devices, called Argos, can't easily function because they need to surface regularly to send data to satellites. Argos are cylinders that rise and fall to depths of up to 2 km (one mile). Thousands have been deployed globally. New types of Argos are being developed that can "sense" breaks in the sea ice to send their data. "The oceans under the ice are actually a blind spot in the global and national observing systems," Wijffels said. "We're starting to suspect the ocean is carrying heat into the sea ice zone," she added, and this could be playing a role in destabilizing the vast iceshelves of Greenland and Antarctica. Scientists say Greenland has enough ice to raise sea levels by 7 meters (23 feet) if it all melted. Rising amounts of carbon dioxide are also making oceans more acidic, affecting sea creatures' ability to make shells and there are fears increased acidity could curb the ocean's ability to mop up carbon. The programme also aims to boost monitoring of major currents around Australia that shift heat around the planet, including through the Lombok Strait near Bali in Indonesia, via deep-ocean moorings. Such measurements were more common in the North Atlantic but the Southern Hemisphere remained a major gap, Wijffels said. | 6 |
Asia-Pacific leaders tackled security issues, including food safety, on the last day of their summit on Sunday after compromising on climate change a day earlier with a vague plan to reduce greenhouse emissions. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum would turn to "human security" issues at their retreat in Sydney Opera House, including terrorism, food safety and pandemics. Pacific Rim leaders, including US President George W. Bush, China's President Hu Jintao and Russia's Vladimir Putin adopted the "Sydney Declaration" on Saturday, calling on members to set voluntary, non-binding targets to cut emissions, while increasing energy efficiency and forests. Proponents say the declaration creates consensus on the thorny climate change issue and will carry weight at a series of meetings in Washington, New York and Bali about replacing the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012. But green groups were dismissive. "The Sydney Declaration is really just a Sydney distraction from real action on climate change," Greenpeace energy campaigner Catherine Fitzpatrick said. The declaration was seen as a compromise between rich and poor APEC economies, which together account for about 60 percent of the world's economy. FOOD SAFETY TASKFORCE Earlier this week, APEC ministers agreed to set up a food safety taskforce, chaired by China and Australia, to ensure the health and safety of the region's population. The action was not aimed at China, which has been grappling with a series of product recalls in a number of countries, ranging from toys to toothpaste, APEC host Australia said. APEC trade and foreign ministers issued a statement on Thursday saying they recognised the need to improve food safety to ensure "the health and safety of our populations". The ministers' statement, which is usually adopted by their leaders at the end of their summit, also said terrorism remained "a persistent, evolving and long-term threat to our prosperity and the security of our people". A study in Singapore found the impact on APEC economies from a major terrorist attack would be $137 billion in lost GDP and $159 billion in reduced trade. Other threats to regional economic growth included natural disasters, food supply contamination and pandemics, such as bird flu, they said, approving a disaster recovery programme. The leaders are also expected to issue a separate statement calling for a conclusion to world trade talks that have dragged on for six years. US President George W. Bush during the APEC meetings called for more flexibility in global trade talks, saying the Doha round of talks in Geneva was a "once-in-a-generation opportunity". APEC's 21-member economies account for half of global trade. Trade negotiators may be edging closer to a deal on the most divisive issues in the Doha talks, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said in a television interview on Saturday. "There is a strong sense that it's make-or-break moment. It may take a few weeks, but my sense is that there is a lot of focus and energy," Lamy told CNBC in a taped interview. | 0 |
When 96 people from China arrived at Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei after paying hundreds of dollars to compete in a music contest offering big cash prizes, they soon discovered they'd been swindled. A con artist had faked invitations from the city of Taipei, pocketed the contest entry fees and abandoned the "contestants" at the airport when they arrived in mid-February. Some of the musicians were so angry that they refused to return home. Such scams are expected to increase in Asia, particularly greater China, as the economic downturn motivates swindlers to prey on the down-and-out looking for a change in their luck, crime experts say. "We see more and more victims now because of the economic crisis," said Chu Yiu-kong, a criminologist at Hong Kong University. "Chinese people like money a lot, so it's easy to get trapped. Chinese people also believe in lucky opportunities, especially in difficult times." Trade-reliant Asian economies are reeling from a global slump. Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan are in recession and major companies in the region are cutting production, freezing job recruitment and laying off workers to save money. Criminologists say con artists often thrive in such desperate economic climates. Scams which police say are particularly likely to increase include job search deception, fraudulent money lending and getting people to pay hefty fees to obtain bogus lottery winnings or buy into supposedly lucrative business opportunities. In one type of scam that has recently become popular, swindlers prey on desperate job seekers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China by posing as recruiters and asking for applicants to invest in the companies they hope to join. Those firms and the "investment" vanish by the time job seekers call back about their applications. "We don't dare go to any roadside job agencies," said Zhou Yang, 26, of the south China boomtown of Shenzhen. "They cheat you most of the time." Another creative scam artist in south China made 800,000 yuan ($117,000) last year by sending mobile phone text messages using a common Chinese name demanding repayment of a debt, local media said. Most of those who fell for the trick owed money to various people and assumed they were being pressed for repayment. Such scams add misery to those already struggling to make ends meet. "People will get desperate and morals will decline," said Chang Chin-lan, a prevention officer with Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau. RISING DECEPTION Deception crimes rose by a third in Taiwan from about 31,000 in 2007 to 41,000 in 2008, police statistics show. Hong Kong police logged a similar surge in deception crimes in the fourth quarter of 2008, from 1,071 to 1,414 cases. In Singapore, which anticipates more phone scams and other impersonation frauds this year as the economy sags, police say that "cheating and related offences" have jumped about 10 percent from 2,917 in 2006 to 3,254 last year. "Phone scams are expected to continue in these tough economic times and culprits may come up with new methods of scams designed to 'scare' or 'entice' victims into parting with their money," the Singapore Police Force warned on its website. Economic hardship aside, more sophisticated technology has also helped to fuel the growth in scams, allowing con artists to cast their nets wider and dupe people across borders. Costly hoaxes began appearing en masse in Asia around 2001 with the rise of the Internet and mobile phones, which allow anonymity and shelter away from the long-arm of the law, sometimes several countries away, said Tsai Tien-mu, a criminology professor at Taipei Police College. "It's easy for anyone to reach anyone," Tsai said. "Before, an aggressor had to meet the victim." As con artists can easily hide, police struggle to crack fraud cases. Police officers in Taiwan solve just 10 percent of their cases. In Hong Kong, police focus more on public education than tracking down individual con artists, said Chu of Hong Kong University. Often the swindlers are in China, far beyond the reach of law enforcement authorities in Hong Kong. Police in mainland China are not much use for those who are fleeced, said Zhou, the Shenzhen job seeker. "Even if you get cheated, calling the police is no use. It's rare that they actually show up and help you," said Zhou. | 4 |
President George W. Bush's decision to intervene in setting air pollution standards is part of a longstanding administration pattern of meddling in environmental science, watchdog groups said on Friday. In cases this week dealing with polar bears, ozone smog and environmental research, groups that monitor these decisions faulted the Bush administration for slighting science in favor of politics. Bush overruled officials of the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken U.S. standards for smog-forming ozone meant to protect parks, crops and wildlife. On Wednesday, the agency tightened a different ozone standard aimed at protecting human health, but not as much as its own scientists unanimously recommended. Asked why the president intervened, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "What we were trying to do on the smog decision was try to have a decision that was consistent with our interpretation of the statute. This was not a weakening of regulations or standards governing ozone, but it was an effort to make those standards consistent." Environmental and scientific groups disagreed, saying the decision benefits coal-fired power plants and other industries that emit ground-level ozone. In addition to harming plants, ozone smog endangers human health, especially the young, the elderly and those with respiratory problems. "This is a pattern unfortunately that extends across the Environmental Protection Agency, across pretty much every science based agency in the federal government," said Tim Donaghy of the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'AN EPIDEMIC OF INTERFERENCE' "In the last several years, there has been an epidemic of interference in the work of scientists," Donaghy said by telephone. "And often this happens because interfering in the science is an easy way in winning the battle over the policy." The Clean Air Act, which includes the ozone standards, forbids consideration of any other factor but science in making this kind of decision. But in announcing the new standards on Wednesday, EPA chief Stephen Johnson suggested the act should be changed to include economic factors. The ozone decision showed that "real science appears to have been tainted by political science," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. Mark Wenzler of the National Parks Conservation Association concurred. "The scientists carefully explained what needed to be done to protect plants and wildlife and the administration completely ignored the science and decided it would protect industry from having to do anything in addition to what they're doing," he said. On another front, the EPA drew criticism for closing some of its 26 research libraries to save money. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the changes "could have impaired the continued delivery of library materials and services to its staff and the public." In practice, the library move meant scientists who can't get to EPA libraries have to go online, where only about 10 percent of the agency's collections are available. On Monday, environmental groups sued the Interior Department for failing to meet a court deadline to decide whether polar bears are threatened by climate change under the Endangered Species Act. The EPA said its lawyers were still considering the case. | 0 |
"Because penguins are fish eaters, the loss of the umami taste is especially perplexing," said study leader Jianzhi "George" Zhang, professor in department of ecology and evolutionary biology.Penguins eat fish so people would guess that they need the umami receptor genes -- but for some reason, they do not have them."These findings are surprising and puzzling and we do not have a good explanation for them. But we have a few ideas," Zhang added.He suspects the sensory changes are tied to ancient climate cooling events in Antarctica where penguins originated.The leading hypothesis is that the genes were lost after cold Antarctic temperatures interfered with taste perception.Vertebrates typically possess five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami.Previous genetic studies showed that the sweet taste receptor gene is absent from the genomes of all birds examined to date.For the study, Zhang and his colleagues took a closer look at the Adelie and emperor penguins data.In addition, they analysed bird tissue samples (chinstrap, rockhopper and king penguins, plus eight other closely related non-penguin bird species).They also reviewed publicly available genomes of 14 other non-penguin bird species.They found that all penguin species lack functional genes for the receptors of sweet, umami and bitter tastes.In the Adelie and emperor genomes, umami and bitter taste receptor genes have become "pseudogenes", genetic sequences resembling a gene but lacking the ability to encode proteins.The genomes of all non-penguin birds studied -- including egrets, finches, flycatchers, parrots, macaws, falcons, chickens and mallards -- contain the genes for the umami and bitter tastes but, as expected, lack receptors for the sweet taste."The results strongly suggest that umami and bitter tastes were lost in the common ancestor of all penguins, whereas the sweet taste was lost earlier," the authors wrote.Penguins originated in Antarctica after their separation from tubenose seabirds around 60 million years ago and the major penguin groups separated from one another about 23 million years ago."The taste loss likely occurred during that 37-million-year span which included periods of dramatic climate cooling in Antarctica," Zhang said.The paper is forthcoming in the journal Current Biology. | 6 |
Climate change is now messing with the monsoon, making seasonal rains more intense and less predictable. Worse, decades of short-sighted government policies are leaving millions of Indians defenceless in the age of climate disruptions — especially the poor. After years of drought, a struggling farmer named Fakir Mohammed stares at a field of corn ruined by pests and unseasonably late rains. Rajeshree Chavan, a seamstress in Mumbai, has to sweep the sludge out of her flooded ground-floor apartment not once, but twice during this year’s exceptionally fierce monsoon. The lakes that once held the rains in the bursting city of Bangalore are clogged with plastic and sewage. Groundwater is drawn faster than nature can replenish it. Water being water, people settle for what they can find. In a parched village on the eastern plains, they gather around a shallow, fetid stream because that’s all there is. In Delhi, they worship in a river they hold sacred, even when it’s covered in toxic foam from industrial runoff. In Chennai, where kitchen taps have been dry for months, women sprint downstairs with neon plastic pots under their arms when they hear a water truck screech to a halt on their block. The rains are more erratic today. There’s no telling when they might start, nor how late they might stay. This year, India experienced its wettest September in a century; more than 1,600 people were killed by floods; and even as the traditional harvest festivals rolled round in October, parts of the country remained inundated.
A dry well that ran out of water two years before, in Parshoi, Uttar Pradesh, India, Jun 14, 2019. The New York Times
Even more troubling, extreme rainfall is more common and more extreme. Over the past century, the number of days with very heavy rains has increased, with longer dry spells stretching out in between. Less common are the sure and steady rains that can reliably penetrate the soil. This is ruinous for a country that gets the vast share of its water from the clouds. A dry well that ran out of water two years before, in Parshoi, Uttar Pradesh, India, Jun 14, 2019. The New York Times The problem is especially acute across the largely poor central Indian belt that stretches from western Maharashtra state to the Bay of Bengal in the east: Over the past 70 years, extreme rainfall events have increased threefold in the region, according to a recent scientific paper, while total annual rainfall has measurably declined. “Global warming has destroyed the concept of the monsoon,” said Raghu Murtugudde, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland and an author of the paper. “We have to throw away the prose and poetry written over millennia and start writing new ones!” India’s insurance policy against droughts, the Himalayas, is at risk, too. The majestic mountains are projected to lose a third of their ice by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their current pace. But, as scientists are quick to point out, climate change isn’t the only culprit to blame for India’s water woes. Decades of greed and mismanagement are far more culpable. The lush forests that help to hold the rains continue to be cleared. Developers are given the green light to pave over creeks and lakes. Government subsidies encourage the over-extraction of groundwater. The future is ominous for India’s 1.3 billion people. By 2050, the World Bank estimates, erratic rainfall, combined with rising temperatures, stand to “depress the living standards of nearly half the country’s population.” Rural India: Brutal Drought
A girl walks across the cracked dry ground in the village of Charam in Uttar Pradesh, India, Jun 14, 2019. The New York Times
The Marathwada region, stretching out across western India, is known for its cruel, hot summers. Hardly any rivers cut through it, which means that Marathwada’s people rely almost entirely on the monsoon to fill the wells and seep into the black cotton soil. A girl walks across the cracked dry ground in the village of Charam in Uttar Pradesh, India, Jun 14, 2019. The New York Times Marathwada is also an object lesson in how government decisions that have nothing to do with climate change can have profoundly painful consequences in the era of climate change. In October, just weeks before the traditional harvest season, Fakir Mohammed led me through his family’s 1-1/2-acre plot of land. A neem tree stood in the middle of the fields. Lie under it, Mohammed said with pride, and you’ll never get sick. The same could not be said of his land. The rains had been deficient for most of the past nine years. This year, they came late, and when they came, the thirsty ground drank everything. Then, an infestation of fall armyworm attacked Mohammed’s corn. The millet was ravaged by a fly. The cotton had flowered, but Mohammed could tell it would be a paltry harvest. “We worked very hard,” he said. “But we’ll get nothing out of this.” Worse, the rains this year did nothing to solve the community’s drinking water shortage. Even at the end of the monsoon, Mohammed’s well was dry. A dam nearby, built to supply drinking water to his village and nearly 20 others, had turned to scrubland, fit only for a few skinny cows to graze. Water is so precious that the women of his family said they drank half a cup if they wanted a whole one. They went without a daily shower so their children could go to school clean and fresh. When their nerves were frayed, they smacked a child who spilled a cup by accident. Every day, four government trucks came down the muddy lane to fill the village water tank, which met a fraction of what the village needs. Most people bought drinking water from far away. Mohammed was grateful for whatever the clouds had to give this year, but he was also anxious. “There’s no water to drink, but at least it’s good for the fields,” he said. “I’m scared in my heart. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.” Mohammed, who says he is around 60, is not wrong to worry. Since 1950, annual rainfall has declined by 15% across Marathwada, according to an analysis by Roxy Mathew Koll, a monsoon specialist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. In that same period, cloudbursts have shot up threefold. But here’s what’s shocking. Also during that same period, Marathwada, along with the rest of India, has seen a boom in the production of one of thirstiest crops on Earth: sugar cane. Down the road from Mohammed’s village, on land that gets water from an upstream dam, farmers had planted acres and acres with sugar cane. Why? Because sugar mills had sprung up across the state, some owned by politicians and their friends. They were ready to pay handsomely for cane.
Foam from industrial runoff drifts past worshipers in the Yamuna River in New Delhi, Nov 2, 2019. The New York Times
Bizarrely, the taxpayers of India, one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, have aided sugar producers handsomely. The government subsidizes electricity, encouraging farmers to pump groundwater for their sugar cane fields, as well as fertilizers, which are used in vast quantities for sugar. State-owned banks offer cheap loans, which are sometimes written off, especially when politicians are courting farmers’ votes. This year, the government has approved nearly $880 million in export subsidies for sugar mills. Foam from industrial runoff drifts past worshipers in the Yamuna River in New Delhi, Nov 2, 2019. The New York Times With all those perks, sugar cane production has grown faster than any other crop since independence from British rule in 1947, making India the world’s biggest sugar producer, according to an analysis by Ramanan Laxminarayan, a researcher at the Princeton Environmental Institute. Three-fourths of irrigated sugar cane production takes place in areas under “extremely high water stress,” the World Resources Institute found. In October, just before the Hindu festival to mark the harvest, another Marathwada farmer named Ashok Pawar sent me pictures of ruin: Freakish rains had washed away his soy and mung beans. No one in his village had seen anything like it so late in the season. Urban India: Floods in Mumbai The image of the potbellied Hindu god, Ganesha, that hangs above Savita Vilas Kasurde’s narrow doorway is intended to keep obstacles away from her family’s path. The same cannot be said for the Mithi River, which flows a few steps from Kasurde’s door. Its path has been blocked every which way as it winds through this city of 13 million people. Mumbai’s international airport straddles the Mithi; you can see the planes taking off from Kasurde’s street. Sewage and rubbish pour into the Mithi. A vast spread of high-rises have been built on land reclaimed from the Mithi, along with higgledy-piggledy working class enclaves like this one, perched precariously on its edge. They are the ones that flood first and flood worst after a heavy rain. The city’s other natural defence against floods, mangrove trees, have been pulled out to make room for concrete. Kasurde is a seasoned veteran. When the water rises, she hauls her fridge on top of the highest table, unplugs the television, wraps her children’s school books in plastic. When the water is up to her knees, she takes it all upstairs to the second floor bedroom. The power goes out when it rains hard. Going to the shared neighbourhood toilet means wading through fetid waters. “We just sit in the dark,” Kasurde said. Mumbai got more rain this year than it had in 65 years, and several times this season, it came in exceptionally heavy downpours. The drains overflowed. The lanes filled with muck. Commuter trains were disrupted. Flights were diverted. Several times in Kasurde’s neighbourhood, schools turned to storm shelters. Those without an upstairs room sloshed through the water to get there. After each flood, as the waters began to recede, they returned to cover their noses and sweep the water and sludge out of their homes. Mosquitoes can breed in the puddles of dirty water. A dengue outbreak was the last thing they needed. This is what worried Rajeshree Chavan nearby when I saw her in the middle of the monsoon. She had managed to save her sewing machine, the source of her livelihood, twice this year when her ground floor room flooded. She had to throw away a sack of rice and her kids’ clothes. It infuriated her that politicians came through only when they were trolling for votes. Even the state’s top politician was here earlier in the year, she said. He wanted the neighbourhood’s support for the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, she recalled. He promised new houses for people on higher ground, in the northern suburbs of the city. He left after giving symbolic plastic keys to five families. © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
The European Union should speedily work out ways to help developing nations fight global warming to avert a "Catch 22" impasse that could brake action worldwide, the UN's top climate change official said on Monday. "This is a priority that all industrialised countries need to get moving on quickly," Yvo de Boer told Reuters of a message he would give to EU environment ministers at a meeting in Brussels later on Monday. About 190 nations agreed in Bali, Indonesia, in December to set, by the end of 2009, a global plan to fight climate change, widening the UN's Kyoto Protocol binding 37 industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gases until 2012. "As Bali indicated, we need some kind of real, measurable and verifiable additional flow of resources," de Boer said. Rich nations should step up aid to help the poor curb rising emissions of greenhouse gases. That in turn would encourage developing states to diversify their economies away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energies. Commitment by developing nations, led by China and India, is in turn a condition for many rich nations, led by the United States which worries about a loss of jobs, to curb emissions. The United States is the only rich nation outside Kyoto. "It's becoming a bit of a Catch 22 -- if you can't generate the resources to engage developing countries...then it makes it difficult for the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia and then possibly the EU to move forwards," he said. "Then things become difficult," said de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Secretariat in Bonn. ' FLOODS, HEATWAVES The EU says it is a leader in fighting climate change that the U.N. Climate Panel says will bring more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising seas this century. De Boer said promising ideas for new funding include auctioning rights to emit carbon dioxide in the EU and using some of the proceeds to help developing nations. Another option was to increase a levy on a Kyoto project that allows rich nations to invest in cutting greenhouse gases in developing nations. And EU budgets for research and development could help curb climate change. De Boer said he would tell EU ministers: "If you don't generate the resources for developing countries then they won't engage and it will be difficult for you to engage." He also urged French President Nicolas Sarkozy to complete an EU package of climate measures during the French EU presidency in the second half of 2008. In January, the EU Commission outlined proposals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, raising use of renewable energy in power production to 20 percent and using 10 percent of biofuels in transport by 2020. "It's important that under the French presidency in the second half that the package is finalised so that it can go to (the European) parliament," de Boer said. France and Germany last week said that the plan might jeopardise European jobs. "The European Union has stepped into this with eyes wide open. And now it has to deliver" by sharing out the burden, de Boer said. "Signals about how the target is going to be achieved are important for (the EU's) international credibility." -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: | 4 |
The royal couple, on a five-day visit, also toured a school and a national park in the capital Islamabad where they chatted with children and admired their drawings. The trip, which focuses on climate change and access to education, has been described by palace officials as the most complex the couple have undertaken due to security issues. On Tuesday afternoon, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge met Khan at his official residence. William's mother Princess Diana, a hugely popular figure in Pakistan, visited Pakistan several times in the 1990s and helped Khan raise money for a cancer hospital. Earlier William and Kate met students at an Islamabad Model College for Girls, discussing education with a group of older students and visiting the classrooms of younger students. As they left, a group of girls sang one of Pakistan's national songs and the couple greeted preschoolers who had lined up to chant 'bye bye'. They then visited the Margallah Hills National Park on the edge of Islamabad, which is under threat from poaching, wildfires, invasive species and littering. For the morning events, Kate wore a periwinkle blue silk shalwar kameez, the national outfit of Pakistan consisting of a loose tunic worn over trousers. Many on social media and in the fashion industry had been hoping she would don the outfit, which Princess Diana had worn during visits. The designer, Maheen Khan said on Twitter: "It is an honour to have been asked to create this outfit for the Duchess." The Duchess of Cambridge's fashion choices, including a bright green tunic over white pants to meet with the Prime Minister, appeared to echo many of the colours and outfits worn by Diana. Foreign policy experts and officials have said the trip, the first by a British royal family member in more than a decade and made at the request of the British foreign office, represented a soft power push, which may help both sides further their diplomatic aims. It comes as Britain seeks to reinvigorate its foreign relationships as the deadline looms for its departure from the European Union, while Pakistan works to repair its global image to boost tourism and investment. | 0 |
MANILA, Wed Jun 17, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Climate change impacts such as lower crop production will have overwhelming effects on Asia and a broader climate pact being negotiated this year is crucial to minimising the effects, a UN official said on Wednesday. Developed nations are under intense pressure to agree to deep 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to try to seal an agreement at the end of this year that will replace the Kyoto Protocol. "Climate change impacts will be overwhelmingly severe for Asia," Eric Hall, spokesman for the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, told a forum at the Asian Development Bank in Manila. "They will exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and they have the potential to throw countries back into the poverty trap." Asia's rapidly growing population is already home to more than half of humanity and a large portion of the world's poorest people. Hall said climate change had started threatening development in the region and could continue to put agricultural production and food security at risk by the 2020s. "Coastal cities, including Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila and Shanghai will be increasingly vulnerable to sea-level rise, as well as flooding and storm surges due to unpredictable weather patterns," he said. An ADB study released in April showed that Southeast Asian economies could lose as much as 6.7 percent of combined gross domestic product yearly by 2100, more than twice the global average loss, due to global warming. Some countries say developed nations are using the global financial crisis as an excuse to cut back on their emissions reduction commitments. "But the money spent on junk food can reforest the entire equatorial belt," said Rachmat Witoelar, the minister of state for environment in Indonesia. Other participants at the ADB forum on climate change at its headquarters think nations cannot afford to set aside climate concerns. "One might say, we can sequence this first, get the financial crisis under control and then turn to other issues regarding climate," said Vinod Thomas from the World Bank. "But that luxury doesn't exist anymore. The big question in financing would be whether in addition to the funds that we're talking about, all the money that is going into fiscal expansion would have salutary effects on the climate crisis." Financial and technological resources needed to aid developing countries in adopting climate mitigation measures are estimated to reach $250 billion a year in 2020, according to United Nations. But it is far from certain if nations will agree on funding mechanisms that will raise and managed such large annual sums. | 0 |
A 190-nation UN climate meeting in Bali from Dec 3-14 is seeking to launch two years of formal negotiations meant to end with agreement on a broad new UN pact to fight global warming. About 10,000 delegates on the Indonesian island are considering a draft document, issued by Indonesia, Australia and South Africa, that lays out a "roadmap" of guiding principles for the talks on a UN treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. THE PROBLEM Kyoto, the current UN pact for slowing warming, binds 36 industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gases by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 to curb ever more floods, droughts, a spread of disease and rising seas. But Kyoto countries make up only about a third of world greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, which are surging when scientists say they need to be axed. The United States is outside Kyoto and developing nations such as China, India, Brazil have no 2008-2012 targets. Many countries want a 2009 deadline to work out a broad new treaty -- that would give parliaments three years to ratify and help plan before Kyoto's first period runs out on Dec. 31, 2012. PRINCIPLES FOR TALKS The draft says: -- There is "unequivocal scientific evidence" that rich nations will have to cut emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst impacts. -- Global emissions will "need to peak in the next 10 to 15 years and be reduced to very low levels, well below half of levels in 2000 by 2050." -- "The challenge of climate change calls for effective participation by all countries", led by rich nations. Ending poverty will remain the top priority for developing nations. ACTIONS NEEDED The draft says that countries will step up actions to curb climate change, such as: -- For developed nations, "quantified national emission objectives". For poor nations, an easier goal of actions to "limit the growth of, or reduce, emissions". -- New policies and incentives to help reduce emissions from deforestation by developing countries, more sharing of green technologies, new financing and investment, more efforts to help countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. LAUNCH OF NEW TALKS The draft lays out three options: 1) Two years of informal talks that do not necessarily lead to a new treaty. 2) Global talks to lead to a new treaty at a conference to be held in Copenhagen in late 2009. In addition, there would be separate talks on new commitments by current Kyoto participants. 3) Twin-track talks among all nations, immediately merging with the Kyoto track, leading to a new treaty in Copenhagen in 2009. TIMETABLE The first talks will be held at a meeting of senior officials, now set for June 2008. That meeting would work out a detailed timetable. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ | 0 |
Just three days before world leaders are expected at the table to seal a UN climate pact, ministers in Copenhagen were struggling to break deadlock that threatens to derail the whole process. Organizers of the talks said environment ministers would work deep into night to narrow wide differences, saying the bulk of the work must be complete before some 130 leaders formally join the Dec 7-18 meeting on Thursday. "We have seen significant progress in a number of areas but
U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said there had been significant progress in several areas, "but we haven't seen enough of it...We are in a very important phase." Danish president of the talks Connie Hedegaard urged swifter progress, likening the climax of the two-year talks to a looming school exam. "It's just like schoolchildren. If they have a very long deadline to deliver an exercise they wait for the last moment," she said. Talks remained stalled after a stand-off the previous day, held up by disputes over the level of emissions cuts by rich countries and a long-term global target to curb a rise in global temperatures which could trigger rising sea levels, floods and drought. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin that she was "a bit nervous" about the lack of progress. "There's a great deal yet to do, the parties are quite far apart on a fair number of issues," said Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, adding he did not expect any change in U.S. targets for emission curbs during the talks. Business leaders say they want a clear deal with short and long-term targets so that they can invest appropriately. "There are still lots of issues that will likely be discussed only at the ministerial level, and that gives us some cause for concern," said Abyd Karmali, global head of emissions trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Major U.S. businesses including Duke Energy, Microsoft and Dow Chemical called for tough U.S. emissions cuts which would mobilize a shift to a greener economy. Draft texts dated Tuesday showed that national negotiators had stripped out figures for long-term global goals and rich nation emissions cuts by 2020 from last week's U.N. texts. The numbers could be re-inserted if agreement is reached. India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh told Reuters that the talks could even break down on "serious" outstanding issues. "There is confusion and lack of clarity at this stage." "There could be breakdown on many issues." Brazil's climate change ambassador Sergio Serra was more upbeat -- "You can have a breakthrough ... with the pressure of time and of public opinion ," he told Reuters.
48 HOURS Ministers expected to work late into the night. "It's very clear that ministers have to be extremely busy and focused over the next 48 hours if we are going to make the success we are trying to make," said Hedegaard. "It is not their (leaders') role to negotiate text," said Serra, emphasizing that most work must be done by Thursday. The Copenhagen talks have stumbled over a long-running rich-poor rift on addressing the threat of climate change. A "BASIC" group of China, India, Brazil and South Africa was "coordinating positions, almost on an hourly basis," India's Ramesh said, reinforcing the entrenched rich-poor positions. South African Environment Minister Buyelwa Sonjica, speaking for the group, said pledges by developed nations for emissions cuts were "less than ambitious and ... inconsistent with the science." Developing nations also want the industrialized world to pay poorer countries to prepare for and slow climate change. Japan would offer $10 billion in aid over three years to 2012 to help developing countries fight global warming, including steps to protect biodiversity, a Japanese newspaper said on Tuesday. The European Union has offered a similar sum. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in Paris that he hoped U.S. President Barack Obama supported "fast start" aid. "President Obama often speaks about his links with Africa, it is time to show it," he said. Most developed countries support interim climate funds of about $30 billion from 2010-2012 to help poorer nations, many of which say that's not enough. Another thorny issue was how far developing nations should be bound to targets to slow their growth in emissions, a process known as measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). "The MRV issue is a very serious divider," said India's Ramesh. The issue "might not sound that sexy but its still a very crucial part because that is where there are red lines to different parties," said Hedegaard. | 0 |
The decree's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan that required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a critical element in helping the United States meet its commitments to a global climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015. The so-called "Energy Independence" order also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production, and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions. "I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations," Trump said at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters, speaking on a stage lined with coal miners. The wide-ranging order is the boldest yet in Trump’s broader push to cut environmental regulation to revive the drilling and mining industries, a promise he made repeatedly during the presidential campaign. But energy analysts and executives have questioned whether the moves will have a big effect on their industries, and environmentalists have called them reckless. "I cannot tell you how many jobs the executive order is going to create but I can tell you that it provides confidence in this administration’s commitment to the coal industry," Kentucky Coal Association president Tyler White told Reuters. Trump signed the order with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Vice President Mike Pence by his side. US presidents have aimed to reduce US dependence on foreign oil since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, which triggered soaring prices. But the United States still imports about 7.9 million barrels of crude oil a day, almost enough meet total oil demand in Japan and India combined. While Trump's administration has said reducing environmental regulation will create jobs, some green groups have countered that rules supporting clean energy have done the same. The number of jobs in the US wind power industry rose 32 percent last year while solar power jobs rose by 25 percent, according to a Department of Energy study. 'Assault on American values' Environmental groups hurled scorn on Trump's order, arguing it is dangerous and goes against the broader global trend toward cleaner energy technologies. "These actions are an assault on American values and they endanger the health, safety and prosperity of every American," said billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, the head of activist group NextGen Climate. Green group Earthjustice was one of many organizations that said it will fight the order both in and out of court. "This order ignores the law and scientific reality," said its president, Trip Van Noppen. An overwhelming majority of scientists believe that human use of oil and coal for energy is a main driver of climate change, causing a damaging rise in sea levels, droughts, and more frequent violent storms. But Trump and several members of his administration have doubts about climate change, and Trump promised during his campaign to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, arguing it would hurt US business. Since being elected Trump has been mum on the Paris deal and the executive order does not address it. Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change who helped broker the Paris accord, lamented Trump's order. "Trying to make fossil fuels remain competitive in the face of a booming clean renewable power sector, with the clean air and plentiful jobs it continues to generate, is going against the flow of economics," she said. The order will direct the EPA to start a formal "review" process to undo the Clean Power Plan, which was introduced by Obama in 2014 but was never implemented in part because of legal challenges brought by Republican-controlled states. The Clean Power Plan required states to collectively cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Some 85 percent of US states are on track to meet the targets despite the fact the rule has not been implemented, according to Bill Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, a group of state and local air pollution control agencies. Trump’s order also lifts the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management's temporary ban on coal leasing on federal property put in place by Obama in 2016 as part of a review to study the program's impact on climate change and ensure royalty revenues were fair to taxpayers. It also asks federal agencies to discount the cost of carbon in policy decisions and the weight of climate change considerations in infrastructure permitting, and reverses rules limiting methane leakage from oil and gas facilities. | 0 |
L'AQUILA, Italy, Thu Jul 9, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US President Barack Obama said at the G8 summit on Thursday there is still time to close the gap with developing powers on climate change, after the UN chief criticised the G8 for not going hard enough. On the first day of the meeting in L'Aquila in Italy, the G8 failed to get China and India to accept the goal of halving emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. Obama, hoping to make his mark on his first Group of Eight summit by chairing a meeting of rich and emerging powers on the environment, said progress could still be made before talks on a new UN climate change treaty in Copenhagen in December. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama told Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that "there was still time in which they could close the gap on that disagreement in time for that important (meeting)". Obama was due to chair the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF), which was likely to agree to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) versus pre-industrial levels but not to agree on the scale of emission cuts. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said progress on climate change at the G8 was so far "not enough". "This is politically and morally (an) imperative and historic responsibility ... for the future of humanity, even for the future of the planet Earth," the U.N. chief said. Progress was hampered by the absence of Chinese President Hu Jintao, who left L'Aquila to attend to ethnic clashes in China's northwest that have killed 156 people. SHARING THE BURDEN Britain's Gordon Brown said he hoped the temperature target would be agree by "all the countries around the table today" -- the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia, plus emerging powers like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico. But one G8 source said it was "not realistic" to expect a deal on emissions. India said developing countries first wanted to see rich nation plans to provide financing to help them cope with ever more floods, heatwaves, storms and rising sea levels. They also want to see rich nations make deeper cuts by 2020. Temperatures have already risen by about 0.7 Celsius since the Industrial Revolution ushered in widespread use of fossil fuels. Italy's prime minister said everyone should share the burden of tackling the problem. "It would not be productive if European countries, Japan, the United States and Canada accepted cuts that are economically damaging while more than 5 billion people in other countries carried on as before," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said. ECONOMY, CURRENCIES, TRADE The fragile state of the world economy dominated the first day of the G8 summit, with rich nations acknowledging there were still significant risks to financial stability. Ahead of Thursday's broader, emerging nations complained that they are suffering heavily from a crisis that was not of their making. China, India and Brazil have all questioned whether the world should start seeking a new global reserve currency as an alternative to the dollar. They have said they may raise this on Thursday after discussing it amongst themselves on Wednesday. Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said developing economies in the so-called "G5" had suggested using alternative currencies to settle trade among themselves. The debate is very sensitive in financial markets, which are wary of risks to US asset values, and is unlikely to progress far in L'Aquila. The G8 and G5 did hope for progress on the stalled Doha trade talks, with agreement possible on concluding them by 2010. Launched in 2001 to help poor countries prosper, the Doha round has stumbled on proposed tariff and subsidy cuts. The G5 said it was committed to address outstanding problems on Doha which would provide "a major stimulus to the restoration of confidence in world markets". But it urged rich nations to tear down trade barriers and restore credit to poor countries. | 0 |
That favourite is President Emmanuel Macron, 44, who has
opted to stay above the fray, delaying his decision to declare he is running
until sometime close to the March deadline, yet another way to indulge his
penchant for keeping his opponents guessing. Comfortable in his lofty centrist perch, Macron has watched
as the right and extreme-right tear one another to shreds. Immigration and
security have largely pushed out other themes, from climate change to the
ballooning debt France has accumulated in fighting the coronavirus crisis. “To call your child ‘Mohammed’ is to colonise France,” says
Éric Zemmour, the far-right upstart of the election who has parlayed his
notoriety as a TV pundit into a platform of anti-immigrant vitriol. Only he, in his telling, stands between French civilization
and its conquest by Islam and “woke” American political correctness. Like
former President Donald Trump, to whom he spoke this week, Zemmour uses
constant provocation to stay at the top of the news. Still, Macron has a clear lead in polls, which give him
about 25% of the vote in the first round of the election on April 10. Zemmour
and two other right-wing candidates are in the 12%-18% range. Splintered
left-wing parties are trailing and, for now, seem like virtual spectators for
the first time since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958. France generally leans right; this time it has lurched. “The
left lost the popular classes, many of whom moved to the far right because it
had no answer on immigration and Islam,” said Pascal Bruckner, an author and
political philosopher. “So it’s the unknowable chameleon, Macron, against the
right.” The beneficiary of a perception that he has beaten the
coronavirus pandemic and steered the economy through its challenges, Macron
appears stronger today than he has for some time. The economy grew 7% in the
last quarter. Unemployment is at 7.4%, low for France. The lifting of COVID-19
measures before the election, including mask requirements in many public
places, seems probable, a step of potent symbolism. It is a measure of the difficulty of attacking Macron that
he seems at once to embody what is left of social democracy in France — once
the preserve of a Socialist Party that is now on life support — and policies
embraced by the right, like his tough stand against what he has called
“Islamist separatism.” “He is supple,” said Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister.
Macron’s predecessor as president, François Hollande, a Socialist who feels
betrayed by the incumbent’s shift rightward, put it less kindly in a recent
book: “He hops, like a frog on water lilies, from one conviction to another.” The two leading candidates in the first round go through to
a second Apr 24. The crux of the election has therefore become a fierce
right-on-right battle for a second-place passage to a runoff against Macron. Marine Le Pen, the perennial anti-immigrant candidate, has
become Zemmour’s fiercest critic, as defections to him from her party have
grown. She has said his supporters include “some Nazis” and accused him of
seeking “the death” of her National Rally party, formerly called the National
Front. Zemmour, whose extremist view is that Islam is “incompatible”
with France, has ridiculed her for trying to distinguish between extremist
Islamism and the faith itself. He has attacked her for not embracing the idea
of the “great replacement” — a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian
populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants, leading to
what Zemmour calls the “Creolization” of societies. The president would be confident of his chances against
either Le Pen, whom he beat handily in the second round in 2017, or Zemmour,
even if the glib intellectualism of this descendant of an Algerian Jewish
family has overcome many of the taboos that kept conservative French voters
from embracing the hard right. France is troubled, with many people struggling to pay
rising energy bills and weary from the two-year struggle against the pandemic,
but a blow-up-the-system choice, like the vote for Trump in the United States
or Britain’s choice of Brexit, would be a surprise. Paulette Brémond, a retiree who voted for Macron in 2017,
said she was hesitating between the president and Zemmour. “The immigration
question is grave,” she said. “I am waiting to see what Mr Macron says about
it. He probably won’t go as far as Zemmour, but if he sounds effective, I may
vote for him again.” Until Macron declares his candidacy, she added, “the
campaign feels like it has not started” — a common sentiment in a country where
for now the political jostling can feel like shadow boxing. That is scarcely a concern to the president, who has
portrayed himself as obliged to focus on high matters of state. These include
his prominent diplomatic role in trying to stop a war in Ukraine through his
relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and ending, along with
allies, the troubled French anti-terrorist campaign in Mali. If Mali has been a conspicuous failure, albeit one that
seems unlikely to sway many voters, the Ukraine crisis, as long as it does not
lead to war, has allowed Macron to look like Europe’s de facto leader in the
quest for constructive engagement with Russia. Zemmour and Le Pen, who between
them represent about 30% of the vote, make no secret of their admiration for
Putin. One member of Macron’s putative reelection team, who
insisted on anonymity per government practice, said the possibility of a runoff
against the centre-right Republican candidate, Valérie Pécresse, was more
concerning than facing either Le Pen or Zemmour in the second round. A graduate of the same elite school as Macron, a competent
two-term president of France’s most populous region and a centrist by instinct,
Pécresse might appeal in the second round to centre-left and left-wing voters
who regard Macron as a traitor. But a disastrous performance in her first major campaign
speech in Paris this month appears to have dented Pécresse’s chances, if
perhaps not irretrievably. One poll this week gave her 12% of the vote, down
from 19% in December. Pécresse has been pushed right by the prevailing winds in
France, the European country arguably worst hit by Islamist terrorism over the
past seven years, to the point that she chose to allude to “the great
replacement” in her campaign speech. “Stop the witchcraft trials!” she said in a television
interview Thursday, in response to an outcry over her use of a term once
confined to the extreme right. “I will not resign myself to a Macron-Zemmour
duel,” because “voting for Le Pen or Zemmour is voting for Macron in the end.” There have been two Macrons. The first sought a reinvention
of the state-centric French model through changes to the labyrinthine labour
code that made it easier to hire and fire, suppression of the tax on large
fortunes, and other measures to attract foreign investment and free up the
economy. Then came revolt, in the form of the Yellow Vest movement
against rising inequality and globe-trotting financiers — Macron was once one —
seen as blind to widespread social hardship. No sooner had that quieted, than the coronavirus struck,
turning the president overnight into a “spend whatever it takes” apostle of
state intervention from a free-market reformer. “We have nationalised salaries,” Macron declared in 2020,
not blinking an eye. The cost of all that will come due some day, and it will be
onerous. But for now the “at the same time” president, as Macron has become
known for his habit of constantly changing position, seems to bask in the glow
of the pandemic tamed. “He got lucky,” said the member of his campaign team. “COVID
saved him from more unpopular reforms.” Anything could still happen — a European war, a new variant
of the virus, another major terrorist attack, a sudden wave of renewed social
unrest — but for now, Macron’s aloof-from-the-melee waiting game seems to be
working. “Absent a catastrophe, I don’t see how Mr Macon is not
reelected,” Bruckner said. Then again, the real campaign will only start when
the incumbent descends at last into the turbulent arena.
©2022 The New York Times Company | 1 |
The United States and other major powers on Wednesday told Iran to prepare a "serious response" by Oct. 1 to demands it halt its nuclear program or risk the consequences. The demand from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany came after US President Barack Obama made his first speech to the UN General Assembly, urging leaders to stop blaming America and join him in confronting world issues including Iran's nuclear plans. "We expect a serious response from Iran and will decide, in the context of our dual track approach, as a result of the meeting, on our next steps," British Foreign Minister David Miliband said, reading a statement agreed by Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said all sides agreed there could be consequences if Iran did not reply substantively when negotiators meet in Geneva next month. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his own UN address, did not directly mention the nuclear issue. But the Iranian leader delivered his usual tough rhetoric on Israel, accusing it of "inhuman policies" in the Palestinian territories and of dominating world political and economic affairs. US and British officials in the assembly hall left at the time of Ahmadinejad's comments about Israel. "It is disappointing that Mr. Ahmadinejad has once again chosen to espouse hateful, offensive and anti-Semitic rhetoric," said US mission spokesman Mark Kornblau. Hours after protesters gathered outside Iran's UN mission to accuse him of stealing the June election, Ahmadinejad hailed the "glorious and fully democratic" poll which "entrusted me once more with a large majority." 'GREED, EXCESS AND ABUSE' Obama, in his first speech to the assembly since taking office in January, pledged US global engagement but said the United States could not shoulder the responsibility alone. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," Obama said. Obama, who will host a Group of 20 nations summit in Pittsburgh this week, also pledged to work with allies to strengthen financial regulation to "put an end to the greed, excess and abuse that led us into disaster." Obama was among the first major speakers at the gathering, which brings more than 100 heads of state and government together to air issues ranging from nuclear proliferation and international terrorism to climate change and global poverty. Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, delivering his own inaugural UN address, took a swipe at the veto power wielded by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. He called the group the "terror council" and demanded it be scrapped. Obama has brought a new tone in US foreign policy, stressing cooperation and consultation over the unilateralism of his predecessor, George W. Bush. But despite Obama's global popularity, the new approach has delivered few concrete foreign policy achievements. US officials were again disappointed this week when Israel and Palestinians rebuffed a new Obama push to restart peace talks in time for the UN meeting. On Wednesday, however, Obama got some good news as both Russian and US officials signaled the two sides may be moving closer on how to deal with Iran's nuclear program -- one of his most pressing foreign policy priorities. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said sanctions could be inevitable -- a significant hardening of Moscow's position. US officials denied the Russian shift represented payback for Obama's decision last week to scale back a Bush-era plan for European missile defense that had angered Moscow. But they acknowledged that the climate had changed. "It wasn't that long ago where we had very divergent definitions of the threat and definitions of our strategic objectives vis-a-vis Iran. That seems to me to be a lot closer, if not almost together," Michael McFaul, a White House adviser on Russia, said in New York. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi repeated his nation's position that the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme should be resolved through dialogue, the official Xinhua news agency reported. "Related parties ought to grasp the present advantageous opportunity, further push forward diplomatic efforts ... (and) resume talks as soon as possible to find a comprehensive, long-term, appropriate resolution to the Iran nuclear issue," it paraphrased him as saying at the United Nations. "China has all along worked hard to urge and push talks, and is willing to continue working with the international community to play a constructive role in peacefully resolving the Iran nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiations," he added. | 0 |
Gathering behind a band and giant painted coffin, they slowly processed en masse down the Strand, shutting down traffic on the busy thoroughfare as they chanted and handed out leaflets, leaving gridlock and chaos in their wake. It was just the latest in a series of efforts designed by Extinction Rebellion, or XR, to disrupt the most visible British fashion event of the year. First, protesters covered in fake blood performed a die-in and demanded fashion week be cancelled on opening day. Then, outside the Victoria Beckham show, activists had lined up, brandishing posters emblazoned with statements like “RIP LFW 1983-2019” and “Fashion = Ecocide.” Sustainability is at the forefront of the fashion conversation today in a way it has never been before, and the emergence of XR — which 18 months ago consisted of just 10 people in Britain and has since swelled to millions of followers across 72 countries — has stoked the increasingly heated discussion. Although the movement targets numerous industries and governments worldwide, a recent focus on fashion has been particularly high profile. Extinction Rebellion, which held demonstrations outside the Manhattan headquarters of The New York Times earlier this year demanding the newspaper increase its focus on climate change, has a distinctive hourglass logo, viral social media campaigns and creatively packaged demands for drastic action. It calls itself the fastest-growing climate and ecology direct action movement in history. Come Monday, the most ambitious protest effort by the group yet will get underway, with tens of thousands of protesters planning to bring roads around Westminster to gridlock; there will also be a sit-in at London City Airport. This is the beginning of two weeks of environmental demonstrations that will also include repair stations where people can bring their old or damaged clothes. So how does it all work? Extinction Rebellion, which originally grew out of the activist group Rising Up! and relies solely on crowdfunding and donations, has three key goals: that governments are transparent about the impact of climate change; that they reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025; and that governments worldwide create citizens’ assemblies to set climate priorities.
Extinction Rebellion protestors stage a mock funeral for fashion outside an H&M store during London Fashion Week, in London, Sep 17, 2019. The New York Times
The group has been deliberately conceived as a self-organising, non-hierarchical holacracy. There is no single leader or group steering its strategy, tactics and goals. Instead, it is a loose alliance of 150 groups across Britain alone, with volunteers organised into working subgroups, and support teams and responsibilities distributed among chapters. Extinction Rebellion protestors stage a mock funeral for fashion outside an H&M store during London Fashion Week, in London, Sep 17, 2019. The New York Times Meetings and planning sessions tend to take place in online forums and on messaging apps, with meetings offline used for training and creating a sense of community. Extinction Rebellion is not the first modern protest movement to organise in such a way (there are parallels in particular with the Occupy movement), though the setup can foster a general sense of confusion and disarray. Volunteers cheerfully describe planning meetings as “pretty crazy and disorganised.” A news conference last week ahead of the latest mass protests involved a fair amount of shouting and technical difficulties, and at London Fashion Week, certain planned protests failed to materialise. With the exception of the funeral march, turnouts were generally lower than anticipated. Indeed, the success, and confusion, around the XR approach to fashion — a sector responsible for about 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations — is fairly representative of the state of the group at large. “It’s always somewhat chaotic and messy, but I suppose that’s part of the beauty of Extinction Rebellion,” said Sara Arnold, a coordinator of Boycott Fashion, an XR subgroup that has made headlines by urging people to buy no new clothes for a year. “You learn to just run with it and hope for the best.”
From left: Bel Jacobs, Sara Arnold and Alice Wilby, the coordinators of the BoycottFashion movement and part of Extinction Rebellion, or XR, at Trafalgar Square before marching in an XR protest of fashion during London Fashion Week, Sep 17, 2019. The New York Times
Arnold, 32, studied fashion design at Central St Martins before environmental concerns led to a decision not to design or produce new clothes. She founded the clothes rental company Higher Rental, and though she refuses to be classified as a leader — “there are no leaders at XR,” she said — she has been one of the more visible and vocal figureheads in the group’s efforts to hold the fashion industry to account. From left: Bel Jacobs, Sara Arnold and Alice Wilby, the coordinators of the BoycottFashion movement and part of Extinction Rebellion, or XR, at Trafalgar Square before marching in an XR protest of fashion during London Fashion Week, Sep 17, 2019. The New York Times For her, a key reason fashion has become a target for XR activists is because it shapes people’s aspirations. “This is not about the survival of the fashion industry, this is about the survival of the planet,” Arnold said, peering through her trademark oversize glasses. “We are now in a state of emergency. Stopping people consuming is really the only way of having any impact at this point, which is a difficult message for many people to take on board. The changes we are seeing from some brands remain extremely superficial.” Arnold continued. Unsurprisingly, XR’s mission and messaging are not popular among many conventional fashion brands and retailers. But the group has also been spurned by another, more surprising, industry faction: sustainable brands. Another coordinator, Bel Jacobs, a former fashion editor of the free daily newspaper Metro, said that she and other Extinction Rebellion members had found themselves the target of ire from those who said the campaigning was damaging to a new wave of businesses attempting to improve the ethical and environmental footprint of clothes. “By asking for huge sacrifices, we know we are alienating ourselves but we are also shifting the Overton window and empowering people, both in and outside the industry,” Jacobs said. “As a communication tool, fashion is so influential. We all have to put clothes on and that has power.”
Protesters gather at Trafalgar Square for an Extinction Rebellion protest of fashion during London Fashion Week, Sep 17, 2019. The New York Times
There is some dispute even inside XR about whether it is better to work with the fashion industry or against it. Protesters gather at Trafalgar Square for an Extinction Rebellion protest of fashion during London Fashion Week, Sep 17, 2019. The New York Times Last summer, for example, three members of Extinction Rebellion appeared in an advertising campaign for the luxury fashion designer Stella McCartney, roaming the Welsh coastline in expensive new designer clothing, without letting other chapters know. The Boycott Fashion coordinators said the first they heard of the partnership was when they saw the photographs. They were, Jacobs put delicately, somewhat surprised. However, at the London news conference last week, Douglas Rogers, an XR spokesman, insisted that the absence of a solid hierarchy is what gives the movement its strength. Fresh efforts were underway to further decentralise its organising systems from a London rebellion support office to autonomous regional bases, as British police announced this week that they would seek new legal powers against protesters.
Extinction Rebellion protesters hold up posters outside the Victoria Beckham show during London Fashion Week, Sep 15, 2019. The New York Times
More than 1,100 people were arrested at Extinction Rebellion’s protests in April, in a police operation that cost £16 million, or $19.7 million. About 850 protesters have been prosecuted and 250 convicted. Extinction Rebellion protesters hold up posters outside the Victoria Beckham show during London Fashion Week, Sep 15, 2019. The New York Times “Of course it can be challenging to maintain a communal sense of control, but without visible leadership it makes us stronger in the face of those who would want to break the movement down,” Rogers said, amid a scrum of reporters and activists and vocal pleas that chairs get stacked to make more space in the room. “I actually find moments like the Stella McCartney campaign reassuring because it shows this really is a rebellion,” he said. “Rebellions are messy and overlap and are forged from lots of opinions and actions. It would be very worrying if XR acted like some superslick Silicon Valley-style business. Not that there is much chance of anyone actually thinking that.” © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
Trump, tapping into the "America First" message he used when he was elected president last year, said the Paris accord would undermine the US economy, cost US jobs, weaken American national sovereignty and put the country at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world. "We're getting out," Trump said at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden under sunny skies on a warm June day, fulfilling a major election campaign pledge. "We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more. And they won't be," Trump said. "The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and in many cases lax contributions to our critical military alliance," Trump added. Republican US congressional leaders backed Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell applauded Trump "for dealing yet another significant blow to the Obama administration's assault on domestic energy production and jobs." Supporters of the accord, including some leading US business figures, called Trump's move a blow to international efforts to tackle dangers for the planet posed by global warming. Former Democratic President Barack Obama expressed regret over the pullout from a deal he was instrumental in brokering. "But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I'm confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we've got," Obama added. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, said his administration would begin negotiations either to re-enter the Paris accord or to have a new agreement "on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers." He complained in particular about China's terms under the agreement. International leaders reacted with disappointment, even anger. "The decision made by US President Trump amounts to turning their backs on the wisdom of humanity. I'm very disappointed... I am angry," Japanese Environment Minister Koichi Yamamoto told a news conference on Friday in an unusually frank tone. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said in a rare joint statement the agreement could not be renegotiated and urged their allies to hasten efforts to combat climate change and adapt. "While the US decision is disheartening, we remain inspired by the growing momentum around the world to combat climate change and transition to clean growth economies," said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. A summit between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and top European Union officials in Brussels on Friday will end with a joint statement - the first ever issued by China and the EU - committing both sides to full implementation of the Paris accord. Speaking in Berlin a day earlier, Premier Li said China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, would stick to its commitment to fight climate change. "We made the decision to join, and I don't think we will (change) it," Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich was quoted as saying by RIA news agency. In India, one of the world's fastest growing major economies and a growing contributor to pollution, a top advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi vouched for intentions to switch to renewable power generation independent of the Paris accord. "The prime minister is very keen on this," Arvind Panagariya said. ISOLATED With Trump's action, the United States will walk away from nearly every other nation in the world on one of the pressing global issues of the 21st century. Syria and Nicaragua are the only other non-participants in the accord, signed by 195 nations in Paris in 2015. Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who is the incoming head of the UN Climate Change Conferences, which formalized the 2015 pact, said Trump's decision was "deeply disappointing". Fiji, like many other small island nations, is seen as particularly vulnerable to global warming and a possible rise in ocean levels as a result of melting polar ice. US business leaders voiced exasperation with the Trump administration. "Today's decision is a setback for the environment and for the US's leadership position in the world," Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein wrote on Twitter. Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk and Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger said they would leave White House advisory councils after Trump's move. Under the Paris accord, which took years to reach, rich and poor countries committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases generated by burning fossil fuels that are blamed by scientists for warming the planet. "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris," Trump said. Pittsburgh's mayor, Democrat Bill Peduto, shot back on Twitter that his city, long the heart of the US steel industry, actually embraced the Paris accord. The spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the action a "major disappointment." The UN body that handles climate negotiations said the accord could not be renegotiated based on the request of a single nation. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, speaking in Singapore on Friday, also called the US decision "disappointing... but not at all surprising," adding that Australia remained "committed to our Paris commitments." South Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement "it is regrettable that the US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord will undermine international responsibility and efforts to respond to climate change." 'DEVASTATING HARM' Trump said the United States would stop payments to the UN Green Climate Fund, in which rich countries committed billions of dollars to help developing nations deal with floods, droughts and other impacts from climate change. The White House said it would stick to UN rules for withdrawing from the pact. Those rules require a nation to wait three years from the date the pact gained legal force, Nov. 4, 2016, before formally seeking to leave. That country must then wait another year. Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed disappointment and said in an email to employees that he had spoken with Trump on Tuesday to try to persuade him to stay in the Paris accord. "It wasn't enough," he said. Other business leaders warned that the US economy would give away technological leadership. General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt said he was disappointed, adding: "Climate change is real. Industry must now lead and not depend on government." Democrats also blasted Trump. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called the decision "one of the worst policy moves made in the 21st century because of the huge damage to our economy, our environment and our geopolitical standing." The United States had committed to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. The United States accounts for more than 15 percent of total worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, second only to China. Leading climate scientists say greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the atmosphere and have caused a warming planet, sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms. A "Global Trends" report prepared by the US Director of National Intelligence's office, released on Jan. 9, warned that climate change posed security risks because of extreme weather, stress on water and food, and global tensions over how to manage the changes. Last year was the warmest since records began in the 19th Century, as global average temperatures continued a rise dating back decades that scientists attribute to greenhouse gases. Frank Rijsberman, Director-General of Seoul based Global Green Growth Institute expected international funding for investment needed to fight climate change would suffer, noting a $1 billion reduction in U.S. funding the Green Climate Fund in South Korea. Economists said the US withdrawal would potentially cost US jobs. China and the EU both already employ more workers in the renewable energy sector than the United States, according to the data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena). "Winding back the climate agenda means that the US will be left behind in the clean energy transition as other global players, such as in Europe and China, demonstrate greater commitment to deploying low carbon and job-creating solutions to climate change," said Peter Kiernan, of the Economist Intelligence Unit. | 0 |
Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a government dominated by loyalists on Monday, tightening his grip on the economy and national security after protests and limiting Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's ability to pursue market reforms. Putin, 59, opted for continuity by retaining his ally Igor Shuvalov as first deputy prime minister in charge of economic policy, while Igor Sechin will remain his energy chief in a role outside the government. Putin reeled off several new names in announcing the cabinet appointments at a Kremlin meeting but kept a core of familiar figures in place, displaying no great hunger for policy changes at the start of a six-year presidential term. The former KGB spy consolidated his hold over the "power" ministries by naming Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev as interior minister, in a sign of trust in a man who has at times used heavy force against protesters demanding Putin quit. Putin signaled continuity in international and military affairs, leaving Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov in place along with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, an ally who oversees the defense industry. "Work will be difficult, given the concrete situation in the world economy - there are very many factors of uncertainty," Putin told the new cabinet, seated at the head of the table with Medvedev to his right, in a Kremlin meeting broadcast live on state television. An important test of the government will be the speed at which it implements a privatization program and a drive to reduce the dependence of the $1.7 trillion economy on oil and gas exports. Putin has also faced the biggest protests since he was first elected president in 2000, caused initially by allegations of electoral fraud but fuelled by anger and frustration that his 12-year domination of Russia has been extended by six years. The opposition, representing a civil society that is finally emerging more than two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, says its views are being ignored and Putin is stifling economic and political reforms in the world's largest country. His appointment of Kolokoltsev to the Interior Ministry sent a clear message that he does not intend to bow to the protesters' demands for more political choice and a reduction in the strong central control over a country sprawling from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. "This is a man who breaks up peaceful meetings with the help of cudgels," opposition leader Boris Nemtsov told Reuters. "This all fits into the logic of modern Putinism." GROWTH AGENDA Medvedev, 46, named premier after Putin returned to the Kremlin on May 7, has said he will push pro-growth policies and the privatization drive. But, even though the partners in Russia's ruling 'tandem' announced they had agreed to switch jobs last September, the long and secretive process of forming a government raised concerns of factional divisions between the two camps. "The composition of the new cabinet suggests that it is likely to focus on budget stability rather than a pro-market agenda," Moscow-based Alfa Bank said in a research note. "We also view the new cabinet as reflective of efforts to maintain a balance of power between the president and PM, which may make it difficult to deliver a united economic agenda." The line-up brought in a couple of new faces from the team of young market liberals that served in the Kremlin during Medvedev's four-year term as president, during which he promised far-reaching reforms but carried out few of them. One, Arkady Dvorkovich, was named among six deputy premiers and was expected to have responsibility for energy and industry policy - areas over which he had little influence while serving as Medvedev's economic adviser. The energy minister's job went to Alexander Novak, a former deputy finance minister, indicating that Sechin would maintain control over Russia's strategic oil and gas sector despite leaving the government. Another Medvedev aide, former power industry boss Mikhail Abyzov, missed out on an energy role and was named last on Putin's list as coordinator of an "open government" forum backed by Medvedev that has until now produced talk but little action. Putin, who stepped aside as president in 2008 because of constitutional limits, extended his influence over economic policy - traditionally the preserve of the prime minister - by ensuring that the finance and economy portfolios were taken by placemen who support his credo of state-led development. Career bureaucrat Anton Siluanov stays as finance minister, while a pro-Putin economist, Andrei Belousov, was promoted to economy minister. NO BREAKTHROUGH "This is not a breakthrough government," said former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, a fiscal hawk ousted from government last year in a power struggle with Medvedev. He is still close to Putin and has been named as a possible future prime minister. "I doubt greatly that it will be able to rise to the challenges facing Russia." Analysts said the cabinet would probably lack independence. They looked to the Kremlin team being formed by Putin for clues on the direction of policy during his six-year term, after which he could seek re-election and try to rule until 2024. "The balance of power in the decision-making process is likely to shift from the government to the presidential administration, while recent presidential statements have not revealed increased appetite for structural reforms," Alexander Morozov, chief economist at HSBC in Moscow, said in a note. Although latest figures show Russia's economy grew 4.9 percent in the first quarter, that was boosted by lavish pre-election spending that drove up the level at which the oil price needs to be for Russia to balance its budget in future. "The oil curse will get us sooner or later," said German Gref, head of Russia's largest bank, Sberbank. "The government has no option but to create a favorable climate for investment and growth." Gref's bank is at the top of a list of state assets slated for privatization, but the sale of a 7.6 percent stake planned for last September has been repeatedly delayed. Shuvalov recently vetoed a near-term sale due to poor market conditions that have since deteriorated further, reducing the value of the stake to $4.3 billion. The English-speaking lawyer is seen as one of the few officials who can mediate in the battles for power and influence between the market liberals and those, like Putin, with a background in the security services. "Shuvalov ... has been a proponent of privatization in the past," said Peter Westin, chief economist at Moscow brokerage Aton. "Whether it goes ahead and at what speed ... depends on the oil price." | 2 |
Bill Gates, the world's richest man and a leading philanthropist, said on Sunday spending by rich countries aimed at combating climate change in developing nations could mean a dangerous cut in aid for health issues. Gates, the Microsoft Corp co-founder whose $34 billion foundation is fighting malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases in developing countries, expressed concern about the amount of spending pledged at December's Copenhagen global climate meeting. Participants at the meeting agreed to a target of channeling $100 billion per year to developing countries to combat climate change by 2020. Gates said that amount represents more than three quarters of foreign aid currently given by the richest countries per year. "I am concerned that some of this money will come from reducing other categories of foreign aid, especially health," Gates wrote in a letter, released late on Sunday, describing the work of his foundation. "If just 1 percent of the $100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases," Gates added. Taking the focus away from health aid could be bad for the environment in the long run, said Gates, "because improvements in health, including voluntary family planning, lead people to have smaller families, which in turn reduces the strain on the environment." The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he runs with his wife Melinda and father William Gates Sr., had an endowment worth $34 billion as of September. Gates, 54, remains Microsoft chairman but focuses his attention on his foundation. Since starting in 1994, the foundation has handed out more than $21 billion in grants. Gates said he was worried generally about levels of government aid from rich countries to poor countries slipping with tough economic conditions globally. "Because of budget deficits, there is significant risk that aid budgets will either be cut or not increase much," Gates said in his letter. He singled out Italy for criticism. "Italy was at the low end of European givers even before the Berlusconi government came in and cut the aid by over half, making them uniquely stingy among European donors," Gates said. According to Forbes magazine, Gates was the richest man in the world in 2009 with an estimated fortune of $40 billion. | 0 |
The index for 2019, from research group Germanwatch, showed that Mozambique and Zimbabwe were the two countries hardest-hit by extreme weather. Both were struck by Idai, the deadliest and costliest cyclone recorded in the southwest Indian Ocean. Just this weekend, central Mozambique was hammered again by another tropical storm, Eloise, which wrecked thousands of buildings, ruined crops and displaced almost 7,000 people. Storms and their effects – strong winds, heavy rainfall, floods and landslides - were the major cause of extreme weather damage in 2019, Germanwatch said. Of the 10 most-affected countries, six were pounded by tropical cyclones. The Caribbean island nation of the Bahamas was the third worst-hit, due to devastation from Hurricane Dorian. The United States was not included in the 2019 index due to data problems. Recent research suggests the severity and the number of strong tropical cyclones will increase with every tenth of a degree in global average temperature rise, Germanwatch said. In 2020 - one of the three hottest years on record - the global average temperature was about 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, according to the World Meteorological Organization. David Eckstein, a Germanwatch policy advisor, said the climate risk index showed poor, vulnerable countries face particularly large challenges in dealing with the consequences of extreme weather events. "They urgently need financial and technical assistance," he said, noting they had yet to receive the full $100 billion a year in climate funding promised by wealthy countries. Richer nations agreed to build up to providing that sum each year, starting in 2020, to help poorer countries adopt cleaner energy systems and adapt to the impacts of planetary warming. Of the nearly $80 billion raised in 2018, the latest figures available, only about 20% was allocated for adaptation, despite repeated calls for that share to be raised to half. The climate adaptation summit starting Monday "must address these problems", Eckstein added. Research out last week from international aid agency CARE suggested the actual amount of donor money going to adaptation could be even lower than reported. Working with other organisations, CARE assessed 112 projects in Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Nepal and Vietnam, representing 13% of total global adaptation finance between 2013 and 2017. It found 42% of the money was spent on activities that did little to help communities build resilience to climate change, including a "friendship bridge" and an expressway in Vietnam and a post-earthquake housing reconstruction project in Nepal. Report author John Nordbo from CARE Denmark said rich nations had not only failed to deliver enough adaptation finance, but had also tried to give the impression they are providing more than they do. "This injustice must be corrected, and a clear plan must be presented to show how they intend to live up to their commitments with real money – and no reporting tricks," he added in a statement. FORECAST-BASED ACTION Ahead of Monday's summit, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) announced plans to at least double the size of a fund which it uses to support communities before climate disasters hit, to reduce losses. IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said expanding the fund was part of a broader effort by the Red Cross to respond to an increasing case-load of emergencies caused by climate change. The IFRC aims to grow the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund, now at 30 million Swiss francs ($34 million) a year, to 60 million a year in 2021 and 100 million by 2025. In the past 30 years, Chapagain noted, the average number of climate and weather-related disasters per decade has increased nearly 35%. They accounted for 83% of all disasters in the past decade alone, killing 410,000 people and affecting 1.7 billion. The IFRC's new loss-prevention approach, now gaining ground among donors and aid agencies, is known as "forecast-based action" because it is triggered by weather predictions. Under the approach, money is made available to people imminently at risk from a coming weather threat, to help them move their families, livestock and goods to safety or otherwise take measures to protect them, as well as recover afterwards. The Red Cross used it six times in 2020 to protect at-risk communities in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Mongolia and Mozambique, through measures such as early evacuation or reinforcing homes. "By doing this, we are definitely saving lives," Chapagain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Red Cross now aims to scale up forecast-based action in partnership with local governments, he added. As climate threats accelerate, the Red Cross head urged vulnerable countries to implement laws that improve how they manage disasters, and put in place systems to provide early warning, evacuate people and reduce losses from extreme weather. Chapagain urged leaders at the summit, hosted by the Netherlands, to acknowledge the need to take urgent steps to help communities cope with global warming impacts, while ramping up efforts to cut planet-heating emissions at the same time. "If we don't adapt now, it is just going to be much, much worse," he said. | 0 |
Coral is again flourishing in the crater left by the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by the United States, 54 years after the blast on Bikini Atoll, marine scientists said on Tuesday. A team of research divers visited Bravo crater, ground zero for the test of a thermonuclear weapon in the remote Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954, and found large numbers of fish and coral growing, although some species appeared locally extinct. "I didn't know what to expect, some kind of moonscape perhaps. But it was incredible," Zoe Richards, from Australia's James Cook University, told Reuters about the team's trip to the atoll in the south Pacific. "We saw communities not too far from any coral reef, with plenty of fish, corals and action going on, some really striking individual colonies," she said. The 15 megatonne hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times more powerful than the blast which destroyed Hiroshima, vapourising islands with temperatures hitting 55,000 Celsius (99,000 Fahrenheit), and shaking islands even up to 200 kms (124 miles) away. The resulting 7km-wide fireball left a crater 2km across and 73m deep, while the mushroom cloud rose 100 kms over the South Pacific and radioactive fallout reached Australia and Japan. Richards, from the Australian government-backed Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said the research team from Germany, Italy, Hawaii, Australia and the Marshall Islands found corals up to 8 metres high and some with 30cm-thick trunks. "It was fascinating. I've never seen corals growing like trees outside of the Marshall Islands," Richards said. While above-water areas remained contaminated and unfit for human habitation, healthy sub-sea species probably travelled on strong winds and currents from nearby Rongelap Atoll, which was not bombed in a series of 23 tests between 1946-58. "It is absolutely pristine for another tragic reason. It received fallout and was evacuated of people, so now underwater it's really healthy and prevailing winds have probably been seeding Bikini Atoll's recovery," Richards said. Compared with a study made before the atomic tests, the team established that 42 species were missing compared to the early 1950s, with at least 28 of those locally extinct. The team was asked by Marshall Islands authorities to investigate Bikini for the first time since the tests, in part to see if a small diving industry could safely be expanded. The waters around Bikini are littered with wrecks of old , decommissioned ships sunk during the atomic tests, including the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and the former Japanese flagship HIJMS Nagato, from which Admiral Yamoto gave the order to attack Pearl Harbour. Richards said the ability of Bikini's corals to bounce back from "a single huge destructive event" was proof of their resilience, although that did not mean the threat to corals from climate change had been overestimated. "Climate change is an ongoing struggle to survive with coral, with no reprieve in sight," she said. "After the atomic blasts they had 50 years undisturbed to recover." | 0 |
The global community had engaged with China to help it grow but now must demand the world's second-largest economy bring more transparency to its trade relationships and take a greater share of the responsibilty for addressing climate change, Morrison said. "The world's global institutions must adjust their settings for China, in recognition of this new status," said Morrison in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, referring to China as a "newly developed economy". "That means more will be expected of course, as has always been the case for nations like the United States who've always had this standing," Morrison said in the speech, according to transcript provided to Reuters. Global trade rules were "no longer fit for purpose" and in some cases were "designed for a completely different economy in another era, one that simply doesn't exist any more", he added. Referring to China as a newly developed economy marks a change from Beijing's self-declared status as a developing economy, which affords it concessions such as longer times to implement agreed commitments, according to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It also puts Australia into line with a campaign led by US President Donald Trump to remove China's developing nation status. In an Apr 7, 2018 tweet, Trump wrote that China was a "great economic power" but received "tremendous perks and advantages, especially over the US" Morrison has previously urged China to reform its economy and end a trade war with the United States but has until now stopped short of taking a public position on its WTO status. While two-way trade between Australia and China has grown since the countries signed a trade pact in 2015, increasing to a record A$183 billion ($127 billion) last year, the bilateral relationship has at times been strained. In December 2017, former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull accused China of meddling in its domestic affairs. The relationship was further soured by Canberra’s decision last year to effectively ban Chinese telecoms firm Huawei Technologies from its 5G broadband network rollout. Morrison said Australia and the United States had different relationships with China, given Australia had a trade surplus with China while the United States had a trade deficit. "The engagement with China has been enormously beneficial to our country," he said. "We want to see that continue." | 0 |
OSLO, Sun Oct 26,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Backers of extreme technologies to curb global warming advocate dumping iron dust into the seas or placing smoke and mirrors in the sky to dim the sun. But, even though they are seen by some as cheap fixes for climate change when many nations are worried about economic recession, such "geo-engineering" proposals have to overcome wide criticism that they are fanciful and could have unforeseen side effects. "We are at the boundaries, treading in areas that we are not normally dealing with," said Rene Coenen, head of the Office for the London Convention, an international organization that regulates dumping at sea. The London Convention, part of the International Maritime Organization, will review ocean fertilization at a meeting this week. Among those hoping for approval for tests is Margaret Leinin, chief science officer of California-based Climos, a company that is looking at ways to use the oceans to soak up greenhouse gases. "The world has not been able to get carbon emissions under control" Leinin said. "We should look at other options." Climos is seeking to raise money to test adding iron dust to the southern ocean to spur growth of algae that grow by absorbing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air. When algae die, they fall to the seabed and so remove carbon. Other short-cut ideas include spraying a smoke of tiny particles of pollutants into the sky to dim sunlight, or even deploying a vast thin metallic barrier in space, with 100 space shuttle flights, to deflect the sun's rays. "CHEMICAL SOUP" The U.N. Climate Panel has said world greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, mainly burning fossil fuels, rose 70 percent between 1970 and 2004. But it said that fertilizing the oceans or dimming the sun "remain largely speculative and unproven, and with the risk of unknown side-effects." "More evidence has been coming in since then, but it's far from making a reliable case for geo-engineering," said Terry Barker, head of the Cambridge Center for Climate Change Mitigation Research and one of the leading authors of the U.N. panel report. The seas are already suffering enough from a "chemical soup" of pollution from humans, he said. "There's no need to add to the mess." With fears of recession and amid the deepest financial crisis since the 1930s, some governments may find cheap geo-engineering attractive compared with reducing carbon emissions. "It would be shortsighted," Baker said. Last year, the London Convention said that "knowledge about the effectiveness and potential environmental impacts of ocean iron fertilization currently was insufficient to justify large-scale operations." Those doubts were "still valid," the Convention's Coenen said. Firms such as Australia's Ocean Nourishment, Atmocean in New Mexico and Climos are working on varying sea-based projects. Another start-up, Planktos, indefinitely suspended operations in February after failing to raise cash. Some like Climos hope that sucking carbon into the ocean, if it works, could qualify for credits as carbon trading. "It is possible to design experiments to avoid harm to the oceans," said Leinin. Climos wants to test iron fertilization in the southern ocean, at the earliest in January 2010 in a test that could $15-20 million, she said. If it works, Leinin said it could be one of the cheapest ways to combat global warming. LESSER RISK Among objections are that carbon makes water more acidic and could undermine the ability of shellfish, crabs or lobsters to build shells. That in turn could disrupt the marine food chain. Backers of geo-engineering say the risks are slight compared to far bigger disruptions from climate change, stoked by human emissions of greenhouse gases, which could lead to heatwaves, floods, droughts, more disease or rising seas. "We are already bludgeoning nature," said Victor Smetacek, a professor at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, who is planning an iron sulphate fertilization experiment off Antarctica in early 2009. His institute will cooperate with India to disperse 20 tonnes of iron sulphate near South Georgia over 300 sq kms (115 sq miles). "Iron has a very positive effect. Added to the ocean it's like water in the desert," he said. "We don't have space to store the carbon we are producing on land," he said of proposals including planting more forests. They will study how far algae grow and absorb carbon. The extra algae, as food, might help a recovery of stocks of shrimp-like krill, a species on which penguins and whales depend. Among other schemes, Nobel chemistry prize winner Paul Crutzen has floated the idea of blitzing the upper atmosphere with sulfur particles to reflect some sunlight back into space. "The price is not a factor...it's peanuts," he told Reuters in Nicosia earlier this month. "The cost has been estimated at some 10, 20 million U.S. dollars a year." Similar smoke is released naturally by volcanic eruptions, such as Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 or Tambora in Indonesia in 1815. The Indonesia eruption led to a "year without a summer," according to reports at the time. Other proposals reviewed by the UN Climate Panel include installing a metallic screen covering a 106 sq km (40.93 sq mile) patch of space 1.5 million kms (930,000 miles) away from earth in the direction of the sun. The 3,000-tonne structure could be put in place over 100 years by 100 space shuttle flights. "The cost has yet to be determined," the panel said. Another idea is to spew more sea spray into the air -- a natural process caused by waves. The plan would make low-level clouds slightly whiter and bounce solar rays back into space. Advantages are that the only ingredient is sea water, and production could be turned off. But the UN panel said "the meteorological ramifications need further study." | 0 |
President Dilma Rousseff accepted Patriota's resignation but appointed him as Brazil's envoy to the United Nations, her office said in a statement.The current Brazilian UN ambassador, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, will become foreign minister. A career diplomat, Figueiredo was Brazil's lead negotiator in climate change talks until his appointment to the United Nations a year ago.Patriota's departure will help Brasilia avoid a diplomatic wrangle with neighboring Bolivia, where the leftist government of President Evo Morales was fuming over the escape to Brazil of opposition senator Roger Pinto.Pinto, who had accused the Morales government of having links to drug traffickers, avoided arrest by seeking refuge in the Brazilian embassy in La Paz.Brasilia granted him asylum but the Bolivian government denied him a safe-conduct to leave the country and he lived in the embassy for 15 months. Over the weekend, the Brazilian charge d'affairs helped Pinto flee across the border in a 22-hour dash in an embassy car.Pinto's flight "created a complicated situation" for Patriota, who appeared to have been disobeyed by a member of his diplomatic corps, a Brazilian government source said.Rousseff picked Figueiredo to succeed Patriota because she was "very impressed" by his work coordinating negotiations between rich and developed nations at the Rio+20 environmental conference, said the source, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak.Patriota is the first cabinet member to resign his post since a flurry of ministers left Rousseff's government in her first year in office in 2011, including former Chief of Staff Antonio Palocci.Under Rousseff, Patriota departed from the foreign policy of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his foreign minister Celso Amorim, who drew Brazil closer to Iran and Venezuela. Patriota took a more moderate line that included strengthening ties with the United States. | 0 |
Singer Sheryl Crow began a bus tour of US colleges to raise awareness about global warming on Monday, one of several high-profile celebrities to take up the cause of climate change. Crow, a Grammy award winning singer/songwriter, will speak about the issue and sing at the college stops. "I am here because the more I learn about global warming the more I feel compelled to do something in my own way whatever that is," she told reporters at Southern Methodist University in Dallas as the tour began. Accompanied by global warming activist Laurie David, Crow is traveling in a biodiesel-powered bus to university campuses with a final stop in Washington for Earth Day on April 22. Texas was chosen as the starting point because it leads all US states in fossil fuel emissions, with its heavy industry and love affair with big pick-up trucks. Other celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Redford and Daryl Hannah have joined the campaign to reduce fossil fuel emissions and curb climate change. Former Vice President Al Gore has helped make the issue fashionable with his Oscar-winning documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth,' which David produced. | 0 |
Beijing has for the first time disclosed internal targets to fight global warming but these, even if officially adopted, are as unambitious as a similar US goal, analysts say. They would do little to help talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and would not keep emissions below levels Europeans say are needed to avert dangerous warming. Beijing's "First National Climate Change Assessment", seen by Reuters, said China had warmed up more than most countries in the last half century and faced serious floods, droughts and falling crop production. Prepared by scientists and signed off by the top economic planning body and foreign and science ministries, the document ruled out "absolute and compulsory" caps before 2050 on China's soaring emissions of the greenhouse gases widely blamed for heating the planet. Instead the detailed briefing suggested cutting the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) created per unit of national wealth. This, if adopted, would be the country's first, much less demanding, climate change goal. "The good news is this is the first time China has had a target at all," said Timothy Herzog, policy analyst at the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental think-tank. The main proposal is to cut by 40 percent from 2000 to 2020 China's emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), a measure called carbon intensity. But over the same 20-year timescale China has a goal to quadruple GDP, so even hitting its carbon intensity goal would imply a more than doubling of emissions. That is incompatible with avoiding more dangerous climate change, the European Union's executive Commission said. "They're saying they could double emissions in 20 years, while we're saying developing countries can double emissions in 30 years -- that's quite a big difference," said Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the European Commission's Climate Change Unit. The Commission reckons that, to minimise dangerous warming, from 1990 to 2020 greenhouse gas emissions will have to fall in rich nations and no more than double in developing countries. "It's very important," Runge-Metzger told Reuters. "(Our) calculations are in line with a 2 degrees temperature increase, more than that is definitely more dangerous." The United States -- unlike most rich countries -- has also rejected emissions caps and like China prefers a greenhouse gases intensity goal: an 18 percent cut from 2002 to 2012. But neither the Chinese nor the US goal is considered ambitious because each is in line with what they have recently achieved. US carbon intensity fell by 17 percent and that in China by 50 percent from 1990 to 2002 , according to the WRI. Most countries gradually cut their emissions per unit of GDP as their economies mature and efficiency improves. Beijing argues that rich nations pumped out the majority of carbon dioxide already accummulated in the atmosphere and so they should cut their own emissions rather than push for caps that constrict poor nations' growth. Its modest targets -- which might not even make it to the international negotiating table -- show a leadership aware of climate change, but wary of binding commitments. China looks set to become the world's top emitter of carbon this year or next, just as serious talks start to extend the U.N.-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012, potentially heaping pressure on Beijing to take more action. "China wouldn't want to commit to international targets they aren't confident they can meet," said one Western diplomat focused on the area, who declined to be named. Carbon intensity goals do not appear in an official national plan for tackling climate change, which was due to be unveiled on Tuesday but is now back under wraps indefinitely, sources who have seen the document say. The difference in part reflects the divide between the climate scientists who drew up the latest assessment and the politicians -- focused on immediate domestic worries like energy security and crippling air pollution -- who are behind the postponed plan. It could also be a sign that even the modest goals of the assessment are slipping out of reach as the country struggles to rein in its roaring economy. "China wants to shape the post-Kyoto future, but it is losing control of the levers over its own energy growth and it doesn't have a very good monitoring and information system in place for measuring carbon, let alone controlling it," the diplomat said. | 0 |
The monsoon, which typically lasts between June and September, has already delivered 10% more rain than a 50-year average, and is expected to withdraw only after early October, more than a month later than usual. The extended rains have wreaked havoc, with northern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states the worst hit in the latest spell of intense downpours, killing 144 people since last Friday, two officials said. In Patna, Bihar's riverside capital city that is home to around two million people, residents said they were wading through waist-deep water to buy essential items like food and milk. Ranjeev Kumar, 65, a resident of Patna's Ashiyana neighbourhood, told Reuters by telephone that the entire area was stranded by the water. "The government is not doing any rescue and the situation is very serious here," he said. On Monday, relief workers rescued Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi from his home in Patna. Video footage showed him dressed in shorts and a t-shirt as he was brought out on a raft along with his family members. Saket Kumar Singh, who lives in the city's Boring Road area, said he was stranded for four days, with about two feet of water inside his house. "There was no electricity, and despite having money I was helpless," Singh, 45, said. In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, heavy rains have brought down more than 800 homes and swathes of farmland are submerged. Data released by the federal home ministry shows that 1,673 people have died because of floods and heavy rains this year, as of Sep 29. Officials said that many of these fatalities were caused due to wall and building collapses, including in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, the western state that has seen 371 flood-related deaths in 2019, the highest in the country. "The danger of old or weak structures collapsing increases during the heavy rainfall, like what happened this time," Chandrakant Sharma, a flood expert with Uttar Pradesh's disaster relief department, told Reuters. India's flood prevention and forecasting systems are lacking, other experts say, even as the total flood prone area in the country has increased in recent decades because of deforestation, degradation of water bodies, and climate change. | 0 |
She promised that the project would be implemented without any adverse impact on the Sundarbans. The issue was raised by former US vice president Al Gore at a plenary session titled ‘Leading the Fight Against Climate Change’ at the Davos Congress Centre on Wednesday. The prime minister highlighted that location of the proposed power plant as being 14km away from the extreme boundary of the Sundarbans and 70 km away from the World Heritage Site. "She also pointed out that the power plant would be using clean coal and modern technology to reduce the impact on the surrounding environment,” said Deputy Press Secretary to the PM Nazrul Islam. The prime minister also invited Gore to come to Bangladesh and see for himself the location, he said. Bangladesh has signed a deal with India to set up the 1,320-megawatt thermal power plant in Bagerhat's Rampal, 14 kilometres off the Sundarbans. Environmentalists and leftist parties have been opposing it saying that the coal-fired power plant will threaten the ecological balance of the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest of the world. The government, however, maintains that proper measures will be taken to protect the environment from pollution. "The prime minister told the plenary session in Davos that some people are unnecessarily creating an issue out of it," said Deputy Press Secretary to the PM Islam. He said Hasina assured the session that she herself will not clear any project if it posed any threat to the environment. Apart from the former US vice president, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, HSBC Group CEO Stuart Gulliver and Cofco Agri CEO Jingtao Chi attended the session. | 3 |
Power tools roar as an army of workmen rushes to ensure Europe's largest city-centre shopping mall opens on time, but marketing executives say the crisis in global financial markets has accelerated a trend among consumers to reject conspicuous consumption. The $3 billion Westfield centre in West London will have a strong focus on luxury when it opens on Thursday. Promotional material cites Louis Vuitton, Prada, Tiffany and Gucci among its stores but Managing Director Michael Gutman downplays these. "We have a mass-market offer here, even though a couple of the precincts have attracted particular attention," he told Reuters by telephone. Executives say other retailers are quietly dropping the term "luxury" from their marketing material in favour of phrases depicting shopping as relaxation and time shared with family and friends. With credit harder to obtain, mortgage costs rising and unemployment growing in the United States, Europe and Japan, clever advertising may not be enough to persuade those who can still afford it to part with their money. "In grim times it becomes distasteful or simply unfashionable to spend money on bling or what you might call conspicuous consumption," said Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman at advertising agency Ogilvy. "There will be a trend toward Swedish, Lutheran-style minimalism," Sutherland predicted, referring to the modest, even austere, lifestyles favoured by Lutherans and Swedes by reputation. Bentley-driving broker Scott David said people in the City of London financial district who could still afford it were hesitating before spending conspicuously. "You wouldn't turn up to meeting in a brand-new Porsche. It would be seen as bad taste," he said. "You don't want to be seen to be rubbing people's faces in it." LUXURY GOODS SLUMP After years of strong growth, luxury goods sales are expected to fall globally by 1 percent in the fourth quarter, and may drop by up to 7 percent next year, according to a study by consulting firm Bain and Co. released this month. U.S. sales of Porsche cars fell by 58 percent in September compared with September 2007, while overall car sales declined by 22 percent, according to figures from Autodata. Andy Lear, head of planning at the London office of French advertising agency Publicis said the repercussions of the financial crisis -- front-page news worldwide for weeks -- were simply accelerating a trend that already existed. "People had already been looking for something more meaningful than just chasing cash and buying things that look flashy," he said. Certainly, some in the financial services industry who had previously enjoyed a luxury lifestyle say they are starting to question the relentless pursuit of material gain. Investment banker Patrick, who did not want his surname to be used, said his working patterns had changed in recent months. "I'm going home earlier and going to work later. I took my son to school last week before coming into work -- something I never did before," he said, adding that some colleagues were doing the same. It was partly because the tough financial climate meant his employer would not be able to pay large bonuses this year, Patrick said, but it was also because the "buzz" had gone out of working long hours. "The tone has changed ... I've got different priorities now." Patrick is looking at ways to "give something back" to society, and is planning to work with a charity that offers debt counselling to the poor. BOARD GAMES Henrietta Creighton, managing director at Lifestyle Boutique which provides luxury concierge services, said business had slowed compared with last year, but clients were still spending on family celebrations. Family board games such as Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly were expected to be Christmas hits as families decided against expensive holidays, Brian Goldner, chief executive of toy maker Hasbro, told Reuters in an interview last week. The credit crisis could propel some people in firmly secular societies such as Britain towards religion, said Lord Richard Harries, a member of Britain's upper house of parliament and a former Anglican bishop. "Perhaps after the last decades of conspicuous consumption and hollow celebrity culture we are entering what we might call an era of the new seriousness," he said in a talk on BBC radio. Greater focus on family and a rise in altruism and spirituality often coincided with downturns, said Nick Wills-Johnson, Research fellow, at Curtain University Business School's centre for applied economics in Sydney. The avaricious and brash 1980s, a period typified by the film "Wall Street", was followed by a global recession and what trend-watchers called the "Caring '90s", whose tone was set by George Bush Senior's pledge to make the United States "a kinder and gentler nation". Downturns also boost anti-materialist movements, especially among the young, said David Fowler of Cambridge University, author of the book "Youth Culture in Modern Britain, 1920-1970". "These do flourish in periods of austerity ... (a recession) exposes the superficiality of consumer-driven culture," he said. | 2 |
The study, drawing on the work of more than 1,000 experts, said a shift from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy such as wind, solar or nuclear power was affordable and would shave only about 0.06 percentage point a year off world economic growth."We have a window of opportunity for the next decade, and maximum the next two decades" to act at moderate costs, said Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of a Berlin meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."I'm not saying it's costless. I'm not saying climate policy is a free lunch. But it's a lunch worthwhile to buy," he said.The report, endorsed by governments, is meant as the main scientific guide for nations working on a UN deal to be agreed in late 2015 to rein in world greenhouse gas emissions that have hit repeated highs, led by China's industrial growth.Governments have promised to limit temperature rises to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times to avert ever more heat waves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels that the IPCC says are linked to man-made warming.IPCC scenarios showed that world emissions of greenhouse gases would need to peak soon and tumble by between 40 and 70 percent from 2010 levels by 2050, and then close to zero by 2100, to keep temperatures below 2C.Such cuts are far deeper than most governments are planning."Ambitious mitigation may even require removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," the IPCC said. Delay in acting to cut emissions until 2030 would force far greater use of such technologies, a 33-page summary for policymakers said.Risky optionsIf countries delay, the world will have to deploy little-tested options, said Edenhofer, a German scientist from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.One method mentioned by the IPCC is to burn wood, crops or other biomass to generate electricity and capture the greenhouse gases from the exhaust fumes and bury them underground.The experimental technology would reduce the amount of carbon in a natural cycle of plant growth and decay. But there are risks, for instance that vast areas of land will be needed to grow biomass, displacing crops and pushing up food prices.Simpler methods to extract greenhouse gases from the air are to plant trees, which soak up greenhouse gases as they grow.The IPCC report is the third and final part of a massive United Nations series, updating science for the first time since 2007. A summary of findings will be issued in October.The UN's climate chief, Christiana Figueres, said the world should step up action to cut emissions. "We cannot play a waiting game where we bet on future technological miracles to emerge and save the day," she said in a statement.US Secretary of State John Kerry said that every year the world defers action, the costs only grow."These technologies can cut carbon pollution while growing economic opportunity at the same time," he said in a statement."This report makes very clear we face an issue of global willpower, not capacity."The IPCC says it is at least 95 percent probable that man-made emissions, rather than natural variations, are the main cause of warming. But many voters are doubtful and few governments have policies consistent with a 2C target.Low-carbon energies, which accounted for 17 percent of world energy supplies in 2010, would have to triple or quadruple their share by 2050, displacing conventional fossil fuels as the top source of energy, IPCC scenarios showed.Low-carbon energy can include coal-, natural gas or oil-fired power plants if they use carbon capture and storage (CCS) to bury emissions underground. That technology, however, is mostly experimental.Saskatchewan Power Corp in Canada will start a $1.35 billion Boundary Dam coal-fired CCS project this year, capturing a million tonnes annually of carbon dioxide in what it says is the world's first post-combustion coal-fired CCS project.Oil and gas firms say they are tackling global warming. On March 31, Exxon Mobil Corp said that all energy sources, including fossil fuels, had to be exploited to meet growing world demand.Environmentalists said the focus should be on shifting to renewables rather than nuclear power or CCS. "We need to put our money into the future ... with a focus on renewables and energy efficiency," said Samantha Smith of the WWF conservation group. | 0 |
Jerome Powell, who was reappointed Monday as head of the central bank, and Lael Brainard, a Fed governor newly nominated to be his No. 2, had steered the economy from the depths of the pandemic to its current place — a robust job market coupled with very high inflation. Biden’s bet is that they are best positioned to try to rein in the latter without undoing the former. Another way to put it: Powell’s great second-term challenge is to try to undo some of the unpleasant side effects of his first-term actions without accidentally causing a recession. The decision is not without risk for Biden. High inflation is walloping his approval ratings, and in polls Americans say they are deeply dissatisfied with the economy despite a low unemployment rate, a booming stock market and strong growth in wages. If Biden wanted to pivot to full “whip inflation now” mode, the clearest way to do it would be with his appointment power to the one entity of the US government most explicitly charged with maintaining stable prices. Instead of taking some abrupt turn, the president is entrusting Powell and Brainard — who has been a key player at the Fed throughout the pandemic economic response — to wean the economy from its diet of zero interest rates and other forms of monetary stimulus without starving it. It is a bet that as seasoned central bankers who have credibility with markets, they will have more ability to thread that needle than fresh faces would. “Why am I not picking fresh blood or taking the Fed in a different direction?” Biden said at an afternoon event announcing the nominations. “Put directly, at this moment both of enormous potential and enormous uncertainty for our economy, we need stability and independence at the Federal Reserve.” If they move too gingerly in winding down this period of very cheap money, it could feed into the inflationary psychological dynamics that may already be setting in. In that cycle, high spending levels, rising consumer prices and higher worker pay feed into a spiral that creates a lot of discontent without leaving anybody better off. But if they were to accelerate the pace of interest rate cuts, there are opposite risks. It is easy for the Fed to break things when it raises interest rates, as the world saw most notably in late 2015 when a shift toward tighter money caused a steep pullback in heavy industry, agriculture and related fields. Many financial markets look bubblier now than they did then, and it is anybody’s guess what might happen to stocks and countless other risky assets if the second-term Powell Fed tilted toward tighter money. The economic recovery, while robust so far, may not be firmly entrenched. The unemployment rate is low at 4.6%, but that masks millions of people who have dropped out of the labour force. And it remains uncertain how many of them will return as the effects of the pandemic fade. Powell and Brainard have spoken repeatedly of the importance of keeping an open mind on how strong the labor market can get, and of the human costs of preemptively cutting off a jobs recovery. They will be loath to take any action that might stop further healing in the job market. “I am committed to putting working Americans at the centre of my efforts at the Federal Reserve,” Brainard said Monday. It is Powell’s focus on achieving as strong a job market as possible that probably secured his renomination, against the wishes of many progressives. While acknowledging his commitment to full employment, many on the left — and at least three Democratic senators — had wanted a candidate with a more agreeable philosophy on regulating the financial system and using the Fed’s powers to try to fight climate change. So what did Biden gain with his choice for continuity in the top two jobs at the central bank, a move that has disappointed key allies on the left? Powell and Brainard are known quantities. Now, a newly minted central banker won’t have to face the typical bumps that come with starting in the world’s most important economic policy job. Powell and predecessors Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke each had difficult communications miscues in their early months. The decision to reappoint Powell, a Republican and former private equity executive who was named to lead the Fed by former President Donald Trump, is also a mild gesture of bipartisanship. His Senate confirmation should be a notch easier than alternatives. This is assuming enough Republican senators vote to confirm him to make up for defections on the left, including those telegraphed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley and Sheldon Whitehouse. “Especially now in such a politically divided nation, I believe we need to do everything we can to take the bitter partisanship of today’s politics out of something as important as the independence and credibility of the Federal Reserve,” Biden said. Notably, Biden did not accompany his nominations of Powell and Brainard with two other key Fed nominations: for a vice-chair for supervision or an open governor’s seat. The president will come under intense pressure from the left to use those vacancies to include candidates with a more aggressive regulatory bent and to add racial diversity to the seven-member Board of Governors. (All six current members are white.) None of that changes the basic discomfort in which the Powell Fed now finds itself. Inflation, for now at least, is far above the Fed’s 2% target, and the job market is strengthening rapidly. Yet its monetary policies look like those from 2014, when the labour market was limping along and inflation was below the Fed’s goals. Can Powell bring down inflation without breaking the economy? Biden is betting the answer is yes, and the success of his presidency may depend on it. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Copenhagen, Dec 18 (Reuters/bdnews24.com)--World leaders tried to rescue a global climate agreement on Friday but the failure of leading greenhouse gas emitters China and the United States to come up with new proposals blocked chances of an ambitious deal. U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders are trying to reach consensus on carbon emissions cuts, financial aid to poor nations, temperature caps and international scrutiny of emissions curbs. There has been progress in some areas, but gaps remain over emissions targets and monitoring, delegates said. "We are ready to get this done today but there has to be movement on all sides, to recognize that it is better for us to act than talk," Obama told the conference. "These international discussions have essentially taken place now for almost two decades and we have very little to show for it other than an increase, an acceleration of the climate change phenomenon. The time for talk is over." At stake is an agreement for coordinated global action to avert climate changes including more floods and droughts. Two weeks of talks in Copenhagen have battled suspicion between rich and poor countries over how to share out emissions cuts. Developing countries, among them some of the most vulnerable to climate change, say rich nations have a historic responsibility to take the lead. The environment minister of EU president Sweden, Andreas Carlgren, said the United States and China held the key to a deal. The United States had come late to the table with commitments to tackle climate change, he said. China's resistance to monitoring was a serious obstacle. "And the great victims of this is the big group of developing countries. The EU really wanted to reach out to the big group of developing countries. That was made impossible because of the great powers," Carlgren said. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Copenhagen on Thursday with a promise that the United States would join efforts to mobilize $100 billion a year to help poor nations cope with climate change, provided there was a deal. But there were no such new gestures from Obama. He stuck to the target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. That works out at 3-4 percent versus 1990, compared with an EU target of 20 percent. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also reiterated existing targets, although he said the world's top carbon emitter may exceed them. "We will honor our word with real action," Wen said. "Whatever outcome this conference may produce, we will be fully committed to achieving and even exceeding the target." 'NOT GREAT' Speaking after Obama's speech a British official said: "The prospects for a deal are not great. A number of key countries are holding out against the overall package and time is now running short." Negotiators failed in overnight talks to agree on carbon cuts. Obama and other leaders failed to achieve a breakthrough in talks on Friday morning. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Chinese resistance to monitoring of emissions was a sticking point. "The good news is that the talks are continuing, the bad news is they haven't reached a conclusion," he said. A draft text seen by Reuters called for a "goal" of $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations cope with climate change. It also supported $30 billion for the least developed countries from 2010-2012, and said the world "ought to" limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius versus pre-industrial levels. Scientists say a 2 degrees limit is the minimum to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change including several meters sea level rise, extinctions and crop failures. The aim of the two weeks of talks in Copenhagen is to agree a climate deal which countries will convert into a full legally binding treaty next year, to succeed the Kyoto Protocol whose present round ends in 2012. The United States never ratified Kyoto, and the pact doesn't bind developing nations. Friday's draft text foresees "continuing negotiations" to agree one or more new legal treaties no later than end 2010. | 0 |
The latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the effects of warming are being felt everywhere, fuelling potential food shortages, natural disasters and raising the risk of wars. "The world, in many cases, is ill-prepared for risks from a changing climate," the IPCC said on Monday, after the final text of the report was agreed. More warming increased the chance of harsh, widespread impacts that could be surprising or irreversible, it added. The report projects global warming may cut world economic output by between 0.2 and 2.0 percent a year should mean temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), estimates that many countries say are too low. "Over the coming decades, climate change will have mostly negative impacts," said Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), citing cities, ecosystems and water supply as being among the areas at risk. "The poor and vulnerable will be most affected," he added. The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the WMO and the United Nations Environment Programme. RISK EMPHASIS The report emphasizes the risks, and portrays cuts to greenhouse gas emissions as an insurance policy for the planet. "Climate change is really a challenge of managing risks," Christopher Field, co-chair of the IPCC group preparing the report, told Reuters before its release on Monday. The risks range from death to disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones and small islands, due to storm surges, coastal flooding, and sea-level rise, the report said. Immediate action is needed, says the report, which follows a warning that humans are probably responsible for global warming thought to cause droughts, colder weather and rising sea levels. "Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement. "Denial of the science is malpractice." Still, many governments have pleaded for greater scientific certainty before making billion-dollar investments in everything from flood barriers to renewable energies. "There are those who say we can't afford to act. But waiting is truly unaffordable. The costs of inaction are catastrophic," Kerry said. Global warming will worsen health threats, damage crop yields and bring floods, the report says. It could also deepen poverty and worsen economic shocks at the heart of conflict. The report is the second in a four-part IPCC series meant to guide governments that have promised to agree a pact in 2015 to slow climate change. The first, in September, raised to least 95 percent the probability that most global warming is man-made, from 90 percent in 2007. The panel's credibility faces scrutiny after one of its reports, in 2007, exaggerated the melt of Himalayan glaciers, but reviews said the error did not undermine key findings. Climate scientists say they are more certain than ever that mankind is the main culprit behind global warming and warned the impact of greenhouse gas emissions would linger for centuries. The report pulls together the work of hundreds of scientists but skeptics have been emboldened by the fact that temperatures have risen more slowly recently, despite rising emissions. One of the authors, Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University in England, pulled out of the writing team last week, saying he thought the report was too alarmist. The United Nations urged governments to step up work for a deal to fight climate change. "This report requires and requests that everyone accelerate and scale up efforts towards a low carbon world and manage the risks of climate change," the United Nations climate chief, Christiana Figueres, said in a statement. | 0 |
From Melbourne, Australia, to La Paz, Boliva, and London to Cape Town, South Africa, young people took part in a historic day of protests Friday to goad world leaders into addressing what they call the climate crisis. Rallies were held in an estimated 150 countries and across the United States. Who are these young protest organizers? What is driving them? What do they want? KAMPALA, UGANDA Leah Namugerwa, 15 Two things prompted her to walk out of school on a Friday this past February: The example of Greta Thunberg’s one-girl strike in Sweden and what she regards to be a near-total neglect of climate change issues by those in charge of her country. “I noticed adults were not willing to offer leadership, and I chose to volunteer myself,” Leah Namugerwa said. “Environmental injustice is injustice to me.” Her teacher was encouraging at first, but not after some school parents complained. She has not been punished for her protests, but the school marks her absent for every day she is out protesting, sometimes by herself on the side of a road, dressed in her school uniform. Uganda, she said, is no stranger to the impact of climate change. Hotter days, longer droughts, unpredictable rains and mosquitoes where there were none. The protests give her some hope. “Fridays for Future grew from one person to millions, from one country to the whole world,” Leah said. “The increasing number of climate strikers and activists are giving me hope that climate action is within our reach.” She was supposed to be in New York this weekend for the United Nations Youth Climate Summit, but could not get a US visa and will not be able to come. MUMBAI, INDIA
Nikhil Kalmegh, 24, with a banner while participating in a climate change protest at the AE Kalsekar Degree College in Mumbra, on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, on Friday, Sept 20, 2019. Kalmegh is one of the local leaders among the young people around the globe that are demanding action on climate change in a day of protest. (Vivek Singh/The New York Times)
Nikhil Kalmegh, 24 Nikhil Kalmegh, 24, with a banner while participating in a climate change protest at the AE Kalsekar Degree College in Mumbra, on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, on Friday, Sept 20, 2019. Kalmegh is one of the local leaders among the young people around the globe that are demanding action on climate change in a day of protest. (Vivek Singh/The New York Times) Nikhil Kalmegh sees climate change affecting the basic necessities of life across his country. “We’re buying drinking water, people are dying of air pollution, there’s water crises, from Delhi to Chennai,” he said. In some places there’s not enough water to drink, let alone water needed to farm. “The poor are facing the worst impacts of climate change. Farmers will be the first to go extinct.” Two things pulled him into climate activism: a dire report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warning about the urgent need to curb emissions, and news of Greta’s solo strike. “This is our terrifying world, already at 1 Celsius warming,” he said. “The Paris Agreement was in 2015, but it looks like no politicians are making a concerted effort.” The first time he joined a climate protest was last March, during the last Global Day of Action. He wants India to declare a climate emergency. “If the government makes climate change their No. 1 priority, and stops deforestation in the name of development, only then do we stand a chance,” he said. Most Indians make a living on the land. The country has a long coastline, and 1.3 billion citizens, the world’s second largest population, after China. “For the economy, we’re increasing industrialization but we have to focus on air, water and food,” he said. “We don’t take this threat as seriously as we should.” MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA Freya Brown, 16 The thing that pulled Freya Brown into her first climate strike late last year was realizing that it’s not a faraway problem, and that it’s not equal. “Seeing people being affected right now,” she said, “which is so unfair.” She sees it all around her. Not so far away are the Pacific islands, whose very existence is threatened by sea rise. Recurrent droughts are making life tough for her friends in the Australian countryside. And then there’s the stress that her peers feel, in her city, about what future they can expect to have. It’s impacting people disproportionately, she said. “We need to be supporting and trying to help those most affected. And realizing some countries have a lot more power and ability to make change.” She wants her own country to stop new fossil fuel projects. At the moment that looks unlikely. Australia is among the world’s biggest coal producers, and its new government has given the go-ahead to open a large new coal basin in the northeast. CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
Ruby Sampson and Ayakha Melithafa, of the African Climate Alliance, during in the youth led march in protest of climate change, as the demonstrators were headed toward the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, on Friday, Sept 20, 2019. Sampson and Melithafa are some of the local leaders among the young people around the globe that are demanding action on climate change in a day of protest. (Sydelle Willow Smith/The New York Times)
Ruby Sampson, 18, and Ayakha Melithafa, 17 Ruby Sampson and Ayakha Melithafa, of the African Climate Alliance, during in the youth led march in protest of climate change, as the demonstrators were headed toward the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, on Friday, Sept 20, 2019. Sampson and Melithafa are some of the local leaders among the young people around the globe that are demanding action on climate change in a day of protest. (Sydelle Willow Smith/The New York Times) Ruby Sampson and Ayakha Melithafa wanted to be interviewed together as members of the African Climate Alliance. They do not skip school every Friday. “It’s not ethical,” Ayakha said, to call on kids to skip school when their parents sacrifice so much to pay school fees. This Friday is an exception. “It’s not just for the privileged kids whose mummies can drive them back and forth,” Ruby said. Buses have been rented, with the help of environmental groups, to ferry children to and from the strike. Ruby and Ayakha see the impact of climate change in the successive droughts that have struck southern Africa, and particularly in the water crisis that struck their city last year. The tap water was contaminated in Ayakha’s neighborhood, and when her brother drank it, unknowingly, he suffered from diarrhea for a week. Ruby’s family, like all Cape Town families, had to strictly ration water. “I couldn’t take showers, I was drinking less water, clothing had to be worn over and over again,” Ruby said. “We are living the way people are afraid to live when climate crisis hits in privileged communities,” Ayakha said. They want an immediate moratorium on the extraction of coal, oil and gas in South Africa. Ayakha has a broader demand for the UN summit next week: She wants world leaders to see the problem globally, not through their own parochial lens. “This is our world, not ‘I have my country. You have your country,’” Ayakha said. LONDON Elijah McKenzie-Jackson, 15 When he went to his first climate strike in February, Elijah McKenzie-Jackson was not sure it was his place to “stand up and speak.” He was only 15, after all. He should be worrying about exams. But then he met a child younger than him, and watched her burst into tears because she was afraid she would not have anywhere to live when she grew up. “It’s so out of this world that children are so terrified of literally being on this planet, being able to survive,” he said. “I thought enough is enough. It’s time to do something now.” Elijah’s country is among those with one of the most ambitious targets in the world to cut emissions and produce, on balance, zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. He does not think it’s soon enough. “I would like politicians and policymakers to actually hear students on the street who are terrified. Our planet is dying and I want them to find a solution. I want to go net zero by 2030.” He tries to keep his fear at bay. “I am terrified for the future,” Elijah said. “I feel like if I think about it too long, I won’t be able to do what I do.” LA PAZ, BOLIVIA Adriana Salazar, 19 Adriana Salazar’s family belongs to the Aymara indigenous community from Guaqui in the Bolivian Andes. Farmers there have long managed the occasional drought, she said, but they could not cope during the last one, in 2016, when Bolivia suffered its worst drought in decades. Rural people ended up moving into already cramped cities. “It didn’t rain when it should have. The cold season was stronger and that damaged the crops too,” she said. “The people who lived off the land can’t live off it anymore.” This year, there are forest fires, some of the worst in her country’s history. “I don’t know what world my kids will live in. I don’t know what’s going to happen in 10 years,” she said. “The kids, the indigenous communities, pregnant women, they’ll see the effects while the higher classes will avoid the worst of it.” She wants rich countries to provide more money for the Green Climate Fund. As a law student, she wants world leaders to recognize the rights of the planet, as they would recognize the rights of individuals and nation-states. “Recognize Mother Earth as a subject of law, and not an object of law,” she said. NEW YORK Jamie Margolin, 17 Jamie Margolin’s climate activism began long before Greta sat outside the Swedish Parliament. Her trigger moment, she said, was the US presidential election in 2016. She needed to help make the planet livable for her generation. “At that moment I was, like, the leaders elected are not going to be the ones,” she said. She joined a local environmental group in her hometown, Seattle, then founded her own called This Is Zero Hour and then one day in April, walked out of school with a sign she made in art class: “School Strike for the Amazon,” it read. She cares about the Amazon not just because it’s the lungs of the planet. The forest stretches into Colombia, her mother’s home country. And it is the Amazon that looms large in her mind when she thinks of the UN summit. “What I need them when they come together on Sept 23 is to immediately halt all deforestation altogether.” The other day, before traveling to New York for the protests there, she was cornered by classmates feeling stressed. “Are we going to make it?” they asked. She said she had no certainty to offer, only a conviction to do whatever it takes to try. “It’s like the door is slamming and we’re trying to run in through that door right before it slams shut.” © 2019 The New York Times Company | 0 |
SEOUL, Nov 17, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - South Korea has set its voluntary 2020 emissions reduction target to a 30 percent reduction from its forecast under a "business as usual" scenario, the presidential office said in a statement on Tuesday. "Unless there is a big change in the business situation, the business as usual target should be equivalent to a 4 percent reduction (against 2005 levels)," Woo Ki-jong, secretary-general of the presidential committee on green growth, told Reuters by telephone. The OECD's fastest-growing carbon polluter earlier this month ditched its weakest voluntary emissions target of an 8 percent increase from 2005 emissions levels by 2020. A senior government source said on Saturday South Korea had adopted the toughest of its two voluntary 2020 emissions reduction targets -- either unchanged from or 4 percent below 2005 levels ahead of a global meeting in Copenhagen. President Lee Myung-bak said in the statement that while emissions reduction would present "short-term burdens" it would also bring "broader national gains." "Through the aggressive greenhouse gas reduction, South Korea will be ready for industrialised countries' carbon trade tariffs, raise energy security and acquire market share first in rapidly growing green sectors." While not obliged under the UN's Kyoto Protocol climate pact to announce binding cuts, South Korea faced pressure to put the brakes on the rapid growth of its planet-warming emissions from industry and transport. The statement noted that the target cut was the strongest recommended to developing countries by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. South Korea's green investment plans are already among the most ambitious in Asia, with the government saying earlier this year it would pump 107 trillion won ($92.88 billion) into environment-related industries over the next five years. The country is hoping to showcase its green policies when it hosts a G20 summit next year. | 0 |
With millions of ballots yet to be counted, Biden led incumbent President Donald Trump in several of the battleground states that will decide the contest. Yet his Democrats were coming up short in their effort to win control of the Senate, where Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority, even as they retained control of the House of Representatives. If those results hold, that would be a recipe for gridlock in Washington, analysts say, where lawmakers would struggle to agree even on basic duties like paying debts and funding government operations. More ambitious efforts would likely be off the table entirely. A multi-trillion-dollar plan to curb carbon emissions and create jobs would founder in the Senate. Biden's plan to raise taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals would also be dead in the water, as would voting-rights and campaign-finance reforms backed by Democrats. Biden also will likely have to settle for a much smaller economic stimulus package. Democrats have passed several bills out of the House that would provide up to $3.4 trillion to provide assistance to millions of jobless people and help local governments keep teachers, firefighters and other employees on the payroll. Senate Republicans have so far refused to pass anything at all, though their leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday that the two sides needed to find compromise by the end of the year. He did, however, show willingness to meet a key Democratic demand - more money for state and local governments. "The message from Senate Republicans is going to be: 'The American people elected us to tap a brake on this unrequited socialism that Democrats are going to try to bring to this country,'" said Jon Lieber, a former McConnell aide now with the Eurasia Group. Lacking a majority on Capitol Hill, Biden could issue executive orders to pursue smaller-bore agenda items, like student-loan relief and consumer protections. That go-it-alone approach, used by Trump and Democratic President Barack Obama before him, could be easily undone by a Republican successor. CORONAVIRUS, CLIMATE AND CABINET On his first day in the White House, Biden says, he will issue a national strategy to respond to COVID-19 that will likely include a mask mandate and clearer guidance on testing and school reopenings. He has also promised to work more productively with health officials that Trump has ignored, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious-disease expert. But a Republican Senate could reject Cabinet appointees they deem too liberal, forcing Biden to opt for consensus picks that might frustrate those on his party's left wing. "We want to make sure that people who are implementing parts of his (climate change) plan are not people who are aligned with the fossil-fuel industry, are not corporate lobbyists," said Garrett Blad, national spokesman of the Sunrise Movement, a grassroots group pushing for aggressive action on climate change. Biden campaigned as a centrist who would try to work across partisan divides, and as a member of the Senate from 1972 to 2008 has a deep knowledge of its workings and personal relationships with many of its members. "Look for him to drive long-standing priorities of his like infrastructure, where he could perhaps find support from a moderate Republican or two," said Scott Mulhauser, a Democratic strategist who worked for Biden in the 2012 presidential election. But many of Biden's former Republican colleagues have retired or been voted out, leaving a more conservative majority that is less inclined to compromise. "These periods of split-party control tend not to be very productive," said Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University. Facing another two years of gridlock, Democrats would likely focus on winning a Senate majority in the next congressional election in November 2022. But that could turn out poorly for Democrats if Washington does not takes dramatic steps to bolster the economy, improve health-care and curb climate change, said Adam Jentleson, a former Democratic Senate leadership aide. "The real danger scenario for Biden and Democrats is that Republicans force all of the solutions to be inadequate and Democrats take them because they have to," he said. | 0 |
SYANGBOCHE, Nepal (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Nepal's cabinet began a meeting close to the base camp of Mount Everest on Friday to send a message on the impact of global warming on the Himalayas, days before global climate talks start in Copenhagen. Wearing oxygen masks and heavy jackets, Nepal's Prime Minister and more than 20 ministers flew in by helicopter to meet 5,242 metres (17,200 feet) above sea level with Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, towering in the backdrop. The base camp is the point from where climbers to the Everest summit begin their ascent. "Global warming is having a serious impact on our economy," Finance Minister Surendra Pandey told Reuters ahead of the unprecedented meeting. "We have changing patterns of rain. Glaciers are melting." About 100 world leaders will meet in the Danish capital for the Dec. 7-18 U.N. summit on combating global warming.
For its part, Kathmandu is sending along some of its renowned Everest climbers to highlight the challenges facing Nepal, such as floods from glacier melting, erratic rains, longer dry spells and unprecedented forest fires. Home to eight of the world's 14 tallest peaks, including Mount Everest, Nepal is vulnerable to climate change despite being responsible for only 0.025 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, among the world's lowest, officials say. Thousands of glaciers in the Himalayas that are the source of water for 10 major Asian rivers could go dry in the next five decades because of global warming, experts say. In freezing temperatures and surrounded by snowy peaks, Nepal's cabinet began meeting at Kalapathar, a small patch of grassy land that is also one of the target destinations for trekkers.
"We are being punished for the crime we never committed.
Developed countries must help check the effects of global warming on the Himalayas," Forest Minister Deepak Bohara said earlier this week. | 0 |
In a speech in Washington, where a partial government shutdown began on Tuesday after a standoff between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans over healthcare reforms, Kim said the implications could be far-reaching.US fiscal uncertainty "combined with other sources of volatility in the global economy, could do great damage to emerging markets and developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that have lifted millions of people out of poverty in recent years," he said.RBC Global Asset Management estimates that each week of shutdown will shave about 0.1 percentage point off US economic growth, potentially helping to trim demand for imports.Kim has sought to energize the bank around a poverty-eradication goal since he assumed his post last year and he has launched a major reorganization to make the institution more nimble and useful, especially to middle-income countries, and work more closely with the private sector.Inequality and limited opportunities for the poorest people in each country can drive instability and breed conflict, Kim said, pointing to developments in the Middle East, where a wave of protests drove decades-old rulers from power."This is what happens when prosperity is reserved for a select few," he said in a speech on Tuesday. "All of those left out feel deeply the burn of inequity."To meet its goals amid greater competition for development funds and a tight budget, the World Bank must focus on "bold" projects and technical solutions to countries, he said.That will involve working with the bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to encourage businesses to create jobs in poorer countries.It will also require focusing on so-called fragile states, which will house most of the world's poor people in the next five years. Kim said the bank's fund for the poorest will plan to increase its funding to fragile states by 50 percent over the next three years, as would the IFC.According to a draft strategy paper presented to the bank's board last month, and seen by Reuters, the new focus will require cutbacks in other programs.Kim made no mention of cuts in his speech ahead of the International Monetary Fund-World Bank annual meetings next week. The bank is also still figuring out its financing strategy, and may start relying more on fees from advisory services and on earmarked funds from specific governments. The bank's board will discuss the finances after the meetings.In April, Kim committed the bank to twin goals of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population in each country.He has also challenged people to build a social movement around the issue, using social media and signing petitions.Kim reiterated the bank's commitment to addressing climate change, saying it is impossible to tackle poverty without dealing with the effects of a warmer world.The World Bank wants to fund 10,000 megawatts of energy in three years -- the entire capacity of Peru, and also help 12 countries reform their energy subsidies, he said. | 0 |
Asia, home to nearly two-thirds of the world's people, must take urgent action to lessen the effects of climate change but needs considerable help from rich nations elsewhere, a report said on Monday. "Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific," the last in a series of reports from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) think-tank, appears just after leading scientists said the effects of global warming would be all-pervasive and irreversible. "Wealthy industrialised countries must act first and fastest to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but emerging Asian countries also need to contribute to climate change mitigation," it said. The report called for sustainable development policies including ending deforestation and promoting energy efficiency and environmentally sensible renewable energy sources, and said booming palm oil production posed a problem in this regard. More than half Asia's four billion people live near the coast, making them highly vulnerable to rising sea levels from melting glaciers, and all are open to the vagaries of the water cycle affecting food production, it said. "It has become clear that Asia will see some major changes as a result of climate change, and several of these are becoming evident already," Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) head Rajendra Pachauri wrote in the report. "Even more compelling are the projections of future climate change and associated impacts in Asia," he added. The IPCC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize this year along with former US vice president Al Gore, issued the leading scientists' warning that climate change was irreversible. DIRTY AIR, POLLUTED WATER The NEF echoed the message in its report on Asia, saying climate change was likely to have a dire effect on air quality and to increase the pollution and scarcity of water, while the rising population put growing demands on scarce resources. The report said Asia contained nearly 90 percent of the world's small farms -- China accounting for half and India one quarter -- which produced much of the food but faced major climate change-induced difficulties. "To cope with a changing environment, Asian small-scale agriculture will need dramatically increased support," it said. The report, like that of the IPCC, is aimed at a meeting of UN environment ministers next month on the Indonesian island of Bali whose subject is climate change and how to deal with it. The goal of the Dec 3-14 Bali meeting is to agree to start urgent talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon gas emissions, which expires in 2012. Scientists say there is no time left for failure, either in Bali or in the global negotiations the Bali talks should launch. "There are less than 10 years before global emissions must start to decline; instead, emissions from Britain and other wealthy industrialised countries are still rising remorselessly," the NEF said. Officials involved in preliminary discussions say the mood about the Bali meeting is good, but many major problems remain and there is no certainty of a positive outcome. | 0 |
The COP26 summit hopes to find ways to keep within reach a target of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), but the scale of the challenge was underlined by a study showing carbon dioxide emissions have returned to near pre-pandemic levels. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal are the single biggest contributor to climate change, and weaning the world off coal is considered vital to achieving global climate targets. The pledge to drop coal did not include Australia, India, the United States and China, which has around half the coal-fired plants operating around the world and plans to build more. Carbon dioxide emissions fell by 5.4 percent in 2020 as economies ground to a halt, but the new report by the Global Carbon Project forecast a 4.9 percent rebound in emissions for this year. "We were expecting to see some rebound," said the report's lead author Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate modelling researcher at the University of Exeter. "What surprised us was the intensity and rapidity." It was a stark reminder to leaders in Glasgow of the challenge of preventing more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial levels. The United Nations says a rise above 1.5C would trigger climate impacts far more catastrophic than the intensifying storms, heatwaves, droughts and floods already being seen. "I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight," Alok Sharma, British president of the two-week summit, said in detailing the pledge to phase out existing coal-fuelled power plants and to stop building new ones. The non-binding pledge "has 77 signatories, including 46 countries, such as Poland, Vietnam, and Chile, 23 of which are making commitments on ending coal for the first time," he said. Richer nations agreed to quit coal power by the 2030s and poorer ones by the 2040s. Poland said it was aiming for the 2040s - having previously pledged to stop mining coal in 2049. Indonesia did not agree to the part of the deal on ending finance for new coal plants. Coal-fired power today produces more than a third of the world's electricity. Many developing countries currently rely on cheap, accessible coal to fuel their economies, just as developed countries did from the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century onwards, despite the costs to the environment and public health. 'CANNOT CELEBRATE' The International Energy Agency, the world's energy watchdog, said net-zero emissions pledges and promises to cut methane announced at COP26, if enforced, would enable the world to limit warming to below 2 degrees. "New @IEA analysis shows that fully achieving all net zero pledges to date & the Global Methane Pledge by those who signed it would limit global warming to 1.8C," IEA chief Fatih Birol wrote on Twitter. Selwin Hart, special adviser to the UN secretary-general on climate action, challenged Birol's assertion. "Fatih, I heard your numbers. But based on the NDCs that have been submitted, the world is on a 2.7 degree pathway – a catastrophic pathway," Hart said in Glasgow. "And therefore we are a long way from keeping the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement alive. We cannot be complacent. We cannot celebrate before we've done the job," he added. FUNDING GAP The UN Environment Programme said poorer countries needed five to 10 times more money to adapt to the consequences of climate change than they are now getting. Richer countries failed to meet a 2020 deadline for delivering $100 billion a year in "climate finance". Questions of finance also swirled around the COP26 coal deal, which some countries said they would not be able to deliver without more financial help. "We need to have funding to retire coal earlier and to build the new capacity of renewable energy," said Indonesia's finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati. The Southeast Asian nation is the world's biggest coal exporter, and relies on the fuel for 65 percent of its own energy capacity. It also will be among the first recipients of a multibillion dollar pilot programme to speed a transition to clean energy, along with India, South Africa, and the Philippines, the Climate Investment Funds said. The main aim of COP26 is to get promises of enough cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to put the world on a clear path towards capping the rise in global temperature - already up 1.1C since pre-industrial times. | 0 |
Already, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades if not centuries, scientists warn in a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That’s on top of the deadly heat waves, powerful hurricanes and other weather extremes that are happening now and are likely to become more severe. Describing the report as a "code red for humanity," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged an immediate end to coal energy and other high-polluting fossil fuels. “The alarm bells are deafening,” Guterres said in a statement. “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.” The IPCC report comes just three months before a major U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where nations will be under pressure to pledge ambitious climate action and substantial financing. Drawing on more than 14,000 scientific studies, the report gives the most comprehensive and detailed picture yet of how climate change is altering the natural world -- and what still could be ahead. Unless immediate, rapid and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the report says, the average global temperature will likely cross the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold within the next 20 years. So far, nations’ pledges to cut emissions have been inadequate for bringing down the level of greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere. Reacting to the findings, governments and campaigners expressed alarm. “The IPCC report underscores the overwhelming urgency of this moment,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said in a statement. “The world must come together before the ability to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is out of reach.” IRREVERSIBLE CHANGE Emissions “unequivocally caused by human activities” have pushed today’s average global temperature 1.1C higher than the preindustrial average -- and would have pushed it 0.5C further if not for the tempering effect of pollution in the atmosphere, the report says. That means that, as societies transition away from fossil fuels, much of the aerosols in the air would vanish -- and temperatures could spike. Scientists warn that warming more than 1.5C above the preindustrial average could trigger runaway climate change with catastrophic impacts, such as heat so intense that crops fail or people die just from being outdoors. Every additional 0.5C of warming will also boost the intensity and frequency of heat extremes and heavy rainfall, as well as droughts in some regions. Because temperatures fluctuate from year to year, scientists measure climate warming in terms of 20-year averages. "We have all the evidence we need to show we are in a climate crisis," said three-time IPCC co-author Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich who doubts she will sign up for a fourth report. "Policymakers have enough information. You can ask: Is it a meaningful use of scientists' time, if nothing is being done?" The 1.1C warming already recorded has been enough to unleash disastrous weather. This year, heat waves killed hundreds in the Pacific Northwest and smashed records around the world. Wildfires fueled by heat and drought are sweeping away entire towns in the U.S. West, releasing record emissions from Siberian forests, and driving Greeks to flee their lands by ferry. "Every bit of warming matters," said IPCC co-author Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading in Britain. "The consequences get worse and worse as we get warmer." Greenland’s ice sheet is "virtually certain" to continue melting. Oceans will keep warming, with surface levels rising for centuries to come. It’s too late to prevent these particular changes. The best the world can do is to slow them down so that countries have more time to prepare and adapt. “We are now committed to some aspects of climate change, some of which are irreversible for hundreds to thousands of years,” said IPCC co-author Tamsin Edwards, a climate scientist at King’s College London. “But the more we limit warming, the more we can avoid or slow down those changes.” ‘WE STILL HAVE CHOICES TO MAKE’ But even to slow climate change, the report says, the world is running out of time. If the world drastically cuts emissions in the next decade, average temperatures could still rise 1.5C by 2040 and possibly 1.6C by 2060 before stabilizing. If the world does not cut emissions dramatically and instead continues the current trajectory, the planet could see 2.0C warming by 2060 and 2.7C by the century’s end. The earth has not been that warm since the Pliocene Epoch roughly 3 million years ago -- when the first ancestors to humans were appearing and oceans were 25 meters (82 feet) higher than today. It could get even worse, if warming triggers feedback loops that release even more climate-warming carbon emissions -- such as the melting of Arctic permafrost or the dieback of global forests. Under these high-emissions scenarios, Earth could broil at temperatures 4.4C above the preindustrial average by 2081-2100. “We have already changed our planet, and some of those changes we will have to live with for centuries and millennia to come,” said IPCC co-author Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. The question now, he said, is how many more irreversible changes we avoid: "We still have choices to make." | 0 |
But something happened last year to shift that orbit. It started with the signs Haner saw popping up in windows as he drove to work: “Now hiring!” McDonald’s was hiring. Walgreens was hiring. Taco Bell closed early because it was short staffed. Everyone in Midland, Michigan, it seemed, needed workers. So Haner began to wonder: Why shouldn’t work revolve around people like him? “It’s absolute craziness,” said Haner, 32, who quit his job at Applebee’s last summer and accepted a fully remote position in sales at a tech company. “I decided to take a chance because I was like, ‘If it doesn’t work out, there’s 100 more jobs out there that I can find.’” More than 40 million people left their jobs last year, many in retail and hospitality. It was called the Great Resignation, and then a rush of other names: the Great Renegotiation, the Great Reshuffle, the Great Rethink. But people were not leaving work altogether. They still had to make money. Much of the pandemic stimulus aid stopped by the fall, and savings rates dropped to their lowest in nine years, 6.4%, by January. What workers realised, though, is that they could find better ways to earn a living. Higher pay. Stable hours. Flexibility. They expected more from their employers, and appeared to be getting it. Applebee’s said the safety of its workers and guests was a priority. “Aggressive behaviour of any kind is not permitted,” said Kevin Carroll, the company’s chief operations officer. Across the country, workers were flush with opportunities and could rebuff what they had once been forced to tolerate — whether rigid bosses or customer abuse. And to keep businesses running, bosses had to start listening. “People have seen this as a rejection of work, but I’ve seen it as people capitalising on an abundance of job opportunities,” said Nick Bunker, director of economic research for North America at Indeed’s hiring lab. “People do need to pay the bills.” As vaccines and stimulus money rolled out last year, and state and local governments urged a return to normalcy, businesses grew desperate for workers. Workers took advantage of the moment by recalibrating what they expected from their employers. That did not mean millions logging off forever and throwing their laptops into the sea. It meant low-wage workers hanging up their aprons and driving to another business with a “hiring” sign hanging on the door. It also meant white-collar workers, buoyed by the tight labour market, telling their employers exactly how and where they want to work. “Our employees have the power,” said Tim Ryan, US chair of PwC, which is in the midst of a three-year transition that allows for more flexible work, including allowing much of the workforce to go permanently remote, a process Ryan estimates to be a $2.4 billion investment. That workplace transition is so grand that the executive of the 55,000-employee company had to describe it with a 2003 Disney reference. “There’s a line in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ — I have six children — where one of the characters says to Elizabeth, ‘Do you believe in nightmares? You better, because we’re living in one,’” Ryan continued, with impressive but slightly off recall of Capt. Hector Barbossa’s dialogue about ghost stories. “We’re living in this amazing transformation of the workplace, and we don’t even know it because we’re showing up every day living in it.” Many of last year’s job quitters are actually job swappers, according to data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics and the census, which shows a nearly 1-to-1 correlation between the rate of quitting and swapping. Those job switchers have tended to be in leisure, hospitality and retail. In leisure and hospitality, the rate of workers quitting rose to nearly 6% from 4% since the pandemic began. In retail it jumped to nearly 5% from 3.5%. White-collar employers still struggled to hire, but they saw far fewer resignations. The quitting rate in finance, for example, declined at the start of the pandemic and is now just below 2%, and in media and technology it stayed roughly consistent, also below 2%. When workers switched jobs, they often increased their pay. Wages grew nearly 10% in leisure and hospitality over the last year, and more than 7% in retail. Workers were also able to increase their shift hours, as rates of those working part-time involuntarily declined. A slim share of people left the workforce entirely, though for the most part that was driven by older men retiring before age 65 — and some of them are now coming back to work. The mismatch between the baby boomers retiring and the smaller cohort of young people entering the workforce has also contributed to tightening labour supply. But broadly speaking, people are not done with work, and cannot afford to be. The last year brought less giving up and more trading up — to new jobs, more hours and better pay. Workers did not really change their feelings about work; they changed their expectations. “Most people have never wanted to work and they do so because they need to live,” said Rebecca Givan, an associate professor of labour studies at Rutgers. “Now workers are saying, ‘We’re going to hold our bosses accountable and demand more from them.’” Porsha Sharon, 28, still thinks about the outbursts she witnessed from customers she served last year at Buddy’s Pizza in Troy, Michigan. One woman entered the restaurant and simply ordered a pizza, to which Sharon responded, gesturing at the extensive menu: Which kind? “Did you not hear what I said?” the customer replied, according to Sharon’s recollection. “Are you dense?” Other customers mocked Sharon for wearing a mask. The eight-hour shifts ended with burning pain in her swollen feet. She got an offer in March to start working as an administrative assistant at a law firm, work she did on a temporary basis in college, and last month she quit the pizzeria. “The last generation, they were miserable in their jobs but they stayed because that’s what they were supposed to do,” Sharon said. “We’re not like that, and I love that for us. We’re like, ‘This job is overworking me, I’m getting sick because my body is shutting down, and I’m over it.’” Katy Dean, chief operating officer of Buddy’s Pizza, a Michigan restaurant chain, said abusive customers were a “challenging component” of the current climate in food service. “If a guest refuses to calm down and treat our staff with respect, we empower our managers to ask that guest to leave the restaurant,” Dean said. This workplace moment has been branded one of anti-ambition. But for many workers, frustration gave way to an explosion of ambitious calls for better jobs: for promotions, industry switches, stable hours, sick leave, bereavement leave, maternity leave, retirement plans, safety protections, vacation time. “No one wants to work anymore,” read a sign outside of McDonald’s featured in a viral TikTok. To which former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich replied, “No one wants to be exploited anymore.” Last year when millions said “I quit,” the reckoning reached far beyond the confines of the companies and industries at its centre. White-collar workers were not quitting jobs at the same rapid clip as those in hospitality and retail. But they made bold demands of their employers all the same, cognizant that unemployment is low and competition for talent is fierce. “There’s the threat of quitting rather than actual quitting,” Bunker said. “Employees realise they do have bargaining power.” They are exercising that power, in particular, where it comes to flexibility. The shutdown of offices left workers with a sense of autonomy they were not willing to relinquish. Even some of the seemingly unassailable bosses on Wall Street recognized that old norms could not hold. Citigroup, Wells Fargo and BNY Mellon, for example, told bankers that their return to the office would be hybrid, and would not mean commuting five days a week. Just 8% of Manhattan office workers are back in the office five days a week, according to data released this week from the Partnership for New York City. “My quality of life increased so much that there would be no convincing me coming into an office was worth it,” said Lyssa Walker White, 38, who switched nonprofit jobs earlier this year because of her old employer’s expectation that she return to the office. Some employers went ahead with calling their workers back to the office, at least for some of the week, and found that they faced outright resistance. Apple, for example, which required its employees to return to the office three days a week, received a recent open letter from workers detailing their fierce opposition to in-person work. “Stop trying to control how often you can see us in the office,” the Apple workers wrote. “Please get out of our way, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, let us decide how we work best, and let us do the best work of our lives.” The company declined to comment. Its hybrid RTO requirement remains in place. At other white-collar workplaces, newly formed unions took up the remote work cause. The Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, for example, grew its membership from 12 organisations and 300 workers in 2018 to roughly 50 organisations and 1,300 workers this year. One member organisation secured an agreement that managers would cover the costs of travel for workers required to commute. Another got its management to agree to provide written justification to any employee required to return to the office. At a recent industry conference, Jessica Kriegel, head of people and culture at Experience.com, a technology company, gathered with colleagues in human resources and swapped all kinds of stories about facing the requests of an emboldened staff. There were tales of people asking for raises quadruple the size of their salaries. There were tales of company strategy meetings that had once been held as closed-door retreats in Napa, California, and had now been expanded to include junior level staff in town halls. Kriegel said she had given a top performer an eye-popping raise, and seen another race through three promotions, rising from a contributor to a director to a vice president, in just one year. “They’re asking for title bumps not even associated with financial promotions in order to put it on their LinkedIn,” Kriegel said. “People who are entry level are getting the director level title.” So the human resources director raises an eyebrow when she hears colleagues say that people are over working, because she is watching her staff agitate for exactly the type of work they want to do. “We’re starting to see people feel they don’t have to live in fear,” she said. “It’s not about anti-ambition. It’s about incredible ambition.” Haner, who left Applebee’s, was recently given a raise, of 16%, putting him at an hourly pay substantially above his wages at Applebee’s. When friends ask about his new job, he waxes on about the thoughtful conversations he has with his manager. When he requested time off for his grandfather’s funeral, something he felt would have prompted a “tsk, tsk” at Applebee’s, he was told that his company offers bereavement leave. While a job is still a job, his morning alarm no longer prompts that sense of dread because of a new sensation: “They treat us with respect.” © 2022 The New York Times Company | 1 |
Many have endured illness, economic upheaval, the climate
crisis, grief and racial inequities. Add to that inflation, supply chain issues
and the ripple effects of Russia’s war with Ukraine — three of the biggest
sources of stress among people in the United States right now, according to a
recent poll for the American Psychological Association. Perhaps, experts say, the arrival of spring can serve as a
natural point to take stock of our mental well-being and reconnect with the
things that bring us purpose and joy, offering our brains a respite when
possible. “It really is — for a number of reasons — a perfect time for
folks to turn their attention to taking an inventory. Where do I find myself?
What have I been through?” said Paul Napper, a psychology consultant to
business leaders and co-author of “The Power of Agency: The 7 Principles to
Conquer Obstacles, Make Effective Decisions and Create a Life on Your Own
Terms.” Creating a clear, more focused mind starts by making
decisions about how we spend our time every day. When those choices are in line
with our values, interests and passions, this is referred to as personal agency. “You do always have a choice,” Napper said. “It may not be a
great choice,” he added, but examining your options helps you to adapt to your
circumstances. Here are five ways to declutter your mind as we enter a new
season. PRACTICE MINDFULNESS “Being a human, particularly right now, is stressful,” said
Nkechi Njaka, a meditation guide in San Francisco with a background in
neuroscience. “And when we think of how degenerative stress is, and how harmful
to the body, we need something that can help mitigate it.” Mindfulness meditation, a practice that helps you remember
to return to the present when you become distracted, has been shown to reduce
the stress of daily life. When people notice that their mind is racing or they start
to become anxious, they are typically thinking about something in the past or
in the future. To refocus on the here and now, you can start by noticing
the sensations in the body, Njaka said. “Can we feel the ground below us? The
heat of the sun?” It is normal for the mind to wander. If this happens, gently
return your awareness to your breathing and come back to the present. If you are compassionate with yourself and approach the
practice with curiosity, openness and forgiveness, you will be more likely to
try it again, she added. Take advantage of the transitional moments of the day to
practice mindfulness — when you wake up, right before or after a meal or when
you change your physical location, for example — so that you can start to form
a routine. TRY THE BULLET JOURNAL METHOD Studies have found that jotting down thoughts in a journal
can improve well-being. One method that has gained popularity in recent years is a
practice created by digital designer Ryder Carroll and outlined in his
bestselling book, “The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the
Present, Design the Future.” The Bullet Journal is an organisational system but also an
exercise in mindfulness — one that requires you to continually reevaluate how
you are investing your time and energy and then decide whether those things are
worth it. Otherwise, Carroll said, “you can be very productive working
on the wrong things.” Carroll, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
initially started journaling to help him stay focused and succeed in his
career, but then he began exploring how he felt about the tasks he was
accomplishing. “Did it give me energy? Did it take it away?” he asked himself. Through journaling, he discovered a pattern: The experiences
that gave him a sense of purpose or pride all involved helping others and
performing acts of service. “If you don’t know what you want, you will never be
satisfied with anything you have,” he said. REDUCE INFORMATION OVERLOAD We have all been inundated by a relentless news cycle, a
fire hose of information coming at us in the form of breaking news
notifications, social media posts and email newsletters (among other sources)
that can leave us feeling anxious, angry or even helpless. “Now is the time to completely overhaul your news
consumption,” said Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown
University and author of “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a
Noisy World.” Choose just one or two reliable sources and read them at a
specific time each day, he advised. For example, you can listen to a news
roundup podcast while commuting to work or read a newspaper at breakfast,
Newport said. Newport, who is 39 and has managed to avoid social media
platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and TikTok for his entire adult life, also
recommends taking a 30-day break from the technologies in your life that are
optional. In his book, he described what happened when 1,600 people
gave it a try. Those who lasted the full 30 days were “cheerily gung-ho and
positively aggressive about trying to fill in the time,” he said. So instead of reflexively watching TikTok or scrolling
through Instagram during your free time, think about what you would be doing if
you weren’t on either of those platforms: Reading a novel? Taking a restorative
walk in nature? Relaxing and listening to music? Set aside time for those activities. DECLUTTER YOUR PHYSICAL SPACE During the pandemic, and especially during lockdown, many
people finally began to clear the junk out of their homes, a phenomenon The
Washington Post referred to as the “great decluttering.” If you haven’t tackled
your pile of clutter, now might be a good time to do it. “Messy spaces tend to prevent clear cognitive thinking,”
said Catherine Roster, a professor at the Anderson School of Management at the
University of New Mexico and who has researched how cluttered homes affect
people. “It has a distorting effect that can bleed into other aspects of a
person’s life — not only their emotions but their productivity.” Hiring a professional organiser to help sort through the
mess is not within everyone’s budget, so Roster suggested relying on a buddy —
ideally someone who is also decluttering their home. Together, the two of you
can serve as a sounding board for each other to make decisions about what to
keep and stay on schedule. Listening to music while you sort and organise can
also help motivate you, she said. RECONNECT WITH THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE “What I’m seeing with my patients is that many seem to be
emotionally cluttered,” said Barbara Greenberg, a clinical psychologist in
Fairfield County, Connecticut. Information overload coupled with either social isolation or
not getting your needs met socially or emotionally “is a really bad brew,” she
added. If there are people you care about whom you have lost touch
with during the pandemic, don’t be shy about getting back in touch, she said.
“We need the support and levity of people who make us feel good." If it has been awhile, it might feel awkward at first to
reestablish contact. But just be honest, Greenberg said. For example, you might
say: “We lost touch during the pandemic, but now things are calming down and I
would really love to see you. Not seeing you has been one of the things I’ve
missed.” It might even inspire a “chain of positivity” where the
person you contacted feels inspired to do the same with others. “Truly, everybody wants to get that call,” she said. ©2022 The New York Times Company | 2 |
Alberta's premier warned on Monday the oil-rich Canadian province cannot be pushed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions too quickly without hurting Canada's national economy. Premier Ed Stelmach also defended his decision to miss a special meeting on climate change being held on Tuesday by the country's other provincial leaders, some whom have complained Canada must move faster on global warming. The premiers are in Vancouver for two days of meetings on a range of subjects, but climate change is seen as the key issue facing the leaders who are under increasing pressure to develop a unified strategy on global warming. Environmentalists say Canada cannot realistically cut national emission levels without doing it in Alberta, already a key source of oil for the United States and where more than $100 billion in new energy projects are planned. "Today the economy of Canada is dependent to a large part on the economy of Alberta. If we were to race everyone and immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions that would mean a total shutdown of the oil sands," Stelmach said. The premier said Alberta would be well represented at Tuesday's meeting by his environmental minister. Stelmach said he briefed the other premiers on the province's plan announced last week to bring Alberta's carbon emissions 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, mostly through capture and storage of the gases blamed for global warming. Critics of the plan say it would actually allow emissions to rise until around 2020 as oil output from the oil sands triples, and contrasts with proposals from other provinces that would cut emissions in that same period. The other premiers refused to criticize Stelmach. "Each province is stepping up to bat," New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham said. Some of the provinces are at odds with the federal government, which has said it will cut carbon emissions by up to 65 percent of 2006 levels by 2050 but warned against ideas such as imposing carbon taxes on polluters. British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell, whose province has one of the most aggressive reduction goals, downplayed the potential of a rift with Ottawa and warned against demanding all provinces adopt the same strategy. "In a country as large as Canada, if we wait for unanimity, we paralyze ourselves with inaction," Campbell said. Some business leaders have warned that allowing the provinces to pursue different strategies could hurt the economy by forcing industries such as auto makers to deal with conflicting rules and regulations. | 0 |
After an exceptionally warm winter and autumn in Europe, the continent experienced its hottest year on record in 2020, while the Arctic suffered extreme heat and atmospheric concentrations of planet-warming carbon dioxide continued to rise. Scientists said the latest data underscored the need for countries and corporations to slash greenhouse gas emissions quickly enough to bring within reach the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to avoid catastrophic climate change. "The extraordinary climate events of 2020 and the data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service show us that we have no time to lose," said Matthias Petschke, Director for Space in the European Commission, the EU's executive arm. The bloc's space programmes include the Copernicus earth observation satellites. In 2020, temperatures globally were an average of 1.25 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) higher than in pre-industrial times, Copernicus said. The last six years were the world's hottest on record. The Paris accord aims to cap the rise in temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees C and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees C to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change. "The key here is to... reduce the amount we emit," Copernicus senior scientist Freja Vamborg told Reuters. Last year also saw the highest temperature ever reliably recorded, when in August a California heatwave pushed the temperature at Death Valley in the Mojave Desert up to 54.4C (129.92°F). The Arctic and northern Siberia continued to warm more quickly than the planet as a whole in 2020, with temperatures in parts of these regions averaging more than 6C above a 30-year average used as a baseline, Copernicus said. The region also had an "unusually active" wildfire season, with fires poleward of the Arctic Circle releasing a record 244 million tonnes of CO2 in 2020, over a third more than in 2019. Arctic sea ice continued to deplete, with July and October both setting records for the lowest sea ice extent in that month. Scientists who were not involved in the study said it was consistent with growing evidence that climate change is contributing to more intense hurricanes, fires, floods and other disasters. In the United States, the costs in lives and damage is fast rising, said Adam Smith, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "We need another dictionary to help us describe how these extremes continue to play out and unfold year after year," said Smith, who tracks climate-related disasters that cause more than a billion dollars worth of damage. Smith said that the 16 billion-dollar disasters that occurred in the United States in the first nine months of 2020 matched previous annual records set in 2011 and 2017. A preliminary tally found that 13 of last year's disasters led to at least 188 deaths and costs of $46.6 billion, Smith said. NOAA was to release a complete survey of damages in 2020 at 1600 GMT (1100 a.m. EST) on Friday. | 0 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.