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VATICAN CITY (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - God wants believers to be green. That's the message emerging from a Vatican conference on climate change which was the latest sign of growing concern by religious groups around the world over the fate of the planet. Scientists, environment ministers and leaders of various religions from 20 countries sat down for two days to discuss the implications of global warming and development. While the scientists spoke of the dynamics of greenhouse gasses, temperature patterns, rain forests and exhaust emissions, the men and women of religion discussed the moral and theological aspects of protecting the environment. The conference, organised by the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, marked the most significant plunge to date by the Roman Catholic Church - the world's largest Christian grouping - into one of the hottest contemporary topics. "Climate change is one of the signs of the times affecting the Catholic Church as a global organisation. The Catholic Church must take a stand on this present-day and urgent question," said Bishop Bernd Uhl of Freiburg, Germany. In recent years, the world's major religions have gone more green in the race to save the planet, which they teach mankind has in stewardship and must protect for future generations. Over the past year, some evangelical Protestant churches in the United States - strong conservative backers of President George W. Bush - have broken ranks with the White House to call for urgent measures to protect the environment. National Catholic bishops conferences in some countries, including the United States and Australia, have issued statements or pastoral letters on climate change and the need to protect what most religions see as "the gift of creation". PAPAL ENCYCLICAL ON GLOBAL WARMING? Uhl said the time had come for an encyclical, the highest form of papal writing, on what he called "the future of creation". He said it would "energize" Catholics, other believers and world opinion on climate change. Bishop Christopher Toohey of Australia said believers should "have the courage and motivation under God's grace to do what we need to do to safeguard this garden planet". Elias Abramides, a Greek Orthodox member of the World Council of Churches (WCC), told the gathering climate change was a "deeply spiritual issue" rooted in the scriptures. "We believe that the solutions to the problem will not only be of a political, technological and economic nature. We believe that ethics and religion will necessarily become essential components on which the solutions will be based," he said. "As Christians ... we need to recognise and accept the intimate ethical and deeply religious implications of climate change. It is a matter of justice, it is a matter of equity, and it is a matter of love: love for God the Almighty, love for the neighbour, love for creation," Abramides said. The WCC groups some 550 million Christians from 340 non-Catholic Christian churches, denominations and fellowships.

Toyako, Japan,july 08 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The G8 rich countries want to work with the nearly 200 states involved in UN climate change talks to adopt a goal of at least halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a draft communique showed. The communique, obtained by Reuters ahead of its formal approval by Group of Eight leaders at a summit in northern Japan, also said mid-term goals would be needed to achieve the shared goal for 2050. The statement puts the focus of fighting global warming on UN-led talks to create a new framework for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and papers over differences inside the G8 itself. The UN talks are set to conclude in Copenhagen in December 2009. The careful wording of the climate statement -- always the most contentious part of summit negotiations -- was also unlikely to satisfy those seeking much more specific targets. Last year, the G8 club of rich nations -- Japan, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Russia and the United States -- agreed merely to "seriously consider" a goal of halving global emissions by mid-century. The European Union and Japan have been pressing for this year's summit to go beyond that, and Brussels wanted clear interim targets as well. But US President George W Bush has insisted that Washington cannot agree to binding targets unless big polluters such as China and India rein in their emissions as well. The European Union's executive welcomed the deal on climate change, saying it represented a "new, shared vision" and kept negotiations on track for a global deal in 2009. "This is a strong signal to citizens around the world," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Tuesday, adding the EU's benchmark for success at the G8 summit in northern Japan had been achieved. Global warming ties into other big themes such as soaring food and fuel prices being discussed at the three-day meeting at a plush mountain-top hotel on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, where 21,000 police have been mobilized. In another statement released on the second day of the summit, the leaders noted that the world economy faces uncertainty and downside risks, including that posed by a sharp rise in oil prices. The group also made a thinly veiled call for China to let the yuan's tightly controlled exchange rate appreciate to help reduce global financial imbalances. "In some emerging economies with large and growing current account surpluses, it is crucial that their effective exchange rates move so that necessary adjustment will occur," the G8 said in the statement. The leaders also agreed to bring major oil producers and consumers together in a world energy forum to discuss output and prices. The price of food and of oil, which hit a record high of $145.85 a barrel last week, is taking a particularly heavy toll on the world's poor. A World Bank study issued last week said up to 105 million more people could drop below the poverty line due to the leap in food prices, including 30 million in Africa. "How we respond to this double jeopardy of soaring food and oil prices is a test of the global system's commitment to help the most vulnerable," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Monday. "It is a test we cannot afford to fail." To help cushion the blow, officials said the G8 would unveil a series of measures to help Africa, especially its farmers, and would affirm its commitment to double aid to give $50 billion extra in aid by 2010, with half to go to the world's poorest continent. The summit wraps up on Wednesday with a Major Economies Meeting comprising the G8 and eight other big greenhouse gas-emitting countries, including India, China and Australia.

Developing nations from Sudan to Uruguay are finding new ways to 'climate proof' their economies from threats ranging from desertification to storms, a UN-backed study said on Tuesday. Schemes to mute the impact of climate change such as wider use of drought-resistant crops, irrigation or better forecasting of storm surges could show how to help protect hundreds of millions of people this century, it said. Achim Steiner, the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said that UN-led climate efforts had so far focused most on ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, rather than helping people adapt to effects such as erosion or rising seas. "One of the big missing links has been adaptation," he said of the report issued at 190-nation climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. About 350 experts made 24 studies around the world in a $9 million assessment of ways to adapt to a warmer world. Steiner said the report gave "a foundation upon which adaptation can become part of country development plans and built into international assistance". Adaptation is likely to cost billions of dollars in coming years. In the Bara province of Sudan, for instance, a study showed that a shift to small-scale irrigated vegetable gardens and efforts to stabilise sand dunes had helped raise food output. For Uruguay and Argentina, the report urged "a review of coastal and city defences and of early-warning systems and flood response strategies" along the River Plate. A study showed the population at risk from floods and storm surges along the delta could triple to 1.7 million by 2070. Property losses could range from $5 billion to $15 billion from 2050 to 2100, assuming one storm surge into Buenos Aires. RAINFALL In Gambia, a projected decline in rainfall this century is likely to cut yields of millet, a stable crop. The study showed that new varieties of millet and more use of fertiliser were the most cost-effective measures, rather than extra irrigation. It also said there were risks of a spread of dengue fever in the Caribbean, with a 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) temperature rise likely to triple the number of cases by 2080. Better education about the risks -- especially that dengue-carrying mosquitoes often bred in water storage drums commonly found outside homes -- could help curb cases. Researchers said that many of the recommendations would apply, even without climate change blamed on emissions from burning fossil fuels. But they said countries had to take a harder look at threats from a changing climate. "Adaptation is not an option -- it's essential," said Neil Leary of the International START Secretariat in Washington who led the studies. The Dec. 3-14 Bali talks are to discuss ways to manage a new "adaptation fund" which has an initial sum of just $36 million but could provide up to $1.6 billion in the period to 2012.

RIO DE JANEIRO, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) – Global leaders ended a UN development summit yesterday with what was widely considered a lackluster agreement, leaving many attendees convinced that individuals and companies, rather than governments, must lead efforts to improve the environment. Nearly 100 heads of state and government gathered over the past three days in efforts to establish "sustainable development goals," a UN drive built around economic growth, the environment and social inclusion. But a lack of consensus over those goals in Rio de Janeiro led to an agreement that even some signatory nations said lacked commitment, specifics and measurable targets. A series of much-hyped global summits on environmental policy has now fallen short of expectations, going back at least to a 2009 UN meeting in Copenhagen that ended in near chaos. As a result, many ecologists, activists, and business leaders now believe that progress on environmental issues must be made locally with the private sector, and without the help of international accords. "The greening of our economies will have to happen without the blessing of the world leaders," said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of the World Wildlife Fund. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived early yesterday for a quick announcement on U.S.-backed projects in Africa and a series of bilateral meetings with various world leaders, admitted as much. "Governments alone cannot solve all the problems we face," she said, "from climate change to persistent poverty to chronic energy shortages." Most troubling for many critics of the summit is the fact that leaders arrived in Rio merely to sign a text that their diplomats had all but sealed beforehand. The text, dubbed "The Future We Want," left little room for vision or audacity from presidents and prime ministers, critics argued. "The world we want will not be delivered by leaders who lack courage to come here, sit at the table and negotiate themselves," said Sharon Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. "They took no responsibility for imposing the action, the targets, the time lines." Some heads of state and government stayed away, given the global economic slowdown, worsening debt woes in Europe and continued violence in the Middle East. Notable absentees included U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, all of whom attended a gathering of the Group of 20 major economies earlier this week in Mexico. GOALS DIFFERENT FROM AT '92 SUMMIT The summit, known as Rio+20, was never expected to generate the sort of landmark accords signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, which included a treaty on biodiversity and agreements that led to the creation of the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse emissions. Although this week's meeting attracted more than 50,000 people, many were disappointed that the leaders made few specific commitments on issues ranging from energy to food security to oceans. Throughout the three-day gathering and weeklong negotiations beforehand, the streets of central Rio and surrounding the suburban conference hall that hosted the summit were filled with demonstrations by activists ranging from Indian tribes to environmentalists to anti-nuclear protesters. The completion of a draft text even before the arrival of government heads gave the gathering itself a sense of finality from the start. Some delegates left on Thursday and by late Friday a handful of leaders were still delivering ceremonial addresses in a large, empty hall. Instead of forging legally binding treaties, organizers say, the purpose of the summit was to initiate a process to define a new set of development principles. But that process, like most global diplomacy, is rife with conflicting interests and tensions between rich countries and the developing world. "The storyline is different from 1992," said Andre Correa do Lago, chief negotiator at the conference for Brazil, which led the final talks on the declaration. "This summit recognizes more than the others that not one size fits all," he added. Many leaders used their time at the podium to note the markedly different needs they were struggling with, especially compared with the developed world. While Brazil, China and other big emerging nations spoke of their need to catch up with rich countries, others like Bolivia, Iran and Cuba unleashed traditional rants against capitalism and conventional definitions of growth. One point of contention is what many emerging nations say is a need for a global fund that could help them pursue development goals. Early talk of a $30 billion fund for that purpose as a possible outcome of the summit foundered well before leaders arrived. A French proposal to tax financial transactions for that purpose also failed. Clinton, announcing a $20 million grant for clean energy projects in Africa, said a better mechanism was "partnerships among governments, private sector and civil society." Other countries, the World Bank and regional development banks also used the summit to showcase similar initiatives. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday that private investors since last year had pledged over $50 billion to boost the use of renewable energy sources worldwide. Many business leaders at the conference said they were eager to find ways to contribute further. Richard Branson, the British billionaire, said in an interview at the "World Green Summit," one of many sideline events: "There's very little in a document like what they've come up with to accomplish real goals. That leaves it to the rest of us to find ways to move forward." But some warned that private initiatives, while helpful, could not be responsible for the rulemaking and law enforcement necessary to ensure that wholesale changes take place. "The private sector has an enormous and important role to play but not as a substitute to governments and international leadership," said Malcolm Preston, who leads the sustainability and climate change practice at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Environmentalists were angry that leaders failed to make commitments on two key issues: measures to protect the high seas and defining a process to stop subsidizing fossil fuels. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and other leaders said the outcome of the summit reflected what was possible after more than a year of discussions among the 193 government delegations that attended the summit. "From here we can only advance," she said. "We've arrived where we are together. To advance further we have to build a consensus."

WASHINGTON, Apr 27 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)- Senator John Kerry was supposed to have been spending Monday basking in the achievement of bringing the United States a gigantic step closer to tackling global warming. But instead of attending media events to announce a compromise climate change bill backed by key US industries, the Democrat has found himself right back to where he's been over the past six months-- holed up in talks with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman. That the three are even talking means that the bill, which would require industry to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, is stalled-- but not yet officially dead. It may provide some solace to business that negotiations are continuing because it is loath for the Environmental Protection Agency to be left to regulate emissions, as the agency has said it would do. "Any and all reports of the demise of energy legislation are greatly exaggerated," said a Senate aide, who asked not to be identified. "Not only is this bill very much alive, but the senators are aggressively moving forward to remove any obstacles to getting it passed this year." The drive to bring a climate change bill to the Senate floor after more than six months of difficult negotiations was ruptured on Saturday, when Graham pulled out. He angrily accused Senate Democratic leaders of having "destroyed my confidence" the bill would be considered, after they raised the prospect of first doing contentious immigration reform. With little time left before November's congressional elections, some think the Senate will barely have time for one more big piece of legislation much less two. A Monday evening meeting of the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman trio could help illuminate whether climate legislation is alive or dead after a string of setbacks. But the three senators may not have the power to decide its fate. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama's White House likely will be calling the shots. "What we can say is that both (immigration and climate legislation) are neck and neck in terms of importance to Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, and that timing is yet to be determined," a Democratic aide told Reuters. The Senate aide added: "We've always been on a path to try to do something this summer." Doing "something" will not be easy, even if the fight over legislative priorities is resolved. Maggie Fox, head of the Alliance for Climate Protection, founded in 2006 by former Vice President Al Gore, said last weekend's developments were a "dramatic bump in the road." Still, she said there has been a positive effect. "It has in an interesting kind of way reignited and reinvested us with a sense of purpose," Fox said. "The sense of it really slipping away has everyone running back to put it back together with determination." Her group is flying 40 people from several states to Washington to put pressure on senators to act and Fox said she thought media events set for Monday will be rescheduled to roll out a climate change bill in a dramatic way. But one official of a major environmental group said if Kerry manages to roll out his bill soon, the key will be who is on the podium with him. "Is Senator Graham going to be there and if he is, under what circumstances?" the official asked. By May, the EPA is expected to set forth rules defining the size of factories and power plants to be regulated for carbon emissions, another step in taking action on climate. The agency got the ball rolling last year with a finding that declared the emissions are a threat to human health and welfare. The EPA's roll-out of the new rule, said Christine Tezak, an analyst at Robert W. Baird and Co., "would perhaps be a precipitating event and put the bill back on the front burner" in the Senate. That's because many emitters feel they would have influence in the crafting of legislation, while EPA rules would represent top down command and control. "The main power of the EPA threat isn't the certainty of strict regulations," said Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, LLC. "It's the uncertainty about what you're going to get." But political considerations by Senate Democratic leaders and the White House, including whether tackling climate change or immigration helps their November election prospects more, are still a factor. A senior Senate aide speculated that senators from both parties might be looking for ways to avoid acting on either bill this year to avoid angering different constituencies.

Climate change drove woolly mammoths to the edge of extinction and then humans finished them off, according to a Spanish study on Tuesday that adds to the debate over the demise of the Ice Age behemoths. Using climate models and fossil remains, the researchers determined that warming temperatures had so shrunk the mammoths' habitat that when humans entered their territory about 6,000 years ago the species were already hanging by a thread. "The collapse of the climatic niche of the mammoth caused a significant drop in their population size, making woolly mammoths more vulnerable to the increasing hunting pressure from human populations," the researchers wrote in the journal PLoS Biology. There has been a spirited debate among scientists about what drove animals like the woolly mammoth into extinction, noted David Nogues-Bravo, a researcher at Museo Nacional Ciencias Naturales in Spain, who led the study. Some argue that climate change was to blame while others promote the "blitzkrieg" or "overkill" theory proposed by University of Arizona scientist Paul Martin in 1967 that humans armed with primitive weapons devastated populations of animals that never previously had encountered people. Untangling the two causes of extinction to determine which played the bigger role has proved tricky, with many studies looking to back one theory or the other, Nogues-Bravo said. His team's approach was to compare a climate model with fossil remains collected from different points in time between 6,000 years ago and 126,000 years ago to analyse the individual role humans and the environment played. This showed that warming climate had pushed the animals that thrived in cold dry tundra to the brink of extinction when humans pushed into their habitat mainly restricted to Arctic Siberia by 6,000 years ago. The researchers estimated that based on the mammoth population at the time, humans would only have had to kill one animal each every three years to push the species to extinction. "Our analyses suggest that the humans applied the coup de grace and that size of the suitable climatic area available in the mid-Holocene was too small to host populations able to withstand increased human hunting pressure," the researchers wrote.

A major drought has squeezed electricity output at big dams across southwest China, highlighting the risks of Beijing's massive hydropower expansion plans on coal and oil markets in a warmer, drier world. Ships are stranded, millions are short on drinking water, and power supplies to big consumers in several Chinese provinces have been cut back, industry officials and local media have said. And while building more dams will help Beijing meet more of its electricity demand using resources within its own borders, it also risks short-term surges in consumption of oil, coal or natural gas to generate emergency power when rivers run low. The world's number-two energy user already gets 15 percent of its electricity from hydropower and aims to increase capacity by more than half to 190 gigawatts -- over double Britain's entire stock of power plants -- by the end of the decade. But Australia's similarly ambitious Snowy Hydro power scheme, designed more than half a century ago as a lifeline for the fertile yet dry Murray-Darling river basin, offers a grim warning. Normally the provider of three quarters of the mainland's renewable energy, it has seen output tumble and drowned towns re-emerge from shrinking reservoirs after years of poor rains. "The Australian example shows how risky hydropower is, from the point of view of droughts," said CLSA analyst Simon Powell. "The Snowy system really is not being dispatched at all. And that has caused a tightening of supply on the generation side, resulting in a spiking of wholesale electricity prices." Other countries like Pakistan and Vietnam that are heavily reliant on hydropower have been forced to step up imports of fuel oil or buy power from neighbours during dry spells, driving up costs for producers and unsettling regional oil markets. SHORTAGES CREEP BACK In 2004, China endured its worst power shortages in decades as new plant construction lagged far behind rapid economic growth. Many businesses turned to diesel-fired generators to stave off blackouts, causing oil demand to surge by 15 percent, a key factor behind oil prices' first ascent above $50 a barrel. The International Energy Agency estimated that up to 350,000 barrels per day of oil demand, or over a third of total consumption growth that year, went to power generation. That strain has since eased, as China builds new power stations at a rate unprecedented anywhere in the world; installed capacity has grown by half since the end of 2004. But in some areas the shortage of local resources -- from coal to water -- is emerging as a new cause of an old problem. Southwestern Yunnan and Sichuan provinces are both facing electricity shortages because of low water levels in rivers. The strain is so serious in Sichuan that it has affected supplies to major users like metals smelters. Nearby Guizhou province is also suffering from outages because tight supplies of thermal coal are compounding problems caused by low water levels. Water levels on the country's longest river, the Yangtze, are the lowest since records began in 1866, state media reported, though reservoirs at its massive Three Gorges project -- the world's biggest hydroelectric plant -- remain healthy. "This year's dry season came a month earlier than usual and water levels fell sooner than expected," the China Daily quoted an unnamed government official saying on Thursday. The dry spell is not a one-off. Last year also saw historic droughts in some parts of the country and officials have repeatedly warned that climate change is already affecting China. "With the impact of global warming, drought and water scarcity are increasingly grave," the State Council, or cabinet, said in a recent directive. Beijing's fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions includes boosting the role of renewables in powering its economy, which has the added attraction of cutting reliance on oil imports. "In terms of energy security the government is right to push for hydropower. China also has a lot of water resources that are untapped," said Donovan Huang, research analyst at Nomura. WORSE TO COME But the country has naturally low per capita water resources, and China's top water official has warned that the challenge of managing scarce supplies is compounded by climate change. The frequency of both the droughts and floods that regularly batter China are expected to increase in a warmer world. And rural demands could compound the impact of short supplies, because China tends to time releases of water to suit the needs of farmers rather than power companies. For instance, water levels behind major reservoirs nationwide rose 6 percent in early January from 2006, but only because dam operators are stocking up ahead of spring planting season. Below dams, boat traffic piled up on drought-stricken rivers, and authorities had to release water from behind the Three Gorges Dam to ease cargo ship stranding downstream. That may have helped power wholesalers in the manufacturing hub of Guangdong, which is looking to the dam for extra supply to help tide over expected summer shortfalls, local media reported. But if the dam cannot deliver, generators will have to chase tight coal or pricey fuel oil supplies, pushing prices up in a cycle that global warming could make unpleasantly familiar.

Plane-free skies over Europe during Iceland's volcanic eruption may yield rare clues about how flights stoke climate change, adding to evidence from a closure of US airspace after Sept. 11, 2001, experts say. The climate effects of jet fuel burnt at high altitude are poorly understood, partly because scientists cannot often compare plane-free skies with days when many regions are criss-crossed by white vapour trails. Scientists will pore over European temperature records, satellite images and other data from days when flights were grounded by ash -- trying to isolate any effect of a lack of planes from the sun-dimming effect of Iceland's volcanic cloud. "The presence of volcanic ash makes this event much more challenging to analyse," said David Travis, of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, who found that an absence of vapour trails influenced US temperatures after the Sept. 11 attacks. One possibility was to study areas of Europe where ash was minimal and flights were cancelled mainly as a precaution. "But this becomes very challenging to measure," he told Reuters. Progress in figuring out the impact of planes might make it easier to include aviation in any UN climate deal -- international flights are exempt from emissions curbs under the UN's Kyoto Protocol for combating climate change until 2012. CARBON That might in turn push up ticket prices if flights include a penalty for emissions. Flights in Europe emitted 186 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2007, the European Environment Agency said, more than the total emissions of Belgium. Many studies estimate that aviation, the fastest growing transport sector, accounts for 2-3 percent of global warming from human activities that could bring more heat waves, species extinctions, mudslides and rising sea levels. No one wants disasters that close airspace but scientists will seize on European data from days of clear skies, said Gunnar Myhre of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. "There will be initiatives," he said, adding that it was hard to separate ash from industrial pollution. Travis's 2002 study found that an absence of condensation trails during the Sept. 11-14 closure of US airspace to commercial flights after the suicide hijacker attacks led to bigger swings in daily temperatures. That was evidence that jets affect temperatures, but did not say if contrails were boosting climate change or not. The UN panel of climate experts reckons that aviation is damaging the climate and that non-carbon factors -- such as nitrogen oxides, soot or contrails -- may have an effect 2 to 4 times as great as carbon dioxide alone. The current European Union emissions trading scheme only covers carbon dioxide, and wants more studies. "All the impacts of aviation should be addressed to the extent possible," European Commission spokeswoman Maria Kokkonen said. High clouds -- such as contrails or cirrus clouds -- tend to trap heat, preventing it escaping from the thin atmosphere. By contrast, lower clouds usually dampen climate change since their white tops are better at reflecting sunlight.

“We have decided to repeal all three farm laws, and will begin the procedure at the Parliament session that begins this month,” Modi said in a televised address. “I urge the protesting farmers to return home to their families, and let’s start afresh.” Protest leaders greeted Modi’s turnaround with cautious optimism, with plans to meet in New Delhi to discuss next steps. Many of the protesters come from India’s minority Sikh community, and Modi timed his announcement for Guru Nanak Jayanti, a holiday celebrated by Sikhs all over the world. Ramandeep Singh Mann, a farmer leader and activist, said he was “ecstatic” after hearing the news. “Like you’ve conquered Mount Everest!” he said. What remains unclear, Mann said, is whether the government will agree to the farmers’ other major demand: a separate law guaranteeing a minimum price for crops. For now, he said, farmers would continue their siege outside the borders of New Delhi until Parliament formally repealed the three laws. “Until that day, we will be there,” he said. Modi’s government had stood firmly behind the market-friendly laws it passed last year, even as the farmers refused any compromise short of repealing them. The protesters remained in their tents through last year’s harsh winter, the summer heat and a deadly COVID-19 wave that caused havoc in New Delhi. Modi’s government had argued that the new laws would bring private investment into a sector that more than 60% of India’s population still depends on for their livelihood — but has been lagging in its contribution to India’s economy. But the farmers, already struggling under heavy debt loads and bankruptcies, feared that reduced government regulations would leave them at the mercy of corporate giants. The repeal of the laws comes as Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party revs up its campaign in an upcoming election in the north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand, where many of the protesting farmers live. After more than a dozen rounds of failed negotiations, farmers changed tactics this fall, shadowing top officials of Modi’s government as they traveled and campaigned across northern India, ensuring their grievances would be hard to ignore. During one such confrontation in October, a BJP convoy rammed into a group of protesting farmers in Uttar Pradesh, killing four protesters along with four other people, including a local journalist. The son of one of Modi’s ministers is among those under investigation for murder in the episode. Jagdeep Singh, whose father, Nakshatra Singh, 54, was among those killed, said the decision to repeal the laws served as homage to those who had died in the difficult conditions of a year of protests — whether from exposure to extreme temperatures, heart attacks, COVID or more. According to one farm leader, some 750 protesters have died. (The government says it does not have data on this.) “This is a win for all those farmers who laid down their lives to save hundreds of thousands of poor farmers of this country from corporate greed,” Singh said. “They must be smiling from wherever they are.”   ©2021 The New York Times Company

WELLINGTON, Thu Jun 5, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United Nations urged the world on Thursday to kick an all-consuming addiction to carbon dioxide and said everyone must take steps to fight climate change. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said global warming was becoming the defining issue of the era and will hurt rich and poor alike. "Our world is in the grip of a dangerous carbon habit," Ban said in a statement to mark World Environment Day, which is being marked by events around the globe and hosted by the New Zealand city of Wellington. "Addiction is a terrible thing. It consumes and controls us, makes us deny important truths and blinds us to the consequences of our actions," he said in the speech to reinforce this year's World Environment Day theme of "CO2 Kick the Habit". "Whether you are an individual, an organization, a business or a government, there are many steps you can take to reduce your carbon footprint. It is a message we all must take to heart," he said. World Environment Day, conceived in 1972, is the United Nations' principal day to mark global green issues and aims to give a human face to environmental problems and solutions. New Zealand, which boasts snow-capped mountains, pristine fjords and isolated beaches used as the backdrop for the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, has pledged to become carbon-neutral. "We take pride in our clean, green identity as a nation and we are determined to take action to protect it. We appreciate that protecting the climate means behavior change by each and every one of us," said New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. New Zealand, like many countries, staged art and street festivals to spread the message on how people can reduce carbon usage. New Zealand Post has asked staff to bring a magazine or book to work and swap it to reduce their carbon footprint. In Australia, Adelaide Zoo staged a wild breakfast for corporate leaders to focus on how carbon emissions threaten animal habitats. GLOBAL EVENTS In Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, people plan to clean up Gulshan Baridhara Lake that has become badly polluted, and in Kathmandu the Bagmati River Festival will focus on cleaning up the river there. Many Asian cities, such as Bangalore and Mumbai, plan tree-planting campaigns, while the Indian town of Pune will open a "Temple of Environment" to help spread green awareness. Global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are rising quickly and scientists say the world faces rising seas, melting glaciers and more intense storms, droughts and floods as the planet warms. A summit of G8 nations in Hokkaido, Japan, next month, is due to formalize a goal agreed a year ago that global carbon emissions should be reduced by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. But some nations think the cuts should be deeper, leading to a reduction of 80 percent of carbon emissions by 2050 to try to stabilize CO2 concentrations in the air to limit global warming. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said the cost of greening of the world's economy would cost as little as a few tenths of global GDP annually over 30 years and would be a driving force for innovation, new businesses and employment. The UNEP urged greater energy efficiency in buildings and appliances and a switch towards cleaner and renewable forms of electricity generation and transport systems. It said more than 20 percent of new investment in renewable energy was in developing countries, with China, India and Brazil taking the lion's share. Renewables now provide over 5 percent of global power generation and 18 percent of new investment in power. But the UN body said an estimated 20 percent of carbon emissions came from deforestation and urged developing nations to save their forests as carbon sinks.

Climate change could have global security implications on a par with nuclear war unless urgent action is taken, a report said on Wednesday. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) security think-tank said global warming would hit crop yields and water availability everywhere, causing great human suffering and leading to regional strife. While everyone had now started to recognise the threat posed by climate change, no one was taking effective leadership to tackle it and no one could tell precisely when and where it would hit hardest, it added. "The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition ... that if the emission of greenhouse gases ... is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic -- on the level of nuclear war," the IISS report said. "Even if the international community succeeds in adopting comprehensive and effective measures to mitigate climate change, there will still be unavoidable impacts from global warming on the environment, economies and human security," it added. Scientists say global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport. The IISS report said the effects would cause a host of problems including rising sea levels, forced migration, freak storms, droughts, floods, extinctions, wildfires, disease epidemics, crop failures and famines. The impact was already being felt -- particularly in conflicts in Kenya and Sudan -- and more was expected in places from Asia to Latin America as dwindling resources led to competition between haves and have nots. "We can all see that climate change is a threat to global security, and you can judge some of the more obvious causes and areas," said IISS transnational threat specialist Nigel Inkster. "What is much harder to do is see how to cope with them." The report, an annual survey of the impact of world events on global security, said conflicts and state collapses due to climate change would reduce the world's ability to tackle the causes and to reduce the effects of global warming. State failures would increase the gap between rich and poor and heighten racial and ethnic tensions which in turn would produce fertile breeding grounds for more conflict. Urban areas would not be exempt from the fallout as falling crop yields due to reduced water and rising temperatures would push food prices higher, IISS said. Overall, it said 65 countries were likely to lose over 15 percent of their agricultural output by 2100 at a time when the world's population was expected to head from six billion now to nine billion people. "Fundamental environmental issues of food, water and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three," it added.

Trade Secretary Rahul Khullar on Thursday warned there was a growing trend for countries to use unreasonable environmental and health standards as a covert form of protectionism, blocking trade already hit by global slowdown. Rahul Khullar said countries were using anything from proposed cap and trade schemes to the level of toxins found in Indian shrimps to bring standards on goods into the World Trade Organisation without proper international debate. The statement from a key trade official from a country that plays a major role in WTO negotiations, underscores worries in the emerging Asian giant that many developed nations are erecting increasing barriers to fair trade. "Environmental issues are being brought onto an international agenda, and there are serious moves to bring it through the back door into the WTO," Khullar told reporters. "I will abide by international standards on selling you safe products, but you can't keep raising your standards, almost at whim, to prevent me from accessing your market." India has long complained that standards or complicated procedures to obtain trade permits have been imposed by partners to protect their domestic markets. But just as nations have struggled to piece together a global climate change deal to share the burden on emissions cuts, countries such as EU member states have mulled how closely to attach environmental disputes to commercial ties. Manufacturers in the European Union, for example, fear the 27-nation bloc's pledges to cut carbon emissions will raise costs and make their goods less competitive compared to India and China. PROTECTING DOMESTIC INDUSTRY Khullar said developed countries were tempted to use measures other than tariffs to protect their industry, especially because emerging nations like India were taking a greater slice of global trade and most rich nations suffered more in the slowdown. "Is any particular country misusing an SPS (health) measure to block my exports? My answer is 'yes'," he said, while declining to single out individual states. Khullar spoke at the release of a book by Centre for WTO studies on the link between trade and environmental issues. He said the book did not represent government policy, but was a "pre-emptive strike" against letting trade abuses spill over into other issues such as labour or intellectual property rights. "It's becoming an issue of friction between trading partners," Khullar said. Khullar said the desire by countries to impose environmental and health standards were a growing problem, but one which would not cloud the slow-moving Doha global trade talks. "It doesn't look rosy, but don't give up hopes yet," he said, in response to the question as to whether the talks could be concluded by the stated target of 2010.

Athletic tape wrapped a thumb and forefinger, not to buffer a tennis racket, but to cover a skin condition that causes discoloration. She has not played in a while — the pandemic, aching joints, the usual excuses. A woman about Navratilova’s age, which is 64, said a star-struck “hello” on her way out of the restaurant. But a young waitress had no idea she had served a tuna salad platter with a side of asparagus to someone who, four decades ago, was working to become the model for the modern, socially aware athlete. During Navratilova’s heyday in the 1980s, the world did not have much appetite for an outspoken, openly gay woman whose romantic partners sat courtside while she dominated her sport as no one else had — winning 18 Grand Slam singles titles and 59 in all, the last coming in 2006, when she was 49. Nowadays, that combination of success and fearlessness can make you an icon. Witness the empathy in recent days for Naomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam tournament winner who withdrew from the French Open, citing concerns for her mental health, after tournament organisers threatened to disqualify her if she did not appear at news conferences. Navratilova — an enthusiastic supporter of Osaka and a vocal champion of causes including climate change and animal welfare — may simply have been born too soon. After paving the way for the modern athlete, Navratilova still has plenty to say, and the world seems more willing to listen now, although not everyone agrees with her. She faced vehement backlash from LGBTQ advocates when she argued in the Sunday Times of London in support of rules for transgender female athletes competing against other women and was dropped from the advisory board of Athlete Ally, a group focused on supporting LGBTQ athletes. And still, Navratilova wishes Twitter and Instagram had been around back in her playing days, consequences be damned. As a child in Prague, Navratilova read the newspaper every day. She studied the atlas, imagining where life could take her. She believes now that living out loud helped turn her into the greatest player on the planet. Defecting from Czechoslovakia at 18 saved her soul, she said, and living as an openly gay superstar athlete set her free. She has no shortage of thoughts and opinions, usually expressed on social media, even if the next day she is providing expert analysis on The Tennis Channel from the French Open. “I lived behind the Iron Curtain,” she said, her eyes still capable of the glare that terrified opponents on the court. “You really think you are going to be able to tell me to keep my mouth shut?” Whatever the political and social culture is buzzing on, Navratilova wants a piece of the action. She tosses Twitter grenades from the left, caring little about collateral, and sometimes self-inflicted, damage. Do not get her started on vaccine conspiracy theories. And she could not resist weighing in on the Liz Cheney fracas. Do people change over time or just become more like themselves? Navratilova — who lives in Miami with her wife, Russian model Julia Lemigova, their two daughters, five Belgian Malinois dogs, turtles and a cat — certainly has not changed so much as the world has. As a newly arrived immigrant, Navratilova was called “a walking delegate for conspicuous consumption” by The New York Times in 1975. The article elaborated: "She wears a raccoon coat over $30 jeans and a floral blouse from Giorgio’s, the Hollywood boutique. She wears four rings and assorted other jewellery, including a gold necklace with a diamond insert shaped in the figure 1. The usual status symbol shoes and purse round out the wardrobe. She owns a $20,000 Mercedes-Benz 450SL sports coupe." She was labelled a whiner and a crybaby (by Nora Ephron, no less) and a danger to her sport, because she was so much better than everyone else. After Navratilova criticised the government of her adopted country, Connie Chung suggested during a CNN interview that she return to Czechoslovakia. “She was always opinionated, and always principled,” said Pam Shriver, Navratilova’s close friend and longtime doubles partner. “It would have been so great for her and her fans not to have her voice filtered.” Mary Carillo, a tennis commentator and former player, remembers being next to Navratilova in the locker room as a teenager at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York, and noticing sculpted arms “with raised veins and sinewy muscle barely holding them all together.” “She was smart and quick and funny and emotional, with a game so strong and assertive that it seemed like fans automatically felt the need to cheer for the woman across the net,” Carillo said. “Like Martina’s game wasn’t … what? Feminine? Fair? That drove me nuts.” The Evolution Name the qualities that allow a professional athlete to transcend the game. Publicly challenging authority? Being an openly gay superstar? Transforming how people play and train for their sport? Navratilova checked each box. She was a Wimbledon quarterfinalist in the summer of 1975, when her country’s communist government was deciding whether to allow her to participate in the US Open in New York later that year. She hated being unable to speak her mind or tell anyone of her sexual attraction to women. When she received permission to leave for the tournament, she told her father, who was also her coach, that she would not be coming back. She did not tell her mother. After a semifinal loss to Chris Evert, she headed to a Manhattan immigration office to request asylum. Three hours later, she was free. By the time she woke up the next morning at the Roosevelt Hotel, the story of her defection was in The Washington Post. Navratilova kept her sexuality private for six more years, because it might have disqualified her from becoming a US citizen. After she was naturalised, a sports reporter tracked her down following an exhibition match in Monte Carlo and told her he planned to write about an off-the-record conversation they’d had about her being a lesbian. She urged him not to. She said she had been told it would be bad for women’s tennis. The tour was managing a recent controversy with Billie Jean King, who had been sued for palimony by a former girlfriend. King at first denied the affair, then acknowledged it during a news conference with her husband at her side. The reporter rejected Navratilova’s request, and after years of silence, she found herself shoved from the closet. From that moment, though, Navratilova appeared with girlfriends and went about her life as she had always longed to. “I didn’t have to worry anymore,” she said. “I didn’t have to censor myself.” That September, Navratilova lost a third-set tiebreaker to Tracy Austin in the US Open final and cried during the awards presentation. The crowd roared for Navratilova that day, but rarely afterward, even as she won the next three Grand Slam singles titles, and then 13 more after that. Along the way, Navratilova essentially changed not only the way people played the game, but also the way tennis players — men and women — went about their business. Don’t believe it? Take a look at the physiques of male tennis players before Navratilova became Navratilova. That evolution began in the spring of 1981, when Navratilova was at the Virginia Beach, Virginia, home of basketball star Nancy Lieberman. She called Navratilova lazy and said she could train much harder. Cross-training was barely a concept then, but soon Navratilova was playing an hour of one-on-one basketball with Lieberman several times a week. She played tennis for up to four hours a day, began weight training with a female bodybuilder and sprinted daily at a local track. A nutritionist put Navratilova on a diet high in complex carbohydrates and low in fatty proteins. Her physique went from borderline lumpy to sculpted. With the help of Renée Richards, a new coach who played professional tennis in the 1970s after undergoing gender confirmation surgery, Navratilova learned a topspin backhand and a crushing forehand volley. Her game, powered by her lethal left-handed serve, became about aggression, about attacking the opponent from everywhere on the court. In 1983, Navratilova played 87 matches and lost only once. In three Grand Slam finals, she lost zero sets and just 15 games. Soon Evert started cross-training, and the next generation of stars looked a lot more like Navratilova. They adopted her fierce style on the court. Tennis careers generally ended around age 30 back then. Navratilova won the Wimbledon singles title at 34 in 1990 and continued to win doubles championships until 2006, becoming a groundbreaker in longevity. She has no doubt that her dominance on the court and her stridency off it worked hand in glove. “It lifts the pressure off you,” she said. “It’s like having a near-death experience. Once you go through it, you embrace life.” The Commentator The social and political commentary, and the requisite blowback, would come in time, starting almost by accident. In 1991, when Magic Johnson announced he had been diagnosed with the virus that causes AIDS, saying he was infected through sex with women, Navratilova was asked for her thoughts. She questioned why gay people with AIDS did not receive similar sympathy, adding that if a woman caught the disease from being with hundreds of men, “they’d call her a whore and a slut, and the corporations would drop her like a lead balloon.” Imagine dropping that in your Twitter feed. In 1992, she campaigned against a Colorado ballot measure that would have outlawed any legislation in the state that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. She said President Bill Clinton had wimped out with his “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military. She demanded equal pay for women and bashed tennis parents who behaved badly. The pushback reached critical mass in 2002 when a German newspaper quoted her saying policy decisions in America focus on money instead of “how much health, morals or the environment suffer.” When Chung took her to task on CNN, Navratilova shot back, “When I see something that I don’t like, I’m going to speak out, because you can do that here.” Now her eyes light up when she discusses Coco Gauff, the 17-year-old budding tennis star who spoke forcefully at a Black Lives Matter rally near her Florida home last year after the murder of George Floyd. And when she thinks of Osaka — who wore a mask naming a Black victim of racial violence before each of her matches at the US Open last year — Navratilova is certain the masks, and speaking out, helped Osaka win the championship. A protest doesn’t take energy away from you, Navratilova explained, it does the opposite. She never knows where the blowback will come from and knows that it won't always be from the right. She will write and tweet about her belief that elite transgender female athletes should have gender confirmation surgery before being allowed to compete in women’s events. “It can’t just be you declare your identity and that’s it,” she said. She feels similarly about intersex athletes who identify as women. The Black Lives Matter sticker on her car garners the occasional heckle. Navratilova said someone recently saw a photograph of her in the 1619 cap, then announced he was pulling out of a tennis camp where she was scheduled to appear. That is fine, she said. She will keep wearing the cap. © 2021 The New York Times Company

In brief remarks to reporters in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, Obama urged fellow Democrats to put aside their disappointment and tried to strike a positive tone after a devastating electoral defeat. "It is no secret that the president-elect and I have some pretty significant differences," Obama said with a smile about Trump, who had long questioned whether Obama had been born in the United States and his eligibility for office. "We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country," Obama said. Obama and his wife, Michelle, campaigned hard for Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton to defeat Trump, acknowledging that the president's legacy on healthcare, climate change and financial reforms were on the line. But Obama kept his remarks on Wednesday focused on ensuring a successful transition for Trump, noting that his Republican predecessor, former President George W. Bush, had done the same for him eight years ago. US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden (L) turn away from the lectern after Obama spoke about the election results that saw Donald Trump become President-elect from the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Nov 9, 2016. Reuters "Everybody is sad when their side loses an election, but the day after we have to remember that we're actually all on one team," Obama said. US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden (L) turn away from the lectern after Obama spoke about the election results that saw Donald Trump become President-elect from the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Nov 9, 2016. Reuters "I want to make sure that handoff is well executed because ultimately we're all on the same team," Obama said. President Obama also hoped the US tradition of people in power not using the criminal justice system against their opponents would continue, the White House said on Wednesday when asked about Trump's pledge to jail Hillary Clinton. "We've got a long tradition in this country of ... people in power not using the criminal justice system to exact political revenge. ... The president is hopeful that it will continue," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a news briefing.

Draghi, acting president of the G20, told reporters that for the first time all member states had agreed on the importance of capping global warming at the 1.5 degrees Celsius level that scientists say is vital to avoid disaster. He said the aim, as laid out in the final communique, to achieve net zero carbon emissions by around the middle of the century also marked a breakthrough by comparison with previous G20 commitments. "We made sure that our dreams are not only alive but they are progressing," Draghi said in a closing news conference, brushing aside criticism from climate activists that the G20 had not gone nearly far enough in trying to resolve the crisis. "G20 leaders have made substantial commitments ... It is easy to suggest difficult things. It is very, very difficult to actually execute them," he added, saying he thought countries would continuously improve on their climate initiatives. Charity Oxfam was one of many groups that registered their disappointment, calling the Rome summit a "missed opportunity" full of "vague promises and platitudes" that failed to deliver badly needed concrete action. Draghi also dismissed suggestions that a group of countries, such as China and Russia, had dented efforts at furthering international cooperation over key issues. "It was a good surprise. We saw countries that had been quite reluctant to move along the lines we had been suggesting and pressing. And then they moved," he said. Most of the G20 leaders in Rome will now fly on to a broader UN climate summit in Scotland, known as the COP26. "What's happened here is that the COP26 will build on a pretty solid foundation, with respect to what it was before," Draghi said. "We changed the language, the goalpost. 1.5 is now universally agreed, before it wasn't. Carbon neutrality around 2050 has been agreed, no additional net emissions, before there was no commitment whatsoever. We talked about the end of the century."

BEIJING, Thu Oct 23, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - China is committed to seeking a climate change pact at key talks next year, the prime minister of Denmark said on Thursday, urging countries not to use global economic upheaval as a reason for delaying a deal. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is among the European leaders in Beijing for an Asia-Europe meeting. And with Copenhagen to host end-game talks late next year on a new climate change pact, he has been courting China, with its bulging output of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas behind global warming. Rasmussen said on Thursday he had emerged from talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao the previous day with a commitment that China is "committed to reaching agreement in Copenhagen." "The two sides ... affirmed the common goal to reach an agreed outcome and adopt a decision at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009," he told a small group of reporters, citing an agreement the two countries sealed on Wednesday. The negotiations, culminating late next year, aim to create a treaty building on the current Kyoto Protocol climate pact that expires at the end of 2012. Its host role has given Denmark an unusual prominence in seeking agreement. With the world preoccupied with the financial crisis and its fallout, and with many issues dividing rich countries from poor ones over how to combat global warming, Rasmussen said China's commitment was an encouraging sign to others. He said other countries should not use the economic downturn as a reason to delay or stymie a new pact. "No doubt, the financial crisis will be used as an excuse to water down the climate change agenda," said Rasmussen, adding that he believed increased spending on environmentally friendly technology could help stimulate an economic rebound. STAY ON TRACK European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said later that delaying tackling climate change because of the crisis was not acceptable, and called on China to join in the fight. "Yes, there is a cost to reducing emissions. But the cost of climate change is going to be far higher, including for China," he said in a speech. "It is important that efforts to combat climate change stay on track, despite the financial crisis we are facing." Under the current Kyoto pact, China and other developing nations do not have to agree limits on their output of the greenhouse gases from industry, vehicles and land-use that are dangerously warming the atmosphere. But China's fast-rising emissions, which experts believe now far outstrip the United States', have driven other countries to say it must accept firmer limits. EU environment ministers this week said developing countries should commit to keep emissions 15 to 30 percent below unconstrained "business as usual" levels. Rasmussen said the EU proposal, which would not set an absolute ceiling on poorer countries' emissions but oblige them to take measurable steps, could be the way to draw China and other developing countries into the commitments. "The contributions from the industrialized countries will not be enough," he said. "We need engagement from the big emerging economies." At the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) opening on Friday, the 27 EU member states and the European Commission will also discuss climate change policy with Japan, China and India and 13 other Asian countries. Rasmussen said he also hopes that meeting will agree on aiming for a pact in Copenhagen.

BEIJING, Sep 16,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - An international goal to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius appears unreachable even if China embarks on a vast effort to tame its growing greenhouse gas emissions, a Beijing think-tank has said. The report cast doubt on the prospects for the world to stay within a commonly accepted threshold of dangerous climate change, to avoid worse droughts, floods and rising seas, two months after world leaders including China acknowledged the limit. China's Energy Research Institute also underlined in its new report concerns among developing countries that a goal to halve global greenhouses gases by 2050, resisted by China and other emerging economies, may cramp their growth. Even if China embraces rigorous low-carbon policies, the chances were slim that the world could achieve that goal, said the report released in Beijing on Wednesday. "According to our calculations, these goals don't in fact leave enough space for developing countries," Bai Quan, one of the researchers who wrote the report, told a meeting marking its release. "You can't hang achieving this 2 degrees goal on China," said Dai Yinde, deputy director of the Institute, adding that it was up to the rich nations to lead with big emissions cuts of 90 percent or more by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. Without these deep cuts, greenhouse gas concentrations are likely to rise this century so the average global temperature rises by around 2.8-3.2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, says the study. China is the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning fossil fuels, and with enough money and tough low-carbon policies, those emissions could peak around 2030-35 and then by 2050 fall to the same level as 2005, the report found. IMMERSED Governments are immersed in negotiations seeking a new global treaty on fighting climate change by the end of 2009, and China with its bulging greenhouse gas output is a key player. Chinese President Hu Jintao will present his government's general plans for tackling global warming at a United Nations meeting on climate change next week, the country's senior official on the issue said on Tuesday. Wednesday's new report, "China's Low Carbon Development Pathways by 2050," examines policy options that could help China avoid emissions levels that could tower over those of the United States, long the world's biggest emitter. The report does not amount to government policy. But coming from a prominent institute that advises officials, it illuminates some of China's key concerns less than three months before the climate pact negotiations culminate in Copenhagen. "This kind of research confirms the impression that China's position (on climate change) is shifting and there's a very healthy debate," said Jim Watson, an expert on energy policy at the University of Sussex who studies China's emissions. "That's heartening. But the numbers are still really daunting," Watson said in a telephone interview before its release. "They just show the sheer scale of the challenge." BIG COSTS AND UNCERTAINTIES The new report builds on another recent report from the Institute that gave slightly different greenhouse gas growth scenarios. If China adopts "low-carbon development", emissions from burning fossil fuels could peak at 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon a year by 2035 and then remain close to that level for at least 15 years. Under current trends they could reach 3.3 billion tonnes of carbon a year by 2050, compared with global carbon emissions of about 8.5 billion tonnes now. Under an "enhanced low carbon scenario" of more stringent steps, China's emissions could peak at 2.2 billion tonnes around 2035 and fall to 1.4 billion tonnes in 2050. But achieving major reductions in emissions will carry a big cost, the report said. A low-carbon growth path would cost about 1.7 trillion yuan ($249 billion) extra a year by 2030 for energy-efficient industry, transport and buildings, and similar levels in 2050, a graph and data in the study indicated. China's current growth stimulus package amounts to 4 trillion yuan, including bank loans, spent across two years. Bai, the researcher, said China could follow the low-carbon path described in the report only with intense difficulty, and the enhanced low-carbon path was virtually out of reach.

JAKARTA, Thu Feb 19, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono urged US leadership on climate change in a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday, as she visited to boost US ties with Southeast Asia and the Muslim world. She was due to travel to South Korea later in the day for talks on the North's military threat. Clinton was greeted by Yudhoyono outside his office in the white colonial-style presidential palace in Jakarta before the two went in for talks. They did not comment after the meeting, but a presidential spokesman said the talks included economic cooperation, Palestine and efforts to reach a new global agreement on climate change. "The president underlined that a global consensus (on climate change) cannot be achieved without US leadership," presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal told a news conference. In a pre-recorded TV interview on a local youth music show, Clinton confirmed she would attend a conference on rebuilding Gaza in Cairo on March 2 when asked about the new administration's efforts to improve ties with the Islamic world. "One thing is that immediately upon being inaugurated and my taking office as secretary of state, President Obama and I said the United States will get re-engaged in trying to help in the Middle East," she said. Preliminary estimates put the damage in Hamas-run Gaza after Israel's offensive, which killed 1,300 Palestinians, at nearly $2 billion. Clinton's visit to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, highlights President Barack Obama's desire to forge a better U.S. relationship with the Muslim world, where many of the policies of former president George W. Bush's administration, including the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, were deeply unpopular. Most Indonesians follow a moderate form of Islam, although there is a vocal fringe element of radicals and there have been a number of small protests by hardline Islamic groups and students opposing Clinton's trip. Indonesia is also the site of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations headquarters, and has Southeast Asia's largest economy. FINANCIAL CRISIS Clinton's talks have also covered the financial crisis and Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said on Wednesday Jakarta had discussed the possibility of U.S. assistance in the form of a currency swap agreement and possible contingency funding to support Southeast Asia's top economy. Indonesia already seeks to extend a $6 billion currency swap arrangement with Japan and has similar deals, each worth $3 billion, with China and South Korea. Yudhoyono, seeking a second term this year, is keen to showcase Indonesia's stability since its transformation from an autocracy under former President Suharto -- who was forced to resign in 1998 -- to a vibrant democracy. Clinton, like Bush Administration officials in the past, held up Indonesia as proof modernity and Islam can coexist as she visited the country where Obama spent four years as a boy. During her appearance on the "Dahsyat" ("Awesome") music show, Clinton was greeted with claps when she said along with classical music she liked the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. She was due to visit a USAID sanitation project in Jakarta before flying to South Korea. North Korea has repeatedly threatened in recent weeks to reduce the South to ashes and on Thursday said it was ready for war. Pyongyang is thought to be readying its longest-range missile for launch in what analysts say is a bid to grab the new US administration's attention and pressure Seoul to ease up on its hard line. Clinton has said such a launch would not help relations. After South Korea, Clinton will go to China, the last stop on an Asian tour that also included Japan. The trip is her first outside the United States since taking office.

Scientists have known for years that climate change is disrupting the monsoon season. Past research based on computer models has suggested that the global heating caused by greenhouse gases, and the increased moisture in the warmed atmosphere, will result in rainier summer monsoon seasons and unpredictable, extreme rainfall events. The new paper, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, adds evidence for the theory by looking back over the past million years to give a sense of monsoons to come. The monsoon season, which generally runs from June to September, brings enormous amounts of rain to South Asia that are crucial to the region’s agrarian economy. Those rains directly affect the lives of one-fifth of the world’s population, nourishing or destroying crops, causing devastating flooding, taking lives and spreading pollution. The changes wrought by climate change could reshape the region, and history, the new research suggests, is a guide to those changes. The researchers had no time machine, so they used the next best thing: mud. They drilled core samples in the Bay of Bengal, in the northern Indian Ocean, where the runoff from monsoon seasons drains away from the subcontinent. The core samples were 200 meters long and provided a rich record of monsoon rainfall. Wetter seasons put more fresh water into the bay, reducing the salinity at the surface. The plankton that live at the surface die and sink to the sediment below, layer after layer. Working through the core samples, the scientists analysed the fossil shells of the plankton, measuring oxygen isotopes to determine the salinity of the water they lived in. The high-rainfall and low-salinity times came after periods of higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, lower levels of global ice volume and subsequent increases in regional moisture-bearing winds. Now that human activity is boosting levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, the research suggests, we can expect to see the same monsoon patterns emerge. Steven Clemens, a professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University and lead author of the study, said, “We can verify over the past million years increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been followed by substantial increases in rainfall in the South Asian monsoon system.” The predictions of the climate models are “wonderfully consistent with what we see in the past million years,” he said. Anders Levermann, a professor of climate dynamics at the Potsdam Institute in Germany who was not involved in the new paper but has produced research on climate model monsoon projections, said that he was pleased to see research that supported the findings of forward-looking climate models. “It’s a tremendous body of information,” he said, “and it’s really nice to see in actual data that reflects more than a million years of our planet’s history, to see the physical laws that we experience every day leave their footprints in this extremely rich paleo-record.” Levermann added that the consequences for the people of the Indian subcontinent are dire; the monsoon already drops tremendous amounts of rain and “can always be destructive,” he said, but the risk of “catastrophically strong” seasons is growing, and the increasingly erratic nature of the seasons holds its own risks. “And it is hitting the largest democracy on the planet — in many ways, the most challenged democracy on the planet,” he said. Clemens and other researchers took their samples during a two-month research voyage on a converted oil-drilling ship, the JOIDES Resolution. It carried a crew of 100 and 30 scientists on a trip that began in November 2014. “We were out over Christmas,” he recalled, and while “it’s difficult to be away from family that long,” the payoff has finally arrived. “We’ve been at this for years,” he said, “creating these data sets. It’s satisfying to have this finally come out.” ©2021 The New York Times Company

No one in the room had been informed of Abiy Ahmed's trip, his second since clinching a peace deal last year that ended two decades of hostility between the neighbours. "The foreign office was not in the loop," said a senior official who was present. "We learned of it from the Eritrean media, on Facebook and Twitter." The surprise visit is typical of Abiy, who both fans and critics say often relies on bold personal initiatives and charisma to drive change instead of working through government institutions. Nebiat Getachew, the foreign ministry spokesman, said policy was well co-ordinated. He did not confirm if Abiy had made the July trip without informing the ministry. The deal with Eritrea won Abiy international plaudits. He is the bookmakers' second favourite to win a Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, after climate activist Greta Thunberg. But Abiy's unpredictable style annoys some Ethiopians. It is unclear how much of the fractious ruling coalition - some form of which has been in power since 1991 - backs his reforms, or how durable those reforms would be without his leadership. He has already survived one assassination attempt: a grenade thrown at a rally last year. Lasting change cannot be built through a "cult of personality", said Comfort Ero, Africa programme director at the International Crisis Group think tank. "None of Abiy's promised transformational reforms are going to have any solid foundations unless he works through the institutions," she said. Ethiopia has been among Africa's fastest growing economies for more than a decade. But uncertainty over Abiy's ability to carry out all his reforms worries both citizens and the foreign investors he has been courting to develop the country's antiquated telecoms and banking sectors. PERSONAL STYLE OR CANNY STRATEGY? Some observers say Abiy, a former military officer specialising in cyber intelligence, will sometimes bypass ministries because his reforms must maintain their breakneck momentum or become mired in bureaucracy. Those reforms - including unbanning political parties, releasing imprisoned journalists and prosecuting officials accused of torture - have drawn ecstatic crowds at rallies. "Abiy seems to have relied on his charismatic rule," said Dereje Feyissa, a professor at Addis Ababa University. "The question is whether this is sustainable. Euphoria is subsiding." Other observers say Abiy's rapid changes are a deliberate attempt to wrong-foot opponents from the previous administration, which was dominated by Tigrayans, a small but powerful ethnic group. Abiy, 43, is from the Oromo group, the nation's largest, which spearheaded the protests that forced his predecessor to resign. Since taking office in April 2018, Abiy's government has arrested or fired many senior officials - mainly Tigrayans - for corruption or rights abuses. "In the first six or seven months, he undercut the institutions ... The institutions were either not working or working against his agenda," said Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo activist and informal adviser to the prime minister. "I don't think he could have travelled this far without doing that." FOREIGN POLICY One of Abiy's biggest victories was the peace deal, signed in July last year, which ended a nearly 20-year military stalemate with Eritrea following their 1998-2000 border war. Asle Sveen, a historian who has written several books about the Nobel Peace Prize, told Reuters the deal made Abiy exactly the kind of candidate Alfred Nobel had envisaged for the prize. "The peace deal has ended a long conflict with Eritrea, and he is very popular for having done this, and he is doing democratic reforms internally," Sveen said. But some benefits of the peace were short-lived. Land borders opened in July but closed in December with no official explanation. "Last year's rapprochement appears to have been partly due to the Eritrean president's belief that Abiy's rise marked the eclipse of Tigray's ruling party, which had been his prime antagonist for more than two decades," said Will Davison, an Ethiopia analyst at Crisis Group. "But although it has lost power at the federal level, Tigray's ruling party remains firmly in control of its own region, which includes a long border with Eritrea, partially explaining why relations between the two nations haven't warmed further." Nebiat, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Eritrea and Ethiopia had restored diplomatic relations, air links and phone connections. "Other engagements are well underway to further institutionalise relations," he said. PERSONAL INITIATIVES Abiy's diplomatic forays - like his surprise trip - tend to be bold personal initiatives, analysts and diplomats said. The foreign ministry has been "completely sidelined," said the senior ministry official, adding that "our interests abroad may be jeopardised". He said Abiy had engaged with Eritrea, Somalia and wealthy Gulf states on major policy issues without building consensus within his government. Nebiat disputed that. "There is always a well-coordinated foreign policy and diplomacy implementation within the Ethiopian government," he said. "Any other claims are simply baseless." Some nations are pleased by Abiy's personal touch. After Sudanese police killed more than 100 protesters in June, Abiy flew to Khartoum to convince Sudan's new military rulers and the opposition to restart talks, and persuaded Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to back his mediation. The talks led to a power-sharing accord in August. "Abiy played a key role," said Amjad Farid, a senior representative of the civilian group that led talks with the military. REFORMS AT HOME Abiy has pushed through reforms at home and abroad. His public renunciation of past abuses drew a line between his administration and that of his predecessor. He appointed former dissidents to senior roles. Daniel Bekele, a former political prisoner and Africa director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, now heads the government's human rights commission. Birtukan Mideksa, who founded an opposition party and was jailed after a disputed 2005 election, now heads the electoral commission. But ethnically tinged violence flares frequently, and systemic attempts to address past injustices have been slow. A reconciliation commission set up in December has an unclear mandate, lacks expertise and has only met twice, said Laetitia Bader, an Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The jury is still out on whether the move will be more than mere window dressing," Bader said.

If the environmental movement has a high holiday, Earth Day is it. The annual effort to raise public awareness about the environment and inspire actions to clean it up marks its 41st anniversary on Friday, coinciding with the Christian Good Friday and Judaism's celebration of Passover. In an effort dubbed "A Billion Acts of Green," organizers are encouraging people to observe Earth Day 2011 by pledging online at act.earthday.org/ to do something small but sustainable in their own lives to improve the planet's health -- from switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs to reducing the use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals. "Millions of people doing small, individual acts can add up to real change," said Chad Chitwood, a spokesman for the umbrella group coordinating efforts. There will be hundreds of rallies, workshops and other events around the United States, where Earth Day was born, and hundreds more overseas, where it is now celebrated in 192 countries. In the United States the activities range from the premiere of the new film from the director of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" (it's called "Revenge of the Electric Car") at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York to a discussion about creating a green economy in 12 cities along the Gulf Coast, where this time last year residents were reeling from the effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In the years since the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 the environmentalist movement made great strides with passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and other groundbreaking laws. But the bipartisanship that marked the birth of Earth Day -- it was sponsored in Congress by a Wisconsin Democrat named Gaylord Nelson and a California Republican named Pete McCloskey -- is often missing in discussions about environmental policy today. Efforts to fight climate change by regulating greenhouse gases, for instance, face fierce resistance from many Republicans and members of the business community, who dispute the science supporting global warming and warn new rules to regulate emissions will kill jobs and raise energy costs.

Ten years after committing to fight AIDS, the United Nations is taking on an even bigger bunch of killers -- common chronic diseases -- in what is shaping up to be a bruising battle between big business, Western governments and the world's poor. Tobacco, food and drinks companies are in the firing line for peddling products linked to cancer, diabetes and heart disease, while politicians in the rich world are accused of failing to set firm targets or provide funds for a decent fight. "This is a once in a generation opportunity. We could save millions of lives here, and it's shameful and immoral that industry lobbying has put short-term profits in front of a public health disaster," Rebecca Perl of the World Lung Foundation (WLF) told Reuters. WLF has been involved in tetchy preliminary talks for several months. The fear is that big business has successfully lobbied rich governments to be only half-hearted in battling non-communicable diseases, or NCDs, despite predictions that they could cripple healthcare systems of developing countries. A bit like climate change, preventing and treating non-communicable diseases requires wealthy nations and multinational firms to take a near-term financial hit to help prevent poor nations being overwhelmed in the future. In these austere times, fears are already growing that a high-level U.N. meeting in New York on September 19-20 -- only the second to focus on disease after one on AIDS in 2001 -- could be a flop. The gathering will include scores of delegates from U.N. member states, including around 20 heads of government as well as representatives from public health groups, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and academia. According to those close to the negotiations, a draft version of the political declaration that will form the cornerstone of the U.N.'s thinking on NCDs contains many platitudes but few tangible commitments. "There are no strong, time-bound commitments in there," Ann Keeling, chair of the NCD Alliance which groups 2,000 health organizations from around the world, told Reuters. "It's a great disappointment from that point of view." NOT ROCKET SCIENCE The scale of the problem is immense. Around 36 million people die every year from NCDs -- around 80 percent of them in poor nations where prevention programs are virtually non-existent and access to diagnosis and treatment is very limited. As a result, death rates from NCDs are nearly twice as high in poor countries as in the industrialized world. Preventing these deaths -- or at least a good proportion of them -- isn't rocket science. Proven measures such as reducing smoking rates, improving diets, making simple drugs available and boosting exercise could knock a huge hole in that figure. "There is a common story that unites cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes and respiratory medicines around tobacco, alcohol, diet and exercise -- and that is where we have the most cost-effective impact," says David Kerr, president of the European Society of Medical Oncology. The crucial sticking points are targets, taxes and money. Stopping a billion people from lighting up every day or providing cheap drugs like aspirin and statins to prevent heart attacks and strokes may be cost effective, but the payback won't be quick and it is unlikely to win many votes. "The time horizon for the return on that investment is very long and beyond many political horizons. So it's difficult to get people to commit to these kinds of resources," says Gordon Tomaselli, president of the American Heart Association. The NCD Alliance says spending $9 billion a year on tobacco control, food advice and treatment for people with heart risks would avert tens of millions of untimely deaths this decade. Is that a lot? By comparison, caring for HIV patients in developing countries already costs around $13 billion a year. In contrast to the AIDS fight that was the UN's focus a decade ago, the price of drugs is less an issue here, since many are available as cheap generics, although there are disputes over the cost of some more pricey products like insulin. STUBBING OUT TOBACCO The sharpest focus this time is on makers of fatty foods, sugary drinks and -- above all -- the tobacco industry, which World Health Organization director general Margaret Chan has described as "an industry that has much money and no qualms about using it in the most devious ways imaginable." With tobacco predicted to kill more than a billion people this century, if current trends persist, the public health lobby says if the U.N. meeting does nothing else, it should at least make a smoke-free world one of its central targets. Smoking alone causes one in three cases of lung disease, one in four cases of cancer, and one in 10 cases of heart disease, says Perl. "So look what a bang you get for your buck there." Conflicted governments will find it tough. Japan Tobacco, for example, is 50 percent owned by the Japanese government, and the massive profits of U.S. cigarette makers bolster the U.S. economy. In China, home to a third of the world's male smokers, the combination of taxes and sales from China National Tobacco -- a wholly state-owned entity -- account for around 9 percent of the government's annual fiscal revenues. This is all the more reason, according to Paul Lincoln of the UK National Heart Forum and Jaakko Tuomilehto, an epidemiologist at the University of Helsinki, to hike cigarette taxes, curb advertising and insist on graphic health warnings. "There are no more excuses," said Lincoln. "We have the know-how. The challenge as ever in public health is to overcome the ideological and vested interests." Tuomilehto is more blunt: "It's a crazy thing to have a product in the shops that kills every second consumer -- it's madness."

Japan has stuck to its offer to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 for a UN accord on condition major emitters agree on an ambitious climate deal, a statement from the foreign ministry showed on Tuesday. The target, based on 1990 levels, was submitted on Tuesday to the UN Climate Change Secretariat under a climate accord worked out by major emitters led by China and the United States last month in Copenhagen. The accord said rich nations should submit by Jan. 31 targets for cuts in emissions by 2020 and for developing nations to outline actions for slowing the rise of emissions to help avert heatwaves, sandstorms, floods and rising sea levels. "I hope that all countries will submit (a target), but ... what's important in order to cut CO2 and to stop global warming is for the United States and China, the greatest emitters, to submit this," environment minister Sakihito Ozawa was quoted by a ministry official as saying in a news conference. Japan had hoped to play a big negotiating role at the climate talks in December with its target, so big emitters such as the United States, China and India join a new pact that goes beyond 2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends. But the Copenhagen talks ended with a weak deal. The meeting failed to adopt the Copenhagen Accord to curb climate change after opposition from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Sudan, meaning the conference merely "took note" of the plan. China, India, Brazil and South Africa promised on Sunday to submit their own climate action plans to the United Nations by Jan. 31. Experts say the total cuts offered by rich countries at the talks amounted to no more than 18 percent and fall far short of the 25-40 percent UN scientists consider necessary to avert dangerous climate change.

Some consumers in rich countries are shunning meat in favour of other forms of protein, including lentils and fish, in order to reduce the amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases emitted by intensive livestock farming. But popular fish such as sardines and mackerel are sourced from African countries that export most of their nutrient-rich catch instead of selling it to their own populations, said a paper published in the journal Nature. A shift in diets would "serve to ... worsen the food and nutritional security of already vulnerable people in places such as West Africa, Asia and the Pacific", said Christina Hicks, the paper's lead author. The global fishing industry is worth $166 billion, and much of the fish on supermarket shelves in Europe and China comes from developing countries such as Namibia and Kiribati, which can export more than 90% of their fish catch. The study found that across much of the tropics, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, some of the most nutritious species of fish such as anchovies are found in countries where citizens suffer from a lack of essential vitamins and minerals. Yet "foreign fishing, illegal fishing, subsidies, prices, and trade all act to divert much-needed nutrients away from those in need," said Hicks, a professor at Britain's Lancaster University. Globally, more than 2 billion people suffer from a deficiency of micronutrients such as iron, zinc, and vitamin A essential for the functioning of human bodies, experts say. In Namibia, almost the entire population is estimated not to have an adequate intake of vitamin A, while in Mauritania, the same applies to nearly half of its people. Even a small portion of the catch from their waters could go a long way towards combating malnutrition-related diseases in millions of people within 100 km (60 miles) of the sea, Hicks said. One way forward is to reform international fishing policies so local governments require companies to divert a small portion of their catch into programmes for malnourished children, Hicks said. In Mauritania, for example, foreign fishing makes up over 70% of the fish caught, much of which are highly nutritious species but are processed in-country to be used in aquaculture abroad, she said. Countries could replicate projects under way in Bangladesh and Uganda where fish heads, bones and tails that are usually binned by factories are turned into fish powder that can be added to meals to boost nutrition, Hicks said. Globally, fish consumption is at an all-time high of 20.2 kg (44.5 lb) per person, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.

By Friday, those predictions proved devastatingly accurate, with more than 100 people dead and 1,300 unaccounted for, as helicopter rescue crews plucked marooned residents from villages inundated sometimes within minutes, raising questions about lapses in Germany’s elaborate flood warning system. Numerous areas, victims and officials said, were caught unprepared when normally placid brooks and streams turned into torrents that swept away cars, houses and bridges and everything else in their paths. “It went so fast. You tried to do something, and it was already too late,” a resident of Schuld told Germany’s ARD public television, after the Ahr River swelled beyond its banks, ripping apart tidy wood-framed houses and sending vehicles bobbing like bath toys. Extreme downpours like the ones that occurred in Germany are one of the most visible signs that the climate is changing as a result of warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Studies have found that such floods are now happening more frequently for a simple reason: A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, generating more, and more powerful, rainfall. But even as extreme weather events become increasingly common around the globe — whether wildfires in the American West, or more intense hurricanes in the Caribbean — the floods that cut a wide path of destruction through Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands this week were virtually unheard-of, according to meteorologists and German officials. Even so, they were not unforeseen. “There should not have been so many deaths from this event,” said Dr Linda Speight, a hydrometeorologist at the University of Reading in Britain, who studies how flooding occurs. She blamed poor communication about the high risk posed by the flooding as contributing to the significant loss of life. For now, German politicians have made a point of not wanting to appear to be politicizing a calamity, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesperson said she planned to visit the stricken state of Rhineland-Palatinate after returning from talks in Washington. But the natural disaster had all the hallmarks of an event that has in the past reshaped political fortunes in German election seasons like this one. Armin Laschet, the conservative leader of North Rhine-Westphalia, who is vying to succeed Merkel after national elections Sept. 26, told a news conference Friday, “Our state is experiencing a flood catastrophe of historic scale.” “We have to make the state more climate-proof,” said Laschet, who is facing his strongest challenge from the environmentalist Green party. “We have to make Germany climate-neutral even faster.” But his state was among the hardest hit. Once the floodwaters recede, he and Merkel may yet face questions about why their political strongholds were not better prepared. German officials said Friday that their warning system, which includes a network of sensors that measure river levels in real time, functioned as it was supposed to. The problem, they said, was an amount of rain they had never seen before — falling so rapidly that it engorged even small streams and rivers not normally considered threats. To describe the events of recent days as a 100-year flood would be an understatement, said Uwe Kirsche, a spokesperson for the German Weather Service, calling it a flood the likes of which had not been seen in perhaps a millennium. “With these small rivers, they have never experienced anything like that,” Kirsche said. “Nobody could prepare, because no one expected something like this.” On Tuesday, Felix Dietsch, a meteorologist for the German Weather Service, went on YouTube to warn that some areas of southwest Germany could receive previously unimaginable volumes of rain. Up to 70 litres, or more than 18 gallons, of water could pour down on an area of 1 cubic meter within a few hours, he warned. The weather service, a government agency, assigned its most extreme storm warning, code purple, to the Eifel and Mosel regions. It was one of numerous warnings that the weather service issued on Twitter and other media earlier this week that was also transmitted to state officials and local officials, fire departments and police. But the waters rose so swiftly, to levels beyond previously recorded record levels, that some communities’ response plans were rendered utterly insufficient while others were caught off guard entirely. A spokesperson for the office responsible for monitoring floods and alerting local officials in Rhineland-Palatinate said that all warnings had been received from the weather service and passed along to local communities as planned. But what happened after that is critical, and not entirely clear. In the village of Müsch, at the junction of the Ahr and Trierbach Rivers, Michael Stoffels, 32, said that he had gotten no warning from the government, but that a neighbour had called to alert him to the rapidly rising waters Wednesday. He rushed home from the retail store he manages nearby to salvage what he could. He was lucky, he said, since he has storage on the ground level and his living area is above that, so the 12 feet of water that his home took on did not cause significant damage. But the village of 220 people got clobbered by flash floods that one resident, Maria Vazquez, said wreaked havoc in less than two hours. On Friday evening, the village was without electricity, running water and cellphone coverage. The river banks were scenes of devastation, with crushed cars and huge tree stumps, while many of the cobbled streets were covered with mud and debris. Truckloads of broken furniture, tree branches and chunks of stone were being driven slowly over downed power lines. “A lot of good cars crashed or got crushed,’’ said Vazquez, who works in a nearby auto repair shop. “I work with cars, so that’s sad, but I just hope that all the people are OK.” Across the border in Belgium, 20 people were confirmed dead, and 20 remained missing, the country’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said Friday, calling the floods “the most disastrous that our country has ever known.” Waters rose on lakes in Switzerland and across waterways in the Netherlands, leaving hundreds of houses without power and submerging the city centre of Valkenburg in the Netherlands, although neither country suffered deaths or the destruction inflicted on German towns. Medard Roth, mayor of Kordel, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, defended the warning systems and said that he activated his town’s emergency flood response once he had been alerted that the waters of the Kyll River were approaching dangerous levels. But the waters rose too rapidly to be held back by the usual measures. A photo provided by the Cologne District Government shows an aerial view of Erftstadt-Blessem in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, July 16, 2021. (Rhein-Erft-Kreis/Cologne District Government via The New York Times) “Already on Wednesday afternoon at 3:30 pm, the Kordel fire brigade began setting up the security measures,” Roth told Bild, a German newspaper. “By 6 pm, everything was already under water. Nobody could have predicted that.” A photo provided by the Cologne District Government shows an aerial view of Erftstadt-Blessem in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, July 16, 2021. (Rhein-Erft-Kreis/Cologne District Government via The New York Times) Ursula Heinen-Esser, the environment minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said during an online presentation Friday that floodwaters had reached “levels never before recorded.” The German flood warning system leaves it up to local officials to decide what action to take, on the theory that they are best informed about local terrain and what people or property lies in the path of an overflowing river. In some cases, it appears that warnings were issued in time. In the city of Wuppertal, located in a valley bisected by the Wupper river, a crisis committee including police, the fire department and city officials used social media to urge people to stay home. Early Thursday, shortly after midnight, they sounded a warning siren, which sounds eerily like the kind used during World War II, to alert residents to move to higher floors or evacuate as the waters surged. Wuppertal suffered property damage, such as flooding in the orchestra pit of the local opera house, but no fatalities, said Martina Eckermann, a spokesperson for the city. But in other places the warnings came too late. In the Ahrweiler district of neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate, regional officials issued their first warning to residents living near the banks of the river as it approached its record level of 3 meters, or nearly 10 feet. It wasn’t until three hours later, as the waters pushed beyond the previous flood record, that a state of emergency was declared. By that time, many people had fled to the upper levels of their homes, while others died, like 12 handicapped residents of a care home in Sinzig, who were not alerted in time to be helped from their ground-floor rooms before the waters surged in. “The warnings arrived,” Kirsche of the German Weather Service said. “But the question is why didn’t evacuations take place sooner? That’s something we have to think about.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

The plan on how to reach the goal, prepared by Canada and Germany ahead of the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Scotland, said developed countries needed to do more and complained that private finance had not lived up to expectations. Climate finance is a crucial issue for the summit, which is aiming for more ambitious country commitments to limit warming. But the failure to meet the $100 billion goal by 2020, an objective that was set in 2009, is a symbol of broken past promises that could undermine trust and complicate efforts to set new goals for ramping up climate aid. The authors of the 12-page plan said they expected developed countries to make significant progress towards the $100 billion goal in 2022 and were confident it would be met in 2023. "The data also gives us confidence that we will likely be able to mobilize more than US$100 billion per year thereafter," the plan said. Environmental groups say this is not nearly enough. African nations believe the financing should be scaled up more than tenfold to $1.3 trillion per year by 2030, a key African climate negotiator told Reuters this month. The COP26 summit begins on Oct 31 and ends about two weeks later. It is being held in the Scottish city of Glasgow.

On his first trip to New York, the 78-year-old Argentine pontiff also prayed at the memorial to those killed in the Sep 11, 2001, attacks in perhaps the most poignant moment of his first visit to the United States. Addressing dozens of world leaders at the UN General Assembly, the spiritual head of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics railed against the "grave offense" of economic and social exclusion. "A selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged," he said. The first pope from Latin America, Francis has often criticised unbridled capitalism in the two years of his papacy. On Friday, he had a high-powered audience at the United Nations, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary. This year's General Assembly is believed to have attracted the highest number of leaders in UN history. The pontiff urged government leaders to ensure their people enjoy the minimum material needs. "In practical terms, this absolute minimum has three names: lodging, labour and land," Francis said to applause. He said humanity's future is in danger. "The ecological crisis and the large-scale destruction of biodiversity can threaten the very existence of the human species," said Francis, who this year published the first papal encyclical, a letter to the church, dedicated to the environment. In keeping with his reputation as a green pope, Francis has used a small Fiat car rather than a limousine to get around Washington and Manhattan this week. Francis underscored an "urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons" and praised the July agreement reached by the United States and other world powers to curb Iran's nuclear programme as "proof of the potential of political good will and of law, exercised with sincerity, patience and constancy". The pope also said international financial agencies should work toward "the sustainable development of countries and should ensure that they are not subjected to oppressive lending systems" that cause greater poverty, exclusion and dependence. Palpable grief Francis led an inter-religious prayer service at the site of the Sep 11 hijacked plane attacks by al Qaeda Islamist militants that brought down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in Lower Manhattan. It was the most solemn moment of his first trip to the United States. "Here grief is palpable," Francis said, after viewing the reflecting pools that mark the footprints of the Twin Towers. Flanked by a dozen religious leaders from the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Greek Orthodox traditions, Francis spoke to a crowd of about 700 people in an underground gallery. "In opposing every attempt to create a rigid uniformity, we can and must build unity on the basis of our diversity of languages, cultures and religions," Francis said. The pope, who arrived in New York on Thursday night, also was serenaded by schoolchildren during a visit to a Catholic elementary school serving mostly Latino and black children in the city's East Harlem neighbourhood, speaking with individual students at Our Lady Queen of Angels School. The pope then was greeted by large, adoring crowds as he drove in his "popemobile" through sprawling Central Park before heading to the famed Madison Square Garden sports arena for an evening Mass. Two years into his papacy, Francis has won the admiration of many in the United States, with liberals captivated by his focus on meeting the needs of the poor, immigrants and the homeless. On his first US trip, he has also emphasised conservative values and Catholic teachings on the family. A day after becoming the first pope to address the US Congress, Francis warned in his UN speech against imposing Western liberal values on the rest of the world via "an ideological colonisation by the imposition of anomalous models and lifestyles". Francis called on government leaders to fight human trafficking, ban nuclear arms and promote the education of girls. Among those in the audience were Cuban President Raul Castro and Malala Yousafzai, the 18-year-old Pakistani campaigner for girls' rights to schooling. Echoing concerns he expressed at the White House and Congress this week about the environment, Francis called for "fundamental and effective agreements" at climate change talks in Paris in December. The prospects of a meaningful global climate pact in the French capital have been boosted by the news that China - one of the world's biggest polluters - will start a national carbon emissions trading market in 2017. Francis wraps up his six-day US trip in Philadelphia on Saturday and Sunday with a Catholic summit of families, a visit to a jail and a large outdoor Mass.

Climate negotiators meeting in South Africa this week face fresh worries over saving the planet from global warming now that a tonne of carbon trades at the price of a pizza. A European steel plant producing a tonne of steel pays as little as $12 for the resulting carbon emissions, spelling trouble for Europe's carbon emissions trading scheme, the world's largest. At those prices, there is little incentive for industry to lower its carbon output, meaning one of Europe's major tools in fighting climate change is broken. Analysts say carbon prices would need to return to 2008 levels in order start making a difference. "Given current commodities prices, we would need 20 euros a tonne to achieve a significant emissions reduction," said Per Lekander, an analyst at UBS. "I look at the price in the morning and don't want to get out of bed," said a London-based emissions trader. London is the EU carbon market's hub, with traders, brokers, power generators and project originators responsible for the bulk of trade. But with carbon prices down more than 50 percent since June, some have decided to cut their losses and have left the market. The EU Commission declined to comment on current carbon prices when asked by Reuters but speaking in Brussels last Thursday, Denmark's climate, energy and building minister Martin Lidegaard acknowledged concern. "Carbon prices are low because there is a crisis. This is a serious problem that threatens stability for investors," Lidegaard said, adding the Commission would be looking at ways to support prices. How Europe tackles that problem will be a hot theme in Durban, South Africa, where negotiators from more than 190 nations are gathering for a two-week summit to map out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which expires next year. Analysts say it is important to agree a future pact in order to safeguard a 2010 goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, a level viewed as a threshold for dangerous change. "We want to see the CO2 price strengthened to give a clearer signal for EU businesses to move to a low-carbon economy," UK energy and climate change minister Chris Huhne told Reuters. "That will come down to the EU economy recovering and making sure we bring more ambition in terms of carbon reductions in the EU," he said. Britain and several other EU members states want to toughen the bloc's climate goal, by increasing its 2020 target to cut emissions to 30 percent from 20 percent against 1990 levels. Yet the 27-nation bloc has said it won't move to a stricter target unless other large emitters, like China and the United States, follow suit, which looks unlikely at the climate talks. Either way, moving the goal posts on a scheme that caps the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions on 11,000 power generators and factories in 30 European countries will not be easy. The EU carbon market, valued at $120 billion last year, has been caught out badly by an excess in carbon permits and credits which analysts expect to outpace demand until 2020. And unless the EU toughens its climate goal or takes intervention measures, carbon prices are likely to stay low until the economy recovers. The knock-on effects include hampered efforts to tackle climate change and hobbled investment in low-carbon technology, a sector many European governments are looking to for help in creating jobs. Shares in clean energy project developers, including UK-based Camco International and Trading Emissions', are among those feeling the heat. "Some of the weaker, independent project developers could inevitably be affected at these price levels and it is likely that some of these may not survive," said Paul Soffe, an associate director at Ecosecurities, a clean energy project developer owned by JP Morgan Chase. Fears of economic recession have added to analysts' pessimism in recent weeks, with Barclays Capital and Societe Generale among those downgrading their forecasts for carbon. Gone are the hopes, held just two years ago, of a trillion dollar carbon market by 2020. And despite schemes in Australia, New Zealand and California, a globally-linked carbon market remains elusive, especially after the United States last year failed to pass legislation introducing a federal emissions trading scheme. Some are looking beyond schemes or market intervention for help as Nigel Brunel, a carbon trader from New Zealand, wrote recently in the Reuters Global Carbon Forum: "Dear Lord – please make the carbon market rally." ($1 = 0.7490 euros)

The UN Security Council will debate climate change for the first time on April 17, the result of a British campaign to force it onto the agenda of a body that deals with matters of war and peace. "The traditional triggers of conflict are likely to be exacerbated by the effects of climate change," Britain's UN ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told a news conference on Wednesday at which he outlined Security Council business for April, when Britain holds the rotating presidency. Britain considers the topic so important to global security that Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett will preside over the debate. Countries on the 15-member Security Council normally have their ambassadors take part in debates but reserve the right to have foreign ministers or heads of state or government address the council on issues of greater importance. Britain invited other countries to send foreign ministers as well, Jones Parry said. In March Britain announced its intention to bring climate change to the Security Council, but it had to be agreed by the council's 15 members including the five permanent members who have veto authority. Permanent members China and Russia expressed some opposition to the holding the debate, diplomatic sources from two countries said. Meanwhile, the United States, which has declined to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, had no opposition. Behind Prime Minister Tony Blair and Beckett, a former secretary of state for environment, Britain has taken a leading role in urgent action against global warming in other international forums such as the European Union, which last month agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 20 percent by 2020. Anticipating that some UN member states will argue that climate change should remain a matter for the General Assembly or agencies dealing with environment, Britain circulated a so-called concept paper arguing that climate change could provoke new wars, change borders, disrupt energy supplies and force mass migration. It outlines six areas where climate change could affect global security: border disputes, migration, energy supplies, other resource shortages, societal stress and humanitarian crises. Melting ice and rising sea levels could alter the world's physical landmass, leading to potential changes in political or maritime borders, and mass migration could also result, with some estimates that up to 200 million people could be displaced by the middle of the century, the paper says.

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Pakistan, this year's host of the United Nations' annual World Environment Day on June 5, is among the countries worst affected by climate change, having been regularly hit by devastating floods in recent years, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and destroying swathes of agricultural land. "Has the developed world done enough: The answer is no," Khan said in an interview with Reuters at his official residence in Islamabad. "Emissions are from the rich countries. And I think they know they haven’t done enough." This year's World Environment Day will serve as the launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, calling for urgent action to revive damaged ecosystems. Under Khan, Pakistan has undertaken a number of restoration projects, including a 10 billion tree-planting drive. This week Khan planted the billionth tree in that drive. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report released on Friday that over the last five years Pakistan had experienced an environmental turnaround after years of decline in its natural capital, but added more needed to be done. Khan said developing countries like Pakistan had done "more than enough" to combat global warming and climate change despite having limited budgets and an array of problems to deal with such as in education and health. "To take so much money out as we did – proportionate to our GDP and available income – I think Pakistan has done more than any country in the world," he said. Aside from ecological restoration projects, Pakistan has also recently become active on the global green finance market, looking to access finance for environmentally friendly projects and decrease its reliance on fossil fuels. Pakistan said the World Bank estimated the country's new plantation projects would be worth $500 million, and that the valuation could go up to $2.5 billion if carbon pricing estimates went up. Khan said global green financing and the valuation of natural assets provided good incentives to the developing world to protect the environment. "If you can prove to the people that by protecting your environment you can actually gain something as well, that means you have more buy-in from the people," he said. "Remember: hungry people do not really care for the environment."

The decree's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, requiring 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 will also reverse a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undo rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production, and reduce the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions. "We're going to go in a different direction," a senior White House official told reporters ahead of Tuesday's order. "The previous administration devalued workers with their policies. We can protect the environment while providing people with work." 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 will sign the order at the Environmental Protection Agency with Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday afternoon. 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. '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. Trump and several members of his administration, however, 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. Trump’s order 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.

Australia may be headed for a hung parliament with an election-eve opinion poll showing the ruling Labor party has lost its slim lead and is now level with the conservative opposition, a worst-case scenario for investors. A minority government, and its inherent uncertainty could, represent the worst outcome for Australia, risking policy gridlock, investment paralysis and an Australian dollar sell-off. Without a clear winner, the next government would have to rely on a handful of independent or Green MPs to form government, leaving policies such as Labor's new mining tax in limbo. Even a razor-thin win by Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard would diminish her mandate to introduce the 30 percent resource tax, the cornerstone policy of her campaign, and leave her weakened as she seeks to have a hostile Senate pass the tax. "Labor's polling nightmare has materialized," wrote Dennis Shanahan, political editor of the Australian newspaper. "As voters prepare to go to the polls, the government is hanging on by its collective fingernails." A Reuters Poll Trend published on Wednesday showed Labor was poised for a narrow win. Gillard deposed former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on June 24 in a desperate bid by the party to avoid electoral defeat, but she has struggled to woo voters, with many angry at the party coup that dumped Rudd. "YES HE CAN" In the closing days of a five-week campaign voter disillusionment with Labor and the conservatives, led by Tony Abbott, has left the election result unclear. Another survey, the Galaxy poll, still tipped a narrow win for Gillard's Labor, with 52 percent support against 48 percent for conservatives. Two of the three key independents, who may decide who takes office in the event of a hung parliament, have said they cannot guarantee passage of a minority government's budget, leaving the possibility of a fiscal crisis or a short-lived government. One financial analyst has tipped a 2-5 percent fall in the local dollar if Australia has a minority government. The Aussie was trading at $0.8890 in morning trade on Friday, down from $0.8975 late on Thursday. Newspaper editorials were divided on Friday as to who should form Australia's next government. Sydney's Daily Telegraph urged voters to elect a conservative government, with a front page headline "Yes He Can," borrowed from U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign line "Yes we can." The Sydney Morning Herald said Labor "deserves a second chance" since it had successfully steered Australia through the global financial crisis. Australia was the only major developed nation to avoid recession. Gillard and Abbott have campaigned hard on Labor's economic credentials. Both have also promised to cut immigration in a move to appease voter concerns over boatpeople arrivals and creaking infrastructure in major cities. But economists fear substantial cuts in immigration will curb growth in consumer demand while reducing skilled labor needed to feed a mining boom, potentially stoking wage and price pressures. Labor has also pledged to take action on climate change with a possible carbon trading scheme and to construct a $38 billion fiber-optic national broadband network. The Liberal-National opposition opposes these plans. With no single overarching election policy, the issues of the mining tax, carbon trading and a broadband network will resonate in different electorates, leaving the outcome of the poll resting on key marginal seats in the resource states of Queensland and Western Australia, and the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. In a last-minute bid to win over voters, Abbott said he would campaign non-stop for the last 36 hours before polls open, while Gillard has taken to the streets of western Sydney to woo so-called "mortgage-belt" voters

The Harvard graduate is one of 10 "entrepreneurial farmers" selected by Square Roots, an indoor urban farming company, to grow kale, mini-head lettuce and other crops locally in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. For 12 months, farmers each get a 320-square-foot steel shipping container where they control the climate of their own farm. Under pink LED lights, they grow GMO-free greens all year round. Groszyk, who personally makes all the deliveries to his 45 customers, said he chooses certain crops based on customer feedback and grows new crops based on special requests. "Literally the first day we were here, they were lowering these shipping containers with a crane off the back of a truck," said Groszyk. "By the next week, we were already planting seeds." Tobias Peggs launched Square Roots with Kimbal Musk, the brother of Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk, in November, producing roughly 500 pounds of greens every week for hundreds of customers. "If we can come up with a solution that works for New York, then as the rest of the world increasingly looks like New York, we'll be ready to scale everywhere," said Peggs. In exchange for providing the farms and the year-long program, which includes support on topics like business development, branding, sales and finance, Square Roots shares 30 percent of the revenue with the farmers. Peggs estimates that farmers take home between $30,000 and $40,000 total by the end of the year. The farmers cover the operating expenses of their container farm, such as water, electricity and seeds and pay rent, costing them roughly $1,500 per month in total, according to Peggs. "An alternative path would be doing an MBA in food management, probably costing them tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars," Peggs said, adding that he hopes farmers start companies of their own after they graduate from the program. Groszyk harvests 15 to 20 pounds of produce each week, having been trained in artificial lighting, water chemistry, nutrient balance, business development and sales. "It's really interesting to find out who's growing your food," said Tieg Zaharia, 25, a software engineer at Kickstarter, while munching on a $5 bag of greens grown and packaged by Groszyk. You're not just buying something that's shipped in from hundreds of miles away." Nabeela Lakhani, 23, said reading "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" in high school inspired her to change the food system. Three nights per week, Lakhani assumes the role of resident chef at a market-to-table restaurant in lower Manhattan. "I walk up to the table and say, 'Hi guys! Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to introduce myself. I am Chalk Point Kitchen's new urban farmer,' and they're like, 'What?'" said Lakhani, who specializes in Tuscan kale and rainbow chard. "Then I kind of just go, 'Yeah, you know, we have a shipping container in Brooklyn ... I harvest this stuff and bring it here within 24 hours of you eating it, so it's the freshest salad in New York City.'"

Britain has amassed a stockpile of more than 100 tonnes of plutonium -- enough for 17,000 bombs of the size that flattened Japan's Nagasaki in 1945, a report from the country's top science institution said on Friday. The toxic stockpile, which has doubled in the last decade, comes mainly from reprocessing of spent uranium fuel from the country's nuclear power plants, so to stop it growing the practice must end, the Royal Society said. "There should be no more separation of plutonium once current contracts have been fulfilled," said the report "Strategy options for the UK's separated plutonium". Plutonium, one of the most radiotoxic materials known, is produced when spent uranium fuel from power stations is reprocessed to retrieve reusable uranium. It can be processed into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel but it can also be used in nuclear weapons and so poses a security threat. "Just over six kilogrammes of plutonium was used in the bomb that devastated Nagasaki," said Geoffrey Boulton, the report's lead author. "We must take measures to ensure that this very dangerous material does not fall into the wrong hands." Paradoxically, the Royal Society said the safest option was to leave spent fuel as it was when it came out of the reactor because it was so radioactive that it was far harder to handle. The second best was to produce and burn MOX pellets and then leave them unreprocessed. "Spent fuel is more radioactive and therefore harder to handle than plutonium -- and more difficult to use in nuclear weapons because it would need to be reprocessed first," the report said. PUBLIC CONSULTATION The report comes as the government is in the middle of a public consultation process on whether new nuclear power stations should be built to replace the ageing existing stations which provide 20 percent of the country's electricity. All but one of the stations will be closed within 15 years due to old age. The government has provisionally said new stations are needed on the grounds of energy security and in the fight against climate change because nuclear power emits little of the carbon dioxide that is blamed for global warming. Environmental campaigners have complained that the consultation is a sham with questions and information presentations heavily loaded in favour of new nuclear stations, and threatened new court action against the process. Some academics too have expressed disquiet over the "form and function" of the process. The government was forced to embark on a new consultation process by a court ruling in February that described the original public consultation as seriously flawed. Many questions remain over the role and safety of nuclear power, although public opinion has moved grudgingly in favour particularly when cast in the light of climate change. Not least of these is disposal of nuclear waste. Last year CoRWM, the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, recommended burying the waste unrecoverably. But the government now has to find a site that meets the combined criteria of being accessible for disposal, very difficult for illicit retrieval, geologically stable and acceptable to the local community.

NEW DELHI, Jan 31(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - India has reiterated a goal of slowing the rise of its carbon emissions by 2020 as part of pledges due by Sunday under a "Copenhagen Accord" to fight climate change, an official statement said. Many other nations have also reiterated existing goals for slowing global warming before a Sunday deadline for making commitments under the "Copenhagen Accord", which sets an overriding goal of limiting a rise in world temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F). The statement said India will "endeavour" to reduce its carbon emission intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 in comparison to the 2005 level. Carbon emissions intensity refers to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of gross domestic product. The statement said India's actions will be legally non-binding and its carbon intensity cut target will not include emission from the agriculture sector. Last week, China reiterated a voluntary domestic target to lower its carbon emissions intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005 level while also stepping up the use of renewable energy and planting more trees. The non-binding accord was described by many as a failure because it fell far short of the Copenhagen conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to prevent more heat waves, droughts and crop failures. So the more top emitters such as China and India there are committing numbers to the accord, the better its chances of survival. China, India, South Africa and Brazil met in the Indian capital on Jan. 24 and expressed support for the "Copenhagen Accord", while urging donors to keep promises of aid.

Warming is still on track, however, to breach a goal set by governments around the world of limiting the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, unless tough action is taken to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions."The most extreme rates of warming simulated by the current generation of climate models over 50- to 100-year timescales are looking less likely," the University of Oxford wrote about the findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.The rate of global warming has slowed after strong rises in the 1980s and 1990s, even though all the 10 warmest years since reliable records began in the 1850s have been since 1998.The slowdown has been a puzzle because emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases have continued to rise, led by strong industrial growth in China.Examining recent temperatures, the experts said that a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere above pre-industrial times - possible by mid-century on current trends - would push up temperatures by between 0.9 and 2.0 degrees Celsius (1.6 and 3.6F).That is below estimates made by the U.N. panel of climate scientists in 2007, of a rise of between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius (1.8-5.4F) as the immediate response to a doubling of carbon concentrations, known as the transient climate response.OCEANSThe U.N. panel also estimated that a doubling of carbon dioxide, after accounting for melting of ice and absorption by the oceans that it would cause over hundreds of years, would eventually lead to a temperature rise of between 2 and 4.5 C (3.6-8.1F).Findings in the new study, by experts in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland and Norway, broadly matched that range for the long-term response.But for government policy makers "the transient response over the next 50-100 years is what matters," lead author Alexander Otto of Oxford University said in a statement.The oceans appear to be taking up more heat in recent years, masking a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that passed 400 parts per million this month for the first time in human history, up 40 percent from pre-industrial levels.Professor Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich, one of the authors, said that the lower numbers for coming decades were welcome.But "we are still looking at warming well over the two degree goal that countries have agreed upon if current emission trends continue," he said.Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 Celsius (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution and two degrees C is widely viewed as a threshold to dangerous changes such as more floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels."The oceans are sequestering heat more rapidly than expected over the last decade," said Professor Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Australia, who was not involved in the study."By assuming that this behaviour will continue, (the scientists) calculate that the climate will warm about 20 percent more slowly than previously expected, although over the long term it may be just as bad, since eventually the ocean will stop taking up heat."He said findings "need to be taken with a large grain of salt" because of uncertainties about the oceans.

A 15-km (10 mile) stretch of crisp white beach is one of the key battlegrounds in Singapore's campaign to defend its hard-won territory against rising sea levels linked to climate change. Stone breakwaters are being enlarged on the low-lying island state's man-made east coast and their heights raised. Barges carrying imported sand top up the beach, which is regularly breached by high tides. Singapore, the world's second most densely populated country after Monaco, covers 715 square km (276 sq miles). It has already reclaimed large areas to expand its economy and population -- boosting its land area by more than 20 percent since 1960. But the new land is now the frontline in a long-term battle against the sea. Every square metre is precious in Singapore. One of the world's wealthiest nations in per-capita terms, it is also among the most vulnerable to climate change that is heating up the planet, changing weather patterns and causing seas to rise as the oceans warm and glaciers and icecaps melt. Late last year, the government decided the height of all new reclamations must be 2.25 metres (7.5 feet) above the highest recorded tide level -- a rise of a metre over the previous mandated minimum height. The additional buffer was costly but necessary, Environment Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told Reuters in a recent interview. "You are buying insurance for the future," he said during a visit to a large flood control barrier that separates the sea from a reservoir in the central business area. The decision underscores the government's renowned long-term planning and the dilemma the country faces in fighting climate change while still trying to grow. It also highlights the problem facing other low-lying island states and coastal cities and the need to prepare. A major climate change review for the Chinese government last week said China's efforts to protect vulnerable coastal areas with embankments were inadequate. It said in the 30 years up to 2009, the sea level off Shanghai rose 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches); in the next 30 years, it will probably rise another 10 to 15 centimeters. POCKET POWERHOUSE Since it was created by the British as a trading port in the early 19th century, Singapore has turned to the sea to expand and has become one of the world's fastest-growing countries in terms of new land area. More land is being regularly reclaimed. In this pocket powerhouse, there is much to protect. Singapore's recipe for success is to be a city of superlatives to keep ahead of competitors. It is a major Asian centre for finance, shipping, trading, manufacturing, even gambling, with giant casinos as glitzy as those in Las Vegas or Macau. Much of the city centre is on reclaimed land, including an expanding financial district, a new terminal for ocean liners and a $3.2 billion underground expressway, part of which runs under the sea. The industrial west has one of Asia's largest petrochemical complexes, much of it on reclaimed islands. The wealth generated from these sectors has created a $255 billion economy. Per-capita GDP stands on a par with the United States at nearly $50,000, though opposition politicians complain about growing wealth gaps within the island's society. The U.N. climate panel says sea levels could rise between 18 and 59 centimetres (7 to 24 inches) this century and more if parts of Antarctica and Greenland melt faster. Some scientists say the rise is more likely to be in a range of 1 to 2 metres. Singapore could cope with a rise of 50 cm to 1 m, coastal scientist Teh Tiong Sa told Reuters during a tour of the East Coast Park, the city's main recreation area. "But a rise of two metres would turn Singapore into an island fortress," said Teh, a retired teacher from Singapore's National Institute for Education. That would mean constructing more and higher walls to protect against the sea. Indeed, between 70 and 80 percent of Singapore already has some form of coastal protection, the government says. The dilemma Singapore faces is mirrored by other coastal cities, such as Mumbai, Hong Kong, Bangkok and New York, though not all have Singapore's financial muscle. The threat underscores the limits on Singapore's physical growth in terms of further reclamation, costs and managing long-term growth of its population, which has risen from 3 million in 1990 to nearly 5.2 million in 2011. Topping up reclamation levels "does not fundamentally change the way we approach reclamation -- while we reclaim to meet our development needs, we are cognisant that there is a physical limit to how much more land we can reclaim," a spokesman for the National Climate Change Secretariat told Reuters. To make more efficient use of existing land, a government agency floated the idea this month of building a science city 30 stories underground. WINDS OF CHANGE Climate change presents a host of other challenges. More intense rainfall has caused embarrassing floods in the premier Orchard Road shopping area. And the government says average daily temperature in tropical Singapore could increase by 2.7 to 4.2 degrees Celsius (4.9 to 7.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from the current average of 26.8 deg C (80.2 F) by 2100, which could raise energy use for cooling. Here lies another dilemma. The country is already one of the most energy intensive in Asia to power its industries and fiercely airconditioned malls and glass office towers -- a paradox in a country at such risk from climate change. The government has focused on energy efficiency, such as strict building codes and appliance labelling to curb the growth of planet-warming carbon emissions and has steadily switched its power stations to burn gas instead of fuel oil. It has also invested heavily in slick subway lines and promoted investment and research in the clean-tech sector. But electricity demand is still set to grow. Consumption doubled between 1995 and 2010, government figures show, and long-term reliance on fossil fuels for energy is unlikely to change, given limited space for green energy such as solar. Balakrishnan said the government is keen to do its part in any global fight against climate change and that pushing for greater energy efficiency made sense anyway in a country with virtually no natural resources. But there was a limit to how fast it would move, opening the way for criticism from some countries that Singapore was hiding behind its developing country status under the United Nations, which obliges it to take only voluntary steps to curb emissions. "What we want is a level playing field and unilateral moves are not feasible, not possible, for a small, tiny island state that actually is not going to make a real difference at a global level to greenhouse gases," Balakrishnan said. Singapore's emissions, though, are forecast to keep growing, having roughly doubled since 1990. The government is looking at putting a price on carbon emissions and perhaps setting up an emissions trading market. "We're already half way there in the sense we are already pricing everything according to the market," said Tilak Doshi, head of energy economics at the Energy Studies Institute in Singapore. He pointed to Singapore being the world's largest bunkering port. "Bunkering is huge in terms of carbon emissions and Singapore can play a key role in how to handle global shipping emissions," he said. "How to handle bunker fuels -- do we tax it, do we cap-and-trade it, do we get bunkering companies to start trading emissions certificates?" The government has a number of levers to adjust energy policies over time. Against rising sea levels, it is a campaign in progress to tame the tides. In some cases, it might be better to let the sea reclaim the land in a managed retreat, said Teh, the coastal scientist. "It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Some areas you keep, others you let go." For land-limited Singapore, that could prove a tough decision to make.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had an "emotional" meeting on Wednesday on Lula's last official trip to the island before his term expires, Cuban media reported. Photographs showed the two longtime friends chatting and smiling while sitting around a table and standing in the backyard of a two-story home. Castro wore a white Nike windbreaker and looked elderly but in good shape. Lula told reporters the ailing 83-year-old looked "exceptionally good," state-run media said. A report on Cuban television said the two men had a long, "friendly dialogue" touching on topics including the global climate change conference in December in Copenhagen and the just-ended Rio Group summit in Cancun. Castro, who ruled Cuba for 49 years before health problems forced him to give way in 2008 to his younger brother, President Raul Castro, thanked Lula for his "gestures of solidarity and cooperation" with Cuba, the report said. "The emotional meeting was an expression of the existing friendship between the two leaders and the brotherhood that unites the two countries," it said. The trip was Lula's third to Cuba in two years and was meant to signal Cuba's importance to whomever is elected his successor in Brazil's October election, a Brazilian diplomat said. Under Lula, a former union leader, Brazil has provided money and corporate muscle to the island at a time when its economy has suffered in the global economic recession. State-controlled oil giant Petrobras is studying whether to drill for oil in Cuba's offshore and Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht is heading a massive remake of the port of Mariel, west of Havana, into Cuba's main commercial port. OVERSHADOWED Brazil's state-run National Development Bank has given $300 million to Odebrecht to build new highways, rail lines, wharves and warehouses at Mariel, best known as the site of a 1980 exodus in which thousands of Cubans fled to the United States in boats. Lula's visit has been overshadowed by the death on Tuesday of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo after an 85-day hunger strike. Lula has not spoken to foreign press based in Cuba and news coverage of his departure for Haiti on Thursday was canceled by the Cuban government. While touring the Mariel project on Wednesday, Raul Castro expressed regrets about the death of Zapata, jailed since 2003 and serving a 36-year sentence, but blamed it on "relations with the United States." Cuba considers dissidents to be US mercenaries working to overthrow the communist-led government and blames Washington for encouraging their activities against the Cuban state. President Castro said Zapata was not murdered or tortured. He and Lula presided over a meeting on Wednesday night when Cuban and Brazilian officials signed a dozen accords on such things as technology transfer, biotechnology, agriculture and public health. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday, after the completion of the Rio Group summit, that he also would come to Havana to meet with Fidel Castro, but there have been no reports on his visit in Cuban press.

In the woodlands surrounding her home in the far north of the country, she lights hundreds of small fires a year — literally fighting fire with fire. These traditional aboriginal practices, which reduce the undergrowth that can fuel bigger blazes, are attracting new attention as Australia endures disaster and confronts a fiery future. Over the past decade, fire-prevention programmes, mainly on aboriginal lands in northern Australia, have cut destructive wildfires in half. While the efforts draw on ancient ways, they also have a thoroughly modern benefit: Organisations that practice defensive burning have earned $80 million under the country’s cap-and-trade system as they have reduced greenhouse-gas emissions from wildfires in the north by 40%. These programmes, which are generating important scientific data, are being held up as a model that could be adapted to save lives and homes in other regions of Australia, as well as fire-prone parts of the world as different as California and Botswana. “Fire is our main tool,” Lawson said as she inspected a freshly burned patch where grasses had become ash but the trees around them were undamaged. “It’s part of protecting the land.” The fire-prevention programmes, which were first given government licenses in 2013, now cover an area three times the size of Portugal. Even as towns in the south burned in recent months and smoke haze blanketed Sydney and Melbourne, wildfires in northern Australia were much less severe. “The Australian government is now starting to see the benefits of having indigenous people look after their lands,” said Joe Morrison, one of the pioneers of the project. “Aboriginal people who have been through very difficult times are seeing their language, customs and traditional knowledge being reinvigorated and celebrated using Western science.” Fires ignited by Violet Lawson, to clear away undergrowth that could fuel an uncontrolled, more destructive fire, burn near Cooinda, in Australia's Northern Territory, Jan 15, 2020. Indigenous fire-prevention techniques that have sharply cut destructive bushfires in Australia are drawing new attention. (Matthew Abbott/The New York Times) In some ways, the aboriginal methods resemble Western ones practiced around the world: One of the main goals is to reduce underbrush and other fuel that accelerates hot, damaging fires. Fires ignited by Violet Lawson, to clear away undergrowth that could fuel an uncontrolled, more destructive fire, burn near Cooinda, in Australia's Northern Territory, Jan 15, 2020. Indigenous fire-prevention techniques that have sharply cut destructive bushfires in Australia are drawing new attention. (Matthew Abbott/The New York Times) But the ancient approach tends to be more comprehensive. Indigenous people, using precisely timed, low-intensity fires, burn their properties the way a suburban homeowner might use a lawn mower. Aboriginal practices have been so successful in part because of a greater cultural tolerance of fire and the smoke it generates. The country’s thinly populated north, where aboriginal influence and traditions are much stronger than in the south, is not as hamstrung by political debates and residents’ concerns about the health effects of smoke. The landscape and climate of northern Australia also make it more amenable to preventive burning. The wide open spaces and the distinctive seasons — a hot dry season is followed by monsoon rains — make burning more predictable. Yet despite these regional differences, those who have studied the aboriginal techniques say they could be adapted in the more populated parts of the country. “We most certainly should learn to burn aboriginal-style,” said Bill Gammage, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra. “Our firefighters have quite good skills in fighting fires. But for preventing them, they are well short of what aboriginal people could do.” Last week, Victor Cooper, a former forest ranger in northern Australia, lit a wad of shaggy bark to demonstrate the type of fire that burns at temperatures low enough to avoid damage to sensitive plants that are crucial food for animals. The preventive fires, he said, should trickle, not rage. They must be timed according to air temperature, wind conditions and humidity, as well as the life cycles of plants. Northern aboriginal traditions revolve around the monsoon, with land burned patch by patch as the wet season gives way to the dry. “We don’t have a fear of fire,” said Cooper, who burns regularly around his stilt house nestled in woodlands. “We know the earlier we burn, the more protection we have.” A controlled fire in Australia's Northern Territory, where Indigenous fire-prevention techniques have sharply cut destructive bushfires, Jan 15, 2020. Such programmes are being held up as a model that could be adapted to save lives and homes in other regions of Australia. (Matthew Abbott/The New York Times) This year, he will become certified to join the carbon credits programme. Money earned through that system has incentivized stewardship of the land and provided hundreds of jobs in aboriginal communities, where unemployment rates are high. The funds have also financed the building of schools in underserved areas. A controlled fire in Australia's Northern Territory, where Indigenous fire-prevention techniques have sharply cut destructive bushfires, Jan 15, 2020. Such programmes are being held up as a model that could be adapted to save lives and homes in other regions of Australia. (Matthew Abbott/The New York Times) NASA satellite data is used to quantify the reduction in carbon emissions and do computer modeling to track fires. Modern technology also supplements the defensive burning itself: Helicopters drop thousands of incendiary devices the size of pingpong balls over huge patches of territory at times of the year when the land is still damp and fires are unlikely to rage out of control. Those taking part in the programme say they are frustrated that other parts of the country have been reluctant to embrace the same types of preventive burning. The inaction is long-standing: A major federal inquiry after deadly fires more than a decade ago recommended wider adoption of aboriginal methods. “I have many friends in other parts of Australia who can’t get their heads around that fire is a useful tool, that not all fire is the same and that you can manage it,” said Andrew Edwards, a fire expert at Charles Darwin University in northern Australia. “It’s hard to get across to people that fire is not a bad thing.” Nine years ago, Gammage published a book that changed the way many in Australia thought about the Australian countryside and how it has been managed since the arrival of Europeans in the late 18th century. The book, “The Biggest Estate on Earth,” uses documents from the earliest settlers and explorers to show how the landscape had been systematically shaped by aboriginal fire techniques. Many forests were thinner than those that exist now and were more resistant to hot-burning fires. Early explorers described the landscape as a series of gardens, and they reported seeing near constant trails of smoke from small fires across the landscape. As Europeans took control of the country, they banned burning. Jeremy Russell-Smith, a bush fire expert at Charles Darwin University, said this quashing of traditional fire techniques happened not only in Australia, but also in North and South America, Asia and Africa. “The European mindset was to be totally scared of fire,” Russell-Smith said. As the fires rage in the south, aboriginal people in northern Australia say they are deeply saddened at the loss of life — about 25 people have been killed and more than 2,000 homes destroyed. But they also express bewilderment that forests were allowed to grow to become so combustible. Victor Cooper uses tree bark to ignite and clear brush that could fuel an uncontrolled, more destructive fire, near Cooinda, in Australia's Northern Territory, Jan 15, 2020. Indigenous fire-prevention techniques that have sharply cut destructive bushfires in Australia are drawing new attention. (Matthew Abbott/The New York Times) Margaret Rawlinson, the daughter of Lawson, who does preventive burning on her property in the far north, remembers traveling a decade ago to the countryside south of Sydney and being alarmed at fields of long, desiccated grass. Victor Cooper uses tree bark to ignite and clear brush that could fuel an uncontrolled, more destructive fire, near Cooinda, in Australia's Northern Territory, Jan 15, 2020. Indigenous fire-prevention techniques that have sharply cut destructive bushfires in Australia are drawing new attention. (Matthew Abbott/The New York Times) “I was terrified,” Rawlinson said. “I couldn’t sleep. I said, ‘We need to go home. This place is going to go up, and it’s going to be a catastrophe.’ ” The area that she visited, around the town of Nowra, has been a focal point for fires over the past few weeks. The pioneering defensive burning programmes in northern Australia came together in the 1980s and ’90s when aboriginal groups moved back onto their native lands after having lived in settlements under the encouragement, or in some cases the order, of the government. Depopulated for decades, the land had suffered. Huge fires were decimating species and damaging rock paintings. “The land was out of control,” said Dean Yibarbuk, a park ranger whose indigenous elders encouraged him to seek solutions. The aboriginal groups ultimately teamed up with scientists, the government of the Northern Territory and Houston-based oil company ConocoPhillips, which was building a natural gas facility and was required to find a project that would offset its carbon emissions. According to calculations by Edwards, wildfires in northern Australia burned 57% fewer acres last year than they did on average in the years from 2000 to 2010, the decade before the programme started. Yibarbuk, who is now chairman of Warddeken Land Management, one of the largest of the participating organisations, employs 150 aboriginal rangers, part time and full time. “We are very lucky in the north to be able to keep our traditional practices,” Yibarbuk said. “There’s a pride in going back to the country, managing it and making a difference.”

A Pakistani utility company on May 27 launched the country's first-ever US dollar-denominated green Eurobonds, seeking $500 million for environmentally friendly projects to enhance the clean energy share in the country's power generation mix, which relies heavily on fossil fuels - particularly coal. "The green bond was six times oversubscribed ... which shows there is a global appetite for a country that has economic stability and as well as green credibility," Climate Change Minister Malik Amin Aslam told Reuters. The South Asian nation, which is the host country of the UN's annual World Environment Day on June 5, is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, and has been hit hard by extreme weather events including devastating floods. It is now looking to become a major player in the global green financing market. Aslam said Pakistan plans to further tap the green bond avenue for building and transport financing. Pakistan on Thursday also completed its first assessment for blue bonds, an financing instrument that raises capital from global investors for projects that protect ocean ecology and related industries, such as fisheries and eco-tourism. For this, Aslam said that Pakistan had launched its first blue carbon estimation, aided by the World Bank. He said the World Bank had estimated the country's new plantation projects - including planting 10 billion trees over the next few years - if nurtured successfully would be worth $500 million by 2050. The World Bank, he said, had used conservative estimates for carbon pricing, and the valuation could go up to $2.5 billion. Pakistan on Thursday also released a joint statement with Canada, Britain, Germany and the United Nations Development Programme outlining its push to establish a "Nature Performance Bond" to provide the country with accelerated access to development financing and debt relief in exchange for meeting ecosystem restoration targets. "The nature bond is chartering totally unchartered territory," Aslam said. The bond will be developed by a consortium of financial advisers, and is in its initial stages.

WASHINGTON, Apr 28, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The outbreak of a flu virus that has led to a US public health emergency highlights the need for a strong government commitment to scientific research, President Barack Obama said on Monday. During remarks on science and technology that covered topics from climate change to the public-school curriculum, Obama set a goal of devoting 3 percent of gross domestic product to scientific research. "If there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it's today," Obama said in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences, a society of scientists and engineers who give advice to US policymakers. "Our capacity to deal with a public health challenge of this sort rests heavily on the work of our scientific and medical community," Obama said. "And this is one more example of why we cannot allow our nation to fall behind." Obama said that US cases of swine flu were "not a cause for alarm" but the administration was monitoring them closely. The administration said its declaration of a public health emergency was precautionary. The flu has killed 149 people in Mexico and spread to North America and Europe. Though no one outside of Mexico has died, pandemic fears have been raised. Obama invoked the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1960s as an example of the importance of a major investment in research, and said science spending as a share of GDP has declined since that "high water mark." Through the goal of spending more than 3 percent of GDP on science, "we will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race," Obama said. The goal refers to public and private spending. The United States now spends 2.66 percent of gross domestic product on research and development, according to the White House. Some of the increased spending is included in the $787 billion economic stimulus package that Obama signed in February. In his proposed fiscal 2010 budget, Obama called for making permanent tax credits for business investment in research and development. The science speech comes as the White House is trying to highlight Obama's accomplishments with the approach of the 100-day mark for his presidency on Wednesday. He also touted his proposals to tackle global climate change, which face a fight in the US Congress, saying it was "this generation's challenge to break our dependence on fossil fuels." The administration on Monday also opened a two-day meeting of major world economies on climate change. Obama wants to cut US emissions by roughly 15 percent by 2020 -- back to 1990 levels -- mostly through a cap-and-trade system that limits how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases big factories can emit. That proposal is at the heart of a bill under consideration in Congress. Republicans have criticized the cap-and-trade system as a backhanded energy tax. Some moderate Democrats are also worried about the impact of the plan on jobs and the economy.

But experts cautioned that the drop should not be seen as good news for efforts to tackle climate change. When the pandemic subsides and nations take steps to restart their economies, emissions could easily soar again unless governments make concerted efforts to shift to cleaner energy as part of their recovery efforts. “This historic decline in emissions is happening for all the wrong reasons,” said Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director. “People are dying and countries are suffering enormous economic trauma right now. The only way to sustainably reduce emissions is not through painful lockdowns but by putting the right energy and climate policies in place.” More than 4 billion people are living in countries that have imposed partial or more extensive shutdowns on economic activity to slow the spread of the virus. By mid-April, the report found, weekly emissions in many of those countries were 17% to 25% lower than they were in 2019, as factories idled, employees stopped driving to work and airlines grounded their flights. The agency expects many governments to start relaxing those restrictions later in the year, as China has already done and as some states are starting to do in the United States. Even so, the report said, global carbon dioxide emissions were projected to fall by roughly 2.6 billion tons this year, an 8% drop from 2019. That would put global emissions back at levels last seen in 2010, wiping out an entire decade of growth in the use of fossil fuels worldwide. The projected annual drop in emissions would be six times the size of the decline seen after the global financial crisis in 2009 and a far bigger drop than at any point during the Great Depression or at the end of World War II, when much of Europe lay in ruins. Still, there are many uncertainties around the early estimates. If countries remain locked down for longer than expected, or if businesses struggle to recover from the pandemic, the drop in emissions could be larger. Conversely, if nations like China try to boost their ailing economies by weakening environmental rules or subsidising polluting industries like coal or steel, emissions could rebound even faster than projected. That’s what happened after the financial crisis: By 2010, global emissions had surged back higher than before. “One of the big question marks now is whether countries decide to put clean energy at the heart of their economic stimulus packages,” Birol said. This week, leaders from Germany, Britain, Japan and elsewhere held a video conference urging nations to invest in technology to reduce emissions, such as solar power or electric vehicles, as they chart their economic recovery efforts. “There will be a difficult debate about the allocation of funds,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. “But it is important that recovery programs always keep an eye on the climate.” For now, the current crisis has dramatically reshaped the global energy landscape. The world’s use of oil fell nearly 5% in the first quarter of this year, the report said. By March, global road transport was down nearly 50%, and air traffic was down 60%, compared to 2019. That slump in fuel demand has caused crude prices to crash worldwide, straining the budgets of major oil producers like Saudi Arabia and pushing drilling companies in places like Texas to the brink of bankruptcy. The world’s use of coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, fell nearly 8% in the first quarter of the year. Much of that was triggered by early coronavirus shutdowns in China, the world’s biggest coal user. But even though Chinese coal plants are firing back up, the global coal industry faces a continued threat from cheaper and cleaner energy sources like natural gas and renewables. By contrast, wind and solar power have seen a slight uptick in demand during the pandemic. One big reason for that: Many countries are using significantly less electricity as office buildings, restaurants and movie theatres close. But because existing wind turbines and solar panels cost little to operate, they tend to get priority on electric grids, which means they are still operating closer to full capacity, while fossil-fuel plants are allowed to run less frequently. Despite the record drop in emissions, scientists cautioned that the world faces an enormous task in getting global warming under control. The United Nations has said that global emissions would have to fall nearly 8% every single year between now and 2030 if countries hoped to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), which world leaders have deemed necessary for avoiding catastrophic social, economic and environmental damage from climate change. “A lockdown is just a one-off event; it can’t get you all the way there,” said Glen Peters, research director at the Center for International Climate Research in Norway. c.2020 The New York Times Company

Global warming is occurring faster than predicted because rapid economic growth has resulted in higher than expected greenhouse gas emissions since 2000, said an Australian report on Tuesday. Emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased about 3 percent a year since 2000, up from 1 percent a year during the 1990s, said Australia's peak scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). "A major driver of the accelerating growth rate in emissions is that, globally, we're burning more carbon per dollar of wealth created," CSIRO scientist Mike Raupach said in a statement. "It means that climate change is occurring faster than has been predicted by most of the studies done through the 1990s and into the early 2000s," he said. Raupach led an international team of carbon-cycle experts, emissions experts and economists, brought together by the CSIRO's Global Carbon Project, to quantify global carbon emissions and demand for fossil fuels. The report found nearly 8 billion metric tons of carbon were emitted globally into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in 2005, compared with just 6 billion metric tons in 1995. "As countries undergo industrial development, they move through a period of intensive, and often inefficient, use of fossil fuel," said Raupach. "Efficiencies improve along this development trajectory, but eventually tend to level off. Industrialised countries such as Australia and the US are at the leveling-off stage, while developing countries such as China are at the intensive development stage." Since the start of the industrial revolution, the United States and Europe account for more than 50 percent of global emissions over two centuries, while China accounts for less than 8 per cent, said the CSIRO report. The 50 least-developed nations contributed less than 0.5 percent of global emissions over 200 years, it said. On average, each person in Australia and the United States now emits more than 5 tons of carbon per year, while in China the figure is 1 ton per year, said the report. "In addition to reinforcing the urgency of the need to reduce emissions, an important outcome of this work is to show that carbon emissions have history," said Raupach. "We have to take both present and past emissions trajectories into account in negotiating global emissions reductions. To be effective, emissions reductions have to be both workable and equitable," he said. The CSIRO report found Australia's per capita emissions were amongst the highest in the world due to a heavy reliance on fossil-fuel generated electricity and a dependence on cars and trucks for transport. "That means that we have quite a way to go in terms of reducing our emissions to bring about CO2 stabilisation," said Raupach. "Our own improvements in the energy efficiency of the economy ... have been not as rapid as improvements in other developed countries." Australia, like close ally the United States, refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol setting caps on greenhouse gas emissions, and has called for a global scheme to replace "Old Kyoto". Both countries say the pact is unworkable because it excludes big developing nations such as India and China from binding targets during the treaty's first phase, which ends in 2012. China is the world's second top emitter of carbon dioxide after the United States. Negotiations have yet to start in earnest on shaping Kyoto's next phase, with India and China strongly opposed to binding targets and demanding rich nations, particularly the United States, commit to deep reductions in emissions.

Credit Suisse has taken a 10 percent stake in carbon project developer EcoSecurities Group for 44 million euros ($59 million), EcoSecurities said on Friday. EcoSecurities acts as a go-between in a growing carbon trade under the Kyoto Protocol, whereby rich countries meet greenhouse gas emissions targets by funding cuts in developing countries. Credit Suisse is following similar moves by Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, betting on a big expansion in carbon trading if, as expected, the United States launches a national carbon trading scheme after President George W. Bush leaves office. In addition, many companies want to exploit a booming, unregulated trade outside Kyoto, for companies and individuals who want to offset their emissions, for example from flights. "(Our goals) include rapid developments in the U.S. and voluntary markets," said Bruce Usher, CEO of EcoSecurities. "The carbon markets are growing rapidly." Credit Suisse is paying 44 million euros for its stake, and EcoSecurities President Pedro Costa and Director Marc Stuart are likely to be major beneficiaries, holding up to now a 28 percent stake in the company. As with all carbon project developers, EcoSecurities is helping generate emissions reductions in developing countries, called carbon credits, the vast majority of which haven't happened yet. As such the firm has very little revenue but high cash requirements to pay its 246 employees. It also needs money to expand in the U.S. A cross-party climate change bill that aims to establish a national carbon trading scheme, supported by all the main presidential candidates, is before a US Senate committee. By investing, Credit Suisse is betting that the Kyoto Protocol gets a new lease of life after 2012, when the present rich country commitments that drive the carbon market expire. "Credit Suisse will not be investing if it thinks Kyoto will drop dead after 2012," said one analyst. Other banks taking staking in carbon project developers so far this year include Merrill Lynch, in the Russian Carbon Fund, Citigroup, in UK-based Sindicatum Carbon Capital, and Morgan Stanley in Miami-based MGM International. Credit Suisse will buy 9.2 million shares at 320p per share, a discount to EcoSecurities' Friday share price of 366-1/2p. EcoSecurities also said it would seek third-party financing for projects through Credit Suisse's clients. EcoSecurities said it also intended to raise 56 million euros by issuing more shares, which would bring the total capital raised to 100 million euros. The firm, or its partners, will also be able to borrow up to 1 billion euros from the bank for new large projects to reduce emissions.

Chinese President Hu Jintao lauded closer cooperation with Japan when he arrived on Tuesday for a state visit intended to nurture trust between the Asian powers despite rifts over energy resources and security. Hu was greeted in Tokyo by senior Japanese officials and flag-waving, mostly Chinese well-wishers. Downtown, some 7,000 police were deployed ahead of threatened protests by hundreds of right-wing activists who see China as a danger. But China is promoting itself as a friendly neighbor after years of feuding over Japan's handling of its wartime aggression, and Hu has stressed forward-looking goals for his five days of ceremony, speeches and deals, as well as table tennis and perhaps pandas. China's second ever state visit to Japan comes as it seeks to calm international tensions over Tibetan unrest, which has threatened to mar Beijing's Olympic Games, a showcase of national pride. With the two economies increasingly intertwined, Hu said better ties were important to both countries' prosperity. "I sincerely hope for generations of friendship between the people of China and Japan," Hu wrote in a message to Japanese readers of a Chinese magazine, Xinhua news agency reported. Cooperation has "brought real benefits to the people of both countries and spurred the growth and development of each," Hu said. "These achievements are worth treasuring by the people of China and Japan." The Beijing Games were "Asia's Olympics and the world's Olympics", Hu added. Certainly much is at stake in ties between Asia's two biggest economies. China replaced the United States as Japan's top trade partner last year, with two-way trade worth $236.6 billion, up 12 percent from 2006. OPPORTUNITIES, ANXIETIES But while China's fast growth offers opportunities, Beijing's accompanying expansion in diplomatic and military reach has stirred deeper anxieties in Japan -- over disputed energy resources, military power and the safety standards of Chinese exports. "Although the iceberg between China and Japan has melted, fully warming relations require further efforts from both sides," a commentator wrote in China's People's Daily on Tuesday. The political climax of Hu's visit is set to be a summit on Wednesday with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, when they hope to unveil a joint blueprint for managing ties in coming years. But it was unclear whether the avowals of friendship would narrow disagreements or merely bathe them in warm words. Japanese media reports said touchy references in the document to Taiwan, human rights, and Japan's hopes for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council were still under negotiation. The two country's are also quarrelling over the rights to gas beds beneath the East China Sea, while a row over Chinese-made dumplings laced with pesticide that made several people sick has become, analysts say, a symbol of Japanese alarm at China's rise. PING-PONG AND PANDAS Officials from both sides had earlier raised hopes of a breakthrough in the gas dispute before Hu's visit, but a swift compromise seems unlikely. Japan also wants greater transparency about China's surging defense spending, set at 418 billion yuan ($60 billion) for 2008, up 17.6 percent on 2007 and outstripping Japan's defense budget. Foreign critics say China's real military budget is much higher. Tokyo wants Chinese backing for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, an issue that in 2005 fuelled anti-Japanese protests in China, where there is deep rancor over Japan's harsh 1931-1945 occupation of much of the country. A mainland China-run Hong Kong paper, the Ta Kung Pao, indicated that Hu was unlikely to meet Japanese hopes. "There are several touchy issues that it will be very difficult for this trip to settle," said the paper, citing the gas dispute and the Security Council issue. "At the least, the time isn't ripe...But reaching some vague understandings may be possible." For its part, China has pressed Japan to spell out again its stance on Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing says must accept reunification. Tokyo has said it supports "one China" that includes Taiwan, which was a Japanese colony for fifty years until 1945 and keeps close ties to Japan. Still, the two sides are keen to stress forward-looking goodwill and are to issue a joint document on fighting climate change, a key topic for Japan as host of the July G8 summit. Hu will give a speech to university students in Tokyo, he may play table tennis with Fukuda and he might also offer Japan a panda to replace one that died in a Tokyo zoo in April. ($1=6.988 Yuan)

US President George W Bush's annual speech to Congress next week is likely to call for a massive increase in US ethanol usage and tweak climate change policy while stopping short of mandatory emissions caps, sources familiar with White House plans said on Tuesday. Bush's annual State of the Union address is expected to touch on key energy policy points, after Bush made the surprise pronouncement during last year's address that the United States is addicted to Middle East crude oil supplies. A rising focus on 'energy security' by both the Bush administration and Congress has added momentum to efforts to employ home-grown fuel sources like ethanol to reduce US dependency on oil imports. Following that theme, Bush is likely to call for more US usage of home-grown supplies of ethanol, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Iowa, which grows more corn than any other US state, is also a key stop for candidates in the upcoming 2008 presidential elections. Ethanol is made from agricultural products like corn. One source briefed by White House officials said Bush's speech on January 23 could call for over 60 billion gallons a year of ethanol to be mixed into US gasoline supplies by 2030. That would be a massive increase from the 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol use by 2012 required by current US law. "I think it's going to be a big number," the source said on condition of anonymity. "It's in the ballpark of even above 60 billion (gallons) by 2030." A White House spokesman declined to comment on the details of the speech. The White House on Tuesday confirmed that Bush's speech will outline a policy on global warming, but said Bush has not dropped his opposition to mandatory limits on heat-trapping greenhouse-gas emissions. Some industry officials and media reports speculated that Bush would agree to mandatory emissions caps in an effort to combat global warming, reversing years of opposition to mandatory caps. But the White House denied this. "If you're talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry-wide and nationwide, we knocked that down. That's not something we're talking about," White House spokesman Tony Snow said at Tuesday's media briefing. Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen Richard Lugar of Indiana, the panel's senior Republican, introduced a nonbinding resolution calling for the United States to return to international negotiations on climate change. "It is critical that the international dialogue on climate change and American participation in those discussions move beyond the disputes over the Kyoto Protocols," Lugar said in a statement. Britain's 'The Observer' newspaper reported on Sunday that unnamed senior Downing Street officials said Bush was preparing to issue a changed climate policy during the State of the Union. US allies like Britain and Germany have pressed for a new global agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. Bush withdrew the United States from the protocol in 2001, saying its targets for reducing carbon emissions would unfairly hurt the US economy. The speech is a moving target and White House officials are known to make last-minute tweaks. Last year, White House political advisors added the 'addicted to oil' remarks hours before Bush spoke. Investors hope Bush will embrace biofuels in his speech. "I would like him to set a very aggressive target for renewable fuels," top Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told the Reuters Global Biofuel Summit on Tuesday.

A British adventurer is planning to highlight the effects of global warming by becoming the first person to swim at the North Pole and break his own record for the coldest swim. Sporting just a cap, trunks and goggles, Lewis Gordon Pugh will swim 1 km (0.6 miles) in water at a temperature of minus 1.8 degrees Celsius on July 15, a dip he expects to last 21 minutes. Such a swim would have been impossible as little as 10 years ago because the water would have been frozen, Pugh says. "Most people have no idea that you can find patches of open sea at the North Pole in summer," said Pugh, who set the record for the coldest human swim off Antarctica at 0 degrees Celsius. "I can't think of a better way to show that climate change is a reality than by swimming in a place that should be totally frozen over. I hope it will ... put pressure on the leaders of the G8 summit to cut carbon emissions dramatically," he said in a statement. Climate change is expected to be high on the agenda at a meeting of the Group of Eight leading industrial countries in Germany next month. Last year Pugh broke his own world record for the longest ice water swim by covering 1.2 km in a fjord in the Norwegian mountains, staying in the water for 23 minutes 50 seconds. Any normal person would hyperventilate, suffer extreme shock and drown within minutes of jumping into near freezing water, but Pugh -- nicknamed the Polar Bear because of his ability to withstand freezing temperatures -- is made of sterner stuff. In preparation for his swim, Pugh, 37, has increased his body weight from 87 kg to 105 kg by eating six meals a day, and has trained by swimming in a specially designed ice pool. "This is the coldest water any human being will have swum in and Lewis has been extraordinarily dedicated," Professor Tim Noakes of the University of Cape Town, an expert on the effect of cold water on the human body, said in the statement. Pugh will spend his last month of training at a Norwegian glacial lake with Jorgen Amundsen, a relative of Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911. "This expedition represents the end of an era of Arctic exploration as we know it," said Amundsen, who will ski the last 10 km to the North Pole with Pugh before his swim. "It's becoming increasingly difficult to walk to the North Pole and many expeditions fail each year when they encounter big stretches of open sea," added Amundsen. Pugh, a lawyer and 'ambassador' for the environmental group WWF, says he is the only person to have completed a long distance swim in each of the five oceans, and last year he swam the length of England's 203-mile River Thames.

Progress towards achieving water quality targets has been slow, and Australia was at risk of falling short of its 2050 goals, UNESCO warned in a draft assessment of world heritage sites prepared ahead of a meeting in Krakow, Poland, in July. "The World Heritage Centre and IUCN consider that the implementation of the Plan will need to accelerate to ensure that the intermediate and long-term targets of 2050 LTSP (Long-Term Sustainability Plan) are being met, in particular regarding water quality," the report said. Australia's Reef 2050 Plan was released in 2015 and is a key part of the government's bid to prevent the World Heritage Site being placed on the United Nation's "in danger" list. A negative rating for the Great Barrier Reef - located off the country's northeast coast - would be embarrassing for the Australian government and damage its lucrative tourism industry. The reef is facing a number of threats, including poor water quality due to agricultural runoff, climate change, illegal fishing and coastal development. Back to back coral bleaching events driven by climate change and El Nino over the past two years have devastated large parts of the reef. UNESCO praised the inception and initial implementation of the government's plan, as well as the $1.28 billion investment strategy for the next five years. But it noted important legislation regulating land clearing had not yet been passed, and climate change remained the most significant threat. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg welcomed the draft decision in a joint statement. "The government acknowledges in its draft decision the Committee's desire for accelerating actions toward water quality targets and will work with the Queensland government and the Independent Expert Panel on this matter," the statement said. Environmental groups have said the report showed Australia needed to lift its game "Two years ago UNESCO put Australia on probation until the health of the reef improves. Clearly that probation is not going well. Since then there has been an unprecedented loss of coral," said Richard Leck, WWF-Australia Head of Oceans.

The world should widen a fight against global warming by curbing a string of pollutants other than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Friday. Heat-trapping methane, nitrogen compounds, low-level ozone and soot are responsible for almost half of the man-made emissions stoking climate change in the 21st century, it said. A wider assault on pollutants, twinned with cuts in carbon dioxide, would help toward a new UN climate pact due to be agreed in December and have other benefits such as improving human health, raising crop yields and protecting forests. "The science is showing us that global warming is happening faster and on a greater scale than anticipated," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told Reuters on the sidelines of a World Climate Conference in Geneva. "There are other avenues by which we can move forward" than cutting carbon dioxide, the main focus of a planned new UN climate deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. "And there are multiple benefits." Soot or 'black carbon', for instance, is among air pollutants blamed for killing between 1.6 and 1.8 million people a year, many from respiratory diseases caused by smoke from wood-burning stoves in developing nations. FISH STOCKS And ozone, a component of smog often linked to emissions of fossil fuels, has been blamed for loss of more than 6 billion euros ($8.56 billion) worth of crops in the European Union in 2000. US studies suggest it cuts annual US cereals output by 5 percent. Nitrogen compounds, from sources such as sewage and inefficient use of fertilizers, stoke global warming and can cause "dead zones" in the oceans that cut fish stocks. And methane, which comes from sources such as deforestation and livestock, contributes up to 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. "We believe that those involved in the negotiations (on a new climate pact) should broaden their field of vision," Joseph Alcamo, UNEP chief scientist, told a news conference. "It's not just a matter of carbon dioxide and energy." Many of the non-carbon dioxide pollutants are not regulated by international treaties. The UN's existing Kyoto Protocol for combating global warming, for instance, sets limits only for developed nations on emissions until 2012 of six gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

In July, the beach became part of a new UNESCO World Heritage Site, a preserve of verdant peaks and mangrove forests in far southwestern Japan that is home to almost a dozen endangered species. Two months later, the placid air was split by a new sound: the rumble of trucks and excavators preparing to strip away a large section of Katoku’s dune and bury inside of it a two-story-tall concrete wall meant to curb erosion. The sea wall project demonstrates how not even the most precious ecological treasures can survive Japan’s construction obsession, which has long been its answer to the threat of natural disaster — and a vital source of economic stimulus and political capital, especially in rural areas. But the plan to erect the concrete berm on the pristine beach, a vanishingly rare commodity in Japan, is not just about money or votes. It has torn the village apart as residents fight deeper forces remaking rural Japan: climate change, aging populations and the hollowing-out of small towns. The project’s supporters — a majority of its 20 residents — say the village’s survival is at stake, as it has been lashed by fiercer storms in recent years. Opponents — a collection of surfers, organic farmers, musicians and environmentalists, many from off the island — argue a sea wall would destroy the beach and its delicate ecosystem. Leading the opposition is Jean-Marc Takaki, 48, a half-Japanese Parisian who moved into a bungalow behind the beach last year. A nature guide and former computer programmer, Takaki began campaigning against the wall in 2015, after moving to a nearby town to be closer to nature. The fight embodies a clash playing out in rural areas across Japan. Old-timers see their traditional livelihoods in industries like logging and construction threatened by newcomers dreaming of a pastoral existence. Villages may need new residents to bolster their eroding populations and economies, but sometimes chafe at their presence. When Takaki first visited Katoku in 2010, it seemed like the paradise he had been seeking. “I had never seen any place like it,” he said. That has all changed. “If they finish building this thing, I don’t know what we’re going to do here.” CONFRONTING NATIRE WITH CONCRETE Japan’s countryside is pockmarked with construction projects like the one planned for Katoku. The country has dammed most of its rivers and lined them with concrete. Tetrapods — giant concrete jacks built to resist erosion — are piled along every habitable inch of coastline. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country’s northeast and triggered the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, planners rimmed the region with sea walls. The projects are often logical for a country plagued by earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, landslides and typhoons, said Jeremy Bricker, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in coastal engineering. The question, he said, is “to what extent is that concrete there because of the stuff that needs to be protected and to what extent is it part of the Japanese culture?” A cemetery left perilously close to the beach’s edge by erosion from two strong typhoons in 2014, in the village of Katoku, Japan, Sept 21, 2021. The New York Times In some cases, concrete could be replaced with natural buffers, like supplemental sand or heavy vegetation, Bricker said. While some Japanese civil engineers are using such alternatives, he added, “Japan’s been so focused on promoting work for traditional contractors — that means casting concrete — that there hadn’t been as much emphasis on soft solutions.” A cemetery left perilously close to the beach’s edge by erosion from two strong typhoons in 2014, in the village of Katoku, Japan, Sept 21, 2021. The New York Times Reliance on concrete is even greater in Amami Oshima, Katoku’s home island, than elsewhere in the country, said Hiroaki Sono, an 83-year-old activist who has successfully opposed major projects on the island. Public works there are heavily subsidized by a 1950s-era law aimed at improving local infrastructure. Politicians eager for the region’s votes have renewed the law every five years, and Amami Oshima’s economy heavily depends on it, Sono said, adding that most of Katoku’s residents have industry ties. “It’s construction for the sake of construction,” he said. THE TYPHOONS STRIKE Environmental engineers describe beaches as dynamic environments — growing, shrinking and shifting along with the seasons and tides. New elements like a sea wall can have unpredictable and destabilizing effects. Rural communities are no different. In Katoku, change came slowly, then suddenly. For decades, residents refused government offers to armour the shore with concrete. But in 2014, two strong typhoons washed away the beach and uprooted the pandanus trees that protected the village. The cemetery, built atop a high dune separating the village from the sea, was now perched precariously above the tattered strand. The storms shook the villagers’ confidence in the bay’s ability to protect them. “The waves came right up to the cemetery,” said Sayoko Hajime, 73, who moved to Katoku with her husband — a native — 40 years ago. “Afterward, everyone was terrified; they panicked.” After the typhoons, the village approached the prefectural government for help. Planners recommended a 1,700-foot-long concrete wall to stop the ocean from devouring the beach. Takaki, who then lived nearby, and a handful of others objected. They recruited analysts, who concluded that the government hasn’t demonstrated the need for concrete fortifications. Those experts argued that a hard defence could accelerate the loss of sand, a phenomenon observed in nearby villages where the ocean laps against weathered concrete walls. Further complicating matters, a river — home to endangered freshwater fish — carves a channel to the ocean, moving up and down the beach in seasonal rhythm. The prefecture agreed to shrink the proposed wall by more than half. It would be covered in sand to protect the beach’s aesthetic, they said, and if that sand washed away, it could be replaced. Meanwhile, Takaki’s group reinforced the dunes with new pandanus. The beach naturally recovered its pre-typhoon size. The seawall in Aminoko, Japan, a village near Katoku, Sept 22, 2021. The New York Times Still, officials continue to insist a berm is necessary. In other villages, “there’s a strong sense that, when a typhoon comes, they are protected by their sea wall,” explained Naruhito Kamada, the mayor of Katoku’s township, Setouchi. “And the typhoons are getting bigger.” The seawall in Aminoko, Japan, a village near Katoku, Sept 22, 2021. The New York Times Other options are worth exploring, said Tomohiko Wada, one of several lawyers suing to stop construction: “The villagers wanted to do something, and the prefecture said ‘concrete,’ because that’s what Japan does,” he said. Local authorities declined to comment on the lawsuit. But Japanese law does not provide for stop-work orders in such cases, and the prefecture seems intent on finishing the job before courts rule. COMPEING VISIONS OF THE FUTURE The new UNESCO designation could draw tourists and bolster Katoku’s economy. But villagers are wary of outsiders. Island culture is conservative. In baseball crazy Japan, locals prefer sumo, an ancient sport heavy with religious significance. They also have an unusual affinity for the military: a small museum near Katoku details Japan’s last-ditch efforts to resist US forces in World War II. Kamikaze boat pilots are prominently featured. Chiyoko Yoshikawa moved to Katoku with her husband four decades ago because the river water was perfect for the local craft of indigo dyeing. Her husband is now dead, her daughter has moved away, and the studio — Katoku’s only business — has become mostly a hobby. Yoshikawa opposes the construction, but hesitates to get involved. Even now, she remains “an outsider,” she said. She may be wise to stay clear. Takaki’s efforts have inflamed violent passions. Last month, with two New York Times reporters present, Norimi Hajime, a villager who works for a contractor building Katoku’s berm, confronted Takaki on the village’s primary road. Waving a small sickle — often used for yard work in Japan — Hajime accused Takaki of plotting to destroy the village. No one wants the construction, Hajime said, but without it, a typhoon will wash Katoku away. Storms, Takaki responded, aren’t the biggest threat to the settlement. Its elementary school closed years ago. Its youngest resident, besides Takaki and his partner, is a woman in her 50s. Bus service is now by appointment only. The beach is Katoku’s most valuable asset, Takaki argued, the thing that differentiates it from dozens of other dying hamlets up and down Amami Oshima’s coast. In their efforts to save the settlement, he said, the villagers may kill it. Standing on Katoku’s main road, there was no hint that the beach even existed. Hajime could see only the village. “If it dies,” he said, “it dies.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON, Oct 27, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A Senate committee on Tuesday launches three long days of hearings on a Democratic climate bill in a bid to further convince an international summit in December that Washington is serious about tackling global warming. The Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee will kick off Tuesday's hearing at 9:30 a.m. EDT with a panel of heavy-hitters from President Barack Obama's Cabinet: the secretaries of energy, transportation and interior and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Joining them will be the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. According to an EPA statement, the officials will focus on "creating a system of clean energy incentives" while "confronting the threat of carbon pollution." The government estimates that the electric power sector contributes 39 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, while 34 percent comes from the transportation sector and 27 percent from the use of fossil fuels in homes, commercial buildings and industry. Obama and Democrats in Congress are pursuing legislation that would create a "cap and trade" system requiring utilities and industries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases associated with global warming over the next 40 years. Companies would have to obtain dwindling numbers of pollution permits from the government and hundreds of dollars worth of permits could be traded on a new financial market exchange. Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer hopes to finish reviewing the legislation and vote on it in coming weeks. If so, that could be the last major action by the Senate on climate change legislation this year, before countries from around the world meet in Copenhagen in December to try to chart new, tougher goals for reducing carbon emissions to head off worsening droughts, floods and melting polar ice. U.S. leadership is considered essential to the global talks, since the United States is the leading carbon polluter among developing countries. At the United Nations on Monday, a senior official lowered expectations of a deal in Copenhagen. Janos Pasztor, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's climate advisor, said the UN head was planning for "post-Copenhagen" talks. Most Senate Republicans oppose the cap and trade bill, saying it would force U.S. companies to move more manufacturing abroad while also raising consumers' energy prices. High-ranking Senator Lamar Alexander, one of the few Republicans to declare that "climate change is real," said that during this week's hearings, he and his fellow Republicans on the committee will offer an alternative to cap and trade. "Before we embark upon a scheme that would send jobs overseas and charge Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year in new taxes ... we might look for another solution," Alexander told reporters. That "solution," he said, is a four-pronged plan to encourage a huge expansion of the nation's nuclear power, expand offshore drilling for natural gas, beef up research on alternative energies and convert half of the nation's car and truck fleet to electric power. Daniel Weiss, of the liberal Center for American Progress, called Alexander's proposal "a recipe for a much larger federal (budget) deficit" with government spending to fund alternative energy research and the potential for huge taxpayer exposure from government-backed loan guarantees for nuclear plants. Weiss also noted that scientists argue that a 20 percent reduction in US carbon emissions is needed by 2020 and it likely would take longer than that to get new nuclear power facilities on line. While Republicans argue that the Democrats' climate change bill would result in substantially higher consumer prices, an early EPA analysis found that, like a House-passed climate bill, there would be small increases, in the range of $80 to $111 per year. Nevertheless, Republicans said they will await more detailed analysis and hinted they could delay the environment panel's work on the bill until they get that information. On Wednesday and Thursday, the committee will continue its hearings, with testimony from industry officials, environmental interests, national security experts, labor unions and others.

Growing dependence on cheap coal to power rapid economic growth in the Asia-Pacific could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that is blamed for harmful changes in the world's climate, experts said on Tuesday. Between 2001 and 2006, coal use around the world grew by an unprecedented 30 percent. Asia, led by China, accounted for almost 90 percent of the growth, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said at the launch of a climate change report in Sydney. "The Asia Pacific region is at a critical moment with regard to coal use, and is grappling with the difficult question of how to balance burgeoning energy needs with the well-being of the planet and local communities," the WWF report said. Coal, the most abundant conventional fossil fuel, is responsible for a quarter of the world's total carbon emissions. According to the International Energy Association, economic growth in India and China will account for 70 percent of the increase in global coal consumption by 2030, primarily in the electricity and industrial sectors. The WWF said coal related carbon emissions increased by 31 percent between 1990 and 2004. If left unchecked, global coal related emissions will increase by 63 percent by 2030, compared to required greenhouse gas reductions of about 50 percent by 2050 to keep climate change at manageable levels. To avoid the dangerous environmental impact of climate change, governments must reduce the use of fossil fuels and ensure that new coal-fired power stations be equipped with low or zero emissions using carbon capture and storage technology, the report said. The WWF also recommended that Asia-Pacific countries increase the use of renewable energy, develop zero-emission technologies and put a stop to large-scale deforestation. Climate change is a major focus at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Sydney this week. The WWF urged APEC countries, which account for about 60 percent of the world's economy, to set binding targets on emission reductions in a post-2012 climate treaty. The first phase of the UN Koyoto Protocol climate change pact runs out in 2012 and there are growing diplomatic efforts to find a formula that brings rich and developing nations together to curb emissions growth of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Scientists say time is running out to stop climate changes caused by a build-up of these gases in the atmosphere. Big polluters such as China, India, the United States and Australia are firmly opposed to binding emissions cuts, saying this will harm their economies. Developing nations also want rich countries to agree to deep cuts first, blaming the industrialised world for much of the greenhouse gas pollution already in the air. While no binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions are expected to be agreed at the APEC summit, analysts say officials might back a consensus on a replacement for Kyoto.

Scientists pushed back the hands on the symbolic Doomsday Clock by one minute citing hopeful developments in nuclear weapons and climate change. The symbolic clock that shows how close mankind is to self-annihilation was moved back to six minutes before midnight from five minutes on Thursday. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which maintains the clock and puts an illustration of it on its cover, attributed the move to efforts by world leaders to reduce their countries' nuclear arsenals and collaborate on climate stabilization. The group, which includes 19 Nobel laureates, said a key to the "new era of cooperation is a change in the US government's orientation toward international affairs brought about in part by the election of (US President Barack) Obama." Nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy at news conference held at the New York Academy of Sciences overlooking the World Trade Center site, said there had been "a shift in world opinion" recognizing that nuclear weapons are "no longer useful to fight wars and are not effective as deterrence." BAS board member Lowell Sachnoff added, "Global warming is more of a threat than nuclear war." When the clock was created in 1947, it was set at 7 minutes to midnight. It has been adjusted only 18 times before Thursday' move. The last was in 2007, when the BAS moved it forward by two minutes citing North Korea's test of a nuclear weapon, Iran's nuclear ambitions and a renewed US emphasis the military utility of nuclear weapons.

The UN's top climate official said on Tuesday that agreeing a global deal by the end of 2009 to combat climate change would be ideal but noted much needs to be done. "There is this sense of urgency, we do need to get it completed as quickly as possible," Yvo de Boer told Reuters on the fringe of talks on global warming grouping 158 nations. Many experts say 2009 is the latest practical date to agree a climate pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. Any firm building a coal-fired power plant or a wind farm needs to know rules for greenhouse gas emissions years in advance. "So finalising things in 2009 would be ideal. But we also have to be realistic about the amount of work that needs to be done," de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said. About 1,000 delegates are meeting in Vienna from Aug. 27-31 to review ways to slow warming. And 2009 has become a matter of prestige for the United States and other rich nations in the Group of Eight. They agreed in June that they wanted agreement by the end of 2009 on a long-term U.N. plan to fight global warming, partly in response to warnings of ever more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels. "We managed to negotiate Kyoto in two years. This is a lot more complicated," de Boer said. The UN's Kyoto Protocol, negotiated from 1995 to 1997, binds 35 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by five percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Most of the emissions are gases released by burning fossil fuels. "For the time being 2009 is what we should be working towards," de Boer said when asked if talks might slip to 2010. Many governments want environment ministers, who will meet in Bali, Indonesia, in December, to launch two-year negotiations to agree a broader international treaty to replace Kyoto. A new pact would seek to involve the United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases which is outside Kyoto, and get developing nations such as China and India to do more to brake their sharply rising emissions. "I think there will be an agreement in 2009," said Hans Verolme, climate expert at the WWF environmental group, noting a growing sense of urgency.

Developing nations objected on Wednesday to possible curbs on greenhouse gases produced by industries such as steel or cement, telling U.S.-led climate talks that too strict standards could throttle their companies. Other countries expressed worries that such targets, championed by Japan as a possible element of a planned new U.N. climate treaty beyond 2012, should only be a complement to big cuts in emissions of gases led by industrial nations. Seventeen nations, the European Commission and the United Nations will meet in Paris on Thursday and Friday for a third round of a U.S.-led series of meetings to work out ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions. On Wednesday, India led objections at a preliminary workshop reviewing whether industries could take on sectoral goals to help curb more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas predicted by the U.N. Climate Panel. Plans by rich nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases "should not be diluted by a sectoral approach," R. Chidambaram, chief scientific adviser to India's government. He said that there were some Indian industries that were among the cleanest in the world but others with far higher energy use. "You cannot develop a global policy that will throttle these guys," he said. Brazil also told the meeting that the rich nations should focus primarily on cutting their own emissions. The Paris talks are the third in a series trying to end criticism that President George W. Bush is doing too little to fight climate change compared to other industrial allies who have agreed to cut emissions by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 under the Kyoto Protocol. 2025 GOAL In Washington, an official said that Bush was planning to call for halting the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 -- far short of targets by most nations -- but would offer few details on how to reach the goal before his term ends in 2009. "We believe a sectoral approach is a solution," said Olivier Luneau of cement maker Lafarge, saying that there was huge room for improvement across an industry where greenhouse gas emissions by the best producers are half those of the worst. Richard Baron, of the International Energy Agency, said tougher goals for only part of an industrial sector, such as steel or aluminium, could then favour countries that escaped the curbs. "The concern is whether the efforts... will be partly offset by increasing emissions outside the constrained region," he said. Jean-Paul Bouttes of the World Energy Council said that it would be hard to get a deal covering power producers, ranging from coal-fired power plants to nuclear power. That was partly because of differing national regulations, and a range of national policies. "A transnational sectoral agreement will be difficult to achieve," he said. For steel, Hiroyuki Tezuka, of JFE Steel Corp, said emissions standards had to be global to work since 40 percent of the metal was traded on global markets. With only regional rules "the end result would be disaster. Steel demand would be filled by high-carbon dioxide-dependent steel. This is why we need a sectoral approach," he said.

Saying that rising seas might wipe countries off the map, small island states urged rich nations at UN climate talks on Saturday to axe emissions of greenhouse gases far beyond their existing plans. "The principle must be that no island must be left behind," said Angus Friday of Grenada, chair of the 43-member alliance of small island states at Dec. 3-14 climate talks at a beach resort in Bali looking for new ways to fight global warming. Low-lying states, such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean or Tuvalu in the Pacific, were already suffering from rising seas and storm surges linked to climate change. And in the long term, many low-lying atolls risked being washed away. "We want drastic action," Friday told a news conference. The group said that even the strictest goals by industrial nations were insufficient to avoid dangerous change, including a European Union target of limiting warming to a temperature rise of 2 Celsius (3.6 F) over pre-industrial levels. "Emissions must be reduced at a level that ensures that global temperature rise remains well below 2C," the alliance said in a statement. The Bali talks, of more than 10,000 delegates, are seeking to launch negotiations on a new global deal, to be agreed by 2009, to fight climate change. The small island states seem to be making toughest demands that the rich should lead the way. The UN climate panel projects that seas will rise by 18 to 59 cms (7-23 inches) this century -- threatening the economies of small island states that often depend on farming, fishing and tourism. Seas rose 17 cms over the past century. AID And the small islands said they would need far more aid. "The infrastructure needs alone of the most vulnerable countries could measure in the billions" of dollars, Friday said. The government of the Maldives, for instance, needed $175 million to build a barrier around a single coral island to make the atoll "twice the height of this chair" above sea level, he said. "We are not in this process as beggars," said Clifford Mahlung of Jamaica, adding that small islands were not to blame for climate change, blamed by the UN climate panel mainly on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. "In Jamaica we used to repair coastal roads from erosion and storms once every four years," he said. "With what is happening now we have to repair those roads four times a year." Friday said Grenada, long considered south of the Caribbean hurricane belt, had been reclassified after two storms within 10 months in 2004-05. Losses from Hurricane Ivan alone in 2004 were $800 million. But he also said that small island states had dropped past threats to sue the United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases, for compensation. "That's not under discussion," he told Reuters. The United States is outside the UN's Kyoto Protocol, the main plan by industrialised nations for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. But Washington has expressed willingness to join a new climate pact that includes developing nations.

While the 2008 presidential campaign grabs most of the headlines, Republicans hope to buck the odds on another front -- the U.S. Senate, where last year they narrowly lost control to the Democrats. With a 51-49 Democratic majority and 34 seats up for grabs in November 2008, experts say the fight is the Democrats' to lose. They only have 12 seats to safeguard. President George W. Bush's Republicans have to defend 22. "I see all kinds of potential for Democrats out there, I just don't know if it's going to be realized," said Jennifer Duffy, an expert at the Cook Political Report who specializes in Senate races. "I don't think the majority is in play ... The Republicans' goal is to keep their losses at a minimum," she said. Control of the Senate will be crucial to the White House next year, no matter who succeeds Bush. A president's policies can live or die there because major bills routinely require 60 votes to clear potential hurdles and win passage. The prolonged Iraq war, an anemic economy, differences over tax cuts and squabbles over climate change will dominate Senate races, said Anthony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College in Maine. "This is going to be an election where the Republicans are on the defensive," he said, and arguments for change will dominate the political discussion. Duffy said it was by no means guaranteed that Democrats would pick up many seats. An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed support for Democrats dropping 10 points since April to 44 percent. Democrats were voted into power in 2006 largely on a pledge to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq but so far have been unable to deliver. A turning point could be September when Congress is due to consider several anti-war measures. Several Republicans are seen as ripe for knocking out to boost Democrats' lead: Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu. So is a seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado. Democrats must also defend a few seats: Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor and South Dakota's Sen. Tim Johnson who is recovering from brain surgery last December. Republicans have yet to settle on a candidate for Landrieu's seat and political watchers are speculating that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee could drop his presidential ambitions and instead challenge Pryor. Sen John Ensign, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, thinks his party will do better than some think. "The odds makers would have given the Democrats almost no shot at taking the Senate two years ago and they would have been wrong," he said. "We're of the opinion that you run elections and you see what the results are." Ensign said the Democrats' call for reversing some tax cuts and their opposition to the Iraq war would aid Republicans, who lost six seats and Senate control in 2006. Ensign's Democratic counterpart, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, counters that the Iraq war, now in its fifth year, would help his party and that Democrats had a history of balancing the budget, which should resonate with voters. "Republicans have lost touch and we're going to sweep in on a mandate of change," said Schumer, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Republicans could face an even tougher fight if senators like John Warner of Virginia and Pete Domenici of New Mexico retire, putting more seats in play. Yet another hurdle is fund-raising. The Democratic campaign has raised twice the money of its Republican rival during the first four months of 2007, $18.3 million to $9.1 million. In a tight Minnesota race, comedian Al Franken, the leading Democratic challenger, has already raised $1.35 million in the first quarter, a strong showing against the $1.53 million raised by Coleman.

- far too cold for roses. Even around Troll, on the edge of mountains 250 km (155 miles from the sea, tens of thousands of Antarctic and snow petrels thrive. Four species of mite, for instance, have been found in recent years and lichen clings to some rocks. SNOW PETRELS About 40,000 people visit Antarctica every year, mostly tourists on the coast, and the continent has a summer population of about 4,000 researchers. A big threat is that climate change, blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, may make Antarctica more habitable for damaging outsiders. Rats or mice aboard ships might jump off on the Antarctic peninsula, the least chilly region snaking northwards towards the southern tip of South America. "Large areas are available for colonisation on the peninsula," Bergstrom said. "There are rats on South Georgia so it's only a little hop, skip and a jump away." All ships should be designed to prevent any rat escapes, she said. Scientists worry that new species may be arriving more quickly than life on the continent can be documented. "One Swedish scientist found eight types of unknown Antarctic organisms in a sample from a single small pond," said Kim Holmen, research director of the Norwegian Polar Institute. To keep the invaders out, tourism operators make visitors scrub their boots and ban them from taking food ashore. Australia requires scientists to vacuum their clothing to get off any seeds. Fumigation of food shipments could help. The restrictions mean that Troll, built for a year-round staff of eight, only receives fresh fruit or vegetables when visitors arrive at a local airstrip. "It would be nice to have a sealed greenhouse to try to grow something fresh. But it would violate the rules," said Oystein Johansen, the station's doctor. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday he was optimistic that the world could agree on a climate change accord with the support of the US administration of Barack Obama. In his opening remarks to the Global Humanitarian Forum, Annan said the clock was ticking for the world to avert extreme storms, floods and droughts that will intensify with global warming. "Every year we delay, the greater the damage, the more extensive the human misery," he told an audience at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, also warning of "cost, pain and disruption of inevitable action later". His group's two-day meeting has drawn together heads of UN agencies with government officials and experts for talks on practical ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions that scientists expect to stoke global warming and cause rising sea levels and loss of food production. Annan, 71, said he hoped their discussions on "the greatest environmental and humanitarian concern of our age" would help set the stage for a deal in Copenhagen in December on a successor to the Kyoto accord. "A new president and new administration in the United States have demonstrated their seriousness about combating climate change. Given that the US is the greatest source of emissions, this raises optimism for Copenhagen and beyond," Annan said. More than 190 countries will meet in Copenhagen to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which regulates emissions of greenhouse gases. Economic stimulus efforts in Washington, Brussels and around the world in response to the global economic downturn have also pumped investment into low-carbon energy and alternative technologies that could create jobs and boost sustainable projects, Annan said. Climate experts have warned pledges by industrialised nations to cut emissions by 2020 fall far short of the deep cuts widely advocated to avert dangerous climate change. Overall emissions cuts promised by industrialised nations in the run-up to December's meeting now average between 10 and 14 percent below 1990 levels, according to Reuters calculations. The UN Climate Panel says cuts must be in the 25-40 percent range below 1990 levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Agata, from Khadundu village in western Kenya's Busia county, has been living in a temporary camp for displaced families for at least three weeks. "The water came and swept away our houses and everything we owned; we came here with nothing. We are in great need of assistance, especially food," Agata said, as she prepared a meal for her grandchildren. Floods and landslides have killed at least 194 people in the East African country and displaced 100,000, the government said earlier this month. The region is also being ravaged by an invasion of locusts. Lake Victoria, on Kenya's southern border, has washed over farmland and houses. Scientists say it hasn't been this high since 1964. The shoreline has crept forward 10 km, local official Casper Ajuma told Reuters. "Now we don't have anywhere to farm, we don't have anywhere to build our houses," he said. Some of those forced to move are fishermen like Michael Arakwa. "This is one of the biggest disasters we have ever witnessed here in Bunyala," he said. Environmental campaigners say climate change is exacerbating problems caused by deforestation and poor land management. East Africa had a record number of cyclones last year. "The floods, the drought, the wildfires that we see are a result of the climate crisis," said Amos Wemanya, a campaigner for Greenpeace Africa. "We don't have time to waste.

Developing countries and environmental groups accused the World Bank on Friday of trying to seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades. "The World Bank's foray into climate change has gone down like a lead balloon," Friends of the Earth campaigner Tom Picken said at the end of a major climate change conference in the Thai capital. "Many countries and civil society have expressed outrage at the World Bank's attempted hijacking of real efforts to fund climate change efforts," he said. Before they agree to any sort of restrictions on emissions of the greenhouse gases fuelling global warming, poor countries want firm commitments of billions of dollars in aid from their rich counterparts. The money will be used for everything from flood barriers against rising sea levels to "clean" but costly power stations, an example of the "technology transfer" developing countries say they need to curb emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide. As well as the obvious arguments about how much money will be needed -- some estimates run into the trillions of dollars by 2050 -- rich and poor countries are struggling even to agree on a bank manager. At the week-long Bangkok conference, the World Bank pushed its proposals for a $5-10 billion Clean Technology Fund, a $500 million "adaptation" fund and possibly a third fund dealing with forestry. However, developing countries want climate change cash to be administered through the existing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), which they feel is much less under the control of the Group of 8 (G8) richest countries. "Generally we have been unpleasantly surprised by the funds," said Ana Maria Kleymeyer, Argentina's lead negotiator at the meeting. "This is a way for the World Bank and its donor members to get credit back home for putting money into climate change in a way that's not transparent, that doesn't involve developing countries and that ignores the UNFCC process," she said.

The move is the latest push by investors to pressure companies and their auditors, charging them with not moving fast enough to adapt to the world's transition to a low-carbon economy or being clear enough about the potential impacts. In letters sent between December and February and seen by Reuters, the investors told the companies their accounts did not reflect the fallout from climate change on their assets and liabilities. For example, some assets may depreciate faster in value while demand for certain products may fall. The need for faster action to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius and mitigate its worst extremes was reiterated by UN climate scientists in a landmark report on Monday. "Investors cannot understand the true value of a company without knowing the embedded climate risks," Natasha Landell-Mills, partner and head of stewardship at investment manager Sarasin & Partners, one of the signatories to the letters, said in an interview. Others to sign include the fund arm of HSBC, French public pension scheme ERAFP, and BMO Global Asset Management EMEA, part of US asset manager Columbia Threadneedle. Investors have tried to press the companies on the issue before. In 2020, through the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, they laid out a series of steps boards needed to take to align their accounts with the Paris Agreement on climate, including changing key accounting assumptions. The investors found that most companies failed to adequately respond, prompting the latest string of letters warning boards they faced opposition at their upcoming annual general meeting. "From next voting season you should increasingly expect to see investors vote against Audit Committee directors’ reappointment, where high-risk companies fail to meet the expectations," the letters said. Shareholder votes could also be cast against companies' decision to retain their auditors or a request to approve their financial statements, Landell-Mills said. AUDITORS ALSO CONTACTED Air Liquide, Anglo American, Arcelor Mittal, BMW, Daimler, Enel, Equinor, Glencore, Rio Tinto, Saint-Gobain, Shell, Renault, CRH, ThyssenKrupp and TotalEnergies  also received letters. The letters were copied to the companies' lead audit partners. Separately, the investors also contacted the largest accountants in Britain, the United States and France over the issue. A woman walks across a bridge in front of a chimney billowing smoke from a coal-burning power station in central Beijing February 25, 2011. REUTERS Landell-Mills said votes would be influenced by the latest annual reports, and that Sarasin had decided to vote against the financial statement and auditor at Rio Tinto's AGM, and abstain on whether to reelect the Audit Committee's chair. A woman walks across a bridge in front of a chimney billowing smoke from a coal-burning power station in central Beijing February 25, 2011. REUTERS She added she was pleased to see Shell include a 'sensitivity analysis' in the notes to its accounts, released after the letter had been sent, that showed impairments could hit $27-$33 billion based on average prices from four 1.5-2C climate change scenarios. Landell-Mills said she still wanted to know what a pure 1.5C scenario would mean for impairments. Air Liquide and Saint Gobain both said they were liaising with the IIGCC, a European membership body for investors collaborating on climate change, and that climate risks were factored into their accounts. Anglo American said it was engaging with IIGCC. Mercedes Benz, formerly Daimler, said it was in "constant and constructive" dialogue with the investors and would update its sustainability strategy on April 11. Equinor referred to its energy transition plan as being on a Paris-aligned pathway. Enel said it would not comment on talks with shareholders. Glencore declined to comment on the letter, but its 2021 annual report contains a sensitivity analysis. ThyssenKrupp shared a letter sent in reply to IIGCC member Rathbones Investment Management in which it said it understood investors' need for more detailed information and was "currently examining how we may implement your inquiry". The rest of the companies did not respond to requests for comment. While many companies have pledged to get to net-zero emissions and are under growing pressure from regulators to disclose their efforts, the majority have yet to align their business practices, including their accounts, with the goal, the investors say. "We can’t rely on 'business as usual' accounting assumptions as the energy transition unfolds. Along with our commitment to be a net zero investor, ensuring company accounts are aligned to a 1.5°C degree future is a crucial first step," said Matt Crossman, stewardship director at Rathbones.

A Commonwealth summit that ended on Sunday united behind decisive action against Pakistan but was too divided to issue the tough statement on climate change that vulnerable island nations wanted. In contrasting outcomes from the three-day meeting, the club of mostly former British colonies overcame divisions to suspend Pakistan because of its failure to lift emergency rule but issued a general and diluted statement on global warming. A final communique expressed "serious disappointment" that President Pervez Musharraf had so far failed to quit as army chief and endorsed the decision of a ministerial committee to suspend the country's membership until democracy was restored. But opposition from Canada and the outgoing conservative Australian government stymied a drive led by Britain and the island nations to issue a strong statement on global warming that would have urged binding targets for emission cuts. Canada called the climate declaration stern and Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon said it as "quite a leap forward". The Commonwealth is proud of a tradition of reaching decisions by consensus so open dissent is unusual, but some members were clearly disappointed, especially small nations that are threatened by rising seas. "We believe that a number of developed countries have not given the commitment we expected. They are the main contributors to the imbalance in climatic conditions and they should contribute much more," said Denzil Douglas, prime minister of the tiny Caribbean nation of St Kitts and Nevis. "The general view is that the document ... could have gone further. We are one of the groups who believe that it should have gone further," he told reporters. WORST HIT St. Kitts is among countries likely to be worst hit by global warming, as rising sea levels engulf its populated coast and higher ocean temperatures increase the frequency and severity of hurricanes, scientists say. Malaysia also expressed disappointment at the outcome. Asked about Canadian "intransigence" and the lack of specific targets on emissions, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said: "In some way I do feel a little bit disappointed." The climate statement said developed countries should take the lead in cutting emissions, but gave no details on how this would be achieved. Before the summit, Britain had called for an unequivocal message on climate change that would urge developed nations to make binding commitments at a conference of world environment ministers in Bali next month. But Canada, an oil producer, said it would not sign any final declaration that did not include developing as well as developed nations. India and China are major emitters, but as developing nations they are exempted from the Kyoto protocol. Abdullah said he was happy that the newly elected Labor government in Australia would ratify Kyoto, reversing the policy of the previous conservative administration. He also said Malaysia, as a fellow Asian member, had wanted to delay action against Pakistan, but had eventually gone with the majority view, like Sri Lanka which initially opposed suspension. McKinnon told Reuters Pakistan was a more clear cut issue. "There was more consensus on Pakistan ... There was a robust defence of Pakistan from some corners. But eventually even best friends say 'right you've crossed the line, you get suspended'," he said. "But climate change is something that every country is trying to come to grips with." McKinnon said it was impractical for the 53 Commonwealth members to make commitments before the Bali meeting. "They are not prepared to make themselves that vulnerable to the others."

- about a third of total energy consumption. There is also little of the concern in India seen in the West over wind turbines ruining scenic vistas -- scores can be seen, for example, outside Jaisalmer's ancient fort in Rajasthan, one of India's most popular tourist sites. A WIND SUPERPOWER? The boom brings in profits, the kind of virtuous circle experts say is needed for renewable energy to really work. At Vestas RBB India Ltd, one of India's largest wind-power firms, sales rose 30 percent in 2006 and the company forecasts growth of about 40 percent this year, company officials say. India's rise to what supporters call a "wind superpower" is due to tax breaks in the 1990s and to Tulsi Tanti, chairman of Suzlon Energy, India's biggest wind energy company. Troubled by power shortages in the 1990s for his textile business in western India, he bought some wind turbines and soon realised it could be a good business. His company quickly became the pioneer in the sector. Wind power has also been helped by some states setting targets that 10 percent of their power should come from renewable energy. High capital costs and the fact wind is intermittent -- plants often run at a quarter of their capacity compared with 80 percent capacity for nuclear power -- mean that it is expensive and the sector has needed tax incentives to survive. Rakesh Bakshi, managing director of Vestas RBB, said provisions were still needed until economies of scale mean "we can give conventional energy a run for its money". But as oil reaches $100 a barrel, and with India suffering shortages that see factories often relying on diesel generators, firms are increasingly looking at wind. Sarvesh Kumar, deputy managing director of Vestas RBB, said many clients were large manufacturers, such as cement or textile firms, concerned about the long-term energy costs. KPMG estimates that wind power costs around 3.5 rupees a kilowatt hour, compared with 2.5-3 rupees for imported coal. "Wind energy is almost price competitive in many places," T.L. Sankar, senior energy adviser at the Administrative Staff College of India, told a renewable energy conference. And global warming might only add to its attraction. "It can only gain in importance because of concerns about climate change," added Kamath.

A gunman on Sunday shot interior minister Ahsan Iqbal, a senior member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and ally of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, as he was leaving a constituency meeting in Punjab province. Iqbal was recovering in hospital from a bullet wound on Monday. Minister of state for interior affairs Talal Chaudhry said he was stable and in “high spirits”. Leaders from Pakistan’s main opposition parties all condemned the assassination attempt. But a prominent official of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) opposition party said Sharif had created the backdrop for the attack at large rallies protesting his removal by the Supreme Court last July. “We condemn it with full force. But the political climate is being seriously affected by Nawaz’s wild accusations against his opponents and creating tension and anger all over,” said Naeem ul Haq, chief of staff for former cricket star Khan. “So if Nawaz [Sharif] continues to utter poison, such incidents will continue to occur.” Pakistan’s Supreme Court disqualified Sharif as prime minister last July over a small source of unreported income and he is currently on trial before an anti-corruption court, though his party still holds a majority in parliament. Sharif has denounced the court ruling as a conspiracy led by rival Khan, routinely gathering large crowds of his supporters to voice his grievances. Sharif has Sharif has portrayed Khan as a puppet of the powerful military establishment, which has a history of meddling in Pakistani politics. Khan denies colluding with the army and the military denies interfering in politics. Sunday’s attack heightened the sense of unease in the runup to the election, expected by late July. Preliminary reports suggested Sunday’s attacker had links to a new Islamist political party that campaigns on enforcing the death penalty for blasphemy and replacing secular influence on government with strict sharia law. ISLAMISTS DENY LINK A local administrator’s initial report on the attack, seen by Reuters, said the arrested gunman had “showed his affiliation” to the Tehreek-e-Labaik party. “We have got nothing to do with him,” Labaik spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi said on Monday. “We are unarmed. We are in an unarmed struggle. Those conspiring against Tehreek-e-Labaik will not succeed.” Party leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi on Sunday condemned the attack on Iqbal, and said Labaik was in an “unarmed struggle to bring the Prophet’s religion to the throne”. Police said a bullet hit Iqbal in the right arm and entered his groin. They named the suspected shooter as Abid Hussain, 21, but have not officially reported any motive. “Religious radicalism is in his background,” minister of state Chaudhry said, adding that others had been arrested and police were investigating groups that may have influenced the attack. “Such people, on an ideological level, are prepared by others ... radicalism is not an individual issue, it is a social problem,” he said. Labaik was born out of a protest movement supporting Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to relax Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws. The movement’s protests shut down the country’s capital for three weeks last year over a change to an electoral law which it said amounted to blasphemy. The assassination attempt on Iqbal has stoked fears of a repeat of the pre-election violence by Islamists that blighted the last two polls, including in 2007 when former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed on the campaign trail.

The industry thinks it has found a solution to both problems in Africa. According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, an industry group representing the world’s largest chemical-makers and fossil fuel companies is lobbying to influence US trade negotiations with Kenya, one of Africa’s biggest economies, to reverse its strict limits on plastics — including a tough plastic-bag ban. It is also pressing for Kenya to continue importing foreign plastic garbage, a practice it has pledged to limit. Plastics-makers are looking well beyond Kenya’s borders. “We anticipate that Kenya could serve in the future as a hub for supplying US-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through this trade agreement,” Ed Brzytwa, director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, wrote in an April 28 letter to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. The United States and Kenya are in the midst of trade negotiations, and the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has made clear he is eager to strike a deal. But the behind-the-scenes lobbying by the petroleum companies has spread concern among environmental groups in Kenya and beyond that have been working to reduce both plastic use and waste. Kenya, like many countries, has wrestled with the proliferation of plastic. It passed a stringent law against plastic bags in 2017, and last year it was one of many nations around the world that signed on to a global agreement to stop importing plastic waste — a pact strongly opposed by the chemical industry. The chemistry council’s plastics proposals would “inevitably mean more plastic and chemicals in the environment,” said Griffins Ochieng, executive director for the Centre for Environmental Justice and Development, a nonprofit group based in Nairobi that works on the problem of plastic waste in Kenya. “It’s shocking.” The plastics proposal reflects an oil industry contemplating its inevitable decline as the world fights climate change. Profits are plunging amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the industry is fearful that climate change will force the world to retreat from burning fossil fuels. Producers are scrambling to find new uses for an oversupply of oil and gas. Wind and solar power are becoming increasingly affordable, and governments are weighing new policies to fight climate change by reducing the burning of fossil fuels. Kenya's president, Uhuru Kenyatta, meets with President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, Feb. 6, 2020. Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the fossil fuel industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times) Pivoting to plastics, the industry has spent more than $200 billion on chemical and manufacturing plants in the United States over the last decade. But the United States already consumes as much as 16 times more plastic than many poor nations, and a backlash against single-use plastics has made it tougher to sell more at home. Kenya's president, Uhuru Kenyatta, meets with President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, Feb. 6, 2020. Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the fossil fuel industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times) In 2019, US exporters shipped more than 1 billion pounds of plastic waste to 96 countries including Kenya, ostensibly to be recycled, according to trade statistics. But much of the waste, often containing the hardest-to-recycle plastics, instead ends up in rivers and oceans. And after China closed its ports to most plastic trash in 2018, exporters have been looking for new dumping grounds. Exports to Africa more than quadrupled in 2019 from a year earlier. Ryan Baldwin, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, said the group’s proposals tackle the global importance of dealing with waste. The letter says that there is “a global need to support infrastructure development to collect, sort, recycle and process used plastics, particularly in developing countries such as Kenya.” The Chemistry Council includes the petrochemical operations of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell, as well as major chemical companies including Dow. The talks are in early stages, and it is not yet clear if trade negotiators have adopted the industry’s proposals. But industries typically have a strong voice in shaping trade policy, and business lobbyists have won similar concessions before. In talks with Mexico and Canada in 2018, for instance, chemicals- and pesticides-makers lobbied for, and won, terms making it tougher for those countries to regulate the industries. At the same talks, trade negotiators, urged on by US food companies, also tried to restrict Mexico and Canada from warning people about the dangers of junk food on labelling but dropped the plan after a public outcry. The Kenya proposal “really sets off alarm bells,” said Sharon Treat, a senior lawyer at the nonpartisan Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy who has worked for more than a decade advising trade talks in both the Trump and Obama administrations. Corporate lobbyists “frequently offer up very specific proposals, which the government then takes up,” she said. The plastics industry’s proposals could also make it tougher to regulate plastics in the United States, since a trade deal would apply to both sides. The Office of the United States Trade Representative did not respond to interview requests or to detailed lists of written questions, nor did officials at Kenya’s Trade Ministry. The Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex in Monaca, Pa., Dec. 12, 2019. Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the fossil fuel industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash. (Maddie McGarvey/The New York Times) Last year, Kenya was one of many countries around the world that signed on to a global agreement to stop importing plastic waste — a pact strongly opposed by the chemical industry. Emails reviewed by The Times showed industry representatives, many of them former trade officials, working with US negotiators last year to try to stall those rules. The Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex in Monaca, Pa., Dec. 12, 2019. Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the fossil fuel industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash. (Maddie McGarvey/The New York Times) The records, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by Unearthed, a London-based affiliate of the environmental group Greenpeace, paint a picture of close ties between the trade representatives, administration officials and industry representatives. On March 29, 2019, for example, an executive at a recycling trade group wrote to several trade negotiators and other federal officials in order to show them a recent statement by environmental activists. “Hey ladies,” she wrote, “This gives us some good fodder to build a strategy.” In an interview, the email’s author, Adina Renee Adler, a former senior US trade official, said her trade group opposed bans on plastic waste exports because they would prevent viable plastic scrap material from being recycled. “My role is to provide them with information based on our expertise,” she said of her communications with the federal officials. FROM APPALACHIA TO NAIROBI Royal Dutch Shell’s 386-acre plastics plant outside Pittsburgh is billed as the anchor for a new petrochemical hub in Appalachia, a region reeling from the collapse of the coal industry. Plants like these have revolutionised the plastics industry by turning fracked natural gas into the manufacturing material for millions of plastic bottles, bags, clamshell containers, drinking straws and a parade of other products, tapping into a seemingly endless supply of cheap shale gas from America’s booming oil and gas fields. Among local communities, the plants have raised air pollution concerns. In Appalachia, Texas and nationwide, almost 350 new chemical plants are in the works, according to an industry tally, together representing oil companies’ life-or-death bet on plastics as the future. But now the coronavirus pandemic has caused not only oil and gas prices to plummet, but plastics prices, too. Last month, oil giants including Shell, Exxon Mobil and Chevron reported some of their worst financial results in history, leading some analysts to question whether the new plastics plants would deliver on the profits the companies expected. A Shell spokesman said that while the “short-term outlook for this business is challenging,” over the long term, “products derived from petrochemicals will continue to grow and provide attractive returns.” An Exxon Mobil spokesman said the company “shares society’s concern about plastic waste” and aims to invest more in solutions to end it. Dow referred queries to the American Chemistry Council. Chevron did not respond to requests for comment. Against that backdrop, Kenyatta visited the White House in February, eager to start trade talks. Kenya currently can send most of its exports to the United States duty-free under a regional program, but that expires in 2025. The petrochemicals industry sensed an opening. Exxon Mobil has forecast that global demand for petrochemicals could rise by nearly 45% over the next decade, significantly outpacing global economic growth and energy demand. Most of that would come from emerging markets. The American Chemistry Council’s April 28 letter to the trade representative’s office laid out the group’s vision. Kenya’s growing ports, railways and road networks “can support an expansion of chemicals trade not just between the United States and Kenya, but throughout East Africa and the continent,” Brzytwa wrote. To foster a plastics hub, he wrote, a trade deal with Kenya should prevent the country from measures that would curb plastic manufacture or use, and ensure Kenya continues to allow trade in plastic waste, demands that experts said were unusual and intrusive. Those terms could “literally encapsulate every kind of bag ban, bottle ban,” said Jane Patton, a plastics expert at the Center for International Environmental Law. She called it an industry-led effort “to erode these democratically enacted policies” in foreign countries. Daniel Maina, founder of the Kisiwani Conservation Network in Mombasa, Kenya, said the trade talks were coming at a particularly vulnerable time, as Kenya was starting to feel the economic effects of the pandemic. “If they were to force this sort of trade agreement on us, I fear we will be easy prey,” he said. KENYA’S TOUGH LAWS The American Chemistry Council is pushing back against the likes of James Wakibia, who helped inspire Kenya to enact one of the world’s toughest plastic bag bans. As a university student walking to class, Wakibia, now 37, used to pass a noxious landfill in Nakuru, Kenya’s fourth-largest urban area. The stench and the plastic debris that spilled into the street, he said, prompted him to act. He began campaigning, largely on social media, for the ban, and his plea soon gained traction across a country inundated with plastic. Bags were everywhere — in the air, clinging to trees, clogging waterways and causing flooding. With strong public backing, a ban on plastic bags took effect in 2017, and it has teeth: Anyone caught breaking the law could face jail time. This year, the government followed up by banning other types of single-use plastic, including bottles and straws, in national parks and other protected areas. “We have done something,” Wakibia said of the bag ban. “But we should not stop because there is so much pollution going on.” Plastic waste in the Nairobi River in Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 3, 2020. Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the fossil fuel industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash. (Khadija M. Farah/The New York Times) Kenya is not the only country taking measures to curb plastics. A recent report by the United Nations counted 127 countries with policies on the books to regulate or limit use. Plastic waste in the Nairobi River in Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 3, 2020. Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the fossil fuel industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash. (Khadija M. Farah/The New York Times) In response, the industry has tried to address the plastics issue. The Alliance to End Public Waste — formed by oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron, as well as chemical companies like Dow — last year pledged $1.5 billion to fight plastic pollution. That figure, critics point out, is a small fraction of what the industry has invested in plastic infrastructure. Manufacturers “say they will address plastic waste, but we say plastic itself is the problem,” Ochieng said. “An exponential growth in plastics production is just not something we can handle.” PLASTICS-MAKERS FIGHT BACK For plastics-makers, direct deals with countries like Kenya have become more important after the industry suffered a major setback on another issue of global dimensions: plastic waste exports. In May 2019, nations reached an agreement to regulate plastic as hazardous waste under the Basel Convention, making it far tougher to ship plastic waste to developing countries. The petrochemicals and plastics industries fought the deal, and trade negotiators largely adopted the industry’s position, according to internal emails from the Office of the United States Trade Representative and other negotiators present. In the emails, the American Chemistry Council found a sympathetic ear among US trade representatives. In April 2019, the council invited Maureen Hinman, a trade official, along with other agency officials, to discuss the industry’s $1.5 billion pollution-fighting proposal. While environmental groups had criticised the industry’s proposals as inadequate, Hinman had a different response. “What you are doing with the alliance is an important counternarrative,” she said, referring to the industry’s Alliance to End Public Waste. The trade office did not respond to requests to speak with Hinman or to written questions about the email. Despite the industry opposition, last year more than 180 countries agreed to the restrictions. Starting next year, the new rules are expected to greatly reduce the ability of rich nations to send unwanted trash to poorer countries. The United States, which has not yet ratified the Basel Convention, will not be able send waste to Basel member nations at all. “It was the United States against the world,” said Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network, a nonprofit that lobbies against the plastic waste trade. “I think they were in shock.” That setback has reenergised industry to seek deals with individual countries to boost the market for plastics and find new destinations for plastic waste, analysts say. In Nairobi, local groups are worried. “My concern is that Kenya will become a dumping ground for plastics,” said Dorothy Otieno of the Centre for Environmental Justice and Development. “And not just for Kenya, but all of Africa.” ©2020 The New York Times Company

OPEC will back the fight against global warming and affirm its commitment to stable oil prices when its heads of state meeting ends on Sunday, but only Saudi Arabia has so far pledged cash for climate change research. Saudi King Abdullah said on Saturday the world's top oil exporter would give $300 million for environmental research, but other leaders have yet to make similar promises. "We are not committing anything. We don't know what the proposal is," Algerian Energy and Mines Minister Chakib Khelil said. "As far as I am aware, nobody else has committed anything either." OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri said this week OPEC would be willing to play its part in developing carbon capture and storage technology to help reduce emissions. According to a draft final communique read over the telephone by an OPEC delegate, the group will say it "shares the international community's concern that climate change is a long-term challenge" and seek "stability of global energy markets" but will make no mention of any environmental fund. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday he expected the summit to affirm commitment to "stable and competitive" oil prices. He warned that crude oil prices, already close to $100 per barrel, could double on global markets if the United States attacks his ally Iran over its disputed nuclear programme. "If the United States is crazy enough to attack Iran or commit aggression against Venezuela ... oil would not be $100 but $200," Chavez told heads of state including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Fears the United States or its ally Israel could attack Iran, which Washington says is covertly seeking to develop atomic weapons, have helped drive world oil prices to record levels. Tehran denies the charge. NO OIL SUPPLY DECISIONS Soaring prices have prompted calls by consumer nations for the exporter group to provide the market with more crude, but OPEC oil ministers said this week any decision on raising output will be left to a meeting in Abu Dhabi on Dec. 5. Iran and Venezuela are seen as price hawks, while Riyadh has traditionally accommodated Western calls to curb prices. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa told the conference on Sunday he favoured pricing oil in a currency stronger than the dollar. The U.S. currency's drop in the value against other major currencies has helped fuel oil's rally to $98.62 last week but has also reduced the purchasing power of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. On Friday, Saudi Arabia steered the group towards rebuffing an attempt by Iran and Venezuela to highlight concern over dollar weakness in the summit communique. Analysts say Saudi King Abdullah, a close U.S. ally and, as OPEC's "swing producer", veteran guarantor of crude to the United States, is keen to keep populists Chavez and Ahmadinejad from grabbing the summit limelight with anti-U.S. rhetoric. The octogenarian leader sat stony-faced throughout Chavez's 25-minute speech on Saturday, and was heard joking to the Venezuelan president afterwards: "You went on a bit!" Addressing leaders assembled in an opulent hall with massive crystal chandeliers and toilet accessories fitted in gold leaf, self-styled socialist revolutionary Chavez said OPEC "must stand up and act as a vanguard against poverty in the world. "OPEC should be a more active geopolitical agent and demand more respect for our countries ... and ask powerful nations to stop threatening OPEC," he said. Ahmadinejad said he would give his views at the summit's close. Saudi Arabia this month proposed setting up a consortium to provide Iran with enriched uranium for peaceful purposes in an effort to diffuse the tension between Washington and Tehran. Iran said it will not halt its own enrichment programme. Worried by a resurgent Iran with potential nuclear capability, Gulf Arab countries, including OPEC producers Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have said they will start a nuclear energy programme of their own.

BEIJING Dec 6, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - China's renewable energy strategy through 2050 envisions renewable energy making up one-third of its energy consumption by then, the China Daily said, as the upcoming Copenhagen conference on climate change highlights the world's dependence on fossil fuels. Coal-dependent China, the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, last month said it would cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each yuan of national income by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels. Depending on economic growth projections, total emissions will still rise. By 2020, renewable energy should account for 15 percent of national primary energy consumption, supplying the equivalent of 600 million tonnes of coal, the China Daily said this weekend. It cited a renewable energy blueprint laid out by Han Wenke, director-general of the Energy Research Institute under top planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission. By 2030, renewable energy's share should rise to 20 percent of the national energy mix, displacing 1 billion tonnes of coal, Han said, and by 2050, it would supply one-third of China's energy, displacing two billion tonnes of coal, the paper said. China's drive for renewable energy to mitigate the health and environmental costs of coal has brought its own challenges. Wind power generating capacity has surged so fast that policy planners now warn of severe overcapacity in the sector, and dam after dam piled on Chinese rivers distorts water flow, endangers fish and poses a potential earthquake hazard. China's installed wind power capacity is now 12.17 million kilowatts, up from 350,000 kw in 2000, and large-scale solar energy facilities are planned, the paper said. China is focusing on non-grain bioethanol and biodiesel, to avoid diverting grains from food and feed supply.

Dhaka, Sept 15 (bdnews24.com)–The finance minister has blamed the donors not fulfilling their aid pledges for the country's failure to pull itself out of poverty and get over other problems. AMA Muhith made the remarks at the launch of a report on Bangladesh's progress towards Millennium Development Goals at Sonargaon hotel in the city on Wednesday. He said he believed MDGs will not be difficult to achieve if donor agencies fulfill their pledges. Like other countries, Bangladesh is committed, under the MDGs, to eradicate extreme poverty by halving the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015. The minister said there are various problems in achieving MDGs though there has been progress on some issues. The malnutrition of children still remains as a major problem, he said. Muhith said arsenic problem is yet to be fully addressed though the sanitation problem has been mostly solved. On the country's economic growth, he said the rate is good but below that of the neighbouring countries. Planning minister AK Khandker and foreign minister Dipu Moni, among others, spoke at the function. Khandker called for more international help to address climate change effects that Bangladesh is facing. Natural calamities from climate change stand in the way of the country's development, Moni said. She claimed progress on poverty reduction, women empowerment, primary education and child mortality. Planning Commission member Shamsul Alam presented the progress report.

"We're expecting lots of people to come and join us in the streets, and not only youth but also adults supporting youth, and adults that want climate action,” said activist Isabelle Axelsson, 20, with the youth movement Fridays For Future, which is organising the march, to be led by Greta Thunberg. The spotlight has been given to civic groups in an acknowledgement of how young campaigners such as Axelsson, Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate of Uganda have raised public understanding of climate change, and how their future will be affected by the decisions being made now. A few hours later, in Washington, the US House of Representatives is expected to vote on President Joe Biden's mammoth "Build Back Better" legislation, which includes $555 billion of measures designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. The COP26 talks in Glasgow aim to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions - mainly from fossil fuels - to keep the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists say is a tipping point towards far more extreme weather events. The British president of the conference urged national negotiators to push harder through Friday, with a week left to secure more ambitious commitments to stop the world's slide into climate catastrophe. "It is not possible for a large number of unresolved issues to continue into week 2," Alok Sharma said in a note published by the United Nations. So far, the summit has yielded deals to try to phase out coal over the next three decades, reduce deforestation and curb methane, a far more potent, if short-lived, greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. 'NEW ENERGY, NEW URGENCY' It has also showcased a jumble of financial pledges, buoying hopes that national commitments to bring down emissions could actually be implemented. "Every COP I've been to in history has never had the feel of what I feel here in Glasgow today: new energy, new urgency, a new sense of possibility," US climate envoy John Kerry told a business dinner Thursday night. "We've never had as much corporate presence or commitment as we have today." Elsewhere this week, city mayors have been huddling over what they can do to advance climate action back home. "National governments are slow to communicate - very bureaucratic, internally and between each other. We're just mayors," said Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, chair of the C40 global mayors' network for tackling climate change. But a clear picture has yet to emerge on how far these voluntary initiatives could moderate global warming. The head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said on Thursday that emissions cut pledges made so far – if all implemented – could potentially restrict warming to 1.8C. But some UN negotiators and non-profit organisations said that assessment was too rosy, and much more work had to be done. Former US vice president Al Gore and Sharma will sit down on Friday with campaign groups to discuss the progress made so far, and what remains unresolved. Professor Gail Whiteman, founder of the climate activist group Arctic Basecamp, said she hoped protest actions and campaign events could add urgency to the discussions. The Greenland iceberg, shipped by her group via Iceland to the east coast of England, then by truck to Glasgow, now bobs in the water on the Clyde. "Studies are showing that if we lose the snow and ice in the Arctic, we will amplify global warming by 25 to 40%," she said. "We felt that negotiators here had to actually come face to face with the Arctic, so we brought the iceberg."

UN climate talks open in Poland on Monday overshadowed by a global economic slowdown but with UN praise for "ambitious" goals by US President-elect Barack Obama for fighting global warming. About 10,600 delegates from 186 governments, businesses and environmental groups meet in Poznan for the Dec 1-12 talks halfway through a two-year push to agree a new climate treaty in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. "It will be an incredible challenge" to reach such a complex accord within a year when the world is struggling with the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen will be among speakers at an opening ceremony on Monday, along with U.N. experts. WWF and Greenpeace activists plan protests outside the conference center to urge more action. De Boer praised Obama for saying that he would seek to cut US emissions of greenhouse gases back to 1990 levels by 2020 as part of global action to avert more heatwaves, floods, droughts, more powerful storms and rising seas. "It's ambitious," de Boer said of the target, speaking at a news conference on the eve of the talks. A rising US population made the goal hard to reach. US emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars, are about 14 percent above 1990 levels. President George W. Bush's policies foresee a peak only in 2025. "I expect Senator Obama to do what he plans to do: show leadership at the national level," de Boer said. Bush did not ratify Kyoto, saying it would be too costly and excluded targets for developing nations such as China and India. Had Washington ratified, it would have had to cut by seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012. ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN De Boer said the economic slowdown was an opportunity to re-design the world economy but warned governments against making "cheap and dirty" choices of investing in high-polluting coal-fired power plants. "We must focus on the opportunities for green growth," he said. In Europe, economic slowdown has exposed doubts about the costs of an EU goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. UN talks host Poland, which gets 93 percent of its electricity from coal, and Italy are leading a drive for concessions in a package meant to be agreed at a December 11-12 summit of EU leaders in Brussels. The talks in Poland will review new ideas for combating global warming, such as handing credits to tropical nations for preserving forests. And China, for instance, is suggesting that developed nations should give up to 1 percent of their gross national product in aid to help the poor switch from fossil fuels.

WASHINGTON, April 22, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates said on Wednesday they will launch a global agricultural fund to boost food production in the developing world. In an opinion piece, Gates and Geithner said the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, which will be launched in Washington on Thursday, will help farmers grow more food and earn more from farming. "As the world's population increases in the coming years and as changes in the climate create water shortages that destroy crops, the number of people without adequate access to food is likely to increase," Gates and Geithner wrote in the Wall Street Journal. "As that happens, small farmers and people living in poverty will need the most help," they wrote. The fund was first proposed by the United States at a meeting of the Group of Eight in Italy in 2008, where it urged countries to pool their resources to invest in agriculture in the world's poorest countries. Gates and Geithner said commitments for the fund total nearly $900 million from now until 2012. They said Canada, Spain and South Korea would contribute funding. The fund, which will be supervised by the World Bank, will provide financing to poor countries with high levels of food insecurity and have developed sound agricultural plans to boost crop production. The fund will invest in infrastructure that will link farmers to markets, promote sustainable water-use management, and increase access to better seeds and technologies. A rise in world food prices in 2008 to record levels highlighted the chronic underinvestment in agriculture in developing countries, where three-quarters of the poor live in rural areas. Gates' foundation has long been active in providing funding for projects to increase agricultural production of small-scale farmers in Africa and elsewhere. It has particularly been interested in improving access to food, working closely with the United Nation's World Food Programme. The United States is the world's largest food aid donor. While enough food is produced in the world to end hunger, more than 1 billion people go hungry because they cannot afford to buy food or otherwise cannot access supplies.

A VIP Biman Bangladesh flight left Dhaka with the prime minister and her delegation on Tuesday at 12:10pm. The flight is scheduled to arrive in London on Tuesday night Bangladesh time. Hasina will stopover in London for a day to spend time with family members. Her niece Tulip Siddiq has been re-elected MP in the British elections on Jun 8. The prime minister is scheduled to arrive in Stockholm on Wednesday night local time, said her Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim.  The Swedish prime minister had invited her Bangladesh counterpart for the visit, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali had said at a press briefing on Sunday. This visit would “deepen and expand” the cooperation between the countries and would also “brighten” Bangladesh’s image in Europe. Two Memorandum of Understanding or MoUs on Sweden-Bangladesh Business Council and Nordic Chamber of Commerce and Industries are also expected to be signed. A joint statement will also be issued after the visit. A 47-member business delegation will also accompany the prime minister. During her visit to Sweden on Jun 15 and 16, she would meet her counterpart in a bilateral meeting. Besides, the PM will also meet deputy prime minister, acting speaker and minister for justice and migration. She will also meet the chief executives of some Swedish companies. Sweden was one of the first countries in Europe that supported Bangladesh in 1971.  Feb 4, 2017 marked the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. Bangladesh exports garments worth $5 billion every year to Sweden to one of its known brands H&M. The foreign minister said the visit would strengthen the bilateral cooperation and bring investment and strengthen ties in the field of migration, climate change, UN peacekeeping, and counter-terrorism and extremism. Bangladesh’s all products enter in Sweden with duty-free market access. The prime minister will leave for Dhaka on Jun 16 and arrive on Saturday.

Developing nations urged rich nations at UN climate talks on Tuesday to raise aid despite the financial crisis to help the poor cope with global warming and safeguard tropical forests. The UN's top climate official said the Dec. 1-12 meeting of 10,700 delegates had started well as the half-way point in negotiations to agree a new climate treaty by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen. "I'm happy with where we are," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said of the meeting which will test governments' willingness to work on climate change amid a global economic slowdown. "I think it's really important, especially in the context of the financial crisis, to see how we can craft a Copenhagen agreement that makes it clear how financial resources will be generated." Developing nations say they will need billions of dollars to help them combat warming and adapt to changes such as droughts, floods, more powerful cyclones and rising seas. Rich nations say they will help, but have made few pledges. "It's imperative that the level of financing is up to the challenge, that's the basic starting point," Andre Odenbreit Carvalho, a Brazilian Foreign Ministry official, told delegates. Several nations, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Suriname and Papua New Guinea, said rich nations had to help them safeguard tropical forests. Trees soak up greenhouse gases as they grow, and burning forests to clear land for farming accounts for about 20 percent of warming from human activities. Governments want measures to slow deforestation as part of the 2009 deal. DEFORESTATION "We must understand how to develop predictable, sufficient and sustainable financial flows" to protect forests, said Kevin Conrad, head of the Papua New Guinea delegation. De Boer said that rich nations had to take a lead with deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases. "There was a strong sentiment expressed that governments need to speed up the work and need to really shift gear," he said. Aid group Oxfam proposed rich countries pay about $50 billion annually from 2013 for rights to emit greenhouse gases, raising cash to help the least developed nations. "This is a way to get it done," said Heather Coleman, senior climate policy advisor at Oxfam America, adding Norway and the Netherlands supported the concept. Early on Tuesday, 11 Greenpeace activists scaled a 150-metre (490-foot) smokestack at the Patnow power plant in Poland to hang a banner reading "Quit coal, save the climate". De Boer said that he was not targeting agreement on a complete deal next year, but rather on principles and targets. He denied that he was toning down ambitions. "I don't think I'm managing expectations, I'm dealing with realities," he said. The existing Kyoto Protocol, binding rich nations to curb emissions, was agreed in 1997 but only entered into force eight years later after ratification by sufficient countries. That process would now have to be squeezed into just three years, from agreement on the outlines of a deal in Copenhagen next year, to ratification of a final treaty by up to 190 nations before the end of the present round of Kyoto in 2012. Environmentalists gave a "Fossil of the Day" -- a dinosaur statuette -- to the European Union, accusing it of failing to lead in cutting emissions. The EU is split on designing measures to cut emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

But while the three-term Texas Republican demonised Democrats at length, he didn’t spend much time talking up the obvious alternative: President Donald Trump, the leader of his party, the man at the top of his ticket Tuesday. Asked whether Trump, the man who redefined Republicanism, was an asset to Cornyn’s reelection effort, the senator was suddenly short on words. “Absolutely,” he said, stone-faced. Cornyn’s gentle distancing from Trump foreshadows a far less genteel battle to come. This year’s election seems likely to plunge both Republicans and Democrats into a period of disarray no matter who wins the White House. With moderates and progressives poised to battle each other on the left, and an array of forces looking to chart a post-Trump future on the right (be it in 2021 or in four years), both parties appear destined for an ideological wilderness in the months ahead as each tries to sort out its identities and priorities. The questions facing partisans on both sides are sweeping, and remain largely unresolved despite more than a year of a tumultuous presidential campaign. After Democrats cast their eyes backward several generations for a more moderate nominee, does a rising liberal wing represent their future? And what becomes of a Republican Party that has been redefined by the president’s populist approach, and politicians like Cornyn who have been in the long shadow of Trump for four years? Traditionally, presidential elections provide clarity on how a party sees its political future. When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, he reinvigorated a progressive public image of his increasingly diverse party. Eight years earlier, George W. Bush remade Republicanism with a message of “compassionate conservatism.” Today, with both presidential candidates content to make the race a referendum on Trump, questions about him have overshadowed the debates raging within both parties over how to govern a country in the midst of a national crisis. “Both sides have been content to make this election about a personality,” said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist and an author of a book about the conservative populist coalition that fueled Trump’s victory in 2016. “Therefore, we’ve not had a lot of light shown on the ideological realignment that’s occurred in the country.” The jockeying has already begun. If Biden wins, progressive Democrats are preparing to break their election-season truce, laying plans to push for liberals in key government posts, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as Treasury secretary. If Biden loses, progressives will argue that he failed to embrace a liberal enough platform. Ambitious Republicans, like former United Nations ambassador Nikki R. Haley, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have begun appearing in Iowa, stops that they say are on behalf of their party’s embattled Senate candidate there but that have distinctly 2024 overtones. “The party is headed toward a reckoning, whatever happens in November, because you still have large segments of the party establishment that are not at all reconciled with the president’s victory in 2016,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who is frequently mentioned as a possible 2024 contender. “These people are still very powerful in the Republican Party, and I think we’ll have a real fight for the future.” The emerging dynamics are particularly stark across in Texas and other states in the Sun Belt, a fast-growing region that embodies the demographic trends that will eventually reshape the nation. For Republicans like Cornyn, the battle lines are already being drawn. Four years ago, Trump mounted a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, winning the support of the party’s base with a message that shredded mainstream conservative ideology on issues like fiscal responsibility, foreign policy and trade. A contingent of the party’s old guard is eager to cast the president as an aberration, a detour into nationalism, populism and conspiracy theories with no serious policy underpinning. Former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he expected Trump to lose and that he hoped the defeat would refocus the party from “anger and resentment” to developing an inclusive message that could win in an increasingly diverse country. “Nothing focuses the mind like a big election loss,” said Flake, who was one of many Republicans to retire in 2018 and who has endorsed Biden for president. “The bigger the better when it comes to the president.” He added, “Trumpism is a demographic cul-de-sac.” Flake would like the party to resurrect its 2012 “autopsy,” an assessment commissioned by the Republican National Committee to explore why the party had lost its bid for the White House that year. The report urged the party to better embrace voters of color and women. A co-chair of the project, Ari Fleischer, said there was no returning to the days of that message. Trump, he said, had accomplished the goal of the report, expanding the party — just in a different way. Rather than engage women or voters of colour, the president expanded Republican margins with white, working-class voters, said Fleischer, a former press secretary for Bush who has come to embrace Trump after leaving his ballot blank in 2016. Sara Fagen, who was the White House political director for Bush, agreed: “Trumpism is cemented in,” she said. “The base of the party has changed; their priorities are different than where the Romneys and Bushes would have taken the country.” Hawley argued that Republicans should embrace the populist energy of their voters by pursuing the breakup of big technology companies, voicing scepticism of free trade and making colleges more accountable for their high tuition costs. “If the party is going to have a future, it’s got to become the party of working people,” he said. Texas may provide a preview of these debates. As Democrats continue to make gains in the state and as the coronavirus rages there, moderate Republicans have tried to steer the state closer to the centre while conservatives have tried to push Texas further right. Hard-line Republican legislators, lawyers and activists have sued Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, formally censured him and protested mandates like a statewide mask order. Over the summer, the party elected a new chairman, Allen B. West, a former Florida congressman and firebrand conservative. “The governor has continued to issue executive orders that are anything but conservative,” said Jared Woodfill, a conservative activist and Houston lawyer who has sued Abbott. “His base has left him completely.” Democrats face their own divides over whether to use the moment of national crisis to push for far-reaching structural changes on issues like health care, economic inequality and climate change. Like Republicans in 2012, Democrats assembled their own task force to try to unify their party after the crowded party primary this year. The group came up with recommendations that were largely broader than what Biden championed in his primary bid but that stopped short of embracing key progressive policies like “Medicare for All,” the Green New Deal and a fracking ban. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus and an ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders, said those plans were the “floor, not the ceiling” of what the liberal wing of the party plans to demand should Biden win. A White House victory, she argued, would give Biden a mandate to push for more sweeping overhauls. In Texas, a rising number of young, liberal politicians believe they can finally turn the conservative state blue by embracing a progressive platform. Two years ago, Julie Oliver lost a House race in Texas’ 25th Congressional District, based in suburban Austin, by 9 percentage points — a far closer margin than the 20 points that Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican, won by in 2016. This year, the race may be even tighter. “The things we are talking about two years ago that seemed radical don’t seem so radical today,” said Oliver, who was endorsed by Biden last month. “Universal health care doesn’t seem radical. Universal basic income doesn’t seem so radical. These are popular ideas.” Others in the state worry that their colleagues are forgetting the lessons of recent history. In 2008, Democrats won control of Congress and the White House. But after passing the Affordable Care Act and pushing a climate bill through the House, they lost seats during the midterm elections and their majority in the House. “We got to remember, midterms are coming,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from south Texas. “If liberals had a mandate, then Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would have won the primary. The mandate of the American public was to have somebody more to the center.” Yet in an increasingly polarised country, that centre may be shifting. As he waited for Cornyn to address the crowd in Plano, Mark Wurst said he had come to embrace the Trump brand of conservatism. A lifelong Republican, Wurst, 74, volunteered at the George W. Bush Presidential Library for years. He was sceptical of Trump initially but was impressed with his actions on immigration and trade — policies that diverged drastically from Bush’s approach. “I didn’t know at the time how much I really disagreed with Bush on some things,” Wurst said. “Look at what Mr. Trump has gotten done. I don’t like his tone, but sometimes you have to look at results.” ©2020 The New York Times Company

But frozen mackerel from Norway or imports from Morocco are more likely to fill the onion, lettuce and pickle stuffed buns than a fresh catch from the Bosphorus or Marmara Sea.Once rich fishing grounds in seas and waterways the size of New Zealand, Turkish fish production is in sharp decline, a victim of commercial ambitions and lax regulation.Over fishing, illegal netting and pollution threaten the industry. Anchovy production, which accounts for around two-thirds of the annual catch, fell by 28 percent in 2012, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute.In a bid to replenish stocks, the government has banned fishing in the summer months when fish reproduce and says it is tightening supervision. But it appears too little, too late."Twenty years ago, you put your arm in the water you could pull out fish - there were so many," said Osman Korkmaz, a 53-year-old fisherman who has fished the Bosphorus Strait and Marmara Sea for 40 years.Aylin Ulman, a researcher with the University of British Columbia's Sea Around Us Project, conducted more than 150 interviews with Turkish fishermen from May through July to determine how Turkey's fisheries have changed.The number of commercial species in Turkey's fishing areas has fallen to just five or six from more than 30 in the 1960s, she said, based on her survey and catch data Turkey provided to the United Nations from 1967 to 2010.A combination of more people, too many boats with advanced technology, weak fishing laws with even weaker enforcement and unreliable data on fish stocks - fishermen under-reporting their catch to avoid taxation and fines - were to blame, she said.High-TechIstanbul alone has grown from one million people in 1950 to approximately 17 million today. And in lock step, the number of fishing boats has ballooned, fuelled by government subsidies from the 1970s and 80s aimed at growing the young, unsophisticated industry into a fishing fleet competitive with its Mediterranean neighbours.Now 450 industrial fishing vessels - boats between 40 and 60 meters in length - and over 17,000 licensed small-scale fishing vessels ply Turkey's waters. Commanding 90 percent of Turkey's total catch, sonar technology has made the industrial fishers some of the most productive in the world."We have three generators, two winches," said Temel Sengun, 27, a commercial bonito, anchovy, and bluefish fishermen from Sariyer at the Bosphorus' northern mouth, showing off sonar and electronic equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars."Our sonar can detect schools of fish 10 kilometres in distance and there's no depth limit."But such technology alone is not enough to guarantee a livelihood in waters with too many fishermen and too few fish."My family brought twin trawl boats, but now we think it was a bad idea. There are too many trawlers and purse seiners and no control," Sengun said."My grandfather and father built that house on the hills with their fishing income ... but I do not have the opportunity to build a house with my earnings, we work five times more and the fish is worth much less."A lack of quota system, scant punishment for illegal fishing and falling prices all encouraged fishermen to break the rules, he said.A senior agriculture ministry official acknowledged that poaching posed a challenge but said 65,000 inspections were carried out last year and regulations had been tightened to try to relieve the pressure on stocks and help legal fishermen."One of the main objectives is increasing the presence of fish in Turkey's seas," the official said, adding studies were underway into introducing new species into its waters.He estimated Turkey's fish exports reached $475 million in the first 11 months of last year, the latest data available, mainly to the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain, and up from $413 million a year earlier.Big BusinessThe issue has caught the attention of one of Europe's largest food wholesalers. German retailer Metro AG is sponsoring research by the Turkish Marine Research Foundation (TUDAV) for a second year to check on one of its most valuable products - and one of Turkey's most popular fish - the bonito.A silver-bellied fish with a striped back, part of the tuna family, bonito are believed to migrate between the Black Sea and Marmara Sea. Their fate is being closely watched by Metro's Turkish Cash and Carry business, the country's largest fish wholesaler, which sells over 6,000 metric tons of local fish a year.Their main threats are overfishing, pollution, habitat loss due to shipping and climate change, according to TUDAV's president Bayram Ozturk."If you visit the fishermen this morning, you can see 100 fish, but 200 jellyfish. They spend extra money and labour taking out the jellyfish. Twenty years ago, there were no jellyfish. It means the ecosystem has gone bad. Jellyfish have no predators," he said. The aim of the study, which will see 4,500 bonitos tagged and released over three years, is to determine where the fish are migrating and estimate stock size. Without such evidence, the government is unlikely to toughen regulations or enforcement and fish stocks will continue to fall, Ozturk said.Metro is not alone. Campaigners Slow Food Istanbul and Greenpeace have joined forces to push for the protection of the iconic bluefish, an increasingly rare favourite of the city's top seafood restaurants, lamented for its diminishing numbers.In an effort to shrink the national fleet of more than 20,000 fishing vessels, the government has started a program to buy back boats from fishermen, but it has yet to gain much traction. By November, only 359 boats had been bought back.Standing on his boat mending his nets by hand, veteran fisherman Korkmaz sees the problem in more simple terms."People take too much out, they don't listen," he said.

The floods swept through Parwan province, which borders Kabul, in the early hours of the morning, washing away men, women and children and destroying 300 homes, according to Ministry of Disaster Management spokesman Tamim Azimi. Rescuers searched through mud throughout the day for bodies, with the confirmed death toll at 72, and at least 90 injured, Azimi added. Floods had also swept through eight other northern provinces, killing two in Maidan Wardak and two in Nangahar, according to the Ministry of Disaster Management spokesman, who added that climate change was exacerbating the amount of flooding hitting the country. A spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani said on Twitter that his office had instructed authorities to provide emergency disaster relief to survivors, adding the floods were causing severe financial losses. The disaster comes as the war-torn nation already faces a sinking economy due to the coronavirus pandemic and as violence continues despite the United States attempting to usher peace talks between the Afghan government and insurgent Taliban.

Waving banners, beating drums and chanting, an array of demonstrators — including members of trade unions and faith organisations, as well as left-wing groups — took over large parts of the Scottish city, which is hosting the COP26 climate summit. By midafternoon, a long, winding line of protesters was making its way through the city, and by late afternoon they were still streaming into Glasgow Green, a city park, to hear speeches from activists. The protest illustrated how the battle to curb climate change had become an umbrella for a growing protest movement that aims to put global leaders under pressure for a broad range of causes, including racial justice and income equality. “We should not underestimate the significance of how the climate movement has broken through into the mainstream in the last two years because it’s really starting to change people’s consciousness,” said Feyzi Ismail, a lecturer in global policy and activism at Goldsmiths, University of London. “I think it is more important than what’s going on inside the COP meeting because it’s applying the kind of pressure that’s needed to force governments to act, but also to take far more radical positions than they might have,” she added. Police did not provide an estimate for the size of the crowd. Organisers said that more than 100,000 people took part, and while that was not possible to verify independently, the gathering was sprawling and extensive; at one point the procession took more than an hour to pass a fixed location. According to some organisers, more than 200 events were planned around with the world, with more than half of that number in Britain. In London thousands marched from the Bank of England to Trafalgar Square, and there were protests in other British cities including Birmingham and Bristol. © 2021 The New York Times Company

About 120 UN world leaders are aiming to end deadlock at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen to agree a new deal for fighting global warming. Following are possible scenarios: WHAT WOULD BE THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME? The most robust would have been legal texts including deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations by 2020, actions by developing nations to slow their rising emissions, and a package for finance and technology to help poor nations. Almost all nations reckon that a legal text is out of reach. WHAT SORT OF DEAL IS MORE LIKELY? World leaders could agree only what they call a "politically binding" text and try to set a deadline for transforming it into a full legal text sometime in 2010. IF THERE IS A DEAL, WHAT WOULD IT SAY? The easiest global goal would be to agree to limit global warming to a maximum temperature rise of 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times. The poorest nations and small island states want a tougher limit of 1.5 Celsius. A big problem is that a temperature goal does not bind individual nations to act. A slightly firmer, but still distant, target is to agree to at least to halve world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But China and India and other developing nations have opposed such a goal in the past, saying rich nations first have to make far deeper cuts in their emissions by 2020. WHAT DO RICH NATIONS HAVE TO DO? They would have to set deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the years until 2020. A U.N. panel of climate scientists suggested in 2007 that emissions would have to fall by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to help avert the worst of climate change, such as more droughts, species extinctions, floods and rising seas. Industrialized nations' offers of cuts by 2020 so far range from about 14 to 18 percent. HOW ABOUT DEVELOPING NATIONS? They would have to commit to a "substantial deviation" to slow the rise in their greenhouse gas emissions below projected growth rates by 2020, for instance by shifting to more use of solar or wind power and away from coal-fired power plants. HOW ABOUT MONEY TO HELP THE POOR? The latest text is blank on the amounts to be committed. The United Nations wants to raise at least $10 billion a year from 2010-2012 in new funds to help kickstart a deal to help developing nations. Many nations also speak of raising the amount to $100 billion a year from 2020 to help the poor. WHAT HAPPENS IF THE TALKS FAIL? One option if the talks end in deadlock is to "suspend" the meeting and reconvene sometime in 2010 -- a similar deadlock happened at talks in The Hague in November 2000. A full breakdown in talks could deepen mistrust between rich and poor nations and undermine confidence in the U.N. system. It would probably also halt consideration by the U.S. Senate of legislation to cap U.S. emissions -- other nations' goals might in turn unravel.

Following are findings of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a 23-page summary about the risks of global warming issued on Nov. 17: * OBSERVED CHANGES "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level." * CAUSES OF CHANGE "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in ... greenhouse gas concentrations" from human activities. Annual greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have risen by 70 percent since 1970. Concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, far exceed the natural range over the last 650,000 years. * PROJECTED CLIMATE CHANGES Temperatures are likely to rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 Celsius (2.0 and 11.5 Fahrenheit) and sea levels by between 18 cm and 59 cm (7 inches and 23 inches) this century. Africa, the Arctic, small islands and Asian mega-deltas are likely to be especially affected by climate change. Sea level rise "would continue for centuries" because of the momentum of warming even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilised. "Warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible". About 20-30 percent of species will be at increasing risk of extinction if future temperature rises exceed 1.5 to 2.5 Celsius. * FIVE REASONS FOR CONCERN -- Risks to unique and threatened systems, such as polar or high mountain ecosystems, coral reefs and small islands. -- Risks of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts and heatwaves. -- Distribution of impacts -- the poor and the elderly are likely to be hit hardest, and countries near the equator, mostly the poor in Africa and Asia, generally face greater risks such as of desertification or floods. -- Overall impacts -- there is evidence since 2001 that any benefits of warming would be at lower temperatures than previously forecast and that damages from larger temperature rises would be bigger. -- Risks or "large-scale singularities", such as rising sea levels over centuries; contributions to sea level rise from Antarctica and Greenland could be larger than projected by ice sheet models. * SOLUTIONS/COSTS Governments have a wide range of tools -- higher taxes on emissions, regulations, tradeable permits and research. An effective carbon price could help cuts. Emissions of greenhouse gases would have to peak by 2015 to limit global temperature rises to 2.0 to 2.4 Celsius over pre-industrial times, the strictest goal assessed. The costs of fighting warming will range from less than 0.12 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) per year for the most stringent scenarios until 2030 to less than 0.06 percent for a less tough goal. In the most costly case, that means a loss of GDP by 2030 of less than 3 percent. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

From inch-long geckos to the iconic king cobra, at least 1,829 species of reptiles — including lizards, snakes, turtles and crocodiles — are threatened, the study found. The research, published Wednesday in Nature, adds another dimension to a substantial body of scientific evidence that points to a human-caused biodiversity crisis similar to climate change in the vast effect it could have on life on Earth. “It’s another drumbeat on the path to ecological catastrophe,” said Bruce Young, co-leader of the study and a senior scientist at NatureServe, a nonprofit conservation research group. Such a collapse threatens humans because healthy ecosystems provide necessities like fertile soil, pollination and water supplies. Among reptiles, particularly hard-hit are turtles, with almost 60% of species at risk of extinction, and crocodiles, with half. In addition to habitat loss, both groups are depleted by hunting and fishing. But the results also brought a sense of relief. Scientists have known far less about the needs of reptiles as compared with mammals, birds and amphibians, and they had feared the results would show reptiles slipping away because they required different conservation methods. Instead, the authors were surprised at how neatly the threats to reptiles overlapped with those to other animals. “There’s no rocket science in protecting reptiles; we have all the tools we need,” Young said. “Reduce tropical deforestation, control illegal trade, improve productivity in agriculture so we don’t have to expand our agricultural areas. All that stuff will help reptiles, just as it will help many, many, many other species.” The authors found that climate change played a role in the threat faced by 10% of species, suggesting that it was not currently a major factor in reptile loss. But the effects could be underrepresented, Young said, because scientists simply do not know enough about many reptiles to determine whether a warming planet threatens them in the short term. What is clear is that the victims of climate change, reptilian and otherwise, will increase dramatically in coming years if world leaders keep failing to adequately rein in greenhouse gas emissions, which mostly come from burning fossil fuels. In September, the Komodo dragon, the largest lizard in the world, was classified as endangered in large part because of the rising temperatures and sea levels caused by climate change. The reptile assessment includes 52 authors with contributions from more than 900 experts around the world. It took more than 15 years, in part because funding was hard to come by. “Reptiles, to many people, are not charismatic,” Young said. “There’s just been a lot more focus on some of the more furry or feathery species.” The team ultimately assessed 10,196 species. In 48 workshops between 2004 and 2019, groups of local specialists would gather and evaluate species one by one. The findings for each reptile were reviewed by a scientist familiar with the species but not involved with the assessment, and then again by staff from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, the most comprehensive global catalogue of the status of animal and plant species. With 21% of species threatened with extinction, reptiles were found to be at higher risk than birds (of which about 13% of species are threatened with extinction) and slightly less than mammals (25%). Amphibian species, which have suffered from severe disease in addition to other effects, fare significantly worse, with about 40% of species in danger of extinction. The study confirmed the results of a previous analysis that extrapolated extinction risk in reptiles based on a random representative sample. Were all threatened reptiles to disappear, the authors found, they would take with them 15.6 billion years of evolutionary history. “Now we know the threats facing each reptile species; the global community can take the next step by joining conservation plans with a global policy agreement, investing in turning around the often too underappreciated and severe biodiversity crisis,” said Neil Cox, who co-led the study and also manages the Biodiversity Assessment Unit, a joint initiative of the IUCN and Conservation International to expand the Red List’s coverage. ear, nations of the world are hammering out a new global agreement to tackle biodiversity loss. While the threats to species are clear — razing forests for beef cattle and palm oil, for example — it is much harder for countries to agree on how to stop them. A gathering in Geneva last month ended in frustration for many scientists and advocates, who described a lack of urgency from governments after two years of pandemic-related delays. Organisers added another meeting in June in hopes of making progress before the final one in Kunming, China, later this year. The reptile research identified hot spots for imperilled reptiles in Southeast Asia, western Africa, northern Madagascar, the northern Andes and the Caribbean. The assessment fills an important gap, said Alex Pyron, an evolutionary biologist at George Washington University who focuses on reptile and amphibian biodiversity and was not involved in the research. “This allows us to paint a much more detailed picture than was possible before,” Pyron said. Scientists said they were particularly struck that habitat loss from deforestation, agriculture and other causes was a much larger threat to most reptiles than factors like pollution and climate change. Young, the co-leader of the study, said addressing issues like these would require significant changes in human behaviour and economies given that “the ultimate cause is human consumption.” ©2022 The New York Times Company

The United States must take another step towards a global climate change pact when major industrialized countries meet in Japan next week, the head of the European Union's executive said on Friday. "In this G8 summit we will expect the United States to show more ambition than they have shown so far," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters. He noted a recent narrowing of differences between Brussels and Washington on the need to tackle emissions of greenhouse gases linked to rising global temperatures, but the two sides remained far apart on how to do it. EU officials said that, without a step forward by U.S. President George W. Bush, there was little chance of progress until late next year when countries would be rushing to try to thrash out a new U.N. climate change deal. The next round of U.N. climate talks is due to take place in Poland in December, but the United States will be in transition, before the inauguration of its next president in January. "The world expects more from a major economy like the United States," Barroso said. "I am saying that not just as a hope -- I expect the U.S. will accept a more ambitious conclusion at the G8 than the one last year." At a Group of Eight summit last year, leaders of the world's richest countries agreed to consider seriously a global goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Now the EU wants the G8 to fix that goal and agree on the need for a target for cutting emissions by 2020, although officials in Brussels concede there is little chance of the Bush administration backing the idea of a near-term goal. Barroso said a 2050 target would not be credible without a closer goal, too. He said he expected the next U.S. president to "enhance" the shift in Washington's position towards measures already agreed by the EU. The 27-nation EU has agreed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and is now working on rules on emissions by industry, cars and aircraft and other legislation to meet that target. The United States says it is committed to fighting climate change but refuses to accept binding emissions cuts until big developing economies such as China and India agree to mandatory limits.

It's the fact that the house is built with cement bricks and mortar, so it should stay standing through a major storm - unlike her last home. Panda, 34, lost her previous house in Ndiadzo village, in Manicaland province, when Cyclone Idai tore through Zimbabwe in 2019, destroying an estimated 50,000 homes. Built from farm bricks - made locally from anthill soil - and pit sand mixed with water, the house was washed away by the heavy rains, leaving Panda's family homeless. A year later, they moved into a place built by the government to a new set of standards aimed at making rural homes more resilient to extreme weather and tackling the tree loss that worsens damage from climate change impacts like floods. "It was devastating to lose our dwellings and everything that belonged to us in just one night," Panda told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. "For over a year, we lived in tents, so we were elated to get a new house - it was such a huge relief." As rising temperatures drive increasingly destructive storms and floods, Zimbabwe is rewriting the rules on how and where homes should be built to help rural communities get through the worst of the weather. The new standards and policy recommendations in the National Human Settlements Policy also encourage Zimbabweans to move away from traditional building methods which rely heavily on timber and soil, contributing to widespread deforestation. Percy Toriro, a city planning expert in Harare, said this marks the first time the construction of rural homes in the southern African country will be as carefully regulated as house-building in its cities. "Whereas urban housing has always been fairly safe due to the strict standards of planning and construction, rural housing was never subjected to any standards or inspection," he said. "Recent cyclones have brought everyone to a realisation that poor housing is vulnerable. In our settlements, sustainability must be the goal." Government data from 2017 showed 80% of homes in rural areas were either wholly or partially made of traditional materials like farm bricks. In contrast, 98% of urban houses were built using modern materials and techniques. Since the policy was approved in 2020, Zimbabwe's government has built 700 permanent homes for people displaced by natural disasters, said Nathan Nkomo, director of the Civil Protection Department, the state's disaster response agency, which helped shape the new building standards. With help from partners, including the International Organization for Migration, the World Bank and the African Development Bank, the construction drive focuses on Manicaland and two western districts, Tsholotsho and Binga, all areas that have been hit hardest by harsh weather. "We must come up with settlements that meet the requirements of habitable architecture," Nkomo said. The Ministry of National Housing and Social Amenities did not respond to requests for comment. SLOWING DEFORESTATION Zimbabwe has become increasingly prone to powerful storms over the past few years. Most recently, in January this year, Tropical Storm Anna left a trail of destruction across 18 districts and affected more than 1,300 households, according to Nkomo. He said most of the houses destroyed in storms were the type locally known as "pole and dagga" huts, made of wood, anthill soil and thatch but no cement, so they quickly become soaked and weak in the incessant rains and fall apart. The new settlements policy is not enshrined in legislation, but it creates the legal framework for local authorities to introduce by-laws that should bring houses in rural Zimbabwe up to national and international standards, said David Mutasa, chairman of the Makoni Rural District Council. The policy says councils should ensure all new builds use materials and methods that are "economic, sustainable (and) resilient" - for example, by insisting that homes are built with cement bricks and all construction is registered. To curb the negative impacts of house-building on the environment, the policy bans the use of temporary wooden shacks in mining and farming compounds and prohibits building on wetlands, which are vital ecosystems that provide a natural buffer against flooding. Mutasa, who is also president of the Association of Rural District Councils of Zimbabwe, said Makoni council is already making sure all new homes are made of cement bricks and fining anyone who cuts down trees for wood to bake farm bricks. Nationwide, the penalty for unauthorised tree felling is between 5,000 and 50,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($13-$133). The process of making farm bricks is a significant contributor to deforestation in Zimbabwe, said Violet Makoto, spokesperson for the country's Forestry Commission. "It is an area of concern - it has always been a big industry and continues to grow," she said. COSTLY STANDARDS Not everyone is happy about the new housing policy, with some local authorities saying they have faced push-back. Cost is the major issue, especially when people who use traditional methods can get most of their materials - like wood and soil - for free, said Toriro, the planning expert. After the government built her home in Ndiadzo village, Florence Panda spent $500 to add on three more rooms that comply with the new guidelines. "Some people don't have the money to build modern houses, let alone to the required standards," she said. "My husband and I survive by doing odd jobs, but we worked hard to get the money to extend our house." Mutasa, chairman of the Makoni council, said he did not know of any plans for the government to help people cover the cost of building to the new standards. Still, he added, local authorities should stay resolute in their efforts to slow deforestation and stem the practice of makeshift construction. Otherwise, allowing people to keep cutting down trees to build flimsy homes "will come back to haunt us", he said.

Thunderstorms hit Sydney and a wide swath of the surrounding area, including parts of the north coast of New South Wales that have been burning for months, with more rain expected through the weekend. “It’s a relief,” said Ray White, a group captain for volunteer fire brigades north of Sydney, where serious fires have been burning since July. “With the rain, we’ve pretty well got all the fires here contained at the moment, mate. Hopefully they’ll be looking to go out in the not-too-distant future.” The amount of rain varied wildly Friday, from a few drops to more than 4 inches. It was not enough to end the country’s bush-fire crisis — dozens of fires farther south are still out of control. But for one gray and drenching moment, or a few hours in some places, strong rain doused the deadly flames. And the dried-out gardens. And the filthy streets. For many, the excitement could not be contained. Cows and humans jumped for joy in puddles, while others shared scenes of city life, like beads of rain on window screens, that only the fire-and-drought-tortured could see as beautiful. The soggy weather — “best day of the year,” said one sports commentator — delivered quite a jolt. Much of Sydney received more rain Friday than it had over the past three months. A few smaller towns to the northwest welcomed more precipitation than they had seen in entire recent years. But while the downpours were greeted warmly, they also caused problems. Sydney suffered train cancellations and heavy traffic. The hardened, dry ground in more rural areas could not handle the largess, leading to flash floods in some places. In a battle of extremes, the historic wildfires made the storms more dangerous. Fire officials warned of “widow makers” — burned-out trees that collapse with precipitation. The rain also threatened the water supply in many areas as ash and debris washed off into reservoirs. At the Warragamba Dam, whose reservoir provides 80% of the water for Sydney, booms and filters have been set up to try to keep the contaminants from reaching treatment plants. “There are barriers floating on the water and beneath the water at significant inflow points,” said Tony Webber, a spokesman for WaterNSW. “It’s not a panacea, but it’s part of a broad response to maintain water quality.” Pedestrians hold umbrellas as they walk in heavy rain in Sydney's CBD, Australia, January 17, 2020. AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi/via REUTERS Meteorologists and fire officials, like water officials, were quick to warn against viewing the storms as a cure for the country’s fire problem. Several large fires in Victoria “remain very active and unpredictable,” state fire officials said. Pedestrians hold umbrellas as they walk in heavy rain in Sydney's CBD, Australia, January 17, 2020. AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi/via REUTERS In New South Wales, areas near the Snowy Mountains, where fires are still burning and smoldering, have received little if any rain. The same was true for some coastal towns. “Northern New South Wales fires have been impacted the most,” said Jonty Bruce, a spokesman for the Rural Firefighting Service. “Many of them have been put out. And as you move further down to the southern part of the state, it lessens.” “There continues to be a threat,” he added. “There’s plenty of fire on the ground.” Climate change doubters — including a federal lawmaker, Craig Kelly — still seized on the rain as evidence that people had been engaged in “climate alarmism.” On his Facebook page, Kelly noted that the government’s Bureau of Meteorology had predicted that heavy rain might not appear until March or April, after the end of summer. But scientists have long dismissed such claims, which confuse isolated weather patterns with long-term climate trends. Last year, Australia experienced its hottest and driest year on record. One day of rain does not erase decades of data predicting that Australia’s fire seasons would do exactly what they have done this year — become longer and more intense. “Weather is what we get, day to day, and this varies in the short term,” says an explanation from Australia’s Climate Council. “Climate is the long-term average of the weather patterns we experience, usually taken over 30 years or longer.” Some Australians, however, hoped that even the partisan climate debate might be dampened by the rain. Most of all, they hoped for more of the good stuff. “In the last few days, we have had very little,” said Brett Hosking, 46, a farmer in northern Victoria. “We are living on a Bureau of Meteorology promise that it will come in this Sunday.” Even in the places getting wet Friday, the message to the heavens was clear: Keep going. “It’s not going to help the drought much, mate,” said White, the firefighter north of Sydney. “It’s just a start.”©2020 The New York Times Company

That is the conclusion of scientists who examined the bones of fish that died on that day when a 6-mile-wide asteroid collided with Earth. “These fishes died in spring,” said Melanie During, a graduate student at Uppsala University in Sweden and lead author of a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature. “The reign of dinosaurs ended in spring.” Scientists have known when the meteor hit — just over 66 million years ago, give or take 11,000 years — and where it hit, off the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. That ended the Cretaceous period of Earth’s geological history, but even though three-quarters or more of the species of plants and animals disappeared in the mass extinction that followed, it has been hard to pinpoint fossils of anything directly killed by the meteor. But in 2019, palaeontologists published the discovery in southwestern North Dakota of what appeared to be a mass graveyard of creatures that died hours or days after the impact. Although North Dakota was about 2,000 miles from where the meteor hit, the seismic waves of what was the equivalent of an earthquake with a magnitude of 10 or 11 sloshed water out of the lakes and rivers and killed the fish. Tektites — small glass beads propelled into the air by the impact — rained from the skies. The researchers spent years exploring the site, known as Tanis, which is in the fossil-rich Hell Creek formation that stretches across four states. An article in The New Yorker described Tanis as a wonderland of fossil finds; the initial scientific paper describing the site was more sparse on details, focusing on the geological setting. With the new science results, the fossils now provide insight into the cataclysm that was previously impossible to discern. “It’s amazing that we can take an event, a single moment that happened 66 million years ago — literally a rock falling down and in an instant striking the Earth — and we can pinpoint that event to a particular time of the year,” said Stephen L Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the research. “I think it’s a detective story of the highest calibre.” Animals in the Northern Hemisphere — some emerging from hibernation or giving birth to young — might have been more vulnerable to extinction. “If it was spring, then it was not very likely for many organisms to be in hibernation,” During said during a telephone news conference arranged by Nature. Animals in the Southern Hemisphere, hunkering down in autumn, might have been more sheltered from the sudden, drastic change in climate. “If you could hibernate that would increase your chances,” During said. “If you could seal yourself off in a burrow or if you could shelter underwater, that could help you.” Brusatte agreed. “I think there is some potential here for helping understand the patterns and the processes of the extinction,” he said. During first heard about Tanis during a talk in 2017 by Jan Smit, an expert on the dinosaur extinction at Vrije University in Amsterdam, where she was working on a master’s degree. She was intrigued by his description of the North Dakota fossil finds. “I actually started typing him an email from my phone from the back of the room, saying, ‘Hey, if you have these fishes, can we please do isotopic analysis on their bones?’” During said. She got in touch with Robert DePalma, the palaeontologist orchestrating the study of Tanis. In August 2017, During flew to North Dakota and spent 10 days at Tanis excavating fossils of six fish: three sturgeon and three paddlefish. In the laboratory, the scientists sliced thin pieces of bone from the lower jaws of the paddlefish and from the pectoral fin spines of the sturgeon. They saw repeating light and dark lines reflecting seasonal changes in the rate of growth, similar to tree rings. The outermost part of the bones indicated that the fish were becoming more active and growing faster after the end of winter. “My guess is on April,” During said. “It was definitely not summer.” Swings in the levels of different types, or isotopes, of carbon in the bones indicated how much plankton was in the water for the fish to eat. The levels were lower than what they would be during summer’s peak abundance. That added to the “various lines of evidence that we have that these fish perished in spring,” said Jeroen van der Lubbe, a paleo-climatologist at Vrije University and one of the authors of the Nature paper. Tektites were found trapped in the gills of the fish but not in the digestive tract. “They couldn’t swim on,” During said. “They immediately died.” Another team of scientists led by DePalma independently performed similar analysis on fish fossils and reported almost the same conclusions last December in the journal Scientific Reports. ©2022 The New York Times Company

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Central Asian states to work together to tackle the disastrous effects of the shrinking Aral Sea on Sunday after local people urged the United Nations to resolve a regional dispute. Much of the former bed of what was once the world's fourth largest lake is now a desert covered with scrub and salt flats. It shrank by 70 percent after Soviet planners in the 1960s siphoned off water for cotton irrigation projects in Uzbekistan. "I was so shocked," Ban said after viewing the damage by helicopter, describing it as "clearly one of the worst environmental disasters in the world". He was on a tour of the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia that lie on some of the world's biggest untapped oil, gas, uranium and gold reserves. The people living around the Aral Sea are some of the poorest in the region and struggle with declining fresh water supplies and fish stocks, pollution and violent sand storms. In 1990 the sea split into a large southern Uzbek part and a smaller Kazakh portion. "I urge all the leaders (of Central Asia), including President (Islam ) Karimov of Uzbekistan to sit down together and try to find solutions," said Ban, hours before a scheduled meeting with the Uzbek leader. "All specialised agencies of the United Nations will provide necessary assistance and expertise," he said. The United Nations has billed Ban's week-long trip, also taking in Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, as a chance to discuss regional cooperation, nuclear non-proliferation, climate change and development. Once isolated from the outside world, the region has gained global significance because of its proximity to Afghanistan. In Moynak, once on the coastline of the Aral Sea but now surrounded by sand, Ban was met by a group of about 20 townspeople who complained about the possible impact of the Rogun hydroelectric power plant that Tajikistan wants to build. Tajikistan hopes the new Rogun plant will solve the country's chronic lack of energy by nearly doubling domestic electricity output. Uzbekistan is concerned about the environmental and economic fallout of Rogun and other developments affecting the Aral Sea. "If Rogun is constructed we will be in a much more difficult situation," local teacher Zhanabay Zhusipov told Ban. "There should be an international inquiry by the United Nations on all these hydro-electric power stations." He and other local townspeople recalled playing in the sea as children and said that since the coastline had receded, local people's health had deteriorated. Uzbek officials told Ban that wind blows up dust carrying toxic chemicals from the dried-out seabed. Uzbekistan wants the UN to get involved in tackling the effects of the Aral Sea shrinking, but a UN official said privately that Uzbekistan was putting too much emphasis on international aid and not enough on regional cooperation.

Former US Vice President Al Gore and the UN climate panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for raising awareness of the threat of global warming. The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to share the 2007 prize from a field of 181 candidates. "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," the committee said in its award citation. "The IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming," it said. The IPCC groups 2,500 researchers from more than 130 nations and issued reports this year blaming human activities for climate changes ranging from more heat waves to floods. It was set up in 1988 by the United Nations to help guide governments. Since leaving office in 2001 Gore has lectured extensively on the threat of global warming and last year starred in his own Oscar-winning documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" to warn of the dangers of climate change and urge action against it. The Nobel prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.54 million) and will be handed out in Oslo on December 10.

And in the process of simply existing, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, one of the most popular, use astonishing amounts of electricity. We’ll explain how that works in a minute. But first, consider this: The process of creating Bitcoin consumes around 96 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by the Philippines, a nation of about 110 million. That usage, which is close to half-a-percent of all the electricity consumed in the world, has increased about tenfold in just the past five years. The Bitcoin network uses about the same amount of electricity as Washington state does in a year. And more than one-third of what residential cooling in the United States uses up. More than seven times as much electricity as all of Google’s global operations. SO WHY IS IT SO ENERGY INTENSIVE? For a long time, money has been thought of as something you can hold in your hand — say, a dollar bill. Currencies like these seem like such a simple, brilliant idea. A government prints some paper and guarantees its value. Then we swap it among ourselves for cars, candy bars and tube socks. We can give it to whomever we want, or even destroy it. On the internet, things can get more complicated. Traditional kinds of money, such as those created by the US or other governments, aren’t entirely free to be used any way you wish. Banks, credit-card networks and other middlemen can exercise control over who can use their financial networks and what they can be used for — often for good reason, to prevent money laundering and other nefarious activities. But that could also mean that if you transfer a big amount of money to someone, your bank will report it to the government even if the transfer is completely on the up-and-up. So a group of freethinkers — or anarchists, depending on whom you ask — started to wonder: What if there was a way to remove controls like these? In 2008, an unknown person or persons using the name Satoshi Nakamoto published a proposal to create a cashlike electronic payment system that would do exactly that: Cut out the middlemen. That’s the origin of Bitcoin. Bitcoin users wouldn’t have to trust a third party — a bank, a government or whatever — Nakamoto said, because transactions would be managed by a decentralised network of Bitcoin users. In other words, no single person or entity could control it. All Bitcoin transactions would be openly accounted for in a public ledger that anyone could examine, and new bitcoins would be created as a reward to participants for helping to manage this vast, sprawling, computerised ledger. But the ultimate supply of bitcoins would be limited. The idea was that growing demand over time would give bitcoins their value. This concept took a while to catch on. But today, a single bitcoin is worth about $45,000 — although that could vary wildly by the time you read this — and no one can stop you from sending it to whomever you like. (Of course, if people were to be caught buying illegal drugs or orchestrating ransomware attacks, two of the many unsavoury uses for which cryptocurrency has proved attractive, they would still be subject to the law of the land.) However, as it happens, managing a digital currency of that value with no central authority takes a whole lot of computing power. 1. It starts with a transaction. Let’s say you want to buy something and pay with Bitcoin. The first part is quick and easy: You would open an account with a Bitcoin exchange like Coinbase, which lets you purchase Bitcoin with dollars. You now have a “digital wallet” with some Bitcoin in it. To spend it, you simply send Bitcoin into the digital wallet of the person you’re buying something from. Easy as that. But that transaction, or really any exchange of Bitcoin, must first be validated by the Bitcoin network. In the simplest terms, this is the process by which the seller can be assured that the bitcoins he or she is receiving are real. This gets to the very heart of the whole Bitcoin bookkeeping system: the maintenance of the vast Bitcoin public ledger. And this is where much of the electrical energy gets consumed. 2. A global guessing game begins. All around the world, companies and individuals known as Bitcoin miners are competing to be the ones to validate transactions and enter them into the public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions. They basically play a guessing game, using powerful, and power-hungry, computers to try to beat out others. Because if they are successful, they’re rewarded with newly created Bitcoin, which of course is worth a lot of money. This competition for newly created Bitcoin is called “mining.” You can think of it like a lottery, or a game of dice. An article published by Braiins, a bitcoin mining company, provides a good analogy: Imagine you’re at a casino and everyone playing has a die with 500 sides. (More accurately, it would have billions of billions of sides, but that’s hard to draw.) The winner is the first person to roll a number under 10. The more computer power you have, the more guesses you can make quickly. So, unlike at the casino, where you have just one die to roll at human speed, you can have many computers making many, many guesses every second. The Bitcoin network is designed to make the guessing game more and more difficult as more miners participate, further putting a premium on speedy, power-hungry computers. Specifically, it’s designed so that it always takes an average of 10 minutes for someone to win a round. In the dice game analogy, if more people join the game and start winning faster, the game is recalibrated to make it harder. For example: You now have to roll a number under 4, or you have to roll exactly a 1. That’s why Bitcoin miners now have warehouses packed with powerful computers, racing at top speed to guess big numbers and using tremendous quantities of energy in the process. 3. The winner reaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in new Bitcoin. The winner of the guessing game validates a standard “block” of Bitcoin transactions, and is rewarded for doing so with 6.25 newly minted bitcoins, each worth about $45,000. So you can see why people might flock into mining. Why such a complicated and expensive guessing game? That’s because simply recording the transactions in the ledger would be trivially easy. So the challenge is to ensure that only “trustworthy” computers do so. A bad actor could wreak havoc on the system, stopping legitimate transfers or scamming people with fake Bitcoin transactions. But the way Bitcoin is designed means that a bad actor would need to win the majority of the guessing games to have majority power over the network, which would require a lot of money and a lot of electricity. In Nakamoto’s system, it would make more economic sense for a hacker to spend the resources on mining Bitcoin and collecting the rewards, rather than on attacking the system itself. This is how Bitcoin mining turns electricity into security. It’s also why the system wastes energy by design. BITCOIN’S GROWING ENERGY APPETITE In the early days of Bitcoin, when it was less popular and worth little, anyone with a computer could easily mine at home. Not so much anymore. Today you need highly specialised machines, a lot of money, a big space and enough cooling power to keep the constantly running hardware from overheating. That’s why mining now happens in giant data centres owned by companies or groups of people. In fact, operations have consolidated so much that now, only seven mining groups own nearly 80% of all computing power on the network. (The aim behind “pooling” computing power like this is to distribute income more evenly so participants get $10 per day rather than several bitcoins every 10 years, for example.) Mining happens all over the world, often wherever there’s an abundance of cheap energy. For years, much of the Bitcoin mining has been in China, although recently, the country has started cracking down. Researchers at the University of Cambridge who have been tracking Bitcoin mining said recently that China’s share of global Bitcoin mining had fallen to 46% in April from 75% in late 2019. During the same period, the United States’ share of mining grew to 16% from 4%. Bitcoin mining means more than just emissions. Hardware piles up, too. Everyone wants the newest, fastest machinery, which causes high turnover and a new e-waste problem. Alex de Vries, a Paris-based economist, estimates that every year and a half or so, the computational power of mining hardware doubles, making older machines obsolete. According to his calculations, at the start of 2021, Bitcoin alone was generating more e-waste than many midsize countries. “Bitcoin miners are completely ignoring this issue, because they don’t have a solution,” said de Vries, who runs Digiconomist, a site that tracks the sustainability of cryptocurrencies. “These machines are just dumped.” COULD IT BE GREENER? What if Bitcoin could be mined using more sources of renewable energy, like wind, solar or hydropower? It’s tricky to figure out exactly how much of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewables because of the very nature of Bitcoin: a decentralised currency whose miners are largely anonymous. Globally, estimates of Bitcoin’s use of renewables range from about 40% to almost 75%. But in general, experts say, using renewable energy to power Bitcoin mining means it won’t be available to power a home, a factory or an electric car. A handful of miners are starting to experiment with harnessing excess natural gas from oil and gas drilling sites, but examples like that are still sparse and difficult to quantify. Also, that practice could eventually spur more drilling. Miners have also claimed to tap the surplus hydropower generated during the rainy season in places like southwest China. But if those miners operate through the dry season, they would primarily be drawing on fossil fuels. “As far as we can tell, it’s mostly baseload fossil fuels that are still being used, but that varies seasonally, as well as country to country,” said Benjamin A. Jones, an assistant professor in economics at the University of New Mexico, whose research involves the environmental effect of cryptomining. “That’s why you get these wildly different estimates,” he said. Could the way Bitcoin works be rewritten to use less energy? Some other minor cryptocurrencies have promoted an alternate bookkeeping system, where processing transactions is won not through computational labour but by proving ownership of enough coins. This would be more efficient. But it hasn’t been proved at scale, and isn’t likely to take hold with Bitcoin because, among other reasons, Bitcoin stakeholders have a powerful financial incentive not to change, since they have already invested so much in mining. Some governments are as wary of Bitcoin as environmentalists are. If they were to limit mining, that could theoretically reduce the energy strain. But remember, this is a network designed to exist without middlemen. Places like China are already creating restrictions around mining, but miners are reportedly moving to coal-rich Kazakhstan and the cheap-but-troubled Texas electric grid. For the foreseeable future, Bitcoin’s energy consumption is likely to remain volatile for as long as its price does. Although Bitcoin mining might not involve pickaxes and hard hats, it’s not a purely digital abstraction, either: It is connected to the physical world of fossil fuels, power grids and emissions, and to the climate crisis we’re in today. What was imagined as a forward-thinking digital currency has already had real-world ramifications, and those continue to mount. © 2021 The New York Times Company  

The White House voiced "serious concerns" on Saturday about future negotiations to fight global warming while praising a deal to launch a new round of international climate talks. Nearly 200 nations agreed at UN-led talks in Bali to begin discussions on a new climate change pact after a reversal by the United States allowed a breakthrough. The countries approved a "roadmap" for two years of talks to adopt a new treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the main existing plan to fight global warming, beyond 2012. While calling many parts of the Bali deal "quite positive," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the United States "does have serious concerns about other aspects of the decision as we begin the negotiations." Negotiators "must give sufficient emphasis to the important and appropriate role that the larger emitting developing countries should play," Perino said. Washington has stressed that any agreement must include all countries with high greenhouse emissions, including fast-growing China and India, which were exempt from the Kyoto requirements. In 2001, President George W Bush refused to sign the Kyoto pact. "It is essential that the major developed and developing countries be prepared to negotiate commitments, consistent with their national circumstances, that will make a due contribution to the reduction of global emissions," Perino said. The United States is the leading greenhouse gas emitter, ahead of China, Russia and India. While acknowledging the reality of global warming, the Bush administration has opposed specific targets to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide -- spewed by coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles -- arguing that this would hurt the US economy. The White House on Saturday praised provisions in the Bali deal recognizing the importance of developing clean technologies, financing deployment of the technologies in developing nations and addressing deforestation, as well as others.

Demand for this indispensable component already outstrips supply, prompting a global gold rush that has investors, established companies and startups racing to develop the technology and build the factories needed to churn out millions of electric cars. Long considered one of the least interesting car components, batteries may now be one of the most exciting parts of the auto industry. Car manufacturing hasn’t fundamentally changed in 50 years and is barely profitable, but the battery industry is still ripe for innovation. Technology is evolving at a pace that is reminiscent of the early days of personal computers, mobile phones or even automobiles and an influx of capital has the potential to mint the next Steve Jobs or Henry Ford. Wood Mackenzie, an energy research and consulting firm, estimates that electric vehicles will make up about 18 percent of new car sales by 2030. That would increase the demand for batteries by about eight times as much as factories can currently produce. And that is a conservative estimate. Some analysts expect electric vehicle sales to grow much faster. Carmakers are engaged in an intense race to acquire the chemical recipe that will deliver the most energy at the lowest price and in the smallest package. GM’s announcement last month that it would go all electric by 2035 was widely considered a landmark moment by policymakers and environmentalists. But to many people in the battery industry, the company was stating the obvious. “This was the last in a wave of big announcements that very clearly signaled that electric vehicles are here,” said Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University who researches battery technology. Battery manufacturing is dominated by companies like Tesla, Panasonic, LG Chem, BYD China and SK Innovation — nearly all of them based in China, Japan or South Korea. But there are also many new players getting into the game. And investors, sensing the vast profits at stake, are hurling money at startups that they believe are close to breakthroughs. “I think we’re in the infancy stage,” said Andy Palmer, the former chief executive of Aston Martin and now the nonexecutive vice chairman of InoBat Auto, a battery startup. “There is more money than there are ideas.” QuantumScape, a Silicon Valley startup whose investors include Volkswagen and Bill Gates, is working on a technology that could make batteries cheaper, more reliable and quicker to recharge. But it has no substantial sales and it could fail to produce and sell batteries. Yet, stock market investors consider the company to be more valuable than the French carmaker Renault. China and the European Union are injecting government funds into battery technology. China sees batteries as crucial to its ambition to dominate the electric vehicle industry. In response, the Chinese government helped Contemporary Amperex Technology, which is partly state-owned, become one of the world’s biggest battery suppliers seemingly overnight. The European Union is subsidising battery production to avoid becoming dependent on Asian suppliers and to preserve auto industry jobs. Last month, the European Commission, the bloc’s administrative arm, announced a 2.9 billion euro ($3.5 billion) fund to support battery manufacturing and research. That was on top of the more than 60 billion euros that European governments and automakers had already committed to electric vehicles and batteries, according to the consulting firm Accenture. Some of the government money will go to Tesla as a reward for the company’s decision to build a factory near Berlin. The United States is also expected to promote the industry in accordance with President Joe Biden’s focus on climate change and his embrace of electric cars. In a campaign ad last year, Biden, who owns a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette, said he was looking forward to driving an electric version of the sports car if GM decides to make one. Several battery factories are in the planning or construction phase in the United States, including a factory GM is building in Ohio with LG, but analysts said federal incentives for electric car and battery production would be crucial to creating a thriving industry in the United States. So will technological advances by government-funded researchers and domestic companies like QuantumScape and Tesla, which last fall outlined its plans to lower the cost and improve the performance of batteries. “There’s no secret that China strongly promotes manufacturing and new development,” said Margaret Mann, a group manager in the Centre for Integrated Mobility Sciences at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a unit of the US Energy Department. “I am not pessimistic,” she said of the United States’ ability to gain ground in battery production. “But I don’t think all of the problems have been solved yet.” Entrepreneurs working in this area said these were early days and US companies could still leapfrog the Asian producers that dominate the industry. “Today’s batteries are not competitive,” said Jagdeep Singh, chief executive of QuantumScape, which is based in San Jose, California. “Batteries have enormous potential and are critical for a renewable energy economy, but they have to get better.” For the most part, all of the money pouring into battery technology is good news. It puts capitalism to work on solving a global problem. But this reordering of the auto industry will also claim some victims, like the companies that build parts for internal combustion engine cars and trucks, or automakers and investors that bet on the wrong technology. “Battery innovations are not overnight,” said Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne National Laboratory’s Collaborative Centre for Energy Storage Science. “It can take you many years. All sorts of things can happen.” Most experts are certain that demand for batteries will empower China, which refines most of the metals used in batteries and produces more than 70 percent of all battery cells. And China’s grip on battery production will slip only marginally during the next decade despite ambitious plans to expand production in Europe and the United States, according to projections by Roland Berger, a German management consulting firm. Battery production has “deep geopolitical ramifications,” said Tom Einar Jensen, the chief executive of Freyr, which is building a battery factory in northern Norway to take advantage of the region’s abundant wind and hydropower. “The European auto industry doesn’t want to rely too much on imports from Asia in general and China in particular,” he added. Freyr plans to raise $850 million as part of a proposed merger with Alussa Energy Acquisition Corp., a shell company that sold shares before it had any assets. The deal, announced in January, would give Freyr a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The company plans to make batteries using technology developed by 24M Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first priority for the industry is to make batteries cheaper. Electric car batteries for a midsize vehicle cost about $15,000, or roughly double the price they need to be for electric cars to achieve mass acceptance, Srinivasan said. Those savings can be achieved by making dozens of small improvements — like producing batteries close to car factories to avoid shipping costs — and by reducing waste, according to Roland Berger. About 10 percent of the materials that go into making a battery are wasted because of inefficient production methods. But, in a recent study, Roland Berger also warned that growing demand could push up prices for raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel and cancel out some of those efficiency gains. The auto industry is competing for batteries with electric utilities and other energy companies that need them to store intermittent wind and solar power, further driving up demand. “We are getting rumbles there may be a supply crunch this year,” said Jason Burwen, interim chief executive for the United States Energy Storage Association. An entire genre of companies has sprung up to replace expensive minerals used in batteries with materials that are cheaper and more common. OneD Material, based in San Jose, California, makes a substance that looks like used coffee grounds for use in anodes, the electrode through which power leaves batteries when a vehicle is underway. The material is made from silicon, which is abundant and inexpensive, to reduce the need for graphite, which is scarcer and more expensive. Longer term, the industry holy grail is solid state batteries, which will replace the liquid lithium solution at the core of most batteries with solid layers of a lithium compound. Solid state batteries would be more stable and less prone to overheating, allowing faster charging times. They would also weigh less. Toyota Motor Co. and other companies have invested heavily in the technology, and have already succeeded in building some solid state batteries. The hard part is mass producing them at a reasonable cost. Much of the excitement around QuantumScape stems from the company’s assertion that it has found a material that solves one of the main impediments to mass production of solid state batteries, namely their tendency to short circuit if there are any imperfections. Still, most people in the industry don’t expect solid state batteries to be widely available until around 2030. Mass producing batteries is “the hardest thing in the world,” Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said on a recent conference call with analysts. “Prototypes are easy. Scaling production is very hard.” One thing is certain: It’s a great time to have a degree in electrochemistry. Those who understand the properties of lithium, nickel, cobalt and other materials are to batteries what software coders are to computers. Jakub Reiter, for example, has been fascinated with battery chemistry since he was a teenager growing up in the 1990s in Prague, long before that seemed like a hot career choice. Reiter was doing graduate research in Germany in 2011 when a headhunter recruited him to work at BMW, which wanted to understand the underlying science of batteries. Last year, InoBat poached him to help set up a factory in Slovakia, where Volkswagen, Kia, Peugeot and Jaguar Land Rover produce cars. Reiter is now head of science at InoBat, whose technology allows customers to quickly develop batteries for different uses, like a low-cost battery for a commuter car or a high-performance version for a roadster. “Twenty years ago, nobody cared much about batteries,” Reiter said. Now, he said, there is intense competition and “it’s a big fight.”   2021 The New York Times Company

Australian Prime Minister John Howard faces a crushing electoral defeat which could see him lose his own Sydney-based seat, a poll showed on Sunday. Howard, 11 years in power and facing re-election in a national vote tipped for November 10, trailed high-profile former television presenter Maxine McKew, 46 percent to 53 when votes were distributed to the two major parties, a Galaxy poll for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper and SBS television showed. McKew, recruited to the rival Labor Party to take on the conservative Howard, was also level with the veteran prime minister when voters were asked who would do the best job for the seat of Bennelong, held by Howard since 1974. The poll was conducted after Australia's central bank lifted interest rates last week to a decade high of 6.50 percent to head off inflation fuelled by strong domestic demand, unemployment at a 32-year low and rapid global growth. Interest rates have been hurting Howard, who secured his fourth election victory in 2004 on the slogan "Keeping interest rates low". The central bank has since lifted rates five times. Rates are also biting into support for Howard's Liberal-National coalition in key fringe suburbs where voters are struggling with large mortgages and a credit binge fuelled in part by the low-interest climate, successive polls show. Also hurting Howard is a charge of boundaries in his own seat, which now has a large Asian community and is in the top 20 electorates for residents who speak a language other than English at home, according to census figures. Howard has angered some immigrant families with policies making it harder for new arrivals, requiring them to adopt vague Australian values of "mateship" and "fair go" equality, while learning English to speed their assimilation into society. Senior Labor lawmaker Bob McMullan cautioned it would be hard to unseat Howard regardless of poll indications. "We're very near the end of this three-year term and people are open to the idea of change. But I think their voting intention isn't set in concrete at all, it's quite fluid," he told Australian television. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Howard's wisdom and experience would carry him over the line and youthful opposition leader Kevin Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, lacked a plan for Australia's future. "There's always controversy about the record of the incumbent and so on, it happens everywhere," Downer said. "I don't always want to seem Pollyanna-ish. I'm a person though who's pretty relaxed about the struggle that lies ahead."

Australia will set a carbon price from July 1 2012 as an interim measure until a full emissions trading scheme can be introduced three to five years later, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said on Thursday. But Gillard said no decision had yet been made on what the price would be, or how much industry and households would be compensated for the new costs. "This is an essential economic reform, and it is the right thing to do," Gillard told a news conference. "Carbon pollution is a threat to our country, and a threat to our future prosperity," she added. The new deal has the initial backing of key Green and independent MPs in the lower house of parliament, but could still face obstacles in the upper house Senate where an earlier carbon trade scheme was twice defeated, before being shelved. "I do not believe that Australia needs to lead the world on climate change, but I also don't believe that we can afford to be left behind. That is why the time is right and the time is now," Gillard said. Gillard's minority government needs support from one Green and three independents to pass laws through the lower house. Key independent Tony Windsor said while he supported the set price and move to an emissions trading scheme, more needed to be worked out before he would guarantee his vote. "This is very much the start of the process in my view," Windsor told reporters. "There's a lot of discussion to take place on this issue. What we've established today is a framework to attempt to work within. That doesn't mean the game is over." Australia, the world's biggest exporter of coal, is one of the highest per-capita carbon emitters in the developed world due to a reliance on coal for 80 percent of electricity generation. Climate change is a key political issue in Australia, reflected in the successes of the Greens in August elections. One of the main reasons Labor had dumped former prime minister Kevin Rudd ahead of the election was voter anger over the shelving of an emissions trading scheme. "The two-stage plan for a carbon price mechanism will start with a fixed price period for three to five years before transitioning to an emissions trading scheme," Gillard said. The power sector wants a carbon price to underpin future investment, but business and mining firms oppose carbon trading, saying it would lift costs and take projects offshore. The government has promised to cut emissions by five percent of year 2000 levels by 2020, and wants to price carbon emissions to encourage business to cut pollution. "A carbon price is a price on pollution. It is the cheapest and fairest way to cut pollution and build a clean energy economy," she added.

Trade ministers opened a new front in combating global warming on Saturday on the fringe of UN climate talks in Bali hit by disputes between rich and poor about how to share the burden to slow warming. The Dec. 3-14 UN climate change meeting in Bali is trying to launch two years of formal negotiations on a new pact to widen the UN's Kyoto Protocol to all nations beyond 2012, including a bigger role for the United States, China and India. Thirty-two governments including a dozen trade ministers started two days of discussions on how to enlist the financial might of world trade in that effort, for example easing tariffs on climate-friendly goods and so spur a booming "green" economy. "The meeting...emphasises the point that it's not just the environmental imperative we are dealing with but the economic opportunities that come from solving climate change," Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean said. "Climate change solutions open up important opportunities for jobs and trade," he told reporters. Trade ministers attending the meeting included those from the United States, Australia, Brazil and Portugal, which holds the rotating European Union presidency. The meeting, on the fringe of 190-nation climate talks involving about 10,000 delegates in a nearby resort on the Indonesian island, is the first time that annual UN climate talks have widened from environment ministers. Differences over who should take the blame for and do most to curb greenhouse gas emissions threatened to deadlock the main talks, as Canada and Australia on Saturday joined Japan in calling for commitments from some developing countries. BINDING TARGETS "Australia's task is, at the appropriate time to commit to targets, but it's also to try and secure binding commitments from developing countries," said Australia's Crean. The Canadian delegation issued a statement saying "major, industrialised developing countries should also have binding targets," delegates said. But developing nations would find it "inconceivable" to accept bindings targets on their greenhouse gas emissions, said the UN's climate change chief Yvo de Boer. De Boer said it was possible that a final Bali text would guide industrialised nations to curb their greenhouse gases by 25-40 percent by 2020, an aspiration agreed earlier this year by countries which have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. At the climate talks, an alliance of 43 small island states urged even tougher action to fight climate change, saying they otherwise risked being washed off the map by rising seas and more powerful storms. "We want to see drastic action," said Angus Friday, of Grenada and chairman of the group in Bali. About 20 finance ministers will join the fringes of the Bali meeting on Monday and Tuesday, in a sign of growing awareness of the economic impact of more droughts, floods and rising seas, and of the lucrative opportunities posed by technologies to curb fossil fuels use. The trade talks, attended by World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy, would discuss a US, EU proposal, made last month, to eliminate barriers to trade in clean energy technologies, such as wind turbines or solar panels, as part of the long-running Doha round of world trade talks. But India and Brazil had criticised the measure as disguised protectionism to boost exports from rich nations. Brazil, a big producer of biofuels from sugar cane, noted the proposals did not include biofuels nor biofuels technologies. Kyoto now binds 36 developed nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a step to slow global warming.

Google Inc. is ready to let Web publishers and bloggers create custom searches on their sites, in a move that could make searches more relevant to consumers and allow the company to charge more for advertising, Google said late on Monday. The Internet search leader said the new Google Custom Search Engine relies on the same underlying database of Web sites to allow companies or individual users to set up personalised online searches -- on topics ranging from global climate change to gossip on pop stars. "This is really a way to make your own version of Google search," Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president in charge of search, said in a phone interview with reporters. The announcement, which executives said was one of the biggest it will make this quarter, came after shares of the Web search leader set a fresh lifetime high of $480.78 on Monday, following a strong quarterly financial report last week. The Google Custom Search Engine is the company's biggest push yet to rely on "the wisdom of crowds," where rival Yahoo Inc. and start-ups such as Rollyo.com and Eurekster.com have focussed for several years. "It is basically applying human judgement by saying I can make search better by allowing people to decide," said Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. Google is moving beyond the formula-driven, one-size-fits all way it indexes the Web to a relativistic approach for finding sites. The move also points towards a balkanisation of what different groups of people see on the World Wide Web. Details can be found at http://www.google.com/coop/cse/. It is set to be available on international sites in a few weeks. MY GOOGLE VS YOUR GOOGLE The service allows users to choose which pages they wish to include in a tailored Web search index, what the search results will look like on their own Web sites and whether other users can contribute their own favourite links to the index. Search results are derived from Google's constantly changing database of billions of sites. Custom Search Engines generate revenue through Google's existing AdSense advertising revenue-sharing program with Web sites, the company said. Universities, government organisations and recognised non-profit groups will be given a choice of whether to run ads alongside their search results, or not. Commercial users will be required to carry Google ads to pay for the free service. Customised Web search should result in more relevant search results for specific users, which in turn is likely to entice advertisers to pay more as ads can become more targeted, officials of the Mountain View, California-based company said. Privacy is protected because Google hosts the searches on its own computers. Custom-created sites do not receive access to database logs showing specific user searches, they added. Sites employing custom search can choose whether users see results only from their site, from a select list of related Web sites, or across tens of thousands of others. They may also give priority to certain sites over others, in contrast to Google's classic page-rank system based on popularity. Intuit Inc., the company behind Turbo Tax and Quicken personal finance software, is relying on Google Custom Search on a new site it is testing called JumpUp.com that helps new business owners connect with other business owners. RealClimate.org, another site testing Custom Search, only links to sites it deems to offer credible expert opinion on the science of climate change, bypassing highly politicised sites. "Custom search engines empower communities everywhere to organise their own information and make it searchable," said Shashi Seth, product manager for Google Custom Search Engine.

With global warming expected to hit Africa hard, some companies in the "forgotten continent" are taking action themselves to fight climate change. "The environment is not being taken very seriously in most of the emerging markets, because we haven't started feeling the pressure yet," Adan Mohamed, chief executive of Barclays Bank Kenya, told Reuters. "But it has got to be addressed and it is up to us corporates to lead that." Poverty in Africa, where nearly three quarters of people rely on agriculture, means it is the part of the world least able to adapt to the severe weather changes forecast to be triggered by global warming, experts say. Tens of millions face water and food shortages, they say, as well as impacts ranging for disease to rising seas. Kenyan firms including national flag carrier Kenya Airways, brewer East African Breweries and others are now actively studying ways to "green" their operations to help lessen the blow. Even a popular Nairobi radio station, Capital FM, has got in on the trend, raising public awareness by paying $2,000 to an offsetting company to become a carbon free enterprise. It all points to changing attitudes towards environmental protection in some of the world's poorest counties. Last November the top U.N. climate official, Yvo de Boer, told Reuters Africa was the "forgotten continent" in the battle against warming and desperately needed help. He said damage to the continent projected by the U.N. climate panel justified stronger world action -- even without considering likely disruptions to other parts of the planet. Big developing countries like China, India and Brazil had won far more funds than Africa from rich nations to help cut greenhouse gases, he noted, for instance by investing in wind farms, hydropower dams or in cleaning up industrial emissions. Just 2.4 percent of more than 1,100 projects for cutting greenhouse gases in developing nations are in Africa under the Clean Development Mechanism, a U.N.-backed scheme. CHANGING ATTITUDES South Africa, the continent's largest economy, does have a handful of such projects. Sasol, the world's biggest maker of fuel from coal, is pioneering a plan to sell carbon credits by converting a greenhouse gas into nitrogen and oxygen, also earning it income. Based at two plants in South Africa, the project will convert nitrous oxide and is aimed at cutting emissions equivalent to about 1 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. One ton of nitrous oxide has the greenhouse gas impact of 310 tons of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for warming. Some 90 percent of South Africa's electricity is produced from coal-fired plants. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment will be mandatory for all new power stations. No power plant yet operates anywhere in the world with CCS equipment attached, and only a handful of countries including the United States, Britain, Canada and Norway, have pledged public money to test the technology on a commercial scale. But the picture in cosmopolitan Johannesburg or Nairobi -- where Kenya Airways plants thousands of seedlings on hills under it flight paths, or diners can eat in the leafy garden of Azalea, a carbon-free restaurant -- remains rare in Africa. Many nations are focused on the challenges of developing basic energy infrastructure to eliminate the need to run costly generators. The emergence of firms offering conscience-salving carbon offsets seems a long way off. Desire Kouadio N'Goran, an official at Ivory Coast's Environment Ministry, said his government was encouraging the use of solar energy and more efficient stoves, as well as public transport to cut vehicle emissions. But Mohamed, the Barclays Kenya chief executive, said times were changing, and that African business had to plan long term. He said his bank only lent to environmentally sustainable projects, but declined to give details. "People are trading carbon units globally," he said. "There's no reason that can't cross over to emerging markets."

Malpass, who started at the Bank on Tuesday, was nominated by US President Donald Trump. Some development professionals feared that he would pursue Trump’s “America First” agenda at the bank by resuming financing for coal power projects and pressuring China. But Malpass told reporters that he will pursue the World Bank’s climate change goals, including its previous decision to withdraw from coal power funding. He called climate change a “key problem” facing many of the world’s developing countries. “The board and the governors have established a policy on that. I don’t expect a change in that policy,” Malpass said, A long-time finance executive, economist and government development official, Malpass most recently served as the US Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs. He helped negotiate a $13 billion capital increase for the World Bank last year. That refunding included requirements that the bank shift lending away from middle-income countries including China toward lower-income countries. Malpass at the time was highly critical of China’s continued borrowing from the World Bank and of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. But he said on Tuesday that new lending to Chinese projects was already declining and the relationship would shift toward one of increased contributions to the bank and sharing of expertise. “That means an evolution where they are much less of a borrower, and they have more to offer in terms of their participation in capital increases, their participation in IDA, where China has been ramping up its contributions,” he said, referring to the International Development Association, the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries. He said he would work with China to boost the standards of its development projects with more debt transparency and open procurement standards. His view on China contrasted those of US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who told lawmakers that Malpass’ presence at the World Bank would help the United States compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative. That program entails hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure development and investment by China in about 65 countries with an emphasis on transportation routes. Asked at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Tuesday what the United States could do to “push back” on China’s growing presence in international development, Mnuchin replied, “I think the single best thing is that David Malpass, who was my undersecretary, is now head of the World Bank.” The World Bank, combined with a new US development agency created by Congress last year, “can be a serious competitor to their Belt and Road,” Mnuchin added. The United States remains the World Bank’s largest shareholder, and the Treasury oversees the US interests at the institution. Malpass said he saw no need for a restructuring of the World Bank’s operations, but he would seek to make lending more effective at lifting people out of poverty.

Making good on a promise in the wake of the protests that rocked Brazil in June, Rousseff asked Congress to hold a non-binding national vote, or plebiscite, to see what Brazilians want changed. In the request, she listed broad themes that she wants to see addressed, including campaign finance reform, an end to anonymous votes by lawmakers in Congress, and a possible shift from proportional representation to district voting.Rousseff's approval ratings have declined by 27 percentage points in the past three weeks, showing that the recent wave of protests sweeping Brazil poses a serious threat to her likely re-election bid next year, according to a survey by pollster Datafolha published on Saturday.More than 1 million people took to the streets of Brazilian cities at the peak of last month's protests, fueled by frustration with deplorable health, education and public transportation services, a high cost of living, and outrage at the $14 billion Brazil will spend to host the 2014 World Cup.The upheaval that paralyzed the country sent politicians a clear message that Brazilians want more effective and transparent government, with an end to corruption.While the protests were aimed at politicians of all stripes, Rousseff's popularity took a beating and the president has insisted on holding a plebiscite to consult the people."It's a fight for more rights, more representation," she said of the protests on Monday."The people want to participate, that's why we are proposing a popular vote. The people must be consulted," Rousseff told reporters.Other issues she suggested the plebiscite address include abolishing unelected stand-ins for senators. Under the Brazilian system, all members of Congress have "substitutes" that can assume their seat if an elected congressman steps down for some reason, such as accepting a Cabinet post. Rousseff also wants the electorate to weigh in on rules that allow lawmakers to be elected with votes from supporters of other parties.Eighty-one percent of Brazilians supported the street demonstrations demanding changes, according to the Datafolha poll, which also showed that 68 percent of respondents back the idea of holding a plebiscite.Rousseff's political opponents, however, see the popular vote as a maneuver to distract the country from the real issues of lack of investment in roads, airports, schools and hospitals, and regain support before next year's election.Senator Alvaro Dias, leader of the main opposition party in the Senate, PSDB, said most of Rousseff's reform proposals - such whether to have public instead of private campaign funding - are dealt with in existing congressional bills. He said a hastily called plebiscite is an unnecessary expense for the nation."These are not the priority issues for Brazilians. This is a political distraction," he told reporters.'THIS COULD BE A FIASCO'The plebiscite also poses a risk to Rousseff. The main ally in her Workers' Party coalition government, the PMDB party, is balking at the idea and would rather see reform drawn up in Congress, which it controls."This could be a fiasco," said Andre Cesar, a political analyst at Brasilia-based consultancy Prospectiva Consultoria."There is a risk that the vote will not happen. Or worse, this could open a Pandora's box and Congress could decide to debate ending the re-election of presidents," Cesar said.Rousseff still has an approval rating just above 50 percent and remains the favorite to win the election in October 2014, though the race now looks more competitive.Some political analysts believe the plebiscite is not the way to recover lost ground. In their view, Rousseff should keep focus on curbing inflation and resurrecting Brazil's economy, which has been largely stagnant for the last two years.Smaller protests continue around Brazil, but a catalyst for the massive demonstrations has gone. The Confederations Cup, a warm-up for next year's soccer World Cup, ended on Sunday.Other challenges exist. Some of Brazil's main labor unions, seeking to take advantage of the tense political climate, are planning a day of marches on July 11 to push their demands, such as a shorter work week.

Australia's fragile government is under increasing pressure to deepen its target to cut carbon emissions after UN climate talks in Mexico ended with an agreement to step up the fight against global warming. Failure to harden the target would anger the Greens, whose support is vital to Australia's ruling Labor Party, but risks enraging the powerful mining sector and conservative opposition. The Greens have piled on the pressure since the end of the talks in Cancun at the weekend, saying Labor's target to cut emissions by 5 percent from 2000 levels by 2020 is far too weak. "Mexico put the mojo back into the UN climate talks," said John Connor, CEO of the Climate Institute think tank. "What came out of Cancun made it quite clear that we're talking about beyond 5 percent because we are talking about a world taking action." Australia is the world's top coal exporter, generates more than 80 percent of its electricity from coal and its per-capita emissions are among the highest in the developed world. The government has said putting a price on carbon is the only way to cut carbon emissions growth from the A$1.2 trillion economy. But it has struggled to win backing from powerful industry lobbies and the issue has proven politically poisonous. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has pledged to speed up a decision on how to price carbon, either by a tax, emissions trading scheme or a combination, by next year and the Greens are demanding tougher action to match Europe's 20 percent cut and Japan's pledged 25 percent reduction. "The Cancun agreement keeps the global negotiations alive on the understanding that everybody needs to lift their sights to stronger action if we are to deliver a safe climate," Greens deputy leader, Senator Christine Milne, said in a statement. She called for Australia to deepen the cut to 25 to 40 percent by 2020. The government in the past pledged to cut by up 25 percent if other big emitters such as China and the United States signed up to a tough climate pact. FIRST CUT NOT THE DEEPEST The mining industry, however, said Australia's reliance on resource exports exposed the country to higher costs than other developed countries when it comes to curbing emissions. "Even a 5 percent cut for Australia costs us much more in lost gross domestic product than a bigger cut in Europe," Minerals Council of Australia deputy chief executive Brendan Pearson told Reuters. He said government modelling found a 5 percent cut would cut economic growth by more than 1 percent, and would be double the impact of a cut of up to 20 percent in Europe. But analysts say the government faces pressure to act. "We can no longer assume the government will simply be able to proceed on its own terms, especially if that is a minus-5 percent target," said Martijn Wilder, global head of Baker & McKenzie's climate change practice in Sydney. "We should also not dismiss the fact that if the government wants to get its legislation through the parliament, it may be the case that the Greens and the independents insist on having a higher target of 10 or 15 percent," he told Reuters. From July 2011, the government will need support from the Greens to pass laws through the upper house Senate. The government also relies on support from three independents and a Green lawmaker in the lower house, who want action on climate change and are part of a multi-party panel on carbon pricing. Tough action on pricing emissions and a tougher target would pit the government against big polluters, such as miners. "The real test for the government is whether the presence of the Greens, independents and experts in the Multi Party Climate Committee will give them the strength to stand up to the rent-seekers and commit to good policy with the ambitious goal to transform Australia's economy," Milne said. The Cancun talks put off a decision on the final shape of an agreement but put the troubled UN negotiations back on track with a package of modest agreements. Under the UN's Kyoto Protocol, Australia was among the few rich nations allowed to increase its emissions during a 2008-12 first phase. Emissions are now about 8 percent above 1990 levels and the government, and industry groups, say even a 5 percent cut by 2020 will be tough. "Australia's 5 percent minimum target is a big ask for a growing, inherently emissions-intensive economy," said Heather Ridout, chief executive of Australian Industry Group, which represents manufacturers.

In a study in The Lancet Planetary Health journal, the scientists said their findings showed climate change placing a rapidly increasing burden on society, with two in three people in Europe likely to be affected if greenhouse gas emissions and extreme weather events are not controlled. The predictions, based on an assumption of no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and no improvement in policies to reduce the impact of extreme climatic events, show European weather-related deaths rising from 3,000 a year between 1981 and 2010 to 152,000 a year between 2071 and 2100. "Climate change is one of the biggest global threats to human health of the 21st century, and its peril to society will be increasingly connected to weather-driven hazards," said Giovanni Forzieri of the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Italy, who co-led the study. He said that "unless global warming is curbed as a matter of urgency", some 350 million Europeans could be exposed to harmful climate extremes on an annual basis by the end of the century. The study analysed the effects of the seven most harmful types of weather-related disaster – heat waves, cold waves, wildfires, droughts, river and coastal floods and windstorms – in the 28 countries of the European Union, plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. The team looked at disaster records from 1981 to 2010 to estimate population vulnerability, then combined this with modelling of how climate change might progress and how populations might increase and migrate. People cool off in Trocadero fountains, near the Eiffel tower in Paris, as unusually high temperatures hit France, June 21, 2017. Reuters Their findings suggested heat waves would be the most lethal weather-related disaster and could cause 99 percent of all future weather-related deaths in Europe – rising from 2,700 deaths a year between 1981 and 2010 to 151,500 deaths a year in 2071 to 2100. People cool off in Trocadero fountains, near the Eiffel tower in Paris, as unusually high temperatures hit France, June 21, 2017. Reuters The results also predicted a substantial rise in deaths from coastal flooding, from six deaths a year at the start of the century to 233 a year by the end of it. The researchers said climate change would be the main driver, accounting for 90 percent of the risk, while population growth, migration and urbanisation would account for 10 percent. Paul Wilkinson, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who was not involved in the research, said its findings were worrying. "Global warming could result in rapidly rising human impacts unless adequate adaptation measures are taken, with an especially steep rise in the mortality risks of extreme heat," he said. The findings add "further weight to the powerful argument for accelerating mitigation actions" to limit emissions, slow climate change and protect population health, Wilkinson said.