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Japan is committed to a post-Kyoto Protocol framework, but will not specify targets for emissions reductions beyond the pact's 2012 expiry as European nations have done, its chief climate negotiator said on Thursday. European Union ministers on Tuesday supported a binding commitment to cut the bloc's emissions unilaterally by at least 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels and also backed a call for industrialised nations to reduce emissions by 30 percent over that same period to help slow global climate change. Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Japan's Special Envoy for Climate Change, said Japan will not let the Kyoto Protocol lapse without a framework to succeed it but shied away from any numerical commitments and said Europe had set a tough target. "Every advanced nation is in a vastly different situation," he told Reuters in an interview. "For example, Japan has really pushed for energy efficiency -- others haven't. "You can't just compare this by figures." Japan is the world's fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter and the biggest polluter that must cut emissions to meet its Kyoto obligations. "This does not lead to the conclusion that whilst Europe is 20 percent and Japan isn't, it doesn't mean that Japan isn't doing enough," he said. Nishimura stressed Japan is committed to meeting its Kyoto goal to cut its greenhouse emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels by the 2008-2012 period but that it might need to take additional steps because its actual volume was 14 percent above the reduction target. "It will be very tough to meet the Kyoto Protocol target," Nishimura said. "But Japan will definitely achieve it." The government plans to buy about 100 million tonnes from the UN Clean Development Mechanism. This allows rich countries to invest in projects to reduce carbon emissions in poor nations and get emission credits in return. However, the government purchase plan only represents about 1.6 percentage points of Japan's six percent Kyoto reduction target, and experts have said the volume is too small and depends too much on business goodwill. "The government would apply additional steps without any delay," Nishimura said. Nishimura said it was essential that all nations work together and make the same efforts, or no new framework arrangement would last long enough to make a difference. "We are not going to let the current regime expire unless we have the new regime to replace it," he said of the 1997 pact agreed in Kyoto, a former Japanese imperial capital. "Kyoto is just the tiny first step. We need to have visions for several decades at least." The most serious shortcoming of the current protocol was the lack of top polluters such as the United States, China and India. "America's participation is the absolutely necessary condition," Nishimura said. "I believe the US will join sooner or later. If it joins, China and India will get moral pressure."

Now comes the coronavirus. Its spread, analysts and experts say, may be a decisive moment in the fervid debates over how much the world integrates or separates. Even before the virus arrived in Europe, climate change, security concerns and complaints about unfair trade had intensified anxieties about global air travel and globalised industrial supply chains, as well as reinforcing doubts about the reliability of China as a partner. The virus already has dealt another blow to slowing economies, and emboldened populists to revive calls — tinged with racism and xenophobia — for tougher controls over migrants, tourists and even multinational corporations. Among all the challenges to globalisation, many of them political or ideological, this virus may be different. “We always forget that we’re at the mercy of nature, and when episodes pass we forget and carry on,” said Ivan Vejvoda, a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. “But this virus has put forward all these questions about the interconnectedness of the world as we’ve built it. Air travel, global supply chains — it’s all linked.” As the virus spreads to Europe and beyond, Vejvoda said, “it makes China seem a bit more fragile and dependence on China as ‘the factory of the world’ more iffy.” The rapid spread of the virus from Asia is “another straw on the camel’s back of globalisation,” said Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, the London research institution. The political tensions between the United States and China over trade, and as well as concerns about climate change, already had raised questions about the sense and cost of shipping parts country to country and the potential for carbon taxes at borders, he noted. Coupled with the risk of a supply chain that is vulnerable to the breakout of the next coronavirus, or the vulnerabilities of an increasingly authoritarian China, Niblett said, “If you’re a business you have to think twice about exposing yourself.” Particularly now, with more countries using sanctions and economic interdependence “as a new form of coercive diplomacy, and it adds up to becoming more risk-averse toward globalisation,” he said. People in masks walk past closed shops in Milan on Feb. 23, 2020. The spread of the deadly epidemic to Europe’s fourth-largest economy has heightened fears of disruption in the global supply chain. (Andrea Mantovani for/The New York Times) Globalisation of disease is hardly new, noted Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, an economic research institution in Brussels, citing the massive deaths that followed the European arrival in the Americas, or the plague, which the now-cancelled Venice Carnival in part commemorates. People in masks walk past closed shops in Milan on Feb. 23, 2020. The spread of the deadly epidemic to Europe’s fourth-largest economy has heightened fears of disruption in the global supply chain. (Andrea Mantovani for/The New York Times) “What’s different is that with the airplane things can spread very fast,” he said. The immediate impulse is to recoil and erect barriers. “We already see flight numbers down dramatically.” Climate-conscious citizens were already discouraging discretionary air travel, as were digital technologies that allow remote participation and transmission of information. “You wonder if perhaps the peak of the global aircraft boom has passed,” Wolff said. “Many people are asking if we really need to have that kind of regular daily travel by air to all parts of the world.” In a way, this virus underscores the imbalance in globalisation. Private-sector supply chains have become very effective. Air travel is comprehensive and never ending. So the private sector is constantly moving around the world. But any sort of coordinated governmental response is often weak and disorganised — whether on climate change, health or trade. And efforts to strengthen globalised public efforts are attacked by nationalists and populists as infringements on sovereignty. Nor can governments do much to unfreeze supply chains, and few governments in Europe have the financial flexibility to inject much extra money into the economy. Theresa Fallon, director of the Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies, agreed that much of the pushback may now be directed at China. She recently returned from Milan, where officials are checking temperatures of travellers, doctors are careful about office visits and locals were visibly keeping their distance from Chinese tourists, she said. “China’s growth has been a long, positive story but now gravity has hit,” she said, with the virus arising as “a kind of black swan that underlines how different China is.” Many companies “are rethinking about putting too many eggs in the Chinese basket,” she said, especially as hopes of China becoming more like the West are fading. “We see more centralisation and lack of trust in China,” in its statistics and its ability to manage the crisis, she said. That was so even as Chinese leaders try to influence what they call “discourse management” with international institutions like the World Health Organization, in attempts to downplay the epidemic. That crisis of confidence in China extends beyond China’s ability to handle the virus, said Simon Tilford, director of the Forum New Economy, a research institution in Berlin. The lack of trust “will only reinforce an existing trend among businesses to reduce their dependency and risk,” he said. But the spread of the virus to Europe will also have a significant impact on politics, likely boosting the anti-immigrant, anti-globalisation far right, Tilford said. “We already see a lot of populist concern about the merits of globalisation as benefiting multinationals, the elite and foreigners, not local people and local companies,” he said. Politicians who insist on control over borders and immigration will be helped, even as the virus transcends borders easily. “Their argument will be that the current system poses not only economic but also health and security threats, which are existential, and that we can’t afford to be so open just to please big business,” Tilford said. That argument may attract voters “who hate overt racism but fear loss of control and a system vulnerable to a distant part of the world,” he added. The racial impact of the spreading virus is delicate, all agreed, but there. “It’s always different when it happens in your own neighborhood, among people like yourself,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former Italian diplomat. “When it happens in Denmark or Spain or Italy you have more of a feeling that it happens among people who share the same lifestyle — so you can see it happening to you.” But the virus also allows people to express hostility to the Chinese that they may have felt but had been reluctant to articulate, Tilford said. “There is already an undercurrent of fear of the Chinese in Europe and the United States because they represent a challenge to Western hegemony,” he said. That fear is being stoked by the Trump administration’s campaign against Huawei, China’s telecommunications company, but also by reports of Chinese repression and censorship through the use of advanced technology. Many Chinese living or traveling in the West have reported a quick spike in abuse and avoidance in public places and transport. “It’s a sign of how close to the surface these sentiments are,” Tilford said. The media, too, shares this sense of cultural distance and difference, Stefanini and Tilford said. Stefanini recalled debates in the Italian Foreign Ministry about whether to send condolence messages, depending on the numbers of deaths and how far away they occurred. “Events in Australia get massive coverage, but mass floods and deaths in Bangladesh barely register,” Tilford said. The outbreak in China “feels distant geographically and culturally, with a touch of racism, as if we measure lives lost in a different way,” he said. Italian sociologist Ilvo Diamanti had a more philosophical concern. The spread of the virus to Italy “has called into question our certainties,” because “it makes defence systems in the face of threats to our security more complicated, if not unnecessary,” he wrote in Monday’s La Repubblica. “The world no longer has borders that cannot be penetrated.” To defend against the virus, Diamanti wrote, “one would have to defend oneself from the world,” hiding at home and turning off the television, the radio and the internet. “In order not to die contaminated by others and become spreaders of the virus ourselves, we would have to die alone.” This, he suggested, is “a greater risk than the coronavirus.” c.2020 The New York Times Company

A huge artificial hill, more than 80 feet high, would rise at one end of Oxford Street, London’s busiest shopping district. Costing around 2 million pounds, or about $2.7 million, design renderings suggested that it would be covered in lush trees and that visitors would be able climb to the top — and “feel a light breeze” against their skin. The hill was part of a 150 million-pound plan by Westminster Council to lure visitors back into the centre of the city after the pandemic. In May, Time Out, London’s main listings magazine, described it as “visually arresting/bonkers.” The reality has turned out to be somewhat different. Since opening Monday, the mound has been widely mocked online as more of a folly than a dream — a pile of blocky scaffolding covered in patches of vegetation that look in danger of slipping off — and that it is not even high enough to look over the trees into Hyde Park. “It’s a monstrosity,” said Carol Orr, 55, a tourist from Glasgow, Scotland, visiting the mound Wednesday, who decided not to even attempt a climb. “You can’t see anything up there,” said Robby Walsh, who had climbed to the top, only to get a view of a Hard Rock Cafe and nearby buildings. “It was the worst 10 minutes of my life,” he said. The complaints, including that it was a waste of taxpayers’ money, have been so strident that Westminster Council on Monday offered refunds to those who had booked tickets, which start at 4.50 pounds. “We are aware that elements of the Marble Arch Mound are not yet ready,” it said in a news release. “We are working hard to resolve this over the next few days.” (The council did not respond to a request for comment.) In a telephone interview, Winy Maas, a founding partner at MVRDV, the Dutch architecture firm behind the project that has previously won acclaim for work promoting green cities, said “it’s a big pity” that the hill did not appear finished. The vegetation was “a bit modest, to put it politely,” he said. The dream behind the project had been to create a space that would make people think about how the city could be made greener and used to combat climate change, but that message seemed to be lost this week. Some of the problems were created by changes to the plan, Irene Start, an MVRDV spokesperson, said in a telephone interview. The company had initially hoped to build the hill over the 19th-century Marble Arch, which is similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But the firm had been told that covering the arch for six months would risk damaging it, so it had to redesign the hill, making it smaller and steeper. Having steeper walls made it harder to plant proper vegetation, she said. On Wednesday, not everyone at the mound was critical. Alison Nettleship, accompanied by her children, said she had heard the bad reviews but decided to visit anyway. “We were prepared for a disaster,” she said, “so it was fun for a laugh.” Her son Thomas, 14, said he loved buildings and enjoyed being able to see the scaffolding up close. “People are impatient,” he said of the complaints. The family intended to return in the fall after the trees had changed color, Nettleship said. The mound is not the first tourist attraction in London to have been met with mockery. The Millennium Dome, a giant white tent erected in the east of the city to celebrate the turn of the millennium, is now home to several successful music venues but was widely vilified after it opened in 2000. Boris Johnson, now Britain’s prime minister, was a magazine editor at the time and suggested that the attraction should be blown up because it was so bad. “There must be some form of public humiliation,” he said. “I’d like to see all those responsible for the contents of the dome eating humble pie.” Maas, the architect, said he hoped the Marble Arch Mound would soon be improved. But Wednesday, it was clear that whatever happened next would be too late for some. Emma Wright, 39, a director at a public relations firm, said in a telephone interview that she had visited the attraction Monday because she loved the idea of getting a new view over London. She so loves London’s skyline, she said, she has a tattoo of one view of the city on her arm. But instead of a stunning view over Hyde Park, she could see only the park’s existing trees and neighbouring building sites. On Twitter, she expressed her displeasure, saying that the attraction was “the worst thing I’ve ever done in London.” “I love going to things that are so bad they’re good,” Wright said. “But this isn’t even that.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Olesya Dmitracova London Mar 15 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Activist group, Egality, is inviting British voters to give their right to vote to someone in one of three developing countries which, it says, are "directly affected by UK policies on war, climate and poverty." Britons can register from Monday on www.giveyourvote.org to donate votes to Afghans, Bangladeshis or Ghanaians and, on the eve of the election -- expected on May 6 -- they will receive a text message telling them who wants to vote for which party. "I've voted in the past but I find that this is a really exciting way for my vote to be important and to count ... Our actions in this country are responsible for so much all over the world," said student Fanny Rhodes-James, 23, who plans to donate her vote. Hundreds of Britons have already committed their votes, Egality says, adding it expects thousands to register. At the last two general elections in 2001 and 2005, national turnout in Britain slumped to around 60 percent, compared to 77 percent in 1992. "When we complain that our political parties are all the same, that voting changes nothing, we're missing the vital perspective of vulnerable people in developing nations -- people whose livelihoods can be destroyed by the stroke of a pen in an anonymous office in Whitehall," Egality said in a statement. Whitehall is shorthand for British government departments. Ghanaian Kwabena Okai Ofosuhene says one of the reasons he wants a vote in the British election is Britain's influence on international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, which are "key to development in Ghana." "UK is one of the leading economies in the world and one of Ghana's leading trading partners," he told Reuters by telephone. Britain's political clout is another factor, added Ofosuhene who works for a non-governmental organization. "America would not have gone to Iraq without the UK backing it, or to Afghanistan without the UK," he said. Britain is one of the world's biggest donors of development and humanitarian aid, with the government saying it donated 5.5 billion pounds ($8.34 billion) between 2008 and 2009. Would-be voters in the three participating countries can contact Egality with questions for British politicians and British volunteers can put them to their local parliamentary representatives, in local debates or via media channels. "We are essentially running a UK election campaign (in those countries), not dissimilar to what the Electoral Commission does in the UK," said campaign coordinator May Abdalla. An Electoral Commission spokesman said that if people were not being paid for votes, there was nothing illegal in Egality campaign and said he had not heard of a similar campaign before.

In the ensuing months, the workers — nearly all of them from Central America, Mexico and Venezuela — toiled day and night across Bay County. In towns like Callaway, which saw 90% of its housing stock damaged by the Category 5 storm last October, they are still working. Like the migrant farmworkers of yesteryear who followed the crops, the hurricane workers move from disaster to disaster. And as the United States confronts more extreme weather caused by climate change, theirs has become a growth industry. But since arriving in Bay County during the chaotic weeks after Hurricane Michael, many of the immigrant workers have been exploited by employers who do not always pay what they are owed or landlords who charge exorbitant rent for their temporary quarters. Some have been stopped by sheriff’s deputies and transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A home damaged by 2018's Hurricane Michael, in Panama City, Fla, Sep 25, 2019. In the months after the hurricane sliced through the Florida Panhandle last year, workers — nearly all of them from Central America, Mexico and Venezuela — toiled day and night across Bay County to repair the damage wrought by winds that snapped pine trees in half. The New York Times A Florida law passed this year requires localities to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. In 2018, 24 immigrants were transferred from the Bay County sheriff to ICE, the federal agency that oversees deportations. In the first three months of this year, the most recent period for which data was available, 42 people were transferred. A home damaged by 2018's Hurricane Michael, in Panama City, Fla, Sep 25, 2019. In the months after the hurricane sliced through the Florida Panhandle last year, workers — nearly all of them from Central America, Mexico and Venezuela — toiled day and night across Bay County to repair the damage wrought by winds that snapped pine trees in half. The New York Times A nonprofit called Resilience Force has been meeting with immigrant workers, trying to organise them and lobby to improve conditions. At a meeting of Bay County commissioners in mid-September, Saket Soni, Resilience Force’s executive director, asked them to consider an ordinance that would make it a violation of county law to underpay or retaliate against workers. The meeting also featured workers who shared their own stories. Ana Salazar, 58, said she had come from Venezuela with her two sons to do debris removal and reconstruction. The immigrant said she represented several workers employed by Winterfell Construction, owned by one of the county commissioners, Tommy Hamm. They had received “absolutely no payment from the company,” she said. Several other workers corroborated Salazar’s account, but Hamm said neither Salazar nor the other workers present had worked directly for him. © 2019 New York Times News Service

President-elect Barack Obama shifts his focus to the second half of his White House Cabinet next week with decisions pending in the high-profile areas of energy, the environment, trade and agriculture. Obama, who takes over for President George W. Bush on January 20, has already put his economic and national security team in place, but has made it clear that other areas -- especially climate change policy -- will be priorities too. Officials within his transition team have kept quiet about a handful of names making the rounds for each of those posts. Obama will hold a news conference on Sunday, the anniversary of Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War Two, to discuss "the contributions of those that have served our nation," his office said in a statement. He is also to appear on a Sunday television news program where he may be asked about plans for further appointments. One important supporter during Obama's campaign, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, is a top contender for an administration post, possibly as energy or agriculture secretary. "Governor Sebelius is honored to be mentioned as a potential secretary and will do whatever she can to help the Obama administration," her spokeswoman said in an e-mail, declining to comment on "hypothetical" jobs. The popular Democratic governor, who was on Obama's short list of potential vice presidential picks earlier this year, has made a big push for renewable energy in Kansas, setting a target for 20 percent of the state's energy needs to be met with wind by 2020. Obama has promised to increase U.S. use of renewable energy sources in order to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers of oil. CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT Industry sources said Dan Reicher, climate director at Google.org and a former Energy Department official in President Bill Clinton's administration, was also a strong contender for energy secretary. Speaking to Reuters on Thursday, he declined to address his prospects but said he enjoyed being on Obama's transition team. Another observer said John Podesta, Clinton's White House chief of staff and now co-chair of Obama's transition team, may also be in consideration for energy secretary or climate "czar," a White House position being created by Obama to spearhead climate change policy. Carol Browner, who was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Clinton and currently leads Obama's energy and environment task force, is a top contender for the climate chief position, said one source with knowledge of the process, adding a decision was expected in the coming weeks. The source said vetting for those positions was not completed and Obama officials were still working out how a climate official in the White House would affect the roles of other policy players. Names mentioned for EPA administrator include Lisa Jackson, who has served as commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection in New Jersey, and Mary Nichols, an assistant administrator for the EPA under Clinton. In the area of trade, Obama met on Thursday with California Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra to discuss the job of chief trade negotiator, a Democratic source said. Becerra, who has a record of caution on international trade agreements, would be the first Hispanic to hold the job. Two other Democrats from the US House of Representatives, John Salazar of Colorado and Sanford Bishop of Georgia, along with Sebelius, are the top candidates for agriculture secretary, according to two farm lobbyists who spoke on condition of anonymity. Vice President-elect Joe Biden announced he had chosen Jared Bernstein as his chief economist and economic policy adviser. Bernstein served as deputy chief economist for the Department of Labor from 1995 to 1996.

The coronavirus is not only spreading but also infecting societies with a sense of insecurity, fear and fragmentation. Above all, it has severed humanity from its conceit of control and of the invincibility of its institutions, science, technology and democracies. If that is true nearly everywhere the virus goes, it is all the more so in Europe, with its history of Enlightenment, where life is lived, ordinarily, on an intimate scale, bumping shoulders on the street or in the cafe, greeting friends with kisses on the cheeks. No more. Today, Europeans are told to hide away, erecting borders between countries, inside their cities and neighbourhoods, around their homes — to protect themselves from their neighbours, even from their grandchildren. Confronting a virus that respects no borders, this modern Europe without borders is building them everywhere. But different states have different answers, and each discrete and disparate step has increased the sense of the coming apart, and the feeling that the problem is someone else’s creation. “The paradox of a virus that knows no borders is that the solution requires borders, not just between countries but within them,” said Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to the European Union. “But putting them up in an uncoordinated way doesn’t help.” Putting them up at all, in fact, may not make much difference. The invisible threat is already within. Even so, there is inevitably a turn back to the state for expertise, control and reassurance. As the pandemic spreads from Italy to Spain, France, Germany and beyond, there is a growing sense of the need for harsh, even authoritarian methods, many of them taken from China. After watching the epidemic in China with extraordinary indifference, Europe has been terrified by Italy. Suddenly, many of the continent’s countries are trying to lock down, to protect themselves and their citizens. The idea of European solidarity, and of a borderless Europe where citizens are free to travel and work, seems very far away. If the pandemic has the logic of war, requiring strong action, the enemy may be the person standing next to you. “It’s not anymore a question of borders between states but between individuals,” said Ivan Krastev, who directs the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, and is a permanent fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna. “It is now the individual you fear,” Krastev said. “Everyone around you may be a danger, carrying the virus. The person may not know he’s a danger to you, and the only one who isn’t a danger is the one you never meet, the one who stays at home.” The welcoming kiss, “la bise,” is suddenly dangerous, as is the hug of happiness or condolence. Krastev has written tellingly about Europe’s migration crisis, calling it as big a shock as the fall of Communism. But now no one is talking of opening borders, he said. “Now it’s not migrants you fear, but everyone,” Krastev said. The narrative of the migrant crisis included metaphors of hordes, invasion and even insects, and claims that migrants were bringing disease. They wanted to come from their wretched lives to a Europe that they considered safe and rich. But it is no longer safe. Now, migrants will wonder, “Is the plague worse than the war?” Krastev said. “You cannot negotiate with the plague or flee it.” A decade ago, Dominique Moïsi, a French political scientist married to an Italian, wrote a book called “The Geopolitics of Emotion,” explaining the strains caused by globalisation in terms of humiliation, hope and fear. “Today,” he said, “the dominating emotion is fear.” “The crisis of COVID-19 is adding uncertainty to uncertainty, fear upon fear, accelerating a process of anxiety about a world that is moving too fast,” Moïsi said, referring to the disease caused by the new coronavirus. With terrorism, economic panic, strategic uncertainty, climate change and migration, he said, “the fundamentals seem uncertain and the future unknowable.” Now comes an enemy unseen. “You can put your hand on a door handle and get the virus — that’s the maximum of fear,” he said. He misses touching and kissing his grandchildren, he said, and begins to think of death. Yet mobilisation of society is “even more difficult and necessary because the enemy is invisible,” he said. Paris has lived through terrorism and saw 150 killed in one night in 2015, he noted. “It was brutal but visible,” he said, whereas “in the end, the number of dead from the virus will be much more numerous, but it’s invisible, and we’ve never lived through that.” So it is difficult for governments who learned to urge calm on their populations in times of terrorism to now learn how to frighten them into acting for the common good. During the great Black Death of the 14th century, which took so many lives, people believed that God had condemned those who died and chose whom to spare. But in a secular society, “it’s harder to find the morality in who is dying,” Krastev said. “Instead you have all these conspiracy theories,” with talk of the “foreign virus” and even a Chinese spokesman suggesting that the U.S. military was to blame. In 2003, George Steiner, the European philosopher who died last month at 90, wrote a famous essay for the Nexus Institute called “The Idea of Europe.” But that idea is under threat. Europe’s cultural identity, Steiner wrote, is founded on several characteristics largely missing in the United States, where car culture, suburban sprawl and great open spaces engender a sense of separateness. In Europe, it is a culture of coffee houses and cafes, where people meet, read, write and plot. They are places, Steiner said, “for assignation and conspiracy, for intellectual debate and gossip, for the flâneur and the poet or metaphysician at his notebook,” open to all. Europe’s is also a pedestrian culture, founded on squares and small streets, usually named after scholars and statesmen, famous for their works and their massacres. Europe “is walked,” he wrote, and “distances are on a human scale.” In this plague time, with cafes closed and squares empty of residents and tourists, both of those characteristics are destroyed, leading to isolation and loneliness, Krastev said. Krastev is trying to decide whether to stay in Vienna or uproot his family for a month to Bulgaria, where medical facilities are weaker but the virus seems less prevalent, and where he has a more traditional network of family and friends. Where is the place of greater safety, a question for all refugees, he wondered. His daughter had just returned from Spain and didn’t understand why she couldn’t stay there. “But I told her, ‘The Spain you like will disappear in 48 hours.’” Many noted “La Peste,” or “The Plague,” an allegorical novel published in 1947 by Albert Camus, seeing it as a lesson not just in how people behave in pandemics, but in how nature bursts forth to mock our pretenses. When the bubonic plague finally lifts in his joyous city, the main character, Dr. Bernard Rieux, remembers that the illness “never dies or disappears,” but bides its time. “Perhaps the day would come,” he thinks, “when, for the misfortune and instruction of men, the plague would rouse its rats and send them to die in a happy city.”

The Environmental Protection Agency's proposal is one of the most significant environmental rules proposed by the United States, and could transform the power sector, which relies on coal for nearly 38 percent of electricity.Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Monday that between 2020 and 2030, the US amount of carbon dioxide the proposal would reduce under the plan would be more than double the carbon pollution from the entire power sector in 2012.States will have flexible means to achieve ambitious but attainable targets, regardless of their current energy mixes. States which rely heavily on coal-fired power plants are thought to have the toughest tasks ahead."The flexibility of our Clean Power Plan affords states the choices that lead them to a healthier future. Choices that level the playing field, and keep options on the table, not off," McCarthy said in remarks prepared for delivery on Monday.The plan has come under pre-emptive attack from business groups and many Republican lawmakers as well as Democrats from coal-heavy states like West Virginia.But the plan looked less restrictive than some had feared, with targets arguably easier to reach because carbon emissions had already fallen by about 10 percent by 2013 from the 2005 baseline level, partly due to retirement of coal plants in favor of cleaner-burning natural gas.The National Association of Manufacturers has argued that the plan will hurt American competitiveness.The plan gives states several ways to achieve their emission targets. Those include improving power plant heat rates; using more natural gas plants to replace coal plants; ramping up zero-carbon energy, such as solar; and increasing energy efficiency, said sources briefed on the proposal.States also have an option to use measures such as carbon cap-and-trade systems as a way to meet their goals.Share prices for major US coal producers like Arch Coal (ACI.N), Peabody Energy (BTU.N) and Alpha Natural Resources (ANR.N) were mixed on Monday but already near multi-year lows.A LEGACY ISSUEMonday's rules cap months of outreach by the EPA and White House officials to an array of interests groups.The country's roughly 1,000 power plants, which account for nearly 40 percent of US carbon emissions, face limits on carbon pollution for the first time.Climate change is a legacy issue for Obama, who has struggled to make headway on foreign and domestic policy goals since his re-election.But major hurdles remain. The EPA's rules are expected to stir legal challenges on whether the agency has overstepped its authority. A public comment period follows the rules' release.Last week the US Chamber of Commerce warned the rules could cost consumers $289 billion more for electricity through 2030 and crimp the economy by $50 billion a year.That assessment keyed off a more stringent proposal by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an influential environmental group. The NRDC had proposed cutting emissions by at least 30 percent from a 2012 baseline by 2020.The National Association of Manufacturers also argued on Monday that the plan will hurt American competitiveness.McCarthy noted on Monday that the regulations could yield over $90 billion dollars in climate and health benefits.From a public health perspective, soot and smog reductions that would also be achieved through the plan would translate into a $7 health benefit for ever dollar invested in the plan, she said.The EPA estimates that reducing exposure to particle pollution and ozone could prevent up to 150,000 asthma attacks in children and as many as 3,300 heart attacks by 2030, among other impacts.GLOBAL REACHThe rules, when finalized, are expected to have an impact that extends far beyond the United States.The failure to pass "cap and trade" legislation in Obama's first term raised questions about how the United States would meet commitments the president made to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions roughly 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels.The new EPA caps are meant to answer those questions.They could also give Washington legitimacy in international talks next year to develop a framework for fighting climate change. The United States is eager for emerging industrial economies such as China and India to do more to reduce their emissions, too."I fully expect action by the United States to spur others in taking concrete action," UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said in a statement Sunday.Chinese and Indian negotiators have often argued that the United States needs to make a more significant emission reduction because of its historical contribution to climate change.Obama will hold a conference call at 2pm ET on Monday with public health groups, hosted by the American Lung Association.

Thunberg won the award "for inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts," the Right Livelihood Foundation said in a statement. Thunberg, 16, denounced world leaders on Monday for failing to tackle climate change in a speech at the start of a climate summit at the United Nations in New York. She started solitary weekly protests outside Swedish parliament a year ago. Inspired by her, millions of young people poured onto streets around the world last Friday to demand governments attending the summit take emergency action. Thunberg shares the award with Brazilian indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa of the Yanomami people, Chinese women's rights lawyer Guo Jianmei and Western Sahara human rights defender Aminatou Haidar. "With the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, we honour four practical visionaries whose leadership has empowered millions of people to defend their inalienable rights and to strive for a liveable future for all on planet Earth," the foundation said in the statement. The four laureates will received a cash award of 1 million Swedish crowns ($103,000) each.

A new global deal on climate change should be achieved at a meeting in Copenhagen next year despite disagreement at talks this week, the head of the UN climate change secretariat said on Tuesday. "I really am confident that at the end of the day, the deal will be struck," Yvo de Boer said in a speech at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. His comments came a day after the European Union and environmentalists at U.N.-led talks in Bonn called for action on climate change but were met by reluctance from the United States, which said it was too early for substantial steps. The Copenhagen meeting at the end of next year is intended to agree a new treaty on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that would come into force after the first round of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. De Boer said growing public awareness of the cost of failure to take action on global warming would push governments into taking action, particularly after the agreement reached at the Bali summit on climate change last year. "I think that the world is expecting an agreed outcome in Copenhagen," he said. "Just as no self-respecting politician could leave the conference in Bali without negotiations being launched, I believe that no self respecting politician can leave Copenhagen without the deal having been concluded." He said the new pact should be tight and focused and should leave national governments as free as possible to shape and implement their own policies. "For the Copenhagen agreement to be really successful, it should be as short as possible and focus on the main issues that you can only make effective through an international agreement," he said. "I hope that not all kinds of stuff will be loaded on that doesn't really belong in that agreement." Speaking to reporters earlier, De Boer said that concrete action from the United States had been hindered by the presidential election but he believed that all main candidates in the race had shown real awareness of the need for action. He refused to criticize the U.S. stance, saying Washington had acted responsibly in declining to lay down commitments that would concern a future administration. He said he hoped for an advance next year.

NEW DELHI (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - India and Brazil, two of the world's emerging market giants, sought on Monday to forge a strategic relationship between their distant nations and enhance their role as a strong voice of the developing world. The two fast-growing economies have come closer in recent years and built a strong relationship based on common positions on key issues such as global trade talks and expansion of the UN Security Council. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who began a three-day visit to India on Sunday, his second in a little over three years, said he wanted to raise those ties to a higher level. "We are making our relationship very dynamic, strengthening economic and political alliances into a strategic relationship," he told business leaders from the two countries. "We must diversify the components of trade, now restricted to less value-added items," he said, adding that Brazil could offer farm technology to India while New Delhi could offer its expertise in the pharmaceutical sector. The two countries are also working on a common position to address climate change ahead of the G8 summit in Germany this week -- which both are attending -- and pushed for India's use of bio-fuels, an area in which Brazil is a world leader. "Ethanol, bio-fuels are more than ever emerging as fuel alternatives," Lula said, adding that they helped reduce pollution and dependence on fossil fuels and provided jobs to rural farmers. Trade and investment are high on the agenda of Lula's trip and his delegation includes some 100 businessmen. Trade between India and Brazil has surged and touched $2.4 billion in 2006. They have also increased investments in each other's fast-growing economies. Indian firms have focused on investment and joint ventures in Brazil's pharmaceutical, IT and energy sectors while Brazilian companies have targeted India's infrastructure, food processing and energy sectors. The two countries aim to quadruple trade to $10 billion by 2010 and Lula said this goal could be achieved. But ahead of the visit, Brazilian officials had complained about New Delhi's hesitation to further open its markets to farm imports and pointed at a fall in Brazilian exports to India by 15 percent to $937 million last year. Indian businessmen said they were pushing New Delhi to facilitate easier trade between the two countries and were optimistic about progress. "Our two countries have already emerged as the strong voice of developing nations in trade negotiations," Trade Minister Kamal Nath said. "We in India hope that the positive signals given to the business community of both sides will further strengthen our relations, leading to further increase in trade and investments between India and Brazil." Separately, Brazilian energy giant Petrobras offered a 25-30 percent stake to India's state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. in three exploration blocks. In return, ONGC offered a 15-40 percent stake in its three deep-water blocks on India's east coast, and a preliminary agreement on the deals was expected to be signed shortly. The two countries also signed seven agreements, including on cooperation in space, customs and education.

It has called for greater cooperation among the member countries to meet the challenges of climate change and related disasters. The South Asian Speakers' Summit on Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals at Indore was attended by South Asian countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The declaration stressed that the Paris Agreement should continue to be guided by the principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate change, especially the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. The joint declaration of the seven countries also agreed to consider setting up of joint parliamentary groups under the forum to deliberate upon and deepen cooperation on relevant issues. The declaration also urged the parliamentarians to create enabling conditions for encouraging private sector, civil society organisations, and other stakeholders to participate in the realisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). "It called upon parliamentarians to create gender sensitive elected bodies, particularly at the grassroots level, with a view to achieving gender equality and prioritising issues pertinent to women," the declaration said. The declaration also vowed to encourage the Parliaments to put in place legislative measures to protect women against discrimination, violence, sexual harassment, atrocities and trafficking. According to the declaration, it also urged upon the parliaments to collectively work for advancing actions, strategies, and cooperation among all stakeholders to mobilise additional resources so as to achieve the targets under the SDGs in a time-bound manner. "It also vowed to reaffirm that the achievement of the SDGs is closely lined to addressing the threat of climate change and strengthening disaster risk reduction which require regional as well as international cooperation," it added. It also called upon the parliaments of South Asian region to allocate one day in a session for deliberations on SDGs.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke visit their ancestral homeland this week to press China to join with the United States in stepped-up efforts to fight global warming. The two Chinese-American cabinet officials arrive in Beijing on Tuesday to talk with senior Chinese leaders and highlight how working together to cut greenhouse gas emissions would benefit both countries and the entire planet. The trip also sets the stage for a visit by President Barack Obama to China later this year that many environmental experts hope will focus on the need for joint US-China action before a meeting in Copenhagen in December to try to forge a global deal on reducing the emissions. They believe cooperation, perhaps even a bilateral deal, between the world's largest developed country and the world's largest developing country is vital if efforts to forge a new global climate treaty are to succeed. "The potential is very large and the need is very serious," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute, a US think tank. "It's not one of those things where one side benefits and the other side pays." In recent years, China has surpassed the United States to become the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming, although its per capita emissions are still far lower. Chu, a Nobel physicist who has devoted years to climate change issues, is expected to make the case for US and Chinese action to rein in rising global temperatures in a speech on Wednesday at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "We face an unprecedented threat to our very way of life from climate change," Chu told US senators last week, warning the world could experience a climatic shift as profound as the last Ice Age but in the opposite direction. Locke, a former governor from the export-oriented state of Washington, is eager to showcase opportunities for China to reduce carbon dioxide emissions using US solar, wind, water and other renewable technology. "There's a huge need in China which creates huge market opportunities for our companies. At the same time, there are big challenges," a Commerce Department official said. PUSH BEIJING China relies on coal, the most carbon-intensive fuel, for over two-thirds of its energy needs and that dependence is expected to continue for decades to come. The United States has the world's largest coal reserves and relies on coal for about 22 percent of its energy needs, creating a big incentive for the two countries to collaborate on technologies to capture carbon dioxide emissions and inject them far underground instead of into the air. "That's at the top of the list," David Sandalow, assistant energy secretary for policy and international affairs, told Reuters in a pre-trip interview. "We believe we can do more working together than separately." China's drive to build new nuclear power plants also has caught the attention of US companies. As Obama pushes Congress to complete work on a bill to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions, he is under tremendous pressure to get China to agree to a quantitative emissions cap at December's meeting in Copenhagen. Without such a commitment, a new climate change treaty is unlikely to pass the US Senate, said Stuart Eizenstat, who was lead US negotiator for the December 1997 Kyoto climate treaty, which was never ratified by the United States. Although Chu and Locke are not going to Beijing for talks on a bilateral climate deal, the United States hopes closer cooperation with China will contribute to a favorable outcome in Copenhagen, Sandalow said. China joined with 16 other major world economies last week in setting a goal of holding the global temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. But it has refused to set a short-term target for cutting emissions. Beijing argues it has been industrializing for only a short time and that strict caps now would hamper growth and urbanization efforts in a country where most people live in much poorer conditions than in the West. Still, the country's latest five-year plan set a goal of reducing energy intensity by 20 percent by the end of 2010. China has also set a target of using renewable energy to meet 15 percent of total demand by 2020. The Obama administration should push Beijing to translate such goals into binding international commitments as "a first step," Eizenstat said. Eventually, China will have to agree to emission caps but that is unlikely this December in Copenhagen, he said.

The complete melt of the Greenland ice sheet could occur at lower global temperatures than previously thought, a study in the journal Nature Climate Change showed on Sunday, increasing the threat and severity of a rise in sea level. Substantial melting of land ice could contribute to long-term sea level rise of several meters, potentially threatening the lives of millions of people. "Our study shows that a temperature threshold for melting the (ice sheet) exists and that this threshold has been overestimated until now," said scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, who used computer simulations of the ice sheet's evolution to predict its future behaviour. A complete ice sheet melt could happen if global temperatures rose between 0.8 and 3.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with a best estimate of 1.6 degrees, the scientists said. Previous research has suggested the ice sheet could melt in a range of a 1.9 to 5.1 degree temperature rise, with a best estimate of 3.1 degrees. One-twentieth of the world's ice is in Greenland, which is about a quarter of the size of the United States and about 80 percent of it is covered by the ice sheet. If it all melted it would be equivalent to a 6.4 meter global sea level rise, previous research has shown. "If the global temperature significantly overshoots the threshold for a long time, the ice will continue melting and not regrow - even if the climate would, after many thousand years, return to its pre-industrial state," said team leader Andrey Ganopolski at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Today, global warming of 0.8 degrees has already been recorded. "The more we exceed the threshold, the faster it melts," said Alexander Robinson, lead-author of the study. If the world takes no action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the earth could warm by 8 degrees Celsius. "This would result in one fifth of the ice sheet melting within 500 years and a complete loss in 2,000 years," he said. "This is not what one would call a rapid collapse. However, compared to what has happened in our planet's history, it is fast. And we might already be approaching the critical threshold. If temperature rise is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, a complete melt of the ice sheet could happen in 50,000 years, the study found.

The vast sheet of ice that covers Greenland is shrinking fast, but still not as fast as previous research indicated, NASA scientists said on Thursday. Greenland's low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice each year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, the scientists said in a statement. The high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall, they said. This is a change from the 1990s, when ice gains approximately equaled losses, said Scott Luthcke of NASA's Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory outside Washington. 'That situation has now changed significantly, with an annual net loss of ice equal to nearly six years of average water flow from the Colorado River,' Luthcke said. Luthcke and his team reported their findings in Science Express, the advance edition of the journal Science. The ice mass loss in this study is less than half that reported in other recent research, NASA said in a statement, but it still shows that Greenland is losing 20 percent more mass than it gets in new snowfall each year. The Greenland ice sheet is considered an early indicator of the consequences of global warming, so even a slower ice melt there raises concerns. 'This is a very large change in a very short time,' said Jay Zwally, a co-author of the study. In the 1990s, the ice sheet was growing inland and shrinking significantly at the edges, which is what climate models predicted as a result of global warming. 'Now the processes of mass loss are clearly beginning to dominate the inland growth, and we are only in the early stages of the climate warming predicted for this century,' Zwally said.

But it turns out that it is not, as was previously stated in a number of reports, including by The New York Times, Elon Musk’s SpaceX that will be responsible for making a crater on the lunar surface. Instead, the cause is likely to be a piece of a rocket launched by China’s space agency. Last month, Bill Gray, developer of Project Pluto, a suite of astronomical software used to calculate the orbits of asteroids and comets, announced that the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was on a trajectory that would intersect with the path of the moon. The rocket had launched the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Feb. 11, 2015. Gray had been tracking this rocket part for years, and in early January, it passed within 6,000 miles of the surface of the moon, and the moon’s gravity swung it around on a path that looked like it might crash on a subsequent orbit. Observations by amateur astronomers when the object zipped past Earth again confirmed the impending impact inside Hertzsprung, an old, 315-mile-wide crater. But an email Saturday from Jon Giorgini, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, changed the story. Giorgini runs Horizons, an online database that can generate locations and orbits for the almost 1.2 million objects in the solar system, including about 200 spacecraft. A user of Horizons asked Giorgini how certain it was that the object was part of the DSCOVR rocket. “That prompted me to look into the case,” Giorgini said. He found that the orbit was incompatible with the trajectory that DSCOVR took, and contacted Gray. “My initial thought was, I’m pretty sure that I got it right,” Gray said Sunday. But he started digging through his old emails to remind himself about when this object was first spotted in March 2015, about a month after the launch of DSCOVR. Almost every new object spotted in the sky is an asteroid, and that was the assumption for this object too. It was given the designation WE0913A. However, it turned out that WE0913A was orbiting Earth, not the sun, which made it more likely to be something that came from Earth. Gray chimed in that he thought it might be part of the rocket that launched DSCOVR. Further data confirmed that WE0913A went past the moon two days after the launch of DSCOVR, which appeared to confirm the identification. Gray now realises that his mistake was thinking that DSCOVR was launched on a trajectory toward the moon and using its gravity to swing the spacecraft to its final destination about 1 million miles from Earth where the spacecraft provides warning of incoming solar storms. But, as Giorgini pointed out, DSCOVR was actually launched on a direct path that did not go past the moon. “I really wish that I had reviewed that” before putting out his January announcement, Gray said. “But yeah, once Jon Giorgini pointed it out, it became pretty clear that I had really gotten it wrong.” SpaceX, which did not respond to a request for comment, never said WE0913A was not its rocket stage. But it probably has not been tracking it, either. Most of the time, the second stage of a Falcon 9 is pushed back into the atmosphere to burn up. In this case, the rocket needed all of its propellant to deliver DSCOVR to its distant destination. However, the second stage, unpowered and uncontrolled, was in an orbit unlikely to endanger any satellites, and people likely did not keep track of it. “It would be very nice if the folks who are putting these boosters into high orbits would publicly disclose what they put up there and where they were going rather than my having to do all of this detective work,” Gray said. But if this was not the DSCOVR rocket, what was it? Gray sifted through other launches in the preceding months, focusing on those headed toward the moon. “There’s not much in that category,” Gray said. The top candidate was a Long March 3C rocket that launched China’s Chang’e-5 T1 spacecraft on Oct. 23, 2014. That spacecraft swung around the moon and headed back to Earth, dropping off a small return capsule that landed in Mongolia. It was a test leading up to the Chang’e-5 mission in 2020 that successfully scooped up moon rocks and dust and brought them back for study on Earth. Running a computer simulation of the orbit of WE0913A back in time showed that it would have made a close lunar flyby on Oct 28, five days after the Chinese launch. In addition, orbital data from a cubesat that was attached to the third stage of the Long March rocket “are pretty much a dead ringer” to WE0913A, Gray said. “It’s the sort of case you could probably take to a jury and get a conviction.” More observations this month shifted the prediction of when the object will strike the moon by a few seconds and a few miles to the east. “It still looks like the same thing,” said Christophe Demeautis, an amateur astronomer in northeast France. There is still no chance of it missing the moon. The crash will occur at about 7:26 am Eastern time, but because the impact will be on the far side of the moon, it will be out of view of Earth’s telescopes and satellites. As for what happened to that Falcon 9 part, “we’re still trying to figure out where the DSCOVR second stage might be,” Gray said. The best guess is that it ended up in orbit around the sun instead of the Earth, and it could still be out there. That would put it out of view for now. There is precedent for pieces of old rockets coming back: In 2020, a newly discovered mystery object turned out to be part of a rocket launched in 1966 for NASA’s robotic Surveyor missions to the moon.   ©2022 The New York Times Company

After the coldest start to a year in more than a decade, spring will bring relief to the northern hemisphere from Thursday. Bucking the trend of global warming, the start of 2008 saw icy weather around the world from China to Greece. But despite its chilly start, 2008 is expected to end up among the top 10 warmest years since records began in the 1860s. This winter, ski resorts from the United States to Scandinavia have deep snow. Last year, after a string of mild winters, some feared climate change might put them out of business. In many countries crops and plants are back on a more "normal" schedule. Cherry trees in Washington are on target to blossom during a March 29-April 13 festival that has sometimes mistimed the peak blooms. "So far 2008, for the globe, has been quite cold, only just above the 1961-90 average," said Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia which supplies global temperature data to the United Nations. "This is just January and February, so two coolish months comparable to what happened in 1994 and 1996," he told Reuters. The northern spring formally begins on March 20 this year. And an underlying warming trend, blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel on human use of fossil fuels, is likely to reassert itself after the end of a La Nina cooling of the Pacific in the coming months. There were similar conditions in 1998 and 2005, the hottest so far, Jones said. SNOW AND SANDSTORMS China suffered its worst snowstorms in a century in January and February. At least 80 people died and the government estimated costs at more than 150 billion yuan ($21 billion), including animal deaths and crop losses. Sandstorms hit Beijing on Tuesday and residents rushed to hide from the dust mixed with petals from the city's magnolia trees. During the northern winter, snows also fell in unusual places such as Greece, Iraq and Florida. Experts say climate change will bring more swings as part of a warming that will bring more droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising seas. U.S. ski resorts reported above average snowfall. "We're 90 percent sure we will extend the season for at least a couple of weeks toward the end of April," said Jeff Hanle, a spokesman for the Aspen Skiing Co. in Colorado. The mountain town has had 400 inches (10 metres) of snow, the normal amount for the whole season, which still has a month to go. Skiers "have got big smiles on their faces," he said. "It's been a good season all around," said Tom Horrocks, spokesman of the Killington Ski Resort in Vermont. He said meteorologists said more consistent snows were typical for a La Nina season in the northeast. But not all places have been chilly -- Jones said western and northern Europe were the warmest parts of the northern hemisphere in the first two months of 2008. NASA satellite data this week showed the thickest and oldest ice around the North Pole has been disappearing. Finland had its warmest winter on record. High-speed ferries between Helsinki and Tallinn in Estonia, normally halted for months by winter ice on the Baltic Sea, started earlier than ever in mid-March. In Norway, many ski resorts have deep snow even though the winter has been the third warmest on record -- scientists say a spinoff of climate change may be more precipitation. "Turnover is 16 percent over the best season of 2004," said Andreas Roedven, head of Norway's Alpine Ski Area Association. Electricity prices in the Nordic region halved this month to 27.5 euros ($43.48) per megawatt hour from late 2007 highs because hydropower reservoirs were full and warm temperatures curbed heating demand. Senior officials from about 190 nations will meet in Bankok from March 31-April 4 to start work on a new long-term treaty to combat climate change to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol.

High in the Himalayas, the isolated mountain kingdom of Bhutan has done more to protect its environment than almost any other country. Forests cover nearly three quarters of its land, and help to absorb the greenhouse gases others emit. Its strict conservation policies help to guard one of the world's top 10 biodiversity hotspots, often to the chagrin of its own farmers. Yet Bhutan could pay a high price for the sins of others - global warming is a major threat to its fragile ecosystem and the livelihoods of its people. "Our farmers are paying a high price for our strict conservation policies," Agriculture Minister Sangay Ngedup told Reuters in an interview. "We are sacrificing a lot, but the world is not making a positive contribution to us." "The effect of climate change and global warming is going to cause havoc to our ecosystem here." The most dramatic threat is posed by what scientists call Glacial Lake Outburst Floods. As the Himalaya's glaciers recede, these lakes are forming and filling with melt water all along the mountain range, dammed by the rocks of glacial moraine. In 1994, one of those lakes burst its banks in Bhutan, and unleashed a torrent of floodwater which claimed 17 lives in the central Punakha valley, sweeping away homes, bridges and crops. Some of Bhutan's glaciers are believed to be retreating at 20 to 30 metres a year. And as that glacial melt accelerates, 24 of Bhutan's 2,674 glacial lakes are in danger of bursting. Some studies predict the wall separating two lakes in central Bhutan could burst as early as 2010, unleashing 53 million cubic metres of water, twice the volume of the 1994 outburst. "You get what is almost a mountain tsunami, which can wipe out anything in its path," said Nicholas Rosellini, resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme. The government, with the UN's help, is beginning the delicate task of trying to lower water levels in some of the high risk lakes, by making holes in the moraine dams without causing the whole structure to burst. Some people in remote places have been given radios to act as a rudimentary early warning system, and studies are being conducted to map the most vulnerable lakes and populations. But much remains to be done. The retreat of Bhutan's glaciers presents an even more formidable and fundamental challenge to a nation of around 600,000 people, nearly 80 percent of whom live by farming. Bhutan's rivers sustain not only the country's farmers, but also the country's main industry and export earner - hydro-electric power, mostly sold to neighbouring India. For a few years, Bhutan's farmers and its hydro power plants might have more summer melt water than they can use. One day, though, the glaciers may be gone, and the "white gold" upon which the economy depends may dry up. The threat led the government's National Environment Commission to a stark conclusion. "Not only human lives and livelihoods are at risk, but the very backbone of the nation's economy is at the mercy of climate change hazards," it wrote in a recent report. Scientists admit they have little solid data on how Bhutan's climate is already changing, but say weather patterns are becoming increasingly unpredictable. There was no snow during the winter of 1998 and, even more rarely, snow in mid-summer in the mountainous north in 1999. In August 2000 flash floods caused by torrential rains claimed dozens of lives. Droughts and landslides are likely to be increasingly commonplace concerns for Bhutan's mountain folk. Malaria, dengue and water-borne diseases like diarrhoea are also marching higher into the Himalayan foothills as temperatures rise. "In places where there was no malaria, malaria is appearing - in higher altitudes," said Dr Ugen Dophu, director of the Department of Public Health. "There is also a risk of epidemic outbreaks." Former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck made protection of Bhutan's rich environment a cornerstone of the country's philosophy of Gross National Happiness, the idea that lifestyle and values were as important as material gains. A quarter of the country's 38,400 square km is set aside as national parks or wildlife sanctuaries, and parliament has passed a law that forest cover should never fall below 60 percent. Yet environmental protection does not come cheap, says minister Ngedup. Farmers would love to convert some of the forest to arable land, while many lose livestock and crops to depredation by wild boar, tigers, leopards, bears and barking deer. Bhutan's government is drawing up a national plan to address the problems of climate change, with taskforces looking at the effects on agriculture, forests and biodiversity, health, water resources and energy, and the risk of natural disasters. But even the best planning in the world will not be enough if the predictions of the global Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change come true. "Even a slight increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius could have a devastating impact on our ecosystem," said Ngedup. "It would change the whole way of life for humans, as well as animal species and plants."

Speaking at a seminar on “Bangladesh in 2017 Davos: Some Reflections”, Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali on Sunday said Professor Klaus Schwab wrote the letter four days back. Hasina was the first elected leader of Bangladesh invited for the prestigious forum this year from Jan 17 to Jan 20. Ali said this was indeed in “recognition of the visionary leadership of the Prime Minister and the way she is taking Bangladesh towards stability, development and prosperity with her ‘Vision 2021’”. “This was further vindicated by Prof Schwab’s letter,” he said. The WEF annual meeting in Switzerland remains the leading platform for engaging the world’s top leaders in collaborative activities to shape the global, regional and industrial agenda at the beginning of each year. Leaders share their insights and innovations on how to best navigate the future in this Forum. Newly elected UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will also attend the meeting. Hasina was invited in six sessions related to water, climate change, sustainable development, the digital economy where she shared the progress made in Bangladesh. She also shared her perspective on future growth – the opportunities as well as the challenges she envisaged. “In fact, on a number of occasions, speaking as a voice of the wider developing world, her perspectives helped other panellists appreciate the complexities of the kind of challenges we face,” the foreign minister said. “While doing so the kind of challenges and limitations of a developing country was well articulated for charting possible solutions or pathways.” Ali said some might argue that “many of the prognosis or analyses in Davos may not apply to our situation or Davos does not offer ‘concrete solutions’, but we need to appreciate that these discussions." It provides a set of useful, relevant writings and pointers into scenarios that are likely to emerge as we develop ourselves to the next level, he added. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, MCCI, jointly organised the seminar in a Dhaka hotel. MCCI President Barrister Nihad Kabir was also present, among others.

Around the world, extreme weather ranging from wildfires to floods is being linked to manmade global warming, putting pressure on the summit to strengthen the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement on limiting the rise in temperature. “Our war against nature must stop, and we know that it is possible,” Guterres said ahead of the Dec. 2-13 summit. “We simply have to stop digging and drilling and take advantage of the vast possibilities offered by renewable energy and nature-based solutions.” Cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases - mostly from burning carbon-based fossil fuels - that have been agreed so far under the Paris deal are not enough to limit temperature rises to a goal of between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius (2.7-3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Many countries are not even meeting those commitments, and political will is lacking, Guterres said. President Donald Trump for his part has started withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, while the deforestation of the Amazon basin - a crucial carbon reservoir - is accelerating and China has tilted back toward building more coal-fired power plants. Seventy countries have committed to a goal of ‘carbon neutrality’ or ‘climate neutrality’ by 2050. This means they would balance out greenhouse emissions, for instance through carbon capture technology or by planting trees. But Guterres said these pledges were not enough. “We also see clearly that the world’s largest emitters are not pulling their weight,” he said, “and without them, our goal is unreachable.” Last year’s UN climate summit in Poland yielded a framework for reporting and monitoring emissions pledges and updating plans for further cuts. But sticking points remain, not least over an article on how to put a price on emissions, and so allow them to be traded. “I don’t even want to entertain the possibility that we do not agree on article 6,” Guterres said. “We are here to approve guidelines to implement article 6, not to find excuses not to do it.” Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has accepted an invitation to become UN special envoy on climate action and climate finance from Jan. 1, Guterres said.

Sea levels on the United States' mid-Atlantic coast are rising faster than the global average because of global warming, threatening the future of coastal communities, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday. Coastal waters from New York to North Carolina have crept up by an average of 2.4 to 4.4 millimeters (0.09 to 0.17 inches) a year, compared with an average global increase of 1.7 millimeters (0.07 inches) a year, the EPA said in a report. As a result, sea levels along the East Coast rose about a foot over the past century, the EPA's report, commissioned by the Climate Change Science Program, said. The EPA focused on the mid-Atlantic region because it "will likely see the greatest impacts due to rising waters, coastal storms, and a high concentration of population along the coastline," the agency said. Higher sea levels threaten to erode beaches and drastically change the habitats of species in the area, often at a pace too fast for species to adapt and survive, the EPA said. Communities in the area are at greater risk of flooding as a "higher sea level provides an elevated base for storm surges to build upon and diminishes the rate at which low-lying areas drain," the report found. Floods will probably cause more damage in the future as higher sea levels gradually erode and wash away dunes, beaches and wetlands that serve as a protective barrier. Consequently, homes and businesses would be closer to the water's edge. Rising sea levels have implications beyond the mid-Atlantic region, the report said. Ports challenged by rising waters could slow the transport of goods across the country, and disappearing beaches could hurt resorts and affect tourism revenue, the EPA said, damaging an already fragile U.S. economy. "Movement to the coast and development continues, despite the growing vulnerability to coastal hazards," the EPA said. Scientists have said the rate sea levels are rising has accelerated. By the end of the century, global sea levels could be seven to 23 inches higher, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted. Federal, state and local governments should step in now to prepare for the rising seas, said the EPA along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, who contributed to the report. Governments should protect residents through policies that preserve public beaches and coastal ecosystems and encourage retrofits of buildings to make them higher, the agencies said. Engineering rules for coastal areas used today are based on current sea levels and will not suffice in the future, the report said. Flood insurance rates also could be tweaked to accommodate risk from rising sea levels, the report said.

The plan, which Biden will unveil at an event in Pittsburgh later on Wednesday, would hike the US corporate tax rate to 28 percent, from its current 21 percent, to secure more revenue from corporations that have used offshore tax shelters and other measures to reduce their tax burdens. "President Biden's reform will reverse this damage and fundamentally reform the way the tax code treats the largest corporations," the White House said earlier as it released details of the plan. The Biden tax provisions quickly came under fire from American business interests and Republicans on a key tax committee in the US House of Representatives. "The proposal is dangerously misguided when it comes to how to pay for infrastructure," the US Chamber of Commerce said in a statement that warned the tax hikes would "slow the economic recovery and make the US less competitive globally." Unveiled along with Biden's infrastructure plan, the tax provisions would roll back many of former President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy. Biden's overall infrastructure plan charts a dramatic shift in the direction of the US economy, with investments in traditional projects like roads and bridges along with climate change and human services like elder care. The president hopes to draw bipartisan support from Republicans in Congress but will need solid backing from Democrats in the Senate and the House, if Republicans uniformly reject the legislation as they did his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. But some moderate Democrats hope to reverse Trump's cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT, which is felt most acutely in Northeastern states with higher taxes. "We say, no SALT, no deal," three House Democrats from New York and New Jersey said this week. Democrats control the House by a margin of 219 to 211, so they will need to stay united if no Republicans support the plan. The party has not yet decided how to shepherd the package through Congress, a House Democratic aide said. Republicans on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee decried the initiative in a pre-dawn statement as "a series of job-killing tax hikes" that would saddle American companies with a higher tax rate that their competitors in "Communist China."

The opinion polls have turned strongly against Australia's conservative Prime Minister John Howard as support shifts to his youthful new rival, but analysts say he can still recover to win a fifth term in office. With national elections due in the second half of 2007, Howard, 67, has suffered the worst slump in the polls in six years and has uncharacteristically stumbled in the opening weeks of parliament against new challenger Kevin Rudd. Rudd, 49, elected leader of the centre-left Labour opposition party in December, has lifted his party's hopes of victory on the back of his promise to pull Australian forces out of Iraq and to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change. Analysts say Howard, who won his fourth term in office in 2004 by promising to keep interest rates low, will claw back support when Australians focus on his strengths of the economy and national security. "The Reserve Bank holds the fate of the government in its hands," Monash University political analyst Nick Economou told Reuters. With record-low unemployment and inflationary pressures easing in Australia, Howard's supporters hope the central bank has stopped its cycle of interest rate hikes and may now look to a rate cut by the end of the year. Economou said an early rate cut would be devastating for Labour and could prompt Howard to run to the polls as early as possible from August. But it was more likely the government would use its May budget to re-focus the debate on the economy. "They may come up with big, big tax cuts, that will then re-focus the debate on the economy and back into an area of Howard's strength," Economou said. HOWARD STUMBLES The latest Reuters Poll Trend, which analyses the three main published opinion polls in Australia, found Howard's Liberal-National Party coalition trailed Labour by 13.4 points in February -- the worst result for the government since March 2001. The poll trend also found Howard has lost his commanding lead as preferred prime minister to Rudd -- the first time Howard has trailed as preferred prime minister since May 2001. The February polls appear to have rattled Howard, who made a rare mistake in parliament when he ruled out a link between greenhouse gases and global warming. He corrected himself hours later, saying he mis-heard the question, but not before the comments were broadcast on evening television news bulletins, further undermining his government's flagging support on environmental issues. In the past week, Howard prompted a heated debate about Australia's 1,400 troops in and around Iraq with unscripted criticism of US presidential hopeful Barack Obama's plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq in 2008. Howard found himself under fire at home and in the United States and was accused of meddling in US politics, putting Australia-US ties at risk because of his personal friendship and support for President George W Bush. "It has not been a good fortnight for the government," the Australian Financial Review's chief political correspondent, Laura Tingle, wrote on Friday. "They have now brought out the three bits of armoury -- economic management, national security, leadership -- which have stood them in good stead against all opposition leaders in the past, and they have not seemed all that effective." Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat who used to read transcripts of parliamentary debate as a child, has pushed his relative youth and family image, while Howard has countered by promoting his experience against Rudd's inexperience. Greg Craven, professor of government at Curtin University, said that while Rudd "must have seemed middle-aged as a child", he has highlighted Howard's age as a problem for the government. "Howard's greatest weakness is as obvious as it is embarrassing to state. He is growing old. Worse, he suddenly seems to be ageing more quickly," Craven wrote on Friday. Howard has twice clawed back from similar polls slumps, in 2001 and 2004, to win elections and notch up 11 years in power, and analysts and commentators warn it is too early to write his political obituary. "He's been down like this before," Economou said. "He's on much firmer territory on defence and foreign policy, and there's still the economic debate to unfold."

Move over, polar bear. The Pacific walrus may be the new icon of global warming. Like polar bears, walruses are dependent on floating sea ice to rest, forage for food and nurture their young. Like polar bears, walruses are suffering because of a scarcity of summer and fall sea ice in Arctic waters that scientists attribute to climate change. And like polar bears, which were listed as threatened in 2008, protections under the Endangered Species Act may be granted to walruses, even though it is hard to get an accurate count of their population. "You don't have to know how many passengers are on the Titanic to know it's in trouble when it hits an iceberg," said Rebecca Noblin, staff attorney for The Center for Biological Diversity, which sued to obtain Endangered Species Act safeguards for the walrus. For the lumbering, long-tusked marine mammals, problems caused by scarce ice are showing up on beaches in northwestern Alaska and across the Bering Strait in northeastern Siberia. For the third time in four years, large crowds of walruses have congregated this summer on shorelines of the Chukchi Sea instead of spreading over chunks of floating ice. That ice has largely disappeared. This year, summer sea ice levels reached their third-lowest point since satellite measurements started in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. As many as 15,000 walruses began crowding the shore near Point Lay, Alaska, in August and are just starting to disperse as ice forms in chilly fall weather, federal biologists said. CROWDED BEACHES Such congregations place walruses far from the best sources of clams and other food they pluck from the icy waters and, if they are young and small, at risk of sudden and grisly death. Last year, at another Alaska shore site where a few thousand walruses had converged, biologists found the carcasses of 131 calves, apparently trampled to death in a stampede. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was to announce last month its recommendation for an Endangered Species Act listing. The deadline was extended to Jan. 31 to give the agency time to evaluate two new studies. Both reports warn of a grim future. One predicts that the Chukchi Sea will be ice-free for three months a year by mid-century and up to five months by the end of the century, and that ice-free periods in the Bering Sea also will expand. The other study calculates that the ice-dependent walruses have a 40 percent chance of being extinct or in danger of extinction by century's end. A LONGER 'COMMUTE?' The latest estimate of the total Pacific walrus population is 129,000, said Joel Garlich-Miller, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. That figure is based on incomplete aerial surveys conducted by U.S. and Russian scientists and is probably on the low end, he said. Another key question is whether walruses stuck on shore are spending significantly more energy searching for food than they would if they could forage from floating ice. "There's this commute that's new to them, and it costs them," said Anthony Fischbach, a biologist and walrus specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He also suspects there may be fewer calves than there should be. "It's certainly shocking to see over 100 dead calves that were apparently healthy. But it's hard to put it in context," said Fischbach, one of the biologists who documented the carnage. "Are these the strong ones that come ashore, whereas the ones that are weaker couldn't make the 150-mile swim to shore?" To try to find answers, he and his colleagues have embarked on studies to count the adult-calf ratio within herds and use radio tracking to pin down their travels for food. Advocates of Chukchi Sea oil drilling and other development are expected to oppose any Pacific walrus listing. The state of Alaska, which supports oil drilling in walrus habitat, already has sued to overturn the listing of polar bears and formally opposed new protections considered by the government for ice-dependent Arctic seals. The state also objected to habitat protections proposed for polar bear and endangered Steller sea lions.

Flowers picked up to 150 years ago in Victorian England show that old collections of pressed plants around the world can help the study of climate change, scientists said on Wednesday. Ecologists compared samples of early spider orchids, held in collections with notes showing the exact day in spring when they were picked in southern England from 1848-1958, and dates when the same flower blossomed in the wild from 1975-2006. "Warmer years were associated with earlier flowering ... In both cases flowering was advanced by about six days per 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) rise in average spring temperature," they wrote in the Journal of Ecology after cross-checking with local temperature records. The match between higher temperatures and quicker flowering for both old and modern orchids showed for the first time that botanical collections could be a reliable source to study climate, even if temperature records were lacking, they said. Vast numbers of specimens of plants and animals are in collections around the world, some of them dating back 250 years and long before there were reliable temperature records in many nations. "It potentially opens up new uses for ... specimens -- this could provide us with long-term data about climate," said Anthony Davy, a professor at the University of East Anglia who was a co-author of the study led by colleague Karen Robbirt. The UN panel of climate scientists said in a 2007 report that average world temperatures rose 0.7 degree Celsius (1.3 F) over the 19th century, mainly in recent decades due to a build-up of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. Tree rings are among biological indicators of climate in past centuries, caused by natural swings. Manmade global warming is very likely to be the dominant cause of warming in the past half-century, according to the UN panel. The 77 pressed orchids, picked when in full bloom, had meticulous records of dates and sites. Early spider orchids have greenish petals and a purple-brown part which looks like the back of a spider. Davy told Reuters that spring temperatures were the main factor determining flowering times for orchids -- rather than the length of daylight or the changing availability of nutrients. He said one issue for future study was whether climate change might bring a mismatch between the appearance of flowers and insects vital for their pollination. Bees, for instance, might not be around when fruit trees are in bloom.

China is preparing its first plan to battle climate change, a senior policy adviser said, stressing rising alarm about global warming in a nation where economic growth has gone untethered. Zou Ji, a climate policy expert at the People's University of China in Beijing, told Reuters the national programme will probably set broad goals for emissions and coping with changing weather patterns. It is likely to be released this year after at least two years of preparation and bureaucratic bargaining, he said. The plan showed that China was sharing deepening global alarm that greenhouse gases from factories, power plants and vehicles are lifting average temperatures and will seriously, perhaps calamitously, alter the world's climate, said Zou. "All this shows that the Chinese government is paying more and more attention to this issue," he said. "When it's approved and issued it will be China's first official, comprehensive document on climate change." Last week a U.N. panel of scientists warned that human activity is almost certainly behind global warming. The expert group gave a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 Celsius (3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit) in the 21st century, bringing more droughts, heatwaves and a rise in sea levels that could continue for over 1,000 years even if greenhouse gas emissions are capped. China is galloping to become possibly the world's third-biggest economy by 2008, overtaking Germany and lagging only Japan and the United States. And it may become the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases by 2009, overtaking the United States, the International Energy Agency has forecast. Beijing's public reaction to the panel's finding has been muted but behind the scenes it is paying attention to the raft of warnings, said Zou, who has been a member of Chinese delegation to international climate talks since 2000. Pan Yue, a vice minister of China's State Environmental Protection Administration, said wealthy countries bore most responsibility for cutting emissions but added that China would contribute, the China Business News reported on Monday. "As a responsible great power, China won't evade its duty," Pan told the paper. "There's tremendous pressure to reduce emissions, but this won't be solved overnight." Zou said the programme was awaiting approval from China's cabinet, or State Council, after being vetted by over a dozen ministries and agencies, but preparations for a major Communist Party congress later this year may slow its release. The dilemma facing President Hu Jintao is how to translate concern into policies that deliver growth and jobs while cutting fossil fuel use and greenhouse gases, said Alan Dupont, an expert on climate change and security at the University of Sydney. "The whole stability of the regime and, as Hu would see it, the future of his country, depends on the continuation of economic growth of 8 and 9 percent," Dupont said. "But the realisation is dawning on them that China will not get to where it wants to go unless it deals with climate change." In China's secretive, top-down government, few major policy shifts are advertised beforehand. But there have been growing signs that Beijing is worried about how global warming could frustrate ambitions for prosperity, stability and influence. Climate experts have been preparing a presentation on global warming for China's top leaders, the first time one of their regular study sessions will be devoted to climate change and a sure sign the issue is climbing the political ladder, said Zou.

The head of the International Monetary Fund gave a gloomy report on Saturday on prospects for the world economy to a dozen leaders debating how to respond to global financial turmoil. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a high-powered forum hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that most of the downside risks to the world economy feared six months ago had now become reality. "The forecasts we are going to release in a few days are not really improving," Strauss-Kahn said. The IMF is due to release its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook next week, just before the IMF's spring meetings in Washington. Earlier in the week, the IMF said it has cut its 2008 outlook for world economic growth for the second time this year -- a move that acknowledged housing and credit problems in the United States were exacting a heavy toll on the global economy. The IMF now expects global growth to slow to 3.7 percent this year, down from its January forecast of 4.1 percent and lower still from the 4.8 percent rate it predicted in October last year. Brown has called together a dozen leaders from centre-left parties, including South African President Thabo Mbeki, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer and Ghana's President John Kufuor, to discuss globalisation, climate change and reforms to global institutions at a conference outside London. Also attending are the heads of the IMF, World Trade Organisation (WTO), the African Development Bank and several U.N. agencies. REFORMS Brown is using the forum to promote his ideas for the reform of global financial institutions to tackle the worldwide credit crunch sparked by the U.S. sub-prime lending crisis. Brown is pressing for global, rather than national supervision of financial markets, for banks to come clean on the losses they have suffered due to the sub-prime crisis and for a global early warning system to be set up to pre-empt new crises. One bright spot among the discussions was talk of improving prospects for a breakthrough in the long-running talks on world trade liberalisation. WTO chief Pascal Lamy said the Doha round of talks were "inevitably long and complex". "My feeling is that we are now reaching a stage where it (an agreement) could happen," he said. Several leaders said rising food and energy prices posed a new economic challenge, particularly for poor countries. Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank, warned that many African governments were straining their budgets by handing out food subsidies to help their populations cope with rising prices. Summarising the discussions, Brown said there were worries about "the combination of inflation and stagnation at the same time and the effects that would have on the world economy." Brown said there was general support among the leaders for "moving further and faster on disclosure and transparency" in financial markets and on a new early warning system for the world economy.

For the people protesting against it, a new dam near these sun-drenched ruins may be more than an environmental upheaval: in it they scent an affront to the country's pre-Islamic identity. For 2,500 years, the tomb of Cyrus the Great has stood on the plain at Pasargadae in southern Iran, a simple but dignified monument to a king revered as the founder of the mighty Persian empire. But some fear the dam and reservoir pose a threat to the ancient structure. They say the project may increase humidity in the arid area near the city of Shiraz, which they believe could damage the limestone mausoleum. That may seem far-fetched -- officials dismiss it -- but the row highlights deep cultural faultlines in attitudes to the Islamic Republic's wealth of pre-Islamic relics. "This is an illegal project which will harm our historical heritage," said Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a lawyer campaigning against the Sivand Dam and an associate of Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. He accuses the authorities of not paying enough attention to sites dating from before the Arab Muslim invasion in the 7th century of what is now Iran: "They don't care about pre-Islamic history." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad officially inaugurated the dam, some 7 km (4.5 miles) away from Pasargadae, in April. Cyrus built the capital in the 6th century B.C. and is believed to be buried there. Ringed by bare and tawny hills, Pasargadae is one of Iran's eight world heritage sites, though it is not as well preserved or famous abroad as Persepolis, erected by Cyrus' successors closer to present-day Shiraz. Many Iranians still see Cyrus as one of their greatest historical heroes, who arguably created the first world empire and showed tolerance towards different faiths of his era. Cyrus conquered Babylon in today's Iraq in 539 B.C. and freed the Jews held in captivity there. He is also credited with authoring a decree inscribed on a clay cylinder which some have described as the first charter of human rights. "We are really proud of him. He was unique," said a man in Shiraz who gave his name as Reza Hosseini. Government officials say the dam is needed to help farmers irrigate land to grow corn, rice, tomatoes and other agricultural produce. They have promised to closely monitor any climatic changes that result from the dam. Iranian Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, who heads the state culture and heritage organisation, has suggested groups "opposing the Islamic Republic" are behind the protests. "It is far from here," said one guard at the dam site, which is slowly filling up. "There will be no damage." People in the provincial capital Shiraz -- renowned as a city of poets, roses and beautiful mosques, as well as for its imperial Persian ruins -- are not so sure. They complain of contradictory information about the dam's potential impact and say they do not know what to believe. "If there is even a tiny possibility of damage to historical monuments we have to be very careful," said shop owner Omid Nejati, selling hand-woven wool and silk carpets, one decorated with a motif of the tomb of Cyrus. Near the dam itself, even one of the farmers it is supposed to help was sceptical. "We don't have water problems," said the 35-year-old man, declining to give his name because of the issue's sensitivity as he took a break from working the land. "The dam was a project to create job opportunities for people from other areas." REVERED AND REVILED In the mountains in the distance lies the Bolaghi gorge, which will be flooded as part of the project. International teams have in the past few years excavated the area, believed to form part of a Persian royal road and to hold other archaeological remains, ahead of the planned inundation. Farzin Fardanesh, a consultant of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, said nobody could tell for sure what the dam's impact might be. There was justified concern, but "no proven risk" to Pasargadae. In his book The Soul of Iran, American-Iranian journalist Afshin Molavi describes how Cyrus was praised by the US-backed Shah but criticised by the Muslim clerics and leftist revolutionaries who toppled him in 1979. After the Islamic revolution, one prominent ayatollah branded Cyrus a tyrant, liar and homosexual and even called for the destruction of his tomb as well as that of Persepolis. "Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed," Afshin wrote. Even so, not much remains of Cyrus' Pasargadae: his multi-tiered tomb is the most impressive building even though it was looted and emptied long ago. The parched surroundings make it hard to imagine that lush gardens once encircled the imposing cenotaph before Alexander the Great crushed the empire Cyrus had founded around 330 B.C, his armies sacking and burning Persepolis. "Unfortunately the government didn't listen to us," said Dadkhah. But 4,000 people have signed his protest petition against the dam, he added: "I never give up."

South African President Thabo Mbeki said he believed Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe will step down peacefully and that the chief challenge for the region was to ensure Zimbabwe has free and fair elections next year. Mbeki told Tuesday's Financial Times he had started mediation following his appointment last week by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to spearhead efforts to resolve Zimbabwe's crisis. Asked if the 83-year-old Mugabe -- accused of electoral abuses and economic mismanagement by the opposition -- would eventually stand down, Mbeki said he believed he would. "I think so. Yes, sure," Mbeki said. "You see, President Mugabe and the leadership of (the ruling) ZANU-PF believe they are running a democratic country." "That's why you have an elected opposition, that's why it's possible for the opposition to run municipal government (in Harare and Bulawayo)," he said in an interview. The SADC appointed Mbeki to act as mediator between Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) when it held a summit in Tanzania last week after the Zimbabwe government's violent March 11 crackdown on political opponents. The South African leader dismissed suggestions that Zimbabwe's neighbours could force change in the country. "We don't have a big stick," he said, adding a joint approach by African leaders could pave the way to a settlement. Mbeki said his office had already been in contact with both of the MDC's main factions and ZANU-PF to draw up a negotiating framework for next year's elections, in which Mugabe has already been endorsed as the ZANU-PF candidate. Mbeki said the future talks would likely focus on MDC demands for legal and electoral reforms, including the strict media and security laws which critics say Mugabe has used to entrench his power in the country. "I am quite clear from previous interactions with the MDC we have had they will raise questions ... like legislation affecting the media, legislation about holding of public meetings," Mbeki said in the online transcript of his interview. "We will then engage ZANU-PF saying it is necessary to respond to all of these. We may very well come to a stage later when they will have to sit together to agree ... (on) what they will do to create a climate conducive to free and fair elections." The MDC's principal leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, said in Johannesburg he would be willing to commit to any election that could be guaranteed free and fair, but said it would require quick action from Mbeki to create the appropriate conditions. The SADC, criticised in the West for turning a blind eye to Mugabe's crackdown, hopes its appointment of Mbeki will lead to direct talks between Mugabe and the MDC although previous attempts to broker political agreement have ended in failure. The West accuses Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, of authoritarian rule and economic mismanagement. Mugabe says he is being punished for seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks.

Malaysia's government will offer "credible" cuts in its emissions of carbon dioxide at the Copenhagen climate change summit in a bid to halt global warming, Prime Minister Najib Razak told Reuters on Sunday. Najib will be among more than 110 world leaders who will meet in Copenhagen next week to attend a summit to try to clinch a deal on deeper emissions cuts by rich nations, steps by developing nations to cut their carbon pollution and finance to help the poor adapt to climate change. "We are willing to offer our commitment, I am not just going to call on the developed world I am going to commit Malaysia and I am going to commit Malaysia to very credible cuts which means we have to spend, which we will do," Najib said in the interview. Najib said the cuts were still being worked on. The United Nations has said a full, legal treaty to expand or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol is out of reach at the talks, after two years of troubled negotiations, and is likely to be agreed some time in 2010. UN data shows Malaysia's carbon emissions in 2006 stood at 187 million tones or 7.2 tonnes from each Malaysian. Although that figure is far less than neighbouring Indonesia, which is the world's third largest emitter with 2.3 billion tonnes or 10 tonnes per capita, according to Indonesian government data, Najib said all nations must contribute. "It has to be predicated on the fundamental principles of the Kyoto protocol and the UN Framework on Climate Convention," he said. "Amongst which the most important being the common but differentiated responsibilities that the developed world must deliver against larger cuts in terms of carbon emissions and that the developing world should be assisted particularly in terms of financial assistance, capacity building and technology." TIGHT BUDGETS MUST ACCOMODATE CLIMATE CHANGE Najib said that despite the current economic turmoil, which has seen the United States and Europe plunge into huge budget deficits, the fight against climate change had to take priority. The United Nations wants to raise $10 billion a year from 2010-12 in quick-start funds to help the poor cope with global warming and move away from fossil fuels. But few nations have offered quick-start cash. In the longer term, the United Nations estimates the fight against global warming is likely to cost $300 billion a year from 2020, largely to help developing nations adapt to impacts such as droughts, floods and heatwaves. "If we really talking about it we must walk the talk (on funding). Otherwise we are just going to face a very uncertain future and the effects will be quite catastrophic," Najib said.

The Maldives, worried about rising seas from climate change, wants steeper cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions but is unwilling to curb its tourism industry, which is reliant on polluting international flights. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in Singapore promoting his book "Paradise Drowning" at an environmental business summit, said cutting back on tourism was not the answer even though the country's survival was more important than development. "I don't think it's a viable option for us to cut down on tourism because it's the mainstay of our economy," Gayoom told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. Tourist arrivals grew 12 percent last year to a record in the Maldives, a chain of Indian Ocean islands known for luxury resorts, expensive honeymoons and world-class scuba diving. Tourism contributes about 5 percent to global emissions of greenhouse gases, but this is expected to rise as more people take international flights. Scientists say emissions from jet engines have a much greater heat-trapping effect when released high in the atmosphere than when released at ground level. This irony was not lost on Gayoom, facing the same problem as major developing countries that do not want any global agreement on emissions to constrain economic growth. The United Nations is leading talks to try to agree a new pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012. With the United Nations forecasting aviation emissions to rise by two to five times by 2050, the European Union aims to make all airlines buy pollution permits whether they fly into or out of the bloc. VICTIMS "It's up to the business community, the corporate community, to look at alternatives to air travel as it is now -- to have more efficient fuel, alternative methods of fuel consumption, safer methods, greener methods -- we are the victims," Gayoom said. "For a country like the Maldives, development comes after survival," he said. "I'm not happy at all, because what the international community has agreed so far is not enough to save our country and other low-lying area countries." A U.N. climate panel has forecast world sea levels are likely to rise by up to 59 cm (2 ft) by 2100 due to global warming. Gayoom said some of his people could be moved to islands with higher ground but adaption was not enough and it would cost $6 billion to build sea defences around the tiny Indian Ocean islands -- more than the Maldives could afford. He said the country was not planning a levy on international tourists to help fund such a scheme, but was considering a trust fund combining government revenues and money from international donors. The economy, which Gayoom said would grow between 6 and 7 percent in 2008, derives about 30 percent of revenues from tourism. Officials previously forecast 9.5 percent growth this year after 6.6 percent last year and a 19.1 percent post-tsunami boom in 2006. Gayoom, 70, who has led the Maldives for three decades, said he planned to run in October presidential elections and was confident of adding to his tenure as Asia's longest-serving ruler. "The introduction of a multi-party liberal democracy in the Maldives is going to be my legacy."

Republican John McCain pledged to take the lead in combating global climate change if elected president in a speech that set him apart from the policies of President George W. Bush. In remarks he prepared to give at a wind technology firm in Portland, Oregon, on Monday, the Arizona senator said he would seek international accords to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and would offer an incentive system to make businesses in the United States cleaner. "The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington," McCain said in remarks he planned to give at the Vestas Wind Technology plant. "Good stewardship, prudence, and simple common sense demand that we act to meet the challenge, and act quickly," he added. McCain is visiting Oregon where Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama is favored to beat Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary on May 20. The speech set McCain apart from fellow Republican Bush, who has been skeptical about global warming throughout his eight-year term, and was calibrated to win support from independents and centrist Democrats he will need to convince to win office in the November election. "I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears. I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges," he added. If elected president, McCain said he would push for "meaningful environmental protocols" that included developing industrial powers India and China, to seek to cut worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. He planned to present a so-called cap and trade system to Congress that sets clear limits on all greenhouse gas emissions for U.S. businesses, while also allowing the sale of rights to excess emissions, so as to "change the dynamic" of the U.S. energy economy. "Those who want clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels will have their opportunity through a new market that rewards those and other innovations in clean energy," he said. McCain said the plan would set out specific goals on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, including a return by 2012 to 2005 levels of emission, and by 2020 to 1990s levels. McCain has campaigned on his support for alternative energy sources including wind, solar and biomass technologies in his run for the White House, as well as support for nuclear power.

"I didn't want to do it, I wasn't looking for trouble," Stone told Reuters. But the 70-year-old director, known for films such as "JFK", "Natural Born Killers" and "Wall Street", said he changed his mind after he met with Snowden in Russia. "Although I was worried about it still being boring and dull, I saw it as a dramatic thriller. I felt like it wouldn't get an audience as a documentary-type film," Stone said.  "Snowden", out in theatres on Friday, traces Snowden's journey from a conservative CIA agent to a disillusioned NSA operative until he fled the United States in 2013 and exposed the government's mass surveillance programmes of ordinary people. He is now living in Russia and is wanted by the US government on espionage charges. Amnesty International and two other groups this week launched a campaign to have him pardoned. Stone and Snowden met a few times in Russia and agreed that the film was going to be a dramatisation. Then the film hit a wall when Stone went to studios for financing. The director declined to name which studios he had approached. "We live in that climate - this is definitely, I believe, self-censorship," Stone said. "I don't believe the NSA called anybody and said 'don't do this'. Who knows? But the truth is ... you either join the club or you're excluded."  Eventually, Open Road Films, a joint venture by theatre chains Regal Entertainment Group and Dalian Wanda Group-owned AMC Entertainment that distributed this year's Oscar-winning journalism drama "Spotlight", stepped in to co-finance "Snowden", made for about $40 million. The film, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden and Shailene Woodley as his girlfriend Lindsay Mills, was shot mostly in Europe, with Germany providing production subsidies and becoming the stand-in for Maryland, where Snowden grew up. Then there were issues making a story about computer coding and programmers engaging for audiences.  "You don't have violence, you don't have chases, you don't have guns. You have to really understand, try to understand the world and make it exciting," Stone said. Stone did shoot key scenes in Washington DC and in Hawaii, and had Gordon-Levitt and Woodley act out a date scene in front of the White House. "Well, if you're going to take a risk in the US, you might as well go the full hog, right?" the director said with a laugh.

US President Barack Obama will confront the Afghan war "head-on" when he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday and address criticism he does not deserve it so early in his presidency, officials said. Obama is the third sitting US president, along with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to win the prize. Jimmy Carter was honored two decades after he left office. Other prominent Nobel peace laureates include Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa. Obama will accept the prize just nine days after he ordered 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan to break the momentum of the Taliban. The troop announcement, so soon to the Nobel ceremony, was an "interesting coincidence of history" not lost on the president, a senior administration official said. He is due to receive the award in a ceremony in Oslo City Hall starting at 1200 GMT (7 a.m. EST) after flying overnight from Washington. Aides said Obama, known for his soaring rhetoric, was still working on the estimated 20- to 25-minute speech in the hours before he was due to travel. In a signal to Americans the fragile US economy and 10 percent unemployment rate remain his top priority, Obama held a meeting with members of the US Congress at the White House to discuss job creation before flying to Norway. Americans remain anxious about the economy, nudging Obama's approval ratings to 50 percent or below and potentially hurting his Democratic Party in congressional elections next year. Some polls show that while many Americans are proud Obama is receiving the award, a majority feel it is undeserved. Many people were stunned, including some in the White House, when the Nobel committee announced in October it was awarding the peace prize to Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" and cited his push for nuclear disarmament. Critics called the decision premature, given that Obama, who took office in January, had achieved few tangible gains as he grapples with challenges ranging from the war in Afghanistan and nuclear stand-offs with Iran and North Korea to climate change. Obama is due to join scores of other world leaders in Copenhagen next week at the climax of a UN conference on climate change, although legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions is stuck in the US Congress. SQUARING THE CIRCLE The administration official said Obama would not shy away from the Afghanistan war in his speech in Oslo and would address the apparent contradiction of a wartime president whose country is involved in two wars receiving a peace prize. "Right now, he has a range of foreign policy and national security initiatives, all of which are designed toward achieving greater peace and security in the world. That would include our efforts in Afghanistan, our efforts against extremism," the official said. Obama will address issues like the Afghan conflict "head-on," the official said, adding Obama would also deal with the question of whether he deserved the prize. "He feels in many ways that he has not fully earned the award yet. He is at the beginning of his presidency and in many ways at the beginning of his work on behalf of peace." At the time of the announcement, Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled but would accept the award as a "call to action" to confront the global challenges of the 21st century. "I will say the president understands and again will also recognize that he doesn't belong in the same discussion as Mandela and Mother Teresa," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday. "But I think what the president is proud of is the steps that this administration has taken to re-engage the world." Obama has been widely credited with improving America's global image after the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, who alienated allies with his mostly unilateral policies, like the 2003 US led invasion of Iraq.

Rival Premier League managers Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger joined forces on Thursday to support Kevin Keegan and Alan Curbishley who resigned from their jobs two weeks ago on points of principle. Both men quit only three games into the season with Curbishley leaving West Ham claiming that the club's board had undermined him over transfers. Keegan left Newcastle citing interference from directors as the main reason for his resignation. "I admire Kevin Keegan and I admire Alan Curbishley because they went on a matter of principle and the principle being I am not in control of my team any longer," Manchester United manager Ferguson told Sky Sports News at a League Managers Association dinner at Wembley Stadium. "Players were being sold over their heads without even acknowledging them. That is not acceptable. It is not why you set out to be a manager, on the whims of a chairman. Arsenal manager Wenger said: "If you have no control, but are responsible for success or for failure, that is terrible. "The manager is the most important man at the club, if not why do you sack the manager if it isn't going well?" Ferguson, who has been in charge of Manchester United for nearly 22 years, and Wenger, who is coming up to 12 years at Arsenal, are the two longest-serving managers in the Premier League. "In the modern climate of young chairmen and very rich chairmen, you really need to be successful and you have to manage different things from when Arsene and I started," Ferguson said. MUTUAL RESPECT "Yes, there are financial constraints we are all aware of that but when you change halfway through from the start of the season, and the manager is subjected to these problems, it's no longer the same job. "And so therefore they walk because it's a matter of principle and I totally agree with it." The pair also discussed the amount of overseas money pouring into the Premier League, highlighted by the Abu Dhabi United Group's takeover of Manchester City. The group have said they will try and sign Cristiano Ronaldo from United and Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal in the January transfer window. Wenger said he thought big investment could destabilise the league. "New people are coming in for different reasons now," he said. "In England we had a generation of fans whose ambition was to buy the club of their dreams. Those days are gone. Now people are coming in for different reasons, maybe money or glory. "To have more money in the League is a good thing, but the inflationary pressure of having too much money is destabilising for other clubs, it puts a huge pressure on their resources." Although the two men are fierce rivals, they smiled and joked with each other. "There is a much better understanding and mutual respect now," said Wenger. Ferguson added: "We've sat and shared a glass of wine and a meal on many occasions on coaching conferences in Geneva. Of course there is respect. We've both got great teams and have had incredible competition over the last decade."

Delegates at climate talks in Bali are close to agreeing guidelines for a pay-and-preserve scheme for forests under a future deal to fight global warming, Indonesia's foreign minister said on Thursday. Under the scheme called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD), preservation of forests could become a tradeable commodity with the potential to earn poor nations billions of dollars from trading carbon credits. Scientists say deforestation in the tropics is responsible for about 20 percent of all man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and preserving what's left of them is crucial because they soak up enormous amounts of the gas. CO2 is blamed for the bulk of global warming that the UN Climate Panel says will trigger rising seas, rapid melting of glaciers and more droughts, floods and intense storms. "In the meeting this morning, it was very clear that there was enthusiasm from developed countries on the importance of forests in the context of climate change," Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda told reporters. "Developed countries and countries with large forest areas agreed to formulate a world map as part of the cooperation, involving not just governments, but also institutions like universities and research bodies." Curbing deforestation has been a top issue for the thousands of delegates at Bali because the Kyoto Protocol, the existing U.N. climate pact, does not include schemes that reward developing nations for preserving tropical rainforests. LAND USE At its simplest, the REDD scheme would allow carbon credits to be issued to qualifying developing nations. Rich nations buy these credits to offset their emissions at home. The unresolved issue centres on the question whether to put future talks on deforestation in a wider context, which includes other types of land use, a proposal backed by the United States and opposed by most developing nations, an Indonesian forestry official said. The official told Reuters the proposal could take away the focus from forests, complicate the scheme and further stall its implementation. So far, the Bali meeting has agreed to encourage individual countries to run a series of projects to help them prepare for REDD while agreeing to study the issue further. The World Bank has already launched plans for a $300 million fund to fend off global warming by preserving forests, which includes a $100 million "readiness" fund to give grants to around 20 countries to prepare them for large-scale forest protection schemes. Grants will fund projects including surveys of current forest assets, monitoring systems and tightening governance. A second $200 million "carbon finance mechanism" will allow some of these countries to run pilot programmes earning credits for curbing deforestation. Indonesia, a keen supporter of REDD, is among the world's top three greenhouse gas emitters because of deforestation, peatland degradation and forest fires, according to a report earlier this year sponsored by the World Bank and Britain's development arm. Indonesia has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres (91 million hectares), or about 10 percent of the world's remaining tropical forests, according to rainforestweb.org, a portal on rainforests.

The annual rate of sea level rise increased to 3.3 millimetres (0.13 inch) in 2014 - a rate of 33 centimetres (13 inches) if kept unchanged for a century - from 2.2 mm in 1993, according to a team of scientists in China, Australia and the United States. Sea levels have risen by about 20 cms in the past century and many scientific studies project a steady acceleration this century as man-made global warming melts more ice on land. Until now, however, scientists have found it hard to detect whether the rate has picked up, is flat or has fallen since 1990. The study found that early satellite data had exaggerated the rate of sea level rise in the 1990s, masking the recent acceleration. The confirmation of a quickening rise "highlights the importance and urgency" of working out ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to protect low-lying coasts, the scientists wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change. A thaw of Greenland's ice sheet accounted for more than 25 percent of the sea level rise in 2014 against just 5 percent in 1993, according to the study led by Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory of Marine Science and Technology. Other big sources include loss of glaciers from the Himalayas to the Andes, Antarctica's ice sheet and a natural expansion of ocean water as it warms up from its most dense at 4 degrees Celsius (39.2°F). A UN panel of climate scientists said in 2014 that sea levels could rise by up to about a metre by 2100. Several climate experts who were not involved in the study welcomed the findings. "This is a major warning to us about the dangers of a sea level rise that will continue for many centuries even after global warming is stopped," Peter Wadhams, of the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "A big question in climate science has been whether the rise in global sea level rise is accelerating. Now there is strong evidence that this is indeed the case," said Brian Hoskins of Imperial College, London. A rise in sea levels will threaten low-lying coasts from Miami to Bangladesh, cities from Shanghai to San Francisco and small island states such as Tuvalu in the Pacific.

CANBERRA, Nov 17, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - After months of stalemate, Australia's government could finally seal an agreement for its sweeping carbon trade scheme by early next week after the opposition said on Tuesday they were confident of a deal. The government wants carbon trading to start in July 2011, covering 75 percent of emissions in what could become the second domestic trading platform outside of Europe. But laws governing the scheme have been stalled for months, unable to win parliamentary approval because of intense opposition from rival lawmakers. The government, short of a majority in the Senate, has been negotiating changes with the main opposition bloc to secure extra votes needed to pass the carbon laws. Opposition negotiator Ian Macfarlane is confident his side would now support a deal. "I remain confident that we'll get an outcome that I can take to the party room, and that the party room can consider. On that basis, I'd be optimistic that the party room would support it," Macfarlane told reporters. He said negotiations on the laws, which were introduced into the Senate on Tuesday, would continue all week and into the coming weekend. The opposition would then vote early next week on wether to support or reject the laws. The government has already bowed to a key opposition demand to permanently exclude agriculture, which accounts for around 16 percent of Australian emissions, but the opposition also wants more concessions for coal miners. The carbon trade bills were defeated in the Senate a first time in August, and could provide a trigger for an early election if they are rejected a second time this month. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wants the package of 11 bills passed before he attends December's global climate talks in Copenhagen. The Senate is due to adjourn for the year on Nov. 26, although Rudd has offered to extend the sitting if needed. The opposition Liberal and National party coalition is deeply divided over climate policy, and opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has promised his lawmakers they would have a chance to approve or reject any deal with the government. The divisions resurfaced at a closed-door opposition party room meeting on Tuesday, when 10 opposition lawmakers said the party should vote against the scheme no matter what amendments were negotiated. However, a party spokesman said more than 10 lawmakers spoke in favour of Turnbull's policy to negotiate changes. Turnbull, well behind in opinion polls, wants a deal to head off the threat of an early election. The government is seven seats short of a majority in the Senate. Junior Climate Minister Greg Combet on Tuesday said opposition divisions were the greatest threat to the carbon trade scheme, which is the centrepiece of Rudd's policy to fight global warming. "The coalition is clearly split, with the Nationals gone off on their own course of action, and the Liberal and National parties fundamentally divided over the issue of climate change," Combet told parliament. Australia's carbon debate is being closely watched overseas, particularly in the United States where lawmakers are debating their own proposals. Neighbouring New Zealand is also trying to pass revised emissions trading laws. To read in-depth articles on Australasian carbon risks and opportunities, visit Carbon Central -- Australia's Climate Change Hub here), which brings together several of Australia's leading climate-change advisers and solution-providers in one place. For additional news and analysis on global carbon markets, click here and sign up to our free Carbon Interactive newsletter.

The ocean’s dominant feature, extending up to 2 miles deep and as much as 1,200 miles wide, is the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, by far the largest current in the world. It is the world’s climate engine, and it has kept the world from warming even more by drawing deep water from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, and pulling it to the surface. There, it exchanges heat and carbon dioxide with the atmosphere before being dispatched again on its eternal round trip. Without this action, which scientists call upwelling, the world would be even hotter. “From no perspective is there any place more important than the Southern Ocean,” said Joellen L Russell, an oceanographer at the University of Arizona. “There’s nothing like it on planet Earth.” For centuries this ocean was largely unknown. But more recently, a new generation of floating, autonomous probes that can collect temperature, density and other data for years — diving deep underwater, and even exploring beneath the Antarctic sea ice, before rising to the surface to phone home — has enabled scientists to learn much more. They have discovered that global warming is affecting the Antarctic current in complex ways, and these shifts could complicate the ability to fight climate change in the future. As the world warms, Russell and others say, the unceasing winds that drive the upwelling are getting stronger. That could have the effect of releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by bringing to the surface more of the deep water that has held this carbon locked away for centuries. In addition, the Southern Ocean is getting warmer, and that has another important climate effect. Some of this upwelling water, which is already relatively warm, flows beneath ice shelves on the Antarctic coast that help keep the continent’s vast, thick ice sheets from reaching the sea more quickly. While the potential magnitude of all these effects remains unclear, oceanographers and climate scientists say that it is increasingly urgent to understand this interplay of powerful forces and how human activity is transforming them. “There’s lots of questions left,” said Lynne Talley, an oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. HUNTING GROUNDS Much of humanity’s limited scientific understanding of the Southern Ocean was long linked to an industry that saw money to be made there: whaling. Beginning in the late 19th century, whaling ships began heading southward, to the Antarctic, in growing numbers as whale populations in the more hospitable waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans declined from overhunting. But in time, overhunting became a problem in the Southern Ocean as well. And the British government decided more needed to be learned about the environment and behavior of the whales there in hopes of sustaining their numbers. Which is why, in the late 1920s, George Deacon, a young London university graduate, received an intriguing job offer: sampling the waters of the Southern Ocean as part of an expedition to help preserve the whaling industry. He spent the better part of the next decade aboard ships, analysing water samples from various depths. It could be dangerous work. But Deacon overcame these obstacles, ultimately sampling enough of the ocean to gain a broad understanding of its mechanics. He combined his ideas with those of others in a 1937 book, “The Hydrology of the Southern Ocean,” that became the standard textbook describing the waters around Antarctica. Around the 1950s, though, research efforts expanded. And by the late 1970s, polar-orbiting satellites began gathering data as well. SENSORS AND SATELLITES But the real revolution in Southern Ocean science began in the mid-2000s, with the use of drifting floats that can adjust their buoyancy, like fish, to move up and down in the water as they take readings. The floats, part of a worldwide project called Argo, have helped transform oceanographers’ understanding of the Southern Ocean. Oceanographers now know much more about the complex cycle of worldwide oceanic currents, of which the Antarctic upwelling is only a part. The waters circling Antarctica are completing an epic journey from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, flowing southward and slowly cycling upward as if climbing an ocean-sized circular staircase. Scientists better understand how closely intertwined the Southern Ocean is, despite its remoteness, with the rest of the world. The circular flow of water around Antarctica is, in effect, a climate engine spinning on a continental scale. With this new knowledge, researchers are now growing increasingly alarmed about how the ocean and current may change as the Earth continues to warm. ‘THE ROT OF AGES’ One of the most important processes that occurs in the Southern Ocean is the exchange of carbon dioxide between the ocean and the atmosphere. And how this process may change as the world warms has huge implications for fighting climate change. Global warming is mainly caused by carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels. Oceans absorb large amounts of these emissions, while also absorbing heat from the atmosphere, serving as a critical buffer against climate change and keeping the world from otherwise becoming a practically unlivable hothouse. By some estimates the oceans have taken up about 25% of the excess carbon dioxide, and more than 90% of the excess heat, that has resulted from burning of fossil fuels and other human activities since the 19th century. But the deep ocean water that upwells around Antarctica contains even more carbon dioxide — not from current emissions, but dissolved over centuries from organic matter including decaying marine organisms, tiny and immense, that sink when they die. “It’s been accumulating the rot of ages,” Russell said. When this ancient water reaches the surface, some of that carbon dioxide is released, or “outgassed,” as the scientists say. Researchers have long thought that the Southern Ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide than it releases, with a beneficial effect for climate. But if more water upwells, more of this carbon dioxide could be outgassed, shifting this critical balance. Upwelling is driven by those incessant Southern Ocean winds, which push surface water northward, drawing up deep water behind it. The winds are affected by warming, and they have already strengthened in recent decades. A recent study suggested that the Southern Ocean is still absorbing more carbon dioxide than it is releasing. But many researchers think the ocean may already be outgassing more carbon dioxide than previously thought. And if the winds keep strengthening as the world warms, they say, the upwelling and outgassing could keep increasing. UNDERNEATH THE ICE Carbon, however, isn’t the only concern. The water that’s welling up in the Southern Ocean is also relatively warm, and warming more, which spells trouble for the planet in the form of sea level rise. Some of that warm water reaches Antarctica’s continental shelf, where it flows beneath ice shelves, the tongues of ice at the ends of glaciers. These glaciers act as buttresses, helping to hold back the massive ice sheets that cover the continent and that are slowly moving toward the ocean. But scientists discovered several decades ago that this upwelling water is melting the ice shelves from underneath. As the ice thins, the glaciers lose some of their ability to keep the ice sheets in check. So far, their melting and thinning has contributed only a relatively small amount to rising sea levels. But the concern is that if the ice shelves melt too much, they could collapse, accelerating the movement of the glaciers, and eventually much of the West Antarctic ice sheet, to the ocean. Today, scientists are on the brink of getting even more data. The Argo program is about to deploy globally a new generation of more sophisticated floats capable of measuring much more than basic temperature and salinity. Despite all that has been learned, Russell said, “Unlike any other field of exploration, we are at the absolute frontier here.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

CANBERRA, Mon Dec 15, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) -Australia pledged to cut its greenhouse emissions by 5 to 15 percent by 2020 as it unveiled on Monday the world's broadest carbon trading scheme, rebuffing business calls for a delay due to the global slowdown. While Australia is now second only to the European Union in its drive to cut emissions by establishing a cap-and-trade system that puts a price on carbon output, critics said the target was too weak and blasted the trading plan that will give free credits to some of the economy's most carbon-intensive industries. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the carbon scheme was vital for Australia, which has the fourth-highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and five times more per person than China, due to its reliance on coal for electricity. "Without action on climate change, Australia faces a future of parched farms, bleached reefs and empty reservoirs," Rudd told the National Press Club. But some carbon market participants said the system, details of which Canberra unveiled on Monday ahead of approval by parliament expected next year, may fall far short of what's required in the global fight against climate change. And the government said Australia would only target the full 15 percent cutback if a global deal emerges from U.N. talks in Copenhagen in late 2009, angering environmentalists who had hoped Rudd would follow through on his green electoral mandate by taking a leading role in cutting global emissions. "It's a total and utter failure. It's madness. Climate change is happening much faster than people thought. Five percent, which is what we are looking at, is an outrage," Greenpeace climate campaigner John Hepburn said. Friends of the Earth called the plan a "polluters' paradise." Scientists and green groups wanted cuts of at least 25 percent but the carbon scheme comes at a politically sensitive time for the government, with the mid-2010 start date set only months before it is due to hold elections to seek a second term. Australia's target is far shy of the 20 percent reduction that Europe has promised and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommendation of up to 40 percent by then, and underscores the challenge world governments face in finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in the next 12 months. Rudd defended the targets by saying they were more aggressive on a per-capita basis than those in the European Union. The government also said the scheme would only trim about 0.1 percent off annual growth in gross national product from 2010 to 2050, with a one-off increase in inflation of around 1.1 percent. "You could say that the decision came down to a choice between the environment and the economy and at this stage it looks like the economy has won," said Gary Cox, head of environmental derivatives at global brokers Newedge. For a graphic showing Australia's emissions targets: https:/customers.reuters.com/d/graphics/AU_CO2TG1208.gif MARKET PRICE The details of the plan released on Monday showed some changes from the draft proposal that came out in July, dropping a much-criticized suggestion to fix initial carbon prices and offering exemptions for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. Under the new proposal, permits to produce carbon will be auctioned by the government in the first half of 2010, raising an estimated A$11.5 billion in 2010/11 that will help compensate businesses and consumers for higher power and fuel costs. The system will cover 75 percent of Australia's carbon emissions and involve 1,000 of the nation's biggest firms, the government said, and participating firms will need to surrender a permit for every tonne of carbon emitted. But there will be exemptions of up to 90 percent for major polluters who could be penalized by the added carbon cost when facing untaxed competitors on the international market, like iron ore and aluminum producers including BHP Billiton, Alcoa and Rio Tinto. And while LNG producers Chevron and Woodside Petroleum will only get a smaller 60 percent exemption, the industry was pleased that it had been included at all. Natural gas is a much cleaner-burning hydrocarbon for power plants, but producing it releases large volumes of CO2. Overall, industry experts said the plan looked weak. "It seems a bit like the old game of one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator, having a bet each way and I'm not sure the numbers add up," said Brett Janissen, executive manager of the consultancy Asia-Pacific Emissions Trading Forum. "BUY THEIR WAY OUT" The carbon trade plan allows for prices to be set by the market, first under auctions to be held in the first half of 2010. It estimated an initial price of about A$25 ($16.70) a tonne, below the European emission allowances, which are trading around 15 euros (A$30) a tonne. But the government said it would also impose an interim price cap of A$40 a tonne for four years, a move that analysts said could limit the market's development initially. By allowing polluters to import unlimited carbon permits from green projects abroad, but barring potential exports from Australia, companies will have their pick of the cheapest price. "The proposed scheme is disappointing in terms of the levels of reductions required as set down by the (U.N.'s) IPCC," said Martijn Wilder, partner at Baker & McKenzie in Sydney. "By adopting a A$40 price cap, it will provide companies with certainty as to their compliance cost but it also enables companies to buy their way out of compliance, in circumstances where the carbon price breaks the $40 ceiling," he added. Australian farmers, who have suffered more than seven years of severe drought, will be spared from taking part in carbon trading for at least five years, as expected. Agriculture accounts for about 16 percent of Australian emissions. But transport and fuel will be included in the scheme. The government will introduce carbon-trading laws into parliament in 2009, where it needs the support of the Greens and two independent senators, or the conservative opposition, which want the scheme delayed due to the global economic downturn. ($1=A$1.49)

Trained in soldering, she aspired to a career in electrical work but hemmed saris for her husband's tailor shop in the west Indian city of Pune until two years ago, when she found work in the country's fast-expanding electric vehicle (EV) sector. Kumbhar's ambition, stalled by motherhood and safety worries about working in a roadside electrical shop, has now taken wings as she assembles circuits for EV speedometers at a factory in Pune - her first job as a formal worker with fixed wages. She is one of a small but growing group of women blazing a trail amid India's EV boom, driven by record sales and a policy push, as the government seeks to cut planet-heating emissions by promoting the use of electric scooters, rickshaws and cars run on power that is set to become increasingly clean over time. Despite concerns over safety and quality, as well as a shortage of charging stations, demand for EVs is outstripping supply - and as firms ramp up production, they are offering rare jobs to women in an auto industry that has been male-dominated. "I work fixed hours and I am financially independent," said Kumbhar, assembling circuits with pink-gloved fingers on an all-female shop-floor at Kinetic Communications, a manufacturer of EV components and a subsidiary of Indian auto-maker Kinetic Group. "My soldering is good and I may get a promotion. This was my dream," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The factory's workforce is about four-fifths women, which goes against the grain in India, where only 20% of women are in the labour force. The South Asian nation has one of the world's lowest female participation rates, far below the global average of 47% of women employed or seeking a job compared with 74% of men. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated India's gender gap, as nearly half of women lost their jobs across the formal and informal sectors during lockdowns and had not returned to work by the end of 2020, research shows. Yet in the past two years, as sales of EVs surged by over 200% in India and more factories sprang up to produce them, the doors have started to open for women in manufacturing, design and leadership roles. In contrast to manufacturing of internal combustion engine vehicles, which relies on heavy machinery, EV companies are focused on electronics, assembly, software and design - skill-sets more widely available among women, industry analysts say. Labour rights advocates see women's comparative advantage in the EV business as an opportunity to increase their pay and strengthen their status and influence in the workplace. Rashmi Urdhwareshe, president of the Society of Automotive Engineers, noted that startups in the EV ecosystem are bringing in new ideas and, unlike legacy auto firms with a conventional male workforce, are building their business from scratch. Ride-hailing firm Ola Cabs and Italian motor manufacturer Piaggio have set up all-women shop-floors at their India-based factories in the last year. And Kinetic Green and fellow leading EV makers Hero Electric and Ather Energy plan to expand and employ largely women. Battery-maker Esmito Solutions and EV manufacturing majors Kinetic Green and Mahindra Electric, meanwhile, are helmed by women, as is the federal power ministry's energy transition company. Urdhwareshe, one of the few women in India's auto industry when she started work in the 1980s, said women have the mindset needed to navigate the challenges of a fledgling business, because they care about safety and value for money. "But there are not enough women yet, and the few that are there are trend-setting examples," she emphasised. Mahindra's, e2oPlus, operated by Indian ride-hailing company Ola, is seen at an electric vehicle charging station in Nagpur, India Jan 24, 2018. REUTERS/Aditi Shah BREAKING BIAS Mahindra's, e2oPlus, operated by Indian ride-hailing company Ola, is seen at an electric vehicle charging station in Nagpur, India Jan 24, 2018. REUTERS/Aditi Shah Prabhjot Kaur, the co-founder and CEO of Esmito, a startup producing batteries and battery-swapping stations for EVs, remembers having to patiently explain her job in meetings where she was often the only woman. "I would be asked two, three, four times about what I do. I remember the faces and expressions of everyone who assumed I was a secretary, and then saw me take the floor to make my presentation," said the 42-year-old with a smile. Sulajja Firodia Motwani, founder and CEO of Kinetic Green, has also been in Kaur's shoes. After finishing university and returning from the United States in the mid-1990s, she joined her family's auto business, only to be met with scepticism by staff. "They thought I was a privileged daughter who was here for a little time and that I would disappear in a few days," said Motwani, 51. Kaur and Motwani have faced other challenges common to most women in the EV corporate world, from a lack of female toilets to not being taken seriously by colleagues. More positively, many women leaders and shop-floor workers told the Thomson Reuters Foundation their parents had been their loudest cheerleaders, with fathers especially egging them on to pursue their ambitions. Born and brought up in Rajpura, a small town in largely agrarian northern Punjab state, Kaur traces her determination back to her desire to hold her own in the karate classes she took as a teenager - the only girl in a class of 50. Kaur did not want to go, but her father persuaded her. "I was very angry and it translated into me being the best student," she said. "It also taught me not to fear my surroundings and so I never feared large groups of men." As a child, Motwani whiled away the hours in her grandfather's office, scribbling away on its walls - but when she came back armed with a degree from Carnegie Mellon University, she still had to prove her worth. "I have earned my place in the industry... I never took this platform for granted. I was back at work four days after my baby was born," said Motwani, sitting in the same office. In her early days, she travelled across 200 districts to get to know the firm's dealership network. But it is not just female CEOs who are helping steer India's EV surge - there are also thousands of women factory workers. Nasreen Banu, 25, was the first woman from her family to study and find a job. As a production supervisor on scooter manufacturer Ather's battery assembly line, she said she was ready to "break the bias about what girls can and cannot do". "I love the job and I know how everything here works," she said. "A battery weighs 25 kg and we often hear that girls can't lift it, but I do," she said on a break during her shift at the Ather factory in Hosur in southern Tamil Nadu state. E-MOBILITY FOR ALL? In India's capital, New Delhi, Mahua Acharya heads Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL), the federal power ministry's energy transition company. With an environmental management degree from Yale and experience in green finance, renewable energy and carbon markets, Acharya views heading up CESL as an opportunity to "get EVs deployed on Indian roads at scale". "I spend a lot of time thinking of business models and innovative ways to put these vehicles on the road," she said. Government incentives and tax benefits for manufacturers and buyers have supported a rise in the production and sales of EVs, which so far currently number a million, or nearly 2% of all vehicles on Indian roads. CESL is trying to push these still small numbers higher by setting up more charging stations, facilitating easy loans for buyers and placing bulk orders for public transport vehicles in cities, making them more affordable. But Acharya's vision for scale faces obstacles ranging from out-of-stock vehicles and limited supplies of batteries and semiconductors, to safety concerns and too few charging stations mainly fed by fossil-fuel power. As a woman heading the government's e-mobility push, she has not faced bias personally, despite often being the only woman in meetings alongside 15 men, she said. In her experience, women bring up issues men fail to spot, such as flagging the importance of locating EV charging stations "in an area that is safe, not far away or grungy-looking", rather than based solely on electricity and land availability. The perspective and nuance brought by women is welcomed by some in the industry. "We (men) are cut-throat, but discussions are more malleable with them," said Sohinder Singh Gill, CEO of Hero Electric and director general of the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles. About eight years ago, at a meeting with major auto brand representatives - all men - discussing the future of EVs in India, Motwani remembers wondering why they were talking only about cars and Tesla. She spoke out over the chatter to draw attention to the fact that, in India, 90% of people used two- and three-wheeled vehicles or buses, while only 10% drove cars. Her persistence led the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers to set up a focus group on two and three-wheelers, which she was asked to champion. That has enabled her to "contribute and make a difference" to India's new policy for electric vehicles - which she said pays attention to green mobility for the masses. SAFETY FEARS As EV demand outstrips supply in India, the excitement in the business is palpable, despite its teething troubles. Conversations with EV company CEOs are peppered with hopeful predictions that the "sunrise industry" will account for 30% of all vehicle sales sooner than India's target year of 2030. Those working in policy speak of an "unprecedented" response by Indian states to make the EV switch - which promises to reduce crude-oil import costs and nudge India closer to its target to cut emissions to net zero by 2070, announced at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last November. But beyond the smiling faces of new EV users on social media with their brightly-coloured wheels, the industry faces some big barriers: from e-scooters bursting into flames to a lack of charging points that is eroding buyer confidence. Delhi resident Dolly Maurya, 26, took advantage of a state subsidy and purchased a lilac-coloured electric rickshaw in April, but she fears taking it out in a sprawling city that only has about 600 charging stations. "If the battery gets discharged, where will I go? How will I take it home?" asked Maurya, who wants to use the vehicle for part-time work transporting passengers around the capital as she prepares for an entrance test for a government job. Other concerns are mounting among EV users as sales rise. Esmito's Kaur has tracked recent cases of e-scooters catching fire with an increasing sense of dismay. "It is worrying, because it sends out the wrong signals at a time when the industry is growing," said Kaur, who is set to scale up her manufacturing, currently done in the basement car park of the IIT research park in Chennai. Kaur - also the founder of the Centre for Battery Engineering and Electric Vehicles, which collaborates with auto firms to develop batteries as an alternative to fossil fuel engines - said more R&D was needed to make batteries safe. "Most companies, and there are over 400, import parts and assemble them," she added. "We need to adapt everything to our environment, our needs." CITY SUPPORT To build a consumer base from zero five years ago, Kinetic Green's Motwani partnered with non-profit groups and states to subsidise electric three-wheeler rickshaws as a new source of income for women in insurgency-hit Dantewada in eastern India and bicycle rickshaw pullers in northern Uttar Pradesh state. "We showcased EVs as a means to earn a livelihood with a low running cost," said Motwani, sitting next to a cabinet covered with dozens of business leadership awards. "They could run the e-rickshaw and earn 1,000 rupees ($13) a day and we took care of the servicing," said Motwani, who believes in the Hindi saying: "jo dikhta hai woh bikta hai (what you see, sells)". For her part, Acharya in the federal government is pushing for state agencies that operate public buses to recruit more women drivers. "It is a good job, pays well, has defined hours. One of the things women want is certainty of when they can get home," she said. The Delhi government this year removed height restrictions for bus drivers so that more women can apply and abolished the heavy vehicle driving-licence fee of 15,000 rupees for them. The city has also rolled out e-rickshaws, reserving a third of the vehicles it is subsidising for women like Maurya. "It is about creating an opportunity for women to work," said Delhi transport minister Kailash Gahlot. The initiative is also about "good messaging" to encourage more people to switch to EVs and spread a sense of safety among public transport users, he added. CLIMATE-CONSCIOUS Beyond financial incentives, rising EV sales in India are also rooted in growing awareness about climate change, soaring fuel prices and mobility challenges in a pandemic-hit world. Mumbai resident Rajni Arun Kumar, 43, an associate director at a human resources startup, frowned on fuel-guzzling cars and used public transport until COVID-19 made her worry about taking her two unvaccinated children out in crowded spaces. She found the perfect solution for her office commute and dropping her children at their hobby classes: an orange e-scooter. But she is now hoping to get a charging point in the vicinity as the nearest one is 3 km (1.86 miles) and a traffic jam away. "There has to be some point where people begin to act to help conserve the environment," she emphasised. Companies know that women like Kumar are key decision-makers on household purchases. Hero Electric's Gill said e-scooters have more women buyers than conventional scooters, as the new machines remove the bother of trips to fuel stations and are easier to manoeuvre. Besides being price-sensitive, Indian women base their purchases on practical features, said Prerana Chaturvedi, co-founder and CEO of Evolet India, an EV startup in Gurgaon near Delhi. Its scooter has a lower seat height and clean edges to stop scarves and saris getting entangled, said Chaturvedi, a former military aviator in the Indian Air Force who believes EVs should be as simple to operate as cell phones. WORKERS' RIGHTS Off the highway connecting Chennai to Bengaluru, cutting through the industrial town of Hosur, the road to the Ather factory meanders through rose plantations. It is a long way from the bustle of Banu's village in Bhatkal, a coastal town in southern Karnataka state, but she loves the independence her job at Ather has given her. She aspired to work in a bank or an air-conditioned office, but her late father encouraged her to join the auto industry. "He kept telling me I could do what boys could do. And here I am, working on batteries, which are the heart of an electric scooter," she said, teary-eyed as she talked about her "hero". Banu, who has a diploma in electrical engineering and electronics, is among thousands who have enrolled in courses at industrial training institutes nationwide, before joining the workforce and honing their skills on the job. Recruitment agency TeamLease Digital, which scouts talent for EV firms, said hiring of both sexes rose by more than 30% in the last two years, with 40% growth forecast by the end of 2022. The government has projected that the EV sector will create 750,000 jobs in the next five years. Munira Loliwala, business head at TeamLease Digital, estimated the number of new job openings at more than 200,000 in the last six months alone - with women especially sought after. "It's like when mobile (phone) manufacturing began in India, women were needed to handle minute pieces with care, their fingers being thinner, more nimble," she said. Similarly, chip manufacturing for EVs requires precise soldering, welding and assembly, bolstering demand for women on the shop-floor and in design and production. "Women leaders are already inspiring many to join," Loliwala added. While welcoming the new job prospects for women, labour and gender campaigners said EV companies should introduce robust measures to better protect labour rights and equalise pay. Other manufacturing industries like clothing, which also employs a majority of women, often opt for female workers because they are regarded as easier and cheaper to employ. They are generally paid less for the same job as men, keeping production costs low, and cause less trouble for bosses, said Preeti Oza, coordinator of the non-profit Centre for Labour Research and Action. "(Women) tend to rush home after work, don't collectively raise demands and hesitate to unionise, making them preferred hires," she added. But for Banu, who is determined to carry on working even after she gets married, the compact Ather factory is home. She fondly recalls the day she took her father to the bus station after his monthly visit to check on her. "There was an Ather parked near the bus station and I excitedly told him that I could dismantle it and put the entire scooter back together right there. He laughed loudly and said the owner might take offence," she said. "He was so proud of me."

Campion became the first woman in the 94-year history of the Academy Awards to receive two directing nominations. (Her first was for “The Piano” in 1994.) Another Netflix film, the divisive climate change satire “Don’t Look Up,” will also compete for moviedom’s top prize. ABC will broadcast the Oscars on March 27. “We set out to build a great film studio by empowering great filmmakers to tell great stories, and I’m proud that we’re doing it across disciplines and teams, including animation and documentary short,” Scott Stuber, Netflix’s film chief, said by phone, noting that Netflix received more nominations than any other company for the third year in a row. Apple TV+ made significant inroads with Oscar voters, with “CODA,” a romantic drama about the only hearing member of a deaf family, giving the tech giant its first best picture nomination. “CODA” also received nominations for Troy Kotsur’s supporting performance and Sian Heder’s adapted screenplay. Another Apple TV+ movie, “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” was recognised for lead acting (Denzel Washington), cinematography and production design. “The Power of the Dog,” “Don’t Look Up” and “CODA” were joined in the best picture category by two movies that were released simultaneously on HBO Max and in theatres (“Dune” and “King Richard,” both from Warner Bros.); four traditional movies that were box office duds (“Belfast,” “West Side Story,” “Licorice Pizza,” “Nightmare Alley”); and the little-seen but critically beloved Japanese film “Drive My Car.” “Dune,” directed by Denis Villeneuve, received 10 nominations in total. It was the second-most-nominated film behind “The Power of the Dog” — although, in a shock, Villeneuve did not receive a nod for best director. Instead, in another sign of an evolving movie academy, which has tried to become less of a club for white men by expanding its overseas membership, voters recognised Ryusuke Hamaguchi for “Drive My Car,” an introspective drama about a widowed theatre director and the young woman who drives him to rehearsals. Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”), Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”) rounded out the directing field. Notably, all three pushed for exclusive theatrical runs for their movies. No streaming service has ever won a best picture Oscar; despite inroads, the traditional studios have fended them off. (Last year’s winner, “Nomadland” from Searchlight Pictures, was mostly seen on Hulu, but only because most theatres were closed.) But streaming companies are now in the dominant position, in part because the pandemic accelerated a consumer shift away from theatres, at least where highbrow films are concerned. The economics of streaming also make it easier to spend freely in pursuit of Oscars. One heavily campaigned film, Amazon Prime Video’s “Being the Ricardos,” received three nominations, with Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman among the lead acting nominees and — in a surprise — J.K. Simmons recognised for his role as “I Love Lucy” actor William Frawley. (In total, streaming services accounted for 12 of the 20 acting slots.) As always, Hollywood will pay as much attention to those who did not get nominated as those who did. Awards prognosticators expected Lady Gaga to be among the best actress nominees, for her gonzo performance in “House of Gucci.” Nominations instead went to Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”), Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), Olivia Colman (“The Lost Daughter”), Penélope Cruz (“Parallel Mothers”) and Kidman. In the documentary feature category, “The Rescue,” from previous Oscar winners Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (“Free Solo”), was notably left out. ACTRESS CATEGORIES This year’s unusually competitive best actress race produced cheers and jeers when the nominations were announced. Previous Oscar winners Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”) and Colman (“The Lost Daughter”) both received expected nods, but the rest of the category was filled with surprises and one eye-popping omission. While she was left off the SAG Awards nominee list, Stewart received her first Oscar nomination after two decades of work. She was rewarded for stretching outside her comfort zone to play Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Things didn’t go nearly as well for Lady Gaga, whose outsize performance in “House of Gucci” was passed over. The other nominations went to Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) and Cruz (“Parallel Mothers”). In the supporting actress category, Kirsten Dunst also landed her first nomination, for playing an alcoholic mother in “The Power of the Dog.” A 32-year screen veteran, Dunst has waited even longer than Stewart for academy recognition. (The moment may be even sweeter considering that her real-life husband, Jesse Plemons, was also nominated for playing her on-screen husband.) With the exception of Judi Dench (“Belfast”) who landed her eighth nomination, the supporting actress category was filled with first-time nominees: Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”), Aunjanue Ellis (“King Richard”) and Jessie Buckley (“The Lost Daughter.”) DIVERSITY Last year was a watershed year for inclusion: Nine of the 20 acting nominations went to people of colour — a dramatic change from 2015 and 2016, when nearly all-white nominees prompted #OscarsSoWhite outcries. This year, the numbers were not as strong. Will Smith nabbed a best actor nomination for his role as the stubborn, hard-charging father of Venus and Serena Williams in “King Richard.” (It is his first nomination since 2007, when he was recognised for “The Pursuit of Happyness.”) Washington, an eight-time nominee and two-time winner, was recognised for “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” In the supporting category, the academy nominated deaf actor Kotsur (“CODA”). He joined his on-screen wife, Marlee Matlin, as the only two deaf actors ever recognised. The academy chose an all-white best actress category, omitting Jennifer Hudson and her rousing performance as Aretha Franklin in “Respect.” In the supporting actress category, DeBose made the cut for her role in “West Side Story,” as did Ellis, a veteran actress who shined in “King Richard.” The directing category, historically dominated by white men, saw Campion (“The Power of the Dog”) land her second nomination. Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”) was also recognised. SPEILBERG For the eighth time in his five-decade career, Spielberg was nominated for best director. But it wasn’t easy. In a Hollywood that’s changing rapidly, Spielberg beat out competitors like Villeneuve (“Dune”), a perceived lock in the category. What is different this time around is that Spielberg is not a front-runner. Despite strong reviews for his interpretation of “West Side Story,” the favorite in this year’s race is Campion, who directed the slow-burn western “The Power of the Dog” for Netflix. She is the only woman to be nominated twice in the category, having previously been nominated for “The Piano” in 1994. Only seven women have ever been nominated for best director, and only two have won, including last year’s victor, Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”). Branagh (“Belfast”), Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”) and Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”) rounded out the category. It was Branagh’s second directing nomination, Anderson’s third and Hamaguchi’s first. The academy may be pointed toward fresh cinematic voices — in recent years, the organization has dramatically expanded its overseas membership to make itself less of a club for white men — but Spielberg’s nomination also showed that it’s not ready to abandon its history just yet. POPULARITY Quick: Name the eight movies that were nominated for best picture at last year’s ceremony, the one inexplicably held in a train station. Don’t feel bad. We had to Google it, too, and we get paid to follow this stuff. For a variety of reasons — the pandemic-accelerated shift toward small-screen streaming services, the stubborn refusal of voters to include films that the masses have actually seen — the Oscars just aren’t what they used to be, as evidenced by a 76% decline in viewership since 2014. Seventy. Six. This year’s ceremony will try to pick itself up off the Nielsen ratings asphalt by returning to a hosted format for the first time since 2018. A host has yet to be named. 2022 OSCARS NOMINEES LIST BEST PICTURE “Belfast” “CODA” “Don’t Look Up” “Drive My Car” “Dune” “King Richard” “Licorice Pizza” “Nightmare Alley” “The Power of the Dog” “West Side Story” BEST DIRECTOR Kenneth Branagh, “Belfast” Ryusuke Hamaguchi, “Drive My Car” Paul Thomas Anderson, “Licorice Pizza” Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog” Steven Spielberg, “West Side Story” BEST ACTOR Javier Bardem, “Being the Ricardos” Benedict Cumberbatch, “The Power of the Dog” Andrew Garfield, “Tick, Tick … Boom!” Will Smith, “King Richard” Denzel Washington, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” BEST ACTRESS Jessica Chastain, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” Olivia Colman, “The Lost Daughter” Penélope Cruz, “Parallel Mothers” Nicole Kidman, “Being the Ricardos” Kristen Stewart, “Spencer” BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Ciaran Hinds, “Belfast” Troy Kotsur, “CODA” Jesse Plemons, “The Power of the Dog” J.K. Simmons, “Being the Ricardos” Kodi Smit-McPhee, “The Power of the Dog” BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Jessie Buckley, “The Lost Daughter” Ariana DeBose, “West Side Story” Judi Dench, “Belfast” Kirsten Dunst, “The Power of the Dog” Aunjanue Ellis, “King Richard” ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY “Belfast” “Don’t Look Up” “King Richard” “Licorice Pizza” “The Worst Person in the World” ADAPTED SCREENPLAY “CODA” “Drive My Car” “Dune” “The Lost Daughter” “The Power of the Dog” ANIMATED FEATURE “Encanto” “Flee” “Luca” “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” “Raya and the Last Dragon” PRODUCTION DESIGN “Dune” “Nightmare Alley” “The Power of the Dog” “The Tragedy of Macbeth” “West Side Story” COSTUME DESIGN “Cruella” “Cyrano” “Dune” “Nightmare Alley” “West Side Story” CINEMATOGRAPHY “Dune” “Nightmare Alley” “The Power of the Dog” “The Tragedy of Macbeth” “West Side Story” EDITING “Don’t Look Up” “Dune” “King Richard” “The Power of the Dog” “Tick, Tick … Boom!” MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING “Coming 2 America” “Cruella” “Dune” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” “House of Gucci” SOUND “Belfast” “Dune” “No Time to Die” “The Power of the Dog” “West Side Story” VISUAL EFFECTS “Dune” “Free Guy” “No Time to Die” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” “Spider-Man: No Way Home” SCORE “Don’t Look Up” “Dune” “Encanto” “Parallel Mothers” “The Power of the Dog” SONG “Be Alive” (“King Richard”) “Dos Oruguitas” (“Encanto”) “Down to Joy” (“Belfast”) “No Time To Die” (“No Time to Die”) “Somehow You Do” (“Four Good Days”) DOCUMENTARY FEATURE “Ascension” “Attica” “Flee” “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” “Writing With Fire” INTERNATIONAL FEATURE “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” Bhutan “Flee,” Denmark “The Hand of God,” Italy “Drive My Car,” Japan “The Worst Person in the World,” Norway ANIMATED SHORT “Affairs of the Art” “Bestia” “Boxballet” “Robin Robin” “The Windshield Wiper” DOCUMENTARY SHORT “Audible” “Lead Me Home” “The Queen of Basketball” “Three Songs for Benazir” “When We Were Bullies” LIVE-ACTION SHORT “The Dress” “The Long Goodbye” “On My Mind” “Please Hold” “Ala Kachuu — Take and Run” ©2022 The New York Times Company

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made an 11th hour appeal on Saturday for a 190-nation conference in Bali to end a deadlock over a plan to launch talks on a new UN treaty. "I am disappointed at the lack of progress," Ban told delegates after making an unscheduled return from a visit to East Timor as the Dec. 3-14 talks ran a day over time. "Your work is not yet over ... everybody should be able to make compromises," he said of a dispute over developing nations' demands that the rich should do more to help the poor cope with climate change. If the dispute is resolved, the meeting would launch two years of talks on a sweeping new worldwide treaty to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 and link in outsiders including the United States and all developing nations. "You have in your hands the ability to deliver to the peoples of the world a successul outcome," he said. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also made an appeal to delegates. "Without an effective road map we may never reach our destination as we envision it," he said. "The worst thing we can do is for this project to crumble because we can't find the right wording," he said. "The world is watching anxiously and I beg you not to let them down."

Developing states most at risk from global warming rebelled against a proposed deal at UN climate talks on Friday, forcing host South Africa to draw up new draft documents in a bid to prevent the talks collapsing. South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane suspended the talks in Durban after a coalition of island nations, developing states and the European Union complained the current draft lacked ambition, sources said. Delegates held overnight talks on a fresh draft and are expected to meet for a plenary session starting from 0800 GMT Saturday with many hopeful a deal could be reached that would bring on board the world's biggest emitters of the gases blamed for global warming. "There was a strong appeal from developing countries, saying the commitments in the proposed texts were not enough, both under the Kyoto Protocol and for other countries," said Norway's Climate Change Minister Erik Solheim. The European Union has been rallying support to its plan to set a 2015 target date for a new climate deal that would impose binding cuts on the world's biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases, a pact that would come into force up to five years later. The crux of the dispute is how binding the legal wording in the final document will be. The initial draft spoke of a "legal framework," which critics said committed parties to nothing. The new draft changed the language to "legal instrument," which implies a more binding commitment, and says a working group should draw up a cuts regime by 2015. It also turns up pressure on countries to act more quickly to come up with emission cut plans. The changes should appeal to poor states, small island nations and the European Union but may be tough for major emitters, including the United States and India, to swallow, said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "One of the crunch issues that has been left out is the date by which the new agreement will enter into force, which could still be as late as 2020 and making it no better than the previous text on this issue," said Tim Gore, climate change policy advisor for Oxfam. The delegates are also expected to approve text on a raft of other measures including one to protect forests and another to bring to life the Green Climate Fund, designed to help poor nations tackle global warming and nudge them towards a new global effort to fight climate change. UNDER PRESSURE The EU strategy has been to forge a coalition of the willing designed to heap pressure on the world's top three carbon emitters -- China, the United States and India -- to sign up to binding cuts. None are bound by the Kyoto Protocol. EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said earlier that a "small number of states" had yet to sign up to the EU plan and that time was running out for a deal in Durban. Washington says it will only pledge binding cuts if all major polluters make comparable commitments. China and India say it would be unfair to demand they make the same level of cuts as the developed world, which caused most of the pollution responsible for global warming. Many envoys believe two weeks of climate talks in Durban will at best produce a weak political agreement, with states promising to start talks on a new regime of binding cuts in greenhouse gases. "A crash is still a possibility. It is going to go on all night. That much is clear," said Gore of Oxfam. UN reports released in the last month show time is running out to achieve change. They show a warming planet will amplify droughts and floods, increase crop failures and raise sea levels to the point where several island states are threatened with extinction. The dragging talks frustrated delegates from small islands and African states, who joined a protest by green groups outside as they tried to enter the main negotiating room. "You need to save us, the islands can't sink. We have a right to live, you can't decide our destiny. We will have to be saved," Maldives' climate negotiator Mohamed Aslam said.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-Moon on Wednesday urged member countries to make a commitment to boosting energy efficiency and providing universal access to electricity and other energy services. The Secretary-General of the UN on Wednesday released a report authored by an Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change, recommending reducing "energy intensity," the quantity of energy per unit of economic activity, by 40 percent by 2030. "Improving energy efficiency is paramount to if we are to reduce greenhouse gas emission," Ban said in the introduction to the report. Carbon dioxide and other gases, known as "greenhouse gases," are blamed for global warming. The report estimates that around 60 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions now come from the energy production, delivery and use. The report also urges UN members to provide universal access to energy services like electricity. About 1.5 billion people still lack access to electricity, and around 2.5 billion people rely on biomass such as firewood as their primary source of energy, the report said. "Expanding access to affordable, clean energy is critical for realizing the Millenium Development Goals," Ban said. The United Nations members have set development goals that they plan to achieve by 2015, including goals related to sustainable development and poverty reduction.

Britain's new Prime Minister Gordon Brown will play down talk of a cooling of US-British relations in his first talks with President George W Bush next week -- but he will not want to be seen as "America's poodle." Speeches by two of Brown's ministers have been seized on by some commentators as evidence that the month-old Brown government plans a shift in foreign policy away from the United States -- although Brown firmly denies it. While Brown and Bush will stress London and Washington's "special relationship" is alive and well in talks at Camp David, the reserved Brown is unlikely to strike up the same close personal relationship with the U.S. president that his predecessor, Tony Blair, enjoyed. "They are going to say America is our best ally, it's crucial we have good relations. But expect a professional working relationship rather than ... a degree of personal chemistry," Strathclyde University politics professor John Curtice said. Issues on the agenda will include global trade liberalisation talks, climate change, as well as Darfur, Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Russia and Iran, Brown's spokesman said. Brown has said Britain will abide by its United Nations' obligations in Iraq and there will be no immediate withdrawal of British troops, as some in the ruling Labour Party want. However, the head of the British military said on Thursday Britain should be in a position to hand over control of the southern Iraqi city of Basra to Iraqi forces by year-end. On Iran, Brown said this week he would not rule out military action but believed sanctions could still persuade Tehran to drop its disputed nuclear programme. Bush and Blair's strong personal bond was forged in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on US cities and their decision to go to war in Iraq. But the relentless bloodshed in Iraq contributed to Blair's downfall, fuelling a backlash from voters and his own party that forced him to step down early as prime minister a month ago and hand over the reins to his long-serving finance minister Brown. The British press regularly mocked Blair as Bush's poodle, a label that did not go down well with the British public and Brown will be keen to distance himself from it. "Brown has no 'poodle' baggage, no one's ever thought of him as a poodle," said Reginald Dale, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Brown has reversed the ruling party's slump since taking office, opening a lead in the opinion polls that has fired speculation he could call an early election. Brown raised eyebrows by visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy before meeting Bush, but he has been cool towards the European Union in the past. Talk of a shift in British foreign policy began when Brown named as foreign secretary David Miliband, reported by British media to have been sceptical about the Iraq war. Brown also gave a junior post to Mark Malloch Brown, a former UN deputy secretary general who has been critical of Britain and the United States over the war. This month, Malloch Brown said it was unlikely Brown and Bush would be "joined together at the hip" as Blair and Bush had been and another minister told a Washington audience a country's strength depended on alliances rather than military might.

Leaders from some of the largest Western powers rallied support Tuesday behind a US plan to build a more balanced global economy and warned against returning to business as usual once recovery takes hold. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there was substantial backing among the Group of 20 nations for creating a new framework to shrink surpluses in export-rich countries such as China and boosting savings in debt-laden nations including the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also supported the idea of a rebalanced global economy, to be monitored by the International Monetary Fund, saying world growth can no longer hinge solely on "overextended" US consumers. But French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said she feared growing signs of economic recovery could undermine commitments to rework and regulate the world financial order. "We are currently seeing, notably in the United States, sufficient signs of recovery that numerous players are saying ... let's go back to our old habits and carry on with our business as we did in the past," she told a news conference. Brazil, one of the emerging heavyweights of the developing world, spoke out against the US rebalancing proposal, saying the IMF already played a role in monitoring economies. "The way it is, this proposal is obscure and we do not agree with it," Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega told reporters in New York. The G20 club of rich and developing economies holds a two-day leaders summit in Pittsburgh from Thursday and the United States wants to see rebalancing high on the agenda. Also up for discussion are the issues of how to nurture an economic recovery, rein in risk-taking by banks and bankers, and save the planet from global warming. It is the third leaders' meeting since the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers a year ago and they are moving now from ways to end the worst global recession since the 1930s to discussing ways to prevent it happening again. The G20 wants to figure out how to build a lasting economic recovery which is less prone to painful boom-bust cycles. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday the world's biggest economy was at the "beginnings" of a recovery, and the key was to ensure that the recovery was self-sustaining. "To make sure that as we recover from this crisis we are laying the seeds for a more balanced, more sustainable recovery: That is the agenda," Geithner said. BROAD SUPPORT US plans for a more balanced global economy could meet resistance from China, which is unlikely to agree to reforms that would threaten its growth, analysts said. It was also unclear whether Germany and Japan, two other big exporters, would back the proposal. But Britain's Brown, currently chairman of the G20, said there was broad backing. "I have been talking to many countries in Asia, as well as in Europe, and I have been talking to President Obama and others, and I believe that there is support for that framework," he said. "We are looking at how we can put in place for the future the mechanism or path that can lead us to making decisions about better ways of creating growth." A document outlining the US position ahead of the summit said big exporters should consume more while debtors like the United States ought to boost savings. The G20 must also address the sensitive issue of reforming the IMF, to win full support from emerging economies, said Ouseme Mandeng, head of public sector investment advisory at Ashmore Investment Management in London. "They are the two sides of the same coin," he said. "There are opportunities to present a new vision in the post-crisis world. I'm not sure if they have the courage to do so." China and other fast-growing nations are clamoring for more say at the IMF and other international financing institutions. The United States has backed a plan to shift 5.0 percent of voting power to certain emerging economies from rich nations. However, Europe has yet to fully support that proposal and the emerging economies have pushed for a 7.0 percent shift. In an interview with Reuters, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said European countries "understand it is time to move" on reforming voting power in the IMF, and he expected China to be the biggest beneficiary. BANKING AND CLIMATE CHANGES Curbing huge pay packages for bankers is also high on Europe's to-do list for the summit. At a meeting of G20 finance leaders in London this month there was general agreement on the need to change the risk-taking culture of banks to ensure employees are not rewarded for making risky investments that later collapse. G20 officials also concurred that there should be tighter restrictions on how much capital banks must hold to absorb losses when loans go bad, but offered no specifics. Britain's top financial regulator said the G20's regulation coordination arm, the Financial Stability Board, would ask leaders to back its guidelines on how banks must structure pay policies to avoid big, risky bets by traders. The FSB will state "it is essential that priority use of high profits should be to rebuild the capital needed to support lending, allow official measures to be removed, prepare institutions to meet higher capital requirements, and that bonus and dividend policies should be consistent with this priority," Financial Services Authority Chairman Adair Turner told bankers in London. On climate change, rifts remain between rich and developing economies over how quickly to cut carbon dioxide emissions and who should foot the bill. However, there were signs of progress Tuesday as Chinese President Hu Jintao announced goals to slow growth in his country's emissions. The G20 is under pressure to show progress before 190 nations gather in Copenhagen in December to try to reach a deal to slow climate change.

Maruf Mallick bdnews24.com's environment correspondent Copenhagen, Dec 11 (bdnews24.com) -- The Kyoto Protocol must and will survive the climate conference in Copenhagen, Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said on Friday. "I think the Kyoto Protocol should survive and must survive for a number of reasons," De Boer said at a news conference on the fifth day of the ongoing climate talk in Copenhagen . "It would be working towards a second period under Kyoto and a new treaty under the convention. That new treaty under the convention would enter into force when enough countries have ratified it." In the case of the Kyoto Protocol, it took eight years between 1997 when countries started to sign it and 2005 when it finally came into enforcement, he said. "The idea of having a single treaty is not off the table in the sense that in the room next door a number of countries stated their preference for a single instrument. "But I see the overwhelming majority of the countries involved in this wanting a two-track outcome, wanting to see something in addition to the Kyoto Protocol." De Boer said the Kyoto Protocol provides market-based mechanisms that are already functioning. There is no provision currently under the Convention for the mechanisms. If somebody wants to push a new treaty, there is again a gap that people do not want to see. The Kyoto Protocol is the only legally binding instrument concerning climate change, and there is no good reason to abandon it, he added. De Boer said significant progress has been made on some of the core elements that will constitute an agreement. "This is the time now to focus on the bigger picture" Earlier, Bangladesh pressed for a stronger climate deal by building on the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. It also proposed for a new phase with new target for Kyoto protocol. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has also called for a new 'Copenhagen Protocol', based on the existing legally-binding Kyoto Protocol.

Shiny, spacious and still having the construction dust brushed away before opening next month, London Heathrow's Terminal Five is Britain's latest bid to help unclog the world's busiest international airport. After the longest public inquiry in British planning history, lasting nearly four years, the 4.3 billion pound ($8.5 billion) passenger terminal may go some way to easing the frustrations of the 67.3 million passengers who squeeze through the airport which began as a tented village in 1946. But even as the shops from Gucci to Prada to Harrods are being fitted out in the terminal, due to open on March 27, protests are mounting at plans for another phase of expansion aimed at enabling Heathrow to keep pace with a forecast doubling of flights in Europe over the next 20 years. A public consultation on the next steps finishes on Wednesday, with campaigners furious over noise pollution, carbon emissions and local disruption. They also question the validity of studies showing expansion to be vital to the British economy. Experts say around one-third of Heathrow flights are currently delayed -- one of the highest rates in the world. Business leaders have long complained of frustration and wasted time, and some argue the logjam is jeopardising London's financial centre. "Bankers already hate flying from Heathrow," said Tom Otley, editor-in-chief of magazine Business Traveller UK. British newspapers repeatedly criticise the airport and even airport operator BAA is damning about its current facilities. "Heathrow is old and tired," said spokesman Simon Baugh. "Terminal Five should allow us to start changing that. The effect should be immediate." Three of Heathrow's four existing terminals were built before 1968. Anyone who has travelled through the airport has joined crowds from around the globe which throng around ageing baggage carousels in low-ceilinged halls. Unexpected events such as a 2006 security scare have left passengers waiting for hours or days. With a capacity of 35 million passengers a year, Terminal Five can handle half the airport's current throughput of passengers, taking pressure off existing terminals and opening scope for their redevelopment. Ceilings are higher in the new terminal, and vast glass walls offer views across the airport. BAA says the new gates, taxiways and parking spaces also offer more flexibility than anything at present, which should reduce delays. After six years of building and testing, the new terminal -- which will take only British Airways flights -- will include a range of restaurants. The champagne bottles are already lined up in the business class lounge. MORE NEEDED? But with Heathrow's two runways already stretched to capacity, Terminal Five will offer no new flights, just new terminal capacity. BAA and the government now want space for new flights. As airlines keep snapping up new planes, they are calling for a third runway and sixth terminal to avoid Britain losing out to airports in mainland Europe, and position it to service emerging key destinations particularly in China and India. "We certainly wouldn't want to get back to the kind of overstretch we have today," said BAA's Baugh. The company says it wants to avoid delays that slowed the approval of Terminal Five and allowed problems at the existing airport to get worse. Activists from Greenpeace breached airport security on Monday, climbing aboard an aircraft and unfurling a banner. But besides general protests at the risk to the global climate in such a development, about two million people who would be under Heathrow's flight path if expansion went ahead are gearing up for a fight. They threaten court action if the expansion does get the green light. Part of the problem is space. In contrast to most other European airports that remain underused for their size, Heathrow is running out of room. The new terminal was built within the existing airport boundaries -- on the site of a sewage works. To make the next step up, homes would have to be demolished, including 700 in the nearby village of Sipson. Many houses in Sipson already display posters and banners opposing the new runway -- but some are also becoming dilapidated as owners put off refurbishment until they know their fate. "You do things like put off putting in a new bathroom," said 62-year-old resident Linda McCutcheon. "The money they are offering won't let us get anywhere else around here. But we're certainly not giving up." With backing from some local councils and London mayor Ken Livingstone, the campaigners believe they can prompt a rethink. Otherwise, they say noise pollution from flights and new road links will blight thousands of properties across particularly West London. Some residents and environmental campaigners say they may also resort to more direct action, chaining themselves to buildings and blocking bulldozers. The protesters -- many of whom fought Terminal Five but have now largely accepted it bar complaints about light pollution -- also say a further expansion would again risk creating the kind of overcrowding seen in recent years. "Terminal Five might actually make things easier at Heathrow," said anti-expansion campaign chairman John Stewart. "But this new expansion could make everything worse again."

Scientists who studied DNA preserved in Arctic permafrost sediments and in the remains of such ancient animals have concluded that these Ice Age beasts relied heavily on the protein-rich wildflowers that once blanketed the region.But dramatic Ice Age climate change caused a huge decline in these plants, leaving the Arctic covered instead in grasses and shrubs that lacked the same nutritional value and could not sustain the big herbivorous mammals, the scientists reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday.The change in vegetation began roughly 25,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago - a time when many of the big animals slipped into extinction, the researchers said.Scientists for years have been trying to figure out what caused this mass extinction, when two-thirds of all the large-bodied mammals in the Northern Hemisphere died out."Now we have, from my perspective at least, a very credible explanation," Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, an expert in ancient DNA who led an international team of researchers, said in a telephone interview.The findings contradicted the notion that humans arriving in these regions during the Ice Age caused the mass extinction by hunting the big animals into oblivion - the so-called overkill or Blitzkrieg hypothesis."We think that the major driver (of the mass extinction) is not the humans," Willerslev said, although he did not rule out that human hunters may have delivered the coup de grace to some species already diminished by the dwindling food supplies.The Arctic region once teemed with herds of big animals, in some ways resembling an African savanna. Large plant eaters included woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, horses, bison, reindeer and camels, with predators including hyenas, saber-toothed cats, lions and huge short-faced bears.The scientists carried out a 50,000-year history of the vegetation across the Arctic in Siberia and North America.They obtained 242 permafrost sediment samples from various Arctic sites and studied the feces and stomach contents from the mummified remains of Ice Age animals recovered in places like Siberia. They determined the age of the samples and analyzed the DNA.While many scientists had thought the ecosystem had been grasslands and the big animals were grass eaters, this study showed it instead was dominated by a kind of plant known as forbs - essentially wildflowers."The whole Arctic ecosystem looked extremely different from today. You can imagine these enormous steppes with no trees, no shrubs, but dominated by these small flowering plants," Willerslev said.Christian Brochmann, a botanist at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo, said the permafrost contained "a vast, frozen DNA archive left as footprints from past ecosystems," that could be deciphered by exploring animal and plant collections already stored in museums.

An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday. "The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf. Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice -- bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City -- has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs. She said 370 sq kms of ice had cracked up in recent days from the Shelf, the latest of about 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to retreat in a trend linked by the U.N. Climate Panel to global warming. The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula. Nine other shelves -- ice floating on the sea and linked to the coast -- have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002. The trend is widely blamed on climate change caused by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels, according to David Vaughan, a British Antarctic Survey scientist who landed by plane on the Wilkins ice bridge with two Reuters reporters in January. Humbert said by telephone her estimates were that the Wilkins could lose a total of 800 to 3,000 sq kms of area after the ice bridge shattered. The Wilkins shelf has already shrunk by about a third from its original 16,000 sq kms when first spotted decades ago, its ice so thick would take at least hundreds of years to form. Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed by up to 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) this century, Vaughan said, a trend climate scientists blame on global warming from burning fossil fuels in cars, factories and power plants. The loss of ice shelves does not raise sea levels significantly because the ice is floating and already mostly submerged by the ocean. But the big worry is that their loss will allow ice sheets on land to move faster, adding extra water to the seas. Wilkins has almost no pent-up glaciers behind it, but ice shelves further south hold back vast volumes of ice. The Arctic Council, grouping nations with territory in the Arctic, is due to meet in Tromsoe, north Norway, Wednesday to debate the impact of melting ice in the north.

President Barack Obama's $3.55 trillion budget, released on Thursday, retains his plan to cut climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions by auctioning off 100 percent of emission permits to industries. That is at odds with some in Congress, including members of Obama's own Democratic Party, who are pushing for 50 percent or more of those emissions to be given away in the early stages of the plan to ease the transition to a lower-carbon economy. Opponents fear that charging companies for the carbon they emit would put unnecessary pressure on an already struggling economy. Selling all the emission permits is projected to bring $646 billion in revenue over the first years of the program, and White House budget director Peter Orszag said that would not change when more details about the administration's budget request are released next week. "We're not going to provide the full details of what will be released on Monday, but I will say that you should anticipate no changes in our climate proposal," Orszag told reporters, when asked if the 100 percent figure would hold. During last year's presidential campaign, Obama said he wanted all emissions permits to be sold, rather than given away, but has signaled there may be flexibility on that point. Under the Obama plan, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions -- which come from coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, cars and other industrial and natural sources -- would be capped. Companies that emit more than the limit would have to buy emissions credits from companies that emit less. Even as Obama's budget request was released on Thursday, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office stressed the whole point of this kind of cap-and-trade system was to push companies to lower emissions. GIVING IT AWAY "Giving away allowances is effectively the same thing as selling them and giving the proceeds from the auction away," the CBO's David Elmendorf told the Senate Finance Committee. Total revenue from auctioning emissions could amount to some $1.2 trillion over 10 years, Elmendorf said. That rise in costs for emitting companies will show up in higher prices. In Obama's budget, some revenues from the cap-and-trade plan are meant to be rebated to consumers to offset this price rise. "The price increase will have to occur somewhere in order to induce the change in behavior," Elmendorf said. "You can move around where it happens, but you can't get away from it altogether." A cap-and-trade bill is moving through Congress, sponsored by Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman wants the committee to pass the bill by the end of May, but a senior Republican suggested on Thursday that the bill could be set aside for a few months while the same committee works on healthcare reform. A delay could give Democrats more time to build support for the climate change legislation, Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, said in a Reuters interview. Some Democrats on the panel, notably Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, expect that most of the emission permits that industry would need under a cap-and-trade plan will initially be given away, not auctioned -- and that this would go on for the first 10 or 15 years of the program. Obama has said he would prefer to limit carbon emissions through legislation but also has the option of using regulation to achieve the same thing. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said last month that greenhouse emissions were a danger to human health and therefore can be regulated as a pollutant.

Every autumn on the third Thursday of November, wine growers from the Beaujolais region market the first bottles of the year's harvest in the annual "Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé" campaign that started in the 1960s. "If there is one day we can call a day of renaissance, after all the crises we have lived through, it is today," said Le Mesturet owner Alain Fontaine as he served free glasses of Beaujolais on the sidewalk in front of his Paris restaurant. Parisians loved the free wine, even if Beaujolais - a light red wine that is just a few weeks or months old - struggles to overcome an image of being cheap plonk. "It's a nice little wine. It's not the biggest grand cru, obviously, but it is pleasant and not very expensive," said Felix, an employee at the French national library. Wine growers were less upbeat as France is set to produce its lowest wine output since records began, after vineyards were hit by spring frost, hail and disease. The farm ministry has forecast total production a quarter below the average of the past five years with the Burgundy-Beaujolais region's output among the worst hit, seen down by nearly half. "The year has been quite hard weather-wise and the grapes have required more manual work than usual, only for us to end up losing around 30% of the harvest. That's too much work for such meagre results," said Beaujolais Nouveau winemaker Julien Revillon in Villie-Morgon, north of Lyon. Revillon said that even though output has been disappointing, people are more than ever attached to the Beaujolais tradition, seeing it as an opportunity to get together with friends and colleagues after months of isolation. "In difficult periods, people hang onto traditions. Even during a war, we want to celebrate Christmas, even during a pandemic, we want to celebrate the Beaujolais Nouveau," he said. Ninety-year-old Parisian Marie-Francoise, who initially found the new Beaujolais too tart, changed her mind after a second tasting. "It’s a good wine, a very good wine. There is no better Beaujolais!" she said.

India bolstered troubled UN climate talks on Friday by saying it could eventually commit to legally binding emissions reduction targets, a newspaper reported, in a major shift in the government's stance. India is the world's No. 3 greenhouse gas polluter after the United States and China, and rapid economic growth and consumption are driving up production of planet-warming carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants, transport and industry. But the government has long insisted it will not accept binding emissions reduction targets in any new climate deal because to do so would harm the economy and stall its aim to lift millions out of poverty. But Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, speaking on the sidelines of UN climate talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun, said it was time to shift India's stance by accepting the need for binding cuts as part of a new legally binding climate pact. "We have to accept the changing global reality. G77 has been vocally calling for a legally binding instrument," Ramesh said in an interview with the Hindustan Times and referring to the 131-member grouping of developing nations. India is part of the G77. "I have just said that all countries must agree to binding commitments under a appropriate legally binding form." Last year's climate talks in Copenhagen ended with a non-binding accord instead of a new treaty to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol from 2013. The long-running UN negotiations have stalled over disagreement between rich and poor nations over how much to cut greenhouse gas emissions and how to share the burden in any new agreement. Developing nations have said they should not take on legally binding cuts when rich nations need to do more and that the rich are responsible for most of the greenhouse gas pollution over the past two centuries. "KNIFE-EDGE" Talks on a deal to slow global warming were on a "knife edge" on Thursday in Cancun as Brazil and Japan expressed guarded hopes of ending a dispute between rich and poor about curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Negotiators were set to work through the night seeking to end a standoff over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, which binds almost 40 rich nations to curb emissions until 2012, before the final day of the two-week talks on Friday. Ramesh's comments come days after the Indian government decided to shift its stance. "This is part of a flexible approach," Ramesh told the newspaper, Similar comments were carried by other Indian media. "It was a deliberate decision to expand India's room in negotiations for the next one year. India can attain global leadership by only expanding its negotiating space," he said. Ramesh's stand was expeceted to be slammed by opposition parties back home and any serious political pressure on the government could force him to back down. An Indian official confirmed Ramesh's remarks. "What the minister said was that India is willing to open a dialogue on taking binding emission cuts going forward as a means to keep the negotiations meaningful and alive," an Indian official with knowledge of the talks told Reuters over the phone from Cancun. "We will not take binding cuts as of now and that remains our position. But we are willing to discuss it, that is what we are saying. We are not closed to taking cuts but in what legal form we have to see that. "In this, it is a new nuance. It will help us emerge as a proactive force from Cancun, a deal maker not a deal breaker." China said this week it would not accept any binding curbs on its greenhouse gas emissions.

has warned the industrialised countries that unless they increase yields, eliminate barriers and move food to where it is needed most, a global catastrophe could result. SUMMIT AGENDA Price controls, trade tariffs and export bans Subsidies for biofuels Help for farmers in poorer countries Effect of climate change on agriculture The FAO is calling for $1.7bn of emergency funding to tackle the shortage in production. The recent crisis is believed to have pushed 100 million people into hunger worldwide. Poorer countries are faced with a 40% increase in their food imports bill this year, and experts say some countries' food bills have doubled in the past year. In other developments at the summit: Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva defended his country's production of biofuels, saying that blaming ethanol production for food price rises was an "affront" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a leading US critic, cited "certain powers" and "invisible hands" of trying "to control prices to achieve their political and economic aims". He said the crisis should be tackled outside the UN as these powers "impose their decisions on the Security Council, using it as an instrument" Access problem In his speech Mr Ban said the instability caused by the price rises threatened progress made in countries like Afghanistan, Liberia and Haiti. He talked of people in Liberia who used to buy rice by the bag and now bought it by the cup. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Mr Ban called for improving food security The taskforce Mr Ban created to target the food crisis is expected to present a 38-page report with measures that could cost up to $15bn (£7.5bn) to implement. Announcing some of its findings, Mr Ban said high food prices offered a chance to finally address the ongoing problem of access to food for the world's poor. "The threats are obvious to us all. Yet this crisis also presents us with an opportunity," he said. "While we must respond immediately to high food prices, it is important that our longer term focus is on improving world food security," he said. Measures to improve access to food for vulnerable people include expanding aid, boosting smallholder production and minimising export restriction and import tariffs, he added. HAVE YOUR SAY David Smith, UK Mr Ban urged countries not to unilaterally intervene to control prices. "Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls," he said. "As I have said before, I say again now: Beggar Thy Neighbour food policies cannot work. They only distort markets and force prices even higher." President Lula, meanwhile, denounced the "intolerable protectionism which stunts and disrupts" farming in developing countries.

MALE, Mon Nov 3, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The Maldives' president-elect said on Monday he will open up public enterprises to foreign investors to help create more sustainable revenue for the tourism-dependent Indian Ocean archipelago. Mohamed Nasheed, 41, a longtime political prisoner of the man he defeated, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, said he would also conduct a review of people in prison to decide whether they should stay behind bars. Nasheed unseated Gayoom, Asia's longest-serving ruler with three decades in power, at the island's first multiparty presidential election by winning a second-round runoff with 54.2 percent of the votes. He takes power on Nov. 11. Gayoom conceded defeat last Wednesday and pledged to hand over power to a man he repeatedly jailed and charged in cases rights groups said were trumped up to stop Nasheed's campaign for greater democracy in the nation of 300,000 Sunni Muslims. Nasheed inherits a country with South Asia's highest per capita income but which is facing a downturn in its tourism industry because of the global financial crisis. "We want to see how we can open up state enterprises for international and local investments. So that would be a very big priority," Nasheed told Reuters in an interview. Key goods and services are now provided by state enterprises, while foreign investment is limited to tourism, which contributes 28 percent of GDP directly and up to 70 percent indirectly. Nasheed also said the two main state hospitals would be privatised next year. While Gayoom's government has said it is working with companies keen to prospect for oil, Nasheed says his government "wants to export solar cells instead of oil". Gayoom brought international notice to the low-lying country by highlighting the risks of climate change, but Nasheed aims to make environmentalism a reality at home by introducing solar, wind and other alternative energy sources to the islands. "We are talking to a number of international companies, who are very excited about the prospects of using the Maldives as a solar power showcase. This is where the sun is," he said. 'THE OTHER MALDIVES' The International Monetary Fund warned earlier this year that the Maldives needed to create more sustainable revenues and trim its government wage bill, while cutting costly energy subsidies. The country's foreign currency reserves presently are standing at $116 million. Gayoom's government this year faced a $200 million hole in its budget after a transshipment port in the north and a port complex in the capital Male fell behind schedule. Nasheed said those two plans would be scrapped. He has also asked Amnesty International, which declared him a prisoner of conscience in the 1990s, to help review prison terms. Gayoom was accused by rights groups and Nasheed of jailing opponents or banishing them to remote atolls, until he finally succumbed to pressure to create democratic reforms. Nasheed said prison stints gave him time to dream of how he would lead the country. "I've imagined this in so much detail, because I've spent time in solitary," he said. "You had to live another moment, another life elsewhere. So the elsewhere life is the other Maldives we've all envisaged."

Germany must take concrete steps to tackle global warming instead of protesting when it comes to implementing planned measures, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso was quoted as saying on Saturday. In an interview with German magazine WirtschaftsWoche, Barroso hit back against German protests about the Commission's proposals to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). "We agreed on climate policy goals in the EU -- under the German presidency by the way," he said. "These plans must become concrete. We can't just talk about tackling climate change in general and then protest when it comes to implementation." Although Chancellor Angela Merkel has made battling global warming a centrepiece of her administration, Germany has protested the EU plans would be too harsh on German carmakers, who form one of the country's most powerful lobbies. The Commission wants a four-year phase-in period from 2012 for fines on manufacturers whose fleets exceed an average of 120 grams of the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. The Commission will on Wednesday present draft laws on energy sector reform and ways to fight climate change, based on ambitious binding targets agreed by EU leaders last March.

WASHINGTON, Wed Oct 8, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - With world attention trained on resolving a financial crisis in Western economies, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the poverty-fighting institution is warning developing countries to prepare for tougher times. In an interview with Reuters ahead of weekend meetings of world finance ministers, Zoellick said business failures, bank emergencies and balance of payments crises are all possible in developing countries as the crisis spreads. He said a growing financial squeeze, together with higher food and fuel prices, will only make it more difficult for governments in developing countries to protect the poor. A new World Bank report prepared for the meetings warns that high food and fuel prices will increase the number of malnourished people around the world in 2008 by 44 million to over 960 million. The World Bank chief said the bank had identified around 28 countries that could face fiscal difficulties. He said he would release the details later on Thursday ahead of weekend meetings of finance leaders in Washington. "What we're now moving into is the phase where one has to look more broadly at the danger of developing country growth and there it depends on policies they take and the support we and others can give them," Zoellick told Reuters. "Over the medium and long term, I remain optimistic about the possibilities of sub-Saharan Africa being a pole of growth, but it won't happen automatically, it will require their actions and the right investments," he added. Zoellick said the World Bank was working with developing countries to make them aware of the services the bank could provide to help prepare contingency plans and support countries whose banking systems may come under strain. STAKES ARE HIGH The financial crisis threatens to undo much, or in some cases all, of the progress made in many developing countries over the past several years to lift growth and reduce poverty and disease. Between 1997 and 2007, 17 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa grew on average 6 percent, most of them non-oil producers. Another 8 countries, all oil producers, grew on average 8 percent over the same 10 years. Zoellick told a news conference earlier there was frustration, fear and anxiety at the difficulties economies may now encounter from a crisis that began in the United States. Better economic management, fewer conflicts, and prospects of high returns on investments have attracted more private sector interest into developing countries. Among those investors has been China, Brazil, India and Gulf countries, spurring so-called south-south investment where one emerging economy invests in another. Zoellick said that despite ripple effects from the financial crisis into emerging economies, he was confident China would continue to invest in natural resources in Africa, while Gulf states look to investments in agriculture. "While we're dealing with today's problems, you have to keep your eye on tomorrow (and) take the problem and turn it into an opportunity," he said. Just as Western central banks and China took unprecedented coordinated action to cut interest rates on Wednesday to restore calm to markets, he hoped they would do the same when it comes to helping the developing world deal with effects from the financial crisis, but also the "human crisis" of increasing malnourishment. The same countries could help by contributing to a World Bank fund to assist developing countries struggling with higher food and fuel prices and that would provide fertilizer to small farmers and energy to the poor. There would also be a need for developed countries to help the World Bank and International Monetary Fund support governments facing balance of payments needs and challenges to do with climate change and trade, he said. "We can play a role but we need the developed countries to also act in coordinated action to support that."

Another half a million are already experiencing famine-like conditions, said the WFP’s Executive Director David Beasley. "We now have four countries where famine-like conditions are present. Meanwhile 41 million people are literally knocking on famine's door," he said. The WFP, which is funded entirely by voluntary donations, said it needs to raise $6 billion immediately to reach those at risk, in 43 countries. "We need funding and we need it now," said Beasley. After declining for several decades, world hunger has been on the rise since 2016, driven by conflict and climate change. In 2019, 27 million people were on the brink of famine, according to the WFP, but since 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic has been added to the mix. World food prices rose in May to their highest levels in a decade, UN figures show, with basics like cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar up a combined 40 percent versus year ago levels. Currency depreciation in countries like Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe is adding to these pressures and driving prices even higher, stoking food insecurity. Famine-like conditions are present this year in Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Sudan and Yemen, as well as in pockets of Nigeria and Burkina Faso. But Beasley warned against "debating numbers to death" as happened in Somalia in 2011 when 130,000 people - half the eventual toll from starvation - had already died by the time famine was declared. The WFP, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, says around 9 percent of the world's population, equivalent to nearly 690 million people, go to bed hungry each night.

Soon after the Taliban takeover Aug 15, the new government told them all to get out. Ghullam Farooq, 40, sat in the darkness of his shop in Firqa last month, describing how armed Taliban fighters came at night, expelling him at gunpoint from his home in the community, a neighborhood of Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan. “All the Taliban said was, ‘Take your stuff and go,' ” he said. Those who fled or were forcibly removed were quickly replaced with Taliban commanders and fighters. Thousands of Afghans are facing such traumatic dislocations as the new Taliban government uses property to compensate its fighters for years of military service, amid a crumbling economy and a lack of cash. Over decades, after every period of upheaval in Afghanistan, property becomes a crucial form of wealth for those in power to reward followers. But this arbitrary redistribution also leaves thousands displaced and fuels endless disputes in a country where the land ownership system is so informal that few people hold any documentation for the ground they call their own. Just as during past changes in government, distributing property to Taliban disciples in swaths of rural farmland and in desirable urban neighborhoods has turned into at least a short-term recourse to keep stability within the Taliban ranks. “Who has the guns gets the land,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “It’s an old, long continuing story.” In a largely pastoral nation split by rugged mountain ranges, dotted with deserts and little forest, land is one of the most important assets and a flashpoint, fueling blood feuds between neighbors, ethnic groups and warlords as power has changed hands. Conflicting legal systems dictating land ownership and a lack of documentation have further destabilized the property market through the generations. The country is slightly smaller in land area than Texas, with a population that has grown in past decades to around 39 million people. Yet, only one-eighth of Afghanistan’s land is farmable and shrinking under a crippling drought and changes wrought from climate change. Today’s land disputes in Afghanistan can be largely traced to the Soviet-backed regime that came to power in the late 1970s, which redistributed property across the country. This quickly fueled tensions as land was confiscated and given to the poor and landless under the banner of socialism. Land redistribution continued to play out, first during the civil war in the early 1990s and then under the rise of the Taliban. After the US invasion in 2001, those same commanders who were once defeated by the Taliban went about distributing and stealing land once more, this time with the backing of the newly installed US-supported government. US and NATO military forces contributed to the problem by seizing property for bases and doing little to compensate landowners. Attempts by the Western-backed government over the past two decades to formalize land ownership and property rights ultimately proved futile as the incentives to take advantage of the system overwhelmed efforts to regularize it. Now more than three months after the Taliban’s rise to power, its administrators are in a similar position, but with no official policy regarding land ownership. “We are still analyzing and investigating how to honor land deeds and titles for people,” said Bilal Karimi, a Taliban spokesperson. Local Taliban leaders have been seizing and reallocating property for years in districts they captured to reward fighters and the families of their dead with land to farm or sell for profit. In 2019, when the Taliban arrived at Mullah Abdul Salam’s modest poppy farm in Musa Qala, in Helmand province, he faced an impossible choice. Like many poor farmers in rural Afghanistan, he had no legal deed to prove he owned the ground he had cultivated for years. So the Taliban gave him an ultimatum: Either pay a lump sum to keep his land or give it up. “We came early, and we had the right to the land,” Salam recalled, standing on the edge of his poppy field in Musa Qala, shovel in hand. “It had to be ours.” For some time, the land in Musa Qala was unclaimed, undocumented and written off as unfarmable, except by a few farmers such as Salam. Then the ground became more fertile with the widespread growth of solar power that enabled farmers to run well pumps, at far lower expense than use of conventional fuel. The Taliban tried to strike a balance by allowing the poor farmers to remain at relatively small cost, while allocating unclaimed plots to its fighters. Khoi, a brother of a Taliban fighter who goes by one name, was among the family members of the militants who received land in Musa Qala two years ago. Since then, he said, fellow Taliban veterans had profited by selling portions of the property gifted to them. “There is no more land for the Taliban to distribute here. If they could, they would,” he said. With no official guidance, Taliban officials have now resorted to the same practices throughout the country that carved up the area around Salam’s farm. But as the Taliban distribute property, parts of the population have been left confused and angered by the actions of their new government, which suspiciously resemble the behavior of its predecessors. In Takhar province, a historically anti-Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan’s north, Taliban fighters have evicted people — including some who had lived there for more than 40 years — in several districts, saying the land was unfairly distributed by previous governments, said a former Afghan lawmaker on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation against her family. Takhar residents, the former lawmaker said, have started to question whether Taliban administrators can run the country any more effectively than their predecessors, given how they are following the same practices as past governments. “The greatest issue for the Taliban going forward will be to deal with land documentation and legalization,” said Fazal Muzhary, a former researcher at Afghanistan Analysts Network, a policy research group, who focused on land ownership in Afghanistan. “So when the Taliban want to legalize or demarcate lands, they will also need to take back the lands from people who grabbed them in any period, in the '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s and so on. This will be very challenging for them.” In central Afghanistan, property disputes of another nature are playing out: the marginalization and displacement of ethnic minorities in order to seize their arable land. Taliban leaders have long persecuted and antagonized the Hazaras, a mostly Shiite minority, and in recent months, the new government has watched as local strongmen evicted hundreds of families. In September, Nasrullah, 27, and his family fled their village in Daikundi province, along with around 200 families who left nearly everything, he said. Such displacements have upended more than a dozen villages in central Afghanistan, affecting more than 2,800 Hazaras, according to a Human Rights Watch report. In recent weeks, local courts have overturned some seizures, allowing some families to return. But for most, the evictions have been traumatic. “In each village, the Taliban put a checkpoint, and the people aren’t allowed to take anything but our clothes and some flour,” said Nasrullah, who goes by one name, during an interview in September. “But I brought only my clothes.” c.2021 The New York Times Company

Autumn air temperatures have climbed to record levels in the Arctic due to major losses of sea ice as the region suffers more effects from a warming trend dating back decades, a report released on Thursday showed. The annual report issued by researchers at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other experts is the latest to paint a dire picture of the impact of climate change in the Arctic. It found that autumn air temperatures are at a record 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees C) above normal in the Arctic because of the major loss of sea ice in recent years that allows more solar heating of the ocean. That warming of the air and ocean impacts land and marine life and cuts the amount of winter sea ice that lasts into the following summer, according to the report. In addition, wild reindeer and caribou herds appear to be declining in numbers, according to the report. The report also noted melting of surface ice in Greenland. "Changes in the Arctic show a domino effect from multiple causes more clearly than in other regions," James Overland, an oceanographer at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle one of the authors of the report, said in a statement. "It's a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways." Researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado, reported last month that Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level this summer. The 2008 season, those researchers said, strongly reinforces a 30-year downward trend in Arctic ice extent -- 34 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000, but 9 percent above the record low set in 2007. Last year was the warmest on record in the Arctic, continuing a regionwide warming trend dating to the mid-1960s. Most experts blame climate change on human activities spewing so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

US President Barack Obama will go ahead with plans to meet the Dalai Lama despite warnings from China not to, White House confirmed on Tuesday . The White House confirmed that, Obama would meet the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader reviled by Beijing as a separatist for seeking self-rule for his mountain homeland. China warned US President Barack Obama on Wednesday that a meeting between him and the Dalai Lama would further erode ties between the two powers, already troubled by Washington's arms sales to Taiwan. China's angry response reflected deepening tension between the world's biggest and third-biggest economies, with Beijing noting that President Hu Jintao himself urged Obama not to meet the exiled Tibetan leader. Ma Zhaoxu, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said his government "resolutely opposes the leader of the United States having contact with the Dalai under any pretext or in any form". During Hu's summit with Obama in Beijing last November, the Chinese leader "explained China's stern position of resolutely opposing any government leaders and officials meeting the Dalai", said Ma. "We urge the U.S. to fully grasp the high sensitivity of the Tibetan issues, to prudently and appropriately deal with related matters, and avoid bringing further damage to China-U.S. relations," said Ma. China's ire at the White House announcement was predictable, as was the White House's confirmation of the meeting, which has long been flagged. But the flare-up comes soon after Beijing lashed Washington over a $6.4 billion U.S. weapons package for Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing deems an illegitimate breakaway province. It also comes during Sino-U.S. tensions over the value of China's currency, trade protectionism and Internet freedoms. BEIJING GETS PUSHY Beijing has become increasingly assertive about opposing the Dalai Lama's meetings with foreign leaders, and the issue is a volatile theme among patriotic Chinese, who see Western criticism of Chinese policy in Tibet as meddling. Protests over Chinese rule in Tibet that upset the London and Paris legs of the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympics drew angry counter-protests by Chinese abroad and demonstrations in China urging boycotts of French goods. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy would not pull out of meeting the Dalai Lama while his country held the rotating presidency of the European Union in late 2008, China cancelled a summit with the EU and there were Chinese calls for boycotts of French goods. On Tuesday, a Chinese Communist Party official said any meeting between Obama and the Dalai Lama "would seriously undermine the political basis of Sino-U.S. relations". The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese Communist Party forces who entered the region from 1950. He says he wants true autonomy for Tibet under Chinese sovereignty, but Beijing says his demands amount to seeking outright independence. Previous US presidents, including Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, have met the Dalai Lama, drawing angry words from Beijing but no substantive reprisals. China's latest statement did not mention any specific retaliation over Obama's planned meeting. "I think it indicates their nervousness in the issue of Tibet ... the wider world recognising that there is problem in Tibet and China should do something about it," said Thubten Samphel, spokesman of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, northern India. The White House shrugged off Beijing's earlier warnings about the meeting, which may happen as early as this month. "The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters. "We expect that our relationship with China is mature enough where we can work on areas of mutual concern such as climate, the global economy and non-proliferation and discuss frankly and candidly those areas where we disagree." The United States says it accepts that Tibet is a part of China and wants Beijing to open up dialogue with the Dalai Lama about the future of the region. But a Chinese foreign policy analyst said the response from Beijing, increasingly assertive on what it sees as core concerns, would be tougher than Washington anticipates. "China wants to change the rules of the game," Yuan Peng, head of US studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper. "Though the US has previously sold weapons to Taiwan and met the Dalai Lama, and we've then railed at the United States, this time there'll be true cursing and retaliation."

- Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday said that the government will set up a second nuclear plant in the southern part of the country. She was speaking after inaugurating six new modern scientific research facilities, including a 3MV Tandem Accelerat

A planned new U.N. climate pact is shaping up to be a mildly tougher version of the existing Kyoto Protocol rather than a bold treaty to save what U.S. President Barack Obama has called a "planet in peril." "There's not a lot of ambition around," said Jennifer Morgan, of the London-based think-tank E3G, of submissions to the United Nations published this month to meet a deadline for consideration in a deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. Australia is a partial exception, saying on Monday that it would ratchet up planned cuts by 2020, if other nations also did so. But Canberra put back its planned carbon emissions trading scheme by a year to mid-2011, amid a recession. Taking account of the new Australian offer, plans outlined by developed nations add up to average cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of between 9 and 16 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, according to Reuters calculations. That is nearer the goal of the Kyoto Protocol -- an average cut by industrialized nations of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 -- than the 25 to 40 percent reduction below 1990 by 2020 outlined by the U.N. Climate Panel as the order of cutback required to avert the worst of global warming. "The economic downturn is putting a brake on the level of commitment and investment to mitigate climate change," said Pep Canadell, head of the global carbon project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. He said Australia's delay was a sign of economic strains. BUDGET DEFICITS "The current stimulus packages are committing the economies of developed countries to run deficits for a number of years which will not make things easier in the near future either," he said. And the rich nations' plans contrast starkly with demands by developing nations, which are likely to suffer most from projected floods, droughts, extinctions of plants and animals and rising sea levels caused by global warming. Countries such as China and India want the rich to cut by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 as a condition for their greater involvement in curbing rising emissions. They also want aid and green technology -- submissions so far have been vague about cash. Among developed nations, the European Union says cuts must ensure that world temperatures do not rise more than 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above levels that existed before the Industrial Revolution. "Submissions so far from all countries are nowhere near 2 Celsius," said Bill Hare, a visiting scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a director of Climate Analytics. "Many countries are slumbering through the climate crisis like Sleeping Beauty," Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim said, asked about the gap between the rich nations' offers and the expectations of developing nations. Norway has so far promised some of the deepest cuts -- 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. But some of the cuts will be made by buying carbon emissions quotas abroad, funded by cash from North Sea oil, rather than by reducing emissions at home. Fossil fuels are a main source of greenhouse gases. Obama plans to cut U.S. emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a cut of about 14 percent from 2007 levels, to help what he described in his election victory speech last November as a "planet in peril." He wants cuts of 80 percent by 2050. Washington says that it needs to be guided by pragmatism as well as by climate science -- and says the 25 to 40 percent range is far out of reach for 2020. But Obama's more modest goal may be having a knock-on effect. "Even going back to 1990 levels in the U.S. -- which is far from insignificant -- has just made Japan feel more at ease that it doesn't need to go any further," said Kim Carstensen, head of the Global Climate Initiative of the WWF International environmental group. "My sense is that we have seen the same relaxation in Europe...Australia may be the point where we begin to see a change," he said. Australia said it will cut by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels if other nations join in, toughening its earlier plan to cut by 5 to 15 percent. Japan has yet to set a 2020 goal, from widely varying options. The EU has promised a cut of 20 percent by 2020 from 1990, and up to 30 percent if other nations join in.

Less than 1% of the population — including aristocrats, royals and wealthy investors — owns about half the land, according to “Who Owns England,” a book that is to be published in May. And many of them inherited the property as members of families that have held it for generations — even centuries. In the book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, author Guy Shrubsole, an environmental activist and writer, identifies many of the owners and compiles data gathered by peppering public bodies with freedom of information requests and combing through the 25 million title records in the government’s Land Registry. He reached a striking conclusion — that in England, home to about 56 million people, half the country belongs to just 25,000 landowners, some of them corporations. The findings go to the heart of a potent political issue — economic inequality — that is roiling nations and feeding populist movements on multiple continents. Leaders of the opposition Labour Party seized on Shrubsole’s findings, first published this week in The Guardian newspaper, as evidence for the case they have made for years against the governing Conservative Party. “Don’t let anyone tell you our country doesn’t need radical change,” Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader, wrote on Twitter as he shared The Guardian’s article Thursday. Comparison to other developed countries is difficult, because they do not have national land registries. Records can only be viewed one at a time through hundreds of local registry officers, they are not fully open to the public and, as in the United States, ownership can be obscured through shell corporations. But Britain has greater wealth inequality than peers like Germany, France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia — though less than the United States. And Britain has not seen the kinds of wars and revolutions that over centuries wiped away sprawling estates owned by nobility in most of Europe. Who owns the “green and pleasant land” of the English countryside can be a well-kept secret, in part because a large segment of it does not even figure in public records. Government efforts to make a public accounting of land ownership date to the 19th century, but according to the Land Registry, about 15% of the country’s area, most of it rural, is still unrecorded. “Much of the land owned by the Crown, the aristocracy, and the Church has not been registered, because it has never been sold, which is one of the main triggers for compulsory registration,” the registry, which covers England and Wales, says on its website. Shrubsole began documenting England’s estates after the referendum on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, known as Brexit, in 2016. “If Brexit really meant ‘taking back control of our country,’ then I’d like at least to know who owns it,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Guardian a year after the vote. Real estate prices in England are among the highest in Europe and have soared during the last generation. Shrubsole’s book documents ownership, maps unregistered land and argues that the concentration of ownership helps keep available land scarce and expensive. Houses, stores, office buildings, schools and farms are often held under long-term leases, paying a steady stream of rents — directly or through intermediate leaseholders — to major landowners. Shrubsole said that by publishing his research, he wanted to start a conversation. “It should prompt a proper debate about the need for land reform in England,” Shrubsole said. The issue of land relates to the country’s housing crisis, to economic inequality, to climate change and the intensive use of farmland, he added. The ancient idea that wealth meant land does not always hold true in modern times. But, in Britain, land accounted for half the country’s net worth in 2016, according to data from the Office of National Statistics — double that of Germany and higher than in countries like France, Canada and Japan. Britain’s net worth more than tripled between 1995 and 2017, driven primarily by the value of land, which rose much faster than other kinds of assets. “The main economic challenge and the social justice issue is that for the last 30, 40 years, landowners have enjoyed enormous unearned windfall gains at a faster rate than wages or the economy have grown,” said Josh Ryan-Collins, head of research at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London. “There is nothing that the landowners have done to earn those incomes,” he said. He said that even agricultural land has become the object of speculative demand, pushing prices and gains for landowners up further. But even if land reform has not been on the agenda of the Conservative government, it has had to address the housing crisis and agricultural subsidies. Recently, Conservatives have focused their criticism on the European Union’s farming and forestry subsidy system, which has put aristocrats, the royal family and wealthy investors among the top recipients of taxpayer-funded aid. Queen Elizabeth II’s estate in Sandringham, north of London, received 695,000 pounds (more than $900,000) in aid in 2017, according to a public database of payments. An agriculture bill in Parliament promises to change farm subsidies after Brexit. Instead of direct payments based on the total amount of land farmed, payments in the new system would be based on factors such as contributions to the environment, animal welfare and public access to the property. “As we know, many of the beneficiaries are not even UK or EU citizens, but foreign citizens who happen to have invested in agricultural land,” said Michael Gove, Britain’s environment secretary, during a 2018 debate on the bill in Parliament. “It is a simple matter of social justice and economic efficiency that we need to change that system.” Most of the European Union is also grappling with concentrated ownership of farmland, though not to the same degree. A 2017 report by European Parliament lawmakers said that in 2010, 3% of farms controlled half the agricultural land within the bloc. “Agricultural land is not an ordinary traded good, as soil is non-renewable and access to it is a human right,” the report said. “As with the concentration of financial wealth, too high a concentration of agricultural land splits society, destabilises rural areas, threatens food safety and thus jeopardises the environmental and social objectives of Europe.” Scotland, where land ownership is in the hands of even fewer people and organisations, has enacted a set of land reform laws. In 2004, it abolished feudal rules that were still in effect, helping many long-time tenants to become outright owners of their land. Other legislation introduced the right to roam, giving the public access to vast privately held lands. “The example of successful land reform programs in other countries, like Scotland, should give us hope,” Shrubsole wrote in his book. “Get land reform right, and we can go a long way toward ending the housing crisis, restoring nature and making our society more equal.”

From Wuhan to New York, demand for face shields, gloves, takeaway food containers and bubble wrap for online shopping has surged. Since most of that cannot be recycled, so has the waste. But there is another consequence. The pandemic has intensified a price war between recycled and new plastic, made by the oil industry. It's a war recyclers worldwide are losing, price data and interviews with more than two dozen businesses across five continents show. "I really see a lot of people struggling," Steve Wong, CEO of Hong-Kong based Fukutomi Recycling and chairman of the China Scrap Plastics Association told Reuters in an interview. "They don't see a light at the end of the tunnel." The reason: Nearly every piece of plastic begins life as a fossil fuel. The economic slowdown has punctured demand for oil. In turn, that has cut the price of new plastic. Already since 1950, the world has created 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste, 91% of which has never been recycled, according to a 2017 study published in the journal Science. Most is hard to recycle, and many recyclers have long depended on government support. New plastic, known to the industry as "virgin" material, can be half the price of the most common recycled plastic. Since COVID-19, even drinks bottles made of recycled plastic – the most commonly recycled plastic item – have become less viable. The recycled plastic to make them is 83% to 93% more expensive than new bottle-grade plastic, according to market analysts at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS). Separated cans are seen at Amarsul plant in Seixal, Portugal July 7, 2020. Picture taken July 7, 2020. REUTERS The pandemic hit as politicians in many countries promised to wage war on waste from single-use plastics. China, which used to import more than half the world's traded plastic waste, banned imports of most of it in 2018. The European Union plans to ban many single-use plastic items from 2021. The US Senate is considering a ban on single-use plastic and may introduce legal recycling targets. Separated cans are seen at Amarsul plant in Seixal, Portugal July 7, 2020. Picture taken July 7, 2020. REUTERS Plastic, most of which does not decompose, is a significant driver of climate change. The manufacture of four plastic bottles alone releases the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of driving one mile in a car, according to the World Economic Forum, based on a study by the drinks industry. The United States burns six times more plastic than it recycles, according to research in April 2019 by Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and former vice chair of the U.S. Federal climate committee. But the coronavirus has accentuated a trend to create more, not less, plastic trash. The oil and gas industry plans to spend around $400 billion over the next five years on plants to make raw materials for virgin plastic, according to a study in September by Carbon Tracker, an energy think tank. This is because, as a growing fleet of electric vehicles and improved engine efficiency reduce fuel demand, the industry hopes rising demand for new plastic can assure future growth in demand for oil and gas. It is counting on soaring use of plastic-based consumer goods by millions of new middle-class consumers in Asia and elsewhere. "Over the next few decades, population and income growth are expected to create more demand for plastics, which help support safety, convenience and improved living standards," ExxonMobil spokeswoman Sarah Nordin told Reuters. Most companies say they share concerns about plastic waste and are supporting efforts to reduce it. However, their investments in these efforts are a fraction of those going into making new plastic, Reuters found. Reuters surveyed 12 of the largest oil and chemicals firms globally – BASF, Chevron, Dow, Exxon, Formosa Plastics, INEOS, LG Chem, LyondellBasell, Mitsubishi Chemical, SABIC, Shell and Sinopec. Only a handful gave details of how much they are investing in waste reduction. Three declined to comment in detail or did not respond. Most said they channel their efforts through a group called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which is also backed by consumer goods companies, and which has pledged $1.5 billion over the next five years on that effort. Its 47 members, most of whom are in the plastics industry, had combined annual revenue of almost $2.5 trillion last year, according to a Reuters tally of company results. In total, commitments by the Alliance and the companies surveyed amounted to less than $2 billion over five years, or $400 million a year, the Reuters survey found. That's a fraction of their sales. A worker collects plastic bottles in a sack while sitting in a pile of trash washed-up from the Motagua river during a cleaning operation at a beach in the village of Quetzalito, in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala September 24, 2020. Picture taken September 24, 2020. REUTERS Plans to invest so heavily in new plastic are "quite a concerning move," said Lisa Beauvilain, Head of Sustainability at Impax Asset Management, a fund with $18.5 billion under management. A worker collects plastic bottles in a sack while sitting in a pile of trash washed-up from the Motagua river during a cleaning operation at a beach in the village of Quetzalito, in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala September 24, 2020. Picture taken September 24, 2020. REUTERS "Countries with often undeveloped waste management and recycling infrastructure will be ill-equipped to handle even larger volumes of plastic waste," she said. "We are literally drowning in plastics." Since the coronavirus struck, recyclers worldwide told Reuters, their businesses have shrunk, by more than 20% in Europe, by 50% in parts of Asia and as much as 60% for some firms in the United States. Greg Janson, whose St. Louis, Missouri, recycling company QRS has been in business for 46 years, says his position would have been unimaginable a decade ago: The United States has become one of the cheapest places to make virgin plastic, so more is coming onto the market. "The pandemic exacerbated this tsunami," he said. The oil and chemicals companies that Reuters surveyed said plastic can be part of the solution to global challenges related to a growing population. Six said they were also developing new technologies to reuse waste plastic. Some said other packaging products can cause more emissions than plastics; because plastic is light, it is indispensable for the world's consumers and can help reduce emissions. A few called on governments to improve waste management infrastructure. "Higher production capacities do not necessarily mean more plastic waste pollution," said a spokesman at BASF SE of Germany, the world's biggest chemicals producer, adding that it has been innovating for many years in packaging materials to reduce the resources required. The new plastic wave is breaking on shores across the globe. MAKE PLASTIC Richard Pontillas, 33, runs a family-owned "sari-sari" or "sundries" store in Quezon City, the most populous metropolis in the Philippines. The liquid goods he sells used to be packaged in glass. Many customers, in fact, brought in their own bottles to be refilled. Merchants like him are among key targets for the plastic industry, looking to extend a trend established after 1907, when Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite. Since World War Two, mass-produced plastic has fuelled economic growth and spawned a new era of consumerism and convenience packaging. "Many years ago ... we relied on goods repackaged in bottles and plastic bags," said Pontillas, whose store sells rice, condiments and sachets of coffee, chocolate drink and seasonings. Today, thousands of small-scale vendors in the developing world stock daily goods in plastic pouches, or sachets, which hang in strips from the roofs of roadside shacks and cost a few cents a go. Already, 164 million such sachets are used every day in the Philippines, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, an NGO. That's nearly 60 billion a year. Consumer goods firms including Nestle and P&G say they are working hard to make their packaging either recyclable or reusable. For example, P&G said it has a project in schools in the Manila region which aims to collect one million sachets for "upcycling." But sachets are very difficult to recycle. They are just one form of pollution that the pandemic is adding to, clogging drains, polluting water, suffocating marine life and attracting rodents and disease-carrying insects. So are face masks, which are made partly from plastic. In March, China used 116 million of them – 12 times more than in February, official data show. Total production of masks in China is expected to exceed 100 billion in 2020, according to a report by Chinese consultancy iiMedia Research. The United States generated an entire year's worth of medical waste in two months at the height of the pandemic, according to another consultancy, Frost & Sullivan. Even as the waste mounts, much is at stake for the oil industry. Exxon forecasts that demand for petrochemicals will rise by 4% a year over the next few decades, the company said in an investor presentation in March. And oil's share of energy for transport will fall from more than 90% in 2018 to just under 80% or as low as 20% by 2050, BP Plc said in its annual market report in September. Oil companies worry that environmental concerns may blunt petrochemical growth. The UN said last year that 127 countries have adopted bans or other laws to manage plastic bags. BP's chief economist Spencer Dale said in 2018 that global plastic bans could result in 2 million barrels per day of lower oil demand growth by 2040 – around 2% of current daily demand. The company declined further comment. USE PLASTIC This year alone, Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BASF have announced petrochemical plant investments in China worth a combined $25 billion, tapping into rising demand for consumer goods in the world's most populous country. An additional 176 new petrochemical plants are planned in the next five years, of which nearly 80% will be in Asia, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie says. In the United States since 2010, energy companies have invested more than $200 billion in 333 plastic and other chemical projects, according to the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry body. Those investments have come as the US industry sought to capitalise on a sudden abundance of cheap natural gas released by the shale revolution. The industry says disposable plastics have saved lives. "Single-use plastics have been the difference between life and death during this pandemic," Tony Radoszewski, president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS), the industry's lobbying group in the United States, told Reuters. Bags for intravenous solutions and ventilators require single-use plastics, he said. "Hospital gowns, gloves and masks are made from safe, sanitary plastic." In March, PLASTICS wrote to the US Department of Health and Human Services, calling for a rollback of plastic bag bans on health grounds. It said plastic bags are safer because germs live on reusable bags and other substances. Researchers led by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a US government agency, found later that month that the coronavirus was still active on plastic after 72 hours, compared with up to 24 hours on cardboard and copper. The industry's letter was part of a long-standing campaign for single-use material. The ACC's managing director for plastics, Keith Christman, said the chemicals lobby is opposed to plastic bans because it believes consumers would switch to using other disposable materials like glass and paper, rather than reusing bags and bottles. "The challenge comes when you ban plastic but the alternative might not be a reusable product ... so it really wouldn't accomplish much," Christman said. Plastic makes up 80% of marine debris, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a global alliance backed by governments, NGOs and companies including Shell, which is also a member of the ACC. Plastic pollution has been shown to be deadly to turtles, whales and baby seals and releases chemicals that we inhale, ingest or touch that cause a wide range of harms including hormonal disruption and cancer, the United Nations says. RECYCLE? Plastic recyclers have faced new problems in the pandemic. Demand for recycled material from packaging businesses fell by 20% to 30% in Europe in the second quarter compared with the previous year, ICIS says. At the same time, people who stayed at home created more recycling waste, said Sandra Castro, CEO of Extruplas, a Portuguese recycling firm which transforms recycled plastics into outdoor furniture. "There are many recycling companies that may not be able to cope," she said. "We need the industry to be able to provide a solution to the waste we produce." In the United States, QRS's Janson said that for two months after the pandemic lockdowns, his orders were down 60% and he dropped his prices by 15%. And the pandemic has added to costs for big consumer companies that use recycled plastic. The Coca-Cola Co told Reuters in September it missed a target to get recycled plastic into half its UK packaging by early 2020 due to COVID-19 delays. The company said it hopes now to meet that by November. Coca-Cola, Nestle and PepsiCo have been the world's top three plastic polluters for two years running, according to a yearly brand audit by Break Free From Plastic, an NGO. These companies have for decades made voluntary goals to increase recycled plastic in their products. They have largely failed to meet them. Coke and Nestle said it can be hard to get the plastic they need from recycled sources. "We often pay more for recycled plastic than we would if we purchased virgin plastic," a Nestle spokesperson said, adding that investment in recycled material was a company priority. Asked how much they were investing in recycling and waste cleanup programmes, the three companies named initiatives totalling $215 million over a seven-year period. At current investment levels in recycling, brands will not meet their targets, analysts at ICIS and Wood Mackenzie say. TOSS Even if existing recycling pledges are met, the plastic going into the oceans is on course to rise from 11 million tonnes now to 29 million by 2040, according to a study published in June by Pew Trusts, an independent public interest group. Cumulatively, this would reach 600 million tonnes – the weight of 3 million blue whales. In response to mounting public concerns, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste says it will partner existing small-scale NGOs that clean up waste in developing countries. One venture, which helps women earn money from selling plastic scrap in Ghana, says it has successfully diverted 35 tonnes of plastic from becoming litter since March 2017. That's less than 0.01% of the annual plastic waste generated in Ghana, or 2% of the plastic waste that the United States exported to Ghana last year, according to World Bank and US trade data. "We do realise change won't happen overnight," said Alliance president and CEO Jacob Duer. "What is important for us is that our projects are not seen as the end, but the beginning." In the Philippines, Vietnam and India, as much as 80% of the recycling industry was not operating during the height of the pandemic. And there was a 50% drop in demand for recycled plastic on average across South and Southeast Asia, according to Circulate Capital, a Singapore-based investor in Asian recycling operations. "The combination of the impact of COVID-19 and low oil prices is like a double whammy" for plastic recycling, said Circulate's CEO, Rob Kaplan. "We're seeing massive disruption."

European nations, Canada, Bolivia and Nepal raised backing for the 2015 Paris Agreement to countries representing 56.87 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions, above the 55 percent needed for implementation, a United Nations website showed. The deal will formally start in 30 days on Nov 4, four days before the US presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump opposes the accord and Democrat Hillary Clinton strongly supports it. China and the United States joined up last month in a joint step by the world's top emitters. Obama called Wednesday "a historic day in the fight to protect our planet for future generations" and he told reporters on the White House Rose Garden: "If we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet." Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Portugal and Malta - European Union nations which have completed domestic ratification and account for about four percent of emissions - formally signed up on Wednesday. In total, 73 countries out of 195 have ratified the agreement, according to the UN website. "Great job!" tweeted European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete. The Europeans brought forward a formal submission of documents to the United Nations from a ceremony planned on Friday, fearing that other nations might ratify and trigger entry into force without them. "We didn't want to be upstaged," an EU diplomat said. Many praised the rapid ratification of an agreement meant to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to limit floods, droughts, more powerful storms and rising ocean levels. "What once seemed unthinkable is now unstoppable," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. But all said more work was needed. "It is no exaggeration to say we are in a race against time," said Thoriq Ibrahim, Environment Minister for the Maldives and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States which fears the impact of rising sea levels. By contrast, it took eight years for the previous UN climate deal, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, to gain enough backing to take effect. It obliged only rich nations to cut emissions and the United States stayed out of it. Opposition continues in the Republican-controlled US Congress to Democrat Obama's climate change policies.   "The Paris climate deal would be disastrous for the American economy," said House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican. By contrast, Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever and Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, said ratification showed that a shift to a low-carbon economy is "urgent, inevitable, and accelerating faster than we ever believed possible". Still, current national pledges for cuts in emissions are insufficient to achieve a Paris goal of limiting a rise in world temperatures to "well below" two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. UN studies project that average world temperatures are set to rise by 3 degrees or more by 2100, based on current trends. And this year is expected to prove the warmest since records began in the 19th century, beating 2015.

WASHINGTON, Thu Sep 27,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters -- including the United States and China -- sent envoys to the US State Department on Thursday for discussions on climate change and what to do about it. The two-day meeting was called by President George W Bush, whose administration has been criticized for its refusal to adopt mandatory limits for climate-warming emissions. The White House favors "aspirational" targets. By most counts, the United States is the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles. But at least one study this year indicated that fast-developing China is now in the lead. Other participants are the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. This gathering of major economies follows a high-level United Nations meeting on Monday that drew more than 80 heads of state and government to focus on the problem of global warming. At its conclusion, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he saw a "major political commitment" to seek a global solution to the problem at future U.N. discussions in December in Bali, Indonesia. At the United Nations and in Washington before the State Department meeting, envoys and lawmakers called on the United States to take a leading role. "US leadership in the area of climate change is essential, not only because it is a big emitter of greenhouse gases, but because the US is on the cutting edge of developing technological solutions and bringing them to the global market," said special UN climate envoys Gro Harlem Brundtland, Ricardo Lagos Escobar and Han Seung-soo at a Capitol Hill briefing. A letter to Bush from members of Congress, led by Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, who chairs the House of Representatives global warming committee, urged mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions: "We need actual reductions in global warming pollution, not aspirational goals." "What would really galvanize the international efforts on climate would be a set of policies in the United States to put the United States on a fast track to building a low carbon economy," John Ashton, Britain's climate envoy, said in a telephone interview. "We now need to stop talking about talking and start deciding about doing." The Washington talks are not formal climate negotiations, but rather an airing of views on greenhouse gases, energy security, technology development and commercialization, financing -- and a daylong closed-door session on "process and principles for setting a long-term goal" to cut the human-caused emissions that spur climate change. Bush's proposal would come up with "aspirational goals" to limit emissions by the end of 2008, shortly before his administration leaves office. The Bali meeting in December is meant to begin figuring out a way to curb emissions after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. The Kyoto plan sets out mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse emissions, but the United States has rejected it as unfairly exempting fast-growing economies like China and India.

Some 135 heads of state and government and dozens of ministers will attend the 71st General Assembly, the last for both Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who will step down at the end of 2016 after a decade in the job. "While many conflicts are causing enormous pain, none is causing so much death, destruction and widespread instability as the worsening war in Syria," Ban told reporters on Wednesday. "Major countries with influence have a duty to use their influence and seize this latest opportunity to pursue a political solution." Members of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), which includes Russia and the United States, are likely to meet on the sidelines at the United Nations on Tuesday, diplomats said, while the UN Security Council is due to hold a high-level meeting on Syria on Wednesday.  Russia had wanted the council to endorse its Syria truce deal with the United States during the meeting, but on Friday said a resolution was unlikely because Washington did not want to share the documents detailing the agreement with the 15-member body. White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said on Friday he anticipated many of the US discussions at the United Nations "will focus on the situation in Syria, the response to North Korea's latest nuclear test, our shared efforts to combat (Islamic State) with many UN member states." Nearly 5 million Syrians have fled the country, and some 6.5 million have been internally displaced during the more than five-year conflict, contributing to the record 65.3 million people who were uprooted worldwide last year. Refugee crisis Before the world leaders begin their traditional speeches on Tuesday, the 193-member General Assembly will meet on Monday to adopt a political declaration on migrants and refugees. It is not legal binding, does not include a call by Ban for 10 percent of refugees to be resettled annually and has been dismissed by human rights groups as insufficient. The next day, Obama will host a summit that aims to boost humanitarian funds by a third and double the number of refugees being resettled annually. Countries are allowed to participate only if they are making pledges. "We are not going to solve the refugee crisis on Tuesday, but I think you will see an important show of political will from leaders around the world," US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told reporters on Thursday. On the sidelines of the week-long UN gathering, meetings are planned on other crises such as South Sudan, Yemen, Iraq and Libya. World powers also will meet to discuss the implementation of a deal to curb Iran's nuclear capabilities and the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Ban is hoping to bring the Paris climate change deal closer to reality with an event for states to deposit their instruments of ratification or approval. The United Nations said some 20 countries have indicated they will do so. The deal needs ratification by at least 55 countries representing 55 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions to take effect. So far, 27 nations that produce 39 percent of emissions have ratified it, including the United States and China, the biggest emitters. Diplomats said there is also likely to be gossip in the halls about the race to replace Ban as secretary-general ahead of the fourth secret ballot by the Security Council on Sep 26. Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres finished on top in the first three polls. When the 15-member council reaches a consensus, it will recommend a candidate to the General Assembly for election. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said there would more than 1,100 bilateral meetings between leaders at the United Nations during the next week. He summed up the annual gathering: "It's the World Cup of diplomacy. It's the Oscars of diplomacy. It's also an interesting fashion week."

FROM COPENHAGEN Maruf Mallick bdnews24.com environment correspondent Dec 14, 2009 Oceans are rapidly turning acidic--100 times faster than any change in acidity experienced in the marine environment over the last 20 million years, giving little time for evolutionary adaptation within biological systems, the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) says. It released on Monday a major study in collaboration with the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) on Ocean biodiversity at Bella Convention Centre, now hosting the climate talks in the Danish capital. According to the study, seas and oceans absorb approximately one quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other human activities. As more and more carbon dioxide has been emitted into the atmosphere, the oceans have absorbed greater amounts at increasingly rapid rates. Without this level of absorption by the oceans, atmospheric CO2 levels would be significantly higher than at present and the effects of global climate change would be more marked, the study adds. However, the absorption of atmospheric CO2 has resulted in changes to the chemical balance of the oceans, causing them to become more acidic. It is predicted that by 2050, ocean acidity could increase by 150 percent. "Ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years, and substantial damage to ocean ecosystems can only be avoided by urgent and rapid reductions in global emissions of CO2. "Attention must be given for integration of this critical issue at the global climate change debate in Copenhagen," said Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the convention. "This CBD study provides a valuable synthesis of scientific information on the impacts of ocean acidification, based on the analysis of more than 300 scientific literatures, and it describes an alarming picture of possible ecological scenarios and adverse impacts of ocean acidification on marine biodiversity," he added. Among other findings, the study shows that increasing ocean acidification will mean that by 2100 some 70 percent of cold water corals, a key refuge and feeding ground for commercial fish species, will be exposed to corrosive waters.

The European Union's executive adopted landmark proposals on Wednesday that will make the 27-nation bloc a world leader in the fight against climate change, but tradeoffs will include higher energy bills. The European Commission approved detailed plans to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions by one-fifth and set each EU state individual targets to produce one-fifth of all power from renewable sources like the wind and sun by 2020. Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the fiercely disputed package "the right policy framework for transformation to an environment-friendly European economy and to continue to lead the international action to protect our planet". Another goal was to ensure the bloc's energy security as remaining fossils fuels become concentrated among fewer nations. "We do not want to be dependent on regimes that are not our friends and want to protect ourselves from them," Barroso told the European Parliament in presenting the plan. The Commission aims to spur talks among industrialised countries for a global climate deal by 2009 to arrest global warming which risks raising sea levels and causing more floods and droughts. Environmentalists say the planned cuts are too small to achieve that goal or give a strong lead to the world and urged the EU to cut emissions unilaterally by 30 percent by 2020. Brussels softened its plans at the last minute to placate anxious industry leaders, who fear higher energy costs will tilt competitiveness further in favour of China and India, which have no emissions limits, at a time of record oil prices. The Commission agreed that energy-intensive industries, possibly including steel, aluminium and cement, would get all emissions permits for free. If there were no global deal to curb emissions, succeeding the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, the EU would consider forcing importers to buy permits. EU Enterprise Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, standard-bearer of the interests of heavy industry, told German television: "I am all for setting an example for the rest of the world. But I am against committing economic suicide." SPECIAL PROTECTION The proposals included a major overhaul from 2013 of the EU's flagship Emissions Trading System, to cover more greenhouse gases beyond carbon dioxide (CO2) and involve all big emitters. The Commission's plans will implement renewable energy and emissions-cutting targets agreed by EU leaders last March, and require approval by member states and the European Parliament. From 2013, power generators will have to buy all permits to emit carbon dioxide. They will pass the extra electricity costs on to consumers, and those costs will rise as the supply of permits is tightened. Until now utilities got most permits for free and derived huge windfall profits. There will be a slower phase-in of auctioning for airlines and oil refineries, EU officials said. Power bills for industry and households will also rise as a result of targets to supply more energy using clean energy technologies which are more costly than fossil fuels. The EU estimated that will add 10 to 15 percent to electricity prices. But Barroso dismissed concern at the cost, telling parliament: "The additional effort needed to realise the proposals would be less than 0.5 percent of GDP by 2020. That amounts to about 3 euros ($4.39) a week for everyone." Resistance is expected over targets for each country to cut greenhouse gases and install renewable energy. The EU executive talked up potential business benefits. Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the plan "gives Europe a head start in the race to create a low-carbon global economy that will unleash a wave of innovations and create new jobs in clean technologies." Business has sought to soften the emissions trading reform, with some energy-intensive industries warning that competition from less environmentally regulated nations such as China, India and the United States could force production out of Europe. "If we were to relocate our industries outside Europe we would then have to transport steel to Europe, adding emissions," said Philippe Varin, president of the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries, and chief executive of Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, owned by India's Tata Steel. EU officials faced a barrage of last minute lobbying from environmentalists, governments and energy-intensive business. "We have major concerns that the auctioning is being very much diluted due to scaremongering by industry," said Stefan Singer of the WWF environmental campaign group.

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In a report, the bank said ending poverty - one of 17 new UN goals adopted in September - would be impossible if global warming and its effects on the poor were not accounted for in development efforts. But more ambitious plans to reduce climate-changing emissions - aimed at keeping global temperature rise within an internationally agreed limit of 2 degrees Celsius - must also cushion poor people from any negative repercussions, it added. "Climate change hits the poorest the hardest, and our challenge now is to protect tens of millions of people from falling into extreme poverty because of a changing climate," World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement. The bank's estimate of 100 million more poor by 2030 is on top of 900 million expected to be living in extreme poverty if development progresses slowly. In 2015, the bank puts the number of poor at 702 million people. Climate change is already hurting them through decreased crop yields, floods washing away assets and livelihoods, and a bigger threat of diseases like malaria, said John Roome, World Bank senior director for climate change. He described ending poverty and tackling climate change as "the defining issues of our generation". "The best way forward is to tackle poverty alleviation and climate change in an integrated strategy," he told reporters. Poor families are more vulnerable to climate stresses than the rich because their main assets are often badly built homes and degrading land, and their losses are largely uninsured, the report said. Low-income households in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are particularly at risk of having their hard-won gains wiped out by climate-linked disasters, forcing them back into extreme poverty, it added. The report warns that, between now and 2030, climate policies can do little to alter the amount of global warming that will happen, making it vital to invest in adaptation measures and broader ways to make people more resilient. When Cyclone Pam devastated Vanuatu this March, a payout from a regional catastrophe risk scheme helped speed the response. When drought in Ethiopia led to a hunger crisis in 2011, a national programme providing food and cash in return for work on community projects was quickly expanded. Better social safety nets and health coverage for all, together with targeted improvements such as flood defences, early warning systems and hardier crops, could prevent or offset most of the negative effects of climate change on poverty in the next 15 years, the report said. “We have a window of opportunity to achieve our poverty objectives in the face of climate change, provided we make wise policy choices now,” said Stephane Hallegatte, a senior World Bank economist who led the team that prepared the report. Roome highlighted the need to roll out good policies faster, and ensure development projects consider climate projections, so that new infrastructure is not damaged in the future. Adaptation limits Beyond 2030, the world's ability to adapt to unabated climate change will be limited, warned the report, released ahead of a UN climate summit from Nov 30-Dec 11 where a new deal to curb global warming is due to be agreed. To rein in the longer-term impacts on poverty, immediate policies are needed that bring emissions to zero by the end of this century, the World Bank said. Some of those will have benefits for the poor, such as cleaner air, more energy efficiency and better public transport. Others could increase energy and food prices, which represent a large share of poor people's expenditures, the report noted. But policy shifts need not threaten short-term progress against poverty provided they are well-designed and international support is made available, it added. For example, savings from eliminating fossil fuel subsidies could be reinvested in assistance schemes to help poor families cope with higher fuel costs. Or governments could introduce carbon or energy taxes and recycle the revenues through a universal cash transfer that would benefit the poor, the report said. The international community can help by providing financial and technological support for things like insurance schemes, crop research, public transport and weather forecasting systems, the report said.

But unlike other bitcoin mining operations, which consume large quantities of fossil fuels and produce carbon emissions, Argo claims it’s trying to do something environmentally responsible. As Peter Wall, Argo’s chief executive, led a tour of the 126,000-square-foot construction site one morning this month, he pointed to a row of wind turbines a few miles down the road, their white spokes shining in the sunlight. The new facility, an hour outside Lubbock, would be fueled mostly by wind and solar energy, he declared. “This is bitcoin mining nirvana,” Wall said. “You look off into the distance and you’ve got your renewable power.” Facing criticism from politicians and environmentalists, the cryptocurrency mining industry has embarked on a rebranding effort to challenge the prevailing view that its electricity-guzzling computers are harmful to the climate. All five of the largest publicly traded crypto mining companies say they are building or already operating plants powered by renewable energy, and industry executives have started arguing that demand from crypto miners will create opportunities for wind and solar companies to open facilities of their own. The effort — partly a public-relations exercise, partly a genuine attempt to make the industry more sustainable — has intensified since last spring, when China began a crackdown on crypto mining, forcing some mining operations to relocate to the United States. A trade group called the Bitcoin Mining Council also formed last year, partly to tackle climate issues, after Elon Musk criticised the industry for using fossil fuels. Crypto mining does not involve any picks or shovels. Instead, the term refers to a verification and currency creation process that is essential to the bitcoin ecosystem. Powerful computers race one another to process transactions, solving complex mathematical problems that require quintillions of numerical guesses a second. As a reward for this authentication service, miners receive new coins, providing a financial incentive to keep the computers running. In bitcoin’s early years, a crypto enthusiast could mine coins by running software on a laptop. But as digital assets have become more popular, the amount of power necessary to generate bitcoin has soared. A single bitcoin transaction now requires more than 2,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or enough energy to power the average American household for 73 days, researchers estimate. To achieve that, some miners are reviving broken-down coal plants, or using low-cost natural gas to power their computers. Last month, a study in the journal Joule found that bitcoin mining worldwide may be responsible for about 65 megatons of carbon dioxide a year, comparable to the emissions of Greece. According to the study, the bitcoin network’s use of green energy sources also dropped to an average of 25% in August 2021 from 42% in 2020. (The industry has argued that its average renewable use is closer to 60%.) That’s partly a result of China’s crackdown, which cut off a source of cheap hydropower. But it reflects fundamental economic incentives, too, said Alex de Vries, one of the authors of the Joule study. Renewable energy is an intermittent power source — the sun shines only part of the day, and wind speeds fluctuate considerably. “What a miner is going to do if they want to maximise the profit is put their machine wherever it can run the entire day,” de Vries said. Bitcoin’s ballooning energy use has long outraged environmentalists. But the criticism that made the strongest impression came from Musk, a longtime bitcoin booster, who said on Twitter in May that Tesla, his electric car company, would no longer accept cryptocurrency payments because of the “increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining and transactions.” His tweet sent the mining industry into crisis mode. Michael Saylor, the CEO of the software company MicroStrategy, which invests heavily in bitcoin, got in touch with Musk to discuss the climate issue. A group of mining executives, including Saylor and Wall, later met with Musk over Zoom. “He wanted to make sure that the industry is on the side of sustainability, and he gave us some coaching,” Saylor recalled. “His encouragement was: ‘Find out how clean is the energy, how sustainable is the energy. Figure out how much you’re using.’” (Musk did not respond to a request for comment.) After the call, Saylor set up the Bitcoin Mining Council, a forum for the industry to share ideas and coordinate environmental strategy. One member, TeraWulf, has pledged to run cryptocurrency mines using more than 90% zero-carbon energy. It has two projects in the works — a retired coal plant in upstate New York fueled by hydropower, and a nuclear-powered facility in Pennsylvania. “Everyone I talk to now is talking about carbon neutrality,” said Paul Prager, the CEO of TeraWulf. “The language has absolutely changed.” But financial priorities and technological barriers in the crypto mining industry, which includes more than a dozen publicly traded companies like Argo, are preventing a complete shift to renewable power. In late 2020, Marathon, one of the largest publicly traded mining companies, started mining bitcoin at a coal-powered plant in Montana, citing the easy access to cheap energy. In Illinois, the cryptocurrency mining company Sangha Systems recently repurposed an old steel mill in the town of Hennepin. Sangha is run by a former lawyer, Spencer Marr, who says he founded the company to promote clean energy. But about half the Hennepin operation’s power comes from fossil fuels. “It was a compromise we had to make,” Marr said. “It was a means to an end that allowed us to establish ourselves as a company.” In recent months, Texas has become a hot spot for crypto mining, attracting more than two dozen companies. The state has an unusual incentive structure that’s well suited to the nascent industry: When electricity demand spikes statewide, the Texas grid operator offers discounts to companies that can quickly unplug, allowing energy to flow to ordinary homeowners. Many crypto mines can turn on or off in seconds, allowing them to take advantage of the incentive with minimal inconvenience. That deal was part of the attraction for Argo, a London-based company founded in 2017 that runs two other mines in Quebec, using mostly hydropower. Wall said Argo was also drawn to the ample green energy in West Texas. The facility outside Lubbock will be connected to the western sector of the Texas energy grid, where 85% of electricity comes from wind and solar infrastructure, including a set of turbines that sit practically next door to the Argo construction site. But Wall can’t guarantee that Argo’s new centre will have no carbon footprint. That would require bypassing the grid and buying energy directly from a renewable power company. “A lot of those renewable energy producers are still a little bit sceptical of cryptocurrency,” he said. “The crypto miners don’t have the credit profiles to sign 10- or 15-year deals.” In the future, he said, Argo plans to build its own solar panels on site in Texas and broker deals with local renewables companies to buy energy directly. The broader cryptocurrency community is divided over whether cleaning up the mining sector is the best path to environmental sustainability. The energy-intensive authentication system that underlies bitcoin is known as “proof of work”; some in the industry are pushing to build new cryptocurrencies on a different system called “proof of stake,” which uses as little as 0.01% of the energy consumed in the mining process. Wall said he had no objections to experimentation with an alternative system. Still, he said, he believes in the long-term potential of bitcoin to transform finance, though he wishes that miners were called something that sounded less extractive, like “validators.” That’s a battle he’s unlikely to win. But even in the face of backlash, he said, companies will keep mining bitcoin. “It’s just going to happen. It’s a reality,” he said. “We need to do it in an environmentally friendly way.” ©2022 The New York Times Company

The Kyoto Protocol which binds nearly 40 rich nations to limit carbon emissions is in "intensive care" and global negotiations to extend the pact have stalled, Environment Minister Jairam Rameshsaid on Wednesday. More than 190 countries are meeting in Copenhagen to agree the outlines of a new global deal to combat climate change, hoping to seal a full treaty next year to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries want rich nations to be held to their Kyoto obligations, and sign up to a second round of tougher commitments from 2013. But Jairam Ramesh said many developed countries were "vehemently opposing" the protocol and some of them wanted a single new accord obliging all nations to fight global warming. "The sense we get is that Kyoto (Protocol) is in intensive care if not dead," Ramesh told reporters.

Diplomats from the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters including the United States, China and India are set to take part in a forum on Monday at the U.S. State Department aimed at getting a U.N. agreement to curb global warming. The two-day meeting of so-called major economies is meant to jump-start climate talks in advance of a December deadline, when the international community meets in Copenhagen to find a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which limits climate-warming greenhouse emissions and expires in 2012. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to make opening remarks. Participants are expected to discuss technology cooperation and other issues. The major economies include Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States. Denmark, the host of the December meeting, also was invited. Environmentalists and others see U.S. commitment to fighting climate change as key to any global pact. "Without U.S. leadership, a global warming agreement in Copenhagen will be largely out of reach," said Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defense Council activist group. President Barack Obama has stressed the link between fighting climate change and helping the struggling economy, and called the meeting to relaunch the major economies process begun by his predecessor George W. Bush. The Bush team's efforts drew skepticism from many participants and were seen as a distraction from the main U.N. negotiations on climate change. OBAMA'S CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY Obama aims to cut U.S. emissions by about 15 percent by 2020, back to 1990 levels. Bush opposed the Kyoto Protocol and any other across-the-board limits on emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, saying the agreement unfairly exempted such quickly growing economies as China and India, and would hurt the U.S. economy. By contrast, the Obama team has pushed for action on climate change, most recently by declaring that carbon dioxide emissions endanger human health and welfare, which means the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can regulate them as pollutants. No regulations have been put in place, and Obama prefers legislation to regulation on this issue. Legislation is already being debated in the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, where former Vice President Al Gore, a long-time environmental activist, on Friday urged passage of a U.S. carbon-capping law this year. Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, declined to specify what the United States needs to bring to Copenhagen in December to demonstrate U.S. leadership, but noted the Obama administration's approach differs markedly from that of the Bush team. "They were not fundamentally looking for an international agreement," Stern said. "We are looking for an international agreement, and we're looking for cooperation at a significant, we hope, transformative level."

The deal, agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris last December, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions by shifting away from fossil fuels to limit global warming to "well below" two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times. But it needs to be formally ratified by countries representing at least 55 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. "The Secretary-General calls on all Parties to accelerate their domestic procedures in order to join the agreement as soon as possible this year," said a spokesman for the UN Secretary-General in a statement. Next week the European Union is expected to complete the joint ratification of the climate pact, which will be a major milestone as it would take approvals past the 55 percent mark and put the deal into effect ahead of the next round of climate talks in November, in Morocco. The Paris agreement received a boost last month after the United States and China, the world's two biggest emitters, submitted their approvals to the United Nations. Concerns about the participation of the United States loom over the deal but cementing the accord before the US presidential election on Nov 8 would make it harder to challenge if Republican Donald Trump, who has opposed it, beats Democrat Hillary Clinton, a strong supporter. Motorcyclists ride through a haze on a road in the industrial town of Vapi, about 180 km north of Mumbai, in this 2009 file photo. Reuters President Obama welcomed India's ratification in a tweet, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the country was carrying on the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and his belief "in a world worthy of our children." Motorcyclists ride through a haze on a road in the industrial town of Vapi, about 180 km north of Mumbai, in this 2009 file photo. Reuters India had called for more work on the agreement ahead of its ratification on Sunday, with its environment ministry saying the Paris agreement laid a "broad framework" but detailed guidelines and rules were needed for it to become operational. The ministry also criticised developed countries, saying their populations "live extravagant lifestyles with a high carbon footprint". It said it was "very crucial" to advance key issues, including those related to finance and technology transfer, at the meeting in Marrakesh next month, where India also plans to urge developed countries to do more. "At Morocco India will insist on a concrete roadmap from developed countries," the ministry said.

Verkhoyansk, where the record temperature was hit on June 20, 2020, is 115 kilometres (71 miles) north of the Arctic Circle - a region warming at more than double the global average. The extreme heat fanned wildfires across northern Russia's forests and tundra, even igniting normally waterlogged peatlands, and releasing carbon record emissions "It is possible, indeed likely, that greater extremes will occur in the Arctic region in the future," the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO said in a statement. The probe was one of a record number of investigations the UN agency had opened into weather extremes as climate change unleashes unrivalled storms and heatwaves. Since Arctic records are a new category, the data needed checking against other records as part of a vigorous verification process involving a network of volunteers. The record is now an official entry in the World Weather & Climate Extremes Archive, a sort of Guinness World Records for weather that also includes the heaviest hailstone and longest lightning flash. The agency already has a category for the Antarctic and had to create a new one for the Arctic after the submission in 2020 - one of the three warmest years on record. A WMO committee is also verifying other potential heat records, including in Death Valley in California in 2020 and on the Italian island of Sicily this year.

Mutual accountability of the government and donors was the bone of contention at a discussion on Sunday. Speakers deliberated upon this aspect of the Joint Cooperation Strategy (JCS), which was agreed upon at a policy-making two-day meeting between the government and development partners in February this year. The Bangladesh Development Forum had decided that this cooperation strategy would coordinate development initiatives. Sunday's session, chaired by finance minister A M A Muhith, was meant to gather feedback of the draft framework from representatives of the civil society including economists, NGO leaders and former bureaucrats. But the discussion revolved around the ins and outs of mutual accountability. Issues like unemployment, underemployment and education had been overlooked in the draft JCS, according to Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, head of the Palli Karma Shahayak Fund, also on several high-powered committees on education policy and climate change. He said that the agencies publish growth projections now and then, often contradicting the government's forecasts, whereas the JCS aims to harmonise these things. "I don't believe this is desirable from the development partners." The JCS draft says much on improving "mutual accountability" to overcome the challenges of aid effectiveness. However, the draft did not indicate how this would be measured, former caretaker government advisor A B Mirza Azizul Islam pointed out. "I don't see any quantifiable or measurable indicators to evaluate the performance of the JCS," he added. Several other discussants echoed the former advisor. On the issue of aid conditionality, Islam said that the development partners imposed certain conditions that were irrelevant. Turning upon the government's problems, he said: "The government should prepare project portfolios so that the development partners can pick specific ones for financing." Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of a Dhaka-based research organisation Centre for Policy Dialogue, raised the developed nations' commitment of giving 0.7 percent of their national income in aid to poor countries. "What has happened to the accountability of that commitment?" Senior Awami League leader Suranjit Sengupta stressed parliament discussions on the JCS draft. "After all, the framework is meant for people's welfare and the parliament represents those people," said the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on law, justice and parliamentary affairs ministry. The prime minister's economic advisor Mashiur Rahman suggested formation of a body, comprising representatives from the government and development partners, which would ensure mutual accountability by monitoring outcome and efficiency of the projects. The finance minister, wrapping up the session, said that the draft had missed out vital areas of migration, land utilisation plan and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). "There should be a land use plan which is very important for the country's planned growth," he said. Terming ICT a "very useful tool for development" Muhith said, "It also helps to ensure transparency and prevent corruption."

A record melt of Arctic summer sea ice this month may be a sign that global warming is reaching a critical trigger point that could accelerate the northern thaw, some scientists say. "The reason so much (of the Arctic ice) went suddenly is that it is hitting a tipping point that we have been warning about for the past few years," James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Reuters. The Arctic summer sea ice shrank by more than 20 percent below the previous 2005 record low in mid-September to 4.13 million sq km (1.6 million sq miles), according to a 30-year satellite record. It has now frozen out to 4.2 million sq km. The idea of climate tipping points -- like a see-saw that suddenly flips over when enough weight gets onto one side -- is controversial because it is little understood and dismissed by some as scaremongering about runaway effects. The polar thaw may herald a self-sustaining acceleration that could threaten indigenous peoples and creatures such as polar bears -- as Arctic sea ice shrinks, the darker ocean soaks up ever more heat than reflective snow and ice. In Germany, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says Arctic sea ice has "already tipped". Among potential "tipping elements" that are still stable, it lists on its Web site a melt of Siberian permafrost, a slowdown of the Gulf Stream and disruptions to the Indian monsoon. "I'd say we are reaching a tipping point or are past it for the ice. This is a strong indication that there is an amplifying mechanism here," said Paal Prestrud of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. "But that's more or less speculation. There isn't scientific documentation other than the observations," he said. Many experts now reckon Arctic ice may disappear in summer before mid-century, decades before earlier forecasts. The thaw would open the region to oil and gas exploration or shipping. Reuters will host a summit of leading newsmakers on Oct 1-3 to review the state of the environment. Speakers will include Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Climate Panel and Michael Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power. "All models seem to underestimate the speed at which the ice is melting," said Anders Levermann, a Potsdam professor. "I do not believe that this is alarmist... not all tipping points are irreversible," he said. And societies can weigh up remote risks, such as planes crashing or nuclear meltdowns. Hansen said he is seeking more study of causes of the melt, widely blamed on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels but perhaps slightly stoked by soot from forest fires or industries in Russia and China. Ice darkened by soot melts faster. "It is a very good lesson, because the ice sheets (on Greenland and Antarctica) have their own tipping points, somewhat harder to get started but far more dangerous for humanity around the globe," he said. A melt of floating Arctic sea ice does not affect sea levels but Greenland has enough ice to raise oceans by 7 metres and Antarctica by about 57 metres, according to U.N. estimates. Pachauri's authoritative climate panel, in a summary report due for release in November, does not use the phrase "tipping point" but does say: "Climate change could lead to abrupt or irreversible climate changes and impacts." It says, for instance, that it is "very unlikely" that the Gulf Stream bringing warm water north to Europe will switch off this century. That could bring a big regional cooling. And it says that a melt of ice sheets could lead to big sea level rises over thousands of years. "Rapid sea level rise on century time scales cannot be excluded," it adds.

SINGAPORE, Tue Jun 9, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Many Asian firms do not fully understand the potential earnings impacts of carbon pricing in the region nor are they prepared for the risk of carbon import duties on their goods, a senior UBS analyst said on Tuesday. Airlines, cement and steel firms, computer makers and shipping lines were among the sectors likely to be hit depending on margins, ability to pass on costs and exposure to the United States and Europe, said Simon Smiles, Asian thematic analyst for UBS in Hong Kong. He said a major climate meeting in December in Denmark could be a catalyst for wider introduction of carbon pricing in Asia and that a carbon tax or emissions trading would affect many companies across every Asian market within three years. "Investors in Asia don't focus on this issue at all. They are very short-term focused, they look at climate change and think this isn't something governments in India and China really have front-of-mind," he told Reuters from Hong Kong. Smiles is author of major UBS report "How could carbon pricing impact Asian company earnings?", published recently. He looked at three scenarios: domestic carbon pricing in Asian countries; "equalising" carbon import duties between richer and poorer nations and harsher climate change carbon import duties. He said the second option was the most likely in the medium term and pointed to signals from the United States and the European Union about the possible introduction of duties on goods from countries that don't have greenhouse gas caps. The Waxman-Markey climate bill, yet to be voted on in Congress, proposes the introduction of an international reserve allowance programme. This would involve US firms buying energy-intensive goods from nations that do not have the same emissions targets as the United States. The US firms would have to buy the allowances to offset the carbon implied in the foreign products, such as cement or steel. CARBON DUTIES Smiles said marine transport firms, airlines, steel makers and computer companies would be affected under the second scenario because exporters would pay for the carbon based on the amount of CO2 they emitted. Domestic firms did not. "When the US introduces carbon pricing, nations comprising over 50 percent of global private consumption will have carbon pricing. They'll be in a better position to potentially introduce carbon-related import duties." According to the report, Taiwan's Eva Airways would be the most-affected Asian airline, with earnings per share falling 34.3 percent under this scenario, based on 2010 earnings projections and a carbon price of US$9 per tonne. Thailand's Siam City Cement's EPS would fall 10.6 percent, while South Korean Hyundai Merchant Marine's EPS would drop 51.4 percent. Under the first scenario in which domestically focused firms and exporters pay for the CO2 they emit, airlines, power utilities, marine transport and cement makers are among the worst hit, he said. The study assumed countries in Asia introduced domestic carbon taxes or carbon trading schemes targeting a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions. China Airlines, for instance would see its estimated 2010 EPS plunge catastrophically because of the high exposure to the United States and EU, 30 percent fuel cost exposure and slightly negative earnings margin. Singapore Airlines' EPS would fall only 8.6 percent because of its 9.5 percent net profit margin and slightly smaller fuel cost exposure, according to the report. Smiles said the third scenario in which exporters of manufactured goods directly or indirectly paid for the CO2 their home countries emitted looked less likely at present. Under this scenario the primary motivation was to force the hand of China, India and other developing nations to join world efforts to fight global warming. "The assumption in the report is to have a look at broadly what we think a domestic carbon pricing regime would cost (for these countries)," Smiles said. It was then assumed that the entire cost for every country was imposed by the US and Europe on all manufactured exports from those countries by way of a flat tax. For China, the implied carbon cost was $55 billion in 2007 terms, while for India it was $9 billion.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed this visit during his bilateral meeting with Bangladesh counterpart Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali. Ali came back to Dhaka on Thursday ending his four-day first official visit to Paris. The foreign ministry said following his request, his French counterpart also agreed to bring a high-level business delegation with him including a delegation of MEDEF, French leading chamber of commerce and industries. He said together with his German counterpart, he would also inaugurate a Franco-German embassy building in Dhaka. Fabius also appreciated Bangladesh’s successes in poverty alleviation, women education and empowerment, and reducing child and maternal mortality under this government. The foreign ministry said their meeting also focused on development of bilateral relations, especially the development of economic cooperation. Expansion of bilateral trade and increasing French investment to Bangladesh and expediting cultural exchange programmes between the countries were also discussed. They also discussed various bilateral and international issues including their commitment to combat climate disruption, which particularly affects Bangladesh. Fabius said France would consider Bangladesh’s concern in the upcoming climate change conference in Paris in December, since Bangladesh was among the most climate change vulnerable countries in the world. He also expressed desire to work with Bangladesh to counter terrorism and militancy for ensuring a peaceful world. Ali informed him about Bangladesh's active role in increasing connectivity and regional cooperation through different initiatives like Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal Motor Vehicle Agreement (BBIN-MVA), the BCIM economic corridor, and the BIMSTEC. In reply, Fabius lauded Bangladesh's initiatives for increasing regional cooperation as well as peace in the region. He also offered all-out cooperation to Bangladesh in this regard. The foreign minister during his Paris visit also visited Bangla section of INALCO, a language and cultural research institute in Paris. He presented them some Bangla books. He also attended the award giving ceremony ‘Chevalier des arts et des letters’ (Knight in the order of arts and literature) where eminent Bangladeshi artist Shahabuddin Ahmad was honoured by the France government. Ali also joined a reception hosted by expatriate Bangladeshis and exchanged views with the Bangladeshi community, according to the foreign ministry.

Even as the war is causing "so much suffering", global warming remains the "most rapidly growing threat to human species on the planet", Espinosa told Reuters. Espinosa said she planned to step down as executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) when her second, three-year term ends in July. The UNFCCC is the 196-country treaty that convenes global negotiations on tackling climate change. "This is an agenda that cannot be postponed," she said, adding the energy security concerns brought on by the war - Russia is a major global supplier of fossil fuels - could hasten countries towards clean energy. The European Union will publish plans on Tuesday to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels, for security reasons. Germany - Europe’s biggest economy - has also brought forward its shift to renewable power. Europe gets 40% of its gas from Russia. "It's a very important change in the way the issue of energy transition is being addressed," Espinosa said. Moscow says its action in Ukraine is a "special operation" to disarm its neighbour and arrest leaders it calls "neo-Nazis". Ukraine and its Western allies say this is a pretext for an invasion to conquer a country of 44 million people. Countries' moves to escape dependency on Russian energy could prompt more domestic coal use, however. Since the invasion, Germany has also announced plans to build terminals to receive gas from other countries. But climate analysts echoed Espinosa's hope that the geopolitical crisis will mark a pivot for global climate action. There's no evidence so far that "climate will be squeezed out of the political or fiscal agenda of governments," said Alex Scott, climate diplomacy leader at think tank E3G. Governments can "handle responses to both of these crises." CHANGE OF GUARD When Espinosa took on the job in 2016, global climate action was at a high point. Months before, UN climate negotiations had yielded the Paris Agreement, committing countries to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, and aim for 1.5C. In the years since, millions of people around the world have rallied for climate action. Countries including the two biggest polluters - China and the United States - have ramped up their emissions-cutting targets. More than 80% of new electricity capacity added in 2020 was renewable. Yet global CO2 emissions continue to climb. Promised funding from rich countries to help poorer nations fight climate change has not arrived. And the 1.1C of warming already seen has worsened weather extremes - from deadly heatwaves and downpours to catastrophic wildfires. A UN climate science report last week warned of escalating destruction if countries fail to slash emissions and prepare for a hotter planet. "We have moved in the right direction," Espinosa said. "But at the same time ... of course, I wish we would have achieved more." The UN climate summit, COP26, in November, clinched an agreement that countries will upgrade their emissions-cutting pledges this year, since current plans would fail to limit warming to 1.5C. Espinosa said she will focus her final months on urging more ambitious pledges ahead of the next UN climate summit, COP27, in Egypt in November. She will also push forward contentious talks on how to deal with the "loss and damage" caused by climate-related disasters in poorer countries. Vulnerable countries' demands for funding for disaster compensation have so far been resisted by wealthy nations in the UN talks. Espinosa said she did not have specific plans for after she steps down, but hoped to continue contributing to environmental sustainability. The United Nations has yet to begin the process of appointing her successor. The biggest challenge facing her successor at the UNFCCC, she said, is speed - a test for a process that can take years to negotiate a single agreement among its nearly 200 countries. "What is very important is to get a sense of urgency in this process," Espinosa said. "We don't have time for gradual progress anymore."

Now Ardern, who made a name for herself by crushing COVID-19 in the country and healing the nation after a massacre of Muslims by a white supremacist, faces a challenge to show her leadership extends beyond crisis management and kindness. Her Labour Party won a landslide victory in the general election, a resounding mandate that ushers in New Zealand's first purely left-leaning government in decades and may allow her to form a single-party government. The win is also the reward for Ardern's leadership through a series of extraordinary events that shaped her first three-year term: the gunman's massacre of 51 worshippers at two Christchurch mosques and the eruption of the White Island volcano, which killed 21. "Be strong, be kind," New Zealand's youngest prime minister in more than a century repeated through these dramatic events, her empathetic leadership and crisis management skills often masking her government's shortcomings. Ardern's left-leaning government will face a looming economic hangover from COVID-19, a deep plunge in output and surge in debt after her strict lockdowns, a worsening housing crisis and a growing divide between rich and poor. Despite promising a transformational term in 2017, Ardern's affordable housing programme was set back by blunders, plans for a capital gains tax that would have addressed the growing rich-poor divide were scrapped, and her government fell woefully short of its goal to reduce child poverty. Even on climate change, which Ardern called "my generation's nuclear-free moment", progress has been incremental. "I think it's fair to say they have not achieved what they had hoped to achieve," said Ganesh Nana, Research Director at Wellington economic think tank BERL. "There are many disappointed with the pace of change." REFRESHING CHANGE Ardern burst onto the global scene in 2017 when she became the world's youngest female head of government at the age of 37. She became a global icon in a rise dubbed "Jacinda-mania," as she campaigned passionately for women's rights and an end to child poverty and economic inequality in the island nation. Ardern, raised a Mormon by her mother and police officer father, left the church over its stance on LGBTQ people in the early 2000s and has since described herself as agnostic. Asked by a television presenter, hours after being appointed Labour leader in 2017, whether she planned to have children, Ardern said it was "totally unacceptable in 2017 to say that women should have to answer that question in the workplace". Ardern did in fact have a baby daughter in June 2018, eight months after becoming prime minister - only the second elected leader to give birth while in office, after Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto. Many took her pregnancy and maternity leave in office as symbolising progress for women leaders. Within three months of arriving in the world, her daughter Neve Te Aroha was at the UN General Assembly in New York with her mother. Ardern is feted globally as part of a new wave of progressive and young leaders that include France's Emmanuel Macron and Canada's Justin Trudeau. Helen Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister for whom Ardern worked after university, said the young leader represents a refreshing and sharp point of difference in a world where news is dominated by utterances of populist and authoritarian leaders. "Jacinda Ardern can be best compared with the three Scandinavian women prime ministers who are from the centre-left," said Clark, co-chair of a World Health Organization panel on the global COVID-19 response. "All of them have led good responses to the pandemic, putting health security first and communicating in an empathetic way with the public in each of their countries." CHRISTCHURCH Last year Ardern received worldwide praise for her response to the Christchurch attacks, which she labelled terrorism. She wore a hijab as she met the Muslim community the next day, telling them the country was "united in grief". She delivered a ban on semiautomatic firearms and other gun curbs, a stark contrast to the United States, where lawmakers and activists have struggled to address gun violence despite numerous mass shootings. At the UN General Assembly, Ardern, asked world leaders: "What if we no longer see ourselves based on what we look like, what religion we practice, or where we live ... but by what we value? "Humanity, kindness, an innate sense of our connection to each other. And a belief that we are guardians, not just of our home and our planet, but of each other."

"It would be a tragedy for the United States and the people of the United States if the US becomes a kind of rogue country, the only country in the world that is somehow not going to go ahead with the Paris Agreement," Robinson said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Sunday. US President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican, has promised to pull the United States out of that global climate accord, which was agreed last year by 193 countries and which came into effect earlier this month, just in advance of his election. The deal aims to hold climate change to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius of warming by moving the world economy away from fossil fuels. The agreement provides for $100 billion a year in international funding from 2020 to help poorer countries develop cleanly and adapt to the already inevitable impacts of climate change. Robinson, who now runs a foundation focused on seeking justice for people hit hard by climate impacts despite having contributed little to the problem, said she was confident other countries would continue their backing for the accord regardless of any action taken by the United States. "I don't think that the process itself will be affected (if) one country, however big and important that country is, decides not to go ahead," she said on the sidelines of UN climate talks in Marrakesh, due to end on Friday. But a pullout could mean a "huge difference" to already difficult efforts to gather enough international finance to help poorer countries develop their economies without increasing their emissions, "which is what they want to do", she said. "The moral obligation of the United States as a big emitter, and a historically big emitter that built its whole economy on fossil fuels that are now damaging the world – it's unconscionable the United States would walk away from it," she said of the threat to withdraw from the Paris deal. Life without water However, Robinson said she sympathised with Americans who had lost their jobs in polluting industries such as coal, many of whom supported Trump in his election campaign. "Clearly they're hurting at the moment," she said, calling for assistance to help such workers retrain and win new jobs in a clean energy economy. "But it's not a future to go backward into coal and have higher emissions in the United States," she warned. "The impact of that will be felt by poor communities and poor countries all over the world." As a UN envoy for El Nino and climate change, she said she had been in dry regions of Honduras where women told her they no longer had water as a result of worsening drought. "I saw the pain on the faces of those women. And one of the women said to me, and I'll never forget, 'We have no water. How do you live without water?' ... I'm hearing that all over the world," she said. If the United States backs away on adopting clean energy, it also would be handing China the leadership role in a key new industry, she said. "That's not what so many states, businesses, cities and academic communities and local communities want in the United States," she said. She urged Americans upset about the proposed changes in US policy to make their voices heard. "People in the United States have to get up and make a big noise, and business in the United States has to make a big noise about this," she said.

A voluntary tax on tourists who visit the luxury resorts and white sands of the Maldives could raise up to $100 million a year towards the country's aim to become carbon neutral by 2020, President Mohamed Waheed said. The Maldives is made up of 1,192 low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean. With average ground level of 1.5 metres above sea level, it is also the world's lowest country and one of the most vulnerable as climate change raises sea levels. The Maldives is perhaps most famous for its 100 island resorts, which attract around a million visitors each year, mainly from Europe and the United States. In 2009, former President Mohamed Nasheed outlined a plan for the Maldives to become the world's first carbon neutral country, having net zero carbon dioxide emissions, by 2020. Under Nasheed, who said he was forced to resign on February 7 at gunpoint after a coup, there were proposals to enforce a $3 tax on tourists to help fund the plan. Waheed, who was Nasheed's vice president and took over the presidency, said the country now preferred a voluntary tax. "We have proposed the idea of a voluntary fund for air travellers coming to the Maldives. Even if each tourist contributed $10, that's $10 million (a year) for us and a substantial contribution to the carbon neutral programme," he told Reuters this week. An airport construction project agreed last year will require $27 from each visitor and Waheed does not want to further burden the tourism industry, which officially accounts for 30 percent of the Madives' $2.1-billion economy, but is thought to be closer to 75-80 percent. "I believe most of the tourists who come to the Maldives are environmentally conscious and quite happy to make a contribution to making the Maldives carbon neutral," Waheed added. Renewables The Maldives is reliant on imported fuel, like diesel, to generate electricity, which is estimated to have cost its economy around $240 million last year. It has now embarked on a $1.1-billion plan to generate 60 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020. Around 50 percent would come from solar photovoltaic power and the remaining 10 percent from wind energy and biofuels, Waheed said. The country is rapidly trying to introduce solar in the capital Male and three islands which make up the greater Male area, covering about a third of the population. It has plans to install about 2-3 megawatts (MW) of solar in the Male area but it would probably need 40 MW to meet electricity demand. The Maldives also needs to construct more environmentally friendly buildings and switch its fossil-fuel reliant land transportation to electric vehicles or hybrids. "We are a little bit behind schedule (on the renewables plan) but we hope we will be able to catch up over the next 5 years or so," Waheed said. "Male is not the most ideal island location right now - it doesn't have 'green' buildings but a lot of companies are interested in developing them." Out of 100 resorts on the islands, 7 are considered to be "ecofriendly", which means they try to minimise their carbon footprint, and one resort should get "carbon neutral" status by next year, he said. The Maldives is also hoping to receive about $30 million from the Climate Investment Funds, channelled by various development banks to help poorer countries pilot low carbon projects. This should leverage around $120 million of capital which would also help scale up the Maldives' renewables programme, Waheed said.

Bushfires threatened dozens of hamlets in Australia's southeast on Friday as authorities closed schools and braced for a horror weekend of soaring temperatures and gusting winds. Army reinforcements have been sent to Victoria state to help more than 2,000 local and New Zealand firefighters struggling to contain 31 blazes, mostly burning in the rugged, inaccessible mountains of the Victorian Alps. With temperatures nearing 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) expected on Saturday and Sunday, state Premier Steve Bracks said residents had to decide early whether to flee or defend homes during what is expected to be one of the worst fire weekends in memory. "It's as important having people with plans ready to put out spot fires ahead of the major front, or fires or activity ahead of the major front, and to stop that really catching on in a town or a community," Bracks said. Firefighters say Australia faces an extreme fire danger this summer amid drought that has turned many rural areas into a tinder box. Scientists fear climate change will bring more frequent higher temperatures and less rainfall to the country. Authorities said blazes stretching 150 kilometres (93 miles) from the central King Valley to the Victorian coast could destroy more than 600,000 hectares (1.4 million acres) in coming days as fires merge in the face of strong northerly winds. People in the Mount Buller ski resort were already fleeing on Friday, with fires expected to race towards the village on Saturday. Thick smoke plumes covered the major towns of Shepparton and Benalla, and stretched 300 kilometres (186 miles) north to the national capital Canberra. The bushfire forced the closure of 24 schools in communities under irect threat including Clifton Creek, Dargo, Lindenow, Maffra and Omeo, and state fire chief Russell Rees advised evacuees to depart early. "Late evacuation is deadly," Rees warned. The fires, mostly sparked by lightning strikes, have already burned across 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres) and are being fought by 350 tankers, bulldozers and 30 water-bombing aircraft. Bushfires are a regular feature of Australia's summer. In January 2005, the deadliest bushfires in 22 years killed nine people in South Australia. Four people were killed and 530 homes destroyed in Canberra in 2003. That same year, bushfires fuelled by drought ravaged a slice of Australia three times the size of Britain. Over the past 40 years, more than 250 people have been killed in bushfires in Australia.

Executives, trade groups and policy experts say hopes for a deal are growing after negotiators at the 2019 summit in Madrid failed to settle how countries can account for international carbon trading as called for under Article 6 of the Paris climate agreement. A lack of international agreement has held back the development of systems for putting a price on carbon. Having some way to measure the economic cost of emissions is a top priority of companies across many industries whose leaders want to cut greenhouse gasses, said Rich Lesser, global chair of Boston Consulting Group. For executives, "if you had a global price on carbon, then it would be economically rational to pursue solutions and alternatives", Lesser said. Dan Byers, who will represent major trade group the US Chamber of Commerce at the summit in Glasgow, called the final resolution of Article 6 "long overdue" to resolve technical issues such as how countries can monitor and verify carbon emissions. He added that a factor favoring a deal is the climate focus of US President Joe Biden, who returned to the terms of the 2015 Paris climate agreement after predecessor Donald Trump pulled out of the accord. "Having the Biden administration backing Paris, and at the table, is hugely important over the long run," Byers said. Other issues that business leaders will track at the meeting starting Oct 31 include what new pledges national leaders might make to cut emissions, and how much money will be set aside to finance sustainable development in emerging markets. Carbon pricing plans can range widely including carbon taxes that charge companies for emissions, or emissions trading markets that cap how much companies or countries can emit but allow them to trade permits to exceed those levels. Many corporations expect carbon pricing plans will help them fulfill the now widespread "Net Zero" pledges, said Kelley Kizzier, a vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund, a Washington advocacy group, and a onetime co-chair of the negotiating group over Article 6 at previous climate summits. Specific issues to resolve in Glasgow for Article 6 include how to prevent two countries counting the same emissions cut, and how new carbon markets might help fund developing countries' efforts to adapt to climate change, she said. Even if a deal is reached, companies will still be left with the work of cutting their emissions, she added. Just because a goal is set, "It's not rainbows and butterflies," Kizzier said. DIVISIONS REMAIN Beyond carbon pricing, leaders are more divided on other topics that will be center stage in Glasgow such as the future role of fossil fuels in the world economy. For instance, an investor group including PIMCO, State Street Corp and French asset manager Amundi has called on countries to take steps including raising their emissions-reduction commitments and ending fossil subsidies, and there have been separate calls for international banks to stop funding fossil fuel projects. But energy executives say fossil fuels still have a role to play in the energy transition. New natural gas facilities in emerging markets would produce fewer emissions compared with existing coal-fired generation, said Aaron Padilla, a policy director for the American Petroleum Institute, whose members include big energy companies ExxonMobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell and Norway's Equinor. "There's still significant room for natural gas especially to displace coal as a source of production," Padilla said. Financial companies face their own pressures. Companies with a combined $90 trillion in assets known as the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero have called for governments to set broad net-zero targets, for instance, and to price emissions. But the group includes banks that still back fossil fuel projects, drawing criticism that they and the alliance's chair, UN special envoy Mark Carney, are missing a chance to force harder action. Richard Brooks, climate finance director for the activist group Stand.earth, said more should follow the example of France's Banque Postale, which said it would stop serving the oil and gas sectors outright by 2030. "Many of the banks who are part of the alliance are getting kudos and green cover but not changing their day-to-day financial practices," Brooks said. Asked about the criticism, Carney said in an emailed statement that member banks must set interim 2030 carbon reduction targets and decarbonization plans. "GFANZ has launched an ambitious body of work to accelerate implementation and action, which will be outlined at COP26," he said.

WASHINGTON, Thu Feb 19, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Barack Obama will seek to quell Canadian concerns about US protectionism when he makes his first foreign trip as president on Thursday to the United States' biggest trading partner and energy supplier. Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will discuss trade, clean energy technology, the global economic crisis and the war in Afghanistan, officials said, but the president's tight schedule on the one-day trip to Ottawa leaves little time for substantive talks. Trade will dominate the discussions, and Harper has said he will seek assurances that the "Buy American" clause in the $787 billion US economic recovery package signed by Obama this week will not discriminate against firms in Canada, which sends about 75 percent of its exports to the United States. US officials, in turn, have said Obama will seek to allay those fears. The president said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation this week that Canadians should not be concerned, noting that history showed that "beggar thy neighbor" protectionist policies could backfire. The "Buy American" provision imposes a requirement that any public works project funded by the stimulus package use only iron, steel and other goods made in the United States. While Obama has stressed that the United States will comply with its international free trade obligations, Harper said last week he was still concerned about the language in the clause. Canada is also alarmed by Obama's stated desire to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, to which Canada, the United States and Mexico are signatories, fearing that it could lead to new tariff barriers. Obama has said he wants to strengthen environmental and labor provisions. U.S. and Canadian labor unions called for changes in agriculture, energy, investment and other NAFTA provisions on the eve of Obama's meeting with Harper. "We need to address the worsening economic crisis in a coordinated manner, reopen and fix the flaws with the North American Free Trade Agreement and move on a range of complementary policies dealing with energy, climate change and green jobs, industrial policy, migration and development," the AFL-CIO labor federation and the Canadian Labour Congress said in a joint letter to the two leaders. Three-way trade between the United States, Mexico and Canada has tripled to nearly $1 trillion since NAFTA went into force in 1994, and together Canada and Mexico buy more than one-third of US exports. But the agreement is often blamed for US job losses, especially in big Midwestern manufacturing states. US administration officials this week sought to downplay the issue, saying that while Obama would raise it in his talks with Harper, the fragile state of the world economy meant he would not be pushing hard for NAFTA to be reviewed now. Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said the president would underscore his commitment to boosting trade between the neighbors, which amounts to $1.5 billion a day, the largest trading partnership in the world. CLEAN ENERGY Obama, who wants the United States to take the lead in the fight against climate change, will also discuss clean energy technology with Harper, US officials said, while stressing the importance of Canada as a key US energy supplier. Environmentalists want Obama to press Canada to clean up its "dirty" tar sands in the western province of Alberta, from which oil is extracted in a process that spews out vast amounts of greenhouse gases. In his CBC interview, Obama said he wanted to work with Canada on new technologies to capture greenhouse gases, a statement analysts interpreted as recognition that the United States cannot afford to adopt a tougher stance right now against its main energy supplier. Obama said he would also discuss Canada's role in Afghanistan, where it has 2,700 soldiers as part of a NATO-led force tackling a worsening insurgency. Obama ordered 17,000 more troops there this week to try to arrest the violence. But with Canada due to withdraw its troops in 2011, and Obama saying he was not going to Ottawa with an "ask in my pocket" for them to stay beyond that date, the talks are expected to focus on other ways the Canadians can help. US officials have billed Thursday's visit, which comes a month after Obama took office, as an opportunity for Obama to deepen a personal relationship with Harper, a conservative who had a natural affinity with former President George W. Bush.

Nepal's sherpa community is sending a piece of rock from Mount Everest to US President Barack Obama to underscore the impact of global warming on the Himalayas. Environmental group WWF said Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had promised to carry the "memento" and give it to Obama when world leaders meet in New York next week as "a symbol of the melting Himalayas in the wake of climate change". Heads of state will attend a U.N. General Assembly meeting as well as hold talks on climate change in New York. The rock was collected from the 8,850 metre (29,035 feet) Mount Everest by Apa Sherpa, who climbed the mountain for a record 19th time in May. Sherpas, mainly living in Nepal's Solukhumbhu district, home to the world's tallest peak, are known for their climbing skills. A WWF-Nepal statement said more than 200,000 youth had also signed a petition to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanding action on global warming ahead of crucial climate talks in Copenhagen. Negotiations on an accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol are scheduled to conclude at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in the Danish capital in December. Experts say mountainous Nepal, home to eight of the world's 14 tallest peaks, including Mount Everest, is vulnerable to climate change despite being responsible for only 0.025 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, among the world's lowest. Average global temperatures are rising faster in the Himalayas compared to most other parts of the world, according to the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

Biden, no stranger to tragic personal losses, will reprise his familiar role as consoler in chief, while promising to bring the might of the federal government to rebuild devastated communities that suffered billions of dollars in damage. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear offered a grim update on Tuesday, saying the dead included a dozen children, the youngest of whom was a 2-month-old infant. He added that he expected the death toll to rise in the coming days, with more than 100 still missing. Biden will visit the Army installation at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, for a briefing on the storm before continuing on to Mayfield and Dawson Springs, two towns separated by roughly 70 miles (112 km) that were largely flattened by the twisters. The president will be "surveying storm damage firsthand, (and) making sure that we're doing everything to deliver assistance as quickly as possible in impacted areas to support recovery efforts," White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Tuesday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has sent search-and-rescue and emergency response teams to Kentucky, along with teams to help survivors register for assistance, Psaki said. FEMA has also sent dozens of generators into the state, along with 135,000 gallons (511,000 litres) of water, 74,000 meals and thousands of cots, blankets, infant toddler kits and pandemic shelter kits. Biden has approved federal disaster declarations for Kentucky and the neighboring states of Tennessee and Illinois, offering residents and local officials increased federal aid. Credit ratings agency DBRS Morningstar said the tornadoes were likely the most severe in the United States since 2011. Insurers are sufficiently prepared to cover claims without significant capital impact, it said in a report. The trip marks one of the few that Biden, a Democrat, has taken to areas that tilt heavily toward the Republican Party, many of whose voters and leaders have embraced Donald Trump's fraudulent claims that he won the 2020 election. The White House has been careful not to bring politics into the disaster relief efforts, including not focusing on what role, if any, climate change may have played in the tragic events. "He looks at them as human beings, not as people who have partisan affiliations," Psaki said. "And in his heart, he has empathy for everything that they're going through." "The message he will send to them directly and clearly tomorrow is: 'We're here to help, we want to rebuild, we are going to stand by your side and we're going to help your leaders do exactly that,'" she added. Biden lost his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car crash, and his older son, Beau, died in 2015 after a fight with brain cancer.

The symbolic Doomsday Clock calculated by a group of scientists was moved a minute closer to midnight on Tuesday, with the group citing inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and climate change. The clock was moved to five minutes to midnight, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said, the first adjustment since the beginning of 2010, when it was moved back one minute to six minutes from midnight -- or "doomsday". "Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed," the group said in a statement. The Bulletin is a periodical founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. They created the Doomsday Clock two years later to symbolize how close humanity was to self-anihilation, with an initial setting of seven minutes to midnight. Initially the clock was focused on nuclear war, but it has been broadened in recent years as the scientists, who include a range of Nobel laureates, added other risks to humanity. The scientists said world leaders had failed to sustain the progress in nuclear disarmament that had seen them move the hands back on the clock two years ago. As well, the major global challenge now was a warmer climate that threatens to bring droughts, famine, water scarcity and rising seas, said Allison Macfarlane, an associated professor at George Mason University near Washington, who chairs the group's committee that helps set the clock. "The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth's atmosphere," Macfarlane said in the statement. The last time the group moved the hands closer to midnight was in 2007, by two minutes due to a North Korean nuclear weapon test, Iranian nuclear ambitions and a renewed US emphasis at the time of the military utility of nuclear weapons. The closest the clock ever came to midnight was 1953, the year of the first test of a hydrogen bomb by the United States.

Brazil's interim President Michel Temer declared open the first Games ever in South America. But in a display of the deep political divisions plaguing Brazil, he was jeered by some in the crowd at the famed Maracana soccer stadium. The opening ceremony was decidedly simple and low-tech, a reflection of Brazil's tough economic times. In one of the world's most unequal societies, the spectacle celebrated the culture of the favelas, the slums that hang vertiginously above the renowned beaches of Rio and ring the Maracana. There was no glossing over history either: from the arrival of the Portuguese and their conquest of the indigenous populations to the use of African slave labour for 400 years. The clash of cultures, as the ceremony showed, is what makes Brazil the complex mosaic that it is. Home to the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, Brazil used the ceremony to call on the 3 billion people watching the opening of the world's premiere sporting event to take care of the planet, plant seeds and protect the verdant land that Europeans found here five centuries ago. Unlike the opening ceremonies in Beijing in 2008 and London 2012, a financially constrained Brazil had little choice but to put on a more "analogue" show, with minimal high-tech and a heavy dependence on the vast talent of Brazil and its Carnival party traditions. While the Rio 2016 organising committee has not said how much the ceremony cost, it is believed to be about half of the $42 million spent by London in 2012. The show drew homegrown stars, like supermodel Gisele Bundchen, who walked across the stadium to the sound of bossa nova hit "Girl from Ipanema" and Paulinho da Viola, a samba songwriter who sang the national anthem with a string orchestra. Everyone performed for free. Loud cheers erupted when Brazil's beloved pioneer of aviation Alberto Santos-Dumont was depicted taking off from the stadium and flying over modern-day Rio. The joyful opening contrasted with months of turmoil and chaos, not only in the organisation of the Olympics but across Brazil as it endures its worst economic recession in decades and a deep political crisis. Temer, flanked by dozens of heads of state, played a minor role in the ceremony, speaking just a few words. The leader who was supposed to preside over the Games, President Dilma Rousseff, was suspended last May to face an impeachment trial and tweeted that she was "sad to not be at the party." The $12 billion price tag to organise the Games has aggrieved many in the nation of 200 million and in Rio, where few can see the benefits of the spectacle or even afford to attend the Games. Due to Brazil's most intense security operation ever, some among the 50,000 attendees faced two-hour-long lines as Brazil staged its most intense security operation ever. People on the periphery The creative minds behind the opening ceremony were determined to put on a show that would not offend a country in dire economic straits but would showcase the famously upbeat nature of Brazilians. It started with the beginning of life itself in Brazil, and the population that formed in the vast forests and built their communal huts, the ocas. The Portuguese bobbed to shore in boats, the African slaves rolled in on wheels and together they ploughed through the forests and planted the seeds of modern Brazil. "They're talking about slavery? Wow," said Bryan Hossy, a black Brazilian who watched the ceremony in a bar in Copacabana. "They have to talk about that. It's our story." The mega-cities of Brazil formed in a dizzying video display as acrobats jumped from roof to roof of emerging buildings and then on to the steep favela that served as the front stage for the ceremony. From the favela came Brazilian funk, a contemporary mash-up of 20th century rhythms, sung by stars Karol Conka and 12-year-old MC Soffia. "This is a conquest. The people on the periphery are having an influence, it's a recognition of their art," said Eduardo Alves, director of social watchdog Observatorio de Favelas. Before the entry of a few thousand of the 11,000 athletes that will be competing in the Games, the playful rhythms of the ceremony gave way to a sober message about climate change and rampant deforestation of the Amazon. Actresses Judi Dench and Fernanda Montenegro lent their voices for a classic poem about hope for the future. Each athlete will be asked to plant seeds that will eventually grow into trees and be planted in the Athletes Forest in Rio in a few years. Brazilian runner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima lit the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony.

The COP26 summit, which began on Sunday in Glasgow, will attempt to complete the rules to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement - which aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times - and secure more ambitious commitments from countries to meet its targets. Underpinning progress on both issues is money. Climate finance refers to money that richer nations - responsible for the bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions heating the planet - give to poorer nations to help them cut their own emissions and adapt to the deadly storms, rising seas and droughts worsened by global warming. So far, the money hasn't arrived. Developed countries confirmed last week they had failed to meet a pledge made in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020. Instead it would arrive in 2023. "Their credibility is now shot," said Saleemul Huq, an adviser to the Climate Vulnerable Forum of 48 countries, adding that the broken finance promise could "sour everything else" at the Glasgow talks. "They are basically leaving the most vulnerable people on the planet in the lurch, after having promised that they're going to help." The Alliance of Small Island States, whose influence at past UN climate talks has outweighed its members' size, said: "The impact this has had on trust cannot be underestimated." SYMBOLIC TARGET The reaction made clear the struggle that countries will face at COP26 as they negotiate divisive issues that have derailed past climate talks. The $100 billion pledge is far below the needs of vulnerable countries to cope with climate change, but it has become a symbol of trust and fairness between rich and poor nations. Vulnerable countries will need up to $300 billion per year by 2030 for climate adaptation alone, according to the United Nations. That's aside from potential economic losses from crop failure or climate-related disasters. Hurricane Maria in 2017 cost the Caribbean $69.4 billion. European Union climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said delivering the $100 billion was one of his three priorities for COP26, alongside finishing the Paris rulebook and securing more ambitious emissions-cutting targets. "I think we still have a shot at getting to $100 billion," Timmermans told Reuters. "It would be very important for Glasgow to do that, also as a sign of trust and confidence to the developing world." Italy said on Sunday it was tripling its climate finance contribution to $1.4 billion a year for the next five years. The United States committed in September to double its contribution to $11.4 billion per year by 2024 - which analysts said was far below its fair share, based on size, emissions and ability to pay. The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened frustration among the poorest countries over the missing climate cash. The $100 billion is a tiny fraction of the $14.6 trillion that major economies mobilised last year in response to the pandemic, according to the World Economic Forum. "One thing that the pandemic showed is that if the priority is big enough, the spending can follow," said Lorena Gonzalez, a senior associate for climate finance at the World Resources Institute. A flurry of mini-deals on climate finance are also planned for the two-week COP26 summit, in an attempt to rebuild trust. The EU, United States, Britain, Germany and France will announce a funding project to help South Africa phase-out coal-fuelled power faster and invest in renewables. Other announcements are expected from development banks and the private sector. Finance will dominate the agenda for negotiations at COP26 on the rulebook for the Paris Agreement. Countries will start talks on setting a new post-2025 climate finance commitment, which poorer nations say must have enough checks and balances to ensure that, this time, the money arrives. Another sticking point will be on rules to set up a carbon offsets market under the Paris Agreement - an issue that derailed the last UN climate talks in 2019. Developing countries want a share of proceeds from the new carbon market set aside to fund climate adaptation projects, such as storm shelters or defences against rising seas. Some richer countries are opposed. "Those markets need to put 1 percent, 2 percent - this is nothing - into adaptation. But this is a no-go for the same countries who are preaching adaptation finance," Mohamed Nasr, climate finance negotiator for the African group of countries at COP26, told Reuters. Securing private finance for adaptation projects is challenging since they often do not generate a financial return. Public support has also lagged. Of the $79.6 billion in climate finance that donor governments contributed in 2019, only a quarter went on climate adaptation, according to the OECD.

China's longest river, the Yangtze, is suffering from a severe drought this year with water levels in some areas falling to the lowest in 142 years, state media said on Thursday. China is suffering its worst drought in a decade, which has left millions of people short of drinking water and has shrunk reservoirs and rivers. Hardest hit are large swathes of the usually humid south, where water levels on several major rivers have plunged to historic lows in recent months. On Jan. 8, the Yangtze water level at Hankou plunged to 13.98 metres (46 ft), the lowest since records began in 1866, the China Daily said on Thursday, quoting the Wuhan-based Changjiang Times. "This year's drought is rare," Li Changmin, a farmer from central Hubei province, was quoted as saying. "Just days ago, I saw ship after ship running aground. I have never seen that before." Since October, more than 40 ships have run aground in the main course of the Yangtze, the world's third longest river which stretches 6,300 km (3,900 miles) from west to east, the traditional dividing line between north and south China. This year's dry season came a month earlier than usual and water levels fell sooner than expected, an official was quoted as saying. "Also, large amounts of water were stored at the Three Gorges Dam last month, which caused the flow volume in the river to fall 50 percent. But the Yangtze River Water Resource Commission said the drought has nothing to do with the dam," the China Daily said. The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, is an engineering feat that seeks to tame the Yangtze. Backers say the dam will end devastating floods downstream and generate clean electricity. Critics call it a reckless folly that has brought wrenching dislocation for many people. Drought and floods are perennial problems in China but meteorologists have complained about the increased extreme weather, pointing to global climate change as a culprit.

"That risk doesn't negate the need for mitigation but highlights the importance of comprehensive policies," said lead researcher Tomoko Hasegawa from the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan. Previous studies have shown that climate change reduces how much food farms can produce, which could lead to more people suffering from hunger. Curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change can help maintain the yields of existing crops. But there might be indirect ways in which cutting emissions could actually put more people at risk of going hungry, said the study published in ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. "For example, some grasses and other vegetation used for biofuels require agricultural land that might otherwise be used for food production. So, increased biofuel consumption could negatively affect the food supply," Hasegawa noted. Also, the high cost of low-emissions technologies such as carbon capture and storage will be borne by consumers, who will then have less money to spend on food. The researchers used multiple models to determine the effects of strict emissions cuts and found that many more people would be at risk of hunger than if those cuts weren't in place. The team concluded that governments will have to take measures, such as increasing food aid, as they address climate change.

- endorse the idea that economic growth takes priority. But big developing nations such as India are facing growing demands from rich nations to curb the growth in emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change such as more intense droughts and storms, rising seas, drying rivers and melting glaciers. While developing nations, which produce more than half of mankind's greenhouse gases, won't agree to legally binding curbs in a new climate pact from 2013, they are expected to sign up to nationally appropriate actions to fight climate change, such as energy efficiency or carbon trading. INEVITABLE In their election manifestos, the Congress, the BJP and the communists all promise to check river pollution, protect the environment and gradually shift to a low-carbon economy by investing heavily in renewable energy. There is no mention of capping emissions. While the Congress plans to add up to 15,000 megawatts of power each year through a mix of sources, including renewables, the BJP proposes to add at least 120,000 megawatts over the next five years, with 20 percent of this coming from renewables. The vast majority of new power generation will come from coal-fired stations. Many in India see this as inevitable. India is the world's fourth largest source of greenhouse gas emissions which, some studies suggest, could soon overtake Russia to become number three after the United States and China. In India's vast countryside, climate change concerns are virtually non-existent, even as global warming begins to leave an indelible mark on the lives of the poor. Take, for instance, open-air cremation practised by India's majority Hindu population who believe burning the body helps to release the soul in a cycle of reincarnation. United Nations figures show close to 10 million people die a year in India, where 85 percent of the billion-plus population are Hindus who practice cremation, mostly using wooden pyres that release huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). That means felling of an estimated 50 million trees, half a million tonnes of ash and eight million tonnes of CO2 each year, according to Mokshda environmental group. "This is our tradition, why should that change?" retorted Sailesh Bhagidar, a poor Indian farmer, when asked if he would consider an environment-friendly electric crematorium. "Climate and all are for the rich people of the cities."

At the start of a crunch week for the UN climate talks in Glasgow, government ministers will get down to the nitty gritty of trying to honour earlier promises to pay for climate-linked losses and damages and addressing questions of how best to help nations adapt to the effects of climate change. Britain, which is hosting the COP26 meeting, will again try to set the pace, announcing 290 million pounds ($391 million) in new funding, including support for countries in the Asia Pacific to deal with the impact of global warming. That will come, the British government says, on top of the "billions in additional international funding" already committed by rich countries such as the United States, Japan and Denmark for adaption and resilience in vulnerable nations, many of which have experienced the worst effects of climate change. But while developing countries want more money to help them adapt to higher temperatures that have caused more frequent droughts, floods and wildfires, developed nations have encouraged finance to go towards cutting emissions. "We must act now to stop climate change from pushing more people into poverty. We know that climate impacts disproportionately affect those already most vulnerable," said Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who was appointed by the British government to focus on adaptation and resilience. "We are aiming for significant change that will ultimately contribute to sustainable development and a climate resilient future for all, with no one left behind," she added in a statement. An advertising board is seen during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 7, 2021. REUTERS After a week when many pledges were made and richer countries were accused by some developing nations of breaking past promises, Monday's session will focus on ministers' arguments on dealing with adaptation, loss and damage. An advertising board is seen during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 7, 2021. REUTERS FIVE DAYS LEFT There are just five days left at the Glasgow talks to cut deals needed to keep alive the possibility of capping global warming at 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels - the limit beyond which the world will be courting devastating climate impacts. Richer nations want to show they can come good on earlier pledges. Developing countries may well be wary. At a UN climate summit 12 years ago in Copenhagen, rich nations promised to hand developing countries $100 billion a year by 2020 to help them adapt to climate change. read more The target was missed and at COP26, richer nations have said they will meet the goal in 2023 at the latest, with some hoping it could be delivered a year earlier. Potentially more problematic for rich nations is how they should compensate less developed countries for loss and damages caused by historic emissions, an area where concrete pledges have yet to be made. Emily Bohobo N'Dombaxe Dola, facilitator of the Adaptation Working Group of the official youth constituency to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said she was drawn to action after seeing how climate change has affected Senegal. "Now it is time for governments and donors to level up on equitable finance and plans for loss and damage and for adaptation," she said in a statement.

About 1,000 asteroids big enough to cause catastrophic damage if they hit Earth are orbiting relatively nearby, a NASA survey shows. In a project known as Spaceguard, the US space agency was ordered by Congress in 1998 to find 90 percent of objects near Earth that are 1 km (0.62 of a mile) in diameter or larger. The survey is now complete, with 93 percent of the objects accounted for, astronomer Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. Using NASA's recently retired Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope, scientists also found about 20,500 smaller asteroids near Earth. Previous studies estimated there were 36,000 to 100,000 of these objects, which have a diameter of about 100 meters (110 yards). "They could still pack quite a punch," Mainzer told Reuters, adding that "any impact is not a very likely event." But a major asteroid strike could and has happened. An asteroid or comet between 5 and 10 km (3.1 and 6.2 miles) in diameter is believed to have smashed into Earth some 65 million years ago, triggering global climate changes that led to the extinction of dinosaurs and other animals. "We know something that big could wipe out mostly all life on Earth," Mainzer said. Scientists are now using archived WISE observations to home in on potentially hazardous objects whose orbits come within about 4.6 million miles (7.4 million km) of Earth. So far, there is no plan about what to do if an asteroid was discovered to be on a collision course with Earth.

Britain said on Monday it would host a meeting of major economies next month ahead of talks to reach a new UN deal to fight climate change. The United States had asked Britain to hold the meeting of the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF) it set up earlier this year to provide an informal forum to discuss climate issues in London on October 18 and 19. The discussions come less than two months before about 190 nations gather for talks in Copenhagen in December to forge a successor to the emissions-capping pact known as the Kyoto Protocol. "MEF will cover most of the climate issues discussed in the official UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) talks ahead of Copenhagen but is not an official part of the negotiations," Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change said in a statement. "However, it will provide valuable contribution toward Copenhagen if developed and developing countries can reach a shared understanding and build consensus on some general principles. "Real commitment from all countries is needed to secure a breakthrough deal." Delegates are currently meeting in Thailand for two weeks of talks to try to settle on the outline of a tougher pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol. A spokeswoman for the department said the MEF was likely to meet again following the London talks and a further meeting on the eve of the Copenhagen talks was also likely.